Paris movie journal oct.-nov. 2017

[Chris Knipp]

THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES (NEW AND SELECTED) (Noah Baumbach 2017). This was at Cannes, then the NYFF Main Slate, but released on Netflix 13 Oct. Watched online, but in Paris. Also showing in US theaters, including IFC and Landmark. Metacritic rating 79%. There's a lot to cover here in a thumbnail review. One reviewer, Jessica Kiang, says it evokes "so many other media," theater, short story, TV, she doesn't know why it's a film. It is mainly a decent attempt to be not dry, witty, and cruel like The Squid and the Whale, but, only 12 years later, to be about being an adult, having children, learning to forgive one's father and face his mortality, and so on, and so forth. The "stories" faceting helps to do that, but leave one with a messy, shattered vision. Maybe this is a transition, and that would be from cleverness to something like wisdom, a harder mark to strike. It takes a while to get going, but when it does, it feels warm and kind, and you appreciate its sincerity and goodwill. And yes, Dustin Hoffman and Adam Sandler are good even if Ben Stiller is the closest to a grownup, among the males anyway. Watched 4 Nov.

[Chris Knipp]

CARRÉ 35/PLOT 35 (Eric Caravaca 2017). The actor for his second outing as director turns to a poetic, healing documentary inquest, dominated by his own voiceover and interviews, into a dark corner of buried sorrow in his family's past. Christine, his sister, died in Casablanca, Morocco, at the age of three shortly before his parents moved to France and he was born in 1966. Éric and his brother never heard about Christine. Thsir mother destroyed all photos and films of her. Her grave, plot 35 of the Casablanca cemetery, turns out to have disappeared. As he delves with interviews and archival footage, Caravaca finds links with France's hidden colonial North African past. Looking deeper, he discovers connections with prejudices that survived in the Sixties that he traces back to (hideous) Nazi propaganda photographs justifying euthanasia. It turns out that, although his mother, in her eighties, is still in denial of the fact, Christine was born with trisomy and her development was retarded. She also apparently had a heart or breathing defect, and they said her heart just stopped beating. The film seeks to cleanse wounds his parents never allowed to heal, so his own small child will be free of darkness. It is a profound task. Carré 35 is dedicated to François Dupeyron (Monsieur Ibrahim), director of C'est quoi la vie?, which won the actor the Most Promising Actor César of 1999. This 67-min. film, which was 5 years in the making, debuted as a Selection out of Competition at Cannes and opened 1 Nov. in French theaters to top marks from critics, AlloCiné press rating 4.3. Watched at MK2 Côté Saint Michel (Hautefeuille) 5 Nov.

[Chris Knipp]

JOAN DIDION: THE CENTER WILL NOT HOLD (Griffin Dunne). Didion, the elegant prose stylist of apocalyptic musings about America and its wars from the Sixties and Seventies on, is an essential writer, witness her required presence in college writing courses. Her personal torments when first her husband dropped dead, then her daughter, are recorded with brave precision in "The Year of Magical Thinking" and "Blue Nights," the former converted into a 2007 play with Vanessa Redgrave with David Hare. The filmmaker is Didion's nephew, which has its plusses and minuses. He has wonderful access, but the portrait is controversy-averse. There are many voice-over readings from her work by her and others and admiring recollections by Anna Wintour, Hilton Als, Harrison Ford. This film, which has the quality of an official portrait, was introduced at the NYFF 11 Oct. 2017, now is on Netflix. Metacritic rating 72%. Watched on Netflix in Paris 5 Nov.

[Chris Knipp]

TOUT NOUS SÉPARE/ALL THAT DIVIDES US (Thierry Klifa 2017). The daughter (Diane Kruger) of a wealthy woman (Catherine Deneuve) gets drawn in with a dashing bad boy (Nicolas Duvauchelle) who's under dire threat from a gang. Also featuring the screen debut of sleek rapper Nekfeu. Since he switched from magazines to movies in 2002 Klifa has attracted big names, and he worked with Deneuve for Le héros de la famille in 2006 and Les yeux de sa mère in 2011; the latter had Duvauchelle. But he is unable to parlay his liking for American '50's noir into anything with real balls or momentum. Quite dire actions make no impression. AlloCiné press rating 2.8, down from 3.0 for the last two. Opened 6 Nov. Watched opening day at UGC Odéon.

[Chris Knipp]

YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE (Lynn Ramsay 2017). Joaquin Phoenix got the Best Actor award at Cannes for his performance as a saintly, suicidal tank of a hit man in this adaptation of a Jonathan Ames novella (the author of "Bored to Death" did this?). However it may be claimed the film was thrown together at the last minute for Cannes (which also won Best Screenplay), this is an amazing movie whose elegantly fused, hallucinatory and riveting story, acting, music, editing and directing create something like a wholly new experience. Though ostensibly set and shot in New York, I kept thinking of the South, and the images evoked the color still photography of William Eggleston. A gem, one that will disturb you and lodge in your head. The French release title is A Beautiful Day and is 90 mins.. AlloCiné press rating is 3.4; there is admiration, but Cahiers du Cinéma calls it a "turkey." Metacritic 88%. Opened in France 8 Nov. Watched opening day at MK2 Saint Germain. Coming to the US 2 Feb. 2018, UK 9 Mar. 2018.