Proclaimed homage to Ozu's centenial, the film re-enact Ozu's traditional family drama with a new generation gap in today's Japan, "Ozu's children" are parents now, and their daughter announces her father-less pregnancy. Omnipresence of trains in a labyrintic Tokyo. The homage to Ozu is indirect, and the style is closer to Kore-eda or K. Kurosawa. The central homage is to a taiwainese composer who studied in Japan. Incidentally the father of the girl's baby is taiwanese too.

+++

it's a terrible documentary... it's more like a Real TV show. there is absolutely no journalistic rigor in this work. evidences are stack with no order, for pure sensational effect. i was manipulated from end to end.
i didnt know what i was watching, just that it was some kind of documentary about a family who got involved in a trial in 1986. i didnt know if they were guilty, condemened, dead or alive...
1) my opinion was it's about a dysfunctional family
2) my opinion was it's about a daddy who hid to his family he had pedophile fantasies
3) the guy did it, the police is onto something
4) this police investigation with mass hysteria is gone nuts, teh guy is innocent
5) damn, this guy has a solid perverted history, abused in childhood, abusing children occasionaly
6) these interviews are all phony
7) this guy denies but he deserves jail for whatever he did
8) his son is too young to be alienated by an aimless/threatening/bargaining parody of justice
9) his son is too careless and joyful to be innocent
there is no contradictory confrontation of assertions... the opposing points of view are interviewed separately (notably Jesse and his lawyer) and neither party is asked to rebute the opposing position, or respond to the denial of the opposing party.
this is such a show! would anybody tour around altogether after your family has been destroyed and humiliated by an affair of this kind??? this is symptomatic of the Real TV generation, Jerry Springer-like Talk shows... people have no shame and just want to get attention.
the way he films himself with his video diary (looking like a last will...), he adresses the audience, and already suspects the cops to watch this footage in teh future... so he's making evidences FOR them, to be watched, and says it while doing it. not to mention he ask us to turn it off if we, viewers, are not him, David Friedman, and discontinue watching this. however David obviously agreed to the publishing of this material... Howard, seems to be having a lot of fun being interviewed by the camera too! he's so melodramatic, exagerating his reaction, the tone of his voice, that i thought he was a bad actor. he cant be real, he cant be talking about his own family... like Vincent Gallo, this guy is too self-conscious of being on camera!
the comparison to Rashomon is very clever. i didnt think of it that way
what i thought of was Bob Crane's fictionous biopic Auto Focus, dealing with the same kind of family movies/pornography short of pedophilia.

awesome opening scene with that spining camera in B&W! with a bird POV reminiscent of the funeral procession scene in Dreyer's Vampyr.
lots of beautifuly composed scenes, with worked out mise-en-scene (the final subway sequence). the evolution of the characters is interesting, and well impersonated by great actors, but the overall story is pointless and without much surprises.

excellent entertwined-storyline melo. half-surrealist half-tragedy and another half or irony. involving a confused lil 5 yold girl, a mall actress, a fighting bull, a dog, and quintuplets. nice existensialism emotions painting. Cannes Festival selection Un Certain Regard - Prix Jeunesse. Rugus London film festival - Sutherland Award Stockolm film festival - Best Scenario
the film is difficult to summarize without spoiling the fun.
multiple stories develop in parallel in various places, untill the pathes cross and some characters bump into each other, and their lives collide. several people go through a life crisis at different age, and ponder about life and death from their unique point of view. the metaphysical considerations facing pregnancy, cheating, fatherhood, motherhood, loss, abandon, identity take a strange look as these characters realize other people around them might have answers. the movie is all about atmosphere, the collage of all the stories together is clever and the transitions around this bullfight carrion give a very surrealist twist to this quirky fable. it's a succession of moving scenes about people's intimacy, an aspect of their life, unshielded, helpless, naked. the photography is rich and colorful, each scene is fully furbished of very personal objects and a complex emotional background surrounds each character, that tells about their whereabouts. the whole dance throughout each sequence, rythmed by the sweet music and the cynic visual derision move us into this burlesque world that is simultaneously sad and humourous.

The Castle of Purity

it has definitely a Buñuel touch. i was disappointed by the dragging heavy narration lacking in virtuosity. but this heavy endless disturbing atmosphere is well rendered. the feeling of imprisonment feels close to the one in Midnight Express. the acting direction, apparently rather free and leaving room to improvisation for the kids was well mastered. the "apocalyptic" ending is crazy, and the ambiguity is preserved until the last minute.

What a complicated extended family transgenerational tragedy! I had trouble to keep track of all characters, their flashback history, and official/unofficial ties to the rest of the clan... Arranged marriage by the grandfather who runs his descendance like a business empire, and funerals (execution, suicide, murders) articulate the discontinuous related story. Although the film is supported by a somptuous cinematography! and a chilling mise-en-scène. I got lost in all the post-war ressentment against the old regime, communists, manchurians, koreans, war criminals, police state, american occupation, foreign influence... for my poor knowledge of the political evolution within this timeframe. However the symbols are powerful enough to push their point across. Baseball plays a central role in the main character's life, obviously siding with the american world. The marriage with the invisible bride is one of the best metaphore I've seen to yell out angst for inhumane traditions, followed by the "public honeymoon" and yet another funeral. A spectacular piece of cinematography!

an adorable comedy full of irony, where Audrey Hepburn and Carry Grant dont take themselves seriously and make fun of their own role in this mere parody of a robbery investigation involving the american embassy in Paris, spies turned baddies, mistaken identities and feminine intuition.
i heard Carry Grant refused to play with Audrey Hepburn earlier because he thought she was too young an actress for his age, to make him the love interest. Here, she falls for him with a fanatic passion! and he keeps her at distance all along :p leading to hilarious scenes (the fully clothed shower with dripdry suit!), where seduction is unilateral.
WOW Audrey is gorgeous!!!!

I just saw the last Marker tonight at the Centre Pompidou (museum of modern art): Chats Perchés, which I would translate into A cat with a Grin (see picture) :D
This is kinda Marker's version of Fahrenheit 911... A retrospective of hot politics events taking place in France since november 2001 (anti-war protests, the fascist/Chirac duel at last presidency, various social strikes, the islamic veil controversy, death of actress Marie Trintignant murdered by her b/f, communist propaganda...) following the narrative track of occurances of this mysterious graffiti cat on the walls and streets of Paris.
I didn't really like it. It's a video-grade made-for-TV mockumentary with limited commentary and bad video effects. I guess it serves as an archive of french politics only. Disappointing.

Chen Mo he Mei Ting
the documentary-neorealist touch of what seem to define the latest generation of chinese filmmakers is again painting Beijing with smog, cold, traffic, poverty, gloom and fatalism. A portrait of the chinese reality under the brutal opening to the western economies. Idleness, unemployment, illegal market, business abuse, skyrocketting rents, shortage of accomodations, helplessness of the police...
This is the daily life of young adults who have no future but to make enough money to live by the day. Their relationship is somehow naive and tender, a friendly-platonic love, but the chinese society is very prude and taboo on sex. The evolution of this relationship is shown through small details, silent attitudes, unspoken words, making touching and poetical scenes.
The cinematography is mixed... half of it is made of unmastered shots (too much camera moves or wrong angle, wrong frame), and the other half gives us this beautiful light and close ups.
Interesting debut film.

The Fall of the House of Usher
Silent Black&White (with an interesting contemporean/dodecaphonic music on it! by Rolande de Cande)
Photo : Georges Lucas et Jean Lucas
cast : Jean Debucourt (Sir Roderick Usher), Marguerite Gances (Madeleine Usher) Abel Gance's wife!
Assistant Director : Luis Buñuel ! who argued with Epstein and split before the end of the shooting. he started his own film a few months later with Salvador Dali : Un chien Andalou.
Scenario : Epstein. inspired from short stories of Edgar Allan Poe (The New Extraordinary Stories) : The Fall of the House of Usher, The Oval Portrait, Berenice, and Tomb of Ligeia.

Story : Allan a visitor look to go to Usher, but the name itself is cursed by a doom and gloom reputation in the region, so nobody wants to drive him there. the castle is derelict and inhabited by Roderick Usher, his wife Madeleine (his sister in Poe's story, changed because of the incest innuendo). Madeleine is very sick, and Roderick spends his days painting her. The long poses exhaust her, and it seems every stroke of brush that makes the picture more real, makes herself weaker (a reverse of the Portrait of Dorian Gray). and once the portrait is finished, Madeleine dies. But Roderick believes she'll be back and forbid to ceal the coffin...
the fine line between life and death is the essence developed throughout the film, using all possible technics to better express it emotionaly and symbolicaly.
the cinematography is impressive! expressionism, ghostly darkness and some surrealism. Epstein uses overlaping footage, slow-motion, shadows and a magic lighting with candles and veils. he manages skillfuly the special FX for the "live painting". the whole set with the huge rooms that dwarf the actors and vibrate with the wind. some FX of the House setting ablaze and crumbling down are a bit funny, with a genealogical tree cast with stars in the night above the House
the editing itself is a reference! Epstein uses power-cut with almost 2 or 3 pics per second at times, inserting some unrelated shots (for graphism or surrealist purpose), some inverted shots, or upside down, quick glances at many places at the same time...
few slates, most of the story goes throught images instead (even the main narration), yet on the opening scene, a black screen with the word "Usher" is redundantly displayed to show how the locals are afraid at the sound of the name (power-cuts with horrified faces)
the characters arent much talkative, Epstein emphasis on the atmosphere: meloncholy, macabre, romantic, fantastic, poetic, dreamy... he fully experiment all visual technics and produce an avant-garde aesthetism.

The Swamp

"family differences" between the city of Buenos Aires, a country town, Salta, and the isolated mountians of Argentina, during a too hot summer.
the wealthy family of 6 living in a large villa with pool (although unfiltred) with 2 servants and a poorer family of 5 living in town.
the 2 mothers are sisters, Mecha and Tali. the older son of the first one, José, has gone to live in Buenos Aires with the a friend of them (or their age!)
When Mecha has an accident, Tali and José come by to take her company. Family proximity always bring up tensions and forgotten issues... Everyone knows, and talk in the back, but nothing is told in the face. Each chracter keeps his/her problems for himselfs and covers them up, by playing the expected role in the family.
The children play with shotguns, swim near the dam, go dancing, nothing much to do when the heat sweat you out.
Meanwhile a girl in town claims to have witnessed an apparition of the Virgen Maria, which is the big event in these fervent latine population.
We can feel the slowish pace of these damp overheated summer days, the photography is very crude, bare, realist, sometimes poetic, sometimes painful, like the screenplay, almost a true and honest documentary.

Extraordinary experimental work with "found footage" recycling! An homage to the begining of the cinematographe, both in its primitivity, and the aging errors aspect. The highly contrasted B&W photography is enhanced by hand-made FX : overexposition, halos, solarisation, inversion... The film slides across the screen revealing the perforations, the soundtrack, mirroring itself, duplicating many times creating a new vitual space of the film footage itself where characters face their double, or themselves in a past/future action. Overlapping of several faces against a black background. The editing go as far as 24 edits per second, alternating the inversed image every second frame, rendering a stroboscopic effect on screen. The film cuts crackle, the sound track grates, suppressed, smothered.

L'arrivée / The arrival (1998, B&W, 2')
Using the first film footage existing : The brothers Lumière's Arrival of the Mail Train (1895). Mirror effects, reel perforations, optical sound track, shuffle around at the stroboscopic beat of stuttering sound effrects. The film itself makes its arrival on screen from offscreen. A second film arrives from the opposing side. The 2 trains on each film crash and show a woman exiting from the slit tearing apart the screen.

Outer Space (1999, B&W, 10')
Using footage from The Entity (1988, Sidney J. Furie) with Barbara Hershey. A woman alone at home in the night, gets undressed, go to bed. The film jumps and thrusts, the woman is trapped in the frame and an invisible monster stalk on her in the dark, and maybe rape her, or maybe it's only her dream. Gradualy the montage goes crazy, first only the image texture is altered by isolating details in the frame, overlaping, mix of several scenes at once, repeat, stroboscopic effect, then the frames jump, the film itself explodes, while the soundtrack rages fury.

Dream Work (2002, B&W, 11')
extension of Outer Space. Homage to Man Ray's surrealist photographic experimentations like rayographs (contact printing by laying objects on the photosensible surface to screen the light and outline a silhouette) with taks, ciszors, film reel and his own hands, all frame by frame.

Inspired by Chaplin's Woman of Paris, and Flaherty's Nanook, Murnau became fully american, makes a realist romance, no longer expressionist, an opposite counterpart of Sunrise, where the city-girl is the legit wife who must make her husband a man despite the patriarcal misogynist society of the country.

The Faithful Heart
B&W Silent
Screenplay : Marie Epstein et Jean Epstein
Cinematography : Paul Guichard
with : Marie (Gina Manès); Jean (Léon Mathot); Petit Paul (Edmond Van Daele, also in Epstein's 6 1/2 x 11 see above); the cripple girl (Marie Epstein as Miss Marice);

Marie, a foster child raised by an old couple of mean bar tenants, on the port of Marseille on the mediterranean coast of France, is loved by 2 men. one is
Petit Paul, a thug feared on the port, the other is Jean, a poor hardworker. both want to marry her, so Petit Paul runs away with Marie to the country, and wants to marry Mary on a Merry-go-round.
powerful images of the entertainment fair, with attractions, music, party's confetti and streamers, with power cuts to close ups, and faces of the actors spinning on the merry go round.
Jean finds them at the fair, and fights with Petit Paul, who takes off when the police shows up. Jean serves 1 year of jail. When he exists, he finds Marie with a baby, and still loves her. but Petit Paul is around...
a naturaliste melodrama portraying the figure of innocence (young and beautiful orphan girl), whose heart is split between Good (the honest, poor, romantic man), and Evil (the mean alcoholic wife-beater thug), that turns out to be a critical study on populist cinema through the avant-garde visual experiment of Epstein. expressionist lighting, strong contrast, dramatical focused spotlight, shadows. use of images/footage overlapping, mirrors, diaphragm. power cut editing, with fast succession of alternating plans.
a fantastic model of avant-garde cinema.

12', B&W, no dialogue.

it looks different on the big screen than online. What looked like nice B&W photography is in fact a Xerox-like grainy dirty picture. He used a mix of frame by frame animation with photocopies of screen capture, and a dirtying effect in post production on the film footage. He definitely used blue screen trick (white screen for B&W positive) and CGI inserts for the duplication/overlapping. I noticed blury edges around the character.

The Seashell and the Clergyman
There has been a controversy around the making and the release of this film. Screenwritten by Antonin Artaud, who was a poet belonging to the surrealist movement, and directed by Germaine Dulac, symbolist filmmaker. Irène Hillel who produced all the films of Dulac, was the benefactor of the Dadaist movement (Breton, Soupault, Aragon...), and Dulac used to meet them, so the link between symbolists and surrealist was more natural than expected.
A satirist newspaper called it "The marriage of the carp and the rabbit".
At the premiere the audience excited by a mediatic scandal shouted insults and booed, the film was stopped after only a few minutes. In the dark theatre they said:

- Who made this film?
- Germaine Dulac
- What is that Germaine Dulac?
- A cow

Despite the bad reputation and his conflicts with Dulac about the direction, Artaud never disowned his scenario, contrary to popular belief.
Jean Vigo was admirative and inspired by this film. The strange bottle with cut hands that Michel Simon shows to the bride on his boat in L'Atalante (1934) is reminiscent of the glass ball containing a face in Dulac's film.

Powerful anti-globalization message deconstructing the psychopath profile of major corporations without ethic for the environment and the human condition. Only money matters, and they condition people to become dependant consumers since childhood. Uninventive documentary.

Eager Bodies

it is kinda amateurish in form and shape, but beyond that it features very powerful performances by teen actors involved in an uncomfortable menage à trois, while one of them is fighting against cancer. outstanding performance by the young Laura Smet (with real shaved head!) who is doing her debut here. (she is the daughter of Nathalie Baye (who plays in Les Sentiments)
a disturbing story about the need for love at the edge of death, jealousy, and the greed for flesh.

Neo-noir political satire. Based on Donald E. Westlake's eponymous novel The Ax. Passional crime adaptated to job-hunting. Unemployment is like an intimate relationship breakup followed by breakdown. A man only exists through his social position, when it's taken away from him, because of proficiency purges, firms fusion or dislocation, the employee takes it personaly and feels abandonned, cheated, betrayed, devaluated. Costa-Gavras deepens this metaphor in a parallel couple therapy the wife brings her husband to:

Him: "This job was my life! They took away my life!"
Her: "...but you have me"
Him: "Can you give me a job?"

A deliciously cynical observation of the many paradoxes in capitalist globalization. Behind a darker extreme case study (a top specialized manager in paper chemistry plots to assassinate the 5 other unemployed managers on the job market, as qualified as him, who could steal the next available position), the film explores human nature when subjected to challenging situations, when morality digressions escalate to justify previous faults. Begining with a lie (as in L'emploi du Temps / Time Out), a double life, outlaw way of life, up to cold-blooded premediation, crime justifications.
Andy Garcia, formerly famous for his comedic roles, is this self-home-made serial killer with naive improvised tactics. This first serious dramatic role is successful, yet I thought a moustache or somekind of prop missed to make him feel somebody else, and break away from his comedy-typing. Thus the atmosphere tends to be lighter. Humor isn't absent though, as Costa-Gavras plays with a recurrant billboard ad with naked girls and wealth/power icons (diamonds, watch, phone, gun, lingerie) that show up on screen like a subliminal message confusing both the audience and the hero.

C +++ W +++ M ++ I +++ C ++

The Model Couple
a young couple going through an identity crisis is projected into a governmental experiment to observe, manipulate and brainwash the life of people in year 2000 with (70ies) high tech environment. anticipation-futuristic tale about Big Brothers scientific holy quest for the average citizen. the first Real Tv show ever!