LA PISCINE - #1088

 “L’eau c’est la vie…l’eau c’est la mort."

Forgive me if that isn’t quite right, put the blame on Google. But that’s about as simple as it gets, right? Water is what fuels everything, but like too much of any good thing, it can also kill you. It is life and it is death. So when a filmmaker puts a swimming pool as the center of his erotic thriller, and even highlights it in his title, as Jacques Deray did in 1969 with La piscine, you can bet it’s going to both charge the sexy times and drain the life out of someone.

Thriller might be too strong a word here. La piscine isn’t a nailbiter in most traditional senses, though you will spend the first half of the movie worrying about how it will all go wrong and the second half wondering what the consequences will be. It stars Alain Delon (Le samourai [review]) and Romy Schneider (Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno [review]) as Jean-Paul and Marianne, a couple on vacation at a remote villa with a swimming pool. They spend their time canoodling with one another, bickering a little, engaging in a power dynamic that regularly explodes in wild passion, her on top this time and him next time. It’s just the two of them. It works. It’s good.

It can’t last. We know this. 

Enter Harry (Maurice Ronet, The Fire Within [review]), an old friend of Jean-Paul’s and an old flame of Marianne’s. He has arrived with Penelope (singer Jane Birkin), a grown daughter no one knew he had. The striking young woman becomes the object of all attention. Does Jean-Paul have a thing for her? He’s inscrutable, it’s hard to tell, but does Marianne think he does? And, gross, is Harry attracted to his own daughter, too? Or is it all just the macho musk in the air? Because Harry definitely still has a thing for Marianne and this might just be about these two brutes—one who talks to much and one who says very little—wanting each woman so the other can’t have her.

A few days go by with normal activity. Couples split off, confessions are made, everyone kind of agrees to not like Harry, Marianne makes some very French guesstimations as to Jean-Paul’s potential lust, and Deray arranges the characters around his sets like chess pieces waiting to move. It’s funny, the filmmaker never tips his hand, we kind of guess that maybe something happened between the older man and the young girl (she’s of age, don’t worry), but neither gives up the info. It’s all about guilty glances and knowing looks. Delon is the king of deadpan, but Birkin could give him lessons in not giving anything away. What’s fascinating about her performance is that Deray presents her as an object to gaze upon, but she resists such an inelegant notion. Penelope may be the perennial observer in most scenes, but those eyes aren’t empty. She sees how ridiculous these adult machinations are, even if she’s not always aware that she’s falling into them.

La piscine, which I should note is available both on disc and currently streaming on the Criterion Channel, is more character than plot, a tale of predator and predator. There is no real prey here. Marianne doesn’t do anything she doesn’t want to, and she’s more than willing to rebuff or welcome advances as she sees fit. Schneider has a regal bearing that automatically places her in charge. There is also a bit of the cliché that she’s the emotionally mature one that will help these two boys keep it together. Harry is a narcissist, Jean-Paul is troubled in ways that are only hinted at. We hate them both, but Harry is the invader, the bully, the interloper…and thus the villain. He’s the one the audience wants to see fall.

It’s interesting that Deray has made a pretty chilly drama even though it’s set in the very sunny French summer. How can there be secrets when everything is bathed in so much light? Even in a nighttime scene, Jean-Paul comments on how there are too many electric lights, and they are drawing mosquitos. What a sly thing to just let slip out in conversation, a metaphor for the whole of the proceedings. People flocking to these bright climes only to feed on one another. And the biggest dangers come when those people bring their secrets out of the dark. The two pivotal scenes that influence the impending violence are confessions: Marianne telling Harry how she really feels about Jean-Paul (i.e. it can never be you) and Penelope telling Jean-Paul how much she really does not like her father and how much her father does not like Jean-Paul. The latter is probably the best thing in the movie. Birkin is suddenly wholly and completely real, safe to be herself, and the steely Delon gives her all the space she needs just by listening.

That’s about explicit as La piscine gets. Deray doesn’t make any grand proclamations about love or desire, and if no character is going to explain their motivations, it’s very much up to the audience to decide. Many will be as confused as Penelope at the end. Her face as she departs suggests she knows what happened, just not what to make of it, and also likely unsure why everyone else is going along. 

The answer to that? Because it’s intriguing! From start to finish, La piscine holds our gaze, the fifth participant in the (blood)lust.

HOME - CRITERION CHANNEL

This review was originally written for DVDTalk.com in 2010.

A tiny house sits on a grassy field next to a deserted stretch of unfinished French highway. As we will learn, the family that lives there moved to this remote location because their mother (venerable French actress Isabelle Huppert) has some kind of nervous condition and this is the only place where she feels safe. They've been there for some time, at one count possibly ten years. That's how long the unused pavement has been cutting through their front lawn. The movie Home is what happens when the builders finally come to finish the road and open it up to commuters.

The family dynamic is a mom, a dad, and three kids. The father, Michel (Olivier Gourmet, Mesrine: Public Enemy #1 [review]), is a good guy who keeps his family happy, going off to work every day to bring home the bacon but never letting the grind get him down. He and his wife, Marthe, get along well, and the family all plays together and enjoys each other's company. The eldest daughter, the worldly Judith (Adélaïde Leroux), even takes baths with her little brother Julien (Kacey Mottet Klein), and mom and dad hang out and splash in the tub, too. Judith is of age, and so is the only other adult in the house. She spends her days in a bikini, sunbathing while listening to death metal. She couldn't be more different than her little sister Marion (Madeleine Budd). Whereas Judith is a Lolita who has fully blossomed, Marion is like her mother to the extreme. She is anxious and concerned with germs. On the other hand, the boy Julien isn't concerned with anything. He's precocious and hyper and regularly indulged.

Ursula Meier's movie is a strange piece of work. Though she and her legion of screenwriters--there are five writing credits in addition to her own--take this solid foundation and erect a bizarre scenario on top, we are watching a parable without context. Home exists somewhere out of time, vaguely modern, but also vaguely apocalyptic. We never leave the confines of the house by the freeway, and dispatches from beyond sound almost alien. In a way, this could be a divergent off-ramp from Jean-Luc Godard's Weekend [review]. Reality is not as important as the message.

So, what is the message? I'm not sure there actually is one. As the cars begin to speed by their house, the family slowly loses its grip on its environment. They become more isolated, there is no exit onto their property. Dad parks the car across the four lanes, and they either have to dodge traffic to cross or crawl under through a sewer tunnel. Mother's illness begins to surface again as the noise and the movement get to her, Marion becomes obsessed with the effects of automobile exhaust, and Julien starts to go a little stir crazy. (In this, the movie is like Todd Haynes' Safe, only abstracted and with no cures offered.) Judith doesn't change her routine, her affectation of being unaffected remains intact, though she will eventually get in a passing car and go. Michel stays strong for everyone, but when he fails to get the family out, he becomes absorbed in his wife's psychosis and starts to go overboard in protecting her. Gourmet has the stand-out performance in Home, maybe because he gets the most to express. The good guy who loves to laugh with his children also gets his private moments--weary cigarettes stolen in the night, a quiet cry in his car, things that allow him to show some range. We get the sense that he signed on for something that has become more than he was expecting.

Home was shot by cinematographer Agnès Godard (35 Shots of Rum [review]), and she captures the bucolic setting beautifully. As the highway encroaches on everything, she lets the natural transformation of the locale take over rather than resorting to tricks to show it. What was once green and clean becomes grimy and cluttered, and Godard understands that photographing it in exactly the same way in both states says more than any lens filter or special lighting ever could.

The problem is, as much as the images speak for themselves, I don't feel the script has all that much to add. The story's isolation ends up being its Achilles heel, and its weirdness becomes something the viewer grows complacent with rather than continually intrigued by. Yes, we watch this family go through the things they go through, deteriorating under the strain of an environmental madness they can't control, ultimately to come out the other side in a rather obvious way--the predictability of the final shots is proportional to the creativity of the central concept--but to what end? Home builds and builds to a harrowing climax, only to flinch from it. Apparently, all that came before is easily solved. Marthe just needed a good nap.

I suppose I might have been fine with a shruggable conclusion had I not already lost interest half an hour before. I think I could sense the whole lot of nothing that was coming, and the more it was obvious that Meier was painting her movie into a narrative corner, the more I drifted away. There are actually outcomes that are more trite that could have caused an even bigger pile-up than this--yet, maybe then at least Home would have been a movie that would have been worth getting upset about. Instead, I'll trade one cliché for another: Home, a nice place to visit, wouldn't want to live there, one visit is enough.

LA VISITA (THE VISITOR) - CRITERION CHANNEL

This review was originally written for DVDTalk.com in 2012.

The 1963 Italian film La visita (The Visitor) is a mild romantic comedy starring Sandra Milo (the mistress from 8 1/2 [review]) as Pina, a mid-30s woman in Northern Italy looking for love. The movie opens at the train station where she waits for Adolfo (Francois Perier, Le cercle rouge [review]) to arrive from Rome. The two have been corresponding since Pina placed a personal ad stating her intention to marry. Adolfo is a clerk in a bookstore with few prospects, and so he has traveled to the country to meet his potential bride.

The action in La visita takes place over a weekend as the pair get to know one another. Pina is a sweetheart who lives a solitary life that is, in its way, a warped fairy tale fantasy. Her home is decorated in Disneyana, and she has three pets: a dog, a parrot, and a turtle. Pina is well liked in her hamlet, and the village idiot (Mario Adorf) threatens Adolfo the moment he sees him. He says he doesn't like the little man from the big city, and as Adolfo begins to reveal his true nature, we realize he's not wrong. Adolfo is obsessed with money, rude, and even racist. He lusts after Pina's neighbor's teenaged granddaughter (Angela Minervini) and even flirts with her in front of his potential fiancée. Through flashbacks, we see how Pina and Adolfo got involved in this long-distance romance, as well as their secret love lives. Pina has been having an affair with a married trucker (Gastone Moschin), while Adolfo has been getting it on with the woman who makes his shirts.

La visita was directed by Antonio Pietrangeli (Adua and Her Friends). He creates an easygoing, almost pastoral vibe for La visita, capturing the quaintness of small-town living, warts and all. Some of the locals are lecherous and spiteful (they call the curvaceous Pina "Miss Pretty Booty" behind her back, thinking the "Pretty" makes it all okay), and they can also be as intolerant as Adolfo. In one amusing, cathartic scene, they trick him into a game of "soldier's bluff" and send him tumbling down a small embankment. He's pretty drunk at that point, and has shown himself to be a boor. It's difficult to fathom why Pina would still be attracted to him. Pietrangeli allows for subtle moments where we know she sees the truth. Pina isn't blind, she's just...patient.

Sandra Milo is marvelous in the lead. She is quiet and serene and she exudes an inherent charm that makes her instantly likable. Pina is far from the pushy tart she played for Fellini; rather, she masks her shyness by being a caretaker. She plies Adolfo with food and has knitted him a sweater. The more we dislike Adolfo, the more we love Pina, particularly as we realize that she and the trucker have genuine affection for one another. Yet, it's also a credit to the writing that, when the emotional climax of the film arrives, Pina is able to disarm Adolfo and get to the root of his bad behavior. The impulse that compelled the two of them to reach out in the first place is what, at least for now, keeps them together. Pietrangeli and his trio of screenwriters show us the comfort that two lonely people can find in each other's arms, and even if it's temporary, it at least makes sense.

VISIONS OF EIGHT - #1081

 

Someone asked me this morning if I had watched any of the Olympics, and I replied “No, but that reminds me I have an Olympic documentary at home to watch and should probably give it a spin.” The fellow asking gave me what I admit was an appropriately perplexing look in response. A contradiction maybe only cinephiles understand. I won’t engage in the Thing but I’ll watch a movie about that Thing. 

Sports movies are probably high on the list for this situation. Why do I not enjoy watching or playing sports but I’ll take a boxing or football movie any given day of the week?

Criterion has re-released 1973’s Visions of Eight just in time for the delayed 2020 Olympics; now labeled 2021, the XXXII Olympiad may seem like it’s full of strife, but keep in mind, the XX games back in ’72 are the games where Palestinian terrorists killed Israeli athletes, an incident only touched upon briefly in Visions of Eight. It’s backdrop for John Schelsinger’s segment, “The Longest,” as the attack delayed the marathon by a whole day. It’s hard to imagine what gets into a runner’s head with that extra day, and how it effects his race. That’s what intrigues Schlesinger the most: what does the long-distance runner face beyond the fatigue of body?

The Midnight Cowboy director [review] is the last to go in this anthology documentary, the 8th of the 8 in the title. Producer David L. Wolper (Roots) picked this octet of international filmmakers and let them loose to shoot what interested them, and each came back with their own snapshot of the Munich Olympics. The notion is that no one film can cover the whole event, so let’s slice it up and create a collage. Naturally, some of the shorts are better than others. Kon Ichikawa, no stranger to the Olympics, having set the standard for documentaries about the games back in 1965 with Tokyo Olympiad, is perhaps the most inventive here, chronicling one 100-meter dash by filming the race at 4X slower speed, isolating each athlete so the audience can track the contortions of body and face, and then showing the whole widescreen image, finally revealing who won. Each competitor looked like the victor on their own, but only one can get the Gold.

Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde [review]) also gets inventive, tightening in and abstracting high jumpers in both success and failure, creating a montage of daring and defeat. Milos Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest [review]) has the most fun, matching the decathlon events to musical performances adding atmosphere during and adjacent to the competition. And I suppose it takes a French director to blithely undertake “The Losers;” Claude Lelouch (A Man and a Woman) focuses on those who miss the mark and how they react to blowing it.

The weak link in Visions of Eight is something that only likely appears as such due to the passing of time. German director Michael Pfleghar’s segment “The Women” is the only one besides Lelouch’s to give the female competitors any time, and he spends most of it highlighting their clothes and how they prepare themselves (like, you know, primping their hair). There is a noticeable focus on mostly white faces throughout the film, as well, and though Visions of Eight is a product of its era and should be judged as such, it’s worth noting that even though Wolper tells you up front you are not getting the whole story, he’s not telling you how much you really aren’t.

For those interested in the technical specs, Criterion does deliver Visions of Eight using a new 4K restoration that looks fantastic while maintaining the veneer of film stock used in 1972. Sound is also good, giving some nice punch to the occasional music by the great Henry Mancini. Extras include audio commentary by podcasters from The Ringer, a new documentary, and archival materials.

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

BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975 - CRITERION CHANNEL

This review was originally written for DVDTalk.com in 2011.

Things may have changed since I was in school, but my only recollection of any civil rights leader ever being discussed at length in American history classes is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. There were brief mentions of Malcolm X and Cesar Chavez, and we also learned who Rosa Parks was, but any more meaningful profile of more aggressive political leaders was nowhere to be found. While I have, of course, gathered additional knowledge over the years, The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is still a revelation, a documentary that both educates and informs, but also entertains.

Though credited to director Göran Olsson, The Black Power Mixtape is more of a collaborative effort spreading back more than forty years. The footage used to construct the documentary is taken from a variety of Swedish television broadcasts. Sweden took an active interest in American culture at the time, exploring our internal struggles and racism, as well as condemning the war in Vietnam. Their distance from the issue allowed for a fascinating perspective, and unlike most of the news media in our own country, they viewed the Black Panthers and similarly minded African American leaders as essential figures in an understandable and necessary revolution. As a result, they gained unprecedented access to Black Panther headquarters and social centers. Stokely Carmichael visited Stockholm with his mother, Eldridge Cleaver let camera crews into the Black Panther embassy while in exile in Algeria, and Angela Davis talked at length with a European reporter while in prison awaiting trial.

The alternative perspective is astonishing for both new viewers and people more educated in the truth. Olsson has gathered up contemporary African American figures, as well as a few surviving voices from the past, to watch the footage and comment. Their reactions can be heard as voiceover. Rapper Talib Kwali, for instance, is surprised by the humanity of the news pieces, and it also reinforces for him his connection to the Black Power movement of yesteryear. Footage of a black bookstore in Harlem in the 1970s reminds him of one he worked at in Brooklyn in the 1990s. A piece on a typical African American family in the late '60s inspires Erykah Badu to sing the coded songs they taught her in school to discourage questioning authority. In other clips, Harry Belafonte looks at himself as a young man meeting Swedish dignitaries, and Angela Davis reflects on the larger meaning of the struggle.

Smartly, Olsson keeps his commentators off-screen, avoiding letting The Black Power Mixtape turn into a talking-heads documentary. What historical context is not provided in the journalist's copy from the actual broadcasts is given via short news clips of other events or text in the upper corner of the frame. Olsson never lets his audience lose a sense of time and place, and he builds the framework naturally, moving in chronological order across the years. Raw footage is also enhanced by new music from Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, drummer for the Roots and a respected hip-hop producer. His compositions, like the film itself, blends old and new, mixing vintage musical lines with more up-to-date rhythms, but avoiding making any of it too domineering. (The musician also contributes to the voiceover.)

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 ends on a sobering note. Harlem always served as a microcosm of black culture, and as drugs flooded its streets in the early '70s, they had a damaging effect on African American empowerment. Years of fighting back had brought about some victories, but it also caused fatigue. As with most of the political activism that had survived the turn of the decade, the Black Power movement was losing steam. Yet, there were still voices struggling to be heard, and some of those voices still speak up and, as this movie illustrates, there are others speaking alongside them. Olsson provides the right perspective for why everything shown in the previous 90 minutes still matters and where we can take the inspiration it engenders from here. It's a compelling message, one that seems particularly relevant as disparate individuals gather across the country to protest economic injustice. There is much to be learned and considered from the past, much to be gleaned from the success and failures of those that fought before, and for that, The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is certainly a vital place to start.

THELMA & LOUISE - CRITERION CHANNEL

This review originally written in 2011 for the film's 20th Anniversary, and was posted at DVDTalk.com.

In the 20 years since I first saw Thelma & Louise during its original theatrical run, there is one scene that I always return to. It's a very short sequence, it could almost be dismissed as throwaway connective tissue, but in my mind, it speaks strongly to the soul of Ridley Scott and Callie Khouri's road-movie western. It's during a brief pit stop, the titular fugitives have pulled off the highway to take a bathroom break and clean up. Susan Sarandon, playing Louise, washes herself in an outdoor sink and, seeing the old man who lives in this roadside shack, she goes over to him, removes all of her jewelry, and puts it in his hand. It's a silent interaction, there is no dialogue or explanation given. Yet, one can take so much away from those few frames. In one light, it is a compassionate moment. Louise is paying this man, who has likely seen some hard times judging by the lines on his face and the faraway look in his eyes, to thank him for the respite he has provided. It also proves she hasn't given herself completely to crime, she won't rob those who can't afford it. In another light, Louise is shedding her earthly connections, rejecting the material world and accepting a fate that is becoming all-too inevitable.

It's not just the best scene in an otherwise rollicking movie, it's one of Susan Sarandon's finest screen moments. It's the actress at her most raw. She is vulnerable and sweet and, a rare thing for us to see in big-budget Hollywood movies, at rest. It's an oasis of peace in the middle of a movie where a bullet from a pistol can blow up an oil tanker.

And yes, it really has been two decades [now three!] since Thelma & Louise was a well-deserved big hit at the box office. The film is a perennial now, something we have become comfortable with, even though the dimwits who run the American film industry are still scared of the idea of kick-ass women headlining their own kick-ass movies. Thelma & Louise casts the dream team of Geena Davis as Thelma, an Arkansas housewife kept underheel by her domineering jerkwad husband, and Susan Sarandon as Louise, a bold-as-brass waitress who has seen her fair share of disappointments.

The story begins as the girls set out for a weekend at a cabin in the mountains. Thelma decides not to get her husband's permission, he's not going to give it anyway. (Darryl is played by Happy Gilmore's Christopher McDonald, who has made what is probably a pretty fun career out of playing energetic sleazeballs.) For her, this three-day vacation is all about letting go and embracing life, to finally unleash everything that is inside her. For Louise, it's somewhat the opposite, though similar. The trip will become her opportunity to bury the past, to get over old mistakes, and accept the disappointments life has handed her.

The journey takes an unintended detour after an unscheduled bar stop. Thelma has too much to drink, and a local scumbucket (Timothy Carhart) tries to take advantage. Louise steps in, one thing leads to another, and Louise shoots the rapist. Convinced that no one will believe their story, the ladies hit the road. A series of mishaps and crimes follow, including running across a thieving drifter (Brad Pitt in a breakout role) and getting a sympathetic cop (Harvey Keitel) on their tail. Thelma & Louise is essentially a modern take on an outlaw western, two anti-heroes on the run like a feminist Butch and Sundance. With each obstacle they overcome, with each new "bad deed," they come into their own. By the end, they are seasoned gunslingers and as gutsy as any frontiersmen in a leather duster and ten-gallon hat ever was.

Thelma & Louise represents the last of vintage Ridley Scott for me. While the director has had some good movies since--usually his "smaller" pictures, such as Black Hawk Down and Matchstick Men--his run in the last twenty years never quite achieved the immediacy or creativity that made his 1980s work so exciting. His bloated Christopher Columbus biopic, 1492: Conquest of Paradise, was to follow a year later, and its failure inspired a four-year gap that would eventually be broken by the little-seen White Squall. His box office successes since have tended to be overdone historical epics or convoluted modern thrillers marred by an unyielding visual style. Thelma & Louise stands in direct opposition to this. The storytelling is lithe, and the bright and breezy cinematography by Adrian Biddle (V for Vendetta) eventually embraces the majesty of the road picture, drinking in all the wonderful sights of the American Southwest alongside its two heroines. Maybe it's fitting that the most over-the-top scene in the movie is the explosion of that oil tanker. It's ridiculously out-of-sync with the "reality" of the rest of Thelma & Louise, yet it serves its purpose: it's the signal flare that the ladies are leaving everything about their safe lives back in Arkansas. Maybe it's also Ridley Scott's demolition of all that came before, a last moment of whimsy before he hunkered down for the more calculated career that was to come.

Of course, if we're going to push that kind of meaning onto Thelma & Louise, then it might be just as fitting to suggest that the ending of the movie, which I guess some would consider controversial, is more of Scott's final leap into the creative unknown. I think it's a rather perfect ending to the film, I can't imagine why anyone would be upset (the extended version that's been out on its various digital video releases would have really given detractors something to crow about). Again, Butch and Sundance are a pretty obvious comparison, but I'd like to toss out a different one: Grease. At the end of the musical, Danny and Sandy take flight in their convertible, presumably on their way to some kind of bliss in cinema heaven. Given where Scott ultimately chose to fade out in this leap, there is no reason not to take it as a Kierkegaardian metaphor. Thelma and Louise never land, they soar off toward immortality. The fact that there is now a 20th Anniversary Edition would certainly suggest they've achieved some level of timelessness. Thelma & Louise is still as fresh and unpretentious as it ever was, despite the fact that it seems to be on TV at least once a week. It's the kind of moviegoing vehicle that's tires will never grow threadbare.

Sarandon & Davis at 2021 30th Anniversary event

ERNEST & CELESTINE - CRITERION CHANNEL

This review originally written for The Oregonian in 2014.

A bear and a mouse aren't supposed to be friends, but they make for a cute pairing in the French cartoon Ernest & Celestine.

An adorable animated adaptation of Gabrielle Vincent's popular children's book, Ernest & Celestine depicts a world of bears and mice where the two species have a lifelong fear of one another propagated by urban legends and fairy stories.

The main characters are an imaginative mouse who loves to draw and a layabout bear who loves to eat. They form a friendship based on their mutual outsider status.

The Oscar-nominated French feature captures the look and feel of classic storybooks, using a charming watercolor style to bring the clever tale to life.

Ernest & Celestine delivers a sweet message that should prove delightful to young and old alike.