A Girl Cut in Two *
Claude Chabrol, 2008
France
@ Varsity Theater

Cold and remote. Almost too much so to have much affect.

See also: IMDb

Vivre Sa Vie ***
Jean-Luc Godard, 1962
France
@ SIFF Cinema

The full-frame clip of The Passion of Jeanne d'Arc has to be one of the longest insertions in cinema. Appropriate given how much time we spend looking at Anna Karina's face. And she gets killed by a bunch of men at the end more or less for trying to make her own way in the world.

See also: IMDb | TCMDb

Masculine Feminine ***
Jean-Luc Godard, 1966
France
@ SIFF Cinema

I think maybe I just like Shia LaBeouf because perhaps excepting the curly hair he looks so much like Jean-Pierre Leaud, and how nice when I'm watching a slightly dull Hollywood film (or reruns on the Disney channel) to be reminded of Stolen Kisses, Last Tango in Paris, La Chinoise, or this.

Hard to tell at times if the backward sexual politics are satirical or unintentionally funny. Highpoints: the graffiti scenes, Paul's "record," and certainly his race to the projection room to complain about an incorrect aspect ratio at the movie theater.

The more Godard I watch the less confusing any one of the films becomes. Because you can more easily identify the quirks, making connections between films, and his bag of tricks all cohere into something resembling a comprehensible style, engaging rather than imposing or just weird.

See also: IMDb

The Last Mistress ***
Catherine Breillat, 2008
France
@ Guild 45th Theater

Ms. Breillat’s explorations of desire and pleasure are so far from the antiseptic world of most screen depictions as to seem far out. In truth she’s just fearless, determined to show what others keep hidden — the good, the bad, the tumescent, the fluid — so she can keep puzzling through her ideas. “The Last Mistress” isn’t as graphic as some of her other films, notably “Romance,” which features full-frontal and then some. The sex in this film is far from explicit, though it features geometric formations that may be better suited for Kama Sutra students, or at least the limber. What’s explicit here is ravenous passion and the depiction of desire as a creating, destroying force that invades the very flesh. It’s terribly French.

It’s also gloriously unpredictable, even if the ways in which Ms. Breillat frames and puts together scenes tend to be less than surprising. A stubborn individualist, she is also a generally unremarkable, even on occasion awkward stylist, though one sensitive to color. You gasp at her ideas and words, not her setups and camera moves. Set amid the rarefied realm of the French aristocracy — Louis-Philippe, the last king to rule France, sits on the throne — the film has many of the trappings of a conventional costume drama, from the rustling gowns to the glowing candelabra. Everything from the costumes to the cinematography works to advance the story. Everything, that is, except La Vellini, who, like Goya’s Maja, rocks her world by the public spectacle of her desire.

Like all the unruly women who populate Ms. Breillat’s films, La Vellini rubs hard against the grain. She’s the fly in the ointment, the stick in the eye, and it’s her howls, her spit and her fury that keep everything off kilter, disturbing the peace, its keepers and the narrative flow. Ms. Breillat reserves her most adoring close-ups for Mr. Aattou, a delicate beauty with feminine pillowy lips. (She loves her boys.) But she never denies Ms. Argento, who hurtles into her scenes, at times literally, gobbling up a lot of space. She’s playing a woman whom others deride as a creature — as if she were a beast. In truth, La Vellini is a woman of pleasure, and Ms. Breillat makes certain her cup runneth over, furiously.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic | Manohla Dargis review

Last Year at Marienbad **
Alain Resnais, 1961
France/Germany
@ SIFF Cinema

This was the first time I've dozed off during a movie in a very long while. I suspect I didn't miss much though. It's all about repeating patterns, the same thing occurring over and over, but hoping eventually for a different outcome. Perhaps like the way in which memories mutate as you recall them over time. Ought to see this again several times.

See also: IMDb | TCMDb

Le Cercle Rouge ***
Jean-Pierre Melville, 1970
France
@ home on DVD

Excellent in its own right, but I must admit to watching it solely because of Johnnie To's upcoming remake, featuring Orlando Bloom, Liam Neeson, Chow Yun-fat, and Alain Delon, presumably in a different role. It'll be interesting to see how To maintains or changes the relationship dynamics, and whether or not he ramps up the set-pieces, like the escape from the train or the heist near the end.

See also: IMDb | TCMDb

To Catch a Thief *
Alfred Hitchcock, 1955
US/France
@ Egyptian Theater

Fun but ever so slight. I kept thinking of early Bond films with the seaside location and chase through the mountains. A few charming scenes but other times Grant's repartee with Kelly or Brigitte Auber feels tossed off. Of course everyone looks excellent.

See also: IMDb | TCMDb

La France **
Serge Bozon, 2008
France
@ Pacific Place

Mysterious and explained just the right amount, which is basically none. I found myself puzzling over the suggestion that Camille's search for her husband was equivalent to a search for death. It's possible that I wouldn't be able to get some things with my pretty casual knowledge of French history.

IMDb

Zidane *
Douglas Gordon/Philippe Parreno, 2006
France
@ Northwest Film Forum

A different perspective on soccer. Most of the interest lies in the editing, and perhaps the words and halftime. I wasn't as excited as I'd hoped.

See also: IMDb

Pierre Rissient: Man of the Cinema ***
Todd McCarthy, 2008
US/France
@ SIFF Cinema

Fascinating, particularly the early years where Rissient is creating a new career for himself to precisely channel his love of cinema.

See also: IMDb

Captain Ahab **
Philippe Ramos, 2008
France
@ Uptown Cinema

Kind of like a fairy tale in the best sense. Very light, nonchalant storytelling that uses setting and mise en scene to communicate some of the story. Wouldn't it be amazing if, instead of simply structuring a (possible) series of films like a three-act unit, sequels or prequels were used to get more directly to deeper themes or to focus better on intangible, ineffable qualities of what we see on the screen. Perhaps that's what the Nolan brothers thought they were trying to do with The Dark Knight, but there are certainly other, better ways this could happen.

See also: IMDb

Eat for This Is My Body **
Michelange Quaye, 2008
Haiti/France
@ Northwest Film Forum

Part Haitian ethnography, part historically symbolic series of set pieces featuring a white French matriarch, her daughter, and a group of Haitian boys. It's profoundly visual: the opening shot is from a helicopter approaching the island over a city, hitting the beach, then neighborhoods, slums, and increasingly scattered huts, and eventually foothills and the barren, stripped mountainsides. Also, there is an amazing food-fight scene featuring a large cake that gets totally demolished; it seems less portentous than most other scenes, but that could be misleading.

See also: IMDb

Marie Antoinette *
Sofia Coppola, 2006
US/France
@ home on DVD

I was surprised a bit by my repulsion toward this film. At no specific point is it aesthetically offensive, or less than charming, but the blinkered view of life at Versailles, and the justification that the film didn't need to encompass anything outside the palace since the subject's life didn't either, seem unwholesome. The only direct critique of her incurious ignorance comes in the form of Steve Coogan, brilliant as usual, her advisor and confidant who makes a futile attempt at keeping her abreast of international affairs.

Sofia Coppola and her supporters certainly have a point about the dearth of female filmmakers and film subjects, but why must she evoke sympathy for such vapid, boring young women? In one of the reviews I read it was suggested that Wes Anderson escapes similar criticism because he's male, and thus his bored and privileged men are not given a second thought, but certainly with The Darjeeling Limited if not prior he's fairly self-critical, assuming he's not totally dissimilar to his characters.

Perhaps it's just that I have a distaste for lavish films about the hassles of aristocracy (see Visconti's The Leopard, for instance), but now (or two years ago) more than ever seems an odd time to attempt to restore the reputation of a cruelly incompetent and neglectful ruler, damning her own country while money is being spent on a war abroad. I mean, isn't the queen pretty much just "clearing brush" at her second home for most of the second half of the movie? I can imagine someone shipping a framed edition of the Rousseau passage she quotes down to Crawford, Texas as a gift to our current out-of-touch leader.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic | Rob Nelson review

Flight of the Red Balloon ***
Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2008
France
@ Crest Cinema

I enjoyed the reading of the painting at the end, both as a clue to the kid's interior life but also to our reading of the film. Some lady asked me as I left whether it had been a good movie, to which I replied yes, but it was clear that she wanted to know whether it was a good "movie" with a familiar narrative arc, clear resolution, etc. To which I had to say no, though I also tried to explain what it was that I thought made it good outside of that framework. The pacing, the choice of what to show or not, the misunderstandings between people who know each other both too well and not quite enough. The performances not in the service of some overdetermined goals or conflicts.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

Breathless ***
Jean-Luc Godard, 1960
France
@ Northwest Film Forum

Godard should be required viewing for any potentially suicidal cinephiles. He's kind of a litmus test in that if you can see his films and not get excited about at least the possibilities of film if not culture in general or life on the whole, then I suppose it really may be time to pack it in. I get the same feeling from different kinds of stuff in different media (music, novels, etc.) but perhaps it's simply from an exquisite expression of, "But maybe life is really like this?" Even if by now many or most of Godard's experiments have been digested and/or adopted by some wing of the modern cinema, his insistent restlessness with form and the devilish glee with which he goes thumbs his nose at accepted values delight me constantly.

See also: IMDb | TCMDb

Amelie *
Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001
France
@ Egyptian Theater

Well, at least I don't feel bad for avoiding this movie previously. The smothering sensory overload was fun until it got old, and then it was a long ride to the end.

See also: IMDb

Terror's Advocate **
Barbet Schroeder, 2007
France
@ home on DVD

I'm a sucker for logical contrarians, so I have a hard time being revolted by Schroeder's failure to castigate Jacques Verges here. This is a great, if brief, history of modern terrorism, and illuminating in so many ways. The connections between ex-Nazis and the PLO, Baader-Meinhof, etc. was particularly interesting. Anyone who takes any ideology, fighting for the oppressed for example, to such a scandalously logical end seems valuable for study and an implicit critique of travelling unthinking down what seems at the start to be a righteous path.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

Muriel **
Alain Resnais, 1963
France
@ Northwest Film Forum

From a 2000 article on the director by Greg Solman in Film Comment:

For Resnais, filmmaking is an act of orchestration... [he] lyrically plays film fragments.

Characters' lives are marked by their attempts to censor, invoke, forget or filter the past.

Resnais was first a cinematographer and a film editor - in essence, trained as a visual musical artist, insofar as editing is akin to composing music with images. Possessed by the theme of remembering, his movies work in the mysterious manner of music. They're fascinating, but often formally perplexing upon first encounter. They're considered difficult, challenging films, but yield more meaning and make more sense upon revisitation, re-encountered with the aid of memory.

See also: IMDb | TCMDb

Boarding Gate *
Olivier Assayas, 2008
France
@ Northwest Film Forum

I had hoped to pair this with Zidane, but the crowds for that were insane. They'd booked two extra screenings today, and the 9:15 had sold out before the 7:15 even opened.

This seems to be nothing more nor less than exactly what it ought to be. Well, maybe it could be a little more bracing. But then, part of the point seems to be that international blackmailing and skulduggery is perhaps less glamorous than simply exhausting and confusing.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

La Chinoise **
Jean-Luc Godard, 1967
France
@ Northwest Film Forum

I felt like I took more pleasure out of this than some other of Godard's stuff. It could be that I simply had lower entertainment expectations of anything post-Weekend, but it could also be that Godard had more comfortably moved beyond the impulse to parody or directly engage with traditional film forms. In my opinion, Weekend is strongest when we're just watching the talking heads, engaged in direct political conversation, and not when the actors are pretend-acting. There's obviously a lot more political rhetoric here, and much of the humor comes through the faux-documentary cracks, between the seemingly serious lines being uttered by the young communists.

See also: IMDb | J. Hoberman review