by ·Comments Off on Eduardo de Gregorio double-feature

Eduardo de Gregorio, cowriter of the great Celine and Julie Go Boating, died last month. I don’t know any of his non-Rivette works, so I watched one he wrote/directed and one he adapted from a Borges story directed by Bertolucci, both very good.

Surreal Estate (1976, Eduardo de Gregorio)

A novelist (Corin Redgrave, Vanessa and Lynn’s brother) seeks a country house in France as an investment – can’t find gate so he climbs the wall. A sexy, ghostly Bulle Ogier shows him around then abruptly disappears when he attempts to enter a forbidden room. Already he’s referring to his situation as novelistic: “Her act was pointless. The mixture of old clothes, erotic come-on and overacted hysteria was in the most hackneyed gothic tradition, a tradition I had done my own small part to debase.”

Next time he meets a different girl (Marie-France Pisier, Bulle’s fiction-house coinhabitant in Celine & Julie) and an older servant (Gigi star Leslie Caron). He rightly comes to think that the vanishing girls are part of an imaginative scam to get him to buy the house, and decides that he must meet Bulle again to write a book about her – but eventually he buys with the understanding that the two beautiful girls will stay there with him – which they do not.

Leslie Caron:

Marie-France:

I lost track at the end of who really was working for whom, and who knew what about which scam, instead paying attention to the mobile camera creeping around corners, the great crazed piano music, and the self-conscious gothic atmosphere the film is creating. Shot by Ricardo Aronovich (Ruiz’s Time Regained and Klimt) with assistant director Claire Denis!

But maybe losing track of the plot threads and simply reveling in the atmosphere of mystery was the film’s intent. It seems to purposely confound expectations in order to mess with Redgrave, beyond simply the goal of selling the house, and the girls end up competing for him (and against him), while Caron takes a larger role than first expected, and even takes over narration for a while.

D. Cairns in The Forgotten:

Secret passages and two-way mirrors are hinted at. What emerges is a much stranger yarn, one which never fully coalesces into an “explanation.” Depending on one’s inclinations, this is either less or much more satisfying than the initial Scooby Doo plot. What seems to be the case is that the younger women are actresses playing parts for the dubious benefit of Redgrave, whose mind starts to unravel when faced with such duplicity. … The idea of actors performing a semi-improvised “play” in a real location with an unwitting stooge as co-star is a beautifully Rivettian one.

Of course, Marie-France Pisier (Agathe) had problems with flowers in Celine & Julie as well.

–
The Spider’s Stratagem (1970, Bernardo Bertolucci)

Bertolucci made this the same year as The Conformist. I think I’ve underestimated him because the only movie I’ve watched in the last decade was his underwhelming The Dreamers. Similarities to Surreal Estate: it’s about an outsider entering an enclosed world full of unknown intrigues. Also, both movies have overt Macbeth references. Very elegant camerawork, outdoing the other feature.

Young Athos comes to the town where his militant anti-fascist father (also Athos, and they look identical) lived and was murdered. He meets his father’s mistress Draifa (Alida Valli of The Third Man, schoolmistress of Suspiria), who sets Athos to investigating the murder. The town is hostile to his queries, and Athos feels endangered from all fronts except by creepy Draifa who wants to hook him up with a young niece so he’ll stay. Then when he tries to flee in frustration, the secretive parties suddenly open up.

The main suspect was fascist Beccaccia, who finally tells Athos “unfortunately, it wasn’t us who killed your father.” Elder Athos’s three friends, who seem alternately welcoming and sinister, finally give up the plot – that Athos had ratted on his own group when they’d planned to bomb a visiting Mussolini, then had allowed them to shoot him instead, martyring him for the cause.

Ebert:

He’s on a strange sort of quest. He doesn’t seem to really care much who killed his father (if you’ll forgive me for not taking the plot at quite face value). In a way, he is his own father, or his father’s alter-ego. Magnani was the only vital life force in the district, and the district defined itself by his energy. Even the fascist brownshirts gained stature and dignity because Magnani opposed them, and Bertolucci demonstrates this with a great scene at an outdoor dance. The brownshirts order the band leader to play the fascist anthem. All dancing stops, and everyone looks at Magnani to see what he’ll do. Coolly, elegantly, he selects the most beautiful girl and begins to dance with her.

by ·Comments Off on Autumn Animated Shorts

The Street (1976, Caroline Leaf)

Story of the summer grandma lay dying in the back bedroom, as told by the grandson who wanted that room for himself. Brilliant animation, looks like charcoal, with erasures visible under the movement. Internet says it was paintings on glass, lovely. Leaf made a pile of animated shorts – I’ve watched her Kafka Metamorphosis one. Did not win the oscar – the movie that beat it is described by an IMDB reviewer as “eye-gougingly dull”.

Is It Always Right To Be Right? (1970, Lee Mishkin)

A 1960’s political generational-gap movie, also featuring sexual and race differences. “Everyone was right – of course – and they knew it.” Pretty below-average animation with a heavy-handed message, but still won the oscar. the director also worked on Mister Magoo shorts and a 1980’s bionic superhero show, ending up on The Simpsons.

Le Chapeau/The Hat (2000, Michele Cournoyer)

An insane morph-drawing of women, sex and hats. Internet says: “An exotic dancer recalls an incident from her childhood where she was physically abused by a male visitor,” but I was busy being impressed by the animation and missed the point.

Munro (1961, Gene Deitch)

Reminiscent of The Bear That Wasn’t. A four-year-old boy is drafted into the army. He tries to tell everyone that he’s four, but every draftee has an excuse to try avoiding the draft, and that one doesn’t fly. Won the oscar over a Czech film, a Disney short about a tiny elephant, a Sylvester cat cartoon and a Chuck Jones sheet-music sketch. Writer Jules Feiffer had a weird career, including Carnal Knowledge and Altman’s Popeye. The director worked at UPA, did some Popeye shorts and a version of Where The Wild Things Are.

Girls Night Out (1987, Joanna Quinn)

A housewife and her buddies blow off steam by partying at a male strip joint while her miserable-looking husband watches television at home, unaware. Nice Bill Plympton-looking animation, with great flickering shadows coming from the TV set.

Just a Gigolo (1932, Dave Fleischer)

Live-action singer Irene Bordoni intrudes into an unusually short Betty Boop cabaret cartoon to sing her gigolo song with follow-the-bouncing-ball onscreen lyrics.

by ·Comments Off on Fantômas (1980, Claude Chabrol & Juan Luis Bunuel)

Found a new version of Fantomas – see also the Feuillade original, the stupid 1960’s version and the surrealist 1930’s short.

Episode 1: L’Echafaud Magique

The original novels and/or serials may have been written as they went along, but in 1980 they should’ve had time to shuffle things a bit. Instead this first episode faithfully recreates the major plot points of the first Feuillade episode – master criminal Fantomas kills an ambassador, is having an affair with the dead man’s wife Lady Beltham, sneaks into a rich woman’s house handing out vanishing-ink business cards, is caught and sentenced to death but switches with an actor, who goes to the guillotine. In this version at least, Inspector Juve discovers the fake seconds after the beheading instead of seconds before – makes Fantomas’s switcheroo more of a sinister plot, less saving his own skin.

Written by Bernard Revon (two of Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel features) and directed by Claude Chabrol, who would tackle another silent-film master-criminal a decade later in Dr. M. Kind of disappointing for what used to be an adventure series – slow and talky, achieving in 90 minutes what Feuillade did in 60 (including intertitles). Fantomas doesn’t get a great introduction as a criminal mastermind, either. He starts strong, killing a woman en route to cashing in her winning lottery ticket under the nose of Juve (Jacques Dufilho of Black and White in Color). Then he breaks into the rich Princess Sonia’s house and. . . bugs her? After Juve catches on to the Lord Beltham disappearance, Fantomas is caught by the Belthams’ gardener, beaten up and handed over to the cops, then relies on his girlfriend, a gullible prison guard and incredible coincidence to escape prison.

Fantomas vs. the Princess:

Juve’s reporter friend Fandor isn’t a pre-existing character here, but the revenge-seeking orphan godson of the slain lottery-ticket woman. Juve assigns him a new name and destiny in an awkward scene.

Fantomas is Helmut Berger, star of some Visconti films. He’s good at playing both the criminal and the windbag actor doing a Fantomas play. Good to see the elegant Gayle Hunnicutt, star of Feuillade-affiliated Nuits Rouges, as Lady Beltham.

Episode 2: L’Etreinte du Diable

Directed by Juan-Luis Bunuel, immediately better than part one, more stylish and energetic. The plot is even stupider and more convoluted – a dead woman is planted in a half-deaf doctor’s house, while a gangster called Lupart has some scheme involving his prostitute girlfriend. The doctor is Fantomas (not sure about the gangster) taunting the police. Shootout at the docks follows, a definite throwback to the originals even if I don’t remember the rest.

Juve vs. Josephine:

Lady Beltham was presumed to be the dead body found earlier, but is discovered alive in a convent – and then she’s followed to her old house, where she has been secretly meeting with Fantomas. Two more good bits from the original follow, to lesser effect than in the silent – a snake attack and the house explosion that “kills” Juve.

Fantomas vs. Lady Beltham:

Episode 3: Le Mort Qui Tue

The Baroness (Danielle Godet of The Fighting Pimpernel) is told by her banker Fantomas that she is ruined. She’s soon found dead, and a young painter asleep in the same room – so the painter (Maxence Mailfort of elder Bunuel’s films and a version of Bartleby) is arrested and hangs himself in prison – then disappears from his cell. It’s always gotta be complicated.

Dead painter’s sister and Fandor are on the case, while an instantly recognizable Juve is undercover in the underground. A sweet train heist featuring a bulletproof mask breaks up all the dialogue and the pointless return of the princess from part one.

Lots more murders and robberies follow. Fantomas is discovered (he’s always hiding right in Juve and Fandor’s faces) but escapes using electromagnets, not the suit with fake arms – a fair trade.

Fandor, stopped in his tracks by magnetic floor:

Episode 4: Le Tramway Fantome

Back over to Chabrol, and it opens with Fantomas knifing a cat. Now he’s Mother Kirsh, friendly landlady in Moravia, and also a fake marquis, both framing a vacationing Fandor for murder then getting Juve caught under suspicion of being Fantomas, the master criminal whom nobody but Juve has ever seen. Lady Beltham, a kidnapped king, and trap-murders causing the cops to kill victims with strings tied to triggers and doorknobs.

Good guys:

The dubbing seems worse than usual, and the subtitles aren’t perfect but I can’t complain. “To use the alarm clock technic to kill is abominable!” Nice that F. and Lady B. get away at the end.

by ·Comments Off on Satyricon (1969, Federico Fellini)

On a bit of a Fellini kick. On a recent shopping trip I found two different books about this movie, so I thought I’d do the full research project, (re)watching the DVD then reading the books. But about halfway through the DVD I decided I was ready to be finished with Satyricon, so the books will have to wait. It’s an imaginative adaptation of an ancient novel, Fellini-grotesque-style with a huge cast and massive sets. Seems like it should work, but everyone is a bit too wild and campy and I couldn’t get on the movie’s wavelength.

Our hero (or protagonist, anyway) is blonde Encolpius (Martin Potter of Demy’s Lady Oscar), introduced vehemently seeking his ex-lover Ascyltus (Atlantan Hiram Keller of Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye), who stole away E’s underage boy Giton and sold him to pig-faced actor Vernacchio. E gets the boy, immediately loses him again, then his entire apartment building is destroyed by an earthquake so E goes to a banquet thrown by super rich poet Trimalchio and attended by bitter rival poet Eumolpus (Salvo Randone of Hands Over the City), who nearly gets thrown into the oven.

Poetry party:

Trimalchio and Fortunata:

Eumolpus vs. the oven:

E is captured by a slave ship and “married” to an old man called Lichas (Alain Cuny, mysterious caped dude in The Milky Way), who is soon killed by enemies of Caesar. Little Giton is there too, but captured again, of course.

Baths are taken, and the demigod Hermaphrodite is kidnapped then allowed to die of dehydration. E fights a fake minotaur then loses his mojo and has to visit the fire-crotched witch Oenothea to get it back.

Oh yeah, there are some women in the movie besides the witch – Capucine (Clouseau’s wife in The Pink Panther) and Magali Noel (temptress of Amarcord), mostly playing bitter wives.

The wikipedia claims the dubbing was unusually horrendous by directorial intent, but I’m not buying it.

by ·Comments Off on The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012, Stephen Chbosky)

Stephen Chbosky adapted a novel by Stephen Chbosky (based partly on the life of Stephen Chbosky) for director (and executive producer) Stephen Chbosky. Sounds like a recipe for a bland, safe movie made by someone too close to the material, but it turned out very well, and features the best cinematic use of David Bowie’s Heroes to date (plus a fair amount of Morrissey).

Charlie (Lightning Thief star Logan Lerman), a high school freshman in the early 90’s had only one friend, who just died, so Charlie spent the summer in an institution having dark thoughts. He’s a nerdy loner at school, only ever talking to English teacher Paul Rudd, but greatly improves when he starts hanging out with Patrick (Ezra Miller, title murderer in We Need to Talk About Kevin) and Mary Elizabeth (Mae Whitman, Ann from Arrested Development, also in Scott Pilgrim) and hottie Emma Watson (of those Harry Potter movies).

Much high-school drama ensues. Charlie joins the older kids’ Rocky Horror show and defends Patrick from homophobes, but doesn’t go after Emma because he is too shy. Belated plot thread when the other kids graduate and Charlie reveals to cast latecomer Joan Cusack that his dead aunt touched him inappropriately. We get a good feeling at the end, like Charlie (an aspiring writer) will be alright, possibly write a memoir-novel of these experiences, adapt it to a screenplay, maybe executive-produce and direct a film version full of Bowie and Morrissey songs.

by ·Comments Off on The Master (2012, P.T. Anderson)

Long-awaited follow-up to There Will Be Blood has a similar episodic construction – power-hungry man meets someone equally strong-willed but very different, feels he needs to conquer the other man in order to progress. This one doesn’t come together as well, possibly because Philip Seymour Hoffman’s emerging religion is supposed to be similar to Scientology but with hardly any concrete details – the movie dances around its own (and its characters’) intentions.

Joaquin Phoenix is a burn-out ex-navy drifter singularly talented at making harsh alcoholic concoctions from whatever chemicals are around. He and Hoffman are the stars here – the Sunday and Plainview of this movie – and the other actors are almost incidental. Hoffman has a devoted wife (The Muppets star Amy Adams) and a frighteningly lookalike son (Jesse Plemons). Laura Dern has a small role as the family’s host, and later, the only believer to question Hoffman’s shifting rules (drawing rage instead of a reasoned explanation).

The movie is long and sprawling, and has plenty of uniquely wonderful shots. It seems disappointing compared to its predecessor – a movie less explicitly about religion which comes across as more spiritual and insightful.

Slant:

The Master drifts for long expanses, like the wanderer at the heart of the film, running on only the fumes of drama and action… [Phoenix] seems perpetually out of synch with dynamics of the group to which he belongs, and his apparent disinterest in the details of the religion he embraces is probably the best case for the film’s own detachment from the same—a line of reasoning one can accept abstractly without deeming it a virtue.

by ·Comments Off on Kinyarwanda (2011, Alrick Brown)

Oh no, I shouldn’t have waited so long to write about this… let’s see what I can remember. Rwandan genocide movie, shown from different character perspectives and overlapping timelines. That’s not clear at first, when small stories are set up then abruptly abandoned, but as they start to cross and join towards the end (including at least one Run Lola Run alternate-story), the movie gets much richer and more interesting.

Since there is a movie about a struggle, a young couple from opposite sides of the struggle must fall in love, so that happens. The girl’s parents are murdered, her boyfriend has to decide whether to support her or not, and the killer eventually confesses at one of those forgiveness committees. Also a priest on the run hides with an imam and regains his faith. And an outmanned military group tries to protect the courtyard where the girl and the priest are hiding.

Writer/director Brown’s first feature after a string of shorts, won an audience award at Sundance.

by ·Comments Off on Dogtooth (2009, Giorgos Lanthimos)

Odd movie, weirdly off-center compositions with tops cut off. Opens with three siblings, insulated in a suburban house their entire lives, being taught fake vocabulary words (“a sea is a leather armchair with wooden arms”). Dad brings a female security guard called Christina from town to have dispassionate sex with the son. The girls kill time by playing fun games, like testing homemade anesthetics (“the one who wakes up first will be the winner”).

Everybody loves Christina:

The girl from outside brings new ideas, and the kids start to act differently, attacking each other with knives and hammers. An unknown creature (neighbor’s kitty) comes over the fence, and the boy defends his family using garden shears.

Dad finds out that one girl (none of the kids have names) got hollywood videos from security guard Christina and developed a killer Rocky impression. He punishes the guilty parties appropriately, beating his daughter with the videotape duct-taped to his hand, then nailing Christina with her VCR. “I hope your kids have bad influences and develop a bad personality. I wish this with all my heart as punishment for the evil you have caused my family.”

Rocky:

Dad tells them a person is ready to leave the house when their dogtooth comes out. Predictably, his daughter knocks out her own tooth, then hides in the trunk of his car to escape. The other daughter is having sex with her brother (if the kids are even related, and not kidnapped or something).

A Cannes winner and oscar nominee. The mom appeared in the other bizarro incestual Greek movie I’ve seen, Singapore Sling. The movie doesn’t explain much, goes in its own entertaining direction instead of trying to psychoanalyze and present backstory.

Lanthimos is one of Cinema Scope’s 50 Under 50, but I’ve avoided reading his entry because it contains possible spoilers about his follow-up, Alps.

Film Quarterly:

Dadaism delighted in exaggerating the pompous absurdity of the ceremonies that authority needs in order to legitimate itself, and Lanthimos’s anatomization of patriarchal power in Dogtooth partakes of the same spirit of coldly savage caricature. The father in the film is not the underside of the Law so much as its parodic extension.

by ·Comments Off on Looper (2012, Rian Johnson)

I laughed at the trailer for this, because Bruce Willis going back in time and confronting his former self, a hitman hired to kill him, recalls 12 Monkeys. Appropriately, this is the best time-travel movie since 12 Monkeys. Dystopia with a grimy Hobo with a Shotgun vibe, saving money on future-stuff by setting the second half in a farmhouse.

Joe Gordon-Levitt and his buddy Paul Dano work for evil Jeff Daniels, executing masked mob enemies sent back in time twenty years. But a new boss is taking over in the 20-year future (which we never see), someone who is “closing the loops” by sending the killers’ own future selves back to be self-executed. Paul Dano lets his guy escape, then is caught with gruesome results. Joe is slightly smarter, so when his older Bruce Willis self escapes, both of them manage to avoid capture, ending up at Emily Blunt’s farm. While Bruce (on a revenge mission for his murdered future-wife) wipes out the entire crime organization single-handed, losing sympathy by killing a shortlist of children, Joe G-L discovers that Emily’s son is the supernaturally gifted future mob boss – or he could be, if he loses his mother to a maniacal Bruce Willis. So Joe kills himself, causing Bruce to disappear and giving the kid a chance.

Joe and Bruce know each other from the G.I. Joe movies. Piper Perabo (Carriers, The Prestige) must’ve played Joe’s prostitute friend. Good to see Jeff Daniels again – last time was The Squid and the Whale.