onibaba

After "Beau travail", everybody was waiting for Claire Denis to make a follow-up masterpiece that never arrived. Now it has. Denis makes a quantum leap in this film, an orgy of gorgeous cinematography, elliptical editing and willfully obscure narrative events that feels strange and acts even stranger. There's a nominal plot (derived partly from the Jean-Luc Nancy book of the same name) about a mature man in need of a heart transplant and who seeks a Tahitian son he abandoned long ago; but mostly it's an exploration of the idea of intrusions personal and cultural. It takes a couple of viewings to fully comprehend, and has pacing problems close to the end, but it's still more advanced and gripping than anything else I've seen this year. Miss it at your peril.

I'm reading the other reader's comments on this movie, and I'm completely bewildered- it was a nice, professional TV movie, but nothing to write home about. Strictly a by-the-numbers historical drama, with some happy plastic people vs. some not-so-happy grayish villains. The director seems all-pro but emotionally shallow, and doesn't really evoke the horror of East Germany- the place seemed about as threatening as a weekend at EuroDisney. Okay if you're flipping by it on television, but not worth paying real money for.

While doing a little research on Canadian cinema, I had the distinct displeasure of sitting through this atrocious film. The Ernie of the title is very possibly the most smug, most obnoxious, most irritating character ever to hit the screen; he runs around sponging off of women who ought to know better, declaring himself a "saint" and talking down to people as if they were four years old. (Of course, he fancies himself a writer despite never having written a sentence.) The lead actor is perfect- too perfect- in the role: he's so convincing that he makes an already annoying character completely intolerable, so much so that I decided I'd rather spend time with Buffalo Bill from "The Silence of the Lambs" than look at his horrible smirk ever again. Unless you're a Leonard Cohen diehard (he has a small scene in which he sings) my advice to you is flee in terror.