Opening Shot Project

The Opening Shot Project run by Jim Emerson at Scanners is an insightful and diadactic form of criticism, combining formal analysis and collaborative work.
It introduces formal considerations to what film commentary should be, in a simple way, because it focuses on a short bit that we easily grasp in our mind and one that is particularly significant to the whole film. As Jim says, the first image on the screen defines our symbolic connection with the meaning developped in the rest of the film.
Secondly, the collective participation opened to readers, so various viewers propose a new opening shot with their own personality, which blurs the institutional line between the unilateral critic's stance and the readers feedback.
Both aspects, formal criticism and collective criticism should be developped online more frequently in my opinion to take best advantage of online interaction and insights.

I especially like acquarello's essays at Strictly Film School because he pays particular attention to describe the opening sequence of each film. Thus we can picture the atmosphere of a film we haven't seen, and really get in the mood the auteur establishes which is important to best relate to his later film analysis.
And I like to do that as well when I review a film. This is a very good exercice. Giving a sneak-peak at the opening shot is more instructive and more pertinent than the random shuffle of a trailer montage.

At the reading of the analysis of Femme Fatale's opening shot, by Dennis Cozzalio and Jim Emerson, a film I haven't seen, I was inspired to try a little informal psychoanalytical reading of the first images :

Layered from back to front : TV subject, mirror reflection, protagonist, real-life audience (us viewers), there are so many symbols at work in the TV bit alone, if we consider the order of screen apparition, paying particular attention to their nature and their significance.

The update of the femme fatale icon, as Jim points out, is also from B&W to color, an aesthetic leap, not only in fashion style. At the same time a nostalgic look back on the past, and a confrontation of two cinema ages, through the most possible violent comparison : superimposition. Giving the edge to the glossy color image of course. The old TV texture undermines even more the B&W image. It's like a comparative test : Color v. B&W

The nudity evoked by Denis further biases this shock of eras, we get more flesh now, but the expression of erotism is different though, and one would say trivialized, corrupted by showing off too much while underplaying the power of suggestive/restrained fantasy. And the male figure rudely switching off TV, like a parental punishment, terminates this uneven rivalery. One was textured by TV screen lines pattern, the other was semi-transparent.

The present wins, the past is shut out, but it's more like an imposed wake up call to suppress our complacent nostalgia. De Palma doesn't necessarily reveal his preference. On the contrary, this is such a humble, cinephile move for De Palma to open his own movie with somebody else's movie. Maybe De Palma pounders over the commodification of great Classics in video forms, or how the whole Production Code aesthetic vanished away, or just a homage to Billy Wilder.

Then there is the multilayered apparition of the protagonist by progressive stages.

First we see the object of veneration, full screen. And the anachronistic reflection enters the frame to deny the original diegesis (Double Indemnity), literally upstaging Stanwyck. Now the image of the voyeur is revealed to the audience made self-conscious. Like if a spotlight was directed on the spectator in the dark theatre, showing up our anonymous presence on the silver screen like on a mirroring window. The TV screen stands for the peeping window of voyeurism.

The TV set is also a mirror, physically, because De Palma uses it to film the face of his actress while she's turning her back to us. It is symbolically also because the viewer-voyeur, looks into the screen and wants to see his/her own reflection on the screen, meaning IN the movie. And this clever mise-en-scene achieves just that, the viewer and the star are side by side on the screen.

So that's a dialogue with the audience, a welknown feeling shared by a cinephile. The unidentified protagonist is like us, an audience within this fiction. Calling for a deeper identification with her.
Moving on to a deeper layer, we assume the protagonist's point of view. The girl watches a mythical icon and her reflection merges into her. The mirror image materializes this unconscious process of identification ("transference" in freudian term), like a ghost double of herself projected outside her body to rub off a little against the screen, and maybe become a movie star too. Which actually happens with the introduction of the real protagonist, pushing back Barbara Stanwyck to backdrop layer.

There is probably a more complex message about screen feminity nested there by De Palma. I don't know the narrative connection between Double Indemnity and Femme Fatale, so I can't figure the thematic purpose.

The reality check of the TV set and the subtitles continue to remove the viewer from the screen world. A trick meant to accentuate the reality of this hereby fiction (Femme Fatale), by contrast to another fiction film (Double Indemnity) turned into a mere video playing on TV and switched off abruptly. The nudity uncovered as the shot widens makes us more and more interested in the color diegesis.
Perverse manipulation to install the proverbial suspension of disbelief. Now we are ready to forget we are watching a movie, because the "movie" was on that TV, now what's happening is reality and we're in it!

.

Obviously, watching the film entirely and knowing the substance of the content would help to inform this formal analysis with more pertinence, but as a technical exercice, I thought it was amusing to look into the structure itself alone.

Cinema is dead... on radio

Le cinéma l'après-midi, The rendez-vous of Filmmakers radio show, cancelled on France Culture!

listen here (available online for a week, in French)

France Culture is a public network, heavy on highbrow culture (philosophy, art, history, psychology, religion...), a haven for quality content, and yet put an end to 3 years of the best panel discussion on cinema... A radio show, hosted by Claire Vassé, I only discovered in 2005, and is not even archived online. It was my weekly fix for serious film talk, cinema reflexion, pertinent questioning, profound insights, and insider perspectives of certain filmmakers on the films of other filmmakers. I got more substance out of these informal verbal chattering between auteurs than from any formal print critics! Filmmakers aren't always very comfortable talking about their own films, but their passion shines when they reveal their vision of cinema through their commentary, the expression of their experience of films that are not theirs.

• The discussion begins with a clip from Renoir's Une Partie de Campagne, selected by Marie Vermillard. The scene of the girl sharing with her mother about her blooming desir and her growing passion for grass, water, insects like an overwhelming sensation that makes her want to cry. Summarized in this scene, cinema is life.
• Marie Vermillard cites Fernando Pessoa on the regard (Caeiro) : "I am at the size of what I see", a reflexion closely relevant to the experience of cinema, before the big screen, facing the dimension of the frames
• Pascal Bonitzer cites Eisenstein : "The close up of a cockroach is more impressive than a wide shot of hundred elephants" traducing the plastic emotionality of filmic framing.
• Brigitte Rouan is annoyed by the poor format of French cinema this year, trivial, she wants a more radical cinema like Desplechin. She regrets the disappearing of this space of resistance (the radio show) that championned obscur filmmakers like Stephen Dwoskin.
• Catherine Breillat : Man is an animal with naked skin and speech. The body language, the language of silence, of regard, of flesh.
• Philippe Le Guay cites Deleuze : "The decomposition of cristal, process of decomposition of the image by Visconti"
  Philosophers teach us how to read images we make. We believe we know our images, and they are re-interpretated by someone else.
  This radio broadcast was a place to re-invent images. Our opinion on a film doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if we like Visconti or not. Shift of appropriation. To change our point of view through speech is what makes cinema important, something to talk about.
• Khalil Joreige : Cinema is a place of thought. It's not a matter of taste, but a field of exploration that has to do with our existence and our approach.
• Catherine Breillat : Cinema is the place for the discovery of the world. Cinema is a metamorphosis of human thought becoming concrete. Place of work and human conscience.
• Brigitte Roüan says the feedback of the audience who amplify a film through their own words, an perspective the filmmaker couldn't even imagine, is emotionaly moving her to tears sometimes.
• Philippe Grandrieux proposes a clip from the opening of Dreyer's Ordet. The word can ressurect life, something becomes possible when the speech is pronounced and heard. The sound of the father calling his son, and the sound of the animals (reminder/vertigo of animality). The great question of cinema is its capacity to make us feel we are alive.
  This radio broadcast was important to put together filmmakers who are not meant to face eachother and talk about other films, and their own relationship to cinema.
• Emmanuel Mouret : "Cinema does resurrect life. Cinema IS life, not aside of life. Often we say reality inspires cinema, but cinema is also there to inspires reality"
• Dominique Cabrera cites "Pierre-Auguste Renoir, mon père" book by Jean Renoir. The paintor fought the motif, he painted nude bodies, and found himself in this nudity.
  The sexual desire to film a body, a face, weaving a life pulsion with the director's personal history.
• Philippe Le Guay cites Ophüls "The greatest quality of cinema is vitality" because vitality cannot be enclosed in an idea.
• Philippe Grandrieux : What matters is the nature and the origin of the "gesture" of the artist. A director doesn't frame his shots with the eyes, but from within, something inside, in order to see something, to mean something. Beauty for itself is grotesque, the quality of a merchandise.

Sad day for thought-provoking Film Discussion, as listening to filmmakers talking about their art is too rare and precious...

Criticism/Creation mix at Cahiers

As cited in my previous post Bazin described a phenomenon characteristic of the Cahiers tradition : a constant interconnection between critical thinking on cinema and its effective practice. Ever since its genesis, the editorial board of Les Cahiers du Cinéma developed a particular proximity with filmmaking, often critics doing the leap and directing their own films after analysing so many of their masters.

"Nonetheless, after defining the independence of creation from criticism, a new phenomenon should be mentioned, the growing dependency of criticism from creation.The birth of criticism at the silent era was tightly bound to creation : Canudo, Delluc, L'Herbier, Dulac, Gance, Epstein, Tedesco... are both filmmakers and theoreticians. Critical reflection and creation were interdependent. (...)
In France, this new generation of young intellectuals [Politique des auteurs] with a conscious vocation and envy to make cinema, believe knowledge and reflection of cinema is no longer at the studio or internship on set, but at the Cinémathèque and by the practice of film criticism."
André Bazin (Reflexions sur la critique, 1958)

I've compiled a non-exhaustive list of Cahiers critics who turned filmmaker to illustrate this interesting fact. Some continued to write in Les Cahiers during their filmmaking career, some came back to criticism for good, others proved they were capable filmmakers with so much talent they entered the pantheon of cinema history.

Film critics who make films

Cahiers precursors : Theoretician-Filmmaker

• Robert Bresson (14 films/17 scenarii/0 performances) "Objectif 49"
• Jean Cocteau (10/42/12) "Objectif 49"
• Alexandre Astruc (19/17/4) "Objectif 49"

Cahiers contributors : Critic-Filmmaker

• Jean-Luc Godard (88 films/73 scenarii/34 performances) "Jeune Turc"
• Claude Chabrol (67/51/48) "Jeune Turc"
• Chris Marker (42/32/0)
• Eric Rohmer (51/34/9) "Jeune Turc"
• Wim Wenders (46/31/20) Special Issue Editor
• Luc Moullet (32/19/27)
• Jacques Rivette (31/23/7) "Jeune Turc"
• François Truffaut (26/34/14) "Jeune Turc"
• Jacques Doniol-Valcroze (21/27/17) Founder
• André Techiné (21/24/2)
• Marguerite Duras (19/48/8) Special Issue Editor
• Olivier Assayas (19/23/2)
• Jean-Louis Comolli (19/20/4) "Moderniste"
• André S. Labarthe (19/5/17)
• Jean André Fieschi (17/2/2) "Moderniste"
• Jean Eustache (12/5/8)
• Jean-Pierre Limosin (12/5/2)
• Jean Douchet (11/21/4)
• Danièle Dubroux (10/10/10)
• Jean-Claude Biette (9/7/10)
• Léos Carax (7/6/4)
• Serge Le Peron (6/4/2)
• Louis Skorecki (6/2/1)
• Alain Bergala (5/4/1)
• Pascal Bonitzer (5/44/26)
• Christophe Honoré (5/8/0)
• Thierry Jousse (4/4/4)
• François Weyergans (3/1/1)
• Serge Toubiana (2/1/2)
• Alain Philippon (2/0/0)
• Nicolas Saada (1/6/1)
• Philippe Sollers (1/5/3)
• Marc Chevrie (1/1/0)
• Michel Chion (1/1/0)
• Jean Narboni (1/0/7)
• Vincent Ostria (1/0/1)
• Yann Lardeau (1/0/1)

-- Approximate number of (films directed/scenarii/performances) for a partial selection of Cahiers critics, taken from IMDb for information (complementary infos/corrections welcomed).

Bazin on criticism - 1958

Reflexions sur la critique / Reflections on criticism

Following to my previous post on his preliminary essay on criticism, Pour une critique cinématographique (1943) -- which didn't provoke much commentary, sadly -- here is an essay he wrote shortly before dying, aged 40, at the end of 1958 -- 48 years ago -- and published in Cinéma 58 n°32, which concludes his career of film critic. He animated Ciné-Clubs (which he considered to be a form of criticism), and worked for big circulation daily newspapers, weeklies or specialized magazines (Cahiers du Cinéma) during 15 years, a decisive period for film criticism in France and in history. He looks back on how print criticism has evolved since he started, the state of criticism and its practice, with an extraordinary lucidity.

(my rough paraphrased translation. The titles are Bazin's)

I - De l'inefficacité de la critique / About criticism inefficiency

Cinematographic criticism is almost useless to the commercial success of a film.

"More and more, advertising uses criticism, although one couldn't say this borrowing and citation pays homage to its efficiency. Firstly because these skilfully truncated quotes are always favourable to the film, even when the article was harrowing, secondly because they prove by contrast the direct impotency of criticism, which becomes efficient when promoted by advertisement."

The impact of criticism on the total commercial run of a film is quasi-null. Even an unanimous critical acclaim, at festival for instance, cannot attract enough audience to extend its run.
However Bazin confesses his satisfaction of criticism powerlessness because the disproportionate and arguable responsibility on the success/failure of a film (like it is most common with an almighty theatre criticism) frightens him.

"I don't see what moral authority, or what intellectual grace would grant to the critic the monstrous privilege to decide the fate of artworks he doesn't like. Ideally we could help efficiently the ones we like, and we would have little influence on the others; but since the two are linked, I still prefer quasi-inefficiency to an abusive power."

II - Inutile mais nécessaire / Useless but necessary

However cinema cannot do without criticism, in spite of its uselessness.

"Chaplin, Griffith, Murnau, Stroheim, Dreyer would have existed anyway, with or without criticism : they wouldn't have changed a single plan in their films. (...)

This parasite vegetation [criticism] on the majestic tree [creation] maintains a symbiotic relationship, with hindsight, not necessarily meaningful to growth but to blissful ageing"

"Criticism is two-faced : one toward the film, which is worthless commercially, the other toward the audience, which justifies its existence. (...)

Had I revealed the cinematographic truth to 10 stray readers only, one even, my duty of critic would be justified. Back in the thrilling days when I could practice oral criticism of workshops and ciné-clubs, the superior delight it gave me over the print criticism laid in this immediate sentiment, physical, directly human, that intellectual analysis resulted on a genuine conversion. How many times have I been approached on my way out by spectators (usually over 40 years old) who meant to tell me they were unable to judge the validity of my analysis of the film, but that it revealed to them that cinema existed, was truly an art, and they believed in it now. (...)

Believe me if you like, these results matter much more than a 10% increase of the influence of print criticism on weekend gross"

Bazin wishes quality would become quantity too on the long run... nearly 50 years ago! The spread of arthouses, replacing the ciné-clubs. Post-war criticism of a greater quality, the actions of La cinémathèque and ciné-clubs, the popular cultural movements are the factors of a complex phenomenon leading to form a specialized cinema audience for a decade (then).

"If criticism is the conscience of cinema, cinema owes to criticism its self-consciousness."

"The concern for style, shaping up thoughts, promote film criticism as a literary genre, which wasn't true before WW2. (...)

We know concerns for effect and style lead sometimes French criticism to disputable excess (often caused by juvenility). But these are the flaws of a new and fundamental quality, which for the first time places film criticism on par with traditional criticism."

III - La critique et la création / Criticism and creation

If criticism is unable to influence a film commercially, then does it influence filmmakers who read it?

"The presumption would be even more intolerable to teach the maker how to do his job (only the like of Baudelaire or Valéry could). The creator expects little from criticism, due to the profound psychology of creation. The critic commences from the result, from the finished work. His mission isn't so much to "explain" it but to illuminate its significance (or meanings more exactly) in the conscience and mind of the reader.

Some bring forth the silly objection that critics find thousands wonderful intentions that the auteur never contemplated. For instance one "sublime" mise-en-scène idea that was in fact originated by a technical incident. If the final work was limited to the sum of the artist's conscious intentions it wouldn't worth much. The quality and depth of an artwork can be measured by the gap between what the auteur meant to put in it and what it actually contains. (Of all arts, cinema is the one that by nature leaves the largest part to chance). Besides, the purpose of criticism isn't to track back the psychological process of creation (operation more uncertain than the most arbitrary aesthetic sketch), but to help nurture its reader intellectually, morally and in his/her sensibility in relationship with the artwork.

Whichever critical method is worthless if not controlled, limited, corrected by this specific quality judging the critic ultimately : taste. A quality, obviously hard to define, that only could distinguish a theoretical hallucination from an acceptable elaboration. Those who lack critical sense and distance, the bad impressionistic criticism, which facile irony only equals its incompetence, make up the free-for-all of criticism. (...)

Nonetheless, after defining the independence of creation from criticism, a new phenomenon should be mentioned, the growing dependency of criticism from creation.The birth of criticism at the silent era was tightly bound to creation : Canudo, Delluc, L'Herbier, Dulac, Gance, Epstein, Tedesco... are both filmmakers and theoreticians. Critical reflection and creation were interdependent.
French critics of the talky era, from 1930 to 1950, mark however a quasi-absence of mix between the industry and what is written about it. A counter-example in the UK (Gavin Lambert, Lindsay Anderson and the team of Sight & Sound) or in Italy (the Experimental Centre from the fascist era) proves critics often cross the line between criticism and filmmaking. Meanwhile, non-critic filmmakers always dialogue with critics. [See: critique/creation mix]
However I'm rather sceptical about the fertility of such exchanges.

In France, this new generation of young intellectuals with a conscious vocation and envy to make cinema, believe knowledge and reflection of cinema is no longer at the studio or internship on set, but at the Cinémathèque and by the practice of film criticism. Thus the partiality, the polemic and militant character of these young critics. Naturally, this is a passionate criticism made of virtual creators. Objectivity is not a goal. Taking side in art is legitimate when backed up by intelligence, taste and talent. Of course these critics are narrow-minded, unjust... but the narrow angle of reflection often penetrates deeper in the intelligence of its object than objective criticism.
Hitchcockism or Bergmanism will remain strategical operations of criticism that nurtured the history of cinematographic reflection. Even though I don't believe in "La Politique des Auteurs" personally. But there is no absolute error in Art. Truth of criticism isn't defined by whatever objective and measurable exactitude, but by the intellectual excitation triggered inside the reader : its quality and amplitude.

The function of the critic isn't to bring an inexistent truth on a silver plater, but to further as far as possible, through intelligence and sensibility of readers, the impact of a work of art."

What do you think about Bazin's analysis and its relevance in today's critical debate?

INA - Public French TV archive online

National Archive Insitute (INA) opened to public use a part of their methodical archive of all things TV and radio broadcast since the 70ies, and put it on the internet a couple of weeks ago with a stunning success (jam and troubleshooting possible).
It's only small clips and nothing recent yet (full access will cost fees), but I found a bunch of great TV moments.

For example these are the hits for Robert Bresson (in French, obviously) :

• 1958 - Maria Casarès on Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne
• 1962 - Bresson interviewed after Le Procès de Jeanne d'Arc was awarded the Cannes Special Jury Prize
• 1966 - Interview of Bresson in Venice for Au Hasard Balthazar
• 1966 - Annie Dorfman producer of Le Procès de Jeanne d'Arc, talks about its commercial failure
• 1966 - Annie Dorfman talks about producing Pickpocket : she says Bresson doesn't let producers interfer in the pursuit of his oeuvre
• 1966 - Louis Malle on Bresson's non-actors
• 1966 - Ghislain Cloquet, DP on Balthazar, talks about the unity/flow /coherence given by a sole 50mm lens for every plan
• 1966 - Godard, Duras, Malle, Reichenbach talk about Au Hazard Balthazar
• 1967 - Godard in Cannes repeat exactly what he said in clip above about Bresson (inquisitor), but in pejorative terms (racist, intolerant) because Bresson supported the censorship Rivette's La Religieuse earlier the same year
• 1967 - Interviews of his models on location during shooting of Mouchette
• 1970 - Dominique Sanda on Une Femme Douce
• 1971 - Dominique Sanda, 20, on Bresson
• 1974 - Bresson press conference for Lancelot in Cannes, defends furiously his cinematographe against the mascarade/disguised parade of commercial cinema (pornography). Disses Dreyer's period costumes for Jeanne d'Arc. The gore opening sequence was meant to show the violent menace of the epoch, but before the film, to keep the core of the film free of representative violence. Disses Resnais period film Stavisky
• 1981 - Truffaut on Bresson
• 1983 - L'argent in Cannes, booed by the public and praised by the critics
• 1985 - Jean Yanne, producer on Lancelot, talks about how Bresson spent 24h on recording the sound of a poker on the ground
• 1987 - Dominique Sanda on Une Femme Douce

Maybe some of them are already featured on DVD bonus tracks, but I wouldn't know because I don't have the DVDs.

More updates later with other findings...

2:37 (2006/Thalluri)

Two thirty 7 (2006/Murali K. Thalluri/Australia) +++

Opening Sequence : Very photogenic shot by a nonchalant camera flying unsteady in the tree leaves as if in the weightlessness of a breeze (overexposition of the sky, translucent leaves, calm, out of time, flowing motion always looking upward). The title appears superimposed like a digital clock for a second (2 :37), marking the exact time of one teenager's death. (This poetical motif will come back in the end, from a different perspective, to loop back the long flashback with the current time of the opening sequence)
Cut (from what was the courtyard of a well to do suburban high school) to the bathrooms. A girl is crying over her own problems when her attention is drawn to a closed door with suspicious noises. Some blood leaks out. After banging and alerting everyone, the door is opened to the horror of reaction shots. We don't see who is dead, and that's the mystery we'll have to figure out until the end.

High school flick is a known territory, especially in TV serial drama, but this exercice in style mixes many genres together to elaborate the complex storytelling of an artfilm. The sensationalist climax breaks in upfront. We know one of the seven students we follow this morning will commit suicide, but who? A varied selection of typical profiles (nerd, jock, teacher's pet, barbie dolls, gay, everyone's friend, laughingstock) that represent social personalities found in today's classrooms.

The students talk about their hopes and issues with life, school and family through talking-head interviews by an off-screen silent journalist, on a glossy black & white camera. Interspreced along the non-linear exposure of several viewpoints of the same events taking place that morning, they really develop the ambiguity of teen's self-centered realities. The B&W documentary image and the interview mode suggest a TV "making-of" filmed after the suicide for the news, which is the equivalent of the classic police interrogation of usual suspects in a more conventional genre. A touch of realism meant to accentuate the dramatization of this fiction based on a true story. It's particularly interesting to notice the obvious discrepencies between the public persona they try hard to portray, proud and optimistic, in these confessional interviews and the painful burden they carry secretly everywhere they go in the school scenes.

Taken in the very footsteps of teenagers along one tough day of their lives, a series of long plan sequences across the school corridors are consciously borrowed from Gus Van Sant's Elephant. The film is openly referenced in one line when Marcus and his English teacher talk about a Columbine-like school massacre. The same types of mini-episodes following one protagonist at the time, and then revisiting the same events from the perspective of another person present. Tracking shots mapping a comprehensive perception of every events from every perspective. The formalist "remake" is deliberate, fully appropriated in a personal and creative way, adaptated to a more mainstream story. Which denotes a confident talent for this debut director only aged 21 during production! This is unbelievable. A strong acting direction and a not so easy mise-en-scène that many experienced directors hardly manage.

One minor quibble though regarding the lengthy and explicit suicide scene coming up as the final revelation, that displays too much of the suggestive horror that defined the wise self-restraint atmosphere up to that point. The overtly gore and melodramatic scene isn't interesting in itself and to keep it unseen, elliptical or symbolic would convey a much more chilling feeling.

This "who is the victim?" mind game set up by the timeline inversion and withdrawal of a key information is a clever twist that introduces each of the seven protagonists as a potential "dead man walking". The potrayal of common troubles (unwanted pregnancy, homosexuality, drug abuse, anorexia, solitude, misunderstanding) makes you believe each one hides a valid motive. Maybe what they go through will lead to a dead end.

In the light of this dreadful outcome we are invited to observe carefully how they deal with their intimate problems and to pay particular attention to the point of no return when they would commit the ultimate mistake.

The film emphasizes that suicide is incomprehensible and that every adolescent may face suicidal tendencies. Even after examination of all the actions leading up to taking one's own life, it's difficult to know if someone could have noticed and help change the course of events. Maybe just a small gesture, a kind word would have made a difference. Maybe nothing at that point would have removed the resolve. The other protagonists' resilence will most likely overcome adversity, which offers a more hopeful sight.

Selected in Cannes 2006 - Un Certain Regard

(s) ++ (w) ++ (m) +++ (i) ++ (c) +++

• Official Website

Conversations with other women (2005/Canosa)

Conversations with other women (2005/Hans Canosa/UK/USA) +++

I like when mainstream cinema picks up some refreshing ideas from the experimental scene. The film runs a dual screen throughout, showing simultaneously two actions in two views. This is purely formalist but since the concept is maintained end to end, it becomes integer part of the narration in a playful way.

A man and a woman meet at a wedding, chatter with a certain self-conscious distanciation, joke around cynically about marriage and flirting, and inevitably spend the night together in the hotel, all in one breath, uninterrupted. Like a grown up pram flirt, with all the mature irony of a late thirties couple with a divorce under their belt. Tacitely agreeing to play an awkward pretense game, a mysterious connivence seems to build up quickly despite constantly refering to their absent better-half. They intellectualize the inconsequential guilt to talk themselves out of an imminent mistake as they approach closer to the adultary bed... The clever conversation drops scarce clues that reveal they know more about their past than we do. Through incremental steps, the intrigue develops on who we think they are. The "surprise" effects are largely underplayed though, almost en passant, as the revelations are rather amusing than a proper "twist".

Actually this pretense is part of their accomplice courtship, based on double-entendre. So it's not a complicated storytelling helding back information, it's the characters themselves willingly roleplaying for the purpose of this one-night stand.

They are desillusioned and convey a hopeless romanticism.The boring melodrama, mostly dialogue-driven, is wittingly written, takes a new turn by the simple fact we see twice as much on a split screen.

Notes on the dual screen "gimmick" :

• The split in the middle is a reminder that the cinemascope aspect ratio (2.35:1) is nearly the sum of two standard square format (1.33:1).
• One side is dedicated to the man, one to the woman. Although the switch of view allocation is part of the fun.
• 2 cameras film each scene, one framing the man (Aaron Eckhart), one framing the woman (Helena Bonham Carter).
• The film is about a couple, man v. woman, about the clash of two point of views, about each trying to figure the other's perspective without telling too much... therefore the form meets content and the screen is split physically to give both an equal platform of expression.
• Perception of two realities at all time. Spatially : 2 places, or 2 views of the same room. Temporally : current time and flashback (memories or selective memory re-enactment of the past, confronting their younger-self).
• Not always creative... sometimes the split is redundant as the 2 shots are almost forming the 2 halves of the equivalent widescreen shot.
• Really interesting diptych compositions, identical type of shot or disparity : duplicated shot, great variation of head shots, back shots, wide shots...
• Artificial re-composition (by way of split-screen) of a scene unlike reality. The angle of the two cameras make protagonists look in opposite or the same direction which may or may not correspond to reality. Which gives a supplementary reading of the scene, with 2 parallel meanings of the same action.
  Playful switch of a character, or an extra from one shot to the other. Co-ordinated camera movement of the two POV to make an harmonious apparent motion. Extras blocking the view on one side. Side swapping...
• Doubles the theatrical possibilities for shot entry/exit (2 rights and 2 lefts). Continuous (slide from one view to the other) or discontinuous (unrelated motion). Complex mise-en-scène, but the technique could offer much more potential for dramatic effects.
• A third character entering the scene unbalances the duality, and it's funny to see how the director copes with 3 characters on 2 screens. Either cutting faster to display 2 talking heads, or duplicating the shot with 6 people on screen at once.
• Reaction shots on the same screen without the need to cut away. A new interpretation of the reverse shot code. Each looking to the other side of the screen so they seem to be at arm length while they are at the other side of the room (discontinuous background in the two shots).
• Allows to insert a cutaway on screen while keeping an eye on one or two protagonists. The main conversation keeps going during the apparition of flashbacks or cutaways.
• Co-existence of alternate takes of the same action. We see the actors doing the same thing, perceptibly de-synchronous, because they are different takes, filmed separately but played on screen simultaneously. And this has a particular meta-significance on the act of filmmaking and performances. We are allowed to compare outtakes in the final cut, in fact 2 outtakes become both "good". Several different ways to deliver a line, or to act an action are played in a row or simultaneously, alteration of the voice inflection, pause, posture, timing or change of the line altogether.This formal construct, anti-film, making-of material, contributes to dissociate the dual screen and emphasizes a differentiation between male and female perception of the same event, which is the point of the film.
• Storytelling variations. The inclusion of alternate takes in the film propose a narrative multiplicity.

(s) ++ (w) +++ (m) +++ (i) ++++ (c) +++

• trailers (2 great scenes!)
• official website (french)

Leonard Cohen Tribute

I don't usually post non-cinema related stuff here, cause I don't know how to write about anything else, but this blogathon honors a documentary from Toronto 2005, Berlin 2006 and Sundance 2006 : Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man (2005/Lian Lunson/USA) I haven't seen the film unfortunately (not distributed in France yet). Although I can't miss the opportunity to show my admiration for my most favorite songwriter with a quick post.

Leonard Cohen is the anti-hero, a romantic loser who can't afford love. He remembers affairs in hotels around the world. He collides supreme poetic moments and crude erotism in a novelist way. Solitude, existential struggle, self-pity modesty, political cynicism, resistance of ideas and revolution. He's a modernist akin to Antonioni, Bergman or Cassavetes. I like the melancholy of his stories, its indirect angles, his mundane poetry, his careful and useless details that make all the difference in memories.
Not to mention the beauty of his chords.

I'm Your Man is my dearest song for it will always remind me of my girlfriend.
Few favorites among many : So Long Marianne; Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye; Suzanne; Who By Fire?; Sisters of Mercy; Chelsea Hotel #2; The Partisan...

And of course :

Famous Blue Rain Coat
Composed and written by Leonard Cohen, 1971

It's four in the morning, the end of December
I'm writing you now just to see if you're better
New York is cold, but I like where I'm living
There's music on Clinton Street all through the evening.

I hear that you're building your little house deep in the desert
You're living for nothing now, I hope you're keeping some kind of record.

Yes, and Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear
Did you ever go clear?

Ah, the last time we saw you you looked so much older
Your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder
You'd been to the station to meet every train
And you came home without Lili Marlene

And you treated my woman to a flake of your life
And when she came back she was nobody's wife.

Well I see you there with the rose in your teeth
One more thin gypsy thief
Well I see Jane's awake
--She sends her regards.

And what can I tell you my brother, my killer
What can I possibly say?
I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you
I'm glad you stood in my way.

If you ever come by here, for Jane or for me
Your enemy is sleeping, and his woman is free.

Yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes
I thought it was there for good so I never tried.

And Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear

Sincerely, L. Cohen

It's like a great film. It's not a song, it's a letter. It's not a letter, it's a written monologue. It could be the synopsis of a Cassavetes film : New York, a love triangle, brotherly friendship, love/hate antagonism, miscommunication. A woman encompassed in a firstname. A suggested past between the characters, symbolized by objects (raincoat, lock of hair, rose), establishing a powerful melodrama without the need to elaborate any further, everything is there.

I'd like to mention Jeff Buckley's interpretation of Hallelujah, because he plays it even better than its author and transcends it. Simply magnificent!

Check out also other participants of this Blog-a-thon :

• Invisible cinema (original idea of the Blogathon)
• Elusive Lucidity
• Girish
• The Evening Class

Bruno Dumont on filmmaking

Discussion with Bruno Dumont

by Marie Vermillard, Philippe Grandrieux, Khalil Joreige
from the filmmaker club at Le cinema l'après-midi, on June 10th 2006

Really interesting discussion among filmmakers who get into the artistic concerns of filmcraft, and the ideology of Dumont's aesthetics. Although the atmosphere is friendly and Grandrieux is clearly in total connivence. They are not promoting a commercial product with complacent questions here. This type of live radio show winds up a little confusing and disorganized, leaving us frustrated by interrupted sentences and spontaneous digressions that never answered a question raised along the way. The interview would gain in intelligence if written down and edited, structured without this urge to say too much at the time. An interesting approach to interview resulting in a richer, deeper material than the press conference digest in Cannes for instance (partial transcript).

The art of cinema is the center of discussion. They talk of his relationship with actors and viewers, how a film commands and alter perception of reality. Dumont doesn't explain his synopsis here but confesses why he makes films.
Former philosopher, turned autodidact director, he speaks with self-confidence and a certain authority that could be alienating if he didn't place the audience at the core of his theory. It does sound a little all-knowing and condescending, maybe a feeling prompted by his recent win of the Grand Jury Prize for Flandres at Cannes 2006.

Which brings the question : "How to speak of cinema?"

Sometimes putting delicate images into words desacralizes the poetry in them by an excess of vulgar materiality. I mean filmmakers aren't always the best persons to explicit their instinctive inspiration, but they are the first people to go to.

* * *

Cinema

Dumont admits "intellectual/illustrative cinema" is boring, he doesn't believe in Cinema of Emptiness. Cinema = Time. Closest art to life itself. Primordial sensibility. Cinema isn't imaginary. What he wants is a simple cinema of reality : the metaphysics of banality. Going beyond intellectual complexity (desires, will, ideas of cinema) in order to make the shot a beginning : nothing. There is nothing to see. No preconceived ideas, no intentions, no established meaning, just a "nothing" that will reverberate into the audience and make sense then through the articulation of montage that echo one plan with another.

Cinema is a powerful but complicate art. Plans, aesthetic values, positions of actors in the shot, light, camerawork, sound... A complex art requiring a lot of upstream work, which paradoxally allows to reach ultimately an apparent simplicity. He humbles before great masterpieces (without citing any films or auteurs in particular). "Cinema isn't technical, I learn when I walk down the street, by meeting people" he says. Cinema is about patience, humility, a look upon others. Today's cinema is overwhelmed by codes, clichés, references to other films. Dumont believes in "decodage".

A film is an experience of astonishment (to be flabbergasted). The subject isn't the object in the film, but the gaze on this object.

Screenwriting

To write a film is to wait for images, sensations to come up, and to reject silly images. (In this he meets David Lynch's own method)

To grasp a scene Dumont writes down the description of a sensation in a literary style, like a novel. But this is only a preparation, literature cannot be filmed. Only remains the emotion summoned, refined by its wording yet devoid of any constructed sense, and will be the raw substance to work on during shooting. Working hard to go beyond clichés. There is nothing to see. The contemplation of a cinema story is secondary. The audience needs a motif however, a basic love story for identification, to relate to the work. Mise-en-scène can never go too far into abstraction.

Set

The most difficult is to make the set designer understand he shouldn't touch anything on location. After a long location scouting, the right place imposes itself and should be preserved intact, thus dismissing all the intentions mentionned in script. Any accentuation, characterization is out of question. The scenes will adapt to the real location instead, to maintain the authenticity and truth of a living space with genuine history.

Acting

Dumont prefers the ingenuity of non-actors who do not ressort to performance tricks. They don't bring in a "prepared color". Non-actors convey with their real-life personality (which belongs to the story) everything that is needed for the film credibility. He regrets his experience with professional actors on Twentynine Palms, and made it despite their active acting. Acting virtuosity is prohibited. "I expect nothing, I await for a miracle to happen, an accident" he declares.

He knows exactly what he wants from the actors, so improvisation is not welcomed. And he makes sure the actors do not know too much about the action planned in a scene to preserve spontaneity and surprises. He's very demanding with actors, pushing them to their limits, against their resistance, insisting, making several takes (up to 15). And then being able to give up when it fails to happen, dropping the scene altogether. There are a lot of wasted out-takes. He's not constrained by script imperatives. He lets chance and accidents rewrite the course of the story, according to what succeeds or not during shooting. For instance the actress on Flandres cried instead of saying her lines and he kept the scene as is. But another actor abandonned the set, because of the directorial (dictatorial?) pressure. "We cannot shoot with maximum security", he says, speaking of the shooting conditions with bomb stunts on Flandres, "the possibility of risk saves a part for lively events".

Sound

Direct sound, mono, without much sound mix at all. Recording reality, out of control, waiting for something to happen, the accident. (same moto)

Mise-en-scène

Like a painter who paints a mountain that ultimately blends in on the canvas where there is no mountain to be seen anymore. Sense is no longer at stake, what he likes is to work where the sense is gone. Reality offers the presence of things that do not imply a narrative construction. Dumont struggles against construction. Dissipate sense. Prevent an actor to formulate meaning. Make the auteur (Ego, gaze) vanish. Because the non-neutral audience is there, coming in with their own emotional load (desires), and a need of sense. The viewer is "full". Cinema must balance the equilibrium with a whole audience, and provide a full film, finished, ruled, moral, political. The heart of the work is in the story (conveyed by actors and scenes), the goal is to carry this story. Takes can be or should be mediocre, unfinished, spontaneous, real, away from the overstated stylization. He says "cut" when he feels the exposition of the audience was sufficient. Cinema is in the montage, that's where Dumont input a suggestive meaning.

Montage

The art to compose cinema elements together. A shot doesn't matter for itself. Shots too pretty, with an overt aesthetization are discarded. What interests him are the transitions obtained in editing opposition. Associating banal shots that will surge with an extraordinary exposure on the editing table by ways of confrontation with another flat shot. Imprevisibility sparks up on the editing table, long after a shooting "out of control", after watching the dailies. Contemplating the exact transition between shots, the right timing, he feels intuitively the shots to be alright.

Grandrieux and Dumont discuss the opening sequence of Flandres: A wide stationary shot of a distant farm to generate a great force. Cut to an extreme close up of a body part, an arm just hurt by the opening of the gate. The close up enters abruptly "inside" the previous shot, and the viewer is pulled in alongside.

The film is a "viewer montage". What is edited isn't what is seen on screen but the sensations, culture, experience, sensibility inside the audience. The viewer is captured into the screen. The thrill is generated by an alteration of the viewer's habits by projecting something unusual. The film is a go-between which leads the scenario and mise-en-scene to operate from the audience.

* * *

This theoretical talk is fascinating, I like most everything he says (non-actors, importance of montage, script improvisation, neutrality, emotional tabula-rasa, learning cinema in the street...), although the only film I saw (L'Humanité) doesn't yield as much visual power as other minimalist films by ascetic filmmakers. Bresson's system (albeit different) is very constraining and rigorous too but develops a much stronger and coherent language. I find it ironical to elaborate such a "populist" speech for such an elistist cinema. I'm not sure what audience he targets his films for but the popular success doesn't quite follow. I mean it seems contradictory to focus on this "universal viewer" waiting to be mesmerized if such viewer rarely responds to these films. I would always defend minoritary cinemas that never find their niche despite their overlooked quality. But what's funny there is the rational of intellectual films supposedly made to reach for the guts...

More on this once I've seen Flandres, out in France at the end of August 2006.

ParisCinema 2006

Paris Cinéma www
June 27th - July 11th 2006

For the first time this year, this huge cinema event founded by Costa-Gavras in 2003 becomes a proper Festival with a competition, which might give Paris a decent international film festival noticeable on the world scene. Until then we only had le Festival du Film de Paris, held in March, usually small, which was a debacle in 2006. Obviously Cannes explains why Paris doesn't appear on the International Festival circuit map. Maybe that's why the French capital doesn't attract as much world premiere. The festivals in Nantes (3 Continents) is bigger than here. There are lots of films shown at Paris Cinéma every year (about 400 titles in 20 venues for 70,000 admissions), but mostly second-run or older movies, whiches are available all year round in parisian arthouses anyway. Although there are many films coming from the Cannes selection (Climates, Lights in the Dusk, The Science of Sleep, Bamako, To Get To Heaven First You Have To Die, Luxury Car, La Raison du plus faible, Bug, El Violon, Nouvelle Chance...)

As always, recommendations welcomed to help me find the best screenings, especially for the Korean retrospective and the new films. (*) Films I've seen already.


COMPETITION www

• Bamako (2006/Abderrahmane SISSAKO/Mali)
• Our Daily Bread (2006/Nikolaus GEYRHALTER/Austria)
• To Get To Heaven First You Have To Die (Djamshed USMONOV/Tadjikistan)
• Old Joy (2005/Kelly REICHARDT/USA)
• Au delà de la haine (2005/Olivier MEYROU/France)
• Zemestan / It's Winter (2006/Raffi PITTS/Iran)
• Quinceañera / Echo Park, L.A (Richard Glatzer, Wash WESTMORELAND/USA)
• Die Große Stille (2005/Philip GRONING/France/Switzerland/Germany) DOC
• In Between Days (2006/So Yong Kim/Mike OTT/USA)
• La Leyenda del tiempo (2006/Isaki LACUESTA/Spain)
• Montag kommen die Fenster (2006/Ulrich KOHLER/Germany)
• Les Oiseaux du ciel (2004/Eliane de LATOUR/France)
• Le Pêcheur et la danseuse (Valerï SOLOMIN/Russia)
• Sehnsucht (2006/Valeska GRISEBACH/Germany)
• 04:30 (2005/Royston TAN/Singapore)

PREMIERE - Off Competition

• Climates (2006/Nuri Bilge Ceylan/Turkey/France)
• Lights in the Dusk (2006/Aki Kaurismäki/Finland)
• The Science of Sleep (2005/Michel Gondry/France)
• Luxury Car (2006/Wang Chao, Chine/France)
• La Raison du plus faible (2006/Lucas Belvaux/France/Belgium)
• Bug (2006/William Friedkin/USA)
• La Californie (2005/Jacques Fieschi/France)
• Jardins en automne (2006/Otar Iosseliani/France) SEP 13 2006
• Nouvelle chance (2006/Anne Fontaine/France)
• Perhaps Love (2005/Peter Ho-sun Chan/Hong Kong)
• La Tourneuse de pages (2005/Denis Dercourt/France)
• The Violon (2006/ Francesco Vargas/Mexique)
• La Dignidad de los nadies (2005/Fernando Solanas/Argentina/Brasil/Switzerland)
• Le Regard (2005/Sepideh Farsi/France/Iran)
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006/Gore Verbinski/USA)

SHORT FILMS www

RETROSPECTIVE KOREAN CINEMA www

• Die Bad, Ryoo Seung-wanBarking
• Dogs Never Bite, Bong Joon-ho
• The Moon is what the Sun Dreams of, Park Chan-wook
• Trio, Park Chan-wook
• Joint Security Area, Park Chan-wook
• Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, Park Chan-wook *
• Old Boy, Park Chan-wook *
• Memories of Murder, Bong Joon-ho *
• The Foul King, Kim Jee-woon *
• Coming Out, Kim Jee-woon *
• Girls' Night Out, Im Sang-soo
• Tears, Im Sang-soo
• A Good Lawyer's Wife, Im Sang-soo *
• The President's Last Bang, Im Sang-soo
• Adresse inconnue, Kim Ki-duk *
• All For Love - The Most Beautiful Week of my Life, Min Gyu-dong
• Blood Rain, Kim Dae-seung
• If You Were Me 1* & 2 (Omnibus)
• Memento Mori, Kim Tae-tong et Min Gyu-dong *
• My Sassy Girl, Kwak Jae-young
• Once Upon a Time in High School, Yu Ha
• High Crime, Im Kwon-taek *
• Peppermint Candy, Lee Chang-dong *
• Rules of Dating, Han Jae-rim
• Take Care of my Cat, Jeong Jae-eun
• Turning Gate, Hong Sang-soo *
• The Unforgiven, Yoon Jong-bin
• Welcome to Dongmakgol, Park Gwang-Hyeon
• Dear Pyongyang, Yang Yong-hi
• Grain in Ear, Lu Zhang
• In Between Days, So Yong Kim
• Linda Linda Linda, Nobuhiro Yamashita
• Go, Isao Yukisada

KOREAN EXPERIMENTAL

• Nam June Paik
• Kim Woojae
• Jean-Claude Rousseau
• A Tale of Two Cities 1 & 2 (Busan Bienale)

KOREAN DOCUMENTARY

• Le Match de leur vie (Daniel Gordon)
• Pyongyang Robogirl (Jouni Hokkanen & Simojukka Ruippo)
• Les Renaissances du cinéma coréen (Hubert Niogret)
• Repatriation (Kim Dong-won)
• Une délégation de très haut niveau (Philippe Dutilleul)

CARTE BLANCHE to Peter Fonda

• The Best Years of Our Lives (1946/William Wyler)
• Woman In The Dunes (1964/Hiroshi Teshigahara) *
• The Hired Hand (1971/Peter Fonda)
• Ulee's Gold (1997/Victor Nunez)
• The Limey (1999/Steven Soderbergh) *

RESTROSPECTIVES

• Recent German Cinema
• Homage Nikolaus Geyrhalter (Austria)
• New Prints
• Homage Cyd Charisse
• Homage Robert Wise
• Homage Rosy De Palma
• Masters of Horror
• Italian Giallo
• Electro Music & Cinema
• French Classics
• Homage Claude Chabrol
• Homage Marilyne Canto

MASTERCLASS

• Im Sang-soo
• Dario Argento
• Agnès Varda : "L'ÎLE ET ELLE"
• Claude Chabrol : "Au cœur du mensonge..."

ROUNDTABLES

- Costumes, with Elisabeth Tavernier (costume designer) & Miou Miou (actress)
- American Independent Cinema, with Costa-Gavras
- Screenwriters, with Santiago Amigorena, Pascal Bonitzer, Jacques Fieschi, Marc Fitoussi, Tonie Marshall, Frédérique Moreau
- Cinema Score, with Bruno Coulais
- Cinema & Videogames, with Marc Miance (concepteur visuel du film Renaissance), David Cage (concepteur du jeu Farenheit), Olivier Séguret (Libération), Denis Friedman (producteur, La Planète des Vents), Xavier Poix (directeur des studios France Ubisoft)
- Actors, with Marilyne Canto (actrice, réalisatrice), Laurent Couraud (directeur de casting), Christophe Moulin (directeur de casting), Richard Rousseau (directeur de casting)
- Arte France Cinéma, with Michel Reilhac (ARTE France Cinéma), Marie Masmonteil (Syndicat des Producteurs Indépendants), Patrick Sobelman (Agat Films), Maurice Tinchant (Pierre Grise Productions)
- Film Production, with Yves Darondeau, Emmanuel Priou, Christophe Lioud (producteurs associés de Bonne Pioche)- Seduction of the Movie Posters, with Michel Landi (artiste-affichiste), Nicolas Journet (journaliste), Soizig Petit (graphiste), Claude Terrier et David Sampedro (Iceberg)
- How to distribute with less than 5 prints, with Yann Kacou (ASC Distribution), Emmanuel Atlan (Zootrope), Eric Lagesse (Pyramide Distribution), Claude-Eric Poiroux (Europa Cinémas, exploitant) (sous réserve), Antoine Cabot (UGC Ciné Cité Les Halles)
- MEDIA 2007 (European program), with Mme Aviva Silver, chef de l'Unité MEDIA de la Commission européenne, et M.Costas Daskalakis, chef d'Unité MEDIA au sein de l'Agence Exécutive Education, Audiovisuel et Culture (EACE). - Filmstiftung NRW (Nordrhein-Westfälen)

MARKET Projects under-development seeking co-production support

• A Good Woman in Paris (Im Sang-soo/Korea)
• A Mexican Story (Artur Aristakisian/Mexico/Russia)
• The Art of Murder (José Carlos Somoza/Spain)
• Egg (Semih Kaplanoglu/Turkey)
• Five Lives (Wong Ching Po/Hong Kong)
• Jash - The Traitor (Fariborz Kamkari/Italy/Iran)
• Keep Smiling! (Rusudan Chkonia/Géorgia/Germany)
• Love & Other Crimes (Stefan Arsenijevic/Serbiea/Germany)
• Tango Bar (German Kral/Germany/Argentina)

Fantasma (2006/Alonso)

Fantasma (2006/Lisandro Alonso/Netherlands/France/Argentina) +++

Opening Sequence : Long stationary shot in front of a shoe-repair shop window pane, inside Vargas awaits, one shoe in hand, his nose stuck to the glass. Cut to pitch black. Saturated electric guitar soundtrack for a couple of minutes in the dark. Cut to wide shot of an immense hall after a ceremony with empty glasses on the tables. Vargas slowly wanders around searching his way to the
main entrance downstairs. There, a poster of Los Muertos. The title, Fantasma, red on black slate, will only be intercut later.

A succession of long plan sequence, immobile or moving really slowly. Characters err along the neon-lit corridors, stairs and elevators. Nobody notices. Endless accumulation of levels and rooms. Marble walls. Carpet. Cement. Steel doors. Distant camera dwarfing onscreen people by the huge scale of the building. Silence. Or more precisely, impersceptible murmur from a waking city outside. This steady viewpoint captures the immensity of solitude and the absence of time.

We realize after a while Vargas has never been in a cinema theatre before and was invited to attend a projection of his film. He visits the premises halfway from awe to circumspection, like a child in a strange place. Not quite as familiar as his home jungle, although unrushed and never worried of getting lost or wasting time, two precious things in city life.

Finally the film is projected for only three people. Vargas, the housekeeper, and a young woman working in the building (secretary or PR). We see Los Muertos' oniric opening scene from behind Vargas discovering the film for the first time. Series of reaction shots of Vargas' face, equally impassible yet fascinated. The full screen projection takes us entirely into another film for a moment as the country nature fills the screen. Like an echoe of Vargas and Alonso's interest inside the multiplex. Like a shameless plug to his previous work.

Argentino Vargas, 56 yold, was the single protagonist of Lisandro Alonso's second feature film Los Muertos (2004), a somptuous wordless contemplative journey through the watery forest of Argentine's back country. Misael Saavedra was the lumberjack in La Libertad (2001), which I haven't seen yet.

Both are non-professional first-time actors from a countryside far away from Buenos Aires. The capital city is summarized here by the Teatro San Martin, the only location the film visits during an hour, a concert Hall multiplex of labyrintine architecture. We could see there a dichotomy opposing rural and urban, ancestral forest tradition and cold city anonymity, the personal and the industrial, and even, why not, Alonso's lonely Avant Garde cinema and the indifferent commercial mainstream industry.

Tsai Ming-Liang's Good Bye, Dragon Inn (2003) comes to mind immediately. Is it a conscious homage? a filmic response? Likewise, speachless characters err in an empty auditorium while a film (not one of Tsai's in this case) is projected on a huge screen. Tsai's film inspires nostalgia and admiration for this old theatre about to shut down, pertaining to a forgotten era. Whereas Fantasma feels indifferent for this lifeless multiplex, and its extensive bewildered visit of a displaced person would rather translate a critique of what represents the place.

His actors are alienated in Buenos Aires, and nobody shows up at the premiere. Quite a paradoxal picture for what is the popular culture of instant screen celebrity, Star System or 15-min fame on real TV.

What does suggest this thinly veiled allegory? Maybe the filmmaker shares with his protagonists the sentiment of not belonging there, in the official establishment of culture venues and movie business. They are more comfortable with simple people in the pampa. So the Buenos Aires audience was alienated by La Libertad and Los Muertos, so their very protagonists feel equally unwelcomed once brought to this unfriendly city, like images of remote locations were brought all the way to urban movie theatres.

Is it a complaint that his cinema is ignored by his own people? A complaint that might only be heard by festival crowds and passionate cinephiles though. Kaurismaki echoed this fatalistic grief by giving a surrealist press conference (Cannes 2006) with absurd answers, conscious nobody cares about the exploration of boredom in his art.

Abstracted wordless scenes. Plotless narration essentially carried by images. Careful sense of pace. Tangible appropriation of time. Maybe his Mexican neighbor Carlos Reygadas would share similar concerns about filmcraft. I could only compare this cinema to Apichatpong Weerasethakul from Thailand or Tsai Ming-liang from Taiwan, much less to the other filmmakers of Argentine's Nuevo Cine. As if the new generations of truly creative auteurs formed today beyond the outdated idea of "national cinema" confined by geographical bounderies.

* * *

Lisandro Alonso introduced briefly the projection. This film closes a trilogy, a urban and indoor installment mirroring the first two rural and open air films, apparently to move on towards something different... Arranging a meeting of their lives with his "actors" in the city : a way of thanking them for the critical recognition he received. His next project will take place in Tierra del Fuego, another remote region of Argentina, the utter south of inhabited land on the globe, again with simple, taciturn non-actors.

Despite the unanimous applause of an half-full auditorium at the end, the final Q & A was timed out unfortunately. It's a shame I wasn't bold enough to ask him a few questions in the street... I admit it took me some time to begin making sense of the experience.

Special Screening, off competition, at La Quinzaine des Réalisateurs (Directors' Fortnight), Cannes 2006.

(s) ++ (w) ++ (m) +++ (i) +++ (c) ++++

12:08 East of Bucharest (2006/Porumboiu)

A Fost sau n-a fost ? / 12:08 East of Bucharest (2006/PORUMBOIU Corneliu/Romania) +++

Opening Sequence : December 22nd 2005. Dawn. Small rural town in Romania, East of Bucharest. Succession of stationary shots in various places.All the lampposts turn off. On the monumental townhall square with the illuminated christmas tree. On a quiet hill with inexistant traffic. In a desertic social housing lane. By an old man's window, who ritualy taps with impatience on the table until the
light dies, and swallows his soup, back to us.This scene introduces an improbable allegory brought up later, and will bookend the full day of this story. A peaceful, contemplative visit across town before everyone wakes up.

Structured in two parts, this bureslesque and gentle critique of the post-Iron curtain Romanian society first introduce the interlaced lives of Manescu, Piscoci and Jderescu through the habits and problems of simple people. Hangover remorses, loans and debts, christmas trees and Santa Claus costumes, firecrackers jokes, neighbor clashes... Intimate scenes with tender banality observing the struggling humanity of proud characters within their very social environment, at home with their wife, at the pub, at school, in the street.This lucid derision reminds of the wry social humour of Kieslowski and more recently, Christi Puiu's riveting The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, also from Roumania. The second part unfolds over a real-time sequence of this history talk show on TV, hosted by Jderescu, a middle-aged TV producer very much fond of his screen persona.

On the anniversary day of Ceausescu's demise, three men debate on local TV show whether the street protests started before or after 12:08, time when the end of the communist dictatorship was proclaimed on TV. Viewers call seem to contradict the heroic version presented by the guests. The literal title means "Was it or was it not?", a question repeated tirelessly until someone can prove there was a popular revolution in their town, alike the ones in Timisoara and Bucharest. Were the people that brave or did the alcoholic selective memory altered the perception of this euphoric and confusing liberation?
A chinese shopkeeper, victim of racists comments, will nonetheless shed an outsider look on this silly quibble in particular and on the Romanian people in general. "You Romanians should stop insulting/accusing eachothers!" Ironically the disgraceful absence of heroism is complacently clouded by a nitpicky reconstitution of crucial minutes around the official capitulation. Evidently this rally wasn't anything like the bloodbath of the French Revolution, subtly referenced twice in the film. Emphasizing the absurdity of pseudo-minutiae accuracy (timeline mockery by anonymous liars fortunately invisible at the othe end of the phone line), the serious of this debate seems to be the only way for them to grab some local glory from the national uprising.


This low-budget channel is totally burelesque. The cameraman trainee can't frame right and has "cinéma-vérité" aspirations. Awkward shots and clumsy zooms, the filmmaker enjoys to give us a faulty camerawork, shaking the cinema widescreen like an amateur homevideo. The effect is hilarious and contributes to embarass the protagonists and lighten up their "grave" discussion. Jderescu, the owner and star anchor, struggles to give some professional dignity to the program, while his bored friends fold or tear paper on air.

A remarkable debut film, of modest but talented ambition, supported by the Cannes Cinéfondation at the Festival Residence. Selected at the Director's Fortnight, won the Camera d'Or (Best debut film) at Cannes 2006.

(s) ++ (w) ++ (m) +++ (i) ++ (c) +++

DIGEST : May 2006

Un-reviewed screenings, current reading, links, recommendations, free talk
(updates in comments) sticky entry for a month

Marie-Antoinette (2006/Coppola)

Marie-Antoinette (2006/Sofia Coppola/USA) ++

Opening Scene : Rock guitars soundtrack. Aerial shot of a lazy Marie-Antoinette sleeping next to her dog on an unmade bed. Dreaming, smiling, enjoying the idleness of an aristocratic leisure at the Hasbourg court. Her life is about to take a dramatic turn for her own lifestyle as well as for the future of Europe. The ambassador announces Louis XV agreed to her marriage with his grand-son Louis XVI. She must leave everything behind, youth, innocence, family, belongings... to meet her fate and duty. After brief farewell and motherly recommendations she travels to the border in a horse-drawn carriage.
While the opening sequence in Vienna was really short, planting a succinct pre-France background as a matter of reference to clash with Versailles later, the second sequence, with pink opening credits, lingers on the long carriage trip across the Austrian landscape. The montage shows her looking by the window, laughing with her company, contemplating a small painting of her futur spouse. She doesn't seem to realize what is going on and entertains this ceremonious protocol like a fairy tale. She's then 14, and the dauphin Louis Auguste, 15.

Neither kitsch enough to be shocking nor accurate enough to be respectable, the historical biopic turns into a trivial chick flick, monotonous, descriptive, uniform, and unfortunately lost the alleged subversion on the way. Her most daring attempt was to introduce Converse shoes in a fashion montage. The superficial melodrama lacks the grandeur and complexity of real life Marie-Antoinette, who was both better and worse than the simplified fantasized Hollywood version of a puerile libertine. Detractors reproach anachronistic liberties. I found it quite interesting to portray a major historical figure through the deliberately narrow prism of her intimate life, out of any context. However it might not have been achieved by the most convincing means.

Inspired by the biography by Stefan Zweig (1933), French historian Evelyne Lever (2000), and British historian Antonia Fraser (2002), Sofia began to write this script in 2001, before Lost In Translation. She dropped the adaptation rights for the french book after 36 months, finally leaving historical accuracy for the glamour and modern diary-style of Antonia Fraser, based on the intimate and detailed correspondance between Marie-Antoinette and her mother Marie-Therese, empress of Austria. Sofia Coppola was granted special access to visit and shoot in the actual palace of Versailles, some rooms under restoration were reopened especially for the film. The revival of this dusty museum by a costumed crowd and horses is an impressive rendition, even if the French aristocracy speaks like Californians... The Marienbad-inspired tracking shots through the geometrical gardens and ornemental corridors are quite delightful indeed.

The subversion is meant to draw a facile parallel with the fastuous, luxurious, extravagant, and vain milieu of the stardom millionaires. Hollywood, and Cannes too incidentally, are new incarnations of the ancient aristocracy. Lady Di, doomed princess with illicit love affairs, being the perfect link between Versailles and today's jet-set. Thus feeling a complacent empathy for the petty problems of the richest people : ennui, melancholy, recognition, fame, attraction, seduction, domination, entertainment, pleasure, thrill...

Now, the atmosphere does offer nice unconventional touches at times, more on par with what we'd expect from Sofia Coppola's inspiration. There are many charms. A very personal period movie highlighting a secret lesserknown personality of the queen usually associated with the Revolution.
What the film achieves very well is to represent the Versailles way of life from inside, with emphasis on the flaws and inconveniences, unlike most period films showing the nobility of it all. Here we see a queen bored by her status, the oppressive etiquette, the snobbish rivalry. Even if this view isn't quite historicaly accurate, it is interesting to follow a discontent queen who cares about her private life, dear friends, parties and bucolic leisure and much less about the kingdom's grandeur.

King and Queen have separate appartments in the palace, and rarely meet eachother but for meals. The royal family, greatfather Louis XV and his official mistress la Du Barry, as well as her own children are mostly out of the picture. Which reveals how solitary is the life of a queen because there are always people to take care of things for her, she doesn't have to worry about a thing, not even her children's education. Although the illustration of the queen's passion for gambling, dancing, fashion, wigs, Champagne and colorful biscuits can be too caricatural and uninspired.

The royal couple is assisted to get dressed and undressed in public. Going to bed and waking up are ceremonious showcases for the court. Marie-Antoinette turns away from the rigorous, extraneous, overbearing protocol and the courtly company established by Louis XIV. While her husband is busy with state business, hunt and locksmith, she grows a vulgar fad for farm and sheep, reading Rousseau in a Hamilton-lite flower field, watching sunrise near the canal. A quick plan puts cleverly in perspective this fancy lunacy by showing a servant cleaning the muddy eggs before the queen arrives with her daughter to collect them. She recreated an idealized farm in Versailles, a dollhouse out of touch with reality. Centered exclusively on Marie-Antoinette's viewpoint, the film is appropriately claustrophobic, shut out from outside events, from Paris, from France, from the World.

The court gossips is figured by a voiceover while the queen crosses the vast corridors and gardens, so we don't see the courtisans deriding her and maybe they are not even present. The overlay with Marie Antoinette's perfect composure, pretending she doesn't pay attention to petty mockery, creates a provocative collision of distinct (cinematic) realities, one of the polite public facade of everyone (visual) and one of the snide deriding backstage (auditive).

Sofia Coppola said she didn't feel comfortable to depict religion, politics and history that were too far from her immediate concerns. This wouldn't undermine a transgressive project if it wasn't nonetheless overwhelmed by its own decorum. The originality meant to expose the decadente modernity of a bohemian queen seems overtly distracted by an adolescent fascination, on the part of Sofia Coppola, for fancy dresses fetishism and the majesty of grandiloquent scenes. The private tragedy so well orchestrated in her previous intimate films through understatements and precautious mundane scrutiny misses here.
The narration is encumberred by reconstitution of famous events. For instance, the only political reference feels anecdotical on the wider scope of the end of monarchy : the participation of France to help americans in the War of Independence against the archenemy, the British Empire.

The film already cuts short before the French Revolution, making a strong statement not to show the world that exists and dies outside the idyllic frontiers of the Versailles property. The notorious escape to Varennes of the royal couple organized by Thomas Fersen (to save his secret lover) failed because someone recognized the disguised king from his profile engraved on the gold coins. When Louis XV was beheaded by the guillotine, Marie-Antoinette kneeled before her son who had just inherited the throne, a king in prison. The behavior of the queen in Paris, first at Le Palais des Tuileries and then locked at La Bastille before her execution is what contributed to build the legend of Marie-Antoinette. However none of this made the cut.

Kirsten Dunst, 23 yold, plays Marie-Antoinette from 14 in Vienna to 35 when she leaves Versailles, without any make up or acting changes. Same for Jason Schwartzman as Louis XV. She remains an eternal adulescent. Again this subversive gimmick would work better if the rest of the film also took advantage of an abstract, timeless mise-en-scène, cleared of historical referent that remind us of time passing.

My ultimate impression of the film is that it goes too fast, spanning over too many years, too many important events that are inevitably overlooked and underdevelopped anyway, despite the awkward storyline jump cuts. For example the first royal intercourse transitions with the child delivery in a wink. Only a male heir could solidify this union and the European diplomacy it involves. The film accentuates the virginity of Marie-Antoinette, from 14 to 21, as a sexualy inhibited Louis XV refuses to touch her during 7 years of marriage! If the insight does inform the estrangement and incompatibility of this couple, the illustration becomes a mere running gag of a recurrent bed scene where the contact is continually aborted. Silly phrases such as "I'm exhausted", "I have to wake up early for hunt tomorrow" that play on the comical relief by today's soap opera standards.

I think Sofia Coppola would have expressed her talent best by limiting the timeline to a random slice of life, without the need to show her teenage marriage and her demise. Just a continuous period of days between Versailles and Trianon. A transcendental portrayal a timeless queen with sentimental issues and a precursor eccentricity. The location in Versailles and the costumes would have been enough to characterize the era and personality. The film could have been much more subversive, formally and morally, within a lose framework disregarding the hassle to narrate her full biography. Maybe she would have written scenes more surprising about her intimacy, her daily boredom, her desires and her dreams. The humanity of an immature woman constrained by an unhappy forced marriage and a ridiculous protocol, the anti-comformist queen who built a farm in Versailles to take care of plants and sheep. Although she failed to developped the sentiment of alienation and solitude so deeply mastered in Virgin Suicide and Lost in Translation.

Official Website (french) - trailers
Cannes 2006 - Official Competition
(s) + (w) ++ (m) +++ (i) ++ (c) +++

CANNES 2006 : Cinéfondation

Cinéfondation 2006 www

[EDIT Award results]

Honorary presidents: Martin Scorsese & Abbas Kiarostami

CINÉFONDATION (Completed Feature Films) www
Created in 1998 and devoted to the search for new talent, the Cinéfondation selects each and every year fifteen to twenty shorts and medium-length works, presented by film schools from all over the world.

Jury : Andrei Konchalovsky (director) President;Sandrine Bonnaire (actress); Daniel Brühl (actor); Souleymane Cissé (director); Zbigniew Preisner

• A VÍRUS / The Virus (Ágnes KOCSIS/Hungary) 3rd Prize Ex-aequo
• BIR DAMLA SU / A Water Drop (Deniz Gamze ERGÜVEN/France)
• DOORMAN (Etienne KALLOS/USA)
• EEN INGEWIKKELD VERHAAL, EENVOUDIG VERTELD / A Complicated Story, Told Simply (Jaap VAN HEUSDEN/Netherlands)
• ELASTINEN PARTURI / The Elastic Hairdresser (Milla NYBONDAS/Finland)
• EVEN KIDS STARTED SMALL (Yaniv BERMAN/Israel)
• FIRN (Axel KOENZEN/Germany)
• GE & ZETA (Gustavo RIET/Argentina) 1st Prize
• GRACELAND (Anocha SUWICHAKORNPONG/Thailand)
• HA'CHAVERA SHELL EMILE / LA COPINE D' EMILE (Nadav LAPID/Israel)
• HUNDE / DOGS (Matthias HUSER/Switzerland)
• JABA (Andreas BOLM/Germany)
• JUSTIÇA AO INSULTO / JUSTICE A L'INSULTE (Bruno JORGE/Brasil)
• MOTHER (Siân HEDER/USA) 3rd Prize Ex-aequo
• MR. SCHWARTZ, MR. HAZEN & MR. HORLOCKER (Stefan MUELLER/Germany) 2nd Prize
• SNOW (Dustin FENELEY/Australia)
• TETRIS (Anirban DATTA/India)
  

L'ATELIER CINEFONDATION www
Films In development : Seasoned directors and new talents PDF
The Atelier selects every year about twenty feature-film projects throughout the world, and invites their directors to the Festival de Cannes to put them in touch with professionals. They can thus access international financing and speed up the transition to directing.

• SCAR (Teboho Mahlatsi/South Africa)
• TARDE (Santiago Palavecino/Argentina)
• SHIVER (Christina Andreef/Australia)
• LA REGATE (Bernard Bellefroid/Belgium) 1
• THE SKY, THE EARTH AND THE RAIN (José Luis Torres Leiva/Chile)
• BLACK IRON DAYS (Wang Bing/China)
• BUICK RIVERA (Goran Rusinovic/Croatia)
• THE QUAGMIRE (Luiso Berdejo/Spain)
• DON'T LET ME DROWN (Cruz Angeles/USA)
• VIRTUAL LOVE (Richard Press/USA)
• BLACK BOX (Fabrice Genestal/France) 1
• EAT FOR THIS IS MY BODY (Michelange Quay/Haiti) 1
• ROAD, MOVIE (Dev Benegal /India)
• KISHTA (Dover Kosashvili/Israel) 1
• SCENE OF A CRIME (Cristi Puiu/Romania)
• DAU (Ilya Khrzhanovsky/Russia)
• HOME (Ursula Meier/Switzerland) 1
• UTOPIA (Apichatpong Weerasethakul/Thailand)

CANNES 2006 : Critics Week

45th International Critic's Week www

[EDIT : Award results]

Gaspard Noé - godfather of the Critic's Week

COMPETITION - Feature films

• Les Amitiés maléfiques (Emmanuel Bourdieu/France) 1 2 3 4 Grand Prix, Grand Rail d'Or, SCAD Award
• Pingpong (Matthias Luthardt/Germany) - Debut www 1 2 3 4 SCAD Award, OFAJ Young Award
• Den Brysomme Mannen / The Bothersome Man (Jens Lien/Norway) 1 2 3 ACID Award
• Sonhos de peixe (Kirill Mikhanovsky/Brasil/Russia/USA) - Debut 1 2 3
• Komma (Martine Doyen/Belgium) - Debut 1 2
• Drama/Mex (Gerardo Naranjo/Mexico) 1 2 3 4
• Friss Levegö / Fresh Air (Àgnes Kocsis/Hungary) - Debut 1 2 3 4

COMPETITION - Short films

• Kristall (Christoph Girardet & Matthias Müller/Germany) Canal + Award
• Iron (Hiroyuki Nakano/Japan)
• Printed Rainbow (Gitanjali Rao/India) Rail d'Or, Kodak Discovery Award, OFAJ Young Critic Award
• Alguma Coisa Assim / Something Like That (Esmir Filho/Brasil) Grand Crû Prize
• L’Écluse (Olivier Ciechelski/France)
• News (Ursula Ferrara/Italy)
• Kvinna Vid Grammofon / Woman and Gramophone (Johannes Stjärne Nilsson & Ola Simonsson/Sweden)

SPECIAL SCREENING

• Destricted (2006/Gaspar Noé/Larry Clark/Marina Abramovic/Matthew Barney/Sam Taylor-Wood/Marco Brambilla/Richard Prince /USA/GB) www 1 2 3 4 5 6
• Free Jimmy (Christopher Nielsen/GB/Norway) Debut 1 2 3
• Look Both Ways (Sarah Watt/Australia) Debut
• I Psihi Sto Stoma / Soul Kicking (Yannis Economidis/Greece) 1 2
• Nocturnes pour le Roi de Rome (Jean-Charles Fitoussi/France) 1 2
• Kigali, des images contre un massacre (Jean-Christophe Klotz/France) DOC Debut 1 2
• Une équipe de rêve (René Letzgus/France) 1
  

MEDIUM LENGTH FEATURES

• Marilena de la P7 (Cristian Nemescu/Roumania)
• Les Deux vies du serpent (Hélier Cisterne/France)
• Charell (Mikhaël Hers/France)

ACID
Agence du Cinema Indépendant pour sa Diffusion www

Jury : Béatrice Champanier; Marina Déak; Joseph Morder; Claude Duty; Pierre Schoeller

• ALLEZ YALLAH ! (2006/Jean Pierre Thorn/France) Doc
• BABOOSKA (2005/Tizza Covi & Rainer Frimmel/Austria) Doc
• BARAKAT ! (2005/Djamila Sahraoui/France)
• ÇA M'EST ÉGAL SI DEMAIN N'ARRIVE PAS (2006/Guillaume Malandrin/Belgium)
• LES FEMMES DU MONT ARARAT (2004/Erwann Briand/France)
• HOREZON (2006/Pascale Bodet/France)
• PETITES RÉVÉLATIONS (2006/Marie Vermillard/France)
• SONG OF SONGS (2005/Josh Appignanesi/UK)
• VOYAGE EN SOL MAJEUR (2006/Georgi Lazarevski/France)

Special Screening :

• LA VISITEUSE (1983/Jean-Claude Guiguet/France) Short