A Short Film About Love (1988)

Posted on March 13, 2017 by 4 Star Films

Why do you watch me? -Magda

Because I love you – Tomek

Early on it becomes evident that Tomek is a very lonely young man. He lives in Warsaw in a room belonging to the elderly mother of his best friend, who is off deployed by the U.N. There is also some brief suggestion that Tomek’s parents left him when he was very young. Look at him now and this taciturn lad of 19 is all alone. He has no true friends.

Every evening his routine involves waiting for his alarm clock to go off at precisely 8:30. He pulls out his telescope from under its covering and readies himself for another evening of people watching. Except he is interested in one person, in particular, his strikingly beautiful neighbor across the way. So, yes, he’s a peeping tom and his voyeurism is a bit reminiscent of Rear Window without the pretenses of a murder mystery.

a short film about love 2 And despite the clandestine nature of his activities he still somehow remains innocent in the eyes of the beholder. Daily he works at the post office behind the glass and in the evening he studies languages. But he’s continually drawn to this lady across the way. He feels like he knows her. He wants any pretense to meet her and so he creates a bit of fate anytime he can.

It means sending her fake money orders just so she enters the post office and he can interact with her. It means calling her home at night and hearing her voice over the telephone or taking on a job as an early morning milkman just so he can get another chance encounter with her. It even strays into the territory of purloining her mail and calling the gas company just to disrupt her life a little bit.

All these facets easily push Tomek over the line and his bit of obsession could easily be seen as creepy, in fact, it is creepy. However, when he runs after a distraught Magdelena leaving the post office and discloses his activities, everything changes.

He is ashamed. She is repulsed by his admissions. And that looks to be the end of it. But she ultimately realizes the innocence in his eyes, the sincerity in his voice. He says in the most genuine way possible that he loves her.

Intrigued she pries more. What is it he wants? To kiss her, to make love, to run away together? His answer? Tomek wants nothing, nothing. This surprisingly tender conversation leads to several more encounters. First, she willingly masquerades in front of his telescope and then they meet for ice cream in a cafe.

a short film about love 3 However, often times sex and love become synonymous terms and that is the underlying tension between Tomek and Maria Magdelena’s relationship. Though innocent, he wants true love, a love that transcends a simple physical act and is summed up with affection, intimacy, and an inherent closeness. He is taken with her beauty certainly but even more so he is invariably alone. Meanwhile, she is so enraptured with sex and denigrating such a grand (and admittedly messy) thing as love, to a simple physical act. She can’t understand this wide-eyed boy and his delusions. She’s ready to open him up to the way the world actually turns. And her callousness ultimately crushes Tomek’s tender heart. She broke it not by simply rejecting him, because this is a ludicrous love story, but truly obliterating any of the naive aspirations he had for love.

The final act is executed with pristine restraint because Kieslowski does not sink into melodrama but the twinges of emotion begin to overcome Magda as she comes to realize how much she devastated her young admirer. Now she looks out her window every night for any sign of his return. She tries calling him up to acknowledge her mistakes and even goes to see his Godmother.

In the final contemplative moments, Magda is finally given a view into Tomek’s perspective — seeing exactly as he had seen — envisioning the scene from across the way. As is his nature, Kieslowski’s film is insightful and thought-provoking, a fuller examination of his work in the Decalogue. It’s a rather perturbing parable in some respects, but that is only due to the perversity and desires that dwell within the human heart. It’s a telling Biblical allusion that the main female heroine is named after Mary Magdelena, a woman who was historically known for her dubious reputation and promiscuous ways. But it was the exact same woman who went to a redemptive transformation in the Biblical narrative.

Kieslowski leaves his film essentially open-ended but the character’s name is a powerful one because it somehow suggests even to the tiniest degree that these characters too can be redeemed. There is still hope. It’s certainly a tall order to make a short film about love that still manages to leave its mark and yet Kieslowski does it with immense grace. He employs brevity while still succeeding in delivering a thoughtful study on one of the world’s most perplexing mysteries: Love.

4/5 Stars

Review: Le Samourai (1967)

Posted on March 10, 2017 by 4 Star Films

There is no solitude greater than that of the samurai unless it be that of a tiger in the jungle… perhaps…

It would be easy for some to call Le Samourai flat and pedestrian due to its visual style and even the workings of its plot. All very straightforward with cool tones and characters who barely crack a smile. Emotions are even less common. But that’s disregarding how exquisitely confident it is in its execution. Jean-Pierre Melville is a director who evolved into one of the great forgers of crime films for the very reasons mentioned above.

His hero played so iconically by Alain Delon is one of those great film characters who does not need to fill every moment of silence with a witty comeback. In fact, Jef Costello is not one to spitfire witty repartee at all. Instead, he’s calculating, steely-eyed and ridiculously phlegmatic. He fits the corridors of this film like a glove, perfectly suited for the cold exteriors and drab interiors.

We meet him not in some moment of dramatic action, but while he reclines silently on his bed, veiled in shadow, cigarette smoke clouding over him and the chirps of his caged canary piercing through the traffic sounds murmuring outside his window. Although we linger there for a time as the credits roll, it takes a moment to acclimate. If you’re not paying attention, the contours of his body are almost lost to us — an extraordinarily ordinary man. But that’s precisely what he wants you to think.

Meanwhile, he highjacks cars, puts an airtight alibi in place, takes on a hit at a local nightclub with ease and disposes of all evidence without even a hiccup. Veins of ice and nerves of steel give him the perfect physique for a hitman. Top it off with his uniform — a trenchcoat, fedora, and cigarette, bolstered by Delon’s imperious stare and it’s difficult not to be mesmerized by his every movement.

It’s the kind of self-assuredness that allows another character to ask him, What kind of man are you? and no answer is needed — at least not with words — because with every action, every look, he tells us precisely what he is. An aloof assassin of the highest order. Yes, if you want to make the comparison, a samurai.

le samourai 2 And though he does call on his lovely girlfriend (Nathalie Delon), who is absolutely devoted to him, as well as making eyes at the nightclub pianist who is the main eyewitness to his hit, Jef for all intent and purposes, is alone. It’s a kind of forced solitude, a self-made exile created by his trade. After he goes through with the hit, he must shut himself off more and more. That is his job.

So he goes to the police station to be questioned. Goes through the lineup. Stairs down the witnesses and goes home. Not to his girl but the dismal flat with his mournful canary. His contractors are out to get him, the cops are looking to catch him in his fabricated alibi and still, Costello maintains his composure as is his habit. He’s unphased by bugs or tails and when he has a gun to his face he never blubbers, only proceeds with beating up his assailant when the opportunity arises.

And although there is never much of overt romance in Le Samourai — Jef never shows any kind of passion — there are still glimpses that he cares about people. Perhaps he holds onto chivalry as part of his moral code. Even after staying away from his girlfriend for many days he comes back to her not expectant of anything but asking her if she’s alright. Pragmatic but concerned. Distant but still invested.

The same can be said for the film’s tremendous finale. Le Samourai is not a film of gratuitous killing but pointed moments of violence that are careful acts of deliberation. Costello kills two people and the film ends with his third and final hit. But it is in these tense moments that we gain yet another insight into the moral makeup of a world-class hitman.

Melville was obviously an admirer of American gangster films but what makes his vision of the genre so fantastic is the demeanor of his characters. Again, some might say boring, but that is probably a predilection of those raised on Hollywood action. There is no aura left. No shred of intrigue or tension left to be examined. Le Samourai is a crime thriller that performs differently, its pacing is entrancing and far from being tepid, it elevates the hitman to enduringly riveting heights to the last bullet fired. It doesn’t hurt that Jef Costello just might be the coolest action hero of all time.

5/5 Stars

Mouchette (1967)

Posted on March 4, 2017 by 4 Star Films

mouchette 1 Robert Bresson’s film is an extraordinary, melancholy tale of adolescence and as is his customs he tells his story with an assured, no-frills approach that is nevertheless deeply impactful.

There is one moment early on that sets the tone for the entire story to follow. Mouchette stands in her class as the line of young girls around her sing a song in harmony with one another. She is the only one not involved, standing sullenly as her headmistress passes behind her.

In front of the whole class, her face is dragged down to the piano keys and she is forced to sing aloud, her pitch nowhere near the mark. She goes back in line with tears in her eyes as the girls around laugh at her sheer pitifulness. But as an audience, it makes our hearts twinge with pain.

She is the girl who looks out of place at a carnival, her clothes frayed and clogs constantly clomping. She is the girl who doesn’t have enough money to pay for a ride apart from charity. She is the girl who gets hit by bumpers cars. She is the girl looking for a friend, but none can be found — the school girls having nothing to do with her and her father scolding her if she ever made eyes at a boy.

She is forced to be mother, housekeeper, and caretaker as her mother lies in bed deathly ill and her swaddled baby brother cries helplessly night and day. When her father comes home he’s of no use and when he’s out he’s quick to drink.

So in many ways, Mouchette understandably finds life unbearable. She never says that outrightly. In fact, I doubt a character in a Bresson film would say something like that because it wouldn’t feel real. It wouldn’t fit his MO. Still, every moment her head is tilted morosely or she trudges down a street corner dejectedly nothing else must be said. That’s why she slinks off into the surrounding forest and countryside to get away from all that weighs on her.

And even there she cannot find complete relief. One such night during an escapade she witnesses what looks to be a fight between two men from town who have feelings for the same woman. As they are drunk in the rocky depths of a stream, such a confrontation does not bode well. When both men go tumbling down and only one gets up, Mouchette believes she is privy to a murder. The perpetrator Arsene sees her and coalesces her to keep a lie for him, making sure she doesn’t say anything. But she’s also not safe in his presence and so she eventually flees into the night.

In the waning moments of the film, what we expected from the outset comes to fruition and Mouchette loses her mother, the only person who seemed to deeply care for her with reciprocated love. And as she wanders through town to retrieve milk for her brother, she turns off anyone and everyone who makes any pretense to help her. Of course, their help is always a backhanded or pious type of charity and in the same breath, Mouchette is not about to be thankful for them. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle of sorts. All parties are to blame.

In the end, she seems to be at her happiest rolling down the grassy hills away from any sort of human sorrow or interaction. It’s a sorry existence highlighted by very few silver linings. Bresson’s film hits deep with numerous bitter notes, offering up a life that is wounded and broken. Mouchette’s tragedy is great but perhaps the most important question to ask is where does her solace come from?

It’s interesting how Bresson often focuses on bodies in action, at times it almost feels like the characters are faceless. We know them, we see them but what they do and how they move speaks volumes about who they are. Posture, actions, desires, these are the things that define characters far more than even the words that cross their lips.

4/5 Stars

Close-Up (1990)

Posted on March 1, 2017 by 4 Star Films

I’ve heard people like director Jean-Pierre Gorin say that there is little to no distinction between documentary and fiction. At first, it strikes us as a curiously false statement. But after giving it a moment of thought it actually makes sense, because no matter the intention behind it, the medium of film is always subjective. It’s always a created reality that’s inherently false and even in its attempts at realism — that realism is still constructed.

So you see, this is the start of an interesting idea. Film is about what you decide to put within the frame and what you keep out. Directors, cinematographers, screenwriters, and editors among others all play a part in this process. They all formulate what we see on the screen — the reality that we perceive.

It occurs to me that Abbas Kiarostami’s film Close-Up stands at the crossroads of the documentary and classical fiction filmmaking with the two lineages blurring together like very few undertakings have ever been able to do, at least to my knowledge.

The story feels simple. It follows the real-life trial of a man who impersonated popular Iranian film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf in order to gain the confidence of a family of film enthusiasts. He wanted to make a movie and they were to be his actors. Abbas obviously took interest in the story that he read of in a magazine because of its relation to film. Here was a seemingly ordinary man who loved movies so much, that he was willing to masquerade as a film director. The irony is that this cinephile Hossain Sabzian also became an actor in the process, donning this role for the family. The family who accused him consider him a confidence man, even a burglar but that’s not how he sees himself. In fact, in a way, this film reminds us that we’re all actors. It all depends on your definition and the circumstances at hand. In some way, shape or form at a given point in time, we’re playing someone who is supposed to be us.

The beauty of Close-Up that not only does it feature the real individuals involved in this whole ordeal: There’s Sabzian playing himself, the Ahankhah family who brought the case to court, and Kiarostami appearing as well. But it blends the actual footage from the trial with reenacted scenes set up by the director as if they are happening for the first time.

One of the few things to tip us off that some of these moments are reenactments is that we see the same sequence twice, just from different perspectives. Thus, the whole docudrama becomes this blend of reality and falsity. Documentary paired with purposeful re-creation, utilizing a kind of cinema verite filmmaking. I almost don’t want to know what is real and what is fake and in some respects, I don’t care. And that’s what’s fascinating about Close-Up. The story is not altogether extraordinary but, again it’s this dichotomy between reality and fiction. The dividing line proves to be paper thin.

Since much of the film is made of a close-up on Sabzian’s face, it does bring up some questions about the defining factors of identity. Is this man in front of us really what he says he is? Is how he is acting genuine and real. Is it all a facade? Was this whole sequence contrived by a director for the benefit of the viewer? You could go on and on with such assertions and with such questions I think you start getting at the profound aspects of Kiarostami’s film and film as an artistic, expressive construction.

If you’re ready to actually consider what you are being fed, what you are viewing and how you can react to it, this is a film worth your time. I have never known a film to be more engrossed in the dilemma of reality versus fiction. It took me long enough to see a film by this late great of Iranian film, but now that I have been opened up to his oeuvre, I look forward to more on my horizon from Abbas Kiarostami.

4/5 Stars

Model Shop (1969)

Posted on February 27, 2017 by 4 Star Films

At face value, Model Shop is an ordinary film of little consequence but look a little deeper and it’s actually a fascinating portrait of the L.A. milieu in 1969. Part of that is due to the man behind it all.

Jacques Demy is among the foremost of French directors, most obviously for his work in musicals like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort. And Model Shop, his first American production, functions in some capacity as a type musical (featuring a score from SoCal rock band Spirit), while also incorporating Anouk Aimee’s character from his earlier success Lola (1961).

It’s a musical in the way that American Graffiti is a musical except its soundtrack is a mixture of Spirit and classical music in equal measures emanating from car radios. But it also maintains Demy’s type of storytelling where he weaves characters together with acts of fate.

The film follows a typical day in the life of Gary Lockwood who is an architecture grad floundering in a general malaise as he lives in a shack with his girlfriend who is making a go of becoming an actress. He’s not ready for a long-term commitment and the fact that his car is about to be impounded pretty much sums up his life.

On a whim, he follows a beautiful woman up into the hills by car and nothing happens right away, although he is taken by the panoramic views of Los Angeles. The sequences that follow develop L.A. into a character on its own. One moment George stops for a girl who quickly rolls a joint and offers him one as KRLA hums over the radio waves, in another, he is making his way down the Sunset Strip. There’s a substantial cameo from Spirit keyboardist Jay Ferguson, who genially gives George a helping hand while trading a bit of small talk. It’s might seem a rather odd inclusion and yet from Demy’s point of view, this group evokes something of the L.A. ethos. It’s understandable.

The biggest reveal comes midway through the film when George learns he’s been drafted to go fight in Vietnam. It’s a bitter twist of fate that shakes up his existence in only a matter of minutes. His freedom has instantly been constrained to a matter of days. That’s all the time he has to get to know this mysterious woman who he professes love to. These are the last moments he will see his girlfriend as their relationship subsequently goes down the tube.

So in some ways, Model Shop shares a bit of Demy’s earlier sensibilities but it by no means feels like he’s trying to transport his style flatly to an American audience. If I didn’t know any better, initially, I would say that this was a purely American production because it feels relevant and realistic to the degree that it can be. Except as he always does Demy is making a sort of fantasy, even if we don’t realize it at first. There’s the reverence of an outsider, someone who sees this City of Angels for its beauty and utopian qualities, while others have begun taking it for granted, seeing only the smog and the violence. That’s what Demy lends to this story, a hint of admiration. And in the moments the dialogue gets more introspective it hardly feels stale but really evokes a candidness.

It strikes me that George is mesmerized by the French woman, although his own girlfriend is very pretty. In my own mind, for me, it becomes a sort of an allegory for European versus Hollywood cinema. One perhaps is more glamorous, namely Hollywood, but other countries oftentimes have far more intriguing films. However, it’s important to note that Demy seems to have an appreciation for both. He more than some had a deep admiration for the musicals of Hollywood’s Golden Age especially.

Another fascinating caveat about this unassuming film is the fact that it could have featured a performance from a young unknown named Harrison Ford. Wouldn’t that have been interesting? But in the studio’s infinite wisdom they assumed Lockwood would be a bigger box office draw. It’s probably because he was in a little film called 2001 A Space Odyssey the year prior. For what it’s worth, Demy’s film didn’t do so well and it still resides in relative obscurity. However, it gives an image of Los Angeles that is rather like a time capsule, starkly different than Demy’s other work and still beautifully tied together with his previous films through a photo album showcasing faces that are very familiar. It’s a striking callback and in some strange way, it connects the director’s work together in a surprisingly satisfying way. Jacques Demy is still worth a watch.

3.5/5 Stars

Red Desert (1964)

Posted on February 25, 2017 by 4 Star Films

red desert 1 John Donne is noted for writing that no man is an island, but if this film is any indication, there might be a need to qualify that statement to suggest that some women are islands — at least when portrayed by the elegiac Monica Vitti. Red Desert begins with blurred images and a high-pitched piercing melody playing over the credits. From its opening moments, two things are evident. It gives off the general sense of industry and it features one of the most extraordinary uses of color ever with the blues and grays contrasting sharply with the brighter pigments.

In fact, it’s oftentimes easy to think of Michelangelo Antonioni as a filmmaker well-versed in the poetic imagery of black and white but you have only to see Monica Vitti in her green coat standing with her son like two solitary beacons, to know that he is equally fit for color. He is a master equally skilled with a new palette.

You could make the assumption that the world has become a sort of wasteland. More comic depictions of these themes are obvious in the works of Chaplin and Tati. In my own mind, a bit of Modern Times and Playtime began to float to the fore. There were bits and pieces of those films that felt like they could be analogous to what Antonioni is trying to accomplish here with his images of the industrial Ravenna. There are smokestacks, bells, whistles, factories, machines and so on.

It’s easy to quickly surmise that this is all a condemnation of the world slowly going to hell because there’s no doubt that many of the opening visuals are bland and austere. But underlying Red Desert is a stark beauty that permeates the entire landscape. Thus, Antonioni’s perspective is perhaps a lot more nuance that the viewer will even acknowledge at first.

In an interview, he once said the following, “It’s too simplistic to say—as many people have done—that I am condemning the inhuman industrial world which oppresses the individuals and leads them to neurosis. The line and curves of factories and their chimneys can be more beautiful than the outline of trees, which we are already too accustomed to seeing. It is a rich world, alive and serviceable.”

red desert 2 However, even if this word does reflect its share of beauty, it is Monica Vitti’s character who still embodies paranoia and disorientation with the modern civilization. In other words, she is the one out of step with the contemporary world that she finds herself in, due in part to an auto accident and a subsequent stint in a hospital. She is struggling to readjust to reality.

And it’s no wonder that Antonioni made a string of four films with her because she has a remarkable gift for personifying all that is distant and aloof in a human being, while still bearing immense powers of attraction. In this case, it’s the visiting recruiter (Richard Harris) who is taken with her. But not even a fling with him can remedy what she is struggling through. There’s no one who can fully understand her, not even the audience.

red desert 3 As per usual with Antonioni, his film invariably feels to be altogether more preoccupied with form over content and that’s what is most interesting. It’s fascinating some of the environments he develops. Atmospheres full of billowing fog, wispy trees, stark alleyways, gridiron structures, and all the while the color red pops in every sequence. There’s no score in the typical sense, instead, the dialogue is backed by foghorns, machinery, and an occasional electronic sound effect.

We get a little better understanding of her psyche when she recounts a mesmerizing story to her young son about a young girl who spends her afternoons swimming in the glassy water off the coast of an immaculate island. The pantheistic fantasy she so vividly paints for him is strikingly juxtaposed with the world around her — a world she has yet to feel fully comfortable in. However, both worlds somehow seem empty.

4.5/5 Stars

Mustang (2015)

Posted on February 21, 2017 by 4 Star Films

Mustang_poster There’s something inherently striking about the title Mustang. It signifies something about the title girls, their free-spirits, billowing brown locks, continually running in a type of a herd, constantly full of life, movement, and motion. But with a mustang and any other creature full of life and vitality, there’s always an opposite force looking to impede, tame, and prod the spirit into some sort of submission. Because being free, being wild is constantly challenged in the world that we live in and this story is a prime example.

The film opens when what can be called little else except for a “tribe of girls” leave their school to go traipsing along the beach with a group of boys. In these moments we begin to understand quite well since frolicking, laughing and playing chicken are the same in every culture. But that’s not how their elders see this seemingly innocent act. Instead, it’s full of passion, lust and moral depravity.

In many ways, although it’s set in Turkey, Mustang plays with some of the same themes of Sofia Coppola’s Virgin Suicides but it is a film that surges with vim and vigor rather than wistful detachment. And even though it has those aloof moments at times, they feel more personal because most of the time instead of being on the outside looking in, we’re constantly being shown the perspective of these girls, a far more frightening point of view.

Furthermore, this isn’t simply about one fundamentalist family that’s the outlier but an entire culture that holds women in a certain regard. There’s obviously something amiss in cultures that lack social mores and a sense of reality, but there’s something equally frightening in those cultures that are utterly repressed. Life is literally driven by fear and shame. Bringing dishonor and gaining the respect of your neighbors. A life like that can be nothing aside from taxing because you can never possibly measure up to the societal standards.

The television, the media, and everything else seems to reinforce exactly these points. Meanwhile, the girls go sneaking out to a football match only to miss the bus, only to hitch a ride with an unfortunate bystander who gets them there in time for the excitement.The images at the football match carry an almost infectious backbeat, hyperactive and frenetic with hair flying, hands flailing and bodies going every which way, but still, every action has a consequence. Every moment of freedom is met with an equal event of restraining power.

In this case, the girls are prepped and prepared for marriage, arranged between families like a shrewd business deal to save face. Their fearful grandmother and domineering uncle think it’s the best for everyone and the girls have little say in their fate.

The youngest girl, Lale, is a tomboy, a perpetual climber but she like the others feels trapped. And they are, as first one sister than another are hitched up in a marriage. But it’s when marriage no longer becomes a joyful union but a suffocating prison of unhappiness, something that it was never meant to be at all. True, one girl gets a bit lucky, the other is utterly unhappy. Still, two down and three to go. That’s the way grandmother thinks of it.

By this point, the three remaining girls are forced to find any little piece of rebellion they possibly can whether it be snickering at the dinner table or something altogether more audacious. Grandma and uncle are unrelenting in their matchmaking and finally, Lale and the only sister she has left are at a crossroads. They must take a plan of action or resign themselves to their impending fate. You can probably guess what their decision is but that doesn’t make executing it any easier.

Mustang is certainly a cultural commentary and you get the sense that it’s a very personal work by writer-director Deniz Gamze Erguven. However, within its portrait of youth, womanhood, and marriage there are also some universal truths to be gleaned. There’s something to be said for freedom — in youth and adulthood. To take it lightly is to commit a grave error

4/5 Stars

Tu dors Nicole (2014)

Posted on February 13, 2017 by 4 Star Films

“Nicole, you’re sleeping…”

I admire a film that is able to linger and I’ve read enough scripts to know that there is a difference between filling up scenes with mindless dialogue and slowing the action down in a way that’s inherently more lifelike. In fact, I now have an increased fascination with the films that don’t rely so much on plot points at all but characters and the everyday situations that they encounter. Because, if I’m honest, everyday situations often make up most of my life and they are most relatable to me. They’re the stories that feel the most genuine.

Just looking at Stephane Lafleur’s Canadian drama, Tu dors Nicole, a little bit of the mundane is evident. Sorting racks in a clothing store. Lazy afternoon bike rides. Lifeless neighborhood streets. Long summer days with the sound of crickets outside the window. Hot nights where you can hardly keep your eyes clamped shut due to the miserable heat that keeps you tossing and turning. It might all seem of little consequence and in many ways it is. But in the modern arena where every film must be the next big thing, the greatest spectacle imaginable and so on, it’s actually quite refreshing when someone dares to tone it down a notch.

There are some oddly weird moments throughout the film. Namely, Martin, a boy who has the vocal range of a 30-year-old man. And the traces of harp music whenever something especially enchanting comes to the fore. Then, there are the closing images of water spouting off into the atmosphere.

However, what’s at the core of Nicole is a story of adolescence coming into adulthood. It’s not so much a coming of age narrative as emblematic of that period of transition. And if Nicole had the fragments of a prototypical plotline it would be this.

The eponymous young woman (Julianne Cote) has recently graduated college and is working a menial job. Her parents have gone away for a little vacation leaving her behind with a list of tasks to complete in their absence. She would have the house to herself if it wasn’t for her older brother who is always jamming away with his bandmates in the living room and all throughout their house. Their backbeat is constantly reverberating through Nicole’s life. She hardly gets any peace and quiet.

And yet even in the tranquil moments, our protagonist still seems a bit melancholy. Mini golf isn’t as fun as it used to be. A trip to Iceland is more fun to plan for than it is to actually go through with. Nicole gets in a row with her best friend. She loses her job after taking a few articles of clothing home with her. But life continues like it always has.

In this case, black and white is not simply an aesthetic choice but an appropriate palette to reflect the underlying tone of this film. There is a listlessness, an apathy to Nicole’s life at the moment. The thing is it’s due to nothing in particular, at least nothing spoken aloud or seen overtly onscreen, but like life, it just is.

Our main hint comes from the title itself. Could it be that Nicole is asleep? She cannot sleep at night, because, perhaps she does her sleeping during the day–going through the motions without a great deal of purpose — without a goal to drive her. We’ve all been there. Maybe even a few moments ago. Growing up in this fashion is not always all it’s cracked up to be.

The question to ask at the end of this particular narrative is this: Have things changed? Not really. But so it is with the vicissitude of life. There will be highs and lows. Moments of vibrant colors and grayish doldrums. Quarter life crises and galvanizing flashbulb moments. Still, we keep on living, latching onto what gives our confusions and doubts even a shard of meaning. We aren’t meant to live life asleep.

3.5/5 Stars

La Belle et la Bete (1946)

Posted on January 11, 2017 by 4 Star Films

Children believe what we tell them. They have complete faith in us. They believe that a rose plucked from a garden can plunge a family into conflict. They believe that the hands of a human beast will smoke when he slays a victim, and that this will cause him shame when a young maiden takes up residence in his home. They believe a thousand other simple things. – Jean Cocteau

From the outset director Jean Cocteau entreats his audience to have a “childlike sympathy” and as a viewer, you do well to heed his advice. Because, that posture is exactly what becomes the guiding force behind this entire fairy tale that he has developed, in some ways so planted in reality and in others very much the purest of fantasy stories.

Though simple, the film’s special effects are surprisingly mesmerizing with magically opening doors, mirrors and human columns spewing smoke. You half expect to see strings or some other obvious cue to signal that this is all a facade, all hokey tricks, but a moment like that is never obvious. The film maintains much of its magic even after 70 years.

The Beast’s castle shines with the opulence of goblets and jewel, while the farmhouse of Belle and her family is humble, characterized after the artistic works of the great Flemish master Jan Vermeer.The atmosphere is equally gripping and Cocteau stages some of his shots in invariably interesting ways interrupting the plane of view with candles, smoke and anything else that suits his fancy. And that’s the beautiful things about fairy tales. You are not tied down to any sort of logic or narrative convention. His film is free-flowing, pacing itself as it sees fit. Even it’s ending is enduringly perplexing, hardly as straightforward as a Disney adaptation, but there is still immense power in that.

There are also an equal number of familiar reference points like evil sisters, who are blinded by their own avarice and then, of course, their humble sister, Belle, played so exquisitely pure by Josette Day. Her face beams with a radiance not often equaled and whether clothed in rags or the finest robes, it’s her humble elegance that shines through.

But it’s Jean Marais’s performance that is perhaps even more noteworthy if that were possible as he takes on a dual role. The first is more obvious, as Avenot, the man that Belle secretly loves, but it looks like it will never be due to their circumstances. However, Marais also takes on the monumental role of the beast and hidden behind tireless amounts of makeup and fur, it’s easy to lose him in the role. What would have been lost if he was animated or computer-generated, is betrayed in how he carries himself and even how he talks at points. Certainly, he is a creature prone to barbarism and violence, but innate in a performance such as this are those human characteristics. Thus, the perfect fairy-tale ending that we all know by now — probably thanks to Disney — is also a striking reminder. Yes, the fate of the prince of becoming a beast was due to spells and incantations, but we can just as easily be beasts now.

Without trying to go too far with the idea, it’s easy to recognize moments when we act almost inhuman. In fact, that’s the constant struggle of mankind, fighting against our more animalistic desires to do what we actually perceive to be upright. So you see, the Beast is not just a fairy story or the Beast is not simply someone else acting out in a horrid way, but the Beast can just as easily be you and me. In Cocteau’s film, a lot is made of the mystical mirror. Belle looks absolutely divine under its gaze but her sisters show up as an old woman and then a cackling monkey. If each one of us was to peer into that same mirror what would we show up as? What characterizes our lives? Beauty or bestiality? If this story is any indication, at least there is a chance at redemption. But that’s enough of that. La Belle et la Bete is a sublime fantasy deserving airtime alongside Disney’s more well-known adaptation.

4.5/5 Stars

Weekend (1967)

Posted on November 27, 2016 by 4 Star Films

weekend1 One of Jean-Luc Godard’s strengths is his capability of feigning pretentiousness, while still simultaneously articulating humor. His film opens with its first of many inter-titles, “A film adrift in the cosmos,” followed by the equally poignant “A film found in a dump.”

Our protagonists Roland (Jean Yanne) and Corrinne (Mireille Darc) are hardly protagonists at all, but curmudgeon bourgeoisie couple both caught up in affairs and preparing to out into the country in order to acquire Corinne’s rightful inheritance from her dying father. But this is never a character study and the actual arrival at the home of her parents is of little consequence. It’s another occurrence in a long string of events that Godard plays at with acerbic wit.

We are constantly reminded that this is an age of sexual revolution and political unrest–the class struggle against the tyranny of the powers that. In foreshadowing the events of the 68ers or even putting a finger to the social unrest, Godard is not alone. It’s how he does it that should be of note.

Weekend quickly becomes a discordant cacophony of sound and image that immaculately illustrates the dissonance of the decade. Rather like a Tati film, Godard uses color prolifically, but it’s hardly as innocent as the former. The colors show the pools of blood and piles of wreckage scattered across the land–In one instance inane and another horrifying.

It’s the emblematic film of the modern age of noise pollution where Godard practically tortures us with the sound of car horns. Constantly adding to the general din. Not to mention the universal, ubiquitous road rage that overtakes everyone and leads to heavy carnage. Some seen, some unseen. Meanwhile, actors or real-life historical figures–the distinction is difficult–including St. Just (Jean-Pierre Leaud) wander the wasteland spouting off inconsequential rubbish in anachronistic garb.

weekend2 Conflagrations engulf cars and human bodies while above the din comes the piercing screams of a woman bemoaning the loss of her Hermes handbag. We cannot take this anyway but humorous because it once again is yet another moment of utter insanity.

The French countryside becomes the perfect locale for an apocalypse mixed with a modern coup de’tait. There’s a call to arms for guerrilla tactics–a new French Revolution. Still, Roland and Corinne frantically hurtle towards their destination of Oinville. Their actions there are far from unexpected highlighting the baseness running through the entire film.

Once again it feels of little consequence that the pair is captured by a band of cannibalistic, free-loving revolutionaries. Cracking eggs on lifeless bodies and painting on naked ones. It’s pretty strange. Godard slips in a bit of love of the cinema as their call names include Battleship Potemkin, The Searchers, and Johnny Guitar. But there’s little point to it, only another pointless attribute in this narrative of volatile absurdity. But in that respect, Godard has hit his point home, by spurning convention as always and supercharging his film with political chops. It drags a bit in the second half, but he salvages it with the utter insanity of it all.

Furthermore, Godard and cinematographer Raoul Coutard are absolutely fabulous at utilization tracking shots to the nth degree in several instances, namely with the initial traffic jam extending for what feels like eons and then camera cycling through the town as the music plays in the background and our two travelers wait for their next ride. Let’s not forget the final moments of Weekend either, where Corinne has been transformed into a fellow commune member feasting on a scrumptious piece of meat with a fellow hippie. Her husband was not so lucky. There’s little to no need to say what happened to him.

4/5 Stars