Archive for November, 2008

Kings & Queen (2004)

November 29, 2008 at 8:57 pm · Filed under Tedious ·Tagged , ,

Putting faith in Desplechin to deliver the goods (Ma Vie Sexuelle was great) and by all accounts this is gonna be meaty.

Even tho Emmanuelle Devos is probably going to ingratiate herself on my nerves (as she did in Ma Vie) And we have Matheieu – racoon eyes – Almaric again (this is the 4th film i’ve seen him in – he’s getting as ubiquitous as Auteil)

It’s 50 mins in: I’ve stopped the film. Not getting into it.

@

“Plotted like a thriller, paced like a farce” was one review. The restless jump-cut editing is getting exhausting.

What do i think of it so far?: It’s not moving or touching me. “Touched” in the head, with brainy brains all over the place.

Emmanuelle Devos does pitiful and pathetic to perfection. Slops her wretched heart over her gutted face like a puffed up duck. I’d like to ring her neck.

@

Finished. Phew! Relief.

The final scene where “funny devil” Almaric is giving his life lesson “homily” is the most engaging. He’s setting little Elias free to be independent, talking without patronising:

“You’re a little reserved. In return, life has given you a rich soul. That way, when you feel lonely, you can retreat to your inner garden, to chat with your imagination“

That’s a great way to give value to introverts. He also shares a line of poetry from Paul Celan (who is supposed to be obscure and difficult) “Your mother’s soul lashes out at the sharks before you“. Think i might be remembering that line for years to come.

There aren’t that many – compared to Ma Vie Sexuelle – memorable lines of dialogue. “Until i’m totally lost i’m not really in love” is about the only other line that grabbed me.

It’s been a disappointment this film.

The interview with Desplechin reveals a few things. He didn’t want the film “to be softly melancholic – but to be dramatic, to get to the point in every scene” He also justifies all the jump-cutting cus he wanted to “try to go (edit) as fast as the audience is” (now used to, from watching TV and music videos) He also justifies the mixed styles and tones: “Film is always entertainment. There is no more truth in this genre or that genre“.

Well, his film didn’t entertain me. It was a messy emotional melange. At times it seemed pointlessly obscure. And I don’t ever want to see Emmanuelle Devos breaking down and weeping again.

And actually, films that are “softly melancholic” are more than ok with me.

Dir: Arnaud Desplechin, France

5/10

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Manhattan (1979)

November 28, 2008 at 5:10 pm · Filed under It's ok ·Tagged ,

He’s recording his “things that make life worthwhile“

Tarkovsky made 7 films, Woody Allen 44 (and counting)  – probably why I’ve given up watching his films in the last 15 years. They’ve all become a bit indistinguishable.

This is supposed to be one of his best. Swooning Gershwin over B/W shots of schmaltzy Manhattan.

Woody is “dating a girl who does homework” – not just dating, but having sex with her. She’s 17 years old. Given what we now know, seeing him kissing young girls is, er, creepy. Seeing him kiss any female doesn’t look right either (even kooky Diane Keaton) Yuck.

I laugh at Woody Allen’s sarky Jewish humour; but he’s a jerk, in a creepy cringeworthy slimy repellent kind of way. Small ugly Jew obsessing constantly about women – as tho he never gets enough pussy. Altho he always seems to get some pussy. And yet a wimp so skinnily, gingery, speccily, neurotic shouldn’t be getting any pussy.

But i guess that’s all part of the Joke he perpetrates on the public.

And he is funny, you can’t take that away from him. He makes me wryly laugh to myself, and at myself (despite myself) He comes up with great lines:

“When it comes to relationships with women i’m the winner of the August Strindberg Award”

“There must be something wrong with me cus I’ve never had a relationship with a woman thats lasted longer than the one between Hitler and Eva Braun”

“I think people should mate for life -like pigeons, or catholics”

“Your self-esteem is, like, – a notch below Kafka’s“

It’s clever, it’s witty, and you might not get the references to Strindberg and Kafka if you weren’t also part of the pretentious intelligentsia he’s pissing on.

And yet: I often get to a point in his movies when the neurotic whining doesn’t sound so funny anymore; it sounds like neurotic whining. For the sake of it. For the sake of his “act”; his defeatism conveniently contrived to fit into that pessimistic persona which always stays the same, doesn’t develop, doesn’t become anything resembling a real person. It’s always this Woody Allen persona in every film he makes. (maybe i need to watch a few more to base my judgment on a bit more evidence)

He shouldn’t be getting the girl. It’s not right, unseemly. That’s what i was thinking. Get the girl on the plane already, let her be thankfully gone – out of his creepy clutches.

Leave Woody Allen behind where he belongs: as the sad little dumped guy.

I’ll like him better then. Cus he’ll make me laugh.

Dir: Woody Allen, USA

6.5/10

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Alice et Martin (1998)

November 26, 2008 at 5:57 pm · Filed under Tedious ·Tagged , ,

Forgot i had this on video, and was in 2 minds whether to watch it or bin it.

Should probably have binned it and saved myself a couple of hours of life.

It’s not that it’s bad, or even awful – merely dull, in that dull dramatic drama way where too much “story” is being told; felt i was watching something delivered in a box marked “cinematic contrivance”.

I’m not a big fan of Juliette Binoche either.

About 20 minutes in the hook is: has Martin pushed his old dad down the stairs? I answered that question immediately.

And for the next one and a half hours the poor lad is slowly unravelling: running away, starving; traumatised, comatised, having nightmares, breaking down;ending up in nut-house; then on to his guilt-releasing confession, and the final judgement.

While throughout Alice is there; to be fallen in love with, to fight for him, to save him, to stay by him, to have his kid.

“If i hadn’t met you I wouldn’t exist” he says. Yes, might have ended up under the wheeels of a truck (he runs away everywhere, not looking where he’s going)

Coming to Paris to crash at his brother Benjamins (Mathieu Almaric yet again) he turns from hobo to poster boy to cute kid. She resists him at first, but eventually capitulates: “If you want me, I’m yours“.

Their “love” affair isn’t convincing. I didn’t believe in it at all. The psychological motivation for their attraction is opaque to the point of seeming too obviously schematically contrived (so as to push all the story on) Martin comes across as a cute – but moody, immature, vapid, boy. And Juliet Binoche is as cute as she always is – replete with her own brand of pretty vapidity.

Peculiar how some films don’t manage to get off the screen and into your head or heart.

Dir: Andre Techine, France

5/10

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Claire’s knee (1970)

November 26, 2008 at 12:04 pm · Filed under Very Good ·Tagged ,

This is the film that got me into thinking I would like Rohmer films. Hope I’m not going to be horribly disappointed (given how irritated I’ve been with his last 4 efforts)

It’s dreamy summer vacation time in the French Alps boating on the lake.

There’s a precocious girl, Laura. She’s 16 but looks about 12 and talks like a spinsterish maid out of an Anita Brookner novel: “All this beauty exhausts me after a while. It oppresses me. You have to get away“.

She’s into Chekovian conversation with Jerome, a 35 year old diplomat. They’re off running up mountains holding hands. They sit, she leans back into him, he kisses her, she pulls away. “When I’m in love it affects me totally and i forget that I’m happy to be alive” she’s saying.

They’re playing a game with one another. The game of desire and love. Not doing the game. This isn’t going to be distasteful. No, talking about it. She’s needing to “enrich my experience” – and uncly Jerome is safe enough to flirt with.

Jerome is playing out this desire/love game with his Rumanian novelist friend, Aurora, too – like he were a character in one of her stories.

Only he gets fixated on – yes, you guessed it – Claire’s knee. Claire is Laura’s friend and Claire’s has a boyfriend who Jerome doesn’t like.

Jerome is analysising his motives – Chekovian stylee – with Aurora re the “magnet of my desire“, the knee: “Every woman has a vulnerable point, the nape of the neck, the waist, the hands. For Claire, in that position, in that light, it was the knee. It was the precise point where, if i could follow this desire, i would have put my hand“.

And put his hand on her precise point he eventually does, while they’re sheltering from a storm, and he’s upset her telling tales about her boyfriend.

Back to Aurora to give her his report he goes: “It’s the only time I’ve accomplished an act of pure will. I’ve never felt so strongly that something had to be done. It was my good deed” A good boy he’s been (rather than a pervy dirty man) “What i thought to be a gesture of desire, she took as one of consolation“. His hand magnetized to the knee, stuck on it, rubbing it – and crucially – not going off anywhere else it shouldn’t. Cus then he would have been a perv, and the film would have lost all the credit it’s been painstakingly banking in it’s Morality Account.

So: does this film hold up? It does. Even tho the precocious girl thing is there, Beatrice Romand manages to stay the right side of charming (instead of ingratiating) And i felt captured by the languorous summer spirit; sipping cool drinks next to calm lakes overlooking tall mountains. Being indulged in Chekovian conundrums of the heart. The sun is warm. Love is young. Desire is sweet – but fleeting.

And there’s a teasing little tweak in your balls.

This is probably the only Rohmer film I’ll keep and watch again.

Dir: Eric Rohmer, France

8.5/10

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Le Fils (2002)

November 24, 2008 at 3:49 pm · Filed under Good ·Tagged , ,

For most of this film the camera is up close behind the back of Olivier Gourmet’s neck. We’re watching his watching. Where his head goes our head goes.

And his head goes – everywhere with his eyes; looking to the left, to the right, looking askance, turning and looking behind, looking around. Everywhere those speccy eyes are going onto everything. As if the guy doesn’t trust anything or anybody, is suspicious of the next thing that might happen. In case it’s something dreadful.

Like your son being murdered.

And the kid that murdered your son happens to turn up to train to be a carpenter – and you’re his carpentry instructor. What you gonna do – kill him?

Olivier doesn’t know. “Nobody would do this, why you? says his ex wife. “I don’t know” he says.

And he’s in that state of “don’t know” for the whole film. But he can’t help but want to know something, want to find out why and want to find remorse in the kid (there isn’t any)

What he does find is a kind of forgiveness. Eventually.

You keep thinking – especially the way he’s looking – that he could kill the kid. There’s numerous times alone with the boy for him to strangle, or knife, or bonk him on the head with his hammer; “do him”, enact his own retribution, give way to the feeling inside that troubles with something like rage, or hatred – or maybe it’s something unfathomable; that impulse within that turns away from doing the animal instinct thing – avenging, revenging, killing.

I don’t know if it is forgiveness exactly. Oliviers “don’t know” becomes our/mine don’t know. We aren’t sure what Olivier thinks or feels cus he never tells us. He probably can’t tell cus he hasn’t got the language to express or fathom what he feels.

There’s no telling in this film, no explaining. I read a review that made a distinction between showing and seeing, with the inference that the film doesn’t “show” – in symbols or metaphors – but only “sees”.  And there is a lot of deliberate seeing going on; looking “at” as if blindly wanting to be looking “into”. But the more look you do can’t break you in; you keep hitting up against a plank of incomprehension.

Olivier Gourmet is remarkable in the lead role.

Even weeks later after seeing this I’m still perched behind his right ear, watching with seething stoicism from out of his thickly blankly uncomprehending glasses.

Dir: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, Belgium

8/10

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Through the Forest (2005)

November 23, 2008 at 10:16 pm · Filed under Tedious ·Tagged , ,

Boyfriend of young girl has died in accident. She grieves. “You have to forget, and move on” says unsympathetic sister. But she can’t. In 10 brief scenes we go through her grief journey.

More films should be 65 minutes long. Not too long to get too fed up of them. This would have got tiresome over an hour and a half.

Watching it was like listening to a Cd album you keep skipping, cus you only like a couple of tracks.

Those 2 tracks/scenes come at the end.

She’s making love – eternally – with Renaud (dead boyfriend) “I’ve always felt your soul more strongly than i have mine” says Renaud, “It’s inside you that i find myself“. Yes, that rings a few bells.

The need to be in love. “I’m afraid. I’m confused. I’m clinging to what i can before i die“. Clinging to someone. Clinging onto him. Even when he’s died. Wanting to find him. And follow him.

Which she does; finds and follows – and vanishes thro a green curtain of trees in the final scene (accompanied by Charles Ives The Unanswered Question)

There’s a sweet little guitar piece, running thro the film i like (can’t get out of my head – Francesco Tattega “Otemus”? – but it’s too obscure to find on the Internet)

Dir: Jean-Paul Civeyrac, France

5.5/10

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Ivan’s Childhood (1962)

November 20, 2008 at 5:36 pm · Filed under It's ok ·Tagged

Think it’s about time i tackled old Andrei, made my ascent up Mount Tarkovsky.

And this film – his first – is probably the least difficult one to climb; there’s a relatively coherent narrative, and not arduously long.

Opening with cuckoo-cooing, butterflies, a meadow, a sandy beach. Ivan’s Childhood was idyllic when mama was around.

You could look down deep dark wells for stars.

Moments later Ivan has become a 12 year old orphaned boy soldier – childhood beauty brutalized by war.

The abiding memory of this film has been the silver birch forest. In and out and around the silver birches virgin doctor Masha and Leonid go. A love interlude. (It gets the best use of silver birch award)

Precipitously hanging, fragile. Love hasn’t got long to be happening. “Everything happens all of a sudden“. Including your death. Your ordinary death.

Masha and Leonid won’t live much longer.

There’s always going to be great photography in a Tarkovsky film

Sitting in the back of an applecart with your little sister in the rain. Apples fall out of the back scattering onto sand. Horses munch on them.

Flares fizzle into the dark water

Chasing along the shore after sister is Ivan.

But he’s already dead.

Unlikely to watch this film again. The few memorable images I’ve posted are probably all that needs to remain.

It’s not particularly engaging; as a war movie, or as a character drama, or even as the poetic evocation of the spiritual going on in Tarkovsky’s head.

One down – six to go

Dir: Andrei Tarkovsky, Russia

6.5/10 (I’m probably slightly over-rating this film cus it’s Tarkovsky)

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Red Satin (2002)

November 19, 2008 at 10:10 pm · Filed under It's ok ·Tagged

A Tunisian film – great!

It starts off ok. Stay at home widow living a drab life knitting and sewing while young daughter is out partying, and having the life she can’t allow herself to have; cus she’s a widow in mourning,  too old, too “past it”.

Then her life comes to life, she finds her vitality through surreptitious visits to the local “cabaret club” – at first to shyly watch, and then to be gently cajoled into dancing for hordes of wildly clapping men; she whirls around like a “wild woman” wiggling hips and jiggling belly – letting herself become sexy again.

It was no longer a subtle Tunisian film, idiosyncratic, unique; instead turning into a bland ersatz aspirational movie – as seen many times before, ala “Calendar Girls” or “The Full Monty”.

Her transformation from shy, inhibited, doormat into sultry bellydancing diva seemed all too pat, and obvious (so therefore, cliched) The characterisation was too thinly drawn, too cute.

And anyway – as far as i could see – bellydancing cabaret is more-or-less like a lap-dancing club; all the tassles and twirls are about titivating men into waving their wads.

I didn’t see her being emancipated thro her “show” of herself, or empowered thro her dance into self-expressed sensuality. I saw her performing like a sex stereotype.

As for bellydancing; it was looking like a burlesque parody of eroticism. All that wiggly jiggly doesn’t make me long for or lust after – just laugh about. Bellybutton fetish just ain’t my thang.

Dir Raja Amari, Tunisia

6/10

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The Sea Inside (2004)

November 17, 2008 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Tedious ·Tagged ,

Number of reasons why I’ve been reluctant to watch this film:

Too much Disability (quadriplegia) Too much Tragedy. Too much Spanish.

Even tho Javier Bardem is appealing in a huggy bearish benevolent uncle-ish kind of way. Does lots of Big Beatific Eyes and Big Cheeky Grins.

Yet he wants to die. Be put out of his misery. Been living 27 years as a hulking bed body. Had enough  of it. It’s time to Die with Dignity. Needs somebody brave enough to kill him.

He listens to Wagner and Puccini; writes wonderful poetry; can astral fly from bed out to sea. Pretty women want to fall in love with him – he’s lovable and huggable. (Cus he’s Javier Bardem)

I kept wanting the film to be over with (it’s over 2 hours long)

As I’ve said before i find listening to Spanish disengaging; a rapid-fire rush, flapping frenetically at my ears.

A sea of sentimentality is this film. Not a deep sea. A superficial sea.

I got numbed by how nice all the suffering is. When the sympathetic tugging of a film on the heart-strings is too obvious you can get to feel irritated.

The soundtrack got on my nerves eventually.

I wanted dear old Javier to hurry up and be put out of his – and my – misery.

Dir: Alejandro Amenabar, Spain

5/10

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The Legend of the Holy Drinker (1988)

November 13, 2008 at 7:27 pm · Filed under Good ·Tagged ,

In the dozen or so years since I bought this film i must have watched it a dozen or so times.

Primarily because of the performance of Rutger Hauer.

He’s a down and out Polish miner with a tragic past living in exile under the bridges of Paris.

If you know Hauer from his (stereo) typical he-man bad man roles you wouldn’t believe he could be capable of playing a humble shambling pathetic drunk. Such gentleness and tenderness; such soft sadness of eyes. Out of rain-spattered windows he looks, looking like the loneliest man in the world.

Then out off to collect newspaper to wrap himself up in under his draughty dirty bridge. He’s sozzled again. Derelict. A No Hope tramp. Wobbling and tottering.

But then miracles start happening in the form of gifts of money and good fortune. All he has to do is return the 200 francs to a chapel dedicated to St. Thérèse.

As he’s a “man of honour” there shouldn’t be a problem – but of course there is a problem; he gets thwarted 3 times (like in fairy tales) can’t fulfill his moral obligation to repay his debt of honour to “Little Therese“. And ultimately: ends up finally failing.

Magical coincidences of plot; lyrical evocations of Paris; Stravinsky soundtrack giving the whole a kind of jaunty vaudevilllian innocence; quixotic minor characters; Hauer as the archetypal Broken Man – gives the feeling of watching some kind of timeless spiritual parable.

Rutger Hauer will go down as one of the great mac wearers (ala Columbo)

And yet without Rutger Hauer the film wouldn’t really work. His charismatic – and mainly silent – presence magnetizes every scene he is in. You look with him looking – thro those fuggy teary eyes of his; you follow him fumbling into his mac to pull out his gold-rimmed glasses; the clumsy careful unfolding of money from his wallet; his rough writing down with his stubby pencil; the slow, careful, putting into pocket of paper, pencil, money, glasses. It’s all very affecting. Like slo-mo, slightly absurd, Beckettian routines and rituals, done in quiet silences, without much word to say.

The shots are long, the scenes are slow; there’s no fast feeding of transitions to keep what you see snappily tight and purposefully, expectantly, continuous. Which i suppose i didn’t mind the first half dozen times i saw the film – so captivated by Hauers beautiful melancholy was i. But the last few times I’ve started to feel the film could do with at least a half an hour lopped off – It gets to drag and drop about half way thro, become too lax and lethargic.

I guess there is always a debt to pay back to the world; and this film seems to be saying – and maybe the Joseph Roth book it’s based on did too – that that debt is always going to be love; and thus those who give a gift of love are saved.

The forms of love – friendly, maternal, sentimental, erotic, platonic, spiritual -  can all be woven into a single sacred thread.

We all – drinkers and non-drinkers alike – can become “Holy”.

Lovely Rutger – bless him – was giving his gift of love at the end. I hope so. I believe so.

Dir: Ermanno Olmi, Italy/France

8/10

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