JUST A QUESTION OF LOVE: This is how I work on my French.
Christian Faure: Juste une question d'amour (Just a Question of Love, 2000) (TV) 88 mins. Netflix DVD.
Laurent (a vibrant Cyrille Thouvenin) is a 23-year-old agricultural student in Lille (with a passion for poetry) who knows he's gay but lets his parents think he's straight and that his roommate Carole (a sweet Caroline Veyt) is his future wife. He's held in this bind by the fact that a gay cousin, Marc, who was like a brother to him, came out only to wind up dying rejected by his parents, an example of in-family homophobia that seems to have been all too well accepted by his own mother and father. Laurent has been on a downward spiral in school ever since Marc's death. Marc's parents are around at family parties, the mother a basket case on tranquilizers, the father stolid and still unforgiving. This angers Laurent, but the trouble is that his mom and dad, who run a pharmacy, are very dear to him. He loves his parents; he loves family; and he loves kids. But he's stuck in a charade. It's already hurting Carole, who's more than a little in love with him, though she knows full well about his sexuality.
All this has to change when Laurent is attached as a trainee (stagère) to a nursery and lab run by the slightly older Cédric (sexy, soulful Stéphan Guérin-Tillié) and they fall in love.The more grown up and independent Cédric is impatient with Laurent's playing the "little hetero to mom and dad." When he came out to his mother Emma (Eva Darlan) 11 years earlier on the death of his dad, Cédric said she could "take it or leave it." Laurent's pretense is exploded from an unexpected source. The film takes us sympathetically through the pain of Laurent's parents and Emma's efforts to help.
The special virtue of Just a Question of Love is its balance. If it's primarily from the point of view of Laurent, and secondarily Cédric, and takes pains (though it's joyful, not painful) to make their love real (without any explicit nudity or sex though, just passionate kissing), it's just as much about the parents' difficult journey toward understanding of their sons' sexuality.
A beautiful gay coming-out-to-the-parents film that had an unusually high viewership and almost universally positive response when shown originally on French TV, this has meant a lot to a lot of gay men, especially young ones thinking about love and conflicts with parents and the kind of "intense love relationship such as I dream of having and regret not to have had up till now," as one young French blogger typically put it. In IMDb comments that rate it, it has gotten nothing but a 10/10: enough said? Splendid performances by everybody, especially Thouvenin, Guérin-Tillié, and Darlan; this is far more than a "TV movie" and like some of the best contemporary French films, manages to be both elegant and emotionally direct.
With his looks and personality, Cyrille Thouvenin is irresistible in the film: he's always running and leaping, troubled, vulnerable, acting out, but also bursting with youthful energy and smiles. The restrained but warm Eva Darlan is also very memorable. This is the kind of film a gay man can watch over and over, with much pleasure and some tears. Doing so is also helping my French quite a bit.
Fast Times At Ridgemont High
Amy Heckerling's film of Cameron Crowe's "non-fiction" year in a California high school is fairly faithful to the book (Crowe wrote the script which is just as implausible) and it holds up pretty well after twenty-five years. But it's the cast of young up-and-comers (Sean Penn, Judge Reinhold, Phoebe Cates and the sublime Jennifer Jason Leigh) that makes the film work. Heckerling's comic timing was not yet fully developed--this was her first feature; she would be much more proficient in later films such as "Clueless" and "Look Who's Talking"--and Crowe has always been something of a killjoy, so there's a lot riding on cast chemistry and they deliever with the ease of old pros. A not bad way to pass an evening and a good way to intoduce your new teen to pitfalls of adolescence.
The Best actress of My Generation
Quote:
Originally posted by bix171
Jennifer Jason Leigh is my favorite actress, bar none. I know of few actresses working as fearlessly as her. "Miami Blues", "The Anniversary Party" (which she co-directed and co-wrote with Alan Cumming), "Mrs. Parker And The Vicious Circle", "The Hudsucker Proxy", "Single White Female" (she's great, the movie...not so great), "Short Cuts" (good in another bad film). Kubrick filmed her in "Eyes Wide Shut" but had to reshoot her scenes with another actress--God, what might have been!
Lotsa great actresses out there but Jennifer Jason Leigh, to me, knows no peer.
I'm so happy someone here agrees the great JENNIFER JASON LEIGH has no peer. She is simply the best American actress. No one can touch her.
*This is an excerpt of a list I posted of Favorite Female Performances of the 90s:
JENNIFER JASON LEIGH---- (Georgia)
ROMANE BOHRINGER-------(Savage Nights)
CRISSY ROCK------------- (Ladybird, Ladybird)
JULIETTE BINOCHE-------- (Three Colors: Blue)
EMILY WATSON----------- (Breaking the Waves)
*Here's an excerpt of my comments about her performance as Dorothy Parker:
"Which brings me to Jennifer Jason Leigh as Dorothy Parker. If film appreciation is a rather subjective endeavor, evaluating a performance is even more so. I happen to think Ms. Leigh is one of the best actors working in film and her performance here is the type of no-net, bravura acting that is quite rare. Few actors take such chances. She understood that for Mrs. Parker sitting around that table was like being up on stage. She understood that a "naturalistic" portrayal would be totally wrong for the character, after doing her typically thorough research into the real Dorothy Parker."
*Here's a comment about Altman's Kansas City:
" I like Kansas City more than most viewers because Jennifer Jason Leigh is my favorite actress."
*Even decidedly "B" movies like Heart of Midnight are immediately elevated by her performance into something worth watching.
Another side of Olivier Assayas
Olivier Assayas: Les Destinées/Les destinées sentimentales (2000). Netflix DVD.
This is basically a love story -- with elaborate period trappings, primarily the intermittent chronicle of a Limoges porcelain factory belonging to the family of protestant minister Jean Barnery (the recessive yet somehow adorable Charles Berling, with a ginger moustache), whose first wife Nathalie (Isabelle Huppert, as haughty as ever) he banishes, suspecting an infidelity, then brings back, then divorces -- and loses their little girl.
Jean's naturally sweeter second spouse (based on the actresses' two personalities) is Pauline (Emmanuelle Béart). This is the love story. The warmest moments are their embraces. Feeling guilty about his ill treatment of Isabelle's character, Jean renounces the ministry, gives away his factory stock, and goes to live in Switzerland on a comfortable annuity with Pauline, with nothing to do but embrace and get lost in the mist.
But a death in the family -- and the need for something to happen -- requires Jean to take on the reins of the porcelain factory -- become its manager or gérant. Pauline doesn't want him to go, but their love survives. Versatile man, he's also in the army during WWI and seems coarsened by that period. There is the irony, that the factory is making the best porcelain ever, and the workers are on strike because they suffer. The story takes us and the factory up to and beyond the economic crisis of the Great Depression, to the decline of the factory and of Jean.
This is a saga, and it runs three hours. It seems odd that anyone as sophisticated and up to date as Olivier Assayas would film a nineteenth-century novel (by Jacques Chardonne, 1884-1968), but he does it well. Perhaps the story is lacking in dramatic incident and inevitably feels like a toney TV miniseries. But, as Roger Ebert wisely wrote, if you're patient and give it time to unfold, this is a film that has rewards for you. Of course on a DVD you can split it into smaller segments, as a cable company also might do.
The not-so-hidden strength of the film is the depth and subtlety given to the many secondary characters, which go hand in hand with fine costumes and rich mise-en-scène. If it has a greatest weakness it's a certain blandness at times in Berling's character and vacuous sweetness in Béart's--despite all the little changes and vicissitudes they and their relationship go through, and despite the fact that they're both quite wonderful in their roles, especially Berling. Nothing radical here. It's as if Assays is saying, "See, I can do conventional stuff if I want to." But that's not all he wanted. This has the rewards, which are precisely those of a long historical novel--capturing the values of another era, capturing the passage of time itself. For me what's rather thrilling is to see a Limoges porcelain factory of a hundred years ago recreated, working full tilt. A French filmmaking team can do this--because the tradition lives. And so do the delicate plates with their translucent Moon-glow glazes. After all is said and done this is a beautiful film, which redeems Assayas' experimentalism but perhaps also underlines his lack of a central concern.
