The Disciple

Aditya Modak in The Disciple

A keening portrait of one man's artistic quest, Chaitanya Tamhane's The Disciple resounds with a subdued and ambivalent power. Sharad, the protagonist, is a devotee and practitioner of Indian classical music. He hones his craft and devotes his life to his musical guru, played by the noted singer Arun Dravid. Yet, though he has technical skill, Sharad fears he lacks that spark of genius that would allow him to fully inhabit and expand upon the music he loves. Improvisation, central to the performance of ragas, seems to be outside his ken. 

Sharad fears that he will become like his father, from whom he developed his love of music, whose attempt at a classical music career turned him into a bitter mediocrity. Tamhane peppers the film with flashbacks of father and son bonding over their love of music. He implies that a devotion to this musical genre is an ascetic one in which individuals not only must eschew material wealth, but also love and friendship. The world of traditional Indian music is counterpointed by the glossy excess of the pop world in the form of an America's Got Talent type show glimpsed on television sets.

Tamhane stresses Sharad's isolation visually. Shots predominately stay fixed, with little camera movement, and are held for twenty seconds or longer. The lack of movement mirrors the stasis of Sharad. Even when he is riding around Mumbai on his motorcycle listening to recordings of his idols (which we hear also, instead of the street noise), Tamhane's camera emphasizes Sharad's isolation.

Aditya Modak's deft performance underlines how Sharad's ascetic devotion has led to his isolation and emotional constipation. When his guru dies, Sharad seizes upon the moment to grab the chance for a normal life. The Disciple's final scene displays that Sharad has a newfound happiness, but that he will never escape the legacy of his past. 

Western interest in ragas seems to have peaked in 1967, so the minimal impact The Disciple has had, despite critical praise, is not a surprise. I learned to appreciate drones from the rock bands of my youth, so I lapped up both the music and the intelligent sound design of this film. Tamhane's still focus visually augments the impact of The Disciple's soundtrack. The film works as both a character study and an appreciation of a musical subculture. Currently streaming on Netflix, the film is a balm of stillness and meditative overtones in a frantic world. 

Cemetery of Splendor

 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Cemetery of Splendor should, over time, solidify his reputation as a modern master. Weerasethakul's style is of the slow cinema of modernists who question modernity such as Bresson, Bela Tarr, Carlos Reygadas, and Hsiao-Hsien Hou. Weerasethakul eschews camera movement. He favors takes that linger long and lovingly on its subjects. His films move away from urban Thailand into the lush countryside where nature, not man, is predominant. There, his films' subjects are often recovering from some malady, as if modern industrial life itself is the cause of what ails us.

Indeed, Cemetery of Splendor is set at a rural hospital where a group of narcoleptic soldiers slumber away despite the ministrations of the staff. They are hooked up to some new machines that are reportedly used on American soldiers in Afghanistan, but modern technology seems to be of no avail here. Seemingly unending construction is occurring near the hospital for a fiber optic cable installation. It seems intrusive. Two workers at the hospital seem to have more success with folk treatments: Itt. who has psychic powers, and Jett, an older woman with a lame leg who concocts traditional unguents. Their slight progress is halted by a visit from two young ladies who say they are the spirits of two princesses enshrined at the local temple. They report that the soldiers from the hospital will never get better because spirits from the past who died tragically and are buried underneath the hospital are preying upon the soldiers like succubae. As in the horror genre, the sins of the past are manifest in the present.

Cemetery of Splendor is suffused with tropical languor. The pacing is slow, often somnambulant. Fixed shots are held for lengthy periods of time, often to show the changing effects of natural and unnatural lighting. What drama there is is not highlighted by music or camera movement, but through dialogue, touch, and gesture. If there is a "message" in Weerasethakul's work it is that we can only find salvation by being in touch with the rhythms of nature and our fellow creatures. The climax of the film, such as it is, has Itt rubbing unguent on Jett's damaged leg, eventually pressing the healing balm into the cracks of Jett's wounds with her mouth and tongue. The dispassionate tone emphasizes that this is an act of tender mercy, a loving touch and not a bizarre sexual come on. Agape not eros. There is a transgressive tone here, much as Dave Hickey finds in Caravaggio and Mapplethorpe in his provocative The Invisible Dragon, but it is not chafing against sexual mores. rather, Weerasethakul is reacting against a modern culture that has literally lost touch. (9/16/16)

Japon

 

Carlos Reygadas' Japon, his first feature from 2002, turned out to be his first step in a long, fruitful, and unfinished cinematic journey. Themes that would reappear throughout his career are present in this film, the split between rural and cosmopolitan Mexico foremost. The film begins with a shot of a traffic jam in an urban tunnel. We follow the unnamed protagonist, first by car and then on foot, as he leaves Mexico City for the hinterlands. He hobbles along with a cane to a remote village where he is put up in a barn by an elderly widow named Ascencio. 

It is only after the first fifty minutes or so that we learn that the taciturn protagonist has journeyed this distance in order to commit suicide. The film's pace is tortoise like with many slow pans offering up visions of rural Mexico that are both beautiful and forbidding. In Reygadas' films, the urban bourgeoisie are out of touch with nature's rhythms. In Japon, the protagonist is redeemed by his sojourn, becoming more in touch with the unconscious tug of nature.

Sex and death are constant motifs here, as they are in all of Reygadas' work. Life offers sensual pleasure, but also, inevitably, mortality. A point hammered home by the film's bravura final track and pan. I find Japon's intimations of eroticism to be too literal, especially in a key dream sequence, but feel the film is a worthy and assured first feature.

The Diary of a Teenage Girl

Bel Powley

Marielle Heller's The Diary of a Teenage Girl was a slight disappointment to me because Heller is unable to match the transgressive tone of Phoebe Gloeckner's graphic novel. The most refreshing moments of the film capture the lysergic and polymorphous nature of Gloeckner's book. What bogs down the narrative drive is Heller's unsteady grasp of the domestic scenes. Kristen Wiig is directed too broadly and Alexander Skarsgard blends into the beige and orange décor. Bel Powley is a wonder and reason enough to see the film. (3/26/16)

The Mill and the Cross

Lech Majewski's The Mill and the Cross, from 2011, is a singular meditation on the power of art. In a roundabout fashion, the film documents the background behind Peter Bruegel the Elder's 1564 painting, The Way to Cavalry. Majewski, with the help of CGI manipulation, crafts his film so that it resembles the 16th century Flanders that Bruegel captured on canvas. Numerous Bruegel masterpieces are interpolated into the film. This gives The Mill and the Cross not only the earthy feel of peasant life contained within Bruegel's paintings, but, also, the era's preoccupation with the omnipresent specter of death. 

Dialogue is used minimally in the film. Those expecting rich characterization and a traditional narrative arc may find the film wanting. Majewski has stated that he didn't want to make a typical story based film, but was searching for something with a more contemplative feel. What verbiage there is comes primarily from Rutger Hauer as Bruegel and Michael York playing his patron, Niclaes Jonghelinck. Bruegel muses on the spiritual and aesthetic underpinnings of his work while Jonghelinck provides social and political context. 

What plot there is amounts to a recreation of Christ's Passion with Charlotte Rampling embodying the anguish of the Virgin Mother. Majewski juxtaposes the suffering of Christ with the persecution of Protestants and other heretics in the Low Countries, which was at that time under the control of Catholic Spain. By this method, Majewski presents Bruegel as conveying how the martyrdom and teachings of Christ still had existential resonance in his time.

The Way to Cavalry by Peter Bruegel

The Mill and the Cross had its genesis in a proposed documentary that Majewski undertook with art critic, Michael Francis Gibson. The documentary roots of the project are still very much in evidence in the film. The costumes look splendid and splendidly lived in. The music, though not always period specific, is effective. The verisimilitude of the film gives it a keening power, but it also gives it the feel of a religious diorama. All in all, though, I feel that Majewski has succeeded in portraying Bruegel as an artist who used his work to grapple with the issues of his day and man's eternal spiritual strivings.

Sister

 

Kacey Mottet Klein and Lea Seydoux in Sister

Ursula Meier's Sister, from 2012, concerns Simon, a twelve year old living alone with his sister near a Swiss ski resort. Simon spends most of his time at the resort filching what he can (skis, gloves, masks, sandwiches), so he can resell the items and support himself and his feckless sibling. Meier pictures the economic and social marginalization of Simon and his sister while never depriving them of their agency. 

After establishing Simon's bona fides as a budding capitalist and juvenile delinquent, the film takes an even darker tone in its second half. His sister is not who she appears to be and Simon learns the limits of transactional relationships. Kacey Mottet Klein as Simon and Lea Seydoux as his sister offer fully rounded and believable performances. It is a testament to Meier's skill that she wrings satisfactory performances from the many children in the film. Gillian Anderson is suitably icy as a rich tourist. Sister is a potent and bleak film that offers no easy answers for its protagonist's plight. Neorealism with teeth. 

Isadora

Vanessa Redgrave tries to shake her groove thing as Isadora Duncan in Isadora

Stiff and wacky, Karel Reisz's Isadora is demented Oscar bait, circa 1968. The film manages to be both overstuffed and under nourishing. A biopic of modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan (1878-1927), Isadora provides a scant facsimile of her life and loves. Many loves and one child are excised from this version of her life.

The three credited screenwriters (Margaret Drabble is credited with "additional dialogue") use a flashback structure for the film. We meet the adult Isadora just before her demise, reflecting on past glories while idling on the French Riviera. Aging rapidly, overweight and indolent, Isadora is dictating her memoirs to her secretary, Roger. All the while, portentous omens of doom auger our heroine's tragic end. 

The film is a vehicle for Vanessa Redgrave, then at her commercial peak. She gives it her all, but is more game than adept in the dance numbers. Reisz seems to be aware of this and photographs her from the waist up a large part of the time. I appreciate a director looking out for his star, but I can never buy into dance sequences that exclude legs. Redgrave dons some padding and unflattering make-up for the scenes of her decline and makes a go of it. She nails the narcissism of her character, but has little to play off of. A good example of this is the character of Roger, her main foil for half the film. Played furtively by John Fraser as gay and chatty, the character is a nonentity, provided with nether wit nor substance by Reisz or the screenwriters. 

Similarly, most of her loves are reduced to cartoons. Ivan Tchenko is disastrous as the Russian poet that Isadora wed during a sojourn in the Soviet Union. Jason Robards does his best as another amour, the sewing machine heir, Paris Singer. Yet, he has little to work with. His character is portrayed as undergoing electroconvulsive therapy, presumably because it was some newfangled health tune up, while Isadora breaks it to him that she is dumping him. The antic comic tone is unfunny and misjudged. 

Reisz was best exploring the dynamics of couples, particularly in The French Lieutenant's Woman and Who'll Stop the Rain, He finds some measure of success in the romantic scenes between Ms. Redgrave and James Fox, who plays scenic designer, Gordon Craig. Fox adds a dash of flair and excitement to a film that badly needs some. There is more elan and energy in Fox leading Redgrave up to his loft for a tryst than in any of the dance sequences. 

In his loft, Craig shows Isadora his set designs, inspiring her in her search for "truth and beauty". However, all we see of the drawings are some indistinct charcoal smudges. Reisz does not visually reinforce his scenario. He has very little feel for spectacle. The crowd scenes, be they in Chicago, Moscow or Paris, are clumsy and inexpressive.

Furthermore, even with extras doing the Charleston to "Bye, Bye, Blackbird", Isadora has very little of the feeling of the roaring twenties or the fin de siècle. What it does feel like, especially when Ms. Redgrave disrobes for two dance numbers, is the summer of love. The filmmakers attempt to link Ms. Duncan with her Classical Greek influences, but it is half-hearted. I saw the two hour twenty minute version of this film. There was a nearly three hour version that played initially and that might have fleshed things out, but I found the film a chore to sit through at 2:20. I did enjoy Bessie Love, who made her film debut in 1916, in the role of Isadora's mother. 

Black Moon

                      

Louis Malle's Black Moon, from 1975, is the most misbegotten film I've seen in some time. A surreal meditation on feminism, war, androgyny, nature and whatever flotsam and jetsam that was floating around in Malle's mind at the time, its primary value lies in being a superb sleep aid. I am a big fan of surrealism and Alice in Wonderland (Black Moon's main influence), but Malle's rational humanism seems at odds with the material; unlike Borowczyk's similarly psycho-sexual film, The Beast. Malle is ill at ease displaying the unconscious.

Shot at Malle's country estate, the film resembles a wigged out home movie, albeit with Sven Nyquist behind the lens. Cathryn Harrison simpers ineffectually as the lead. Joe Dallesandro and Alexandra Stewart are nice eye candy. A good example of latent 60s brain damage. (9/2/16)

Quick Takes, July 2022

Charlie Hunnam and Mel Gibson in Last Looks

Sean Ellis' The Cursed is a handsome prestige horror film that suffers from blandness. A Romany matriarch lays a curse upon the family of a greedy aristocrat that produces fatal results and some rather silly Lupine monsters. Ellis who, as in Anthropoid, serves as his own cinematographer, offers a few beautiful images (a funeral, horsemen riding through the fog) that are worthy of Courbet. However, his scenario is so fixed on the social aspects of the tale that none of his characters emerge with a discernable psyche. Since we are not emotionally invested in the characters, the film becomes a mindless spectacle, much like the Hammer films it resembles.

Joseph Kosinski's Spiderhead, currently streaming on Netflix, tells the story of a penitentiary where the prisoners are guinea pigs in experiments funded by a pharmacological firm. Miles Teller plays a prisoner who begins to question the ethics and efficacy of the experiments. George Saunders short story seemingly provides a firm basis for dystopian Sci Fi, but Kosinski's direction is so flavorless that the film flounders. The film seeks to emulate Saunders' black comic tone, but the end results are toothless. Teller is fine, but the miscasting of Chris Hemsworth, in the part of the hubristic pharma titan, sinks the film. Hemsworth, who was a producer on the project, deserves a pat on the back for trying to extend his range, but any number of competent thesps, I'm thinking Chris Pine or Jon Hamm, could have nailed this role of a man of science playing God. 

Tim Kirkby's Last Looks is a shaggy dog noir that has its own funky appeal. Adapted by Howard Michael Gould from his novel, the film follows the adventures of an ex-cop (Charlie Hunnam) who is enlisted by an old flame to investigate the murder of the wife of an alcoholic film star. Mel Gibson, channeling the dilapidated charm of Peter O'Toole, plays the star with bravura, spouting Shakespeare when he is not guzzling vodka. Hunnam play the role of the shamus with ease and the varied supporting cast contains nice turns by Method Man, Morena Baccarin, Jacob Scipio, and Clancy Brown. The film seems inspired by the noir updates of the 70s, Hunnam even lives in a trailer like Jim Rockford. Noting earth shaking, but a pleasant and ingratiating film. 

Kenneth Branagh's Belfast is not the worst film about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, but it is the cutest.

Mark Donskoy's The Village Teacher, from 1947, is a Soviet Goodbye, Mrs. Chips. An idealistic schoolteacher survives thwarted love, narrow minded kulaks, the snobbery of the haute bourgeoisie and two world wars to bring Siberian children some good larning. Effective schmaltz, if you can stomach the paeans to Lenin and Stalin. Its chief asset is gorgeous photography by Sergey Urusevskjiy who also lensed The Cranes are Flying and I am Cuba.

Pee-Wee's Big Holiday

Jack Lee's Pee-Wee's Big Holiday is a charming comeback for Paul Reubens' titular character. Lee and Reubens capture the spunk, camaraderie, and everyday surrealism of Pee-Wee's previous video forays. Reubens seemed like the successor to John Waters with a similar merging of Camp and Day-Glo Americana before his career derailed. Lee, like Tim Burton and Randal Kleiser before him, is not the auteur here, but keeps things rolling merrily. (3/28/16)

The Blood Spattered Bride

Lesbian Vampires in Lilac: Alexandra Bastedo in The Blood Spattered Bride

Vincente Aranda's The Blood Spattered Corpse, from 1972, is an interesting lesbian vampire flick that straddles the border between art and exploitation. A young bride, married to a brutish aristocrat, is haunted by a phantom who closely resembles an 18th century murderess whose portrait just happens to be hidden in the basement of their aged manse. Aranda, best known in this country for the 1991 film Lovers, successfully alternates between the competing pulses of repression and passion that are the nexus of concern in Gothic horror. 

The film is a loose and modernized adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu's novella, Carmilla. An author of Victorian potboilers, Le Fanu is not much read today, but he was the primary influence on Bram Stoker. Carmilla itself has been adapted into twenty or so films, most notably Dryer's Vampyr. The character of the husband is an Aranda addition to the tale, mostly to bash the patriarchy and make his sapphic couple more sympathetic. 

Not all of Aranda's touches work. The sexual symbolism of the film, like the bride snagging her veil on a miniature cannon, verges on the ridiculous. The lead performances are overly somnambulant, though Simon Andreu is suitably reptilian as the husband. I did appreciate Aranda's use of animal traps, representing the vain attempts of man to keep the chthonic forces of nature at bay. I also got a kick out the film's color coding, especially the symbolic use of white, black, red, and lilac. 

Aranda's films have a genuine erotic charge to them. The interiors and exteriors of The Blood Spattered Bride contain the right amount of decay, dread, and mystery for a gothic yarn. The female lovers here are a rebuke to man and his hegemony. Aranda portrays man as not as in touch with the supernatural pull of nature as the so-called weaker vessels. The Blood Spattered Bride has most of the defects of exploitation cinema of this era, but its images contain enough beauty and provocation to rise above its genre. 

More

Klaus Grunberg and Mimsy Farmer follow their bliss in More

Barbet Schroeder's More, his first feature from 1969, is a grim look at the counter culture. As with most of Schroeder's features, I found it interesting, yet ultimately unsatisfying. Mimsy Farmer stars as an American gal in France who entrances a young German. He follows her to Ibiza and after she hooks him, he becomes entangled with her other love, heroin, with tragic results.

Schroeder is an objective realist in the Preminger mode and seems attracted to protagonists who are ambivalent, such as in Reversal of Fortune and Barfly. Like Preminger, Schroeder does not judge his characters or create moral parables around their plight. He views his characters' flaws in a clear eyed fashion with little subjective feeling. His portraits of ambivalent relationships intrigue, both here and in his later work. However, he is not half the technician that Preminger was. The death of a junkie at the conclusion of More lacks the impact of, say, Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons plummeting down a canyon to meet their end in Angel Face.

Despite the presence of Nestor Almendros as cinematographer, More is haphazardly shot. Interiors are sometimes dark and indistinct. Some of this can be attributed to the scant budget, but Schroeder never became a visually arresting director. The score by Pink Floyd sounds like they are still struggling to find their way in the post Syd Barrett era.

The Best of James Caan

                                                                 James Caan

                                                                 1940 - 2022

 It's hard to tell writers, especially in movies, that words are secondary. Behavior is important.

1)    The Rain People                       Francis Ford Coppola                    1969

2)    The Godfather                          Francis Ford Coppola                    1972

3)    El Dorado                                  Howard Hawks                              1967

4)    The Killer Elite                         Sam Peckinpah                              1975

5)    Thief                                           Michael Mann                               1981

6)    Brian's Song                              Buzz Kulik                                    1971

7)    Slither                                        Howard Zieff                                 1973

8)    Misery                                        Rob Reiner                                    1990

9)    Freebie and the Bean                Richard Rush                                1974

10)  The Gambler                             Karl Reisz                                      1974

Machismo was his calling card and that led him to be perpetually underrated. His only Oscar nomination was for The Godfather and he lost the trophy to, um, Joel Grey. Perhaps if he had slapped on an eyepatch or limped... Actually, he hobbles around quite a bit in The Killer Elite, but the action roles he was so suited for were not produced for acclaim. 

However, from El Dorado on, his injection of comic notes demonstrated his versatility. I also value his efforts in Red Line 7000, Games, Cinderella Liberty, Rollerball, Funny Lady, Gardens of Stone, For the Boys, Flesh and Bone, Bottle Rocket, The Way of the Gun, Dogville, Honeymoon in Vegas, The Yards, Elf, and The Good Neighbor.  

 

Brick

Joseph Gordon-Leavitt in Brick

Rian Johnson's Brick, an uneven attempt to shoehorn noir conventions into a high school flick, still ranks as one of the most promising American directorial debuts of the 21st century. The uneven nature of the film is primarily due to the stylized script which tries updating the hard boiled dialogue of Hammett and Chandler. Johnson's dialogue is interesting, but hard to present in a contemporary setting without descending to parody. Most of the cast is up to the challenge, particularly Joseph Gordon Leavitt who shoulders most of the acting load as Johnson's rumpled and bruised shamus. 

Johnson, though, has problems with his distaff characters. The women in Brick are underwritten stock characters and Johnson poses them to convey single emotions: dread, bitchiness, venality, etc. Since the narrative is presented through the mind and experiences of Johnson main character, this shortcoming is not fatal to the movie. However, a noir needs an effective femme fatale and Nora Zehetner's portrayal here doesn't have the impact of Jane Greer in Out of the Past, Marie Windsor in The Killing or Kathleen Turner in Body Heat. 

It's not as if Johnson doesn't try with Zehetner's character. He provides her with a musical set piece as provocative as Howard Hawks did for Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not. The detective has been invited to a costume party put on by the high school artsy clique. He slumps in to see Zehetner dressed to the nines like a 30s moll sitting at a piano warbling Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Sun, Whose Rays Are All Ablaze"; a most gorgeous melody. Except Nora Zehetner can't sing and doesn't try. She goes through a verse of the song in sprechstimme and the effect is more curious than striking. What is Johnson doing, tipping his hat to Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvy? Beats me, but I enjoy the sense of quest I get from him. 

Zehetner by no means gives a bad performance, she just doesn't seem assured enough to give her characters that extra bit of oomph. The male performers have more to work with and Richard Roundtree, Noah Segan, and Lukas Haas all register amidst a seedy SoCal backdrop. Johnson stresses the alienation and anomie of San Clemente. Instead of a suburban Eden, the town looks brown and covered in concrete, like the back of the 7/11 the stoners hang out at. The high school is a crumbling, mall-like structure, anonymous and sterile. It does not seem accidental that the site of two killings is a concrete culvert that leads to darkness.

Johnson successfully conveys visually the emotional state of his protagonist. He is not afraid to summon an array of cinematic effects to heighten violent encounters or impart an air of regret to the memories of his driven dick. Brick, from 2005, is not a flawless film, but it is a felt one. (8/11/16)

The Brothers Bloom

Mark Ruffalo and Adrien Brody are The Brothers Bloom

Rian Johnson has emerged as one of the most interesting directorial talents of the last ten years or so. I first encountered his work, knowingly, with his Sci-Fi yarn Looper where he displayed a knack for dialogue, characterization and visual dynamism. I noticed that he had directed some of the better Breaking Bad episodes and this led me to his second feature, The Brothers Bloom.

Spurred by David Edelstein's largely positive review, I was eager to see this, but its quick exit from theaters led me to forget about it until I noticed it in my streaming queue. The Brothers Bloom is a con movie with roots in the screwball comedies of the 30s. Rachel Weisz plays a crazed heiress while the titular brothers who are out to con her are played by Mark Ruffalo and Adrien Brody. The leads are solid and playful, my wife commented that this was the first time she thought Brody exuded charm. 

Most critics were put off by the unevenness of tone in the film. it resembles a farce like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, but has a thematic seriousness and sense of unease that keep popping up at odd junctures. Johnson has crammed the film with a host of allusions and references: The Man Who Would Be King, The Conformist, The Band, Diane Arbus, and, especially, Ulysses. Some may find this to be pretentious baggage dropped in a wacky farce, but I found the film to be bolstered and vivified by Johnson's lively intellect. 

I was not for a moment bored by The Brothers Bloom finding it both visually and intellectually stimulating. I interpreted the brothers as representing two sides of the same coin: one the conscious side, the other expressing the unconscious. The conscious one sacrifices himself at the end so his brother can go off with his lady love in much the way rational constraints must be cast off if one is to commit to one's beloved. There is much to chew on in the film: Johnson's use of hats, the maps/scripts the brothers use in their cons as meta texts and the possibility that the brothers are "wandering Jews". The Brothers Bloom is overstuffed and silly, but I found a lot in it to delight over and ponder. Johnson is laboring on the new Star Wars film, but I am more psyched to see his first feature, Brick. (8/3/16)

 

Amy

                  

Asif Kapadia's Amy is a first rate documentary on a topic I thought I wouldn't be interested in. Singer Amy Winehouse was an obvious talent, but was a little too retro for my tastes. The doc is one of the first to utilize the ubiquitous video self-documentation of the present generation. Winehouse's parties, rehearsals, vacation videos, etc., are at Kapadia's disposal here and he is artist enough to chronicle her rise and fall without becoming morbid or mawkish.

Kapadia subtitles most of Winehouse's performances with her lyrics to highlight how they were often a direct comment on her struggles. He shows how Winehouse was exploited by those around her, including her father, without any finger pointing or grandstanding. (3/20/16)

Benedetta

Paul Verhoeven and Virginie Efira

Paul Verhoeven's Benedetta tells the story of a 17th century Italian nun whose sapphic exploits and mystical visions brought the wrath of the Catholic Church upon her. Very loosely based on the life of Benedetta Carlini and Judith C. Brown's book on her, Immodest Acts..., the film is recognizably a work of the Dutch director, for good and ill. The mix of sexual content with social satire has been his bread and butter since 1973's Turkish Delight. A member of the Jesus seminar, Verhoeven published a book on the life of Jesus in 2008. Benedetta marks the first film in which Verhoeven has specifically addressed his spiritual concerns.

Leaving Hollywood after 2000's Hollow Man, Verhoeven has done his best work in the intervening years: Elle and, especially, Black Book. Sadly, Benedetta is not on the same level as these two films. The film is diverting enough, with themes and sequences that recall the sexual intrigue of The 4th Man, Spetters, Flesh + Blood, and, his most commercially successful film, Basic Instinct. Indeed, Verhoeven quotes the money shot of Sharon Stone in the latter film in a scene where Benedetta (Virginie Efira) flashes her charms at her lady love, Bartolomea, played by Daphne Patakia.

Efira is superb, effectively channeling her character's imperious mysticism and steely resolve. Patakia is much less effective and this throws the film's balance off. Verhoeven wants the relationship between the two to be both a passionate love affair and a folie a deux, but there is never a believable pull and tug in the relationship between the two, like the one successfully embodied by Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures. Efira nails the hauteur of a character born in the lap of aristocratic privilege, but Patakia, who is playing an abused young woman born of peasant stock, comes off as a whiny teenager.

Virginie Efira and Daphne Patakia in Benedetta

Benedetta's mystical visions, which are the most compelling parts of the first half of the film, recede from view as Verhoeven gradually shifts the focus of his film to his two lovers. I must confess I find Verhoeven's fascination with lesbianism (see also Basic Instinct and Showgirls) to be adolescent. Titillation seems to be the primary motivation for the director. I have nothing against sapphic sex on the screen. Indeed, like most hetero males, I kind of dig it. Therefore, watching Benedetta is an apt view for both Pride Month and Father's Day. However, Verhoeven's inclusion of it reminds one of the softcore porn elements of his early Dutch films; more an exploitation of a theme than a mature exploration of it.

Still, Benedetta works as a period film. The film is handsome without stinting on the appalling hygiene of the 17th century. Charlotte Rampling, Lambert Wilson, and Louise Chevillotte all offer fine support. The appearance of a crucifix dildo harkened me back to Ken Russell's The Devils, but, at least, Verhoeven is more restrained than Russell. However, there are two films with a similar theme that are superior to Benedetta: Jacques Rivette's La Religieuse  and Alain Cavalier's Therese, masterpieces both.