CLAIRE DENIS revisited

[Chris Knipp]

Claire Denis: 35 Shots of Rum/35 Rhums (2008).

Four people who live in proximity in the same suburban Paris apartment building are at the center of this warmest of Denis' films, one of my favorites and one of the best and most accessible - not that it's talkative or explanatory. You can refer to "Close to Ozu," an essay by Rob White on Cinema Guild Home Video, that spells out what happens at the end (I wasn't sure). The Boston Globe critic ended by saying that he was devastated when the final credits rolled and he was separated from these characters. Ebert says "You can live in a movie like t his." Denis said this was inspired by Ozu's 1949 LATE SPRING, also her own mother's and grandfather's closeness. Living close to the father and daughter (Descas, Diop) who're as close as lovers but must prepare to part, are the man's former lover Gabrielle (Dogue) and Noé (Colin), a rakish admirer lodged in his late parents' penthouse above. Ebert points to how Godard's camera dwells on the faces of these four in a famous highlight sequence in an after hours cafe dancing to a calypso version of "Siboney" and the Commodores song "Nightshift" - one of the most enveloping, intimate, visually communicative scenes of all Denis' films. All this, and not a hint of sentimentality. That's perfection! Also notable, despite an obtrusive classroom discussion of Fanon, is the seamless absorption of blackness, with only a sleazy-sexy Colin of the four, not black. The Tindersticks score is particularly fine.

[Chris Knipp]

Claire Denis: Bastards/Les Salauds (2013)

Disappointing and unpleasant yet done very well (like TROUBLE EVERY DAY?), BASTARDS is a grand noirish tale of big disintegrating families, with several 'grand' actors, first Vincent Lindon, then the tragic-faced Chiara Mastroianni, playing the mistress of the evil billionaire 'enemy,' the legendary Michel Subor, of L'INTRUS, before that BEAU TRAVAIL, earlier still Godard's LE PETIT SOLDAT, and the narrator of JULES ET JIM, 77 or 78 here, his last sad scary villain. This is about some very sleazy, corrupt, or corrupted, people, but it's a film whose strain of sleek elegance is symbolized by Lindon's exquisite pale robin's egg blue Alfa Romeo, which he sells off to help pay bills as he tries to bail out his sister from that billionaire's predations and her husband's terrible mistakes. This is all inspired by Kurosawa's corporate revenge drama THE BAD SLEEP WELL, also Faulkner's SANCTUARY, as is mentioned in VARIETY by Scott Foundas - departed from film criticism since 2015 for Amazon's development team - whose review, typically for him, gives the clearest explanation of a film where, critics suggest, Denis' elliptical style is particularly challenging. This is not much fun, as is clear in the first frantic, furtive sex scene between Lindon and Mastroianni. But Lindon's presence is reassuring, as always. Foundas points out this was Denis' first movie made in digital, and uses its nighttime penetration qualities as Michael Mann did in MIAMI VICE and COLLATERAL. Grégoire Colin is a pimp here, as Foundas puts it "a long way from the baby-faced pizza-seller of NÉNETTE AND BONI." This gets creepy at it's "shallowly sordid" end, as Mike D'Angelo put it - Pasolini SALÒ creepy. One of her less-well critically received films or, as they say, "divisive." I took a neutral stand in my 2013 NYFF review. Now I just want to ask Why? But the obvious answer is that Denis is a compulsive explorer, and going in new directions feeds her creativity in essential ways.

[Chris Knipp]

Claire Denis: High Life (2018)

This on rewatching four years after my NYFF seems to me more clearly a flop - I'd go beyond my original review. Others strongly disagree, but to me it seems to lack even the strengths of a good minimum budget sci-fi film that Duncan Jones' MOON has - such as a good clear plot. Lugubrious, depressing and violent, it's another of those bad films by good directors that make you wonder if you were wrong to love their other ones so much. Robert Pattinson's perfect bone structure is not enough. An overly enthusiastic Atlantic piece is right about one thing: that there are plenty of "loving and tender moments" in HIGH LIFE too. So it's not as simple as I'm trying to make it sound here, but it's not satisfying: it doesn't hold together. Richard Brody wrote a detailed analysis for The New Yorker online. He argues that HIGH LIFE is too conservative, stilted, stiff and expository. Jordan Mintzer in Hollywood Reporter in his good, balanced assessment, describes it as "a film both sensual and disturbing, strangely fascinating and slightly tedious, tender and off-putting, bold and also a bit stilted." Of course if you are a fan of Claire Denis, offbeat sci-fi movies, or Robert Pattinson, you will still have to watch this film despite its tedium and other obvious flaws.

AlloCiné press rating (French review aggregator): 3.1, 62%, but Metascore (US or anglophone critics) is 77%. Is one turnoff for the French that it's a French director's first English-language film? There is another factor: Denis is working with a somewhat different crew here, notably without her collaborative cinematographer, Agnès Godard, whose lovely, intimate images have been so much a part of her films.

[Chris Knipp]

Claire Denis: Friday Night/Vendredi soir (2002)

The feel of a "woman's picture" looms over the action - a lady in a humongous Parisian transit strike traffic jam meets tall silent handsome stranger Vincent Lindon and they share a Night of Love. But that fades as one is swept away by the event and the filmmaking. With my current appreciation of Denis, the opening passage of Paris at night and the chaos of the traffic now emerges clearly as a swirling glowing marvel. Now Agnès Godard's intimate cinematography takes nighttime in the city to a new level - the darkness, the glow of lights, the sensuousness of anonymity, because you're free, because the night is special, because the emergency means rules are suspended for the night. This really happened, Denis has reported: there were indeed many one-night hookups this one night. The score is sweeping, orchestral - strings, soothing, romantic. It damps down the messiness, turns disorder into the opportunity for sex. But this is a film that feels ultimately a bit slight in Denis' oeuvre, declining in interest toward the end. Finally watched on a DVD found on eBay that has been waiting. The closeup camera of Agnès Godard is extreme here. At times it crawls over the two bodies in the dark so close you can't make out what you're looking at, which is distracting. But as a process film this is arresting and has Dennis' distinctive touch.

[Chris Knipp]

Still to come: Let the Sunshine In/ Un beau soleil intérieur Then STARS AT NOON, which is in limited release since Oct. 14, but I have not seen it available around here on the West Coast yet.

[Chris Knipp]

I still have several gaps. But I have set up all these commentaries on my website, in the order in which the films were made, if anyone is interested. They are HERE.