About Chocolate Parfaits

The Firemen’s Ball

I don’t think I have heard of a more stupid German title, really. Just the title shows how hard it really is to understand the very eastern european humor of the film. But then again, Roger Ebert and the likes love the film, and that is impressive considering the subtleness of its humor. I mean, hey, it’s a socialist comedy, and I really don’t think that this humor is universal. It’s too ironic, too strange, yet for some reason it must resonate with the film critics. Now here’s the truth: I did not actually laugh. It’s all beautifully absurd and funny, but it’s not the kind of film that I can laugh at. (Though the desire to laugh grows stronger the more the film progresses – by the end, I almost laughed.)

As for myself, I am most impressed by the fact that these people are not actors. I mean, even playing yourself is not usually something just anybody can do. I also like that the film was indeed shelved for a year because of its ‘bad’ jokes.

Even though I knew Milos Forman for quite awhile, of course, having seen “Amadeus” several times and “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest” a long time ago, I have never heard of his older films in Czechoslovakia. The first time somebody mentioned this film to me was when I was TA-ing last semester and one of my students recommended it to me. It was this Indian guy who called himself to be a film buff, said that “Slumdog Millionnaire” is bullshit and claimed this film to be his absolute favorite. I was quite impressed by that, and now that I have seen the film, it blows my mind why this seemingly mediocre engineering student would have a film like that as his favorite.

Now that I did, I have a hard time recommending it, because it’s such a hit or miss. I see what’s great about it, but I also feel that its lack of ‘suspense’ in any sense and extreme subtleness of its humor can be difficult to deal with. They call this “Czechoslovak New Wave”, described by Wikipedia as “unscripted dialogues, dark and absurd humor, and the casting of non-professional actors”. That is exactly it, and if you like this kind of stuff, “The Firemen’s Ball” certainly is one of its best examples. Dogma 95 feels like a lame copy of this concept.

Le corbeau

Mass movements scare the heck out of me, because there is almost nothing as scary to me as the thought that the whole world might hate me. Luckily the likelihood of that happening is very small, but after I got into quite a few collective fights on the internet, I can only guess how bad it would be in real life.

In that respect, Clouzot has managed to yet again work with a terrifying feeling – in “Le salaire de la peur” it’s the fear of death, in “Le corbeau” it’s defamation. To some degree, I cannot make up my mind about what is more scary. I would even like to say that “Le corbeau” is feels more dated: While we are always going to die and run the risk of doing so any moment, the society in “Le corbeau” seems rather specific to the pre-World War II; it is said the film is anti-gestapo. But is that really true? Isn’t the Stasi especially agile at doing that? That was barely 20 years ago, and from what I can see, it could easily happen again. It’s just that today, people are more subtle and wouldn’t react as crazily. I can imagine it to be less formulaic, but just like modern racism is hidden behind some strange mask, defamation would be successful in a different way too. Think DSK who was refused an apartment in New York City.

My favorite scene of the film is the one in which Denise calls Germain “un bourgeois”. That was pretty awesome. Actually the film has many of these awesome scenes; another one is where the old Vorzet brings up the example with the lamp to illustrate that you will burn yourself if you try to figure out who is really good and who is really bad.

Perhaps “Le corbeau” is less dramatic and gripping than “Le salaire de la peur” but the same unusual genius by Clouzot is there just the same: A great story with impressive mise en scene, transported by fitting actors. On top of that, the film is slightly less manly, thus giving its female characters more depth. Totally recommended.

Ascenseur pour l’échafaud

I had to watch “Au revoir, les enfants” in middle school, and totally hated the film. Ever since, I have avoided the particular film despite other people’s ravings about it, and ended up never watching another Louis Malle for that reason. That is how much the movie scared me away at the time. But, I also disliked “Rear Window” and might have had a disdain for all movies at high school precisely because we were forced to watch them (except “Women in the verge of a nervous breakdown” which I thought was great), so I suppose it’s time to give the not-really-Nouvelle-Vague director another chance.

Considering that this film is so minor, it has surprisingly long Wikipedia articles that go with it, both in the German and the English version. They also are right: The film is a little strange, somewhat boring and extremely slow. None of the characters are ‘good’, even the German is kind of a fascist, and except for Jeanne Moreau herself, almost every character is also utterly stupid. The stupidity even goes as far as the little nagging girl in the café. But then again, who cares?

The film relies upon Jeanne Moreau’s performance, whom we often see alone. I could watch her being lovesick forever and ever. Sure, she’s a murderous ‘femme fatale’ but more than that, she is largely a woman who thinks she has lost the love of her life. I am immensely intrigued by the film’s Nouvelle Vague looks, the jazzy, incredibly sad soundtrack and close-ups of Jeanne Moreau’s face in there. It’s certainly a mood film, and with those Nouvelle Vague and Film noir elements, it perfectly suits my tastes. In terms of film music, I think I like jazz the most; the beginning of the film gave me the chills and immediately reminded me of Jarmusch.
I absolutely love how the film even shows the 16th arrondissement bridge (I have no idea what it is actually called.) So stylish.

Everything worthwhile of the film is in its opening shot and its ending shot, both of which prominently feature Miles Davis’s captivating trumpet. The opening shot is awfully Nouvelle Vague and the ending shot does only give us a lovely Noir-ish punchline to the crime story, but also has Jeanne Moreau’s greatest monologue of the whole film. It might be a flawed film, but I think it had great potential.

Cries and Whispers

It came out around the same time as “Scenes from a Marriage” but to me, it feels like it’s an entirely, entirely different from. I was originally drawn to it because the film looked so amazingly beautiful to me; in retrospect, I still think it is very, very beautiful. The saturated colors, the red of the tapestry, it looks stunning.

But I was not too fond of the story; I found it self-indulgent, the characters unlikable and, to some degree, one-dimensional without a good reason and whatever happened left me quite distant. Certainly I see the Chekhov and the Strindberg in it, and I like how the film focuses solely on the characters without all that history crap, but all this cannot make up for my impression that the film feels banal, very unlike Chekhov’s plays.

If “Tystnaden” was the last successful Bergman film before “Cries and Whispers”, then what is “Persona”? That is his real masterpiece, both visually and in terms of characterization of the two women. This one feels so bland in comparison to that, even the self-mutilation scene left me fairly unimpressed. It’s also unfortunate that Liv Ullmann happened to have gotten the role of the flirtatious hypocrite.

Yesterday night, I dreamed of getting a job to kill some false priest in front of his followers, and the rest of the dream was the ensuing running away from the police, during which I was saved by friends dressed up as policemen in a police car. At the moment, that seems much more interesting to me than this film where I cannot help but wonder if there is something I am missing.

Les vacances de Mr. Hulot

This is my very first Jacques Tati film, and I find the idea of seeing his first film first fairly lovely. I know that his actual style is different than this, and it only makes me look forward to it more.

The film was released in English and distributed in the U.S., so that critics have compared the humor of this Tati film with silents like Buster Keaton. While I do see the parallels of this very visual comedy, I actually think that the film is much more like “L’Atalante”. Frenchness prevails, maybe?

I thought the film was totally lovely to watch, especially after a realistic, nerve-wracking epos like “Scenes from a Marriage” and totally makes me want to see more of Tati. It’s a typically French film in how it is the sum of many small, lovely details, but the sum is greater than its parts. At the end, nothing has really happened, there is no straightforward storyline going through the film besides Hulot’s interest for Martine, and ultimately, we are just left with an almost slice-of-life-ish “story” of a summer in France.

Scenes from a Marriage (Theatrical version)

This is the kind of film that could leave you devastated, and it’s not exactly the funniest or ‘enjoyable’ film in the world. But there is a reason why it was so popular in Sweden, it’s such an Ibsen. It’s as if all those realistic Swedish plays and novels have come to life in this little domestic portrait.

So yes, of course the film affects me. In these long relationships, I talk like they talk and, to some degree, I even think how they think. I started watching the film knowing that it led to more divorces in Sweden,

The best scene of the film are the close-ups of Liv Ullmann’s face when she hears about her husband leaving. Her, from today’s perspective, strange glasses intensify that look too. Though, of course, I don’t actually know if it is the best scene. I am only watching the shorter theatrical release version, and just like with Fanny and Alexander and am quite convinced that I would prefer the longer version. But, beggars cannot be choosers, and considering how much I liked the film already, I will be sure to see the longer version one day. After all, I already feel like the film was over too quickly, with 3 hours running time! Maybe watching it over 6 days, like a TV miniseries, would make sense.

Unfortunately, I hated the husband. The film would gain a little bit more depth if both sides are at fault in a similar manner, but maybe this is actually more realistic. That there is no balance between the two might just as well be the root of their problems. At any rate, the guy contradicts himself and plays the part who hurts, whereas Marianne is clearly the one who is being hurt. Male dominance and idiocy is so lame, even in this film. I know that all those artsy Italians and French do exactly the same thing, but there are different aspects. In “Le Amiche”, there’s the man who leaves his wife for another girl and then goes back without caring much about the feelings of both women, but there also is the career woman who decides to leave the man she liked because she thought her career was more important to her. “Domicile conjugal” is practically the French version of “Scenes from a Marriage”, where the husband is even more of an asshole than Johan here, but Nouvelle Vague films see strong female characters much more often even, like in “Pierrot le Fou” or “Jules et Jim”. With Bergman, man and woman always play their roles, even when it comes to their place in relationships. Even the “the woman is frigid” cliché is being brought up, my my.

Nevertheless, the film is filled with amazing one-liners that are so true it almost hurts physically. The amazing thing is not that they were smart people saying smart things, they are just normal people saying things a very normal person would easily come up with as well – just as irrational and silly (especially when Johan says he wanted “to be honest” after hiding his affairs from his wife for years) but filled with a wisdom that really only Bergman could come up with.

I would usually either find actresses beautiful or not that beautiful. It’s a personal, subjective impression, which mostly has nothing to do with whether they are major or good actresses or not, including Audrey Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Emmanuelle Béart, Julie Delpy, Virginie Ledoyen, Monica Vitti, Claudia Cardinale, Ornella Muti, Nora Zehetner, Greta Garbo. Liv Ullmann is the fascinating exception – there are scenes in which I am stunned by her dashing beauty, in other scenes I think that she looks fairly normal. But maybe, in some sense, she is the most beautiful woman of all of them.

Considering how long it’s been since I saw one of Bergman’s films last time, I had a hard time putting this film into context with his other work. (Bergman was so damn productive!) I wonder if this will happen to me with Godards too. But, this is one of his masterpieces for sure.

Biutiful

In my mind, Sofia Coppola is the exact opposite of Gonzalez Inarritu. One of them shows the harsh reality of the socially underprivileged, the other one is mostly confined in a world of estrangement and detachment, but the kind that would only show up if you have no financial worries.
On top of that, in both their cases, it’s been a very, very long time since I saw their last movies. I saw “21 Grams” in 2008 and “Marie Antoinette” in 2007, and I saw the other Coppola movies even before that, before I even started this blog. I was practically a child when I saw them, or at least so it feels when I go back looking at my impressions.

In every one of Gonzalz Inarritu’s movies, there are characters living in a third world country or practically living the lifestyle of one; “Biutiful” is no different from that. However, Gonzalez Inarritu went back to the simplicity linear story-telling but not without forsaking the poetry of his directing. Unlike most of his other films, “Biutiful” lies on a single character played by Javier Bardem, and he most definitely the best Spanish actor out there.

Uxbal is awesome. He’s definitely the film’s most interesting character, especially his wife and family. It’s too bad the majority of the other characters are rather bland. The illegal immigrants he is trying to help are all either incapable or angry or just portrayed in an odd way, as if everybody is just a pawn in the board. It comes off as somewhat less believable than in “Babel”; though this is not too surprising, the film focuses on the character on Uxbal, and rightfully so.

I felt a slight emotional detachment to the film at first. Just like I probably wouldn’t get rich people’s ennui, I cannot fully feel empathy with these characters, because I am nothing like them. Nobody in my family has ever had to live as workers in such conditions; they were either merchants, academics or peasants who led a simple, but not miserable or humanly degrading life.
But death is ubiquitous. The first most fascinating scene is the one in which Uxbal sees his father who died when he was younger than he is. That is absolutely fascinating. The other one is the point at which Uxbal discovers that the Chinese immigrants died. That was more touching than anything Gonzalez Inarritu has ever done before.

Somebody described “Still Walking” as a film in which people are trying to find love amidst all the struggle. I only saw the hatred in that film. In reality, the description fits “Biutiful” perfectly. Yes, the movie is sad and bleak and everything, and certainly that is its biggest weakness, but at the same time, the tiny bits of humor and affection thrown in show how love is in all of this.

However, all in all, I think I am less impressed by this film than I was when I saw “Amores Perros” or “Babel”. But this movie is so beautifully sad without any of his previous pretentiousness, it’s as if Gonzalez Inarritu grew out of his megalomania and decided to make a great movie.

Rien sur Robert

The reason why I disliked this movie is certainly not because I couldn’t understand it, despite horrible lack of subtitles. In fact, it seems so obscure and apparently ununderstandable for non-French people that nobody cares to subtitle it, not even in French. Lucky me that the film is not, say, Italian?

However, you don’t have film-crazed intellectuals in Italy. “On rit beaucoup” (“people laugh a lot”), that is what one of the reviews says. But really, this film is written for critics and I can see how only critics would watch it. Certainly, there is quite a bit of irony in the film, and the main character’s faux-pas, to write bullshit about a movie he’s never even seen, is subtly funny and that particular detail tells us everything about the environment the characters are living in.

Unfortunately, they are all hate- and spiteful. Although I admit that the movie does a great job at introducing us to them and characterizes them in quite an interesting way, I couldn’t help but facepalm at their falseness. It’s hard to like a movie where the characters’ badness doesn’t even make me laugh.
Sure, there might be aspects about the film that are lovely. I mentioned the subtlety of its humor, and sometimes, it’s not so bad; the last line, for example, has an amusing sweetness to it. It made me feel a little better about the whole thing.

Not too surprisingly, the film was recommended to me something like 4 years ago, by Loris’ father, who – haha – is a movie critic. (Maybe not 4 years, but in 2008 I certainly knew about the film) At the time, I started watching it until the scene in which Juliette randomly talks to this guy in the park, which is where I couldn’t stand the film anymore. I always felt like I wanted to see the rest of it, but now I think I should have left it at that. All I got is peace of mind for not having missed out much.

A Brighter Summer Day

What this movie needs is proper subtitles. The version I have has hard-subbed Chinese and English subtitles – what a strange DVD. XD Sadly the Chinese subtitles are traditional characters, which means that I can barely read them, and the English subtitles are so bad that “Somebody’s there!” got translated into “Who’s that?” Luckily I can understand most by hearing, thank God.

In that respect, I am extremely happy to see that the World Cinema Foundation has restored the film and has been playing it all over the US. Okay, I guess they have been mostly playing the film in Little Asia (San Francisco), We Are Proud To Stand In Line To See A Movie Town (New York) and Quentin-Tarantino-land (Austin). Here’s hoping that they will bring out a good DVD of this.

At this point, I assume that I have already hinted that I find this movie to be quite a masterpiece. Like a few other movies I have seen lately, I wouldn’t add them to my favorites, but this is definitely close. If anything, it is my special love for “Yi Yi” that will prevent this film, which I ultimately am a little less obsessed with, from entering the realms of ultimate goodness. But oh my God, this movie is epic. It wasn’t always easy to watch it (it is 4 hours long after all, and I am amazingly bad at recognizing any faces besides Xiao Si’s and Xiao Ming’s), but it doesn’t take long until the film grows on you. The portrait of these characters is absolutely fascinating, especially as it’s through seemingly everyday life. There is a hint of Godfather in there, a hint of Hongkong gang mobster attitude, a hint of film noir, a hint of war movies, altogether in this high school setting. How could I not like a film like this? (I have not seen “Rebels without a cause” but now I am intrigued to see it even more.)

I have a special affection for film titles which are references to movies and, at some key point in the film, mention the title. Music is a much stronger and reminds me a lot of Jia Zhangke’s “Platform” (though that film is almost a decade younger and I believe there is no apparent connection).

Chang Chen is quite a surprise really. I feel like I have seen him in a million films, and to some degree, that is probably true. But he’s such a child prodigy in the fashion of Jean-Pierre Léaud! I also think that both their first films were their best, “A Brighter Summer Day” and “Les 400 Coups” respectively. These films are strangely similar in their portrait of a repressive school system too!

It is no surprise that the film also seems to be a critics’ favorite. Googling its name mostly gives lengthy, fairly insightful reviews, written by professionals I assume. In general, I agree with them about how the film exudes cynical darkness. But, unlike a typical Coen brothers film, I find the characters in this film strangely likable. Coen brothers films make me feel distant to those characters, it’s like an exercise in “This is how other people are”. Yang’s movies are about us, about our own society and how we are or at least could have been. Both are highly interesting – one because it gives us a new perspective on others, and the other because we get a new perspective on ourselves. And both are inherently human. Heck, they curse like my parents curse – so awesome. Yang certainly is one of the best storytellers in the film world.

So unless they properly subtitle this movie or your listening Chinese is impeccable, don’t watch the film. But if you can get your hands onto the restored one, for which I have great hopes, and happen to have 4 hours at hand, by all means watch this film.

Eros (The Hand)

I don’t know why this is, but for some reason I just don’t go well with compilation films. I didn’t particularly like “Tokyo!” nor “Paris je t’aime” (moreover, “New York I love you” was even worse) and I never came to finish “Aria”. When compilation films are by the same director, I like them sometimes (“Coffee and Cigarettes”) but most often would rather dislike parts them (“Three Times”). I decided to watch “Eros” on a whim and, to some degree, regret that. While Wong Kar-Wai’s first part was awesome and almost as beautiful as “In the Mood for Love”, I thought I was going to fall asleep by the unbearable ranting in “Equilibrium”. Afterwards, I skimmed through Antonioni’s part only to realize that I really, really disliked its esthetics. What in the world, this is quite surprising.

All in all, maybe I just need a break from anything that is erotic or a love story at all. There is no particular, specific reason, but I need to get over the ennui they induce. I wonder what I should watch tonight?