Julian Schnabel’s moving, real-life story follows Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Almaric), who, at 43, suffered a massive stroke that left him with something called "locked-in syndrome.”
Though Bauby’s mind returned to full capacity upon waking from the coma induced by the stroke, his body was paralyzed. The only exception was his left eye, which he was able to use, and which became his only tool for communication.
The film is based on Bauby’s own memoir, published days before his 1997 death.
If it’s the fact that Bauby was able to write a book at all that makes the movie such a testament to the human spirit, then it’s his sometimes sarcastic, other times deeply regretful internal monologue that makes the movie so powerfully complex.
Written and directed by Pavel Chukhrai, 97 minutes, rated R, in Russian with English subtitles.
Of Stalin, Hitler once said: “He’s a beast, but he’s a beast on a grand scale who must command our unconditional respect. In his own way, he’s a hell of a fellow!”
Clearly, it takes one beast to back-slap another, but for post-Soviet Russian filmmakers, finding the nerve to finally come to terms with the bloody history of Stalin’s former stronghold has been a beast in and of itself.
Pavel Chukhrai’s “The Thief” follows Nikita Mikhalkov’s Academy Award-winning “Burnt by the Sun” (1994) in that it takes a successful leap in that direction. Through an extended metaphor that follows its three main characters during the initial throes of the Cold War, his film explores Stalin’s brutal influence with often harrowing results.
Told from the viewpoint of 6-year-old Sanya (the remarkable Misha Philipchuk), the film follows the boy’s relationship with his mother, Katya, (Ekaterina Rednikova) and the dashing soldier, Tolyan (Vladimir Mashkov), who meet on a train and masquerade as husband and wife in an effort to secure communal housing.
But Katya, who is meant to symbolize Mother Russia, has been misled by Tolyan, who represents Stalin: the man is a thief who steals from the poor with complete disregard for the repercussions of his actions.
His treatment of Katya is abusive, yet seductive, even protective--he’s a potent, powerful lover who whispers a mouthful of lies even while providing for mother and child. When his leadership fails and it’s revealed to Katya that this god is nothing but a crook, she and her son nevertheless still love him, which is perhaps the most powerful statement this excellent film makes about Russia’s complex relationship with their former leader.
Follows the writer Amir (Khalid Abdalla), an Afghan living in the U.S., who must deal with the decisions he made in his past, when he deceived his best friend, Hassan (Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada).
Though Amir loved Hassan--initially, they are inseparable, often flying their kites in neighborhood competitions--Amir couldn’t handle the fact that Hassan possessed the sort of integrity and courage he himself didn’t have.
And so, when Hassan is raped by bullies, Amir does nothing but silently retreat as the act plays itself out.
It’s in this extended flashback that "The Kite Runner" is at its best and most believable. The child actors are superb, as is Homayoun Ershadi as Amir’s father. But when the movie switches to the present and Amir finds himself traveling back to the now Taliban-ruled Kabul to retrieve Hassan’s son, the plot contrivances hit hard, so much so that they detract from an otherwise engaging story.
If for some reason you didn't find time to jet to the film festivals at Cannes, Berlin, Los Angeles and Tribeca, not to worry. Currently, 50 theaters in 50 cities around the U.S. are offering a rare opportunity to see the range of amazing work being done in the short-film format, both animated and live action, which is so frequently and unjustly ignored in the hype over big-budget films.
Because these films must be condensed to their essence, they often are more entertaining minute-for-minute than any other films.
This year's animated nominees are especially rich, with Josh Raskin's "I Met the Walrus" offering a brief, trippy account of the day 14-year-old Jerry Levitan interviewed John Lennon on the sly. A riff on cheating death is found in Samuel Tourneux's "Even Pigeons Go To Heaven," though that cheat doesn't exactly go as one man plans, and one woman's haunting journey by train is the focus of Chris Lavis' anxiety-ridden "Madame Tutli-Putli." Also here is "My Love," a beautifully impressionistic piece from Russia's Alexander Petrov that follows one young man's love affair with two women (as with some of the films in this collection, this one is best suited for children).
As for the live-action films, look for Andrea Jublin's bizarre Italian offering "The Substitute," which is dedicated to those who have difficulties with conduct (for reasons that immediately become clear); the funny French comedy "The Mozart of Pickpockets," with director Philippe Pollet-Villard following two bumbling pickpockets whose luck is lifted thanks to a deaf boy; and Belgium's funnier "Tanghi Argentini."
That film is from Guido Thys, and in it is a man who promises the Internet love of his life the fire of the tango, a dance he doesn't know. It's up to the help of a reluctant male co-worker to get him up to speed within two weeks, all of which makes for a hugely entertaining movie that, in the end, literally is a gift. Also in the mix is Daniel Barber's "The Tonto Woman," which comes by way of Elmore Leonard's deceptively spare short story. It's an intense, nicely mounted Western romance that's so compelling, you almost wish its characters could be explored in a feature-length film.
All of the films are special, but one in each category is remarkable. First is Christian E. Christiansen's harrowing and heart-breaking live-action Denmark film, "At Night," in which three women struggle to cope with cancer and their own mortality at a cancer ward. The results are powerful. Second is the standout in the animated category, "Peter and The Wolf," a fantastic entry from the United Kingdom and Poland that sometimes puts a lump in your throat before forcing it out with a laugh.
What this film observes about cats alone is reason enough to seek out these movies.
Directed by Marc Forster, written by David Benioff, based on Khaled Hosseini’s novel, 128 minutes, rated PG-13. In Dari with English subtitles.
Recently, two movies have explored the idea that children sometimes can be serious agents of destruction whose ability to ruin lives can be every bit as monstrous as anything wrought by an adult.
First came Joe Wright’s "Atonement," in which Saoirse Ronan, in an Academy Award-nominated performance for Best Supporting Actress (she doesn’t deserve it), plays Briony Tallis, a wide-eyed lass with a clipped blonde bob, a mean mouth and a tight-fisted gait who fancies herself as something of a writer.
When, in a fit of jealousy, she lies about something she saw in the movie’s key scene, she not only ruins the lives of young lovers Robbie (James McAvoy) and Cecilia (Keira Knightley), but she also sends Robbie to prison. Later, as an adult with a conscience, she makes an effort to atone for her sins.
Now, in Marc Forster’s "The Kite Runner," which is based on Khaled Hosseini’s best-selling novel, we have Amir (Khalid Abdalla), an Afghan living in the U.S. who also is a writer (clearly, this is not a good year to be a writer). As the movie opens, Amir’s new book has just been published, which is cause for only fleeting celebration when he must deal with the decisions he made in his past.
A telephone call comes that brings Amir back to his childhood, when he was a spoiled 12-year-old boy (Zekiria Ebrahimi) living a privileged life in Afghanistan with his father, Baba (Homayoun Ershadi), whose affection and respect he could not earn. His best friend, Hassan (Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada)--the son of his father’s long-time servan--was devoted to Amir in ways that Amir could only partly return.
Though Amir loved Hassan--initially, they are inseparable, often flying their kites in neighborhood competitions--Amir couldn’t handle the fact that Hassan possessed the sort of integrity and courage he himself didn’t have. And so, when push literally came to shove in a scene that finds Hassan being raped by bullies, Amir does nothing but silently watch and then retreat as the act plays itself out. Later, his mind poisoned by his inability to face his own deceit, he deceives Hassan further in ways that drive the young man and his family out of his life for years.
It’s in this extended flashback that "The Kite Runner" is at its best and most believable. The child actors, in particular, are superb, as is Ershadi as Amir’s father. But when the movie switches to the present and Amir finds himself traveling back to the now Taliban-ruled Kabul to retrieve Hassan’s son, the plot contrivances begin to hit hard, so much so that they detract from the otherwise engaging story.
Amir is seeking his own atonement, and in spite of the formidable odds stacked against him, the movie errs in that it goes too far out of its way to make certain he will have it, regardless of the implausibilities inherent in a few of the scenes that follow. In this way, the end of "The Kite Runner" feels disappointingly scripted, so it’s especially good news that many of its characters do not.
Set in Japanese-occupied China, Ang Lee’s beautifully shot noir stars Tang Wei as Wong Chia Chi, who mixes into a group of young Chinese radicals who want to assassinate Mr. Yee (Tony Leung), a vicious Japanese sympathizer actively torturing his own people.
Because of her beauty, Chia Chi is chosen to seduce Yee with the sort of trap that’s responsible for the movie's NC-17 rating. The sex scenes in this film are ratcheted up to such a degree, some might feel as if they're being fanned by the Kama Sutra while watching it.
As for Chia Chi, she's startled to discover that she rather likes Yee's romantic kinks almost as much as she hates the man himself.
What's it all mean? Get ready--the graphic sex is a metaphor meant to literally evoke war's bondage and the freedom that can come when one releases oneself from their own repression.
Sound pretentious? It is, but Lee ("Brokeback Mountain," "Hulk") nevertheless stands tall as the most insatiable person in the room. He wants to know what happens when caution meets lust while a murder plot simmers on the back burner.
If you also want to know, rent the movie, but also know this--the pace can be excruciatingly slow, which is a mark against a film that might have been a vexing romp had, say, 45 minutes been cut from its 2 1/2-hour running time.
Directed by Julian Schnabel, written by Ronald Harwood, based on Jean-Dominique Bauby’s memoir, 112 minutes, rated PG-13, in French with English subtitles.
Julian Schnabel’s "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" is the moving, real-life story of Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Almaric), a former editor of the French fashion magazine Elle who, at 43, suffered a massive stroke that left him with something called "locked-in syndrome."
The condition is as devastating as it sounds.
Though Bauby’s mind returned to full capacity upon waking from the coma induced by the stroke, his body was paralyzed. The only exception was his left eye, which he was able to use, and which became his only tool for communication in the months that followed.
Recently, the movie earned Schnabel ("Before Night Falls") and his screenwriter, Ronald Harwood ("The Pianist"), Academy Award nominations for best director and best adapted screenplay, respectively, which they deserve. Their film is based on Bauby’s own memoir, published days before his death in 1997. If it’s the fact that Bauby was able to write a book at all that makes the movie such a testament to the human spirit, then it’s his sometimes sarcastic, other times deeply regretful internal monologue that makes the movie as powerful and as complex as it is.
Over the course of 14 months, Bauby dictated his memoir to Claude (Anne Consigny), a woman who became his closest confidante, by a system devised by his speech therapist, Henriette (Marie-Josee Croze). The system involved Claude saying the most used letters of the alphabet first until she came upon the letter Bauby was seeking. When he stopped her with a blink, she noted the letter and repeated the process. Eventually, a word was formed, then a sentence and finally a book. So, you can imagine the effort this took.
Meanwhile, Bauby’s life — once a misguided, selfish force that lived large in Paris (as his imagination does now) — doesn’t stop just because his body stopped. Now, it must be reckoned with by those who come to visit. This includes bitter, conflicted Celine (Emmanuelle Seigner), the jilted mother of his three children, as well as a host of friends who hold him in varying levels of esteem, not to mention unwanted jolts of pity.
Bauby’s guilt-ridden girlfriend (Agathe de la Fontaine) visits by a tense telephone call, and his father, beautifully played by Max von Sydow in what should have been an Academy Award-nominated performance, only calls as well. At 92, he is too weak to visit his estranged son, and so all he can do is phone him and tell him how much he loves him, which leads the movie into some rather deep emotional waters.
But never into cheap sentiment. In spite of the rawness the film’s subject and its outcome court, Schnabel wisely didn’t create a weepy — far from it. This is a film about a flawed womanizer with little time for his children who comes to face himself by the vehicle of his own memoir. Bauby wasn’t pleased with what he saw there, but at least he had the courage to look, which allows you to respect the man in ways that make room for forgiveness and, in the end, a deep, unexpected sense of loss.
Directed by Olivier Dahan, written by Dahan and Isabelle Sobelman, 140 minutes, rated PG-13. In French with English subtitles.
Marion Cotillard, the French actress who portrays Edith Piaf in Olivier Dahan's "La Vie En Rose," takes a flawed movie and turns it into something memorable and haunting.
Dahan co-wrote the screenplay with Isabelle Sobelman, and what they have created is a testament to a few things--first, the power of Cotillard's fierce performance, which is nominated this month for an Academy Award for Best Actress, and second to Piaf herself, the hard-luck singer who survived her bum early years as a child in Paris to literally become Paris' favored child.
For those who know and admire the mix of strength, frailty, pluck and heart that rings through Piaf's voice--her "Milord," "Hymne a L'amour," "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" and the song that inspires the title of this film are classics--this movie based on her life wastes no time in underscoring the reasons behind the complex wealth of emotions that collide when Piaf sings.
In this way, "La Vie En Rose" can't help but court the trappings of melodrama, which sometimes works for it and against it. Furthermore, while it isn't always successful in tying up its loose ends--several subplots are oddly dropped, most curiously a critical one involving Gerard Depardieu as the nightclub owner who discovered Piaf--there is an admirable rawness to the production and to Cotillard's performance that gets to the core of a woman who existed on the fringe.
Since much of Piaf's early life is speculation, the movie explores the myth pop culture created for her. We see Edith as a child, when she was prodded by her abusive father to sing on the streets for money. Reluctantly, she did so, singing "La Marseilles" until people cheered. Later, when her father abandoned her, she was shuttled to her grandmother's brothel, where she received love and an enlightening education from a family of whores who came to adore her, most notably a prostitute named Titine (Emmanuelle Seigner) who treated Edith as her own daughter.
As good as these scenes are, it's in the film's exploration of Piaf's rise from sketchy cabaret singer to polished, superstar performer that the movie is at its best and most seductive. It was, after all, during this time in which Piaf fell in love with the boxer Marcel Cerdan (Jean-Pierre Martins), who looked like a movie star and loved her like no other. Later, in the wake of a devastating event that won't be revealed here, Piaf's decline into drug and alcohol abuse staked claim to her ruin.
Whether because of her addictions or in spite of them, there always was the sense in that tremulous pull of Piaf's voice that she was letting you into rooms that otherwise, in less giving hands, would have remained closed. To hear her voice wasn't just to hear a woman struggling with the highs and lows of life (she died at 47), but also to hear Paris itself.
In her voice was sorrow, life, defeat and humor, but mostly, like the city that came to embrace her as its own, a sense of absolute acceptance for those who came to it. It's this gift that Piaf possessed that the movie and Cotillard get exactly right, which turns out to be more important than the structural mistakes Dahan makes along the way.
Much like her American contemporaries Judy Garland, who also died at 47, and Billie Holiday, who died at 44, Piaf had that ability to draw everything out of you with a mere song. Her voice could do you in, lay you flat. In that way, there's a certain risk in listening to her, but that risk, in the end, is what made her so great.
Written and directed by Cristian Mungiu, 113 minutes, not rated. In Romanian with English subtitles.
Cristian Mungiu’s "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," winner of last year’s Palme d’Or, is set in 1987 Romania toward the end of Nicolae Ceausescu’s tyrannical rule.
The time in which the film is set is significant for several reasons, chiefly because it was Ceausescu, long before his Christmas Day execution in 1989, who reversed Romania’s stand on abortion, thus making the procedure illegal and punishable (with few exceptions) whereas beforehand, women had the right to choose.
Ceausescu criminalized abortion upon his ascension to power in 1966. Twenty-one years later in 1987, his corrupt dictatorship had turned Romania into a country of chaos, poverty and turmoil, so much so that Romania became a country of outlaws forced to turn to the black market to have their needs met. There, cigarettes were a popular choice. So was finding someone who would perform an abortion.
It’s in this atmosphere of fear and risk that "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" takes place. The movie opens in a crowded college dormitory with roommates Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) and Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) packing their bags for some time away. On the sly, they buy cigarettes and toiletries. Though the film’s title is a giveaway, it’s only gradually that we learn they’re preparing for Gabita’s abortion.
Turns out she’s lucky to have Otilia for a friend. Whereas Gabita is flighty and unfocused, Otilia is a force, balancing in one harrowing day Gabita’s sketchy abortion and the birthday party being thrown for her boyfriend’s mother across town. The abortion comes first, though it nearly doesn’t go off because Gabita failed to secure a room at the hotel chosen by Mr. Bebe (Vlad Ivanov), the gruff man they hired to perform the abortion.
While Bebe’s surname proves that Mungiu isn’t without a dark sense of humor, that’s where the humor ends. Bebe is a brute who uses his power over the situation to his benefit. He does so in ways that turn this drama into part tragedy and part thriller, particularly when he learns that Gabita lied to him about how far along she is in her pregnancy. There’s a price to be paid for that lie — aborting a fetus this late in its term could, after all, cost him 10 years in prison if he were caught. And so Bebe becomes determined to exact a higher payment from each woman, though through means that have nothing to do with money.
Throughout this tense, superbly crafted movie, it’s as if a camera is nowhere near the actors — their performances are that good, that natural. Helping to that end is the dialogue, which seems unscripted. Every corner of this movie speaks to authenticity, such as the terrific scene in which Otilia, her face a mask of concern, is sandwiched among her boyfriend’s chatty family when all she wants to do is to be with Gabita, who very well could be bleeding to death back at their hotel room. The scene in which Otilia rushes back to the hotel through the city’s dark streets is the film at its unnerving best.
So far, "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" joins "Persepolis" and "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" in being among last year’s best foreign language films.
Directed by Raul Ruiz, written by Gilles Taurand and Ruiz, 162 minutes, rated R.
(Originally published 2000)
There are probably more challenging undertakings one could assume than mounting a three-hour production of Marcel Proust’s “Time Regained,” the sixth and final volume in his beast of a novel, “Remembrance of Things Past.” For instance, electing a new president comes to mind.
However, from a literary perspective, it’s difficult to imagine many novels as unsuitable for the screen as this, a work whose construction is so circular in nature--and whose themes, characters and ideas exist so firmly within the realm of a deeply personal internal landscape --the idea of bringing it to screen seems downright absurd.
It’s almost a shock, then, to see how well Chilean director Raul Ruiz has done in capturing the essence of “Time Regained”; just as in Proust’s work, Ruiz’s film is rich in texture, sumptuous in its images, beautifully surreal.
The film, which begins in 1922 with Proust (Marcello Mazzarella) on his deathbed, stars Catherine Deneuve as Odette de Crecy, Emmanuelle Beart as Gilberte, Vincent Perez as Morel and John Malkovich, of all people, as Charlus. It isn’t for anyone with a passing knowledge of the French novelist’s work; indeed, those who haven’t studied Proust will likely be lost in his allegorical search for truth.
But those aficionados of Proust will revel in how Ruiz plays with memory to intertwine the real characters in Proust’s life--those ridiculous, chattering, early 20th century class archetypes he found at swanky salons--with the fictional characters that spark his novel.
There’s no story told in “Time Regained”; just images and moments inspired by the book and Proust’s life. For some, that will prove maddening. For others, those who want to be challenged by the ambitious undertaking of an ambitious work, it’ll be sublime.
Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, written by Guillaume Laurant, in French with English subtitles, 115 minutes, rated R.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s "Amelie” was one of last year’s best films, a smart, quirky crowd-pleaser from France that’s at once touching and hilarious, especially in its opening moments, which follow the pitfalls and absurdities of young Amelie’s life as she steps boldly into a world fraught with cruelity and injustice.
Born to eccentric parents--a father who rarely touched her, a strict mother accidentally crushed by a suicidal stranger--Amelie (Audrey Tautou) grows into a shy, 23-year-old waif living a loney life in Paris.
A waitress by trade, she stumbles upon her true calling by accident. Behind a loose tile in her bathroom is a tin box filled with a boy’s childhood keepsakes, items Amelie herself would want returned if they were her own. Launching into action, she tracks down the box’s owner, now a grown man who’s stunned by this act of kindness and brought to tears of joy.
Filled with joy herself, Amelie becomes a modern-day Miss Lonelyhearts, fluttering about her Montmartre neighborhood and fixing everyone’s life but her own. But when she meets the mysterious Nino Quincampoix (Mathieu Kassovitz), a fellow eccentric whose spare time is spent reassembling other people’s lives with his scrapbook, Amelie’s heart begins to soar--she’s found her man.
The problem is that she doesn’t seem to know it.
Working from a script by Guillaume Laurant, Jeunet strengthens his narrative with a string of unexpected complexities and a star-making performance from the terrific Tautou, who recalls a young Audrey Hepburn and who deserves the same cross-over success Penelope Cruz enjoyed three years ago, when she appeared in Fina Torres’ “Woman on Top.”
Written and directed by Gavin Hood, based on the novel by Athol Fugard, 94 minutes, rated R.
Gavin Hood's Academy Award-winning film, "Tsotsi," is based on the novel by Athol Fugard, and while it isn't as good as the movie that should have won 2005’s Best Foreign Film--Hany Abu-Assad's "Paradise Now"--it is memorable, with a terrific performance by Presley Chweneyagae as Tsotsi that burns in its contained rage.
Set in the South African township of Soweto, where “tsotsi” is slang for “thug,” the film wastes no time in revealing that Tsotsi assumed his nickname for good reason. He is indeed a thug, hardcore to the core, with one look into his unblinking eyes suggesting that he would shoot you dead if he thought for a minute that you'd rise up against him.
He's a young man unhinged, so seemingly lacking in humanity, there is little question that for him, life is without meaning--and not just his own life. For the unfortunate few he meets early in the movie, they understand firsthand what a monster he can be. This is particularly true for the wealthy woman whose car Tsotsi hijacks. When she decides to fight back, he busts a bullet in her gut and then steals her car, only to find out later that in the back seat is her infant child.
So, what is Tsotsi to do? Leave the baby behind? Kill it? Perhaps a kidnapping is in order?
He's capable of all of it. Whatever he has in mind, into a shopping bag the baby goes, with Tsotsi fleeing to his little shanty shack, where he tucks the bag beneath his bed only to awaken the next morning to find that inside, the baby is reeking of feces and covered in flies.
It's this image that creates the shift in Tsotsi that alters the film. Shocked by what he sees, he's suddenly moved to act, which for Tsotsi means helping the child by the only means he knows--violence.
In town, he finds a woman (Terry Pheto) with a young child and orders her at gunpoint to breast feed the child he stole. From this, their tense relationship is born, lives are changed and as the movie unfolds, so do flashes of Tsotsi’s past--we glimpse his mother, who died of AIDS; we meet his violent father, who crippled the family dog with a vicious kick; we witness Tsotsi running away from it all to live in a cement pipe on the outskirts of Soweto, where other orphans lived.
As the stumbling blocks of his life fall into place, the human being beneath the criminal takes shape. Now a story about redemption, "Tsotsi" could have gone one of two ways--it could have become a heartwarming little tear jerker in which we were meant to thrill at Tsotsi's sudden transformation from creep to citizen, or it could have stayed true to life and realized that change is more subtle than that, particularly since the easier impulse is to resist it. Director Hood goes for the latter, and as such, his movie has a power it otherwise might have lacked.
Hany Abu-Assad's "Paradise Now," nominated Sunday night for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, follows two Palestinian men who believe they are called upon by God to strap bombs to their bodies, travel to Tel Aviv, and then move into a crowded area, where they will detonate those bombs in two separate suicide attacks.
The men are told by one of the organizers, Jamal (Amer Hlehel), that the first bombing will take out a smaller number of civilians and soldiers. But not to worry. Fifteen minutes later, when the bloodshed generates pandemonium and more soldiers and people descend upon the chaos, the second man will blow himself up in the center of it, which will create more death and make for the sort of political statement that tends to generate worldwide attention.
As they see it, neither Said (Kais Nashef) nor Khaled (Ali Suliman)--lifelong friends struggling to find meaning in their lives--has to worry about the implications of their actions. There is no shame, evil or disgrace in this. They consider their selection as martyrs to be an honor. They believe this is their calling to heaven.
Trouble is, when Suha (Lubna Azabal), their friend and the daughter of the revered revolutionary spearheading the attacks, gets wind of what Said and Khaled are about to do, her staunch opposition to her father's ideologies and methodologies begins to raise its share of questions within them.
Are they indeed doing the right thing? Is martyrdom the answer to solving the conflict between Israel and Palestine? What will change should they take their lives and the lives of others? Is being considered a hero enough, even for two men who feel as though they are prisoners in occupied Nablus and have few options for a better life?
As written by Bero Beyer and the Netherlands-based Abu-Assad, "Paradise Now" offers no easy answers. Much of its power comes by not portraying Said and Khaled as unstable men eager to pull the trigger, but as otherwise ordinary men who believe their way is the only way.
At first, it's Khaled who is the more gung-ho of the two; Said seems to be wavering, his eyes failing to conceal his indecision, particularly when he's in the presence of his mother (Hiam Abbass), who senses something is up. But when the film gets down to it and the bombs are strapped to their bodies, the dynamic shifts. Said becomes resolute while Khaled begins to wonder whether Suha is right. The rest of the plot won't be discussed here, but the complications of what unfolds can be excruciatingly intense.
Filmed on location in the West Bank by an international crew that included Israelis and Palestinians, "Paradise Now" isn't a perfect film--the occasional contrivance undermines it--but it's nevertheless a perfectly gripping, brave and timely film. It takes a slice of what plays out nightly on the evening news, and puts a human face to it. Some won't want to look into that face--to see the humanity behind the inhumanity--but there it is, and so the discussion deepens about the Middle-East.
Who knew that studying in the French countryside could be so hazardous to your health?
In the slasher film "High Tension," college students Marie (Cecile De France) and Alex (Maiwenn--yes, just Maiwenn) flee the city to cram for their upcoming finals in the presumed quietude of Alex's country farmhouse.
Trouble is, when they arrive, so does a homicidal maniac (Philippe Nahon) who brutally abducts Alex, but not before resourceful Marie slips into hiding with some rather sharp hardware at the ready.
What ensues is a cinematic bloodbath from director Alexandre Aja.
The movie is lean, mean and initially focused; it wants to repel you with gore and it might just succeed. The bizarre, fractured ending is a disappointment, so much so that some will wonder what Aja was smoking when he conceived it. Still, the ending shouldn’t negate what comes before it--a visceral thrill ride.
Francois Ozon's "8 Women" tries to make George Cukor's 1939 catfight, "The Women," look like a quaint Sunday prayer meeting among the best of friends. While it doesn’t quite pull that off (what could?), it has a great time trying and, in the end, it stands as a worthy homage to the unforgettably bitchy mood Cukor created in his film.
Set in the 1950s, "8 Women" is a haughty, heavy-breathing melodrama based on Robert Thomas' play. It's so over-the-top, it almost knocks itself out.
The film begins with a rush of strings and trumpets from Krishna Levy's triumphantly purple score and a glimmering curtain of crystal beads shimmering in a soft pastel hue. Both ground the movie in camp while priming the viewer for what’s to come. Certainly, you hope, that whatever is lurking beyond that curtain will be just as festooned, bejeweled and grotesque as the curtain itself.
It is. Indeed, when the beads wink apart, they reveal a huge snowbound French country estate that, inside, is the sort of Technicolor dreamworld that could put a crease in Vincente Minnelli's pants.
What ensues feels like Robert Altman's "Gosford Park" as written by Agatha Christie on a nitrous oxide drip. The film has more bite and more histrionics than Altman’s film, but then it also has six full-length musical numbers performed by eight famous French actresses, all of whom play suspects in the murder of the estate's wealthy owner, a man found dead early on with a knife in his back.
Who did it? Take your pick. The film’s bevy of lusty, busty babes--Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux, Fanny Ardant, Isabelle Huppert, Firmine Richard, Virginie Ledoyen, Ludivine Sagnier and Emmanuelle Beart—all could be the killer. But who has the true motive? And is the film ever really what it seems?
As it becomes clear that somebody here is more clever with the cutlery than she’s letting on, the film channels everyone from Jacques Demy to Douglas Sirk as these women work hard to root each other out. If the story sometimes strains against its seams--not unlike Deneuve in her dress--the cast is consistently strong, particularly Deneuve and Ardant, bravely throwing caution to the wind and mugging fearlessly in an all-out effort to bring down the house.
The Academy Award-nominated “The Chorus,” from first-time director Christopher Barratier, taps into one of the most sentimental of genres--the student-teacher melodrama--but not in ways that make you want to hurl from a saccharine overdose or throw boxes of Kleenex at the screen.
With its obvious parallels to “Goodbye, Mr. Chips,” “Dead Poets Society,” “Music of the Heart” and “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” among so many others, including the film that inspired it, 1945’s “La Cage aux Rossignols,” “The Chorus” could have been one of those nauseating, top-heavy tear-jerkers if the story hadn’t refused to push too hard to move us.
It’s sentimental, yes, but it’s not sentimental slop--always a blessing with this genre, which sometimes leans so heavily toward the heartwarming and maudlin, it can turn the screen purple if not kept in check.
For the most part, Barratier keeps it in check, beginning his movie in the present with Pierre (Jacques Perrin) and Pepinot (Didier Flamand), two elderly men reminiscing about their childhoods at Fond de l’Etang--the school for troubled boys at which they were unwilling students--before flashing back to 1949 France, when they were students.
There, we meet the man who changed their lives--Clement Mathieu (Gerard Jugnot), a beleaguered teacher hired by the unforgiving headmaster Rachine (Francois Berleand) to teach a handful of unruly boys who want nothing to do with him.
From the start, Clement realizes that while World War II might be over, he has nevertheless entered a war zone. These kids are monsters--and why shouldn’t they be? The verbal and physical abuse they suffer daily at the hands of Rachine and his henchmen is intolerable.
For them, the good news is that Clement isn’t so quick to punish. This cool man with the thinning hair and the unrealized music career is determined to set things straight with his own youthful failings before these boys leave their youth. He’s going to reach them and he’s going to do so through music.
On paper, all of this sounds grotesquely formulaic, and I suppose it is--on paper. But “The Chorus” is meant to honor the French films made for families in the ‘40s and ‘50s. It’s inspired by them. As such, what it does right it does very right, indeed.
The film’s cast of professional and unknown actors are especially good, working with screenwriters Barratier and Philippe Lopes-Curval to deepen the predictable rhythms inherent in the genre. Moments are heavy-handed, particularly at the start, but the story and the characters resonate through the brie, particularly when Clement gradually introduces them to the power of song and their own soaring voices, which make for a soundtrack that can be pure--and purely haunting.
Without a multi-million-dollar ad campaign to give it a kick or a major American star to give it a lift, Laurent Cantet's "Time Out" did just what was expected of it over the weekend—it slipped through the cracks and essentially went unseen in spite of being superior to the three major Hollywood releases: "The Bourne Identity," "Scooby-Doo" and "Windtalkers.”
The film has those qualities that tend to kill a movie, especially one released during the summer months: subtitles and substance.
It's focus is on real life, which has gotten a bad rap lately, and on real people, who have almost gone missing from today's box-office-obsessed Hollywood. Still, I can tell you this: It resonates more deeply than any explosion and is more filling than any Scooby snack.
The film, from a script by Cantet and Robin Campillo, follows Vincent (Aurélien Recoing), a mid-40s businessman so humiliated and ashamed to have been fired from his job, he invents a new life for himself, vaguely informing his wife, Muriel (Karin Viard), their three children, his parents and their friends that he's found new work just over the French border in Switzerland.
No such job exists, but Vincent, now caught in the web of his own lies, starts spending extended periods away from home. Driving aimlessly through the French countryside and often sleeping in his car, he keeps in touch with his wife via his cell phone, sharing with her the highs and lows of a life that doesn’t exist while trying to shield her from the disappointment of what his life has become.
When it occurs to him that he can’t maintain this façade wi
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”
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