L'eau Froide

Pagan rites in L'eau Froide

Olivier Assayas' L'eau Froide, from 1994, is a bracing look at the sociopathic descent of two French teenagers. Set in the early 70s, Assayas eschews any grapplings with the political struggles of that era. Instead, Assayas focuses on how his two young lovers fail to connect with any institutional support mechanisms: be they educational, medical, correctional or familial. The totems of their subculture, joints and rock albums, are passed from youth to youth in a gesture of bonding, but the two lovers fail to connect with anyone else or, ultimately, each other.

Assayas certainly captures the schizoid zeitgeist of the 70s. European high culture, represented here by Caravaggio and Rousseau, is rejected by the young as moribund. They are more interested in getting good reception on their radios so they can listen to "Virginia Plain". The party and bonfire at an abandoned chateau, which dominates the second half of the film, is a pagan rite for a generation disconnected to the rituals and romances of their forebears. Those forebears are portrayed dispassionately, but fairly. Assayas has no generational axe to grind. The elders may be clueless and self-preoccupied, but so are their offspring.

L'eau Froide is a very strong film, but not a flawless one. Assayas sometimes seems to be unable to decide if he is shooting an art film or cinema verite. His lovers are mismatched. Virginie Ledoyen was already one of the best young actresses of her time and delivers a breathtaking performance. Cyprien Fouquet was making his cinematic debut and is not up to the challenge. His lack of roles after this film is telling. Since the male protagonist is barely out of boyhood and is unformed, this is not fatal to the film. Assayas' career has had many highlights and L'eau Froide is one of them.

Best of 1974

1. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul                                                                  RW Fassbinder
2. Chinatown                                                                                      Roman Polanski
3. Female Trouble                                                                              John Waters
4. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre                                                     Tobe Hooper
5. The Four Musketeers                                                                    Richard Lester
6. Cockfighter                                                                                    Monte Hellman
7. Alice in the Cities                                                                          Wim Wenders
8. Parade                                                                                             Jacques Tati
9. Celine and Julie Go Boating                                                         Jacques Rivette
10. California Split                                                                               Robert Altman

         Honorable Mention

         Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia -- Peckinpah, Juggernaut -- Lester

         Young Frankenstein -- Brooks, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser -- Herzog,

         Going Places -- Blier, Lancelot du Lac --Rohmer, The Godfather 2 -- Coppola,

         Eadweard Muybridge Zoopraxographer -- Thom Andersen,

         Stavisky -- Resnais

         Films I Enjoyed

         Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Lacombe Lucian,

         The Sugarland Express, Sweet Movie,

         Freebie and the Bean, That's Entertainment, 

         The Phantom of Liberty, Electra, My Love, Cartesius,

         The Taking of Pelham 123, Harry and Tonto, 

         It's Alive, Daisy Miller, 

         The Conversation, Claudine, 

         Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Zardoz, The Parallax View, 

         The Longest Yard, Phantom of the Paradise, Caged Heat

         Below the Mendoza Line

         The Gambler, Je tu il elle

         Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, 

         The Terminal Man, The Yakuza,

         Black Christmas, The Front Page,

         Flesh Gordon, Arabian Nights,

         Messiah of Evil, 

         Blazing Saddles, Death Wish,

         Murder on the Orient Express, The Man with the Golden Gun, 

         Big Bad Mama, The Little Prince, 

         Journey Through the Past, Busting, 

         Mr. Majestyk, Seizure, 

         The Great Gatsby, 

         The Towering Inferno, Earthquake,

         Airport 1975, McQ,

         Lenny

         

                                      

Polar, The Marquise of O

 Exquisite languor in The Marquise of O

Jonas Akerlund's Polar is soul sucking dreck, redolent of urine and flop sweats.

After such a dispiriting cinematic experience, I relished the restraint, taste and moral probity that are the hallmarks of an Erich Rohmer film. The Marquise of O, from 1976, is a major work in his oeuvre. The first foreign language film and costume drama for the director, it is remarkably, almost overly, assured. Rohmer adapted a Kleist novella and would return to Kleist as a source for 1980's Catherine de Heilbronn, one of many Rohmer TV movies and documentaries I am eager to track down. The narrative, presented mostly in flashback, concerns an Italian woman who becomes mysteriously pregnant amidst the tumult of war with Russia in 1799. Edith Clever embodies the marquise and it is a great pity that she has so few film credits to her name. She provides a warm presence to a film without a dash of syrup.

Bruno Ganz portrays the Russian count who saves the marquise from being raped by marauding soldiers as her father's fort falls. He is the likely father of the Marquise's baby, but the marquise is not sure who the father is because she had been sedated with poppy tea. The shot of the Marquise passed out while lying on bright red sheets is among the most beautiful in cinematographer Nestor Almendros' storied career and an erotic invitation to rival those of Velazquez, Botticelli and Manet. How can we resist, Rohmer seems to suggest before fading, as usual, to black. The Count is first presented as an angel dressed in white saving the Marquise from above, as the Marquise herself later notes, but his rushed courtship after the rape presents a more tortured and ambivalent side to his character. Ganz became a frenzied Hitler meme in his dotage, but The Marquise of O shows his youthful range and subtlety. He personifies the Romanticism and neuroticism of the post Werther European hero.

Rohmer shifts the tenor of the film from melodrama to dry comedy to give the film tonal variety instead of monotony. The melodramatic nature of the film is heightened by the use of silent film techniques: titles, irises, fades to black. The marquise is truly an orphan of the storm by the time she is cast out of her father's house. When her father realizes the error of his ways and creeps back to beg his daughter's forgiveness, Rohmer opts for droll comedy. The father has become the child, made inarticulate by the certitude of his own guilt. Rohmer also uses the brief and absurd glimpses of combat for light comic effect.

There are also shifts between rigor, dissecting the nature of human relations, and languor, into which oozes life's sensual side. This tension is the crux of the late French master's work and makes The Marquise of O a dense text and a delight.

An angel viewed from below

                                   

Velvet Buzzsaw

A jejune view of modern art...Velvet Buzzsaw

Dan Gilroy's Velvet Buzzsaw is a prototypical mixed bag. The elements of art world satire work well enough, but Gilroy cannot provide that extra oomph to give the horror sequences much of an impact. Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo are back from Gilroy's Nightcrawler and the writer-director provides them chewy moments; as he does for Zawe Ashton, John Malkovich, Toni Collette and Tom Sturridge. The cinematography by Robert Elswit, who lensed Nightcrawler, Inherent Vice, There Will Be Blood, etc., delivers a lurid noir look replete with neon, sunsets, car lights and oil paint. This, along with nice costumes and intelligent set design, are reason enough to see the picture.

On the debit side, Gilroy's view of modern art is jejune. Since both dealers and artists are portrayed as vacant hustlers, there is little emotional impact for the viewer when they meet their violent ends. The haunted paintings that trigger the horrific events are banal facsimiles of 30s expressionism presented under the guise of 'outsider art". Gilroy has fun depicting the back stabbers and sell outs of the art world, but do they really deserve their grisly fate. I enjoyed seeing Toni Colette's limb being severed by a piece of modern sculpture, but William Gass explored the intrusive nature of modern art more provocatively in his novel A Frolic of His Own way back in 1994. The lack of morality and compassion in Velvet Buzzsaw is ultimately Gilroy's.

Best of 1975

1. Barry Lyndon                                                                        Stanley Kubrick
2. Jeanne Dielman...                                                                 Chantal Akerman
3. The Passenger                                                                      Michelangelo Antonioni
4. Night Moves                                                                          Arthur Penn
5. Return of the Pink Panther                                                 Blake Edwards
6. The Mirror                                                                             Andrei Tarkovsky
7. Fox and His Friends                                                             RW Fassbinder
8. Xala                                                                                        Ousmane Sembene
9. French Connection 2                                                           John Frankenheimer
10. The Magic Flute                                                                    Ingmar Bergman

         Honorable Mention

         Jaws --Spielberg,

         The Man Who Would Be King -- Huston, Hard Times -- Hill,

         Nashville -- Altman, Grey Gardens -- The Maysles Brothers, etc.

         Films I Enjoyed

         Hearts of the West, The Wind and the Lion, 

         L'Important C'est d'Aimer,

         Dersu Uzala, Shivers,

         Dog Day Afternoon, The Killer Elite,

         Picnic at Hanging Rock, Shampoo,

         Bite the Bullet, Winstanley,

         Hester Street, The Great Waldo Pepper, 

         Mandingo, Love and Death, 

         India Song, Tommy,

         Deep Red, Three Days of the Condor,

         Breakout, Breakheart Pass, WW and the Dixie Dancekings,

         The Legend of Lizzie Borden, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, 

         Below the Mendoza Line

         The Story of Adele H, Seven Beauties,

         The Romantic Englishwoman, Salo

         Adoption, The Drowning Pool, 

         White Line Fever, The Beast,

         Day of the Locust, Farewell, My Lovely,

         Inserts, Posse,

         That's the Way of the World,

         Death Race 2000, 

         The Battle of Chile, The Fortune,

         Aloha, Bobby and Rose, 92 in the Shade,

         Conduct Unbecoming, The Sunshine Boys,

         Rooster Cogburn, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, 

         Race with the Devil, The Eiger Sanction,

         The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother,

         Rollerball, The Other Side of the Mountain, Brannigan,

         The Hindenburg

         Cave Videntium

          Black Moon

         

        

Jamaica Inn

Marie Ney has the advantage over Robert Newton and Charles Laughton in Jamaica Inn

Alfred Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn, from 1939, is one of his lesser works, but I still found some felicities amidst the dubious suspense and hackneyed melodrama. This Daphne du Maurier adaptation would surely seem to be in Hitchcock's wheelhouse, but the script was bowdlerized before filming. The villain, played in supreme Smithfield fashion by Charles Laughton, was changed from a vicar to a magistrate to avoid the wrath of the Church of England. This and other changes to the scenario give it a jumbled and toothless feel. Much of the vinegar of du Maurier's prose was lost. What was left feels like a hollow repeat of the young lovers in peril trope of The 39 Steps. Not surprisingly, Hitchcock and Laughton did not get along and the shoot was an unpleasant experience. The film lacks the relish one finds in Hitchcock's better films. The film is a chore.

Still, there is delight to be found in the characterizations, if not the narrative. Leslie Banks and Marie Ney are striking as the proprietors of the titular inn, a front for smugglers. The pair serve as another Hitchcock portrait of an unhappy marriage. The director plays up the S and M nature of the relationship, both sadomasochistic and servant and master. Emlyn Williams is a delight as a scuzzy brigand. It is interesting to see Robert Newton as a romantic lead. He is serviceable, but, in retrospect seems more suited for villainy. His romantic partner in the film, Maureen O'Hara, is near perfect. Hitchcock captures her peculiar combination of tremulousness and grit. Ms. O'Hara's memoir 'Tis Herself is a bit cuckoo, but worth a read. Laughton's performance is the type that would overshadow most films, as Orson Welles did in his paycheck roles, but here his fussiness and tics throw the film off. He dominates the film instead of supporting it. Still, Hitchcock turns him into an appropriately loathsome embodiment of avarice.

Jamaica Inn is a lesser film by a master. A better treatment of similar material is Moonfleet, directed by Fritz Lang, once Hitchcock's primary influence and, eventually, his filmic twin of nightmare cinema.

The Sisters Brothers

"My right hand was thunder..." The Sisters Brothers

Jacques Audiard's The Sisters Brothers is a competent condensation of Patrick deWitt's novel, but it fails to fully capture the novel's sardonic tone and invention. Audiard, as previously in his work, displays a sure hand with his players. John C. Reilly, Riz Ahmed and Joaquin Phoenix all do good work. Even Jake Gyllenhaal, who has marred good films like Okja with his unrestrained antics, offers a measured and nuanced performance. Yet, something is missing.

I have been reading Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd and been musing upon the relatively unsatisfactory 1967 film version. The decor and costumes of the John Schlesinger film are exemplary, as is Nicholas Roeg's cinematography. The casting of Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Terence Stamp and Peter Finch could not be bettered and they all deliver fine performances. However, Schlesinger fails to capture the moral crux of the novel. The direction is anonymous and workmanlike.  Far From the Madding Crowd is a nice enough film that lacks the impact of the novel because the tone and effectiveness of a film lies with the director and his aesthetic choices.

The story of The Sisters Brothers provides a promising blueprint for a film, but Audiard's direction lacks the panache and narrative drive that deWitt infuses his novel with. Part of the reason is structural, deWitt's short chapters provide an enclosed start and finish to each vignette within the somewhat picaresque story. Audiard's narrative flows like a river with the focus constantly shifting from pursuer to pursued. The moral nexus of deWitt's work is focused. Audiard's ribbon of events unspools pointlessly.

This is also due to anonymous nature of Audiard's Oregon where most of the action of the film and book take place. The film's setting is a generic Western one, really Spain and Romania, without the sense of place the novel has. deWitt also more effectively utilizes violence to emphasize the amoral nature of  the Old West. Audiard is shaky as a director of action. The thunderous sound and flashing flames that emit from the weaponry is memorably illustrated. However, the carnage that the brothers unleash has no emotional impact upon the viewer because the antagonists are blank figures. Audiard is so intent on evoking the confusion and destructiveness of violence that he leaves his audience confused as to who the various gunmen are. The lack of a point of view may be audiard's attempt to evoke the amoral universe of the tale, but it leaves viewers without a narrative voice to guide them.

Another example of the film's shortcomings is the lack of emotional resonance after the death of Eli Sisters' one eyed horse. deWitt slowly builds the empathy Eli has for his horse so that the horse's demise resonates and clues us into Eli's sensitivity. Audiard stresses the suffering of the horse, but not Eli's growing attachment. Thus, when John C. Reilly gives a moving eulogy about the horse, the effect is negligible; and that is the ultimate effect of the film.

Best of 1976

1. Kings of the Road                                                                           Wim Wenders
2. Taxi Driver                                                                                       Martin Scorsese
3. I, Claudius                                                                                        Herbert Wise
4. The Marquise of O                                                                           Eric Rohmer
5. Family Plot                                                                                       Alfred Hitchcock
6. Face to Face                                                                                    Ingmar Bergman
7. Cadaveri eccellenti                                                                         Francesco Rosi
8. Carrie                                                                                               Brian De Palma
9. Mr. Klein                                                                                          Joseph Losey
10. Robin and Marian                                                                           Richard Lester

         Honorable Mention

         

         The Outlaw Josie Wales -- Eastwood,

         Obsession -- De Palma, Assault on Precinct 13 -- Carpenter, 

         The Missouri Breaks -- Penn, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie -- Cassavetes, 

         Silent Movie -- Brooks, The Shootist -- Siegel

         Films I Enjoyed

         Network, Edvard Munch, 

         In The Realm of the Senses, Maitresse,

         The Pink Panther Strikes Again, 1900, 

         Mikey and Nicky, All the President's Men,

         Rocky, The Bad News Bears, The Man Who Fell to Earth,
         God Told Me To, Freaky Friday, 

         Small Change, The Tenant,
         Bingo Long..., Bound for Glory, 

         Vigilante Force, The Last Tycoon,
         Marathon Man, Car Wash, The Innocent, 
         Captains and the Kings, Bloodsucking Freaks

         Below the Mendoza Line

         Fellini's Casanova,

         The Front, Black and White in Color,

         Shout at the Devil, The Silver Streak,
         King Kong, The Eagle Has Landed, 

         The Song Remains the Same, 

         Future World,
         Bugsy Malone, The Omen, 

         The Toy, Murder By Death,
         Logan's Run, The Education of Emily, 

         A Star is Born,
         Midway 
        

         

        

        

         

La maman et la putain

Three cigarettes in an ashtray

Jean Eustache's La maman et la putain, from and very much of 1973, is a four hour examination of the formation and breakdown of a menage a trois between French twenty somethings. It has the chief attribute and detriment of French arthouse cinema: digressively endless scenes of dialogue in bedsit flats and cafes. This is enough to keep all but the most ardent cinephiles away, but, despite or because of its longueurs, La maman et la putain strikes me as one of the more compelling artifacts of the late New Wave.

As Rivette did in Out 1, Eustache is using the romantic intersections of the bourgeoisie to portray a post-revolutionary generation negotiating the sexual minefield of post-monogamous France. Eustache avoids improvisation, very unlike Out 1. The story is simple and straightforward. Shiftless Alexandre is living with and leeching off Marie, who owns a fashion boutique. He takes up with Veronika, a nurse. Alexandre shifts back and forth between the two women. Briefly, there is a rapprochement between the trio, but the relationships are too tenuous to survive as such. Ultimately, biology decides the romantic victor.

A Pyrrhic victory because the "prize" and main object of desire in the film is the callow, pretentious and feckless Alexandre. A smoking, lying, two-timer who the ladies cannot resist. Eustache places him in the firmament of Parisian cafe society, but the books he reads, the records he plays and the movies he quotes are merely signifiers of a character that has not coalesced. "I'm just kidding, but seriously," Alexandre spouts. Eustache is able to make Alexandre tolerable for nearly four hours because he cast Jean-Pierre Leaud, the masculine face of his generation in France. Leaud makes the pompous pronouncements of Alexandre with a soupçon of his puppy dog charm. Eustache is artist enough to portray the pathology behind the charming mask of Alexandre in what amounts to a self-portrait and critique.

Francoise Lebrun

A menage a trois must contain at least one folie a deux. Eustache was involved with the actress playing Veronika, the haunting Francoise Lebrun. This adds to the sense of the film as a critical self-portrait, particularly when Veronika correctly diagnoses Alexandre as a narcissist. It also tilts the film towards Veronika and away from Marie. Bernadette Lafont has fewer long soliloquies than Ms. Lebrun. Fortunately, the portraits of both women are fully drawn, as is the milieu. the hardscrabble nature of life after university is exactly portrayed as littered with whiskey bottles and beanbag chairs. The film illustrates the era where the counterculture was shifting from macrame to glitter. The ladies outfits are priceless for their funky chic and there is even a scene where Veronika applies makeup to Alexandre.

Though I'm sure it will render a large part of the population comatose, I thoroughly enjoyed La maman et la putain. I found it to be more erotic than such noted films from the era such as Last Tango in Paris and Shampoo, primarily because of Eustache's restraint, realism and self-awareness. Despite the surges of eros and thanatos in Last Tango..., do we really believe Brando's character is mourning his late wife? It seems to me that the film wallows in middle-aged male self-pity, as does Shampoo. When Warren Beatty's hairdresser loses Julie Christie, is it because of his philandering, Nixon or capitalism in general.? The makers slapped the chilled white whine of Paul Simon on the soundtrack to connote a vague sadness. Eustache uses music only when his characters put on a record. His technique verges on the primitive, but the concept and ending of this film are felt and deeply ambivalent. Is the conclusion of La maman et la putain happy or tragic?

                 

Bedsit Bohemians

Never Look Away

A painter confronts his heritage in Never Look Away

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's Never Look Away is a searching look at thirty years of German history that is somewhat negligible as cinema. Something of a film a clef about the early life of painter Gerhard Richter, Never Look Away never bored me during its three hours, yet never swept me away. As in The Lives of Others, von Donnersmarck expertly navigates us through the plights of his characters, but has trouble sharing his character's passions and complexes.

The villain, Professor Seeband, never is given motivation for his work in the Nazi eugenics program which kickstarts the plot. Perhaps von Donnersmarck regards him as a careerist, but he remains sketchy as a character. Sebastian Koch is miscast as the doctor, tamping down his charisma to portray a hollow man. His daughter, played by Paula Beer, falls for the young painter who is played charmingly by Tom Schilling. However, despite numerous sequences with the lovers heaving and shuddering a deux, von Donnersmarck merely records, but does not evoke, their passion.

Because of von Donnersmarck's restraint, he eschews any touch of melodrama or expressionism that might enliven his muted palette. Thus, the plot's predictability is, at times, exacerbated by its modal monotony. Never Look Away is an absorbing film that doesn't come close to penetrating the mystery and passion of artistic creation.