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Reviews
The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018)
Oh, well
Could have been much worse; yet, the film is too long by and hour and fifty-nine minutes.
Belle toujours (2006)
A modest, graceful, and sly little gem
First: slow down. Second: turn of the phone. Third: relax. Now you're ready for a treat.
Manoel de Oliveira's Belle Toujours (2006) is a sequel in homage to Belle de Jour (1967), the classic film from Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière. Certainly Belle Toujours is diverting and can stand alone; but, when it follows on the heels of Belle de Jour, so that the two films are taken together, then it finds its full stride. Something magical happens. Michel Piccoli returns as "Mr. Husson" (un drôle de type), as Bulle Ogier replaces - who else could? - the otherwise irreplaceable Catherine Deneuve as "Séverine" (la putain-penitent, forty years on). It works very well. Alone, Oliveira's little gem comes in around 60 minutes. If watched immediately after Buñuel's film, the two taken together require 2 hours and 40 minutes. Enjoy. 8/10 plays it safe.
La grande bellezza (2013)
Forget La Dolce Vita
Sorrentino's La Grande Bellezza is often compared with Fellini's La Dolce Vita. This is easy enough to see, both films being set in the Eternal City and peopled with an assortment of odd and/or striking characters; yet, the comparison to Fellini applies to the first 30 minutes only, during the first of three parties. After, in the early morning light, the mood changes as we begin to learn about the previous night's Birthday Boy who has turned sixty-five. From this point, unhurriedly, the film diverges from Fellini. Why, because Sorrentino's subject is different. In a way, Le Grande Bellezza becomes a polemic that makes use of satire, irony, gut feelings, touches of magic realism, and one rather good inside joke (not a spoiler: the 'aging' 42-year old stripper – an object of parental concern - was played by someone ten years older; but, for the punchline, you must see the movie.) La Grande Bellezza is about memory, loss, self-assessment, regret, and renewal; the flashes of beauty too often missed; everything that is buried beneath quotidian existence and "the incessant blah, blah, blah" (end quote). Finally, some viewers say there is too much water under the bridge in the final five minutes – but it is a matter of sensibility and the balance between frenzy and tranquility
Tren de sombras (1997)
An Enigma, Squared
WARNING: It is difficult to know whether this overview constitutes a spoiler.
This film is nearly pure cinema. It appears to be sans plot, but clues seem to be scattered everywhere. If one watches carefully, there are at least two (2) "filmmakers" (the lawyer and the prestidigitator), at least two (2) objects of desire (one rather more obscure than the other), a collection of family photos and memorabilia, the restored footage from the 1920s, the restoration process itself (beginning about half-way through Tren de Sombras), which signals the presence of an editor (redactor) whose project may be lending a certain intentionality to "archival materials" that the materials themselves may not possess. Clearly there is some intentionality (Guerin's , but of course; but perhaps also the intentions of his characters).
As an audio-visual feast, this film is unsurpassed. There is much food for thought, and the touch is so very light - always the case with Guerin's films.
No, this film will not be for everyone. nevertheless, its rewards are many.
Ripley Under Ground (2005)
Ripley buried
RIPLEY UNDER GROUND (2005)
Tom Wilkinson. Simon Callow. Clare Forlani
The casting is fine with the unfortunate exception of Barry Pepper (excellent in The 25th Hour) who is miscast as Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley. Then again, this movie is only nominally a Ripley film. Why, because the misfiring slapstick of the screenplay taken with the frenetic "action" orientation of the pedestrian direction are wrong-headed. And that's a shame. Actors, however competent, cannot save films lacking intelligence, wit, subtlety, and style. Highsmith requires these four things, plus atmosphere. Postcard shots of a French château, jump cuts, and wooden dialogue just don't meet the mark. Nor is mere attitude (for example, an arty archness) any substitute for substance (in this case, the mental machinations of Mr. Ripley). And yet, there are worse movies on offer. Far worse.
Pao Da Shuang Deng (1994)
Interesting inversion
A brief conversation, together with an interesting inversion of traditional roles, keeps "Red Firecracker, Green Firecracker" (1994) timely. When the female Boss (who habitually wears men's clothes) speaks privately with an itinerant male artisan who is newly-arrived to her family's company town, the entire Confucian system is undermined in a single sentence. Yet, in another scene, the Boss is concerned that traditional rules be followed when paying workers – and again, that traditional punishment be meted out to a worker who caused a fire in the factory. No one questions this 30-something woman, not even male elders in their 70s. She is accepted in her role as The Boss. However, as the story continues, and the boss falls in love with the artisan, all bets are off. She changes her hair (watch out!) and dons traditional female garb. Then she announces to everyone that she is tired of being the boss, and that she wants to be a woman. What?! No one, absolutely no one, accepts her statement of wishes. So, everyone plots
Hmm. It's an interesting inversion, but perhaps one should not make too much of it.
NB. A revision of earlier (nearly incomprehensible) English subtitles has been uploaded to opensubtitles.com – not perfect, but an improvement. At a minimum, the revision is more coherent.
La sapienza (2014)
Eugène Green's stilted pretensions?
Extremely different reactions to "La Sapienza" reflect differences in temperament. Negative criticism tends to remark the film's arty pretension, lack of plot, and pointlessness. It is easy to see why someone might react in this way, because Eugene Green's movies are different from everything else on offer, including so-called art-house films. To say that his characters do not talk as real people talk is exactly right, given that Green's characters speak in the declamatory Baroque style, a style which he has been teaching these past forty years. This mode of speech is so far removed from our daily discourse that it sounds like it comes from Mars. And that's the intention. It forces one to pay attention. It takes time and patience to get used to such talk, but after a little, the unusual diction begins to make sense: it fits Green's symmetrical compositions of objects in space and the stillness that permeates all his films.
As to pretentiousness, no. Green is, if anything, modest in his insistence that there is another way, albeit one that appears wildly impractical in our materialistic present. True, his characters incarnate types that reflect ideas which he has been developing, especially since 2001, in print and on film. True, to embody an idea is to be a bit odd. Certainly this approach takes us off the beaten track. However, for those of a particular temperament, that's all to the good.
It is not the fault of an English-speaking audience, when they are unfamiliar with Green's ideas. He writes in French, as did Julian Green and Samuel Beckett. However, unlike these latter two, his books have yet to be translated from French into English.
Meanwhile, Green's movies aim for evocation. There are no car chases, no shootouts, no femme fatales, no sound-bite dialogues, no CGI, no enhanced sounds, all of which can be entertaining. Instead, there is a universe of the imagination and a particular sensibility that would have us put down our smart phones for a long moment, take a deep breath, look around, and 'regard' (recall that this word comes from French and there lies its meaning) the person sitting across from us. That is to say, to be in the moment, not becoming, but being. After all, 'becoming' will take care of itself. Being, on the other hand, is sometimes missed altogether.