Beau Travail (1999)

June 30, 2009

For your listening pleasure: two selections from Benjmin Britten's opera of Billy Budd, which Denis uses to score her film:

Billy Budd - Scene 1: Pull, By Bantams

Billy Budd - Interlude & Scene 2: Blow Her Away...

And, too, though I'd recommend picking it up in print, the entire text of Melville's short novel. It's not essential reading in order to enjoy Beau Travail, but it certainly enriches it.

Posted by David Lowery at 5:47 AM | Comments (0)

Nenette et Boni (1996)

Nenette et Boni marks Denis' first use of a score by the pop group Tindersticks, whose lush, tremulous music (much of it drawn from their second self-titled album) henceforth becomes a trademark of her work, and which here ebbs in and out of a narrative that, like the prismatic imagery that accompanies its hero's initial masturbatory reveries, reflects back and forth itself with endless symmetrical variations, all of which are incessantly, unerringly sensual. In fact, the first thing that struck me about the film was how gorgeously Denis captures Boni's frequent bouts of self pleasure. Masturbation is usually portrayed as solipsistic at best and violently nihilistic at worst, with the prevailing common ground finding it a practical punchline to a fairly common joke. Here, though, in spite of the rather misogynistic nature of Boni's fantasies, Denis regards these private moments from a sweet, tender, almost romantic perspective. She traces her way up and down his body, luxuriating with him as he exalts himself, traipsing now and then right into those fantasies themselves, and then back out again into the working class neighborhood sof Marseilles.

It's from this same perspective that she first views the object of Boni's desire - the beautiful, curvaceous baker's wife. And her wares as well, which are too lovingly photographed to simply be double entendres but which are certainly sexualized to maximum effect. Long shots of bread, pastries with glistening, suggestive clefts, row after row of cream-topped cakes, into which a finger gently pushes. It's dazzling, decadent, gloriously perverse, and it is here - with this eroticization of work, of a trade - that the crux of the film is first hinted at.

Essentially, the film traces the dynamic between those most pendulous of masculine concerns: the shift from exuberant, youthful lust to adult responsibility, a journey which can be mapped by the seed expended in pursuit of both ends. Boni objectifies the baker's wife (in spite of her clearly happy marriage) until his teenage sister Nenette shows up in his bed, seven months pregnant, and frustrates his carefree ways. Why is his bed the place she appears - indeed, right as he's bringing himself to another climax? Rest assured, Denis isn't dipping her feet into incestuous subject matter; she's simply letting the sexuality by which the first quarter of the film was defined progress naturally; this sibling relationship can't help but be compounded by it. That said, the film doesn't stop being sensual once the sexuality ceases to be free of consequence. Consider these two images, which are presented about ten minutes apart in the film but are clearly reflective of one another:

The latter frame, it turns out, is from yet another masturbation scene, one representative of the thematic lines that have begun to run together; Boni kisses the mound of dough with paternal tenderness (reflecting a preceding scene between the baker, his wife and their baby, and prefiguring the final moment with Nenette's newborn) before letting loose on it with desperate, orgiastic fervor.

And the way those lines continue to blur - I don't know what adjectives to use other than marvelous, joyful, ecstatic, in describing just what it's like to watch Denis turn our expectations on their head. She delves deep into Freudian territory while openly engaging, confronting and confounding the typical Madonna-Whore complex a lesser filmmaker would have been content to merely exploit. This is the classic story of a boy becoming a man, but you scarcely know it until the final scene, which find Boni bursting into a hospital, armed with a BB gun, his heart set on growing up come hell or high water.

* * *

And there, in the middle of it all - Vincent Gallo's baby blues.

Posted by David Lowery at 3:48 AM | Comments (0)

35 Rhums (2009)

June 24, 2009

Chronology must temporarily fall by the wayside: I made it up to Nenette et Boni before yesterday, when 35 Rhums played at LAFF. That morning and afternoon saw a welcome influx of guests and a not-so-welcome overabundance of sunshine, and by the time five o'clock rolled around and it was time to head over to Westwood, I was spent. I stood in line (more sun!) and briefly considered skipping this partiuclar screening and going to the encore on Thursday - but that would involve passing up the Wilco show that we were on the list for, and besides, I'd been waiting to see this movie for too long. I found my seat and the lights went down and it started. And then halfway through it started again, and in between those two beginnings all the worried creases in my mind were ironed out and I was left feeling right as rain.

That second beginning was the centerpiece of the film, the extended scene in the bar in which the four main characters spend a rainy evening, dancing to the jukebox and silently delineating their relationships. It's the scene which everyone talks about, because you can't not talk about it, even though it's also one of those scenes that can be semantically deconstructed or pedantically described but can't be put into words in any truly meaningful way. I can say that it occurs roughly at the midpoint of the film, maybe even a bit later, and is the culmination of everything Denis has developed to that point - but I can't explain why, in my immediate memory, it comes so much earlier. I can describe my memory of the smile I felt spreading across my face, there in the dark, but as to tracing the source of that reaction I can only suggest you see the film yourself.

The other scenes I loved: the one with the poor 17-year old cat, and the one with the old man on the train, and the way these two representations of the same theme dovetailed at just the right point to underscore its director's intent. That the film was inspired by Denis' mother's love for her own father is clear; but out of that emotional content, Denis has crafted an immensely tender instruction manual on how to let things go.

I rode to the theater with Clay, and we made loose plans to meet up afterwards. But when I strolled outside, I decided to just go for a walk instead. I'd recently sent a friend a note about Baudelaire and his definition of le flâneur - "a gentleman stroller of city streets" - and the movement it inspired, and with that in mind I decided to walk all the way home. Seven and a half miles, which with my newly cleared head and a deficit of sunshine felt like half as much. I can't wait to see this movie again.

And it reminded me that I need to buy a new rice cooker.

Posted by David Lowery at 3:21 AM | Comments (1)

J'ai Pas Sommeil (1995)

June 20, 2009

I haven't seen Claire Denis' second feature, S'en fout la mort (as far as I can tell, it's only available on an out-of-print VHS) and so can't exactly trace her path from the stateliness of Chocolat to the warm messiness of I Can't Sleep, her first collaboration with Agnes Godard as cinematographer. And by messy I mean: the film is loose to the point of sloppiness. The lens often seems incapable of finding focus as the characters drift in and out of its handheld periphery - an imperfection, to be sure, but one begat of the camera's regard, which is considerate in a way that a more mannered approach would not have been.

That consideration is extended to Camille (Richard Courcet), the queer Raskolinkov in what is essentially a true crime story. Camille is based on Thierry Paulin, a drag queen who murdered 18 elderly women in the 80s before being arrested, confessing to his crimes and succumbing to AIDS prior to conviction. This context gives the film it's axis. Camille's intentions are opaque; perhaps he's simply evil (on the film's poster, he's literally portrayed as a devil), but all signs suggest otherwise, and Denis isn't after a theory so simple as that of a wolf in ewe's clothing. Rather, in lieu of direct hypothesis, she employs the contrasts afforded by the interconnected storylines - which all deal in one way or another with issues of personal and, especially, cultural assimilation. It's a theme that she'll return to, but I couldn't help but feel that the promise of this particular film was picked up and brought to greater fruition by Michael Haneke in Code Unknown (and, to a more refined but perhaps lesser extent, Cache). In a way, Camille is too easy a symbol for the disconnection that Denis is probing here. There are other things more haunting, more enigmatic. The look that Beatrice Dalle gives Alex Descas, for example, by way of looking straight into the lens. And the way he returns it later, but not to her.

A little fracture of the fourth wall. Those are the things that stick.

Posted by David Lowery at 3:52 AM | Comments (0)