The Bresson brand of neo-realism is perhaps exemplified best with this unconventional character study of a Parisian thief desperately in need to self-fulfillment. Remarkably Bresson's seemingly simple approach uncluttered by the elements of traditional cinematic narrative allows the master filmmaker to create as much uncompromising tension as anything in Alfred Hitchcocks's filmography.
Showing posts with label French. Show all posts
Showing posts with label French. Show all posts
Monday, 4 August 2014
Wednesday, 16 October 2013
Eyes Without a Face
Before the era of the slasher film, horror films didn’t get any sicker or more twisted than this early 60’s French gem which tracks the devilish attempts of a plastic surgeon to kidnap, drug and steal the faces of innocent women to graft onto his facially-deformed daughter.
Thursday, 11 July 2013
Shoah
The masterful comprehensive examination of the Holocaust never fails to mesmerize on all levels of cinema, history and humanity. Though never having seen Claude Lanzmann’s lauded and landmark 9-hr film on the Holocaust until now, the effect of watching it today is probably more powerful than it was first released, and likely will become more revelant and revelatory with each passing year.
Friday, 14 June 2013
Band of Outsiders
Even after six films following his celebrated Nouvelle-Vague debut 'Band of Outsiders' finds Godard at his hippest, frolickiest, cool, witty and irreverent – a postmodernness which bleeds formally into the seminal early work of Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino.
Tuesday, 23 April 2013
A Man Escaped
Robert Bresson fetishizes the minute details of a French man’s escape from a Nazi prison during WWII, assembled together with clockwork like efficiency and rigor. A benchmark in the procedural genre, A Man Escaped exemplifies the enemcumbered and remarkably focused cinematic style of Robert Bresson.
Friday, 15 March 2013
Chronicle of a Summer
Chronicle of a Summer, a unique collaboration of sociologists and filmmakers interviewing a number of Parisian working class men and women discussing themes personal and political, is a treasure of documentary cinema. Made in 1960 in Paris, not only do we get to see the rich flavour of the romantic city in the 60’s, Morin and Rouch’s documentary shows us the thrill of classical cinema verite at its most relevant and revealing.
Tuesday, 5 March 2013
The Intouchables
This French hit, the story of a rich paraplegic white man who forms an unlikely friendship with an unrefined black caretaker/assistant is the stuff Stanley Kramer movies, TV after school specials, a number of politically correct 80’s sitcoms or perhaps even a cinematic version of the McCartney/Stevie Wonder song, Ebony and Ivory. That said, the dated racial and class characterizations and on-the-nose sentimentality are evened out by the genuinely warm and authentic performance trump of Omar Sy.
Wednesday, 2 January 2013
Purple Noon
Rene Clement's adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley is still a daring and delicious examination with a raging psychopath. Clement's dreamy 60's French cinematic flavour is neither inferior nor superior to Anthony Minghella's later remake. Two different but worthy artistic adaptations of a terrific story.
Friday, 23 November 2012
Holy Motors
Curiosity seekers interested in this picture because of its hyped-up reception at Cannes, as well as descriptions by smitten critics such as ‘exhilarating’, ‘completely bonkers’ and ‘balls-to-the-wall crazy’, will likely be disappointed. That is unless you’re willing to completely give in to Leos Carax’s exercise in inane randomness. But from these eyes, the general acceptance and praise of this film must have Mr. Carax laughing his ass off, having fooled overly analytical critics into thinking that Holy Motors is any good.
Holy Motors (2012) dir. Leos Carax
Starring: Denis Levant, Edith Scob, Kylie Minogue, Eva Mendes
By Alan Bacchus
There’s much in common with David Cronenberg’s Cannes inclusion, Cosmopolis - the idea of a man driving around the city in a limousine and engaging in deliriously surreal encounters with minimal overt purpose. There was a semblance of a narrative, theme and purpose in Cronenberg’s film, but in Holy Motors the joke seems to be on us.
As much as I could gather, Oscar (Denis Levant) seems to be some kind of actor or Lon Chaney ‘Man of a Thousand Faces’ whose agenda for the day includes nine appointments, each one a surprise to him and us. As such, it’s an episodic work, a film divided into these nine or so (I didn’t really count) scenes.
Driving him around the city is an older woman, Celine, who serves as some sort of shepherd for Oscar, aiding and serving him in his duties. Going by the title, there’s a religious metaphor at play with Oscar perhaps being some kind of angel moving in and out of people’s lives.
Each of the sequences is like a random mélange of writing. Early on we see Oscar turn himself into an old bag lady, panhandling on the street. Nothing becomes of this scene. For his second appointment he turns himself into a troll out of The Lord of the Rings, runs amuck stealing and eating flowers from the gravestones of a cemetery, and then invades a fashion photo shoot, bites the fingers of an innocent bystander and kidnaps Eva Mendes, taking her to an underground lair to show her (and the audience) his erect penis. Nothing pays off from this scene either. Later on, Oscar turns himself into a domestic family man, seemingly returning to his home to be with his wife and child. Only later do we realize his family is a pair of chimpanzees.
Holy Motors fails for me not because of the obliqueness of the big picture connection (this I can accept) but because the individual scenes are impenetrable, each one a free association of inane cinematic rambling. Even David Lynch at his most beguiling can satisfy his audience with individual set pieces or moments of drama and cinema.
The only two vignettes to cherish in this picture are the motion capture interpretive dance sequence featured in much of the publicity and advertising of the film, and the inspired intermission musical sequence featuring Oscar and a band of accordion players filmed in one long take. Everything else is a bore of monumental proportions, the Cloud Atlas of European art films.
**
Friday, 21 September 2012
Children of the Paradise
One of the most critically and commercially successful films for France at the time has the misfortune of losing its lustre over the years. While a sufficiently entertaining sprawling melodrama telling the story of a half-dozen characters revolving around a vaudevillian-like theatre group in Paris, it fails to match the contemporary resonance like the films of Jean Vigo or Jean Renoir.
Children of Paradise (1945) dir. Marcel Carne
Starring: Arletty, Jean-Louis Barrault, Pierre Brasseur, Pierre Renoir,
By Alan Bacchus
The film’s lengthy 190-minute running time is split into two very digestible halves. The first half sets up the situations and conflict of the main characters, five wandering souls surrounding the Funambules theatre district situated on the ‘Boulevard du Temple’ or the ‘Boulevard of Crime’ as it's called by the characters for its attraction of undesirables. Central to everyone’s attention is Garance (Arletty), a mysterious courtesan who exerts a magnetic attraction to everyone she meets. This attraction is especially strong with four men - Frédérick Lemaître (Pierre Brasseur), an up-and-coming actor; Édouard de Montray (Louis Salou), an aristocrat; Pierre François Lacenaire (Marcel Herrand), a charming but nefarious thief; and Baptiste Debureau (Jean-Louis Barrault), a soulful but shy mime.
Carne moves between the courtship and connection of each of these men with Garance while they endeavour to make a living either in the business of the theatre or in the case of Pierre Francois conspiring to steal from it.
Paradise is described extensively in the liner notes of the Criterion Blu-ray as poetic realism. This is certainly a new term for me. I’ve heard of magic realism, and even that moniker is nebulous. Poetic realism is even more confusing. Perhaps the term references the filmmaker’s desires of purely populist acceptance. It exists purely for its own sake, and for the audience to soak up and be entertained by. Like the characters in the film who perform in the staunchly working class genre of the pantomime, Children of Paradise seems to consciously separate itself from the politically conscious works of say, Jean Renoir at the time.
The film was a great success, billed in North America as the Gone with the Wind in France. Its running time surely invites comparison, but the languid and under-dramatic methods of storytelling leave much to be desired. Although there are four men in the mix, Carne divides our allegiance between two of them, Frederick the actor and Baptiste the mime. Frederick is characterized as an ambitious distrustful egomaniac, muscling his way into the Funambules, usurping Baptiste’s title as star of the show and womanizing Garance to sleep with him. All the while we see a deep, more emotional connection between the humble Baptiste and the enigmatic Garance. And yet, as the best melodramas show, it’s Frédérick who succeeds and Baptiste who fails. The forlorn romance buoys most of the second half of the film, which takes place seven years after the first half.
Unfortunately, we never feel the stress and anguish of unconsummated desire as dramatically as we should for this type of film. Maybe it’s the French who traditionally understate their feelings compared to the engrossed emotions of America’s Hollywood. But with praise from modern critics and cinema masters such as Terry Gilliam, who provide reverent words to the film in the Special Features, Children of Paradise is certainly not a film to dismiss, but rather a film one should approach with a different set of expectations.
***
Children of Paradise is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
Friday, 31 August 2012
La Grande Illusion
The futility of war was never more intelligently articulated with wit and poignancy than in Jean Renoir’s 'La Grand Illusion', a prison-escape film which presents almost no conflict or action in favour of a sharp commentary on the absurdities of war.
Grand Illusion (1937) dir. Jean Renoir
Starring: Jean Gabin, Erich Von Stroheim, Dito Parlo, Pierre Fresnay
By Alan Bacchus
Here war is a gentlemanly game, where mutual respect and admiration for each other extend from the front lines to war camps. In the opening scene the German captain hosts a shot-down officer for a splendid dinner. Everyone is polite and accommodating and orderly - a far cry from the gut-wrenching pain and agony the soldiers on the ground conduct against each other. I’m not sure if this was the reality of WWI, but for sophisticated cinema Renoir is making a statement not unlike his satire of class system stupidity in Rules of the Game. The officers’ first meal is ‘the best they ever had' - chicken, foie gras, fine spirits and wine.
If it was so good for these soldiers at these prisons then where’s the drama? I can’t answer this, but Renoir doesn't need traditional notions of cinematic conflict to make his point and tell an engrossing dramatic story.
Admittedly, it took me a few viewings for this picture to really sink in. It's consciously anti-climactic, not a traditional war film at all, and not even a traditional prisoner of war film either. There are three distinct stories. At first we see Lieutenant Maréchal (Jean Gabin) and Captain de Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay) being shot down behind enemy lines in WWI Germany. As officers they’re greeted at the German base with honour and respect by their captor, Captain von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim).
They’re then sent to a formal POW camp, and once locked into their prison cells the pair discovers an affable group of international prisoners. Despite their joyous carousing they’re also plotting their escape, tunnelling underneath the camp and beyond the fence. The procedural mechanics of their scheme are choreographed beautifully – arguably influencing the granddaddy of prison escape films, The Great Escape.
But it’s an anti-climax, as Maréchal, de Boeldieu and their new friend Rosenthal are shipped away to another camp in the mountain region, headed by the same Captain Rauffenstein from earlier. Due to Rauffenstein’s aristocratic roots and respect for de Boeldieu’s lineage, their stay is even more laid back and they enjoy good food and respectful treatment. But again, it’s a rouse with the trio plotting their escape to return home and endure more fighting.
And so after a dramatic escape, aided by the sacrifice of de Boeldieu, Renoir changes gears by showing Rosenthal and Maréchal’s comfy stay as borders at a local German widow’s home. As Maréchal and the girl fall in love, Renoir remarkably shifts us emotionally with a deeply emotional love story.
If this film was made today, we would have seen the love story placed before the trio’s movement to Rauffenstein’s camp, thus ending the film with the action-oriented escape and likely the reunification of the estranged war torn lovers at the end. But somehow, as arranged by Renoir, it works.
For Renoir theme runs deeper than conflict, and here his commentary on patriotism is thought provoking. For Maréchal, de Boeldieu and Rosenthal their desire to escape from a prison despite being well fed and far from the carnage of the trenches stems from their instinctual need to subvert the enemy and fight the war by whatever means necessary.
While Von Stroheim is characterized like an Emperor with No Clothes, I don’t see this as an anti-war statement. Instead, Maréchal's and de Boeldieu’s duty as soldiers to escape and fight is as patriotic as it gets. And with the onset of WWII at the time of the making of this film, La Grand Illusion is as encouraging to French citizens to stand up against aggressive authority as any war propaganda at the time.
****
La Grande Illusion is available on Blu-ray from Alliance Films in Canada.
Wednesday, 15 August 2012
Le Havre
A very slight but heartwarming picture no doubt, from the master of Euro deadpan, Aki Kaurismäki. The story of a humble shoeshiner who takes in an African refugee works best as a quiet comedy, delightful but not profound, and arguably over-praised in its Cannes/Toronto festival journey.
Le Havre (2011) dir. Aki Kaurismäki
Starring: André Wilms, Blondin Miguel, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Kati Outinen
By Alan Bacchus
Aki Kaurismäki’s films certainly won't provide shock and awe, but they do give a very palpable optimistic and humanistic viewpoint on topical and serious issues. Here, Kaurismäki is in France, specifically the French port city of Le Havre, a city famous for being the demarcation point for refugees fleeing the continent for the UK and beyond. Kaurismäki’s hero is a Capra-esque loner, Marcel Marx, a ne’er-do-well elderly man, eking out an existence as a lowly street shoeshiner. As played by Andre Wilms, Marcel silently cries out for our sympathy. And it’s not hard to dish it out when early on we see his wife admitted to the hospital with a potentially fateful but unnamed diagnosis.
Marcel finds his solace in the most unlikely of places, namely a young black teenager called Idrissa who escaped custody after he and a group of fellow refugees were found holed up in a cargo container at the docks. The pair barely speaks to each other, but Marcel senses Idrissa’s pleas for help and Idrissa senses Marcel’s compassion. On their tail is the passively persistent detective who pursues Idrissa and casts a suspecting eye on Marcel. It's Marcel’s neighbours who create a Capra-like rally of support for Idrissa and Marcel and help the pair best the weary detective.
Kaurismäki’s distinct cinematic visual style complements the eccentric tone and silent-cinema approach. There’s something about Timo Salminen’s cinematography that creates a sense of artificial but effective drama. It’s partly an overlit studio style, lighting the characters with strong sources of light, unafraid of the harsh shadows which sometimes appear in the background. A stagey look results, like the dioramic look of Wes Anderson.
Kaurismäki’s modus operandi, his deadpan style, is always front and centre, perhaps overly so. Marcel’s glum demeanor can feel forced, as he seems to be begging too hard for our sympathy when it's not warranted. And forgotten-about almost completely is Idrissa, who is less a character than a cipher for the plot. Kaurismäki cleverly makes a statement without the need to push the buttons most issue-driven films bombard us with. And the ace in his hole is a marvelous denouement, Marcel's reunion with his wife, which might seem like an unmotivated deus ex machina, but it's an ending that works because it just 'feels right.'
Le Havre is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
***
Friday, 2 March 2012
La Jetee
Starring: Hélène Chatelain, Davos Hanich, Jacques Ledoux
****
By Alan Bacchus
The deep pop-culture penetration of this short experimental film from the ‘60s is a remarkable achievement. At a mere 28 minutes in length and featuring only still photos, it creates remarkably strong and poignant high concept science fiction with a strong humanist/existential drama. The piece was surely a vital influence on Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys, as well as James Cameron’s time bending love story in The Terminator and, by association, any time travel film after that. Even Christopher Nolan’s Inception is born from the perplexing notions of manipulating dreams and time paradoxes. Hell, even Groundhog Day owes something to La Jetee.
It’s the aftermath of WWIII in Paris, where most of the survivors have retreated to the underground to avoid the nuclear fallout. A team of scientists experiment with time travel in the hopes of finding resources for the present. The unnamed hero of the story (Hanich), who narrates his childhood memory of waiting outside an airport gate with his mother and seeing a desperate man shot to death, is chosen as the subject because of his deranged mental state, which has the ability to withstand the pressures of the experiment.
Several attempts at going back into the past results in the man meeting an alluring woman from the past. Each journey brings him closer to her, eventually forming a genuine relationship. After completing his mission his doctors turn on him and track him down in the past to assassinate him, but not before he comes face-to-face with a remarkable existential revelation.
As powerful as the moving image has proven to be since the birth of cinema, Chris Marker has not forgotten that the still image can be even more powerful. Each of the 800 or so still images presented in this piece has as much emotional weight and beguiling mystery as anything a motion camera could capture. Marker could have used a motion camera, as the picture cut together has some of the same rules and language as traditional cinema – wide shots, close-ups, traditional coverage, etc. – which makes his choice of stills so inspired. It acts like a scrapbook of the events.
But La Jetee is experimental through and through, and although it resembles the general arc of its feature remake, 12 Monkeys, the film is consciously aloof and mysterious. It’s constructed more like a series of dream experiments than time travel – I don’t know if the term time travel is ever used. But in the end Marker is clear to make his point about the hero's journey, a spiritual love story across space and time, which connects with astonishingly profound satisfaction.
La Jetee, packaged with Chris Marker’s 1983 essay doc, Sans Soleil, is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
Tuesday, 10 January 2012
Rules of the Game
Rules of the Game (1939) dir. Jean Renoir
Starring: Marcel Dario, Nora Gregor, Jean Renoir
****
By Alan Bacchus
Robert de la Chesnaye (to the Servant): “Please, will you end this farce?”
The Servant: “Which one?”
Generally cited in most international polls as one of the greatest films of all time, Rules of the Game has proven to be a major influence on the unique sub-genre of ensemble-chamber films and a major influence on Altman, Lars von Trier, Woody Allen, Denys Arcand, Luis Bunuel and many others. It’s a biting farce and critique of the social follies of upper-class French aristocrats.
A snobby French aristocrat, Robert de la Chesnaye, is planning a hunt at his country estate, and he invites not only his friends, but their husbands, wives, mistresses and lovers as well. In Renoir’s world, wives and mistresses are interchangeable. Husbands have mistresses, and their wives are mistresses to other men. Even the mistresses have other lovers. And everyone is invited to the party. The title is appropriate because Renoir’s upper-class twits have ‘rules’ to their social games, where everyone is supposed to accept their dalliances as such. But only the upper-class can be naïve enough to think their social superiority will immunize them against envy and greed. That’s how it starts, but of course we know the house of cards will eventually fall – it always does.
Renoir deftly juggles half a dozen plotlines and character relationships throughout the film. He uses pre-Citizen Kane deep-focus photography to show action and dialogue in the background and foreground. It was innovative then and is still fresh and exciting to watch today. After establishing all the characters and their relationships with each other, the film moves to another level with the famous hunting sequence. Renoir crafts the scene well, with a terrific montage of the killing of rabbits, pheasants and various other animals. The foreshadowing isn’t subtle, but it provides the film with a darkly comic edge.
In the evening during a stage masquerade show for the guests, the energy of the film is ramped up to another level. Jealous anger boils over causing a series of arguments and fights throughout the house. These scenes, which make up much of the second act, create one of cinema’s most famous set-pieces – a masterpiece of movement and choreography.
Unlike Kane, which begins with a bang and announces itself as a cinematic rule breaker with force, Rules of the Game is more subtle. At the outset it may not be an obvious masterpiece, but as Roger Ebert puts it, ‘You can't simply watch it, you have to absorb it.' By the end the characters get into your skin. And it's not just the follies of the rich, but every substrata of class as well – the wait-staff, servants and grounds keepers all watch and participate in the elaborate game.
The impending war, though not specifically referenced, provides another level of socio-political context. Renoir made the film prior to WWII and didn’t have the benefit of hindsight, which makes his achievement even more remarkable. With the war on their doorstep, the naiveté of the ruling class and the triteness of their ego-driven preoccupations are even more scathing.
Unfortunately, the result was a complete dismissal of the film by critics and the public when it was released, as well as being banned by the Vichy government for being unpatriotic. Like Citizen Kane, it wasn’t until the late ‘50s that Renoir's masterpiece could be appreciated as a film years and decades ahead of its time.
Rules of the Game is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
Saturday, 3 December 2011
Le Trou
Starring: Marc Michel, Michel Constantin, Jean Keraudy, Philippe Leroy
****
By Alan Bacchus
Perhaps the granddaddy of all prison escape films? There’s been some great ones, including The Great Escape, Escape from Alcatraz, Papillon, A Man Escaped and Grand Illusion. Le Trou achieves a purity of its genre - distilling all other distracting elements, subplots and red herrings out of the picture without the sacrifice of some core themes of brotherhood, trust, camaraderie, loyalty and fear.
It’s a simple set-up as young Claude Gaspard enters a French prison after being charged for the attempted first degree murder of his wife. He’s a regular citizen in a prison of hardened lifers. His prison mates look upon him with suspicion because there's an escape afoot, a plot that will work only if everyone is in on the plan and working cohesively for the end goal. Can Claude be trusted? The men test him with questions about his crimes, how much he'll serve, what his appeal prospects are, etc., all to determine Claude's reliability under pressure and whether it's worth his while to stick it out all the way.
Becker has a great fascination with the process of the escape, and such is the appeal of the genre. The breaking of the ground is an extended sequence seen from a single shot pointed at the ground. When the men first try banging the steel bar against the ground it looks like a Herculean task to dig underneath. But through the shear length of the shot we get to not only see the progress made, but we also see a hole dug right before our eyes.
Becker’s use of real time is key to putting us right into the tension of the details of the operation and the importance of even the most minuscule of tasks. The creation of the periscope device is especially precise. We see the small mirror hidden in the baseboard, the breaking of the mirror into small pieces and finding the right shape of shard that is small and thin enough to fit onto a toothbrush, thus allowing them to poke it outside their peep hole and see down the length of the hallway.
The best escape films live and breath in these details. Which is why films like these are called procedurals. The procedure of action is just as important as the characters. And in fact, the characters are shaped by these actions. Becker knows the importance of the fact that a close-up of an object is just as important as a close-up of a face, with his camera moving with precision between these objects.
Le Trou is a little different than other escape pictures in that we don’t know where each step of the way will lead us. Each layer of their plan is revealed to the audience as the running time clips along. When the men are digging in their cell, we don’t know what is beneath them. Is it earth, another floor or a basement? Do the men know? Maybe, maybe not. The surprise at each corner of the story is thrilling and edge-of-your-seat drama.
The French have done these films better than anyone. I guess the opposite of the escape film is the heist picture, which is breaking into some place as opposed to breaking out. Jules Dassin’s classic Rififi makes a good companion piece. Like in Rififi, Becker uses silence as a strong builder of tension. The nighttime escape from the cell is played in pin-drop silence - no music with muted ambience and sound effects. Same with Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped, a film which pairs the narrative down even scanter than in Becker’s film.
And with all the emphasis on procedural details, if you thought Le Trou was a style over substance, the final moments pay off in a profound emotional revelation between the men. Enjoy.
Friday, 25 November 2011
Three Colours Trilogy
Starring: Juliette Binoche, Julie Delpy, Irene Jacob, Zbigniew Zamachowski, Benoît Régent, Jean-Louis Trintignant
****
By Alan Bacchus
Blue, White and Red, the glorious trilogy of French films from legendary Polish director, Krzysztof Kieślowski, are essential viewing for lovers of international cinema. Using the three national colours of France, representing Equality, Liberty and Fraternity, Kieślowski created a thematically complex yet wholly accessible linked trilogy incomparable to any other series of films in cinema. Each is unique and self-contained, and there’s no particular order in which they need to be seen. The films freely weave themselves in and out of one another with grace.
Kieślowski specifically chose three different cinematographers to shoot his films, resulting in three distinct ‘looks’. Blue, as shot by Slawomir Idziak, is dark and brooding, using predominantly blues (of course), but also deep yellows and noirish grey shadows concealing much of his frames. White is the least stylistic with bright and traditionally composed imagery subordinate to the narrative. While Red is shot with a dreamy, romantic, effortless style, energetic and effervescent.
Blue, the darkest of the the three films is also the most intimate and contained. After a tragic car accident, Julie (Juliette Binoche) is left a grieving widow and dodging questions from the media about her late husband’s (a renowned composer) last unfinished concerto. Sequestering herself from the world and the emotional pain of her losses, she finds strange solace in a female companion of her husband’s.
Kieślowski represents Blue as Liberty by using the strange irony of her new friendship with the former illicit lover to free herself of her former life and become a new woman. In keeping with Julie’s internalized emotions, Kieślowski employs a distinctly abstract and impressionistic cinematic style. The deep blues and yellows absorb light and constrain his world in shadows and darkness. Unlike the complex plotting of Red, Blue is sparse, fuelled by mood, texture and the brooding emotions of its heroine. The result is intoxicating.
Usually billed as the ‘comedy’ of the three films, White is Kieślowski at his most affable, but also his most cruel. It features an unusual setup, including the supremely absurd opening scene, which shows the complete destruction of his lead character, Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski), a Polish immigrant who stands agape in a courtroom where his wife is divorcing him for his inability to consummate their marriage. What shame. The casting of Julie Delpy, normally portrayed as a sweet and innocent fanciful girl in other pictures, aids in disarming us to her cruelty and selfishness toward Karol.
After a series of other mishaps, Karol, at his lowest moment, meets another Polish ex-pat who asks Karol to kill him as a favour in exchange for money. Through this random association (a strong theme across all the films) we see Karol build his life and career back up to the point where he is wealthy and successful and finally ready to exact revenge on his ex-wife, who forsake him so many years ago.
Within this noirish black comedy set up Kieślowski presents a sharp political allegory to Poland’s post communist-era financial troubles with the rest of Europe. As an immigrant in a strange land, Karol’s inability to integrate into French society causes him to resort to underground illegal means to achieve his success, something which echoes the rise of Eastern European crime in the '90s and beyond. With nothing to lose, Karol exploits the tenets of the free market capitalist mentality to become a self-made entrepreneur fuelled by his deep-rooted desire to destroy his opponents – in this case, his equally diabolical (though gorgeous) ex-wife.
While it’s painful to even consider ranking these films, arguably Red is the standout picture, garnering Mr. Kieślowski two Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Screenplay. Portraying the theme of Fraternity, Kieślowski puts us in the shoes of Valentine (Irene Jacob), a model, who, while driving home after a photo shoot, accidentally hits a dog. Her compassion for the animal causes her to seek out her owner, thus sparking a remarkable, enlightening journey of discovery and reconciliation of her own inner anguish.
Red is the most romantic, hence the use of the colour of love prominently throughout. Yet, Kieślowski’s heroine never experiences love. We can feel it in the air, like God almighty moving his characters around like chess pieces on a board to be in a position to fall in love, or at least release themselves of their fates. Such is the happenstance meeting of Valentine and Kern, who spends his days listening in on his neighbour’s conversations. Kern’s emotional reconciliation is brought out by Valentine’s gentle innocence.
Again, Kieślowski uses coincidence and chance to express his themes of existence, love, repentance and forgiveness. Red is elliptical without being self-consciously clever. Kieślowski uses parallel narratives, which twist and turn within one another and even double back through the other films, connecting all three main characters as one form of human conscience and thus a glorious finale to this landmark series.
Three Colours Trilogy is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
Saturday, 22 October 2011
Les Cousins
Starring: Gérard Blain, Jean-Claude Brialy and Juliette Mayniel
***
By Alan Bacchus
It’s appropriate that this film gets its Blu-ray debut via The Criterion Collection at the same time as Chabrol's previous film, La Beau Serge. Both films represent an inverse of each other, a cinematic yin and yang of sorts.
While Serge features Gérard Blain and Jean-Claude Brialy as brothers - Brialy from the city returning to meet Blain from the country - in Les Cousins, it’s Blain still playing the country boy coming to Paris to stay with his bohemian cousin played by Brialy. Tonally, La Beau Serge played like a rebellious and angst-ridden James Dean film. Les Cousins is a playful though quietly disturbing satire on family rivalry.
Here Blain plays Charles, a quiet and humble boy from the country arriving in the big adventurous city of Paris to study law with his cousin. His cousin, Paul (Brialy), is the opposite - a brash, cocky bohemian who struts around his garishly hip apartment leading a pack of other hipster minions and hangers-on. While there’s some warmth and congeniality between the two, at every turn Brialy engages in a series of mental games, passive aggressive behaviour and backhanded compliments to exert his authority.
At stake here are their education and their women. In their studies, Charles as the responsible one is careful not to lose sight of his goal, while Paul shrugs off the shackles of academics in favour of a carefree way of living. When Paul notices Charles’ attraction to one of Paul’s frequent guests, Florence (Mayniel), he aggressively goes after her in order to subjugate his cousin.
For most of the film’s nearly two-hour running time Chabrol plays these mental games without much conflict or threat. From the outset, it’s clear that Charles’ responsibility and studiousness will eventually get the better of Paul. As such, it’s a playful tone, as loose and easy-going as Paul’s lifestyle. Some exhaustion and repetitiveness sets in late in the picture, as we are unsure where this is all going. But Chabrol pulls a wicked trump card out of his back pocket by engineering an intense third act and denouement, which pays off the unfocused pacing.
With this picture I suspect Martin Scorsese may have found some influence in Taxi Driver and a number of his other pictures. Chabrol’s meandering camera moves with the same kind of precision as Scorsese’s, and at times it moves on its own motivated by the character's emotions as opposed to physical movements. Chabrol’s key set piece, Paul's attempted subversion of Charles on the night before his exam, set to Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyres has the same kind of slow brewing intensity as some of Scorsese’s celebrated sequences.
Florence’s seduction of Charles during his desperate attempt to cram for his exam the next day is a nail-biting scene and echoes Robert De Niro's seduction of Juliette Lewis in Cape Fear. By now, knowing that Paul has passed his exam, Charles is set up to be completely humiliated for Paul’s sadistic enjoyment. And in the denouement Chabrol again turns the table for the dark, pessimistic finale, turning the film completely upside down from where it started two hours prior.
Les Cousins is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
Tuesday, 27 September 2011
Le Beau Serge
Starring: Gérard Blain, Jean-Claude Brialy, Bernadette Lafont, Claude Chabrol, Philippe de Broca.
***½
By Alan Bacchus
Though most people consider Francois Trauffaut’s The 400 Blows to be the first of the French New Wave, fellow Cahier Du Cinema writer Claude Chabrol beat him by a year with his melodramatic, angst-ridden, but no less moving feature about sibling rivalry in small town France. It’s a beautifully stark and moving character film that jump-started the Nouvelle Vague, and yet it feels more akin to the angst-ridden rebel films of the James Dean/Marlon Brando Hollywood era.
Francois is an erudite but sickly city slicker returning home to his humble rural roots for an extended vacation. It’s not exactly a homecoming for Francois, as he immediately searches out his brother Serge, who, by reputation, is now a drunk reeling over the stillborn death of his child. Even with a new baby on the way with his wife Yvonne, he’s still on a downward bender into oblivion.
The return of Francois certainly doesn’t improve Serge's recovery. The mere presence of Francois, quietly basking in success and throwing pity at his brother, is as transparent as his brother’s alcoholic coping mechanism. A love triangle emerges with Yvonne’s friend Marie, who once had a fling with Serge. Adding even more conflict into the small town shenanigans is Marie’s father, Goumand, a dangerous presence who resents Francois’ courtship of his daughter resulting in a heinous act of revenge.
Despite these narrative layers, La Beau Serge is anchored in the story of two brothers. It's a complex relationship, at once contradictory and violent, but also loyal and loving. Like all boys, Francois and Serge are quick to fight and quicker to make up - an unbroken and unspoken bond of brotherhood, warts and all.
There's a strong hint of 1950s method angst. In fact, Gerard Blain's anxious, disaffected look is often compared to that of James Dean. He's also ruggedly handsome like Marlon Brando, but even more self-destructive than Stanley Kowalski. Despite his perpetual drunken stupor and his characterization as a rural hick left behind by his ambitious brother, Serge is still able to analyze Francois and put him in his place. And if Serge is Dean or Brando then Francois is probably Karl Maldon, the moral conscience of the film, but considerably less angelic and saintly.
While A Streetcar Named Desire skirted sexual connotations delicately in Hollywood, Chabrol is more direct, helping to eschew these increasingly obsolete moral traditions. The rape of Marie by the man assumed to be her father is tragic and alarming. And the frank depiction of Yvonne’s pregnancy difficulties also feels modern.
Under the crisp Criterion Collection Blu-ray treatment, Henri Decae’s cinematography is striking. The moody look with strongly contrasting light and dark creates a brooding, almost ‘Slavic’ sense of tragedy (think Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood or anything by Bela Tarr). The quaint town and use of real locations and non-actors lend invaluable neorealist credibility and poignancy. And by the end the film it reaches heights achieved by only a few in the New Wave. The triumphant finale is emotional, moving and poignant, reminiscent of any number of great John Ford pictures.
Le Beau Serge is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
Saturday, 17 September 2011
TIFF 2011 - Carré blanc
Carré blanc (2011) dir. Jean-Baptiste Léonetti
Starring: Sami Bouajila, Julie Gayet
****
By Greg Klymkiw
Those who cling to wealth and power by forcing conformity, stifling creativity and crushing the very essence of humanity are the faceless dominant evil that exploits the most vulnerable aspect of what it means to be human. It is ultimately our spirit which is, in fact, not as indomitable as we'd all like to believe. Through indoctrination and constant scrutiny we are reduced to lumps of clay. We are moulded in the image our true rulers want to see. They want us tied to the consumption they control. Call them what you like, but they are indeed The New World Order.
And, they are winning.
And, worst of all, the loser is love.
And, without love, we all become prey.
Harkening back to great 70s science-fiction film classics like The Terminal Man, Colossus: The Forbin Project, A Boy and His Dog, Silent Running and THX 1138 - when the genre was thankfully bereft of light sabres, Wookies and Jabba the Hut - when it was actually ABOUT something, Jean-Baptiste Léonetti's debut feature film Carré blanc is easily the finest dystopian vision of the future to be etched upon celluloid since that time.
The future it creates is not all that removed from our current existence.
Léonetti announces himself as a talent to be reckoned with. This low budget science fiction film astounds us with its visual opulence. That, of course, is because it's so obvious that Léonetti has filmmaking hardwired into his DNA. NEVER does the film feel cheap or low budget. Never do we feel like the film has structured itself around all the usual budget-saving techniques that so many other first-time filmmakers unimaginatively opt for. Leonetti has wisely, painstakingly chosen a number of actual exterior and interior locations that fit his vision perfectly and work in tandem with the narrative. His compositions are rich and because his location selection has been so brilliantly judicious, he clearly had the time to properly light and dress the images.
The next time I hear some young filmmaker whining about the "challenges" of their one-set low-budget production I will consider placing them on my list of those who shall feel the wrath of my Baikal semi-automatic Russian assault rifle when civilization collapses and it becomes one giant free-for-all.
Though Carré blanc shares a specific approach from past work to a genre that can - perhaps more than any other, effect true analysis and possibly even change, there is nothing at all retro about the picture - no obvious post-modernist nods here. It is completely unto itself.
Carré blanc is fresh, hip, vibrant and vital.
Blessed also with a deliciously mordant wit, Léonetti delivers a dazzling entertainment for the mind and the senses.
The tale rendered is, on its surface and like many great movies, a simple one. Phillipe (Sami Bouajila) and Marie (Julie Gayet) grew up together in a state orphanage and are now married. They live in a stark, often silent corporate world bereft of any vibrant colour and emotion. Muzak constantly lulls the masses and is only punctuated by announcements occasionally calling for limited procreation and most curiously, promoting the game of croquet - the one and only state sanctioned sport.
Phillipe is a most valued lackey of the state - he is an interrogator-cum-indoctrinator - and he's very good at his job. In fact, with each passing day, he is getting better and better at it. Marie, on the other hand, is withdrawing deeper and deeper into a cocoon as the love she once felt for Phillipe is transforming into indifference. In this world, hatred is a luxury. It's a tangible feeling that the rulers would never tolerate and punish with death.
Indifference, it would seem, is the goal. It ensures complete subservience to the dominant forces. Love, however, is what can ultimately prove to be the force the New World Order is helpless to fight and the core of this story is just that - love. If Phillipe and Marie can somehow rediscover that bond, there might yet be hope - for them, and the world. It is this aspect of the story that always keeps the movie floating above a mere exercise in style.
So many dystopian visions suffer from being overly dour. Happily, Léonetti always manages to break the oppressive force of the film and its world by serving up humour. Most of the laughs in Carré blanc occur within the context of tests delivered by the interrogating indoctrinators. In the world of the film, suicide is often the only way out for those who have a spirit that cannot be crushed. One early scene features Phillipe as a young teen and another boy his age who have both attempted unsuccessfully to kill themselves (by hanging and wrist-slashing respectively).
Both boys are led into an empty room where smiling corporate lackeys speak to them in tones of compassion. They are both asked to engage in a test to cheer them up. Lying before them is a body bag. The test is thus: which one of them will be first to go inside the bag? They hesitate. They're assured how much fun it will be. The other boy dives down immediately and enters the bag.
The lackey zips the boy inside, hands a club to Phillipe and orders him to begin beating the boy within the body bag. Phillipe hesitates. The lackey praises our young protagonist - assuring him he's made the right choice and that anyone who would choose (as Phillipe has not) to go into the body bag is not worthy of life. Phillipe continues to hesitate and the lackey strikes him viciously with a club, ordering him to strike the boy repeatedly. When Phillipe beats the boy in the bag, but halfheartedly, he is again punished by the lackey. Phillipe knows what he has to do now and does so with vigour.
Here we laugh in horror as Phillipe beats the child in the body bag. (I wasn't the only one laughing in the packed house at the film's premiere screening. A few sick puppies belched out appreciative guffaws.)
Narratively, this sequence reveals that Phillipe is clearly an interrogator-in-the-making. The test itself is a perfect way to not immediately "waste" potential "talent" by snuffing them out before seeing what they're really made of. As the film continues to unspool, some of the biggest laughs and equally chilling moments come from the tests Phillipe concocts and metes out to discover those who must be weeded out of society - permanently. Other laughs derive from the odd announcements and pronouncements over the endless loudspeakers.
To Monsieur Léonetti, I offer a tip of the hat for coming up with so many dollops of darkly humorous nastiness throughout the proceedings. They not only offer entertainment value, but are inextricably linked to the world he creates, a world so similar to the one we live in and one which feels just around the corner if humanity does not prevail over the force of a very few.
Love becomes the ultimate goal of Léonetti's narrative and as such, he delivers an instant classic of science fiction. At the end of the day, the best work in this genre IS about individuality and the fight to maintain the indomitability of spirit.
It might, after all, be the only thing we have left.
Carré blanc was unveiled at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2011) and if there is any hope for both cinema and mankind, it will be released theatrically as soon as humanly possible.
Sunday, 11 September 2011
TIFF 2011 - The Artist
Starring: Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, Malcolm MacDowell, John Goodman and James Cromwell, Penelope Ann Miller
****
By Alan Bacchus
What a remarkably entertaining film. French director Michel Hazanavicius's love letter to the silent film era has the potential to be the movie event of the year. It’s a remarkably poignant, humorous and thoroughly entertaining black and white silent film presented in the style, tone and form of this era in Hollywood.
Like studio classics of yesteryear, such as All About Eve and A Star is Born, The Artist chronicles an epic journey of a Hollywood actor from the highs of stardom to the lows of obsolescence and back up again in miraculous fashion. Jean Dujardin plays George Valentin, a silent film star who is obsessed with his own celebrity. After the premiere of his latest swashbuckler starring himself and his frequent sidekick, his dog, he's on top of the world. He lives in a lavish mansion decorated which shameless portraits of himself and all other forms of self-congratulations. His marriage falls apart when he's caught in a photo being kissed by a fan, the coverage of which puts the young gal, Peppy Miller, in demand as well. Peppy's background extra parts in films slowly turn into bit player parts, then back-up dancer parts, then co-star roles until eventually she becomes lead actress.
Stardom arrives for her in 1929 with talking pictures, a time when many actors like Valentin suddenly were out of demand, unable to transition into the sound era. As Valentin hits rock bottom, Peppy's star hits its height. Despite the cavernous distance between their career paths, the spark of love remains, the blossoming of which might just help Valentin get back on his feet.
Oh yeah, all of this is silent. That means no dialogue. There's a wonderful music track though, which guides us through the emotional ebbs and flows. But it's the phenomenally expressive performances that take us back in time and make us care about what happens, beyond our admiration for the technical audacity. Dujardin's resemblance to Gene Kelly is so remarkable that the film deservedly belongs to sit beside Singing in the Rain, which also used the switch to the new sound era to frame its story. His comic timing and physicality hit every comic and tragic beat for maximum dramatic impact. Dujardin is so good, he's practically Rudolf Valentino raised from the dead.
The Artist reminds us of Todd Haynes' experimentation with a Douglas Sirk-style melodrama played absolutely straight. This film works as well as Haynes', if not better. It's so well executed, it has a chance to open up lay audiences to how and why silent films were so popular and remain as entertaining as anything made today.
The Artist might just be the front-runner for the audience award here at TIFF and perhaps film of the year. Oscar might even be calling.
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