Showing posts with label Paris. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paris. Show all posts

Monday 4 January 2016

We hate him, because he’s immortal* (work in progress)

This is a review of Let’s Get Lost (1988)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


20 November

This is a review of Let’s Get Lost (1988)

Referenced in a review of Orion : The Man Who Would Be King (2015) - to help to demonstrate that film's superiority (in telling a musician's life and handling the conflicts of pursuing a career) - Let’s Get Lost (1988) is a film about jazz trumpeter and vocalist Chet Baker. (It appears not to have been screened in the UK until 6 June 2008 (at Cambridge Film Festival).)

It can hardly be accused of being over adulatory, in the way that Iris (2014) or Mavis ! (2015) easily appear to be, but it had the luxury of working with a subject who was no longer living, but whom it had shot in the year before his death. Yet one probably thinks too much of its possible influence, if one conceives that its portrayal of him as a bad cat could have affected people in the way that his music (or recordings of it) did and have continued to do.

For reasons that seem questionable (and in footage not obviously falsified by its context), it dished up to us images of Baker, then 58, being schmoozed by two attractive women, seemingly fans, in the back of an open-topped car, or on the dodgems. If one did not know of his life, this proved not to be candid documentary-filming of a jazzer’s celebrity life-style, but a directorially conceived treat for Baker – in reference to which, much later on, we hear him sounding unduly thankful :

It is as if ‘treating’ him in this way, when he is open that he likes getting stoned** (which may indicate a suggestible personality ?), licenses other footage where, for example, he is patently on camera with the film-makers, but is, for no very good reason, shown glamour shots of naked (or near-naked) women, and invited to comment. One feels for Baker, involved in some sort of tribute to him that does not seem very bothered about whether it even appears to be exploiting him, but he does have enough composure simply to remark nice-looking ladies : maybe, more than twenty-five years later, ethical considerations are different about one’s documentary subject, but it is not as if one does not hear the film-makers (they are good enough to allow us) talking to Baker in a way where one must reasonably doubt that they can be unaware where the balance of power lies.


In reviewing Orion, the laboured artiness of this film’s look was critiqued, but it even extends to mimicking what Hitchcock does, after Norman Bates’ (Anthony Perkins’) attack in Psycho (1960), with Marion Crane’s (Janet Leigh’s) eye, taking us right up to it, and then rotating it, so that it resembles less an eye than a vulva. A victory of form over significant content ? Well, in those terms (even if that reference seems gratuitous, it is momentary), its ‘style’ is not the worst of the excesses of the film :

For no apparent reason (other than that, amongst everyone else, he eventually mentions Baker ?), screen-time is taken with a rambling interview with actor Lawrence Trimble, name-dropping in a slow way about when he was in Paris and drifting around the jazz-club Le Chat Qui Pêche, and the likes of Bud Powell. On one level, by being allowed to go on so long, Trimble hangs himself, but so could, probably, any of the others in Chet Baker’s life – and except that, unlike with them, neither the film, nor Trimble seems to trouble to establish what connection he had with Baker (except as another name). Writers have their treasured phrases / sentences, but they sooner or later refuse, however delightful they are, to find a place where they fit, and have to go : this interview, for similar reasons, should never have made this self-indulgent cut, where one did not take long to start hoping that there was less of it, not more, to see.


The discussion of this film in the review of Orion wants to point up how Let’s Get Lost also keeps ringing the changes on the message in what one interviewee has said (Diane Vavra, as one recalls ?) : You’ll never really know when Chet is being sincere. So, rather than considering, in equivalent depth, other matters such as the super footage (courtesy of Pathé) of Baker’s appearance at Cannes Film Festival in 1987 (the year before his death), it hops around - guiding you, in these juxtapositions, only by how he looks at any time – from young Baker, to much younger, to older (though, during a recording session, we do hear much of the song ‘Imagination is funny’). Just because it can (?), it interweaves these moments with critiques of him as a person, from those who want to say what , beneath a surface, he was ‘really like’.

As with the arty appearance, the film may be of its time in that it presents a male friend who tells how Baker supplanted him in his fractional absence from sexual intercourse, and, consequently, how that satisfied partner (still having thought that it was he) always wants to go to bed with him, but the story, if it even sounded plausible, is obviously of a double-edged variety : although Baker is thereby credited as a titanic lover, it is in the context of being painted as unscrupulous and opportunistic, and only fortuitously ‘benefiting’ the persons whom he had wronged (one of whom, somehow (?), remained unaware). Yet were we watching this ‘account’ to be Baker’s moral judge, or to learn something relevant to his trumpet-playing and singing ?

The review of Orion touched on the status of Jacqueline du Pré as a musician versus what we are required to concentrate on in Hilary and Jackie (1998), where Emily Watson plays her in the role of being the sister of Hilary du Pré-Finzi (Rachel Griffiths) - with all that is entailed for their relationships, both with each other, and with others : quite in tune with the story about Chet Baker jumping into bed with a woman and assuming the narrator’s place...

Rather strenuously, with what Let’s Get Lost chooses to show, almost no stone seemed to have been left unturned to say that, with Baker performing a song, the experiences that resulted from the occasion were not felt by him in that moment, but were a calculated and manipulative act. In this respect, though, when we hear ‘eager’ questions - such as asking how many wives he has had - from those surrounding him, as he is being filmed for this project, we know that they already know, and that they are just ‘acting dumb’ in the enquiry and with their responses. Or, when Bruce Weber and his editor are deciding to give us a moment that has been caught where Baker says I’m always looking for my lighter, placing it*** in such a way in the film so that it sounds ‘significant’ and noteworthy, not just banal : if Baker was pretending to feel an emotion in a song, film itself is an even bigger constructed reality.


[...]


End-notes

* What is that (song ?) reference ?

** One interviewee talks about when Baker and she ‘got lost on a sail-boat’, thereby explicating the film’s title.

*** Both at what point (how far in / in what other company) in the film, and how the scene is contextualized within itself (what came before the remark, to frame it, and how is it allowed to hang in the air)...




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Sunday 11 August 2013

Frances Aha !

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


10 August

So, why did I write what I did as a footnote to my review of Frances Ha (2012) ?


These are my clues (in roughly chronological order) :

* Colleen (Charlotte D'Amboise) is a figure of huge importance in Frances' life. (No reason why she should not be.)

* However, although Colleen several times indicates to Frances that she does not have time to talk at the moment*, but will have later, Frances persists, seemingly unaware of the (social) cues

* Frances, just before Colleen makes clear - in a nice way that acknowledges Frances, but asserts her need - that she has to get on with the wadge of correspondence, Frances blurts out that she is pleased that she asked Colleen about classes, and, in fact, she is more pleased that she felt able to ask than disappointed that, as it turns out, Colleen does not (think that she can) offer her any work

* At the flat, when she has moved in with Benjy and Lev, Frances says that she has plans for Sunday when offered a bacon-and-egg roll - and is then shown, having stayed and eating such a roll

* When Colleen tells Frances that she will not be able to use her for the Christmas show, Frances is busy with the things that have come from her bag (a small rucksack that is almost always with her), and apologetically says that 'leaving' is a problem for her

* In framing what she has to say to Frances, Colleen says that she has told her with a few days' warning so that Frances will have a chance to process the information

* Colleen knows that it is bad news for Frances (indeed, Frances has to move out from sharing with Lev and Benjy, and - it is unclear for how long - goes to her parents' house)

* However, Colleen is quick to make sure that the door is not felt to be shut on Frances, by saying that they will talk about the future when things resume in February


* The impulsive trip to Paris :

** The cost, put on a credit card that came through the post, and which, at the time, Frances is happy with (she meets Benjy and his girlfriend (?) in the street just after she has made the decision and explains her plan), though later has to agree with her parents that it had been a mistake

** Wanting to see Abby (one of the old gang of which Sophie and she were part, and whose 'politics' Frances had been talking about at the dinner table), she nevertheless goes to Paris without knowing that Abby is there and free to see her, and persists in efforts to make contact

** The assumption that the meeting with Colleen is so important that it cannot be moved to allow her longer in Paris (perhaps Frances dare not ask this time ?)



The film had affected me when I reviewed it, but I found Frances' relation to life more moving still the second time around, and felt particularly keenly for her when she :

* Has left her parents at Sacramento airport (and, symbolically, re-ascended the escalator)

* Realizes that she has said too much - and why - after the account that she gives of herself after dinner at the party

* Is at the table outside the café, both before Sophie rings, and when and how Frances signs off

* Realizes that Sophie has gone after she crashed with Frances in the dormitory, and desperately hurries outside to call out to the departing taxi


The film is not completely about this, but the themes of abandonment are strong


End-notes

* As a dancer who has to do management work, as Colleen ironically comments.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Thursday 1 August 2013

Too good to be true ?

This is a review of Frances Ha (2012)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


1 August

This is a review of Frances Ha (2012)

* Contains spoilers *

I had heard such positive noises about Frances Ha (2012) that I feared that I would be disappointed - and would squirm. But my worry was groundless, and I have nothing but praise for the film and for Greta Gerwig, who co-wrote it, as well as starring.

The script had all the urbanity of, say, Dianne Wiest as Holly and her friend and business partner April (played by Carrie Fisher) in Hannah and her Sisters (1986), and one likewise felt that, just as Woody Allen produces very good parts for himself (apart from giving himself the lion's share of the jokes), so Gerwig gauged her own nuances perfectly in the writing. (Allen gave her the part of Sally in To Rome with Love (2012), which, of course, does not surprise.)

The film is shot in monochrome, and uses a montage to give us quickly the breadth of the relationship between Frances and her best friend Sophie (Mickey Sumner). Coincidentally, and in no ways as a detraction from this film's originality and expressive power, I found myself reminded of those long-lost stories of another inhabitant of New York and her sister, from the t.v. series Rhoda : not pressing the similarities, but the quirkiness, the humanity, and the sense of being an individual.

Frances is gorgeously composed and shot, edited with style and precision, and the music is as it should be, so unobtrusive that, when one sees the list of what has been used, one is boggled not to have noticed so much of it, even well-known classical pieces. To prove the rule, two deliberately prominent tracks are David Bowie's 'Modern Love' and 'Every 1's a Winner' by Hot Chocolate, which feel just right, both in their exact context, and their emotional contribution.

So who is Frances exactly ? I shall say nothing about the film's title other than that one is kept waiting right to the end*, where we feel again the healthily pragmatic and impulsive part of Frances' character to the fore. Throughout, she is her own woman, and those who struggled with the role of Poppy in Mike Leigh's Happy-go-Lucky (2008), an excellent piece of work by Sally Hawkins, might be reminded of it.

If one took seriously what IMDb's headline statement had to say about Frances, one would think that she is simply a dreamer, which she is not : I do not believe that Poppy or Frances is an incurable optimist, but that they have a not infallible sense of others' hurts and susceptibilities, and live their lives trying to take account of them. (Unlike me before this film, Frances approaches things, and people, with expectancy.)

Sumner and Gerwig have to be singled out since, just as Poppy has her trusted flatmate in Zoe (Alexis Zegerman) for their own bohemian world, they are at the heart of the film (though a heart that beats at a distance when Sophie goes to Tokyo), but everyone seems well cast, and to give of their very best as part of the ensemble.

The film covers a lot of ground, and feels a lot like a portrait of Frances done with honesty and compassion : quite naturally, I believe that one feels for her, whether it is being let down about the Christmas show, or finding that a conversation with new room-mates Lev and Benji that she relied on about rent has been forgotten.

A key scene is the rather awkward dinner-party with friends of another room-mate, this time reluctant, where we learn a lot about where Frances stands in relation to others who are not of her kind - with Benji, she was able to communicate naturally, whereas these people seem unable to understand even when, metatextually, she drunkenly tries to explain what makes her able to get on with people.

Perhaps a bit of a loner, an outsider, she is still valued, and she sticks to her convictions. (In this connection, whatever dancer Gerwig may be, the film wisely limits what we see of her on her feet, choosing instead to show her nimbleness as she runs and twirls with ease along the streets of New York and of Paris, so that the status as dancer is established, but does not distract.)

In Poppy, one might have felt that her vibrant persona in the world was a response to something deeper. What we get to know of Frances, with her spontaneity and with a problematic way with money, makes a similar hint, not to be much dwelt on**, but noticed. What I take away is a special person, loving and caring (even for someone whom she does not know who is sad), and a bit of an outsider. If this is what Miranda July had in mind in The Future, I believe that she is way off, whereas Gerwig and the film's co-writer and director, Noah Baumbach, are spot on.


End-notes

* But there is a joke from A. A. Milne...

** Unless one's bedtime reading is informed by such things as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, and it guides trying to understand a whole person : one would quickly rule out high-functioning autism, but ponder a mild form of bi-polar disorder, or even traits of borderline personality disorder, on which more here...

Also, I'm not sure that it's just not having the money that means that Sophie has a mobile on which she can get e-mail and Frances hasn't, or that Frances has a computer that she doubts will enable her to communicate with a distant Sophie as suggested. Even if she could, I don't see Frances spending on those things, because her priorities, her notions of relations, are different : Sophie makes an up-beat blog in Tokyo so that her mother will not worry, whereas, tellingly, Frances envisages her mother seeing the truth on her own blog and coping with it. (I forget the quotation, but the word 'depressed' / 'depressing' is used.)


Wednesday 29 August 2012

Luc Besson looks prolific

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


30 August
* Contains some spoilers *

That is the impression created by Besson's page on www.imdb.com.

I have caught up with Angel-A (2005), and found it an engrossing adventure for Jamel Debbouze as André and Rie Rasmussen playing Angela as Capra met City of Angels (1998), not in Los Angeles, but Paris. Rasmussen I feel sure that I should have known (although I turn out not to know
her other work, but she was a good emotional and physical foil to Debbouze (who played a strong role in Let's Talk About the Rain (2008)), and they worked well as a team, stalking around an often deserted city, although there is many a twilight shot just of him, walking across a deserted bridge.

Bridges give a sort of loose connection of theme with Leconte's The Girl on the Bridge (1999), but the real tie is with a take on It's a Wonderful Life (1946) (whose Donna Reed so impressed me at a screening, appropriately on Christmas Eve, when last seen): Angela is bold and self-assured in life and in her sexiness in a way that André is not, and she is a pre-echo of the title role in Besson's The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec (2010), as is the humour.

With Jimmy Stewart, it is easy to see that he does not deserve his lot, though he cannot see all that he has done to improve people's lives, whereas with André, not that it matters, it is the beauty of what Angela can see in him that turns out to count, both for him and for her, in this well-imagined and gloriously photographed embrace with Paris, and with these two people who dance around it.

Saturday 10 March 2012

My unusual job

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


19 March

I live under one of the bridges of the Île de la Cité - I'm not saying which, and I change from time to time, but that's where I sleep, and have my home.

I choose to live there, as I have an important duty to carry out, and it's just that I feel more comfortable with this way of life.

By day, my business is bananas, 'hands' of bananas they call them in English (but not in French), and I inspect them wherever they are to be found, and they are even to be found in very small quantities in Les Halles, an area where once they abounded.

I smell them, feel them, taste them, so that I know where the best specimens are to be found at any time - the bananas that are most fresh, most juicy, and more like a peach than many one knows.

The true Frenchman and -woman value this information, because they have a native passion akin to that of Gauguin, so they scan my column, which tells them everything that they need to know, first by arrondisement and by the style of fruit within each (because there is no one such thing, o no, as a banana any more than 'a white wine').

But I also give links to the neighbouring arrondisements, so that my readers can choose: someone in the fifth might be the wrong side, and be nearer to a good supplier on the sixth, so I think that through for him or her and have a feature that cross-references in that way.

And I do very well on it. I remain anonymous, with a wealth of disguises to make my visits, and I receive a big bag of letters every week from those grateful to me for what I do, so I am content.


Saturday 17 September 2011

Not waving, but drowning

More views of - or at - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


17 September

As expected, Liam Cunningham (as Jack Cope) was excellent in Black Butterflies, but Carice van Houten, playing poet Ingrid Jonker, was a revelation. To those in the know, she perfectly carried out a role that betrayed the traits of impetuosity, feeling abandoned, blaming others, promiscuity, drinking too much in order to feel safe and able to cope, and becoming overwhelmed by conflicting emotions, which characterize some common personality disorders (they would probably have called them neuroses then).

Yet, as is by no means inconsistent, her character was delightful, and she filled the screen with feeling, from seducing Jack, and showing the characters’ hunger for each other in the very beautiful sex-scenes, to hurling objects at him with extreme force. There are claims that she was had other lovers, but Eugene and Jack, the ones who are definite, both find her draining, as well they would. A force for life is hard to live with, after all.

Rutger Hauer as Ingrid’s father (eerily resembling my former university tutor facially) has a harsh love (eventually, on account of her alleged sleeping around, he dismisses her as a slut), likely to have been one of the things that contributed to how she reacts to life and, through doing so in later life, the three psychiatric admissions that we see (or hear of), the last of them leading to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Although it is not always true that people are never the same after it, she is damaged.

She is also damaged by the child whom she wished she had kept, and by the one fathered by Eugene, and which led her to desperate steps in Paris and that last admission. Whereas the film does not pretend to portray Ingrid’s life or that of others who were close to her faithfully, hearing Carice (and, against his judgement, her character’s father) read her verse will encourage a journey to look out her writing, not least given that is was allowed such a prominent place in the new South Africa.

Maybe the real Ingrid wrote on the walls, maybe she didn’t, but it set up a world in which desperate words written in the condensation in Paris were hurtingly real, and also tragically echoed her having made love to Jack in her old room at her father’s house (the old servants’ quarters), their bodies touching and mingling with her script.

Not exactly a love-story, through she clearly does love Jack (but cannot be ‘faithful’), but one about what it is to feel, love and live, and to write faithfully what one believes in, whatever the cost.