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Reviews
The Nest (2020)
A film with almost no closeups
It seems that the director has a fear of them. There are barely any close ups in the entire movie...strange.
My Little Princess (2011)
Art imitates Life, with a touch of Fassbinder...
"My Little Princess", Eva Ionesco's debut film explores the intense relationship between mother & daughter. Although, initially it may sound like a cinematic cliché to go over family dynamics once again, the film offers us a double controversy:
The first being the relationship itself and the fact that the mother (played beautifully by Isabelle Huppert) takes erotic/pornographic photos of her under-aged daughter(Anamaria Vartolomei) and sells them. The second being that these very events happened in the director's actual life and caused a huge spark in France.
The narration explores how these dynamics came to be about and their ultimate unraveling. Aesthetically, the film borrows a lot from R.W Fassbinder, particularly his BDR trilogy and his collaboration with Hanna Schygulla. Huppert's appearance and beautiful designer gowns (most notably Yves Saint-Laurent) pays homage to the 30s and several references have been made to Marlene Dietrich. The problematic of the working woman struggling to survive in a ruthless world has been explored by the German director back then and is repeated by Ionesco today, with emphasis on child abuse.
Also, Huppert's acting never disappoints but Vartolomei was surprisingly brilliant. Her very young age and the salacious material of the text did not deter this great talent from the intense performance she gave. The latter is indeed a gentle reminder of Brook Shields' days in "Pretty Baby" & "The Blue Lagoon".
To sum up, French films are getting more and more controversial, although I had originally expected a gem out of the "New French Extremity" to be included in the Semaine De La Critique De Cannes, this interesting piece of work is satisfying enough.
Native Son (2010)
The quest for intimacy
Scott Graham's film packs in its small duration a tremendous lot of substance. Be not deterred by the 19 minute short-film because the director made sure every single second counts in his depiction of the need for intimacy.
In a small village, a potato farmer named John suffocates in his redundant and ultimately empty daily activities. As he goes about his duties one night, an encounter with a woman's dead body changes him. With her corps, he experiences intimacy as he never had and lives to suffer the consequences.
Graham takes his time in emphasizing every touch, gaze, movement between John and his dead beloved, bordering on the grotesque. And yet, irrelevant of its obscenity, the character and the incident become more and more metaphoric. The rough environment John lives in contrasts beautifully with the softness of his private moments and the hardships of his work are mirrored in his inner world as well...
These 19 minutes personally blew me away. They seem to translate either a feeling of unilateral affection and desire or a deep unintelligible necrophiliac fantasy. Regardless of the interpretation, Who is Scott Graham (I later answered this of course) and when is he releasing another film?