Nouvelle Vague

Zoey Deutch and Guillaume Marbeck

I found Richard Linklater's Nouvelle Vague to be a charming, frisky, and light on its feet tribute to the French New Wave. The film focuses on Jean-Luc Godard's struggle to direct his first feature, Breathless. The script, written by a cohort of writers, places Godard within the ferment of the Cahiers du Cinéma magazine in which Godard and his fellow critics (especially Truffaut, Chabrol, Rivette, and Rohmer) formulated la politiques des auteurs. That critical stance became known, in English, as the auteur theory which is somewhat of a misnomer. The auteur theory is not some all encompassing method for evaluating film, but, originally, was a championing of a more personal approach to commercial filmmaking. The auteur theory was a response to a the stultifying "tradition of quality" that dominated the French cinema and was represented by such figures as Marcel Carné, René Clément, Claude Autant-Lara, and Henri Clouzot. In response to this, the Cahiers critics championed European auteurs who they felt offered a more personal and less stuffy vision of cinema such as Renoir, Ophuls, Becker, and Tati. The Cahiers critics also championed Hollywood directors such as Hawks and Hitchcock long before they were recognized as artists in the English speaking world.

Nouvelle Vague does a good job of providing a glimpse into the Cahiers crowd before Godard began shooting Breathless. All of the characters are introduced by titles which proves to be a good shorthand method for introducing the film's large cast. The film also shows Godard following the advice of esteemed film veterans before making his debut. There are wonderful cameos by figures playing Cocteau, Bresson, Melville, and Roberto Rossellini all of whom were venerated by the Cahiers crowd. Linklater's choice of shooting in black and white captures the feel of early New Wave films without mimicking Godard's style. There are no jump cuts or irises like those employed by Godard in Breathless. The editing is brisk and ebullient, fitting for the story of a film which was shot guerrilla style in less than three weeks. 

A number of Linklater's films revolve around a group of individuals who band together due to a common bond: the stoners in Dazed and Confused, the outlaws in The Newton Boys or the jocks of Everybody Wants Some!!. The cast and crew of Breathless are another little band united in a common purpose in this paean to cinephilia. The crew all play their part even when befuddled by the more cryptic pronouncements of the director. Nouvelle Vague displays the crucial contributions of cinematographer Raoul Coutard (Matthieu Penchinat) whose grounded efforts often provided a counterbalance to Godard's airy fancies. The cast are uncanny in their likeness to their real life counterparts and there is no weak link among them. No one quite has the charisma of Belmondo, but Aubry Dullin beautifully personifies his relaxed physicality and bemused demeanor. Guillaume Marbeck captures the intelligence, insolence, and insularity of Godard. The film wisely elides some, but not all, of the less laudatory aspects of his character. We root for him despite his nature because he is young and struggling to be a voice in the world of cinema that is his true love. Best of all is Zoey Deutch who is an uncanny twin of Jean Seberg. Deutch ably displays the steely resolve that lurked beneath Seberg's corn fed Iowa exterior.

Misericordia

Félix Kysyl and Jacques Develay

Alain Guiraudie's Misericordia (in France Miséricorde) is a wry and unsettling murder mystery set in the southern French countryside. The film, scripted by Guiraudie, combines an assortment of elements: a polymorphously perverse figure cons and bedazzles a small circle of patsies with his erotic allure (Teorema), a homophilic attraction and its attendant passion leads to murder (any Patricia Highsmith adaptation) resulting in a corpse being comically underfoot amidst gorgeous fall foliage (The Trouble With Harry). Guiraudie populates his film with a motley array of characters, nearly all harboring a secret or two. Most interesting are a not too grieving widow (Catherine Frot), an equivocal cleric (Jacques Develay), and a protagonist who is the object of desire for all who gaze upon him (Félix Kysyl). Misericordia is nothing earth shaking in terms of film dynamics, but I appreciated its droll aplomb. 

The film is not a whodunit, the audience witnesses the killing, but a will he get away with it.  Misericordia presents a series of mostly two handed dialogues with a constant vying for dominance between the combatants. It is the dialogues between priest and the perp that best display the range of the film, meditations on crime and punishment that limn the heights and depth of the human soul. Ultimately, the film rejects the rationalism of Cartesian dualism to celebrate the comforts of the flesh, while we can. The film's priest offer a rationalization for his moral stand, as a French priest would, but it is eros more than agape that compels him. 

Cold Fish

Megumi Kagurazaka

Sion Sono's Cold Fish is the sickest film I've seen in some time, but I mean that in the nicest way possible. This 2010 film is easily the best of the half dozen or so of Sono's films that I've seen. Still, the copious amounts of gore and polymorphous perversity contained within the film will limit the appeal of this picture. Viewer beware! The film is quite lengthy at 144 minutes, but I was not bored or repelled for a moment. I appreciated the film's pitch black humor. The protagonist is a repressed loser named Shamato who owns a tropical fish store. He leads an uneasy existence with a wife named Taeko (Megumi Kagurazaka) and a daughter from a previous marriage named Mitsuko (Hikari Kajiwara), both of whom hold him in contempt. Mitsuko, acting out, is busted for shoplifting at a drug store. The proprietor of the drug store,  Murata (Denden), who not coincidentally also owns a swankier tropical fish store than Shamato's, seemingly takes a kindly interest in Mitsuko and offers her a job. He employs "troubled teens" at his fish store where they reside. Mitsuko, eager to leave home, accepts the job and soon joins the all female crew who attend to their duties in skimpy tees and short shorts. Murata and his mate Aiko (Asuko Kurosawa) ingratiate themselves into the lives of Shamato and his family. Murata eventually seducing Taeko and tricking Shamato into joining in his criminal escapades.

Eventually, Shamato grows sick of doing Murata's bidding and turns the tables on him. This is not a political film per se, but it does seem like a meditation on the Japanese national identity. Certainly, the misogyny of the film seems to be a comment on women's second class status in Japan. This fits within the film's depiction of domination and submission as the basis of relationships. The characters, all two dimensional, seem primarily motivated by lust and greed. Denden, a stand-up comedian, hectors those around him like a sinister Don Rickles. Murata alternately belittles and pep talks Shamato. It is a performance that is both appalling and tremendously entertaining. Sono constantly films Denden from below, looming over the browbeaten Shamato. What Sono is seeking to portray is a dog eat dog world predicated on consumption. We are constantly being treated to shots of creatures in their aquariums being fed smaller creatures for their survival. The world depicted in Cold Fish is an anti-humanist one in which homo sapiens have hardly evolved beyond their amphibious ancestors.