PFF 2011: Mathieu Amalric's On Tour

I slipped into this screening because my dinner took too long and I missed the start of Chen Kaige's Sacrifice.  This may have been a rather fortuitous last minute change of plans, for I have never been much of a fan of Kaige's work and its cheap theatrics, and On Tour, a film directed by and starring one of the finest actors working today, in France or elsewhere, Mathieu Amalric, was quite a refreshing surprise.  Quite refreshing indeed.

Save for a brief opening that takes place in the states, Amalric's film is set entirely in France, but spoken in both English and French.   It is the story of a misfit burlesque troupe touring the small port towns of France under the stern, but ultimately ineffectual leadership of Amalric's mustachioed and tragic has-been show promoter.   Mostly acted by unknowns and actual burlesque performers, save for the aforementioned M. Amalric of course, the film has an air of improv to it - much in the same way as do the films of the late great John Cassavetes. The film, as is often the case with films directed by actors, is what one would call an actor's paradise, and even though much of the cast is filled with non-professionals, that descriptive still has some truth in it.

To pinpoint the Cassavetes factor even more, On Tour can be seen as the spiritual brethren of that director's 1976 masterpiece of despair, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and in turn, Amalric can be seen as an equally lost brother-in-arms to Ben Gazzara's strip club maestro in the film.  Granted, there are times of dead space in the film, but that is an occupational hazard of someone trying to strip away the gloss of a film down to its Cassavetesesque bare theoretical bones.  Overall, these times of dead space amount to very little when compared to the desperate and raw performances Amalric gets out of his troupe - and out of himself, in the finest performance of an already very fine career.

Now the sad part about this intriguing work is the fact that as of this writing it has no US distributor to speak of.  On Tour, or Tournée as it is called in its native land, debuted way back at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival (where Amalric was awarded the Best Director prize) and was subsequently released throughout Europe, but as far as the US goes, it has played just twice - at the San Francisco Film Festival back in May and now at the Philly Fest.  Whether it gets a US distributor and release is still debatable (the burlesque numbers are quite frank in their sexuality) but here's to hoping it does at some point in 2012.

PFF 2011: Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty

When the 10:10 screening of Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty ended, the negative chatter coming from the crowd at the Ritz Five was something akin to the angry squawking heard after many screenings of Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life earlier this year.   Things like, "What was that?", "Just terrible.", "Thank God that's over." and "That's it!  You don't get to pick the movie anymore!".  And just like with The Tree of Life, none of these epithets are fairly warranted, merely idle disgruntlements from an audience caught unawares of what they had just witnessed.  Granted, the film never comes anywhere close to the artistic/cinematic level of the aforementioned Malick, but the Plebeian reaction is nonetheless the same.

The comparisons to The Tree of Life go no further than audience reactions (and this was merely one screening and not an all over thing like with the Malick film), as the two films are really nothing alike.  While Malick's film is about the deconstruction of memory and the loss and regaining of faith, Ms. Leigh's film is essentially about the attempt of a young woman, who is dead on the inside, to find, for the most part unsuccessfully, an emotional outlet in any form she can find it.  Where The Tree of Life is emotionally provocative and immensely draining, Sleeping Beauty is a void of insular excess, even while showing the most shocking of moments.  But enough of these unnecessary comparisons to The Tree of Life (I have already more than stated that the film's really have nothing in common, save for the reactions of the cinematically challenged), let us move on.

Actually, if Leigh's film need be compared to anything or anyone (even T.S. Elliot said, "No artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone") then it would be to the cinema of Catherine Breillat.  Leigh, in her directorial debut (she is a well-known novelist in Australia), imbues her film with a methodical, determined cadence and an almost deadening emotional effect that is allowed an explosive catharsis only in its final moments.  This is the type of cinema that evokes the measured yet slyly rapturous oeuvre of the aforementioned Mme. Breillat.  Of course the comparisons do not stop there.  Other than Breillat being a novelist of some artistic renown in her own native France, she too released a film called Sleeping Beauty earlier this year.  Entirely different stories - Breillat's is more Gothic fucked-up fairy-tale while Leigh's is more modern fucked-up malaise - but intriguing nonetheless.

But enough of these comparisons (we can say Breillat and Leigh have both been inspired by the likes of Bresson and Bergman and move on) for Leigh's film, whether it resembles the cinema of Breillat or not, does stand on its own merits.  Leigh's Sleeping Beauty is the story of a young, somewhat promiscuous wayward woman trying to make ends meet by taking odd jobs such as waitress, medical experiment guinea pig and a job that seems to amount to scantily clad hostess of a fetish party (perhaps I am just a bit naive, but you have got to see it to believe it).  Eventually she lands a job as the titular beauty.  This job entails drinking a magical tea that puts her to sleep for several hours, in which time various wealthy older men have their way with her.  Hey, at least the money's good - and you have no memory of what has been done to you.

Emily Browning, last seen in the ridiculously inane Sucker Punch (so her calling card did not bode well for this critic), actually does a rather nice job with this deceptively daring role - just like a heroine from a Breillat film (but we are not doing that comparison anymore, so I digress).  As for those aforementioned naysayers at the festival screening - fuck 'em.   Seriously, fuck 'em.  Now, I can understand how many can be lost in a film such as this.  Between the deliberate pacing and the sexual frankness, one can see why certain audiences would feel either bored and/or uncomfortable - even those audiences who say they like art films (you know the kind, they watch Amelie and claim to be a foreign film connoisseur).  

Too daring for many, and in a way not daring enough for this critic (some after show bellyaching would be warranted if it were directed a little differently, a little less middlebrow), Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty is nonetheless, an often powerful look at the so-called breaking point of a person's already fragile psyche.  As for a US release - IFC Films has picked Ms. Leigh's film up (incidentally helped by Aussie heavyweight Jane Campion's involvement as "Presented by") and has announced a December 2 release here in the States - and with IFC, one can only assume this release will be both theatrical and V.O.D.  A full review of this film will be forthcoming on or around said date.

PFF 2011: The Dardenne Brothers' The Kid With the Bike

Not many filmmakers do the edge of tragedy better than brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.  Just when you feel yourself getting cocky enough to think you know what will happen next, these ever-so-sly Belgian brothers pull the proverbial rug out from under your cinematic expectations.  With their latest, The Kid With the Bike, it is business as usual for the brothers, which means nothing but good things for all those Dardenne admirers out there - myself included.  One of the few directors, or pair of directors as the case may be, to be honoured with Cannes' Palme d'Or twice (for Rosetta in 99 and L'Enfant in 05), this film, which incidentally was awarded the Grand Prix, Cannes' second highest honour, is nearly those film's equal.  And that ain't just me whistlin' hyperbole either.

Brilliantly seductive, with the Dardenne's usual subtle and deceptive grace, The Kid With the Bike is the story of a boy, his bike and the woman who tries to pull him out of the violent world he begins to crumble into.  With more than a mere nod to The Bicycle Thieves, this tender and quite disarming coming-of-age tale takes the genre and ferociously, but quite carefully so, turns it on its own head.  In fact this is probably the most poignant, and the most realistic (while at the same time playing as a modern day fairy tale of sorts), and the most demanding (the Dardennes' cinema is nothing if not a demanding kind of cinema) coming-of-age story since Ken Loach gave us Kes way back in 1969.  The Dardennes have taken their typically no-frills style of poetic realism (and this time, unlike their past oeuvre, with an actual soundtrack) and once again make it sing with a much deeper resonance than one would expect from such a type of cinema.

It may sound as if I am gushing - and I suppose I am - but I don't seem to be able to stop myself.  Probably better than anything the brothers have yet done, with the notable exception of the aforementioned Rosetta (the duo's one true masterpiece of endurance cinema), The Kid With the Bike may not have the overbearing power of that film, but in a much smaller, more subtle way, it is its very own emotionally charged powder keg of a film.  Just think of how this film would be ruined in the hands of the modern day machine that is Hollywood.  Like I said earlier, the Dardenne's take us to the precipice of tragedy, and pull us back when we think it is not enough, or toss us over when we are afraid it is too much, better than just about anyone out there today - and after a minor, just minor, slip with Lorna's Silence, the brother's prove just that.  A pair of modern day Bresson's indeed.

The film has been picked up by IFC, who will probably release the film sometime in early 2012.  A full-length review of said film (less gushing, more critiquing) will be made public around that same time.

PFF 2011: David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method

Part of the Masters of Cinema section of the Twentieth Annual Philadelphia Film Festival, one could make a claim that a film such as this gets a bit of a free ride from an auteurist like myself, but dammit, I don't care - the film is quite spectacular, no matter who directed it.  Even so, it is not your typical kind of spectacular - it's the kind of spectacular that sneaks up on a person.  At first unassuming, leading crescendo-like into full-bore Cronenberg, A Dangerous Method (missed at the New York Fest but finally caught here in Philly) is something one may not expect from the director, but at the same time, something completely in the madman's semi-psychotic wheelhouse.

  

Perhaps not as cleverly deceptive as A History of Violence (in my not-so-humble opinion, the director's greatest and gutsiest work) nor as balls-out as Crash (the other film in the Canadian's oeuvre that comes closest to a masterpiece), but only the man who gave us, along with the aforementioned two films, Dead Ringers, The Fly, and the filmic version of Burroughs' Naked Lunch, could have put so much disturbing dread, so much perverse glee into the now-infamous psychoanalytical battle song of the mystical Jung and the Svengali-like Freud.  Cronenberg is one of those directors with the ability to arouse and disgust you simultaneously, and once again, like in Videodrome and Crash (to name just two), he does it here in this tale of psychological horror disguised as an analytical period piece.  The film is subtly dirty, and that's just how we want it.

Cronenberg has always had a rather perversely funny way about showing sexual encounters in his film (and again, we must look back at Crash as the prime example of such perversity), so a film about Freudian psychoanalysis and the particular case of Sabina Spielrein, a patient and eventually lover of Jung, and the catalyst (at least in this version of the story, based on Christopher Hampton's 2002 stage play, The Talking Cure, which in turn was based upon the 1993 novel A Most Dangerous Method by John Kerr) of the break between Jung and his one-time mentor Freud, was ripe for the Cronenbergian touch.  When we watch as Keira Knightley's Sabina is belt-whipped by Michael Fassbender's Jung, and see the look of orgasmic power shooting from the actress's surprisingly nuanced face, Cronenberg has enraptured us inside his own web of sexual obsession - and that is just what a film such as this needs to have.

Most attuned to the director's Dead Ringers (sexual obsession, psychosis) and, of course Crash (socially perverse actions that are merely the workings of a person's natural sexuality), but more subtly maneuvered (an attribute that comes with age perhaps?), A Dangerous Method , which incidentally also stars an especially devilish Viggo Mortensen as Herr Freud (in his third collaboration with the director), is a film that may seem a bit awkward at first as the viewer is not sure which direction one is about to take, but ends as a bubbling cauldron of, for lack of a better or more encompassing term, chewy Cronenbergian goodness.  In sum, both unexpected territory for the director and typically lurid Cronenberg material - a fiery juxtaposition that creates such an atmosphere as to make this one of the master's best and most mature works.

A Dangerous Method will open in limited release on November 23, with a national roll-out later (in time for the Oscar campaigns I assume, of which Viggo Mortensen could be a strong contender for a Best Supporting Actor nomination).  I will have a full review of the film coming right around that planned release date.

In Anticipation of The Philadelphia Film Festival

This Thursday is the kick-off for the Twentieth Annual Philadelphia Film Festival, and yours truly plans on being there.  Well, okay, not opening day, but I will be attending several screenings, and I will be reporting back to you, my faithful readers and true believers, on all the films I see.  My tentative schedule include the films A Dangerous Method (Cronenberg), The Kid With the Bike (Dardenne Bros.), My Week With Marilyn (Simon Curtis), The Descendants (Payne), Sacrifice (Chen Kaige), Sleeping Beauty (Julia Leigh) & Goodbye First Love (Mia Hansen-Love).  There may be a few others tossed in there as well.  Sadly though, due to scheduling, I will be unable to see the two most anticipated films (at least in this critic's heart and mind) of the festival.  The Artist, a silent ode that I had to skip at the NYFF as well, and Shame, with my mancrush Michael Fassbender, will go unseen by yours truly.  Alas...I must struggle on.

At last year's festival, due to scheduling conflicts, I was only able to catch two films - Blue Valentine and Black Swan (and back to back at that!).  It will take a lot to outdo that experience - a thing I do not expect to happen, even with the greater amount of films to be seen, and with the aforementioned Shame and The Artist out of reach.  Now some of the more anticipatory films screening at the festival I have already had the pleasure of seeing.  Five in total.  Four of these I got the chance to see at the New York Film Festival late last month.  The links to my festival coverage of these four films (full reviews of each coming upon theatrical release) can be found at the following links.

Melancholia (von Trier)

The Turin Horse (Tarr)

Le Havre (Kaurismaki)

Pina (Wenders)

The fifth film I have already seen is now playing in NY and LA.  It is Joann Sfar's Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life.  My review of that film can be read here.

Well that is it for this short but sweet pregame show.  Throughout the next two weeks I will be posting pieces on each of the films that I see at the festival.  I will of course, be writing full reviews of the films once they get a little closer to their eventual release dates.  These too will be linked here at The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World.

Pompous Loser on the Train: An Afterword to Black Swan

So there I was on the Philadelphia Regional Rail, heading back to my friend's house in Glenside PA (with whom I was staying the weekend) after the Philadelphia Film Festival screening of Darren Aronofsky's brilliant batshitcrazy Black Swan, and sitting two seats in front of me was a man and a woman in discussion of said Black Swan.  Now my personal thoughts on the film (which are obvious from the aforementioned use of the word brilliant) aside, it is not what they thought of the film that I take a certain offense to, but how they thought of it that bothered me - or at least how the titular pompous loser thought of it.  The woman, if anything, just seemed to want to get up and escape her possible date (first date perhaps?).  These two seemed not to know each other all that well (just gathering from the lack of intimacy in their conversational style) and this I think bodes well for the poor woman in all of this - a woman that has hopefully since escaped this pompous loser and his reign of condescending verbal fire.

After telling this woman that she did not know what she was talking about, because she liked the film, this pompous loser went on a tirade of how Aronofsky's film (not the he ever mentioned the director by name - most likely unaware of who he even is!) made no sense at all and "why does this girl care so much abut doing the things she does?" he went on and on, "It's ballet, who cares?".  Really?  Really buddy?  Seriously, this jerk just kept going on about how the film was unworthy of our time because HE did not care about ballet.  Meanwhile, the woman just shuffled about in her seat, waiting (I hope) for her escape.  He didn't understand why Portman's character kept hurting herself over all of this, and why it was so important to her.  At one point this jackass said "No one cares about ballet, why even make this movie?".  Really?

Now my love of The Red Shoes aside (why make that movie even?) this wasn't even the worst part of his soapbox diatribe.  His ending note, just before they got off the train (one stop before me), was thus, "Why do people try to achieve perfection?  Instead everyone should just try to be average."  Wow!  I really hope he isn't a parent or a teacher or someone else that can warp children's minds.  Amazing stuff indeed.  Let's just all strain to be average.  Perhaps I should have stepped in and called him out on all this, but I was mesmerized by watching them - as if I were watching a movie right then and there (one filmed by Godard or Bresson considering my constant shot of the backs of these people's heads).  Oh to be average.  Perhaps this guy should stick to less daring fare such as the oeuvre of Steven Spielberg or Ron Howard - they make average look so easy.

Oh yeah, and Black Swan is batshitcrazy brilliant.  Be sure to see it when it opens on Dec. 3rd.

Philadelphia Film Festival: Black Swan

When sitting down to write about Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, this usually quite wordy (some would, and have, said too wordy) critic suddenly found himself at a loss for words.  Or at least at a loss for the appropriate words.  One could easily use such terms as beautiful or gorgeous or even succulent to describe this film, and all of these words would be perfectly accurate, but none of them seem to fit as they should.  While Black Swan may very well be one of the most gorgeous films this critic has seen in a long time, full of succulent, beautiful imagery, the film goes beyond such descriptives.  While simultaneously shining in such gorgeous imagery, Aronofsky has also made his film a monstrosity of sorts.  The auteur of Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain and The Wrestler, has finally done what all those films have been alluding too, leading up too - he has finally created his very own monster movie.
 

Black Swan is the story of a ballerina on the precipice of old age (at least by dance standards), who is cast to play the white and black swan (the light and dark, Ego and Id) in a new rendition of Swan Lake, and the inner demons that manifest themselves as a nightmarish reality.   Aronofsky has taken this ballet, and the making of this ballet, and has structured a monster movie like nothing else before it.  Sort of The Red Shoes on acid (an apt, but cursory description), Black Swan is a dangerous, threatening, wicked movie that takes the idea of perfection in art and transforms such a philosophical conundrum into a psychological horror movie reminiscent of Cronenberg or Haneke or even Argento. And it is Natalie Portman, at the center of this movie, who brings the light and dark together in the most ferocious of finales.  

The film also stars Mila Kunis as the supposed evil to Portman's supposed good (and her partner in the inevitable, and quite delectable, Sapphic delerium scene!), Vincent Cassel as the demanding ballet troupe leader (this film's Lermontov) and Barbara Hershey as Portman's psycho mother (can we say Piper Laurie in Carrie?), but it is Portman and her twisted ghoulish, yet striking mannerisms, that take the film deep into the void it dares to go into.  There is also a surprisingly intriguing turn by Winona Ryder, playing a ghostly version of herself.  But above all else, with its fractured cinematic psyche and bravura demonology, this is Darren Aronofsky's movie - and what a movie, what a work of Grand Guignol, it ends up being.
 

Denzel Washington once said (in his Oscar winning role in Training Day) that King Kong didn't have anything on him.  Well, that big ape's got nothing on Black Swan either.  Of course none of this is any help whatsoever in coming up with an appropriate term to describe such a film.  Magnificent, marvelous, enticing.  Astonishing, amazing, awe-inspiring.   Dazzling, delectable, provocative.  All of these describe what I felt while watching this rapturous (there's another word!) film, but still, they all seem like not quite enough for a film that is so batshitcrazy as Black Swan.  Hey wait, that's it - the perfect word.  Batshitcrazy.  As gorgeous a film as Black Swan is, more than anything else, it is batshitcrazy as can be.  Oh yeah, and it's one of the best films of the year - hands down.  Batshitcrazy indeed.
 

A full (and probably quite long-winded) review of Black Swan will appear here closer to the December 3rd release date of the film.

Philadelphia Film Festival: Blue Valentine

One hesitates in using such cliched terms as the greatest actor or actress of his or her generation, but I defy anyone, upon seeing Blue Valentine, to not willingly, and quite wholeheartedly, thrust these very same monikers upon both Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams.  Not that these two actors are in need of such newfound recognition - they have both had such epithets (and Oscar nominations) thrust upon them in past roles - but the raw nerves hit, with an almost machine-gun array of brutal emotionality, in Blue Valentine, do more than just cement such titles as greatest actor and actress of their generation to this deserving duo.  It is almost a cinematic coronation of sorts - or at least damn well should be. 

These are a pair of performances that deserve more than just the roar of cheers it received by the 400+ crowd at the Prince Music Theater the night I saw it.  These are a pair of performances, playing off each other with a non-linear, ever-evolving bloody melange of sweet Cinéma vérité nothings and emotionally abusive savagery, that deserve something akin to a chorus of post-operatic bravos and bravas, or, keeping more apropos to the unmerciful disintegration, nee goring of a once promising relationship that is at the epicenter of the film, a deafening thunder of maniacal oles after the bull is killed and systematically and traditionally mutilated at a bullfight.   These are a pair of performances for the ages, as they say.

But at the same time, hyperbole aside (and I thrust a whole lot of it around in those first two paragraphs), there is actually more to Blue Valentine that just the two best damned performances of the year.  Much more actually.  From the opening moments of the film, with its languid leanings abruptly  bombarded by meta-close-ups and torn asunder anguish, to its back and forth gutty-works, showing the brilliant glare of blossoming love and the harsh lights of relational realities, to its strangely placed fireworks-laden finale, Blue Valentine is a work of daring, sometimes stunning, sometimes purposefully ugly cinematic bravura.This is a powerful film indeed, and some may say a bit too powerful at times.

On its recent MPAA attached NC-17 rating (talked about briefly in a recent post of mine) one can only shake one's head and hope for a turnaround on appeal - without director Derek Cianfrance having to make any cuts from this beautiful, yet raw, disquieting, quite emotionally brutal film.  Even if the rating is severed down to an R (without the cats dammit!!) the stigma of such a rating (and its poisonous touch in both box office prowess and award-bait accolades - deserving of both!) will surely stick with the film through it's December 31st release date and beyond.  

The ratings board is a funny place, and who really knows exactly what set them off (the sex scenes, admittedly raw, are nothing physically we haven't already seen in R rated movies before) and such a rating should not tamper with a film's power, but we all know it will definitely limit its audience (especially in an ever-conservativizing world such as ours) and that is a shame, since everyone should be able to see Blue Valentine for the brilliant work of cinema that it is.  I am only glad I was able to see the film in its raw power, before anything happens to its narrative integrity.
 

A full (and probably quite long-winded) review of Blue Valentine will appear here closer to the year-end release date of the film.

First thoughts on Blue Valentine

After not expecting to be able to attend this year's Philadelphia Film Festival, I got a surprise offer to go to Philly this weekend.  So I checked the festival schedule and lo and behold, I could see both Blue Valentine and Black Swan.  After my dance of joy, I knew a great cinematic weekend was in store for this critic.  Of course I had no press pass this time so I had to actually buy tickets and go in with the "people" (incidentally this led to a great conversation with two very cinematically knowledgeable gentlemen attending the festival).  Whatever the case, my idea of a great cinematic weekend was not only had, but went far beyond even my great expectations.

 I am still percolating my thoughts for my eventual review on these films (which should come in the next few days sometime - if not full-length reviews, but at least a festival report kind of piece).  Before doing any of that though, I do want to mention a few things about Blue Valentine right away.  First and foremost is the recent attachment of an NC-17 rating from the MPAA.  After seeing the film, I must agree there are several very raw sex scenes in the film, but in no way do they "top" many of these same kind of scenes in many an R-rated film.  There is an abortion scene in the film which may very well be the real reason for this very unfair rating.  And unfair it certainly is.  

Sure, I will still see the film no matter the rating (obviously) but many will not have the opportunity due to many mainstream theaters refusing to carry a film with the stigma of an NC-17 attached to it.  There is also the loss of potential Oscar nominations for the film and its actors - which they so richly deserve.  The rating will hopefully be changed by its Dec. 31st release (and hopefully on appeal and not with forced cuts), but the stigma of the rating will still be there.

And speaking of the Oscar deserving actors, the other thing I needed to talk about right away, was just that.  One hesitates in using such cliched terms as the best actor and best actress of their generation, but I defy anyone, upon seeing Blue Valentine, to not say that exact same thing about Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams.  Always a fan of both (Gosling in Half Nelson and Murder by Numbers; Williams in Brokeback Mountain and Wendy and Lucy) their raw, angry, bitter, heartbreaking performances in Blue Valentine more than cemented that idea.

But enough of that, I will have reviews coming soon.