Archive for Very Good

Best Intentions (1992)

October 4, 2009 at 11:52 am · Filed under Very Good ·Tagged , , ,

A chronicle of the difficult early  relationship of Ingmar Bergman’s parents – Henrik and Anna – in Sweden a century ago.

Anna’s mother intensely dislikes Henrik and wants to prevent then seeing one another: “You have deep and early wounds, beyond healing or consolation” she slams him with. Henrik’s mother loathes Anna: “Lord forgive me that i camnot love that girl”. They don’t only have matriachal opposition to their “association”; they appear to have a fundamental temperamental antipathy with one another: she’s a flighty, vivacious, capricious, Sanguine; he’s a dour, miserable, Melancholic. But they seemingly love one another (opposites attract and all that) and become fated to be sharing destiny come-what-may.

I don’t know about Henrik (Bergmans dad) There’s much to not like about him. A man riddled with flaws and inconsistencies. A pious man of the cloth who sleeps with both Anna and Frida (first fiancee). Has no sense of humour or fun, lacks spontaneity; Anna tries to get him to dance – he storms off, “I’m a great spoiler of games. That can’t be helped”. He’s a Misery Fetishist: “I’m best living on the extreme edge of the world” he laments after Anna has left him to go back to her moms.

You aren’t suprised that she leaves that Frozen North he has such a grim masochistic affinity with. You wonder why she loves him, or even needs him really. He needs her though: “He needs someone to like, so that he doesn’t have to hate himself so much” says first fiancee Frida.

“Henry, you must forgive me” she saying, but considering he’s a Christian priest he doesn’t seem too keen on forgiveness: “I’ll never forgive you for this” he says… then he’s calling her “despicable” and  “spoilt” shouting at her to leave….”I never want to see you again“….. or he invokes God to get what he wants… or he’s slapping her. She seems more capable than he is of expressing her heartfeltest feelings: “I’m crying because you trample on me and it hurts! You’re trampling on your most faithful friend, amd i’m crying because it makes me angry” she sobs. You don’t get that he’s the “good person” (his mother and ex) say he is. You get that he’s painfully flawed, emotionally dsyfunctional, a bit of a loser-loner saddo really (its all those early and deep wounds he’s got).

And yet. I didn’t despise him. Or dislike him. Maybe that’s to the credit of the actor (Samuel Froler) ; or maybe because of the psychological authenticity of Bergmans screenplay. You  aren’t allowed to take easy polarised sides: Henrik bad, Anna good. Everybody has got a bit of crap in them somewhere.

The film really got to me when i first saw it. The stonking rows they have with one another are seeringly shatteringly real. “I’m beginning to recognise my life. It’s coming back at last. I was dreaming. Now I’m awake” he says to himself after they’ve torn the romantic pretence off one anothers shiny pre-wedding masks.

I suppose by the end of the film, Henrik has had to get off his pious high horse of stagnant self-righteousness and get over himself: be forgiving. As Anna will be willing to forgive him also. To bear the disappintments they’ve hurt one another with, they have to dare to forgive. And grow – hopefully – into a maturer, kinder, kind of love.

Dir: Bille August, Sweden

8/10

Leave a Comment

Grizzly Man (2005)

September 30, 2009 at 9:31 am · Filed under Very Good ·Tagged ,

A documentary by Werner Herzog about Timothy Treadwell, a wild-life bear enthusiast and self-claimed “kind warrior”.

Treadwell lived with wild grizzlies up in Alaska for 13 summers. He claimed to be protecting them. He got up close and personal, gave them cute names like “Mr Chocolate” and “Sergeant Brown“. He also befriended wild foxes; he can be seen cuddling up to”Spirit” and tickling her under her chin;“Ghost” runs off with his favourite hat.

Treadwell gets to be more fascinating to observe than the bears he’s filming. He seems like a bit of a fruity fruit and nut-case. He sounds like a girl. Then he sounds campily gay. “I’m a bit of a patsi“. He has little hissy fits to camera. Then he has big ranty tantrums; the whole of the fucking civilised world is against him. God is against him. Nobody wants him to do what he feels it’s his vocation to do: love and save bears.

“He tried to be like a bear, woof like a bear” says somebody that knew him. Herzog interviews various people that knew and loved or loathed Treadwell. Hanging in the air is the possibility that Treadwell might have had a morbid death-wish to be eaten by a bear, so as to become incorporated into bear-likeness, be at one with bear-spirit. Which would make his consequent death suitably fitting. Only problem was his girlfriend got attacked and eaten too.

There’s plenty to speculate upon. How nuts Treadwell was. Or how liberated (from stuffy societal “norms”) he was. How being with the bears for those 13 summers helped transform and save his life; for years he’d been killing himself with booze.

There’s an audio tape of Treadwells grizzly death. His camera was running, but the lense cap is left on. You can hear his girlfriend screaming apparently. Herzog doesn’t let us – or his previous girlfriend – hear it. “You must never listen to this. You must destroy the tape” he says gravely to her. But why was the camera on? Did Treadwell want to film being eaten? And he couldn’t get to the camera to get the cap off cus his head was in the bears mouth? Was he wanting to leave behind a chillingly melodramatic – and  macabre – record of the “enactment” that was taking place?

Herzog’s film allows you to entertain all of these possibilities. He gives a soberly restrained presentation of Treadwell, his appraisal reasonable, rational, respectful. “This landscape in turmoil is a metaphor for his soul” intones Werner portentously. He doesn’t sensationalise or sentimentalise the gory story. He allows Treadwell to be in front of the camera, be present in all his vainglorious silly sweet conceitedness.

I couldn’t help bu feel sentimentally sympathetic towards Timothy Treadwell. He seemed like such a sad lonely queer little boy.

Dir: Werner Herzog, USA/Germany

8/10

I watched this film on Channel 4;  Every 10 minutes there was a 4 minute ad-break. Grrr! I’m gonna send one of these Grizzlies over to sort them out.

Leave a Comment

Meantime (1984)

September 26, 2009 at 2:00 pm · Filed under Very Good ·Tagged , , , ,

This is the 6th Mike Leigh i’ve seen in the last 3 months (5 of them off of YouTube)

It’s got all the usual bittersweet Pathos. But it’s also got an edgy kind of street-corner “nous”.

Phil Daniels is what gives it edge; he’s the levva jacketted Cockney wide-boy older brother of dim younger bro Tim Roth (Colin) They live in a cramped flat in a grimy tenement block in Saff London with irritable Mavis (Ma) and useless Frank (Pa) All of them are on the dole. Can’t find work. Can’t be arsed.

“Wot you gonna do?” Nobody ain’t got nuffing to do. Except get on each others nerves, wind one another up, take the piss. Get bullied or be bullying. Gary Oldman comes in as Coxy, a bovver-booted off-the-wall skinhead punk to jab in his 10 pence of  sarky scorn and sour spit. The verbal sparring between Daniels and Oldman comes across as something they know about for real; practising being narsty bastards on one another – in lieu of getting a smack in the gob.

Wot you gonna do? Nuffin. It’s dahn the boozer to piss away your dole, dahn the laundrette to sit there bored stewpid, dahn the bingo desperate to win house. It’s workin clarss cultcha. It stinks of disaffected hopelessness (how many times have i used “hopeless” in reviewing a Mike Leigh film?!)

Nice Aunty Barbara gives Colin  a “little job” to do painting. She’s tried to “better” herself, lives in a nice semi-detached house in a nice middle-class area. Only she’s lonely, depressed, her marriage is sexless and loveless. She needs Colin around for some company. Mark puts the kibosh on that; sees her charity for what it is: pity.

As in most of these Mike Leigh films, the sad seam of pathos within his characters  becomes all too painfully real, painfully revealed; Aunty Barbara is slumped up the wall, pissed, lonely as fuck – not able to talk to her husband; he’s not listening to her, not understanding. They don’t love one another anymore. She’s on her own, alone, isolated. I looked into Marion Bradleys eyes and i could see my own separateness, aloneness, unlovedness. She’d connected to me. You always seem to get these deeply affecting “human” moments in Mike Leigh films – where you feel a deep hit in your heart where it hurts, and you start to well up with tears.

Phil Daniels got to me also. Yes, he’s cynical; yes, he goads “Kermit”, “Muppit”, “Dobbin” dimwit Colin; but he also feels brotherly protective towards him; yes, he thinks “Frank” and “Mavis” as so-called parents are a pair of saddo tossers. He can’t bear to be like them. And yet he is like them: another dosser on the dole, with no job, no purpose. As sad as they are.

Only he’s got his gob and his nous to keep him going, keep him moving anywhere as long as it ain’t nowhere. As long as it’s not slumped on that sofa like Frank.

He’s lost. But he hasn’t given up. Not yet anyway. Still gotta keep kicking against all those fucking pricks.

Dir: Mike Leigh, England

8/10

Leave a Comment

Naked (1993)

September 10, 2009 at 10:03 am · Filed under Very Good ·Tagged , , , ,

This might be Mike Leighs best film. It’s certainly one of the best i’ve seen.

Probably cus David Thewlis as disaffected Manc loser-loner “Johnny” is so spot on.

He carries you right into the heart of the hurt of his woundedness.

With such a caustic sense of futile frightening no-hope. It’s uncomfortable to watch. And yet compelling.

The dark bitter brilliant sarcasm cuts close to the edge of the bone

“There was this little dot right, and the dot went bang! and the bang expanded, energy formed into matter, matter cooled, matter lived…into the amoeba the fish, the fish the fowl, the fowl the froggy, the froggy the mammal, the mammal the monkey, the monkey the man….and quid pro quo, momento mori, add infinitum, sprinkle on a little bit of grated cheese – and leave under the grill till Doomsday“

Johnny keeps the clever pitter of patter coming, he’s read loads of books, he’s got (so he says) an A level in Psychology… a degree in Bullshit (“She’s got this irritating proclivity for negation; she thinks its progressive”)…and a Ph’d in Utterly Futile Bollocks…. he’s an incendiary device of detonated damage…..

“Do you think you might have already had the happiest moment in your whole fuckin life, and all you’ve got to look forward to is sickness and purgatory?” he’s asking his ex Louise.

Yes, a right cheery soul is Johnny.

He’s read his Book of Revelation. The Apocalypse is upon us, the End is nigh

““God doesn’t love you, God despises ya – there’s no hope. Good exists in order to be fucked up by Evil. The very existence of Good enables Evil to flourish. Therefore God is a nasty bastard”

The Pathos of the human condition is reduced to Noel Gallagher like soundbite Bathos

“You can’t make a omelette without crackin a few eggs, and humanity is just a cracked egg, and the omelette – stinks”

“We’re not fuckin important. We’re a crap idea” (chips in Liam Gallagher. Or maybe its Paul Scholes)

He wanders around the Streets of London trashing all the lonely people (where do they all come from?) All as lonely and lost as he is. He can’t even give a boozed up middle-aged woman the fuck she wants (actually, she probably wanted affection, warm human contact) “I can’t love, you look like me mutha! The look of pitiful despair on her face is matched by his look of pitying dismay (or maybe it’s disgust)

“You don’t wanna fuck me – you’ll catch something cruel” he says to her. And he’s right, he is cruel. Like God, he’s a right nasty bastard. And yet. You can’t help but feel compassion for how humanly flawed with fucked upness he is. (Whereas Greg Crudwell’s  – as Jeremy G Smart – nasty bastardness is lizard-like cold and sadistic)

Katrin Cartlidge as pothead Goth Sophie and Lesley Sharp as dumpy Louise come across as mysgonised victims. “What is a proper relationship? Living with someone who talks to you after they’ve bonked ya” says Louise in her weary-woe flat Lancastrian monotone. There’s some nasty violence towards Sophie (she gets brutally sodomised/raped by psychopath Jeremy G Smart) Johnny also gets a good kicking. Twice.

Towards the end he goes through a writhing mental breakdown on the hall landing, regressing to the poor sad little unloved boy he underneath always is (maybe thats why i feel so much sympathy for him)

He does a runner. Hobbles off down the street to God knows where. To Anywhere. To Nowhere.

He’s probably never gonna find anywhere that feels like home, that feels like love.

Dir: Mike Leigh, England

8.5/10

Katrin Cartlidge died in 2002. She was only 41.

Leave a Comment

Trainspotting (1996)

April 18, 2009 at 10:18 pm · Filed under Very Good ·Tagged , , ,

I know some people find this film spine-curdlingly awful; not in the sense that it’s a badly made film – more that certain scenes in it are disgusting. Like that infamous Ewan McGregor head down “Worst toilet in Scotland” scene. Or when he’s going cold turkey and hallucinating babies crawling across the ceiling.

It’s meant to be getting at you, and to you. That’s what Danny Boyle wants you to be experiencing; not just watching cute smack-heads shooting up, but viscerally feeling the hit of that needle into the vein, the spew of guts  sicked up, the mad agony crawling thro the blood aching to score.

Its got so much visual verve and stylistic panache. And i like the pumping soundtrack by Underworld too.

Yes, i like the film. Mind you, i find psycho nutcase Begbe (Robert Carlyle) veers too far into unredeemability. I don’t find him funny. I find him nasty.

Ewan McGregor is great. As is Ewen Bremner. I’ll be keeping this film. It’s worth watching again. Especially if you just want to indulge yourself in the “Fuck you!” part of your head for a wee while.

The opening scene has McGregor and Bremner on the run from store detectives – and this is being said (by Ewan) over the top:

“Choose life, choose a job, choose a career, choose a family, choose washing machines, cars and electrical tin openers. Choose a 3 piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics; choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing, game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all…..

I chose not to choose life. I chose something else. And the reason? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin“

Real life, the life of the Ordinary Joe simply pales into pathetic given that kind of rationale. Cus as we know, heroin blows your mind away, “Heroin has got a great fucking personality“.

This film kind of gives me access into why heroin addiction becomes so attractive, so necessary (when you’re into it that is)

By the end tho Renton (McGregor) has fucked off with the loot and he’s booting heroin into touch. He’s lucky:

“I’m going to be just like you: lesuire-wear, DIY, game shows, walks in the park, good at golf,  washing the car, choice of sweaters, getting by, looking ahead, the day you die”

Or maybe not so lucky…..Lol….

Dir: Danny Boyle, UK

8/10

Leave a Comment

My Dinner With Andre (1981)

January 21, 2009 at 10:53 am · Filed under Very Good ·Tagged , ,

Picked this up 6 months ago from a Poundshop!

“A brilliant, brilliant film” i read from one enthusiast. I remember in the 1980’s indulging in deep and meaningfuls about the deep and meaningfuls that Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory get up to in the film. Stream of consciousness dialogues sprouting inspiration all over the place. It moved and meant something i needed to be meaning – then.

And now – over 25 years later? Not quite the same impact. Altho i still feel fondness. I can still see aspects of my younger idealistic self: the earnest yearning for personal transformation. But maybe less earnest these days. And less a yearning for. Because most of my life has happened already

Andre generates most of the energy of the interaction, sets the revelatory mood and insistent tone: “It was very very”…”She really….”  – his urgent earnestness compels Wally Shawn to mug up a kind of rapt, complicit attention – “Gosh”, “Wow!”, “Really amazing” – which is meant to be mimicking the rapt attention we as listeners are experiencing as watchers.

“I experienced for the first time in my life what it is to be truly alive. Now that is frightening because with that comes an immediate awareness of death, being connected to everything means also to be connected to death” gasps Andre. “That’s really amazing” chortles Wally.

Andre gets on a roll and he’s off; unraveling his whole shebang of spiritual transformation re meaningful serendipity’s, eating sand in the Sahara with a devilish Japanese monk, seeing minotaurs, seeing fauns, the power of flags (Tibetan swastika) meditating with cauliflowers in Findhorn, being buried alive in a dug grave.

He’s perceptive enough to know that his story of transformation hasn’t sorted him tho – he’s still vulnerable and neurotically judgmental.  Still doing complaint about how awful life is, how much like zombies we all are.

There’s alarm expressed at electric blanket comfort complacency, how the seasons don’t affect us anymore, how out of touch with direct reality we are, how we ought to breaking through habituated role-playing and experiencing each moment anew; how every action should be a prayer (according to Martin Buber)

Eventually, Wally has to butt in with some objections to all this earnest piousness, stick up for electric blankets:

“Do you want to know my actual response to all of this? I’m just trying to survive. I’m reading Charlton Hestons biography. I keep a list of errands to do in a notebook…. I enjoy having a delicious cup of coffee and a piece of coffee cake – why is it necessary to have any more than this?”

“If you’re really alive inside there’s no problem. If you’re living with someone in a little room and there’s a life going on between you – a whole adventure can be going on right there in that room” says Andre graciously.

Wally does a little bit more token objecting re how doing nothing and merely “being” is absurd….”It’s our nature to do things, be purposeful” – but Andre has got all the trump cards really, the whole point and purpose of the film is with him:

“I can imagine a life when each day could be an incredible monumental creative task – a life of such feeling; quickly falling into enthusiasms, joy celebration, wonder, abandon, tenderness – could we stand to live like that?” he’s saying softly, tenderly.

Wally’s resistance is broken. They end their dinner, go their separate ways. Wally fondly reminisces about places where his life has been – all those little significances – on his journey back home.

We feel his tender glow. And maybe like him we feel our souls enhanced, our life’s feel suitably affirmed – we’ve woken up (a little) to our little selves.

That life affirming woken up juicy feeling is what i experienced seeing this film back in the 1980’s. Now tho the impact isn’t quite there. Life has moved on since then. There’s just so much more of this transformation stuff in the public domain. We’re stuffed to the gills – through the Internet, self-help manuals, inspirational weekend workshops etc – on how we should be self-actualising our full potential, realising our better happier more real selves….

I think the core message of the film is still sound, worthwhile, relevant. But maybe i look at the messengers a bit more critically. Why is Andre having to talk to Wally at all? A need to indulge and show his Ego towards somebody who would passively reflect it perhaps? I mean i’m seeing Wally as a bit of a wally  – so why isn’t he?

And Wally Shawn i find vaguely irritating now; his high pitched squeaky whine of a voice, his odd head, squinty eyes, ingratiating look, his obsequious but faintly mocking manner – he comes across as a ridiculous character – like a caricature of a perpetual loser, yer ordinary averagely neurotic Wally.

I’ll keep this film tho. And will always watch it again. But watching it as stimulating entertainment – rather than as the bewitching provocation it once was.

Dir: Andre Malle, USA

8.5/10

Leave a Comment

The Lacemaker: Part 1 (1977)

December 10, 2008 at 12:25 pm · Filed under Very Good ·Tagged ,

How fond i was of this film when i saw it back in the late 70’s at Birmingham Art Centre. So fond in fact i went back the following Saturday and watched it again.

Charmed me into being a European Cinema “buff”.

Lets put my young head on and write as if watching back then, in 1977.

She seemed very sweet did Isabelle Huppert. Shy, sweet,  introverted, 18 year old virgin. Like i was i imagined. I identified more with her uneducated “naivete” than Francoise’s university educated sophistication and all his book learning.

Certain images resonate: When they’re searching for one another again around the resort; her peeling him a peach; running out of the sea together and he whispers something delicious into her ear and she does a little flicky thing with her tongue; him guiding her blindfold to the edge of the cliff.

Mostly its images of their shy sharing of love at the beginning i remember. Not so much the disconnect and disintegration that happens later on. Of course that haunted mad-sad face she does at the end – turned silently into the camera, staring through us watching her and devastating us with her mutism, her heartbreak, her broken spirit.

That it should end so tragically and miserably was heart-rending – and the melancholy feeling stayed with me for days afterwards.

One of those small films i came to feel so softened and sweetened by. And of course i still have that quiet need to be softened and sweetened even now, 30 years on.

But I’ve grown-up. I’m wiser. Watching Feel-Sad films about “doomed love” has got to feel masochistic: too much wallowing in self-indulgent misery and melancholy.

Still, I’ll admit to feeling a kind of infatuation with poor sad sweet little “Pomme” (Isabelle Huppert). She fulfilled the role of being my imaginary and hoped for – but safely abstracted and absent – girlfriend.

Dir: Claude Goretta, France/Switzerland

Probably given it 9/10 back in 1977

Leave a Comment

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

Leave a Comment

Ma Vie Sexuelle (1997)

October 16, 2008 at 8:42 pm · Filed under Very Good ·Tagged , ,

I’m liking these French films about intellectuals, writers, artists. The very idea that they exist somehow pleases me.

Maybe it’s got something to do with Frenchness itself; they seem to value the life of the mind more than we do. There’s something endearing about the bombastic pretension they bask intellectual life in; i find how “seri-ooos” they take ideas, thoughts, language, comforting and reassuring.

“Life of the Mind” looms all over this film like a great big sucky gargoyle (odd choice of simile there – but it feels right, so I’ll leave it in). Here’s an example of how this film “thinks”, in it’s omniscient voice-over:

“Paul (Mathieu Amalric, in pic above with fag on) feels it his duty to “think” his friends. For him, thinking them is a way of caring for them. He believes that his positive thoughts protect his friends from danger….”To stop thinking” is what he will never be able to do. Eventually all of Paul’s friends surrender to the loving discourse in which he envelops them“.

No, he doesn’t “stop thinking” them nor does anybody else stop thinking either. Not think like me or you would. But think like they do; referencing Adorno, Kierkegaard, Ibsen, Kundera etc. In fact, they talk a bit like characters in a Kundera novel, like this:

“You see yourself in me. Because you admire me. I’m flattered. You see yourself in me so you want to destroy me and be the original. You want to tame me. Or else you’d be kind, to please me, to keep me“.

And then the Kundera-like narrator breaks in, voicing-over with this:

“Paul is mistaken. Valerie doesn’t need kindness. Her lack of tenderness is not hard to explain. It’s simply a question of Valerie’s nature. As Kundera wrote: “Tenderness is the fear of adulthood”. Val fears nothing of the sort, having no childhood nostalgia. A child wholly integrated into the adult world, she is furious that anyone else can stake claim to childhood“.

Ok, i won’t try to analyse what that might mean here (I’ll stick it and more dialogue from the film in a separate post) But you get the idea? It’s wordy. It’s mental. It’s up it’s own botty (makes me nostalgic for University suddenly) The discourse they wrap – or entangle, or unravel-  one another up in is not positive or “loving” exactly. No – more like stickily, disconcertingly, “neurotic”.

“My Sexual Life” it’s called – but there’s no sex in it. Talk about sex. Not talk that’s sexy. Maybe it should have been called “My Neurotic Talk Life” or “Affairs of My Head” or something.

Mathieu Amalric and Jeanne Balibar of Late August, Early September are both in this. Amalric does good fag (as you can see in the pic) and Balibar does a good line in off the wall loopiness. Pauls’ ex-girlfriend Esther (the one he’s been breaking up with for the last 10 years) is Emmanuelle Devos. She gets some heart-breaking scenes – and yet i find it difficult to watch them, or her. Probably cus she reminds me of somebody in my past i don’t like. I cringed when i saw her crumpled up teary crying face.

It’s a very long film (3 hours) and you won’t want to watch it in one sitting. And you’ll probably get tired by how tiresome they all are, and irritated by how self-centred it all is. Watch a bunch of French Narcissists for 3 hours? No!

But maybe like me, you’ll be scintillated. You’ll keep rewinding to read the subtitles; you’ll be pausing the tape to think- yes think!

Eventually, you’ll be able to stick your head up your arse, and go – boo!

Dir:Arnaud Desplechin, France

8.5/10

Leave a Comment

L’Ennui (1998)

October 12, 2008 at 11:30 am · Filed under Very Good ·Tagged ,

Yes, he does worry. Is worried to death about her. Cus he can’t have her – no matter how hard, or how many, times he fucks her.

Martin – a philosopher – is having a bit of a nervous breakdown to begin with. Having an affair with Cecilia sends him hurtling headlong into Dread and Despair.

Sophie Guillemin – her of the “animal intelligence” (in “Harry, he’s here to help” – is Cecilia: plain, stout, ordinary 17 year old girl. “You don’t seem to be the sort of woman to inspire grand passion” he says. “You seem very ordinary. You’d make a great wife“.

And yet. He becomes fixated by her. Passionate. Obssessive. Possessive. Can’t get enough of getting into her pussy because he can’t get into her empty head.

“There’s no why to love, you just love” she says blankly. “There’s a why to everything” he says. He proceeds to bombard her with a lot of Why, trying to get under her skin, strip her mind. But her mind is moreorless bare. “Ask me a proper question. You always ask about feelings or thoughts. I never know what to say” she says.

Martin has plenty to say. (So much in fact, I’ve put it in a separate post) ”I haven’t thought” she says. He has. His thoughts are driving him crazy.

He keeps fucking her. She keeps not thinking. He’s up her as she’s coming through the door. He’s interrogating her. He’s up her as she gets dressed. He’s thinking himself into a frenzy. He’s up her as she’s going through the door. He’s thinking about her after she’s gone, can’t bear what she might be getting up to.

What she’s up to is – fucking a younger guy. Fucking the 2 of them. ”You can’t love 2 men” he pleads. “Yes i can” she purrs. Cus she can. Cus she likes it.

He starts chasing about after her like a “lunatic with a tyrannical penis and a tiny brain“.

And it nearly, but not quite, ends in tragedy.

“I tried to die really. Now i believe one mustn’t die of despair, but feed off one’s despair. Not die of it, but live off it. Live at any price“

I love films about French intellectuals. Gabbling on. Especially when they’re neurotic. And there’s loads of existential angst going on. There’s plenty bonking too. But it all makes perfect sense.

Dir: Cedric Kahn, France

8.5 or 9/10

Comments (1)

Older Posts »