The Frame » film-France http://frame.the-frame.com from the pen of Jandy Stone Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:17:28 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 #92: Amelie http://frame.the-frame.com/2008/10/08/92-amelie/ http://frame.the-frame.com/2008/10/08/92-amelie/#comments Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:03:41 +0000 Jandy http://frame.the-frame.com/?p=431 This post is part of a project to watch the Film Bloggers’ 100 Favorite Non-English Films.

AMELIE-20

Amélie
France 2001; dir: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
starring: Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz
screened 4/6/08; DVD

Previous Viewing Experience: I’ve seen this at least four times, but most of them were pretty soon after it came out on DVD, so it’s probably been four or five years. Wow, that makes me feel old.

Previous Reactions: I pretty much fell in love with this movie when I first saw it (hence the seeing it again so often so soon). The colors, the music, the quirk, the charm. Mostly the colors, if I’m honest.

Brief Synopsis: Amelie Poulain lives and works in Montmartre, but doesn’t connect very deeply with other people. When she finds a long-lost box of toys and successfully finds the overjoyed owner, she decides to do random acts of kindness (and meanness, in one case) – one of which may lead to romance if she doesn’t chicken out first.

Response: Interesting reaction this time. I’m still charmed by the film, and for all the same reasons as before. But I found myself also a little disappointed at its obviousness. Which I think is a function of having seen several Krzysztof Kieslowski films over the past year. Jeunet’s use of vibrant color seems directly borrowed from Kieslowski’s later films (the French ones), and since the cinematography is one of my favorite things about both Amelie and Kieslowski’s work, I couldn’t help comparing them in my head. And Kieslowski is better. Amelie’s problem is that she’s afraid of connecting meaningfully with other people. That’s why she spends more time pulling pranks and tricking everyone else in the story (whether for their good or ill) rather than concentrate on her own life. Ultimately, that’s why she constructs elaborate schemes and false identities that keep her in contact with yet also distanced from Bobo. And that’s great, it’s a fine storyline. But then Jeunet introduces a brittle painter who can’t quite capture one girl’s expression in the Renoir he’s copying. Why? Because she’s in a group of people and yet not connected to them. Over and over the fact that this girl and Amelie are the same is reiterated. Over and over the painter explicitly pushes Amelie to take the risk, to open herself up to others. Again, not a bad thing in and of itself, but Kieslowski takes a similar storyline of people who have cut themselves off from the world emotionally in Red and carries it out with much greater subtlety and ambiguity. Perhaps that’s why Amelie is #92 on this list and Red is down at #39.

I still love Amelie, don’t get me wrong. It’s delightful, and it remains one of the two or three best introductions to foreign films for the subtitle-phobic. But it’s a gateway drug to world cinema, and if you like it, move on to the harder stuff.

Overall Rating: Well Above Average

]]> http://frame.the-frame.com/2008/10/08/92-amelie/feed/ 0 Les bonnes femmes http://frame.the-frame.com/2008/07/22/les-bonnes-femmes/ http://frame.the-frame.com/2008/07/22/les-bonnes-femmes/#comments Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:59:44 +0000 Jandy http://frame.the-frame.com/?p=412 This is Claude Chabrol’s first feature, following four Parisian shop girls as they go about their daily lives. It’s not one of his best-known films, and it feels like a first film – like he’s still feeling out the best ways to do things – but I ended up finding it rather compelling. At first the four girls seem very similar, all working at the same store, watching the clock until they can leave, going out at night, etc. But their personalities begin to emerge – subtly, so much so that I didn’t catch all the nuances until the second time through (I rewatched almost immediately because of not paying enough attention but then being so intrigued by the end I wanted to see what I had missed). Then one of the girls starts a romance with a biker who’s been following her around, and the film takes a darker, more ambiguous turn, definitely a turn for the better. Certainly interested in seeing more Chabrol films after this introduction.
Above Average

]]> http://frame.the-frame.com/2008/07/22/les-bonnes-femmes/feed/ 0 Masculin Feminin http://frame.the-frame.com/2008/07/22/masculin-feminin/ http://frame.the-frame.com/2008/07/22/masculin-feminin/#comments Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:56:14 +0000 Jandy http://frame.the-frame.com/?p=411 A stylistic return to earlier films like Band of Outsiders, but thematically tending toward Godard’s eventual political turn in 1968. Paul (Léaud) is a student and frequent protestor against the Vietnam War; meanwhile, he cautiously (almost indifferently, though his indifference is probably a pose) romances Chantal Goya. I enjoyed the film, as I always enjoy Godard films, but I need a rewatch to talk about it competently. Again, like all Godard films. I know a few people who like Masculin Feminin best of Godard’s films, and Chantal Goya best of his heroines, but she’s still not Anna Karina. :) And the ending threw me off. Still, so did Pierrot le fou’s the first time, and now it’s one of my favorite Godard films.
Above Average

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]]> http://frame.the-frame.com/2008/07/22/masculin-feminin/feed/ 0 Made in USA http://frame.the-frame.com/2008/07/22/made-in-usa/ http://frame.the-frame.com/2008/07/22/made-in-usa/#comments Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:52:13 +0000 Jandy http://frame.the-frame.com/?p=410 In which Jean-Luc Godard tries to meld Pierrot le fou’s visual and narrative style with an overtly political story. Anna Karina is looking for her boyfriend, Richard P—, who has disappeared under suspicious circumstances, perhaps the victim of a political intrigue. Along the way, she’s thrust into a world like “a Disney film starring Humphrey Bogart. A film with a political message.” She meets various other people who may or may not be helping her on her quest, who tend to break down into interesting but unrelated language games at random times. The overall effect is extremely pretty to look at, but essentially incomprehensible, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but Godard certainly pushes the limit of how little plot information he can give and still keep us watching.
Above Average

]]> http://frame.the-frame.com/2008/07/22/made-in-usa/feed/ 0 The Diving Bell and the Butterfly http://frame.the-frame.com/2008/03/29/the-diving-bell-and-the-butterfly/ http://frame.the-frame.com/2008/03/29/the-diving-bell-and-the-butterfly/#comments Sat, 29 Mar 2008 21:37:10 +0000 Jandy http://frame.the-frame.com/?p=18 The Diving Bell and the ButterflyDirector Julian Schnabel is also an artist; in fact, he prefers to be known as a painter rather than as a filmmaker. That visual background serves The Diving Bell and the Butterfly perfectly in its story of a 42-year-old fashion editor who undergoes a sudden stroke, leaving him completely paralyzed except for his left eye. He can still hear, but his world is largely rendered through what he can see and eventually, what he can remember seeing. Jean-Do, the playboy senior editor of the French Elle magazine, struggles with his condition, which is termed “locked-in syndrome”–a perfectly healthy mind trapped in a husk of a body, a condition he likens to being trapped underwater in a diving bell. One of his first full sentences (once his speech therapist Henriette has worked out a system of communication using winks) indicates his wish to die; it takes time for him to learn to appreciate what he still has and to rely on his imagination and memory.

The film as a whole is one of great beauty and sensitivity, with Schnabel and two-time Oscar winner Janusz Kaminski bringing an impressionistic touch to the scenes of Jean-Do’s imagination and memory, as well as to the first third of the film, which is almost completely filmed from Jean-Do’s point of view. As Jean-Do moves outside of himself, accepting the emotional investment that Henriette and his dictation-taker Claude (and also his ex-girlfriend Celine) have given him, the camera does as well, taking a third-person view. The danger in a film like this would be to list toward sentimentality, but Schnabel never does that. We care about Jean-Do, but his wry voice-over (taken mostly from the book written by the real-life inspiration for the story) and the caring but never maudlin camera allows a dark humor that keeps the film from becoming yet another heroism-in-the-face-of-adversity stories.

As to Schnabel’s claim to be a painter first and a filmmaker second, he may have a hard time defending his preference after having made such a wonderful film.

Superior

]]> http://frame.the-frame.com/2008/03/29/the-diving-bell-and-the-butterfly/feed/ 0 Weekend http://frame.the-frame.com/2008/02/23/weekend/ http://frame.the-frame.com/2008/02/23/weekend/#comments Sun, 24 Feb 2008 01:57:44 +0000 Jandy http://frame.the-frame.com/?p=153 The bad thing: Anna Karina isn’t in it, which makes me sad. The good thing: it’s good anyway. A spoiled bourgeois couple try to take a weekend vacation (with the ulterior motive of obtaining the woman’s inheritance, even if that requires killing her father, apparently), but keep running into obstacles. The most memorable of which is the longest traffic jam in the world, which we pan across forEVER, moving past car after car; some people have gotten out and are having picnics, others are honking madly, and still others, like our couple, pull into the other lane to try to get around it. The jam is caused by a car accident, the first of many crashed cars the couple comes across during the film, which I think symbolize the ultimate outcome of bourgeois life, as Godard sees it–a constant race to get the next big thing ending in tragedy that nobody cares about. The end lost me a little, but up until then, it was enjoyable watching Godard synthesize objects, ideas, and styles from his earlier films. And virtuoso tracking shots make me happy.
Well Above Average

]]> http://frame.the-frame.com/2008/02/23/weekend/feed/ 0 The Beat That My Heart Skipped http://frame.the-frame.com/2008/01/05/the-beat-that-my-heart-skipped/ http://frame.the-frame.com/2008/01/05/the-beat-that-my-heart-skipped/#comments Sun, 06 Jan 2008 02:56:51 +0000 Jandy http://frame.the-frame.com/?p=183 In this French movie, a young guy who acts as the gangster muscle behind his father’s real estate business yearns to escape his life into that of a concert pianist (his late mother’s profession). Working with a Chinese woman recently arrived in Paris (who speaks no French), he practices for an audition that might change his life, while also dealing with the demands of his father’s business. It sounds far-fetched, but I hoped that the French sensibility might make it work. What actually happened is that I came very close to turning it off in the middle due to boredom–about as close as I’ve ever come while watching a film. Yet I’m not willing to say it’s really that bad of a movie, because I was overly tired and I probably shouldn’t have been watching anything. Honestly, I think it’s probably fairly good, just completely not what I was in the mood for, and not as good as I was hoping.
Average

]]> http://frame.the-frame.com/2008/01/05/the-beat-that-my-heart-skipped/feed/ 0 Alphaville http://frame.the-frame.com/2007/10/23/alphaville/ http://frame.the-frame.com/2007/10/23/alphaville/#comments Tue, 23 Oct 2007 20:13:21 +0000 Jandy http://frame.the-frame.com/?p=222 Or, Jean-Luc Godard does sci-fi. Sort of. Lemmy Caution arrives in Alphaville, which has been taken over by a gigantic computer, which runs and regulates everything in the town. All the details were a little hard for me to grasp, even though I watched it twice (I never did get what exactly brought Lemmy to the city in the first place), but there are, as usual for Godard, a lot of interesting things going on. My beloved Anna Karina is here, as the girl who becomes both Lemmy’s way to get into the computer to destroy it and his love interest. There’s a good bit of 1984 in it, especially linguistically–what the inhabitants of the city term “the Bible” turns out to be a dictionary, which is replaced daily with a new one, as the list of approved words changes. There’s a great scene where Natacha (Karina) and Lemmy discuss words which have been deleted from the city’s vocabulary, suggesting that if the word for something doesn’t exist, than neither does the thing itself–Natacha can no longer feel emotion because the necessary language no longer exists. And the weapon Lemmy brings against the totalitarian computer? Poetry. Awesome. Anyway. The lighting scheme and set design are great too, very minimalist, and very obviously 1960s-era Paris. The plot may be futuristic, but the setting isn’t…a purposeful move on Godard’s part, who in 1965, when this was made, was moving into a more politically-charged section of his career.
Well Above Average

]]> http://frame.the-frame.com/2007/10/23/alphaville/feed/ 0 The Double Life of Veronique http://frame.the-frame.com/2007/10/23/the-double-life-of-veronique/ http://frame.the-frame.com/2007/10/23/the-double-life-of-veronique/#comments Tue, 23 Oct 2007 20:01:11 +0000 Jandy http://frame.the-frame.com/?p=219 If Krzysztof Kieslowski didn’t win my award for MOST BEAUTIFUL FILMS EVER with the Three Colors trilogy, he’s definitely got it now that I’ve seen Veronique. Every single shot of this film is absolute perfection. In fact, every moment of the film is absolute perfection. The colors, the framing, the reflections, Irene Jacob’s face, everything. I’ve seen a lot of beautiful films, but this is the most gorgeous one yet…every single ordinary object is imbued with extraordinary wonder. And the music, oh, the music. With Blue, the music was the main thing that kept me engaged with the plot. Here, the music is what ties the film together, and it’s even more successful. Oh, plot. Right. Irene Jacob plays Weronica, a Polish girl, as well as Veronique, a French girl. The film is playing with concepts of doubling–the girls don’t ever meet, and they aren’t the same person or separated twins or anything like that, but they do share some sort of mystical/spiritual connection. Don’t ask me exactly how that works, but it makes for a very intriguing meditation. And even if you don’t get the plot, did I mention it’s TOTALLY GORGEOUS? Mark me down as a Kieslowski fangirl.
Superior

]]> http://frame.the-frame.com/2007/10/23/the-double-life-of-veronique/feed/ 3 A nous la liberte http://frame.the-frame.com/2007/10/23/a-nous-la-liberte/ http://frame.the-frame.com/2007/10/23/a-nous-la-liberte/#comments Tue, 23 Oct 2007 19:51:30 +0000 Jandy http://frame.the-frame.com/?p=217 A man escapes from prison and becomes the successful head of a record manufacturing company; his cellmate escapes later and ends up working for the factory. Events come to a head when the successful man is threatened with exposure from various other former prisonmates, but the main focus is a satiric critique of the industrial revolution/factory system by way of comparing the assembly line process to the tedious work the men did in jail. It’s got a lot of similarity to Charlie Chaplin’s later Modern Times, but in French instead of silent. Personally, I prefer Chaplin, but À nous la liberté is highly respected as well.
Above Average

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