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film fatales #213: happening (audrey diwan, 2021)

Abortion is serious business, and a movie that features abortion better be good or it will outrage ... what a woman goes through deserves a powerful film. Of course, abortion is a crucial topic in the U.S. right now, and some movies, which occur in a time and/or place where abortions are hard to come by, really hit home. In Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020), the central character is only 17, and can't get an abortion in her state without parental consent, so she goes to New York. And the brilliant 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) takes place in Romania during the Ceaușescu era, where everyday life is oppressive.

Happening takes place in France in 1963, and the illegal status of abortion and the accompanying repression reflects our own times. The decision of the young student to have an abortion is honest and considered ... she isn't thoughtless, she is realistic. But the trauma is twofold, because abortion is a difficult decision and the procedures are risky (especially when you must go underground to get it done), and because of the social pressures on women to acquiesce to their situation as they are told to. Happening doesn't hold back ... the various attempts at abortion are grisly and extremely upsetting, and it's a bit hard to recommend the film to anyone sensitive to these things. But it's also honest and necessary, and it's a surprise that it wasn't submitted to the Oscars as the French submission. They sent Titane, another unsettling film that isn't as good as Happening. Titane was explicitly in the body horror genre ... in Happening, writer/directorAudrey Diwan manages to show how an unwanted pregnancy fits into that genre as well, almost accidentally.

This was the first time I saw Anamaria Vartolomei, and she is excellent. The legendary Sandrine Bonnaire turns up late in the film as an abortionist. It's always good to encounter new-to-me talents like Diwan and Vartolmei, even when the film is as disturbing as Happening.

 

undine (christian petzold, 2020)

A friend recommended this, and I came to it cold ... knew nothing about it, never seen any movies from director Christian Petzold, knew none of the actors. It's one of my favorite ways to watch a new-to-me film, but I think I might have needed some context.

Undines are water nymphs ... the little mermaid is an example ... and I'm not sure if Petzold embellished the legend or not, but the titular Undine in his movie (played by Paula Beer) has some specifics related to love with a human. None of it was very clear to me, which is where context might have helped. At the beginning of the movie, when a man is breaking off a relationship with Undine, she says that means she must kill him, as if that's something everyone knows. I just went with it, knowing from the start that I'd be in the dark about the fantasy elements.

And it was an intriguing watch, no matter what I was missing. Beer is excellent, and Petzold creates an atmosphere that is a good blend of reality and mythology. Undine's relationships with men are both romantic and mysterious, thanks to the underlying myth, and if I never quite got the idea, I was able to go with it anyway. Undine is the kind of movie that often bothers me, yet for some reason this time I bought into what I was watching.

la piscine (jacques deray, 1969)

Seemed like I should watch an Alain Delon movie as a tribute to the actor, who died yesterday. During my extended stay in the bedroom, recovering from my broken ankle, I watched a lot of movies I'd seen before, and I wanted to avoid that as I moved upstairs to watch the big screen TV for the first time in months. I've seen some of his films ... loved The Leopard, Le Samourai is also excellent, not to mention Purple Noon and Le Cercle Rouge. I decided on La Piscine (in English, The Swimming Pool).

Besides his other qualities, Alain Delon brings eye candy to the screen. And he is joined by some pretty sweet co-stars: Romy Schneider had been partners with Delon for several years, although they had separated, Maurice Ronet wasn't exactly shabby, and there was Jane Birkin to round things out. La Piscine is smoldering from the start ... Delon and Schneider still had great screen chemistry. The appearance of the other two stars setup a steamy who-will-and-with-whom plot. Jacques Deray, though, lets the chemistry of his actors do all the heavy lifting, so the film is actually a bit boring as it meanders its way to a thriller ending.

Ultimately, I don't think La Piscine makes any large statements ... not sure that was intended, to be honest. None of the characters is particularly likable or the opposite, they are just well-off and better-looking people than the rest of us.

film fatales #208: the souvenir (joanna hogg, 2019)

I feel like I need a spoiler warning before writing about The Souvenir. I'm usually pretty good at avoiding crucial spoilers, but much of what works and doesn't work in The Souvenir comes out of a specific plot point. So, you've been warned.

Joanna Hogg directed Exhibition, which I liked, in part because of the fine job from former Slits member Viv Albertine. The Souvenir has an intriguing cast ... Tilda Swinton in a supporting role (and what actor in our time is more intriguing than Tilda Swinton?); Tom Burke, who recently appeared as Praetorian Jack in Furiosa and who played Orson Welles in Mank; and Swinton's daughter Honor Swinton Byrne in what is effectively her film debut. This is only my second Joanna Hogg movie, but I already feel like she has a recognizable visual style ... she's not afraid of mirrors, for one thing.

The Souvenir is a semi-autobiographical remembrance of Hogg's time in film school. The Hogg stand-in, Julie, begins a relationship with an older man, Anthony, and at first that relationship feels fairly straightforward, although from the start I wanted more time spent on Julie than on Anthony (in fairness, Anthony in the film only exists as part of Julie's world ... there is no question which character is at the center of the movie). The scenes of Julie and her film-school friends are fun, the scenes with her with Anthony less so, and we eventually learn a reason for this: Anthony isn't always a lot of fun because he's a heroin addict.

It's tough, albeit not impossible, to represent addicts in a movie. A greedy, flamboyant portrait risks romanticizing, but a down-in-the-dregs picture can become too dreary to watch. Hogg is closer to the latter approach ... Anthony is not the most interesting character in the movie, and his addiction doesn't really make him more interesting. But The Souvenir never falls too far into dreariness, because the center of the movie lies not in Anthony but in Julie, who is full of youthful life. I suspect I am asking too much of Hogg, for the character of Julie is believable and interesting and she is, after all, the focus of the picture. A movie like Sid and Nancy, where both people in the relationship are junkies, eventually pulls away from romanticizing because both characters falls into the dregs, but the vibrancy of Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb still jumps off of the screen. In The Souvenir, Anthony is a much quieter junkie than Sid or Nancy, and while Byrne gives a strong performance, it doesn't often call for "vibrancy". So The Souvenir is a more low-key film than something like Sid and Nancy, and I'm not sure it makes sense for me to even compare the two.

There is much to respect about The Souvenir, and it's easy to recommend it. I preferred Exhibition, but both of the Hogg films I have seen are encouraging. #148 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of the 21st century.

the conformist (bernardo bertolucci, 1970)

I re-watched The Conformist for the first time in 50 or so years. I've often listed it as my favorite Bertolucci film (and I like a lot of them), even though my memories of it were pretty vague compared to others I'd seen over the years (I have a special fondness for The Dreamers, even though I've never thought of it as his best). There are subtleties in the film that perhaps contributed to the vagueness of my memories ... I never forgot how much I liked it, but never could pinpoint exactly why.

This is an interesting time to be watching The Conformist, which draws a picture of fascism (or, perhaps better, a run-of-the-mill fascist) that resonates in 2024. Jean-Louis Trintignant's Marcello wants to be a fascist because he wants to go unnoticed, to be "normal". The subtextual connection between fascism and sexual "deviance" is as silly now as it was in 1970, but in Marcello's case, it's not clear that sex interests him. The most sexually charged scene comes when Stefania Sandrelli and Dominique Sanda dance together ... it's a scene you remember 50 years later.

I don't know where I got this idea, but I always thought the actor who played Fanucci in The Godfather: Part II was a non-actor cast because he looked the part. So imagine my surprise when Gastone Moschin turned up in a key role in The Conformist. (He's very good, too.) The Conformist looks gorgeous, as most Bertolucci films do. Shoutouts to cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and art directors Ferdinando Scarfiotti and Nedo Azzini. After all these years, I may still believe that this is Bertolucci's best film. #83 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of all time.

charlotte and her boyfriend (jean-luc godard, 1958)

A 13-minute trifle from Godard, one of a handful of shorts he made before Breathless. There's not much to it ... Charlotte stops by the hotel room of her ex-boyfriend Jules, who proceeds to rant about her leaving him. We don't get a chance to know either character, so the whole thing is kinda pointless, and since almost all of the dialogue is from Jules, whose every other line insults Charlotte, there's a misogyny that isn't subtext but text. Anne Collette brings charm to Charlotte, while Jean-Paul Belmondo is uninteresting as Jules (perhaps because he was unavailable to dub his voice, so what we hear is actually Godard, and he isn't very compelling). Godard pays homage to Jean Cocteau in the opening credits, for what it's worth.

chambre 12, hôtel de suède (claude ventura and xavier villetard, 1993)

Quirky documentary made for French TV gives us Claude Ventura, returning to the sites where Godard's Breathless was filmed more than 30 years prior. Ventura wants to understand more about the film, so he rents a room, Chambre 12, at the Hôtel de Suède, where the famous long sequence with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg takes place. The hotel is about to be demolished.

Ventura works like a detective, trying to get at the truth of the making of Breathless (it was never clear to me exactly what co-director Xavier Villetard had to do with all of this). We aren't sure just why this matters to Ventura, but his obsession is clear. Those of us who love Breathless want to learn more about that classic film ... it's why we watch this documentary ... Ventura's personalizing of the process is part of what makes the film quirky. I don't know that it adds much depth for the viewer, and I don't imagine someone unfamiliar with Breathless will find anything of interest here.

Ventura works his way through the past. He interviews as many still-living participants as he can: Belmondo, Raoul Coutard, Claude Chabrol, and others. Twice he calls Godard himself on the phone and tries to get the director to talk about Breathless; twice Godard declines and hangs up the phone. Ventura searches out the film's locations, obviously including the hotel room where he stays. He even travels to Geneva, where Godard spent his formative years. He tracks down an old friend who now owns a bookstore. We learn a bit more about Godard, just as throughout this film, we learn a bit about Godard and a bit about the making of Breathless.

But Chambre 12 doesn't really serve as much of an introduction to Breathless. It's a film about our obsessions with the movies of our past, and I found it intriguing. And of course it's not a traditional documentary, for how could one make anything traditional in relation to Breathless?

film fatales #204: the blue caftan (maryam touzani, 2022)

Quietly smoldering triangle that takes some different approaches, although the end result isn't too far off from the norm. The main difference is that the triangle consists of a husband and wife and a young man who attracts the closeted husband. The catch is that the wife is dying of cancer. The wife is played by the wonderful Lubna Azabal, who starred in Denis Villeneuve's best film, Incendies.

Director/co-writer Maryam Touzani and cinematographer Virginie Surdej create an intimate environment that invites us into the budding threesome. There is the expected awkwardness ... the husband suppressing his feelings, the wife dying but wanting her husband to feel free when she is gone, the young man who gradually enters the lives of the others (he is an apprentice at the couple's caftan store). Nothing feels false, and we want the best possible outcome for all of the characters ... to the extent it is possible, Touzani rewards our desires.

The film feels long at 122 minutes. It's not that there is anything obvious that could be cut, but the low-key tension walks a fine line between intensity and torpor. But that's a minor complaint for a film that takes just enough liberties with romantic triangle tropes to make The Blue Caftan feel unique.

black girl (ousmane sembène, 1966)

This is the twenty-eighth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 28 is called "World Cinema Project Week":

Martin Scorsese founded the World Cinema project in 2007 with the goal of preserving and restoring films from around the globe that otherwise would become neglected. They focus on films that do not get a lot of exposure in the West and that are at risk of becoming lost because of the lack of resources some countries have to preserve their own films. They continue to work on this endeavor to this day, so far ensuring that 54 films from 30 different countries have been preserved and accessible to a global audience through screenings, Criterion boxsets with 24 of the films on DVD and Blu-ray, and through streaming on the Criterion Channel.

Whether you’re Marching Around the World this month or not, let’s all enjoy one of the films preserved by the World Cinema Project and remember how inaccessible the voices and perspective of people around the world can be for even the most avid moviegoer. Michael Hutchins maintains an up-to-date list here.

Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project is one of the great gifts the celebrated director has given the film world. I've seen a handful of the films on the above list and most of them have been very good, with one classic-to-me, Buñuel's Los Olvidados. Black Girl is a perfect example of the treasures to be uncovered in the project. Ousmane Sembène was an esteemed writer from Senegal who wanted to expand his audience by making films. After two shorts, he wrote and directed Black Girl, which became known as the first Sub-Saharan African film to get attention worldwide. It tells the story of a Senegalese woman, Diouana, who gets a job with a white French couple, who later take her with them to France. Sembène uses a complex narrative structure that bounces between the present and Diouana's past life back in Senegal.

The essential examination in Black Girl is of colonialism and race, but Sembène draws a sensitive performance from first-time actor Mbissine Thérèse Diop as Diouana that personalizes the story even as it points to how colonialism affects its victims. The film is short, but the story of Diouana feels extensive, and ultimately heartbreaking. Sembène pulls no punches. #272 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of all time.

geezer cinema: the train (john frankenheimer, 1964)

John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate, but also The Island of Dr. Moreau) had a long and varied career, with a few real highlights. The Train, like Seven Days in May, is very entertaining, with enough subtext to add depth without distracting too much from the basic intention to offer an intelligent action picture. I looked forward to seeing this movie, which seemed to have a decent reputation but which isn't talked about as much as Seven Days in May (much less Manchurian Candidate). And that reputation is deserved .... The Train isn't special, yet that gives it a retrograde enjoyment, as in the cliche of "they don't make them like that any more". Of course, they do still make big action movies, but in line with the retrograde feel, The Train is in black-and-white (reputedly the last big B&W movie), and Burt Lancaster is always good for the nostalgic angle.

Frankenheimer makes excellent use of Lancaster, who does all of his own stunts (on an off-day, Lancaster injured a leg playing golf, so Frankenheimer wrote a scene where Burt's character gets shot in the leg to explain his limp). They also used real trains throughout, no models ... when you see big trains crashing, often into each other, it's the real thing. It's perhaps especially impressive in the CGI era, when such extravagances are unnecessary.

The plot, based on a true story, is about French art treasures the Nazis have stolen. They are trying to get the masterpieces to Germany. Lancaster is a French railway inspector and Resistance fighter (as evidence of his star status, Lancaster does not use a French accent ... he's pretty much the only person in the movie who sounds like an American). The film is a combination of clever manipulations by the French to forestall the transfer of the art works and occasional action set pieces that usually involve one or more trains blowing up. The entire film is a bit long, but it holds its entertainment value throughout. The brutality of the Nazis is there but as a supplement, not the core of the film, and the general question of whether art matters more than the lives of humans is at least deep enough to make The Train a bit better than the standard war picture. Lancaster is at his action best, Paul Scofield as the main Nazi antagonist has a German accent, and Jeanne Moreau is wasted (her part is apparently Woman with a Few Scenes So We Can Say There's a Woman in the Film). #9 on my Letterboxd list of the best movies of 1964.