Une affaire de femmes

Marie Trintignant and Isabelle Huppert

Claude Chabrol's Une affaire de femmes, which was released in the US in 1990 under the unsatisfactory title Story of Women, is set in Cherbourg under the Nazi occupation. It focuses on a lower class woman named Marie Latour (Isabelle Huppert) who finds her calling as an abortionist after taking it up to make ends meet. The film was based on a novel by Francis Szpiner who is better known in France for his careers in politics and law. Marie Latour is based on the real life Marie-Louise Giraud who was guillotined in 1943. In the film, Marie is saddled with a traumatized husband, Paul (François Cluzet) who returns from a POW camp after the first reel to reunite with Marie and their two small children. Marie wants nothing more to do with her quietly seething husband and takes up with a young wheeler-dealer named Lucien (the dashing Nils Tavernier) who has profited by collaborating with the Nazis.

Part of the reason I think Une affaire de femmes is second tier Chabrol is its predictability. As soon as scorned Paul learns that Marie has taken a swanky lover, we know he will rat on his wife to the authorities. Paul never seems truly damaged, just sullen and frustrated because the talented Mr. Cluzet is busy tamping down his natural charisma. I also don't completely buy Ms. Huppert as a semi-literate. A bigger problem is the film's shaky point of view. During the course of the film, we learn that the tale is being told later in life by Marie and Paul's son, Pierrot. However, Chabrol doesn't really adhere to Pierrot's perspective, so that reveal comes off as clumsily as the film's one onscreen shooting. On the plus side, Marie's relationships with the women she encounters who need her services are superbly and empathically rendered. Best of all is Marie Trintignant as Lulu who befriends Marie and mentors her on expanding her client base. A seaside tracking shot of the two conversing is the highlight of the film.

Roger Ebert suggested that Ms. Huppert was the perfect performer for Chabrol and I concur. Whenever Chabrol needs her to show what Marie is thinking or feeling in the film, Ms. Huppert is able to make it plain to the viewer without punctuating the proceedings with unrealistic demonstrativeness. Marie is the only multi-dimensional character in the film and Huppert is able to range across a wide spectrum in displaying both her character's grasping materialism and lyrical love of music. It is a commanding performance and was duly rewarded with the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival in 1988. She has gone on to prove and continue proving that she is the premier film actress of her generation. Une affaire de femmes may not be one of Claude Chabrol's best films, nor one of his worst, but it does contain one of Isabelle Huppert's best performances.

Violent Streets

Noboru Andō and Akira Kobayashi

Hideo Gosha's Violent Streets is a terrific yakuza film from 1974. It ranks with the best of the dozen or so of his 24 films that I have seen: Three Outlaw Samurai, Samurai Wolf 2, Goyokin, and The Geisha; all outstanding. I have been a champion of his work since seeing Goyokin, still my favorite, at the Vinegar Hill Theatre in Charlottesville in 1984. May it rest in peace. Violent Streets is only one of three modern day films Gosha directed. He was best known for working in the samurai genre. Certainly, he stands as one of the outstanding action directors of the late 20th century. Every bit as stylish and interesting as Sam Peckinpah or John Woo.

The protagonist of Violent Streets is a retired, for the moment, yakuza named Egawa (Noboru Andō). Egawa owns and manages a flamenco club named the Madrid located on the Ginza. The first fifteen minutes of the film establish Egawa's back story and the tone of violence that dominates the film. While a flamenco trio entertains, Egawa dispatches a quartet of rude hoods with clever aplomb. Then, to fully establishes that he is beyond the pale, he violently rapes his drunken mistress, Minami (Minami Nakatsugawa). She alludes to him loving another woman (Miyoko Akaza) who is now married to a yakuza boss. We eventually learn that Egawa had to leave organized crime and hand over his fiancee to broker a deal. The Madrid was his consolation prize, but he holds onto it tightly as if it were his last shred of self-respect. Andō was a tough customer himself, getting his trademark scar while serving a stint in prison before appearing in over fifty films. He is superb at putting up a stoic front that masks the seething need for vengeance inside him.

Violent Streets is a thorough composed picture, every shot that goes into its brisk 96 minutes is there for a reason. When the first segment entirely set in the Madrid concludes Gosha inserts a flashing green pedestrian walk sign to connote a transition. The film opens with the title backgrounded with barking dogs. Animals are a constant motif in the film (dogs, chickens, and a parrot), highlighting the barely evolved level of the characters. Another motif is that of performance, there are numerous shows within shows in the film ranging from classical theater to striptease. There is even a "lesbian' sex show featuring a performer who we learn is a kick-ass trans assassin (Lady Joy!). This is a movie of masks and that is one way to interpret it. Another is that show biz is a guise, a mask for organized crime. Indeed, as in the contemporaneous Charley Varrick and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, it is the titans of big business who are the ultimate criminals.

A masked marauder

Minami's brother helps mastermind the kidnapping of a pop star with dire results. A battle of completing clans subsequently erupts and Egawa is compelled to return to the yakuza life. He gains his revenge in a series of bravura sequences which include Egawa driving a car into his rival's nightclubbing, blasting away and a final coup de grace in which Egawa interrupts his target's menage a trois. Violent Streets is greatly helped by the appearance of Bunta Sungawara's gunsmith who calmly guzzles a Coke while Egawa is massacring his foes. Sungawara brings needed comic relief to a fatalistic flick. Violent Streets has much to offend sensitive modern viewers. Its fire engine red blood seems out of a Herschel Gordon Lewis movie and it certainly fails the Bechdel test. Ms. Nakatsugawa was used in the film because of her experience in softcore porn. Like Lady Joy, this was her only mainstream film. However, if you look beneath the veneer of commercial exploitation, you will find a multi-level masterpiece and crackerjack picture.

Return to Silent Hill

Jeremy Irvine

Christophe Gans' Return to Silent Hill is a reboot of the Silent Hill horror franchise that commenced in 2006, with a film also directed by Gans. The original is not a good film, but it has some mitigating assets that make it one of the better video game adaptations. The script, by Roger Avary, is ludicrous, but Gans manages to elicit solid performances from a good cast including Radha Mitchell, Sean Bean, Laurie Holden, Alice Krige, and Deborah Kara Unger. The CGI for this film was ahead of its time and the production design is impressive.

Likewise, Return to Silent Hill's attributes are wholly contained by its look and design. The script, co-written by Gan, is drivel and, this time, the acting ensemble is second rate. Whatever power the original film had derived from its sense of place, a mining town in West Virginia. There was a sense of ecological decay that is lacking in the new film, mostly because Silent Hill is now set next to a pristine lake in Serbia. Silent Hill becomes not a place, but a state of mind. Unfortunately, the film's script provides a jumbled back story that provides the viewer with few tangible plot threads to grasp. The monsters that haunt Silent Hill, the only holdovers from the original film,  are vague unconscious emanations that have little connection to Return to Silent Hill's flimsy plot.