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Reviews
Mouchette (1967)
Mouchette mucks about too much
My Bresson baptism, with Mouchette: and it underwhelms. I'm sure I picked up Mouchette on strong recommendations: but it backfired.
Shot in black and white (1967), perhaps to accentuate the despair and and hopelessness of the theme, is a tactical mistake. I'm sure there are things you can do with black and white to accentuate particular objects, emotions, situations: as in Hitchcock's movies. Here, we are treated to a washed out monotone of colour which does nothing for the many scenes shot in apparently verdant woods. Contrast was poor throughout, sharpness non existent: colour was a mismanagement.
Nadine Nortier is miscast as Mouchette. She has presence, but no qualia. Utterly emotionless throughout, even when she is crying, less of an enigma and more of a non person. What is she thinking, what is she about, what makes her tick? The blank canvass of her acting output throws up no answers. Marie Cardinal as her mother, in only a few short scenes with few words does a much better job of fleshing out a character: we, as the audience, get what she is about: a disillusioned, weary woman: physically and spiritually ill. Mistreated by life and men, she is ready to depart this life. Her agony , in fact her life story is played out beautifully in an understated way by Cardinal. Nortier does not come even close with her performance.
Mouchette is supposed to be a suffering martyr of some kind, but 'm not sure why. Yes, the family is poor, mum is sick and dad goes out at night to deal in contraband, but is that enough to warp your mind and deaden your soul? Why does she refuse to sing in school and throw mud at her schoolmates? Bresson is just sloppy here: a few more psychological angle shots wouldn't have been amis, just to really set the background on Mouchette's despair.
A plot development sees Mouchette out in the woods late at night, huddled under a tree. She is found by Arsene, the village daredevil, who first 'rescues' her from the rain, then walks her back to the village, and to his house, where a little incongruously because there was no build up to this, rapes her. And Mouchette likes it. In fact the next day she alludes to him as 'her lover'. Yes, she is sadly misused here.
Then, one hour into the film, a host of secondary characters start popping up for the first time. Mouchette's mother dies on the morning after her rape, and as Mouchette walks about town to get milk, various personages make an appearance. All of them presume to help her with hand me downs and end up calling her a slut and wicked. For no particular reason at all. This grated on my nerves a bit: first, the glut of personalities piled up all at once: what about pacing, Bresson? Then, their allegations towards Mouchette. If she is indeed a slut, why weren't we shown it, why wasn't it alluded before: why spring it up out of the blue. Of course, this may be a subtle reference to the fact Mouchette enjoyed her rape, but of course the townfolk can't know this. The only thing this film had going for it is the ending. As Mouchette tumbles down a river bank and literally plops into the river, the camera stays put for about thirty seconds on the water, before fading out. Does Mouchette resurface, or is she dead?
À bout de souffle (1960)
Breathless is less than breathtaking
Jean Luc Godard apparently 'exploded' onto cinematographic centre stage with 'Breathless', labelled the fore-runner of French cinema new wave. 50 years on its hard to see what the fuss is all about.
The film operates in two distinct temporal dimensions: the beginning and end segments are fast paced and furious, sandwiching in between the requisite French moody dwelling on life discourse shared through a fog of cigarette smoke, enigmatic glances and languid stretches on an unmade bed. Which is what the main protags Michel and Patricia seem to do for a fair chunk of the film.
The opening sequence sees Michel travel down Goddard's favourite road in France (the exact same one he features prominently later in the Weekend), a tree lined asphalt cut through sun scorched flat plane. Michel attracts the notice of police for a minor traffic violation and decides the best course of action is step on the pedal and play chase. When a cop does eventually catch up with him, Michel pulls out a pistol and shoots him dead. All of this transpires within five or so minutes, and I'm left wondering: but why? Why? Who does this? Why shoot the cop for nothing and bring down the long arm of the law on yourself? Well, my dear, I can hear Godard saying, we've got to start this movie somehow or other, just go with the flow, cherish the 'rebel without a cause' style of Michel.
Next up, Michel meets up with American Patricia, whom he's known for three weeks and seems to have fallen for. Patricia stumble-bumbles about in her Twiggy hairdo, bobby socks and long pleated skirt and her poor French accent which we are blessedly spared from overuse, as she tends to be monotonic, mostly saying things such as 'I don't know', or 'Its all the same thing'. A blander non character I've never seen. What Michel sees in her remains a mystery, both to him and frankly to me. Patricia does, however, have some sort of avante-guarde visage for a 1960 film: she seems to be a slut, through and through, which would have been novel for the time. I can't figure out if making her an American slut wasn't a political machination on Godard's part: in order to spare the 'purity' of French girls? In any event, as Patricia reels off various conquests, I'm doing mental calculations; when did the Pill debut? Surely it wasn't around in 1960? How does Patricia get away with it, then? Well, she doesn't, it turns out. She's pregnant. Not entirely sure who the father is, but most likely candidate is Michel. Oh, and puffing on ciggies non stop. Maybe they didn't know back then?....
Now follows the bed scene. God, the French love their bed mis en scenes, remember 'My Night at Maude's' here. An hour of rolling around on the bed, chain smoking and trying to be brazen about love, life and everything under the sun. Just as I felt my eyes beginning to glaze over, the gruesome twosome finally decided to get out of bed and hit the Champs Elyzee, which is always a treat to see through out the ages as it were. Michel finds out he is a wanted man by the police, so he decides to run for it: next port of call: Italy. Can Patricia please come with him? No, Patricia can not. She likes all the bad boy antics, but when it comes down to it, she's going to marry some straight and narrow guy, live in a house with a white picket fence and have 2.2 children.
All fine and good, but why, oh why does she have to call the police and give Michel away? This seemed an unnecessary tactic. Michel refuses to run because, he says, he is tired. Again, incongruous and out of character for him. He is in his early twenties and has so far displayed a casual devil may care attitude to life. How did he get tired all of a sudden? Is Godard in a rush to wrap things up and so throws everything into a one pot Massala for a grande denouement? Yes, he does. Grande ending ensues within next five minutes with gun shots and Michel prostrate in the 'foothills' of the Eiffel Tower, making funny faces at his beloved. In a rather powerful finale gesture he closes his own eyes pre-mortem and expires on cue for brilliant theatrical effect.
Still, what the hell just happened here, apart from a Frenchified homage to Bonnie and Clyde? Godard is so much better later on.
Sedmikrásky (1966)
Daisies is a great experimental film
Perhaps because Vera Chytilova directed 'Daisies' in 1966, at the start of the Prague Spring, that subsequent viewers scramble in a mad rush to label the film as a feminist outcry against the patriarchal hegemony organised along communist themes of repressive theocracy.
Even without any prior knowledge of the historical context in which this film emanated, it works as a playful collage of surrealistic scenes which serve as an ironic lambast and a helping of satirical lashing against the entrenched consumerism and conventional normative of the day: a mad, bad, coming of age story embodying two young girls who decide that if the world is 'so bad', then they will be too. How exactly is the world so bad, then? There is one very oblique reference to war in the very beginning of the film, but in general the themes which are propelled to the forefront and unpicked with gentle satire (well, and slapstick comedy, and cartoon animations, and lackadaisical fun-o-rama) focus on nihilism, hedonism, decay of moral values, ennui and lack of any productive and meaningful life goals. Rebelling against all this is perhaps the true definition of a 'rebel without a cause', and perhaps there is never any 'age' when disenchanted incumbents won't have a go at the moral depravity of their peers, as each generation discovers anew the hypocrisy and disinterment between society paying lip service to social values and the underlying reality which ensconces the exact opposite.
So, Marie and Marie (our two protagonists), are going to be 'bad'. But, not too bad: this isn't going to be the Czech version of 'a Clockwork Orange' by any means. Bad here means taking unscrupulous old men for a ride: wizened insufferables who hope to score based on paying for a meal. Well, if eating their food and sending them on their way makes the two Maries bad, what in heavens name would they have done if they were 'good': succumbed to the wily charms of the octogenarians? Uugh, it doesn't bear thinking.
Being bad is defined twice more in the film: once as the girls get tipsy in a cabaret and stage an impromptu side show in their cubicle as they start jiving: (quelle horreur!) and once more at the finale when they descend upon a baquet hall and proceed to systematically destroy the food plateau, the room's fixtures and furnishing as well as the banqueting table and all the accoutrements on it. All this is done so playfully, gracefully, and sweetly that the viewers get swept up in the ride: we're not indignant at the wanton destruction as these two scamps wallop, we're enchanted: not least by the food fight and strip tease which culminate the scene.
But what happens next, the true denouement and final scene of the film, is an ironic take of double entendre which demands kudos. The two Maries decide they are going to try and make amends having wreaked havoc with the food hall. Why they decide this, remains unclear: is it because polit bureau apparatchiks are whispering sweet somethings in Chytilova's ear? Is it because she wants one final stab at bohemian assertion? In any event, the two Maries are going to make good: they tell us so: 'We shall be happy because we are good' they say. But in a tonal chorus set to a grating repetitive basso continuo which leaves the audience in no doubt that they mean the opposite. Dressed in newspaper rags (which would probably have Lady Gaga enthralled if she had seen it BEFORE the meat dress), they trip around setting the banquet to rights. But just like Humpty Dumpty, they are never going to be able to put this together again. 'Does it matter?' asks Marie number 1. 'No it doesn't matter' says Marie number two, and I can't help cheering them on.
Hukkle (2002)
An eerie, silent concoction
An eerie, nearly silent presentation of life in an anonymous Hungarian village caught between the timeless traditions of old and emerging new technology: this dichotomy is shown sensitively and in symbiotic relationship: the new technology seems to enhance rather than destroy or clash with traditional social mores. Whilst none of the characters ever ostensibly talk, there is always a background buzz of everyday sounds which paint a fulsome audio picture of village life, as it unfolds through the goalposts of every human existence: birth, childhood, wedding and death: all sequences which are portrayed sympathetically with respect to the local meme.
Source Code (2011)
Riddled with inconsistencies
I like sci-fi, but it has to make sense in its own 'made-up reality' way. Take the Matrix: brilliant because every single twist and turn was neatly tied in, no loose ends, no plot lines that seem to defy the general direction the film is going in. But this, Sourcecode? You don't know if you're coming or going. The film is all over the place, broken chain of causation, contradictory events with no explanation, bits coming out of left field with no prior build up: messy, messy, messy .In other respects, the film is reminiscent of a dreamy ground hog day experience with lots of thrills and knuckle-biting action thrown in. What it could have done without though, was the hurried romance thread which seems to have been added as an afterthought.