Arnaud Desplechin: Kings and Queen (2004)

[Chris Knipp]

We have had some debate on A History of Violence before, and some interesting things came out of it, in fact I think it was one of the best discussion threads on a new movie here this year. Yes, your "impression" that you "get" that I "didn't notice all the quotation marks on everything on Cronenberg's film" is quite correct, except that that is a setup statement because I don't buy its assumptions. I still don't "get" the movie and question that there is much to "get." "Quotation marks" don't exist on film, per se. What do you mean by this metaphor? Explain. Prove it.

We should take this back over to the History of Violence thread though.

My impression is that 2046 showed here in this past year. It was showing in New York City only recently and in Berkeley ealier. Hence I see nothing wrong with listing it in my Best Foriegn list for 2005. Clean, I don't know, I just saw it when it opened in Paris in September 2004. We debated it some on a thread here, and people have seen it, but I disagreed with arsaib4 who loved it before he even saw it, and I thought it was interesting but overrated. In particular Maggie Cheung's performance was overrated, but I understand that. Men fall in love with Maggie Cheung. She was kind of clunky in her early days but even then she was appealing and now she has become pretty cool and elegant and sexy, no doubt about it. I didn't think she did a fantastic acting job in Clean or really was given the opportunity to. French critics thought otherwise. I haven't seen Yes. I have heard enough about it not to want to see it. However, I should have seen The Holy Girl. I just let it slip by. I should rent it. That was an oversight on my part. By the way, the lastest issue of TimeOutNY is sitting beside me on the desk and the movie "Best and Worst of 2005" includes three of their writers' lists. Each one has a "Worst" listed; David Fear's is Where the Truth LIes, Joshua Rothkopf's is Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist, and Melissa Anderson's is Lila Says, about which her comment is:

The sexual politics in this French atrocity about a 16-year-old nymphet who's raped for telling smutty tales make it clear that the devil is a woman.

I don't think it's an atrocity but I do think it's embarassing.

But none of this chitchat belongs on a thread about Rois et reine, but on a thread about 2005: the year's best films.