Oxen/The Ox (1991)

Oh no! Sven Nykvist shot a great many fine-looking movies in his day, but Oxen, one of the films he directed, is not exactly a masterpiece. The images are beautiful, of course, capturing the bleak light of wintry Småland or the harsh environment of a prison. But beyond this, Oxen turned out to be a sentimental, almost embarrassing movie. The story takes place during the drought & famine years in the middle of the 19th century. Some go to America, others remain. The times are tough and in a confused state of desperation Helge kills his employer's ox with the intention of getting food for the winter. His wife blames him for what he did, even though they have a small kid to feed. In the end, his crime is revealed and he gets a cruel life sentence. Stellan Skarsgård triest to make the best of his character, the tortured Helge, but he is given clumsy line and not much to work with. Max Von Sydow is the only memorable character from the movie, playing a well-meaning pastor. The film is melodramatic, immersing itself in misery rather than shedding new light on the situation at hand. This is the kind of film in which one bad thing after another happens but the only thing I was left with was feeling numb, not caring much about the fate of these poor souls. Nykvist tries to scrape up a moral drama about poverty and bad conscience, but the magic is in the details, and in this movie, the details are never focused on. Instead, the characters are one-dimensional and so are their moral problems. The cinematography is austere but the austerity never takes off, it never takes me anywhere - it's just ... pretty.

The Elephant Man (1980)

I watched The Elephant Man as a kid and haven't watched it sense. Despite some sections that end up much too sentimental than they need to be, the film turned out a much more interesting experience than I expected. Victorian-era London may be a surprising choice of movie setting for David Lynch, but I must say he evokes a place that one still recognizes as Lynch's territory. I've read that the film may stray from the real story about the elephant man, who apparently was indeed working at a sideshow, but was not treated nearly as badly as he is in the movie. But as I see it, Lynch's movie is not primarily about the elephant man as a particular person. He focuses more on the society that breeds interest and curiosity for the unusual, the monstrous, the extravagant. I'm not saying that Lynch was making a deep Foucaldian analysis of power and the Gaze, but what I liked about the movie is how he makes connection between the world of seedy sideshows, the clinical hospital and the bourgeois salon - as places where things are on display, whereas other things remain hidden, but where a special Gaze is always directed at some sort of secret, whether it is a scientifically obscure syndrome that is to be brought to the light or whether it is the strange and elusive creature attracting the circus audience. My take on the movie is that this is not so much a tale revolving around the courageous life of John Merrick but that it is an investigation about what it means to "enter society" and on what conditions one does it. - - But some of the sentimental images in the movie (OK they exist in abundance, I must admit) spoil this approach, and make it a quite conventional story in which we are to admire how this man that is first presented as a freak and a monster turns out to be an eloquent man about town, charming ladies and quoting the Bible. (Still, one could read this as a portrayal of the ideal entrance into Victorian society.)

Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea

John Waters (one of my favorite persons in the movie business) lends his voice to the story about Salton sea, a constructed sea that once was a high-end holiday resort, but has now transformed into an environmental disaster. The documentary about Salton sea, directed by Chris Metzler and Jeff Spinger, is both entertaining and tragic. Located in the middle of the Californian desert, Salton sea, originally an accidental, man-made sea born out of irrigation water from the Colorado river, was a project intended to be a part of modernization, the American dream of leisure and fun. As a result of flooding, rising salt levels and hurricanes, tourists turned elsewhere and many of the residents moved away. But some stayed, and in Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea, some local eccentrics are interviewed. They talk about their lives, the sea and what it is like to live near this environmental trash heap where the fish and the birds die because the water is so bad. Some of these residents relent in their opinions: it's still a beautiful place and a good place to live. - - - Few documentaries succeed so well in combining social commentary and personal anecdotes. Perhaps the reason why the film is so good is that it abstains from unnecessary posing. The people appearing in the film never feel just like quirky characters offering comic relief - we start to see Salton sea through their eyes.

My Night at Maud's (1969)

A guy stands with his arms crossed in a bedroom. He looks serious and he's talking. A woman lies in a fluffy bed. She wears a sailor's shirt and she is listening:
- Women have taught me a lot, morally speaking... I know 'women' sounds....
- a little vulgar
- Yes. It would be idiotic to generalize from individual cases, but each girl I met posed a new moral challenge that I'd been unaware of or never had to face concretely before. I was forced to assume certain attitudes that were good for me, that shook me out of my moral lethargy.
- You should have concentrated on the moral and ignored the physical.
Says the girl, who lies in the bed. But we only hear her; the camera sternly focuses on the guy who stands in a slightly different position than before, his arms behind his back looking both relaxed and awkward.

This is a typical scene in Rohmer's My Night at Maud's, one of his early films (even though the director was in his fifties when he made it). Rohmer is famous for the easy-going tone of his movies, despite the constant appearance of philosophical discussions. These sometimes are no more than intellectual prattle that says more about the situation than a sterile philosophical argument. Usually, I'm quite fond of this approach but for some reason My Night at Maud's annoy me instead of thrilling me or sharpening my attention. Also here, discussions about belief, love, and conventions whirl around, and these are always rooted in a particular relation, but somehow I am never engaged in this film. I am irritated by the film's portrayal of the two main male characters. They think about Women and their past Adventures and the next move they are going to make with a girl - yes they analyze it by means of Pascal. The two main female characters merely react to these male 'philosophers'. Yes, one is a free-thinker, an atheist who sees through muddled thinking. But still, everything she does is seen under this aspect of femininity and there is always flirtation in the air. The film is about these two men and their existential problems. The women may talk back ('I prefer someone who knows what he wants!'), they may be well-educated and articulate, but this film is never about them, and somehow, they are always reduced to being Women, playing their part in the sexual game that this film is so tightly involved in.

But maybe I make the classic mistake of disliking the movie because I have difficulties with its characters? I don't find my feet in their endless blabber about Pascal, choice and marriage, but they don't seem to know themselves very well either, and one of the things I must admit I admire about the movie is its way of observing how people open up, start revealing who they are to another, but then they get scared, and start talking about something practical, they draw back, only to open up later on; Rohmer has an eye for this type of dynamic. The main character (do we ever know his name?) has finally found his Blond Girl. They talk. He has made some tea (he's an expert, he says) and they talk about choice. He says that choice for him is always easy. The camera is following their tea drinking ritual - Rohmer is always emphasizing the rituals of everyday life - while the girl says that choices can be agonizing, but not always. And it goes on in that vein. It's just that all of these discussion, all the dramatic turns, leave me cold: I know this is a 'good film', at least many think it is, by my own response was not so enthusiastic.

Ratcatcher (1999)

Lynne Ramsay is one of the most interesting contemporary directors, or so I think. I was impressed by the strangeness of Morvern Collar and her latest film, We Need to Talk about Kevin was both disturbing and eerily beautiful. When I start watching Racatcher - on an old, wheezing VHS-tape where the image is both grainy and unstable .... - I immediately recognize her style, her use of colors and her approach to film characters. Be prepared for a movie that is almost oppressingly bleak. Glasgow. Early seventies. A young kid plays with his friend by the canal, and the friend dies. The boy didn't do as much as he could, and afterwards, he fights with bad conscience. We follow him roaming around his neighborhood, a dilapidated housing area which is partly abandoned. He has two sister and a father who drinks. The world we look at is James' agonized world. One day James takes the bus to the end of the line. He walks around, looking at the houses. There is a field of wheat, almost surreal in its sheer existence, in its distinctive movements and colors. This is a quiet, stunning and dreamy scene which is important for the film as a whole. James is portrayed as an outsider kid, but he's got a friend, a girl who the local boys take advantage of. If you read this, you might shy away from all these depictions of urban misery. But if you know Ramsay's films, you know the quality of imagination there. Even though there are plenty of kitchen-sink realism, cruelty and loneliness in Ratcatcher, there is also a sense of amazement. In one scene, James' friend shows his pet mouse. The local gang takes the pet from him and starts playing with it, violently passing it around them to make it 'fly'. The friend ties the tail of the mouse onto a balloon, and the balloon flies up into the air, up to the moon, and the mouse explores the crevices of the moon together with an entire squadron of mice. This scene provides no consolation, but it expresses an aspect of sadness and hopelessness, it opens up another angle. Ramsay doesn't simply throw a heap of gloomy images at our face, she very skillfully and perceptively constructs a world which I immediately believe, I react to it, I learn to recognize and see different elements of it and Ramsay makes the viewer attends to the everyday regularities of life: the canal is there, the dustbins are there, the kids are playing over there. I think this is one of Ramsay's strengths - her understanding of place. Just to place her film in a broader context, I think a director like Terence Davies makes films which work on the same level as hers, and they both share a sense for the elegiac, the moments in which life both stops and brutally moves on. The film touches on political themes. There is a strike among the garbage men. The area is about to change entirely. But at the same time the film does not give away much hope for change - a feeling crystallized in the scene where James returns to the house he explored in the earlier scene with the weat field, only to find it locked. I would say that this political aspect of the film is not as developed as the more personal story about James, about being a child in a harsh world, about guilt and cruelty. The political remains a backdrop, but it is never explored as such.

Apflickorna (2011)

Apflickorna is Lisa Aschan's first feature film. This is impressive, as she develops a style and approach of her own - even though there are of course connections - I though about Ruben Östlund's interest in social dynamics when I watched Apflickorna, the use of static camera and long shots (in this case combined with extreme close ups) also brought Östlund's peculiar mix of intimacy and distance to mind. What I liked about Apflickorna is its refusal to please, to conform to expectations about how a story is to progrress or what characters should do or how they should react. But this is not to say that Aschan has made a provocative film - I would rather describe it as unsettling, elusive perhaps. Apflickorna is a love story, but also a tough tale about power and competition. When you think 'love story', in this case you have to think about hard-boiled lines uttered in a Humpherey Bogart kind of way, stonefaced. When I reveal that the two main characters are training a form of gymnastics on horses, one girl being a newbie, the other more experienced, you might conclude that this still has to be a cute and feminine little film about friendship and such things that take place between two girls who like to create a secret little world for themselves (this is the stereotype). No. The training is situated within a nexus of power and discipline - you are to exert control, not only over you body, but over any situation you are confronted with. Apflickorna explores how this discipline is achieved, or how it breaks down. Sexuality is depicted as playing out both as a way to uphold power and to break it down. In one scene, the two girls are courted by a guy. They tease him, send mixed signals, and dismiss him. One of the girls may feel differently about the situation than the other, but it all takes place within forms of power, even though the character of this power is not at all clear. The situation invokes the idea of femininity as a power tool, but I am not sure in what way the film treats it differently from sexist rhetoric in which the same image is often present (where women are portrayed as scheming, using their sexuality as a weapon) - I guess that one could see it as connected with the film's generally bleak image of relations as immersed in power configurations. An important and heart-wrenching side-plot focuses on one of the main character's little sister, who is in love with her older cousin. The girl is schooled into how to react ('be tough') and the film shows a kind of vulnerability no disciplinary conditioning or attempts at poker-faced self-control could take away.  Apflickorna has its weak points and those occur when too much is spelled out, when things are said, rather than shown. Most of the time, the stiffness works brilliantly and creates an unnerving tension between the characters, but sometimes this stylized acting feels to calculated (I think about what Bresson would have said, how he directed his actors to be blank, but somehow immediately present).

Calais: The Last Border (2003)

Marc Isaacs' documentary film Calais: The Last Border is a well-made and important documentary about present-day Europe. He follows a diverse group of individuals in Calais, he lets them talk, he shows us the surrounding that shapes their lives. Isaacs refrains from big gestures or slogans, this is the big strength of the film. One of the people Isaacs interviews is a man who hopes to cross the canal, to live a decent life in England. He knows he hardly stands a chance, but he nurses some kind of hope, trying to keep up the spirit. Isaacs also talks to a bar-owner from England who has settled down, at least for a while, even though business doesn't look too bright. Business problem is also the focus of the interview with an elderly businesswoman who tries to cope with economic problems. Not only does Isaacs make us attend to these individual persons, he also evokes this transitory city, Calais, in which most people seem to be moving on, somewhere, but where a lot of people have found themselves stuck against their will. But Isaacs doesn't let the film succumb to mute depression, there is plenty of life here (even in the repeated image of a man waiting for a bus that never comes, scenes take take on an almost Beckettian feel, but without losing any of their sense of ordinary despair), he shows how things change, not always for the better, and how people deal with that. If you want to see a very everyday portrait of European migration - watch this.

Roadkill (1989)

There are three or four movies I simply cannot watch without falling asleep (Alien 3 comes to mind). This must prove they are bad movie, you might think. No, not necessarily. Roadkill (dir. Bruce McDonald) is one of these movies - I watched it again in the middle of the night at my parent's place and I, well you know, fell asleep. It's the dreamiest film about rock musicians on the road I ever seen, as if Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man was set among sleazy, beer-drinking indie rockers. Well, it kind of works. The story is strange and massively erratic and so is the film, in a good way. Somehow, the film has a sort of atmosphere that prevents it from falling to pieces. The main character is a record label employee who is commissioned to track down a rock band. She doesn't know how to drive so she takes ... a cab that worms its way through Northern Ontario. The journey is winding and even though she finds the band, she loses them again, but she meets other characters along the road, one who is obsessed with animals killed by vehicles. I didn't always know what exactly was going on, but that was OK. Roadkill is filmed in beautiful B&W and Canadian bands from the late 80's play on the soundtrack. My recommendation: buy yourself a couple of bad-brand beers, sit down in front of the telly late at night and let yourself be wooed by this eerie, little movie. 

Day for Night (1973)

Quite recently, I re-watched The 400 Blows and was struck by how perceptive it was - an almost impeccable movie. But that is, I think, the only good movie by Truffaut I've seen and Day for Night, a whimsical comedy about the film industry didn't change my opinion on that. My immediate reaction when I start watching a film with this kind of topic is to be on my guard: will this be yet another self-indulgent ironical nod that is supposed to show off the director's capacity for witty self-reflection? In the case of Day for Night, my suspicion turned out to be justified. In my opinion, this was a quite tiresome attempt at comedy where a bunch of knotty social relations are interwoven with the messy business of movie making. The crew is depicted as a troubled family that is all the time at the brink of splitting up and everybody is having their own private or social problems. OK, one may say that Truffaut manages to create a less glamorous image of film-making and the everyday life of shooting a (in this case: terrible and cheesy) movie than we are used to but no, Day for Night doesn't really have any dirt under it's nails - in the end this world of hotels and movies sets is portrayed as quite cozy, so maybe I shouldn't complain about the lack of friction. He also choses another perspective on movie-making than Godard's Mepris, something I am grateful for (not being a fan of Godard's self-congratulatory musings - but Fritz Lang was good) - Truffaut presents a tender homage to movie-making, to the process, to the staunch work it involves. The story has its moments and some things actually are quite moving, including the cat not doing its job on the movie set. But most of the time Truffaut is involved in conjuring up a sort of nostalgic attitude: people don't make movies like this anymore, let's show how we did it the old way. In this case, I wasn't as charmed as many other people seem to have been by this movie.

Submarino (2010)

Two brothers whose lives go from bad to worse. The brothers had a horrible childhood with abusive and alcoholic parents. Now they don't speak to each other anymore. The first brother has a kid and he tries to act like he leads a normal life - for the kid. Except that he is a junkie who needs to finance his abuse somehow. The other brother has recently been released from prison. He drinks beer and works out, trying to make do in a tough world. Thomas Vinterberg's Submarino has its indubitable moments of tragic realism, but too often I feel I know exactly where it's going and, yes, it's going right in that direction. Two weeks after having seen the film, I can no longer recall more than a couple of scenes, all of which have an immediate sense of depression in them, which Vinterberg captures rather well - especially the father trying to keep up appearances. I feel like I've seen this film a thousand times: a dark film about misfortune and emotional fragility, but which has no particular perspective on this misfortune; our faces are just pressed against it. And it is also quite revealing that the two characters are men - there is a clear tendency towards male miserabilism here. Some of the actors are good, however.

Spring Breakers (2012)

I watched Spring Breakers at the local movie theater - and so did a large group of teenagers who seemed rather perplexed by Harmony Korinne's nightmarish exploration of youth culture. Having only seen Gummo - a strangely beautiful, but also depressive - film about young people in a small town, I didn't quite know what to expect. Spring Breakers starts off as a surreal rock video. Kids dancing, an abrasive tune by Skrillex, the camera spins around - the whole thing evokes instant nausea. A gang of teenagers look forward to spring break. They want to go to the place where all kids their age spend a week of partying. They can't afford it, but that's not an absolute limitation - they rob a bank and go on holiday, where one is to party and 'have a good time', whatever that means in this world which is portrayed as a sort of hedonistic hell, where everyone is trying to experience everything. Some of the girls have second thoughts, and go home. Sunny Florida delivers. The party never dies out. The girls end up at a party raided by the police, get arrested and are bailed out by a local wannabe-thug. In one of the film's characteristically weird scenes, the girls line up at a piano on the beach, where they belt out a Britney Spears tune. Gummo was a lo-fi, eccentric little movie. Spring Breakers seems to aim at the Mainstream, creating the kind of images that actually look like the thing derided in the movie: commercials, music videos, glossy sunsets - everything that is creepy and pervy about commercial culture and desires (some of the actors are brought from the Disney teen-star factory...). The camera ogles, but the result is not, I think, supposed to look alluring - it's just sad and alienated. - Yet, the problem with the movie is it's stance, that its entire idea seems flawed. What can Korinne, given the main ideas of the movie, confront us with other than faux-beauty and a world so warped in its desire for - well its not clear what it desires - that it is hard to even react to it. Is Spring Breakers just an exploitation movie with social critique as its excuse?

Port of Shadows (1938)

Port of Shadows (dir. Michel Carné), a true classic of French poetic realism, exudes existentialist philosophy, but perhaps without that philosophy's constant elevation of a sort of gritted-teeth heroism. Well, yes, it's a somber, melancholy movie, set in foggy le Havre. The main character is a grim-looking deserter. He just wants to get away, hop onto a liner to Venezuela where nobody knows him. He ends up in le Havre, where he is taken to a place where all kinds of lowlives hang out (everyone is involved in some sort of shady business). Then there's the encounter with a girl of course. She is also running away from something. There's also a tragic suicide which equips him with a passport. So will he take the girl under his wing and will they both find a sanctuary in Venezuala? No, this is not that kind of film. The cinematography of Port of Shadows is wonderful, dreamy: there is fog everywhere, but the images also have a strange matter-of-factness to them, which you might not expect from a movie labeled 'poetic realism'. The ragged aesthetic of raincoats and quays might appear like a hopeless cliché, and indeed, this is by no means a perfect films - its defaitism is on the brink of one-dimensional pessimism (love is but an ephemeral ruse etc.), but at the same time, Port of Shadows never gets too pompous. What I didn't like about the film was its predictable doomed love affair - the innocent girl, world-weary girl of 17 and the experienced and equally world-weary man. It didn't speak to me at all. The film's own perspective remains unsettled: are we thrown into a world in which people no longer believe in love, that they have hardened their hearts, or is the point that the world can't inhabit love? In my opinion, the grimness and deep-rooted gloom of Port of Shadows works better as a beautiful film noir than as a clear-sighted philosophical tract.

Chocolat (1988)

France grows up in colonial Cameroon with her mother and father. The father is often away on trips. Mother and daughter befriend Protée, who works as a servant in there house. As the story progresses, we understand that their relation transcend or subvert the boundaries (these boundaries are visible and invisible to use a metaphor one of the characters suggests) set by colonial sociality. To the child, Protée is a dear friend, a conversation partner, a person whom she trusts. For the mother, Protée may be more than a friend, but this aspect of the relation cannot be revealed and when it threatens to get too close to the surface (for example by being articulated by a third party) things get bad. Chocolat (don't mix it up with the cutesy film with Johnny Depp) revolves around sexuality, but also friendship in a country in which you are at home but where you are expected to act as an outsider, as a French person - one interesting aspect of Chocolat is that the child's home is placed as it were in the middle of nowhere. The camera focuses on vast landscapes, and the small space occupied by this French family. The frame of the film, where the child is a grown-up, provides a good illustration of what this mean. France gets a hike from a black American man. He assumes France is a French tourist; it does not cross his mind that she may be at home there. Denis skillfully attends to the tensions that remain unspoken, but characterize an entire way of life. Already in this early film, she works with the visual, rather than the normal proceeding of storytelling in which every scene is carefully designed to give away a specific piece of information. Expressing what you see in the different segments of Chocolat will also require interpretive work, it will reveal how you understand the relations (as power relations, and how you see power, the limits of power etc.).

Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995)

Of course you remember Happiness, the film that made Todd Solondz famous - a strangely tender film about misfits and all sorts of trouble. He made Welcome to the Dollhouse a couple of years before that and it is a much more ramshackle film, but just as outrageous. Let me add: in a good way, at least if you, like me, think that John Waters offers unassailable glimpses into the human soul.

You have seen plenty of films about every sub-species of Daddy's girl; the girl who does what she is supposed to, dances through life and is irresistable (?) in general (from the point of view of boring ideals, that is). Our main character is in 7th grade, wears glasses and the wrong clothes. School sucks. The kids are mean and the teachers bully her. Her parents adore her sister and brother, who do everything right (striving to get into a decent college for instance, even though it might take becoming a member in a garage band). She falls in love with the older guy (a Fabio-esque asshole) who plays in her brother's dorky rock band - the guy is to be hers, period. At the same time, she practices kissing with the guy that officially bullies her. Heather Matarazzo is great as Dawn, the kid who suffers cruelty and responds with more of the same. I can't recall when I saw a film about the world of adoloscence that felt this unadorned and well, kinda honest about how things can be in that age: hell and more hell. This sounds grim, and it is, but funny, too, in a darker-than-dark kind of way. Welcome to the Dollhouse kicks you in the stomach and offers you the most unappealing image you can imagine of what the so called social game is like, the game in which you are to pass, to succeed, to be, as a teacher tells Dawn, dignified. With regard to its non-existence positive messages (yeah, it get's better, at least they don't call you names to your face...), it's weird that such a movie is so comforting. But don't get me wrong, this is not a film in which you end up in a cute little collectivized cheering to the be-yourself. What Welcome to the Dollhouse does is showing us that it is not at all clear what we do when we say that somebody should 'be themselves'. Maybe its Dawn, resiliant, never conforming, always fucking up, but also constantly doggedly convinced what she has to do. Welcome to the Dollhouse is not cynical, it just demonstrates that even though there is no guarantee that stuff gets better, life is best faced equipped with a big fuck you to sociality: don't-try-to-be-adorable. I loved everything about this film and YOU should watch it if you haven't.

Neighbouring Sounds (2012)

The starting point of Kleber Mendoca Filho's Neighbouring Sounds is fascinating: his film takes us to a community in Recife, a city in North-East Brazil. We meet a bunch of people living in the neighborhood and we are also invited into a world of sounds and architerture (gates, fences, streets, apartments). Urban sounds and urban architecture, revealing something about the state of present capitalism, class differences and fetischized security. This approach feels fresh, and I wish the director would have taken it further, rather than crafting a typical story with elements of drama and thriller. The very first scene with a girl on rollerskates is promising, and the first segment has its thrilling moments, but the whole thing feels contrived. The film had potential (one reviewer depicted it as a weird soap opera without a plot - I like that), also in its visual style, but in the end I wasn't impressed. The best scenes were the weirdest ones: a sudden waterfall of blood, two young people in an old building that used to be a cinema, a repeated nightmare. Here, Filho shows that he has something to contribute. Something that bothered me was a rather sexist view of women (how the camera focused on female bodies gratuituously, without it adding anything to the movie). If the film would've stuck with those sounds - rumbling noise, the yelping dog, footsteps and sirens - instead of repeating a story about macho men, I think I would have liked Neighbouring Sounds a great deal.

Waterloo (1929)

A silent film about Waterloo (Karl Grune) and political intrigues? That sounds rather dull, but when I watched this politically extremely fishy (pro-German agenda) film at the film archives in Brussels with live piano music, the experience turned to be quite interesting. It's a busy film, despite the fact that some of the time the action takes place around the negotiation table. It's also a long film and it is also a film that hammers home its message without worrries about subtlety: the battle scenes are stylized and from the get-go, good guys are good guys (= German). In the end, Waterloo is also a not very successful attempt to combine historical drama, war movie and romance - it all falls together, even though some scenes are saved by the director's attention to pace, some fun segments where split scenes are used along with some dreamy, humane scenes.

The Cameraman (1927)

I watched The Cameraman, a Buster Keaton comedy, accompanied by a live orchestra. The experience itself was, of course, magnificent, but I must say I am not crazy about this type of comedy, not even the classical ones from the silent era (OK, I can't say I have seen that many). The Cameraman is what Vertov's cameraman is not. Where Vertov shows a world where technology, society and the human being are all tossed into the same well-oiled machinery, the machinery of Keaton the cameraman does not work at all. The funny moments of the film grow out of the disastrous and bumbling cameraman who messes up every situation he is thrown into. Yes yes yes it's a fine film the innocence of which we can marvel at etc. (as I heard somebody say, and it striked me as awfully cynical to say such a thing) but still - I wasn't very amused by it, despite all the self-referential jokes about movie-making and some interesting points about photography.  

Bastards (2013)

Bastards by Claire Denis was screened at the Cannes film festival, and afterwards, she made some changes. I am not sure whether the version we saw in Sodankylä was the final one but be that as it may, Bastards didn't convince me, something I can't even blame on the fact that I was seated too far from the screen to pay full attention to the movie. I have watched quite many films by Denis, and never before have I reacted negatively to the elusive and dizzying nature of some of her films. Here, however, I had the feeling that Denis did not quite know what she was up to and that there was even something fishy about the whole miserabilist thing. A couple of scenes works pretty well but my overall impression was that the structure doesn't work. Denis works with actors that have performed in her earlier movies. Some of them are impressive - especially Michael Subor whom I remember from L'Intrus. The film opens with a suicide. Police investigators. A naked woman is running around, her body covered with blood. We learn that the man who committed suicide, Jacques, was deep in debt and the brother of the widow is now trying to help out. The brother lives in the same house as the man to whom Jacques owed money. They start an affair. And then there's the woman whose naked body we saw, she's the daughter of Jacques... This sounds complicated? Yeah, it is, and I don't feel Denis succeeds in tying together questions about money, abuse, sex and family relations. The tangles remain, as it were, in a knot that never opens up for me. When the film ends in the big Revelation, I cannot help feeling that nothing at all got clearer, that Denis relies on a form of mystification that titillates, allures, nothing more (even though, admittedly, hers is a very peculiar form of titillation - this is not exactly a dazzling film, except for the Lynchesque ending scene). Everything is rotten, but Denis makes it quite seductive in a strange way, and that's my issue here. Mystification is particularly troubling here as the film hints at one of the main characters being a victim complicit in her own violation. I wish I could admire the style of this film, the gray light, the chopped-up scenes, the lack of reasurrance. But I have no clue where the film is going, or what it wants from me, so - no, I am looking forward to Denis' next film.

Trouble Every Day (2001)

In Phenomenology of the Spirit, Hegel wrote about desire as a form of eating. Perhaps that is what Claire Denis had in mind when she made Trouble Every Day, a horror movie that is unlike most other horror movie in dodging silly effects for a strangely haunting story about sexuality. I watched the film a couple of weeks ago, and it's still hard to shrug it off, especially the score by the wonderful group Tindersticks. So what to expect? Trouble Every Day is one of Claire Denis' more open-ended movies. It's quite a task even to describe what the main themes are. It's a film that disturbs and subverts but at the same time it's a strangely alluring affair.

When you think about Paris, do you think about wonderful little alleys and cozy cafés, romance and sunsets? Forget all this, Denis throws you into a gray, cold landscape. Remember what Nicolas Roeg did to Venice in his eerie horror flick Don't Look Now from 1973. Denis film has much in common with that film, it digs and digs, layer after layer, and its digging process requires all of cinema's aspects: how frames are designed, use of close-ups, colors, editing (if there's one dimension of Denis' films I would say are easily overlooked, its how different scenes are juxtaposed in a way that defies linear storytelling). 

Trouble Every Day has the structure and geography of a nightmare, the sort of nightmare when things and places are several things at the same time - that's another reason why the film is so hard to pin down, it doesn't really seem like a film that you could reassemble into a neat package of ideas. A newlywed couple arrives in Paris. The guy is obsessed with looking for a doctor with whom he has collaborated (there are references to unorthodox experiments but we don't know much). A woman coos a string of lovers - and devours them. She is married to the doctor the American man is looking for. The doctor has locked her into his house, but she finds ways to escape. What's going on between these people? There's little dialogue, and plenty of mood. It's rare to see sex depicted so gloomily as it is here: sex is killing, or a desire to kill, to feed on the other, but it is also related to affliction and disease. It's not fun to watch Trouble Every Day, it's not in any sense entertaining (the performances are flat, there is no plot and the violence is not supposed to look cool). But what sort of carnal being are on display here? As in other movies, Denis explores the body, and what she finds there in this film is a strange and sometimes repulsive site for urges, but not urges int the sense of elusive psychological drives - Trouble Every Day leaves almost no room for psychology. At the same time, however, it's also a film about our relations to each other, about fear of hurting one another. But where does the film end up in displaying erotic relations as involving a deep sense of horror and an eerie dimension of pleasure? I was surprised by my reaction to this movie. Instead of being appalled, or shocked, I was moved by the melancholia that the images and the music conveyed. 

 Agnés Godard's cinematography is masterful, as always.

35 Shots of Rum (2008)

Claire Denis is famous for making sensual and enigmatic movies. In this sense, 35 Shots of Rum is not a typical Clair Denis movies - even though it would be wrong to say that she makes only one type of movie; actually Denis is a rather versatile director. However, 35 Shots of Rum is characterized by something that is typical for all Denis' film: lack of sentimentality and a refusal to mold a film in accordance with familiar patterns.

A widowed train driver lives with his daughter, who is a student. They are close, even though there are also some tensions. From the get-go, we realize that these two people have a deep love for each other. The film follows the daily rituals and habits of these two, and the neighbors with whom they socialize. Here, habits don't evoke static repetition, but rather, we see people doing things in the middle of life where subtle changes and sometimes even drastic decision take place. Agnés Godard's cinematography works wonderfully here, focusing on movement not as going from A to B but as spatial dramas (watch the beautiful images of trains at night or the scenes with rice steamers) - this aspect is similar to other Denis movie, Beau Travail in particular (where movement becomes choreography). 35 Shots of Rum is not an abrasive film, but it works with concentration - everything is important. In this film, the nature of particular relationships are never spelled out verbally - Denis trusts us to look and see, as the relationships are established through various scenes in ordinary life, rather than as conflicts and confrontations. The relation between the two main characters and one of the neighbors, a taxi driver, is particularly haunting to watch. Denis manages to convey very subtle emotions, grief and loneliness, intimacy and a need to let go, without retreating to scenes in which everything is supposedly explained and resolved. I really feel that this movie invites you or immerses you in an extremely rich world - a world of spatiality, sound and emotions (and the political is always present, but in a quiet way, in this domestic drama). There are turning points, yes, but as in real life, their meaning is excessive (the scene in a small café is fantastic). As a portrait of a family reaching crossroads, 35 Shots of Rum is remarkable. The director herself talked about her admiration of Ozu and here that really shows.

And yes, Tindersticks made the musical score, and what an amazing complement that turns out to be!

Child's Pose (2012)

If you've been following Romanian cinema during the last few years you know that there are several directors working with realism in a way that feels fresh and compelling. Child's Pose (dir. Calin Peter Netzer) offers a chilly glimpse into the life of the ridiculously rich; the film discloses a country deeply marked by class differences, and it also shows a certain group of rich people so indulged by their easy lifestyle that they are alienated from reality - they can bribe their way into any project they take on, even when these projects comprise human relationships. Netzer's take on family drama is a dark and raw one, focusing on how affection intermingles with manipulation and blackmailing. A mother desperately tries to help and assist her son, who is to blame for a car crash in which one person was killed. The relation between the mother and the son is a catastrophe, and throughout the film, the mother tries to reach out to her son, but this hardly comes out as the pure love of a mother. Corruption abounds, on several different levels (social and personal). What I like about Netzer's approach is that the film rarely gets preachy or indignant, even though the portrait of the upper class contains many satirical moments (some of which relates to the characters' attempts to appear culturally sophisticated or as "being in the same boat as everybody else"). At the same time as this is a film about class, it's also a film about grief, a subject the director takes just as seriously, even though he tackles it with his own peculiar clinical cinematic style (all shots, even when they are busy, bear the feel of a penetrating glance).

I also want to mention Luminita Gheorghiu's performance - she acts the role of the mother, and I can't recall when I've seen such a complex display of iciness and emotionality; Gheorghiu really lets us take a stand on what we would regard as a matter of emotional bribery and what is to be considered as a spontaneous reaction.

On my way (2012)

Emmanuelle Bercot's On My Way is a lighthearted road movie, a sympathetic drama/comedy about family relations and reconciliation. It's not a masterpiece in any sense, but I found the film quite entertaining, even though it's not the kind of movie that will remain in your mind for long. Well, it seems fair to say that On My Way is a harmless film that has its good moments (if you can stand the clichés), most of which stem from Catherine Deneuve's sweet acting. Deneuve plays a restaurant owner who's had enough. She hits the road and of course she delves into several adventures. The denouement of the film plants itself in the middle of every expectation you may have about what a French movie should be like.

Black and White (2010)

Think about directors like Rohmer. He managed to make a string of easy-going movies about everyday life - in a very bourgeois setting. I can stand his movies, well, I happen to adore some of them. But it takes a good director to pull off that kind of movie, and I'm afraid Black and White, directed by Ahmet Boyacioglu wasn't one of these films, even though it had its strong aspects, and even though its offbeat focus on ordinary life was charming, even moving at times. The problem was just that the film remained lofty, conventional - I was never overwhelmed, worried or taken aback - this film played it safe, and the effect it had on me was slight. Most of the story takes place in a bar in which a group of loyal patrons hang out, drink and philosophize about love and life. At first, they seem to be a miserable bunch, but things brighten up, and the message of the film is that life goes on, no matter how static it may have seemed up 'til now - change is always possible. After the film (screened at Sodankylä film festival) the director explained that most of the characters are based on people he knows. It is obvious that these portraits contain a great deal of affection. But for all this, the film never takes off, there is no real urgency there, no lasting images; despite his aspiration to keep the film as close to reality as possible, the big issue I had with it is that it felt too general, too much craving for stories that everybody could relate to and recognize.   

Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

If you are fascinated by Italian horror movies from the late 70's or the early 80's Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio offers you a real treat; an ironical but also sympathetic meditation on film-making, chauvinism and creative imagination. A British sound engineer arrives in an eerie film studio in Italy. A seedy film is about to be made, mostly by good looking ladies being placed in booths, where they scream their lungs out. The challenge of the Brit is to transform this into movie magic, but one problem here is that the gentleman is used to making nature documentaries and the tasks he is commissioned to do abhors him. Strickland has plenty of fun showing us how the cheesy Italian horror movies might have been made - the most ingenious tricks are used (involving an assortment of vegetables) to create just the right sound of smashed bones or mushy flesh. The contrast between the bumbling Brit and the chauvinistic Italians of course plays on cultural stereotypes, but well, this is not a tract on national characteristics. The funny thing about Berberian Sound Studio is of course that it focuses on a much overlooked aspect of movies - sounds - using images that are both offbeat and sometimes eerily evocative, even when they border on the nonsensical (I must admit that the end could have been skipped). Weirdos, you'll like this one.