Wetherby (1985)

(Directed by David Hare, UK, 1985)



A young man crashes a dinner party given by a middle-aged schoolteacher for her friends. Being British, they are too polite and all believe he came with or knows someone, hence his presence. The next day, the man shows up again and explains that his attending the previous night's dinner was a hypocritical lie, since he didn't know anyone and they all pretended that they did. He suddenly places a gun in his mouth and commits suicide while the teacher watches in shock.

This is the start of David Hare's film Wetherby, focusing on the aftermath and investigation of the suicide of the young man, John Morgan (Tim McInnerney) and simultaneously an investigation of the life of the schoolteacher, Jean Travers (Vanessa Redgrave).

The main reason to see this film is Vanessa Redgrave's excellent, heartfelt performance as a woman who has, in response to a tragedy earlier in her life, has nullified her feelings to the point where she just simply exists. She proudly declares, at one point in the film that she believes she is alone, not lonely and treasures that fact. The point is that she and the friends around her, the Pilboroughs (played by Dame Judi Dench and Ian Holm) are empty and hurting as well. To get by, there are the dinner parties, the pub drinks that Jean shares with Stanley Pilborough where they play elaborate games of one-upmanship and the endless activities that Marcia, Stanley's wife arranges. Into this arrangement of
her semi-lived life comes Karen, a friend of the man who committed suicide. Karen disturbs Jean with her listless approach to living and disaffection and just hangs on. The investigation becomes complicated with a local constable (Tom Wilkinson) asking too many questions. In flashbacks, Jean reveals that she has had a love affair with a long dead man, who died as a result of a stupid chance of events.

Hare's film owes a lot of its structure to Alain Resnais' Muriel, although not having seen that unavailable film, it is hard to comment on the similarities. Hare's film is quite moving and ambitious, being hard to pin down the central mystery on why a young man kills himself over societal rules, but I almost want to believe that the core of the film is that his act forces the schoolteacher to reexamine her life and somehow move on. As one character says in the film, 'Life is messy'.

This is Redgrave's film, her performance lights it up extremely. With this and Karel Reisz's film of Isadora Duncan, this is her best. See it for her.

Them! (1954)

(Directed by Gordon Douglas, USA, 1954)


For those of us of a certain age, watching 1950's sci-fi/horror films on television became something of a rite embodying somewhat ecstatic religious heights. Let's see: there were killer shrews, giant behemoths, a rampaging prehistoric lizard imported from Japan and creepy crawly spiders. And also those films involving predatory aliens in all sizes and malevolence. All of them involved either atomic mutilation or consequences of atomic bomb testing or interplanetary exploring (or hazards thereof). The average viewer can read into this the cold-war paranoia of 1950's-1960's Cold War politics: or US against them.

Them! was the first 1950's film to deal with gigantic mutant monsters: in this case monstrous ants irradiated by desert A-bomb testing and is one of the best. The predatory giant killer ants were not seen until midway through the movie and only alluded to by a weird high-pitch electronic signal, or a very high frequency noise.

This is particularly eerie and haunting in the very beginning of the movie, when two cops pick up a small girl in the desert, listlessly wandering around, clutching a doll. She only responds when she smells a beaker of folic acid and screams: "THEM!!!"

That's one of this movie's most effective highlights. One of the cops (played by James Whitmore) is joined by an FBI agent (James Arness) and an eccentric old scientist/doctor (Edmund Gwenn) and his daughter (Joan Weldon). The movie involves the standard plot of tracking the killer ants as they migrate westward to sunny California, after laying waste the girl's trailer and family, decimating a general store for sugar and other mayhem. It is gradually revealed that the ants were the products of atomic testing in the New Mexico desert and along the way, the doctor gives a lecture on ant behavior and organization. If only the Bush administration were so organized...oh wait, take that back.

Now for the ants: before CGI and special effects, the 1950's movie monsters were extra-clunky and completely low-tech: the ants of Them! are basically puppets that don't exactly look like ants, (a bit too many pipe cleaners and puppeteers) but who cares? The movie still is great 1950's escapist fun and easily enjoyable. With a grand showdown in the Los Angeles sewers, how can one go wrong?

Them! is great escapist movie for a dull weekend morning. It is enjoyable as a great nostalgic return to low fi horror.

Last Year at Marienbad (1961)

(L'Annee derniere a Marienbad, directed by Alain Resnais, France 1961)

Last Year at Marienbad is one of the most audacious experiments in post-war film. Alain Resnais' film, based on a script by 'nouveau roman' novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet, dispenses with what we normally expect from viewing a film: a linear narrative or storyline, continuity editing (or having the filmic story make sense) and a story arc: or clear beginning, middle and end. This film exists in some sort of temporary present with echoes of a past that the main characters may or may not have experienced. In the filmic case the 'Man' (Giorgio Albertazzi) trys to convince the 'Woman' (Delphine Seyrig) that they have had an affair, while her dessicated husband (Sacha Pitoeff) looks on in menace and concern. The upper-class elegant milieu and the glamorous emptiness of their surroundings entrap all of them somewhere in post-war Europe (read: an above-ground mausoleum).

The end result is a demanding art film full of ellipses, obfuscation and romantic sentiment of the order of one of Alain Robbe-Grillet's 'nouveau roman' experiments. That it works is due to the directorial eye of Resnais and the sexy, insouciant and mysterious persona embodied in the great French actress Delphine Seyrig.

"Last Year at Marienbad" is a classic of the French "New Wave" cinema, and has been successfully reshown in revival twice (as of this writing) at the Film Forum in New York. It generally polarizes audiences as a real head-scratcher, or "one of the most pretentious movies ever made". For this cinema goer, it will forever show the potential for film, experimental film in particular, long after the blockbusters are forgotten.

Two Women (La Ciociara) (1960)

(Directed by Vittorio de Sica, Italy, 1960)

Turner Classic Movies recently aired this as a selection of John Sayles' favorite movies. I have always been intrigued by this film and in 1960 it won Sophia Loren an Oscar for Best Actress from 1962 - the first time that a foreign actress in a foreign film ever won that award.

Basically, De Sica's story is perhaps one of the great anti-war films and its simple story can be described as an almost feminist 'road movie: Loren plays a young voluptuous widowed shopowner in Rome who decides to leave the city with her teenage daughter as constant bombardment from the Second World War threatens their livelihood. She goes to southern Italy with her daughter and meets a badly dubbed Jean-Paul Belmondo at her relatives' home. Her character frequently vents rather naively on men, and the war. Frequently blunt, Loren gives a great performance: tough, vulnerable and ultimately crushed by the tragic denouement that occurs towards the film's end.

It is a shame that this film is not available on a viewable dvd. There is a rather awful version produced by the Madary company that is a rather muddy VHS transfer, by all means avoid this version. Perhaps the Criterion company will re-release a better version in the near future.

La Ciociara is an adaptation of a novel by the Italian author Alberto Moravia, he was responsible for providing the filmic inspiration for, among others Jean-Luc Godard ("Contempt"/"Le Mepris) and Bernardo Bertolucci, ("The Conformist"). For more information click here.

I'm Not There (2007)

A cartoon in a recent New Yorker mag depicted two bums leaning against a wall, one saying "So which Dylan do you want to be?"

Which one indeed...such is the subject of Todd Haynes' audacious film I'm Not There, in which six actors play various aspects of the many personas of Bob Dylan.

I would love to know what Bob Dylan thinks of this film. Todd Haynes has created an audacious experimental film about an icon, which (for me at least) is one of the best American films I'd seen in years, and also one of the most imaginative.

In exploring the various "lives" of Bob Dylan, Haynes imagines and reimagines Dylan as a young black Woody Guthrie-inspired teenager (Marcus Franklin); a sell-out film star (Heath Ledger); a funny interviewee named "Arthur Rimbaud" (Ben Whishaw); a born again lost soul (Christian Bale); a Billy the Kid inspired Old West hero (Richard Gere) and the most inspired casting choice of Cate Blanchett as a "Don't Look Back" mid-1960's Dylan named Jude Quinn.

Needless to say this film is not a bio-pic but a fantasia on persona(s). It doesn't really matter if you don't know much about Bob Dylan's life, but it does help to catch some elusive references (i.e., the collaboration with the Band and "The Basement Tapes" totally eluded me, until a fellow film fanatic brought it up).

The film is episodic and enjoyable while not following a linear narrative. Ideally it should be watched on a late afternoon, and the images pour over you like late winter sun. Enjoy the ride.

Une vielle Maitresse (2007)

(Directed by Catherine Breillat, France, 2007)
(New York Film Festival Notes, Part 2 of 2)

"Une vielle Maitresse" is a wonderful period piece directed by Catherine Breillat, who had a modest success here some years ago with the films "36 Fillette" and "Fat Girl".

Based on a novel by the 19th century French writer Barbey d'Aurevilly (best known for "Les Diaboliques" among other works that remain untranslated), the film starts with the legend "A story from the ancien regime" then proceeds to depict a story set in the height of French Romanticism, around 1830's - 1840's. Disconnect starts early in this film. "Une vielle Maitresse" tells of the romantic affair between a dissolute rake, Ryno de Marigny (Fu'ad Ait Aattou)and the wilful Vellini (Asia Argento) that creates problems when Marigny decides to marry Hermangarde (Roxane Mesquida), from a wealthy family. Vellini just keeps popping up during the newlyweds' Normandy home and inadvertently creates devastating consequences for all concerned.

First of all, I liked the period detail in this movie: the two leads are strikingly androgynous: Argento, with her handsome allure is very George Sand-ish and Aattou looks younger, very feminine in features to her character's mannish boldness. The affair is told through a flashback that Marigny narrates to the Marquise de Fler (Claude Saurraute, daughter of the novelist Nathalie Saurraute) and Hermengarde's relative. The witty dialogue throughout this scene is a delight, as well as the sumptuous visual decor and narrative. The two leads have some rather odd sex scenes, but Asia Argento is rather sexy, at times she reminded me of a prettier Anna Magnani; and seems to outshine every scene she's in. The actor playing Marigny, while being overpowered, smiles obligingly.

Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days (2007)

(Directed by Cristian Mungiu, Rumania, 2007)
(Winner of the Palme d'Or, Cannes Film Festival, 2007)
New York Film Festival Notes Part 1

At the last minute, an enterprising friend of mine took me to the 45th New York Film Festival. Getting past the unfortunate choice of venue (Rose Theater), we saw "Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days", a Rumanian film that won the Palme d'Or this year at Cannes.

Mungiu's film is set in Bucharest during the waning years of the Ceasescu Regime. Ottila (Anamaria Marinca) is a young student constantly negotiating for things on the black market, especially a treasured pack of Kent cigarettes. The camera relentlessly follows her around in long shot, while she runs around negotiating with a hotel clerk who is rather rude to her; another hotel clerk and a shady businessman. The director spoke before the screening about how he wanted to show everyday life in Rumania during the late 1980's: this is a Rumania where you need to use your i.d. for everything, where you are questioned after dark (especially if you are a woman), and where the bureaucratic order is mind-numbingly enforced.

It gradually becomes apparent what Ottila is really negotiating for: without trying to give too much away, she is attempting to obtain an abortion for her friend Gabita (Laura Vasilu). Since abortions were illegal in the years that this film depicts, it is an act of brave desperation that Ottila performs, involving a shady 'doctor' inappropriately named 'Dr.' Bebe (Vlad Ivanov). The so-called Dr. insults the women when they have failed to comply with his implicit instructions, has a melt-down when it is revealed that the self-involved Gabita is late in term: (hence, the film's title) and then becomes a bit fatherly once the deed is done. Ivanov's performance is rather a short, knock-out performance, equal to Marinca's performance.

Mungiu's film is full of long-shots meant to evoke real-time and becomes a bit more revealing with Ottila's running around, until the last devastating half-hour. I would like to recommend this film, but can't really find the words to describe its simple shocking power. The female friend I saw it with was just as disturbed as I was after the conclusion. Writing about it a few days after viewing it, it's still hard to grasp the apparent simplicity of Mungiu's filmmaking, an apparent simplicity that is devastating to watch in its cumulative effect.