Die My Love

 

Jennifer Lawrence on all fours in Die My Love

Lynne Ramsay's Die My Love is my favorite bad movie of the year. The film is an adaptation of the brilliant Argentine writer Ariana Harwicz's slim first novel Malate amor. This tale of a new wife and mother coming undone was originally set in rural France, but Ms. Ramsay and her two talented co-writers have transposed the drama to North America with Alberta standing in for Montana. Not that the picture seems particularly American even with US icons like Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte in the cast. No matter, the tale of a traumatized woman mentally unraveling suits Ms. Ramsay's astringent feminism, but also shows her limitations.

Grace (Jennifer Lawrence), the protagonist, never adjusts to domesticity with her new spouse (Robert Pattinson) and baby. Montana is her husband's territory and the couple move into the abandoned home of a relative of his, who we will eventually learn has committed suicide. The house is fairly isolated, so the attending alienation only exacerbates Grace's post partum depression. The picture suffers from portentousness, however. A mysterious motorcycle rider ( a wasted LaKeith Stanfield) and wild black horse too patly portend Grace's desire for freedom from domestic bonds. Soon, she is barking at the dog, acting horny, scurrying around on all fours, and discarding her clothes at the drop of a hat. I thought the picture should have been called Diary of a Mad and Feral Katniss.

Ramsay pounds us over the head with this theme, but fails to visually express the atavism of her material. We never feel the unconscious pull that guides Grace to the forest for her eventual annihilation. The overly placid adaptation of Train Dreams suffers from this same fault, but, at least, Ramsay can never be accused of being an overly placid director. I suspect she is more suited to urban material. Ramsay plays up the sick house horror of the home, but it flattens the supporting characters into Gothic schtick reminiscent of, and this is not meant as a compliment, Sam Shepherd's Curse of the Starving Class. Pattinson suffers the most from this. A fine actor, he is so misdirected that he comes off as a cartoon: just a pretty boy in a trucker hat. As with her performance in Mother!, Ms. Lawrence almost redeems an arty misfire. She gives a committed performance that gives us the unhinged madness the rest of the picture lacks. She has displayed her lack of inhibition as a performer before, but never with such ferocity.

L'Accident de piano

Adèle Exarchopoulos
           

Quentin Dupieux's L'Accident de piano is a typical pratfall filled misanthropic farce from the eccentric Gallic talent. Adèle Exarchopoulos stars as Magalie who we eventually learn is a social media star whose online sobriquet is Megajugs. The first act consists of an injured Magalie, assisted by her PA Patrick (an excellent Jérôme Commandeur), settling into a chalet near the Alps. Dupieux has endeavored to make Ms. Exarchopoulos as unattractive as possible, a Herculean undertaking, and succeeds with padding, a frugly wig, and braces. Apparently a stunt involving a piano has gone awry, but this first section of the film is intentionally obscure and off-putting. We do learn that Megajugs is a narcissistic diva who enjoys bullying the apparently long suffering Patrick. Their solitude is broken by some hooligan fans and a phone call by a blackmailer who knows the details about the piano accident.

Simone, the blackmailer played by a tightly wound (like her braids) Sandrine Kiberlain, is a reporter who seeks not cash, but the legal tender of the age: an interview. Megajugs accedes to this and the resulting confrontation takes up most of the middle section of the film. Simone probes Megajugs' background and, through flashbacks, we view her path to fame. A viewing of an episode of Jackass inspires the 14 year old Megajugs to become the distaff Johnny Knoxville, a goal she embraces whole heartedly thanks to a "congenital insensitivity to pain." Megajugs posts videos of her masochistic exploits in which she always assumes the Wile E. Coyote role. Sandrine assumes the voice of reason in the interview. She wants to know why. Something, in the tradition of French dualism, that Megajugs is loath to do. She represents the credo of the unconscious artist reacting against interpretation. Megajugs and by extension Dupieux feels that it is pointless to analyze her nihilistic behavior.

I feel that, even though the character of Megajugs is artistically aligned with the juvenile provocateur Dupieux, that the film, which ends with Megajugs indulging in a quiet frenzy of Dionysian destruction, is ultimately an auto-critique on the limits of nihilism. Megajugs is still her 14 year old self, an aging adolescent who is hopelessly self absorbed. L'Accident de piano also stands as a visual meditation on the psychic link between comedy and violence. The flick reminds me of the old Mel Brooks joke: "Tragedy is me getting a paper cut. Comedy is you falling into a hole and breaking your leg." I'm surprised Dupieux didn't utilize a falling anvil. Regardless, Ms. Exarchopoulos makes a magnificent monster. 

El Jockey

Ursula Corbero and Nahuel Perez Biscayart          

Luis Ortega's El Jockey, released in the US as Kill the Jockey, is amiable light entertainment. Ortega is only 45, but the Argentinian writer and director has built up an impressive filmography over the last two decades. El Jockey wears its influences lightly: dashes of color and queer sensibility (Almodovar), deadpan surrealism (Kaurismäki), and comic zaniness (Jerry Lewis). Nahuel Pérez Biscayart is the lead, a hapless jockey named Remo who is under the thumb of a small time crime boss. He has a pregnant girlfriend, a fellow jockey named Abril (Úrsula Corberó), a tip of the gaucho to Victoria I suppose. Remo has a bad crash at the track and ends up at the hospital suffering from some whacky form of amnesia. He escapes the hospital, for no apparent reason, wearing a stolen mink coat and little else. While he wanders amongst the homeless and dispossessed of Buenos Aires, Abril finds consolation in the arms of another jockey, the sassy Ana (Mariana di Girolamo).

The dramatic contrivances that take up the last act are paper thin, but Ortega's visual imagination never flags. El Jockey boasts 2025's best sight gags. The colors in this flick really pop thanks to Ortega and cinematographer Timo Salminen, a longtime collaborator of Aki Kaurismäki. Both leads are superb, Biscayart does a great deadpan and Corberó smolders impressively. The dance numbers are a hoot and are a great showcase for the players. The music is outstanding, both the Argentine pop songs, old and new, and the score by Sune Wagner, of the Danish band The Raveonettes. El Jockey is not the type of movie that will change the course of film history, but it provides more entertainment than some of those that do. Currently streaming on MUBI.