Posts
- South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-ok made her debut in 2002 with Jiltuneun naui him (Jealousy is My Middle Name), a droll, intelligent movie with fascinating characterizations, which struck me at the time as the best Korean film not made by Hong Sang-soo. Paju, Park's second feature, premiered earlier this year at Rotterdam, and advance word has been good. It will screen four times at the Tribeca Film Festival: Thursday, April 23 at 6:30 pm; Saturday, April 25 at 1:30 pm; Sunday, April 26 at 6:45 pm; and Thursday, April 30 at 1 pm. The first three screenings are at the Village East; the last is at the Clearview Chelsea.
- My very favorite Swedish films were made, not by Bergman, Stiller or Sjöström (though those guys did some pretty fair work too), but by Alf Sjöberg, a once-celebrated director whose reputation waned after his disciple Bergman ascended to art-film superstardom. One of Sjöberg's greatest works, 1949's Bara en mor (Only a Mother), screens in the Walter Reade's valuable Northern Exposures series on Saturday, April 24 at 9:15 pm and Monday, April 26 at 1 pm. Built around a powerful lead performance by Eva Dahlbeck (Smiles of a Summer Night), Bara en mor strikes an exciting balance between pictorial and social realism (the story is set in the world of migrant farm peasants) and a theatricality that spotlights the emotional struggles of its beset but formidable protagonist.
- In The American Cinema, Andrew Sarris wrote that "nothing much happens" in Phil Karlson's career until 1953's 99 River St.. But research reveals several distinctive works in Karlson's early filmography, with at least one - 1952's Scandal Sheet - that ranks for me with Karlson's best. The film is based on Samuel Fuller's novel The Dark Page, but Fuller's personality is somewhat diluted in the adaptation, whereas Karlson's abrasive but humanist brand of urgency is in full flower. Scandal Sheet plays in Film Forum's series "The Newspaper Picture" on Friday, April 30 at 1, 4:35 and 8:10 pm.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Assorted Screenings in NYC: April 2010
Just a few quick recommendations for end-of-the-month action on the NYC film circuit:
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Barbe Bleue (Blue Beard): IFC Center, until Thursday, April 15, 2010
Catherine Breillat now has a solid international reputation, but I wish she was regarded less as a sexual provocatrice and more as an artist whose powerful personality filters and interprets all aspects of experience. Barbe Bleue (Blue Beard), her most recent work, helps the cause, in that it is based on a Perrault fairy tale, and shows Breillat imposing her world view through a story written for children.
Here is a checklist of moments I noted in Barbe Bleue that are strongly inflected by Breillat's sensibility, that other filmmakers would be unlikely to write or direct the same way. My impulse here is analytic rather than synthetic, but patterns will no doubt emerge: identifying them is left as an exercise for the reader.
There will be plot spoilers below.
1. The heartless Mother Superior (Farida Khelfa) who dominates the film's first scenes is cast against type as a young, beautiful woman.
2. The sisters in the fairy tale, Anne (Daphné Baiwir) and Marie-Catherine (Lola Créton), shed tears upon being given unceremonious notice of their father's death. They are then expelled from their convent school and sent home in a carriage. Showing the process of departure would for many filmmakers provide an excuse to ramp down the film's level of sadness, so that the sisters' grief will be nearly as moderate as the audience's when we next encounter them. But Breillat prefers to resume the story in the carriage with the sisters weeping, showing the audience the mourning that it has already gotten over. Only then does Breillat ramp down the grief, by letting the sisters veer into a discussion of marriage and the future. By placing the transition from mourning to the mundane in mid-conversation, Breillat makes the sisters own the mood change, which now seems slightly unfeeling. Acknowledging the dissonance that she has created, Breillat lets the sisters name it: "We shouldn't laugh. Papa just died." "It's nerves."
3. At home, the differing reactions of Anne and Marie-Catherine to their father's death are emphasized by Breillat and given equal weight, even though Anne is not a structurally important character. It is unusual for a supporting character not to have a supporting opinion. Breillat is making a small break with narrativity, digressing into a mode she likes, in which sisterly conflict resembles warring aspects of the same mind.
4. And both these opinions are uncomfortable, expressing forbidden aspects of the parent-child relationship. Anne violates the spirit of mourning with her fury at her father, who died saving a stranger's life. Whereas Marie-Catherine fetishizes her dead father, clearly enjoying the power she now has over him: "You aren't intimidating now. I love you." Breillat maintains sympathy for both characters; neither emotion seems to alienate her.
5. Even while she reproaches Anne, Marie-Catherine understands her, and explains to both her mother (Isabelle Lapouge) and her dead father that Anne's insults are the result of her pain.
6. Barbe Bleue's emissary (Adrien Ledoux), who informs the family that the rich noble wishes to choose a wife from among the young women of the area, is a handsome, arrogant young man, an attractive predator who will have no occasion to cross swords with any woman in this story. As in the case of the Mother Superior, Breillat invests with sexuality even the most functional representatives of power.
7. The sisters in the modern story, Catherine (Marilou Lopes-Benites) and Marie-Anne (Lola Giovannetti), while quarreling over the fairy tale that they are reading, have a brief but digressive discussion of free will versus determinism, in which Marie-Anne blames her squeamishness on her head ("cerveau"). "Your head is you," says the younger Catherine. "No, I was born with it," protests Marie-Anne. As usual, Breillat does not seem to want us to take sides, or to characterize the sisters via their opinions: the dispute merely shows that the sisters encompass both sides of the issue.
8. Slipping away from Barbe Bleue's reception, Marie-Catherine whiles away the time in the fields surrounding the castle, playing with a praying mantis, then watching the beheading of a chicken. The camera lingers upon the death agony of the unfortunate chicken: the gaze of the camera is presumably Marie-Catherine's gaze. Breillat, and by extension Marie-Catherine, seem interested in and accepting of the horror.
9. Meanwhile the youth of the area take part in a group dance outside the castle. I can't vouch for the authenticity of the music and the dancing, but the film at least suggests that the instruments and the choreography are of the period. Breillat focuses on the saucy dance moves of the young women, who smile and wag their fingers ceremonially at their male partners. She seems to enjoy emphasizing that the old ways look modern, that these people acknowledge and play with sexuality much as we do today.
10. The massive and scary-looking Barbe Bleue first talks to Marie-Catherine while resting under a tree. He is surprisingly unthreatening in his demeanor, suggesting a tame bear. His voice is soft and gentle.
11. Discussing the fairy tale in the modern story, precocious Catherine insists that, in the old days, women could get married even at age 5. "It's not like adult marriage," she says in qualification. Pressed for details by Marie-Anne, Catherine demonstrates that she's vague on the whole subject. Like much of the modern story, this scene exists only to show the children's imagination reaching out boldly into the world of sex.
12. Marie-Catherine's engagement to Barbe Bleue is simultaneously a weapon against her older sister Anne and the sad occasion of their separation. Breillat likes to compress the two feelings. After a harsh outburst against Anne, Marie-Catherine suddenly hugs her tenderly.
13. Similarly, as Marie-Catherine is leaving her home with her new husband, Anne says to her, "Now we needn't fight anymore." Marie-Catherine replies, "But I liked that." Hatred and love between the sisters are repeatedly depicted as compatible emotions, not requiring resolution.
14. At the sisters' post-wedding goodbye, Barbe Bleue sits silently on his horse in the background, waiting for his new bride like a liveryman. In the spirit of counterpoint, Breillat will depict the fairy-tale monster as gentle and domesticated throughout the film.
15. In the modern story, Catherine shows off her incorrect understanding of the word "homosexuality." Her exasperated older sister gives her the correct meaning, but Catherine is obstinate. Again, the subject connects to the narrative only in that it shows the young girls' interest in sex.
16. As she is installed in Barbe Bleue's castle, Marie-Catherine suddenly becomes imperious and demanding about her living arrangement, trying to assert her power over her husband. Marie-Catherine is not generally characterized as imperious, and does not test her power in this fashion again. Breillat seems to assume that a war for power lies just under the surface of love relationships. The filmmaker shows no sign of disapproval, and our identification with Marie-Catherine is not affected.
17. Sneaking around the castle at night, Marie-Catherine peeks in her husband's room and spies on him removing his tunic and sitting on his bed bare-chested. The gigantic Barbe Bleue does not provide the sort of nudity that movie audiences are likely to welcome. Both Marie-Catherine (who is not yet sleeping with her husband) and Breillat have no reaction to the naked man other than fascination with the spectacle; Marie-Catherine's feelings toward him do not seem to be altered.
18. In the modern story, young Catherine insists that she is more intelligent than her older sister Marie-Anne, and mercilessly exploits Marie-Anne's having stayed back a grade because of illness. Marie-Anne has no good defense, and seems beaten. The conflict will have no obvious repercussions.
19. Marie-Catherine confides to her husband, "I miss my sister, but I'm glad to be rid of her." The contradiction does not require resolution.
20. Breillat repeatedly puts visual emphasis on the absurd difference in size between the gigantic Barbe Bleue and his tiny wife Marie-Catherine: for instance, by framing them side by side at the dinner table. Though the couple will have no sexual contact in the film, that outrageous, unspoken fantasy is the motor of the story. Never one to avert her gaze, Breillat forces us to imagine such an act.
21. After a time in the castle, Marie-Catherine tells Barbe Bleue that she is now accustomed to luxury. The statement does not signal a problem with Marie-Catherine's values; Breillat seems accepting, as she so often is.
22. After a solar eclipse gives Barbe Bleue the opportunity to display his knowledge of history and science, an impressed Marie-Catherine says to him avidly, "Teach me everything you know." Marie-Catherine shows no other interest in learning: she seems to regard knowledge as a form of male power that she wishes to acquire for herself.
23. After Marie-Catherine discovers the bodies of Barbe Bleue's other wives, she must hide the discovery from him and eat dinner with him upon his return from a trip. The tone of this scene is difficult to fix. Barbe Bleue has become threatening to us; and Marie-Catherine begins to lie to him in self-protection. However, Breillat declines to give us images of Marie-Catherine's presumed fear and repulsion. Further, Marie-Catherine participates willingly in the communal aspect of dinner, taking bites out of the huge leg of lamb that her husband shares with her. Though the story mandates that Marie-Catherine now fear Barbe Bleue and regard him as an enemy, Breillat manages through Marie-Catherine's behavior to create the interesting impression that the horrible murders have not destroyed the marital bond.
24. Breillat gives us a bare indication that the accidental death of Marie-Anne at the end of the modern story is the fantasy of the traumatized Catherine: surely Catherine's mother would have spotted Marie-Anne's body on the floor below if the fall had actually occurred? False alarm, all is well, except that Catherine's desire to kill her older sister has been made manifest.
25. Breillat ends the film with an image of Marie-Catherine caressing the severed head of her husband. She is victorious, and simultaneously she is sad.
26. The sad music accompanying this gruesome ending yields, as in other Breillat films, to happy dance music under the end credits. Like her characters, Breillat will not pretend that contemplating her atavistic impulses is gloomy business.
Barbe Bleue is scheduled at the IFC Center only until tomorrow, Thursday, April 15.
Here is a checklist of moments I noted in Barbe Bleue that are strongly inflected by Breillat's sensibility, that other filmmakers would be unlikely to write or direct the same way. My impulse here is analytic rather than synthetic, but patterns will no doubt emerge: identifying them is left as an exercise for the reader.
There will be plot spoilers below.
1. The heartless Mother Superior (Farida Khelfa) who dominates the film's first scenes is cast against type as a young, beautiful woman.
2. The sisters in the fairy tale, Anne (Daphné Baiwir) and Marie-Catherine (Lola Créton), shed tears upon being given unceremonious notice of their father's death. They are then expelled from their convent school and sent home in a carriage. Showing the process of departure would for many filmmakers provide an excuse to ramp down the film's level of sadness, so that the sisters' grief will be nearly as moderate as the audience's when we next encounter them. But Breillat prefers to resume the story in the carriage with the sisters weeping, showing the audience the mourning that it has already gotten over. Only then does Breillat ramp down the grief, by letting the sisters veer into a discussion of marriage and the future. By placing the transition from mourning to the mundane in mid-conversation, Breillat makes the sisters own the mood change, which now seems slightly unfeeling. Acknowledging the dissonance that she has created, Breillat lets the sisters name it: "We shouldn't laugh. Papa just died." "It's nerves."
3. At home, the differing reactions of Anne and Marie-Catherine to their father's death are emphasized by Breillat and given equal weight, even though Anne is not a structurally important character. It is unusual for a supporting character not to have a supporting opinion. Breillat is making a small break with narrativity, digressing into a mode she likes, in which sisterly conflict resembles warring aspects of the same mind.4. And both these opinions are uncomfortable, expressing forbidden aspects of the parent-child relationship. Anne violates the spirit of mourning with her fury at her father, who died saving a stranger's life. Whereas Marie-Catherine fetishizes her dead father, clearly enjoying the power she now has over him: "You aren't intimidating now. I love you." Breillat maintains sympathy for both characters; neither emotion seems to alienate her.
5. Even while she reproaches Anne, Marie-Catherine understands her, and explains to both her mother (Isabelle Lapouge) and her dead father that Anne's insults are the result of her pain.6. Barbe Bleue's emissary (Adrien Ledoux), who informs the family that the rich noble wishes to choose a wife from among the young women of the area, is a handsome, arrogant young man, an attractive predator who will have no occasion to cross swords with any woman in this story. As in the case of the Mother Superior, Breillat invests with sexuality even the most functional representatives of power.
7. The sisters in the modern story, Catherine (Marilou Lopes-Benites) and Marie-Anne (Lola Giovannetti), while quarreling over the fairy tale that they are reading, have a brief but digressive discussion of free will versus determinism, in which Marie-Anne blames her squeamishness on her head ("cerveau"). "Your head is you," says the younger Catherine. "No, I was born with it," protests Marie-Anne. As usual, Breillat does not seem to want us to take sides, or to characterize the sisters via their opinions: the dispute merely shows that the sisters encompass both sides of the issue.
8. Slipping away from Barbe Bleue's reception, Marie-Catherine whiles away the time in the fields surrounding the castle, playing with a praying mantis, then watching the beheading of a chicken. The camera lingers upon the death agony of the unfortunate chicken: the gaze of the camera is presumably Marie-Catherine's gaze. Breillat, and by extension Marie-Catherine, seem interested in and accepting of the horror.
9. Meanwhile the youth of the area take part in a group dance outside the castle. I can't vouch for the authenticity of the music and the dancing, but the film at least suggests that the instruments and the choreography are of the period. Breillat focuses on the saucy dance moves of the young women, who smile and wag their fingers ceremonially at their male partners. She seems to enjoy emphasizing that the old ways look modern, that these people acknowledge and play with sexuality much as we do today.
10. The massive and scary-looking Barbe Bleue first talks to Marie-Catherine while resting under a tree. He is surprisingly unthreatening in his demeanor, suggesting a tame bear. His voice is soft and gentle.
11. Discussing the fairy tale in the modern story, precocious Catherine insists that, in the old days, women could get married even at age 5. "It's not like adult marriage," she says in qualification. Pressed for details by Marie-Anne, Catherine demonstrates that she's vague on the whole subject. Like much of the modern story, this scene exists only to show the children's imagination reaching out boldly into the world of sex.
12. Marie-Catherine's engagement to Barbe Bleue is simultaneously a weapon against her older sister Anne and the sad occasion of their separation. Breillat likes to compress the two feelings. After a harsh outburst against Anne, Marie-Catherine suddenly hugs her tenderly.13. Similarly, as Marie-Catherine is leaving her home with her new husband, Anne says to her, "Now we needn't fight anymore." Marie-Catherine replies, "But I liked that." Hatred and love between the sisters are repeatedly depicted as compatible emotions, not requiring resolution.
14. At the sisters' post-wedding goodbye, Barbe Bleue sits silently on his horse in the background, waiting for his new bride like a liveryman. In the spirit of counterpoint, Breillat will depict the fairy-tale monster as gentle and domesticated throughout the film.
15. In the modern story, Catherine shows off her incorrect understanding of the word "homosexuality." Her exasperated older sister gives her the correct meaning, but Catherine is obstinate. Again, the subject connects to the narrative only in that it shows the young girls' interest in sex.
16. As she is installed in Barbe Bleue's castle, Marie-Catherine suddenly becomes imperious and demanding about her living arrangement, trying to assert her power over her husband. Marie-Catherine is not generally characterized as imperious, and does not test her power in this fashion again. Breillat seems to assume that a war for power lies just under the surface of love relationships. The filmmaker shows no sign of disapproval, and our identification with Marie-Catherine is not affected.
17. Sneaking around the castle at night, Marie-Catherine peeks in her husband's room and spies on him removing his tunic and sitting on his bed bare-chested. The gigantic Barbe Bleue does not provide the sort of nudity that movie audiences are likely to welcome. Both Marie-Catherine (who is not yet sleeping with her husband) and Breillat have no reaction to the naked man other than fascination with the spectacle; Marie-Catherine's feelings toward him do not seem to be altered.
18. In the modern story, young Catherine insists that she is more intelligent than her older sister Marie-Anne, and mercilessly exploits Marie-Anne's having stayed back a grade because of illness. Marie-Anne has no good defense, and seems beaten. The conflict will have no obvious repercussions.
19. Marie-Catherine confides to her husband, "I miss my sister, but I'm glad to be rid of her." The contradiction does not require resolution.
20. Breillat repeatedly puts visual emphasis on the absurd difference in size between the gigantic Barbe Bleue and his tiny wife Marie-Catherine: for instance, by framing them side by side at the dinner table. Though the couple will have no sexual contact in the film, that outrageous, unspoken fantasy is the motor of the story. Never one to avert her gaze, Breillat forces us to imagine such an act.
21. After a time in the castle, Marie-Catherine tells Barbe Bleue that she is now accustomed to luxury. The statement does not signal a problem with Marie-Catherine's values; Breillat seems accepting, as she so often is.22. After a solar eclipse gives Barbe Bleue the opportunity to display his knowledge of history and science, an impressed Marie-Catherine says to him avidly, "Teach me everything you know." Marie-Catherine shows no other interest in learning: she seems to regard knowledge as a form of male power that she wishes to acquire for herself.
23. After Marie-Catherine discovers the bodies of Barbe Bleue's other wives, she must hide the discovery from him and eat dinner with him upon his return from a trip. The tone of this scene is difficult to fix. Barbe Bleue has become threatening to us; and Marie-Catherine begins to lie to him in self-protection. However, Breillat declines to give us images of Marie-Catherine's presumed fear and repulsion. Further, Marie-Catherine participates willingly in the communal aspect of dinner, taking bites out of the huge leg of lamb that her husband shares with her. Though the story mandates that Marie-Catherine now fear Barbe Bleue and regard him as an enemy, Breillat manages through Marie-Catherine's behavior to create the interesting impression that the horrible murders have not destroyed the marital bond.
24. Breillat gives us a bare indication that the accidental death of Marie-Anne at the end of the modern story is the fantasy of the traumatized Catherine: surely Catherine's mother would have spotted Marie-Anne's body on the floor below if the fall had actually occurred? False alarm, all is well, except that Catherine's desire to kill her older sister has been made manifest.25. Breillat ends the film with an image of Marie-Catherine caressing the severed head of her husband. She is victorious, and simultaneously she is sad.
26. The sad music accompanying this gruesome ending yields, as in other Breillat films, to happy dance music under the end credits. Like her characters, Breillat will not pretend that contemplating her atavistic impulses is gloomy business.Barbe Bleue is scheduled at the IFC Center only until tomorrow, Thursday, April 15.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
La maman et la putain (The Mother and the Whore): NYU, Monday, March 22, 2010
If any of you have three and a half hours to spare on the evening of Monday, March 22, I'll be giving a ten or fifteen-minute introductory talk at a ciné-club DVD screening of Jean Eustache's monumental 1973 film La maman et la putain (The Mother and the Whore). The show starts at 6:30 pm at NYU's 20 Cooper Square building (at Bowery and E. 5th St.), in Room 471. The notice for the screening says, "ALL WELCOME. Refreshments - stiff, copious - provided."
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Xunzhao zhimei gengdeng (The Search): Maysles Cinema, Saturday, March 20, 2010
I didn't find out about the Tibet in Harlem series until today, its opening day. One of the titles in the program, Pema Tsaden's Xunzhao zhimei gengdeng (The Search), made an impression on me at last year's Toronto Film Festival. In my Toronto 2009 wrap-up for Senses of Cinema, I wrote:
"Screened at Locarno after winning the Grand Jury Prize at the Shanghai Film Festival, Pema Tseden's Xunzhao zhimei gengdeng (The Search) is allegedly the first Tibetan film made openly in China. Structured around a film crew's search for rural performers for an adaptation of a traditional Tibetan opera, Xunzhao zhimei gengdeng is actually an elaborate riff on the theme of performance, stringing together stories within the story and impromptu auditions, and exploring various dryly comic ways to interrupt, contextualize, or serialize them. Tseden's remote visual plan, keyed to the expansive terrain and hanging back at important moments, is gradually revealed as a important component of his mission to restore the uncanny aspect of performance by subtracting its direct appeal to the audience. (In the film's climactic scene, we see that the film crew's cameraman has a more conventional dramatic sense than Tseden, slowly zooming in on the singer that the film crew has been pursuing, while Tseden's camera remains stubbornly locked-down.) By the time the search reaches its conclusion, song and theater seem to be springing unbidden from the Tibetan landscape. The print of Xunzhao zhimei gengdeng that screened in Toronto contained awkwardly translated English subtitles that improved after fifteen minutes or so, but made it difficult to perceive the film's formal and verbal intelligence."
Xunzhao zhimei gengdeng shows at Maysles Cinema (at 343 Lenox Ave., two blocks away from the 125th St. stop on the 2/3 trains) on Saturday, March 20 at 7:30 pm. I haven't seen the other films in the series, but two other Tseden films are included: his 2005 feature Lhing vjags kyi ma ni rdo vbum (The Silent Holy Stones) on Wednesday, March 17 at 7:30 pm; and his 2004 short The Grassland, as part of a program on Friday, March 19 at 7:30 pm. Kevin Lee (who will be doing a Q&A with Tseden after the Wednesday screening) compares Tseden to Abbas Kiarostami, and I can see the connection: both filmmakers hide a droll, cerebral formalism behind naturalistic surfaces.
"Screened at Locarno after winning the Grand Jury Prize at the Shanghai Film Festival, Pema Tseden's Xunzhao zhimei gengdeng (The Search) is allegedly the first Tibetan film made openly in China. Structured around a film crew's search for rural performers for an adaptation of a traditional Tibetan opera, Xunzhao zhimei gengdeng is actually an elaborate riff on the theme of performance, stringing together stories within the story and impromptu auditions, and exploring various dryly comic ways to interrupt, contextualize, or serialize them. Tseden's remote visual plan, keyed to the expansive terrain and hanging back at important moments, is gradually revealed as a important component of his mission to restore the uncanny aspect of performance by subtracting its direct appeal to the audience. (In the film's climactic scene, we see that the film crew's cameraman has a more conventional dramatic sense than Tseden, slowly zooming in on the singer that the film crew has been pursuing, while Tseden's camera remains stubbornly locked-down.) By the time the search reaches its conclusion, song and theater seem to be springing unbidden from the Tibetan landscape. The print of Xunzhao zhimei gengdeng that screened in Toronto contained awkwardly translated English subtitles that improved after fifteen minutes or so, but made it difficult to perceive the film's formal and verbal intelligence."
Xunzhao zhimei gengdeng shows at Maysles Cinema (at 343 Lenox Ave., two blocks away from the 125th St. stop on the 2/3 trains) on Saturday, March 20 at 7:30 pm. I haven't seen the other films in the series, but two other Tseden films are included: his 2005 feature Lhing vjags kyi ma ni rdo vbum (The Silent Holy Stones) on Wednesday, March 17 at 7:30 pm; and his 2004 short The Grassland, as part of a program on Friday, March 19 at 7:30 pm. Kevin Lee (who will be doing a Q&A with Tseden after the Wednesday screening) compares Tseden to Abbas Kiarostami, and I can see the connection: both filmmakers hide a droll, cerebral formalism behind naturalistic surfaces.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Le Roi de l'évasion (The King of Escape): Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, March 15-16, 2009
Little by little, the international film community is catching on that French director Alain Guiraudie is one of the most distinctive and confident voices in today's cinema. His latest film, 2009's Le Roi de l'évasion (The King of Escape), can look like either a bold surrealist gesture or the last gasp of classical widescreen filmmaking, depending on where one focuses. A plot description - a gay, plump, 40-year-old tractor salesman (Ludovic Berthillot) in the south of France yields enthusiastically to the overtures of the beautiful 16-year-old daughter (Hafsia Herzi) of his boss - doesn't begin to convey Guiraudie's wild, rapid storytelling style, nor the extraordinary ease with which the filmmaker depicts a set of social groups that even adventurous filmgoers are unlikely to encounter on screen often. There is an amazing opposition, almost a contradiction, in Guiraudie's approach: he stylizes the social landscape into an idealized vision of sexuality freely expressed and tolerated; and yet the comic compression of the plot suggests a paranoid dream of punishment and persecution for the slightest and most concealed sexual impulse. That Guiraudie is aware of this bizarre split, and presents it to us simply and lucidly without resolving it, marks him as a major artist. Le Roi de l'évasion (The King of Escape) plays twice more in the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema program: on Monday, March 15 at 3:45 pm at the Walter Reade, and on Tuesday, March 16 at 9:30 pm at the IFC Center.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Assorted Screenings in NYC: February-March 2010
1. I've gotten in the habit of looking at online trailers for upcoming screenings in NYC - admittedly an iffy way of deciding whether to see a film, but better for me than all the other iffy ways. In case you're interested in sharing the iffiness, here are trailers or clips that piqued my interest:
2. I caught the Larrieu Brothers' Les derniers jours du monde (Happy End) at Toronto 2009, and it seems even more audacious and appealing upon reflection than it did at the time. It's one of the lower-profile entries in this year's edition of Film Comment Selects at the Walter Reade: screenings are at Monday, March 1 at 3:30 pm and Tuesday, March 2 at 6:15 pm. Here's what I wrote in my Toronto 2009 wrap-up for Senses of Cinema:
"Presented in Locarno's Piazza Grande ten days before its French theatrical premiere, Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu's Les derniers jours du monde, which witnesses the destruction of Europe via virus, nuclear attack, and assorted other implements of destruction, was sensibly programmed on TIFF's last night. As usual in this genre, we are allocated an identification figure (Mathieu Amalric) - but this audience surrogate is not quite standard issue, in that he has lost an arm as a result of his adulterous sexual fixation on an androgynous sex worker (Omayrah Mota), who cannot be dislodged from the top of his priority list even as death rains down around him. The end of the world according the Larrieus is light on exciting violent spectacle, but full of beanballs thrown at our delicate psyches: sometimes via the wholesale abrogation of sexual barriers, sometimes by confronting us with unsettling evidence of the fragility of the body. For the characters as well as the filmmakers, the apocalypse is about freedom, about the falling away of social and psychological constraints - and if the Larrieus sometimes treat the apocalypse rather casually, they take sex very seriously. Among the film's many pleasures is the best role in years for the admirable Karin Viard, as the protagonist's abandoned but not forgotten wife."
3. Catherine Breillat's excellent Barbe Bleue (Blue Beard) has a preview screening on Wednesday, March 3 at 7:30 pm at Anthology Film Archives (as part of their Bluebeard on Film series) before its March 26 opening at the IFC Center. Once again Breillat dissolves the gap between a literary property (this time Perrault's fairy tale) and her own sensibility, effortlessly finding a paradoxical emotional angle on every primal event. A modern-day framing story, featuring two sisters reading the tale in their attic, provides a running comic commentary while simultaneously delving into life-and-death conflicts of its own. One can perhaps argue that the fairy tale's focus on the anxiety of disobedience, which requires creating a monster, is somewhat at odds with the sympathy that Breillat characteristically extends to all her sexual combatants. Still, it's fascinating to watch her erase distinctions between mundane and mythic subject matter.
4. Hilary Brougher's distinctly underappreciated 2006 drama Stephanie Daley returns for a one-off screening at 92Y Tribeca on Friday, March 5 at 7 pm, with the filmmaker in attendance. There is a faintly metaphorical aura to the film's story - a teenage girl (Amber Tamblyn), in denial about her belatedly terminated pregnancy, perplexes a forensic psychologist (Tilda Swinton), herself pregnant - that probably led to it being pigeonholed as a topical work. Easier to miss is the unusual density of Brougher's filmmaking: she seems determined to cut out all the ordinary moments in life and move briskly from one insight to another. And she seems to have a lot of detailed observations up her sleeve about both teenage anguish and pregnancy. It's rare to see an American film that adopts a familiar investigation/mystery format and yet comes across as a continuous stream of personal expression.
5. The surprise of last year's Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, Sylvie Verheyde's Stella, is screening at Symphony Space on Saturday, March 6 at 7 pm and Saturday, March 13 at 8:45 pm at as part of the New York International Children's Film Festival. The story of a tentative but self-sufficient young girl (Léora Barbara) trying to transcend the restrictions of her déclassé upbringing, Stella has few formal chops, doesn't look so great, overuses its effects - and I loved it anyway. Verheyde is a wizard at not letting fictional forms get in the way of facts about people, and she effortlessly generates compelling complexity while dodging every bullet of the coming-of-age genre. The film's scale is so modest and human-centered that one doesn't tote up its achievements immediately: nearly every scene is a standout, nearly every performance is incisive.
6. Just in case you need recommendations for Film Forum's Victor Fleming series: 1935's The Farmer Takes a Wife (on Tuesday, March 9 at 1, 4:45 and 8:30 pm) and 1938's rather Hawksian Test Pilot (on Wednesday, March 10 at 1, 5:30 and 10 pm and Thursday, March 11 at 1 pm) are both pretty good. Also Red Dust (on Friday, March 5 at 1, 4:30 and 8 pm, and Saturday, March 6 at 2:50 and 8 pm), but you probably know that one already. (Too bad Film Forum couldn't get 1935's Reckless, which is probably my favorite.) Fleming isn't always able to show his talents, but he's a smart director, with distinctive visual habits: he likes short lenses, slightly depressed angles, and characters approaching and leaving the foreground on diagonals. He favors exaggerated acting and action, has an interesting taste for violence and iconoclasm, and likes visual overcrowding and excess.
7. I haven't seen anything in this year's Rendez-Vous series, but I'm very much looking forward to Alain Guiraudie's Le roi de l'évasion (The King of Escape): playing Saturday, March 13 at 9 pm at the Walter Reade; Monday, March 15 at 3:45 pm at the Walter Reade; and Tuesday, March 16 at 9:30 pm at the IFC Center. On the basis of 2001's Ce vieux rêve qui bouge (That Old Dream That Moves) and 2003's Pas de repos pour les braves (No Rest for the Brave), Guiraudie seems one of the most inspired filmmakers on today's scene. He's not exactly unknown, but none of his films have gotten US theatrical distribution as far as I know. The new film sounds like light comedy (a gay middle-aged salesman has an opportunity with Hafsia Herzi, and decides to go for it), but Guiraudie can blend light and heavy tones in the oddest ways. I'm also interested in Philippe Lioret's Welcome, which got some attention on the festival circuit: Lioret's Je vais bien, ne t'en fais pas (Don't Worry, I'm Fine) marked him as a talent to watch. It plays Friday, March 12 at 1:15 pm at the Walter Reade; Saturday, March 13 at 6:30 pm at the IFC Center; and Sunday, March 14 at 3:30 pm at the Walter Reade.
8. Gianni Di Gregorio's wonderful Pranzo di ferragosto (Mid-August Lunch), which I wrote about when it played New Directors/New Films last year, gets a theatrical premiere at Film Forum on March 17. The film presents itself as one of those life-affirming films with lovable eccentrics and lots of cooking scenes, and I guess that's true enough. But it's also pure personal filmmaking.
9. MoMA's Canadian Front series is looking pretty hotsy-totsy this year. The most exciting title is Bernard Émond's sublime La Donation (The Legacy), which plays Thursday, March 18 at 4 pm and Saturday, March 20 at 8 pm. Here's what I said in my Senses of Cinema Toronto 2009 wrap-up:
"Though a notch lower in prestige than Venice, Cannes and Berlin, the Locarno Film Festival, which takes place a month before TIFF, provided a disproportionate number of my favourite films this year. At the top of the list is La Donation, the high point to date of Quebecois filmmaker Bernard Émond’s career. Set in the small town of Normétal in the Abitibi-Ouest region of Quebec, and haunted by the clear gray skies and dark wooded areas that seem ready to reclaim the settlement at a moment’s notice, La Donation is the continuing story of Jeanne Dion (Elise Guilbault), the embattled doctor of Émond’s La Neuvaine, whose search for meaning leads her to a trial period as the impoverished region’s only physician. Casting a number of residents of the area, and directing his professional actors to match the quiet stoicism of the amateurs, Émond arrives at an uncanny evocation of the mood of Bresson’s Journal d’un curé de campagne (Diary of a Country Priest, 1950), in which the performers are less documented for their reality than enlisted as principles of existence. As a follower of Émond since his first feature La femme qui boit (2001, also starring Guilbault), I had begun to fear in recent years that he was settling into a reflex solemnity that was yielding diminishing returns. To my delight, La Donation recasts Émond’s art in new terms, not so much dispelling his heaviness as offering it to us, contextualising it with brisk pacing and a strong narrative hook, exposing it to the skies and cold winds. Now would be the perfect time for programmers worldwide to give Émond greater exposure."
A tougher sell is Sherry White's Crackie, about which I wrote in the same article:
"Labrador-based director Sherry White premiered her film Crackie at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in July before bringing it home to TIFF and a subsequent Canadian theatrical run. Set in a rural part of Newfoundland that seems dominated by scrap yards and garbage dumps, Crackie is the story of 17-year-old Mitzy (Meagan Greeley), suspended between her tough, practical grandmother/caretaker (Mary Walsh) and the worthless mother she idealises (Cheryl Wells). The film is a bit broad and schematic around the edges, but subtle and affecting at its centre: Greeley’s wonderfully simple performance scales the girl’s reactions down so that both her vulnerability and her inner strength seem in harmony with her hardscrabble environment. White portrays Mitzy’s first sexual experiments frankly and without sentiment, and gets emotional mileage out of her turbulent relationship with the eponymous dog who figures in her transition to adulthood."
- Make Yourself at Home, in the Korean American Film Festival: Sunday, February 28 at 4:30 pm at the SVA Theatre at 333 W 23rd St. (The screening is sadly opposite A Brighter Summer Day at the Walter Reade that afternoon.)
- Le bel âge (Restless), in the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema Series: Tuesday, March 16 at 7 pm at the IFC Center; Wednesday, March 17 at 1 pm at the Walter Reade; and Thursday, March 18 at 8:45 pm at the Walter Reade.
- Polytechnique, in the Canadian Front Series: Friday, March 19 at 4 pm and Sunday, March 21 at 12:45 pm at MoMA.
2. I caught the Larrieu Brothers' Les derniers jours du monde (Happy End) at Toronto 2009, and it seems even more audacious and appealing upon reflection than it did at the time. It's one of the lower-profile entries in this year's edition of Film Comment Selects at the Walter Reade: screenings are at Monday, March 1 at 3:30 pm and Tuesday, March 2 at 6:15 pm. Here's what I wrote in my Toronto 2009 wrap-up for Senses of Cinema:
"Presented in Locarno's Piazza Grande ten days before its French theatrical premiere, Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu's Les derniers jours du monde, which witnesses the destruction of Europe via virus, nuclear attack, and assorted other implements of destruction, was sensibly programmed on TIFF's last night. As usual in this genre, we are allocated an identification figure (Mathieu Amalric) - but this audience surrogate is not quite standard issue, in that he has lost an arm as a result of his adulterous sexual fixation on an androgynous sex worker (Omayrah Mota), who cannot be dislodged from the top of his priority list even as death rains down around him. The end of the world according the Larrieus is light on exciting violent spectacle, but full of beanballs thrown at our delicate psyches: sometimes via the wholesale abrogation of sexual barriers, sometimes by confronting us with unsettling evidence of the fragility of the body. For the characters as well as the filmmakers, the apocalypse is about freedom, about the falling away of social and psychological constraints - and if the Larrieus sometimes treat the apocalypse rather casually, they take sex very seriously. Among the film's many pleasures is the best role in years for the admirable Karin Viard, as the protagonist's abandoned but not forgotten wife."
3. Catherine Breillat's excellent Barbe Bleue (Blue Beard) has a preview screening on Wednesday, March 3 at 7:30 pm at Anthology Film Archives (as part of their Bluebeard on Film series) before its March 26 opening at the IFC Center. Once again Breillat dissolves the gap between a literary property (this time Perrault's fairy tale) and her own sensibility, effortlessly finding a paradoxical emotional angle on every primal event. A modern-day framing story, featuring two sisters reading the tale in their attic, provides a running comic commentary while simultaneously delving into life-and-death conflicts of its own. One can perhaps argue that the fairy tale's focus on the anxiety of disobedience, which requires creating a monster, is somewhat at odds with the sympathy that Breillat characteristically extends to all her sexual combatants. Still, it's fascinating to watch her erase distinctions between mundane and mythic subject matter.
4. Hilary Brougher's distinctly underappreciated 2006 drama Stephanie Daley returns for a one-off screening at 92Y Tribeca on Friday, March 5 at 7 pm, with the filmmaker in attendance. There is a faintly metaphorical aura to the film's story - a teenage girl (Amber Tamblyn), in denial about her belatedly terminated pregnancy, perplexes a forensic psychologist (Tilda Swinton), herself pregnant - that probably led to it being pigeonholed as a topical work. Easier to miss is the unusual density of Brougher's filmmaking: she seems determined to cut out all the ordinary moments in life and move briskly from one insight to another. And she seems to have a lot of detailed observations up her sleeve about both teenage anguish and pregnancy. It's rare to see an American film that adopts a familiar investigation/mystery format and yet comes across as a continuous stream of personal expression.
5. The surprise of last year's Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, Sylvie Verheyde's Stella, is screening at Symphony Space on Saturday, March 6 at 7 pm and Saturday, March 13 at 8:45 pm at as part of the New York International Children's Film Festival. The story of a tentative but self-sufficient young girl (Léora Barbara) trying to transcend the restrictions of her déclassé upbringing, Stella has few formal chops, doesn't look so great, overuses its effects - and I loved it anyway. Verheyde is a wizard at not letting fictional forms get in the way of facts about people, and she effortlessly generates compelling complexity while dodging every bullet of the coming-of-age genre. The film's scale is so modest and human-centered that one doesn't tote up its achievements immediately: nearly every scene is a standout, nearly every performance is incisive.
6. Just in case you need recommendations for Film Forum's Victor Fleming series: 1935's The Farmer Takes a Wife (on Tuesday, March 9 at 1, 4:45 and 8:30 pm) and 1938's rather Hawksian Test Pilot (on Wednesday, March 10 at 1, 5:30 and 10 pm and Thursday, March 11 at 1 pm) are both pretty good. Also Red Dust (on Friday, March 5 at 1, 4:30 and 8 pm, and Saturday, March 6 at 2:50 and 8 pm), but you probably know that one already. (Too bad Film Forum couldn't get 1935's Reckless, which is probably my favorite.) Fleming isn't always able to show his talents, but he's a smart director, with distinctive visual habits: he likes short lenses, slightly depressed angles, and characters approaching and leaving the foreground on diagonals. He favors exaggerated acting and action, has an interesting taste for violence and iconoclasm, and likes visual overcrowding and excess.
7. I haven't seen anything in this year's Rendez-Vous series, but I'm very much looking forward to Alain Guiraudie's Le roi de l'évasion (The King of Escape): playing Saturday, March 13 at 9 pm at the Walter Reade; Monday, March 15 at 3:45 pm at the Walter Reade; and Tuesday, March 16 at 9:30 pm at the IFC Center. On the basis of 2001's Ce vieux rêve qui bouge (That Old Dream That Moves) and 2003's Pas de repos pour les braves (No Rest for the Brave), Guiraudie seems one of the most inspired filmmakers on today's scene. He's not exactly unknown, but none of his films have gotten US theatrical distribution as far as I know. The new film sounds like light comedy (a gay middle-aged salesman has an opportunity with Hafsia Herzi, and decides to go for it), but Guiraudie can blend light and heavy tones in the oddest ways. I'm also interested in Philippe Lioret's Welcome, which got some attention on the festival circuit: Lioret's Je vais bien, ne t'en fais pas (Don't Worry, I'm Fine) marked him as a talent to watch. It plays Friday, March 12 at 1:15 pm at the Walter Reade; Saturday, March 13 at 6:30 pm at the IFC Center; and Sunday, March 14 at 3:30 pm at the Walter Reade.
8. Gianni Di Gregorio's wonderful Pranzo di ferragosto (Mid-August Lunch), which I wrote about when it played New Directors/New Films last year, gets a theatrical premiere at Film Forum on March 17. The film presents itself as one of those life-affirming films with lovable eccentrics and lots of cooking scenes, and I guess that's true enough. But it's also pure personal filmmaking.
9. MoMA's Canadian Front series is looking pretty hotsy-totsy this year. The most exciting title is Bernard Émond's sublime La Donation (The Legacy), which plays Thursday, March 18 at 4 pm and Saturday, March 20 at 8 pm. Here's what I said in my Senses of Cinema Toronto 2009 wrap-up:
"Though a notch lower in prestige than Venice, Cannes and Berlin, the Locarno Film Festival, which takes place a month before TIFF, provided a disproportionate number of my favourite films this year. At the top of the list is La Donation, the high point to date of Quebecois filmmaker Bernard Émond’s career. Set in the small town of Normétal in the Abitibi-Ouest region of Quebec, and haunted by the clear gray skies and dark wooded areas that seem ready to reclaim the settlement at a moment’s notice, La Donation is the continuing story of Jeanne Dion (Elise Guilbault), the embattled doctor of Émond’s La Neuvaine, whose search for meaning leads her to a trial period as the impoverished region’s only physician. Casting a number of residents of the area, and directing his professional actors to match the quiet stoicism of the amateurs, Émond arrives at an uncanny evocation of the mood of Bresson’s Journal d’un curé de campagne (Diary of a Country Priest, 1950), in which the performers are less documented for their reality than enlisted as principles of existence. As a follower of Émond since his first feature La femme qui boit (2001, also starring Guilbault), I had begun to fear in recent years that he was settling into a reflex solemnity that was yielding diminishing returns. To my delight, La Donation recasts Émond’s art in new terms, not so much dispelling his heaviness as offering it to us, contextualising it with brisk pacing and a strong narrative hook, exposing it to the skies and cold winds. Now would be the perfect time for programmers worldwide to give Émond greater exposure."
A tougher sell is Sherry White's Crackie, about which I wrote in the same article:
"Labrador-based director Sherry White premiered her film Crackie at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in July before bringing it home to TIFF and a subsequent Canadian theatrical run. Set in a rural part of Newfoundland that seems dominated by scrap yards and garbage dumps, Crackie is the story of 17-year-old Mitzy (Meagan Greeley), suspended between her tough, practical grandmother/caretaker (Mary Walsh) and the worthless mother she idealises (Cheryl Wells). The film is a bit broad and schematic around the edges, but subtle and affecting at its centre: Greeley’s wonderfully simple performance scales the girl’s reactions down so that both her vulnerability and her inner strength seem in harmony with her hardscrabble environment. White portrays Mitzy’s first sexual experiments frankly and without sentiment, and gets emotional mileage out of her turbulent relationship with the eponymous dog who figures in her transition to adulthood."
Sunday, February 21, 2010
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