Reviews

Paris in the 1950s. Film opens with Jeanne & Maggy, two glamorous high society aristocrats, watching a polo game, cheering the star player, the equally glamorous society page poster man Raoul Flores. Later, cozy snuggling between Raoul and Jeanne who, we learn when she goes home, is married to another man -- a prominent newspaper publisher, Henri. Over dinner, we observe quickly that Jeanne and Henri's marriage has been on deep freeze for sometime inside that capacious, ornately furnished countryside mansion. Henri, more or less convinced of Jeanne's affair with Raoul, insisted on having Jeanne invite Maggy and the polo player for the weekend. On her way back from Paris that weekend Jeanne's sports car breaks down. She's given a ride by archaeologist Bernard, definitely proletariat, definitely more comfortable studying rocks from diggings than at the polo field. Henri invites Bernard to stay for the weekend with Raoul and Maggy. At dinner Bernard shown to be an obvious outsider of this group. After everyone goes to bed, Jeanne wanders out into the night in her white, diaphanous nightgown, starting the forty-minute final sequence, the heart of the movie. This is the mildly sensuous moonlit epiphany for Jeanne that true love still can happen. (This sequence was deemed "shockingly erotic" in 1958 when the movie was released, becoming the main reason for calls for censorship, if not outright banning, in many countries). In a long sequence of lyrical black and white, day-for-night shots of shadows in the moonlight, a long walk on a vast field of shrubs and flowers, delicate embraces on a cozy boat floating unaided on a stream, Jeanne falls for Bernard's non-aristocratic, nonhigh-society, proletariat charms. Maybe it is the moonlight, or Bernard's open collar, working-archaeologist shirt, or his 2-cylinder mini-car, or the portentous bat that flew into the room when they were dining, but at the break of dawn, Jeanne decides to leave everything, including her sleeping daughter (another reason which shocked the critics and the Catholic church into condemning this movie) and drive away with Bernard into a new day aborning. (As far as I can remember this is the first movie I know where the central characters, at the fade-out, ride into the sunrise instead of into the sunset. One extra point for the then 25-year old Louis Malle). This movie has acquired its "classic status" for several reasons: It was a notable (and controversial!) work from a young director who was just starting to get noticed (Malle's fifth movie, his second for 1958). It portrayed succinctly the phoniness of the affluent as it showed a portrait of a woman confined within the rituals of her social status and then acting on her sudden feeling to get out. It presented a sex scene considered bold and shocking at that time (Jeanne's orgasm shown only through a close-up of her trembling hand is I think a clever idea from Malle). And it has Jeanne Moreau. (Although for me, anything with Jeanne Moreau is automatically on my personal "classic" list). Even by today's standards I think this is a very well-made movie if only for the subtlety with which Malle presented how these characters show the spectrum of their raw feelings. Moreau is "on every frame" (Malle's words from a 1994 interview) and perfectly so. She shows the build-up in Jeanne's simmering feelings so flawlessly, we actually feel the tension of when it's going to explode. Magre is pure delight as the fully-enjoy-the-moment Maggy. De Villalonga captures perfectly the unctuous charms of someone who's enraptured with his own image, endlessly watching and listening to himself in his own head. Cuny is admirably subtle in showing Henri as someone who has really stopped caring a long time ago, just enjoying watching these people make fools of themselves, eventually to choke on their own flirtations. Note his stiff indifference watching Bernard drive away with Jeanne. In the Moreau performances I've seen, I think this is one of her finest. In her every movie, the main tension is her eyes -- no one really knows what's going on behind that hypnotic stare. Love, passion, hatred, murder, tenderness, bewilderment? We always have to wait for the end of the movie. Some clever prefiguring clues Malle gives us: The bat flying in during their dinner causing a brief consternation -- their fortress has been breached, their aristocracy is not invulnerable anymore. Bernard's mini-car, slow but unstoppable in the highway -- stability, simple and quiet persistence. Bernard freeing the fishes from Henri's traps -- obviously about Jeanne. Excellent, luminous restoration from Criterion of this stunningly photographed black and white film by Henri Decae. Extras include two interviews from Malle and one from Jeanne Moreau. ##

Movies about characters with disabilities usually focus on how the personal deficiencies were overcome, with everyone, especially the audience, feeling good in the end. This is not that kind of movie. Ben, the central character, is an autistic high school student subjected to repeated excruciating torments by his classmates. Everyday in school he gets slapped and pushed around while he cowers helplessly. Later he is subjected to a most traumatic assault by two of the meaner classmates, one cruel asault shown in the internet as a crowd of students cheer and jeer. Ben's divorced parents and the school authorities seem as helpless as Ben. As this goes on without respite I felt that Director Balthazar, (who wrote and directed this from his own novel), enjoyed Ben's suffering as much as his sadistic classmates. Somewhere along the movie I became convinced that Balthazar is submitting his own entry into the Torture Film Genre (Michael Haneke's "Funny Games" ('97), Mel Gibson's "The Passion of Christ"). Ben's consolation is playing his sword-and-sandal superhero video game, Archlord. This is used to tease the audience that at a certain point Ben will emulate his hero and fight back. He can never get himself to do it however. The only thing in that video game fantasy that becomes his salvation is the appearance of a young woman, Scarlite, who gives him the courage to act on his solution -- to die. It is this act that Balthazar uses to end the movie supposedly to shame Ben's tormentors and all the school authorities, into remorse over everything done to Ben. This retaliation that Balthazar cooked up, that these young brutes and thugs, these indifferent, uncaring and indifferent adults, can supposedly be shamed, I find not only naive but phony, artistically inane and dishonest. After showing us throughout the movie a group of irreparably thuggish youths and indifferent uncaring adults, Balthazar wants us to think that these people can be shamed into remorse and reforming. Balthazar's whole point seems to be that the only refuge the emotionally and mentally handicap can find is in the fantasy of video games, that the real world will always be cruel, even to the point of turning video -- the only world he can escape to -- into yet another torment. Balthazar probably forgot that the film world is bursting to its seams with Christ metaphors and Christ themes have long been exhausted, and any new attempt is artificial and shallow. Timmermans' performance, even if he looks older to be a high school student, is highly commendable. Ben's absorbing fear of the world outside his room and his video screen is perfectly encapsulated in the way he coils unto himself, the way he walks as though anticipating to fall or sink as he takes his next step, the contortions on his face as he walks through the gauntlet of students. The repeated shots from above when Ben gets out of his house looking like a creature coming out of a hole in the ground is a haunting image, implying his being not of this world. This is a well-photographed movie with a good script, very well acted by all, especially Timmermans and Verlinden, but the treatment of a disabled life really stinks.Tito Alquizola ##

The movie depicts the lives of three grown daughters of a bitterly angry, physically punitive widowed father, screaming at and slapping any daughter who displeases him. It opens with the youngest daughter Grace on the way to her wedding. The car travels through a countryside with browning vegetation. Mendoza should have been more visually explicit about this barren countryside as the devastated result of the 1991 volcano eruption which he later implies as the catastrophe behind the daughters' father's sense of failure and bitterness. We see the rush-rush scenes before Grace's wedding, an authentic amusing depiction of the common chaos which takes place before any ceremony in the Philippines. Well-staged in showing almost everyone as too excited, excitable and euphoric to ever get anything organized. After the wedding Mendoza divides the movie into 3 segments. First is Angin (Wind) depicting the stressful early years of Grace's and Conrad's marriage, with Conrad's wealthy family's condescending view of Grace and her family,class conflict being a staple of Philippine movies. The Wind probably refers to the ill winds early in their marriage or to the blustery winds of Conrad's unpleasant mother's mouth. Segment 2 is called Api (Fire) starting with a woman in bed in a motel with someone not her husband. This is about the marriage of Lourdes, the middle sister, showing the choices Lourdes has to make. The Fire here I suppose is the emotional conflagration which erupted in Lourdes' marriage. Segment 3 is Danum (Water), about Jesusa, the oldest and most nurturing sister and the more sharply etched character in the whole movie. She's significantly noticeable even in the initial scenes getting our attention through Cherry Pie Picache's honest, unaffected performance revealing an insightful understanding of her character. Jesusa is a lesbian who is the object of her father's outright hostility despite her being the stabilizing figure in the family. What I admire -- the well-observed recreation of Filipino ceremonies (the wedding, the flagellants), the scenes of someone always decorating something, the looks of the insides of the houses revealing of the people's characters, Mendoza's insight on the frictions of marriage, the immaturity of people, the class consciousness, the cultural insensitivities, all well-depicted in a straightforward matter-of-fact way without cynicism or any demeaning or derogatory intentions, just pure presentation of what has been observed as common characteristics. I also appreciate Mendoza not attaching anything irrelevant (shoot-outs knifings, exploitative sex scenes) to please the typical audience. On Picache's performance: gratifying enough that she did not make Jesusa a caricature but she also created a respectable, humane, emotionally coherent solid character. Shortly into the movie we are convinced that she provides this family's moorings in her quiet uncomplaining way. What I don't like -- Mendoza's self-conscious stylishness, shots of wind-swept grass, rain falling on parched earth, conflagrations as though his characters emotions are not enough they have to be explicitly illustrated. In certain places, he errs on the side of becoming too vague sometimes not clear early on which character is which. I also needed a little idea on how Conrad and Grace resolved their conflict. Johnny Delgado's Father was a one-note character,never getting the chance to show anything but anger. Unfortunate, Delgado being such an accomplished actor. A movie worth seeing because of its authenticity in presenting these Filipino characters with this kind of Filipino cultural behavior. Reflects accurately the times, the places and the people it's depicting. Tito Alquizola ##

We enter this movie as voyeurs, intruders into Xiao Jian's sewing room.We see only Xiao Jian's shadow, bent over the shadow of the sewing machine projected on a yellowish dirty wall,implying that this is going to be a story of a man projecting another life into his world a made up shadow of his real self.I see this as a movie within a movie Xiao Jian's acting out the movie in his head -- having power as a policeman.The actor gives a perfect awkwardness to Xiao glossed over with poorly contrived bravado as he intimidates commuters in deserted highways.Later he smoothly shows Xiao's increasing confidence, not in his con game, but in some kind of self-deception that he has become a real policeman.His walk is more determined,his sneakiness less nervous,more cunning. The wearing of the uniform has turned fantasy into a discovery of something in him to respect. The movie is about finding self-respect.The final Chaplinesque image of Xiao biking away confirms for me that this movie is a commentary on some specific socio-political condition in China presented in a Silent Movie mood. Xiao is cartoonish yet moves us, makes us feel for him as Chaplin's and Keaton's characters did. He is the innocent, naive Everyman caught in the turmoil of wiser men and forced to fight his way out. His policeman's uniform is the reincarnation of all those common objects Chaplin and Keaton used to throw at their pursuers. Zheng Shasha's waifish persona is a strong reminder of all those women Chaplin and Keaton's characters used to go goo-goo eyes over. This is a Silent Movie with sound and dialogue (although there are long stretches without any conversation). A movie that says a lot, simply. Cinematography is tinted like the patina of tarnished metal, greenish, darkening beginnings of rust. Gives the movie its character's mood of increasing desperation.tito a. ##