PARIS OCTOBER 2007: briefly noted

[Chris Knipp]

Nadine Labaki: Caramel (2007)

Local flavor

Caramel (Arabic title: Sukr banaat) is a Lebanese film with its own vernacular charm. It's as messy and disorganized as the echt bourgeois interiors and the ordinary, chummy hairdressing establishment that is the hub of the action. This is a woman's picture, a syrupy but perhaps fortunately disorganized comedy of the street and beauty salon. It slips around among subplots with nothing really central, uses sloppy jump cuts, doesn't tell much of a story. . . but there's one sweet lesbian, one aging would-be TV actress (Jamal (Gisele Aouad)) who keeps showing up for disastrous tryouts. There's a fiancee about to be married who's afraid the groom will discover she's not a virgin. (That's Nisrine: Yasmine Al Masri).) There's an old maid seamstress courted by a dignified, well turned out elderly chap. There's a handsome cop outside (Youssef, Adel Karam) who all the ladies have their eye on. Maybe a dye job can change your life; and the cop comes in for a "treatment" that involves trimming his eyebrows (that's what they use the caramel for, as a depilatory) and shaving off his mustache.

Layale (Labaki herself) has just broken up with someone. Stylist colleagues Rima (Joanna Moukarzel) and Nisrine (Yasmine Al Masri) commiserate. Rima gives very special facial massages to a beautiful lady (Siham Fatmeh Safa); it's those that are arousing her lesbian tendencies--but her manner and dress already give it away. Rose (Sihame Haddad) is the seamstress, whose efforts to open up to the courtly Charles (Dimitri Staneofski) are constantly thwarted by her annoying nutty sister Lili (Aziza Semaan).

Labaki, whose feature debut this is, has a background of videos and TV commercials. Perhaps the holdover from that is the preponderance of beautiful women. There's nothing slick and commercial about her movie, though. Something about this suggests Francois Dupeyron's charming 2005 Monsieur Ibrahim, where also there is much focus on the quartier and people are drifting and longing for love (or losing their virginity). There's a good, natural feeling about Carmel. Funny thing: all this happens in Beirut but you would never guess that was a place torn by civil war every other decade and recently bombed by Israel. Life goes on; caramel's still sticky; and women bond, whether they're Christian or Muslim. But let's face it: as flavorful as it is, and valid as a slice of Lebanese culture, Caramel is weakly structured, characters are superficial and too broadly drawn, and Labaki may not be invited to Cannes again for a while. Still, this is a rare artifact, and the women are easy on the eye.

Seen in Paris October 2007

[Chris Knipp]

Mia Hansen-Løve: Tout est pardonné (2007)

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Marie-Christine Friedrich and Victoire Rousseau in Tout est pardoné

Scenes from a failed marriage, failed life

This pan-European first feature focuses on people rather than dramatic events and concerns a Frenchman Victor (Paul Blain) married to an Austrian woman, Annette (Christine Friedrich). When we meet Victor and Annette they're living in Austria in close proximity to her large family, and they have a six-year-old daughter, Pamala (Victoire Rousseau). Take one look at Victor and the face says, lazy, hedonistic, dissolute, frustrated, angry--with a smiling, people-pleasing exterior. This is some great casting. Friedrich, on the other hand, simply seems one of those healthy, slightly stolid Nordic moms. Victor is a failed writer. His drug addiction is going to lead to heartbreak, and worse. Half the time she speaks to him in German and he answers in French. They aren't on quite the same wave length.

The couple moves to Paris, where Victor is no happier or more productive. Whatever Annette is doing, he's spending his days dabbling at writing and hanging out and his nights out getting high with Annette's knowing his whereabouts. His moods are not good and he's verbally and physically abusive. Eventually Annette wises up, gets angry herself, and goes off to Vienna for the holidays with Pamala. Victor seizes this opportunity to get further involved with his user girlfriend, Gisele (Olivia Ross), who teaches him to shoot up. Before long in this linear, but choppy narrative she's dead of an overdose. After a while he has a mental and physical breakdown (the time sequence always a bit vague, and winds up in a sanatorium.

An inter-title announces an interval of eleven years. Annette and Pamala are living in Paris again and part of a comfortable bourgeois French family; that is, the new husband is French. Victor is around somewhere too, rehabilitated, looking healthy enough, a bit better dressed, and working at some sort of job as a reader for a publishing house. Pamala of course is now a grownup girl (and played by Constance Rousseau, Victoire's older sister), and she wants to meet her father again after all these years. At first this goes well, with sincere feelings on both sides, and an exchange of letters that are read to us while Pamala is away on summer holiday. For Victor the meeting is hugely important but also a terrible reminder of all he might have done and might have been. It awakens bad memories, and the ultimate outcome is tragic.

The co-authors Hansen-Love and Clementine Schaeffer skip narrative collective tissue in telling their tale, nor do they necessarily include all the key moments to dramatize. Exactly how Victor gets into the sanatorium isn't dramatized, for instance, nor when he and Annette get divorced, and so on. There is a certain casual elegance in this, a simplicity, a naturalness with setting, a focus on conversation, but at times the progression is simply unclear. There is no effort made whatever to make Annette or Victor look any older in their scenes set over a decade later. Rousseau as the adult Pamala is not impressive. She seems just a conventional bourgeois girl reciting her lines. Annette's new French husband is a good posh bohemian Parisian. Annette has a comfortable job cataloging things at the Musee d'Orsay. All this is casually sketched in.

All is Forgiven is an elegant, artistic, if minimal production, with a spare, striking use of Scottish folk tunes and hand-held camera work. The acting by Blain and Friedrich is convincing. This first film is a sincere and creditable effort that promises quality work to come, but it does not overwhelm.

Part of the "Quinzaine des Realisateurs" (Directors' Fortnight) at Cannes 2007, shown at the semi-rep MK2 Hautefeuille in Paris, October 2007. The series also included Avant que j'oublie and Caramel as well as Control, Chop Shop, and Araki's Smiley Face.

[Chris Knipp]

Jacques Nolot: Avant que j'oublie/Before I forget (2007)

Drier than dry

Another Cannes 2007 Directors' Fortnight film, Jacques Nolot's latest continues a distinctive body of work in which an apparently dry, ironic, openly gay French point of view predominates. Nolot himself, a rather handsome Mediterranean type in his late fifties, stars as Pierre, a blocked writer, former gigolo, HIV-positive for 24 years (rather unusual), reveals himself starkly in dark opening scenes where he tosses and turns, vomits, and exhibits a sagging chest and protruding belly. (He still has all his hair and a tan and looks stylish in his clothes.) He pees into the sink and orders up a call boy for fellatio. All this is surprisingly elegant and even witty as the film progresses from conversation to conversation, cigarette to cigarette in a diaristic look at the artist as a jaded gay man who sees one friend who's maintained him for years die, another inherit a fortune in art work, and arranges at the end with a muscular gigolo to act out his wildest fantasy.

Pierre sees a shrink three times a week--a younger gay man who encourages him to go with younger gay men, believing it will give him a boost. Nolot is frank about his own sexuality, which seems to be of a well-off bourgeois kind, but he doesn't show gay society as we know it in America. Where are the gay parties, gay bars, gay couples, or even just gay support groups? The solidarity available to urban gay men in the US seems missing here, where French gays have full intellectual self-acceptance but don't seem to envision the possibility of a positive lifestyle--of political action, for example, longtime companionship, adoption (or fun?). Depressed coping is the rule of the day. To what extent is Nolet/Pierre's aloneness self-imposed? There is also a fascination with money, who has it, how to get it, how to keep it. One sequence given climactic position is of the auction where the big art collection is sold off.

Pierre talks about considering suicide. Life is a string of cigarettes, or cups of coffee taken with a world-weary air. Pierre copes, but he does not thrive. Where are life's enthusiasms? All in the past, it seems. He reads aloud a love letter from the Eighties with slightly tearful wistfulness. Lost perhaps in the hedonism of a vanished youth, he can't get a positive grip on the present, but won't let it go either. This is a very urbane and European treatment of a life that's been reduced to mechanical coping. But isn't it a bit of a pose, since Nolet has the energy to produce a distinctive sequence of works--to act in 65 films and direct four of his own--the 1986 Manege, the 1998 Arriere-Pays, the 2002 La Chatte a' deux tetes,/Porn Theater, which had limited US distribution; and this, which, "low-budget" or no, did cost 400,000 euros to make?

Seen at MK2 Hautefeuille, Paris, October 2007. Also featured at the even more arthouse-focused MK2 Beaubourg, where handsome large posters of Nolot's last three films are on display.

[Chris Knipp]

Jia Zhang-Ke: Still Life (2007)

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Offhand and astonishing

Though perhaps Stilil LIfe/Sanxia haoren (the Variety reviewer thought so) is indeed primarily for the Jia devotee or the festival-goer (it's already been awarded the Golden Lion at Venice) and certainly it's totally uncommercial, it's a lovely, hypnotic piece of work, another haunting picture of the vast creation, disruption, destruction that is modern China from that country's most exciting and original younger-generation filmmaker.

Three are layers of irony in the title, because in the incredibly turbulent, ceaselessly active events on screen in this world of life that is anything but "still," the most amazing images slip by without comment. A construction boss on a rampart one evening cell-phones a technician and says, "The VIP's are here. Why aren't the lights on? I'll count to three; then turn on. One, two, three. . . and a huge bridge and arch are suddenly illuminated behind him. One of the two estranged couples the film follows to tentative reunions is talking with a vast city behind them and in the background a big skyscraper suddenly, silently collapses. There is no comment. It just miraculously happens. In the final shot, amid the debris of the Three Gorges where the world's largest dam will eventually displace 1.4 million people, Han Sanming (non-actor Han Sanming's actual name), a mine worker who's come to find his wife and daughter, who left him sixteen years ago, stands looking out at the urban landscape and a trapeze artist is quietly walking across a tightrope between tall buildings. Again, no comment.

Han Sanming can't find his wife right away and her brother doesn't trust him at first, so he stays for months, working with the brother in demolition. A perky young fellow, who quotes John Wu star Chow Yun Fat and imitates Hong Kong gangster gestures, befriends Han Sanming and they put each other's numbers in their cell phones--a contemporary pledge of solidarity that has a sad sequel later. The young fellow, who could easily have been one of the lost, hopeful young men in Jia's 2002 Unknown Pleasures, is lost in a demolition accident and gets a sea burial like the one accorded to Johnny Depp's character in Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man.

Focused on the displacement of people for a vast industrial and engineering project, Still Life also contrasts classes--the humble working-class stiff who can make 50 yuan a day pulling down walls or 200 going down in a coal mine not knowing if he'll come back out, versus the handsome lady, Shen Hong (Zhao Tao) whose estranged building magnate husband she wants to divorce because she's found a younger man. She has options; Han Sanming is simply drifting and lonely. And in the background for both, though, is the enormous turbulence and activity in which we see both protagonists as tiny helpless figures, their own lives indeed "still life" by comparison.

There's another unexpected, astonishing sequence of a fat rock singer, naked from the waist up like most of the Three Gorges demolition workers Han Sanming encounters and drenched in sweat. He sings of nostalgia for his youth, a time when everybody was happy, and old men in the audience shed tears while garish go-go girls gyrate: where does this fit in? This is another symbol of social upheaval. But what is really happening? Won't Chinese society have to return to its heritage of Mao and the Eighties aftermath chronicled in another of Jia's unwieldy masterpieces, the 2000 Platform? Perhaps the titles Still Life ironically points to the way people are frozen in isolation (broken couples, estranged children) and unhappiness (or quiet desperation) in a China that all the rampant economic progress both masks and perpetuates.

After his colorful land pointed but somewhat leaden 2004 The World/Shijie Jia Zhang-Ke has shown again as in Platform and Unknown Pleasures that he can touch and astonish. The human events are dwarfed by capitalist Progress in the new China, but people (after all, they are a zillion of them there) are still very much in the foreground. Still Life is an impressive, organic-feeling movie that refers to Jia's earlier films but, extraordinarily, seems to bring together both post-war Italian neorealism and the desolate urban landscapes of Michelangelo Antonioni.

Seen at the MI2 Hautefeuille in Paris, October 21, 2007.

[Chris Knipp]

Jorge Duran: Proibido proibir (2007)

Academic meets practical in the streets of Rio

Jorge Duran's story of three university students in Rio may sound a little like a TV hospital drama, but its location in an authentic-feeling Brazilian environment and deeply committed acting by Caio Blat, Maria Flor, and Alexandre Rodrigues, as the three principals, make all the difference. What makes this a terrific film is the way it handles important social issues while engaging us with personal, amorous stuff. The momentum is powerful and the way things are going is never obvious in this passionate but never preachy story.

The politically disillusioned medical student Carlos (soulful Che Guevara-lookalike Caio Blat) is lazy and smokes too much dope, but when he correctly identifies the illness of Rosalina (Edyr de Castro) as leukemia while interning at University Hospital, he begins to develop an intense bond with this lovely middle-aged lady from the favelas and eventually goes out to discover how her two young sons are doing. Not well, it seems. Cops allied with local gangsters have killed one of the sons for trying to make a living as an independent street vendor. The other one, Cacao, a witness to the murder, has gone into hiding.

Carlos' best pal and roommate is a black sociology undergraduate from Sao Paolo named Leon (Alexandre Rodrigues) whom Letitia (Maria Flor), an architecture student, is deeply in love with. Leon is a happy, hard-working guy, who as Letitia says may not be the best looking but has the most charm of anybody around, and is at the top of his class as well. When Carlos eventually meets Letitia (which doesn't happen right away), there's chemistry neither can long ignore. Carlos attempts to keep up Rosalina's morale, while Leon inevitably learns about her and then about Cacao. Since Leon has had the same thing happen to his own brother and comes from a world of poverty himself, he inevitably becomes deeply involved in the project to save Cacao.

Dialogue early on shows Carlos once was a student leader but has given up on demonstrations and social reform, but his cynicism fades in the face of physical suffering.

Proibido proibir (also title of a Caetano Veloso song (http://www.casadobruxo.com.br/poesia/c/caetano27.htm ) --E' proibido proibir") or "(It's) forbidden to forbid," i.e., "everything is permitted, is Carlos' motto. It symbolizes his unwillingness to commit, or to be straight-laced in the interests of ideals. The film gets at a gut level sense of emotional values. Carlos and Leon truly love each other. But this undercuts our possible expectations of a menage a trois triangle of two boys and a girl. Leon and Carlos eventually both love Letitia, but their feeling for each other is a commitment to honesty and fairness. Carlos is deeply troubled by the idea of stealing away the girl of his best friend.

That becomes irrelevant but the three become more tightly entertwined than ever when Leon goes out and tries to get Cacao out of the favela and is attacked by the police himself and almost dies. Carlos saves him and the new focus is getting Leon to safety away from Rio. The confrontations during these later sequences are over Cacao, not the love triangle.

Proibido proibir vividly dramatizes the authenticity and vibrancy of Brazilian personalities along with the desperation of Brazilian poverty and the lingering death-squad tendencies of the cops in the favelas. A final scene symbolizes the attempt, passionate but perhaps doomed, of these three young people to rise above these overwhelming social issues. Wisely, Duran leaves things unresolved but doesn't settle for an easy pessimism either. Technically the film is smooth and seamless but unexceptional; Luis Abramo's cinematography however makes skillful and appropriate use of contrasting images of grand modern buildings and panoramic slums. There is also a vibrant soundtrack. Where the movie most excels, however, is in the supple writing, the vivid sense of place, and excellent acting, particularly by the appealing Blat. The Chilean-born, Brazilian resident Duran achieves some of the complexity of Cuaron's Y tu mama tambien in this engaging second film. It won prizes at five festivals focused on Latin American films in 2006 and is in limited release in France, October 2007. Great stuff--and it will be surprising not to see more of Cao Blat.

Seen in Paris at the MK2 Beaubourg October 25, 2007.

[Chris Knipp]

Idit Cebula: Deux vies plus une/Two Lives Plus One (2007)

Emmanuelle throws up

The French actress Emmanuelle Devos, who has graced films by Jacques Audiard and Arnaud Desplechin, among others, is so soulful and cinematic it's fun just to watch her smoke a cigarette (which she does a lot); smile; roll her big almond eyes; or put her head back and shake her lovely mane. I confess I am her devotee and slave. This little film does not disappoint as an arena for her many charms. But otherwise I'm afraid it's very, very thin stuff. In this blunted feminist comedy Ms. Devos is Eliane Weiss, an elementary school teacher of Jewish ancestry who--desperately bored with her conventional life--buys a laptop, explores her options as a writer using an old journal, and finds a young publisher to whom her jottings appeal. This upsets her husband, the silver-haired Sylvain (Gerard Darmon), surprises their grown daughter, Bella (Maea Riviere), turns her little life upside down, and eventually charms her extended family. But the whole thing seems a little ringard (old fashioned) in its plaintive approach to women's lib--as well as cliched in its version of the Jewish family gemutlichkeit, with the invasive, demanding mom, the Yiddish phrases, the crowded dinners--the whole schmear.

Gerard Darmon may have the put-upon look appropriate for the stereortypical protective husband in this kind of story--the kind of guy who's lost the minute his wife develops the least independence. He may even look Jewish. Bu he has an edge about him that is wasted away from a gangster flick. He was one of the colorful nasties in Beinix's classic, Diva and even though that was 64 movies ago for the active Darmon, I still kept expecting him to pull out a long knife and look at it and somebody's neck with a lover's gaze. As the young publisher, Michel Joanez has a stammering eagerness that's just this side of grating. Devos is called upon to go overboard a few times too. When she learns for sure that her collage-book's to be published for sure, she falls on the floor, then rushes to the W.C. and throws up lengthily. To do her credit, she manages to make this amusing (it's heard, not seen). But when a few thumbnail reviews say Agnes Jaoui could do no better, one wonders what Agnes Jaoui they've been watching. Pu-lease! This has none of the dry wit of Family Resenblances, The Taste of Others, or Look at Me.

What I like about Deux vies plus une (Two Lives Plus One) is the way it feels as if nothing is happening. The screenwriter (Cebula, presumably) is so laid back she's almost asleep, and it's nice for this kind of comedy to feel so unforced in that way. Despite the cliches, including a hoary father visited at a cemetary, the casualness does achieve a certain naturalism.

One would not want to say Ms. Devos is wasted. She is never wasted, because she turns her moments to gold. In the end Deux vies plus une, which Le Monde's reviewer called "terribly superficial and conventional," is, one may venture to say, too thinly plotted to provide material for a Hollywood remake. And that's a plus.

For a more interesting lightweight recent comedy featuring Devos, see, if you can find it, Sophie Filliere's whimsical Gentille/Good Girl (2005), which has a more interesting cast that includes Bruno Todeschini, Lambert Wilson, Michel Londsdale, and Bulle Ogier. Or go to the good stuff, which would include Desplechin's Esther Kahn, My Sex Life, and Kings and Queen, Audiard's Read My Lips and The Beat My Heart Skipped, and Frederic Fonteyne's Gille's Wife.

Seen at the MK2 Odeon in Paris, October 26, 2007.

[oscar jubis]

I like your review of Proibido Proibir very much (notice you misspelled it in the title of the review). This is one of the two outstanding films I watched at our Brasilian film festival (which now travels fom here to NYC and other places). Currently I have it listed at #8 (or 9) in a preliminary and tentative list of about 30 undistributed films I've seen this year that I've liked. It would be nice if our fellow Americans get a chance to watch it, but it's hard for films in Spanish or Portuguese to get distribution. Often the ones that get to our theaters are not the best. The other Brasilian film I really liked is called Bog of Beasts. It's darker and more adventurous than Proibido but more pessimistic in its worldview. I actually prefer Duran's film, but not by much.

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks. I figured you must have seen Proibido proibir but couldn't find your comment on it. I corrected the typo of PROIBIDO. Keep us posted on the availability of Bog of Beasts.

Can hardly find anything much of great interest to see among new French films in my remaining day and a half in Paris. In Rome next week, looks like I might get to see Coppola's new film Youth Without Youth or Roy Andersson's You, the Living-both showing at the same theater specializing in foreign and original soundtracks that's close to where I'm staying. (I saw The Wind That Shakes the Barley there last year.) Paris rep presentations can be quite interesting but limited in schedule and hard to get to. There were a couple I missed. I'm going to write about Alain Corneau's predictably disappointing remake Le deuxieme soufle/Second Wind (same story as Melville's '66 film) and may see a new comedy called Detronmpez-vous, which might be funny but has gotten very mediocre reviews here. Where are the good new French movies? Maybe coming later. Woody Allen's new one is eagerly awaited and Superbad is being well advertised.

[Chris Knipp]

Alain Corneau: Le deuxieme soufle (2007)

Out of wind

There's already a heavy legacy of polar noir, gangster films, in France. What's really left after Jean Gabin, Belmondo, Alain Delon, Jean-Pierre Melville? Of course the addictive detective novelist Georges Simenon wrote dozens and dozens of compelling novels. Bela Tarr just adapted one of the more obscure ones. And why not have a stab at it?

This movie shows you why not. The only thing justifying a director as known as Alain Corneau (Tous les matins du monde, with Depardieu and son; Fear and Trembling, with Sylvie Testud) being attached to it is that he got name actors, headed by Daniel Auteuil (in a little mustache that makes him look bloated) and Monica Bellucci (who'd look better here if she were blowsier and tackier and more soulful, as Simone Signoret was). This is the degeneration of a genre and a tradition that reached perfection in the Fifties and Sixties in France. Arguably French crime movies have succeeded better of late by following new American models, in slum-revolt stuff like Jean-Francois Richet's 1997 Ma 6-T va crack-er ("My City Is Going To Crack") or updated caper knockoffs like Florent Emilio Siri's 2002 Nid de guepes (Nest of Vipers). Todd McCarthy's Variety review of Corneau's new film says, "it will be a hard sell Stateside, where its style and substance will appear both out of step and out of date." Correct. Seen in Paris with a sparse middle-aged audience, it looked like a strictly local artifact.

I don't believe I've seen the 1966 Jean-Pierre Melville version of this Jose Giovanni novel about an escaped lifer who stages that one last big job to raise the money to leave the country. But after seeing the bargain basement Brian De Palma nightclub shootout in ugly, garish color that opens Corneau's new film, I kept thinking of the wonderful bank robbery that begins Melville's 1972 Un flic/A Cop. This garish look may be meant to echo recent US graphic novel celluloid; if so that's just another miscalculation. Where Melville was sparse understatement, Corneau's sequence is clumsy excess. It's preceded by an escape sequence featuring Auteuil as main character Gu (Gustave Minda) that is so brief it fails to establish context. The nightclub scene that blasts the opening away is so noisy it also overwhelms most of the action that follows.

Gu in Melville's version was played by Lino Ventura. He himself seemed always stolid and second rate, but in a brave, determined sort of way that was noir personified; and he shines in recent memory through the recent revival of Melville's resistence study, Army of Shadows. Auteuil has none of that inner-ness; he's pure bluster. Auteuil's perpetually uncomfortable look works well enough in a comedy like The Valet and My Best Friend. Michael Haneke used it brilliantly and on a far higher level in his 2005 Cache'. The look seems out of place in a gangster condemned to life who initiates one last big job--a desperate man of desperate courage. In Melville's version, Paul Meurisse plays Gu's adversary, the foxy Commissaire Blot. We also remember the wonderfully mournful-countenanced Meurice from Army of Shadows. Corneau uses Michel Blanc, a little bullish man with an annoying cockiness. Where is suave disdain when we need it?

The big robbery of some trucks that involves killing people (and more garish reds) is fairly effective, but is the kind of sequence that, as McCarthy noted, has been done many times before by a Hollywood that has moved on to other things. Corneau's staging has none of the kinetic energy of the warehouse robbery in Siri's Nest of Vipers (and even that was just able mimicry of recent American movies).

This is a Sixties story that keeps introducing Forties and Fifties cars. The sense of period is as shaky as the awareness of what's up-to-date.

Some of the French critics seem to have been impressed by the flashy colors and flamboyant acting of Corneau's remake. They are impressed by a roster of other actors with good recent track records that includes Jacques Dutronc, Eric Cantona, Philippe Nahon, Gilbert Melki, Jean-Paul Bonnaire--lots of reliable pros here. But that doesn't make this a good movie, or make up for the lack of chemistry between Auteuil and Bellucci. At two hours and thirty-five minutes, this is an albatross as well as a travesty.

(Le deuxieme soufle=Second Wind.)

Seen in Paris October 26, 2007 at the UGC Odeon.

[oscar jubis]

It may come as a surprise to some that the French make PROPORTIONATELY as much crap and pseudo-crap as Americans. There's a series here next month of 9 new French films (6 are American premieres). After much review, I plan to skip it altogether. There may be one ot two worth-watching films among the nine, but none truly worth my 2 hours and $12 when there's so much else to do and watch.

[Chris Knipp]

It may come as a surprise to some that the French make PROPORTIONATELY as much crap and pseudo-crap as Americans. No doubt about it, except that their crap isn't as loud and expensive, usually, as ours. I would say what I've seen at the two FSLC Rendez-Vous with French Cinema have been more interesting than the new French ones here opening currently, simply because they are a selectiion of new stuff over a longer period, maybe three months. But not a high proportion are masterpieces. Nobody's, no country's, are, there is always crap. You hve to watch and wait. But about three years ago here I had two weeks of really interestint stuff. It seems to be better in September. and the MK2 Beaubourg and Hautefeuille always has good special presentations--things not usually available in the US art houses, suich as Proibido proibir and Jia's Still Life.

[oscar jubis]

According to the French allocine, these are the best reviewed films released in France in 2007:
[list=1]
Tim Burton's NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS 3D
RATATOUILLE
PERSEPOLIS
THE SIMPSONS MOVIE
CONTROL
STARDUST
CARAMEL
THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM
ARTIC TALE
LE COEUR DES HOMMES 2
4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, 2 DAYS
A MIGHTY HEART
MY BROTHER IS AN ONLY CHILD
L'ENNEMI INTIME
[/LIST=1]

[Chris Knipp]

Yes, I know, and I've seen all the French ones but LE COEUR DES HOMMES 2, but that is a comedy sequel and probably not of much interest to us. I saw the mainstream French romantic comedy DETROMPEZ-VOUS last night and i will probably add that later but it's not very urgent.

What do I mean "all the French ones"?! Only two are French. That's not a very good sign, is it? But there are French art films that have been well reviewed, but are not popular. For example, two I've reviewed here:

Tout est pardonne/All Is Forgiven
and
Avant que j'oublie/Before I Forget

Showing at MK2 Hautefeuille (but not continually)


Le Deuxième souffle
Control
Tout est pardonné (Mia Hansen-Love)
Avant que j'oublie (Jacques Nolot)
Un homme perdu (Danielle Arbid)
Boarding gate (Olivier Assayas)
Syndromes and a Century (Joe the Thai guy)
Forest of Bliss (Robert Gardner 1986)
Les Climats (the Turkish one Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
Retribution (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

If I stuck around long enough I could see em all. Some of them look pretty sexy. Of course I have seen Control. That's another one to watch for. Also This Is England was showing here somewhere else and I think that was one of the best this year. released in the US anyway, though it has the date 2006 on it.

[Chris Knipp]

P.s. And the MK2 Beaubourg has a really long list of stuff showing in rotation, thirty to be exact, and some of those you would really like to catch. Two other new French ones worth seeing, but I' haven't been able to see them are La Question humaine and La Part animale. Look those up, I think you would find they sound interesting. I saw Ken Park there last year. They're still showing it.

[oscar jubis]

Tim Burton's film is the only one I've seen in 4 formats: 35mm in 1993, vhs about a year or two later, dvd around 2002, and digital 3D last year. I think, and I'm obviously not alone, it is a masterpiece. It's in theaters here for the second consecutive year.

I've seen CLIMATES. Very Good film.

LA QUESTION HUMAINE has a US distributor. No dates announced.

Weerasethakul's SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY opened in April, apparently only at NYC's IFC Center and it's not out on dvd yet. I cannot find an Asian dvd either.

I finally gave up and purchased a dvd of STILL LIFE. It's on its way from Hong Kong.

Looking forward to Assayas' BOARDING GATE

[Chris Knipp]

I saw Syndromes and a Century at the NYFF last year. Also Climates. Both definitely to be seen.

What do you mean "looking forward" to Boarding Gate? Is it coming to the US soon?

Glad to hear about Question Humaine.

As I said on the other thread I am in Rome now and got to see Coppola's somewhat peculiar new one, Youth without Youth, with original soundtrack, a rarity in Italy.

[oscar jubis]

Variety called it "a limp, sleazy inanity" and it's being compared with demonlover rather than Assayas' better films. But I'll watch it and make up my own mind. Every Assayas film after the excellent Cold Water (1994) has been distributed and this mostly English-language one already has a US distributor. No dates announced.

I hope to somehow get a chance to watch Weerasethakul's movie before February, when I make my best lists. Otherwise, I'll have to list it under "not seen yet". A list I like to keep very short.

[Chris Knipp]

I assume by IT you mean Assayas's new one. I thought at first you meant Coppola's. But the derogatory adjectives for the latter have been different.

[Chris Knipp]

Also in Rome got to see Roy Anderssonàs YOU THE LIVING, which was quite cool. Will post my updated reviews of other Paris and the two Rome viewings here shortly.

[oscar jubis]

Looking forward to those reviews, CK. Especially YOU, THE LIVING. It's the only film shown at the Toronto fest to receive a 5-star rating from Toronto's alternative paper, The Eye Weekly. But to be honest, I can't get too excited about the new film from the director of the good-not-great SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR.

I just watched the trailer for the Coppola film. It was so brief I couldn't form an impression. The feature was Ang Lee's LUST, CAUTION which is really good, unless one expects a "thriller" or something as devastatingly moving as his previous film. Review by Sunday.

[Chris Knipp]

I know nothing About SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR but from looking at J. Hoberman's review of it, I think I can see what you mean. Maybe he relaxed in this new one-anyway, you'll soon see what I have to say about it. Perhaps I liked the new one the more for not having seen anything else like it, which Andersson's earlier film perhaps is. Hoberman calls it "supremely crafted" but since you and he think as one, not surprisingly he didn't like it and seems to have reacted to it the way I do to that fey Canadian director, Guy Madden. YOU THE LIVING struck me quite differently, though.

[Chris Knipp]

Bruno Dega: Détrompez-Vous (2007)

Get smart: watch something else

Détrompez-Vous is a polished, sanitized French romantic comedy with François Cluzet and Alice Taglioni as Lionel and Lisa; Roschdy Zem and Mathilde Sagnier as Thomas and Carole. A certain gloss of American influence is evident in the indistinguishably comfortable apartments and nice clothes supplied to these two couples. Model-pretty Alice Taglioni is granted a Diane Keaton-esquire cute frumpiness (Annie Hall vintage), while M. Cluzot has an unmistakable Dustin Hoffman look. Taglioni is a children's book illustrator, Cluzot a gynecologist she visits. Detromper means get smart (or "undecieve") and Cluzot and Taglioni are the ones who wise up (sort of) after they learn Saginer and Zem, their respective mates, are involved in a hot affair. The question arises: is this sort of situation ripe material for comedy? Zem and Taglioni have a little girl and the other couple a little boy, which makes for a cute finale, after a series of episodes that are on the whole more ingenious than amusing. Zem's an engineer-architect; Sagnier seems to specialize in home-wrecking.

Avoiding any confrontation, the "undeceived" pair try surreptitiously to block their respective spouses' affair. The Diane Keaton stand-in takes to satisfying Zem orally before he goes out so he can't perform with the home-wrecker, and so on. Eventually Lionel and Lisa say, What the hell? If Thomas and Carole want to get it on, let them. Only the misused ones stage one last romantic holiday trip with their cheating spouses--by accident, wouldn't you know, at the very same rocky watering place--and this derails the affairs and the couples get back together to their original positions. Bourgeois stability is restored and nothing transgressive--or ultimately very funny--has happened.

The French press was not generous with this bauble. As one review pointed out, if the two betrayed spouses had simply confronted their mates about the infidelity, they'd never gotten involved in a series of time-wasting and twisted preventive measures--but there would have been no film. The bright look of the film and the smooth acting make our ninety minutes less painful than they might have been, but do little to engender sympathy for the characters or their machinations. A waste of everybody's time.

Seen in Paris October 28, 2007 at the UGC Danton.

[oscar jubis]

I decided I need to respond to "you and Hoberman think as one", which is perhaps a compliment but I need to qualify it. I learned of Hoberman and Rosenbaum at exactly the same time. I was browsing the Film section at Books and Books in 1983. Prominently displayed, a book with a picture of Henry, the protagonist of Eraserhead, on the cover. The book was Midnight Movies, co-written by H and R. I loved the book and I've been reading everything the authors have put out ever since. There are no film critics more knowledgeable and insightful than H and R. I always learn from them and that's why I mention them fairly frequently. They also have a global perspective rare among American critics (Lopate, and the much younger Kent Jones among those few). But I do have my disagreements with these illustrious gentlemen. I once conducted a personal survey of critics and found much more taste/opinion congruence with a lesser critic: Variety's Todd McCarthy.

Dega's film sounds like one to avoid.

I love Guy Maddin!

[Johann]

"fey Canadian director"?
What's not to like about Guy Maddin?
He worships Ken Anger, he makes bizarro arty films, he's awesome to me..

BTW, he has a blurb on the back of the DVD of The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes, a film I've seen 5 times now and still don't know how to talk about.

I saw Saura's Flamenco trilogy box at HMV today- looks great.
Gotta save more pennies...

[Chris Knipp]

I was just joshing you, Oscar. I know you don't think as one. You do often use his views and Rosenbaum's on particular movies as a point of reference, though. I might agree with you on Todd McCarthy too. I haven't checked, but I like how thorough and informative Variety's reviews are. One never agrees 100% with anybody on anything when taste is involved I guess.

I don't think Anger is fey Johann--he's gay but not fey--an important difference. IT's the feyness I can't abide in Madden. But he's Canadian and an original so you've got to line up with the dude. I love Saura's Flamenco and have watched and just listened to it repeatedly.

[Johann]

Isn't the feyness a good thing in this case?

Maddin is like Anger with a wink, but I'll readily acknowledge Anger as the better filmmaker. (And so would Maddin, I gather)

[Chris Knipp]

I just don't respond to Maddin, but I know he's a Canuck--with a wink.

[oscar jubis]

Volume 2 of THE FILMS OF KENNETH ANGER has just come out on Fantoma dvd. I'm on my third viewing of some of the offerings on Volume 1. They look much better than the scratchy 16 mm prints shown at cinematheques and art museums since the 60s. Every film has an audio commentary by Anger himself. I'm waiting for deepdiscount's end-of-year sale to purchase volume 2. I know I'll be pushing that repeat button on my remote when the disc is in my player.

[oscar jubis]

Chris, you did a good job reviewing Jia Zhang-Ke's [i]Still Life[i]. It would be among my top 5 undistributed films of 2007 but I won't list it as it's slated for a January 2008 release in the US. Without a doubt, one of the best films of 2008, I'd say.

[Chris Knipp]

I hope so.

[oscar jubis]

Caramel has now been released in the USA and I enjoyed it. It would be obvious to compare it to Steel Magnolias, Beauty Shop, and Venus Beauty Institute for thematic reasons. I think Caramel is better than those three, including the surprising Cesar winner for Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay (Venus Beauty Institute). However, your comparison to Monsieur Ibrahim is inspired and appropriate. I liked the handling of the relationship between the seamstress and the white-haired gentleman and the lesbian relationship more than anything. But this film is charming and assured throughout. Not much disagreement with you other than your characterization of the structure as "weak".

Strand Releasing will distribute Before I forget in the US and Canada.

[Chris Knipp]

Before I Forget is not for everyone. It's a very gay film. It's surprising to me that these two that I saw in Paris have gotten US distribution and Caramel has done very well with the reviewers. I would not have suspected. You may be right that France produces just as many mediocre movies as the USA, but in Paris as in NYC one can see a much more interesting array of films in regular, nice, commercial cinemas than one can in the rest of this country generally. Still Life and All Is Forgiven were two that were special limited showings also, like Before I Forget; Caramel was a regular scheduled showing. It looks like several others that I saw in Paris are going to get a US run--including Miller's A Secret.

[oscar jubis]

I'm going to check out PORN THEATER (netflix) by the director of Before I Forget before the latter comes to theaters. Have you seen it?

[Chris Knipp]

Yes, I have seen it. I thought it was strange and very low keyed. Definitely the same sensibility, but this new one is relatively brighter and more sociable.

[oscar jubis]

I watched Porn Theater and I am impressed. I know of three films set entirely in a theater and Nolot's came first. With porn increasingly something people watch at home, as opposed to a public space, Porn Theater has been characterized by a couple of critics as an homage to a kind of place or scene that is no more. I'm not so sure about that. I enjoyed the film as a sort of social anthropology. I found it particularly interesting in that I've never been to a porn theater, not even when I was young and they were all over the place. I like how Nolot alternates between the almost silent happenings inside the theater and the verbal interaction in and around the ticket booth. IGood script by Nolot himself, who's written for others, including Techine. I recognized him from his performances in Wild Reeds, among others. Porn Theater feels very authentic for several reasons, including the explicitness of some of the sex scenes. When cops raid the theater, one comments on the irony that the film being projected is a "straight sex" movie. Nolot carries the irony further by appropiating the French title of the film being shown. I wonder if filmgoers in France thought they'd be watching a "staright" movie. Nolot's debut, L'Arriere pays is reportedly autobiographical. I wonder if there are parallels between Nolot and the character he plays here: a middle-aged gay man who's been HIV+ for a long time and pretends to be married because he believes potential gay lovers find that "reassuring". Very much looking forward to his third feature.

[Chris Knipp]

Porn theaters played a much bigger role in gay than in straight life, and AIDS is the main reason for their demise, more than the arrival of video and DVD.

As you obviously know since you've researched all this better than I have, Nolot met Techine when studying drama (like I DON'T KISS's protagonist) and a long friendship and collaboration with acting roles in five Techine features and one short film followed. The short film is a chapter in Nolot's autobiography that comes after I DON'T KISS: LA MATIOUETTE OU L'ARRIERE-PAYS. I haven't seen it either.

The Techine that Nolot contributed most to the writing of is as you no doubt know I DON'T KISS, a story referring to the most important early period in Nolot's life, as BEFORE I FORGET refers to an important later chapter; the difference (a step forward?) is Nolot plays the autobiographical character in BEFORE I FORGET because the story is about a man his age; is contemporary with his present existence and that of his current friends, those of them who are still living.

In fact Nolot has acknowledged that BEFORE I FORGET is a "film a' clefs" with lots of guarded and not so guarded references to real people; to begin with the French film world is a small and incestuous one; but the diaristic process, in some ways therapeutic, is also a distancing; and the elegance of the filmmaking sets off the sordidness of the subject matter or locales.The finale of BEFORE I FORGET shows Pierre (Nolot) in drag entering a porno theater, thus returning to the scene of the previous film. There are interesting comments on this in "le blog de bernard alapetite" (in French) online. http://alapetite.canalblog.com/archives/2008/01/22/index.html

David Ng in the VOICE: "The original title of Jacques Nolot's Porn Theatre is La Chatte Ã* Deux Têtes (The Two-Headed Pussy)—a misleading appellation considering most of its lonely characters would prefer a nice, juicy cock." He points out that the question the cop asks, "Why don't these faggots see gay films?" is "left unanswered." Maybe it's so as not to get distracted from their cruising by what's happening on screen. Or maybe the straight porno houses in Paris were just bigger and better, if there even were gay ones. I don't know. I personally can attest to a familiarity with gay porno and a more limited familiarity with gay porn theaters, but no experience of the nether world of men's room or backroom gay sex with which some gay men, including Nolot, are conversant. Anyway, US reviews of this film don't go into any depth, not even Ng, despite his mentioning Tsai. The flat English title PORN THEATER, to begin with, is a blunt and literal reduction that's a bad lead-in to the film. THE TWO-HEADED PUSSY could mean varous things; the main relationships seem to revolve around a woman, the ticket seller.

Obviously though you don't mention the Asian film by name you like LA CHATTE A DEUX TETES for its harmony with Tsai Mind-liang's GOODBYE, DRAGON INN, which Ng does mention. I am so conventional as to prefer movies where things happen, and hence I would definitely rate BEFORE I FORGET higher and look forward to re-watching it eventually to delve into more of the implications and ironies of the conversations. I think more of the appeal of Nolot for the cinephile is that he's definitely the kind of filmmaker that's more for studying than casual watching.

[oscar jubis]

Interesting material on the Techine/Nolot connection. Hope both have long careers.

Indeed the other two films I know that take place entirely inside a theater are Lisandro Alonso's Fantasma and Tsai Ming Liang's Goodbye Dragon Inn. The latter had more of an impact on me that Porn Theater because of the mise-en-scene and the use long takes (a device used for the first time_or so my viewing would indicate_ in Kenji Mizoguchi's Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (1939) in which cuts are spaced as long as three minutes apart). Besides, Tsai's film mourns the end of the era of stand-alone, huge movie palaces. I was particularly moved by the premise of an old actor (Tien Mao playing himself just before he died) taking his grandson to the last screening at such a theater prior to demolition; a screening of King Hu's epic Dragon Inn, a landmark of Chinese cinema.

Your comment that Nolot is "the kind of filmmaker that's more for studying than casual watching" makes sense in general. However, I don't know that I personally can watch movies "casually".

[Chris Knipp]

Surely one can watch many movies without studying them, casually, though one may study them later. Some things crumble under analysis though. I understand your preference for and reasons for liking Goodbye, Dragon Inn. However both that and Nolot's La chatte a' deux tetes are a bit depressing and at the same time don't arouse maximum enthusiasm in me. I can see understanding Nolot, with "study," mainly meaning just seeing more of his films, better than I ever will Tsai Ming-liang.