the LAST FILM YOU'VE SEEN thread

[Chris Knipp]

Antonioni. The Passenger AKA Professione: reporter (1975).

I saw it when it came out but liked it better seeing the new print first shown at the 2005 New York Film Festival. I was impressed by the much admired long final tracking shot. Up in the Festival Coverage section 2005 if it interests you you can read my review from back then. But your description is fine.

[Chris Knipp]

Benoit Jacquot, A Single Girl/Une fille seule (1995). Netflix DVD.

Valérie (Virginie Ledoyen), a young woman who's just discovered she's pregnant, breaks up with her unemployed boyfriend Rémi (Benoit Magimel) in a café, and we then watch her go through her first day of work for room service in an elegant Parisian hotel. Valérie wards off the advances of a male coworker, chats with her mom on guest's phones, delivers breakfasts, walks in on couples having sex, etc. The film is elegant, well-made, minimalist, with concentrated little scenes, all involving Ledoyen, whose self-possession is as striking as her looks -- but she conveys uncertainty and immaturity as well as boldness. Jacquot skillfully gives the effect of real time, though events are really sharply condensed: all these scenes couldn't quite unfold in just seventy-five minutes. Viewers looking for a story line rather than the understated character development on offer will go away disappointed. The fifteen-minute epilogue has parallels with the ending of Jacquot's 1998 School of Flesh. This is a movie that seems more interesting when closely examined on a DVD. Watching it originally in a theater, I felt shortchanged. But the way Valérie's maturity is defined by her two brief scenes with Rémi is sharp, and the use of close-ups is fine, always at the right moment. And yet, when all this is considered, there is still a certain coldness and emptiness about the film.

[Chris Knipp]

Francis Girod, Transfixed (2001). Netflix DVD.

American commentators seem to regard this "polar noir" set in Belgium with a young transvestite at its center called Bo (Robinson Stevenin, praised by everybody) as trashy and pointless. It may have too much plot (a child-molestation case featuring Bo's dad; a serial killer in the trannie prostitute community; Bo's dangerous attraction to a handsome brutish gigolo blackmailer called Johnny (Stephane Metzger) that indeed doesn't lead anywhere too much. But nice cinematography, the elegant Richard Bohringer as chief investigator of both crime cases, and the film's sympathy toward all the characters, even the most twisted ones, might make this worth watching, except that the English subtitles on the American DVD are several beats behind the actual dialogue, which makes the film impossible to follow, and the elaborate mystery-melodrama explanation at the end is quite ridiculous. This was a great role for Stevenin, who got a Cesar for it, but everybody deserved better material.

[Chris Knipp]

Claude Miller, Alias Betty/Betty Fisher et autres histoires (2001). Netflix DVD.

A successful novelist (Sandrine Kiberlain) loses her little boy in an accident and her nutty mother (Nicole Garcia) kidnaps a similar-looking boy as a replacement. Various other people come into the story, Kiberlain's husband, the kidnapped boy's mother (Mathilde Seigner) from the projects and her unemplyed boyfriend, the boy's father, a gigolo who tries to sell a rich woman's house to a Russian mafia couple, etc. This is based on an English novel I'm not familiar with. Praised by some as sly and witty. I found it uninvolving, scattered, and strange. Marred initially by the brutality of Garcia's performance: she seems to confuse madness with grumpiness. Doesn't work nearly as well as Miller's previous film, Class Trip/Classe de neige (1998).

[Chris Knipp]

Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Pulse (2001). Netflix DVD.

Michael Joshoa Rowan on Indie-wire refers to characters in "techno-wary J-horror films like 'Ringu' and 'Pulse,' who find themselves encountering supernatural phenomena while routinely using modern media." This is nowhere near as haunting and good as Kurosawa's Cure but the visuals are better than the earlier (1998) Ringu's, I think. The genre is repetitious, but Kurosawa is a real stylist. Rooms are seen from a distance, with the young protagonists dimly in the back rather than in closeup. Everything is cold, dim, and austere, with a color-drained color in which yellow and green predominate. Impending doom is strongly hinted at from the first scene. Unfortunately we've seen it before.

[Chris Knipp]

Christophe Malavoy: The Fire That Burns (1996, TV). Netflix dvd.

The French title of this film is "La ville ou le prince est un enfant" -- a line from the Bible quoted by the Father Superior at the pre-WWII Catholic school where this takes place: "The city where the king is a child." It's not where you want to be: emotionally in thrall to a young boy. But that's just where Abbe Pratz (Christophe Malavoy, who also directed the film) is: he has an excessive affection for a boy named Souplier (Clement van den Bergh). Since Souplier happens to be involved in an "amiti� particuliere," a "special friendship" of the schoolboy homo kind, with an older boy, Sevrais (Na�l Marandin), Pratz deliberately entraps the boys at one of their secret meetings and expels Sevrais so he can have Souplier all to himself. But the Father Superior (Michel Aumont) is onto Abbe Pratz's pedophile attraction and expels Souplier too. Abb� Pratz and the Father Superior have a long final scene in the chapel more appropriate to the stage than the screen (this is based on a 1951 play of the same name by Henry de Montherlant) in which the Father Superior chastens Pratz and urges him to think of "souls" and not "faces" and love God instead of little boys.

Readers of Roger Peyrefitte's 1943 novel Les amities particulieres/Special Friendships or viewers of the excellent 1964 black and white Jean Delannoy film based on it will know what to expect from the secret meetings between Souplier and Sevrais -- the sweet kisses and adoring looks from the older boy and cigarettes and declarations of selfless loyalty and love, always conducted in some hidden storeroom. But this film by Malavoy on the template laid down by Montherlant, though beautifully staged, with handsome costumes, good cinematography and nice music (including a boy choir), isn't nearly as intricate and entertaining as the web of manipulation and deceit woven by Peyrefitte, who went on from Catholic school to become a professional diplomat. Peyrefitte's novel and the Delanoy film go more deeply into psychology, boy love, and school politics. In a sense Special Friendships can be seen as essentially a boy-boy love version of the Machiavellian mindset behind the 1784 Choderlos de Laclos classic of love manipulation and revenge, Dangerous Liaisons, set under the rules of a Catholic school instead of a royal court. The Fire That Burns is different because its concern is the responsibility of the priest to repress his pedophile tendencies in an institution teeming with young boys (he doesn't consider that they might just ask for a transfer). But a look at Montherlant's biography reveals that he was expelled from a Catholic school himself for a relationship with a younger pupil, and he had a lengthy correspondence with Peyrefitte, so he knew whereof he spoke; and despite its recent date this TV film captures the period mood and atmosphere.

[Chris Knipp]

Philippe De Broca: En Garde (Le bossu) (1997). With Daniel Auteuil, Fabrice Lucchini, Vincent Perez, Marie Gillain, Philippe Noiret, and others. Netflix DVD.

Would not recommend this to anybody unless you love swashbucking fencing movies, but for that, it's excellent, and I've never seen Daniel Auteuil having so much fun. Vincent Perez as his noble adversary early in the film looks very happy too. Fabrice Lucchini as always makes an articulate, if somewhat lightweight, villain. Marie Gillain is lovely. The story has implausible elements and some of the links from point A to point B are just not there. The fending sequences are the best thing. De Broca was getting old and didn't have the touch he had when he did the swashbuckler Cartouche; Devil by the Tail; and the classic Belmondo vehicle That Man from Rio. The French title means "the hunchback," which I guess is what Americans call a "spoiler," since it gives away the significance of what might seem at first a minor character. The American distributors dropped that titles, which had been used seven times by then, for one that had only been used three times.

[Chris Knipp]

Jules Dassin, Rififi. 1955. Criterion DVD.

A recent re-issue of the French crime film (original title Du Rififi Chez les Hommes),with its famous 20-minute silent jewel heist sequence, now comes in the US in a gorgeous new print from The Criterion Collection with improved subtitles and some extras. Jules Dassin was an American (born Julius Dassin in Middletown Connecticut) who was forced to make films in Europe because he was Blacklisted. Rififi was well publicized in the US and did well in art houses. Later Dassin became a lot more famous in the US for Never on Sunday (1960) starring his wife, the Greek actress and political activist Melina Mercouri. (Greece was again glamorized and popularized for Americans and others with Anthony Quin in Mihalis Kakogiannis' 1964 Zorba the Greek, which was even a big hit in Cairo.) The new Rififi DVD includes a recent interview with Dassin. I did not previously realize that one of the main robbers, Cesar the Milanese, was played by Dassin, who stepped in when the original actor became unavailable. He's one of the most memorable characters, a dandified Italian safe cracker who speaks no French.

Although this classic has all the trappings of French film noir, the black and white twilight world of well lit apartments, shiny black cars, men in suits, the nightclub scenes, including a dramatically filmed and lit title song performed at the club, the stony faces and the Gauloises in hand or mouth, I don't think it's as atmospheric or has quite as distinctive a style as Melville's films do. But there's the mesmirizing robbery, which still holds up today as a tour de force. It goes like clockwork, with a fine sense of craft and teamwork among the robbers. Some nosy cops are efficiently dealt with. Things quickly go wrong after they go home and distribute the loot when one of the players gets sloppy and gives a dame a ring with a million-dollar bangle in it. Has there ever been a heist film whose perps lived happily ever after?

It's the wordless heist sequence that guarantees this a special place, and Dassin deserves credit for that. He took a novel so conventional he was going to reject it, and added some key elements that make it special. In the event, he couldn't reject doing the adaptation: he needed the money too much. Jean Servais, who plays the lead character Tony le Stephanois, was an actor rather down on his luck. His grim face is perfect for the role. He was later to play the lead in Dassin's He Who Must Die (1957), which used French actors in Greece for a political tale. Topkapi is a somewhat disappointing 1964 caper film (it pales compared to Rififi) that also got US distribution. It does have a good setting, but it's wasted, gone all bland and bright and prettified. Of Dassin's post-Hollywood oeuvre, Never on Sunday, with its catchy theme song and charismatic heroine, is the popular choice (and won Best Film at Cannes 1960); He Who Must Die the political choice; Rififi the genre choice. An odd piece is his Phaedra with Mercouri and Tony Perkins (1962). Purists of tough-guy Hollywood genre work would eschew these and favor Dassin's early films, which include a prison drama, Brute Force (1947);a cop flick, The Naked City (1948); and two hard core noirs, Thieves' Highway (1949), and Night and the City (1950). Personally I tend to like Frenh noir and neo-noir spinoffs better than the original source material--hence my enduring fascination with Rififil. But Dassin is rather unique in having not only made Hollywood noir but then going over to Paris and producing a memorable example of its Fifties French derivative.

[Chris Knipp]

Lucas Belvaux, Un couple épatant/An Amazing Couple (2002). Netflix DVD.

The Belgian director's trilogy, number two as shown in the US, but shown first in French theaters, this is a domestic comedy (the title is ironic) about a hypochondriac and increasingly paranoid small tech business owner Alain (Francois Morel) who runs around hiding from his wife that he's going to have a very minor operation because he absurdly thinks it's going to be the death of him. His wife Cecile (Ornella Muti) senses that he's sneaking around and, thinking he's having an affair, gets her friend Agnes' cop husband (Gilbert Melki) to follow him, which makes him more paranoid. Eventually things end up at the chalet where Belvaux's escaped political prisoner character (central in the Cavale/On the Run panel) is hiding--the chalet being the main link with other episodes. This is generally and not without reason considered the weakest of the three films in The Trilogy. It's thin and repetitious pretty much throughout, and though poised as a comedy, its main character's obsession with death is hardly funny.

As one French critic wrote, he might have done better if he'd just made one good film. Mahohla Dargis wrote that The Trilogy was "more conceptually fascinating than cinematically engaging." "'The Trilogy'" (she also wrote) "is nothing if not a logistical coup. Inspired by the way genre determines meaning, Belvaux used three editing teams to shape his overlapping stories and the results are [these three films]." In the third, which I haven't seen yet, Apres la vie/After the Life, the genre is drama (or melodrama) and in it Melki, the cop, falls in love with Cecile, the wife who's hired him to investigate her husband. It's generally agreed that Melki shines in The Trilogy. I also like Catheriine Frot, who is important in Cavale.

Belvaux's Trilogy is good material for a film course (comparison of genres, alternate takes, etc.), but the basic material could be better. The hope with Belvaux's Trilogy has to be that the whole is more than the parts.

[Chris Knipp]

Laurent Cantet, Human Resources/Resources humaines (1999). Netflix DVD.

This drama about a labor-management conflict tearing apart a father-son relationship is truly one of the finest French films of the last decade and is a must for anyone interested in contemporary films on social issues. Terrific performances especially by Jean-Claude Vallod as the factory worker father, Jalil Lespert as the management-trainee son, Chantal Barré as his mother, and Danielle Mélador as the feisty rep of the Communist-backed CGT union--among others. Though Cantet's subsequent films (Time Out/L'Emploi du temps. 2001, Heading South/Vers le sud, 2005) have been interesting, he has yet to hit on anything as strong as this. First time I've seen this film again since it appeared briefly in a Berkeley theater in 2000, and it moved me just as deeply as it did then. For a good online description and review, go here.

[Chris Knipp]

Nicolas Philibert, To Be and To Have/Etre et avoir (2002). Netflix DVD.

This documentary of a a French schoolteacher in rural, high-up St. Etienne sur Usson focuses on his few students of various elementary school levels all in one room, and the soon-to-retire teacher George Lopez's firmness and patience. Another of the best French films of the last decade, which understandably holds up on re-viewing and a masterpiece of the thorough and unobtrusive documentary style.

[Chris Knipp]

Claude Chabrol:

Inspector Lavardin (1986)
Cop au Vin/Poulet au vinaigre (1985)
The Color of Lies/Au coeur du mensonge(1999). Netflix DVD's.

Lavardin ( Jean Poiret) debuts with Cop au Vin and his charm is a certain scofflaw cynicism; there was a two-segment TV series follow-up in '88 and Lavardin might have continued but Poiret died of a heart attack in 1992. The first film features Lucas Belvaux of The Trilogy as the bullied son of a neurotic handicapped mother (Stephane Audran). The second is considered inferior, but I'm not sure I'd agree, because it features a deliciously self-centered and corrupt bourgeois family (including Jean-Claude Brialy) who're somehow tied in with a suspicious club owner.

The Color of Lies reminded me of Patricia Highsmith with its tormented painter suspected of merder. The whole Breton town has secrets and this time the puffed-up self-satisfied bourgeois is a French media star who favors extra-long cigars and adultery. Sometimes I think Chabrol is more interested in character and situation than narrative arc, so the suspense and whodonit aspects of his crime stories sometimes get lost, but all three of these are watchable.

[Chris Knipp]

Marcel Gisler, Fogi is a Bastard/Fogi est un saloud (1996). Netflix DVD.

This gay-friendly Swiss French film about a drugged-out punk singer who has an obsessive, dysfunctional affair with a 15-year-old boy groupie pushes the edge of the permissible and the believable and does not go anywhere but downhill, though it isn't without a certain sweetness. Deserves a tiny spot in the roster of drug and music films somewhere is a remote branch off from Velvet Goldmine and Sid and Nancy.

[Chris Knipp]

Laurent Cantet, The Sanguinaires/Les Sanguinaires (1999). Netflix NVD.

Les Sanguinaires is the name of an island where a bunch of Parisians go in December 1999 to get away from pre-millennial craziness and wind up just getting on each other's nerves and nursing resentments against the lighthouse manager (Jalil Lespert, who was to shine in Human Resources and later Xavier Beauvois' 2005 Le Petit Lietenant, wasted here). Too tame to build up to anything, this just fizzles out and gives no hint that Cantet would come up with anything as powerful as his next film or as original as the two after that.

[Chris Knipp]

Steve Suissa, Dangerous Love/L'amour dangeroux (2003). Netflix DVD.

Starring Nicolas Cazalé as an 18-year-old (he was 25 or 26 at the time) and Jennifer Decker as his 16-year-old girlfriend who runs away with him when he gets into trouble with the law. This is a lackluster "criminal lovers"-type drama, already somewhat weakly (but with critics successfully) developed recently in Benoit Jacquot's A tout de suite (2004). At least Jacquot had his muse, Isild Le Lesco, as the girl in flight and her fugitive Arab boyfriend Bada (Ouassini Embarek) started out with a slight aura of danger and craziness about him. Cazalé's character is just a nice guy in the wrong place and the wrong time. The production is competent as French productions tend to be, but the result is exceptionally lame and bland. Not even listed on Allociné.