Sans lendemain

Edwige Feuillere

Max Ophuls' Sans lendemain is a very good melodrama that premiered in 1939. Kino Lorber has released a disc of the film under the title There's No Tomorrow, but a more literal translation would be Without Tomorrow. The film was shot during the invasion of Poland which sparked what we now know as World War 2. The film premiered in Algiers, presumably out of harm's way, and was commercially released in France of 1940. This was during the brief "phony war" before the German army launched its Blitzkrieg through the Ardennes forest in May, forcing French surrender in 45 days.

Because of this historical background, one cannot help but sense a mood of dour pessimism. Like The Rules of the Game and a host of other late thirties French films, Sans lendemain has an overriding sense of impending doom. It's heroine, Evelyn, played vigorously by Edwige Feuillere, must sacrifice her son and lover because of her shame at being a showgirl and paid escort. She puts her two beloveds on a ship to Canada during its final reel, an option many in France wished they had at that time.

Evelyn's concealment of her vocation is her primary motivation in the film. Ophuls stresses this theme by shrouding his frame with screens, scrims, curtains, and drapes. After an introductory nightclub sequence replete with topless dancers, we find Evelyn reuniting with an old love, Georges, who, dollars to donuts, we believe is the father of her ten year old. Evelyn cannot reveal the depraved circumstances of her current lifestyle, so she ends up gulling her lover and surrendering her own freedom to a procurer.

Feuillere and George Rigaud

If this all sounds like a paean to self-sacrificing mother love, akin to Stella Dallas, that is exactly what it is. Ophuls was fortunate that his leading lady is every bit as adept and compelling as Barbara Stanwyck was in Stella Dallas. I've only seen Feuillere in Olivia, where she is also superb, but I can't wait to sample her prewar output. Georges Rigaud is only adequate as Georges, another in a long line of callow, unconsciously smug leading men in Ophuls' films whose cluelessness dooms their female partners. Rigaud smiles too much, an attempt at facile charm, but is no worse than Louis Jourdan. The supporting players, as usual in an Ophuls film, are exemplary.

The production values of Sans lendemain are outstandingly typical for a Gregor Rabinovitch (Le Quai des brumes) production. The wonderful sets were designed by Max Douy and Eugene Lourie, the team behind The Rules of the Game. If Sans Lendemain has a fatal flaw, it is the cobbled together feel of the script. At least seven sets of hands labored on the finished project, the result is not exactly up to the standards of Stefan Zweig, Arthur Schnitzler, and Guy de Maupassant.

Secret Defense

Sandrine Bonnaire, on the move, in Secret Defense

Jacques Rivette's Secret Defense, from 1998, is a rather conventional effort from the director. Sylvie, played by Sandrine Bonnaire, is a research scientist working in Paris. The film's plot is sparked by Sylvie's brother Paul who brings her evidence that their father's death five years previous may not have been an accident. Paul, a down at the heels character who seems to be on the spectrum (and who has an antecedent in the Rivette canon, the paranoid character played by Jean-Pierre Leaud in Out 1), doesn't seem reliable, but Sylvie gradually comes to share his suspicions. The prime suspect is a business associate of the father named Walser, played in an oily and dissembling fashion by Jerzy Radziwilowicz.

As usual in paranoid thrillers, plans for revenge go awry. On a conventional and basic level, Secret Defense is a failure as a psychological mystery. The dénouement arrives after a very deliberate running time of nearly three hours. I left the film with a feeling of incredulousness rather than catharsis at the concluding revelation that supposedly explains all. Is that all there is, as Peggy Lee once asked. If Claude Chabrol had made this film it would have been a tight 101 minutes instead of a meandering 170. Like nearly all French directors, Rivette has difficulty depicting violence. The two deaths by pistol in Secret Defense fail to convince on a technical level.

The acting is all over the place in this film. If there is one aspect of Rivette's direction that remains from his more experimental films of the 60s and 70s, it is his every man for himself tude towards his players. He does not micromanage his players, for good and ill. Most of the supporting cast is at sea here. The most interesting performances are on the periphery (Hermine Karagheuz's nurse, whoever plays the boor on the train). Radziwilowicz overplays his character's cold affect early on, but provides some interesting notes of menace as the film unspools, mostly with a blocky posture. A romantic interest is introduced for Sylvie, but he is continually rebuffed as she becomes more obsessed with investigating the mystery of her father's fate. This subplot could have been completely dropped from the film with no detriment, mostly because Bonnaire acts her co-star off the screen.

Despite these gripes, a failure by Rivette is more interesting than successes by most directors. Bonnaire gives a riveting performance which provides an emotional center as she paces and prowls through office and living space. Conveyance is the primary motif as Bonnaire is constantly going from one point to another in scooters, autos, trains or trolleys. Secret Defense seems inspired by Stephane Audran's trolley ride in La Rupture, itself a tip of the chapeau to the streetcar sequence in Sunrise. In all these films, the ride is a metaphor for and an embodiment of its characters' emotional evolution. 

Despite its longueurs, Secret Defense provides a rich viewing experience. The film is color coded with costumes denoting reason (blue), passion (red), and death (black, natch). Even though its climax had me ripping out the few remaining hairs on my head, Secret Defense's mise en scene has its compensatory rewards.

Beau is Afraid

Ari Aster's Beau is Afraid is a paranoid nightmare revue of the life of its protagonist. It is separated in five fairly discrete acts and it gets worse, in effect more obvious, as it goes along. Unlike Damien Chazelle's Babylon, however, it appears that on some level Aster knows he is constructing a white elephant and injects some badly needed satire and yuks. It is this humor that redeems this three hour epic of a messed up mind.

I have a skewed sense of humor that tends towards the dark, I find both Dostoyevsky and Kafka to be jolly fun for example, so I recognize that the comic aspects of Beau is Afraid may be lost on some. It is there, though. The opening dystopian segment is black comedy in the vein of A Clockwork Orange, to which Aster tips his cap by mimicking that film's use of scatological graffiti amidst urban decay. The other specter that haunts this film is that of the Cohen brothers, especially Raising Arizona. Little ironic touches abound: the combo Hawaiian/Irish from his mother's conglomerate that Beau pops into the microwave, the goofy business names throughout the film, the cod Shakespearean play put on in the Arden forest sequence, the threat of a brown recluse spider. The music in the film is funny, also. Bobby Krlic's score is in a witty mock epic mode. The pop songs Aster utilizes are also gauchely amusing: songs by the Swingle Singers, Bread, and Nina Simone ploughing through a George Harrison dirge. Best of all is Parker Posey's Elaine selecting a Mariah Carey tune as her love jam to get her in the mood for a long delayed tryst with Beau. This gives the film a climax that is premature for the audience if not the players.

Some of Aster's satire is a little too au courant. Jibes at selfish tycoons, America's pharmaceutical addiction, and our upcoming invasion of Venezuela seem like shooting fish in a barrel to me. Likewise, the last two acts, where Beau's mom, played in her older guise by a clenched Patti LuPone, harangues Beau for being ungrateful and rejecting, is a good example of a director spelling out in dialogue themes already implicit in the film. You know a film is a little off the rails when a giant genital monster is introduced. Still, I can't help but think that there is more than a trace of self-parody in the film. 

As yet, I have failed to mention the film's other saving grace: Joaquin Phoenix as Beau. Phoenix is the foremost actor currently working in English language films. He has great range ranging from a raging monster of the id (You Were Never Really Here) to a docile shaggy dog who is catnip for the ladies (Inherent Vice). Phoenix is expert at capturing Beau's anxiety without resorting to tics or mannerisms. It is a largely passive performance until Beau has to flee from whatever new terror is stalking him. Phoenix has already shown his skill in portraying infantilized males, especially in The Master, and Aster scored a major coup in casting him as Beau. The supporting cast is also well chosen, not only the reliable Ms. Posey, but also Amy Ryan, Nathan Lane, and Richard Kind. Best of all is Zoe Lister-Jones, as Beau's Mom in her younger days, expertly capturing the steeliness behind her character's Betty Crocker façade.

Another factor in Beau is Afraid's favor, something Aster shares with the Cohen brothers, is its embrace of Jewish identity. A number of critics, especially Sheila O'Malley, have presciently diagnosed the deracination of American Jewry in recent features such as Mank and Oppenheimer. Beau is Afraid, like the Cohen's A Serious Man and Emma Seligman's Shiva Baby, is not timid about placing its characters within a Jewish milieu and having them grapple with their heritage. The guilt heaped upon Beau by his mother and her lawyer is portrayed as specifically and indelibly Jewish. All of Aster's films have dealt with dysfunctional families or surrogate families. The Jewish elements of Beau is Afraid give the film a personal flavor that refuses to swamped under by the film's Sturm und Drang. 

Mysterious Island

Charles Schneer and Ray Harryhausen's production of Mysterious Island, from 1961, ranks somewhere in the middle of their output. Shot in Spain and Shepperton Studios, the flick represents the producers' attempt to duplicate the commercial success of Disney's 20.000 Leagues Under the Sea and Swiss Family Robinson, albeit within the framework of a B level budget. The production team was fortunate in landing Cy Endfield in the director's chair. An expatriate who had fled the Hollywood blacklist to direct films in England, Enfield was adept at filming action sequences, see especially Hell Drivers and Zulu, and this greatly helps a film where the threats to life and limb border on the ludicrous.

It is Harryhausen's contributions that are the most distinctive aspects of Mysterious Island. The use of miniatures, matte painting, and the film's colorful production design all bear his imprint. He is most noted for his use of stop-motion animation which is in evidence here whenever the cast battles with an array of giant monsters: a dodo bird, bees, and a crab. The effects are dated, but charmingly so, like those from the fount of Harryhausen's inspiration, King Kong. Mysterious Island, like all of Harryhausen's work, has a magical storybook quality rarely found in the work of today's CGI wizards. 

The cast of Mysterious Island is slightly more impressive than in most Schneer and Harryhausen productions, but it still consists of has-beens (Gary Merrill, Joan Greenwood) and never would b's (Michael Craig, Michael Callan). However, I love, love, love Joan Greenwood and enjoy seeing her in anything, even though she has little to do here except express terror or pluck. Her voice is unmatched, raspy yet sweet, redolent of plums and corn husks. Most Gary Merrill performances during his decline are depressing, but he is less decrepit here than usual. Beth Rogan, reportedly the inspiration for Julie Christie's character in Darling, is on hand to show off her legs and décolletage. Somebody should have told Percy Herbert not to attempt a Sothern accent. However, Herbert Lom, who had worked with Endfield on Hell Drivers, is marvelously understated as Captain Nemo. Lom doesn't have the saturnine presence of James Mason (who does?), but he gives the film's best performance and Mysterious Island definitely picks up when Lom materializes onscreen at midpoint. 

Beth Rogan in her goatskin bathing suit and Joan Greenwood

The multiple screenwriters who loosely adapted Jules Verne's novel made some good choices. The employment of Craig's offscreen narration saves us from awkward expository dialogue. Bernard Herrmann, a frequent collaborator of the production team, gives the picture a magnificent score, one brimming with verve and humor. All in all, a much better  flick than The Three Worlds of Gulliver and The Valley of Gwangi, if not up to the level of Clash of the Titans or Jason and the Argonauts. Tom Hanks described the latter, after presenting Harryhausen with an honorary Oscar, as "the greatest picture of all time." If he was joking, it was only partly so. Harryhausen's films, with their mixture of fantasy and adventure, have a perpetual appeal to the six year old in all of us.

Quick Takes, August 2023

Natasha Lyonne in Poker Face

Rian Johnson's Poker Face is the best new television series I've seen in some time. A fresh take on the television murder mysteries of the 1970s, the gravelly voiced Natasha Lyonne calls to mind the rumpled and discursive Peter Falk on Columbo The imperiled yet resourceful heroine takes to the road after crossing a gangster and takes on a series of menial jobs to support herself. Johnson and his directorial cohorts use the travelogue structure of the series to celebrate roadside Americana in all its funky glory. Highly recommended and streaming on Peacock.

Leslie Iwerks' 100 Years of Warner Brothers is an uncritical and unenlightening look at the studio. A four hour commercial in the guise of a documentary. Currently streaming on Max.

Chad Stahelski's John Wick: Chapter Four is a propulsive action cartoon, the best Wick film since the original. It helps to switch off most of one's brain functions to grok the comic book action, but the film integrates its violent set pieces smartly with its scenic backdrops and is pretty well paced for a nearly three hour epic. Nearly all the new casting additions bring some humor and humanity to this mechanistic franchise: particularly Clancy Brown, Rina Sawayama, Hiroyuki Sanada, Shamir Anderson, and the most charismatic cinematic canine of 2023.

Hooroo Jackson's Aimy in a Cage, from 2015, is an unsuccessful art film that shows traces of talent. The son of a painter. Jackson knows how to fill up the screen with color and objects. He needs to work on some other things though: like dialogue, characterization, blocking, and pacing. Crispin Glover, Paz de la Huerta, and Terry Moore (!) appear as special effects. The rest of the cast are hit and mostly miss in this current Tubi streamer. Hopefully, Jackson's upcoming Window Seat will show progress.

One Fine Morning is a routine Mia Hansen-Love film, but, since Ms. Hansen-Love is among our greatest working filmmakers, it is a must see. The scenario at times verges on soap opera because the director is too much of a realist to highlight the project's melodramatic aspects. However, the film contains many brilliant actorly moments that display the director's attentiveness to the primacy of individual experience: Lea Seydoux's tears of joy at receiving a text from her lover and Pascal Greggory being overcome by memories after hearing a Schubert piece stand out amidst a mundane exploration of sex and death. 

Not Recommended: Infinity Pool, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, Knock at the Cabin, Renfield, Evil Dead Rise, The Blackening, Children of the Corn

Rodeo

Julie Ledru in Rodeo

Lola Quivoron's Rodeo is a promising feature debut from France. Julie Ledru play Julia, an émigré from Guadeloupe who joins a gang of daredevil cyclists. The gang operates out of garage owned by their imprisoned leader who helps conduct their nefarious activities. The gang is a largely misogynistic bunch, but some of them accept Julie when she displays her resourcefulness and toughness. Quivoron largely films the action in a handheld, verite style which has its positive and negative facets. It gives the film a feeling of immediacy and brings some freshness to the featured players: Ledru, Antonia Buresi, and Yanis Lafki all give memorable performance. 

However, the film has a haphazard structure. There is little dramatic buildup or release. Quivoron's free floating camera also tends to flatten the efforts of the supporting cast into one dimensionality. I was moved by the chivalric self-sacrifice of Julia's heroic journey, but wonder if the film would have benefitted from a mythic framing rather than a realistic one. 

Oppenheimer

Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer

Before I give it a slow death by a dozen paper cuts, I will admit that I found Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer to be one of his more watchable films. Nolan is at ease with a large scale format and knows how to choreograph his players. Most of the casting is apt and in some cases, particularly Benny Safdie's Edward Teller, this leads to outstanding performances. I was never bored during its three hours, though I was often befuddled by Nolan's choices.

The film has a hurtling momentum that enables Nolan to cram in a lot of info during its running time; perhaps too much. The project might have benefitted from the mini-series format. The rapid pace, jumping back and forth through time, flattens the dimensionality of the film's characters. As usual in a Nolan film, the female characterizations are the most indistinct. Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh, as Kitty Oppenheimer and Jean Tarlock, do their level best, but their roles are sketchy. Important aspects of Tarlock's character, her sapphism and depression, are barely hinted at. She exists as attendant to the Great Man. Blunt and Cillian Murphy are given a scenic New Mexican horseback ride to show the genesis of their love. However, Nolan is not a romantic director and the sparks of passion never fly. Kitty is reduced to domestic drudgery and she responds, depressed, with dark fulminations and a dependence on alcohol. Every time we see the Oppenheimer children, one of them is screaming his head off. This may be an attempt to be real, but it is manipulative, a variation of what Manny Farber called "The Gimp". There is not one comforting or sweet domestic scene and Murphy all too ably plays the distant Dad.

The only convincing relationship in the film is between Oppenheimer and Matt Damon's General Groves, Oppenheimer's military liaison. The push and pull between Murphy's ivory tower pomposity and Damon's sputtering Dale Carnegie conviviality provide what little humor and warm camaraderie the flick has to offer. I liked nearly all the supporting performances except Robert Downey Jr's Lewis Strauss. Downey is the most talented performer onscreen, but has little to do except stroke an imaginary mustache. Nolan has stated that he wanted the relationship between Oppenheimer and Strauss to resemble that of Mozart and Salieri in Amadeus. However, Salieri was given enough human foibles to make his villainy believable. Nolan's Strauss is all resentment and overweening ambition. Tony Stark has more ambiguity than Strauss does.

There is a lot of pretentious clutter in Oppenheimer. Kitty Oppenheimer's vision of Tarlock humping her husband on a chair amidst an AEC hearing seems more silly than disturbing. The film switches back from color to black and white, presumably to give it a newsreel feel (You Are There!), but usage of the effect seems arbitrary. Oppenheimer's vision of a nuclear apocalypse or atoms colliding in his mind's eye pop up every once in a while, adding to an overall sense of overreach. Ludwig Goransson's score saws and hammers away incessantly. A minimalist score would have been more appropriate to this project, but Nolan is a maximalist.

Oppenheimer has the value of good intentions. We certainly are transported as an audience to the gates of hell. Nolan's juxtaposition of the closed AEC hearing with the public hearing on Strauss' nomination to be Secretary of Commerce demonstrates how democracy needs the oxygen of open air debates to thrive. The film, designed to reap rewards, again displays Nolan's strength and limitations.

After Blue

         
Bertrand Mandico's After Blue was a slight disappointment to me. The psychedelic splendor of the more successful The Wild Boys remains, but I'm not sure if Mandico's talents are suited to the mock epic demands of his heroine's journey. If you are going to play material like this straight, not something Mandico is inclined to do. characterization cannot be limited to deadpan monologues and ambivalent gestures. If, however, a burlesque is being enacted, Mandico's wheelhouse, more overt humor is needed to leaven the exposition. 

After Blue does have a few chuckles, particularly the vulvic third eye. If Mandico's schizoid films were to be pigeonholed into a genre, the midnight movie one would be the most appropriate filing. Certainly, the pictures of Jodorowsky, John Waters, Lucio Fulci, and Guy Maddin seem to have left their traces in his films. However, After Blue is an almost chivalric tale of good and evil at odds with Mandico's amorphous androgyny. In Panos Cosmatos' more successful Mandy, the mise en scene is as eye catching and hazily lysergic as in After Blue, but the emblematic characters representing good and evil are so firmly etched that we feel the prick of reality amidst the dream world. The prevailing theme of After Blue is fluidity and there is much blurring of landscape, identity, and sexuality. The dream world of the film is unreal. The end effect, despite the impressive cinematographic play of light and shadow, is soporific.  

Fire Over England

Vivian Leigh and Laurence Olivier in Fire Over England

William K. Howard's Fire Over England is a mildly engaging period piece set in 1588 amidst the turmoil of the Spanish Armada's unsuccessful campaign to invade England. The film's historical accuracy is dubious at best, a fact that bothered critics such as Graham Greene at the time, but this is a handsome production with an impressive crew and cast that boasted many luminaries. Erich Pommer and Alexander Korda lent their considerable skills as producers. James Wong Howe was the cinematographer.

The film has become most famous as the nesting ground of the famous romance between on-screen lovers Vivian Leigh and Laurence Olivier. Leigh plays a lady in waiting to Elizabeth I. We first glimpse her scurrying around court searching for a lost pearl from her queen's dress. She often supplies a spriteliness that keeps this historical epic from becoming too stodgy. It was this role that led Myron Selznick to suggest to his brother David that Ms. Leigh might make an ideal Scarlett O'Hara for the upcoming Gone With The Wind. Leigh has too little to do here. The scenes between the two lovers find them mooning over each other, with predictable remonstrances from Elizabeth, and I don't think much acting was involved. 

Olivier is merely serviceable as the romantic lead. He is great when declaiming dialogue with Leigh or Flora Robson as Elizabeth or Raymond Massey as Philip V of Spain. However, Olivier is playing a character ten years younger than himself and, when he has to display his character's youthful rashness, the effect is histrionic rather than passionate. Also, I suspect the producer's wanted to duplicate the success of Warner Brothers' Captain Blood in the swashbuckler sweepstakes. Olivier was certainly adept at theatrical swordplay, but lacks the romantic dash of Errol Flynn. He was better with characters who had a cold core, like Maxim de Winter or Richard III. This film's naval miniatures are also inferior to the ones in Captain Blood. 

This reminds me of an anecdote related by Herb Caen in his San Francisco Chronicle column. Olivier and Leigh were starring in a production of Romeo and Juliet in San Francisco that eventually made its way to New York for an unsuccessful 1940 run. Olivier's entrance as Romeo involved a magnificent leap with sword brandished onto the stage, but on opening night it resulted in a pratfall. Caen spied Olivier at the Palace Hotel bar three hours later nursing a drink and a sulk. So profound seemed the actor's misery, that Caen ignored his journalistic instincts and did not attempt to nab a quote.

The real star of Fire Over England is Flora Robson who captures the majesty and vanity of the monarch better than anyone except Glenda Jackson in Elizabeth R. It is an indomitable performance which Robson reprised in The Sea Hawk. Equally good is Leslie Banks as Elizabeth's favorite, Leicester, who was, actually, quite dead by the time the Armada launched. Raymond Massey, who had starred in Korda's Things to Come the previous year, is suitably chilly as Philip. Robert Newton is surprisingly adept as a Spanish noble. I forget what a nimble actor he was before he became sodden with drink. James Mason is well cast in his brief role as a spy.

In retrospect, Fire Over England seems a fairly obvious allegory about the rise of Naziism and its subsequent threat to Great Britain. Korda was a Hungarian Jew and Pommer had fled Germany after Hitler rose to power. The film makes an attempt to link the inhumanity of the Spanish Inquisition with the then current scourge besetting Europe. Like Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, Fire Over England is a historical drama that portends World War 2 and its attendant Holocaust.

Assault on Precinct 13

Ethan Hawke and Laurence Fishburne in Assault on Precinct 13

Jean Francois Richet's Assault on Precinct 13, from 2005, is a well constructed thriller that rises above its mechanistic structure to create a polyphonic portrait of American urban decay during the war on drugs. The film is a loose remake of John Carpenter's 1976 film, itself a reworking of the besieged jail in Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo. This time around the imprisoned baddie, Laurence Fishburne, must be defended from a cabal of rogue police, led by Gabriel Byrne, with whom he has fallen out after various nefarious dealings. Ethan Hawke has to rally his undermanned precinct crew, enlisting his prisoners against an armed to the teeth SWAT team.

The implied critique of the militarization of local police is never vocalized (though an outpost of American justice and, thus, American justice itself is being blown to bits by the police), Richet has no interest in getting all Stanley Kramer on us. Rather, he prefers to build characterization by showing a racially and class diverse group banding together for the greater good. The jumpy energy of Hawke, Ja Rule, and John Leguizamo is contrasted with the chilly and near motionless calm of Byrne and Fishburne, here more Morpheus than Cowboy Curtis.

Richet gets good work from the distaff side, too. Drea de Matteo and Maria Bello transcend formulaic parts, though the latter does not have much chemistry with Hawke. The editor, Bill Pankow, best known for his work with Brian De Palma, is to be particularly lauded for his expert cross-cutting that keeps the narrative afloat while jumping between disparate, yet all well defined, set-ups. This Assault on Precinct 13 propels us along on the usual action thrill ride, but pauses to let us see characters struggling to survive, showing us a glimmer of humanity amidst chaos and carnage; this is the principle refrain of Richet's career.

I don't want to oversell this film, but its critical reception points out a schism in popular American film criticism that has existed since the 60s. The remnants of auteurist criticism, like J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum, have responded to the termite art feel of Richet's film while the followers of Pauline Kael, such as David Edelstein, have rejected the film as a "heartless exercise". This is an oversimplification, ex-Paulette Joe Morgenstern liked this Assault and I enjoy reading Edelstein and Morgenstern very much no matter what their views.

Still, genre prejudices exist today. Yesteryear it was mindlessly popular genre films like musicals and westerns that drew critical scorn. Now those genres are curiosities that will pique a critic's interest because they are rare. Craftsman like genres such as action films or romantic comedies are now critically ghettoized. They are treated as commercial products catering to mass taste rather art. Craftsman like Richet need to be celebrated, now as then, for their attempts to elevate mass taste. (2/5/17)

Barbie

           

I both enjoyed and was nonplussed by Greta Gerwig's Barbie. The film is well paced, winningly costumed and designed, and spritely in tone. Gerwig has given the film the look of a technicolor MGM musical with an emphasis on pink, a wise choice given the artificial splendor of the Barbie aesthetic. Ms. Gerwig and her partner, Noah Baumbach, have done their due diligence in researching the more arcane branches of the Barbie family tree in a way that both celebrates and satirizes the mythology around the Mattel doll.

However, the praise lavished by some critics, Jonathan Rosenbaum cited the film's "almost Brechtian camp", seems overblown to me. Gerwig wants to have her cheesecake and eat it, too. The lampoon of Mattel's CEO, played by the perpetually bloviating Will Ferrell, lacks even the sting of an SNL skit. It is hardly akin to the acidic portraits of capitalistic exploiters concocted by Brecht and George Grosz. There is a surface intelligence to the film, references include Proust, Kubrick, and Stephen Malkmus, that makes it appealing to critics, but, when the film seizes upon themes like mortality and cognitive dissonance, it quickly discards them. Barbieland could have been another Cloud cuckoo land, but it is, ultimately a colorful setting. As a personal statement, Barbie is less interesting than either Lady Bird or Little Women.

Still, as summer blockbusters go, Barbie is entertaining fare. I have always found Margo Robbie robotic, but since she is playing a plastic figurine, one might call it good casting. The casting of Ryan Gosling was a stroke of genius. Ken is the comic relief of the film and the Goose, used to poking fun at his own chiseled frame, lovingly captures his doltish appeal. I hope the success of Barbie does not auger a Hamburglar movie. 

Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon

Jeon Jong-seo and Kate Hudson

Ana Lily Amirpour's Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon barely got a theatrical release last year, but I was pleasantly surprised by it and found that it confirms Ms. Amirpour's visual gifts. We meet Mona, played by Burning's Jeon Jong-seo, under restraint in an asylum. However, Mona has the ability to hypnotize and physically manipulate people like marionettes, so her stay in the asylum is brief. The film is set in New Orleans and chronicles Mona's aimless and picaresque wanderings through the Crescent City where she mingles with the seedier elements of the underclass. 

Chief among those is a jaded and aging stripper named Bonnie Belle, played by a game Kate Hudson. Bonnie becomes hip to Mona's special skills and utilizes them so that soon she and her eleven year old son are rolling in the Benjamins. Mona's escape from the asylum and her subsequent criminal career draw the attention of the police, embodied by the always dependable Craig Robinson. To avoid a return trip to the asylum, Mona must flee New Orleans and is able to do so with the help of an unlikely white knight, a drug dealer/DJ named Fuzzy.

As one can perhaps tell from my thumbnail sketch of the plot, Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon suffers from a diffuse narrative and uncertain jumble of genres. As with Amirpour's previous film, The Bad Batch, the film's mise en scene far outstrips its script. However, the film's theme, similar to that of Amirpour's debut A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, is suited to its fantastical and horrific bent. Mona is an outsider who can never be fully integrated into the community. A theme equally suited to stories about supernatural monsters or emigres.

The picture triumphs in its portrait of the lurid demimonde of New Orleans. The lysergic, Day-Glo colors of the film are a perfect fit for the seamy underbelly that Amirpour portrays lurking around the edges of what a tourist sees in New Orleans. The bric-a-brac in a stripper's dressing room or Fuzzy's opulent car or a burgeoning adolescent's room tells us more about the characters than the often stilted dialogue. Daniele Luppi's electronic score helps to give the film the quality of a dimly perceived nightmare.

Jeon Jong-seo's halting English actually helps to bring out the alienated nature of her character. Kate Hudson's New Jersey accent is a jarring mistake, but I admired her gumption in the role. Best of all is Ed Skrein's Fuzzy, a marvelous mixture of menace and naivete.

X, Y and Zee

Too late to the party to be a convincing portrait of swinging London, X, Y and Zee, released in early 1972, is a boozy and tart love triangle. Edna O'Brien's original screenplay was considerably altered by director Brian G, Hutton much to Ms. O'Brien's dismay and rancor. In her memoir, Ms. O'Brien writes that "the result was a tame offering, with all the meatiness squeezed out of it." 👄Zee is played by Elizabeth Taylor and is uneasily wed to a successful architect, Robert (Michael Caine). Their union is volatile, with each having had amours on the side, and infertile. Robert falls for a placid widow, Stella (Susannah York), who has twin boys. Zee stalks the two lovers and resorts to a histrionic suicide attempt to win back her man. Zee insinuates herself with Stella, prodding her opponent for weaknesses, and is ultimately able to build a wedge between her and Robert.  

I half liked the film, though it is a bit tatty around the edges. The party scenes are so slackly choreographed that they come off as silly and artificial, even with (or is it especially because of) Margaret Leighton in a fright wig. The shag cuts on Ms. York and Mary Larkin are even scarier. The costumes are a baroque horror with psychedelia giving way to funky fringes. Glam lurks as yet undetected. The music is even worse: whether it be Stanley Meyers' traditional score or the contributions of various Rock assemblages. There is a credit to Sergio Soldan for "Fur Creations worn by Miss Taylor"; not something you see on film crawls these days. 

However, there is enough energy and wit in Ms. O'Brien's view of heterosexual relationships as S&M laced Punch and Judy shows to pass the time. The script's zingers are well performed by the cast even when Mr. Hutton's pacing seems a beat behind. Caine and York are more than good in bland roles, but Ms. Taylor is the emotional pivot point of the film and its prime attraction. Her English accent is shaky, but she has a ball playing an unrepentant bitch who will do anything she can to get Ms. York and her scrawny ass out of her husband's life. Ms. Taylor has to endure jokes about her size and about plastic surgery. Booze is on her nightstand and her vanity. Yet, she emerges triumphant, giving the film the vulgarity and juice it needs with her outsized mugging. It ranks as one of her best performances, alongside those in National Velvet and A Place in the Sun. 

👄 Edna O'Brien, Country Girl, pg. 211