by ·Comments Off on Nana (1926, Jean Renoir)

Everyone loves actress Nana (the Whirlpool of Fate orphan, and the director’s wife), including Count “Dr. Caligari” Muffat, horse breeder Count “Robert Macaire” Vandeuvres, and Macaire’s useless nephew Ray (The Three-Sided Mirror). Nana, in turn, likes whoever she can use to get ahead, and that’s Muffat, who gets her the starring role in a play but can’t stop her from being laughed off the stage. In the end, everyone in this movie who acted normal about anything was spared – unfortunately that’s nobody.

Nana with her Count:

Somehow Nana is even worse as a courtesan, needing to ham up every interaction as if she’s still onstage. If you watched this and The Odyssey back-to-back, you’d have to conclude from the crowds of suitors that all men except Matt Damon are pathetic. Nana’s three suitors are in a desperation spiral, and it’s tough to keep track – you tell yourself at the beginning “the Count is the guy with the preposterous mustache,” but there are multiple Counts and a preponderance of bad mustaches. The horse breeder tries to throw a race to gain enough cash to win the girl. When that fails he drinks poison then falls down, starting a fire that burns up his horses. The nephew is overwhelmed by how pathetic this all is and unalives himself with Nana’s scissors. Muffat’s wife left him long ago, is now depressed about her life with an annoying playwright. Finally Nana gets smallpox and I lost track of whether she took the count with her.

Nana with Horse Guy:

Based on a Zola novel that gets remade every decade or so. The Silent Film Music Shuffle Mix was played, and Dirty Three’s Ocean Songs came out the winner.

Nana with the annoying nephew:

by ·Comments Off on Whirlpool of Fate (1925, Jean Renoir)

Checking out the Renoir silents with my faithful playlist of weird jazz. Cute riverboat girl Catherine “Nana” Hessling loses her dad to a random fall overboard and becomes the ward of her abusive uncle. Things aren’t gonna get any better from here, if the film title is to be believed. She meets a charismatic poacher named Weasel who provokes the locals into burning his house down, the girl left crying while Weasel skips town with her dog. But the girl doesn’t deserve all this torment by 1920’s standards, she hasn’t done anything wicked or evil like have sex with a man, so after she has some cool hallucinations (Melies cauchemars, lizards and anti-gravity) she’s discovered by a nice rich boy who helps fight off the uncle when he tries to return.

by ·Comments Off on Ménilmontant (1926, Dimitri Kirsanoff)

A couple gets axe-murdered in the opening seconds, orphaning their two fully grown frizz-haired daughters who are pretending to be cavorting schoolgirls. Once they’ve grown into their actual ages they get exploited by the patriarchy, as far as I can understand – Kirsanoff is more of an editing nerd than a clear storyteller. The cad who has taken advantage of one (or both) of them gets his head smashed in by some third woman and her mustache-man, in a mirror to the open. I played the music on the disc, nice and sinister.

Orphan road:

Destitute new mother contemplating a watery grave:

Death to the cad:

by ·Comments Off on Betty (1992, Claude Chabrol)

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.

by ·Comments Off on 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:
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by ·Comments Off on 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.

by ·Comments Off on 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.

by ·Comments Off on 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: