The Best Films I Have Never Seen Before: Hara Kiki (1962)

Harakiri (1962) ****
Directed by: Masaki Kobayashi.
Written by: Shinobu Hashimoto based on the novel by Yasuhiko Takiguchi.
Starring: Tatsuya Nakadai (Hanshiro Tsugumo), Akira Ishihama (Motome Chijiiwa), Shima Iwashita (Miho Tsugumo), Tetsurô Tanba (Hikokuro Omodaka), Masao Mishima (Tango Inaba), Ichirô Nakatani (Hayato Yazaki), Kei Satô (Masakazu), Yoshio Inaba (Jinai Chijiiwa), Yoshirô Aoki (Umenosuke Kawabe).

Masaki Kobayashi’s Harakiri is one of the best samurai films I have ever seen. This is true despite the fact that the film really is an anti-samurai film – one that looks at Japan’s most celebrated historic warrior, and criticizes the famous code in which they lived. Kobayashi’s film, while certainly critical of feudalism in Japan’s past, works as well as a criticism of Japan’s present circa 1962. Kobayashi rejects the idea that the individual most be subserverant to the group – a prevailing idea in Japan at that time (and in some ways still today). So it shouldn’t be surprising that Harakiri, although it is a samurai film, doesn’t contain all that much action. True, the final battle in the film is the samurai version of The Wild Bunch’s final shootout – bloody in the extreme and sustained for a long time – but until then, Harakiri almost seems like a courtroom drama, more than a samurai film. When we finally get to that bloody showdown at the end of the film, it isn’t really thrilling, because it’s all too sad. The violence hits hard, as it should.

Interestingly, for a samurai film, this one is set in 1630 – less than 25 years into the reign of the Tokugawa shogunate. Most samurai films take place much later – in the 1800s – in the years before the shogunate collapsed. The purpose setting the film earlier is to show that the code of the samurai was wrong from the beginning – they didn’t lose their way at the end, but were always corrupt. The film opens with Hanshiro Tsugumo (Tatsuya Nakadai) showing up at the compound of the Iyi clan, requesting permission to commit seppuku – ritual suicide for samurais. Through flashbacks, we learn that Tsugumo’s son in law, Motome Chijiwa (Akira Ishihama) had recently come to the Iyi clan with the same request. Motome had heard that if you offer to commit seppuku to the Iyi’s, that instead of allowing you, that they would offer you a job instead. But the Iyi clan, sick of having so many ronin (masterless samurai), from clans that were destroyed at the beginning of the shogunate era, showing up and requesting the honor. Instead of giving Motome a job, they call his bluff, and force him to go through with the seppuku. He requests a few days to put his affairs in order, and they refuse. When they discover that Motome has sold his real samurai swords, they force him to go through with the seppuku using his bamboo swords – which makes the process much harder and more painful. As Tsugumo tells his story – of how he came to be unemployed, his struggles to raise his daughter, and Motomo, whose father was his best friend before out of shame he as well committed seppuku, the death of his wife, the death of his grandchild, the death of his daughter, the Iyi clan grows restless. They sense that there is something Tsugomo is not telling him – specifically about the absence of the three samurai he requested to be his “second” (the one who will cut his head off after he has disemboweled himself so the pain isn’t too great, and his death isn’t dragged out too long).

Harakiri is a masterfully made movie. Kobayashi shoots the film is stark black and white, and in widescreen, which serves the movie well. The intricate flashback structure of the movie is expertly handled, and Kobayashi’s visuals are frequently stunning (as they would be in the color film Kwaidan two years later). The film ends with one of the greatest samurai battles ever put on screen. The battle is bloody and intense, but also full of starts and stops. Interestingly, throughout the battle, Kobayashi cuts away to show the head of the Iyi clan, in isolation in a dark room, as the crushing weight of what Tsugumo has told him becomes all too clear.

Harakiri has a slower pace than most samurai movies – no real action happens for well over an hour and a half – but the film is never boring. Part of this is thanks to the brilliant performance by Tatsuya Nakadai, in the lead role. He has a difficult role, because he cannot reveal everything from the start, but by the end, when the full weight of what has happened becomes apparent, just how good he was becomes apparent. He rejects the code of the samurai, but shows the hypocrisy in the Iyi clan, who claim to hold it above all other considerations. Tsugumo believes there are things in this life worth dying for – and he shames the Iyi clan by proving that he is willing to do it.

Kobayashi isn’t as well known as some other Japanese directors of that era – particularly Akira Kurosawa. But Harakiri can easily stand alongside the best films that other Japanese master ever made. It is a complex, challenging film. One that is endlessly engrossing. I want to see more of his films.

Movie Review: A Royal Affair

A Royal Affair
Directed by:  Nikolaj Arcel.
Written by: Rasmus Heisterberg and Nikolaj Arcel based on the book by Bodil Steensen-Leth.
Starring: Alicia Vikander (Caroline Mathilde), Mads Mikkelsen (Johann Friedrich Struensee), Mikkel Boe Følsgaard (Christian VII), Trine Dyrholm (Juliane Marie), David Dencik (Ove Høegh-Guldberg), Thomas W. Gabrielsson (Schack Carl Rantzau), Cyron Melville (Enevold Brandt), Bent Mejding (J. H. E. Bernstoff), Harriet Walter (Augusta - Princess of Wales), Laura Bro (Louise von Plessen), Søren Malling (Hartmann).

A Royal Affair is the type of lavish, historical romantic drama that we always see this time of the year – a prototypical “Oscar bait” movie, about a beautiful young Queen (Alicia Vikander) who does the unthinkable and falls in love with someone not her husband. In this case, that is Johann Friedrich Struensee (Mads Mikkelsen), a German doctor hired to be the personal physician of the Danish King Christian VII (Mikkel Boe Folsgaard), who ends up sleeping with the King’s English wife.

This probably sounds like something you’ve seen before – and in many ways you would be right. The difference in A Royal Affair is that the filmmakers are as interested in the title affair itself – but rather in the politics of the time (the late 1700s in Denmark), and how Struensee did everything possible to drag the country into the age of Enlightenment – and for a brief time succeeded. He is seen as a hero in Denmark today – not so much at the time he was around.

The nicest way to describe King Christian VII would be to say he was feeble minded. He is certainly not very bright, and would no doubt be diagnosed with some sort of mental disorder were he alive today, but no one was all that interested in doing that at the time. Because Christian is a perfect foil. The learned council – full of religious zealots and the rich – passed laws that suited them, and not those that helped the common man. Christian attends all these meetings so he can sign off on all these laws – when he asks what he’s signing, they simply tell him not to ask questions, and just sign, and he does.

But then two people come into his life who will end up changing not just him but the country. The first is his beautiful English bride Caroline Mathilde, who is a modern woman, upset that most of her books were sent back to England because they had been banned in Denmark. She is horrified to discover her husband really is a silly twit – more in love with dog than anything else. But she does what she was raised to do – become Queen of Denmark, and give the King an heir – after which, she promptly banishes him for her bedchamber. Then comes Struensee, who is one of many doctors interviewed by the King to be his personal doctor. Struensee immediately sees how childish Christian is, and knows just what to do to manipulate him. Soon Christian sees Struensee as his “best friend” and confidant – and Struensee sees how he can get Denmark to become a modern country – which in this time means things like ending serfdom, banning torture and opening orphanages. It is also clear that Struensee and Caroline are drawn to each other – the share similar ideals, and are both saddled with the King, who they don’t really like, but need to accomplish their goals. It’s only a matter of time before they will fall into bed with each other.

A Royal Affair is an extremely handsomely mounted production. It has all the trappings of this kind of movie – beautiful costumes and production design, lush cinematography, a romantic score. The film is one of the most expensive made in Danish history – and may well get an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language film, as it is their entry (beating out The Hunt, also starring Mikkselsen). But A Royal Affair is also more concerned with ideas than most costume dramas of this sort. In fact, it is the romance between Struensee and Caroline that gets the short end of the stick here – the movie is so concerned with the politics, the maneuverings of Struensee, and his rivals on the council, and how they all manipulate Christian, that it almost feels like the pair fall into bed simply because the plot requires them to. Both Mikkselsen and newcomer Vikander are very good in their roles, but the sexual chemistry between the two of them isn’t quite there. They seem better suited to each other when they are discussing their ideals than in the throes of passion.

Still, I think that’s why I liked A Royal Affair. I’ve seen too many movies set in this time period, or shortly before and after, where people who are not supposed to fall in love with each other inevitably do just that. The movies often use society’s outrage at the lovers as proof of just how backwards that society is. But A Royal Affair knows that there were more important things wrong with society, other than the fact that it kept lovers apart. And this makes A Royal Affair an engrossing costume drama.

The Best Films I Have Never Seen Before: Stolen Kisses (1968)

Stolen Kisses (1968)
Directed by: François Truffaut.
Written by: François Truffaut and Claude de Givray and Bernard Revon.
Starring: Jean-Pierre Léaud (Antoine Doinel), Delphine Seyrig (Fabienne Tabard), Claude Jade (Christine Darbon), Michael Lonsdale (Georges Tabard), Harry-Max (Monsieur Henri), André Falcon (Monsieur Blady), Daniel Ceccaldi (Lucien Darbon), Claire Duhamel (Madame Darbon), Catherine Lutz (Catherine).

Francois Truffaut’s Stolen Kisses moves with effortless grace, moving from comedy to harsh truths in the blink of an eye. Stolen Kisses is about love and lust, and how they drive everyone crazy to one degree or another. It is at perhaps Truffaut’s most dreamy and romantic feature – and one of his best.

Back for the third time is Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Leaud), who we first saw as a juvenile delinquent in 1959’s The 400 Blows, and then in the 1962 short Antoine et Collette, where he was obsessed with a girl who just wanted to be his friend. We first see Doinel in this film being dishonorably discharged from the army – apparently he had a habit of going AWOL – but Doinel doesn’t seem to much care. He goes straight from the army to the house of Christine (Claude Jade), his one time girlfriend. Her parents are happy to see him, but inform him Christine is away for a few days, but do arrange for Antoine to have a job as night clerk at a hotel. He doesn’t last long there – but he does catch the eye of a Private Detective, who gets Antoine a job with his firm. Antoine isn’t much good at that job either – some of the funniest scenes in the movie are his inept attempts at surveillance – but he tries hard. Eventually, he will be assigned to become a mole at a shoe store – the boss, who hires him, wants to know why everyone hates him so much. Antoine doesn’t really help matters by falling in love with the boss’s wife Fabienne (the great Delphine Seyrig). All this, while he continues in his quest to win back Christine.

Of course, Truffaut based Antoine on himself, and in Stolen Kisses, we see perhaps why Truffaut became a filmmaker – he was horrible at pretty much every other job he had. Antoine isn’t tormented by his family life, like in The 400 Blows, and he isn’t stuck in a cycle of unrequited love, as in Antoine et Collette, but he hasn’t really moved forward either. He signed up for the army because he thought it would fun and romantic – but ended up hating it, and running away. Antoine, in his way, is far too trusting. He gets fired from the hotel because he believed the PI’s story, which we in the audience knows is suspect. And as a surveillance specialist, Antoine fails, because he is far too forward – his marks make him right away, and grow uncomfortable with him following them. They end up losing him in a block or two.

But Stolen Kisses is really about love, and the crazy things it does to people. Antoine and Christine’s relationship is complicated. Like with Collette, her parents seem to like him more than Christine does. Because Antoine’s parents were so bad themselves, he seems to seek the approval of his girlfriend’s parents – trying very hard to make a good impression. But for much of the movie, Christine seems lukewarm to Antoine – not unlike Collette in the previous movie – and Antoine is simply a little lost. He goes to prostitutes, he falls in love with Fabiene, and when finally he has Christine, he isn’t sure he actually wants her. The theme of love making people crazy is seen throughout the movie – the magician’s lover who wants him tailed, and goes crazy when he finds out his lover is married, Fabiene being drawn to Antoine as well, and even down to the final shot, when a stalker confesses his love to Christine – who dismisses him as crazy. But Antoine understands this stalker – and that look on his face seems to suggest that perhaps he wishes he still felt that way. Of course, being infatuated from afar is easy – having a relationship is hard (and I believe that is what the next segment, Bed and Board is about).

Truffaut’s camera moves effortlessly around the streets of Paris. He doesn’t quite shoot it to look as romantic as Woody Allen in the recent Midnight in Paris, but he certainly does capture the magic and romance of the city – just not in quite the way we are accustomed to. I admit, it took me a little time to warm up to Truffaut, but now that I am hooked, I cannot wait to continue to explore his work. Stolen Kisses was masterful, and yet effortless. I hope the next installment is as good.

The Best Movies I Have Never Seen Before: In the Realm of the Senses (1976)

In the Realm of the Senses (1976)
Directed by: Nagisa Ôshima.
Written by: Nagisa Ôshima.
Starring: Tatsuya Fuji (Kichizo Ishida), Eiko Matsuda (Sada Abe), Aoi Nakajima (Toku), Kyôji Kokonoe (Teacher Ômiya).

The list of non-pornographic films that contain as much sex and nudity as Nagida Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses is very short. The list of films that contain that much sex and nudity are also effective is even shorter – perhaps as few of three films with Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris, David Cronenberg’s Crash and John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus. And yet, what In the Realm of the Senses shares with those other three films – as wildly different as they are – is that it uses sex and nudity to make a broader point. On the surface, the movie is about a dark, sexual obsession that ends up destroying Ishida (Tatsua Fuji) and his mistress Sada (Eiko Matsuda). But Oshima saw this as a profoundly political film. Set in 1936, with the rise of fascism is Japan; perhaps the only way to rebel – to assert themselves as individuals – was to fuck.

Sada Abe is a former prostitute who comes to work at a more legitimate inn run by Ishida and his wife. It is not long before the beautiful Sada has caught her boss’s eye, and the two begin a torrid affair. This doesn’t seem new to Ishida, but something is different about Sada. He cannot get enough of her – and she cannot get enough of him. Soon, they have their own place together, and he is neglecting his duties and his wife, and the two stay in bed all day together, much to the chagrin of the servants who want to come in a clean the room because it’s starting to smell. The sex starts off as more or less normal, but the more time they spend with each other, the farther out it gets, until it threatens to consume them.

That is the basic plot of the movie, and while it seems simple, it really isn’t. Oshima spends almost the entire movie in various rooms with these two characters as the make love and talk, and yet the movie has a strange beauty to it. It is expertly crafted, and doesn’t fall into the trap of porn films in going for the money shot. While the movie will show all sorts of graphic nudity, and it is erotic, not cold, the film is not porn. Porn requires the point of it to be sexual arousal, and that isn’t what the point of the movie is. The point is these two characters, who are in love, and how society keeps them to the outside. They are not normal, so they are wicked and evil. They are apart from society – as seen in a scene where Ishida daring walks against the tide of the Imperial soldiers.

I was drawn into In the Realm of the Senses almost from the beginning. There is an awkwardness to some of the scenes at the beginning of their relationship – as they are still circling each other – but once the relationship starts, it is intrisicately fascinating. The performances by the two leads are brave – not just because of all the nudity, but also because of the emotional turmoil these characters go through. This is not a film for vain actors, and they lay themselves bare onscreen. There does come a point however, near the end of the movie, where all the nudity grows tiring. The final scene is masterfully shot and acted, but it does tend to drag on quite a bit. It wears a little thin by the end of the film.

 
And yet, it total, I admired In the Realm of the Senses. This is a mature, thoughtful film that uses sex – lots and lots of sex – but does so in an intelligent way that looks at the larger implications. If you look at this film and see porn, you aren’t looking very hard.

Movie Review: Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle
Directed by: Johnnie To.
Written by: Kin-Yee Au & Ka-kit Cheung & Ben Wong & Nai-Hoi Yau & Tin-Shing Yip.
Starring: Lau Ching Wan (Panther), Richie Ren (Cheung Ching Fong), Denise Ho (Teresa), Myolie Wu (Connie), Lo Hoi-pang (Yuen), So Hang-suen (investor).

Every time I watch a Johnnie To movie, I anxiously await the gunfights. More than any other filmmaker in Hong Kong right now, To is the one who has taken over for the likes of John Woo as an expert action filmmaker. His gunfights in films like Breaking News, Election and Election II, Vengeance and Full Time Killer (to name but a few of his films) are expertly crafted, and unlike American action films, not cut to shit with rapid fire editing. John Woo described his films as ballet with bullets, and To has a similar style. He is one of the best action film directors in the world right now.

This was very much the case when I sat down to watch his latest. Life Without Principle. But a strange thing happened as I watched the film – I got so invested in the different characters in the movie, the expertly crafted story, and the fast paced storytelling employed by To, that I barely noticed that he didn’t have any action set pieces in the film at all. By the end of the movie, I realized that I had seen perhaps To’s best film to date – and it didn’t even contain the type of action he is best known for.

The movie basically has three plot threads – all of them revolving around the financial crisis. In the first one, we see a woman whose job it is to sell stocks to people for a major Hong Kong bank. Obviously, the riskier the stock, the more than bank wants to sell it – and she has a quota to meet and could be out of a job if she doesn’t meet it. The problem is, anyone who knows about stocks, knows that the bank are ripping you off with bank fees and would rather invest themselves for far less – and anyone who doesn’t know about stocks, shouldn’t be investing in this sort of stock anyway, which means you have to lie to them to get them to buy. It appears her co-workers have no problem with doing so – but she has a conscience.

The second story line is about a group of gangsters. Even they seem to have trouble raising funds recently – their once posh banquets have now fallen on hard time, with fewer tables and fancily named vegetarian entrées to disguise the fact that they are cheap. They have even lost some of the ranks to the financial trade themselves – you can’t make enough money being a gangster, so you may as well trade stock. Panther is perhaps the only loyal gangster left – he hopes from one of his “sworn brothers” to the next, getting them all out of jams.

The third story line is about a police Inspector, who is called out to several crimes throughout the movie (he really is the unifying character of the movie). While he appears to be just a cop with no involvement in the financial crisis, his wife gets him involved anyway – going from wanting to buy a new apartment, to insisting they do so when they unexpectantly become the guardians of the little sister he didn’t even know he had. Of course, she buys at just the wrong time – when the bottom starts to fall out.

To weaves these stories together with ruthless efficiency. There is murder and bloodshed in the film to be sure, but it’s low-key compared to most of To’s other efforts. The message is simple and direct – there really is no difference between the cutthroat world of high finance and the cutthroat world of gangsters. Like last year’s Margin Call, Life Without Principle shows just how far bankers will go to make money – not caring who they hurt in the process. Of the two, I think I prefer this one – To’s film is less preachy than Margin Call, and a hell of a lot more entertaining. Sure, the ending could use a little work (I don’t think it needs the happy ending that gets tacked on here), but overall I think Life Without Principle shows To at the height of his powers – even if there are no gunfights to speak of.

Movie Review: The Day He Arrives

The Day He Arrives
Directed by: Sang-soo Hong.
Written by: Sang-soo Hong.
Starring: Jun-Sang Yu (Sungjoon), Sang Jung Kim (Youngho), Seon-mi Song (Boram), Bo-kyung Kim (Kyungjin / Yejeon).

Sang-soo Hong’s The Day He Arrives is a quietly moving film. In many ways, I suppose, it is autobiographical. It is about a filmmaker Sungjoon who returns to Seoul for a few days visit from his teaching post in the country. He directed four films, but apparently no one saw them, so he has taken up teaching. He has no plans while in the city except to visit his old friend Youngho, a movie critic. But he spends the first night alone, not being to get in contact with his old friend, and instead going drinking with a group of film students before confusing them by taking off on them. He then visits an old girlfriend, and begs forgiveness.

Finally, he will meet up with Youngho, and the rest of the movie plays like variations on a theme. In each, Sungjoon and Youngho go to a bar with Youngho’s attractive female friend Boram, a film professor, where they spend their time drinking while the owner is away. Eventually, the owner Yejeon, comes back – and Sungjoon is struck by how much she looks like that old girlfriend (since they are both played by the same actress, he’s right). But what happens in each of these variations changes slightly. They have similar discussions, but they take on different meanings as one character will say or do something different. Twice they will meet up with a former actor of Sungjoon’s – once he is angry with Sungjoon for abandoning him for a bigger star after their first movie, and one time he is a lovable, drunken oaf. In all of them, Boram seems to be attracted to Sungjoon, even though he thinks she should be with Youngho, and she flirts with him, oblivious to the fact that he is more drawn to the bartender. And the way Sungjoon expresses that attraction to the bartender – and the results – is also different each time.

The movie is both funny and sad. As with other films of Sang-soo Hong that I have seen (and I feel I should see more), the film is made up of a series of scenes where the characters drink and talk – and then go somewhere else to drink and talk some more. The film is shot in beautiful black and white, which gives an element of sadness to the proceedings. Sungjun seems lost and aimless. He has nowhere to go – either in Seoul or in his life – so he just keeps repeating his day ad nausea. The film students recall what he once was – young and idealistic – and while its fun to look back at that for a while, eventually he must flee. His relationship with his girlfriend is over – but he has to go back and revisit that as well. And then, when he meets the barmaid, who looks just like her, he must repeat the pattern all over again. Some people have criticized Sang-soo for simply remaking the same film over and over again – and I can’t help but think that The Day He Arrives is a slight shot at those critics, as he has made a film about a filmmaker who keeps living the same day, with slight variations again and again.

The movie is filled with Sungjoon’s longing for something more – something he will not discover, at least not during the film’s fleet 79 minute running time. At the end of the film, he’s still wandering around in circles, still melancholy, still doomed to repeat his mistakes again and again. The Day He Arrives is a deceptively simple little film.

Movie Review: Barbara

Barbara
Directed by: Christian Petzold.
Written by: Christian Petzold & Harun Farocki.
Starring: Nina Hoss (Barbara), Ronald Zehrfeld (André), Rainer Bock (Klaus Schütz), Christina Hecke (Assistenzärztin Schulze), Claudia Geisler (Stationsschwester Schlösser), Peter Weiss (Medizinstudent), Carolin Haupt (Medizinstudentin), Deniz Petzold (Angelo), Rosa Enskat (Hausmeisterin Bungert).

Christian Petzold’s Barbara is both a melodrama and a thriller, but one that refuses to pump up the action and emotions to the degree that films in both genres usually do. There are no car chases or fight sequences here, no weepy confessions or swelling music to artificially evoke tears or thrills. Instead although Barbara is both a thriller and a melodrama, it plays things straight – and is more of a character study than anything else.

Nina Hoss stars in the title role. It is 1980 in East Germany, and Barbara has been banished from her life in Berlin, and forced to take up her medical practice in a small, country hospital. From the time she arrives, she is watched by everyone – her co-workers, her new boss Andre (Ronald Zehrfeld), and most invasively by the Stasi, who like to pop by and subject her to humiliating surprise inspections. Everyone whispers about her behind her back, but she keeps her head down and does her job. Everyone knows she has a secret – and she does – but she doesn’t let on as to what it is.

Hoss’ performance in this movie is truly masterful. She is asked to do so much, by doing very little. In the early scenes in the movie, she tries to keep a stone face – not let anyone see behind the façade of the tough woman she is putting up. Yet, around the edges of those scenes, her humanity slowly starts to peak through. She isn’t the ice queen she is pretending to be – but just a woman who is justifiably scared, and doesn’t know if she can trust anyone, so she decides to trust no one. But slowly, she starts to loosen up – Andre is nice to her, some of her patients have it even worse than she does, and in the end she cannot ignore her hypocratic oath – “First do no harm”. That can mean many things to many people. Like her country at that time, Barbara is divided – torn between doing what she thinks is right, and doing what she needs to for herself.

Hoss portrays this character as a complex, complete person. Barbara feels more like a real person than most movie characters – who are puppets being put through the motions of the screenwriters grand design. In many ways, Barbara follows the standard plot we expect in this type of movie. And yet, in the hands of Petzold and Hoss (who have worked together five times now), the film feels more natural than that – you buy the clichés more than you usually do, right up to ending which has an inevitability about it that quite simply works.

There have been a lot of movies about the waning days of Communism in the past few years. Romanian cinema is starting to address this period in movies as variant as The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Aurora and 12:08 East of Bucharest. Germany has started as well, with films like the Oscar winning The Lives of Others. Barbara belongs on the list with all of them. It is not as overtly political as many of those films – it doesn’t feel the need to spell it out how bad the Stasi were, but instead treats them as a fact of life that must be dealt with. This is a quiet, haunting film that stays with you long after it ends.

Movie Review: Amour

Amour
Directed by: Michael Haneke.
Written by: Michael Haneke.
Starring: Jean-Louis Trintignant (Georges), Emmanuelle Riva (Anne), Isabelle Huppert (Eva), Alexandre Tharaud (Alexandre), William Shimell (Geoff).

Michael Haneke has made a career out of punishing his characters and by extension the audience, for their sins. From the parents of the deranged Benny in Benny’s Video to everyone in Code Unknown, to Daniel Auteuil’s in Cache to the entire village in The White Ribbon and in most of his other films, in a Haneke film the past is never forgotten, and those past sins eventually catch up with everyone. And Haneke has never let viewers off the hook either – he directly blames them for all the violence in both versions of Funny Games, and holds nations responsible for their past in other films. While many critics have seen his latest film, Amour, as a more humanist side to Haneke – a film where he finally feels warmth for his characters, I am not convinced this is the case. True, the old married couple at the heart of Amour have no past sins (that we know about) to atone for – but they are still punished quite thoroughly. The only thing they really do wrong is grow old – and Amour lays bare exactly what happens to them because of it – and by extension what will happen to everyone in the audience one day as well. So while it some ways, Amour really is the “warmest” film that Haneke has ever made, in other ways it’s the cruelest – his characters get punished much like they have in the past, but this time they haven’t really done anything wrong.

The film opens with a seemingly happy Paris couple in their 80s coming home from a concert. They have been married for years, and still seem very much in love. The next morning they wake up and have breakfast together. Everything is going normally until Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) stops responding to Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignat). He tries everything, and nothing can get her to snap out of it, until suddenly she does. She has no memory of what happened, and thinks he is playing a cruel trick on her. They go to the doctor, and discover she has had a stroke. And for the rest of the movie, she will slowly deteriorate – and he will be there every step of the way trying to take of her.

The movie takes place almost entirely in their apartment – and they have few visitors. Their daughter Eva (Isabelle Huppert) stops by occasionally – and disapproves of how Georges is handling everything but he doesn’t really care. He promised Anne he would never take her back to the hospital, and he means to keep that promise. They have a nurse, and later a second nurse, come over to help take care of Anne, but Georges fires one of them in one of the harshest scenes in the movie. He doesn’t approve of how she was treating Anne – and when she complains he tells her “I hope one day someone treats you like you treat your patients when you cannot defend yourself”. Anne wants to die – talks about it a lot until she can barely speak at all (then she just repeats “Hurts” for hours on end). She even tries to stop eating by refusing to swallow anything Georges feeds her – leading to a moment that is as sudden and shocking as the suicide in Cache.

Amour is not an easy film – nor is it meant to be. Most of the movie is the day to day routine that Georges and Anne go through – shot by Haneke is his typically cold, detached style as the camera simply sits back and observes the two of them. It is an honest film however – anyone who has been around someone slowly dying could tell you that. The performances here – perhaps more than any other Haneke film – are key to the movie’s success. Emmanuelle Riva may have the simpler role, as she has to waste away and slowly die, but it is a brave performance, and Riva and Haneke pull no punches here. This is not one of those movies where the woman dies of some mysterious disease that somehow makes them more beautiful as they die (I think it’s called Love Story syndrome). Riva’s physical transformation is shocking. And she completely and utterly nails the behavior and speech patterns of a stroke victim. But Jean-Louis Trintignant is even better, as the man who has to watch his wife slowly dissolve into nothing. When the movie begins, he seems like such a nice guy, but while you could argue that everything he does in the movie is understandable, and motivated mainly by love, you could also argue that he behaves selfishly – and at times even acts like a child. It’s probably too much to ask for, but both Trintignant and Riva deserve Oscar nominations this year for their amazing performances here.

Reading some of the reviews of Amour coming out of Cannes (where the film won the Palme D’or – placing Haneke is very exclusive company of directors who have won the award twice) I was worried that perhaps Haneke had gone soft on us. But Amour is hardly a soft film. Yes, he gives he feels more for the characters in this film than he has in the past – but he still punishes them – and the audience, and makes us watch. This is a difficult film to watch – but a brilliant one.

Movie Review: Tabu

Tabu
Directed by: Miguel Gomes.
Written by: Miguel Gomes and Mariana Ricardo.
Starring: Teresa Madruga (Pilar), Laura Soveral (Old Aurora), Ana Moreira (Young Aurora), Henrique Espírito Santo (Old Ventura), Carloto Cotta (Young Ventura), Isabel Muñoz Cardoso (Santa), Ivo Müller (Aurora's Husband), Manuel Mesquita (Mário).

I pride myself on being a fairly adventuresome film watcher. I go see everything from blockbusters to indies, from foreign films to documentaries, to the films that everyone sees to the films that almost no one sees. Miguel Gomes is one of those directors who makes films that send those strange film magazines into a tizzy, but whose films are barely seen by anyone else. I know because I read those magazines, and recently one of them – Cinemascope – not only put his latest film, Tabu, on the cover but named Gomes one of the 50 best directors under 50. I remember hearing of his last film – Our Beloved Month of August – because it did so well on the Indie Wire and Village Voice year end critics’ survey, where it stood out because somehow I had never even heard of it before then. So when I had a chance to see Tabu, I jumped at it – I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

I must say, I was disappointed. While Tabu is a marvelous looking film – in glorious black and white, that uses the style of silent film for two of its three parts, the movie failed to engage me in the least – either emotionally or intellectually. After a while, I just grew bored.

The movie opens with a silent film, with narration, of an intrepid explorer in Africa. The style reminded me of those old newsreels you sometimes see, as the man braves the jungles of Africa, and the people and animals around it. This sequence was fascinating to me, because I could never figure out what the hell was happening – was this just a surreal joke? Would it build to something?

We then flash to the first real part of the movie – entitled Paradise Lost. In it, a middle class woman in Portugal, Pilar (Teresa Madruga) goes to the train station to meet the young Polish woman who is supposed to board with her for a while – only to be rejected by the girl, who pretends to be someone else. She then goes home, and receives the first of many phone calls and visits from Aurora – the old woman who lives across the hall and Santa, her live-in African caretaker. Aurora has a daughter somewhere in America, who hardly ever visits or calls. Santa is her only real companion, and she doesn’t like Aurora very much – which is understandable, because Aurora doesn’t seem like a very nice person – just an annoying old lady who imposes herself on everyone around her. When she dies, we meet an old man named Ventura – who will narrate the final segment of the film – Paradise. Again, this segment is made in the style of a silent film, which Ventura narrates. It takes place in his youth, in Africa, where he meets and falls in love with Aurora – who ends up pregnant with his child, even though he is married to someone else. Of course, this will not end well for anyone – and a murder will take place, although not the person we expect Aurora to kill.

Reading some reviews of Tabu – most of which were rapturous in their praise – I discover that most people see the film as a kind of statement on Portugal’s past imperialism in Africa. It is true that each of the three segments have some connection to Africa – and see the African people as some sort of exotic “other”, that no one really takes seriously on their own terms. In the prologue and the final segment, no African characters make any impression at all – they are simply in the background, for exotic effect on the characters’ lives. In the middle segment, the only African character is Santa – and even she hangs in the background, as if not sure she is allowed to have an opinion on anything.

If that is the point of the movie, it’s an easy point, and is made early and often throughout the film. It may have been a good idea to give a real role to an African character, but then, I supposed that is beside the point – the point being that while Portugal had control over parts of Africa, like Aurora has control over Santa – they don’t for a second consider their own thoughts or feelings – just how they can serve themselves. A fair point, but not one to build an entire movie around – at least not this movie, which focuses on the shallow lives of the Portuguese characters – which again, may well be the point, but not a very interesting one.

Compare Gomes’ film to that of another recent Portuguese master – Pedro Costa. Costa’s film, In Vanda’s Room and Colossal Youth – really are masterpieces, even if most people have never heard of them. In them, Costa mixes fiction and documentary, and repeats scenes to make a point. But the people in his movie snap into sharp focus in their sad, lonely lives. Gomes’ film is all style and message, and never engages in terms of story or character. The subtext of the movie may well be interesting – but in order to get people to read for the subtext, you at least have to engage them on the text level. For me anyway, Tabu doesn’t. However if it sounds interesting to you, maybe it will be.

Movie Review: Rust & Bone

Rust and Bone
Directed by: Jacques Audiard.
Written by: Jacques Audiard and Thomas Bidegain based on the story by Craig Davidson.
Starring: Marion Cotillard (Stéphanie), Matthias Schoenaerts (Alain van Versch), Armand Verdure (Sam), Céline Sallette (Louise), Corinne Masiero (Anna), Bouli Lanners (Martial), Jean-Michel Correia (Richard), Mourad Frarema (Foued), Yannick Choirat (Simon).

Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone is a melodrama about two damaged people, who help save each other. It’s a somewhat odd choice for Audiard as a follow-up to his masterpiece A Prophet, which is one of the best crime dramas/prison movies ever made. This film is a more standard issue melodrama – one that tries, and succeeds, in trying to make the audience feel sympathy for its two main characters. While the film is nowhere near as good as A Prophet was – it is still a fascinating, heartfelt little film – and contains two excellent lead performances.

The first character we meet is Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts), who for reasons the movie never fully explains, no has custody of his five year old son Sam that he barely knows. He travels to live with his sister Anna (Corrine Masiero) and her husband that he hasn’t seen in years. They don’t have much, but welcome Ali and Sam into their home. Ali has no discernible skills – he used to box and Thai box – but he doesn’t much do that anymore. He gets work as a bouncer – and later as a security guard, and working for a security consultant, who specializes in placing illegal cameras in business, that allow the bosses to monitor their employees. It is while he is a bouncer that he meets Stephanie (Marion Cotillard) at a club. She gets hit, and he takes her home – and although she has a boyfriend, he gives her his number anyway.

Stephanie is a whale trainer at park that looks like Marin World to me. We see her during one of her performances – set to Katy Perry’s Fireworks – as she and the other trainers direct the whale what to do. What starts as a fun episode, begins to take on an ominous tone – we know something is about to happen, well before it does. What happens is a horrific accident that takes both of Stephanie’s legs above the knee. Wherever her boyfriend goes, it’s clear he is not sticking around. Her friends and family feel awkward around her – and soon with no one left to turn to, she calls Ali. Surprisingly, Ali treats her like a normal person – which is precisely what she needs. Ali is no saint – we see him cruelly lashing out at his son, and eventually, he’ll get into the world of underground fighting. Both of these people are hurting, and need each other, or else they may just spiral downwards to a point of no return.

The reason to see the movie is the two excellent lead performances. Schoenaerts role will probably remind viewers of his role in Bullhead – an Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film Last Year – where he played a man with a secret, who feels grossly inadequate, and overcompensates for their inadequacy by building his muscles. That was a great performance, in a movie that tried to needlessly add complexity with an absurd plot. Ali is a similar character – although more vocal than his character in Bullhead, both men feel inadequate, and try to mask their inner pain with the outer shell they show the world. Both men are angry and prone to violence – Ali has just found a way to release that anger in a (marginally) more acceptable way. If Bullhead announces a major new acting talent, than Rust and Bone confirms it. And Cotillard is Schoenaerts equal in every way in this movie. She plays a similar role in some ways – a woman who likes to be desired by men, who used to love when men stared at her, and fantasized about her, but now has to deal with the fact that everyone sees her differently now – not as an object to lust after, but a woman to be pitied. Through Ali, she gets back out into the world – is able to start seeing herself differently than before. She also learns though that Ali may not be someone you want to count on. This is a very internal performance by Cotillard – she doesn’t explode, like many actors would giving what her character goes through, but simply tries to bury it down deep inside herself. It’s some of the best work she has ever done.

I’m not quite sure I buy the ending of the movie. The Craig Davidson short story that was used as a jumping off point for this story had a much darker ending than this – and it seemed more appropriate to the story. And yet, emotionally anyway, I prefer this ending. I may not quite believe it – but I want to. 

Movie Review: Attenberg

Attenberg
Directed by: Athina Rachel Tsangari.
Written by: Athina Rachel Tsangari.
Starring: Ariane Labed (Marina), Giorgos Lanthimos (Engineer), Vangelis Mourikis (Spyros), Evangelia Randou (Bella).

The Greek film Attenberg invites comparisons to another Greek film – Dogtooth – made the year before this one in two ways. It directly makes us think of the earlier film by casting Giorgos Lanthimos, the director of Dogtooth, in a key role in this film. And it indirectly reminds us of Dogtooth, because at the heart of each film is a strange, perhaps perverse, familial relationship. The family at the heart of Dogtooth – run by a megalomaniac father who refuses to let his kids off of their large estate, only to be undone when the outside world starts encroaching upon them – was screwed up. But the father-daughter relationship in Attenberg is also clearly dysfunctional in many ways.

Attenberg opens with Marina (Ariane Labed) and her best friend Bella (Evangelia Randou) is a strange scene, where Marina admits she has never “done that” – which in this case means kissing. Bella indulges her friend, and the two kiss – but people hoping for an erotic moment will be disappointed – yes, the two beautiful women kiss, but it purposefully lacks any real eroticism. Marina has no idea what to do, and it shows.

You are right to wonder how a beautiful 23 year old woman like Marina has never kissed anyone before – but then we meet her father and things start to make more sense. The first thing we hear Marina ask her dad is “Do you ever think about me naked?” – and although he says of course not, he doesn’t strike the admonishing tone we would expect a father to answer that question to his grown daughter. Clearly these two have a close relationship – even far too close – but we don’t really know how far it goes. Marina talks about how she never thinks about sex – the thought disgusts her, some man pumping inside her like a piston. What 23 year old talks to her dad this way?

Whatever their relationship truly is, her father Spyros (Vangelis Mourikis) is now dying – and knows he needs to get his daughter out there in the real world. Although it is never mentioned in the film, I couldn’t help but think that Bella may have been hired by Spyros to be Marina’s friend. It is mentioned several times that Bella is a “loose” woman, and near the end, she thinks nothing of sleeping with Spyros at Marina’s request. Could she be a prostitute hired by Spyros to try and dissuade Marina’s attitudes about sex? Sometimes all Marina and Bella do is Monty Python style walks, which gives the film some strange, comedic moments.

The other major character is an Engineer, played by director Lanthimos. Encouraged by her father, and Bella, to try sex, Marina meets him, and the two slowly initiate sexual contact – slowly at first, and then getting more and more involved.

Throughout all of this, Marina is also dealing with the imminent death of her father – who has some strange (for Greeks) requests – like being cremated, which only recently became legal there, and is still a lengthy ordeal.

I was drawn in by Attenberg, without ever really loving it. Like Lanthimos’ follow-up to Dogtooth, Alps, Attenberg is a film that is fascinating in its weirdness, but is probably more interesting to talk about than it is to actually watch. But writer-director Athina Rachel Tsangari is certainly a talent to watch for in the coming year. Along with Lanthimos, she may be the beginning of a New Wave of Greek filmmakers.

Movie Review: Alps

Alps
Directed by: Giorgos Lanthimos.
Written by: Efthymis Filippou & Giorgos Lanthimos.
Starring: Stavros Psyllakis, Aris Servetalis, Johnny Vekris, Ariane Labed, Aggeliki Papoulia, Erifili Stefanidou.

I have no idea what to make of Giorgos Lanthimos’ Alps. His last film, Dogtooth, was a brilliant, surrealistic film in the tradition of Luis Bunuel, about a father who has kept his kids locked in their large compound, and warped their view of the world – essentially by not letting them see it – and then having his work ruined by an outsider, he thought he could trust. That was a demented little film – violent, sexual, but it was also brilliant. And now for his follow-up, he made Alps. And I have no idea what it means.

When I recently reviewed Leos Carax’s Holy Motors, I said that I didn’t think that the movie had an overall meaning – or if it did, Carax deliberately doesn’t give the audience the information they need to piece it together. The movie is whatever you make of it. The difference between that film and this one is that while I think Carax was deliberately not giving the audience the information required to “figure out” his movie – and that the end result was freeing, because you could think whatever they hell you wanted to. But Lanthimos’ film is different – there is a meaning to Alps, or at least I think there is. I just don’t have the foggiest idea what the hell it is.

The movie is about a group of four strange people – a paramedic, a nurse, a gymnast and her coach. Together they make up a group that they call the Alps – which according to the paramedic, who is the leader, both has a meaning and does not. What they do is approach family members of the recently deceased and offer to be their dead family members for a few hours a week. A lot of planning goes into this, and the members of the Alps dress precisely how the family members tell them, and follow a very strict script of what to say – screw it up, and you’re in trouble. They say this will help the family deal with their grief, and eventually, they will no longer need the surrogates. The nurse, who is the main character in the movie, identifies a young promising tennis player, injured in a car accident, and decides when she dies, that she will take over the role. She then lies to the rest of the group, telling them the tennis player miraculously survived, and then approaches the family herself – and becomes the tennis player for them.

We know this will not end well. Just like the dysfunctional family in Dogtooth, the dysfunctional group at the center of Alps is held together with threats, intimidation and violence – and we know sooner or later it will all come crumbling down – as it must.

But what is the point of Alps? The premise of the movie is ridiculous – I cannot imagine anyone in real life coming up with a business like the Alps do – and if they did, I cannot imagine families just welcoming these strangers into their home to be their dead family members. Yet, you could make the movie into a bizarre comedy, or another exercise in surrealism like Dogtooth. This is the track Lanthimos takes, because the movie certainly isn’t funny. The actors all speak with a slow, steady monotone; there is no passion to anything they are doing from one scene to the next. But even surrealism normally has some sort of point – Bunuel often used it to expose the hypocrisy of the ruling class or of religions. Dogtooth looks at human nature, and fascism. But what is Alps saying?

I still have no idea. I even did something I rarely do before writing my own review – and that is read what other critics had to say, and I’m still at a loss. Because the family members of the dead are not given real roles – we never know how they feel about doing this or why they felt it necessary, the movie really isn’t saying anything about grief. It’s looking at the people who do the acting themselves. But what the hell does it mean?

Alps is equally fascinating and frustrating. I have to admit, I was drawn into its immense weirdness. I was never bored watching the film, and I always wanted to see where the movie was going next. Dogtooth was in many ways a triumph of screenwriting, but Alps is the better director film – more mysterious, darker, more impenetrable. I don’t always require a movie explain itself in full. I loved Holy Motors, which I’ve already talked about, and while I know that some have posted big, long theories on the meanings of such ambiguous films as Mulholland Drive or The White Ribbon, I don’t really care to read them. I don’t have to unlock all a film’s mysteries to like it. The difference is that I didn’t think unlocking the mysteries of those films was really the point of those films – you don’t need to understand the mechanics of what happened in Mulholland Drive or The White Ribbon to get lost in its mysteries, and the solution to those mysteries ultimately doesn’t matter. But I think they matter in Alps. Watching the film, I kept waiting for a light bulb to go off in my head – the moment when things become clear, or at least clearer. And that moment never came. I was fascinated by Alps all the way through – I think I’ll probably watch the film again, perhaps multiple times. But I still have no clue what the hell the movie is about.

DVD Review: Goodbye First Love

Goodbye First Love
Directed by: Mia Hansen-Løve.
Written by: Mia Hansen-Løve.
Starring: Lola Créton (Camille), Sebastian Urzendowsky (Sullivan), Magne-Håvard Brekke (Lorenz), Valérie Bonneton (La mère de Camille), Serge Renko (Le père de Camille), Özay Fecht (La mère de Sullivan), Max Ricat (Le frère de Sullivan).

Goodbye First Love is about that particular blindness that only teenage girls seem to have. When you’re a 15 year old girl in love with a handsome, slightly older boy, it seems like you are completely blind to all his faults. Camille (Lola Creton) is a stunning French beauty who is head over heels in love with Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky), who is 19. She’s only 15, but she spends all her time thinking about Sullivan. They argue often, he storms off often, she spends hours in her room crying, and then he comes back, his regular rakish self, and they make up all over again. Her mother doesn’t object to their relationship, but is still worried about her daughter. Why are you in love with this boy? All he does is make you cry, she asks Camille one day. “Tears of joy” is her only response. Try arguing with that.

The movie spans an eight year period, which Camille and Sullivan will mostly spend apart. During their torrid teenage affair, he decides to drop out of University and go backpacking through South America with his friends. “Don’t worry”, he assures her, “It’s only 10 months”. At first she believes the lie – hangs a map of South America on her wall, and tracks his progress with pins from wherever his letters are coming from. But then, as was inevitable, the letters start coming less frequently – they are at times obliviously cruel, and then stop altogether. Camille is devastated – but then moves on.

We meet her again, years later, as she’s studying architecture. She has cropped her hair short, and still pines, at least at times, for Sullivan. But gradually she comes out of her funk. She develops a relationship with one of her professors Lorenz (Magne-Havard Brekke) – who is older, wiser and yet still wears his hair long, like many middle aged men trying to convince themselves that he is still young. The two are comfortable with each other – and despite what we initially think – this is no mid-life crisis fling for Lorenz. These two do love each other – but it isn’t the type of love that rocked Camille’s being as a teenager. So when she runs into Sullivan’s mother one day, and gives her her new phone number, we know it’s only going to be a matter of time before Sullivan shows back up.

I couldn’t help thinking of the Twilight series when I watched Goodbye First Love. No, this movie does not have werewolves or vampires, but its main character shares the same delusion of what love is with Bella – the heroine of the Twilight saga. For both of them, love should be an all-consuming passion. But there is a key difference between these two – and that’s because writer-director Mia Hansen-Love understands how soul destroying that kind of all-consuming love can be – and how unrealistic it is. In his review of the film, Roger Ebert complains that the movie should be harder on Sullivan – even if Camille cannot see it, he really is a jerk – and unlike her, he doesn’t seem to mature as he grows older. But Hansen-Love makes her movie from Camille’s point-of-view – a point of view that cannot help but love Sullivan, despite all his faults. But the audience can see who Sullivan really is, even if Camille cannot.

Goodbye First Love gets deeper as it moves along. At first, it seems like this will be a nostalgic look back at young love – the type most people have, and although they get over it, they never quite forget. The film opens in 1999 in Paris, and sees everything as wonderful and romantic. It would not surprise me to discover that this is, at least partly, based on Hansen-Love’s own experiences – she would have been a few years older than Camille in 1999, but not much. And her first film, The Father of My Children, was also somewhat autobiographical.

But it’s when the movie jumps forward in time that it goes deeper than mere nostalgia – and romantic longing. Because when Camille and Sullivan reunite – and discover that same passion still there – the movie doesn’t swoon like it does in those earlier scenes – there is a sense of sadness in these scenes, and a feeling that these two kids need to grow the hell up.

The performances help a great deal. Magne-Håvard Brekke as the older man isn’t the pervy old guy after hot young flesh that we expect him to be – he’s kind, sweet, trusting and thoughtful. Sebastian Urzendowsky as Sullivan has some of that bad boy attitude that women find so appealing – at least as teenagers, but is also good at showing how less romantic that seems when you grow older. He’s not a million miles away from some of the young men in a Catherine Breillent movie, who always talk the young women in their lives out of their virginity – but is seen much more sympathetically than Breillent could ever conceive. Best of all is Lola Créton, who is perfect as the naïve teenager, and never loses our sympathy even as she makes mistakes later in the movie. She’s a beauty – and a future French star to look out for – a younger Marion Cotillard if you will.

 
Overall, I think Goodbye First Love is a fine little movie. It’s an improvement over The Father of My Children, which everyone seemed to like more than I did, and shows that Hansen-Love really is a filmmaker to watch out for.

DVD Review: Oslo August 31

Oslo, August 31
Directed by: Joachim Trier.
Written by: Joachim Trier & Eskil Vogt based on the novel by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle.
Starring: Anders Danielsen Lie (Anders), Hans Olav Brenner (Thomas), Ingrid Olava (Rebecca), Anders Borchgrevink (Øystein), Andreas Braaten (Karsten), Malin Crépin (Malin), Petter Width Kristiansen (Petter), Emil Lund (Calle), Tone Beate Mostraum (Tove), Renate Reinsve (Renate), Øystein Røger (David), Kjærsti Odden Skjeldal (Mirjam).

Oslo August 31 is about Anders (Anders Danielsen Lie), who is a drug addict. He’s been living clean in a rehab facility for months now, and his time is just about up. They are even letting him go out for the day – to go to a job interview, so perhaps when he gets out of for good, he’ll have something to look forward to – something to keep his mind off the drugs. But he knows it’s hopeless. From the beginning of Oslo August 31, I knew how the movie was going to end – and so does Anders. He may not have seen how he screwed everything up with the drugs while he was still using, but now that he’s clean, he knows there is no going back.

Oslo August 31 is essentially made up of a series of conversations between Anders and others. When he first arrives in Oslo from the rehab facility, he has some time to kill before his interview, and drops in on his old friend Thomas. Thomas is married now, and has a couple of kids, but he is nice to Anders – but really has no idea what to say. He gives him sympathetic look, and meaningless platitudes of support, but they don’t really help Anders, essentially because Thomas has no idea what to say, do or how to behave when his old friend the drug addict shows up at his door unannounced. Do any of us? We then move onto the interview, which, predictably, doesn’t go too well. Anders is obviously smart and well educated, and he’s applying for a job at a shitty magazine, and he isn’t quite able to stop himself for insulting the magazine. And then when the interviewer asks him why there is nothing on his resume after 2005 things get even worse. I’m sure the rehab place prepared him for this question, but however they told him to answer it, it certainly isn’t the way Anders does.

The day goes on like this – a series of encounters Anders has with people from his past. He’s supposed to meet his sister for coffee, and then go onto their childhood home, which their parents are in the midst of selling, in part to help pay to get Anders out of trouble. But his sister is wary – and doesn’t show up, and instead sends her girlfriend to meet Anders, which angers him. And finally, it’s onto a party, where Anders knows he should not go, but he cannot help himself. Throughout the day, he calls his ex-girlfriend repeatedly. She stuck by him for years, but has now moved on with her life – and moved to New York. She never answers the phone, but Anders keeps leaving messages.

The best thing about Oslo August 31 is the lead performance by Anders Danielsen Lie. He looks like you would expect a recovering drug addict to look, but his performance is more than that. He doesn’t rely on the usual nervous ticks or increasingly anxious voice that many actors do when portraying an addict – someone either craving a hit, or trying really hard not to. He remains fairly calm. I don’t think he’s really falling apart, the way we normally see in these movies. That is because from the beginning of the film, his mind is made up. You could delude himself when he was an addict – or more accurately, when he was an addict, he didn’t have to think about the consequences of his actions. But now that he’s clean, he cannot live with what he has done.

It is true that many people are able to get and stay clean after being addicts. I bet you many of those have some sort of support system in place though – and Anders doesn’t. He was a spoiled rich kid, and while his parents gave him everything material he could want, they never gave him what he really needs. His friends don’t know how to behave around him – they are all either like Thomas, all awkward and well-meaning, or else they pretend nothing at all happened, and that Anders is the same old screw-up he’s always been. His sister is nervous about his coming out of rehab – and his girlfriend is gone, never going to return.

But Anders cannot, and does not, blame anyone else for what has happened to him. He knows the fault lie directly with himself.  And he sees only one way out. Oslo August 31 is a deeply sympathetic film about Anders. Directed by Joachim Trier, the film has a simple visual look – it basically looks directly at Anders throughout the movie. I was reminded of the films of the Dardenne Brothers who often position their camera to be looking directly at the characters face – or the back of their head – as if by looking long enough, they’ll finally be able to break through into their mind. In this case, what you would find is a sad, lonely man, who sees only one solution.

Movie Review: The Intouchables

The Intouchables
Directed by: Olivier Nakache & Eric Toledano.
Written by: Olivier Nakache & Eric Toledano.
Starring: François Cluzet (Philippe), Omar Sy (Driss), Anne Le Ny (Yvonne), Audrey Fleurot (Magalie), Clotilde Mollet (Marcelle), Alba Gaïa Bellugi (Elisa), Cyril Mendy (Adama), Christian Ameri (Albert), Grégoire Oestermann (Antoine).

The Intouchables is a would-be inspirational movie that quite frankly left me cold. It contains two excellent performances, but they are shoehorned into the most obvious, cliché riddled, cringe worthy story imaginable. The film essentially trades on obvious racial stereotypes, that no matter how good the performances are, the film simply cannot overcome them.

The film stars Omar Sy as Driss, an immigrant to France from Senegal, who has just got out of prison where he spent six months for robbing a jewelry store. His Aunt, who raised him, no longer wants him in the house. He has nowhere else to go, nothing else to do – but he needs money. He doesn’t really want a job, but needs to have a form signed by potential employers that says he is looking for a job in order to continue to collect unemployment benefits. This is how he comes to apply to be a caretaker for Philippe (Francois Cluzet), a rich widower, paralyzed from the neck down due to an accident. He barges in, demands his form be signed so he can be on his way. Almost out of spite, Philippe hires him – and now Driss is stuck doing a job he never wanted.

But wouldn’t you know it, it turns out that Driss is precisely the kind of caretaker Philippe needs to loosen up and live his life again – and Philippe is precisely the employer Driss needs, to show him some responsibility so that Driss can become a productive member of society. At first, Driss seems hopeless – he doesn’t take the job seriously, he spends more time ogling Philippe’s beautiful assistant than he does caring for him, the staff eyes him suspiciously, and Philippe’s teenage daughter makes it clear she doesn’t want him around. But soon, Driss’ no nonsense approach, his wide, friendly smile, make fit in. And while Driss at first sees Philippe as a stick in the mud – an upper class, out of touch old man, gradually, he starts to see the real person underneath – the person who needs help.

I suppose a movie like this could work. Hell, it’s not a million miles away from a film like Driving Miss Daisy – although that film at least had the advantage of being set in the past, where the behavior of the old white person, and the younger black person, at least made some sort of sense. And Driving Miss Daisy never had scenes as ridiculous as when Philippe takes his first hit of marijuana (how often have the movie taught us that up tight people just need to start smoking up?), or a scene as insulting as the would be funny sequence where Driss puts on some Earth, Wind and Fire at Philippe’s uptight birthday party, only to have a bunch of square, old white people in tuxedos start busting a move on the dance floor.

It is somewhat amazing then that the two performances in the movie work as well as they do. Sy in particular is wonderful as Driss – yes, he’s playing a stereotype – the type of character Eddie Murphy or Richard Pryor might have played in the 1980s (and apparently, Chris Tucker says he’s interested in the role for the upcoming English language remake – and that casting actually makes sense to me), but with even less dimension than those roles. But Sy works hard, and sells his character. It may well be a stereotype, but Sy plays the hell out of it. And Cluzet makes Philippe into a real person – not just another movie “handicapped” person whose courage we are supposed to admire. The two performances make what otherwise would have been an insufferable movie at the very least watchable.

 
Still though, I cannot say I really liked The Intouchables. Yes, apparently this is based on a true story (although how much is really true, and how much was made up for the movie is up for debate), but that still doesn’t mean I really bought the movie. The Intouchables is a film that has two gifted actors at the peak of their form – but the movie doesn’t trust them enough to give them more complex characters to play.