Regarde la mer

Ever since I've started writing comments on IMDb I've been writing about European movies more than about American, and I've suggested readers to watch most of them. I gave good marks to French movies, though many others (mostly American) movie-lovers found them pretentious, false artistic or boring. But now here's the movie that expresses everything bad people have ever thought about French movies. Too short for a serious standard movie, too long for its weak story. Too much nudity for prudes, too little to be a soft-porn. Too many unimportant scenes, too little developing of characters. If Americans often make cover versions of French movies, this one shamelessly steels from US movies and still succeeds to make it boring, because we can expect in advance every important event and the revealing of secrets doesn't surprise us very much. Finally, the "shocking" end of the movie is in fact the only logical one.

What's good in the movie? Photography maybe, but it is so common in French movies that it's not necessary to emphasize it (no better, no worse than average French photo). The acting is also far below French standards. Paul as character might have also been omitted from the movie, he might have been left just as a person somewhere far away: it would have been intriguing for us to think if he existed at all. But it would be too, too much for writers to understand that.

I taped this due to the recommend in the NYT television section and it was right. I kept getting apprehensive from the moment the backpacker turns up. The suspense of approaching terror reminded me of the growing sense of horror in Chabrol's Le Ceremonie.

Two quibbles: what mother would leave her baby in the bathtub for only a few seconds. And what mother would leave her baby alone on the beach? The mother obviously had a dark side to begin with; she was lonely (trying to reach her husband for several times without success) and was an easy prey to the backpacker. While the ending horrified me, it shouldn't have surprised me. What was great is the movie didn't drag on and was short.

Definitely worth watching and it left me shaken for a long time after-wards. Like Le Ceremonie, it will remain in my memory. Horror doesn't mean slash and gore.

It's not until a feature filmmaker reaches a certain status that their short films are released beyond the festival circuit. Now the short work of Francois Ozon is available on DVD after a short cinematic release.

Ozon offers impressive tapas here, with concise, impeccably structured short films. Plot twists are reminiscent of Roald Dahl, while the sensual undercurrents approach Anais Nin's erotica, without being nearly as explicit.

In Summer Dress (1996, 15 minutes), two gay teenagers are on holiday at French beach community Isle d'Yeu. While wasp-waisted Sebastian mimes to 'Bang! Bang!', by chanteuse Sheila, his lover Luc begs him to be more discreet. Until Luc dallies with the older, knowing Lucia at the local 'beat'. After Luc's forced to wear her dress home, he comes out of the closet.

The cinematography is flashback 1950s, with azure sea, bronzed boys in swimming trunks and rose-red lips. But this nostalgia avoids sentimentality, instead increasing the dreamlike quality of Luc's experience. And the interplay between the characters demonstrates an essential sexual fluidity present in all Ozon's films – although his characters may have definite sexual orientations, there's no guarantee they'll follow them. In addition, as gay auteur Ozon's focus of desire is men, it liberates his women from the 'male gaze' and allows them to be more interesting.

Sharing the same island setting as Summer Dress, the standout film of the collection is See the Sea (1997, 52 minutes).

Englishwoman Sasha (Sasha Hails) is holidaying alone with her baby daughter when ill-kempt backpacker Tatiana (Marina de Van) pitches her tent in the backyard. From the first, something is not quite right about Tatiana, but lonely Sasha wants someone to babysit. As the suspense develops, Tatiana becomes more repellent but also fascinating, an earthy id to Sasha's ego. At the same time, while Sasha may be clearly normal, she is also a careless mother. While, the relationship between the two is reminiscent of Ozon's Swimming Pool, the outcome is much darker. ****/***** stars.

A woman living with her small child at a remote coastal location allows a vagabond woman to stay with her for a couple of days. This is a curiosity piece. While it is somewhat interesting, it is not clear why Ozon even bothered with this one. At 52 minutes, it is too long for a short film and too short for a feature film. Despite its short length, it drags a bit. It is basically a bizarre collection of scenes that don't add up to much of anything. There's no rhyme or reason to the things the women do except that both display odd behavior that is left unexplained. The only point of the whole exercise seems to be to justify the end, which is disturbing but not surprising.

The story begins with a crying baby and ends with a crying baby (but under very different circumstances) and in between we become involved in a intriguing and somewhat sinister drama about two very different women. The beauty of the beach location with its golden sand contrasts in an interesting way with the ugliness of the tragic events. Simmering not far below the surface is the sexual yearning of two women, each of them lonely in their own way.

Baby Chiffre is a great little actress - smiling, gurgling, crying and doing all the right things at the right time. The two women made a nice contrast in characters - Sasha Halls as the lonely elegant wife and Marina de Van as the intruding back-packer. The development of the plot as the cunning back-packer with her insensitive questioning manipulates the wife into accepting her presence inside her home is an exciting thought somewhat frightening aspect of the story.

There are a couple of details I would like to question: Firstly, would the obviously well-bred wife put the toilet roll at her feet on the bathroom floor? Secondly, whilst admitting she was very hungry, would the backpacker pick up her dinner plate and lick off the gravy with her big fat tongue? While the toothbrush scene might offend some people,I found it quite acceptable in the context of the desperate character.

Husband Paul appears late in the film as a businessman returning from Paris. The shocking scene which he discovers on arriving home stuns him into absolute silence, hand over mouth to stifle his cry. I think a cry of terror, panic, disbelief - call it what you will, would have added more dramatic impact.

Summing up: top quality film, interesting, exciting and disturbing. I am still trying to understand the significance of the title.