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Reviews
Camping sauvage (2005)
Alex In Rags
I went to see this for Denis Lavant's face. He's up there with Kinski in my book in terms of a poetic cinematic visage. Anything he's in is worth watching based on this virtue alone.
Good directors know how to work with this and can make the movie be very rewarding. But unfortunately, there is nothing special here. The focus is on the character and the story. So we have a series of medium shots all throughout. This is a sad shame. He seems to know this. He locks his jaw with less vigor, and there is no pursing of the lips.
Notice the way he looks when in jeans. Lavant is the only 40-something man who can pull this off. I believe it's a posture problem. He has the frame of a 15 year old, but his mannerisms are those of an adult. Carax worked with this by making him wear those tattered baggy pants.
Lavant apart, this is a very good example of how not to make a movie. It lacks form. It might as well have remained the newspaper clipping it was inspired by. In fact, it seems like they took the journalistic approach: factual and logical. Not cinema.
Also, they quote his limp from _Lovers On the Bridge_ here, for the finale. Cheap shot. But it made me very happy.
Broken Flowers (2005)
We Are In The Present Now
*Spoilers herein.*
I like this kind of film. It is very easy to review.
A guy receives a letter. The letter supposedly comes from an ex-lover, unnamed. It says he has a son, from a previous relationship, twenty years ago.
Guy sets out to revisit the four girlfriends from that time period. His goal is to possibly chance upon the mother of his supposed son.
So we have a story about a guy who has four stories with four different girls. Floating above it all is a story about a possible offspring, who also has his own story: he (again, supposedly) is out on a road-trip looking for his father.
Take notice that the film is dedicated to Jean Eustache, a man who made movies about people telling stories. See Une sale affaire for an explicit indication, or La maman et la putain for a story about a storyteller with a neurotic compulsion to tell stories. This movie is also said to be inspired by a story Sara Driver told Jarmusch. They made it a point to let us know.
No resolution. Each thread goes off into a lingering ambiguity. So what is really interesting here is the abstract layers between us and our multi-storied hero. What we see on the screen is past brought to present using encounter of past-characters as form. What we don't see is conclusions, resolutions, answers to anticipation: the future.
Also, we see him wake up after each encounter. All of these stories might be fabrications. Well so, as our character is established as a former businessman, now lonely, and rich enough to lack any incentive to work. A dreamer, a drifter, a Jarmusch trademark.
Our hero finds a letter at the end that supposedly clues him into thinking the original letter was a scam. It is supposed to be written by the lover in the first scene of the movie. The scene that is obviously a dream.
See this for laughs. I loved it.
The Girl from Monday (2005)
American Godard
Is this Hartley following Godard's footsteps and becoming "political"? Political commentary is never interesting, unless it is executed in an interesting way. Luckily, this is one of those cases.
I'm amazed at the quality of the shots considering they used a DCR-VX2000 for this movie. How many cameras did they use? One I suspect.
Hartley's World is that of an intelligent essayist, specially since he quit making movies like "Surviving Desire" and "Trust". "Theory of Achievement" was heavily influenced by "La Chinoise", as much as the form of a "short" could take it. Here we have the same intent, but turned into a fictional narrative. It works, but only if you understand the reasoning behind it.
Les aimants (2004)
Good Title but...
I have seen romantic comedies and this is one of the easiest/worst attempts at one. A lot of the scenes work in a plug-and-play manner inserted strictly to conform to the romantic-comedy genre. Usually this is okay because we're dealing with a genre, but the challenge generally resides in making it original, new and inventive. This movie fails to do so.
There is no sense of who the characters really are, apart from Sylvie Moreau's (who is the real star of this movie, not Isabelle Blais). They fit into this one-dimensional cliché and they become nothing more than simple puppets serving the purpose of a very light narrative.
The pacing of the movie can become annoying, rhythm lacks, and the editing is filled with unnecessary close-ups. I should also mention the overly stylized decors making some scenes devoid of any naturally, or rather, making the attempt at naturally seem too obvious. Of course, along with that, you have the right-on-cue sappy music which unfortunately often sounds mismatched.
I can't believe that a movie who makes obvious Woody Allen allusions ends up being this deceptive. If you expect a good light-hearted romantic comedy, this is not it. Or rather, this a poor attempt at it. You will only leave the theater wondering why this film has been getting such praise when cinema is now more than 100 years old and there are far superior Quebecois directors making better flicks.
Les Aimants is a good movie for what it is. But it's a bad one if you regard cinema as an art and directors as auteur's.