bob998

I have a collection of comfort movies that I like to watch at night when I don't have to think about anything. Two by Godard (Alphaville and Prenom: Carmen), the Big Lebowski, Va Savoir and a few more. They are non-linear, plot isn't important. I just savour the performances and the comedy. Inherent Vice is one of these, and it's almost perfect. I could do without Joanna Newsom's voice over narration, although she's good to watch, and Owen Wilson's character is really tiresome (he seems to stray in from a Woody Allen picture). But these are small defects in a very entertaining movie.

This doc turned up on TV the other night. It's a look at the formation of the French version of the American Act-Up movement. Like its American counterpart, it tried--with varying success--to shame politicians and church leaders into first acknowledging the problem then doing something about it. There's a sour scene denouncing the Benetton ad, with the grieving family around the bedside of a dying patient. The imagination of the activists is shown by the covering of the obelisk in Marseille by a massive cloth condom--quite funny really. Young people today who haven't heard about the struggles of yesteryear would benefit from watching this.

This is the last Pialat film I hadn't seen; thanks to Criterion I can evaluate it now. It looks unfinished, most of his films had that look. He's looking at family life among the Parisian upper middle class--these people have a hard time breaking up with their partners. Sophie tells Gerard that she's through with him three times yet they can't seem to quit each other, even when she takes a new live-in lover. Depardieu is excellent as the frenetic builder but it's Geraldine Pailhas as Sophie who really shines; she's easy going sometimes and anxious about her son at others. The sequence in the Auvergne serves as a climax for the film (cf La gueule ouverte), and there is a too-long denouement during which we lose interest.