Holy Cow

Luna Garret and Clément Faveau

Louise Courvoisier's Holy Cow is a promising feature debut from the young French director. The French title for the film is Vingt Dieux or "twenty gods" which is a common French exclamation akin to "good heavens". The phrase derives from the more blasphemous "vain dieu" or vain god. Darn, as it were, instead of damn. The title Holy Cow points to the film's setting which is in Jura, a rural region of France near the Swiss border, which is the main dairy producing area in the country. The film focuses on two siblings, the young Claire (Luna Garret) and 18 year old Totone (Clément Faveau) who are left to fend for themselves after the sudden death of their father. The film is chiefly a coming of age drama about Totone coming to terms with his newfound responsibilities.

The film presents a warm portrait of the youth of the region, though it implies that they have few outlets for entertainment after a hard day's work on the farm. One of the few dark notes of the film is the prevalence of alcoholism displayed in the region. That said, the film's tone is somewhat naive. There are no social services to be found to help or nettle Totone. The only hint at the daily struggle to survive is a brief scene of Claire and Totone dumpster diving. The film's narrative is chiefly taken by two strands. The first is Totone's desire to follow in his father's footsteps by becoming a maker of artisanal cheese. Totone's clumsy attempts at learning his craft are somewhat comical, but he finds mentors to further his education about fromage.  

The other strain of the narrative concerns Totone's sentimental education. Totone falls in love with Marie-Lise (Maïwene Barthelemy), the no-nonsense daughter of the owner of a large dairy. Marie-Lise is a fount of practical knowledge and she gives Totone lessons in a wide range of subjects, from how to birth a calf to the finer points of cunnilingus. The whole cast is terrific, but it is Ms. Barthelemy who makes the most indelible impression. What impressed me the most about Holy Cow was Ms. Courvoisier's skill at pacing individual sequences. The film never drags or lags, but moves along in a spritely and engaging manner. It reminded me of Breaking Away, but Holy Cow is a superior film to that one about a rural community and a young man's coming of age.

Red Rose White Rose

Joan Chen and Winston Chao

Stanley Kwan's Red Rose White Rose is a rapturous romantic melodrama from 1994. The film is relatively faithful to its source, Eileen Chang's novella of the same name, which was first published in 1944. Zhen-Bao (Winston Chao) has returned to Shanghai after finishing his education in the UK. Hired by a trading company, Zhen-Bao takes a flat with an old classmate who has an attractive and very Western wife named Jiao-Rui (Joan Chen). The old friend leaves for a business trip and the inevitable occurs. 

The first half of the film is, largely, one long tryst. Kwan separates his lovers from the world as they plunge into each other. The camera remains tightly fixed on the duo. The current events of the era are faintly touched upon. Shanghai is evoked by artifice such as miniatures and hand painted backgrounds which play up the unreal, fairy tale nature of falling into romantic tumult. Christopher Doyle's cinematography utilizes inky black and blood orange to depict the flames of love. Jiao-Rui's apartment walls are studded with tiles, like the background of a Klimt, which shimmer just the right way thanks to Mr. Doyle. The use of titles, quoting the novella, further distances the audience from this folie à deux. When Jiao-Rui tells Zhen-Bao that she wants to ditch her husband and marry him, he recoils and retreats from her. He cannot sacrifice his career by marrying a divorcee, so he discards the red rose of passion for the white rose of marriage.

Veronica Yip

There is an ellipsis of time in the film and we see Zhen-Bao on his wedding day, embarking on an arranged marriage. His new wife, Yen Li (Veronica Yip), is the opposite of Jiao-Rui, in almost every way. She is unsophisticated and unresponsive in bed. She bears her husband a baby girl, her meddling mother-in-law prattles that the next one will be a boy, but their union is discordant. Zhen-Bao drowns himself in alcohol and frequents prostitutes. While the focus of the first half of the film is on the two lovers, the second half focuses on Zhen-Bao's family milieu with a foregrounding of his brother and mother. The palette of the cinematography changes also. Darkness is banished and the images are over saturated with light. Pastels are substituted for vivid primary colors, all the better to highlight the Western kitsch of the married couples' flat. The decor is festooned with cherubs and pink roses highlighting the cognitive dissonance of the menage.

Joan Chen's performance here is so ferocious that it convinced me that Hollywood misused her as an actress. Ms. Yip has less to do, mostly play sullen, but is equally expressive. Inexpressive is what Mr. Chao is, he reminded me of Gregory Peck, but this serves to bolster a film about the transience of male desire. The film ends with Zhen-Bao vowing to keep to the straight and narrow, but I note a trace of mild irony with the pat ending of this under seen masterpiece.

 

The Miracle Woman

Barbara Stanwyck

Frank Capra's The Miracle Woman is an uneven, yet ultimately effective 1931 drama. It reunites Capra with Barbara Stanwyck who were on a winning streak for Harry Cohn and Columbia Pictures. The picture was based on a 1927 play, entitled Bless You Sister, by John Meehan and, significantly, future Capra collaborator Robert Riskin. The material was adapted by Jo Swerling, and functions as a critique of evangelism, equating it with  sports, carnivals, medicine shows, and the like. The main inspiration for the play was evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson whose "disappearance" was the most sensational news story of 1926. 1927 was also the year Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry. Since the birth of the Republic, each new spiritual awakening has elicited a backlash by America's writers and intellectuals. I just finished reading Hawthorne's superb The Blithedale Romance, published in 1852, which pictures American spiritualists as confidence men and scoundrels. The song has remained the same.

The picture opens with Stanwyck dressing down her father's congregation after they have defrocked him. This provides her an ideal opportunity to display her moxie and passion as an actress. A traveling carny named Hornsby(Sam Hardy) senses her charisma and takes her under his wing. Soon, she has been monikered "Sister Florence Fallon" and is ministering to a large congregation. Sister Fallon's show features stage lighting, a large band, a choir, and even caged lions. Shills are employed by Hornsby to fan the flames of the fanatics. The razzmatazz and ballyhoo employed by Hornsby brings lucrative rewards. The backstage aspect of The Miracle Woman is what is most saltily attractive about the picture. Hardy, in particular, excels at the rat-a-tat-tat dialogue that Riskin would become renowned for. Hardy amassed over eighty film credits before his premature death in 1935.

Stanwyck and David Manners

Unfortunately, the romantic angle of the picture nearly sinks it. David Manners, as a blind veteran named John Carson who wins the evangelist's heart and moves her towards redemption, is so stiff and lifeless he resembles a two ton anchor. Manners had some success playing Jonathan Harker in the 1931 hit Dracula, but his lack of affect would doom his career in films. The romantic ardor generated by Stanwyck and Manners is zilch. Manners was a stiff, but I'm not sure who could have redeemed this idiotic role. Carson wins over Stanwyck by employing racial epithets, a doll named Sambo, a toy clown that plays The Farmer in the Dell, and, most heinous of all, ventriloquism. The mind reels. 

However, there are moments of genius that redeem the picture. A good example is Capra's introduction of Carson: a four shot sequence briskly tossed off, but containing a trove of information about the character. Carson is seen in the background of the shot telling an apartment dweller, separated by a narrow alley from Carson's pad, to turn her radio, tuned to the Sister Fallon show, down. Then there is an overhead shot from the roof of Carson's apartment showing his head sticking out his window asking for quiet. The shot, which will be crucially repeated, shows how narrow the alley is separating Carson's building from his neighbor. The shot emphasizes the reduced circumstances of those living in these tenements. Capra then cuts to a head on shot of Carson closing the window. The next shot, from the inside of his apartment, shows Carson in profile with a Harvard pennant in the background. Why, the audience must ask, is an Ivy League grad living in penury. We soon learn that Carson was a World War 1 aviator who lost his sight in the conflict. He has struggled to make a living as a songwriter, but his failure compels him to attempt suicide. Capra repeats the overhead shot that now augurs doom. Instead, Carson hears Sister Fallon's voice urging her listeners to combat despair and never quit on life. The rest of the film pretty much writes itself. 

Stanwyck's diaphanous stage outfits are a wonder of Pre-Code cinema. The finale in which Sister Fallon's tabernacle is engulfed in a conflagration is a fiery ending that calls to mind the title of one of Capra's 1932 pictures: American Madness.