Marie “daughter of Jean-Louis” Trintignant is Betty, a “drunken, self-destructive woman” who wanders into the life of Stéphane Audran. Each woman crashed out of society after losing a husband. Now Audran is dating local barman Mario (returning from a Chabrol/Audran movie 15 years earlier). The flashbacks are groovy, ranging from long sections to subliminally quick shots. Ultimately Betty runs off with Mario, leaving Audran to despair and suicide. The closing voiceover tells us it was always gonna be one woman or the other, though it never seemed like a struggle at the time.
Tag: france
Police Python 357 (1976, Alain Corneau)
A guy and his boss are seeing the same girl, then the boss murders the girl, but all evidence points at the guy. Yes, it’s a Big Clock remake, minus the clock, sleazier, and with the guys turned from reporters into cops.
When you are the lead suspect in your own investigation:
The killer cop boss is in all the cop/killer movies where guys wear cool hats (Le Samourai, Le Cercle Rouge) and was Heurtebise in Orpheus. Stefania from The Conformist rejects his gifts, so he beats her to death with a stone, then immediately confesses to his bedridden wife Simone Signoret. Post-Tout Va Bien Yves Montand investigates by tearing up the girl’s apartment, finding hidden mementos everywhere, then he goes around attacking potential witnesses, getting himself tailed by a glasses-wearing cop (of Malpertius, which I coincidentally bought on blu-ray on the same day as this).
Drunken Yves liberates some pigs:
Things get dark for Yves – he burns his face with acid after killing the boss and mercy-killing the boss’s wife (witnessed by Glasses Cop), then with nothing to lose he “becomes a weapon” and supercops some bad guys in the big action finale. I’m making it all sound generic, but it’s an improvement on The Big Clock and I’m hoping to check out Corneau’s Serie Noire next.
Mouseover to set fire to your memories:
Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (1987, Eric Rohmer)
Two girls meet on a country road and spend four chapter-titled episodes together, this might as well have been named Four More Moral Tales. M is a city ethnology student (Jessica Forde of The Blind Owl the same year). R is a country painter (Joëlle Miquel of Lelouch movies). M agrees to stay over another night after a passing truck ruins their experience of The Blue Hour (a moment before dawn when “you can feel nature holding its breath”, the exact opposite side of the day from The Green Ray). So far I’m on R’s side, because she thinks a lot about outside bird sounds.
2. After M stays in the country, she invites R to paint in the city. Tyrannical waiter Philippe Laudenbach (Mon oncle d’Amérique) illustrates how much Europeans hate when you try to pay the tab with large bills.
3. The most tedious episode – M sees a woman shoplifting, attempts to help her evade the police by moving her bag aside, but the criminal runs off leaving M with a bag full of pilfered groceries and an ensuing lecture about it from R, then she in turn lectures a subway scammer (Green Ray star Marie Rivière).
4. R shows off her portfolio to an art dealer (Perceval himself, later evil boss of The Empire), M pretends to be a disinterested visitor who shames the dealer into paying more for a painting.
Alpha (2025, Julia Ducournau)
After a flashback scene with her drugged-out dad uncle, stoned teenage Alpha gets a tattoo at a drug party, then it won’t stop bleeding. She inevitably will catch the medusa virus going around that’s turning people to stone, but first she’s gonna become unstuck in time and live her past/present life with her troubled uncle.
I liked the range of weird tones in Titane, the dark humor in Raw – this one is all grim all the way, following lives of pure misery, and whenever something almost positive happens it gets interrupted. Didn’t I see another movie recently where the final shot was the poster image? Only Alpha and boyfriend Adrien and uncle Amin (Tahar Rahim of A Prophet) have character names, none for mom Golshifteh Farahani or nurse Ella McCay.
Sometimes the world vibrates and assaults Alpha. Her teacher (a Nocturama lead, above) has a boyfriend with the stone disease. Uncle Amin takes the girl for a dreamed night on the town to Nick Cave’s “The Mercy Seat,” but even in the dream he has fits, then vanishes. Mom tries to deal with Amin, helping him to live or to die. The boyfriend got the same tattoo (minus the constant bleeding) and didn’t tell anyone. Despite the big fantasy epidemic, the movie is mostly handheld-cam family/teen drama, and feels long.
8 Women (2002, Francois Ozon)
Lovely and delightful, a bunch of the greatest actresses in a color-coordinated single-location murder-mystery musical. I take it Ozon isn’t always good, but I’m thankful to discover that he was ever this good. The ending is a bit cruel (you shouldn’t shoot yourself in front of your kids).
Won a cast award at Berlin (you bet it did). Victim’s wife Deneuve appears here after a couple Ruiz films and in between a couple Oliveiras. Her weirdo sister Isabelle Huppert was also following a great Ruiz, in between a couple Hanekes. Their mom Danielle Darrieux had been playing Catherine’s mom since The Young Girls of Rochefort. Chef Firmine Richard was in an early film from the director of Indigenes which nobody appears to have seen. Suspicious new maid (they’re all suspicious, but come on) Emmanuelle Béart was a decade past La Belle Noiseuse and about to star in Story of Marie and Julien. Victim’s flighty sister Fanny Ardant looks the same as she did in the 1980s Resnais films, played Maria Callas this same year. Older daughter Virginie Ledoyen had already been murdered by Huppert in The Ceremony and more recently played the hotgirl in The Beach. That leaves young Ludivine Sagnier, who would return in Ozon’s Swimming Pool, and get to sing again in Love Songs.
Huppert’s transformation:
Le Boucher (1969, Claude Chabrol)
Local butcher Jean Yanne (We Won’t Grow Old Together) likes teacher Stéphane Audran, also has been murdering people, and stabs himself when she finds out.
Two by Straub-Huillet (2006/08)
These Encounters of Theirs / Quei Loro Incontri (2006)
I’ve grappled with these guys before, trying to figure out their whole deal in previous posts. Think they stated in the Pedro Costa doc their moral grounds for cutting sound with picture with no attempt towards soundscape continuity, but I don’t remember the details. Today I’m here not to grapple, just to space out on the couch with a couple of their late works.
Familiar setup: some people (not actors, we’re told) are declaring/reciting dialogue, their performances engaging and alienating at once. This all brings to mind Denis Côté’s Social Hygiene in the staging. They pause strangely in the middle of sentences, and at the end of a scene they face each other in silence, having run out of lines, the wind blowing their clothes. Their words were written for Greek immortals by depressed communist Cesare Pavese in the 1940s. Played in competition in Venice alongside eleven others I’ve seen – what a year.
Neil Bahadur gets it:
Huillet once said about Straub, “Jean-Marie is always looking for paintings.” Perhaps they wanted to show us that the world itself is a painting, a moving one, always alive. Here is a film about the beauty that the world is capable of, not just by humans, but by the shapes and patterns that sunlight makes when it passes through the leaves and the branches of a tree. The world is so beautiful, so ephemeral that even the gods wish to become mortal. We humans don’t know what we’re missing.
–
Itinerary of Jean Bricard (2008)
First we motorboat around Coton Island a couple times, looking at wintry trees in 4:3 b/w. I assumed this was to demonstrate the size of the island (small enough to circle twice in 15 minutes) but Bahadur sees impressionism, abstraction, a tribute to Cezanne. Then onto land while the titular narrator tells stories of the area’s nazi occupation and beyond. Jake Cole: “He also talks of postwar projects that have dramatically affected the entire ecology and terrain of the area, which further complicates the tranquil images. Left hanging in the air unspoken is the notion that, to the land, the French are every bit the ruinous occupiers that the Germans were.”
Toute Une Nuit (1982, Chantal Akerman)
Anthology of night scenes and into the next morning, mostly involving couples getting together or not – one her most lovely and compulsively watchable dream-films, looks to be an influence on Claire Denis and Tyler Taormina.
A Woman of Paris (1923, Charles Chaplin)
Parents in these movies are all stern, stiff and disapproving, eagerly disowning their kids for dating somebody. Jean’s dad drops dead rather than say goodbye. When Jean doesn’t show at the station due to his dead father, Edna gets on the train and goes to Paris without him. A year later she’s a rich society chick, kept in jewelry and hats by Adolphe Menjou, when Jean shows up to act all righteous then lose her yet again. After a defeated Jean shoots himself, Edna does what all penitent rich women do: open an orphanage.
Adolphe and Edna:
After meeting up again Jean is hired to paint Edna:
I know Chaplin wrote original music for this but I ran my silent movie playlist instead, and heard Cluster, Takako Minekawa, Sly/Family Stone, Shigeru Umebayashi, London Sinfonietta, Sir Richard Bishop, Seefeel, Jacob Mann, Sun Ra, Hania Rani, Squarepusher, Neu, Cyro Baptista, Bar Kokhba, Matmos, bunch of Zorn Book of Angels tracks. Good acting, good cast, good final scene – it seems like Chaplin was determined to prove himself in an area outside his wheelhouse, and unlike Polanski he succeeded.