DHEEPAN - #871

There is no frying pan, only fire.

Three refugees make their way from war-torn Sri Lanka to France, banding together as a family even though they have never met. The father, Dheepan (Antonythasan Jesuthasan), is a soldier from the losing army going into hiding following the slaughter of his men and his family; the mother, Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan), is hoping to escape to London and join her only remaining relative; and the daughter, Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby), is an orphan in the right place at the right time. Families have a better chance of getting through the immigration red tape, so these strangers will have to pretend they are tied together by marriage and blood. It’s a nightmare for many in Trump’s America, the huddled masses gaming the system, but then again, maybe a story like Dheepan will inspire some empathy. What would you do if your country went to war and you ended up on the wrong side, or worse, had no real stake in the fight and just got caught in the crossfire?

Released in 2015, Dheepan is the latest from French director and Cannes-darling Jacques Audiard, who previously made a splash with A Prophet [review] and Rust and Bone [review]. Dheepan has more in common with the earlier movie--a prison picture about gangsters coping with life inside and outside their cells--in that the filmmaker manages to take very specific group sand relate their individual experience in a way that is true to their story but also relatable. The particular becomes universal.

Once this lost trio lands on French shores, they are put into the system, which eventually sends them to a remote ghetto where Dheepan will work as caretaker, Yalini will care for an infirm old man, and Illayaal will go to school. As they learn to make their way in their new home, they also start to become a real unit, with the lure of traditional roles proving too strong to resist. They also start to learn that the world is terrible everywhere. The complex where they’ve been placed is run by drug dealers, and Yalini is unwittingly caring for the father of the local boss, Brahim (Vincent Rottiers), who himself is freshly out of prison, only to be trapped in the tenement by an ankle monitor. It seems for some people, circumstances never change: you’re always imprisoned, you’re always at war.

The movie is called Dheepan, but I feel that’s misleading, it’s not entirely his picture. Sure, he gets an interesting arc, and becomes an active plot agent in the film’s powerful climax, as his past comes back to haunt him and he wrestles with his PTSD, but the true center of Audiard’s film, co-written with the director’s regular collaborator Thomas Bidegain and Noé Debré, is Yalini. She drives their scheme, searching out Illayaal in the refugee camp, and she has the most connection with the varying lines of action. When Dheepan decides to fight back against the thugs, like some kind of 1980s vigilante, it’s Yalini who must shuttle messages back and forth between her husband and the bad guys. Likewise, as Dheepan loses his way, she is the one who takes responsibility of their adopted daughter, a task she has otherwise tried to avoid. (If anyone gets short shrift, it’s Illayaal, who kind of gets set aside after some initial hiccups at her new school; there’s more to be explored here regarding the young girl’s search for acceptance.) That said, both lead performers have a quiet strength that gives them equal footing. One can sense there is much going on beneath the surface of their words and deeds.

In fact, that’s one of Audiard’s greatest strengths, hinting at and then ultimately revealing what is hidden. There is much going on behind all these stories, a history to each character, a politic to their situation. Audiard plays with light and dark throughout Dheepan, using visual metaphor to suggest truth emerging. In early scenes, it is literally lit objects appearing in blackness, the people carrying them or around them only becoming evident as the light sources--mouse ears, a lamp--gain power. Later in the movie, when too much has been revealed, we see Dheepan sitting in an orange light, fully exposed, but his own darkness still lurking within. For him, it’s secrets that are brought out; for Yalini, a strength and resourcefulness otherwise untapped. And a goodness.

It’s a credit to the script that, despite a very exciting, violent finale, the climactic scenes don’t overtake what comes before. The grit and flow of this action reminds me of Cuarón’s Children of Men [review], for as much as Audiard is a master choreographer as for his assured hand. The confidence we see in these scenes is what keeps them from calling too much attention to themselves, even if they are the biggest and loudest moments in the entire film--at least on the face of things. Audiard’s real skill is that every quiet moment is still big and loud to him, and thus given as much emphasis. The silence speaks volumes, or even the lines he chooses not to translate, as his main characters jump between languages--Tamil, French, and a little English--it’s the tone of the words, the force with which they are said, the expression on the actor’s face, that tells the real story. And their emotional conflagrations are as powerful as any gunshot, their unexpressed rage as hot as any emotion.

This disc provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.

CANOA: A SHAMEFUL MEMORY - #862

Released in 1976, Canoa: A Shameful Memory is considered a milestone of Mexican cinema, influencing future filmmakers (Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuarón both appear in supplements on this new release) and setting a standard for the local industry to follow. Felipe Casals’ innovative, probing docudrama is equal parts Costa-Gavras and Francesco Rosi. It's dramatic and real and maybe a little long in the tooth, but fascinating all the same. Also, relevant to our times--and like most older films that maintain their bite, I might add, sadly so.

Based on a real-life incident from the mid-1960s, Canoa is essentially a story of small-town hysteria and political bullying. Taking place in the rural village that gives the film its name, Canoa centers around one night, including the preamble and the aftermath, when a terrible crime occurs. The catalyst is the arrival of a handful of university workers visiting the region to hike in its hills. They get off the bus at the start a torrential rainstorm, the severity of which prevents them from traveling further before sunrise. Word of the strangers spreads quickly, especially when they are refused shelter by the town sheriff and the local priest (Enrique Lucero)--a miniature dictator who has been squeezing the town dry for years. His anti-communist rhetoric, combined with his acute paranoia, misleads his congregation into believing the group are activist students who have come to undermine the Catholic church. As tails of their intentions become exaggerated, a mob forms and does what a mob does, ending in several murders.

Casals crafts Canoa: A Shameful Memory like a faux documentary, complete with an off-screen narrator and an on-screen witness (Salvador Sánchez). The latter is the most compelling part of the film. A worker from Canoa, the witness gives us the inside dope on town politics, speaking directly to the camera, as much a tour guide as an interview subject. His self-aware, glib cynicism colors the whole of the picture. He speaks with both the benefit of hindsight and distance. Granted, no one asks where he was on the night in question, and we aren’t entirely sure of where he fits in all of this. Not that it matters. He is the outside observer, disgusted yet not surprised. Even in the film's denouement, he already sees the powers that be turning tragedy into opportunity.

This witness basically sets the tone for Canoa. The movie is both real and unreal, an accurate depiction of events and yet a fictional re-creation of the same. We have access to closed-room machinations with the priest and his flunkies, a narrative conceit unavailable in a true documentary, not to mention an artful POV shot that reminds us that the minister is the shadowy villain behind the whole thing, the noirish lighting shaking off the cinematic grit that otherwise marks the picture. When it comes down to it, most of Canoa’s visuals conform more to the standards of fictional drama than any verité aesthetics. We also see Cazals push the limits of his budget in some of the performances, particularly the university workers, whose expositional scenes in the city are amateurish and contrived. Canoa’s fundamental cinematic constraints are showing.

The one exception is the violence that comes in the final act, when the mob comes for the unsuspecting visitors, breaking down the door of the meager shelter they found. Here Casals pulls no punches, embracing the terrible events in all their lifelike horror. The attack is vicious and bloody, and the brutality of it is appropriately unsettling. By the time the townspeople come for the outsiders, the truth of their visit is no longer important. In fact, to their minds, the boys’ explanation for coming this way is exactly something lying communists would say to save their skins. The violence is drawn-out and cruel, and Canoa doesn't shy away from some of the harsher details. As shown here, the hive mind succumbs to its most primitive impulses, trading its humanity for self-preservation.

But is it self-preservation? Is it even self-serving? They think so, but if we reconsider the info we got at the start of Canoa, these farmers make no real money, and what little they have is siphoned off by the clergy and funneled to its political cronies, sometimes as a trade-off for delivering such basic conveniences as electricity and telephones, other times for delivering nothing at all, the price of an empty promise. That the priest distracts from this thievery by inspiring a fear of the "other" should be all too familiar. Ignore my hand in your pocket, because that other guy is going to steal what I want before I do. And then pay me to "protect" you. Or show me how strong you are by protecting yourselves, you freeloaders!

So, despite showing its age in filmmaking, Canoa: A Shameful Memory remains as potent as ever. Swap its decades-old setting for a current one, wherever xenophobia and oppressive rhetoric holds sway, and you’ll find a cautionary tale for our era. One would have hoped that in these "enlightened" times we would be better, that Canoa would be considered fantasy rather than realism, and that such prejudices would have been rooted out--if not in the 1960s then at the end of the Cold War--but if the first few months of 2017 have shown us anything, we haven't really evolved much at all, and we’re getting busy creating a few new shameful memories of our own.

This disc proved by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.

SOLO CON TU PAREJA - #353

I’ve been circling various artful ways in which to enter this review, but they all make me more irritated and bored than I already am, so I’ll just give it to you straight: Sólo con tu pareja is not a very good movie.

I’ll even go so far as to say that it is one of the more baffling selections in the Criterion Collection. It’s fairly common for Criterion nerds to debate what movies do and do no deserve to be in the Collection, and I tend to be more forgiving than most, preferring to default to the label’s original mission statement and figure out what the film represents that makes it important to this version of cinematic history. When it comes to Sólo con tu pareja, however, I come up with nothing, except that it’s the full-length debut of Alfonso Cuarón, made in Mexico a decade before Y tu mamá también [review]. Well, I guess it’s true, everyone has to start somewhere. The cover copy calls Sólo con tu pareja a “ribald and lightning-quick social satire,” to which I can only reply, “I guess...?”

Sólo con tu pareja, which translates as “Only With Your Partner,” and has also been referred to as “Love in the Time of Hysteria,” is a sex comedy released in 1991. Written by Carlos Cuarón, it tells the story of Tomás Tomás (Daniel Giménez Cacho, BadEducation), a ladies man who we are lead to believe has game inside the bedroom, but who otherwise appears to be a buffoon outside of it. As a schemer, Tomás seems to have picked up most of his moves from Three’sCompany reruns. We’re talking a guy who calls in sick to work while holding the thermometer against a light bulb to prove he has a fever. Over the phone.

Tomás not only refuses to settle down, but he’s irresponsible about it. You see, Tomás is one of those immature lovers who refuses to wear condoms. If the girl is on the pill, that’s enough, he doesn’t think about other consequences (but more on that later). Things change for Tomás on a night he tries to balance two women--his best friend’s assistant, Silvia (Dobrina Liubomirova), and his own boss (Isabel Benet)--keeping one in his apartment and one two apartments down. It’s when moving between the two via the building’s outer ledge, going in and out through the bathroom windows, that Tomás spots the new neighbor that has moved into the middle apartment. Clarisa (Claudia Ramírez) is a pretty flight attendant who captures Tomás’ imagination. So much so, he declares he’s in love and will change his ways to impress her.

Only, as such things go, Tomás has to actually learn his lesson first. Tomás’ best friend, Mateo (Luis De Icaza), also happens to be his doctor, and this puts Silvia in the position to intercept Tomás’ lab reports and mark him down as having tested positive for HIV. Fearing his life now ruined, while everyone else is out celebrating for New Year’s, Tomás is concocting ways to kill himself (like sticking his head in the microwave!). As luck would have it, when Clarisa comes home early and catches her own boyfriend, a pilot with silver-fox Elvis hair, having sex with another woman on her bed, she joins Tomás’ suicide mission. You think they’ll find love with one another rather than go through with it? Well, do ya’?

Oh, and did I mention that earlier Tomás accidentally gave Silvia his stool samples when seeing her off to work, and he took her lunch to the hospital for lab analysis. Is that a “meet cute” or a “meet poop”?

In many ways, Sólo con tu pareja is very much of its time, particularly in style and presentation. One could see it fitting in with the early 1990s Sundance circuit, where many middling efforts were applauded for their quirky energy and stepping outside the mainstream. Indeed, Sólo con tu pareja sort of comes off like Pedro Almodovar decided to make an Adam Sandler movie, but ended up meeting Sandler more than halfway in his attempt to adapt to the comedian’s style. Even for 1991, the comedy is politically tone deaf, making light of people’s ignorance about a very serious subject, with occasional pit stops for racist comments about some Japanese doctors visiting Mateo. Really, that Sólo con tu pareja holds any kind of critical regard at all is down to that strange reverence some cinephiles have for movies in any language other than English. Were this a Hollywood release, it would already be forgotten, and it should be held up as evidence that cinema from other shores is not automatically better or devoid of schlock. We are just normally spared anyone importing the worst of it. Hell, I’d probably sit through The Cobbler again before reaching for this disc.

As a young filmmaker, Alfonso Cuarón already shows an attention to detail and an early interest in tricky shots and extreme angles. Likewise, his relationship with his regular cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki, is  starting to form. The storytelling here is clear, as are the pair’s command over a locale. What Cuarón shows little facility for, however, is comedy, which might explain why his career has gone in other directions since this debut. His instincts for what is funny and for how to frame a gag prove woefully inadequate. Despite the preponderance of pratfalls and slapstick, Cuarón is no Charlie Chaplin, and his leading man is no Buster Keaton. Cacho gives an off-putting performance full of mugging and banal mimicry. Worst of all, he fucks like he’s being bitten by bugs and is trying desperately to shake them off his body, meaning this sex comedy isn’t just unfunny, it’s unsexy, making it hard not to root for Tomás to get everything he deserves.

Though vastly different in tone and quality, Criterion also includes two short films from the Cuarón brothers on Sólo con tu pareja: Alfonso’s 1983 student film Quartet for the End of Time and Carlos’ 2002 comedic short Wedding Night. Of the two, Carlos is the winner, with a quick vignette that features a solid gag. The trick here is not overselling it or overstaying his welcome: set-up and punchline.

Quartet is more ponderous, as perhaps befitting a college project. Angst, boy, angst!

Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN - #723

There is an ephemeral grace to Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mamá también that makes it easy to reduce to something simple and small, but that when chased after, reveals deeper meaning and an artful construction of a movie that at times feels like it has no construction at  all.

At it’s most basic, Y tu mamá también is a road trip and a coming-of-age story, both fairly standard and oft predictable genres. At its most grandiose, Y tu mamá también explores erotic identity, political engagement, and the biggest, darkest theme of all: death. It does most of this with a light touch, never once pushing any of these elements so far forward that they dominate. The underlying themes of the eroticism never overtake the erotica itself. More than anything, this is a sexy movie, but like, say, Bernardo Bertollucci’s The Dreamers, a sexy movie with meaning.

The Dreamers is a good comparison for another reason. That movie is a tribute to the French New Wave, and Bertollucci channels the techniques of 1960s cinema through a youthful story of sexual and political awakening. So too does Cuarón adopt the style and the spirit of those influential filmmakers to create something that is free and spontaneous and at its most virtuoso moments, a celebration of moviemaking itself. Released in 2001, and hinting very little at the director’s smart sci-fi blockbusters to come (namely, Children of Men [review] and Gravity [review]) in terms of scope, Cuarón already exhibits the casual mastery of technique that would be so impressive in those later films. Working with frequent collaborator Emmanuel Lubezki (The Tree of Life [review]), he orchestrates long, unbroken scenes that rarely call attention to themselves. They aren’t used to deliver action, but rather are mostly used to probe the environment, to expose the details of the characters’ world by moving away from them and looking around. The one exception is the unforgettable dance sequence between actress Maribel Verdú (Pan’s Labyrinth [review], Tetro [review]) and, almost literally, the camera lens. Her eyes locked dead center, she dances like someone is watching, locking in the audience, seduction through control. Though much is made of her young co-stars, this scene alone explains why the actress got top billing: she’s the star.

Oh, but of those younger men. Y tu mamá también introduced the world at large to Diego Luna and Gael Garciá Bernal; these talented performers would go from Y tu mamá también to separately work with directors as renowned as Spielberg, Gondry, Korine, Jarmusch, Van Sant, and Almodovar. Here they play recent high-school graduates and best friends in Mexico, with Luna taking the role of Tenoch, the son of a rich politician, and Bernal playing Julio, the average son of a middle-class family. The boys are restless during their final summer before college, and spend most of it getting stoned and trying to get laid. It’s at a wedding that they meet Luissa (Verdú), the Spanish wife of one of Tenoch’s cousins. The horny pair invites her to go to the beach with them, promising to show her a beautiful cove so idyllic it’s been nicknamed Heaven’s Mouth. The locale is pure invention, but they haven’t a hope of luring the older woman to go its shores, so that really doesn’t matter.

Except, circumstances change for Luissa, and when she finds out her husband has been cheating on her, she decides to go with them after all. Their naïveté amuses her, and she takes advantage of their eagerness to please by probing them about their sexual adventures (such as they are) while they drive toward the coast in search of paradise. As they reveal more about what they do or do not know--and as she shares with them in equal measure--a sexual tension builds up, one that will eventually find a release.

This in itself would be enough for most filmmakers, but not for Cuarón. Co-written with his brother Carlos, Cuarón’s script for Y tu mamá también never forgets that there is more going on all around the three travelers. There are regular references to political unrest throughout Mexico, and even glimpses off it along the roadway. The travelers pass police checkpoints and people getting arrested, but remain mostly oblivious to the lives being altered within their view, carrying on with their sex talk as if somehow separate from the changing world. This in itself mimics most existences, we all drive on more concerned with our own situation than that of our fellow man. Yet, Cuarón mixes these macro details with the micro. The vacationers also drive by various rites of passage: a car full of newlyweds, a girl having her quinceañera, and a funeral procession. No matter how isolated the transitional experience of two teenage boys and an older woman may feel, the world carries on.

Which also fits the Nouvelle Vague ethos, particularly that of Jean-Luc Godard, who in movies like Masculin Feminin and La chinoise [review] would use the experiences of young people as a springboard to explore other things, to detail the political climate of his era, and expound on his own radical ideas. You could also say similar things of Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude [review], another film about a young man having an affair with a (much) older woman set against political turmoil. Cuarón goes so far as to give Ashby’s movie a shout out. Y tu mamá también opens with Tenoch having sex with his girlfriend under a Harold and Maude poster.

Not that the reported protests and massacres ever interrupt or invade the getaway; rather, they are representative of the things that these three voyagers are putting off, the seriousness they will ignore and avoid as long as they can in much the same way they--and all of us--put off death. Cuarón regularly reminds us of this unavoidable fate, as well, with the narrator breaking in to tell us about different traffic accidents that happened in spots along the highway when the car passes. This voiceover interrupts regularly to inform us of things we would not otherwise know, filling in details from the past and present and even the future about all the characters. Rather than being overcompensating narration, however, it adds a poetic quality to Y tu mamá también, evoking the style of South American literature. In terms of presentation, it also calls to mind Godard again, the way Cuarón tweaks the sound, turning the volume down on the main audio to give his off-screen speaker the dominance. (It’s probably no coincidence that Luissa’s cheating husband is a writer, and his encouragement of Tenoch’s own literary aspirations gives us cause to wonder if maybe it’s this boy eventually turning their excursion into something more.)

In the end, though, these things all dissipate. Like sea foam, as Luissa might put it. It’s the connection she makes with the boys, and the things they share, that we will remember. Even if--or perhaps because of--their coming together also eventually drives them apart, we can assume it’s also something they can never forget, and perhaps the finality it engenders is because it’s a time of life that can never be replicated. They will always be remembering, always looking back, even as the next road opens up before them.

Included in this set alongside Y tu mamá también is a 2002 short film by co-writer Carlos Cuarón. Though far lighter in tone, You Owe Me One is a fine companion to the main feature, and perhaps should be watched as a lead-in for a full night of programming. The lark features an oversexed family going about their clandestine business on what we can assume is an average night in their home. The laughs are genuine and unforced, with Cuarón lacing together his scenarios with smart cues derived from the story itself. Double the pace, and this would be a screwball comedy, but as it is, it’s genial and fun.

SIDELINE: MORE REVIEWS FOR 9/13

IN THEATERS...

* Adore. You heard of wife-swapping? How about son-swapping? Naomi Watts and Robin Wright are best friends who start having sex with each other's sons. It's all very literary.

* Don Jon, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's slick directorial debut. You will be asked to believe that porn is better than Scarlett Johansson. I remain unconvinced. There is nothing better than Scarlett Johansson.

* Gravity. See this in the biggest, loudest theater you can. Then again, if you need me to tell you that, you must be living somewhere no one can hear you scream.

* Inequality for All, a documentary about the widening gulf between the 1% and the working poor, as well as the disappearing middle class. Luckily, your host for this sobering journey is the affable Robert Reich.

* Rush, a middle-of-the-pack racecar movie from Ron Howard.

* Short Term 12, one of the year's best. Brie Larson stars in this potent drama about counselors for troubled teens who find some of the kids' problems hit a little too close to home.

My Oregonian columns...

We're shaking things up a bit. Online, the column I write will now be broken up and the individual movies listed on their own; the Friday paper will still print them all together. These first few, naturally, are the old way.

* September 6: go on pilgrimage in the documentary Walking the Camino, see Richard Elfman introduce a colorized Forbidden Zone, and watch the Everything is Terrible! website come alive.

* September 13: Two from Charlie Ahearn, the Trent Harris retrospective, and a dreadful Portland-made documentary. 

* September 20: two documentaries--the art-themed Herb and Dorothy 50X50 and Rise from Ashes, about the Rwandan bicycle team--alongside a revival run of Tarantino's Elmore Leonard adaptation, Jackie Brown.

* Cutie and the Boxer, a documentary about two Japanese artists who have been married and living in New York for four decades.

* Gideon's Army, a personal look at public defenders and the Herculean nature of their professions.

* Salma, the true story of an Indian poet who transformed confinement into art.

* The Trials of Mohammad Ali, a documentary looking at what happened to the champ when he stopped being Cassius Clay and started to stand up for what he believed.

* A Tribute to Les Blank: Three nights of Southern culture, music, and food. 

* Plus, two creative, off-the-beaten path screenings: From Nothing, Something asks a variety of artistic types why they do what they do, and Vanessa Renwick shows us what it is she does in the Wild Beasties program.

ON DVD/BVD...

* Between Us, a smart indie drama with Julia Stiles and Taye Diggs.

* Going Hollywood, a charming pre-Code musical with Bing Crosby and Marion Davies.