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A Journey Through The Eclipse Series: Yasujiro Ozu’s Early Spring

David Blakeslee — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 19:32:18 +0000

The world today isn’t very interesting.

Everyone’s dissatisfied.

You ought to try and have a good time.

You’re right. That’s the only way.

I guess that’s about it.

After a weekend packed with tweets, blogs and breaking news about hotly anticipated fantasy/action/adventure/sci-fi movies from the San Diego Comic-Con, I’m sure that some of us are ready to spend a few minutes thinking about poignant, calm, reality-based films for grown-ups as a refreshing change of pace. At least I hope so, since that’s where I’m trying to draw your attention. For this week’s column, I’ve chosen Yasujiro Ozu’s Early Spring, from Eclipse Series 3: Late Ozu. It’s Ozu’s follow-up to Tokyo Story, one of those perennial candidates for “greatest film of all time,” at least within some subsets of the art house crowd. I’ve chosen it for the simple reason that, like Kurosawa’s I Live in Fear back in June, this 1956 release happens to fall right in line with my larger project of watching all the Criterion films in chronological order. I did think about reviewing a comic-themed movie in honor of #SDCC, but William Klein’s Mr. Freedom is as close to that genre as I could find in my Eclipse collection, and I already covered that one earlier this month.

Early Spring also represents a 23-year leap forward in Ozu’s career after last week’s viewing of Passing Fancy, one of his last silent movies. A few small details link the two otherwise unrelated films: first, the male protagonists both have to passively endure some well-deserved face slapping, and second, a character in each film appears on screen with an unexplained eye patch. As would be expected, Ozu’s techniques were further developed and refined over those two decades, but his style remained quite distinctive and consistent as well, perhaps more than any other director over the course of such a long career. The setting of Early Spring has shifted upscale a bit, to an urban working class neighborhood (instead of Passing Fancy‘s shoddy tenement) and the impersonal corporate office spaces of mid-50s Tokyo. The story concerns Shoji, a “salaryman” and war veteran who’s entering his early 30s and settling into the realization that he has a long, slow grind ahead of him as he awaits his turn to climb a few rungs on the corporate ladder over the course of the next several decades.

The snippet of dialog at the top of this column is just one of several exchanges that Shoji witnesses over the course of Early Spring, concisely summing up the mood of oppressive futility and weary resignation that the film delivers. This opening clip captures the first six minutes or so of Early Spring, and it’s a lovely (and rather leisurely paced) introduction to this very mundane slice of Japanese life in the midst of their postwar economic rejuvenation. Don’t expect slam-bang excitement here, folks – Ozu’s not the director who’s going to grab you by the collar and plunge you into a whirl of adventure. But savor the subtle details as we start an ordinary day: Shoji and his wife Masako rouse from their slumber, giving small but unmistakable cues of a marriage that’s grown stale and distant; familiar migratory patterns emerge as local breadwinners tread beaten paths en route to the train station, where they each cluster into their chosen cliques, an instinctive safeguard against the dehumanizing effects of their daily commute into downtown Tokyo.

Once we arrive at Shoji’s office, we begin to learn quite a bit about his life. He’s on a management track, likely to be an employee of the Toa Fire-Brick Company until the day he retires, if he so chooses. His friend Miura, hired in at the same time as Shoji, has been laid up with a lung ailment for several months. He has an older mentor, Onadera, played by Ozu’s acting stalwart Chishu Ryu, though with darker hair and a younger appearance than I was expecting based on the elderly characters he played in Tokyo Story, Early Summer and Late Spring. Shoji is integrated into his social circle and generally well-liked, but he’s not particularly seen as a leader or dominant force within the group. Though he’s handsome and seems to have a fair amount going for him, he hasn’t taken that big step to really stand out from the crowd quite yet, and you get the sense that he’s not really clear or confident about where he’d like to take his career. He’s playing it safe, biding his time, observing and holding his thoughts and feelings inside – even concealing them from the viewer. Shoji’s lack of expression and reticence to speak candidly about what’s on his mind is both realistic and at least potentially frustrating. He doesn’t do a whole lot to make himself an interesting character on the screen, but his blank and non-committal affect ends up making him quite believable as a typical guy – and I think “ordinariness” was clearly Ozu’s intention in Early Spring, as in just about all of his films.

The central complications develop when Shoji briefly capitulates one night to arranging a secretive rendezvous with a pretty and flirtatious young woman in his circle, nicknamed “Goldfish” because of her big eyes, her affectionate nature and her reputation for being “best seen from afar.” We already know that Shoji and Masako aren’t getting along, due to general marital fatigue and also the emotional scars wrought by the death due to illness of their son some years earlier that have never really been healed. Goldfish is an amusing plaything for Shoji, but disaffection sets in quickly after he’s satisfied his curiosity, and he shows little interest in prolonging the affair or deepening their relationship in any meaningful way. But the small hints of their encounter have a ripple effect, and soon the gossip and speculation rev up loud enough that Masako begins to harbor her own suspicions. (This plot element makes Early Spring a suitable “Variation on a Theme” of Infidelity, as was discussed in our recent podcast on Wong Kar-Wai’s In The Mood For Love.) Despite his efforts to maintain a passive, implacable surface, Shoji is forced to confront the difficulty of his situation and the lack of a convenient explanation for his recent conduct. Successive scenes throw additional wrenches into the gears of his conscience:

He hears the news about the widow of one of his slain war buddies who’s remarried and moved on from her first husband’s loss
He plays host to a couple of drunken pals who remind him to appreciate the comforts and privileges he’s taken for granted and grown bored with
He listens to Miura’s reminiscence of being hired to work at Toa, seemingly the happiest day of his life – what turns out to be among his ailing friend’s last words
He offers counsel to a younger neighbor who’s dealing with the unwanted anxiety of his wife’s unanticipated pregnancy and his lack of confidence in meeting the financial obligations of parenthood
He grapples with the offer from his employers to transfer out of the Tokyo office and relocate to a remote branch of the corporation in the small mountainside manufacturing town of Mitsuishi, city of belching smokestacks and rickety freight-trains and not a whole lot to do…

These central predicaments constitute the core of Early Spring‘s narrative, and without describing how it all ends up, I will forewarn that you won’t get the satisfaction of some big, emotionally wrenching declarative climax. Which isn’t to say that Early Spring lacks an effective punch; it’s there, you just have to let it sink in and hit you. There’s a resolution, and the very mundaneness of the characters’ activities and responses makes it believably satisfying. But I’ll leave it to the readers to determine how much pertinence these kinds of dilemmas have to their own lives. As for myself, I found it all engrossing and stimulating enough to hold my attention over 2 1/2 hours. I’ve lived through my 30s and most of my 40s now, been married for 25 years and I’ve worked for the same employer for over two decades, so there’s a lot of material in Early Spring that I can relate to. Younger viewers, those who mainly seek escapism in their movies, or anyone who’s not been sufficiently oriented to appreciate the craft of Ozu, may want to try some of his lighter, more engagingly entertaining films featured in the Criterion Collection – those mentioned above, or even Good Morning, if you’re looking for something that’s just flat out funny and even raucous by Ozu’s standards. Early Spring is a more bracing concoction, a shot of the hard stuff, like the old and burned out salarymen toss back as they ruminate on where their toil has gotten them. It may not go down so smoothly but it might just be the kind of eye-opener we need to jolt us out of the torpor of a midlife rut. Whatever season of life we may be in, Ozu’s sometimes bleak and sometimes quite amusing depiction of a workingman’s ennui and the plight of the wife who’s pulled along in his wake offers an oblique pointer away from the dead ends and stunted emotions that threaten to engulf us, should we surrender to the tedious monotony that serves as a price tag for the comforts and securities of modern corporate codependency.

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A Journey Through The Eclipse Series: Yasujiro Ozu’s Passing Fancy

David Blakeslee — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 19:00:41 +0000

With better manners, he’d be head of his class.

Over the course of a career spanning the late 1920s to the early 1960s, Japanese auteur Yasujiro Ozu released 54 films. Of those, 17, nearly one-third, are irretrievably lost and a pair exist only in fragments. Of the films that remain, another 17 have now been released in the United States through Janus Films and the Criterion Collection. That number was just attained last week when Criterion issued a lovingly crafted box set of two films: The Only Son and There Was a Father. This news, combined with our recent podcast focused on Floating Weeds and the in-depth Ozu retrospective series by Moises Chiullan in his Arthouse Cowboy column over at Hollywood-Elsewhere.com, have made Ozu a frequent topic of conversation on this site and in the online community of Criterion and cinema fans over the past few weeks. So now seems as fitting a time as any to add my thoughts to the mix by taking a look at one of the titles in Eclipse Series 10: Silent Ozu – Three Family Comedies. I’ve chosen Passing Fancy (1933), chronologically the last of the three in this set, which places it right before A Story of Floating Weeds (1934), the last domestically available Ozu silent, which in turn precedes The Only Son (1936), for those interested in placing all this Ozu chatter into a manageable timeline!

The pathway to becoming an Ozu aficionado seems fairly well marked. Typically, a novice to the work of the great director will first learn about his work by coming into contact with the lofty reputation of one of his so-called Noriko Trilogy films: Late Spring, Early Summer or most prominently, Tokyo Story. Let’s call that Stage 1 of the Ozu Initiation. After making casual acquaintance with the Master, the neophyte may be deemed worthy to advance to an apprentice phase, Stage 2, where one learns about other of his later works like Floating Weeds, Good Morning or An Autumn Afternoon. These exquisite relics from the later chapters of Ozu’s oeuvre often prove sufficient for many of his admirers, but as with any other esoteric disciplines, there are further levels of ascendancy to attain, should one be daring and resolute enough to brave the journey.

For as we see, there is an earlier realm to explore, which I’ll call Stage 3, the level I’m currently at, where one becomes adept at understanding and appreciating the wordless spells that Ozu is capable of weaving. My ambition here is to help Stage 2 apprentices take that next step, with the understanding that there are others more advanced than I, acolytes of Stages 4, 5 or beyond: disciples like Moises Chiullan and Michael Kerpan who have rigorously tracked down and viewed every last scrap of film that emerged from Ozu’s camera – and I will only utter the names of Tony Rayns and Donald Ritchie in a hushed, reverential tone, for they have trod in the Master’s footsteps, ascending to heights of Ozu-satori that induce dizziness at the merest contemplation.

Setting aside then the prospects of accomplishments quite likely beyond our grasp, let’s return our gaze to the object before us: Passing Fancy, Ozu’s affecting comedy about single fatherhood and the perennial masculine resistance to growing up gracefully. The first hurdle that most of us face in entering this world, and the others evoked in the Silent Ozu box set, is that the film is, indeed, silent. Unlike most of the other silent films featured in the Criterion Collection, Passing Fancy offers only two audio options – a lilting piano score, composed by noted silent film composer Donald Sosin in the spirit of Ozu but not what the original audiences were likely to hear, or nothing. There’s no audio commentary (since Eclipse discs are bare bones) or more elaborate selection of soundtracks such as one would find on The Passion of Joan of Arc or Pandora’s Box DVDs. This lack of audible stimulation requires a bit of work for many of us, but stick with it. I recommend the piano track for beginners. But go ahead and give it a try without sound for a second viewing, after you’ve gotten to know the characters and story line. The silence has a way of drawing our attention further in, once we learn to discern the subtleties it reveals.

A second obstacle is that these old films carry their scars. Just the fact that roughly a third of Ozu’s films no longer exist says a lot. Even though he was a highly successful film maker in the postwar years, conditions were tough, the esteem of old movies was so low and preservation was such a low priority that little could be done to restore his early works. The images of Passing Fancy show a lot of damage – it seems likely that for certain scenes, the reel they used for the transfer must be the only one in existence for that particular segment. But the sheer rarity often enhances our respect and even awe that these films have survived the ravages of time.

The story itself is fairly unprepossessing. Kihachi is a single father, and it’s never made clear what happened to the mother. There’s a brief mention of his “ex” by his friend and neighbor Jiro. Other reviews give the opinion that Kihachi is a widower, so I’m not sure. But he has a son, Tomio, who we first see laying sacked out on the floor of a local working-class music hall. Kihachi keeps time by tapping out the beat on Tomio’s rear end, a small indicator of his oblivious disregard of parental duties. He’s there for a night’s entertainment and the opening scene wins us over with some simple physical comedy involving a misplaced coin purse and antagonistic fleas. From there, Kihachi and Jiro continue on for a night of drinking, and we get the sense that it’s late, that Tomio is being lugged along like so much excess baggage and that Kihachi is not doing a very good job of looking after his kid, who’s got some kind of eye problem and obviously needs his rest.

Into the drunken gaze of the drinking buddies wanders Harue, a young woman just let go from her factory job and now without a place to stay. Kihachi looks her over, noticing that she’s pretty enough to suit his tastes. “I have a kid, but no wife!” he blurts out, briefly losing contact with propriety, but Jiro is there to bring him back in line. Jiro is skeptical of Harue’s story, sizing her up as a troublemaker bent on taking advantage of vulnerable men. Kihachi, characteristically wavering as he does throughout the film, can’t follow Jiro’s impulse to just leave Harue to fend for herself. So a night’s lodging with Otome, matron of the local inn, is arranged for Harue and the men stagger home, Tomio in tow.

Ozu cuts directly to a nicely composed shot of a young hand skillfully drawing the face of an alarm clock – it’s Tomio’s work, and we see that this neglected boy has some native talent. We’ve jumped to the following morning, and Tomio notices that it’s well past time for his dad to wake up and get to his job at a nearby brewery. But Kihachi is under his nets, sleeping off last night’s alcoholic stupor. The usual methods of rousing him don’t work, so Tomio resorts to the old reliable “whack the shin” method to wake both his old man and Jiro from their slumber. These comical bits establish quite a bit regarding the functionality of the household and the essential likeability of the central characters. Even though Kihachi is a scoundrel, Tomio is a brat and Jiro has a hard-bitten cynical side to him, it’s hard to not feel affection for them and empathy for their plight.

Kihachi in particular, in all of his various “passing fancies,” holds our attention as he gradually comes to recognize his inadequacies, first as a lover in his futile and funny efforts to woo Harue, and later as a father who takes way too much for granted regarding Tomio’s ability to roll with the punches brought about by his poverty, his drinking, his lack of education and his foolish pursuit of a woman half his age. Like many (dare I say most?) guys, Kihachi is not above resorting to a bit of scammery and double-talk to buy himself some time when facing pressure, nor is he immune to self-deceiving flatteries if it helps him to ignore the long-shot odds of success. He’s a lot more show than substance, but the way he goes about it – dressing up in his finest white gown and “breaking the bank” on an ornamental comb gift in his pursuit of Harue – can’t help but make us laugh as we recall other versions of that guy we’ve seen (or been) in our own lives.

Besides Kihachi’s misguided attempts at romance, the father-son relationship between himself and Tomio provides Passing Fancy’s moral center of gravity. As is often the case with emotionally immature single dads and their only sons, the bond degrades a bit to blur the boundaries between parent and child. Tomio is the one growing up too fast, put in the position of having to defend his dad against the ridicule of his peers while also coping with his own disappointments and frustrations. Kihachi and Tomio often resort to smacking each other, and though it’s comical at first, it erupts into a more heart-wrenching episode halfway through the movie, after Tomio has destroyed Kihachi’s prized bonsai gingko plant in a fit of frustration..

The outburst proves somewhat cathartic, restoring a brief equilibrium, before matters turn much more serious in Passing Fancy’s third act. An impulsive act of generosity and showmanship on Kihachi’s part leads to an illness that threatens Tomio’s life – and ultimately clarifies his father’s understanding of what he must do (though only in an indirect, roundabout way.) Despite his frequent wrong-turns, and a proclivity to dropping his trousers numerous times over the course of the film (a running gag that leads to a poignant payoff at the end), Kihachi proves ultimately trustworthy to do the right thing – though it’s an anxiety-provoking process to finally get him there.

The concluding minutes of Passing Fancy ramp up the melodrama and the emotions to a stirring climax that I could describe here but I won’t. A summary of the plot only goes so far in capturing the moods that Ozu evokes, and might even persuade some readers to think that the movie isn’t worth their time. My recommendation is that anyone new to Ozu stick with the traditional route of entry, through Tokyo Story or Late Spring, then on to other later works, and then tread backwards in time to see if the old silents deliver enough charm to win your own Passing Fancy. Personally, I really enjoy seeing Ozu’s depiction of this cluttered, cramped, workingman’s environment that he focused on before moving to the more prosperous middle class environs of his later films. The elements so familiar from the films of his full maturity – the pillow shots of industrial and natural landscapes, the low camera angles, the elliptical leaps in time and space – are already settling into place here, but not as formally refined and therefore even more fresh and vibrant. Check out Passing Fancy or any of the other silent family comedies in this set. And if you like them, file your report with us here at CriterionCast. Send us a self-addressed, stamped envelope and $5.00 for handling fees, and we’ll send you your official Stage 3 Ozu-phile Badge. Be the first on your block to get one!

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A Journey Through The Eclipse Series: Louis Malle’s Vive Le Tour

David Blakeslee — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 19:00:35 +0000

As soon as they see a bike, they can’t quit, and off they go.

Another annual running of the Tour de France just began last weekend, and the timing couldn’t be better for the nation that hosts the world’s greatest bicycle race. The French national soccer team suffered humiliating opening-round failure in the just-concluded World Cup of football/soccer in South Africa, an embarrassment compounded by the fact that their neighbors to the north (Netherlands) and south (Spain) played for the trophy. Even in light of the snide sarcasm directed their way in last week’s featured Eclipse title Mr. Freedom, France badly needs the boost to their collective self-esteem provided by this impressive, internationally renowned event.

Though I’m a sports fan (American baseball and football mainly), I have to admit I’ve never paid close attention to or even understood the Tour de France, despite having a brother-in-law who’s followed it closely for years and tried explaining to me how the champions are determined on several occasions. But there’s nothing like a well-made documentary to draw my interest in a new subject and that’s what I’m here to write about this week: Vive le Tour, a short subject from Eclipse Series 2: The Documentaries of Louis Malle. This film is only 19 minutes long and focuses more on the visceral experience of participating in the race or observing it as a spectator, rather than the mundane results of who won what stages or whether any records were broken. In that respect, it reminded me of Kon Ichikawa’s Tokyo Olympiad from 1964, where the camera lingered on the athletes in motion and gave only scant attention to the outcome of the competition.

Instead of a report on what specifically happened in a particular series of races held in the summer of 1962, what we have in Vive le Tour is a gripping though brief impression of what Le Tour looked and felt like in that era, back when France was a lot more traditional, monocultural and low-tech than the scenes we can watch on our screens over the next few weeks. Imagine dozens if not hundreds of men hurtling across the countryside on their bicycles at speeds upwards of 30 mph, not a single bike helmet in sight. Some of the injuries suffered for that lack of precaution are caught on camera here: blood pouring down the side of a rider’s head as he pedals relentlessly while a friend in a car rolling alongside him daubs at the wounds; other cyclists woozy and wobbling until they literally topple over in the street, likely victims of concussions, exhaustion or other internal injuries in the aftermath of a massive crash. The bulk of these guys aren’t probably much past 5’ 6” and 140 lbs (convert to metric as necessary) but they are some tough dudes!

Meanwhile, other anachronisms caught in the footage include inhabitants of the rustic French villages lining the streets, wearing the caps and colors of favorite riders, many of whom are in the competition to bring honor and perhaps more tangible rewards for themselves and the area they represent. Through the spectacle they create, it’s obvious that even at this time the Tour de France was a commercialized, highly organized affair, but we can’t help but appreciate the homespun funkiness on display. Spectators routinely break out of the sidelines to help push straggling cyclists up the mountain inclines, a breach of etiquette (and security) that would be utterly intolerable nowadays. Vive le Tour opens with the garish artwork and parade float decor of the festivities. We also witness “drinking raids,” where riders swiftly jump off their bikes, barge into roadside cafes and just grab whatever liquid refreshments were at hand – champagne, beer, wine – leaving the tour promoters to foot the bill when the race had concluded. And after the cyclists had finished their chugging, of course they’d have to relieve themselves of the fluids they hadn’t already sweated out – and Louis Malle’s camera is there to immortalize those transient moments!

The tour was nearly 60 years old at this time, certainly at a mature enough point in its development that serious prestige and intense competition factored into the public’s interest. The festive atmosphere and its galvanizing effect on bringing masses of people together in celebration of a beloved tradition overcame the signs of corporate exploitation that were already becoming quite evident, though still pretty modest in comparison to the logo-festooned jerseys of today’s riders and the surrounding sea of advertising through which they pedal. And doping scandals were beginning to encroach on the supposed purity of the sport (although cheating of all sorts goes back to the very earliest races, reaching such a crisis point that the whole thing was almost called off after only the second year!)

So as a glimpse of a colorful, simpler stage in the evolution of a sport, Vive le Tour has historic value, but Malle’s accomplishment goes beyond satisfying our curiosity or inducing nostalgia. It’s also a finely crafted film, not merely an assembly of scraps from various points in the month-long procession. Malle, still a relatively young filmmaker at the time, demonstrates technical expertise and a sharp eye for detail, whittling his project down with the same spartan discipline embodied by the athletes he filmed. He and his crew incorporate excellent footage from a variety of perspectives, mostly handheld shots, incorporating swift blurs of pure motion, first person compositions as if we were pedaling in the race ourselves, and intense close-ups of grimacing, sweat-dripping faces pushing their bodies to the limit over many different terrains – countryside, mountain passages, small towns and big cities. A dynamic and creative sound mix augments the viewer’s involvement as well, conveying in a brief span of time a vivid sense of just how demanding Le Tour is on the physiques and psyches of the competitors.

Louis Malle ranks among the most accomplished directors featured in the Criterion Collection, producing a number of highly-regarded and award winning documentaries and traditional narrative stories over a 30+ year timespan. I risk embarrassing myself by admitting that I’m not as familiar with his work as I should be. I’ve seen and enjoyed Elevator to the Gallows and The Lovers, but that’s it so far! I know there’s a lot more to be discovered, so I won’t pretend to offer any great insight on Malle’s career – but this brief sample of what’s generally seen as a minor work offers the promise of many more intriguing and challenging cinematic masterworks to come.

You can watch Vive le Tour in its entirety on YouTube, in two parts. But I recommend the DVD!

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Animation Corner: Ryan Reviews Pierre Coffin & Chris Renaud’s Despicable Me [Theatrical]

Ryan Gallagher — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 13:00:35 +0000

This “animation corner” will be a semi-regular, column featured on CriterionCast.com, where we look at past and current animated films, in Ryan’s ongoing attempt to get Criterion to include a piece of animation in their Collection.

As we have said time and again, throughout our Disc 2 episodes, the Summer of 2010 has been, for the most part, disappointing. I say for the most part because just a few weeks back we bore witness to the incredible Toy Story 3, a touching, visually stunning, third chapter in Pixar’s flagship work. Many studios have attempted to take on the titan that is Pixar, with their own 3D animated films. From Madagascar and Ice Age, to the recent critical successes of Kung Fu Panda and How To Train Your Dragon, the battlefield is strewn with clones, consistently defeated critically, when positioned against those animation geniuses from Emeryville.

Earlier this year, some odd trailers started popping up in front of movies, featuring a clueless young boy, who, while visiting the pyramids in Egypt with his family, stumbles across the shocking discovery that someone has stolen the monuments, only to replace them with large balloon replicas. The characters were oddly stylized, compared to the recent trend to move towards more naturalistic humans in these animated stories. Oddly stylized in that they were blocky, more cartoonish, harsh edged, caricatures of real people. The initial trailers hinted at the fact that the movie, titled Despicable Me, would highlight the villain that had stolen the Pyramids, presumably along with other wonders of the world.

Before I get into the meat of this review, let me just say that if you’ve been turned off by the marketing, or non-Pixar-ness of the film, you will be pleasantly surprised by Despicable Me. It was on the darker end of the thematic spectrum, as far as kids movies go, but every single child in my audience was laughing at the physical comedy up on the screen, and the adults were able to get those jokes that may pass over some of the younger ones heads. It was much better than the trailers had led me to expect, and I will honestly go back and see this movie again, either in theaters, or on Blu-ray.

Spoilers ahead for Despicable Me

As I said earlier, the film opens with a tour bus, visiting the pyramids, only to reveal their unlikely and improbable theft. This should immediately tell you something about the level of realism that the world of the film inhabits. This is a world where supervillains have their own banks, armies of minions, and apparently no superheroes to stop them. After the initial set-up, we meet our “hero,” Gru. I use that term lightly, as he is technically a super-villain, complete with freeze rays, mad scientist partners, and an army of yellow, humanoid minions, that speak in a incoherent jabber.

We quickly learn that Gru is not the one who perpetrated the theft of the pyramids, and goes on to plot an even bigger theft, that will dwarf every other villain in the world: he intends to steal the moon, by shrinking it with an experimental shrink ray. While at the supervillain bank, he meets a newcomer to the world of supervillainy, Vector, voiced by Jason Segel. Gru eventually learns that Vector is in fact the one who stole the pyramids in the opening sequence, and a rivalry is quickly formed. After attempting to steal the shrink ray needed for the Moon heist, Gru is foiled by Vector, who steals the device, and hides it in his impenetrable fortress. The only way in? Through Vectors stomach, courtesy of some girl scout cookies delivered by the three most adorable orphans, this side of Annie.

Gru concocts a plan to adopt the children, for the sole purpose of infiltrating Vectors hide-out, have them deliver some specially designed robo-cookies, which will enable him to steal back the means to his inevitable Moon shrinking ends. Of course, as had to be expected, things go hilariously, and predictably wrong as the three adopted children work their way into Gru’s villainous heart. The girls get Gru to take them to the carnival, to their dance recital, and so on, slowly whittling away at years of evil deeds.

As far as the overall Moon heist goes, things go surprising according to plan for the most part, as the moon is unbelievably shrunk to the size of a ball, and momentarily returned to the Earth. We are then treated to a climactic show-down between the two villains, and the three adorable orphaned girls, are not so orphaned at the end.

It is certainly not a rehashed plot line, despite the cliched moments of a hard-hearted grump, slowly worked over by the prospect of becoming the father that he so lacked, growing up with a consistently negative mother, voiced by Julie Andrews.

I think what struck me as being so unique about this film, was it’s irreverence, the almost return to a Looney Tunes -type world where people can survive the most insane detonations, dust themselves off, and start up again. Where, in a row of suburban cookie cutter houses, Gru’s black and clearly villainous house does not draw any attention to itself. Or even his car for that matter. A retro tank of a car, something that would prove itself highly impractical in the real world, or even a Pixar movie, fits perfectly well in this world they’ve created. I even warmed up to the “minions.” These small, yellow, jawa-like figures that have been a large part of the marketing campaign over the past several months, seemed absolutely trite and obnoxious to me from the outside. “Why are they yellow?” “Are they human?” These were the questions I had going into the movie, which quickly disappeared as I realized that these questions simply did not matter. The minions serve their purpose hilariously, and manage to poke fun at themselves, as well as the serious tone of other animated films. And the kids loved them. Every time one would accidentally blow up, or shrink, or drink some concoction that lifted them into the stratosphere, the kids roared with laughter.

Another incredible element of the film that was highly skeptical about going into the film, was the voice cast. To praise Pixar once more in this review of a non-Pixar film, is their choices in casting voices for their characters. They consistently choose quality voice / character actors to bring their toys, monsters, or animals to life. They try their best to steer away from stunt casting, which is something that the Dreamworks and Fox animated films have done time and time again, to obnoxious effect. I honestly thought that was what I was in store for, seeing Steve Carell’s name plastered all over the marketing for this movie. As the opening credits rolled, and it was revealed that Jason Segel and Russell Brand would also be voicing characters in Despicable Me, I could feel my brain quickly shielding itself, from what could have been an hour and half of dick and fart jokes. I’ll also have to admit, that as soon as Carell’s Gru starts talking, I pictured Michael Scott from the Office, doing a bad imitation of a foreigner. This quickly dissipated, as Carell’s voice acting was consistent throughout the film. I don’t think it was a believable accent as far as one that might exist in our world, but in the world of the film, it worked. However good Carell’s voice acting was, Russell Brand stole the show, with his character, Dr. Nefario. Having just seen Brand star as himself once again in Get Him To The Greek, I was expecting another rock and roll character to pop up somewhere in this movie, and make me groan at the further lack of proper utilization of Brand’s comedic timing and sensibilities. There is none of that in this movie. Brand manages to deliver a crackly, crotchety, senile mad scientist, who could easily be admitted to the Academy of Inventors, in Futurama. I could not believe that I was watching the same character, who only weeks earlier, was singing about the Clap, and African babies. Brand deserves an award of some kind, for his work in this film. Jason Segel’s Vector is also a pleasant change-up from his usual shtick. Segel manages to change his voice enough to where you know it’s him, but you can see that he’s working for this role.

I can’t finish this review without highlighting another piece of the story that I was pleasantly surprised with, namely the three orphaned girls. They are clearly in the Powerpuff Girl molds of having three distinct, but completely interlocked personalities. The leader, the tough kid, and the kid who loves fluffy unicorns. They never go too far with out just how adorable these kids are, as they have been toughened up by their years at the orphanage, under the despotic rule of Miss Hattie, voiced by Kristin Wiig (a personal favorite of mine from the recent Saturday Night Live cast). I felt flashes of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, as the marketing slowly leaked the plot points, but again, the movie surprised me with how well it managed to subvert some expectations.

Overall, Despicable Me, is a surprising amount of fun, in a summer of complete schlock. It manages to revitalize the joy I one had in watching characters wield ridiculous weapons, dodge absurd missile barrages, while not featuring obnoxious dialog. Throughout this review I’ve wanted to compare some of the moments of physical comedy to the work of Jacques Tati, as I’m sure the directors, Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud must have watched his works in their development of this project. Despicable Me was animated through Illumination Entertainment, and distributed by Universal Pictures, and I honestly hope this movie does well, so that we can see more films from this pairing, as they have released a solid comedy, animated or not.

A Journey Through The Eclipse Series: William Klein’s Mr. Freedom

David Blakeslee — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 20:00:41 +0000

F-R-double-E-D, D-O-M spells Freedom! We fight for freedom, for one and for all!

It’s you-and-me-dom, and ten foot tall! Freedom, freedom, and oh-can-you-see-dom!

We’ll always beat ‘em with star-spangled freedom!

Another Independence Day has come and gone in the USA, but before we bundle up the bunting, furl up the flags and blaze that last pack of firecrackers, let’s take a few minutes to celebrate the meaning and grandeur behind all that traditional hoopla: I’m talkin’ about FREEDOM!

Yeah, FREEDOM, that wonderful essential quality of life we all enjoy here in America, unique among the nations in granting FREEDOM as a birthright to its natural born and duly assimilated citizens. FREEDOM, that allows us to choose our own destiny, chart our own course, shrug off the rules that don’t apply to us and righteously snuff out any and all tyrants that dare to stand in our way. FREEDOM! Our forefathers caught it, we inherited it and we aim to spread it around as far and as wide as our FREEDOM-loving loins allow us to roam! FREEDOM - it’s that sound of the drumbeats of liberty you hear, approaching, rumbling, pounding in the distance… it’s the sight of millions of disciplined individuals all marching in lockstep, determined to make everyone else free just like them! …it’s the undeniable, irresistible power that overwhelms and subjugates all who dare obstruct FREEDOM’s path! And FREEDOM has a champion – and that Champion’s name is… MR. FREEDOM!

If all that rhetoric kind of has your head spinning and your ears ringing, don’t worry, that’s the effect I was trying to induce. A brief period of disorientation, where words cease to have meaning and all that’s left is knee-jerk stimulus/response, helps us make the necessary adjustments that allow entry into the world of Eclipse Series 9: The Delirious Fictions of William Klein. This set contains three films created in the 1960s and 70s by an expatriate fashion photographer who emigrated to Paris and spent the majority of his film-making career creating documentaries on subjects like Muhammad Ali and the French Open tennis tournament. I’m thankful that William Klein found the time and resources to put his vivid visual and satirical imagination into these unique, vibrant features. Mr. Freedom, from 1968, captures the radical, revolutionary energy of that pivotal year, incorporating documentary footage from Parisian street riots and kitschy advertising pastiche into a wicked lampoon of right-wing Cold War jingoism at a time when it seemed just possible that the whole edifice of Anglo-American imperialism might collapse in on itself due to youth-fueled resistance from within.

For readers who haven’t studied or given sustained consideration to the art and culture of the late 60s, it was a time of great turbulence and experimentation across all forms of media. The influence of psychedelics, the sexual revolution, the civil rights movement and political upheavals in all parts of the world engendered strong feelings of both hope for positive change and dread of what would be lost in the process. Stakes were high, tensions seemed to be continually mounting and partisans on all sides of the conflicts were readier than ever to take drastic measures and advance their cause. Mr. Freedom belongs to that brief flowering of subversive, brutal parody that produced music like The Mothers of Invention’s We’re Only In It For The Money and Absolutely Free and The Fugs’ It Crawled Into My Hand, Honest; the free-wheeling, ragged improvisation of theatrical productions like Hair and short films like the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour; and the “nobody can stop us” vulgarity of early underground comix by Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton and many others. Boundaries were pushed, taboos were challenged, blunt provocation was the order of the day. A wooly, tacky aesthetic thread runs through these works – unrefined, crude, immediate, grandiose and amateurish at times, but relentlessly exploring and flush with the the excitement of new possibilities. Though it received only a limited, belated release here in the States and was poorly received by the critical establishment at that time, Mr. Freedom struck me as an extraordinarily entertaining send-up of the hawks who were escalating the Vietnam War, unleashing the pigs to hassle the hippies, blacks, peaceniks and radicals and who believed themselves to be the last best hope for the advancement of humanity against the evil threat from godless Communism.

We first meet Mr. Freedom as a sandwich munching, malt liquor chugging enforcer of the law, going about his routine duties in the USA. The film opens with documentary footage of riots in urban America, with looters raiding burned out stores grabbing TVs, appliances, whatever they can carry. Witnessing the lawlessness, Mr. Freedom ditches his sheriff’s uniform, retreating into his flag-draped secret chamber to don the first of his many red-white-and-blue ensembles. Next thing we see, he’s barging through the window of a black family, imparting lessons on right vs. wrong and spraying a few bullets around to emphasize the points he wants to make. Then he’s abruptly called away, via his nifty two-way wrist-TV, to the skyscraper corporate headquarters of Freedom, Inc. where he’ll receive a new set of orders.

The plot, such as it is, of Mr. Freedom follows its eponymous character (who has no other name or alter-ego, though an endless variety of costumes at his disposal, never repeating his look from one scene to the next) as he carries out a mission of revenge under orders by his boss, Dr. Freedom, the white-coated mastermind of Freedom Inc. that we only ever see on glitchy TV monitors. The mission is halting the overthrow of France by Commie infiltrators aligned with the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China.

Just as Mr. Freedom serves as a proxy for the USA, the adversary nations are represented by their own costumed mascots, namely Moujik Man, a double-talking Kremlin apparatchik in an overstuffed Nerf suit, and Red Chinaman, a giant inflatable cartoon dragon. They’re suspected in the tragic death of French superhero Capitaine Formidable, who pops up in a couple of quick cameos, portrayed by none other than Yves Montand (The Wages of Fear.) Capt. Formidable was the last remnant of the whithered French resistance, and now that former ally has once again lost its collective nerve and needs the mighty Yanks to come over and bail them out just like we did in the two World Wars.

Upon landing, Mr. Freedom quickly meets up with Marie-Madeleine (Delphine Seyrig, a Criterion favorite from her appearances in Last Year at Marienbad, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.) Here her role is much less demanding, as she basically has to flounce herself around as Mr. Freedom‘s head cheerleader in a skimpy sexy outfit. And she does that very well! But there’s more going on with her character than the appealing (if somewhat zany) surface initially reveals. She helps him set up the Freedom Rally that he hopes will capture the imagination of the French populace, and from the looks of things, he gets off to a pretty good start:

As impressive as the presentation is though, somehow the pitch fails to take hold, even after Mr. Freedom opens up a facility where recruits can practice their insurgency and counter-insurgency skills. If it weren’t for the noble cause they served, the unhinged, freaked-out mayhem that takes place there might be confused for what you’d see in a terrorist training camp! Despite his willingness to cut out the middle-man and offer bulk wholesale discounts on the handy leatherette-bound Freedom Kits (featuring Super-F defoliant and 2-ton TNT equivalent exploding ballpoint pens) Mr. Freedom still faces resistance. Is it because of the moral or intellectual weakness of his would-be proselytes? Are his enemies arguing points that resonate more strongly with the silly deluded natives? Is there a betrayer in his midst? Would a new and improved marketing campaign turn things around?

Mr. Freedom doesn’t have the time or the inclination to wonder and worry about such things! He’s a man of action, and when Plan A doesn’t go according to plan, it’s time to press harder on the gas pedal – no slowing down, no retreat, no surrender! That’s not what Mr. Freedom is all about. Having used everything else in his arsenal to win French hearts and minds, Mr. Freedom makes one last appeal, begging them to not force him to go all the way and drop THE BIG ONE!

While Mr. Freedom‘s absurd, exaggerated narrative spins wildly toward its apocalyptic, cartoonish finale, packing its own simplistic political punch, what knocks me out through the course of the film are the vivid colors and playful details of Klein’s set designs and costumes, just short of miraculous considering they had to have been produced on a shoestring budget. Among my favorites are the US Embassy, a supermarket stocked full of bland generic branded products and staffed by bouncy go-go dancers, and the ridiculous pseudo-tech Freedom bunker that serves as command central when the incorrigible French citizenry force Mr. Freedom‘s hand to escalate the conflict.

I’ve peppered this review with many screencaps that I think speak eloquently enough for themselves without requiring a lot of commentary from me. Some parts remind me of the trippy flourescent whimsy of Yellow Submarine and early Peter Max, while other segments resemble the pop-art carnage of Godard’s Pierrot le Fou.

It also brought to mind more recent films like Team America: World Police (in its over-the-top political satire) and even the Matrix Trilogy (with its banks of TV monitors and subway tunnel hero vs. villain encounters.) Mr. Freedom also served as inspiration for Beck’s Sexx Laws video, and its explosively abundant visual flair makes for wonderful mash-up possibilities like this one, which adds digital enhancements you won’t see in the original:

Mostly though I just laughed out loud throughout the film, enjoying the continually audacious mockery of consumerism, action and spy movies of the period and especially the portrayal of cocksure, in-our-face, unapologetic, my way or the highway reactionary conservatism gone wild. It’s pretty much impossible for me to watch and listen to Mr. Freedom and not experience flashbacks to Reaganism and the Bush/Cheney years, especially in the aftermath of 9/11 and their War on Terror.

And it gets me thinking about today’s political situation here in the United States. We have a full summer and fall of electioneering to get through before we know for sure what changes will take place in our nation’s political life, but in the meantime, I’m hearing a lot of squawking from Mr. Freedom‘s ideological descendants, the “Tea Party” factions and other such paranoiacs who are looking for a real Mr. Freedom they can rally around and put out there as their public spokesman. When, not if, they find their dream candidate and put the new Mr./Ms. Freedom up before the American public to sell us their repackaged 21st century “handy leatherette Freedom kits,” I hope the voters have the good sense to pay more attention to what the next Doctor Freedom is saying behind the scenes.

A Journey Through The Eclipse Series: Akira Kurosawa’s I Live In Fear

David Blakeslee — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 23:00:11 +0000

I keep thinking about the H-bomb, but all I can do is think! …

It’s a living hell!

This week’s selection for the Journey Through the Eclipse Series is driven by a desire to maintain some continuity with my Criterion Reflections blog. On that site, I’ve been watching and writing about films released by the Criterion Collection in their original order of release (as films, not DVDs.) I Live in Fear, a 1955 film featured in Eclipse Series 4: Postwar Kurosawa, just happens to fall in line with my most recent review over there, Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog. So during the past few days, just like a small handful of movie watchers in late 1955, I’ve been contemplating those two great horrors of the World War II era: first, the Holocaust, and now the prospect of death by nuclear attack and radioactive fallout. Anyone got a Xanax they can spare? I’m feelin’ kinda shaky at the moment!

I Live in Fear opens with shots of busy Tokyo intersections, accompanied by music of the theremin, that eerie high pitched electronic wail that instantly signals 1950s Atomic Age paranoia. I’m used to hearing it in American sci-fi of the period and was impressed/surprised to hear it used in this Japanese setting. Music is a universal language indeed! The action opens with a dentist taking a phone call right in the middle of doing a check-up – I could hardly imagine such a thing happening nowadays. He’s summoned to a family court hearing, where he serves as a mediator for the purpose of resolving domestic disputes. He’s apparently forgotten about his commitment and now has to wrap up business lickety-split to make it to the hearing on time. As a result, some lucky kid gets out of his dentist appointment…

Upon arrival, Dr. Harada is plunged into a roiling dispute afflicting the family of Kiichi Nakajima, a wealthy, aging industrialist whose increasingly eccentric behavior is creating a rift between him and his dependents. Further complicating matters, we quickly learn that his offspring include more than just the children that he and his wife have raised. He’s also the father to three other children, through three different mistresses he’s had over the course of his career. Though polite conversation and customs prevented these people from openly acknowledging each other’s existence for some years, new realities compel them to dispense with such formalities. Tensions are already at a boiling point as we get to know the basic facts of the case. Mr. Nakajima, used to calling the shots after years of ruling his steel foundry with an iron fist, is facing unexpected opposition by his own sons, Ichiro and Jiro, who serve as spokesmen for the rest of the family. They oppose the old man’s desire to sell off the family assets and relocate the whole bunch of them to, of all places, Brazil. Kiichi’s outrage at this resistance from sons he no longer respects pushes him over the edge. In the first of several physical outbursts, he slams the desk of the mediators, knocking over a water glass and driving his poor wife to tears.

Unfazed by Mr. Nakajima’s blowup, Mr. Hori from the bar association patiently explains the purpose of the family court: to resolve conflicts between spouses, siblings and generations by patiently listening to all points of view, considering the merit of each, and doing their best to guide the disputants toward the most amicable solution. Clearly, in 1955, Japanese society is at a different place than it was in the past, as recently as the war years, when solemn paternal decrees were issued and obeyed without question. I Live in Fear is, among other things, an attempt to grapple with new ways of coping with families in turmoil, reflecting the cognitive dissonance experienced by many, now that they are given a legal leg to stand on in denying their patriarch the obedient deference that in earlier times was naturally regarded as his due.

Akira Kurosawa employs an interesting device in illustrating how third-party rulings based on abstract principles of the law now govern modern Japanese life. As a petition is read, outlining the basis of the complaint against Mr. Nakajima, a dual exposure of the text is laid over images of the family as they sit on time-out in the hallway adjacent to the meeting room. Words on paper now limit a man’s ability to act, giving weight and substance to the rebellion and laziness of an ungrateful generation! Nakajima, who’s apparently built his steel foundry business from scratch, must now suffer the indignity of seeing his role as head of the clan subverted by sons who fail to grapple with the threat from which he seeks to protect them.

And what is the nature of this threat? Nothing less than instant, horrific death through an atomic bomb attack, or worse yet, exposure to the terrible radiation that is certain to sweep over Japan whenever the Big One drops. Mr. Nakajima, you see, is the one who says I Live in Fear – not always in so many words, but by his actions, flinching and cowering in a nervous heap when he hears jets flying overhead or sees a flash of lightning come through the window, convinced that the annihilation of all he holds dear is mere moments away. Those deeds also include more sustained efforts, like building an underground fallout shelter but then abandoning that task (at the cost of several million yen) when he learns new facts about the expected distribution of fallout patterns that would make the bunker ineffective. His new plans now revolve around emigration to Brazil, where we wants to swap his land with an expatriate farmer eager to return to his childhood home. He pursues this quest against everyone else’s wishes, since they’re content to take their chances in Japan with the other millions of their neighbors. The only route open to his sons, their wives and children, is to have Mr. Nakajima declared mentally incompetent, thus preventing him from selling the foundry and family properties out from under them.

This synopsis sets up the central tension of I Live in Fear, a story of inter-generational rivalries, shifting social mores and, most emphatically, Atomic Age paranoia run rampant in the fevered imagination of its flawed, painfully frustrating protagonist. Probably the most immediately amazing detail of this movie is that the lead character, Mr. Nakajima, is played by Toshiro Mifune, the brilliant actor best known to audiences then and now for his memorable performances in Kurosawa’s massively successful run of samurai features that began with Rashomon in 1950 and reached a new pinnacle with Seven Samurai (1954.) Mifune daringly transformed himself into the guise of a crumbling elderly man on the brink of losing his sanity while at the very peak of his physical powers, filming I Live in Fear between his outings in Seven Samurai and the MacBeth-inspired Throne of Blood, as well as his epic portrayal of samurai legend Musashi Miyamoto in the Samurai Trilogy directed by Hiroshi Inagaki. To fully appreciate Mifune’s courage in taking on this role, imagine some of the prototypical action stars of American cinema over the past couple of decades basically stripping themselves of their stock-in-trade just for the sake of stretching themselves professionally by playing a cranky old man. Even when Brad Pitt went through that old age transformation in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the marketing department made sure he had the opportunity to turn back into the “young and gorgeous” version of himself that was featured on the posters!

Mifune’s experiment isn’t necessarily the most rousing success – he labors a bit to contain his wild, animalistic energy and the makeup only goes so far in disguising his handsome features – but I admire the effort, keeping us mindful of the enormous power that Mr. Nakajima wielded in his prime as he juggled business matters and his personal affairs without paying much heed to future complications. Likewise, the subdued meekness of the dentist Harada serves as a study in contrast for Takashi Shimura, the venerable warrior-sage Kambei of Seven Samurai who dials down the majestic awesomeness of that role to take on one drenched in ambivalence and befuddledness. Harada’s character serves as the prime point of access for most viewers – he’s the first character we meet and he’s the one who strives the hardest to stay objective in regard to the underlying dilemma of I Live in Fear: Is it rational or irrational to allow our dread of nuclear weapons to establish the guidelines by which we live?

Before we provide too glib of an answer to that question, consider the circumstances of Japan in 1955. Scarcely ten years had past since the nation had suffered two atomic attacks. The Soviet Union and the United States were deadlocked in the Cold War, China and Korea, neighbors to the East, were both hot zones of geopolitical conflict, and Japan possessed no serious deterrent force of its own. As eccentric and extreme as Nakajima’s fears may seem to us now, he only stood out because his resolution to do something that would allow him and his family to escape the danger was backed up by the financial means to do so. But that resolve meant unwanted disruption and relocation to younger generations who had somehow come to terms with living in such peril, and they wanted no part of it. In a sense, Kurosawa was posing a question that ran through his earlier postwar films: given our past and the conditions of the here and now, what kind of society will we become in the future? I think his response in I Live in Fear denies the option of simple escapism but also cautions against materialistic complacency. Though we might be tempted to side with Nakajima’s children in the underlying dispute, there’s not much to be applauded in the petty squabbling that takes place among their ranks. Tempers flare on several occasions to the point where family members come to blows and its definitely not played for laughs. These are people in crisis, with no easy solutions to be found.

As the film concludes, I Live in Fear jumps to a level of high pathos that may not play well with some viewers. Nakajima takes drastic measures to sway his children to see things his way and everyone winds up paying a dreadful price for his folly. The Kurosawa theme of an utterly bereft and shattered old man floundering in the mud makes an appearance here, setting the stage for future expansions of this scenario in Ran, among others. My hunch is that this kind of nervous breakdown plays better in “classical” settings, at least for Western viewers who are used to Shakespearean characters groveling in tragic misery. The drastic fall of a contemporary corporate titan like Nakajima, for various reasons doesn’t seem as likely, and that may be one reason that I Live in Fear turned out to be one of Kurosawa’s least commercially successful films. The relatively small cinematic canvas allowed fewer opportunities for Kurosawa to show off his ability to viscerally enhance the viewing experience through camera work and editing, though there are enough moments to reward fans of his art. It also brought to an end his alternating pattern of historical followed by contemporary films, at least for the remainder of the 1950s. After seeing the international critical and financial success of Rashomon and Seven Samurai, Kurosawa and Toho Studios recognized the obvious: AK could make a lot more money cranking out the samurai films than he ever could making films focused on the plight of modern Japan. With films like Throne of Blood, Yojimbo, Sanjuro and The Hidden Fortress in his future, who could ever complain about the direction his career took? Still, I Live in Fear powerfully captures the genuine anxiety and uncertainty that beset a nation at a critical juncture in its history. I’m glad that, for now, those worst fears have not yet been realized.

A Journey Through The Eclipse Series: Gabriel Pascal’s Caesar And Cleopatra

David Blakeslee — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 01:01:11 +0000

I shall have many young kings with round, strong arms.

And when I am tired of them, I shall whip them to death.

Last week, controversy developed over reports that Angelina Jolie has been cast to take the lead role in a biopic about Cleopatra, the historical Queen of Egypt whose reputation over the centuries has developed to nearly legendary proportions. While I think Ms. Jolie has the perfect blend of beauty, attitude and screen presence to pull off a job that’s served as a platform for silver screen goddesses of decades past, critics take issue with the fact that a Caucasian woman is once again being awarded the opportunity to play one of history’s most noteworthy African female characters. Despite the legitimate argument that Cleopatra’s lineage included European ancestors, I understand the sensitivity of their concern. Similar objections have been voiced about the upcoming The Last Airbender, which also employs a white lead actor to play a child of clearly Asian descent, as well as The Prince of Persia‘s use of Jake Gyllenhaal to play the family adventure film’s Arab protagonist. Even the flap on Twitter stirred up by black actor Donald Glover’s self-initiated campaign to land the role of Peter Parker in a planned Spiderman reboot demonstrates the volatility of this topic. But in my opinion, it takes a certain megastar status to give Cleopatra’s portrayal due justice on the big screen. All questions of ethnicity aside, Angelina Jolie has the screen goddess credentials to follow in the footsteps of Elizabeth Taylor, Theda Bara, Claudette Colbert and (by arrangement with David O. Selznick) Vivien Leigh, the star of this week’s feature in our Journey Through The Eclipse Series, Caesar and Cleopatra.

This 1945 Technicolor spectacle is part of Eclipse Series 20: George Bernard Shaw on Film. The package marks a new angle for Eclipse in that it’s dedicated not to a particular director (though Gabriel Pascal did direct two of the films and produced all three) but instead, a playwright. Shaw was considered in his time the heir apparent to William Shakespeare, and that comparison holds especially true for his play Caesar and Cleopatra, the film version of which bears such a strong resemblance to earlier straightforward movie adaptations of Shakespeare (before it became trendy to put the stories in alternative historical settings.) Similar in look and feel to the Laurence Olivier Shakespeare productions included in the Criterion Collection, Caesar and Cleopatra functions as a kind of companion piece to Olivier’s Henry V in that both were released in close succession, shot in vivid Technicolor and funded by the same tycoon, J. Arthur Rank. Whereas Henry V is regarded as a classic and even an heroic achievement, providing a badly needed rallying cry on behalf of British nationalism in the dark days of World War II, Caesar and Cleopatra hasn’t fared so well. I’ve come across some rather hostile reviews, which you can find by visiting some of the links in this article. I am not without sympathy to some of the objections raised. I had to work a bit to set aside some of the initial skepticism I felt, especially in the early portion of the film. But I’ve come to appreciate it and actually enjoyed my second viewing quite a bit earlier today – so if you’re inclined to check out Caesar and Cleopatra, I recommend that you not give up too quickly. Maybe what I write here will help you hang in there!

The opening credits, etched in faux marble, with all the Us turned to Vs, give an impression of seriousness and grandeur to start things off. The illustrious name of Bernard Shaw (what happened to “George”?) is given prominent credit for the scenario and dialogue (not merely “written by.”) At nearly 90 years of age, this was Shaw’s last direct involvement with a film adaptation of his works for the stage. I think it’s safe to say that the filmmakers back then assumed their audience had a fair amount of familiarity with the basic facts surrounding the Roman general Julius Caesar, his rival general Pompey, the rift between two factions in Egypt’s Ptolemaic Dynasty and Cleopatra’s seductive powers that ultimately ensnared both Caesar and his younger protege Mark Antony. It may help to read up a bit on all that in order to keep up with the plot and appreciate some of Shaw’s foreshadowing of later events that occurred outside of his play. But a careful viewer will get the needed information by paying close attention. Still, my experience of watching Shakespeare on film applies equally well here – it helps to know the basic outlines of the story going in.

Another lesson from Shakespeare on film fits here too: don’t hold the staginess and artificiality of the characters on screen as a detriment to the film’s overall effect. These movies are not the place to go for convincing portrayals of regular folks just like us. The literary quality of the text, peppered with memorable, epigrammatic quotes, and the mythic dimensions that the two lead characters in particular have assumed in Western culture, put us in the realm of archetypes. In this case, we have Caesar, the aging conqueror, pinned down for the moment in a strange and hostile land, and Cleopatra, the privileged, powerful yet naive young woman who’s just coming into her own as a wielder of power on both the political and sexual level. Each character serves as a canvas upon which Shaw can layer observations of varying degrees of profundity, that the rest of us can relate to in some way or other, either personally as they apply to our own lives, or observationally as we see connections to the lives of others. Caesar’s plight involves the degree to which he exercises his noble inclinations of clemency toward his foes as he reconsiders his war-like ways, while Cleopatra’s character arc transforms her from foolish child into the cunning, seductive manipulator of powerful men that has made her both an object of fascination and a proverbial harlot, albeit one who uses her lack of scruples to achieve notable conquests.

Still, the biggest hurdle for today’s viewers to get over is the blend of colonialist, patriarchal and chauvinistic assumptions that were inherent not only in Shaw’s view of the world but also the culture in which the film was made. Shaw’s play was written in the 1890s. Fifty years later, as Caesar and Cleopatra was being filmed, the legitimacy of European armies descending on North Africa to conquer and impose order in the name of “civilization” was easy to take for granted. As was the inherent sexism of a narrative that, in a very Pygmalion-esque style, emphasized the necessity of an older gentleman’s guiding hand in order to make a “real woman” out of an emotionally vulnerable, even somewhat hysterical young girl. The opening dialog between the worldly sophisticate Julius Caesar and the credulous Cleopatra, all a-tremble under the sway of her silly native superstitions, is potentially noxious enough to cause many viewers less dedicated to the task than me to bail out right away, or take such lasting offense that the rest of the film never gets a chance to work out from under the burden. Caesar treats her condescendingly, a plaything for his amusement, and her easy submission to his mind-games has, at times, an implicitly smutty quality to it.

Likewise, the cavalier mockery of native cultures can be grating. The “humorous” touches of a buffoonish black slave, bugged-eyed and fearful, running around in his underwear screaming “Fly! Fly!” when the Romans approach, or the running gag about the invaders’ inability to pronounce the name of Cleopatra’s head servant Ftatateeta come across as obtuse and boorish more than anything else, but such was the smugness of the old-time boys’ club mentality back then. I suppose it’s good to see with fresh eyes such biases revealing themselves in the guise of entertainment. Caesar’s tutelage of Cleopatra in how to use the threat of raw violence to assert her royal sovereignty is both disturbing and fascinating to behold, especially when it produces such an instantly sadistic response from his young pupil (alluded to in the quote to lead off this article.)

Setting the problems aside then, there’s still plenty to enjoy for lovers of classic, large-scale film sets of the monumental sort, even though they do have that stage-like air of artifice about them and cling rather closely to the conventions of Orientalist fantasy, similar to what you see in The Thief of Bagdad, on the few occasions that attention is given to ordinary Egyptian peasantry. My eyes were pleased by a few beautifully composed exteriors and I’m a big fan of Technicolor too, so that alone validates the price of admission. Less successful are some attempts at “cast of thousands” style spectacle toward the end of the film – the potential for climactic battle scenes on both land and sea was sadly under-exploited, with a feeble montage of very short battle images having to suffice when I was expecting a major throw-down between Caesar’s army and warriors under the command of Cleopatra’s sibling rival Ptolemy and his general Achillus. I get the sense that this production grew kind of exhausted toward the end, which was understandable after learning about some of its setbacks. These included Vivien Leigh’s pregnancy, miscarriage and the early onset of bipolar disorder that would plague her the rest of her life, budget overruns that drew negative attention from the British Parliament (during wartime, no less) and an unplanned relocation of production from England to Cairo (at least they could almost say “filmed on location”!) While there are many fine moments, Caesar and Cleopatra rarely delivers in terms of the sheer entertainment value promised in this trailer:

Due to the cumbersome weight of the spectacle and the general unwieldiness of the whole enterprise, Caesar and Cleopatra failed to recoup its investment, thwarting its creators’ ambitions to go toe-to-toe with Hollywood in the production of blockbuster spectaculars. That was probably a good thing for the overall British film industry, which went on to create some great successes as the careers of David Lean, Powell & Pressburger and many others thrived under more modest cinematic budgets and expectations. Keeping all that in mind then, let’s consider the choice of Vivien Leigh to take the pivotal role of Cleopatra when she did.

In the mid 1940s, Vivien Leigh was the biggest female star in the world, primarily based on the phenomenal success of Gone With the Wind and her iconic performance as Scarlett O’Hara. Her youthful beauty and fiery, impetuous on-screen persona captured the fancy of women and men alike, and she seems to have made a specialty of playing women who transition from times of severe adversity to pinnacles of power, only to face another round of setbacks that force them to rebuild their lives once again. At least, that’s judging from what I’ve seen of her in Gone With the Wind (1939), Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) and That Hamilton Woman (1941), a Criterion release from last year in which Leigh starred with her husband, Laurence Olivier. Cast opposite Claude Rains, who took the male half of the title roles, the two of them make a compelling and entertaining lead couple, though there are only flickers of romantic attraction between them – a dynamic built into the script, not a failure of their screen chemistry in the slightest. On the contrary, these two accomplished actors succeed in building a convincing rapport between older man, seasoned in the accumulation and expansion of power, and younger woman, born to privilege but naive about how to apply her advantages most effectively. Rains is probably most famous nowadays for his supporting role as Capt. Renault in Casablanca, and he’s enshrined in the Criterion Collection as Ingrid Bergman’s sinister husband in Hitchcock’s Notorious.

Other noteworthy contributions include Francis L. Sullivan (the slimy club owner in Night and the City) who plays a similarly ill-fated character here; Flora Robson as Ftatateeta, who’s better known as Sister Philippa in Black Narcissus and as the Stygian Witch (her last performance) in the original Clash of the Titans; Stewart Granger, who telegraphs a coded gay swagger (he’s a dashing, flamboyant, bronze-skinned interior decorator, with a dangling earring and the shortest tunic that censors could presumably allow); and Granger’s future wife, a very young, uncredited Jean Simmons (on the verge of breaking out in Great Expectations) as a fetchingly cute harpist in Cleopatra’s lavish harem, after the queen has completed her inevitable ascendancy to a life dedicated to voluptuous leisure, where all fantasies of Cleopatra eventually lead.

So though its clearly not a cinematic masterpiece by any measure, Caesar and Cleopatra has plenty to recommend it, even if one chooses to give it a “camp” reading. That’s apparently the value discovered by the Worth1000.com website, which takes iconic images and encourages participants to try their hand at coloring them creatively. Click the link for a gallery of takes on one poignant image (though it’s not one that’s lingered over at all in the actual film.) As they say, a picture can be worth a thousand words – I’ll leave you to fill in the blanks however you’d like on this one!

A Journey Through The Eclipse Series: Samuel Fuller’s The Steel Helmet

David Blakeslee — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 02:26:10 +0000

Don’t let your emotions get the best of you.

Dead man’s nothing but a corpse.

Nobody cares who he is now.

I opened up this Journey Through the Eclipse Series by stating in my first column that when given the choice of a film to watch, I’m not too likely to pick out a war movie. But here I am, just three weeks into this new effort, with the entire Eclipse catalog of nearly 90 titles at my disposal, and what do I do? I’ve selected another film dealing with military matters! My reason for this is that I aim to make these reviews timely and topical whenever possible. As the 60th anniversary of the Korean War’s outbreak draws near, I’ve been hearing rumblings of a new escalation in the armed conflict between North and South Korea, based on the recent sinking of a South Korean navy ship and a host of other indicators that Kim Jong-il is feeling more belligerent than usual toward his estranged countrymen. Even though nothing more than a few bursts of inflammatory rhetoric and a higher-than-usual stage of alert have been noted by foreign observers, Korea is definitely one of those geopolitical tinderboxes that could go up in flames at a moment’s notice. So I thought, why not take a look at a film that was written, shot and released in the very early stages of the original Korean War to see what kind of insight it sheds on this long-simmering feud? I think it’s safe to say that more Americans have had their popular impression of what that war is really about through watching M*A*S*H than through in-depth historical studies. I won’t offer that kind of fact-based insight here – I’m just directing your attention toward a different media source, the very first Hollywood movie (maybe the first movie of any kind) to specifically deal with the American intervention in Korea.

As it turns out, Th e Steel Helmet says a whole lot more about the American infantryman’s perspective on war in general, and not all that much about the issues that drove the two halves of the Korean peninsula apart. It was shot on the cheap, in a hurry, with little attention given to the big picture. The basic assumptions of “commies are the bad guys, kill ‘em before they kill you” holds true throughout, indicative of the mindset drilled into warriors of all eras. My expectations that the film might shed light on today’s or tomorrow’s headlines remain unfulfilled, but The Steel Helmet hardly fails to disappoint as a rough and rugged examination of what keeps a soldier trudging forward when death and confusion seem more likely to greet him than anything more pleasant to contemplate. It probably won’t go down as one of the most impressive wartime epics you’ll ever see – too many big budgets and top rank talents have labored on these themes for The Steel Helment to be include in those ranks – but it deserves a place of honor within the genre because of the bravery shown by writer, producer, and director Sam Fuller when he put this project together.

The Steel Helmet tackles issues of race, of American ethnocentrism and the jumble of tormented emotions stirred up by long stretches of duty on the front lines. The film primarily focuses on a single soldier, Sergeant Zack, as tough a two-fisted, cigar chompin’, stubble-faced, hard-headed mug as you’d ever want to have at your side when the firestorm erupts. Zack makes a memorable entrance to open the film, peering warily over a ridge, his helmet pierced by a bullet that just missed splitting his skull when his company was slaughtered in a North Korean ambush. Left for dead, Zack turns out to be the sole survivor, and might not have made it much further than the small hill he wriggles over, bound hand and foot, crawling like a worm toward a knife he intends to use to free up his limbs. A young boy, all alone and carrying a rifle, walks down the road, refusing to fall for Zack’s possum act. Lucky for Zack, the boy is a South Korean, neither the “gook” nor the “dog face” that Zack assumed him to be. Nicknamed “Short Round” (a bullet that doesn’t go all the way) by Zack, the boy takes a liking to this hard-boiled Yank, despite Zack’s efforts to shake him off and reconnect with his fellow soldiers without being hindered by child care duties. When it gets down to it, the grizzled retread, a vet of World War II and now the Korean “police action,” has a softer spot for the poor little orphan than he’s ready to admit, even to himself. He knows it’s almost certain death for Short Round unless he can help find some friendly goo- … that is, South Korean – hands to pass him along to.

Along the way, Zack and Short Round link up with the remnants of other massacres and patrols gone awry. A black medic, a Japanese sergeant, a lieutenant whose passive-aggressive rivalry with Zack jeopardizes the safety of everyone, a conscientious objector, a bald kid who lost all his hair from a childhood fever. It is indeed the epitome of the “fouled”-up outfit just hanging on for dear life either until help arrives, or it just doesn’t matter anymore. The fact that their personality differences would never draw them together at all in a civilian setting hardly makes a difference in such circumstances. This clip gives you a chance to meet the fellas that you’ll be spending most of your time with, should you choose to try The Steel Helmet on for size:

Fuller’s interest in bringing cross-cultural biases and blind spots to the surface is what made this film truly distinctive and surprising to me. There’s no shortage of gritty combat scenes, senseless deaths and heroic valor under duress – but such attributes are pretty much expected in truly worthy war flicks from just about any era. Fuller takes the familiar plot line of outnumbered, out-gunned soldiers making a bold stand against withering odds in new directions as he explores the racial and ethnic hostilities that simmer under the surface in an army that’s struggling with uncomfortable and unprecedented degrees of integration – not to mention the sheer necessity for cooperation in order to survive the enemy hostilities. A short interlude involving the familiar ballad “Auld Lang Syne” may surprise some viewers when they discover how Koreans regard the tune, but I was instantly reminded of Twenty-Four Eyes(1954), among numerous Asian films of this time that also made free use of traditional Western songs. More than just an amusing curiousity, Fuller informs his audience that the invisible walls that isolated and segregated societies before the wars are now crumbling, whether we’re ready for the culture shock or not.

On top of all that, ideological tensions of both political and religious varieties also crop up as the soldiers take shelter in an abandoned temple. A giant Buddha statue (really, it looks more like what an American design team under a short deadline imagined the Buddha would look like) looms imposingly over all the calamities that take place in the temple, as each of the characters, including a hidden enemy in their midst, take their turn at consciousness-raising encounters that call each man’s assumptions (and the viewer’s) into question, even if they fail to lead to full-fledged “diversity awareness” by today’s standards. I can’t say with certainty that this was the first American war movie to press these hot button issues so vigorously, but Fuller’s direct approach was clearly ahead of its time, blunt and unconventional enough to draw unwanted attention from the F.B.I. It seems that J. Edgar Hoover was curious to know if Sam Fuller’s credentials as a loyal American were tarnished in any way. This is not your by-the-book, chest-thumping flag waver of a war movie, even though John Wayne was briefly considered for the lead role before Fuller made it clear he’d have none of it. He sought the freedom to tell his story, his way, without having to work out from under the jingoistic burden that an actor of Wayne’s stature would lay over the production.

The Steel Helmet offers up plenty of evidence to confirm its B-movie origins, with obvious incorporation of grainy stock footage during the battle scenes and a generally boxed-in feeling that reflects the backlot sets and nearby SoCal hillsides where the movie was shot. The highly quotable dialog is full of rough-edged sentiment and dark humor: “If you die, I’ll kill ya!” “He’s South Korean when he’s running with you. He’s North Korean when he’s running AFTER you.” “If I was right all the time I’d be an officer, Lieutenant.” A lot of these anecdotes were gathered by Fuller himself, based on the diary he kept in his own combat experience in the 16th Infantry Regiment, the same assignment drawn by Sgt. Zack.

This probably serves as a good-enough introduction and recommendation to check out The Steel Helmet for yourself whenever you’re in the mood for a tough-hearted, intelligent two-fisted tale. It’s part of Eclipse Series 5: The First Films of Samuel Fuller, a vintage collection of previously hard-to-find works that the great American auteur crafted when he was just emerging into the Hollywood film industry. From these seminal productions, shot with low budgets, no-name casts and ridiculously accelerated time-tables (three weeks of shooting for this particular title), Fuller went on to fearlessly blaze new cinematic trails for the next three decades. He’s a Criterion favorite, of course, with four other films (Pickup on South Street, Shock Corridor, The Naked Kiss and White Dog) in the Collection, and a famous cameo in Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le Fou. I think it’s always a good idea to see where the great ones started their journey, and The Steel Helmet is the film that really put Sam Fuller on the map.

Rudie Reviews Brilliante Mendoza’s Lola [Tribeca Film Festival 2010]

Rudie Obias — Tue, 25 May 2010 05:18:20 +0000

One of the gems I screened at the Tribeca Film Festival this year was Brilliante Mendoza’s “Lola”. This is the latest film from the Filipino filmmaker who, for me, came out of nowhere. His breakout film, from 2008 was “Kinatay” (Butchered) was in competition in the 62nd Cannes Film Festival. Mendoza won Prix de la Mise en Scene (Best Director) for Kinatay during the festival. Moreover “Kinatay” was the first Filipino film accepted for competition for Cannes since 1984. Going into this film, I had huge expectations for the success of it. And my word, it does deliver.

“Lola” (Grandmother) is the story of a random act of violence and how it’s affected by the grandmother’s of those involved. The film starts with Lola Sepa who is traveling through the mean streets of Manlia with her grandson. They are on their way to make an appointment. When the picture starts, you’re not quite sure what these two are up to. It’s not until they meet up with Lola Sepa’s daughter at a funeral home. They are shopping for coffins. This opening scene is done in a very interesting way. The point of the scene is the purchasing of coffins but before then are smaller scenes of prayers at a church, a memorial, and a mugging on the streets. When we get to the funeral home we think Lola Sepa is buying a coffin for herself but then we find out she’s buying a coffin for her grandson, who was murdered days before.

Lola Carpin is the grandmother of the suspected killer, Mateo. We first meet Lola Carpin visiting her grandson in prison. We are brought to this rather scary and rough Filipino prison filled with equally scary and rough prisoners. On first meeting with her grandson, Lola Carpin is more concerned with general well being of Mateo. She asks him whether or not he has eaten dinner today. This is an organic response of a grandmother visiting her grandson. In this way, her view of Mateo is genuine. Her feelings towards his alleged crime is non-existent rather she ignores the suspicions and the backdrop of the scene.

Mendoza plays this film in an interesting way, dealing with grief and loss through the strength of two elderly matriarchs. One deals with it buy accepting and moving on, the other ignores and manufactures her perfect family. Both are caretakers of their respective families so who are we to judge whether one way is better than the other. Mendoza puts these ideas in the context of the grief. His camera is objective, shot as a documentary, Mendoza follows the action rather than creates it.

“Lola” is a highly engaging and absolutely riveting piece of true cinema. It plays as an interesting character study of two women dealing with the changing face of their families. Rather than explore whether Mateo is guilty or innocent, Mendoza choses to show the affect of violence on its victims. He also subverts the tropes of the procedural courtroom genre. Placing the fates of the families in the Filipino justice system but never shows the outcome or the stakes. They seem unimportant to the film as if they are unimportant to seeking justice. Brillante Mendoza has created a masterpiece. A gem of a film from a relatively unknown filmmaker from a country not known for its films. Highly recommended!

James Reviews Stéphane Brizé’s MADEMOISELLE CHAMBON [Theatrical Film Review]

James McCormick — Sat, 08 May 2010 18:41:12 +0000

Silent sorrow. This is a constant and heartfelt thematic device throughout the film Mademoiselle Chambon, the new film by director Stephane Brize. A simple story about a man named Jean (played wonderfully by Vincent Lindon) who has a happy life with his beautiful wife and son. He’s a working man, a builder who helps create homes from scratch, which is what he tells his son’s class in a great scene, at the behest of the homeroom teacher, Mademoiselle Chambon (played exquisitely by Sandrine Kiberlain). And when they meet for the first time, Jean doesn’t realize his world will be flipped upside down.

We’ve all experienced a love at the wrong place and the wrong time. Something that you know you shouldn’t try to attain but yet still want so badly, on both sides of the table, because there’s this connection you can’t refute. This is what Jean and Veronique experience, that connection that is undeniably there, which we as the audience see in extended takes of almost complete awkward silence between the two. And unlike most films with this familiar plot, the two of them spend more time almost at odds because of the situation and how much it pains the two of them that this probably won’t work at all.

You see the attraction when Jean asks Veronique to play a piece on her violin. While she says she isn’t any good, Jean doesn’t want to insist but almost does, to see what he’ll hear when she plays. And she starts to play and you see the sadness and happiness well up in Jean’s face all at once. Almost seeing his pain and anguish at a life that he may had never had because of circumstances in his past. This is all told by facial expressions, which this film is filled with, and it flourishes because of it.

Their attraction is one which almost doesn’t make sense, only because Veronique knows that Jean is married and has a child. And when Jean tells her he has another child on the way with his wife Anne-Marie, the resistance is there and Veronique decides to run away from this by rejecting the offer to take the teaching gig at the school and go back to Paris, once again leaving her problems behind, which is something that is hinted at when speaking about why she moves very often from school to school.

Vincent Lindon is sort of a revelation to this American viewer. Never seeing him act before, his rugged looks are out of a Hollywood playbook from yesteryear, specifically the 1960′s and 1970′s. His understated performance will probably be overlooked by most American audiences and what a shame that is because he says more in his eyes and his silent demeanor than most actors say in a monologue. And one the other side of this amazing coin is Sandrine Kiberlain’s wounded performance of Mademoiselle Chambon, which just is so simple and beautiful, you can’t help but fall in love with her yourself.

When Jean, learning that Veronique is leaving for good, brings back some CD’s he has borrowed from her and asks her to perform for his father, who has been sick for quite some time (there’s even a darkly comical scene where he goes to look at coffin’s to buy with his father), and she is hesitant at first until Jean tells her that he ‘wants his father to hear something beautiful before he dies.’ Of course she can’t refuse and she does come over to the party and plays a beautifully touching piece. While Jean is visibly shaken and almost on the verge of tears, Anne-Marie looks over and realizes the connection the two have and yet again, a performance of few words but expressions makes for a surprising film.

When Jean drives her home, they don’t speak a word whatsoever, but we watch from the backseat, seeing the two look at one another, and as Veronique starts to wipe away her tears, Jean does nothing at all. Veronique gets out of the car and walks toward her door, violin in tow, and we pan back to Jean, who then starts to cry, tears rolling down his cheeks. This is when we pan back to the outside of the car and we see Veronique looking at him from the door. And we cut to a love scene between the two, who have finally given into their temptation and profess their feelings for one another.

But Veronique is still leaving and Jean tells her he wants to leave with her. And she says something so poignant, it sends chills down your spine. “Don’t say it if you don’t mean it.” And he continues to kiss her and we cut to the next day, while she’s getting in her cab to the train station, we see Jean packed up and hopping into his car and driving off to the station. And one of the most heart wrenching scenes in recent cinema history is depicted in this film, where she is waiting right near the train while Jean is only 50 feet away, down the stairs. He waits, with bag in hand, until the train leaves; Veronique finally getting on. And Jean has chosen his wife and child, perhaps because he felt guilt wash over him. Or is it because he truly loves his wife and son? Or is it just easier to get back into the swing of things in his simple life? It’s an open ended question in a film that deserves to be seen by everyone, especially people who like unconventional romantic films that are a little closer to home than the usual Hollywood fare.

Mademoiselle Chambon is a film that leaves a mark on you and will continue to resonate within until the next time you see it. You feel completely drained and at the same time satisfied It’s also a film that you want to show other people and see what they ultimately take from its story. A new love found and then lost, is it better than never loving at all? That’s only a question that can be answered by the individual watching the film.

Lorber Films is proud to announce the U.S. theatrical release of the French box office hit MADEMOISELLE CHAMBON, directed by Stéphane Brizé and starring Vincent Lindon and Sandrine Kiberlain in a poignant and universal romance of unrequited love. The film will open at New York’s Lincoln Plaza Cinemas on June 11th, followed by a nationwide release to select cities.