the bunny controversy

[Chris Knipp]

Most of Lelouch's movies have been clinkers. His famous one, A Man and a Woman, was basically just a pretty piece of schlock. I have seen the preview for this new one. And you are right, the local press is warning people to avoid it like the plague. ONe wonders what "hours of glory" the writer is referring to. There are a lot of good new French films to see!

I have seen five more films in Paris, not all French this time:

Clean (Olivier Assayas)
Ken Park (Larry Clark)
Head On (Akin Fatih)
Un fils (Amal Badjaoui)
Le chiave di casa (Gianni Amelio)

Of course only two of these are French, Clean (partly in English, with a little in Chinese--Maggie Cheung is multilingual) and Un fils, about north Africans living in France.

I found all of these very interesting.

Clean works much better for me than did Demonlover. It has a similar multilingual globetrotting plot, but the situations and emotions are much more real and connected and yes, it's what the French call a "grand mélo," a tear-jerker, but the resolution is authentically touching.

I'd been wanting to see Ken Park (having been a Clark fan ever since his famous photo book Tulsa); as far as I know it hasn't been that much seen in the US? It's outrageous for its nastiness and meanness as well as its graphic onscreen sex next to which Brown Bunny is Mary Poppins, but I found it wasn't just a novelty and a scandal but one of Clark's best efforts, a film that works better artistically than Kids. It's tighter and it's dripping in irony in its bitter depiction of family breakdowns in the dead-end suburban world of Visalia, CA.

Head On is a powerful, lurid cross-cultural study that's quite involving and has its own distinctive look and feel. I question the easy assertion that it's a depiction of the situation of Turks in Germany. The situation it represents reads as fairly unique, though there is a brief look at the pressures of a traditional Moslem family on a young woman brought up in a contemporary European environment.

I found Un fils a bit thin, though some French writers admired its very lack of explanation of the pretty Arab boy's male prostitute life and his attempt at rapprochement with his father. It is understated; the question is whether there is a fully worked out background behind that, or if the director/writer simply couldn't work it all out.

I was rather bowled over by Gianni Amelio's Chiave di casa (Keys to the House), having never seen Amelio's other films. It's about a handicapped boy and his father's effort to come to terms with their relationship. The star is a real handicapped boy who is both mysterious and adorable and the whole production, including an important appearance by the always haunting Charlotte Rampling (who reveals here yet another talent, fluency in Italian), is both original and rooted in Italian cinematic traditions -- neorealist as well as post-neorealist Antonioni-esque ones. The film suffers a bit from the deterministic effect of its simple plot, which implies a false dichotomy between loving care and medical help for the handicapped. It's not an either/or, as the Rampling subplot shows. But the close look you get at the boy is unforgettable, as are his scenes with his father. As Alberto Crespi wrote in the Italian communist paper L"Unita'", "Le chiave di casa isn't a film: it's a life experience." Much debate, not detached from left/right political issues, of whether the film is simply manipulative, or valid artistically. I'd say it's another "grand mélo," but one too authentic in its roots -- and too well individualized --- to write off.

I still think about Adieu by Arnaud des Pallieres, which some think too attention-getting and off-putting, but I found too serious and involved in too many central issues to overlook.