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gilgeoIII
Reviews
El lado oscuro del corazón (1992)
The Dark Side in the Light of Genius
"The Dark Side of the Heart," a fierce and divine comedy, may not be on any list of the greatest films of all time, but this Argentine masterwork of poetic surrealism and erotic irreverence more than belongs there.
Bunuel himself may have wept with envy in movie-god heaven when this brilliant comedy was released in 1992, but if he didn't, he should have.
Oliverio, a madman poet and seducer extraordinaire is in bed with his latest conquest, as the film begins, saying, "It matters not if (you) wake up in the morning with a breath like insecticide or an aphrodisiac, or if (your) skin feels like a peach or sandpaper....but on no account will I forgive a woman who cannot fly." At that, he disappears her down a trap door hidden on the bed. I suspect every man in the audience wept with joy. I certainly did.
The poet, played by the wonderful Dario Grandinetti, stalks the streets of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, with a billowing cape, searching for ideal love, and when he finally finds it with the magnificent Sandra Ballesteros, like discovering Shakespeare's sonnets the first time, she is a puta with a heart like a steel bank who is always searching for the ideal $100 trick. At one point, he tears out his heart for her as she feasts on it briefly then casually throws it away. I suspect every man in the audience wept for him. I certainly did.
Eventually they have the greatest love scene of all time, while levitating, naturally, but his time runs out as she gets ready for her next customer. I suspect every man in the audience wept with deja vu. I certainly did.
Eliseo Subiela's direction ("Man Facing Southeast") offers sublimely moody imagery of bravura originality, including that love scene of visual splendor, which lingers long in the mind's eye of the heart. "The Dark Side of the Heart," also a spot-on political allegory,is available on DVD at Netflicks. Miss it at your peril.
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La Môme (2007)
Schtick & Schlock
Just as there is disappointment when you go to an arena to see a fight and a hockey game breaks out, I went to the Edith Piaf movie, La Vie en Rose, and they showed The Hunchback of Montmartre instead.
Marion Cotillard, portraying the incomparable Piaf, doesn1t recreate the deeply troubled singer1s complexity of emotions, desires and neurosis, she indicates them mostly with a few stock faces and movements. To indicate feelings instead of creating them on camera is like painting by the numbers. The word 3schtick2 comes to mind.
To show Piaf1s bewilderment, disappointment or fleeting joys, for example, Ms. Cotillard indicates it by scrunching up her face. Ms.
Cotillard does a lot of scrunching up of the face, or she indicates it by scrunching up her body into something resembling that of a hunchback. Ms. Cotillard does a lot of that. The result brings to mind, for a mad moment, Charles Laughton in 3The Hunchback of Notre Dame.2 Note to Ms. Cotillard: there1s more to great acting than schrunching and humping.
Director Olivier Dahan, who co-wrote the screenplay as well, is a hack-lifer whose entire oeuvre, at the age of 40, consists of music videos. He shudda stuck to schlock. There isn1t a cliché in the book he overlooks in this confusing mess which defies an audience to understand when most of the events depicted in this sad story are happening to the 3little sparrow2 whose voice could arouse emotions from a block of granite.
Dahan took great pains to make the actress a replica of Piaf whose real voice was lip synched. The physical recreation of Piaf is uncanny superficially, and when the character sings the initial effect is extraordinary, but the performer on camera doesn1t have the x-factor of recreating Piaf1s artistry and communication with her audiences. Piaf, like the other great ones, had the power to transform an audience into a kind of mystical realm of uniting mind and soul into a single, collective entity, turning the audience into a part of the performer herself, seemingly feeling what she feels at that very moment. Audience knowledge of French isn1t essential for that, but the mysterious x-factor is, and Ms. Cotillard, for all her efforts, doesn1t have it.
Would any actress working now? Probably not. Most critics, it seems, have already awarded Ms. Cotillard the Oscar for best actress. Quel crazy.
Every scene in 3La Vie en Rose2 is a cliché, like similar scenes in most of the other bio pics, excepting 3Ray2, with nary a trace of originality even though the singer1s desperately sad life and artistry cries out for something new and different. A cruel irony that a hack director presented the story of a great artist whose work is just as thrilling and deeply moving now as it was all those decades ago.
Un long dimanche de fiançailles (2004)
Made me laugh and cry: a masterwork
Once every 10 or 15 years a movie is made that gladdens the heart, enriches the soul, and inspires the spirit to soar. Such a film is A Very Long Engagement, a French production starring Audrey Tautou.
This is the best movie I've seen so far this century and one of the best of any other century, and I've been around for several of them.
Its genre, described in IMDb, is Drama/Mystery/Romance/War and it is that and more.
Despite its very mixed reception by certain ogre Critics, IMDb users, as usual, are much more discerning and on the money, calling it PURE POETRY, a visual wonder, a tremendously entertaining epic offering suspense, intrigue and a wonderful romance. It is all of that and more.
Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet , who redeems himself brilliantly after the achingly cute Amelie, the film tells the story of a young woman, Audrey Tautou, who conducts a relentless search for her lover, a hapless French army soldier who disappeared from the wasteland between the opposing trenches in World War One.
The complex plot becomes a compelling detective story, involving countless characters, all of whom are portrayed brilliantly by a wonderful cast, including Jodie Foster, of all people, speaking flawless French. In a Rashomon -like tale -- based on a novel by a detective writer, Sebastien Jarisot -- everyone has a different take on the fate of the boy, well played by Gaspard Ulliel.
The cinematography by Bruno Delbonnel, who shot the horrific battle scenes (better than any in memory) in a sepia-toned pastiche, matches the superbly inventive direction by that cultish and often-despised Jeunet whose international hit, Amelie, made the teeth ache after the fascinating first act. As for Tautou, she creates an ennobling character that will long be remembered with great warmth, even love.
To those who cry the movie is rife with trickery and cheap sentimentality, I say fie, fie on thee, and return thyself and thy rotting heart to thy casket. This film made me laugh, made me cry and very glad to be alive to experience art at this high level.
Daddy Nostalgie (1990)
A sad father daughter love story
Daddy Nostalgia is a deeply moving love story, in a French/English production, about an emotionally starved daughter and her dying father, played by the great Dirk Bogarde, a self-absorbed, remote ironist who never had time for her.
The sad irony of his life is that even on the verge of death he still can't make that connection until the end of their last night together, and then only tenuously. The film, directed by Bertrand Tavernier, who has accomplished a body of wonderful work, is wise, bittersweet and unsentimental, excepting the background music of "These Foolish Things," played and sung beautifully by Jimmy Rowles, the jazz master.
The superb Jane Birkin plays the daughter with heartbreaking sensitivity as she flirts continually with her father, as does he with her, then turns hard momentarily with the devastating, "I don't want to hear about your beautiful life. It was a selfish life and your selfish sun is setting." I wept. As the final credits rolled, over the sound track of "These Foolish Things," sung again with piercing beauty by Rowles and the surprising Birkin, I wept again. Who could ask for anything more?
Closer (2004)
Better than brilliant....
After reading several of your user comments about "Closer," most of which seem to consider it brilliant, I have nothing to add except I found the film better than that, better, in fact, than any movie in memory that deals with sex and "romantic love." It is a masterwork which will linger in the collective consciousness as long as there are movies about sex and "romantic love," a concept which is revealed here to be as false as it is irresistible.
The Mike Nichols' production, with Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman, Clive Owen and Jude Law, tells a story, set in London, about two couples who change partners ("Won't you change partners and dance with me?") and change again over a four-year period, during which time they betray each other and themselves with splendid brutality and merciless alacrity.
These marvelous actors create ensemble performances which rank among the best ever committed to film. Their characters are highly intelligent, articulate, sexy and only interested in self-gratification. In other words, people just like you and me.
The wonderful screenplay, with its lacerating, biting wit, and brutal honesty, is by Patrick Marber and based on his play of the same title.
It more than matches up with "Who's Afraid of Virgina Wolfe?" which it has been compared to.
Those benighted souls who might complain about the language in "Closer," should be condemned to perpetual reruns of "The Sound of Music" in Bushland U.S.A. Those who crave better than brilliant direction, dialog and performances, can do no better than "Closer" and reruns of "Closer."
La salamandre (1971)
As fresh as today...
Renting a foreign film, at random, especially one you've never heard of, and directed by someone you're unfamiliar with, can be a wonderful experience if you're lucky enough to wind up with "La Salamandre."
This 1971 Swiss/French production, shot in glorious black and white, is an off-beat satire which mocks bourgeois conformity and culture in oh-so-straight laced Switzerland. Like shooting fish in a barrel? Director Alain Tanner is far too inspired a talent to settle for the obvious.
He takes an absurdest plot -- played terribly straight -- about a couple of down-on-their luck, hapless, hack writers, trying to put together a TV script about a sexy, free-spirited young woman who, "in real life," shot and wounded her uncle for several good reasons, mainly, I suspect, for being boring (a motive I find endearing).
Tanner, best known for "Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000," takes his sweet time setting up his eccentric characters and their numskull project, but once in place a lot of genuine laughter arises from the work of his gifted cast, led by the irrepressible Bulle Ogier (the compassionate dominatrix in "Maitress") in their delirious situation. Many great bits, all played straight, are offered, including a government inspector of "civil decency" popping up for an investigation. Much of this inspired stuff seems like it could have been written today and definitely not about the Swiss.
Romance (1999)
As sexy and romantic as a toilet
Only the French would make an explicit sex "art" film called "Romance" (ironic title, get it?) with the sexual elements like a dentist filling a decayed tooth, and the romance like watching somebody going to the toilet.
Actually, I'd rather watch a dentist at work rather than view this merciless atrocity directed and written by the criminally untalented Catherine Breillat.
Her leading actors, Caroline Ducey and Sagamore Stevenin play lovers who spend their entire time on camera looking sullen, jaded and bored with each other and life, and acting as if they too had watched themselves on screen doing nothing for 98 minutes except looking sullen, jaded and bored. Even the Italian stallion porn star, Rocco Siffredi, can barely get it up in his explicit scenes, and when he finally does, much ado about nothing.
This deconstruction of sex and romance would make the illustrious Marquis de Sade, wherever he is, and Danielle Steele repent and join a good 12-step program.
Diarios de motocicleta (2004)
A saint Che ain't
In its merry way,"The Motorcycle Diaries" rolls along just fine until it crashes in the second act (where else?) into a sump hole of poppycock, masquerading as social and political consciousness raising. It's an episodic tale of a long motorcycle trip around the spine of South America actually taken by a young medical student, Ernesto Guevara, before he became the political firebrand called Che. The fine Mexican actor, Gael Garcia Bernal, gives a terribly earnest performance which is one-dimensional in its rendition of an emerging saint/icon. Accompanied by his buddy, a bio-chemist, played by the wonderful Argentine actor, Rodrigo De la Serna, who steals the show, the boys cavort through a series of amusing misadventures (Che the straight man) along the road to enlightenment until Che begins to see The Light -- the cruel exploitation of the proletariat and the indigenous peasants along the way, somewhere in Peru. As soon as the film gets "serious" it loses it's bearings, offering scenes of surpassing banality, with no dramatic or comedic impact, involving romanticized, one-dimensional characters, climaxing in a leper colony where Che literally and metaphorically (swimming across a river) plunges into awareness of the necessity of active resistance to the bourgeois status quo, and ultimately into "sainthood." (Note to star and director, Walter Salles: a saint Che ain't.)
The Grass Is Greener (1960)
Bad title, good movie
Although I'm a film buff, I was unaware of the existence this delightful,sophisticated comedy until I saw it recently on TV in Buenos Aires, of all places. Grant, Kerr and Simmons are splendid, as usual, and Mitchum is, well, Mitchum and that's good enough for me. The plot offers the conceit of Mitchum taking Kerr away from Grant, her fusty husband, because Mitch is hot and Grant's not, a rather daring concept for 1960. Grant, of course, has a trick or two up his sleeve and alls well that ends well. The witty dialogue and snappy direction (Stanley Donen) puts to shame the witless, charmless crap churned out by Hollywood hacks for the past 25
Lost in Translation (2003)
A wonderful brief encounter
Whenever a Hollywood movie is touted as a "feel good" experience, I don't see it because I know, from experience, it will make me feel bad. I know it will be maudlin, obvious and excruciatingly dishonest. "Lost in Translation," uses the tag line, "Getting lost never felt so good," and for once they told the truth. This film offers a genuine anti-Hollywood take on a wonderful brief encounter between old guy & young girl, both married, meeting in an exotic place and rediscovering joy, wonder and love in themselves and in life. Watching Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson play off each other was a delight I haven't felt in years. Despite its modern sensibilities, the film felt like it was made when I was young a long time ago, and believed in love and the possibility of happiness. Sofia Coppola, who wrote and directed, has created a magical work of art.
Swimming Pool (2003)
Not what it appears to be?
I love movies that appear to tell a story about one thing, but are actually about something else ("Chinatown," for example), which is usually revealed late in the second act. "Swimming Pool" is another prime example. At the risk of perhaps being a spoiler, the story, as it unfolds, actually takes place in the mind of its protagonist, a crusty English mystery writer, played by the divine Charlotte Rampling. Or, does it? There are a few visual and verbal hints along the way until some of the audience "gets it" around the mid-point of the second act. Thus satisfied, I felt rather smug and pleased with myself. Intrigued by the mastery of its director, Francois Ozon, I watched 'Pool' a second time and enjoyed it even more, but somehow I missed the snapper in the final scene, the first time, and was confounded by it in my second viewing. I'll have to watch the film again.
Irréversible (2002)
Tells the truth about terrible things.
This film has inspired emotions in audiences ranging from indignation to outrage to near violence in film festivals around the world. It offers elements similiar to a recent Hollywood product -- "21 Grams"-- the annihilation of blameless victims by fate or a malevolent person, and the need for retribution and vengeance. These films represent to me the difference between Hollywood s*** and genuine art. Both offer superb leading actors. "21 Grams" is a ludicrous melodrama, confusing obfuscation and trickery with art. It's a ludicrous melodrama, gussied up with fancy cutting. Without it, the picture, by rights, would be laughed out of the theaters. On the other hand, "Irreversible," is to film as Goya and his representation of Napoleon's invasion of Spain is to great art. It tells the truth about terrible things, and the truth, it seems, is the last thing audiences want these days