LITTLE WOMEN (2019)

Greta Gerwig has created perhaps the most beautiful, vital and affecting version of LITTLE WOMEN yet seen on screen. Even better, she has opened improved upon the original novel and more slavish adaptations by making Amy March a character of some wisdom and agency by the end, and by making Laurie's choices more credible. There is nothing I would fault in this film - nothing I would add or subtract. I was low-level crying for much of the final hour, and not just at *that* plot point.  I felt I had been through the wringer and really loved the March women and respected and understood their choices.

For those unfamiliar with Louisa May Alcott's classic novel - revered in the US but far less well known in Europe, the book is set during the American Civil War. An earnest Christian father is away at the front, leaving his wife Marmie to raise their four daughters - the little women of the title.  The eldest - Meg - is sweet and kind and aspires to be a homemaker like her mother.  The second eldest - Jo - is an aspiring writer, tomboy, and to many the true protagonist of the novel.  The next is Amy - beautiful and superficial in the novel, and given a revelatory expansion of feeling and story in this version.  And the youngest is piano-playing sweet Beth.  

Eliza Scanlan (SHARP OBJECTS), Emma Watson (BEAUTY AND THE BEAST) and Laura Dern (MARRIAGE STORY) are all just right as Beth, Meg and Marmie respectively.  But they aren't the focus of the novel or this film. Jo is played with characteristic energy and earnestness by Saiorse Ronan, but I actually preferred Maya Hawke in the recent TV miniseries.  The real star of the show is Florence Pugh (MIDSOMMAR) as Amy, brilliantly playing both a petulant silly child and the more cynical, weary but fundamentally good older woman.  And a lot of the credit for this has to go to writer-director Greta Gerwig (LADY BIRD) - who has given the women a more pragmatic take on the economic position of women in the late nineteenth century without making their feelings seem anachronistic or overly "woke".  I also absolutely love the way Gerwig splits the story in two and has the adult Jo remember scenes of childhood in a way that enhances the emotional punch of the final choices of the girls. 

In the other roles, I particularly liked Tracy Letts (LADY BIRD) in a cameo as Jo's publisher Mr Dashwood and Louis Garrel as the blunt, honest Frederick.  I thought James Norton's dull Mr Brook was a bit forgettable. Finally, I really loved Timothee Chalamet (CALL ME BY YOUR NAME) as Laurie. His love declaration to Jo is utterly heartbreaking and their entire relationship fizzes with authentic sibling physical intimacy.  But it's his final realisation of love that's truly touching. It was also rather good to see him play a final meeting with a rival for laughs - a side of this rather intense young actor that we rarely see.

LITTLE WOMEN is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 134 minutes. It is out in the USA on Christmas Day and in the UK on Boxing Day.

REDOUBTABLE - Day 8 - BFI London Film Festival 2017

Michel Hazanavicius’ REDOUBTABLE is not so much a full-scale biopic of Nouvelle Vague auteur Jean-Luc Godard but a portrait of his three year functional marriage to actress Anne Wiazemsky, 17 years his junior, in the late 60s. As the age gap would suggest this is not so much a marriage of equals as one of an acolyte and an over-bearing demanding selfish man, although she is genuinely in love and can't see it at first. As the film opens, Godard discourages Anne from acting, calling actors jumped up fools, and encourages her to go back to university for a proper "political education". What does he mean by this? Why, that Anne should adopt the same Marxist revolutionary views that he has. 

All goes well enough until the 1968 General Strike. It was a volatile period where workers were protesting and Parisian students had also basically shut down the City.  Godard goes to Cannes and with a bunch of other directors has the festival shut down too - something I have some sympathy with - there is something a little absurd, after all, about showing rom-coms and dramas when France is on the verge of revolution. But of course, Godard takes it too far. He demands that other directors and his wife sacrifice opportunities according to his political demands, and viciously mocks those who have the temerity to disagree with him. He puts down his wife in public, embarrasses her with his radical and anti-semitic views, and then goes into a massive sulk when she takes on a film role in Czechoslovakia, culminating in what I think should never be described as a selfish act, but in this case clearly is! - a suicide attempt.

From my description of the events of this film, one would think it was a remarkably grim watch. But it isn't! To be sure, Godard is a massive arsehole with some really offensive views, but the way in which Havanacius portrays this is so witty and inventive that it was still a great watch.  In particular, the director juxtaposes the serious dramatic action with bright coloured costumes and sets and merry music - one of my favourite scenes has a car packed with people viciously arguing set to a jaunty orchestral version of Perry Como's Magic Moments.  Another great scene has Godard trying to shame his wife into refusing a film role that contains a lot of nude scenes, and that scene is shot with both actors unnecessarily nude.  There are so many great moments like this that I can honestly say that this is a truly funny film. I also want to gives special praise to Louis Garrel in his best role since MOTHER as Godard. He goes the whole hog, creating a fake bald patch, wearing those specific glasses, and adopting the Godard lisp.  It's a great performance because it's simultaneously funny, knowing, obnoxious and sad - for example, I never once doubted that Godard loved his wife, it's just that he's also a selfish misogynist too. 

Overall, REDOUBTABLE is a must watch for cineastes and for wider audiences it will resonate as a portrait of a marriage of unequals, of verbal abuse, but also a film of immense wit and humour: a surprisingly fun watch.

REDOUBTABLE has a running time of 107 minutes. The movie played Cannes, Toronto and London 2017. It opened in France and Israel earlier this year. 

PLANETARIUM - BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Day 9

There once was a Romanian Jew called Bernard Natan who came to France and took over the legendary Pathe cinema studio.  He was the pillar of the movie industry - a man of power and taste. He even had an air of scandal about him - rumours abounded he had directed, and maybe even starred in, hardcore porn.  But when the Nazis came, power and influence did not protect him. He was accused of fraud, thrown into prison, and released only to be handed over to the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz. This could have made an exceptionally interesting movie, a little like CABARET in contrasting the carefree hedonism of the glamorous set with the rise of fascism just at the corner of our vision.  But that is, sadly, not the film that Rebecca Zlotowski chose to make.  Rather, she takes elements of Natan's life, recasts them, and mixes them in with elements of spiritualism and science for a film that contains far too many ideas and not enough focus.

London Film Festival Day 2 - LA BELLE PERSONNE

LA BELLE PERSONNE is French auteur Christophe Honoré's loose adaptation of Madame de la Fayette's La Princesse de Clèves. In Honoré's version, the tale of unrequited and unconsummated love takes place in a dreary Parisian high school populated with over-sexed pupils and staff. In uncharacteristically slippery style, Honoré completely side-steps the moral difficulty with teacher-pupil relationships. Indeed, his film has a curious democracy to it - pretty much everyone - young, old, gay, straight - is emotionally wrecked by love.

Léa Seydoux plays the enigmatic Junie who transfers into school and begins a relationship with earnest Otto (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet) even though she doesn't really love him. Thereafter she falls for the dishy Italian teacher, Nemours. (Louis Garrel in an unusually low-key performance - and all the better for that). Nemours clears the decks for a relationship with Junie but is curiously resistant to pursuing her. And Junie in turn is sceptical about Nemours' capacity to remain interested once the relationship is consummated - hence an emotional stand-off.

The story is economically told and nicely photographed, and doesn't feel like a TV film that somehow stumbled into a cineplex. However, I have to say that despite all the constant blubbing, I found it to be a rather slight film. I think this is because Honoré has a tendency to compose his films like a series of over-wrought French pop videos. He indulged this fully in LES CHANSONS D'AMOUR but even here, he sometimes seems more interested in the moody close-up than emotional truth. Indeed, it was with great dismay that I found Honoré slipping back into his lip-synching addiction in the most dramatic scene of the film, reducing it to pop video banality.

LA BELLE PERSONNE is a TV movie. It opened last month in France and Germany and played London 2008.

Justifably overlooked DVD of the month - LES CHANSONS D'AMOUR / LOVE SONGS

After the marvellous bittersweet family drama DANS PARIS, French writer-director Christophe Honoré returns with a bittersweet contemporary musical LES CHANSONS D'AMOUR. It's a drama about the impact of love affairs and loss on a group of young people in a rather dismal, gloomy, contemorary Paris. The movie sees Christophe Honoré continue his collaboration with the young actor, Louis Garrel, who appears in an all-too familiar role as a cheeky, good-looking erotomaniac. Ismaël (Garrel) is an infantile exhibitionist, who'll play with puppets to cheer people up. Some may find this charming (Honoré evidently does). I found it deeply irritating. The fact that I was irritated is, however, simply a matter of taste. The more serious charge against Garrel's performance is that it undercuts the serious subject matter of the film. We have to believe that he is genuinely torn between his love for his girlfriend Julie (Ludivine Sagnier) and his attraction to his co-worker Alice (Clotilde Hesme). We have to believe that when a tragic event occurs, "every second is a sob". We have to believe that he starts to shag anyone he can - even the sweet young boy who genuinely loves him - so that he can at least connect again. Sadly, Garrel's performance is not one that convinces that such an emotional weight lies behind his actions. The result is that he simply looks like a confused young man indulging in some opportunistic shagging. (Contrast this with Romain Duris' performance as a guy with REAL emotional problems in Honoré's previous film DANS PARIS.) The other big problem with LES CHANSONS D'AMOUR is that, surprise surprise, the story is told through music. I didn't particularly like the style of Alex Beaupain's rather insipid acoustic songs. Neither did I like the breathy, half-spoken singing style of the actors. The problem is that pop song lyrics, which their short lines and easy rhymes, often sound banal. Even when Honoré wants to do something poetic with them, they just end up sounding pretentious. All in all, it's a big fat failure. Never mind. With a director as talented as Honoré we can always look forward to the next film! 

LES CHANSONS D'AMOUR played Cannes and Toronto 2007 and was released in Belgium, France, and the UK last year. It was released in the US, Russia and Greece earlier this year and goes on release in Germany next Friday.

THE DREAMERS - less Tango more self-indulgence

In a week when Bertolucci's greatest film, LAST TANGO IN PARIS, is released again in the UK, let's take a look at his 2003 release, THE DREAMERS. Both films deal with self-realisation through transgressive sexual relationships and put cinephilia cetre stage. But, separated by thirty years, Berolucci treats the subjects rather differently.

TANGO is a 100% Bertolucci product mediated by Brando. The sexual obsession with a random younger woman stems from his own fantasies, as does the need to put a film-maker centre stage. The brutality and the refusal to opt for easy choices (up until the final scene) are pure anti-Hollywood, as is the visual experimentation.

THE DREAMERS is a different beast, not least because Bertolucci is mediating the memoirs of Gilbert Adair. He tells the story of a young American (Michael Pitt) who arrives in Paris on the eve of the 1968 riots. He is taken up by an eccentric brother and sister (Louis Garrel and Eva "Casino Royale" Green). Soon they are abandoned in their parents decadent apartment and enter into an incestuous menage a trois while Paris burns outside their window. At first, the American is entranced by their chic and cine-literacy. When he asks the sister how old she is, she responds, a la Jean Seberg, "I entered this world on the Champs-Elysees, 1959. La trottoir du Champs Elysees. And do you know what my very first words were? New York Herald Tribune! New York Herald Tribune!" The American is flattered and seduced by the siblings declaration that "We accept you, one of us! One of us!" As their relationship deepends he realises that he may not be as accepting of their transgressive behaviour as they are. To be one of them is to be, to some extent, a freak. Their relationship is, then, ultimately doomed.

THE DREAMERS is as courageous in portraying sexual relationships as TANGO but lacks the emotional depth. Furthermore, unshackled from the intensity and brutality of emotional discoveries made in TANGO, Bertolucci is free to indulge his love of the French New Wave. THE DREAMERS is a web of references to and re-enactments of seminal scenes from cinema history. To that end, it's a joyful puzzle for cinema fans, but I suspect something of a bore for casual viewers. It's not just cinema history that's under the 'scope, but the very means by which we take in moving images. In a key scene, the American takes the Sister to the cinema. She instinctively goes to the first row, where the cinephiles sit. But the American wants her to sit in the back row, like on a real date, where the point of being there is to kiss rather than watch the art.

"Why do we sit so close? Maybe it was because we wanted to receive the images first. When they were still new, still fresh. Before they cleared the hurdles of the rows behind us. Before they'd been relayed back from row to row, spectator to spectator; until worn out, secondhand, the size of a postage stamp, it returned to the projectionist's cabin. Maybe, too, the screen was really a screen. It screened us... from the world."

Overall then, THE DREAMERS is a cinephile's delight. The lush photography and production design; the cinema references and the decent performances from the leads make it a worthwhile experience. But it does not have the profound impact of TANGO.

THE DREAMERS was originally released in 2003 and is available on DVD.

Late review - MA MERE

Why am I reviewing the French film, MA MERE, over two year's after its initial release? A number of reasons. First off, I watched the director's latest film, DANS PARIS at the London Film Festival and really liked it. It was a sweet, small film all about familial love with a mischievous, whimiscal shooting style. However, it stands in great constrast to Christophe Honoré’s previous film, MA MERE. Both have the same director and indeed the same star in Louis Garrel. However, I feel strongly that people who like one film will not necessarily like the other. In that sense, my usual trick of linking reviews to other films by the same director wouldn't be a good indicator of interest. The other reason to review MA MERE is that we are about to see the release of a movie starring its lead actress, Isabelle Huppert in the UK - a movie called GABRIELLE. I have always held Isabelle Huppert in high regard - ever since seeing her in AMATEUR. She is one of those few actors on whom you can count for a searing performance. She also tends to choose films which are trying to explore something new or interesting rather than the usual cineplex fare.

MA MERE is an adaptation of the controversial, post-humous novel by George Bataille - a French novelist writing in the first half of the twentieth century and famous for his erotic writing. The director sets the novel in contemporary Europe - specifically in a holiday resort in the Canary Islands - the sort of resort where young Europeans come for sun, sea, alcohol and casual sex. Contemporary European sexual morality is much less restrictive than in Bataille's era and much of the material in the film will not be shocking to the open-minded viewer - graphic nudity, masturbation, S&M, group sex...you may or may not indulge or approve, but surely they have lost the power to shock?

However, the novel and film go further than this. A young man, played by Garrel, has come from France to live with his mother, played by Huppert. He was raised by his grandmother because his mother is a self-confessed "slut". Upon the death of his father the teenager finds that his father's study is stuffed with porn and becomes depressed. His mother lifts him out of this funk by introducing him to a world of casual group sex with a number of young women, and finally with herself. Strong stuff.

While the production values of the movie - the visuals and editing - are pretty poor - you can appreciate the artistic intentions of the director and actors. The sex, while graphic, is not gratuitous - it is the entire point of the novel/film. The subject is how sexual exploration is part of feeling alive and what happens when you reach such a point where nothing is transgressive and everything is permitted. What is left then? Life or death?

My problem with the movie is not its graphic content but the fact that it doesn't really get a handle on the major issues it aspires to explore. And given this failure to locate its characters' actions convincingly in their psychological development - and the poor production values - the movie does end up feeling a little empty and shocking for the sake of it - which I know was absolutely not the director's intention. I am not sure if this is a failure of the underlying source material as I haven't read the book. For sure, there is a problem with the script. At any rate, the movie is far less well-made and far less impressive than, say, Michael Haneke's THE PIANO TEACHER - which also showed Isabelle Huppert in a shocking sexual relationship underpinned by a very specific psychological state. The sad verdict is that while both MA MERE and THE PIANO TEACHER are admirably fearless, only the latter is worth watching.

MA MERE opened in the summer of 2004 and showed at Toronto and London that year. It opened in the UK in March 2005 and in the US in May 2005. It is available on Region 2 DVD.

DANS PARIS - charming family drama

DANS PARIS is a movie written and directed by the young French auteur, Christophe Honoré. It is a quiet, lyrical, low budget film set in contemporary Paris, with a beautiful shooting style that owes a little to the nouvelle vague and an outstanding score that veers between free jazz and new punk by way of a virtuouso scene set to 80s pop princess, Kim Wilde's Cambodia. (I really need to get a copy of the soundtrack.) Style aside, the film is refreshing because it takes time to capture the intimate relationship between a father and his two sons. The father is caring but slightly misses the point with both of them - he cooks the elder son chicken soup as if this will cure his clinical depression. The elder son is played by Romain Duris. If not quite playing against type, he certainly shows a different side to his acting - more interior and at times playful. It is another interesting performance to chalk up on the board. He is joined by the Louis Garrel - best known to British film-goers as the French kid in Bertolucci's THE DREAMERS. Jonathan is a young University student who runs around town is a state of simultaneously detached and concerned brother-hood but also a sort of adolescent erotomania. It is a charming and effervescent performance.

DANS PARIS is essentially a day in the life of this family - a normal loving family that occasionally gets on each other's nerves and that is bound together in its grief for a dead sister. It's a tremendous film - nothing like the director's previous outing - the disturing and high impact MA MERE - but offers something genuinely insightful, touching and tragi-comic nonetheless.

DANS PARIS played Cannes and London 2006 and is already on release in France and Belgium.