Symphonie pour un massacre

Jean Rochefort

Jacques Deray's Symphonie pour un massacre is a tightly constructed and cold eyed crime drama from 1963. Derived from Alain Reynaud-Fourton's novel, Les Mystifiés, the adaptation was written by Deray with help from Claude Sautet and one of the film's actors, José Giovanni. The flick centers on five gangsters who band together as partners in a narcotics deal. However, we are clued in from the start that there is no honor among these thieves. The nominal protagonist, Jabeke (Jean Rochefort), is revealed within the first reel to be having an affair with the wife of one of his criminal cohorts, Claude Dauphin's Valoti. Jabeke is also keen to rip off his brothers in crime. He stalks the gangster Moreau (Giovanni) who is taking a large satchel of cash to Marseilles in order to initiate the narcotics deal. Jabeke murders Moreau on the train to Marseilles and steals the cash. Needless to say, Jabeke's plan eventually goes awry and the film ends in a cascading wave of violence promised by its title.

The film is firmly entrenched in the shady milieu of bars and gambling clubs seen in the films of Jacques Becker who had adapted Giovanni's first novel, Le Trou, in 1960. Deray shoots his players from a low angle conveying the menace of an underworld in which no one can be trusted. Symphonie... is unhurried in showing us the machinations of its plot. The audience is fully clued in to the perfidy of the characters. Deray percolates his drama at a slow boil never resorting to jump scares or concocted suspense. The fact that we can see the dénouement of this film a mile away does not lessen its fascination, but works to tighten the snare Deray has fashioned for his characters. The tightness of the movie's construction, particularly its editing, results in marvelous moments of ironic counterpoint. 

Symphonie... is a feast of Gallic film acting. Rochefort, known primarily up to that point as a light comedian both on stage and in films like Cartouche, was given a career boost by showing he could be equally equally effective as a dramatic lead. His stoic mien is the focal point of the film. Claud Dauphin is affecting as the cuckolded Valoti and Charles Vanel, most famous for The Wages of Fear, is equally superb. Claude Renoir's vivid black and white cinematography of Paris, Lyon, and Brussels is reason enough to see the film. Léon Barsacq's art direction hips us the personality of the characters more, unfortunately, than some of the performers do. Deray's use of space is tightly controlled and largely static. When he does move his camera, whip pans and tightly coiled dollies, it is a cold smack to the viewer. 

I will conclude with a bit on José Giovanni because it will be the proper chilly end note for this short review. Giovanni wrote over twenty noir novels and many film scripts, including Melville's Le deuxième souffle. He had a real life appreciation for crime and moral depravity. Before assuming the pen name Giovanni, he was born Joseph Damiani, a French citizen of Corsican descent. The son of a gambler, Giovanni was twenty when he began collaborating with the Vichy government and its Gestapo henchmen. He belonged to the German Schutskorp which hunted camp escapees and dodgers. When not capturing Jews and other undesirables and pilfering their loot, Damiani would blackmail Jews in hiding. And there was more, including murder. After liberation, Damiani narrowly escaped the hangman's noose and ended up serving eleven and a half years in stir. He was unrepentant when he died a Swiss citizen in 1986.

The Devil and the Daylong Brothers

Three Brothers: Jordan Bolden, Brendan Bradley and Nican Robinson

I could pick nits with it from now till Doomsday, but Brandon Mccormick's The Devil and the Daylong Brothers is bold and inventive. A Southern Gothic musical set in the pre-cellphone era, the film function as an update of Supernatural  with the addition of an extra brother. The songs are serviceable country blues pastiches, but writer Nicholas Kirk, the co-auteur of this flick, imbues them with doom and propulsive energy appropriately leading us to the inexorable climax. Mccormick frames the pitiless violence and songs with handheld immediacy sometimes lapsing into hysterical overkill. On the whole, though, this approach bears fruit as Mccormick and Kirk have constructed a narrative of superior craft that all comes together like a fine timepiece

The mythology of The Devil and the Daylong Brothers is Satanic gobbledygook. Three brothers from different mothers are paying off their Dad's debt to his satanic majesty by dispatching those whose time it is to pay for their Faustian bargains. Last on their list is Dad who sold his soul to be the ultimate blues singer. Now that said father is played by a veteran actor/singer most famous for crooning the excruciating "I'm Easy" to various femmes in Nashville is problematic to say the least, but I'm not going to pick the nit of the white bluesman here and Keith Carradine acquits himself extremely well. Most of the acting is quite good for a B movie, though Jordon Bolden seems to be doing a bizarre Rami Malek impression. The best vocals are provided by Rainey Qualley, Margaret's sis and the sole femme (fatale) here, better known in music circles as Rainsford. The Devil and the Daylong Brother has opened to little fanfare by streaming on Apple TV, but it is vigorous cinema for those who don't mind an impaled eyeball or two.

La bestia debe morir

Narciso Ibáñez Menta and Laura Hidalgo

Román Viñoly Barreto's La bestia debe morir (The Beast Must Die), released in 1952, is a terrific melodramatic mystery from Argentina. The screenplay, by Barreto and leading man Narciso Ibáñez Menta, is adapted from Nicholas Blake's novel. Blake was the pen name of English poet laureate Cecil Day-Lewis who concocted mysteries, usually following the exploits of detective Nigel Strangeways, in order to earn the income his poetry could not generate. The book was also adapted in 1969 by Claude Chabrol for his film This Man Must Die. The two films are an interesting contrast. The Chabrol film is shot in color in a realistic fashion with many outdoor sequences. Chabrol marshals his characters like chess pieces in an essay on determinism. La bestia debe morir is in black and white and shot on soundstages. Barreto stresses the traumas of the characters by expressionistically heightening the claustrophobia of the interiors, which contain a nest of vipers.

Barreto and Menta stress the inevitability of the film's tragic denouement by rejiggering the story's structure. The story is a revenge tale in which a bereaved father, author Felix Lane (Menta), vows to take retribution for those responsible for the demise of his son, who died in a hit and run accident. La bestia debe morir starts off by having the killer, a rich landowner named Jorge (Guillermo Battaglia), be poisoned in the first reel, though we do not know by whom. The main part of the narrative, Felix's search for his son's killer, is told in flashback, a device that helps the film's plot seem as foredoomed as its look. Lane finds his son's killer through Linda (Laura Hidalgo), Jorge's sister-in-law and a film actress, who was with Jorge when Felix's son was run over. Felix initially uses Linda to get at Jorge, but finds himself falling for the saucy, but troubled dish.

His relationship with Linda gains Felix an invitation to Jorge's estate, a sick house with secrets like in many works of horror, Poe's ...Usher for example. Jorge is a domineeringly sadistic host, truly a beast. He beats both his wife and her child from a previous union mercilessly with a belt. He openly pursues Linda and has installed a former, and perhaps current, mistress as the wife of his business partner. The manse is presided over by Jorge's aged mother, a tart tongued and self-righteous biddy played with sulphuric majesty by Milagros de la Vega. Barreto and cinematographer Alberto Etchebehere's camera usually regards these grotesques from a low angle, at knee level. The perfect angle to warily regard serpents.

                            

However, Barreto is up to more than prodding the snakes in his terrarium. In this film, Barreto shows and evokes how traumatic events smack into people and leave their mark. When Jorge's auto is about to smash into Felix's son, the camera does a quick dolly into the frightened lad from the car's point of view. At the moment of impact, Barreto cuts to a shot of waves crashing on the rock coast. The surreal charge of this carries over into the sequence recording Felix's memories of the aftermath of the accident: distorted images superimposed on one another as an expression of mental distress (see above). This is audacious cinema poised at the point of hysteria.

Hysteria is also what most of the acting skirts, but I find it appropriate to the melodramatic excesses of the scenario. The exception is Menta playing a character willing to watch and bide his time before striking. Menta deftly underplays his role, which is accentuated by all the eye rolling and lip quivering going on around him. Menta was a Spaniard who became the equivalent of Vincent Price to a generation of Latin American moviegoers. A devotee of Lon Chaney Sr., Menta would subsequently appear in scores of Latin horror films. I relished his performance here and will seek out both more of his and Barreto's work. La bestia debe morir and Barreto's El vampiro negro (a remake of M) are both available on spiffy Flicker Alley discs. I commend them to all.

Quick Takes, February 2025

Something is askew in Dos Monjes

Juan Bustillo's Dos Monjes (Two Monks) is a near masterpiece from 1934. This sound film is a delirious, expressionistic melodrama that verges on the surreal. Two monks are in conflict at a monastery, the fallout of a collapsed love triangle. The events of the past are told twice from the perspective of each combatant. This schizoid film is full of technical wizardry: swooping cranes, bifurcated wipes, and oblique angels. Even the grandfather clock is crooked in this one. Highly recommended.

Rich Peppiatt's Kneecap is a lively look at the rise of the titular Irish hip-hop group whose tunes, which feature Gaelic lyrics, offers a middle finger to British imperialism. The tone is delightfully rude and cheeky. Peppiatt's visual stylings, which includes animated overlays, are consistently inventive. Currently streaming on Netflix.

Ana DuVernay's Origin is one of the more neglected American releases of 2024. The film traces the origins of Isabel Wilkerson's book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent. Wilkerson's book intertwines vignettes about Jim Crow America, Nazi Germany's racial laws, and India's treatment of the Dalit caste (known popularly as the untouchables) into an indictment of social hierarchies. The scenes of Wilkerson conducting her research do occasionally bog down in didacticism, but the scenes of Wilkerson's family life are moving and well acted. Origin contains one of the past year's best acting ensembles: especially Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Jon Bernthal, Connie Nielson, Nick Offerman, Blair Underwood, Audra McDonald, Niecy Nash, and Emily Yancy. Ultimately, Origin is a moving meditation not only about caste, but also mortality.

Nathan Silver's Between the Temples is the most moving and funny exploration of Jewish identity (and self-hatred) since Lemon. Jason Schwartzman stars as a troubled cantor in upstate New York who falls for one of his mitzvah students, the always welcome Carol Kane, to the disgruntlement of his family and community. The film, purposefully, provides more cringe worthy moments than laughs. Silver's supporting players are all in fine form, especially Robert Smigel. The film's visual approach, it looks like it was shot on video, is continually and disarmingly creative. 

The Zellner Brothers' Sasquatch Sunset feels like an extended, R rated version of the "Messin with Sasquatch" beef jerky advertisements, yet manages to transcend its lowly aspirations with humor and warmth. The flick is a decided advancement over their previous one, the stillborn Damsel. Riley Keough and Jesse Eisenberg and their fellow Bigfoots are to be commended for the all out zeal they bring to their performances. In the tradition of Keaton's Three Ages. 

Francis Galluppi's The Last Stop in Yuma County snuck into a few theaters in late 2023 to little notice, but it is a solid B film. Disparate strangers are stranded at a remote diner with two bank robbers in this desert noir which is beholden to Hemingway, The Petrified Forest, Hitchcock, Tarantino, and numerous B pictures from the 1950s. Galluppi's saving grace is a sense of humor and film craft. The fine acting ensemble keeps things from getting too cartoonish, especially Jim Cummings, Jocelin Donahue, and Gene Jones.

Yasujirō Ozu's That Night's Wife, released in 1930, is a silent crime melodrama that features a sickly child, a loving wife and a tortured husband driven to robbery in order provide for his family. The scenario is hokey, undynamic, and bathetic, the pacing extremely slow for a 65 minute picture. A kindly policeman corners the miscreant in his apartment where we are stuck for half of the picture's running time. Intimations of future genius are apparent, but this is lesser Ozu.

Frank Perry's Ladybug Ladybug is nuclear war drama that opened after the Kennedy assassination in 1963. A rural elementary school in Pennsylvania sends its charges home under the threat of annihilation. The film gauges the various reactions as the teachers and students face the prospect of impending doom. Nancy Marchand and Estelle Parsons have their moments, but Perry's juvenile cast is shaky. The film captures the dread and paranoia of the Cold War era, but I found it to be a painfully earnest and thin anti-nuke screed.

The Best of Gene Hackman

                         

                                                                        Gene Hackman

                                                                            1930 - 2025

"I was trained to be an actor, not a star. I was trained to play roles, not to deal with fame and agents and lawyers and the press."

1)   Unforgiven                                      Clint Eastwood                              1992

2)   Night Moves                                    Arthur Penn                                   1975

3)   French Connection II                John Frankenheimer                           1975

4)   The Conversation                     Francis Ford Coppola                          1974

5)   The French Connection               William Friedkin                               1971

6)   Downhill Racer                              Michael Ritchie                               1969

7)   The Birdcage                                   Mike Nichols                                 1996

8)   No Way Out                                  Roger Donaldson                             1987

9)   The Royal Tenenbaums                 Wes Anderson                                2001

10) Scarecrow                                      Jerry Schatzberg                             1973

11) The Firm                                        Sydney Pollack                                1993

12) Bonnie and Clyde                            Arthur Penn                                   1967

He quit while he was ahead, but, still, the number of good to excellent performances he gave is astonishing. I could have easily added his performances in Young Frankenstein, Eureka, Enemy of the State, and Under Fire to the above list. His lack of a fixed image may have hindered him from vaulting into the stratosphere of superstardom, but he was always in demand and I don't think he gave a darn about the trappings of stardom. I also treasure his performances in Lilith, I Never Sang for My Father, Cisco Pike, The Poseidon Adventure, Bite the Bullet, Superman, Hoosiers, Postcards from the Edge, The Quick and the Dead, Crimson Tide, Get Shorty, Twilight, and Absolute Power. 

Oh, Canada

Richard Gere

I may be mistaken, but it seemed that Paul Schrader's Oh, Canada was received underwhelmingly by American critics. Conversely, I think the film, along with 2007's The Walker, is one of his better efforts in this century. I am far from an admirer of Schrader as a director, recent films like First Reformed have struck me as overly tortured and derivative, but Oh, Canada's screenplay is the best text Schrader has had to work with in a while. The screenplay is based on the late Russell Banks' novel Foregone, a great writer Schrader mined successfully with his film version of Affliction in 1997. Oh Canada is concerned with a documentary filmmaker based in Montreal named Leo Fife and played by Richard Gere. Fife has terminal cancer and he has agreed to a filmed interview with documentarians he has taught and mentored. This device allows Schrader to investigate Fife's past with Jacob Elordi impersonating (sometimes) Fife as a young man. 

The films flits back and forth through time, sometimes in black and white, sometimes in color. A lot of critics found this presentation "muddled", but I thought it was an honest attempt by Schrader to portray the mental decomposition of Fife. Schrader has never been a visually supple director, so he succeeds only partially here, there are too many shots of Gere furrowing his brow, but he does end up conveying Fife's confusion. At least his visual flubs are sins of commission and not omission. I did like the bits we see of Fife's documentaries, all period appropriate. Fife has a sterling reputation as a liberal crusader after, supposedly, fleeing his home country and the draft for Canada. However, he makes plain that his motives were not so idealistic. Fife was also bailing on two wives (one an ex), each with a child. Fife has rejected advances to reconnect with his children and wallows in guilt, here as elsewhere Schrader's main thematic interest.

What helps this tortured memory play is Gere's underacting. He nails Fife's grandiosity and testiness, but also manages to convey, confined to a wheelchair for much of the film, his character's rage at his own imminent implosion. Gere could always move through the frame as though he owned it, but this largely immobile performance is evidence of artistic growth. Elordi and the supporting cast are spot on, but Uma Thurman, as Fife's last wife, is disastrous. Only with Tarantino and Philip Kaufman has she looked relaxed and in character onscreen. Oh, Canada is a weird mixture of good and bad, Phosphorescent's score is both lyrically appropriate and soporific, but Russell Banks tortured realism once again proves a good fit with Schrader's reformed Calvinism.

The Barkleys of Broadway

                     
I wanted to like The Barkleys of Broadway, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers' swan song as a dancing duo and their only film together in color, but could not. MGM and Arthur Freed had coaxed Astaire out of his first retirement in 1948 after a broken ankle forced Gene Kelly to withdraw from Easter Parade. That film was a sizable hit and MGM wanted to reunite the film's stars, Astaire and Judy Garland, with director Charles Walters for a follow-up. Garland was subsequently suspended from the production by Freed for reasons that have been well documented. The studio sought out Ginger Rogers whose career was in decline.

Even with Garland, I doubt The Barkleys of Broadway would have amounted to much. The script, by Betty Comden and Adolph Green with an assist from an uncredited Sydney Sheldon, is irritatingly thin. The Barkleys are a married musical comedy duo with a string of Broadway successes behind them in collaboration with a songwriting friend played by Oscar Levant. However, Rogers' character yearns to be taken seriously as an actress and ends up appearing as the young Sarah Bernhardt in a play by a handsome French playwright (Jacques François). Likewise, Astaire is ostensibly tempted by an young ingenue played by Gale Robbins. Billie Burke is also on hand in her go to part, a ditzy heiress.

Rogers was a gifted comedian and the plot suits her better than it does Astaire. However, no one wants to see these two bicker and the scenes of Rogers playing Bernhardt made my eyes and ears bleed. Levant is given the best one-liners, but, inexplicably, is also given two musical numbers. I enjoyed watching him attack Khachaturian's Sabre Dance for a minute or so, but I was appalled as Levant and an orchestra later launched into a Tchaikovsky piano concerto and went to the kitchen for a beer. Even the numbers between the star duo are below their august standard. I did like the reprise of "They Can't Take That Away From Me", originally sung by Astaire in 1937's Shall We Dance and the shared tap dance. Not so much Fred's number with a chorus of dancing shoes. Such gimmicky special-effect dance numbers (as in Anchors Aweigh and Royal Wedding) were a bane of the post-war era. The nadir is "My One and Only Highland fling", a Scottish number so cutesy that I took it as a slur on ye bonny land. 

As for Charles Walters, while he is not a schlockmeister, he is a conveyor of corn. However, The Barkleys of Broadway lacks the story-book pastel beauty of his best films such as Easter Parade or Lili. I would even call important elements of the flick, especially the production design and Irene's dresses, to be strikingly ugly. The Barkleys of Broadway was a moderate hit, but not enough of one to reunite Astaire and Rogers for future pictures. Perhaps they knew when to stop. Their combined talents were certainly more suited to the elegant, black and white, 1.33:1 1930s rather than the garish widescreen, Technicolor extravaganzas of the 1950s.

OK, not all of this film is ugly

Fred and sister Adele Astaire, 1906

Emilia Perez

Zoe Saldaña

Weeks ago, Jacques Audiard's Emilia Pérez seemed primed to be the worst Best Picture Oscar winner since Crash. Now, it looks like that ship has sailed. To be fair, Audiard has the germ of a good idea here: a Narco opera in which a cartel head goes into hiding by changing his sex. However, the music is lousy as is the choreography and Audiard's cast is, at best, serviceable. Only Zoe Saldaña comes off effectively while Selena Gomez is badly miscast as the wife of a drug lord. I understand this concession to the marketplace, but Gomez's talents are better suited to lighter fare.

Audiard has written a suitably tragic ending to his film, but does not possess the romantic or expressionistic style that would be suited to his material. His is a realistic approach that fails to match the attempted ambience whether portraying musical numbers or violence. The picture is flat and non-affective whether we are watching half-assed tributes to Busby Berkely or the guignol of severed fingers. The "Mrs. Doubtfire" aspect of the plot's domestic scenes, which should seem creepier, register inappropriately because Audiard is set upon making Emilia a tragic heroine. Audiard refuses to view Emilia with much ambivalence and she never becomes an interesting character. She goes from troubled kingpin to reform minded saint as soon as her testicles are excised. Audiard is willing to absolve his heroine of her past sins, but I cannot shake the bad faith of his conception.

Sly Lives!

Sly Stone aka Sylvester Stewart

Questlove's Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) is a largely successful survey and appreciation of the career and legacy of Sylvester Stewart, best known for fronting Sly and the Family Stone from 1967 to 1975. I'm not sure Questlove really nails the particulars of the burden of black genius, geniuses tend to have a rough time of it no matter what their color, but the film is spot on in exploring how Sly morphed his own blend of pop, R&B, and rock into funk. Questlove, drummer for The Roots and a musical polymath, is uniquely suited to prod fellow musicians into shedding light on Sly's innovations and lasting appeal. Thus, we get insightful sequences like the one in which Jimmy Jam, himself a top notch arranger and producer, breaks down the instrumentation and vocal arrangements of "Dance to the Music", highlighting the ingredients of Sly's polyrhythmic stew.  

Indeed, Questlove integrates his talking heads superbly into the flow of his narrative. Sly Lives! never once feels academic or dry. The film deftly illustrates how, through sampling, Sly's rhythms helped underpin the growth of hip-hop. The sequences in which Jimmy Jam and Q-Tip display how they integrated samples of Sly's music into records by, respectively, Janet Jackson and A Tribe Called Quest are a perfect summation of how his music became a bequest to future generations. No documentary on Sly can avoid the role drugs played in his decline and Sly Lives! maintains a strong notion of the difference between recording his excesses and falling into a tabloid mode. That said, the film skirts some of the the unhealthy internal dynamics that caused the band to break up. Bass player Larry Graham's affairs with keyboardist Rose Stone, Sly's sister, and Sly's sister-in-law go unmentioned though they were a deciding factor in Graham's departure from the band. Some behind the scenes managerial wrangling also goes unreported. Still, I would recommend Sly Lives! to anyone with even the slightest interest in the man and his music. The film is currently streaming on Hulu.

Sick of Myself

Kristine Kujath Thorp

Billed as an "unromantic comedy", Kristoffer Borgli's Sick of Myself is a body horror satire from Norway. This 2022 film went unreleased in America, but the enlightened poohbahs at Vinegar Syndrome have released it here on a sterling disc. Kristine Kujath Thorp stars as Signe who works at a bakery and lives with her boyfriend, Thomas (Erik Sæther). Signe is in a competitive relationship with Thomas, one that is replete with one-upmanship. What rankles Signe is that Thomas, a kleptomaniacal artist, is on his way up in the art world and is the cynosure of media attention. Signe responds, with the help of a drug dealer who lives with his mother (a verry funny Steiner Klouman Hallert), by procuring a Russian drug called Lidexol, its tablets a sickly yellow, that reportedly causes one's skin to rot if abused. Signe begins hoovering up the pills and soon she is on the cover of the tabloids as a sufferer of a rare malady. 

The downfall of Signe, and Thomas, is somewhat predictable. The quarry of Borgli's satire, primarily narcissism, the art world, fashion, and social media, are such large targets that it is impossible for him to miss with all his barbs. However, Signe and Thomas are thoroughly unlikeable. Who can we root for? Borgli doesn't care, but he leavens this with his deft handling of the bourgeois milieu and supporting cast. Even when Signe and Thomas are at there most self-centered, the characters and settings around them provide glimpses of ambivalent reality. That said, I enjoyed both Thorp and Sæther's turns as self-absorbed sociopaths. Sharp performances in the most tactile sense of the word. Sick of Myself tends to prod its audience. Despite its faults, I prefer the bracing facility of Sick of Myself to two recent highly praised films with similar themes, Anatomy of a Fall and The Substance. Both good films where supporting characters descend into caricature (Dennis Quaid in The Substance, the prosecutor in the Anatomy...). Borgli followed Sick of Myself with the equally promising Dream Scenario. His next film, "The Drama", will star Zendaya and Robert Pattinson.

Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In

Raymond Lam

Soi Cheang's Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In is a compelling and lovingly constructed martial arts action film from Hong Kong. Set in the 1980s before Hong Kong rule shifted from the UK to China, the film is almost entirely set in the notorious Kowloon Walled City. This lawless enclave was ruled largely by triad gangs before being demolished in 1993. One of the chief assets of the film is its striking recreation of the walled city. Tenements and hovels were literally stacked on each other in Kowloon. The labyrinthine nature of Kowloon made it ideal for gangs who wanted warrens that the authorities could not or would not penetrate. Cheang and his scriptwriters portray Kowloon not only as a haven for the gangs, but also as a micro-culture that welcomed refugees and the dispossessed. The moving coda of the film, after the dust of the film's epic battles has settled, displays the denizens of Kowloon reembarking on their daily routines; a coda made more moving by our knowledge that their homes and way of life has been erased.

The film's protagonist, Lok (Raymond Lam), is a refugee who seeks sanctuary in Kowloon after clashing with a Hong Kong gang fronted by "Mr. Big" (Sammo Kam-Bo Hung). The film's Kowloon is controlled by a gang helmed by a philosophical thug named Cyclone (Louis Koo). After knocking the stuffing out of Lok to put him in his place, Cyclone takes a shine to the interloper and Lok gradually becomes integrated into the gang and the community. The fight choreography of ...Walled In is terrific, spread out across not only Kowloon's narrow streets, but also up and down its stacked tenements. Mr. Cheang, a onetime refugee himself from Macau, takes the time to establish his themes of identity, trust, and friendship. ...Walled In is blessed with more shades of characterization than one usually finds in action features. Most moving is the depiction of Lok's relationship with Cyclone who provides the younger man with mentorship and a sense of belonging. 

Book Review: Josh Brolin's memoir From Under the Truck

Josh Brolin

Josh Brolin's memoir From Under the Truck is very different from most books of Hollywood reminisces. The book does provide verbal snapshots of Brolin's on-set experiences and anecdotes of his brushes with famous figures ranging from Cormac McCarthy to Marlon Brando to Brolin's step-mother Barbara Streisand, but the book is not a chronological review of Brolin's life and career. Rather, it is a series of small essays, leaping back and forth through time, that function as a decoupage of Brolin's experiences. Brolin is bright enough to realize that individuals exist not as monolithic entities, but as a whole host of varying selves. Thus, Brolin presents himself as a son, husband, father, actor, surf-punk, alcoholic, nepo baby, Hollywood hellion, and much more.

The scattershot technique of the book does yield varying results, but I admire Brolin attempt at a poetic form of memoir. Some of the more lyrical moments succumb to mawkish mushiness, but, on the whole, this book is a clear-eyed coming to terms with the past. Most memorable are Brolin's memories of his early life with his mother. His mother was a live wire who was more than a little screwy. Her chaotic personality became part and parcel of Brolin's psyche, including his need to obliterate stress and trauma through alcohol and drugs.

Brolin overcame his struggles and is now able to view his mother's legacy with affection and not resentment. From Under the Truck is a portrait of a mature artisan whose life challenges have aided his growth. Though I suspect there is still enough of the surf punk in Brolin for him to bristle at that description.

Storm Fear

Cornel Wilde and Jean Wallace

Storm Fear is the second film by Theodora Productions, an independent company formed by Cornel Wilde and his then wife Jean Wallace in 1954. Wallace was a troubled woman and Wilde was a freelance actor on the downslope after being cut loose by Columbia Pictures. Wilde hoped he could arrest the downturn of their careers in self-produced films. He also knew he had to change his image as he aged from romantic lover boy to a more grizzled, even villainous lead. Theodora's first feature, The Big Combo directed by Joseph H. Lewis, was a hit with audiences and critics and is now regarded, justly, as a noir classic. Unfortunately and primarily to save money, Wilde took up the directorial reins for Storm Fear. 

Now I'm not sure if Storm Fear would have been a good movie even if it had been directed by Lewis or Anthony Mann. The script by Horton Foote, based upon Clinton Seeley's novel, is a clunky rehash of The Petrified Forest with Freudian overtones. The setting is a farm in rural Idaho. A sickly and frustrated writer played by Dan Duryea named Fred Blake lives on the farm with his beautiful wife Elizabeth (Wallace) and twelve year old son, David. Most of the chores and the mentoring of the boy is left to hired hand Hank (Dennis Weaver) who pines for Elizabeth. Suddenly a car appears containing Frank's brother, Charlie (Wilde), a goon named Benjie (Steven Hill) and a chippie named Edna (Lee Grant). We soon surmise that they have fled the scene of a bank robbery which left two dead. Charlie is wounded and uses the farm as a hideout while an ominous blizzard rages on.

Tacked onto this standard hostage plot is the issue of David's parentage. Since the audience can surmise that he is the product of an affair between Charlie and Elizabeth by the end of the second reel, the tortured truth is bandied about for far too long. We repeatedly see a miscast Duryea with white spray paint in his hair bemoan his status hysterically in between beatings administered by the brutish Benjie. Jean Wallace, a far lesser performer than Duryea, fares better because her character is aligned with Wallace's recessive qualities. Elizabeth has been beaten down in life by bad men and fate. She sullenly goes about the cooking, washing, and cleaning with an aura of defeat and Wilde, at least, is director enough to give space to Wallace's silent reaction shots. However, Steven Hill's performance, which comes off as wacky instead of menacing, makes me wonder if Wilde was giving his actors enough rope to hang themselves. This is also true of Wilde's own overheated performance. Storm Fear is at its most ridiculous when Wilde pretends to writhe in pain, never, of course, crying out, while Wallace extracts a bullet from his leg. Wilde is stripped to the waist, as he is in about a third of this picture, and you can't help but think the real reason is because he was vain and wanted to show off his biceps. In an inordinate number of the pictures he directed, Wilde was compelled to show off his physique. Dennis Weaver, fortunately, is assuredly effective as the picture's deus ex machina and Lee Grant is terrific in a one dimensional role.

One of the things that holds the picture together is Joseph LaShelle's (Laura, 7 Women) crisp and coherent cinematography. Even when Foote's speechifying gets overblown and Wilde doesn't know where to put his camera, LaShelle's work helps the film resemble the grade A production that it most certainly wasn't. Wilde fares better as a director out of doors rather than in, but even outdoors he inserts close-ups of his actors in front of cheesy projected backdrops that jar with the exterior vistas. What Wilde does display in his neophyte effort and throughout his career as a director is a good sense of pacing. The picture moves along briskly even if it is from one idiotic conflict to another. There is no way that I consider Storm Fear a "good" picture, but Wilde's kooky conviction, what Andrew Sarris called "half-baked intensity", makes it somewhat entertaining.

A Woman of Affairs

John Gilbert and Greta Garbo with Dorothy Sebastian in between

Clarence Brown's A Woman of Affairs is a luxe MGM production released in 1928. The film was the third teaming of Greta Garbo and John Gilbert as romantic leads. The project reteamed the leads with Brown after he had helmed them in 1926's Flesh and the Devil, a sizeable hit for MGM. A Woman of Affairs is silent with a synchronized musical score and sound effects. It was also a hit, but has tended to have a lesser reputation than the earlier film. A Woman of Affairs main drawback is its predictable script, a mélange of mush, madcap hijinks, and moralizing melodrama.

A team of writers had adapted the book from Michael Arlen's 1924 novel, The Green Hat. Arlen was the pen name of Dikran Sarkis Kouyoumdjian, a Romanian born, Armenian bred writer whose family settled in England. Arlen is not much remembered today, but was he very well known in his lifetime and even appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1927. The Green Hat is largely a dark satire of the smart set of 1920's London. The femme fatale of the book was based on Nancy Cunard, the heiress whose lovers ranged from Arlen to Ezra Pound and Aldous Huxley. The Green Hat was a huge best seller and even spawned a stage adaptation with Katharine Cornell and Leslie Howard that ran for 251 performances on Broadway. Unfortunately, what we are left with in A Woman of Affairs is a bowdlerized facsimile of Arlen's novel. The homosexuality, heroin, and venereal disease of the book were a no go for MGM even in the Pre-Code era.

The film spans the course of ten years. We first meet Garbo's character racing through the English countryside in her auto, blithely disregarding the speed limit and the safety of construction workers. By her side is her beloved (Gilbert) since childhood. The twosome are all set to get hitched when Gilbert's father (the suitably moribund Hobart Bosworth) maneuvers a separation for them. Gilbert is sent off to find his fortune in Egypt while Garbo succumbs to the attention of earnest, stolid John Mack Brown. Garbo's character, at this point, is a little too young for her and displays unusual gayety long before Ninotchka and Two-Faced Woman. 

However, all that changes on Garbo and John Mack Brown's wedding night. Just before they can taste the delights of paradise, the law bursts through the door ready to bust Brown for embezzlement. Seeking death before dishonor, he leaps to his death through an open window. This is a bravura sequence somewhat muffed by a stiff and amateurish Brown. As Brown hears a knocking at the door after a preliminary nuzzle with Garbo, the director gives us a moving close-up of wedding rice slipping through his hands. The camera dollies back as Brown leaves the bedroom to his doom. It is unfortunate that John Mack Brown, a former Crimson Tide gridiron star, looks like he's ready to throw up a stiff arm, but director Clarence Brown did what he could. Brown, would soon lose his MGM contract, but eventually morphed into B Western star Johnny Mack Brown.

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Garbo

Garbo's character doesn't want to besmirch her husband's character, so she lets Gilbert and her alcoholic brother (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) believe that it was her perfidy that drove her husband to his end. This is pretty nonsensical so the picture paves over the next seven years with snapshots of her various continental lovers. Fairbanks death reunites her with Gilbert, but he is now engaged to the fetching Constance played by Dorothy Sebastian. I was surprised by how effective Fairbanks is in a real Mr. Hyde performance. I do think he was more suited to light and charming roles, but he gives the film some drunken energy, particularly when he is bouncing around Cedric Gibbons fine Henley Royal Regatta set. Gilbert has little to do, this is all Garbo's picture, but sit around and stew with queasy lovesickness.

Dorothy Sebastian is stuck in a one note role. Constance is constant love, get it, but Sebastian gives the role some forlorn warmth. I wish she had given us more screen performances in the sound era, but her career declined after MGM released her in 1930. This may have more to do with her off-screen behavior than her acting chops. She had been a New York chorus girl before, according to Louise Brooks, a tryst with Lord Beaverbrook led to an MGM contract. She continued to be uninhibited in her private life with liaisons with married men including Buster Keaton and William Boyd, eventually her second husband. She was also known for knocking them back. Her propensity to pass out at parties earned her the moniker Slam Bang Sebastian. Regardless, I adore her and the moxie she gives even a doormat role like Constance.

That I find A Women of Affairs enjoyable despite a silly script is primarily due to Garbo and Clarence Brown. Brown was Garbo's favorite director and they developed a simpatico relationship over seven films. Garbo is at her most relaxed here, even when she has to play noble. Brown always tries to milk what he can from the material no matter how ridiculous. He uses a lot of dollies in and out to punch up the melodrama. particularly effective is a dolly back revealing the emptiness of Garbo's room after her husband's suicide. The police inquiry and its hubbub are over and the shot impresses upon us that Garbo's character is alone and abandoned by society. I also enjoyed Brown's close-ups of hands, not only John Mack Brown's rice slipping through his fingers, but also a ring slipping off Garbo's finger to signal sexual surrender. A Woman of Affairs doesn't add up to a hill of beans, but it has moments.

   

      

Nosferatu

Lily-Rose Depp, foregrounded.

Robert Eggers' Nosferatu is the most disappointing horror film I've seen in some time. The film has a creepy cruddy goth look that is impressive. Forsooth, technically, the film is a marvel. Dramatically, however, I found the film inert and boring; a fatal flaw especially for a horror film. The film is soaked with death, but peculiarly for a vampire film, very little sex. A vampire film that has Thanatos but not Eros seems to me a misunderstanding of the genre.

This project is a lifelong dream of the writer and director, but, in a misguided attempt to modernize the material, I feel he has over thought the project. Eggers foregrounds Mina Harker as the locus of the story. Here she is renamed Ellen and is played by Lily Rose-Depp. Indeed, all the characters are essentially the same as in Stoker's story, but are renamed for this umpteenth version for no apparent reason (it can't be a copyright issue by now). In the film's prelude, Eggers shows Ellen getting a foreshadowing of the menacing vampire years before the main action of the film. He posits Ellen as a Cassandra whose warnings are largely ignored by the men around her. In contrast, Nosferatu is the worst type of patriarchal male, solely bent on possessing and consuming others for his own power.

Now a feminist twist on Stoker's old chestnut is not neccesarily a bad idea, but such a film needs a firm and fierce Cassandra. Alas, Lily Rose-Depp is not up to the challenge. She is up to the physical demands of the role, but I was never convinced she was from the Victorian era in the film's deadening drawing room scenes. Winona Ryder is a good comparison in Coppola's much more successful Bram Stoker's Dracula. Nicholas Hoult, as Ellen's spouse, is over qualified for a role that requires him to dither and cower. He does those just fine. What strikes me is how the film's supporting characters all tend to recede in the background, even the ones inhabited by good actors. Part of this is because Eggers has foregrounded his lead female, but also this is due to the rote nature of the film. We have seen this show before many times. Even Simon McBurney's Renfield can't hold a candle to the bravura work Tom Waits did in the Coppola film. I did enjoy the continental flair of Willem Defoe in the von Helsing role and I liked the two twin girls. Twins are always spooky!

Bill Skarsgård is a fine monster, though he is swaddled in so much prosthetic padding it is hard to tell who is in there. His voice is heavily filtered and Eggers even has him throw away some lines in Dacian, a defunct Balkan language. That effect and, indeed, the whole movie seems academic rather than felt. The Nosferatu of this film is neither exciting nor sympathetic. I think you need a trace of humanity in your monster, even King Kong and Mothra, to help your audience buy into the mechanics of your plot. This Nosferatu is lovingly textured, but unyielding in its hermetic appeal.

Janet Planet

Zoe Ziegler and Julianne Nicholson

Annie Baker's Janet Planet is an impressive film debut from the talented and prolific playwright. The film chronicles the travails of the titular acupuncturist (Julianne Nicholson) who is a single mother raising an eleven year old daughter named Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) somewhere in the hinterlands of western Massachusetts in 1991. Lacy is overly dependent and has boundary issues with her mother, even begging to share her bed. The film opens with Janet taking Lacy home from camp after Lacy has threatened suicide if not taken home forthwith. The duo are an airtight cell with Lacy being the dominant personality. Janet succinctly describes Lacy as "forthright and aggressive." Lacy mopes around a lot, passive aggressively undermining Janet's other relationships. The deliberate pace of the film may be off-putting to some, but I thought it fit Baker's aim. Janet Planet evokes the lazy, hazy days of pre-adolescence just before the tumult of puberty. Lacy is savoring the languor of her last days of childhood, though she is too obstinate to know it.

The film is divided into three sections and a coda. Each section named after an interloper who threatens the supremacy of Lacy's relationship with her mother. Wayne (Will Patton) is a traumatized lout who is deep sixed by Janet after Lacy has convinced her of his hopelessness. Next is Regina (Sophie Okonedo), an English woman and former friend of Janet, who rooms with them after leaving a cult. Regina seems a bit of a sponge and soon clashes with Janet. Regina retreats back to the cult which is led by the bearded sage, Ari (Elias Koteas getting to channel the charisma he hasn't unleashed since Cronenberg's Crash). Ari seizes this opportunity to court Janet, reading her poetry while they picnic, but the relationship ends in an ellipsis. In the coda, we see Janet joining a contra dance group and obviously enjoying the socialization. Lacy sits on the sidelines and has a good sulk. Perhaps, in a year or two, she will join the dance.

Julianne Nicholson's lead performance is taut and unassuming, her fellow players are also exemplary. Baker's skill with dialogue and characterization should be no surprise to theater goers, but it is her firm visual sense that grounds Janet Planet. Baker and cinematographer Maria von Hausswolf's compositions utilize the full screen in a deadpan style that displays alienation and affection towards the Americana of piano lessons, shopping malls, and ice cream stands. A close-up is devoted to blintzes heating up in an antique and mammoth microwave. A funny and evocative note to this child of the Seventies. I also appreciated Baker's balanced view of the New Age milieu of Janet Planet which has largely been a target of satire in the American cinema for a hundred years or so with the possible exception of Lost Horizon. I'm a very rational, Western type guy, but I can't see how environmentalism, Rilke, and Buddhism have hurt the American psyche. Janet Planet is a balm to the eye and a boon to the soul. 

The Apprentice

Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan

Due to its subject matter, Ali Abbasi's The Apprentice had a hard time finding an American distributor and audience. The film, thanks to a sharp and well researched screenplay by Gabriel Sherman, depicts the young Donald J. Trump in the 1970s and 80s receiving tutelage in the dark arts of persuasion and power by legendary heel and New York power lawyer, Roy Cohn. Cohn is portrayed as paving the way for Trump's gargantuan real estate projects with his legal acumen and blackmail skills. We also get to witness Trump's awkward courtship of Ivana and the dysfunction within Trump's family, with a special emphasis on the alcoholism of Trump's brother, Fred Jr. 

Fred Trump Sr., played here by an unrecognizable Martin Donovan, was a chilly and cruel figure known throughout New York City as one of the metro area's most infamous slum landlords. Trump Sr.'s troubles with the IRS and the US Department of Justice provides the impetus for the Donald to seek out Cohn's counsel. Some critics thought that The Apprentice was too soft in its satire, but I think one of the reasons it succeeds is its humanization of its main characters. Neither Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump nor Jeremy Strong as Cohn ever resorts to caricature or burlesque. They offer us portraits of powerful men who are not at ease in their own skin. Trump because of his warped family dynamics: he seeks his father's esteem because he knows he will never get his father's affection. Cohn is portrayed as a self-hating queer who views relationships as transactional and instructs Trump to do the same.

Both the performances by Stan and Strong rank among the year's best. Besides Donovan, I also liked the supporting turns by Maria Bakalova, Charlie Carrick, Mark Rendall, Catherine McNally, Stuart Hughes, Bruce Beaton, and Barbara Katz. Abbasi has given the film a verite look. This prevents the film from seeming too handsome and makes the actors seem more bracing and lifelike. He shot the 1970s sequences in 16mm, often hand-held, and filtered the 80s sequences so that they look like they are VHS tape footage. This makes the segues between the dramatic footage and stock footage, usually showing Gotham in decay. flow more smoothly.

The use of "video footage" also dovetails nicely with the film's theme of the manipulation of the media by Trump to further his own ends. Fawning interviews of Trump are juxtaposed by one of Mike Wallace eviscerating Cohn. Stars rise and inevitably fall. The film opens with video of Nixon's infamous "I am not a crook" speech. Screenwriter Sherman is trying to link the sleazy maleficence of Trump to Tricky Dicky and Cohn and the Red-baiting era. Opinions will vary, depending on how much MAGA Kool-Aid one has drunk, on whether this is a valid stand. What the film is a irrefutable success at portraying is how Trump's career has been one long promotional video feed featuring continuous episodes of The Apprentice.

             

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Jonathan Pryce

As Something Wicked This Way Comes unspools, the first thing we see is a cursive signature that announces the film as Ray Bradbury's. Bradbury had published the novel on which the 1983 film was based in 1962. He had been tinkering with the tale since 1948 when, in its first guise, it was a screenplay. After the novel was published, many adaptations were tentatively planned with such disparate names attached as Kirk Douglas, Peter O' Toole, and Christopher Lee. Possible directors included Gene Kelly and Sam Peckinpah. Jack Clayton was poised to direct the film as his follow up to The Great Gatsby, but was felled by a stroke in 1977. After a lengthy recovery, filming began in 1981 with Jonathan Pryce, then little known outside the UK, as the nominal lead.

Pryce is one of the better things in the flick, giving the picture the saturnine malice it badly needs. He play a traveling carnival proprietor with diabolical powers. The story is framed as a boy's own story amidst 1900 Americana. Two pre-pubescent lads crawl out their window to get a gander at the new attraction, but soon they discern that evil is afoot. One of the lads' father has disappeared and single mother Diane Ladd has to pick up the slack. The other boy is saddled with Jason Robards as a father. Robards uneasily plays a librarian with guilt issues towards his son. Robards is great when he is having a shot of hooch or lighting his cigar, at ease in a Eugene O'Neill milieu, but at sea having to navigate the goo that surrounds Bradbury's concept of psychology. The father and son moments probably could not been redeemed even if a more suitable actor, say Henry Fonda, was cast.    

Something Wicked This Way Comes was a troubled production. Bradbury clashed with Clayton because the latter brought in an uncredited John Mortimer for rewrites. Disney was not happy with the film, after dismissing Clayton, the studio shot retakes through 1982 and 1983. The studio felt that Clayton's touch was too dark for them which makes me wonder if they had seen his work on The Innocents or Our Mother's House. That said, I don't feel Clayton was enough of a visual artist to salvage this project with or without studio interference. The town in this film, shot at Disney's Golden Oak Ranch, always looks like a well swept studio set. Clayton's style was chiefly realistic. In his adaptations of Henry James and Pinter this has benefits, but in projects that call for romantic flair ( like The Great Gatsby) or fantasy, like this one, Clayton cannot create a suitable setting for his tale.

To give him the benefit of a doubt, his conception of the film was largely altered. A CGI segment was discarded. Most of the remaining effects, even the matte painting, looks cheesy. A score by Georges Delerue was scrapped for one by the anodyne James Horner. The film's commercial failure is indicative of Disney's loss of direction for almost two decades after the death of Walt. Disney releases of this era like The Black Hole and Tron display a studio badly out of touch with its audience. It was only with the founding of Touchstone Pictures in 1984 that the mouse was able to roar again.

As with The Great Gatsby, the best performances are by the supporting players in Something Wicked This Way Comes. Royal Dano, Pam Grier, James Stacy, and Ellen Geer all do yeoman's work with nice little bits. I often wish Clayton took as much care with his mise-en-scene as he did with his players. Though, perhaps because of the space he gives his cast in ...Wicked, the film feels pokey and slow, even at just 95 minutes. Bradbury defended the film, his baby, saying it was "not a great film, but a decently nice one." Unfortunately, decency and niceness were not the right tone for this tale of the supernatural. 

Book Review: Lawrence Tierney: Hollywood's Real-Life Tough Guy by Burt Kearns

Lawrence Tierney

Burt Kearns' biography of Lawrence Tierney is obviously a labor of love and a must read for noir fans, but I found it somewhat monotonous. This is not really Kearns' fault because he applied due diligence in his research. I doubt we will ever get a more complete survey of Tierney's career and alcoholic misadventures. Kearns' background is in tabloid journalism and it appears he was quite eager to comb through the voluminous newspaper clippings that chronicled Tierney's brief rise to Tinseltown stardom and numerous scrapes with the law. Kearns certainly seems to have tabbed every Tierney mention in the gossip columns of his heyday, from ones still remembered like Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper to figures now largely forgotten like Jimmie Fidler and Earl Wilson. 

However, if you've heard the tale of one Lawrence Tierney barroom scrape, you've pretty much heard them all. There are variations, but the theme is always the same. Kearns' prose is simply a device to connect the pasted press clippings he has unearthed. There is very little in the way of analysis of Tierney's psyche or his acting craft. More ink has been spilled in this book on fisticuffs than Tierney's love life or career. Now, in Kearns' defense, Tierney's propensity to end up his evenings in the hoosegow did blight his career and personal life. He had a brief comeback in the 1990s, but always managed to alienate colleagues and employers. Still, I expect a biography of an actor to try to evoke the poetry a performer conjures. Because this may be out of his ken, Kearns doesn't try.

Kearns fills up Lawrence Tierney... with the grubby tabloid scandals of the day, ranging from Robert Mitchum to William Tallman, that have only a tangential relationship to Tierney. Now I think it is possible to write a good biography on a pop figure utilizing the tabloids of yore as a source, Nick Tosches' classic Dino comes to mind, but you cannot provide a full chronicle of a figure within such a limited worldview. Kearns reports that Tierney recited Shakespeare to his dates, but such tantalizing details are limited. What did Tierney like to read or enjoying eating? Beats me after reading this book. Kearns reports that Tierney dated Gloria Vanderbilt and was a drinking buddy of Brendan Behan, but these are Page Six facts and don't give a clue to the flavor of the man and what made him tick. Kearns should have remembered Oscar Wilde's line in Lady Windemere's Fan: "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." This biography wallows unrepentantly in the gutter. 

               

Only the Animals

Nadia Tereszkiewicz

Dominik Moll's Only the Animals is a very good 2019 French drama based on Colin Niel's novel Seules les bêtes. The plot concerns the disappearance of a woman during winter in the rural Massif Central region of France. The film interweaves the stories of eight or so characters whose lives intersect with that of the missing woman. The film is divided into four parts, each part focusing on one of the main characters. Since the narrative hinges upon revelations resulting from the film's changing perspective and time shifts, I won't play the spoiler by spilling the beans. Only the Animals contains enough elements for three thrillers: unburied corpses, a lesbian affair of mismatched partners, additional adultery, Ivory Coast catfishing, and more. Moll handles the unwieldy plot adroitly and, as usual for his films, elicits a host of accomplished performances; especially by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Laure Calamy, and Denis Ménochet. 

Moll has directed six features in his career. I'd put Only the Animals in the top rank of his films along with his debut, Harry, He's Here to Help and his most recent feature, La Nuit du 12. Moll has proven to be a consistent talent, but his work, thus far, lacks the underlying passion and grandiose vision necessary for great cinema. It is telling that the material he generally works with, like Only the Animals, culminates in the hermetically sealed closure of irony rather than the catharsis of tragedy. Still, a film like Only the Animals may be exactly the type of material suited to Moll's misanthropic rationalism. Moll does a wonderful job of drawing out the themes of loneliness and repetition compulsion that emanate from Only the Animals plot and locale. His pans intimate a world of shifting perspectives in which his characters navigate without a lodestar. 

The Beast

Léa Seydoux

Bertrand Bonello's La Bête is made up of three variations of Henry James' novella "The Beast in the Jungle", a formal approach that dovetails nicely with Bonello's former career as a session pianist. The James tale features a male protagonist, John Marcher, who ruins his own life and that of his lady love through a lifelong fear that catastrophe is lurking for him like a beast of prey. The protagonist of Bonello's film, in three iterations, is named Gabrielle and is played by screen icon Léa Seydoux. Her would be suitor is named Louis, who is played by George MacKay (1917, Captain Fantastic) in the three time periods covered by the film. In each strain of the film, the ending is tragic.

The three time frames captured by the film allow for variations in story, production design, and locale, but the theme remains pretty much the same. One part is set in the Belle Époque Paris of 1910. In this section, Gabrielle is a married pianist living a complacent existence hinted at by her husband's business, manufacturing baby dolls. Gabrielle is tempted by English expatriate Louis who is privy to her secret fear. This story line is juxtaposed with one set in Paris in 2044. An unexplained plague has decimated the populace. Those who survive wander the streets with protective masks. AI and robotics dominate the landscape. Gabrielle is undergoing a sinister seeming "purification" treatment recommended by her AI medical pooh-bahs. A very different kind of doll is available for humans, Gabrielle's robot is embodied beautifully by Guslagie Malanda (Saint Omer) . Gabrielle meets Louis at a bar that morphs into different periods. She pines for him, but has difficulty tracking him down.

At La Bête's midpoint, Bonello wraps up the 1910 story and sends this version of Gabrielle and Louis to a watery grave. He introduces a story line set in 2014 Los Angeles. There, Gabrielle is a struggling model/actress who is house sitting for a wealthy client. Louis is a menacing incel type who ends up stalking Gabrielle. One of the few off notes of the film for me was MacKay in the 2014 section. He nails his character's cynicism, but seems overly hale for an incel. Otherwise, he is quite good trading je t'aimes in French to the 1910 Gabrielle or apparating in the future in a Pierre Cardin Beatle suit. Even in a dud like Laurent, Bonello has been masterful in exploiting his costume and production designers, coiffeuse, and sound mixers. The technical aspects of La Bête are all top notch. The floral displays and Ms. Seydoux's hairstyles are sublime. The outfits for her also contribute to the film's mise-en-scene in intriguing ways. When Gabrielle invites Louis to her husband's doll factory for a tryst, her red ensemble incinerates the screen with repressed longing before the muted blue and white set literally explodes in flames due to the Paris flood of 1910.

The only other brickbat I could hurl at the film concerns a scene where a forbidding pigeon attacks Gabrielle. The ability to film action scenes does not fit with the Gallic temperament. Otherwise, this is Bonello's best film thus far and one of the best of the past year. Bonello, not surprisingly, excels in his use of music. Patsy Cline's "You Belong to Me" is used for ironic effect as Gabrielle is stalked and Roy Orbison's "Evergreen" is a beautifully appropriate hymn to eternal love. The film, ultimately, belongs to Seydoux. She is onscreen for nearly all of this 145 minute film and handles the subtle modification of the various Gabrielles like the master technician she is. The actor of her generation? Peut-etre.