My review of Joann Sfar’s Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is up at Look/Listen, timed for the film’s five-day run at the Webster University Film Series that begins this Sunday . Check it out.
Posts Tagged ‘French Cinema’
StLIFF 2011: The Artist
Friday, November 11th, 20112011 (France)
Director: Michel Hazanavicius
Viewed: November 10, 2011
Format: Digital Theatrical Projection (Landmark Tivoli Theater)
The Artist is enamored with the glamour and thrills of cinema’s silent era and, to an extent, of the early Golden Age that followed it. The film plainly expects that the viewer will find its deliberately anachronistic evocation of this period to be endearing. And, truth be told, it’s challenging to actively dislike a feature as wistful and fluffy as writer-director Michel Hazanavicius’ shamelessly nostalgic film. In it, he spins the entwined tales of dashing silent film star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) and newly-minted It-Girl Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), the latter ascending just as the former is fading away. Beyond presenting the film in black-and-white with era-appropriate intertitles, orchestral score, and 1.33:1 aspect ratio, Hazanavicius employs a plethora of touches to recall a time when Hollywood studios first began to embrace sound technology. These touches include not only formal flourishes such as filter effects and cranked-up frame rates in some scenes, but also pointedly creaky archetypes and visual gags. There’s an artistic conservatism to the use of these stylistic elements that isn’t found in the contemporary silent works of Guy Maddin, but they serve their purpose here.
Dujardin, who has previously collaborated with Hazanavicius as the titular, clueless secret agent in the director’s OSS 17 spy satires, channels Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks, and Errol Flynn while adding a marvelous slathering of vintage comic sensibility. He’s a pleasure to watch, as is the spritely Bejo, who blends Rebecca Hall’s blinding smile and willowy profile with the cheekiness of a Depression-era film damsel. Inasmuch as the story has a conflict, it hinges on Valentin’s sudden and demeaning exile from Hollywood due to his prideful refusal to make talkies. Hazanavicius portrays the transition from silent to sound as a slow-motion tragedy, and Valentin’s fall as pitiable. The story necessarily recalls Singin’ in the Rain, if it were shot through with dark Looney Tunes seizures. (Indeed, one nightmare sequence seems plucked from the feverish experiences of Elmer Fudd or Daffy Duck.) The film serves in part as a facile criticism of show business’ slavish devotion to lowbrow tastes and its pitiless penchant for stampeding off in search of the Next Big Thing. The film underlines that criticism with its old school stylings—What could be more underground in 2011 than a silent film?—but its message lacks bite.
Eventually, Valentin’s downward spiral into alcoholism and suicidal despair (hi-larious!) is suddenly reversed in a manner that becomes more head-scratching the longer one dwells on it. The film is so attached to its protagonist (and Dujardin such a perfect charming rascal) that once Valentin’s problems are resolved, all seems right in the world. When the sour so abruptly turns sweet in this manner, however, one can’t help but feel a little cheated. There’s a narrative sloppiness to the final act, a defect that points to the broader lack of diligence in the construction of the film. Unlike Charles Chaplin’s Limelight, with which it shares some narrative and thematic features, The Artist isn’t so much cloying as it is ramshackle and crudely considered. Hazanavicius blends together cartoonish tropes, lively dance numbers, restrained slapstick, and knowingly purple melodrama. Each component can be (and often is) engaging on its own, but the whole never seems to coalesce into a clear statement or point of view. Then again, perhaps a point of view isn’t necessary in a film so besotted with ephemeral pleasures.
The Vanishing
Wednesday, September 7th, 20111988 (Netherlands / France)
Director: George Sluizer
Viewed: September 6, 2011
Format: Hulu Plus via Playstation 3
[Vague Spoilers] George Sluizer’s disturbing 1988 thriller is a kind of “daylight nightmare,” wherein a sunny holiday trip changes into something abnormal and terrifying, all in plain view of scores of witnesses. It doesn’t end there, however: The film’s protagonist Rex (Gene Bervoets) spends three years thrashing about in this nightmare, where even charming little cafes and quiet country roads take on a fractured and ominous aspect. Thematically, the film zeroes in on the nature of obsession and the destabilizing character of an unresolved mystery, and in this respect it is kin to works as diverse as Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Sweet Hereafter, Zodiac, and The White Ribbon. Unlike those films, which generally assume a more sociological or philosophical approach to the aforementioned themes, The Vanishing is an intensely psychological film. Sluizer approaches the story as two distinct journeys through personal conflict and catharsis. The first concerns Rex, whose anguish over his girlfriend’s inexplicable disappearance demands an answer that may not be forthcoming. The second journey is that of Raymond Lemorne (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu), a sociopath in the guise of a mild-mannered chemistry teacher and family man, who feels that he must act on his homicidal impulses in order to prove something to himself or the cosmos. Eventually, the two men meet and confront one another, but they don’t so much interact as ricochet off another, fatefully altering each man’s ultimate destination.
The film contains just enough oddness to keep the viewer ever so slightly off-balance about what they are witnessing. Events occur which may or may not be “real,” but are presented in such a way that they hint at deeper truths rustling just out of sight. Henny Vrienten’s score recalls Howard Shore’s early work with David Cronenberg in its reliance on synthesizers that moan and squeal with sinister import. For a film that is essentially bloodless, there is a palpable aura of unsettling sexual and physical peril lurking in nearly every crevice. The fact that Rex is carelessly misogynistic and Lemorne malevolently so subtly colors the film’s events, and only adds to the viewer’s sense of discomfort. Sluizer cunningly uses his performers and his frame, establishing an uneasiness that silently shrieks a symphony of warning. The much-discussed conclusion, while hardly a “twist ending,” is the sort of confounding anti-resolution that adds to the film’s pitiless aura of authentic mortal and moral despair.
Diabolique
Wednesday, September 7th, 20111955 (France)
Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot
Viewed: September 6, 2011
Format: Hulu Plus via Playstation 3
[Spoilers] There’s a specific kind of thrill to be had in re-discovering a classical-era film one has seen before, but only remembers vaguely, an enjoyment that is somehow distinct from that of a genuine first-time encounter. So it is with Henri-Georges Clouzot’s masterpiece, Les diaboliques, which I had seen many years ago, and had become unfortunately entangled in my memory with the 1996 American remake. The remarkable thing about Clouzot’s film is how efficient it is in setting up its premise, and then ratcheting up the tension with one uncanny twist and perilous development after another. What’s more, Nicole and Christina’s scheme is already unfolding when the film opens, and Clouzot does a commendable job of conveying exactly what the women have in mind for the monstrous Michel, all without resorting to stilted dialog. I adore the way that every character in the film save the three principals is presented as vaguely comedic, from the crotchety tenants to the school’s faculty, from the drunken soldier to Charles Vanel’s oddly insistent retired police detective. Far from being a distraction, the tone of light absurdity serves to heighten the sensation that the women’s murderous plot is unraveling and slipping through their hands. Of course, the film’s hidden, second-tier story—the gaslighting of a vulnerable woman in order to kill her—is hardly original stuff, but I’m hard-pressed to think of another example that is presented with such lean, nasty potency.
Point Blank
Wednesday, August 3rd, 20112010 (France)
Director: Fred Cavayé
Viewed: August 2, 2011
Format: Theatrical Print (Landmark Theaters Tivoli Theater)
It’s challenging to find anything to actively dislike about a work as functional and ably presented as Fred Cavayé’s breathless crime thriller, Point Blank. The film blends a noir-tinted story with the sort of frenetic Continental chases and standoffs that will likely have viewers searching in vain for Liam Neeson’s stern visage. In his absence, we have Gilles Lolouche portraying stanch Everyman Samuel, a nurse ensnared by pure happenstance into a world of violent fugitives, murdered millionaires, and corrupt officials. Clocking in at an agreeably brisk 84 minutes, the film boasts a trim unfussiness that expunges unnecessary scenes and dialogue. That said, Point Blank is so rigorously unadventurous in its narrative that one can’t help but feel a touch dissatisfied. Almost every set piece and plot twist that Cavayé and co-writer Guillaume Lemans employ has been presented elsewhere with far more verve and style, and the script’s hackneyed tendencies have a troublesome habit of short-circuiting tension. Case in point: The opening scenes of domestic contentment between Samuel and his pregnant wife Nadia (Elena Anaya) virtually guarantee that she will soon be placed in mortal peril, and will eventually emerge unscathed. Capable action sequences can’t elevate a film this formulaic above mere utilitarian genre escapism. Fortunately, even within this context, there are modest pleasures, such as an enticing turn from Roschdy Zem as an unruffled safe-cracker, or a nerve-jangling climactic scene in a bustling police station.
The Chameleon
Monday, July 18th, 20112010 (France)
Director: Jean-Paul Salomé
Viewed: July 14, 2011
Format: Theatrical Print (Landmark Theaters Plaza Frontenac Cinema)
Jean-Paul Salomé’s fictionalized tale of notorious French imposter Frédéric Bourdin might have been a more satisfactory and engaging film had the director and co-writer Natalie Carter allowed their bolder proclivities to run wild. Instead, The Chameleon is just graceless and drowsy, albeit oddly aware of the psychologically probative potential in Bourdin’s attempt to pass himself off as missing American teenager Nicholas Randall. There are rumblings that the film was taken away from Salomé to be sliced-and-diced by the producers, a rumor supported by the often jarring editing. However, there are plenty of other factors working against the film: a thin budget revealed by visibly shoddy set design; a flat, indifferent movie-of-the-week visual aesthetic; and a meandering script peppered with sophomoric dialog. In places, the ugly, run-down quality to the film’s look works in its favor, providing a dose of corroded and sun-faded verisimilitude to the Louisiana setting. (Shades of Bad Lieutenant - Port of Call: New Orleans there.) However, most of the time, the film’s look is just dull.
The actors don’t help the proceedings, as they all seem to exist in different films. Ellen Barkin and Nick Stahl go for Southern-fried grotesque, while Famke Janssen plays things straight as an FBI agent with a laughably hackneyed backstory. Emilie de Ravin is, well, Emilie de Ravin, which means most of her acting consists of grimacing so that the spot where her eyebrows meet crinkles in alleged confusion or anger. Marc-André Grondin’s approach to Bourdin is to veer arbitrarily between cringing doofus–fanny-pack and all–and delinquent hothead, while throwing a creepy leer here and there to reassure the viewer that Bourdin is, in fact, a globe-trotting conman. This all-over-the-map aspect to the performances is fitting, given how much trouble Salomé has handling the vague narrative. He is clearly fascinated with Bourdin’s craving for love (or, less charitably, attention), rather than the money or adrenaline that drives other imposters, and the script plainly wants to utilize the probable murder of the real Nicholas to wedge open Bourdin’s mercurial mind and expose it for examination. Except that these two components–the con and the murder–just end up slipping past each other most of the time. What we get is an annoyingly bland story about an international conman, into which a Faulkner-tinted tale of wickedness and secrets frequently intrudes. It’s a flimsy patchwork, and ultimately forgettable.
Look/Listen: Fat Girl on Blu-ray
Friday, May 6th, 2011
Timed to coincide with the release of the new Fat Girl Blu-ray from Criterion, I have a piece up at Look/Listen looking back at Catherine Breillat’s provocative 2001 film. Check it out.
Look/Listen: Certified Copy
Wednesday, April 6th, 2011
My review of Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy is up at Look/Listen. Check it out.
Of Gods and Men
Thursday, March 31st, 20112010 (France)
Director: Xavier Beauvois
Viewed: March 29, 2011
Format: Theatrical Print (Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema)
It’s a tricky thing, adapting real-world events fraught with moral, theological, and philosophical significance into a film which purports to share the same character. The burden of oblivious pretension and unprincipled exploitation has buckled the ambitions of countless films about Very Serious Matters, whose creators seem prone to an especially stubborn sort of artistic blinkeredness. In his Grand Prix-winning new film, Of Gods and Men, French writer-director Xavier Beauvois succeeds where many of his confreres have often failed, owing primarily to his disciplined and fitting stylistic choices.
Beauvois–whose other works are unfamiliar to me–uses a stripped-down approach to convey the tale of French Trappist monks in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria in 1996, who must decide whether to stay or leave their monastery when the nation’s civil war comes knocking at their door. The director exhibits an admirable respect for his material’s integrity. The monks are keenly aware of the momentous consequences of their choice on the villagers they serve; on the broader honor of their order; on their personal righteousness; and, most directly, on their own safety. Accordingly, Beauvois and co-writer Etienne Comar generally resist stifling their film with grave trimmings meant to double-underline the dire nature of the monks’ predicament. The characters know exactly what they are facing, and we know it because the performers are intensely capable and the filmmakers regard them with rapt attentiveness.
Beauvois’ film works carefully, establishing the pattern of the monks’ lives, conveying the particulars of what it means to dedicate one’s life wholly to Christ’s teachings in a remote corner of the old French empire, surrounded by Muslim neighbors. The particulars, it turns out, are remarkably innocuous: the monks run a medical clinic for women and children, they listen to the concerns of the village leaders, they plant crops, they make honey, they scrub floors, they read the Bible, they pray. Baeuvois watches them in long shots as they chant together in communal worship, recalling Philip Gröning’s masterful documentary, Into Great Silence. There is little music in the film, all of it diegetic. (The film’s only real dramatic belly-flop involves an audio cassette recording of Swan Lake’s thunderous crescendo. In a work that is otherwise so restrained, the scene in question comes across as comically heavy-handed.) Beavois doesn’t use stirring string cues or beatific lighting to emphasize the gravity of his tale. Instead, he lingers on the naturalistic texture of the Atlas setting: glassy mountain lakes; herds of goats in the wooded hills; old cars stalled on dusty roads.
Gradually, the shadow of the civil war falls across the monastery, although the political and cultural context of the conflict remains obscure within the boundaries of the film. No one utters the words “canceled elections” or “Armed Islamic Group.” It’s clear, however, that the monks are fearful of the jihadist rebels and wary of the corrupt government, which still rumbles with anti-colonial sentiment. The monks only seem to trust their neighbors, who look at the thuggish jihadists and wonder despairingly and rhetorically, “Who are these people?” Eventually, it becomes apparent that the advancing rebels will either conscript the monks or kill them, and the brothers must therefore reach a consensus about whether this looming fate warrants any action beyond, well, reading and praying, I suppose.
The film is therefore a quite pointed first-order rumination on moral duty and martyrdom, one that is partly enmeshed with Catholic tradition but not wholly dependent on it for pathos. It’s perhaps a bit dry to watch monks sitting around and debating the pros and cons of abandoning their home, or monks whispering anxious prayers to themselves in their dark cells. However, the film’s events have the luster of graceful credibility, reinforced by an understated hand. One can envision that the monks would have had these conversations, and they would have taken the time to carefully consider the moral meaning of their choices. Many of the brothers are frightened or angry, confessing a secret wish to return home to the relative safety and comfort of life in France. French audiences were likely well aware of how the story concludes, and the film’s American promotion does little to conceal the unhappy ending of the tale. Nonetheless, there is value in any tale told with such elegance, even one so thematically frank.
Late to the Game: A Prophet (Un prophète)
Thursday, December 30th, 2010
2009 (France / Italy)
Director: Jacques Audiard
Viewed: December 24, 2010
Format: Netflix Instant Queue (via Playstation 3)
In recent years, even arthouse cinemas seem to have been overrun with gangster epics, and although the mother tongue often changes, the cadences are usually the same. Fortunately, Jacques Audiard’s mostly prison-bound entry in the subgenre, A Prophet, proves to be a vibrant and exceptional dramatic work, one that elbows conventions and repeatedly surprises without feeling the need to burn its underlying formula to the ground. Much of the film’s absorbing and lithe character lies in the manner in which it regards its anti-hero, Malik (Tahar Rahim), an nonreligious Arab who enters the French corrections system without family or allies, and receives a six-year crash course in the acquisition and safeguarding of power. Rahim’s estimable performance—part whipped mongrel, part prowling panther—and Audiard’s peculiar flourishes of magical realism provide glimpses of the man’s emotional terrain, but the details of his schemes are often shuttered away from the viewer until the last moment. Accordingly, the film works remarkably well strictly as a bloody, smoldering thriller where the narrative’s precise trajectory is deliciously uncertain. More broadly, A Prophet refreshes in its shades-of-gray stance towards nakedly self-interested behavior, in its grim assessment of the clashes between self-respect and ambition, and in the specificity of its contemporary French setting, so awash in social and ethnic shudders.