arthurpewty

I have only seen 3 Bertrand Blier movies, but this one is easily my favorite of the 3. BUFFET FROID, starring Gerard Depardieu, was the first I saw -- and the fact that it was basically plot less and full of absurdist humor made it instantly a favored flick. I more recently saw Blier's Oscar-winning GET OUT YOUR HANDKERCHIEFS but thought it was a little too conventional and strained next to the more flat-out freewheeling BUFFET. About 15 years after that pair of movies comes this one, which marries the sensibilities of the other two perfectly. Like HANDKERCHIEFS, it actually has a story, but like BUFFET, it doesn't bother with real-world logic, good taste, or linear chronology in telling that story. SOLEIL is sort of a movie about coming-of-age in the projects, sort of a movie about sexual psychology, and sort of a cut-and-pasted collage of unusual moments. The magical thing is that the damn thing winds up more moving than it probably would have if it was a straightforward tearjerker about hard living. Of course, Blier can't be credited completely for this, as his actors are wonderful, especially Anouk Grinberg as Victorine, our perpetually childish heroine, and Marcello Mastroianni as her charming perpetually drunk papa. An under-seen gem.

I have been recently watching a lot of Tim McCann movies in anticipation of his new movie with Robin Tunney and Aaron Stanford.

This second-newest release, NOWHERE MAN, is a great slice of low-budget DV independent/ B-movie film-making. And when I say B-movie, I mean it in the best sense of the term. I read a FILM THREAT interview with McCann where he talks about preferring Anthony Mann movies to anything made today, and NOWHERE MAN has that same sort of hard-hitting pulpiness that a film academic could respect... if they weren't TOO uptight. After all, this is a movie whose main character has had his willy removed.

The acting all around, from leads Rodrick and Rochon and Olivier to one-scene appearances by Michael Risley (who starred in McCann's excellent REVOLUTION #9) and Bob Gosse and Lloyd Kaufman, is really solid and plays more to the realistic side of the situation, but with a few moments of comedy -- both broad and subtly dark -- in there for good measure.

The theme of NOWHERE MAN is quite similar to McCann's first feature DESOLATION ANGELS, which also featured Rodrick as a man who learns a secret about his girlfriend that drives him to unnecessary macho violence, but this is a much leaner, more effective film. Unfortunately, I fear too many people won't be able to get over this flick's cockiness, so to speak, and see it for the well-told drama that it is.

Of course, the filmmakers aren't helping matters with the selection of crude outtakes put into the end credits, which sort of undercut the tone of the film -- but which presumably are there to pad this lean, mean film out to feature length.

I checked this out from the public library, because the cover looked vaguely interesting and there was basically no risk, but for some lost time. And, like someone discovering a song-poem collection in a used-LP bin, I was amazed and amused by this great (and fortunately brief) little film. It's about these people who send in poems or lyrics to a company, which promises to make a song from those words, then asks them to pay the recording cost -- which is how they make money. But the scheme is beside the point. Instead the movie focuses on some of the "poets" who write tunes, almost always with a straight face, with titles like "Non-Violent Tae-Kwon-Do Troopers" and "I Am a Ginseng Digger." The movie also features some of the performers, composers, and producers of these songs (sometimes separate, often not), and even has time for a brief rise-and-fall story regarding one artist that the song-poem cultists and performers all seem to consider a squandered semi-genius. It's a crazy-quilt portrait of low-impact American ambition and creative expression from Joe Public (no, not the early 90s group). A real freakin gem.