Lambert & Huppert in "White Material"

"There can be only one..."

...01 / 01 / 11

How about that funky date today? Happy New Year.

The New Year couldn't come soon enough because I was informed yesterday that this blog had run out of storage space! The renovated site should be up in the next 36 hours to rescue us. I'll let you know.

Today's very special once in a hundred years date reminded me oof Highlander's Christopher Lambert.  On account of all the #1s.

"There can be only one!"

I assume this mnemonic moment was brought to me by Claire Denis's White Material which I was just watching the other day (in theaters and on IFC on demand) in which he plays Isabelle Huppert's ex-husband who -- I'm not sure if I got the details right because Denis always makes you work for them -- still lives on the African coffee plantation with her (and his new wife and his two wildly contrasted sons from both marriages).

It's crazy enough to live with your ex. When your ex is Isabelle Huppert (she's always trouble) and you're running a plantation in a region that's slipping into violent chaos and the French military are helicoptering out and dropping you survival kits on their way, you are totally off your gourd. Everyone in this movie is insane. But Huppert is contagious like that.

Lambert's presence is an extremely clever bit of casting since the international star already famously embodied everyone's favorite white-man-rules-Africa imperialist fantasy in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan Lord of the Apes. In White Material there is no fantasy unless you count the delirium one can sometimes experience when faced with Huppert's riveting confrontational opacity. You'd expect, given the plot, that her plantation owner Maria is a stubborn delusional but Huppert tilts her closer to the implacably deterministic. She isn't flaunting a death wish so much as a death expectation. Rebel forces and their child soldiers have had it with this "white material" on their land but Maria is staying put.  Disturbing movie.

"Manuel" (Nicholas Duvauchelle). Does he get his death wish from his mother?

I can't say I fully connected but I always love Denis's reliable command of atmosphere and I appreciated what Guy Lodge correctly described as "laudably complicated politics". I'm desperately awaiting Nick's full review because his twitter capsule

Agonized and fearless, eerily sympathetic, formally electric, like the last visions of someone being burned alive

...makes me love the movie more in retrospect than when I was watching it. That happens sometimes with the best of film criticism.

Box Office Blather: Spectacles, Star Vehicles, Subtitles and Easy $

Year in Review Pt 1 of Many
It's time to wrap up 2010. You'll have to have patience since The Film Experience likes to do this piecemeal... and often! Let's do it every day at 10 AM or 10 PM or both when we magically have free time. How about that? We'll start with the US box office.

Box office hits get much coverage in the media so let's just dispense that basic "smash hit" list quick-like and move on to more interesting less covered seat-filler topics. All figures on all lists are up until the December 18th. And please go easy on any errors as I am unskilled at math is not my strong suit.

Read more »

LFF 2010: Zero Hours Remain

David from Victim of the Time with one last report from the 54th BFI London Film Festival.

Craig gave you a packed wrap-up earlier today, but I couldn't let you go without getting in another word myself. I caught near to 50 films during the past month (give or take a couple I, er, nodded off during), and I'm happy to say there were an abundance of highs and a general lack of lows - maybe I just chose well, or maybe the programmers did. My standout film remains Kelly Reichardt's menacing Meek's Cutoff (review), while the festival practically brimmed over with stunning female performances, from Michelle Williams' two-hander in Meek's and Blue Valentine (capsule), to Jeong-hee Lee's damaged optimism in Poetry (Nat's review), to Lesley Manville's jittering sorrow in Another Year (capsule). Huge thanks to Nathaniel for hosting Craig and I, huge thanks to the festival for putting on such a great show, and huge thanks to you for reading.

For my final post, let's stick with the positivity, since the year's closing film proved a surprising package from a director I usually dislike...

127 Hours may give you a headache, but Aron Rolston had to hack his arm off, so maybe you I should stop complaining. Danny Boyle rather pre-empts the inevitable intensity of witnessing someone detach their arm with a blunt penknife by assaulting your senses from the very first moment; it’s all split screens, fast edits, impossible pans from inside kitchen units, close ups of taps dripping, and so forth. This is all rather disorientating and it barely lets up, but the film is enclosed in some vague, meaningless allusion to the speed of modern life with shots of commuters that resemble Koyaanisqatsi, and so the headrush of Boyle’s direction is a very straightforward interpretation of living in Rolston’s world. Once he gets trapped in the crevice, these stylisations barrage instead into his mind, continually taking us on flights of delirious imagination and memory.

Read more »

LFF 2010: And It Hurts With Every... Cannon

David from Victim of the Time, reporting from the 54th BFI London Film Festival.

I've been engrossed in this festival for so long now, it already feels like it's winding down; in fact, there's another week to go, with Danny Boyle's 127 Hours the closing night gala next Thursday evening. Perhaps my feeling comes from the fact that my most anticipated film is just around the corner: yes, I too fell under the spell of the Black Swan trailer, and it hits my eyeballs tomorrow. I'm at fever pitch. Today, though, we visit Italia and Quebec, but not before a British perennial delivers once again...


Lesley Manville.

I realise I have a tendency to waffle, so I thought I’d get straight to the point.

I had my problems with Another Year, but, as you’ve heard (and heard, and heard), Lesley Manville is absolutely superb in it. I’d heard that too, but it still didn’t prepare me for the density and devastation mustered by Manville in this character. Manville’s Mary is so magnificently imagined that, despite Leigh’s insistence in the post-screening Q&A that what you see is what was shot, and nothing more, there is the strong suspicion that the film shifted during its realisation to centralise on her. (Echoed by this review – I didn’t set out to focus it so immediately, but it felt honest to do so.)

Perhaps it's reductive to talk solely of Manville. The rest of the cast, from the connecting contentedness of Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen to the chirpy Karina Fernandez, give assured performances just the same, and surely only boost Manville’s power through Leigh’s famous workshopping process. The cinematography expressively, if rather obviously, differentiates the seasons the film shifts through. The editing is extremely deft within the restraints of Leigh’s improvisational approach, notably giving a sparky energy to scenes like Broadbent and Sheen’s first meeting with their son’s new girlfriend that contrast with the more sober, gentler feel of much of the film. But I can’t escape that it is Manville, her mousey, skittish walk, her nervous, misdirected laughter and her sad, defeated glances that are what struck me most heavily, and what continue to live mostly strong in my head. (B+)

If only he wasn’t gay! That seems to be the central lamentation of Ferzan Ozpetek’s dunderheadly jaunty Loose Cannons, which doesn’t just have one gay son of a traditional Italian pasta-making family to pretend to support; it has two! Oh yes; before Tomasso (Riccardo Scamarcio) can make his shocking announcement, his brother Antonio taps his glass and is promptly thrown out, leaving Tomasso to run the business and suffer suggestions he should get it on with the business partner’s daughter Alba. Of course, with its longing musical montages of the pair drinking, eating and laughing together, you could be forgiven for thinking the film is even more desperate for the heterosexual harmony than Tomasso’s oddball family are – even when Tomasso’s boyfriend Marco and their camp friends crash the… well, you can hardly call it a party. Framed with a seemingly irrelevant flashback device involving the wise, accepting grandmother, the unexpectedly poignant finale almost redeems things by not tying up every loose end in a neat little farfalle, but it can’t erase the tiresome, laboured schematics of what precedes it. (C-)


I confess. I have a weakness for young, attractive French people giving themselves over entirely to their lustful urges. Xavier Dolan himself is a young and attractive Canadian person, but he’s from Quebec, and I do believe that’s included in Subsection 1B of my confession. After his vaunted J’ai tue ma mere, Dolan again directs himself in Les amours imaginaires (feel free to explain the disastrous English title, Heartbeats). Dolan’s style boldly cribs from Wong Kar-wai – they may not be accompanied by In the Mood for Love’s striking musical theme, but you can almost see a pot of noodles swinging from the hand as we follow a posterior in slow-motion down the street. Dolan doesn’t merely copy but adapts the techniques he apes, sexualising the characters in saturated single-colour sex scenes; but there’s also a sense of irony and pity in the fierce emphasis on the desperation of the two friends both in lust with the same man. Dolan consumes you in sensuality and focuses you on the mistrustful dynamics of love, so that while you might not match the lust for the particular figure, you lust for this mood in general. It isn’t about liking these characters – the sneering ending makes that clear – but about identifying with how low these familiar feelings have made them, and can, have, and will make you. (B) [edited from full review]

LFF: Picco an Oscar Nominee

David of Victim of the Time reporting from the 54th BFI London Film Festival.

I'd like to stick some exciting star sightings into my little introduction here, but sadly the only famous body part I've laid eyes on (so far) is Freida Pinto's head. Before we get to the enticing capsules -two starkly different Foreign Film Oscar contenders and one harrowing prison drama that trumps them both - a bit on one of the highlights so far:

Meek’s Cutoff feels like the natural evolution of Reichardt’s attitude towards her filmmaking – it is broader than but not indistinct from her previous films, an experiment in how starkly different elements (of plot, of acting, of character) can be understood in the low-key shooting style many admire her for.

More on Meek's here.

Now about that harrowing prison drama... 

It’s part of the festival experience to overload your schedule, and as a result, you sometimes find yourself barely focusing on what you’re watching because you’ve run straight from something that’s rooted itself in your head. And so it was, as I sat watching a film about ye olde French aristocracy besotted with a square-faced princess, that I spent at least half an hour musing instead on Picco. The title comes from German slang for the newest inmate, and Picco dwells entirely in a youth prison. It's inspired by a startling real life incident. First-time director Michael Koch makes oppressive use of tracking shots, circular pans, low angles and square framings to emphasise the trapped, limited existence, cemented by a more subtle use of sound to separate the youths both in sync with and against the image. Slowly but surely, as our ‘picco’ Kevin (Constantin von Jascheroff) becomes more acclimatised to prison life, Koch tightens his focus onto the film’s formidably gripping centrepiece. He coats the film with a dreadful inevitability, providing a naked, uncompromising view of people who, by their own bitter admission, are “all fucked”. (A-)


“I have no one else, anywhere,” says one of the Cistercian monks explaning why he has no reason to abandon the monastery. ‘But what about God?,’ might be the obviously facetious question. But France's Oscar submission Of Gods and Men is really about the struggle between men. The godly presence remains left unquestioned, present only in the ceremonious prayer sessions that are viewed like the clockwork mechanism they are. The kinship the film focuses on is the monks’ brotherly bond, tested in the face of confrontations with the violent fundamentalists in the North African region where they live. We see that the tension isn’t an inherently cultural one through the interactions between the monks and the locals, particularly Michael Lonsdale’s medic and his affectionate patients. Instead, Of Gods and Men questions where religion fits in a violent world, especially one where the violence is religiously motivated (the fundamentalists leave, quietly, on hearing the sacredness of the Christmas Day they have interrupted). But the brief moments outside the monastery don’t seem to exist for more than surface examples – of how the monks are accepted, or the stark violence of the fundamentalists – and the tone is, inevitably, deliberately monastic. Only in a dramatic sequence at the dinner table do we really muster any deep connection to these characters, and it runs the risk here of being done so baldly it only narrowly avoids tipping the scales in the other direction. Finally, despite the technical skill and delicate performances, you feel you would have been just have moved by reading the plot on a piece of paper. (C+)

On the other end of the spectrum completely, and not getting near Oscar with a ten foot altar cross, The Temptation of St. Tony is a twisted, darkly beautiful and morbidly funny piece of Estonian esoterica, shifting unpredictably between bourgeois Buñuelian absurdism and eccentrically dark Lynchian setpieces. A plot is dissected and strewn across the film, though we start out in fairly clear territory as Tony (a deadpan, bewildered Taavi Eelmaa), a factory middle manager, wilfully engages in a midlife crisis after the death of his father. Dinner parties devolve into drunken madness where swinging is a lifestyle, he chases a beautiful but impoverished woman into the darkness of a baroque underground, and a dead dog is dragged across an ice plain. Director Veiko Õunpuu acknowledges his debts – thanking Buñuel and Pasolini in the end credits – but there’s a uniqueness to this nightmarish comedy, making inscruitable comments on the politics, history and socio-economics of its environment and twisting the Eastern European atmosphere to deepen both the hilarity and the tension. Add a delectably discordant sound mix and you have an affront to the senses, but it tickles each one in just the right way. (B+)

NYFF Finale: 7 Word Reviews (Meek's Cutoff, Another Year, Hereafter, More...)

Oh readers. What to do with me? I'm always falling behind. In an effort to acknowledge that NYFF ended this weekend, and fall prestige/early campaign season is already upon us (Toy Story 3 event tonight!), here's everything I saw at the NYFF. I got sick right in the middle so I missed a handful I wanted to see. The films are presented in the order I saw with a brief description and a 7 Word Review. For now.  Surely I'll find time to say something more about two or three of these later. If you've wondered why I've been posting 2 grades for each movie I see lately, it's because it's my current grade (bold) plus the grade I could be talked into / might end up with when all is said and done.

Poetry & Oki's Movie (South Korea) |  Tuesday After Christmas (Romania)

Poetry full review A-/A 

Oki's Movie
A filmmaker recounts a romantic affair and professional entanglements.
7WR: Funny. Repetitive. Aggressively unwilling to engage visually. C/C-



Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives full review B+/B

Tuesday After Christmas
A Romanian man loves two women. Must choose.
7WR: Love Wrecked! Incisive, naturalistic gem. Pitch-perfect ending. B/B+

 The Robber (Germany/Austria) | My Joy (Ukraine) | Certified Copy (Various)

The Robber & My Joy
The Robber: an ex-con trains for long distance runs but continues his life of crime.
My Joy: a truck driver gets lost on dangerous allegorical roads.
7WR (x2): Virtuosic filmmaking but autistic experience. Couldn't connect.
Grade? Depends on what we're grading. This is when Nick's VOR would come in handy as both films strike me as worthy sees for commited cinephiles. But they're almost impossible to enjoy because they're so emotionally deficient or at least tonally limited to entirely nihilistic worldviews.

 Certified Copy
The English author of a book on the worth of artistic forgeries, tours Italy with a beautiful married French stranger (Binoche!).
7WR: Transcends its fun intellectual gimmick. Beautifully acted. B+/A-

Of Gods and Men
French monks living peacefully in a Muslim village are warned to leave when terrorists arrive.
7WR: Despite vibrant emotional pulses, touch too sedate. B/B+

The Social Network previous articles A-/A

 We Are What We Are (Mexico) | Another Year (UK) | Meek's Cutoff (USA)

We Are What We Are
A poor Mexican family struggles to keep their "rituals" alive after the father dies in this gruesome horror film.
7WR: Thematically obvious/clumsy but compulsively, masochistically watchable B-/C+

Tempest
Julie Taymor adapts Shakespeare's shipwrecks & sorcery play.
7WR: Muddy everything: ideas, sound, performance. Visual tourettes. D-/F

Another Year
Mike Leigh! A long married couple in England are surrounded by needy friends in four seasonal vignettes.
7WR: Blissful troupe rapport, comic beats. Weirdly judgmental. B+/B

Meek's Cutoff
Three families in covered wagons get lost in Indian country. They're running out of water.
7WR: Western From Another Planet but mysteriously confident. B/B+

Hereafter
A French woman experiences near death. A British boy copes with grief. An American psychic resists his gift.
7WR: Mawkishly moving but stiff, disjointed, weak storytelling. C-/D+


The Social Network used the fest as its world premiere and then promptly opened to great acclaim and presumptively leggy box office. Otherwise you're going to have to wait until 2011 for these films, apart from two: Hereafter (Oct 22nd) and The Tempest (Dec 10th)... unless you want to count Another Year but New Year's Eve releases are soooo next year if you ask us.

Kristin Scott Thomas Wanted Tilda's Role in "Burn After Reading"

The latest issue of French Premiere has hit the newsstands 'cross the Ocean. It's a big Harry Potter issue with new photos and such but if you look at the top left hand headline you can see the hallowed name of Kristin Scott Thomas, one of the few British acting giants that didn't teach at Hogwarts. Kristin has lately been headlining French films like Leaving (now in theaters) and, of course, I've Loved You So Long a couple years back. 

I had the pleasure of interviewing her a couple of years ago and she struck me as surprisingly unguarded and honest about her career ups and down. Premiere asked her if she ever watches movies and wishes she had played that role. "Of course, all the time" she answered (!) and then some.

Les rôles de garçon, surtout. Il y a aussi Burn After Reading des frères Coen, dans lequel je voulais tourner, mais ils ont préféré prendre Tilda Swinton. Et je suis aussi très fâchée contre Stephen Frears, parce qu’il ne m’a pas proposé le rôle de la femme de l’écrivain dans Tamara Drewe. Tamsin Greig est formidable, mais quand j’ai vu le film, je n’ai pas pu m’empêcher d’aller voir Stephen pour lui demander pourquoi il n’avait pas pensé à moi. Je rêve de tourner avec lui et il le sait très bien !

 Kristin Scott Thomas and two roles she wanted to play.

My french is of the high school variety but basically she's jealous of the men's roles first and foremost. She also alludes to having auditioned for the Tilda Swinton role in Burn After Reading but the Coen Brothers preferred Tilda. I heart Tilda but I could totally see KST barking orders at George Clooney and John Malkovich while chopping carrots or driving through DC, can't you? She also approached Stephen Frears after seeing Tamara Drewe. 'Why hadn't he thought of her for the role played by Tamsin Greig?'

About the Oscar loss (The English Patient) and the snub for I've Loved You So Long, she has this to say.

Un jour, quand j’aurai 95 ans, ils m’amèneront sur scène et me donneront un prix pour l’ensemble de ma carrière. Mais je n’ai pas vraiment besoin de récompenses. De toute façon, je ne gagne jamais rien, ni loto, ni tombola, ni Oscars.

This is something humorous along the lines of  'I never win anything -- lottery, Oscar -- but I don't need awards.' Maybe when she's 95, they'll bring her up on stage for career honors?

 Kristin and Sergí Lopez in Leaving (Partir)

Kristin Scott Thomas is still inarguably vivid onscreen at 50 and what's more she's still erotically viable, too. Leaving is full of randy sex scenes with Sergi Lopez but my favorite moment in the film is one where her husband (played by Yvan Attal, Charlotte Gainsbourg's real-life man), who has learned of her affair verbally assaults her marking her "sluttish grin" and comparing her to a cat in heat. The moment, which is nasty but unfortunately relatable (given the outright flaunting of her affair), wouldn't work half as well if you hadn't already marked how much she's abandoned herself to desire.

One hopes more directors and casting directors start to notice how well she's maintained her particular screen magic. Maybe her role in Nowhere Boy, in which she's typically excellent playing the key role of John Lennon's (Aaron Johnson) disciplinarian aunt can remind them what they're missing when they don't consider her for the meaty parts. If that pre-fame Beatles biopic takes off at all, it's easy to imagine Oscar traction for her role in Best Supporting Actress.

Can you imagine her in Tilda's Burn role? Do you plan to see Nowhere Boy?
*

The Foreign Film Oscar Race: So Much (International) Drama

But first things first. If German's popular drama When We Leave is nominated and wins, can the actress Sibel Kekilli please -- pretty pretty please -- repeat her barefoot acceptance/sit- in from Germany's Film Awards this past April? That'd be so sweet.


Oscar night thrives on weird surprises and they get so few. Sibel to the rescue. (I'm aware that Actresses don't accept Best Foreign Film Statues but let me dream!) I've only seen her in Head On but found her just riveting to watch onscreen and I've heard only good things about her performance in this particular movie. Will it be a nominee?

[tangent] Helpful hint: If you ever search for pictures of her online, makes sure to have you "safesearch" filters on though. I'm just saying. Is she now, quite literally, the best/most acclaimed actress to have ever started in the most disreputable form of acting? She was once Amber Waves and now she's Julianne Moore if you catch my drift. I'm trying to avoid spelling it out because I woke up this morning with an intense fear of spambot comments. But my point is this: Well done! She's now a two-time German Oscar winner. [/tangent]


Good luck to Sibel this season.

Click on the links below to go to pages with lots of info about the submitted films. And a big round of applause to The Film Experience's faithful international readership who have been helping track this journey each year since long before every movie site regurgitated each announcement in the 24 hour news cycle. Cinema is a global language and you rock.

Algeria to France

• Algeria. Outside the Law
• Austria. La Pivellina
• Azerbaijan. The Precinct
• Brazil
• Croatia. The Blacks
• Estonia. The Temptation of St. Tony
• Finland. Steam of Life (there's always at least one documentary submitted though none have ever been nominated)
  
• France. Of Gods and Men
  ...and let us break here for a moment to enjoy the beauty of silver fox Lambert Wilson, an actor/model/singer who we've always loved to look at whether that was in French movies, Calvin Klein Eternity ads or even during his stint as Evil Eurotrash Baddie in terrible Hollywood movies (Catwoman, The Matrix Revolution, etcetera)
  
  
  You're welcome.
  
  Oh and here he is with one of his Of Gods and Men co-star and his director. He's as kissy as Jeremy Renner is huggy!
  
  
  

We wish Lambert and especially France luck. Even though French cinema is the most frequently nominated, they haven't won the Foreign Language Oscar since Indochine (1992). Isn't that crazy? Major players Argentina, Denmark and The Czech Republic --countries that have won multiple times -- have yet to announce.

Germany to The Netherlands

• Greece. Dogtooth
• Hungary. Bibliothèque Pascal
• Iraq. Son of Babylon
• Israel. (The Ophir awards are almost here so we'll know soon. They'll send the Best Picture winner which we suspect will be Intimate Grammar)
  
• Japan. Confessions by Tetsuya Nakashima.
  ...and let us break here for a moment to watch the unsettling operatic trailer. I can't imagine Oscar voters responding to something this stylized but you never know. And I do respect the countries that just submit what they love most / deem best rather than worrying about Oscar's particular and sometimes disappointingly narrow aesthetic.
  
  
  
  Creepy odd and loud but doesn't it look highly watchable?
  
  
• Mexico - long list announced. We suspect they'll choose Biutiful on account of the Oscar pull of its team (Gonzalez Innaritu + Bardem). That said, countries don't always choose in a Bait-focused way so we can't guarantee it.
  
• The Netherlands. Tirza
  

Frequently nominated players Italy and Israel have yet to announce. Hong Kong is also up in the air. What will they choose?

Norway to Venezuela

• Peru. Undertow (Contracorriente) my review
• Poland. All That I Love
• Romania. If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle
• Russia. The Edge
  ...and let us break here for a moment to ponder how much Vladimir Mashkov looks like a superhero on his movie poster. Actually the movie poster itself suggests a steampunk adventure or maybe a sci-fi superhero movie. What powers does "The Edge" have?
  
  
  Actually it's a post World War II drama (as in immediately following the war) about a man who loves speeding locomotives or some such. I can't find an official site though, damnit. Readers outside of Russia, might recognize Vladimir from films like Behind Enemy Lines (2001) or TV series like Alias.
  
  
• Slovakia. The Border
• South Africa. Life, Above All
• South Korea. A Barefoot Dream
  
• Spain. They've narrowed it down to three films. I suspect it'll be prison drama Celda 211 which was big at the Goyas.
• Switzerland. La Petite Chambre
• Sweden. Simple Simon (previously discussed)
  
• Taiwan. Monga (previously discussed)
• Thailand. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
• Turkey. Honey (Bal)
• Venezuela. Hermano
  

As always your input and comments are welcome. Which of these films are you most curious about? Have you seen any of the films. Do you like your countries choice?

Oscar Nomination Prediction Index

Venice Red Carpet: The Town, Potiche, Meek's Cutoff

Toronto kicked off last night but before we get to our coverage there -- we'll be hearing from the same folks who covered Toronto for The Film Experience last year -- Venice is starting to wrap up. Awards will be announced before you know it.

The most 'Hollywood' Venice premiere was probably The Town which brought out the happy familiar faces of Ben Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jon Hamm and last year's Best Actor nominee Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker).


Is it just me or is it always a bit odd to see Jon Hamm smiling? He's smiling so much lately and with that career you'd be smiling too. But it's so UnDraper! These townies had prophetic reason to be happy. Reviews were kind. Here's a sampling:

• Cinema Blend "bigger by nearly every measure" [than Gone Baby Gone]
  
• Newsweek "Affleck’s heist movie is part of a career turnaround so amazing that he looks like the new Clint Eastwood"

One of the most exciting things for cinephiles about film festivals is that they tend to be more auteur-focused than any other movie event.

Tykwer, Miike, Ozon and Guadagino

Tom Tykwer was promoting his latest Drei, a film about a bisexual love triangle between a long time couple and the man they both fall for (unbeknownst to each other). Obsessed With Film called it "punchy and inventive" but wasn't completely bowled over. Tykwer has yet to recapture the type of international enthusiasm that greeted his breakthrough Run Lola Run (1998) but every few years or so we get another good looking movie like Perfume or The International.

Takashi Miike makes a new movie as often as I write a blog post. At least it seems that way. He's twice or thrice as prolific as Woody Allen. The man behind violent sensations like Audition and Ichi the Killer (and many others with less staying power) was premiering 13 Assassins.

François Ozon is one of the best directors of eye candy movies in the world with a gorgeous filmography that includes 8 Women, Water Drops on Burning Rocks and 5x2 among other gems. He's also sweet to look at offscreen. I'm just saying. The gay auteur was in Venice to premiere Potiche, his latest confection starring a starry buffet for hungry francophiles: Catherine Deneuve, Karin Viard, Sergi Lopez, Gerard Depardieu, Judith Godreche among others. Yum yum. Ultimate Addict was totally entertained citing its "snappy, hilarious dialogue" and calling Deneuve "a joy to watch" though you can cut and paste that description into every Deneuve review, n'est-ce pas?

Luca Guadagnino, Tilda's I Am Love director was also in town. He's on Tarantino's competition jury. I include him because I am nuts for I Am Love and his proposed Auntie Mame remake with Tilda in the lead is the greatest movie ever made that doesn't actually exist yet. Ohmygod I want to see that like three years ago. Please make it. If only I were a multi-millionaire and could fund the project myself. This is why I should have been born rich instead of poor. I could have supported so many worthwhile creative endeavors. (Sigh)

Michelle, Tilda, Paz and the immortal Deneuve

But we mustn't forget the actresses beautifying the red carpet.

Michelle Williams is sharing a closet with Carey Mulligan? They're like twin pixie fashionistas. Michelle was in town for her role as Kelly Reichardt's (Wendy & Lucy) main muse, this time in the western Meek's Cutoff.

• Time Out London "just as rich, nuanced, mysterious and low key as anything she's made."
• Guardian "far from action packed, but still gripping."
  

Tilda Swinton appears magically wherever there are A list festivals. It's a rule of the cinema nature ...a benevolent one, too.

Paz Vega. Remember her? Would Spanglish jog your memory or have you tried to forget it?
She's in town with the Italian drama Vallanzasca.

Anyway... we could do this all day. But the question is now who will take the prizes from Tarantino's jury? Guy Lodge has predictions. Will Natalie Portman's psycho ballerina win her the Best Actress prize? Will a non-English language picture rise to the top, forcing the media to note that not all movies are from Hollywood? Venice pulls the curtains closed tomorrow.

Modern Maestros: Catherine Breillat

Robert here, with another entry in my series about great contemporary directors.

Maestro: Catherine Breillat
Known For: movies about sex
Influences: Chantal Akerman, Bertolucci
Masterpieces: Fat Girl
Disasters: Yes there are some films of hers that are disasters, perhaps Anatomy of Hell most of all. But you can't make an omelet...
Better than you remember: Fat Girl, The Last Mistress and Bluebeard (which conveniently will be the subjects of this post) are the good ones
Box Office: 1999's Romance broke a million.
Favorite Actor: Has made three films with actress Roxane Mesquida

Sex is complicated. In general, as a society we've decided to react to this by compartmentalizing sexuality into concepts that are easier to understand. There's the obscene or pornographic, the safe and loving, the dangerous, the forbidden, the passionate and so on in ways that seem to attach each separate sexual experience to a single emotion. Movies reflect this and create narratives around it. Virginity is to be kept by girls, lost by boys, sex without love is ultimately unfulfilling, desires often doom us. I don't mean to suggest that we're still stuck in a world defined by Victorian morality. We've come a great ways since then. But still, a happy ending usually means a wedding, not an orgy, because quite frankly we're not comfortable rooting for characters for whom an orgy would be a happy ending (and you might already be considering me some kind of pervert for suggesting it could be a happy ending). Catherine Breillat wants to tear all that down with a wrecking ball. Her films constantly seek to redefine our comfort levels, and demand that we question our preconceived notions about what a character's sexuality says about them.

Many of Breillat's films are sexually explicit, or at least explicitly sexual. Films that attack such subjects with such explicitness traditionally yield mixed results. Sometimes the audience becomes distracted by their prurient or prude sensibilities, sometimes the film gets distracted by it's own desire to shock. In other words, sometimes it's our fault and sometimes it's theirs. Breillat may have been doomed to forever have been "That French woman who makes movies with porn in them. Whatever." had she not broke through with 2001's Fat Girl. Consider the challenges issued by the film's plot. (Fat) Anais and her (pretty) sister Elena both dream about the loss of their virginity (could an American film pull this off without painting them as "tramps" or "troubled"?). Elena wants her first lover to love her. Anais wants anything but. When the movie ends, only Anais has gotten what she wants in the most foul way possible. Yet we the viewers can't really accept that her wishes have been filled. It's not possible. Why couldn't she have wanted love? We'd have been comfortable with that!

Since then, Breillat has put out two more great films. 2007's The Last Mistress in which Breillat utilizes a period piece to ponder how our misguided instinct to paint the sexually adventurous woman (brilliantly cast, wonderfully portrayed, thank you Asia Argento) into a devilish caricature still persists, and 2009's Bluebeard, in which the classic fairy tale is updated to make the murderous title character into a pretty lonely guy and his innocent bride into a rather petulant child. Each time she demands the audience ask of themselves: Who is the sinner? Who is the saint? Who deserves love and who deserves the consequences of their actions? The questions, seemingly endless are difficult and if you like difficult questions (and sex) you're bound to like Breillat's films. If not, you may find yourself happily retreating back into a world of simple sexuality, where sex for love is the ultimate goal, sex for lust is a forbidden but understandable diversion and people's sex lives remain properly hidden between their sheets. But Catherine Breillat will not be in that world, not unless she's swinging a wrecking ball.
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The Wildest

Mais non, Isabelle. C'est toi.
*Isabelle Huppert

MM@M: Jean "Peggy" Seberg

Mad Men at the Movies In this series we discuss the film references on Mad Men. And now for Season 4 we're also discussing the show in general. Previously: Live From Times Square, 60s Box Office Queens, Catherine Deneuve and...Gamera?

Episode 4.4 "The Rejected"
In this episode Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) faces both personal joy and career drama and combines them in cunning fashion. He sure is a 'high WASP'. Don's secretary Alison gets a smashingly played exit scene (goodbye Alexa Alemanni. We hardly knew ye. But we liked what we knew. Pssst Mad Men will work wonders on your reel. You were great.) And Peggy attends an underground party winning both male and female attention. Plus, Ken Cosgrove returns (yay!).

Right before Ken's name surfaces, Pete and Harry are arguing about the printing of a newspaper ad.

Pete: I don't care if she looks like a Puerto Rican. Puerto Rican girls buy brassieres.
Harry: Not that they need to. I saw this one on the subway in one of those striped Jean Seberg shirts, red rag in her hair. Nipples.
Pete: I'm not in the mood.

Jean Seberg wore that famous striped shirt in Breathless (pictured above) which hit US screens in 1961, four years before this episode takes place. The Jean Luc Godard film became one of the most iconic films in the French New Wave, a film movement which had already peaked by 65 but had definitely affected New York culture.

Though Seberg is most remembered for the French Breathless today and made other foreign films, she was an American actress (born in Iowa) and made many movies at home, too. She was not only a fashion icon but a political activist of some notoreity (hence an interesting if tossed off reference name ... since we know much political turmoil is coming as this show explores the 1960s). She died at only 40 in Paris from an overdose.


In early 1965, concurrent with this episode, Seberg was a Golden Globe nominee for Lilith (1964), a film about a woman in a mental institution. (Maybe both Jean Seberg and Lilith would've related to Mad Men's frustrated women?) The AMPAS voters passed Seberg over for a nomination but she wasn't the only snub. The Oscar lineup (as follows) was actually composed mostly of the Globe comedy nominees (that doesn't happen anymore) with only the Drama winner making the cut.

• Julie Andrews, Mary Poppins (Globe winner, Comedy)
  
• Anne Bancroft, The Pumpkin Eater (Globe winner, Drama)
• Sophia Loren, Marriage Italian-Style (Globe nominee, Comedy)
  
• Debbie Reynolds, The Unsinkable Molly Brown (Globe nominee, Comedy)
• Kim Stanley, Seance on a Wet Afternoon
  

Enough 1965 history. Back to 1965 fiction.

Favorite Moment
Revisiting Kenny & Pete's rivalry. Pete apologizes for gossiping and then tells Kenny he's going to be a father. After Pete's weak olive branch, Ken offers a delicious stealth-bitchy compliment: "Another Campbell. That's just what the world needs."

Best Intangible Something
Every single thing about the centerpiece sequence worked superbly. A group of women are corralled by Joan (not invited due to being "old and married") to be focused tested about beauty regimens while Don & Peggy watch from behind glass. The repercussions ends up rippling through the office, violently. The multi-scene sequence is all composed of people looking at each other from a glassed off protected distance whether comical (Peggy spying on Don) or dramatic (Don wincing at Allison's tears) or through doorways. It's full of entrances and exits (almost like bedroom farce) with everyone carrying their painfully open baggage into each room and when they exit, they've left articles behind. Amazing.

Best (Shouted) Exchange
Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) rejecting a lesbian advance from Joyce (Zosia Mamet) at a party.

Peggy: I HAVE A BOYFRIEND
Joyce: HE DOESN'T OWN YOUR VAGINA.
Peggy: NO, BUT HE'S RENTING IT.

Please note that Peggy is wearing a not un-Seberg like striped shirt for this sequence. Mad Men is nothing if not self reflective.

Best (Silent) Exchange
Peggy and Pete, former lovers, saying their goodbyes (through glass again). For a show that's so often about inchoate feelings it sure is emotionally acute.

Further reading?
I like to read a wide range of reaction to movies and tv, don't you?

• Lylee's Blog "I can't fix anything else" on last week's episode but I think it's insightful.
• Parabasis great piece on Peggy rising and Don descending in the mid 60s.
  
• GIF Party & GIF Party. Two funny Elisabeth Moss bits. For all her personal troubles (Peggy's not Moss's) one sometimes senses that Peggy is the one character that's going to be all right. Don Draper on the other hand...
• HitFix has a thorough recap with detailed end notes.
• Atlantic Peggy's brush with the mid sixties and the episode's comic tone
• The New Republic on the "effortless" feel of the episode, and lessons for series television in general
• Cinema Talk on Jean Seberg and Lilith
• Film Quarterly Seberg and notes on women and depression
• Vulture John Slattery on directing his first episode.
• The Bastard Machine on all the rejection in this episode. Aptly titled.
• Antenna Mad Men's female fashion and the mise-en-scène in this episode.
  

MM@M: Deneuve & Godzilla Gamera, Cinema Giants

I never thought I'd see anyone on Mad Men shouting "MONSTER!" at a movie screen but that's why Mad Men at the Movies is great fun to write. You never know what's coming.

Episode 4.3 "The Good News"
In this episode, Joan focused for once (yay Christina Hendricks!) the worlds curviest office manager handles her confusing marriage with surprise tenderness and her career with less control than usual, her temper flaring. Meanwhile, Don (Jon Hamm) travels to see his first ex-wife and gets very bad news. He returns home early, ditching a planned Apaculpco vacation. Come the middle of the holiday afternoon, Lane (Jared Harris) and Don are already drunk and planning a boys night out.

Don: [drunk, with mouth full] We're going to the movies.
Lane: Do you think we should?
Don: Does Howdy Doody have a wooden dick? [reading from newspaper] Zorba the Greek -- seen it, but would see it again. It's a Mad Mad Mad World -- no kidding. Send Me No Flowers?
Lane: No.

Cut to: Different office. The movie ads have switched hands. Don is pouring a drink, missing the flask entirely.

Lane: The Guns of August!
Don: I hate guns and I hate August.
Lane: It's all over the rug!
Don: Then we''ll have to smoke the dress.
Lane: Don't know that one. [Back to paper] The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.
Don: [pause for entirely appropriate internal actress reverie] Catherine Deneuve.
Lane: ...apparently it's for all the young lovers of the world.

[cut to:..]


Heyyyy, that's not Catherine Deneuve! No, the boys have chosen a Godzilla movie. Or wait is that Gamera? Some folks online are saying Gamera (the trailer) but that came out after this episode takes place. edit: I thought it was Mothra vs. Godzilla, which would be in the right US release time frame... but the more I look at it, yes, Gamera. My god I used to love those movies as a kid on the telly. But they all bleed together. Seriously, if you've seen one giant monster crushing Japan...

Lane and Don are now even more inebriated and loudly talking through the movie.

Don: You know what's going on here don't you? Hand jobs.
Lane: Really? What percentage do you think.
Angry moviegoer: Do you mind?
Lane: [shouts politically incorrect Japanese gibberish at angry moviegoer. Then points at the screen and shouts] ...MONSTER !!!

Drunk Lane is hilarious -- Don even thinks so. It's so rare to see him laugh! -- finally giving Jared Harris something to work with for the first time since he fired everyone in Season 3. He later will hold a slab of well done steak against his crotch and shout about his Texas sized belt buckle. This episode has four dick jokes. No joke. Season 4, only 3 episodes in, is already infinitely more crass than the previous seasons but the 1950s era propriety is beginning to slip away from virtually all of the characters save possibly old timey youngster Pete Campbell. But he's blue blood.

Anyway... the movies!

We relate to Don's reverent invocation of Catherine Deneuve. This is Deneuve circa 1964 on the set of Cherbourg.


But, really, whichever year you capture her in, she's a breathtaker. Deneuve has to be among the twenty or so greatest movie stars that the planet ever produced, n'est-ce pas?.

We're betting that even if Don hadn't yet seen The Umbrellas of Cherbourg -- it opened in NYC two weeks prior to this episode's time frame -- he'll get to it soon enough. He likes the foreign films. And if you haven't yet seen Umbrellas, better get to it. It's only one of the greatest movies of all time. Plus it's a colorful musical and we like those. It also holds one of those rare Oscar distinctions of being nominated for statues in two separate years (before they changed the rules to prevent foreign films from doing so). It was France's Oscar submission in 1964 and won a Best Foreign Film nomination. In 1965, when it was presumably released in LA during the traditional eligibility period, it was nominated for four more Oscars, three music categories and best screenplay. Today's rules would have stopped the second batch of nominations, since a Foreign Film nomination preceding your release renders you ineligible for other nods (see the Aughts case of Hero for a rather famous example. The current rules also mean that France's A Prophet and Argentina's The Secret in Their Eyes cannot be nominated in any category for the upcoming Oscars even though they opened in the States during the 2010 eligibility period.)

About the other rejected movies.

• The Guns of August opened on Christmas Eve in NYC in 1964. It was a documentary based on a Pulitzer Prize winning book. This isn't the first time I've noticed an actual illustration of a book on an old movie poster. Could you imagine a movie today advertising itself with a photo or drawing of a book? Even Harry Potter and Twilight wouldn't risk that!
• Send Me No Flowers was one of Doris Day's many popular hit romantic comedies with gay co-stars. Excuse me gay co-star. No plural.
• Zorba The Greek was released in December 64 and was a big hit with Oscar voters. Antonio Banderas will be reviving this Oscar nominated title role on the Broadway stage soon.
  
• It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (Don left out one of the "Mad"s) was an all star comedy that was actually released a holiday release the year prior to this episode but movies used to stay in theaters much longer. Anyway, it was the biggest box office hit of 1964... at least according to my ancient book Box Office Champs: The Most Popular Movies of the Past Twenty Years which covers the years from 1939 through 1989. (I must have bought it shortly after I decided to live and breathe cinema. I blame Pfeiffer on that piano top. It's all her fault.) The book tells me that the movie "brought together virtually every living Hollywood comedian from Buster Keaton to The Three Stooges to Jerry Lewis. But it opted all too often for tired slapstick gags instead of moments of genuine wit. On balance, it was funny -- clearly it was a hit with audiences -- but so much talent should have produced something so much better." GEE, THAT DOESN'T DESCRIBE ANY OF TODAY'S COMEDIES!
  

Which movie would you have picked to see?

With its pared down cast (only Joan, Lane and Don get any play) and weirdly aborted vacation sequences, the episode aired to some unusually charged online griping. Maybe the naysayers wanted the show to stay in 1960 with its original cast and character dynamics for its entire run? It's true enough that the show has lost parts of itself that we loved but there is no way to stop the world from spinning. And the times they are definitely changing.

Best Moment / Line
The finale. Five ad men are seated for a department head meeting. Joan Holloway Harris sits at the head of the table. "Gentlemen, shall we begin 1965?" With all of their personal lives spinning rapidly towards destinations unknown, 1965 is beginning whether or not they're ready for it.

Further Reading
Mad Men Unbuttoned explains that Harry "Hollywood Brown Derby" scene
Omega Level got great screenshots and thinks Don & Lane's big night out was the funniest 8 minutes of MM ever.
Time Abortion legalities from December 1964
The New Republic Matt Zoller Seitz thinks "The Good News" was Mad Men's first bad episode.

Halfway Mark 2010: Foreign Films

More halfway mark articles comin at'cha. Just about anywhere you look online you'll see reports about this or that blockbuster and the top ten of the year and how superheroes, franchise/brands and animated films are still all the rage blah blah. You'll hear about the same movies over and over again. Why not look a little deeper? How about the foreign language films? Here's how they've done so far Stateside (box office figures as of July 1st).

Foreign (Box Office) Top Ten

1. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Sweden) $8.8
   Scandinavia doesn't often claim the biggest hit, so good on them. Skål! In our modern marketplace, where more and more people wait for DVDs for anything other than films with 8 figure ad campaigns, 8 million is now a huge gross for a foreign film. The "hits" rarely make the kind of bank that they used to. Amélie's $33 back in 2001 seems like another era altogether. Even Pan's Labyrinth's $37 as recently as 2006 is a miracle. Especially when you stop to consider that Let The Right One In only managed $2 million in 2008 just two years later despite crazy passionate word of mouth.
   
   Incidentally I tried to read The Girl... recently and just couldn't get into it but even just reading a small portion of the bestseller made this Nora Ephron spoof laugh out loud funny to me.
   
2. The Secret in Their Eyes (Argentina) $5.4 Oscar winner
   
3. My Name is Khan (India) $4.0
4. A Prophet (France) $2.0 Oscar nominee
   
5. Kites (India) $1.6
   Interesting that this internationally-minded effort with American setting, Mexican and Indian stars, and even an American "remix" didn't do any better than more traditional Bollywood entries did.
   
   
   
6. Raajneeti (India) $1.4
   
7. Mic-Macs (France) $.7
   The latest from the visually gifted Jean Pierre-Jeunet (Amélie). Fun movie but also a bit exhausting. I suspect audiences will take to it in greater numbers on DVD where you can watch it in (set)pieces.
8. Vincere (Italy) $.6
   A decent gross I suppose but IFC waited way too long after this film's first explosion of buzz to open it. Especially since Italy didn't even submit it for Oscar consideration. There was no use waiting since it couldn't use Oscar as platform anyway. And some films with passionate fans do better if people know that they're not eligible for the foreign film Oscar. People like to be outraged. Why not September or October back in 2009 hot off its Cannes buzz with an attempt to generate faux 'look what Oscar's missing' outrage?
   
9. Ajami (Israel) $.6 Oscar nominee
   
10. Raavan (India) $.5
    Starring the married superstars Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai
    

South Korea's Mother just missed this top ten. Arthouse audiences and critics talked it up but Oscar passed. It waited and opened up shortly after the Oscar ceremony.

You'll notice that the top grossers are from Bollywood -- have they usurped France's spot as most reliable in the US market? -- or are Oscar holdovers. A few of these used the Oscars as a platform rather than risking regular release. Secret only showed itself in theaters once it could use the Oscar win as advertisement but that's a risky strategy since you can't guarantee a win. The two rather robust contenders it beat on Oscar night, France's A Prophet and Germany's The White Ribbon, had twin buzz trajectories: hot ticket Cannes debut, Cannes trophies, well regarded auteur at the helm, rave reviews. Ribbon opened with only those things to guide it last December. A Prophet, like Secret, banked on Oscar love for ticket sales, only opening after the expected but not guaranteed nomination. Box office result: Slightly smaller box office for Prophet than Ribbon.

What does it mean? Interpret as you will. I prefer to interpret things as "open when the film is ready" and stop making audiences wait! This is the age of gimme it now and film distribution is lagging compared to tv and music, which both seem to be (slowly) adapting to the instant gratification / 'on my terms' culture.

But then numbers are highly interpretable. It might simply indicate that Oscar means nothing unless you win.


FWIW: The Milk of Sorrow, Peru's first Oscar nominee, is the only 2009 Foreign Film nominee that never opened in the US. Such a shame. Sorrow's director Claudia Llosa was just invited to join AMPAS's directors branch.

My favorite foreign release of 2010?
Italy's I AM LOVE improved remarkably on second viewing and I was fond enough of it the first time. It's just ravishing and my only real concern about it the first time through was what seemed like a sexphobic denouement. On second viewing, I believe I misread the film initially, taking the narrative happenings too literally when the images were the key. Most of the film is shot, designed, scored and acted with a more symbolic, sensual, operatic mindset in mind. I suddenly have a lot of things to say about it but it feels like the kind of movie you only discuss once people have seen it. So I'll wait a bit more.


[box office note: It's currently grossed just under over half a million in limited release but it should end up as one of the top foreign grossers of the year when the year wraps.]

Oscar buzz for 2010?
Those Oscar nominees we've just discussed are ineligible for further honors -- they already had their Oscar year -- so we look to Cannes buzz to guide us in predicting the Best Foreign Language Film Submissions for 2010. As for I Am Love... I think it's probably not so Oscarable (despite exquisite craftsmanship) but if it catches on in theaters, you never know. Oscar likes an arthouse hit.
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