gsims

If this film had been made by Atom Egoyan, then we might have been treated to a serious, interesting and complex reflection on media, memory and surveillance. Instead, we end up with a foolish, naive, thin and superficial film that has nothing to say about the myriad connections between memory and cinema/films. A ragged, laboured effort, held together by a few bits and pieces of amusing characterisation. Don't bother.

Charming, elegant, witty, incredibly entertaining, playful, funny and captivating, brimming with all kinds of beautiful nuances on all levels, both "form" and "content" (if one may be allowed to make that distinction?). It's also quite a silly film, and ridiculously "stagey" in many ways, of course, especially with its endless plot twists and turns, but I had no trouble overlooking the silliness and the "stageiness". Some of the song and dance numbers - especially those of Fanny Ardant, Isabelle Huppert and Emmanuelle Béart - are brilliantly done, even if, as singers, none of them will likely be signing any recording contracts in the near future. Shows a well-judged parodic balance between absurd farce, melodrama and drama. After the quiet grimness of "Sous le sable" and "Regarde la mer", a most unexpected change of direction and pace for Ozon.

This film has everything one could ask for: astonishing visual intelligence and imagination, wonderfully evocative, impeccably composed images that draw on silent cinema and painting, all perfectly adapted to the very moving story being told, and the period/milieu in which it unfolds: Effie Briest is presented as enclosed in the many different spaces (most of them - especially the interiors - saturated with stifling formality, social rectitude and conformity) through which she moves and in which she lives, or tries to live (the bird in the cage being a transparent symbol of all this). Quite simply, Fassbinder knows - knew - what "mise en scene" really means. The passage of time is brilliantly handled (through, for example, the use of the fade to white, intertitles and a moving voice-over narration), and the cast is flawless, as well as being flawlessly directed. A film of immense dignity and power, yet it somehow remains understated...