Films Seen - December 2002
[Pre-'96 films not included.]
THE PIANIST (49) (dir., Roman Polanski) Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Frank Finlay, Emilia Fox [How is a humanist masterpiece conceived? "Theo's Century of Movies" is honoured to present this exclusive transcript - obtained from the arthouse paparazzi after much grovelling and greasing of palms - of the moment when director Roman Polanski first decided to make his searing indictment of Man's inhumanity to Man, THE PIANIST. The scene is a hugely trendy Paris restaurant where Polanski, a valued customer, is having dinner with two close friends, whom we'll call "Jean-Pierre" and "Claudine"...
DIE ANOTHER DAY (44) (dir., Lee Tamahori) Pierce Brosnan, Halle Berry, Toby Stephens, Rosamund Pike, Judi Dench [Big-budget spectacle, not unimpressive but it goes on and on (two hours is excessive for this sort of thing), and the villains still miss Bond by inches even when they enlist a state-of-the-art satellite system shooting pinpoint laser beams. Suspension of disbelief becomes a drag - the franchise lurches closer to sci-fi, with invisible cars and DNA therapy offering literal transformation - but the overriding problem is a lack of finesse : at least Roger Moore knew how to arch an eyebrow over such 'wit' as Bond claiming to be an ornithologist and charmless Halle Berry (the film's biggest liability) eyeing his crotch and saying "Now there's a mouthful". Most interesting strand : the simultaneous plundering of 007's past (Halle emerging from the waves like Ursula Andress, etc) and crippling insecurity over appearing stuffy or old-fashioned, from the extreme-surf opening to such bits as a dreadlocked attendant popping up to say the high-class fencing club "needed redecorating anyway" after Bond has smashed its various paintings and furnishings. Most niggling annoyance : trivial and gratuitous use of "London Calling", though admittedly the film-makers couldn't have known Joe Strummer would expire so soon after its release. Most absurd detail : the cellphone that doubles as a time-bomb, flashing a little icon of a bomb when you press the button (runner-up : heroes run after - and catch up with! - a plane as it taxis down the runway, even scrambling into the baggage-hold). Most popular look of 2002 : the glass-shards-in-face number, also sported by Jude Law in ROAD TO PERDITION. Art Anticipating Life Dept. : Britain and the US join forces to smash North Korean plans in covert operation, amid charges of Western hypocrisy and cries of "It's pathetic that you British still feel you have the right to police the world"...]
ABC AFRICA (40) (dir., Abbas Kiarostami) [What's wrong with this picture? Kiarostami throws in most of his usual preoccupations - above all self-reflexivity, as he makes a documentary about Ugandan orphans that's also about him making a documentary about Ugandan orphans - but ends up close to self-parody, mostly because the inner tension of his other work is missing : self-reflexivity in itself is just a gimmick - what makes it meaningful in e.g. the Koker trilogy is the way it echoes the constant conflict between the director and his subjects (which is why it makes sense when he calls attention to himself, interposing 'Kiarostami' between them and us). Most of the previous films are about 'picturesque' real people being used to some extent by a more sophisticated person (standing in for Kiarostami himself) with his own agenda - the director in THROUGH THE OLIVE TREES wants to exploit their everyday behaviour for his movie, the one in AND LIFE GOES ON wants to draw information out of them for his own purposes, ditto the engineer in WIND WILL CARRY US, while Kiarostami himself in HOMEWORK (which I haven't seen) asks questions about homework but is really out to expose an abusive, over-punitive system ; the films get their tension from the complicated relationship between the 'pure' subjects (often uneducated villagers), the director who exploits and sympathises with them, and our - the viewers' - realisation of this fine line between exploitation and sympathy. Here, on the other hand, there's no tension at all, because the project - to "sensitise people" and "draw international attention" to the orphans' plight - is so virtuous it validates Kiarostami's presence, and the more he records the more he's validated (even when he stages things, as he seems to do occasionally - e.g. when he spots a child's corpse as he just happens to be passing by an open door (even does a double-take) - the end amply justifies the means) ; at worst, the fact that we see his crew filming and the kids performing merely draws attention to the contrast between filmers and filmed, which is after all the idea - even if one reads it as guilt ('What can I, renowned director Kiarostami, really know of these kids' terrible lives?'), that merely dovetails with the response predicated from the viewer ('What can we, in our cosy Western worlds, really know, etc?'), though in fact the film is much more benign than that : Kiarostami puts himself at his subjects' disposal, most tellingly in a bit where he lets the kids look at his monitor as he films and offer their suggestions as to where the camera should point (this is their movie). The result is bland, pointless - and seemingly endless - as a film, fascinating only as testimony, the sights and sounds of Africa (those incredible skies!) and snapshots of the lives of these people at this time ; but we hardly needed Kiarostami for that.]
'R XMAS (62) (dir., Abel Ferrara) Drea De Matteo, Lillo Brancato Jr., Ice-T, Lisa Valens [Add a couple of auteurist points for the way New York on the brink of Giuliani clean-up ties in with drug-dealer heroes on the brink of settling down to domesticity and - implicitly - Ferrara himself on the brink of moving on from crackhead highs and bad lieutenants, to a more subdued style (though I guess we won't know for sure till the next movie). Very much a slice-of-life, people studied in context, shaped by their work and family and the place where they live - New York's also a character (it's a period-piece, as the opening shot cheekily acknowledges), and there's hardly any close-ups till the drug-sorting scene 20 minutes in. Trademark emphasis on religious symbols - crucifixes, pictures of Jesus on the wall - makes it very possible (if a little moralistic) to read it as a "Christmas Carol" fable, with Ice-T as the Spirit of Christmas opening the couple's eyes to their pernicious lifestyle ("Make him stop selling that shit," he pleads) - but it's just as effective as intimate character-piece with a feel for the druggy milieu, Ferrara showing his flair in a couple of striking shots (best of all : heroine's mottled reflection in cut-glass panel as she knocks on the door) and De Matteo burning up the screen as a fiercely loyal warrior-wife. Most irresistibly named cast member : Jay "J-Dog" Dog (as 'Felipe's bodyguard').]
LOVELY & AMAZING (58) (dir., Nicole Holofcener) Catherine Keener, Emily Mortimer, Brenda Blethyn, Dermot Mulroney, Jake Gyllenhaal [Scene where Mulroney unflinchingly, not to say brutally passes judgment on every aspect of Mortimer's body - at her request - is the standout, mostly because it's the only scene that does in fact stand out, i.e. the only one where the main theme (the Beauty-myth that makes women obsess over their bodies instead of accepting their imperfections) gets dramatised in a memorable way ; the rest is Significant plot-points (Blethyn gets a liposuction) and Significant lines (the little black girl saying, apropos of nothing much, that she'd like to scrape her skin off in order to be white) amassed in a noncommittal way that's supposed to be 'novelistic' - pithy, unforced, just observing these people's lives - but is also not very compelling. Falls between two stools slightly, because it still goes for the indicator-and-payoff (heroine, too soft-hearted for her own good, likes to rescue stray dogs - and is finally bitten by one) yet also tries for no resolution and an open ending ; still pretty good, characters carefully drawn, performances strong, Catherine Keener (not one of my favourite actresses) never better, nudging her amoral-bitch persona towards a more interesting character, the fiery individualist who's uncompromising and also monstrously selfish (though the film cops out, making her more sympathetic as it goes on). Did Mulroney base his slack-jawed, sleepy-eyed-Lothario actor on Joey from "Friends"?]
HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS (60) (dir., Chris Columbus) Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Kenneth Branagh, Richard Harris [Now that Harry's learned the ropes and started to become an action hero, it must be said he's not a very good one : he's forever having to be rescued in the nick of time here (sometimes arbitrarily, e.g. the car that saves him from the spiders), and even when he fights it's just to swing a sword about, no wizardly skill or imagination (maybe in the next instalment, though it's now two films gone and barely a successful spell from the alleged whiz-kid wiz) ; his persona is a little bit of everything, good at games but also good at lessons, an outsider but also a celebrity - and, like most celebrities, famous primarily for doing nothing. The film is indeed a bit 'darker' than the charming Part One, tying in with Harry's progression from boy to teen - a few morbid undertones starting to creep in (though 'petrification' is hardly the same as Death) and a little more questioning of the cosy Hogwarts world, if only in Harry's emergence as egalitarian counterpoint - even treating a house-elf as an equal - to the Malfoys' virulent elitism (not to say racism, "mugblood" being "a word you don't hear in civilised conversation") ; not developed, of course, but still the kind of modern-day point that can't help but nudge at the place's Victorian foundations. Solidly-carpentered, generally satisfying, lifted by Branagh's fleet-footed comedy and Grint's amiable if more limited version ; characters a lot more fun than the story or 'magic', which seems a bit prosaic - a flying car is no big deal nowadays, no matter how "enchanted" they may call it, and the schtick of inanimate objects (trees, letters, books) with a life of their own gets a bit repetitive. Line you never thought you'd hear Harry Potter say (the Not-What-It-Sounds-Like Award) : "It's not true sir, I swear! I never touched Mrs. Norris!".]
HOW I KILLED MY FATHER (62) (dir., Anne Fontaine) Charles Berling, Michel Bouquet, Natacha Regnier [A meeting of two basically cold people - a father who's never (by his own admission) known or felt love, a son aptly described (by his own wife) as a "shrivelled little man" - makes for a film that's sometimes clumsy (we could certainly have done without the stand-up-comic brother, milking filial memories for confessional spiel) yet imbued with a discomforting reserve, feelings floating without quite being grasped, which is a fair approximation of many father-son relationships (even more remarkable in being made by a woman). Bouquet, with his gravelly voice and inscrutable eyes - eyes that "judge you down to the bone," claims his son - is a slippery type, going in the opposite direction than you might expect from this kind of 'outsider' figure (a colonial doctor, bringing a reminder of Third World misery to the rich environs of Versailles) : on one level he acts in the classic Boudu way, the reluctant houseguest helping poor little rich people (notably Regnier as the pill-popping wife) find their way again, yet he also becomes less impressive as the film goes on - his life a mess, his pinched face echoing his son's, his talent (again, like his son's) being mostly for running away from problems. "I don't believe in roots," says Berling, and Bouquet agrees - "You make your own" - as does the movie, the final scenes explaining that fathers don't make sons after all, everyone makes themselves : fathers only offer ghosts to be exorcised - Bouquet is something of a ghost in the film's schema, given that it opens with news of his death - and old grievances to be outgrown (only when our hero settles on a memory of Dad helpless and defeated can he begin to feel affection) ; fathers are there to be killed, as per the title, and if you can't kill them (e.g. because they weren't around to be killed) you might find yourself turning into them. Could've used a polish, just to get rid of lines like self-loathing hero saying "I don't like my body", or maybe reconsider the unsubtle indicators - hero a doctor specialising in reversing the effects of ageing (= denial) ; still exceptional in all kinds of ways, done with quiet honesty. I don't see Hollywood offering too many moments as affecting as the steely throwaway when a father tells his grown-up son : "I'm not obliged to love you"...]
THE TUXEDO (15) (dir., Kevin Donovan) Jackie Chan, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jason Isaacs, Peter Stormare [25 seconds on the clock : a deer cocks its leg and lets fly with a stream of piss (in CU). 75 seconds on the clock : a killer stands over his prone victim and picks up a bottle of water with the line "Aqua la vista, baby". It has to get better, but not so you'd notice : Jackie Chan's ageing limbs barely get a workout - his schtick being instead that he can drive a car really fast - Burger King get a nice fat plug and the plot gets increasingly wayward, not to say unpleasant, not to say inconsistent (shouldn't the magic tux have turned mild-mannered Jackie into a superhero? why then is he still a bumbler, with La Hewitt having to bail him out all the time?). Best bits are perhaps the ones that make no sense at all, like the interlude at the firing-range with the camera homing in on the girls' butts as they take their stance, or dialogue exchanges like the following : Hewitt : "That's it! I'm going home for some rest and medication." Chan : "What?". Hewitt : "Uh ... I said 'We'll be in communication'." Lay off the crack, Hollywood gag-writers...]
WAYDOWNTOWN (50) (dir., Gary Burns) Fabrizio Filippo, Marya Delver, Don McKellar, Gordon Currie [Torn right down the middle on this one, because it's often sharp / funny / smart in its particulars yet totally misguided in overall design : staying indoors for 30 days on end (i.e. the film's premise) feels, says someone, like the feeling you get when you wake up after a night of heavy drinking (stale and groggy, albeit with an undertow of buzz from the night before) - yet the way it's shot is more like the feeling of a caffeine-and-sugar jag, with ostentatious split-screens and jump-cuts from the opening credits. One might say it's meant to convey a stir-crazy restlessness, maybe shading into paranoia, but you still end up figuring it can't be that bad in corporate-drone land with so much excitement all the time ; OFFICE SPACE, doing many of the same jokes, captured the deadness infinitely better, as well as pushing the gags in more interesting directions - McKellar's near-autistic Bradley is spiritual cousin to Stephen Root in SPACE, except the latter is an ever-more-untameable grotesque while the former gets steadily neater and more comprehensible (being suicidal actually limits him as a character), just as the film itself gradually tones down (i.e. loses sight of) its premise to become a pocket-size 'comment' on desensitised humanity and holding on to your dreams (note the aerial imagery, superheroes flying up vs. desperate drones falling / jumping down). Not well done, but characters are juggled quite adeptly and they're mostly memorable (as caricatures often are) ; special mention to James McBurney, channelling becalmed Bronson Pinchot as a snarky security guard. Didn't like it, but I did enjoy it ; is that even possible?]
MURDEROUS MAIDS (66) (dir., Jean-Pierre Denis) Sylvie Testud, Julie-Marie Permentier, Isabelle Renauld, Dominique Labourier ["Beware the fury of the weak, the enraged and the forsaken!" bellows a labour organiser, warning of the imminent showdown between bosses and workers - but it's one of the incidental (or perhaps not so incidental) jokes of this true-crime tale that it never paints the titular killers - despite obvious class-warfare connotations - in revenge-of-the-proles terms, not even in the indirect way of Chabrol in LA CEREMONIE. Its rallying-cry is perhaps closer to "Beware the fury of the horny, the repressed and the sexually screwed-up!" reclaiming a French cause célèbre from the domain of ideology (even the original court verdict, a closing caption blandly informs us, found the crime "motivated by social revenge") to a more organic view of History-as-psychology, and incidentally allowing Testud to run the gamut from protective tenderness - e.g. the scene where she saves a fawn from hunters - to sexual voracity and all-out madness (I've never seen her in this kind of role before : that lugubrious, sad-eyed-rodent quality is gone - she seems downright feral). Denis never tries to match Chabrol for icy control - LA CEREMONIE packs more of a punch, esp. the murder scene itself - but it's still formally accomplished, carefully done with spare use of sound and tiny incremental bits (e.g. Testud scrubbing a staircase on her hands and knees, stopping wearily as a pack of kids runs past her up the stairs) adding to the overall effect. Holds out the bait of "social revenge" - "you'll be allowed butter from now on, just like us," smiles a mistress condescendingly - only to plump for lesbian passion and the maelstrom of human emotions ; sexy, too.]
DAUGHTER FROM DANANG (70) (dir., Gail Dolgin / Vicente Franco) [Works even better for Americans, no doubt, since half-Vietnamese - but "101% Americanised" - Heidi Bub's attempt to reconnect with her roots is also America's desire to make its peace with the traumatic memory of Vietnam (when she heard about the war in school, says Heidi, she just tried not to think about it - "I just wanted to scrunch down in my chair"), but a highly impressive doc in its own right, its main virtue being that it doesn't try to push the material beyond what it'll stand. First World meets Third in what also seems at first to be a case of the Ugly American vs. idyllic 'traditional' community (close ties, extended family, etc), but in fact sympathy for Heidi is carefully apportioned - we learn of her unhappy childhood at a very strategic point, cueing compassion just as things begin to go wrong for her - in the same way that picturesque images of kids playing and the sun rising over a lake turn out to be merely a tourist's-eye view of Vietnam ; the result is a very clear-eyed view of why different cultures "can't understand each other emotionally" - because people have different needs in each - and a very acute sense of nice-but-callow Heidi, growing up lonely and confused, trying to get her Vietnamese relatives - much to their amusement - to stop smoking, loaded down with Oprah-isms (looking out the plane on the way to Vietnam with a cunning little sob and a shake of the head, ready for her close-up : "So many memories ... So many memories"), looking naively but sincerely for 'closure', unconditional love and a happy ending ; in the end, what separates First and Third World may be just that people in the latter are too busy trying to survive to worry overmuch about 'self-actualisation'. The film is a little suspect in terms of technique - what we see when Heidi remembers Danang is footage of entirely different kids (albeit in similar situations), and the final shot of the Vietnamese mother is almost certainly not "two years later" - but near-perfectly realised in terms of theme and narrative, despite (though of course because of) being unresolved. Only makes a couple of points, but it makes them gracefully.]
SIGNS (36) (dir., M. Night Shyamalan) Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin, Abigail Breslin, Cherry Jones, M. Night Shyamalan [How much longer can Shyamalan's portentous, self-consciously 'restrained' style camouflage the shocking laziness of his glib, often ludicrous movies? One gets a sense of supreme self-confidence - even casting himself in a pivotal role! - and he probably sees it as a challenge when he undercuts suspense with arch comedy or deliberately keeps things out of sight (staying on a flashlight on the floor as violent action thumps and bangs just offscreen), but there's also a sense that the challenge - how can I defy Hollywood formula and still make money? - is taking over from the nuts and bolts of film-making : the monster-movie aspect doesn't work when the monsters are so inept they can't even break down a door, and the highfalutin' message (Faith Lost and Regained, or : "Is it possible there are no coincidences?") needed clever back-up and inventive plotting, not a bald statement of purpose and frankly stupid ending (I believe I laughed out loud when the true significance of "Swing away" became apparent : just as well our heroes have God around to instruct them in the fine art of alien-bashing). Clear case of the Emperor's New Clothes, constantly asserting that it's special, not the usual dumb thriller but concerned with higher things, bullying the audience into ignoring the fact that there's nothing there : teasingly oblique and oracular, but suspense inherent in the premise and setting - God-fearing small town, the house with its cornfield (a staple of American Gothic and dark "It's A Good Life"-type sci-fi) - nowhere near the similar ENCOUNTER AT RAVEN'S GATE (not to mention any random episode of "The X-Files") because the film never seems to be taking it seriously, distracted by its Larger Meanings and determination to be different (monsters breaking into the house is used as an opportunity for family bonding - an audacious idea on paper, but a real tension-breaker onscreen) ; characters don't have a plan, film has no plot, Gibson is a vacuum waiting to be filled by the Grace of God ; more exalted layers kind of hang there, unanchored and irrelevant (and not all that profound, either). Notable mainly for the arrogance implicit in presenting an underwritten cop-out as a big summer Event, no doubt on the principle that 'if you don't see it you're not looking hard enough' ; and of course the rare and wondrous sight of a Culkin and a Phoenix in the same movie.]
LAGAAN (61) (dir., Ashutosh Gowariker) Aamir Khan, Gracy Singh, Rachel Shelley, Paul Blackthorne [Really lifted by the final hour - the big game itself - but still a bit too disposable for a film that claims 225 minutes of your life. Cinematically fluid - silky-smooth pace, lots of Steadicam - morally unimpeachable (not only are the nasty colonials defeated, but the Indian team transcends both the caste system and religious divisions), often amusing and gloriously old-fashioned - esp. the climax, with the tension building slowly and without the usual short-cuts (no cheap twists, no tricksy stylistics), fair play triumphant and a couple of veddy British umpires who might've been played 40 years ago by Wilfrid Hyde White and James Robertson Justice. Musical numbers colourful but lacking catchy melodies (to my Western ears), plot somewhere between SEVEN SAMURAI timelessness and ESCAPE TO VICTORY absurdity ; dedicated "with love, care and concern to the people of Kutch", and I bet they mean it too. The ultimate cricket movie, if nothing else.]
THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS (54) (dir., Takashi Miike) Kenji Sawada, Naomi Nishida, Keiko Matsuzaka [Really quite bad, except when it's being outrageously brilliant. Miike unwisely goes for murky visuals (so murky I begin to wonder if I saw some worn-out bootleg) rather than the shiny SOUND OF MUSIC look that might've been appropriate to this tale of a happy family (and intriguing double-bill with VISITOR Q), with an unattractive yellow filter over many scenes and frequent reliance on a high-angle, wide-angle shot - the family at dinner, discovery of the first body, heroine writhing on the floor - coming across like the callous POV of a surveillance camera set just below the ceiling. Black-comedy plot of a family hotel where the guests inconveniently wind up dead ("How come we only get guests like this?") goes nowhere, to be succeeded by the psycho lover in US Navy garb, which also goes nowhere ; hilarious set-pieces turn up just as you're about to lose faith - a karaoke love song with mirror-ball and chintzy lighting, a claymation fight-to-the-death with real faces occasionally superimposed on the figurines - then it's back to narrative inertia and draggy choppy rhythms. One for the DVD, so you can amaze your friends with mind-blowing excerpts without actually having to watch the thing. Most compelling evidence that Miike is a major film-maker despite it all : the sad-eyed, flute-playing family who appear out of nowhere for about 10 minutes, casting an eerie disquieting spell in a few well-chosen shots. All a red herring, of course...]
TO BE AND TO HAVE (63) (dir., Nicolas Philibert) [Frustrating at first, because there seems to be a story here - the dapper, sensitive teacher plonked down in the midst of uncouth country bumpkins, the 'man of the South' with a Spanish surname stuck in the snowy fields of the French heartland - that isn't being told : all we get are scenes of kids at school, with assorted joys and small disasters (much of it plays like that bit in THE 400 BLOWS where a kid struggles repeatedly to write a sentence with a leaky pen, tearing all the pages out of his exercise book in the process) and the endlessly empathetic M. Lopez guiding their steps, sorting out their quarrels, even pushing them gently down the hill on their sleds. The point seems to be not inner conflict - even when we finally get Lopez alone, all he can vouchsafe is that he's always wanted to be a teacher - but what's possibly a Catholic thing (certainly alien to Anglo-Saxon culture), a lives-of-the-saints celebration of goodness, both in itself and implicitly as an emanation of divine Spirit : though entirely secular, it's still very much a film about discovering the world - the first time we see a kid he's peering out intently from the window of a bus, and one of the first things we hear is another tyke having to be taught the difference between morning and afternoon - and very much a film about transience and Time (seasons conspicuously passing, older kids about to go to high school, a new crop of first-years arriving, teacher himself on the brink of retirement) : Lopez' gentle kindness is the only constant in a changing world - hence implicitly a sign of something greater, as if he were an angel sent on Earth for the express purpose of guiding little kids through their first steps. The film is steeped in Edenic pastoralism, with its cosy little school where the big kids help the small ones and everyone loves the teacher - it'd make an instructive double-bill with Tavernier's IT ALL STARTS TODAY - which seems to be a weakness until (and unless) it's transformed into a strength ; rural milieu is intriguing - we too, like the kids, have a new world to discover - though the scene where the rustic family try to solve a maths problem flirts with amused condescension (could there be a parallel of sorts between farmers tending animals and a teacher leading his flock?). Seems unsatisfying, but it's actually quite touching.]
MOSTLY MARTHA (41) (dir., Sandra Nettelbeck) Martina Gedeck, Maxime Foerste, Sergio Castellitto [Pleasant enough, but it's all so obvious. Martha is a chef who's great with food but rotten with Life ; she likes to cook but, significantly, doesn't like to eat what other people cook (even though, as someone helpfully points out, food is all about companionship - nothing is worse than eating alone) ; she uses food to escape her problems, talking recipes instead of feelings with her therapist ; then her rigid life is turned upside-down by a wacky Italian chef who dances in the kitchen and an 8-year-old niece who refuses to be easily categorised ("I wish I could find a recipe for you," explains Martha for those who came in late). Lots of food on display but it's still undernourished, with exactly one scene of (mild) conflict between Martha and kid, about one-and-a-half scenes of (mild) animosity between Martha and Italian plus a couple of rather incongruous scenes where perfectionist Martha berates philistine customers - hey, it worked in BIG NIGHT - capped by a suitably limp ending (Martha thinks it might be nice to get the kid back from its father - so she does) ; the rest is foodie montages, generic rom-com loneliness and trying to get over how much Ms. Gedeck looks like Helen Hunt. Castellitto, on the other hand, may be the most effortlessly ingratiating actor working today ; everything about him just oozes rumpled charm.]
HARD GOODBYES: MY FATHER (56) (dir., Penny Panayiotopoulou) Yiorgos Karayannis, Stelios Mainas, Ioanna Tsirigouli [Interesting angle to this family drama of a little boy in denial about his father's death : most such films would offer a happy family torn asunder, with our hero trying to hold on to idyllic memories, but in this case the family is dysfunctional and the father notable mostly by his absence - which actually makes perfect sense, since the boy's love becomes synonymous with the hopeful conviction that his Dad will eventually return from his frequent business trips (anything less would be a disaster), making for refusal to accept when Death makes that absence permanent : a 'bad' father defined by absence paradoxically becomes harder to let go of than one who's actually around. Might've been nice had Panayiotopoulou pushed this further, whether by making the father a complete bastard or alternatively by making him more present in the second half (ironically more present in Death than Life, giving our hero something to connect to) ; instead the film gets steadily more prosaic even as it tries to be 'poetic', with the kid writing florid letters in his father's voice or holding imaginary conversations (image flitting annoyingly from MS to CU and back again as he speaks first in his voice then his father's - why didn't Von Trier think of that in BREAKING THE WAVES?), or else basing his denial on Dad's promise - "Dad always keeps his promises" - that he'll be back to watch the moon landings with him (the film is set in 1969). Turns into a tale of bereavement - nothing more, nothing less - but at least it's senistively done, with allusive style and tender eye for small family moments (kid watches Dad shaving, suddenly pokes him in the shoulder with the air of a scientist conducting an experiment, tries to look innocent as Dad cuts himself and glares angrily) ; clumsy bits and general earnestness - it's the kind of film that seems to have a little pause after every single line of dialogue - offset by careful emotional mapping and combustible, chipmunk-cheeked kid hero. More the work of a promising director than a promising writer ; still probably the best Greek film I've ever seen, though. [NB. Now supplanted - and how! - by A MATTER OF DIGNITY.]]
CITY BY THE SEA (38) (dir., Michael Caton-Jones) Robert De Niro, James Franco, Frances McDormand, George Dzundza [Biggest strategic error is undoubtedly starting on the kid, only shifting to De Niro when the plot is already underway : Franco's character needs to be an enigma if the father-son theme is to have any meaning, so that any decision to help him becomes an act of faith - instead it's made clear from the start that he's a good kid, trying to go straight, basically innocent of murder (he over-reacts, but acts in self-defence), so the only question becomes 'When will De Niro finally come to his senses and start acting like a father instead of a cop?' (and, since the answer is obviously 'At the film's climax', there's little to hold the attention as it plods towards that destination). Actors try their best, De Niro settling into the persona he seems to have patented in THE SCORE (fairly close to his real-life self, by all accounts) - brusque and down-to-earth, prizing honesty and straight dealing above all (when his integrity as a cop is questioned he neither throws a tantrum nor tries to justify himself, merely tosses in his badge with a muttered "This is bullshit") ; but it's still a trite, cliché-ridden movie, its based-on-a-true-story status merely underlining the resemblance to TV fodder. This is a film where De Niro has to choose between being a Good Cop and a Good Father. This is a film where he goes through an 'audio montage', looking stricken and uncertain while disembodied lines of dialogue from earlier in the film assault him from all sides, summarising his dilemma. This is a film where George Dzundza as the loveable, expendable partner decides to go in after a perp and a fellow cop protests "You're not going to wait for backup?!" (guess what happens next). This is a film where Franco as the wayward son (who dreams of going to Florida, Ratso Rizzo-style) looks at his father sadly and declaims : "You know, when I was a kid I wanted to be a cop. Just like you..."]
THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE (63) (dir., Clare Peploe) Mira Sorvino, Ben Kingsley, Fiona Shaw, Jay Rodan, Rachael Stirling ["Twelfth Night" territory - Marivaux, actually - done in brisk and sprightly fashion, with a playful self-awareness one might call Greenaway-like if Greenaway didn't take himself so damn seriously. The tweaking of theatrical conventions - lifting the veil in deliberate gesture of it's-all-make-believe - is sometimes heavy-handed, notably the coda where the cast line up in modern-dress to take their bow (and a caption rather needlessly informs us that "The Triumph of Love" was first performed in Paris in 1732), but more often joyous and unforced, toying not so much with the material as our expectations, enfolding play and viewers in the same affectionate joke. The audience is everywhere, literally so in surreal glimpses of a watching crowd in between the action (the first such glimpse coming significantly on the line "I feel trapped" - for of course the characters are trapped within their assigned roles), metaphorically in the frequent shots of statues and gargoyles 'watching' the play and the way subtext often gets foregrounded, as if keeping one step ahead of the jaded viewer : homoerotic overtones in the heroine's disguise (as a man) are embraced so thoroughly it becomes a joke, hunky Rodan male-bonding so enthusiastically with his newfound 'friend' it's no wonder he looks crestfallen when it turns out 'he' is a she, just as Kingsley deliberately overplays the intellectual rescued by l'amour from the "cruel solitary confinement of your philosophy", pushing the Triumph of Love beyond old-fashioned romanticism to a form of blissed-out insanity. Slightly unnecessary, like most such attempts to 'update' a classic, and of course quite self-conscious, yet it's also true that the theme of head vs. heart comes into focus, because we're concentrating on the characters instead of worrying about the creaky theatrical mechanics ; light on its feet - flurries of jump-cuts each time Love gets the various swains in a tizzy - even Sorvino is impressive, and it manages to be sensual as well as clever (Bertolucci having obviously been quite a hands-on producer), starting in a rustle of clothes, close-up limbs and stifled giggles as heroine and her maid disrobe (prior to changing into men's attire) in the back of a cramped coach. Then the opening credits end, directorial credit apparently superimposed on the cart of the coach - and the coach rattles off, taking "Directed by Clare Peploe" along with it. How can you hate a film like that?...]
BETTY FISHER AND OTHER STORIES (72) (dir., Claude Miller) Sandrine Kiberlain, Nicole Garcia, Mathilde Seigner, Luck Mervil [Not a lot to say about this one, except it calls to (my) mind Sokurov's description of RUSSIAN ARK as "a film told in a single breath" - a fluid, compulsive series of seamless transitions, riveting from opening flashback (simmering violence subtly suggested via high-angle shot of woman and child in train carriage, seen through the glass as if by an intruder) to wry denouement, with all the selfish people - mother thinking only of her own fun, absent father putting his career over his son, exploitative toy-boy trying to take the money and run - getting suitably punished while the only person willing to devote herself to another gets a free pass (a fitting end to the film's constant theme, viz. that every life is contingent on others : solipsism isn't just unhealthy but downright naive). Garcia as a monster of selfishness - taking selfishness to the realm of psychosis - unsurprisingly kick-starts the plot, but no-one's allowed to overwhelm - it's all about patterns repeating (abused child becomes abusive parent) or else reversing, parts interlocking, events branching off or clicking together ; lacks the style of a MAGNOLIA, even lacks the icy control and mordant worldview one might have expected from the God's-eye plotting - needed a Chabrol, basically - but Miller has a wonderful jagged abruptness and respect for open-endedness. Tense, compelling, elegant, strongly-acted, finely-wrought, richer and fuller (and indeed more compassionate) than the Ruth Rendell starting-point ; just a really good movie, basically.]
COMEDY OF INNOCENCE (57) (dir., Raul Ruiz) Isabelle Huppert, Jeanne Balibar, Charles Berling, Edith Scob, Nils Hugon [Closest to Polanski, perhaps, straying into psychological unease with sudden weird images and ethereal la-la-la sounds - except that it never pretends to omniscience, or indeed to know what's going on ; explanations are offered and discredited, non sequiturs abound (e.g. the dice that come up 3-3-1 no matter how many times you roll them) and Edith Scob turns up as a magnificently "discreet" neighbour who may know everything or nothing. Most convincing way-in is perhaps the concept of child-as-camera - we see him wield a camcorder, rising periscope-like from under the table, and someone says of the kid that he's the "réalisateur" (creator, or of course film director) of everything that's going on, the plot being presumably his dream or fantasy ; then again, understanding isn't really the point here - more a case of low-key enjoyment, with amusingly deadpan performances around a central absurdist (not to say surrealist) mystery. Shame the King Solomon painting on the wall gets explained - "a bit too pertinent" for this tale of rival mothers, smiles Berling - but maybe it's all just a part of the film's perverse self-subversion. Isn't it great when big box-office stars agree to sign up for something so cryptic and bewildering? Thank God for French cinema...]