Few recent films have attracted as much critical loathing as Stephen Daldry's visually lush but tone-deaf adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer's novel about a precocious New York boy coping with the death of his father. On paper perfect Oscar bait, due to its prestige sheen, tony cast and literary origins, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close ended up attracting a heap of critical revulsion, some of which well deserved, due to its head-on, bull-in-a-china-shop approach to the open wound of American society that is 9/11.
Just as in the source novel, 11-year-old Oskar Schell's doting dad died in the Twin Towers collapse, and the film doesn't shy away from the images rolling around Oskar's mind of falling men in what is a jarring, ill-advised recurrent visual motif that is wholly unnecessary to the film's elegant structure. It's not the only blunder Mr. Daldry and Forrest Gump screenwriter Eric Roth commit in streamlining the book's sprawling conceit for the purposes of filmic movement. There's a really good narrative, dealing with death and mourning, hiding in here somewhere, visible in how Oskar's "expedition" into New York City looking for the lock where a key his father left behind will fit brings him in touch with other New Yorkers, and in how the sharing of their individual stories and life experiences works as a process of communal grief.
But Messrs. Daldry and Roth are never really interested in those other stories other than as props to Oskar's own tale, flattening everything into a neat, predictable, conventional storyline arc instead of embracing the chaos and hurt that would give it an actual beating heart instead of just a simple emotion-milking machine. The final act, in particular, suggests that everything in this undoubtedly sincere but ultimately very awkward movie was an enormous manipulation with little or no regard for the emotional truth of its underlying concept. And yet, the uniform excellence of the performances and especially of the stunning first-timer, non-pro Thomas Horn as Oskar, along with the occasional elegance and flair of Mr. Daldry's handling, make it very hard to totally dismiss a film that wants to deal with 9/11 in an adult way, even if it then squanders that desire and hides its quivering, uncertain heart underneath a gloopy glazing of prime and often ill-judged schmaltz.
Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Thomas Horn; Viola Davis, John Goodman, Jeffrey Wright, Zoe Caldwell; Max von Sydow.
Director, Stephen Daldry; screenplay, Eric Roth, from the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close; cinematography, Chris Menges (colour by DeLuxe, widescreen); music, Alexandre Desplat; production designer, K. K. Barrett; costume designer, Ann Roth; editor, Claire Simpson; producer, Scott Rudin (Warner Bros. Pictures, Scott Rudin Productions), USA, 2011, 129 minutes.
Screened: distributor advance press screening, Columbia Tristar Warner screening room (Lisbon), February 23rd 2011.
Friday, March 02, 2012
Thursday, March 01, 2012
SHAME
Never has the definition of the orgasm as "la petite mort" been so accurate and acutely explored on the big screen as by artist turned filmmaker Steve McQueen in his sophomore feature. Its hero, New York high-flyer Brandon (impeccably inhabited by Michael Fassbender), seems to live only for his obvious addiction to sex, one where every new orgasm seems like yet another step in his becoming an emotional cadaver, someone for whom instinct has replaced feeling, joy totally chased from his world. Such is the premise Mr. McQueen and his co-screenwriter, playwright Abi Morgan, present the viewer with in a work that is as remarkable and challenging as the director's acclaimed debut Hunger, but more narratively fluent and more conventionally structured.
Though sex addiction is the evident starting point of the tale, what Shame really is about at the bottom is people coming to terms with themselves. Brandon lives in a comfortable but self-reinforcing cocoon, an illusion of pristine, distant contact where commitment is off-limits and romanticism replaced by mechanical, atavistic desire. But the unexpected arrival of his chaotic sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan), a lounge singer in town for a run of shows, throws a spanner in the works and forces him to face the desperation and joylessness behind the facade of a successful ladies' man.
Mr. McQueen's work is as extraordinarily formalist here as it was in Hunger, yet never for its own sake, rather in order to point out a hidden emotional truth in the characters. He therefore goes back to the audacious long takes that were one of the most striking elements in his debut, but uses them now in the service of the story as windows into his characters' souls, from the remarkable speechless subway opening to the stupendous close-up of Ms. Mulligan's wondrous, decelerated cover version of "New York, New York". In this the director is much helped by the all-out commitment of his actors and especially of the fearlessly intense Mr. Fassbender, though Ms. Mulligan finally transcends her gamine image in a role that suggests a better choice of parts might lift her to Michelle Williams status. By the time the old cliche of the cleansing rain comes round towards the end of the film, Brandon's circle of emotions - almost like a trip through Dante's circles of hell - has been made complete and the title's programmatic nature made visible without the word ever having been uttered throughout, leaving the viewer utterly shaken and trying to make sense of what he's just seen.
A film that lingers in one's mind for weeks, maybe even months after we've seen it, even if not as strikingly unique as Hunger (whose quasi-experimental stylings have been all but smoothed out here), Shame is the second masterpiece in a row from Mr. McQueen.
Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale, Nicole Beharie.
Director, Steve McQueen; writers, Mr. McQueen, Abi Morgan; cinematography (colour by Deluxe, widescreen), Sean Bobbitt; music, Harry Escott; production designer, Judy Becker; costume designer, David Robinson; editor, Joe Walker; producers, Iain Canning, Emile Sherman (See-Saw Films for Film 4 and the UK Film Council, in association with Alliance Films, Lipsync Productions and Hanway Films), UK, 2011, 100 minutes.
Screened: distributor advance press screening, Zon Lusomundo screening room, Lisbon, February 16th 2012.
Though sex addiction is the evident starting point of the tale, what Shame really is about at the bottom is people coming to terms with themselves. Brandon lives in a comfortable but self-reinforcing cocoon, an illusion of pristine, distant contact where commitment is off-limits and romanticism replaced by mechanical, atavistic desire. But the unexpected arrival of his chaotic sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan), a lounge singer in town for a run of shows, throws a spanner in the works and forces him to face the desperation and joylessness behind the facade of a successful ladies' man.
Mr. McQueen's work is as extraordinarily formalist here as it was in Hunger, yet never for its own sake, rather in order to point out a hidden emotional truth in the characters. He therefore goes back to the audacious long takes that were one of the most striking elements in his debut, but uses them now in the service of the story as windows into his characters' souls, from the remarkable speechless subway opening to the stupendous close-up of Ms. Mulligan's wondrous, decelerated cover version of "New York, New York". In this the director is much helped by the all-out commitment of his actors and especially of the fearlessly intense Mr. Fassbender, though Ms. Mulligan finally transcends her gamine image in a role that suggests a better choice of parts might lift her to Michelle Williams status. By the time the old cliche of the cleansing rain comes round towards the end of the film, Brandon's circle of emotions - almost like a trip through Dante's circles of hell - has been made complete and the title's programmatic nature made visible without the word ever having been uttered throughout, leaving the viewer utterly shaken and trying to make sense of what he's just seen.
A film that lingers in one's mind for weeks, maybe even months after we've seen it, even if not as strikingly unique as Hunger (whose quasi-experimental stylings have been all but smoothed out here), Shame is the second masterpiece in a row from Mr. McQueen.
Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale, Nicole Beharie.
Director, Steve McQueen; writers, Mr. McQueen, Abi Morgan; cinematography (colour by Deluxe, widescreen), Sean Bobbitt; music, Harry Escott; production designer, Judy Becker; costume designer, David Robinson; editor, Joe Walker; producers, Iain Canning, Emile Sherman (See-Saw Films for Film 4 and the UK Film Council, in association with Alliance Films, Lipsync Productions and Hanway Films), UK, 2011, 100 minutes.
Screened: distributor advance press screening, Zon Lusomundo screening room, Lisbon, February 16th 2012.
Friday, February 24, 2012
WAR HORSE
Much has been made of Steven Spielberg having shot on location, in actual film, with real actors and real horses, this deliberate throwback to grand family entertainment of Hollywood's golden age, and of his debt to a certain tradition of British cinema - especially after the all-digital environments of The Adventures of Tintin. Certainly, this is one of the director's films where his love of and for cinema, his innate classicism and eloquent storytelling flair best come to the forte. War Horse asks the question of how well Mr. Spielberg could have fit the American studio system and how much more the master he clearly is would be recognised if he had indeed been working within it in the 1940s/1950s. That such a system no longer exists is both heart and bane of War Horse, its impeccable cast of British stalwarts and defiantly hand-crafted production highlighting that it takes a director with the clout of Mr. Spielberg to mount such a movie today - and that even he can't fix the problems such a film eventually faces in this day and age.
The biggest of those problems is simply that Michael Morpurgo's kids' book on which it (and Nick Stafford's extraordinary stage play) is based is much too slight to sustain a 150-minute epic, especially since the tale of Joey, the horse that travels from the fields of Devon to the trenches of World War I, searched by Albert (Jeremy Irvine), the farmer's son who has bonded with him, is already episodic in nature. Some of the episodes (namely the French pastoral and the tragic escape of two German underage soldiers) come off essentially as padding that might have worked on the page but does little or nothing to advance the plot, and the peripatetic arc of events risks reducing War Horse to a predictable series of sketches.
That it doesn't, and that despite the staid moments the film remains so engrossing and even moving at times throughout, is thanks to Mr. Spielberg's skills as a visual storyteller, and the many pleasures he finds along the way (the way the film's opening, the British cavalry charge or the windmill execution say all that needs to be said through purely cinematic means are outstanding, for instance). There is almost a balletic grace in the way the films flows smoothly from one moment to another, its gentle rhythm, almost like a trot, masterfully shaped by the hands of editor Michael Kahn. It is almost as if Mr. Spielberg had decided to actually put in one film all that he is capable of as a filmmaker - and in doing so, he makes War Horse something more than just a vanity project (made more for himself than for an audience that may no longer exist for a film as old-fashioned as this is), but something less than a classic. But what a glorious less-than-classic this is!
Emily Watson, David Thewlis, Peter Mullan, Niels Arestrup, Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irvine, Benedict Cumberbatch, Toby Kebbell.
Director, Steven Spielberg; screenplay, Lee Hall, Richard Curtis, from the novel by Michael Morpurgo, War Horse, and its stage adaptation by Nick Stafford; cinematography, Janusz Kaminski (Deluxe prints, widescreen); music, John Williams; production designer, Rick Carter; costume designer, Joanna Johnston; editor, Michael Kahn; producers, Mr. Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy (Dreamworks Pictures, Reliance Entertainment, Amblin Entertainment, The Kennedy/Marshall Company), USA/India, 2011, 146 minutes.
Screened: distributor advance press screening, Zon Lusomundo Colombo 1 (Lisbon), February 17th 2012.
The biggest of those problems is simply that Michael Morpurgo's kids' book on which it (and Nick Stafford's extraordinary stage play) is based is much too slight to sustain a 150-minute epic, especially since the tale of Joey, the horse that travels from the fields of Devon to the trenches of World War I, searched by Albert (Jeremy Irvine), the farmer's son who has bonded with him, is already episodic in nature. Some of the episodes (namely the French pastoral and the tragic escape of two German underage soldiers) come off essentially as padding that might have worked on the page but does little or nothing to advance the plot, and the peripatetic arc of events risks reducing War Horse to a predictable series of sketches.
That it doesn't, and that despite the staid moments the film remains so engrossing and even moving at times throughout, is thanks to Mr. Spielberg's skills as a visual storyteller, and the many pleasures he finds along the way (the way the film's opening, the British cavalry charge or the windmill execution say all that needs to be said through purely cinematic means are outstanding, for instance). There is almost a balletic grace in the way the films flows smoothly from one moment to another, its gentle rhythm, almost like a trot, masterfully shaped by the hands of editor Michael Kahn. It is almost as if Mr. Spielberg had decided to actually put in one film all that he is capable of as a filmmaker - and in doing so, he makes War Horse something more than just a vanity project (made more for himself than for an audience that may no longer exist for a film as old-fashioned as this is), but something less than a classic. But what a glorious less-than-classic this is!
Emily Watson, David Thewlis, Peter Mullan, Niels Arestrup, Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irvine, Benedict Cumberbatch, Toby Kebbell.
Director, Steven Spielberg; screenplay, Lee Hall, Richard Curtis, from the novel by Michael Morpurgo, War Horse, and its stage adaptation by Nick Stafford; cinematography, Janusz Kaminski (Deluxe prints, widescreen); music, John Williams; production designer, Rick Carter; costume designer, Joanna Johnston; editor, Michael Kahn; producers, Mr. Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy (Dreamworks Pictures, Reliance Entertainment, Amblin Entertainment, The Kennedy/Marshall Company), USA/India, 2011, 146 minutes.
Screened: distributor advance press screening, Zon Lusomundo Colombo 1 (Lisbon), February 17th 2012.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
LA GUERRE EST DÉCLARÉE
DECLARATION OF WAR
There is far too much going on around French actress/director Valérie Donzelli's sophomore film to be able to focus exclusively on its cinematic qualities, good as they may be. This is simply because it's impossible, no matter how much you try, to separate the film's premise from the story it tells. And that is a tall order in itself, as La Guerre est déclarée is that tricky staple, the illness melodrama, describing what happens when the two-year-old child of a young Parisian couple (played by the director and Jérémie Elkaïm) is diagnosed with a malignant tumour.
Pretty much the big miracle of Ms. Donzelli's film is that it deliberately refuses the traps such a premise sets up, preferring to turn its attention away from the misery and drama to the insouciant energy of celebrating life, following the couple as they make sure that every single moment is meaningful is worthwhile, both for them and for their child. That alone would be enough to set La Guerre est déclarée apart, but it's even more amazing that Ms. Donzelli pulls it off so successfully for most of the film, by making it not so much about the illness as about the love story between the couple, slyly called Roméo and Juliette, and how they decide to make a pact to defy death by using that love as shield and armour against the dark days ahead.
It doesn't work all the way: the battle against disease does sap your energies and, just as Roméo and Juliette are at some point spent and their attempt to laugh in the face of death turns into an exhausting routine, so does the film run out of the pop energy that boosted it, and begins skirting the edges of a more conventional relationship melodrama, even if smarter and dryer-eyed than most. It was probably far too much to expect Ms. Donzelli to keep it up through an entire film, but it's no less an honourable try, not in the least because it's her own story that she is fictionalising in the film. It was her own, and her co-star and co-writer Mr. Elkaïm, child that was diagnosed with a malignant tumour, it was their own experience they are retelling (even though by the time the film was made they were no longer a couple), and even though the film isn't a straight account of real events, that proximity to real life renders it a peculiar experience: it leads the film into an unusual territory of personal exposure that is as exhilarating as it is uncomfortable, and that will inescapably shape your own perception of La Guerre est déclarée.
Valérie Donzelli, Jérémie Elkaïm, César Desseix, Gabriel Elkaïm; Brigitte Sy, Elina Löwensohn, Michèle Moretti, Philippe Laudenbach, Bastien Bouillon; Béatrice de Staël, Anne le Ny, Frédéric Pierrot, Élisabeth Dion.
Director, Ms. Donzelli; writers, Ms. Donzelli, Mr. Elkaïm; cinematography, Sébastien Buchmann (colour, widescreen); production designer, Gaëlle Usandivaras; costume designer, Élisabeth Méhu; editor, Pauline Gaillard; producer, Édouard Weil (Rectangle Productions in association with Wild Bunch, Cofinova 7, Uni Étoile 8, ARTE, Cofinova 6), France, 2011, 100 minutes.
Screened: Lisbon & Estoril Film Festival 2011 competition advance DVD screener, Lisbon, November 6th 2011.
La Guerre est déclarée - Bande Annonce por wildbunch-distrib
There is far too much going on around French actress/director Valérie Donzelli's sophomore film to be able to focus exclusively on its cinematic qualities, good as they may be. This is simply because it's impossible, no matter how much you try, to separate the film's premise from the story it tells. And that is a tall order in itself, as La Guerre est déclarée is that tricky staple, the illness melodrama, describing what happens when the two-year-old child of a young Parisian couple (played by the director and Jérémie Elkaïm) is diagnosed with a malignant tumour.
Pretty much the big miracle of Ms. Donzelli's film is that it deliberately refuses the traps such a premise sets up, preferring to turn its attention away from the misery and drama to the insouciant energy of celebrating life, following the couple as they make sure that every single moment is meaningful is worthwhile, both for them and for their child. That alone would be enough to set La Guerre est déclarée apart, but it's even more amazing that Ms. Donzelli pulls it off so successfully for most of the film, by making it not so much about the illness as about the love story between the couple, slyly called Roméo and Juliette, and how they decide to make a pact to defy death by using that love as shield and armour against the dark days ahead.
It doesn't work all the way: the battle against disease does sap your energies and, just as Roméo and Juliette are at some point spent and their attempt to laugh in the face of death turns into an exhausting routine, so does the film run out of the pop energy that boosted it, and begins skirting the edges of a more conventional relationship melodrama, even if smarter and dryer-eyed than most. It was probably far too much to expect Ms. Donzelli to keep it up through an entire film, but it's no less an honourable try, not in the least because it's her own story that she is fictionalising in the film. It was her own, and her co-star and co-writer Mr. Elkaïm, child that was diagnosed with a malignant tumour, it was their own experience they are retelling (even though by the time the film was made they were no longer a couple), and even though the film isn't a straight account of real events, that proximity to real life renders it a peculiar experience: it leads the film into an unusual territory of personal exposure that is as exhilarating as it is uncomfortable, and that will inescapably shape your own perception of La Guerre est déclarée.
Valérie Donzelli, Jérémie Elkaïm, César Desseix, Gabriel Elkaïm; Brigitte Sy, Elina Löwensohn, Michèle Moretti, Philippe Laudenbach, Bastien Bouillon; Béatrice de Staël, Anne le Ny, Frédéric Pierrot, Élisabeth Dion.
Director, Ms. Donzelli; writers, Ms. Donzelli, Mr. Elkaïm; cinematography, Sébastien Buchmann (colour, widescreen); production designer, Gaëlle Usandivaras; costume designer, Élisabeth Méhu; editor, Pauline Gaillard; producer, Édouard Weil (Rectangle Productions in association with Wild Bunch, Cofinova 7, Uni Étoile 8, ARTE, Cofinova 6), France, 2011, 100 minutes.
Screened: Lisbon & Estoril Film Festival 2011 competition advance DVD screener, Lisbon, November 6th 2011.
La Guerre est déclarée - Bande Annonce por wildbunch-distrib
Thursday, February 16, 2012
LE HAVRE
Over a 30-year career, Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki has carved himself a very particular niche in the world of contemporary arthouse cinema, as if he sidesteps most of everything everyone else is chasing and looks for something else entirely, often hidden in the folds of classic film history. In that sense, Le Havre, his 16th full-length feature (and first in five years) brings nothing new to the table - still the same old deadpan humour (and veteran comedian Pierre Étaix has a brief supporting role), the carefully tended balance of despair and wide-eyed humour, the deliberate throwback to the cinema of an earlier age, charmingly stylized in the way it never tries to be self-consciously "modern" while knowing it can never be truly "classic".
But Mr. Kaurismäki's wry stylisation is indeed leavened in Le Havre by a more openly humanist philosophy, by a deliberate engagement with a specific reality of the world outside his universe, through the tale, set in a popular neighborhood of the title French harbour town, of an illegal immigrant boy (Blondin Miguel) trying to evade the border patrol, taken in by a struggling shoeshine (a wonderful André Wilms) whose wife (Kati Outinen) is in the hospital with a possibly grave illness. Evoking deliberately the French cinema of the 1930s - whether in its Popular Front or dour, Quai des Brumes-like atmospherics - but also the later laconicisms of the polar (Melville is always around the corner, like in the ambiguous policeman played by Jean-Pierre Darroussin), Mr. Kaurismäki pulls off what may be his most accessible film, a fanciful yet heartwarming treat that is always fully aware of its status as a well-meaning fable but does not refuse to engage the world outside.
Ironically, that engagement with the contemporary handling of illegal immigration in France is the film's weakest link - the intrusion of reality somehow shatters some of the old-fashioned magic of the film, highlights just how self-contained and self-centred the director's universe has become. Whether Le Havre will expand the director's following beyond his usual coterie of aficionados is anyone's guess, but it certainly is the ideal entry point for those who've been hearing about him for 30 years and haven't yet dipped their toes in.
André Wilms, Kati Outinen, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Blondin Miguel, Elina Salo, Evelyne Didi, Quoc-Dung Nguyen.
Director/writer, Aki Kaurismäki; cinematography (colour, processing by Éclair), Timo Salminen; production designer, Wouter Zoon; costume designer, Frédéric Cambier; editor, Timo Linnasalo; producer, Mr. Kaurismäki (Sputnik, Pyramide Productions, Pandora Film, ARTE France Cinéma, ZDF/ARTE), Finland/France/Germany, 2011, 93 minutes.
Screened: distributor advance press screening, UCI El Corte Inglés 12, February 2nd 2012.
But Mr. Kaurismäki's wry stylisation is indeed leavened in Le Havre by a more openly humanist philosophy, by a deliberate engagement with a specific reality of the world outside his universe, through the tale, set in a popular neighborhood of the title French harbour town, of an illegal immigrant boy (Blondin Miguel) trying to evade the border patrol, taken in by a struggling shoeshine (a wonderful André Wilms) whose wife (Kati Outinen) is in the hospital with a possibly grave illness. Evoking deliberately the French cinema of the 1930s - whether in its Popular Front or dour, Quai des Brumes-like atmospherics - but also the later laconicisms of the polar (Melville is always around the corner, like in the ambiguous policeman played by Jean-Pierre Darroussin), Mr. Kaurismäki pulls off what may be his most accessible film, a fanciful yet heartwarming treat that is always fully aware of its status as a well-meaning fable but does not refuse to engage the world outside.
Ironically, that engagement with the contemporary handling of illegal immigration in France is the film's weakest link - the intrusion of reality somehow shatters some of the old-fashioned magic of the film, highlights just how self-contained and self-centred the director's universe has become. Whether Le Havre will expand the director's following beyond his usual coterie of aficionados is anyone's guess, but it certainly is the ideal entry point for those who've been hearing about him for 30 years and haven't yet dipped their toes in.
André Wilms, Kati Outinen, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Blondin Miguel, Elina Salo, Evelyne Didi, Quoc-Dung Nguyen.
Director/writer, Aki Kaurismäki; cinematography (colour, processing by Éclair), Timo Salminen; production designer, Wouter Zoon; costume designer, Frédéric Cambier; editor, Timo Linnasalo; producer, Mr. Kaurismäki (Sputnik, Pyramide Productions, Pandora Film, ARTE France Cinéma, ZDF/ARTE), Finland/France/Germany, 2011, 93 minutes.
Screened: distributor advance press screening, UCI El Corte Inglés 12, February 2nd 2012.
Monday, February 13, 2012
PAIXÃO
It quickly becomes clear that Paixão isn't your traditional narrative film; rather a filmmaker's conceptual essay, a theoretical attempt at running with an abstract idea towards an artistic statement. It is, however, somewhat difficult to fathom exactly what is the artistic statement in Margarida Gil's fifth full-length feature, other than it is a dazzling photographed, exquisitely assembled aesthetic delight. But despite the lush visuals and setups, the film is narratively so rarefied and airless that it's worth asking what exactly Ms. Gil is trying to get at with this story of a grieving singer (Ana Brandão) who holds a budding writer (Carloto Cotta) hostage in a sound-proofed room in a decaying Lisbon palace under renovation.
Is it suggesting that love is a tight-rope walk over a collapsing bridge, that emotional violence is inescapable in the modern world, that the absence of love will drive you to desperate acts? It's anyone's guess, and we're neither none the worse nor none the wiser by the end of this slight, 70-minute-plus-credits experience - film does not have to reveal instantly all of its secrets. But the fact remains that this is essentially an abstract construct entirely lacking in dramatic interest, the highly erudite literary dialogue co-written by novelist Maria Velho da Costa heightening the sense of an intellectual after-dinner treat, not even veteran Acácio de Almeida's sumptuous cinematography nor the best efforts of the actors (who we've seen put to better use elsewhere) raising it above a spare, dry opaqueness. This is simply so personal and idiossyncratic as to be accessible only to whatever fans this rare director may have, with little or no interest for general audiences and a career destined to remain in the fringes of the festival and arthouse circuit.
Ana Brandão, Carloto Cotta, Gonçalo Amorim, Sandra Faleiro.
Director, Margarida Gil; screenplay, Ms. Gil, Maria Velho da Costa; cinematography, Acácio de Almeida (colour by Light Film); art director, Nuno Esteves; editor, Paulo Mil Homens; producer, Paulo Branco (Alfama Films Production, Clap Filmes), Portugal/France, 2011, 75 minutes.
Is it suggesting that love is a tight-rope walk over a collapsing bridge, that emotional violence is inescapable in the modern world, that the absence of love will drive you to desperate acts? It's anyone's guess, and we're neither none the worse nor none the wiser by the end of this slight, 70-minute-plus-credits experience - film does not have to reveal instantly all of its secrets. But the fact remains that this is essentially an abstract construct entirely lacking in dramatic interest, the highly erudite literary dialogue co-written by novelist Maria Velho da Costa heightening the sense of an intellectual after-dinner treat, not even veteran Acácio de Almeida's sumptuous cinematography nor the best efforts of the actors (who we've seen put to better use elsewhere) raising it above a spare, dry opaqueness. This is simply so personal and idiossyncratic as to be accessible only to whatever fans this rare director may have, with little or no interest for general audiences and a career destined to remain in the fringes of the festival and arthouse circuit.
Ana Brandão, Carloto Cotta, Gonçalo Amorim, Sandra Faleiro.
Director, Margarida Gil; screenplay, Ms. Gil, Maria Velho da Costa; cinematography, Acácio de Almeida (colour by Light Film); art director, Nuno Esteves; editor, Paulo Mil Homens; producer, Paulo Branco (Alfama Films Production, Clap Filmes), Portugal/France, 2011, 75 minutes.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
SALÒ O LE 120 GIORNATE DI SODOMA
SALÒ, OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM
Seldom has the terrifying banality of evil been so forcefully depicted on screen as in Italian iconoclast Pier Paolo Pasolini's filmed testament, an oppressive, claustrophobic setting of the Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom in the final throes of WWII Italian fascism. Banned and/or censored in many places and still today a discomfiting, disquieting experience, Salò is not just an immediate, visceral one but especially an intellectual, allegorical one.
The tale of four dignitaries that round up a group of local boys and girls to be subjected to an endless series of depraved games is obviously meant to resonate with the horrors of World War II and absolute power, but also with the subsequent oblivion and forgetfulness of them. Mr. Pasolini, though, does not forget, neither does he stop there; despite all the hullabaloo surrounding the film's disturbingly graphic depictions of coprophilia or torture, the offending visuals are actually few and far between and it's the spoken word that fleshes out the horror and makes it more disturbing. The continuous, endless narration, quoting at length from literary criticism works from Roland Barthes or Pierre Klossowski, creates a hypnotic vortex of humiliation and suggestion that heightens the film's increasingly progressing oppressiveness. The muted, bourgeois ambiance of the prologue and of the stately villa outside Salò - the site of Mussolini's Fascist Republic in the last days of WWII Italy - where everything takes place inexorably give way to a grotesque, claustrophobic entropy. As the unholy pleasures chased by the four men and their four female entertainers spiral into an endless loop of humiliation and sadism, the "little death" usually identified with the physical orgasm becomes purely mental, multiplied a thousandfold until nothing else remains but the sheer fatigue of addictive, self-consuming voyeurism.
Designed as a nihilistic counterpoint to his earlier "trilogy of life" and as a first step in a "trilogy of death" that the director's brutal death shortly before the film's premiere in late 1975 left forever unfinished, Salò is a prime example of purely illustrative, intellectual film-making. Mr. Pasolini's geometric, almost neutral setups are essentially functional, merely at the service of the film's theoretical agenda of meditation on the nature and banality of power and evil, but have lost none of their capacity to disturb. It may no longer be necessarily shocking, but few films remain as thoughtfully provocative as this.
Paolo Bonacelli, Giorgio Cataldi, Umberto Quintavalle, Aldo Valletti, Caterina Boratto, Elsa de Giorgi, Hélène Surgère, Sonia Saviange.
Director, Pier Paolo Pasolini; screenplay, Mr. Pasolini with Sergio Citti, from the book by the Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom; cinematography, Tonino delli Colli (colour by Technicolor); musical director, Ennio Morricone; production designer, Dante Ferretti; costume designer, Danilo Donati; editors, Nino Baragli, Enzo Ocone; producer, Alberto Grimaldi (Produzione Europee Associate, Les Productions Artistes Associés), Italy/France, 1975, 117 minutes.
Screened: Cinemateca Portuguesa - Dr. Félix Ribeiro Theatre, Lisbon, February 10th 2012.
Please note: the trailer below includes images that may shock or disturb some viewers.
Seldom has the terrifying banality of evil been so forcefully depicted on screen as in Italian iconoclast Pier Paolo Pasolini's filmed testament, an oppressive, claustrophobic setting of the Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom in the final throes of WWII Italian fascism. Banned and/or censored in many places and still today a discomfiting, disquieting experience, Salò is not just an immediate, visceral one but especially an intellectual, allegorical one.
The tale of four dignitaries that round up a group of local boys and girls to be subjected to an endless series of depraved games is obviously meant to resonate with the horrors of World War II and absolute power, but also with the subsequent oblivion and forgetfulness of them. Mr. Pasolini, though, does not forget, neither does he stop there; despite all the hullabaloo surrounding the film's disturbingly graphic depictions of coprophilia or torture, the offending visuals are actually few and far between and it's the spoken word that fleshes out the horror and makes it more disturbing. The continuous, endless narration, quoting at length from literary criticism works from Roland Barthes or Pierre Klossowski, creates a hypnotic vortex of humiliation and suggestion that heightens the film's increasingly progressing oppressiveness. The muted, bourgeois ambiance of the prologue and of the stately villa outside Salò - the site of Mussolini's Fascist Republic in the last days of WWII Italy - where everything takes place inexorably give way to a grotesque, claustrophobic entropy. As the unholy pleasures chased by the four men and their four female entertainers spiral into an endless loop of humiliation and sadism, the "little death" usually identified with the physical orgasm becomes purely mental, multiplied a thousandfold until nothing else remains but the sheer fatigue of addictive, self-consuming voyeurism.
Designed as a nihilistic counterpoint to his earlier "trilogy of life" and as a first step in a "trilogy of death" that the director's brutal death shortly before the film's premiere in late 1975 left forever unfinished, Salò is a prime example of purely illustrative, intellectual film-making. Mr. Pasolini's geometric, almost neutral setups are essentially functional, merely at the service of the film's theoretical agenda of meditation on the nature and banality of power and evil, but have lost none of their capacity to disturb. It may no longer be necessarily shocking, but few films remain as thoughtfully provocative as this.
Paolo Bonacelli, Giorgio Cataldi, Umberto Quintavalle, Aldo Valletti, Caterina Boratto, Elsa de Giorgi, Hélène Surgère, Sonia Saviange.
Director, Pier Paolo Pasolini; screenplay, Mr. Pasolini with Sergio Citti, from the book by the Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom; cinematography, Tonino delli Colli (colour by Technicolor); musical director, Ennio Morricone; production designer, Dante Ferretti; costume designer, Danilo Donati; editors, Nino Baragli, Enzo Ocone; producer, Alberto Grimaldi (Produzione Europee Associate, Les Productions Artistes Associés), Italy/France, 1975, 117 minutes.
Screened: Cinemateca Portuguesa - Dr. Félix Ribeiro Theatre, Lisbon, February 10th 2012.
Please note: the trailer below includes images that may shock or disturb some viewers.