Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
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I've been looking forward to this one. Mr. Beaks, our man in New York, has been granted press access to the New York Film Festival this year, and I'm expecting some kick ass reports from him over the course of the thing. He's off to a hell of a start with tonight's look at three different films...
The New York Film Festival, with its highly selective and ever-idiosyncratic list of 27 features spread out over a roughly two week span, stands in direct contrast to the frenzied likes of, say, Toronto and Sundance, where one should expect to pencil in four films per day, rather than an easily managed diet of two. It is also, by its late placement on the calendar, likely to be made up of films already screened at prior festivals, with the off-chance of scoring a premiere for one of the year-end Oscar hopefuls (this year, that honor goes to my most anticipated film of 2001, Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums), so don’t expect any breathless dispatches announcing that Miramax has just shelled out $6 million to distribute Happy Texas 2: The Quickening, or a special, phone book-sized issue of Variety padded out with thirty-six pages promoting a slate of Menahem Golan-produced films all “In Development”, half of which purport to star Michael Dudikoff, even though he’s been MIA since the early 1990’s, and is rumored to be managing a water park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Essentially, this is a festival in every sense of the word; a series of films chosen to help celebrate the medium in as movie-mad a town as exists, and if ever a city was in desperate need of reveling, it is most certainly New York City.
Which is not to say that the selections are all bright and cheery. Far from it, this year’s line-up features the latest works from some of our most darkly perverse surveyors of the human condition (e.g. David Lynch, Catherine Breillat, Todd Solondz and Jean-Luc Godard). And what lightness there is comes from the oft-sardonic likes of the aforementioned Anderson and his fellow Texan, Richard Linklater, whose Waking Life is completing a festival hat-trick of sorts, having premiered all the way back in January at Sundance, while also unspooling earlier this month in Toronto.
Still, while the landscape has been forever altered in some respects by the nation’s recent tragedy, has there ever been a better time to celebrate our indomitable creative spirit in all its wildly different incarnations? While it may understandably be too early for some to take in the full range of expression that cinema allows, I’ll happily be the big toe testing the water, checking to see how the water feels now that the weather has become unexpectedly, if only temporarily, inclement.
VA SAVOIR (d. Jacques Rivette, w. Pascal Bonitzer, Christine Laurent, Rivette)
Cahiers du Cinema, the massively influential French film journal, is turning fifty this year, so the New York Film Festival is celebrating by bookending this year’s screenings with the latest works from two of that magazine’s most legendary critics-turned-filmmakers, Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette, whose Va Savoir (“Who Knows?”) opens Gotham’s annual cinematic throwdown this Friday.
Probably best known in this country for 1974’s Celine and Julie Go Boating, Rivette, at the age of 73, is, remarkably, one of our final links to Jean Renoir, the director of – to name a few masterpieces – Grand Illusion, Rules of the Game and, most importantly, The Golden Coach, the premise of which Rivette has admittedly pressed into service for Va Savoir. Rivette’s rendition stars Jeanne Balibar and Sergio Castellitto as Camille and Ugo, the star and leader, respectively, of a cash-strapped Italian theater troupe that has just rolled into Paris with a production of Luigi Pirandello’s terribly cerebral As You Desire Me. From the outset, Camille is faltering onstage, as she’s dogged by a palpable melancholy that confounds Ugo, who, aside from being her co-star, also happens to be her lover, and though she initially pleads ignorance to the cause of the malaise herself, Camille is keenly aware that her unease derives from the fact that this is her first trip back to Paris since she jilted her former lover, Pierre, a possessive, insecure intellectual still toiling over his long-in-gestation thesis regarding Heidegger (the only progress from then to now, it seems, is that he’s shortened the once ridiculously verbose subtitle to the more succinct, and, as it turns out, apropos “The Jealous One”). Now, it seems, Camille is questioning the wisdom of her leaving Pierre, but her chances of re-igniting this long-snuffed flame have been met with a complication in the form of Sonia, Pierre’s beautiful, ballet instructor wife.
Meanwhile, Ugo, when he’s not puzzling over Camille’s sudden melancholia, spends his time seeking a lost Goldoni play entitled The Destiny of Venice, which may be hidden amidst a terribly unorganized private library housed by the comically aloof Madame Desprez, whose blossoming young daughter, Do (Helene De Fougerolles), is instantly attracted to the older, but charming, actor. Ugo’s quest, however, when it isn’t being sidetracked by his growing affection for Do, is seriously hampered by Do’s half-brother, Arthur, an inveterate gambler who settles his debts by pawning certain volumes from the family’s presumably valuable library. And since Arthur is merely Do’s half-brother, don’t discount the likelihood of their hooking-up. Oh, and would it be too much if Arthur is also shacking up with Sonia? And how about if he also suddenly developed an attraction for Camille?
If 2 hours and 34 minutes seems awfully lengthy for what is clearly shaping up to be a classic, if massively convoluted, French farce, understand that Rivette’s ideas extend well beyond the drawing room, and slowly congeal into a not-surprisingly Renoir-esque examination of that singularly untidy human emotion, love. And rather than concern himself with a simple triangle, this tale involves six inextricably bound characters in search of an epiphany; therefore, set-up is crucial, yet bound to seem a tad protracted. Take comfort, then, in Rivette’s command of the medium, as he masterfully utilizes the same freewheeling, improvisational style that set he and his French New Wave brethren apart from the filmmaking status quo some forty years ago. Because of this, characters are apt to surprise at every turn, particularly Ugo and Dominique (Helene De Fougerolles), whose continuous flirtation, constantly on the verge of consummation, is interrupted at every turn by the unexpected reticence of either party.
While this is, undeniably, an ensemble picture, with excellent performances from each of the key six actors, the film absolutely belongs to Balibar and Castellitto. What a perfect match Rivette and Balibar make; a director with an admitted predilection for medium shots that capture as much of the human body as possible teaming with a performer blessed with a strikingly skeletal appearance complimented by an elegant, corporeal mime-informed sense of movement. It’s a wonder these two have never worked together in the past, and, trust me on this, it’ll be an awful crime if this constitutes the end of their professional relationship. As for Castellitto, he has a great, slightly hunched-over presence, but his true genius is for manipulating that wonderfully expressive face of his, especially in the film’s most uproarious scene, a disastrous dinner party that ill-advisedly brings together Pierre, Sophie, Camille and Ugo.
It could be argued that a little judicious trimming could tighten up Va Savoir, possibly improving its commercial prospects, but what would be lost is the generous character development that lends the film its soul, which would irreparably diminish the year’s most life-affirming denouement. Just be thankful that, for once, Rivette kept it under three hours, and, most importantly, that he’s still working, reminding us that, for all our foibles and unavoidably selfish behavior, we’re never that far away from deliverance into the arms of our loved ones, where forgiveness awaits.
WHAT TIME IS IT THERE? (d. Tsai Ming-Liang, w. Yang Pi-Ying, Ming-Liang)
Like his fellow Taiwanese filmmakers Edward Yang (Yi-Yi) and Hso Hsaio-hsien (Flowers of Shanghai), Tsai Ming-Liang favors the kind of long takes that might’ve left Stanley Kubrick comatose. He also employs an elliptical storytelling style reminiscent of Atom Egoyan, while also indulging in unremittingly bleak subject matter exacerbated by his continued fascination with bodily waste (see his prior film, The Hole, to see what I mean); i.e., to date, Tsai Ming-Liang’s films have rarely, if ever, been distributed outside of New York City, a streak that will likely go unbroken with the comparatively cuddlier, but overwhelmingly mournful What Time Is It There?
The film opens with a typically static opening shot of an old man (Miao Tien) just sitting down for dinner. Rather than begin eating, though, he lights a cigarette and wanders about his house looking for, we presume, a dinner companion. Unable to find anyone, he proceeds to step outside and smoke by himself while his dinner goes cold and uneaten. In the intervening moments between this shot and the next, the old man will be dead, leaving behind a grief-stricken wife (Lu Yi-Ching), and a seemingly emotionless son, Hsiao Kang (played by the star of all of Ming Liang’s films, Lee Kang-sheng), who spends his days on the streets hawking watches out of a suitcase; a vocation that brings him into contact with a pretty young girl (Chen Shiang-Chyi) who, unimpressed with his selection, pesters him for the very watch on his wrist. After a day, he relents, and is rewarded with a cake for his trouble; however, their relationship is to end there, as she is off to Paris that very same day. That night, Hsiao, seeking refuge from his mother’s desperate adherence to traditional rituals designed to bring about his father’s reincarnation, works out the time difference between Taiwan and France, and proceeds to first set all of his watches to Paris time, followed by every watch and clock in the entire city.
Ming-Liang has said that the genesis of this project was the suicide of Lee Kang-sheng’s father, the sheer tragedy of which forced the director to reflect upon his own father’s passing some eight years prior; thus, lending the film a persistently mournful undercurrent that leaves an indelible impact on the viewer. Ming-Liang’s most audacious gambit, however, is his use of Truffaut’s The 400 Blows as a sort of guiding spirit hanging over the film, linking Hsiao and Chen in an irresistibly cinematic, but undeniably facile, manner (the only Gallic import I’d expect a Taiwanese street video vendor to have in stock would be something along the lines of The Brotherhood of the Wolf ); that is, until the film’s final moments at the Tuileries gardens, where the surprise appearance of the film’s second “angel”, followed by a haunting rendition of the main theme from Truffaut’s original masterpiece over the closing credits, makes the reference work in a bizarre, but ineffable manner.
The highest compliment I can pay What Time is it There is that it demands to be seen twice. Its every sequence teeters precariously on the verge of plunging into pretension, but rights itself often enough, becoming elusive and affecting in a way few films are nowadays.
STORYTELLING (d & w. Todd Solondz)
Lowering the satirical rim to dunkable heights once again, Todd Solondz has followed-up 1998’s highly controversial Happiness with Storytelling, an overt reaction to his critics who claim he is little more than a hateful man bent on evening the score for past indignities through his particularly unpleasant work. Whether or not this is valid criticism, Solondz is so busy refuting his detractors throughout the film’s mercifully truncated eighty-seven minute running time, he forgot to conjure up a story worth telling, resulting in a pointless wallow that strands some very talented actors in the worst student film ever bankrolled by a major studio.
The fundamental problem with Solondz’s approach is that all of his characters are unfailingly transparent. In the film’s second segment, “Non-Fiction”, we’re meant to wonder whether or not Toby (Paul Giamatti), a fledgling documentary filmmaker, will resort to exploiting his subject, a dim, unfocused high school student named Scooby (Mark Webber) whose aimlessness is of great concern to his status-obsessed parents. When Toby makes the decision to simply mine Scooby’s cluelessness for laughs, it’s no great surprise since, from the opening scene, Solondz sets him up as a huckster who will stoop so low as to hit up a former high school classmate for help in producing his documentary, even though the last time he talked to her was when he refused to accompany her to the prom. Solondz only makes matters worse by casting Mike Schank from Chris Smith’s superb documentary American Movie and entitling Toby’s final project “American Scooby”. If that’s exploitation, Todd, then congratulations….. you’re the new Preston Sturges! (For those wondering, it isn’t and he’s not.)
As for the ratings hubbub surrounding Storytelling, I guess it would mean something had Solondz not been contractually obliged to turn in an “R”-rated film. I agree with him, however, that the MPAA’s standards and ratings system needs revising, and while it is a kick to know that people will be paying $9.50 to see a sex scene obscured by a jarringly superimposed red rectangle, I have a feeling those who really care will simply shrug and wait for the DVD.
Still to come: Shohei Imamura’s Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, Manoel de Oliveira’s I’m Going Home, Majid Majidi’s Baran, Blue Wild Angel: Jimi Hendrix Live at the Isle of Wight and much, much more.
Faithfully submitted,
