Troll 2 is considered by many to be the worst movie ever made. It was a 1989 passion project of Italian fimmaker Claudio Fragasso and was never released in theaters, but became a cult classic on VHS and cable. This documentary shows the current state of cult fandom and how the cast and crew react to the film and the national success it is having now.
Most of the film follows George Hardy, a dentist in Alabama who was the lead in the film. He did the acting gig knowing only that he was working with an Italian director and figured it was going to be a serious movie. It was only after he got the VHS tape of the film and watched it that he realized how bad it was.
Hardy's story is similar to most of the cast. They did the film in earnest, knowing it was a horror piece, but thinking it might be OK. When they saw the final project they realized what they had done. Some laughed it off and forgot about it, some had to deal with it haunting their careers for years to come.
Fans today flock to midnight screenings of the film because it is so incredibly bad. It seems to be something like The Room or Birdemic... although the daddy of those (with Plan 9 From Outer Space the grandaddy of them). One thing this doc doesn't do well is tell us really what the movie is about... so as a neophyte, I have no idea what they're talking about. This is a shame, because I really don't want to rent and watch this film... ugh.
It is funny to see how most of the actors have grown to embrace the terribleness of the film, but some, like Claudio Fragasso, still think it's a serious, brilliant film. What's sorta uncomfortable is that audiences love the film and laugh at it, but they also embrace the shitiness of it. When we see Fragasso watching it at a screening with fans, it is not clear that people are laughing at him. This is sorta upsetting.
This is a fun documentary, though it probably should have been a short, as it really loses steam in the last 30 minutes. I think it would have been much better at around 45 minutes. It's something in the vein of Winnebago Man or The King of Kong. Lots of fun.
Stars: 2.5 of 4
Friday, December 31, 2010
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Blue Valentine (Thursday, December 30, 2010) (169)
Blue Valentine is a beautiful and heartbreaking film by relative new-comer Derek Cianfrance. It is blue in tone and subject matter, but also in appearance. It is the story of Dean and Cindy (Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams) who meet and fall madly in lust and then start a family and then begin to dislike one another. It's a film about the beginning and end of a relationship - beginning and end because it is beautifully constructed where we see both story lines moving along together intermittently.
The film begins with Dean and Cindy in their (somewhat-suburban-looking) home looking after their little daughter Frankie (who seems to be about five or so). They seem to share the same space, but never totally connect. It is clear that Dean's approach to fatherhood is to be Frankie's best friend and to make her laugh. When it comes to eating breakfast, he wants to entertain her, while Cindy wants to be a responsible grown-up and wants her to eat. He really just wants to entertain everyone, considering charisma is really all he's dealing with. He's not a particularly smart guy, nor is he responsible. He's romantic, to a point, but also charming as hell.
Then there is a flash-back to maybe five or six years earlier, where both Dean and Cindy are single and embarking on their lives in different places. He gets a job as a mover in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and and she's a college student in Philadelphia looking to get an education and maybe go on to med school. The two meet by chance and he asks her out. She demurs, but ultimately accepts his offer; they fall madly for one another. Back in the present day, they are struggling to keep their family together, deciding they will go on a weekend sex jaunt to rekindle whatever low embers they might still have for one another.
More than anything, this film is about the two performances of the two lead actors. I think Gosling and Williams are two of the best actors of their generation (both are now 29). (Gosling is fabulous in Half Nelson and more fabulous in Lars and the Real Girl; Williams is amazing in Wendy and Lucy and also in the not-wonderful Mammoth) (Oh, and there's a very clever allusion to Wendy and Lucy in the opening of the film, if you've seen that one.) Both act from a very elemental, ground level position. Their actions are generated from the cores of their souls, rather than more method people who seem (to me) to act from the shoulders up. Both of them move along with a constant slow boil of energy, waiting to overflow the pot.
But Cianfrance's direction with writing by him, Joey Curtis and Cami Delavigne helps a lot too in setting a tone for the film. These people are sub-hipsters - they're not rich enough to be hipsters. Dean is a high school drop-out who moves from lifting boxes for a living to house painting; Cindy doesn't go to med school, but becomes a nurse and seems to be the responsible breadwinner in the family. Most of the scenes of the two of them are intimate and dark... and blue in color. When they get to their cheesy sex hotel, they're in a sci-fi-themed room that has a dark moonscape on the wall. Most of the shots here are with a handheld camera, putting us right in the middle of the action.
As heartbreaking as this film is, I found it less intense and a bit too cutesy with the formal construction. As an alternate presentation, I would offer Maren Ade's film from earlier this year, Everyone Else. I think in the long term, that film is more powerful and more deep-burning because it has no formal flair like this one has with the back-and-forth past-present stuff. There we see the couple madly in love at the beginning slowly falling out of love through the course of the film. We realize their relationship is over basically at the same time they realize it. I think this is more painful to experience (if we're judging effective filmmaking on painfulness). Here we see the relationship is basically over at the beginning and see how it got to that point. I think the former is more commanding.
There also is something annoyingly super hip here about the presentation, say, with the music. One of the main songs is Dean on a ukulele on the street serenading Cindy (early in their relationship) with You Always Hurt the One You Love (get it?! get it?!!) in a very Spike Jones style. Then there's the really, really, really wonderful Penny & The Quarters song You and Me (which I had never heard before, but LOVE!). Both of these are old-fashioned in an overly precious, hipsterish way. I think this almost hurts the cause of the film a bit by confusing us to think that Dean is a hipster... when, again, he's just honestly poor and wears ratty t-shirts because that's what he has available to him. Something doesn't work here for me about how he's very salt-of-the-earth and white trash, but he's also cute and likable because we could imagine hanging out with him on Bedford Ave with expensive mix drinks.
I'm being very picky, I know. There is a lot to like in this film and I appreciate the fresh voice Cianfrance gives us here. This is a very good film and is very powerful. The acting is amazing (I think Williams is a bit better than Gosling because she's not as showy) and the atmosphere is indelible. This is a film well worth watching (though I would still recommend one sees Everyone Else as well, as I think it is a more successful version of the same general story).
Stars: 3 of 4
The film begins with Dean and Cindy in their (somewhat-suburban-looking) home looking after their little daughter Frankie (who seems to be about five or so). They seem to share the same space, but never totally connect. It is clear that Dean's approach to fatherhood is to be Frankie's best friend and to make her laugh. When it comes to eating breakfast, he wants to entertain her, while Cindy wants to be a responsible grown-up and wants her to eat. He really just wants to entertain everyone, considering charisma is really all he's dealing with. He's not a particularly smart guy, nor is he responsible. He's romantic, to a point, but also charming as hell.
Then there is a flash-back to maybe five or six years earlier, where both Dean and Cindy are single and embarking on their lives in different places. He gets a job as a mover in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and and she's a college student in Philadelphia looking to get an education and maybe go on to med school. The two meet by chance and he asks her out. She demurs, but ultimately accepts his offer; they fall madly for one another. Back in the present day, they are struggling to keep their family together, deciding they will go on a weekend sex jaunt to rekindle whatever low embers they might still have for one another.
More than anything, this film is about the two performances of the two lead actors. I think Gosling and Williams are two of the best actors of their generation (both are now 29). (Gosling is fabulous in Half Nelson and more fabulous in Lars and the Real Girl; Williams is amazing in Wendy and Lucy and also in the not-wonderful Mammoth) (Oh, and there's a very clever allusion to Wendy and Lucy in the opening of the film, if you've seen that one.) Both act from a very elemental, ground level position. Their actions are generated from the cores of their souls, rather than more method people who seem (to me) to act from the shoulders up. Both of them move along with a constant slow boil of energy, waiting to overflow the pot.
But Cianfrance's direction with writing by him, Joey Curtis and Cami Delavigne helps a lot too in setting a tone for the film. These people are sub-hipsters - they're not rich enough to be hipsters. Dean is a high school drop-out who moves from lifting boxes for a living to house painting; Cindy doesn't go to med school, but becomes a nurse and seems to be the responsible breadwinner in the family. Most of the scenes of the two of them are intimate and dark... and blue in color. When they get to their cheesy sex hotel, they're in a sci-fi-themed room that has a dark moonscape on the wall. Most of the shots here are with a handheld camera, putting us right in the middle of the action.
As heartbreaking as this film is, I found it less intense and a bit too cutesy with the formal construction. As an alternate presentation, I would offer Maren Ade's film from earlier this year, Everyone Else. I think in the long term, that film is more powerful and more deep-burning because it has no formal flair like this one has with the back-and-forth past-present stuff. There we see the couple madly in love at the beginning slowly falling out of love through the course of the film. We realize their relationship is over basically at the same time they realize it. I think this is more painful to experience (if we're judging effective filmmaking on painfulness). Here we see the relationship is basically over at the beginning and see how it got to that point. I think the former is more commanding.
There also is something annoyingly super hip here about the presentation, say, with the music. One of the main songs is Dean on a ukulele on the street serenading Cindy (early in their relationship) with You Always Hurt the One You Love (get it?! get it?!!) in a very Spike Jones style. Then there's the really, really, really wonderful Penny & The Quarters song You and Me (which I had never heard before, but LOVE!). Both of these are old-fashioned in an overly precious, hipsterish way. I think this almost hurts the cause of the film a bit by confusing us to think that Dean is a hipster... when, again, he's just honestly poor and wears ratty t-shirts because that's what he has available to him. Something doesn't work here for me about how he's very salt-of-the-earth and white trash, but he's also cute and likable because we could imagine hanging out with him on Bedford Ave with expensive mix drinks.
I'm being very picky, I know. There is a lot to like in this film and I appreciate the fresh voice Cianfrance gives us here. This is a very good film and is very powerful. The acting is amazing (I think Williams is a bit better than Gosling because she's not as showy) and the atmosphere is indelible. This is a film well worth watching (though I would still recommend one sees Everyone Else as well, as I think it is a more successful version of the same general story).
Stars: 3 of 4
Another Year (Thursday, December 30, 2010) (168)
Mike Leigh has a wonderful way of making the most mundane people and situations beautiful and interesting. What's even more amazing is that his films are always so dialogue-based and they are always gripping, even when generally about dull topics. Another Year is another great example of this.
In it, Tom and Gerri (funny!) (Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen) are a married couple in their early 60s. He works as a geologist and she works as a social worker in a hospital. They love to garden, cook and spend time together. They have a grown son, Joe, who is a lawyer, and spend a fair amount of time with Mary (Lesley Manville), who works as a secretary in the same office as Gerri. Mary is a rather pitiful woman who never has luck with love and barely ever stops talking for long enough to figure out what to do differently.
The film is divided into four parts, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Through the course of the year, really through a major event in each season, we see how the friendships of Tom and Gerri with Mary change and develop.
There is nothing fancy about this story and no gigantic central thing (like some of Leigh's other films, Secrets & Lies and Vera Drake, for instance). Instead we get a warm and loving couple in a funny and normal relationship with their grown son and their nutty friends. This is a very gentle, character-driven story, one that moves very slowly, and doesn't really move all that much from beginning to end. Still, what we do see is so heart-felt and charming that it is a pleasure to watch.
All of the characters are full of depth and detail and are beautifully written. There is a certain quality to Mary that is somewhat reminiscent of Shirley Valentine. She's the loopy middle-aged woman whose dreams are bigger than her life will allow. She's totally lovable, if a bit annoying, and has a heart of pure gold. Lesley Manville does a wonderful job here, always talking and getting drunk with too many glasses of wine. She's aware of her situation, but feels like its not totally her fault. Broadbent and Sheen are a wonderful couple and come across as truly in love and in a fabulous marriage. They are able to warmly laugh with one another all the time and be supportive whenever needed.
Leigh uses wonderful cinematography (by frequent collaborator Dick Pope) to help tell the four-part story. The spring is bright and green and red; the summer is yellow and orange; the fall is blueish; and the winter is grayish. Such a transformation helps to move the story along (the narrative follows a similar path from brightness to darkness) and is lovely to experience.
I will say that at times I felt like Leigh was stronger writing and directing the scenes with poorer, less well-bred people than he was with scenes with Tom and Gerri and Joe. I think he is better in general with poorer people, like in his best film Life is Sweet or in Happy-Go-Lucky, where the people are struggling to keep their heads above water (like Mary here or Tom's brother Ronnie and his son Carl). I don't know why this is, but throughout his oeuvre, he always does better with less well-off people. There's something about the dialogue and how it works with the general design aesthetic. Interesting.
What is even more fantastic than Lesley Manville's performance here (which is sometimes a bit overdone), Imelda Staunton does a totally, totally amazing job here in a very brief role at the beginning. The film opens up with her going in for a check up as she is suffering from insomnia. She sees a doctor (one of Gerri's friends) and later comes back for a talking session with Gerri. She is a totally worn down and depressed with her terrible life. She is so powerful you identify with her immediately and want to scream out for help for her. She also really sets the tone of the movie, where Gerri is an upbeat woman dealing with very sad people who are not receptive to love and kindness. Even though she's only on screen for 5 minutes, Staunton totally deserves acting awards for her performance.
This is really a top-notch Mike Leigh film. Much of the last act has Mary talking to Ronnie, a sad and suffering man totally lost without his wife who did everything for him. Through most of the sequence, Mary does 90 percent of the talking (as she is wont to do), but we still get the most amazing interaction between the two. This is not a dull scene at all; it's painful, pitiful and uncomfortable, but it is exactly what is at the heart of Leigh's view of things and particularly of this film. People are searching for connections, some find them and some don't. Those who don't find someone grasp for anything they can find in the dark. It's very powerful.
Stars: 3.5 of 4
In it, Tom and Gerri (funny!) (Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen) are a married couple in their early 60s. He works as a geologist and she works as a social worker in a hospital. They love to garden, cook and spend time together. They have a grown son, Joe, who is a lawyer, and spend a fair amount of time with Mary (Lesley Manville), who works as a secretary in the same office as Gerri. Mary is a rather pitiful woman who never has luck with love and barely ever stops talking for long enough to figure out what to do differently.
The film is divided into four parts, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Through the course of the year, really through a major event in each season, we see how the friendships of Tom and Gerri with Mary change and develop.
There is nothing fancy about this story and no gigantic central thing (like some of Leigh's other films, Secrets & Lies and Vera Drake, for instance). Instead we get a warm and loving couple in a funny and normal relationship with their grown son and their nutty friends. This is a very gentle, character-driven story, one that moves very slowly, and doesn't really move all that much from beginning to end. Still, what we do see is so heart-felt and charming that it is a pleasure to watch.
All of the characters are full of depth and detail and are beautifully written. There is a certain quality to Mary that is somewhat reminiscent of Shirley Valentine. She's the loopy middle-aged woman whose dreams are bigger than her life will allow. She's totally lovable, if a bit annoying, and has a heart of pure gold. Lesley Manville does a wonderful job here, always talking and getting drunk with too many glasses of wine. She's aware of her situation, but feels like its not totally her fault. Broadbent and Sheen are a wonderful couple and come across as truly in love and in a fabulous marriage. They are able to warmly laugh with one another all the time and be supportive whenever needed.
Leigh uses wonderful cinematography (by frequent collaborator Dick Pope) to help tell the four-part story. The spring is bright and green and red; the summer is yellow and orange; the fall is blueish; and the winter is grayish. Such a transformation helps to move the story along (the narrative follows a similar path from brightness to darkness) and is lovely to experience.
I will say that at times I felt like Leigh was stronger writing and directing the scenes with poorer, less well-bred people than he was with scenes with Tom and Gerri and Joe. I think he is better in general with poorer people, like in his best film Life is Sweet or in Happy-Go-Lucky, where the people are struggling to keep their heads above water (like Mary here or Tom's brother Ronnie and his son Carl). I don't know why this is, but throughout his oeuvre, he always does better with less well-off people. There's something about the dialogue and how it works with the general design aesthetic. Interesting.
What is even more fantastic than Lesley Manville's performance here (which is sometimes a bit overdone), Imelda Staunton does a totally, totally amazing job here in a very brief role at the beginning. The film opens up with her going in for a check up as she is suffering from insomnia. She sees a doctor (one of Gerri's friends) and later comes back for a talking session with Gerri. She is a totally worn down and depressed with her terrible life. She is so powerful you identify with her immediately and want to scream out for help for her. She also really sets the tone of the movie, where Gerri is an upbeat woman dealing with very sad people who are not receptive to love and kindness. Even though she's only on screen for 5 minutes, Staunton totally deserves acting awards for her performance.
This is really a top-notch Mike Leigh film. Much of the last act has Mary talking to Ronnie, a sad and suffering man totally lost without his wife who did everything for him. Through most of the sequence, Mary does 90 percent of the talking (as she is wont to do), but we still get the most amazing interaction between the two. This is not a dull scene at all; it's painful, pitiful and uncomfortable, but it is exactly what is at the heart of Leigh's view of things and particularly of this film. People are searching for connections, some find them and some don't. Those who don't find someone grasp for anything they can find in the dark. It's very powerful.
Stars: 3.5 of 4
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Biutiful (Wednesday, December 29, 2010) (167)
Biutiful gets its name from a moment in the film where Uxbal (Javier Bardem) is helping his son with his English work. Rather than knowing the exact spelling of the word, the father lets the son get it wrong and moves on to some other catastrophe in his life without correcting it. This is exactly what this film is: a dirty collection of broken stuff, generally taped together, but mostly ugly and aesthetically unpleasant. This is not at all to say that I don't like this film. It is a good movie, but is totally challenging and sometimes repulsive.
The film is about Uxbal, an unusual man with a dark life in Barcelona. He's a black-market hustler, a loving, devoted, if imperfect father and a medium who speaks to the dead. We see him going about his every-day life, struggling to keep it together through mundane things and exotic things. He hatches a get-rich-quick plan with Chinese gangsters and tries to keep his fucked-up family from totally crumbling. He sorta fails at both, but not for trying his hardest.
Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu constructs a beautiful tale that keeps us always on our toes and on the edge of our seats. His style is always uncomfortable and always beautiful... if beautiful is unsettling and uncomfortable. There are things that don't really work, like the Chinese gangsters...and things that work beautifully, like their guest workers' deaths and them later washing up on-shore. I rally like that he presents Uxbal as a man who straightforwardly talks to the dead, but is not really thrilled with his "gift". (This is treated differently here than in Clint Eastwood's recent Hereafter... a film about talking to the dead. Here, the talking to the dead is just one of many things that Uxbal does.)
Uxbal's relationship with his wife is both very painful and very beautiful. She doesn't know how to deal with normal life with her kids and family, and he doesn't know how to deal with her sensibly, and how to protect their kids from her, but also make sure they have a relationship with her. He doesn't want to cut them off totally from her, but also doesn't want to expose them to her corrupting influence.
He is able to make money in many ways, but still insists on living in poverty and squalor because, like Jesus, a poor life is a comfortable one for him. It is this Jesus life that makes him feel good. This film feels a lot like the Leonard Cohen song Suzanne. Dark, melancholy, stormy.
I like this film, but it doesn't all totally come together for me. Somewhere between the talking to the dead and the sadness it just feels like a bunch of parts that never totally feels complete.
Stars: 3 of 4
The film is about Uxbal, an unusual man with a dark life in Barcelona. He's a black-market hustler, a loving, devoted, if imperfect father and a medium who speaks to the dead. We see him going about his every-day life, struggling to keep it together through mundane things and exotic things. He hatches a get-rich-quick plan with Chinese gangsters and tries to keep his fucked-up family from totally crumbling. He sorta fails at both, but not for trying his hardest.
Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu constructs a beautiful tale that keeps us always on our toes and on the edge of our seats. His style is always uncomfortable and always beautiful... if beautiful is unsettling and uncomfortable. There are things that don't really work, like the Chinese gangsters...and things that work beautifully, like their guest workers' deaths and them later washing up on-shore. I rally like that he presents Uxbal as a man who straightforwardly talks to the dead, but is not really thrilled with his "gift". (This is treated differently here than in Clint Eastwood's recent Hereafter... a film about talking to the dead. Here, the talking to the dead is just one of many things that Uxbal does.)
Uxbal's relationship with his wife is both very painful and very beautiful. She doesn't know how to deal with normal life with her kids and family, and he doesn't know how to deal with her sensibly, and how to protect their kids from her, but also make sure they have a relationship with her. He doesn't want to cut them off totally from her, but also doesn't want to expose them to her corrupting influence.
He is able to make money in many ways, but still insists on living in poverty and squalor because, like Jesus, a poor life is a comfortable one for him. It is this Jesus life that makes him feel good. This film feels a lot like the Leonard Cohen song Suzanne. Dark, melancholy, stormy.
I like this film, but it doesn't all totally come together for me. Somewhere between the talking to the dead and the sadness it just feels like a bunch of parts that never totally feels complete.
Stars: 3 of 4
The Strange Case of Angelica (Wednesday, December 29, 2010) (166)
So, how many movies did you make last year? None? Oh, well, Manoel de Oliveira who just turned 102 made two movies. You suck, you lazy-ass loser!
Following on the heels of The Eccentricities of a Blond-Haired Girl, Oliveira comes back with The Strange Case of Angelica, a similarly magical, lyrical and lovely tale of love and loss. It is very similar to Eccentricities in its style and format, it also feels like a film version of a short story (though not as short as the former), and also stars leading man Ricardo Trepa.
He plays Isaac, a Jewish man with no traditional roots in a small coastal town. One night he's asked to visit the house of the village's wealthiest family and photograph their recently deceased twenty-something daughter. The moment he sees her in her death bad, he falls in love with her. When he takes her picture, he imagines she's looking right at him and smiling. He becomes obsessed with her and can't concentrate on his work without thinking of her. All he wants to do is spend eternity with her, but, of course, she's dead and he's living, so there are some basic problems with that idea.
The film is lovely and poetic in an unusually dramatic and beautiful way. Oliveira seems to have made a film that feels more 1920s than 2010s. He uses almost only static shots, perfectly composed and amazingly full of interest in life. Some shots go on for 10 or more minutes, most have action pass in front of them and tension arises when we don't know what is coming in front of the lens next. He does occasionally tilt the camera or crane it up, but these shots are few and far between. It feels like an UFA picture from before the sound era. Add a bit of wonderful color and you have almost the same film.
Oliveira also uses music in a wonderful way, with most of the score as a solo pianist playing mournful and sentimental tunes. The sounds work wonderfully as Isaac sadly suffers without the love of Angelica. Oliveira also uses traditional workman songs to break up the tone a bit. They give a wonderful texture to what we see on screen.
This feels to me to be a chicken and hare situation. Oliveira is clearly well established (he made his first film in 1931) and it seems like he's not running, but slowly walking here. He knows how to make an excellent movie; he's seen all the tricks and knows them well. He doesn't do anything flashy (other than some silly ghosty double exposure stuff), but he does it right and does it well.
I am very interested in the idea that this and Eccentricities are supposed to be viewed together or in close succession. That film dealt with the capriciousness of love and the fickleness of lovers. This film deals with the eternality of love and the deep, strong attachments people have to it - even if totally constructed in their heads.
I also wonder if Isaac in this film is Oliveira himself. The character is a man obsessed by photographic images of his lover. In the winter of his life (easy for me to say... he could live another 20 years at this rate), the director could be a man looking back at the photographs he's taken, having fallen in love with them. I think it is clearly significant that the man is a photographer.
I like how it is the same actor in both films and that he plays a different, but not totally dissimilar, characters in each. In Eccentricities he was a man shackled to his family and the role he was supposed to play in the greater story of his genetic line. Here he is an outsider (a Jew) who is somewhat not tied down by the heavy burden of local expectations. He is a total free agent without any duty. I think together the two films show us two sides of the same coin. Love can be fast and thoughtless and hard to figure out, or it can be deep and unwavering and without borders.
Stars: 3.5 of 4
Monday, December 27, 2010
Prodigal Sons (Monday, December 27, 2010) (165)
The writer/director of the documentary Prodigal Sons, Kimberly Reed, was born as Paul McKerrow in Helena Montana. Her older brother Marc was only 11 months her senior and was adopted by her parents just before she was born. Placed into the same year in school the two McKerrow brothers were competitive for attention, but Marc always seemed to lose to his younger brother, who was the high school quarterback and a hunk.
Secretly Paul was struggling with his own identity and ultimately transitioned to become a woman. Around the same time, Marc got in a car accident that left him with significant brain damage that made him volatile and not the same guy he was before the accident. The two broke off contact for about a decade.
As this film opens, they both are going back to their high school reunion where they are different people (on the outside or the inside) from what they were before. Kim is now a woman, living as a lesbian with a wife in New York City; Marc is functioning at a different speed than he used do and suffers from mood swings that he controls with meds. The two try to work on their relationship and try to rediscover who each one is now at this point in their lives.
This is a very beautiful story, one that is so perfectly balanced and symmetrical that it nearly has to be made into a documentary. At one point in voice over, Kim says something to the effect that Marc only hopes to be the man that she never wanted to be. It's a pretty fabulous line in an interesting story.
As with many documentaries, I think the last third is a bit rocky and loses its way a bit. Marc has a breakdown around Christmas time and assaults their younger brother (who is also gay). He's put in jail for a spell. Once this happens, some of the air is taken out of the story, without an interesting foil, Kim becomes less interesting to us.
This is a good movie, but I wonder if that is helped dramatically by the amazingness of the true story that exists. I am not sure that I would see another film by Kim Reed... nothing against her, but I think this was her story and now that it's done, it's done. (I don't want to ruin anything, but there's a totally amazing revelation in the middle of the film about who Marc's birth grandparents were. The film is almost worth seeing for that alone.)
Stars: 2.5 of 4
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Hadewijch (Sunday, December 26, 2010) (164)
Hadewijch is is film that I would like to quickly dismiss as a simple film about a girl who struggles with her deep and powerful faith in modern times, but it is actually much harder to deal with than that. This film, by the always challenging French director Bruno Dumont (who previously made the difficult films Humanité and Flanders) seems rather straightforward until you scrape the surface a tiny bit.
The title of the film comes from the name of the convent where the main character Céline is studying to become a nun, as well as a lesser known 13th century mystic poet who struggled with her transcendent devotion to god. Céline deals with a similar love of god, one that even her nun teachers don't totally understand.
The film mostly follows Céline, but also a young construction worker, David, who seems to go in and out of juvie every few months (or so he tells us). As the film opens, we see two old nuns discussing Céline and saying that her faith is too blind and too extreme that she doesn't really understand the meaning of the suffering she's putting her self through in the name of God. They send her back to the real world to experience more life and get her better prepared for life in the convent.
Back in Paris, she is the daughter of a super rich minister, living in one of the nicest apartments you've ever seen on Isle Saint Louis (not bad!). She has everything she wants. One day she meets a group of Muslim boys from the banlieue who begin flirting with her. She strikes up a friendship with one of them, Yassine, and goes to visit him in his project. There she meets his brother, Nassir, who is a Koran teacher and low-level zealot. They two become friends based on their love of God (of whatever name) and understanding of sacrifice.
There are long segments of this film where we see Céline watching religious services (watching musicians or praying) where not much happens. These parts are very slow and rather boring (with just close-ups of her face). Much of this film is rather overdone, such as when she begins working with Nassir. Still, the last scene helps to tie a lot of these disperate elements together well, so I forgive some of those problems.
Dumont does an interesting thing where he makes Céline's body always on display, even though she's not totally outwardly gorgeous. He sexualizes here a good amount, I think, showing her naked in one scene and then showing her nipples through her dresses in just about every other scene. At one point she says that she is so devoted to God that she doesn't like when men look at her sexually. At this point we realize have been looking at her sexually the whole time.
This film is about Holy Fools and True Believers. There is some fascinating stuff in it, but it never totally comes together all that perfectly. It almost feels like two movies (one with Céline in the convent and one with her in Paris) that don't totally connect. At times, Dumont is so elliptical with his narrative that big changes of direction are left out and leave us scratching our heads as to how we got there.
Sill, this is a beautiful looking movie with wonderful color saturation thoughout the cinematography (by Yves Cape... who seems to work with Dumont a lot). There are wonderful blues and greens and a soggy wetness that permeates the convent sections and makes it very intimate.
I wish this was a better film, because I think there's so much interesting stuff in it. Still, I think it's worth watching all the way through to see the fascinating ending.
Stars: 2.5 of 4
The title of the film comes from the name of the convent where the main character Céline is studying to become a nun, as well as a lesser known 13th century mystic poet who struggled with her transcendent devotion to god. Céline deals with a similar love of god, one that even her nun teachers don't totally understand.
The film mostly follows Céline, but also a young construction worker, David, who seems to go in and out of juvie every few months (or so he tells us). As the film opens, we see two old nuns discussing Céline and saying that her faith is too blind and too extreme that she doesn't really understand the meaning of the suffering she's putting her self through in the name of God. They send her back to the real world to experience more life and get her better prepared for life in the convent.
Back in Paris, she is the daughter of a super rich minister, living in one of the nicest apartments you've ever seen on Isle Saint Louis (not bad!). She has everything she wants. One day she meets a group of Muslim boys from the banlieue who begin flirting with her. She strikes up a friendship with one of them, Yassine, and goes to visit him in his project. There she meets his brother, Nassir, who is a Koran teacher and low-level zealot. They two become friends based on their love of God (of whatever name) and understanding of sacrifice.
There are long segments of this film where we see Céline watching religious services (watching musicians or praying) where not much happens. These parts are very slow and rather boring (with just close-ups of her face). Much of this film is rather overdone, such as when she begins working with Nassir. Still, the last scene helps to tie a lot of these disperate elements together well, so I forgive some of those problems.
Dumont does an interesting thing where he makes Céline's body always on display, even though she's not totally outwardly gorgeous. He sexualizes here a good amount, I think, showing her naked in one scene and then showing her nipples through her dresses in just about every other scene. At one point she says that she is so devoted to God that she doesn't like when men look at her sexually. At this point we realize have been looking at her sexually the whole time.
This film is about Holy Fools and True Believers. There is some fascinating stuff in it, but it never totally comes together all that perfectly. It almost feels like two movies (one with Céline in the convent and one with her in Paris) that don't totally connect. At times, Dumont is so elliptical with his narrative that big changes of direction are left out and leave us scratching our heads as to how we got there.
Sill, this is a beautiful looking movie with wonderful color saturation thoughout the cinematography (by Yves Cape... who seems to work with Dumont a lot). There are wonderful blues and greens and a soggy wetness that permeates the convent sections and makes it very intimate.
I wish this was a better film, because I think there's so much interesting stuff in it. Still, I think it's worth watching all the way through to see the fascinating ending.
Stars: 2.5 of 4
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