December 28, 2005
Broken Promises
Am I the 100th person to use that headline? If I am the 100th, I should probably get some sort of prize... Anyway, remember last column where I said I’d be reviewing THE PROMISE/MASTER OF THE CRIMSON ARMOR? Well, there was trouble with the print and it was not to be. I’ll have to wait till it becomes available from Hong Kong and/or for when the Weinsteins wide release it. And a very astute reader has noted that I’ll be able to see it next week when it shows in LA, albeit cut by 20 minutes. I’ll still have to import the DVD to see the whole thing...
Surprisingly, the film both broke box office records at home and also got pretty bad reviews. It only makes me more curious to see it.
An International Incident
So I just about started an international incident in my last column by referring to the continent of Australia as the continent of Australia. As our American readers may know -- that really is what they teach us the continent is called. But I guess in some other places in the world, most notably New Zealand, they call it Oceania. Being stressed from Holiday shopping I was perhaps not as nice to these folks as I could have been... But now I think both I and those who e-mailed me from the fine country of New Zealand understand that different geographical areas are known by different names in different places of the world.
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A Very Rohmer Christmas
In my Fourth of July column I noted that I had gone home to suburban Massachusetts and I went to my local blockbuster to see what foreign films were there to review. I get a lot of e-mails from folks who complain that they simply don’t have access to a lot of the fine films I usually review. Living in Los Angeles, there are a number of non-chain video stores that have really extensive catalogs of foreign films. But for a lot of people, all they have is Blockbuster.
Now it’s Christmas and I’m even worse off, I’m in the middle of nowhere South Carolina (and I mean, the middle of nowhere) but about 15 miles away is a Blockbuster. So I went down there today to see what I could see. As I suspected, it had some American friendly offerings like JET LAG, FULLTIME KILLER, THE FAST RUNNER, etc... But like a lot of Blockbusters I’ve seen, their selection was completely random. It didn’t have all the things you’d think they would have and did have some really odd things.
And I decided to rent the oddest thing of all. They had not one, but two Eric Rohmer movies. You’re hard pressed to find two Eric Rohmer movies in even the avant garde video stores. I’m still pretty shocked by this -- I mean, they had maybe 3 dozen foreign films at all.
For those of you wondering -- who is Eric Rohmer? Let me start with that. The easiest way to define him is as a French filmmaker that no one I have ever met likes at all. I happen to like him pretty well. And who knows? He might just be for you.
I have to give credit to IMDB for turning me on to this quote that Gene Hackman’s character speaks in the film NIGHT MOVES (1975): "I saw a Rohmer film once. It was kind of like watching paint dry."
Rohmer was part of the French New Wave with directors and film critics Goddard and Truffaut, but his aesthetic was markedly different. It’s been said of Rohmer that it’s as if he directs to a metronome. His films have very deliberate, often slow, pacing that never changes. This turns many, many people off.
The films of his I have seen are not really the kind of thing he is known for. They happen to be his few costume dramas. The first one I saw was THE LADY AND THE DUKE which got a lot of press when it was released because it had entirely CG backgrounds. Then I also caught THE MARQUIS OF O on TV. I watched it because I had read the story, not because I knew it was a Rohmer film. Surprisingly, I liked them both. Upon further research, I found I was one of few.
The two films the Blockbuster had are BOYFRIENDS AND GIRLFRIENDS (1987) and FULL MOON IN PARIS (1984). They are part of a group of his films known as ‘Comedies and Proverbs’ (and tells you as such under the title of the film). It is more the kind of film that he is known for -- with regular folks having lots of banal conversations.
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But I don’t mean to turn you off of Rohmer entirely. Perhaps, I’ll refer to Tarantino’s thoughts of him. He said the following in an interview conducted by Dennis Hopper (I don’t really know what that’s about): "I remember -- this is really weird -- I created a following for Eric Rohmer in Manhattan Beach and the South Bay area. We had all of his films on video. So people would come up to me with Pauline at the Beach, or something -- because they had those sexy boxes, you know -- and ask, "How is this?" And I would feel I had to indoctrinate them on Eric Rohmer. "Well, he's a director you have to get used to. The thing is, actually, I like his films." "Well, are they comedy or are they drama?" "Well, they're not dramas, they're comedies but they're not really very funny, all right? You watch them and they're just lightly amusing, you know? You might smile once an hour, you know? But you have to see one of them, and if you kind of like that one, then you should see his other ones, but you need to see one to see if you like it."
I think that’s good advice. See one of them to see if you like it. At the very least, when you find yourself in a circle of snobbish film intellectuals, you can talk about the one Rohmer film you’ve seen and you’ll be looking good.
BOYFRIENDS AND GIRLFRIENDS
This film was surprisingly like a little Rohmer romantic comedy. The proverb for this film is: "The friends of my friends are my friends" My boyfriend, who understands French, tells me that the title of the film in French is therefore a lot more clever than it’s translation -- especially where the proverb is involved.
The thing with this movie, which isn’t unlike a genre film, is after meeting all the characters you will know who is going to end up with who. And with a title like ‘Boyfriends and Girlfriends’ you can assume that there will be some switching around. But plot is never the major characteristic of a Rohmer film. Yet let me tell you about the plot nonetheless.
Blanche (Emmanuelle Chaulet) and Lea (Sophie Renoir) meet by chance in a restaurant one day. Blanche slowly grows to know Lea’s boyfriend Fabien (Eric Viellard) with whom she has a lot in common, but lusts after Lea’s acquaintance -- the handsome Alexandre (Francois-Eric Gendron).
I think the film revels in the normality of its characters. These are not emotional French artists or intellectuals. These are every day folks, living in a yuppie suburb of Paris, who, as one character mentions, are looking for security. Someone who has the same hobbies perhaps. Someone who is attractive, certainly.
The production and costume design is really interesting. Blache’s apartment is white and blank. There are also a lot of matching outfits throughout the film that make comparisons that enhance the action. Rohmer certainly uses all the tools available to him to tell his story.
As a Rom-Com, I found myself rooting for Blanche. As a Rohmer film, I found myself staying slightly more awake than usual. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy myself. I think this is a very accessible Rohmer film. It’s very light, almost comedic. Perhaps a good one to watch for your first film of his.
FULL MOON IN PARIS
Louise (Pascale Ogier) lives with her boyfriend Remi (Tcheky Karyo) in a Paris suburb. But she wants to still live her life and go out on Friday nights. Remi likes to stay in, so she goes out with her friend Octave (Fabrice Luchini) who, although married, keeps trying to get her in bed. Louise’s life with Remi is suffocating her so she keeps her apartment in the city and stays there on the weekend so she can party. With this time of her own, she’s able to contemplate her relationship with Remi. Growing further apart and pushing him away leads her to the ultimate act of distance at which point she finally comes to a conclusion about her relationship.
So I did hit pause and take a nap in the middle of this movie, but I was tired...
But this movie is a very good portrait of a character. The movie is as absorbed with her as she is with herself. And while she’s not the most sympathetic character, she is easy to understand. And it’s sadistically fun to watch her make all the wrong moves. You both feel bad for her and laugh at her. It’s truly interesting, as a viewer, to have these conflicting feelings of sympathy and aversion.
Of course, if you are a woman (or even a man) who has been in the same situation, you may feel more deeply. But to feel deeply about a woman who does not feel particularly deeply herself is somewhat anachronistic.
And I had conflicting feelings about all the characters really, not just Louise. Like Octave for instance, he’s a lech but he’s charismatic. These conflicting feelings are particularly devious because one of the themes of the film is that of decisiveness.
While Louise becomes predictable, you both know what she will do but you don’t know what is going to happen to her. Like all Rohmer films, you have to just sit back and enjoy the ride.
For a talking heads movie, Rohmer really has a great cinematic sense. His backgrounds always reflect his characters. I only really start noticing the mechanics of the filmmaking when I get bored and the monotony of Rohmer’s pace has a tendency to entrance me to the point where I never think about these things. And I find his monotony works well in these films of the banal, monotonous lives of urbanites. His style probably works better in these films than the period works I had seen before for just this very reason.
And Louise’s story is really a good morality tale -- even though he did another group of films that were morality tales and this one is a ‘comedy and proverb’. And the proverb this time around is thus: “He who has two women loses his soul. He who has two houses loses his mind.” Rohmer, on the one hand, takes this literally -- with Louise having two houses. But it also emphasizes the confusion of the young waif. The central aspect of the film is her confusion and how much she doesn’t know herself. She doesn’t know if she’s ready to really settle down.
But Rohmer brings it to a very satisfying conclusion -- at least he doesn’t leave you hanging. And the ending, which of course I’ve been trying to avoid revealing, makes the discussion of the film all that more interesting.
But beware, the 80s clothes in this film are beyond distracting. If you thought what we wore in America was bad, you should see what they wore in France...
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