My Reviews Of French Films
This is an old list, but was completely outdated because most of the links (to my reviews) weren't working, and I had omitted to update the list with new films over the last 10-11 years.
So I replaced the dead links with the reviews - which I should have done in the first place. Who knows how many years this list sat there, useless... I have no idea why all of the links were dead, either. Perhaps they changed things around in the meantime, "things" being my word referring to all that technical IT stuff I know little about.
Of course, some of you (I mean many of you) probably consider this list useless anyway. You are wrong, obviously. Because I write the best reviews - a well-known fact.
Anyway... All of these reviews are up to 16-17 years old.
It (probably) includes all of the French-speaking movies I'd ever seen, and that includes a few Franco-Canadian ones.
There are SPOILERS in most of them.
Listed in no particular order, except that all the latest additions will be placed on top.
Here is where you can comment:
https://vjetropevsmusic.blogspot.com/2020/08/recent-movies-august.html
So I replaced the dead links with the reviews - which I should have done in the first place. Who knows how many years this list sat there, useless... I have no idea why all of the links were dead, either. Perhaps they changed things around in the meantime, "things" being my word referring to all that technical IT stuff I know little about.
Of course, some of you (I mean many of you) probably consider this list useless anyway. You are wrong, obviously. Because I write the best reviews - a well-known fact.
Anyway... All of these reviews are up to 16-17 years old.
It (probably) includes all of the French-speaking movies I'd ever seen, and that includes a few Franco-Canadian ones.
There are SPOILERS in most of them.
Listed in no particular order, except that all the latest additions will be placed on top.
Here is where you can comment:
https://vjetropevsmusic.blogspot.com/2020/08/recent-movies-august.html
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- DirectorAgnès VardaStarsJean-Claude DrouotMarie-France BoyerMarcelle Faure-BertinFrançois, a young carpenter, lives a happy, uncomplicated life with his wife Thérèse and their two small children. One day he meets Emilie, a clerk in the local post office.3/10
Considering how short the movie is, 80 minutes, it's preposterous how much of it the director wastes on a boring intro in which absolutely nothing happens, aside from happy-nappy Baroque music and a happy family frolicking in nature and having happy fun in the city. A whole 20-25 minutes is wasted on this. Of course, Varda is setting us up all along.
Yes, the carpenter protagonist and his wife are happy, we get it. One doesn't need 20 minutes to establish this, especially when the title of the movie spells it so unsubtly. We get it, the topic is happiness, and it will be handled satirically, or at least cynically. Pretty obvious. This was a period of great cynicism in French cinema, when the hatred for conventional existence was steadily approaching its peak, and all "bourgeois" behaviour was frowned upon and loathed. It was the start of Cultural Marxism. These cynical-yet-idealistic dummies (what a paradox) actually believed they were doing something worthwhile and intelligent. As many self-absorbed malcontents do.
Then the plot finally starts when he finds a girlfriend on the side, starts an affair, because this is a French movie, the 60s, and he finds double happiness, so-to-speak, coz now he's got his little harem, two blondes of which he "loves", though he appears to be sincere, almost like a child.
That word gets thrown around quite a lot here. The dialog is corny and somewhat unrealistic, though I can't quite tell whether this is always ironically/cynically intentional or at least partially the result of inexperienced banal writing. (I don't know any other Varda films.) The entire tone of the movie may be construed already at the start as mocking "bourgeois" existence, but I know this only because I know that this is a New Wave film. After all, New Wave poseurs were decadent misfits obsessed with "challenging the Establishment", or whatever baloney it is that is spelled out in their inane manifesto, should they have one. They hated western conventions, loved communism, and degenerates such as Godard even worshiped Mao. The cheerful tone is cynical not really literal, but I wasn't entirely sure because the protagonist is a working-class carpenter, not exactly a posh banker or sophisticated doctor i.e. someone who'd much more typically fit the bill of a typical "bourgeois" Frenchman that the New Wave felt they should mock, satirize and spoof. The more money a person has the more contempt the New Wave had for him. (Unless of course he was a wealthy communist, they didn't mind that at all.)
Whether ironic or not, the conversations are somewhat ridiculous. He tells his new mistress he loves her before they'd even had physical contact. Then he goes on to describe his wife to her: how much he loves her. He actually says this to his new mistress, and even repeats it later to her. Bizarre, because that's literally one of the most basic no-nos: do NOT harass your new girlfriend with information about your ex, especially not if it's not your ex but your current wife.
His lines anyway seem to be directed squarely at the audience, not at the mistress. That's partly why the dialog appears so unrealistic. I prefer the characters to be natural, as opposed to be giving speeches for the audience. Kinda obvious.
Things get really strange when the guy decides to confess his sins to his wife - out of the blue, totally voluntarily, because "I cannot lie". Yeah, about this lying business... Earlier on he boasted to his mistress about how honest he was, which made me wonder whether Varda is clueless about women, or whether she was just trying to show us how utterly naive the protagonist is.
Put more simply: women not only don't want to hear the truth, they are put off by it, especially if it's unpleasant, and Varda as a woman ought to have known this. Admittedly, most women aren't aware that they hate the truth, but at the very least Varda - as a high-and-mighty New Wave Princess of Intellect should have been more privy to the workings of the female psyche. Women hate the messenger when the message is rotten, and they prefer to be lied to. But hey, Varda didn't know this. How could she have known? She was just a left-wing clown.
The mistress doesn't wanna hear him talk about his wife, nor does his wife want to know about him having a mistress. Hence the question begs itself: is the protagonist the only moron here or was Varda just as daft? Or did she actually believe that men don't know that they should rarely confront women with truth, especially truth as explosive as this?
What man in his right mind would have admitted to an affair - and voluntarily, without even reacting on a wife's suspicion? This protagonist is a figment in Varda's confused imagination. He isn't a real person. And since he's not a real person, let alone a proper Frenchman, then whom is she satirizing?
An imaginary society.
Judging how chill the two blondes are about his honesty, I'd say it's bloody obvious that Varda was a lousy psychologist and understood women too insufficiently to write a movie of this sort. Ironic and embarrassing, since she called herself a feminist.
After all, the mistress should have been more adamant about not wanting to listen to him drone on about how awesome his wife is, and even more importantly: his wife should have reacted quite differently to hearing about the affair. She should have got up and left him, or at least thrown a temper-tantrum. At the very least she should have screamed a loud "QOUI??? Tu as un putain?!"
Come on, Varda, these aren't real people, these are cardboard cutouts...
I had to laugh out loud when he started convincing his wife how his affair was a good thing and how it should give his wife a reason to love him MORE.
On what planet do men like this exist? And women...
Right after that stoopid proposition, they hug, happily. At this point I really didn't know if this was a very cynical Monty Python sketch or the actual, real, non-satirical opinion about relationships by a writer whose understanding of gender relationships was poor at best, and non-existant at worst. Did Varda even have any boyfriends at this point in her life? She must have only read about relationships in cheap romance novels... Her writing appears confused and uninformed.
Minutes after he tells her he has an affair, the two of them start having sex. It is so absurd, like a bizarre comedy, or a parallel-world drama. Varda actually wrote this scene, and none of her New Wave pals warned her that the scene was hopelessly silly.
Then she goes and kills herself, which was obvious from the very first moment when the carpenter got up and couldn't find her.
So she had sex - THEN she decided to kill herself? Really? You going with that twist, Varda?
It's a dumb ending also because she is French, and wouldn't she be more likely just to give her husband le middle fingeur and then find herself a boyfriend on the side, as revenge?
Coz that's real life, not this baloney.
But how about this: if a woman is THIS unstable, that she goes and kills herself right after something unpleasant happens, then she's anyway very probably the wrong person to be his or anybody's wife. This is the great irony that Varda never intended nor noticed, yet it's there. I am pretty sure that 99.9% of film-goers - especially hipsters who worship French New Wave and all its many foibles - missed this completely. The guy had a happy marriage, but if his wife is this crazy, then it was just a matter of time before she'd kill herself, or do something very crazy.
It's extremely silly though, that she'd show no shock upon being told she is cheated, and even happily agrees to have sex, and THEN drowns herself, just like that. Bizarre or just plain stupid?
Yeah, I know, I can already hear the hipster voices defending the movie, making up stupid excuses about how this is a convention-defying masterpiece, that it shouldn't be taken literally, and that we shouldn't nitpick... I always nitpick, though in this case it's not nitpicking but regular picking, because the characterization and the logic just don't wash. I am not claiming this outcome is impossible, but it is highly unlikely - and just as importantly, as I mentioned, the impulsiveness of her suicide implies she wasn't a good choice for a wife anyway. What would she have done under Nazi occupation in WW2? She would have killed herself right there and then. I mean, her husband's affair is PEANUTS compared to a million Nazis invading your country, right?
Because of this fact (and others I mentioned) the whole premise i.e. the whole "clever satirical take" on French society falls like a deck of cards.
And frccrssakes, this is France. "He cheated on me!" or "She'd been unfaithful to me!" Yeah, colour me shocked... - DirectorJacques RivetteStarsJuliet BertoDominique LabourierBulle OgierA mysteriously linked pair of young women find their daily lives preempted by a strange boudoir melodrama that plays itself out in a hallucinatory parallel reality.This isn’t New Wave, this is No Wave. No waves here at all, no boating either, no nothing: just two foolish actresses indulging a clown director.
1/10
A clown hipster director, naturally.
One of the very worst movies I'd ever come across. Out of close to 4,500 so far, I'd rank this one among the 30 worst - which is quite a "select" group.
So how did I sit through 195 minutes of such utter, total, complete - mostly unedited - pure, 100% trash?
Or did I?
Yes, I did! I used an old space-time-bending trick: I watched the first 90 minutes in normal time (and space), then used a TIME MACHINE (well, a remote control) to press SKIP for the next 10 minutes, thereby managing to traverse through the remaining 105 minutes in 10% of the time normally required to sit through that amount of useless garbage. 105 minutes in only 10 minutes: not bad, huh? Imagine the poor fools in the 70s who had to sit through this in cinemas: no toilet breaks, no PAUSE button, no SKIP time machine, no nothing.
No nothing: just like the plot here. Zip comma zilch.
I can do magic, and I use it, but only for really bad movies, the worst of the very worst. The remote control has proven to be one of the most crucial weapons in the war on hipsterism.
This 3-hour trashathon (trash marathon) is so utterly unmanageable that I'd have preferred to watch somebody else watch this trash for 195 minutes. Somebody PRETENTIOUS, some deranged hipster in love with himself and in love with the idea of loving trash - the kind declared as "high art" (by other self-loving attention-seeking respect-begging hipsters). That I would have preferred. I wanna make sure these hipsters REALLY sit through such unwatchable marathon sessions, because I have my doubts that they actually do. Plus, I'd like to see their dumb faces as they watch these awful hipster flicks: do they laugh? What do they do. I'd like to know. Do they get high?
That's probably it. Hipsters are human too - as inhumanly absurd as their idiocy may appear to be - hence they must employ some trick to sit through all this BS without fidgeting or going bonkers, IF they actually sit through it, which, as I often mentioned (not just now), I seriously doubt. They probably have a stash of weed and Bolivian shrooms on the ready, and that is how they "enjoy" this crap, that's how some of them manage to sit out these horrible films without resorting to hand-controlled time-machines.
Let me explain a hipster's modus operandi. Typically, a hipster reads about a hipster movie that other hipsters had written many semantic-salad essays about (i.e. their supposed meaning, ludicrous interpretations and last but not least the much-adored "socio-political relevance"), so the hipster makes it a mission to watch the film too - so he can then write up his own psycho-babble nonsense-essay about it. They know in advance that they will "like" the movie, so they may in fact write up parts of the essay/review beforehand, that's how nuts they are. They may even cheat by borrowing ideas from other hipsters' essays/reviews. In fact, reading reviews of a turd such as this is obligatory anyway, simply because hipsters need to find out what the movie is about, because from experience they already sense in advance that they won't be able to understand anything without a quasi-intellectual map explaining the plot and its cinematic-philosophical relevance.
Just to illustrate my point more accurately, here's a quote from a hipster movie site, "explaining" C&JGB:
"The tradition of rigid adherence to the 90 minute to 2-hour time frame, enforced by the laws of free market capitalism, is exploded by Rivette. As a filmmaker, Rivette refuses to confine himself to these arbitrary lengths, or to the even more arbitrary, if unspoken, rules about demands on subject matter and mise-en-scène in films of epic length. Instead, Rivette extends the lengths of his films to a point beyond necessity, where it is understood that the film's length in and of itself is a statement about the system he works in and rebels against."
In other words, the movie is intentionally boring just to defy and protest against capitalism. Hipster logic: never ceases to bemuse and elicit mockery.
"Mise-en-scene". That always gets a smile out of me. Hipsters are so awesomely deranged, what would pop culture do without these insecure misfits?
The first half-hour is watchable, despite later proving to be completely meaningless and irrelevant to the "plot", not to mention absurd and confusing. It is after the two women meet that things start to deteriorate rapidly, as it becomes crystal-clear that the writer-director had no intention of devising a story. Not even a basic plot. The conversations are random and boring, and the two "actresses" overact their bums off, trying so hard to be "rebelliously cute".
By the one-hour mark I was quite restless, utterly bored, and wondering whether this movie would ever eventually show mercy toward its suffering audience and actually initiate a plot - any plot. Even a really bad plot is better than no plot. Would this hipster have the common courtesy of serving the audience a plot?
Unfortunately, not. He doesn't care about decency, as most communists don't, and as an incorrigible hipster he doesn't respect either himself nor the audience. This must be the only (?) 3-hour-plus movie with literally no plot. Supposedly, it's about these two bird-brains fleshing out a fantasy in a mansion, making up a story, but I can't confirm the existence of this alleged plot/fantasy/nonsense. Every scene in the 2nd half of the movie is painfully boring, and I mean excruciating. When I was skipping through the last third I found myself unable to stop even for 15 seconds, to listen in on what's being said, so completely stupid and dreary was this supposed "premise". To make things worse, the director put zero effort into presenting it visually. The movie is so drab in appearance and the actors are so utterly uninteresting, it's as if this celluloidal dung-beetle was intended to make you hate cinema forever.
I suspect that lots of this garbage might have been improvised, because the dialog is so random, meaningless, and nonsensical. Don't they teach improvisation in French acting schools? (We already know they don't teach screenwriting.) I know there was no plot to improvise around, I get it, but the least these two could have done is make a semblance of an effort, to try to say something that could be remotely interesting.
When all the people who voted for this film, giving it such a high rating, decide to start telling the truth, then and only then will the film's average sink to 1.5 where it belongs. And even that is being generous.
New Wave? These are wave after wave of dung. I feel as if somebody had taken a dump on me. - DirectorÉric RohmerStarsBernard VerleyZouzouFrançoise VerleyThough he has an adoring wife, a bourgeois man is still tempted to pursue other women.7/10
I hadn't even realized that I'd already watched several Rohner movies before this one. The reason that this one is probably his best is multi-fold: the photography is great, the casting isn't shambolic - as it often was/is in French films, the dialog is intelligent rather than absurd (again, often a French or even European trait), the logic is there (for once), the characterization is very tight, and the story is OK.
Now, admittedly there isn't much of a story here, but it doesn't have to be, because it plays out so well - due to the other positive factors I just listed. It's a character study so there's no need for twists and turns. The way the couple's relationship develops is a constant guessing game: when will they finally hook up and what will be the consequences of that adultery, if any?
Surprisingly, they never do hook up. In a FRENCH movie, mind you. That to me was the totally unpredictable twist. A horny Frenchman restraining himself over and over from consummating an affair with a woman that stops short of spreading her legs in front of his face, and all of this being set in 70s Paris, pre-AIDS, is something nobody could have expected.
This isn't a thriller so that it could fail grandly in the logic department, as thrillers nearly always do. Nevertheless, there are so many dumb and illogical (French) dramas, so that we can't take the movie's sound logic for granted. Rohner wrote a tight script (way more disciplined than the typical French movie from this new-wavey period) that very clearly defines the two protagonists, and their acting works with the script, not against it. The chemistry is there too, which means the audience can get interested in what happens later. There is no nepotist Deneuve to be wooden at all times and to serve as a mere screen decoration, no nepotist Leaud to annoy with his incompetence and bland expressionless face. (Not to mention that this hypothetical pairing would be visually laughable due to the height difference.)
The protagonist's (early) narration is pretty good too, and interesting to hear for most guys - though women should pay close attention too. I'm not saying I always agree with him, definitely not, but the way he explains his constant horniness rings true to the most part, as do his fantasies, for example the one about having magic powers to get any woman he wants. If Rohner had chosen that route - to make the whole movie revolve around that magic device - it would have been great.
I don't necessarily always agree how women are portrayed here, in the psychological sense. I do believe they are romanticized a bit, which is a standard in most movies, though nowhere nearly as much they get idealized in for example American films which often emit a completely flawed picture of the female psyche, i.e. Portraying women as romantic fools and perpetual victims of the "horny male", which the majority of women simply aren't. I doubt that Rohner understood women that much better than your Average Joe (or Jacque), but at least with Zouzou's character he created a believable person, flaws and all - i.e. Not perfect - which makes this a credible story rather than like a dumb romance novel, or cheesy film.
The only issue I have is the last 5 minutes, which confused me. The protagonist suddenly decides not to have sex with Zouzou - who is literally waiting for him naked in her bed - which is quite unrealistic but acceptable. What follows is what confused me, namely his rather emotional conversation with his wife. Why did he behave like he'd just met her? Why was he so emotionally distraught? Shouldn't he have been relieved that he didn't cheat i.e. Get Zouzou pregnant (which she told him she wanted)? I mean, I understand the gist of this scene but parts of it seem weird and off.
Of course, the male protagonist made the right decision. He has a happy marriage. By having a child with loose cannon Zouzou he would risk everything, and might have found himself in a world of hurt and stress later on, perhaps even very soon thereafter. For example, Zouzou claims she only wants a child from him, but what women CLAIM and what they actually DO or WANT are often at odds, sometimes two completely different things. Once she had his child she might have easily changed her mind and demanded that he divorce his wife, which easily could have happened, especially considering how unstable and impulsive she is. - DirectorLuc BessonStarsPierre JolivetJean BouiseJean RenoIn a post-apocalyptic future where no one is able to speak, the few remaining humans fight over resources in order to survive.5/10
A silent post-apocalyptic film, no dialog.
It's certainly original, but I didn't find either the characters nor the thin plot too interesting.
I'm sure that "pvrists" would defend the decision to shoot this in b&w, but to me this is yet another obvious case of French-cinema pretentiousness, many French film-makers being infamous for being such try-hards when it comes to achieving "artistic uniqueness". Colour would have been a much better choice, especially since the type of b&w used here isn't as appealing as the director seems to have believed. Besides, how often do we get post-apocalyptic chaos of this sort? Rarely, which is why we should get it in colour. Go and film your pretentious dramas in b&w, for all I care, but leave the interesting genres out of it...
If you're gonna use b&w then SHOW just how good you and your cinematographer are, don't just "switch off" the colour. Any ass can do that...
Examples of excellent b&w? Eraserhead, Dead Man, Institute Benjamenta, American Astronaut. That's how you do it... - DirectorLeos CaraxStarsDenis LavantEdith ScobEva MendesA man boards a limousine to be driven to his day's work: nine mysterious "appointments."French shock cinema. Shockingly plot-free.
1/10
People who claim that movies are like this are useless pretentious twaddle are only half-right. It is pretentious twaddle (to the power of 10), but it isn't useless.
It is a great litmus test, as so many bad (or awesome) things are. For example, if you're searching for someone on IMDb whose opinions you can rely on (something I'd given up on not long after I joined here 16 years ago), a crapoddity such as this lazy trash can sort out the worst reviewers from the... well, not necessarily from the good ones (not sure there are any) but at least from those who might be more in tune with cinema than that other group, the hipster clowns who spend their lives pretending to understand and enjoy nonsense such as this.
Which brings me to another way in which it's not a useless movie. Skimming through the reviews section you can find so much to laugh about: intentional humour, which can be expressed with the numbers 1/10, as well as unintentional humour, which can be expressed with the numbers 10/10. Pick the 1/10 reviews and you can enjoy the more intelligent segment of the cinema crowd, as some of them have a few amusing or clever things to say about this garbage, and pretentious reviewers/films in general. Then go through the 10/10 reviews (and 9/10 and 8/10) and laugh out loud at the complete and utter baloney that hipsters and other types of wannabe intellectuals dare to post. There's no fool like a dishonest insecure fool trying desperately to earn your respect - by saying stuff that achieves the exact opposite. Hats off to the generations of weak DNA carriers who joined forces over the millania to produce such specimens. What would we do without fools? We wouldn't have anyone to feel superior to - should the need ever arise to feel that way.
The movie is also not useless in the sense that it helps you add another name, in that very long list of film-makers to avoid, to add to the black list. By making this meaningless, idiotic claptrap, whatshisname has in effect admitted to being useless, which is always useless to know. He's signed his own certificate of buffoonish hipsterism, a diploma that forever blackens his name, at least in terms of cinematic output. (He may be a great boat captain, who knows, or he may write good children's books, but movies are definitely not his thing and never will be).
Now, as far as actually getting something useful out of this movie, such as enjoyment or at least mild levels of semi-entertainment, there the movie indeed proves itself as completely worthless.
Aside from the opening scene, which appears promising because "weird" (giving hope that this could be a fun bizarro thing), there is zero value in the next two hours. The plot? 9 completely disconnected "stories" that lose your interest quicker than you can spell "FRENCH CINEMA". Personally, I lost half of my interest already during the 2nd sequence (the dark-room computer-dance), and by the third sequence I was remote-controlling the crap out of this crap: skipitty skip skip skip. I don't tire of saying this, but thank God for the remote control and that GOLDEN skip button. Without it I would have found this too excruciating to sit through. The mere act of pressing SKIP, i.e. the POWER I feel when I press on it, makes me feel stronger - right after the movie makes its umpteenth attempt to destroy me.
The reason all those bizarre scenes - and there are admittedly many - don't amount to a hill of invisible beans is that there is no MOTIVATION to continue watching this tripe, after you'd realized that there is zero plot, no point, and no enjoyment to be had. Who cares what the "conman/actor/whoever" does when you know it will not be of any use whatsoever to anything that transpires before or after it?
I know how this movie came about... Whatshisname had 9-10 movie ideas and decided to lump them all into one film, that way avoiding the painful task of having to develop a few of them into actual plots i.e. movies. That's all this is: a lazy, uninspired, worthless conman of a "film-maker" trying to earn a reputation through a short-cut, without having to do the "dirty work", the hard work that involves putting together a usable script.
And it's not even visually flashy or stylish enough to pass the grade at least in that way. The cinematography is to the most part bleak, average, and ugly. I could have sat through the film without skipping it, despite its non-plot, were the scenes aesthetically appealing. Not even close...
People who claim that the movie has some touching scenes need to lay off the Bolivian shrooms. The obvious question: how can you possibly be "touched" by such under-developed characters and the non-plot they play in? That'd be like a hausfrau taking a handkerchief during the opening credits of a soaper. Delusionary hipsterism manifests itself in a variety of ways, so I guess this is just one of many. - DirectorÉric RohmerStarsPatrick BauchauHaydée PolitoffDaniel PommereulleA womanizing art dealer and a painter find the serenity of their Riviera vacation disturbed by a third guest, a vivacious bohemian woman known for her long list of male conquests.Two Frenchmen and a dimwitted harlot. No, this isn't "Jules & Jim".
5/10
Prologue 1: A flat-chested French actress walks along a beach. She turns around and walks in the other direction. Art.
Prologue 2: Two French pseudo-intellectuals, with mail-order Philosophy degrees, engage in a discussion about a coffee mug with razor-blades glued to it. The deep thinker on the right suggests it means something. The other deep thinker agrees. Nothing gets the blood of two 60s New Wave hobby-thinkers boiling like a cup with razorblades clumsily attached to it. Art.
Two friends, Adrien and Daniel (the cup gluer), are resting on the French Riviera. They have decided not to do anything, be idle for a while. And when two New Wave French cinema deep thinkers are on vacation you just know it won't be long before they do two things: 1) exchange philosophical musings about the world, and 2) share a woman. Which brings us to the to-and-fro beach-walking floozy from Prologue 1, Haydee. She and another man, lover no.23,783, join Daniel and Adrien. The gal and her loveur hurl pebbles at a group of chickens. Adrien is not amused, but his curiosity is tickled. Art.
The narrator initially wants nothing to do with this chicken-hating harlot; he finds her too base even for his amoral, hedonistic ways (he claims to have high morals in the dating arena, but we know better than to believe him). Haydee has the voice of an 11 year-old boy and just as much below the neck: i.e. you can certainly understand why art-loving men fall for her in their thousands. To be fair, she has a very cute face i.e. not at all boyish – which might just explain why she isn't an instant object of desire for Daniel and Adrien.
Nonetheless, our monotone-voiced narrator soon starts to rationalize the growing number of Haydee-induced erections in his pants by deceiving himself that his growing interest in her is because "she isn't empty- headed like the others". Art.
How he reaches the rather suspicious conclusion that her IQ is higher than a chimp's, I do not know. Her sentences rarely contain more than 3 words. But I guess when you do nothing all day but read Rousseau your judgment tends to get a little clouded. French philosophers will do that to you
Soon we find out what German Romantics do to the floozy. Rather unconvincingly, she holds a book called "Les Romantiques Allemandes", in spite of the fact that even the average episode of "Asterix the Gaul" must be far too demanding for her. That very day, as if wanting to release her from the boredom of having to spend the whole evening pretending to read a philosophy book, Adrien suggests a night out. Soon he makes his moves, but she plays hard to get. She runs away (sobbingly? laughingly? the editor decided not to make her weird grunts comprehensible to the viewer) straight into the hands of Daniel, with whom she had a brief fling a few days earlier. The two embrace passionately – in spite of the fact that Daniel and Haydee were supposed to be not on good terms. Don't ask me what the hell is going on. I'm just the viewer. Needless to say: art.
Next up is a brief scene in which Adrien shows a 10th-century vase to Haydee. He turns it around so the cameraman can capture its other side too (which looks pretty much the same), and then he flips the vase back to its original position. I'm just glad this wasn't a 15-minute scene. Art.
Later, grumpy Daniel (vaguely resembling David Warner), bangs his right foot against the living-room floor, over and over, like a semi-catatonic lunatic. Haydee dares complain about the annoying noise. Daniel reacts to her with a vicious yet pointless diatribe about beauty and ugliness. Being unusually homely himself, I'm a little surprised that he'd even dare touch the subject. He also mentions the Sun briefly, making some New-Waveian analogy not worth repeating here. Summa sumarum: this entire venomous anti-Haydee tirade occurs just because she rightfully complained about his childish behavior. Daniel should be glad that a cutie like Haydee ever even looked at him – let alone actually agreed to bed him.
Breaking the bliss of this slightly idle trio is an art collector, Sam. He sounds like Darth Vader, and throws in a few exciting comments about the much-touted elephant-based ancient vase. Daniel shows up, and true to his fickle 60s New Wave temperament, starts berating Sam for being an art collector. The rant is mercifully short though, and the message is as simple as it is moronic and pointless: "I hate art collectors, so I refuse to kiss your behind." Was Daniel molested as a child by a similar kind of baritone-voiced art collector, or is he merely as dumb as a doorknob?
Later, Sam decides to berate Adrien for his sloth, while the latter defends himself by trying to rationalize his layabout existence as some form of "higher existence": a typical language-rapist, in the best New Wave tradition.
In the end, we find out that these 80 minutes of New Wave French cinema were about Adrien's attempts to start feeling "independent". Hallelujah.
Rohmer once said that he focused on the "cinema of thoughts rather than actions". So why didn't he just publish books then? Cinema happens to be largely a visual medium. Perhaps someone forgot to tell him But next to Godard he must be a genius.
Still, LC is a watchable flick, some of the dialog being fairly interesting. On the other hand, I'm not one of those Tabula Rasa viewers who are easily impressed by any thought or conversation deeper than a pub discussion about a Premier League draw. It takes more than coffee- table philosophers to get my adrenaline going. - DirectorLucile HadzihalilovicStarsZoé AuclairLea BridarolliBérangère HaubrugeA look inside an offbeat boarding school for young girls.Reminds me so much of my own childhood...
4/10
Oh, yes, yes, yes, I too remember those long-lost times, especially that dream-like, allegorical day when the coffin opened, and there I was - tuh-duh! - rising up out of it, like a wide-eyed hungry zombie, to meet my fellow 8 year-old inmates. The coffin had holes, unlike Iris's, so I was able not only to breathe comfortably but also eat while being transported by my kind kidnappers. (Some of the holes were big enough to shove chunks of food through, which I devoured gratefully, and there was also "a drinking hole", with a straw permanently attached to it, leading to a rather wonderful, seemingly inexhaustible supply of red Hawaiian Punch.) It was a beautiful and innocent time... We walked through the woods, very innocently, trained ballet for hours on end while being told we were "just maggots and not butterflies yet", though some of us occasionally got innocently drowned in the rigged boat while trying to escape the Ballet Concentration Camp. Did I mention it was an innocent time?
They are right: this movie is thought-provoking. It provoked many thoughts of pressing the fast-forward button.
Lucile Hadzihalilovic offers us a typical Euro-trash art-crowd-pleasing free-for-any-interpretation nonsense right out of the School of Lazy Film-Makers' Meaningless Tripe. Its pace is sluggish even for an overly pretentious Continental govno.
The formula for winning awards on moronic Euro-festivals is as simple as it is brilliant: Step 1: write a general outline of something vaguely resembling a story. Don't bother with further drafts. Draft 1 is more than enough to shoot the film with. Step 2: do not waste your precious artistic time with the editing. Editing is an accountants' job, it is dry, it is dull, and it only makes the story more coherent, which we want to avoid at all cost. Just stick all your scenes together: they need not even be in any particular order. Be random about it. Step 3: do as many interviews with low-IQ film journalists, throwing them as many different ideas and mentioning as many old filmmakers and philosophers' names as you can. Name-dropping. It is vital to invest a lot of time and energy - that weren't used during the film-making process - in learning as many impressive quotes from Kant, Rousseau, and Bunuel as you can.
I dare anyone to sit through that first hour and not yawn, fidget, or just right-out scream. Literally nothing happens, apart from the first scene in which Iris comes out of a coffin. That should have been a warning in itself: METAPHOR ALERT! PRETENTIOUS, VACUOUS, COCKAMAMIE ALLEGORY WARNING! A girl gets drowned, but Lucile - masterful as ever - manages to turn even the tragedy of a child's death into something as dreary as watching your friend eat an old sandwich.
The second hour finally starts moving a bit. Well, a BIT. But at least there is some sense of mystery. Who kidnapped the girls? Where are they all later sent to? Why do they train ballet? Why do they so suck at it after years of practice? Why hasn't Marion Cotillard been fired long ago for her inability to teach it? Why does she never take her top off, considering she does it in all her other movies, and considering that every "art film" requires gratuitous nudity? Questions upon questions. Very mysterious.
However - and I absolutely knew this would happen - Lucile does not provide answers. Instead, she opts for a cop-out ending. It worked for "Blow Up" and so many other films whose script required 3 days of preparation, so why not now. I am not one of those viewers who requires everything spelled-out loud, all the answers served on a plate. I loved "Picnic at Hanging Rock", "Possible Worlds", "Walkabout". However, these movies were loaded with style, tension, wonderful music, they have true mystique. "Innocence", on the other hand, is directed with the effort of an aging sloth, and the inspiration of a horse's ass. Worse yet, Lucile doesn't even offer hints, clues - absolutely zip, nothing, nada.
If you actually believe that you saw/heard/noticed any clues, then it's all in your head. Mme Hadzihalilovic slowly hypnotizes you for 2 hours (into a drowsy, almost drug-like stupor), and then expects you to be right where she wants you: your brain all softened up, ready for the kill, prepared to hallucinate any explanation into the non-proceedings, any meaning that you can think of. It's called The Blank Piece of Paper Cinema. Fill in the blanks yourself. It's ingenious, in a way... a method used by modern-art "painters" also. Clever. Effective.
This flick was supposed to be about innocence. Lucile can just as well re-name it later to "Splendour", or "Deception", or "Bliss", or any other "grand" term, for she has nothing to worry about: art-film students the world over would still be eating out of her hand. "If Ms. Hadzisalimovic says the film is about bliss, then it's about bliss!" - DirectorPhilippe Le GuayStarsBenoît PoelvoordeBernard BlochAnne ConsignyFrançois's life changes inexplicably overnight, from unlucky to miraculous.As French comedies go, this must be a masterpiece.
6/10
If you think DJAL has too much goofy stuff going on, then check out other - much more typical - French comedies and you'll realize that the gags here are reserved and subtle. For far too long French humour has been about big-nosed clowns slipping on banana-peels and bumping into walls while kids point at them and giggle. Admittedly, the main protagonist does have a big nose, but there is none of the obligatory, exaggerated buffoonery that was to be expected.
The premise of a 180-degree reversal of fortune in the life of a perennial loser is a good one. However, the story meanders, gets lost in various dead-ends; it's as though the writers had no clue where to go with the idea after the first 10-15 minutes. (There is even an utterly awful music&dance piece.) So absurd does the plot get that the main character even starts despising his new-found luck, hating people who suddenly show respect for him, etc. He even refuses the renewed love and commitment he receives from his until-recently estranged wife (whom he loves)! Comedies can be bizarre, and are often even supposed to be that way. Nevertheless, even the most zany script has to have some basic element of truth/reality in order to be funny. I don't see any logic in someone fighting against his luck, and no amount of empty-headed fortune-cookie philosophizing/rationalizing can make me buy the idea that a former down-on-his luck delta male cannot and will not cope with his new life as a successful, happy alpha male.
In spite of that, it's a fairly watchable comedy, with one outstanding scene that made me laugh for minutes: the 5-Euro offer involving the three Spanish businessmen. Pure Python.
And just to set a minor error straight: Ivan Lendl did not win the 1984 French Open finale because "he finally started running" (as is claimed here), but because McEnroe simply ran out of steam... - DirectorÉric RohmerStarsJean-Louis TrintignantFrançoise FabianMarie-Christine BarraultA devout Catholic man's rigid principles are challenged during a one-night stay with Maud, a divorced woman with an outsize personality.I would have picked the brunette...
6/10
There are several hilarious scenes in which Maud practically throws herself at Trint. These nonsensical sexual shenanigans culminate in the morning-after(-nothing-happened) (after Le Nuit Spectaculaire Philosophique) when she almost tries to rape him. However, his Catholic faith turns out to be far far too resilient, withstanding even the most un-withstandable temptation of them all (a nude Maud in heat)! If you didn't laugh there, then you're taking this overrated flick far far too seriously.
It seems as if almost every (older) French film contains at least some element of a fanciful male fantasy. Sexy-looking women/girls throwing themselves breast-first into the sweaty hands of crappy-looking (usually aging) men: what nerdy, middle-aged, sexually-neglected film critic wouldn't drool all over his sofa over that, later hyping the movie for all its worth? After he finishes wiping off the drool, the film critic proceeds to devise a way to justify his fascination for the movie (god forbid he should admit that the real reason was sexual titillation) with a clever(?) cover-up reason: some cockamamie semantic word-salad about the alleged philosophical insights which the said movie offers. Some nonsense that, at closer scrutiny, holds little or no water. However, most film students (usually lobotomized at birth) gobble that stuff up and that's how such a movie gets considered to be not just a mere mortal's produce, but a gift from God Himself. Rohmer, the God. (Of course, since film students are mostly political extremists, their real god is usually Marx.)
(But at least this time around the female throws herself at someone her own age. Usually we have lolitas and 55 year-old men.)
I, too, occasionally enjoy male fantasies in certain films (no, not just porn), but at least I'm honest about it. I admit it, instead of making lame excuses and explanations about the movie having blown me away with its "wise" musings on Marxism, Pascal, Catholicism, and mathematics.
Speaking of which, Pascal's retarded "small probability / high gain" wager is only matched by Vidal's cretinous world-view (small wonder: a flaming Marxist). Vidal is a philosophy professor, and as 90% of all Western university professors he is staunchly Left-wing. This is one of the rare aspects of the movie that IS realistic. Btw, if one of Rohmer's intentions was to bring us closer to Pascal - getting us to rush to libraries and bookstores in search of his pitiful ideas - he may have failed, at least in my case; all Rohmer accomplished was to remind us how utterly cretinous many aspects of that Frenchman's philosophy are.
Much of the philosophic dialogue isn't nearly as intelligent as might appear to the more impressionable, indiscriminating viewer: more often than not an idea/concept is brought up by one character, only to be responded with a non-sequitor or with a reply that is only vaguely related to the question/issue at hand. Hence the "thoughtful" exchanges were sometimes decidedly UNintelligent, almost schizophrenic in nature with characters talking past each other. Naturally, the actors were given instructions to babble the philosophy-related lines as quickly as possible so as not to give the viewers a chance to realize how many of them stink from a logic standpoint.
How to classify MNAM... A romantic philosophical drama? Most of the dialogue consists of discussions about the above-mentioned four subjects. Even the "flirtation" between Trint and Maud sounds more like two deluded philosophy students chewing over age-old ideas than two horny 30-somethings - and they ARE both horny, not just male-fantasy-fulfilling Maud.
Maud is obviously the image of the ideal woman in Rohmer's eyes. She is as fictional as Darth Vader. Try finding a woman like this: good luck! (This is not intended as criticism of the movie.) Rohmer tries to sell Maud as a perceptive, intelligent, and witty person, which may all be true to some extent, but it's all overshadowed by the simple fact that she is a tart who will try to lure a man into bed a mere 15 minutes after having met him for the very first time. Realism? Not much. The fact that she is undeniably/objectively sexy, whereas Trint is much closer to resembling a sneaky little child-molester more than a Paul Newman-like stud, doesn't exactly help the movie's constantly rising absurdity levels either.
How about Vidal's motives for introducing Trint to the nymphomaniac Maud? "He wanted to free himself from me by throwing you in my arms". Which human universe or dimension had Rohmer resided in? He may have been an expert on the so-called "human condition", but only as it relates to some imaginary humans he had invented in his twisted view of mankind out of which resulted the semi-bizarre psychology of his characters.
MNAM has some typically confusing 60s-Euro-trash moments: at one point Trint gets the promise of a first date with the church blond, but then just a scene later he kisses Maude for the first time. And what happens next? Trint tells Maude that it was "just a kiss of friendship". Huh?? Did I miss out on any scenes in-between? Did the editors all get fired before they managed to complete putting the film together in one coherent piece? Trint's behaviour is totally irrational. In those two scenes Rohmer manages to complete destroy any potential for understanding Trint's character. Not to mention that nonsense about "the kiss of friendship" (it wasn't a cheek kiss, that much I can reveal). Does one need to be French to understand that kiss - or these people? Or does one just need to be properly soused to connect all the dots in a (subjectively) meaningful manner?...
La Grande Revelation de Fin didn't impress me either. So the blond tart was the one who had an affair with Maud's ex-husband? WOW. What a plot-twist. I was shaking with excitement.
I'm not saying this is a bad movie, merely that it is ridiculously drooled over by people who are susceptible to BS. It's watchable, not too dull. - DirectorJoachim LafosseStarsJonas BloquetJonathan ZaccaïClaire BodsonAn aspiring tennis player is taken under the wing of an established player as his family life falls apart."Hey, teacher! Leave them kids alone!"
1/10
In hedonistic France this is probably defined as a "family drama", rather as "sexploitation shock-cinema".
Thumbs up for French cinema: it has actually managed to devolve from perennial underage-Lolita-seduces-middle-aged-man to middle-aged-man-seduces-boy scripts. Just as you thought decadence in French movies could not possibly get any worse than it's been in recent decades, comes EL, a movie that will have you vomiting for weeks.
The basic plot: Jonas, a not-too-bright 16(?) year-old tennis hopeful (how many tennis hopefuls ARE bright?) is sent to the home of Pierre, a middle-aged intellectual wannabe, where Jonas learns maths, history, and how to receive oral sex from people two-to-three times his age.
Pierre - the smelly society-loathing anarchist pervert who ogles him at every opportunity and indulges in lame, self-serving philosophical diatribes - quickly introduces two more smelly perverts in Jonas's life: Nathalie and Didier, an open-relationship orgy/swinger couple who treat sex as if it were a used chewing-gum. One look at those three and you'd run. But what does Jonas know about running? After all, he's just a tennis player... Very soon Jonas finds out that maths, history and nihilistic philosophical rants are not at the top of Pierre's passions, but that molesting boys tops all his lists by a long shot. He sneakily prepares Jonas for this delightful adolescence-ruining ordeal by first destroying the boy's relationship with his girlfriend (by having everyone at the dinner table openly snicker at her for her alleged sexual inadequacies), and then getting Didier and Nathalie to prepare Jonas for a world of sexual perversion by giving him oral sex while Jonas, the gullible schmuck that he is, sits there blind-folded, unaware that he's being set up by three very, very smelly perverts for a life of bisexuality involving older men and rather unappealing middle-aged women with big noses.
In the end, Jonas predictably starts feeling rather gloomy about having regular catching sex with his 45 year-old pitching male teacher. To cheer Jonas up a bit and perhaps avert a suicide attempt or two, Pierre tells him the movie's final line of dialogue: "I never forced you to do anything you didn't want." That line must be what all pedophiles love to use after desecrating the body of a minor. (Right after "hey, you asked for it!".)
Even worse than all the stench-drenched pedophilic shenanigans that transpire in EL is the writer's message to the (young?) viewer to "think for yourself (like Kami says you should)" which invariably means - at least in the context of this degenerate movie - that children are the hope of not just the world, but of all of the world's lusting pedophilic perverts. The movie can even be understood as a guide for emerging pedophiles: it offers useful seduction tips for all those losers who are sexually attracted to children. For example, leave porn tapes lying around the living room, the way Pierre does.
Who financed this abhorrent trash? That notorious Dutch pedophile political party?
Pierre is supposed to be a former tennis player. However, his skills are on par with the most talentless beginner imaginable. It was like watching a rhino play golf.
Why would they cast Jonas, a kid who obviously knows hot to play, along with an "established ex-pro" who obviously can't swing a racket in any useful manner - except to accidentally hit himself over the head with it?
Needless to say, the movie is also bad because it contains dozens of drawn-out scenes/moments when everything seems to move in slow motion. Yeah, the century-old affliction of Europe's pretentious "cinema del arte" i.e. junk cinema. "Arteaux means never having to rush, never having to edit the movie to make it compact hence interesting". Did Kami say that? From his grave, perhaps...
AVOID.
A certain reviewer has posted a comment here with the sole intention of "educating me". (Or so he claims in the laughable email he sent me.) Read his "wonderful" plea for child-molestation: it's poetic almost. And, no, the kid is 16, pal, not 18.
To the other reviewer (the one who says "bro"): no, I didn't refer to the kid's tennis-playing abilities being under-par. I was talking about the adult pervert playing like a rank amateur. Read my text properly. - DirectorJoachim LafosseStarsIsabelle HuppertJérémie RenierYannick RenierA divorced mother of two boys reaching adulthood decides to sell their house, find love and get on with her life away from her husband and sons; a decision that will lead to an escalating fraternal dispute.To sell or not to sell... The near-kinky exploits of a house-selling family.
4/10
NP is about the rampant alienation in modern Capitalist Western society, and the gradual destruction of the once-compact family unit, through greed, materialism, and loss of spirituality. It's a heart-felt, and indeed heart-wrenching, look at the struggles involved in late adolescence on one hand, and the sense of disorientation of a middle-aged cow, on the other. Furthermore, the concept of the-
Just kidding...
Yes, this is a French movie in more ways than one.
Nuage Proprietage is basically just a relatively dull, quite pointless family drama, and yet from the start it is chock-full of little kinky surprises: perversions that we're so accustomed to seeing from Euro-trash directors these days. Huppert is taking a shower, while one of her twin sons is peeing, standing only a meter away from her. I half-expected them to have sex (knowing full-well that incest and/or sodomy and/or bestiality have odds at around 50-50 of occurring in any given European movie - even more so when it's held in high esteem by Les Critiques Filmeaux), turning NP into yet another excuse for taboo-breaking hence "artistic" cinema.
But no, there is no incestual theme here. I guess perhaps the French do this sort of thing on a regular basis: parents and their kids being naked together in the john... A little later on, incest-fans/perverts among the cinema-goers are given a glimmer of yet more hope when Isabelle's male twins bathe together in a very very small bathtub. Did I mention they're 18 years old? No, no, no, ye fans of sexploitation trash cinema, don't get yer hopes up; the siblings do not - thankfully(!!!!) - have sex with each other. Believe it or not, they are not even (physically) attracted to each other, and at least one half of the twinic duo is straight.
We find out about the blond twin's heterosexuality through a number of scenes in which he has sex with his pretty girlfriend. I mean, show me good female nudity any time you like, but is there any purpose to these scenes? No. Does it matter to the further plot developments that at least one of the twins likes girls? No. Would the blond twin act any different toward his mother's plans to sell their house if hadn't had a girlfriend? Probably not. (If anything, being sexually unsaturated he'd be even more aggressive against her selling it.) And yet what French movie would be complete without pointless sex scenes? European filmmakers never forget that most critics who write about their precious movies are sex-starved aging nerds, hence once you've titillated them, you assure yourself at least a solid rating.
The bizarre nude scenes are just the top of the Pointlessness Pyramid. There is a plethora of scenes that mean absolutely nothing, add nothing to the story, etc. Their only purpose is PADDING. Fill the time somehow because the story is so thin; so basic it would not suffice for a half-hour TV drama, if left to stand on its own, without the silent, pretentious pauses in the plot. Cleverly enough, every brainwashed/lobotomized film student has been indoctrinated to tell you that these pointless scenes are supposed to "aid character development". Yeah, a woman walking on grass for 10 minutes definitely tells me everything about the character... (That she's a cow?...) In fact, padding tells a lot more about the director's pretentious cluelessness than any character here.
WHO CARES about a scene in which the twins wrestle, this allegedly showing us that they're "still immature" (as one reviewer put it)? A skillful director/writer does not require a dozen one-minute scenes to describe a character: he can do it in 2 minutes, and if he's really ingenious/inventive he can describe a character sufficiently in even less than that.
Remember: so-called "character development" is just another term for "wasting the viewer's precious(?) time". Besides, none of the movie's basic six characters are interesting enough to deserve so much "in-depth" portrayal. These people are neither interesting or weird enough to warrant that kind of effort or time.
When you strip away all the BS and take a hard - (and slightly bored) - look at the basics of NP, you must realize that you're dealing with a rather trite plot of whether a woman will sell her house or not! WHO CARES! If I wanted to experience the thrill of watching people decide whether and how to sell their homes I'd have gone into real estate.
The ending is as pointless as the basic premise: the blond twin injures the other twin. The love is now gone from the family, the twins' innocence is lost, everyone is emotionally devastated, and allegedly all of this is the blond twin's fault because he was trying to prevent his mother from taking their house away... So very deep.
I really like Isabelle Huppert. However, in her later years she has narrowed down her acting technique to giving us the same grumpy poker-face (sounds like an oxymoron, I know) - in almost every single scene. I doubt that she's even capable of playing sympathetic characters anymore. She's starting to display the non-range of Katherine Deneuve, the worst French actress of all time. - DirectorClaude FaraldoStarsMichel PiccoliBéatrice RomandMarilù ToloMade without proper language, just gibberish and grunts, this is an absurdist comedy about a man who rejects every facet of normal bourgeois life and turns his apartment into a virtual cave.The Human Rights Watch would give this thumbs up. For once we agree.
7/10
It was truly amazing/amusing to read some of the pretentious, wanna-be pseudo-intellectual gobbledygook some people wrote about "Themroc". Clearly, this story excited quite a few of society's misfits, losers, and Marxist misanthropes because of its anarchistic attitude. They identify with the main character because, just like him, they are too weak to take the pressure of modern life so they seek out Che Guevara, Sid Vicious, or even G.G. Allin as guiding lights, mocking anyone who is content, hard-working, or successful in this oh-so evil Capitalist world they live in. (Ayn Rand refers to those types as "moochers". She was being kind.)
So naturally such viewers read everything into the movie that they wanted to read into it. I.e. that it's meant to about Western decadence, police brutality, 1968, bla bla bla. (If anything, there should be MORE police brutality, especially on May 1st.) With "Themroc", making these kinds of very personal (read: deluded) interpretations is very easy: the movie has no dialogue, at least nothing apart from various grunts and groans - which is how Leftist pumpkins sound to ME when they expose their ignorance by over-rationalizing the events in movies such as this one.
Piccoli is very good as the labourer-turned-Neanderthal, in what is one of the most bizarre movies I've seen. A totally obscure little oddity that is a million times harder to find than any Godard or Truffaut. Unfortunate, because this happens to be one of the best French movies ever made. Forget all those supposedly brilliant, hilariously overrated French/Euro-trash politically-coloured "character-study" dramas; THIS film is worth your attention - unless you're squeamish, that is. There is incest, there is cannibalism, and other unsavory stuff going on. And yet, the movie is part-comedy. It is not to be taken too seriously. The visual look, that somewhat grainy 70s feel, also contributes to the quality. - DirectorClaude MillerStarsCharlotte GainsbourgDidier BezaceSimon de La BrosseIn a small town in post-World-War-II France, an unhappy sixteen-year-old (Janine Castang) tries to escape her dreary situation by any means at her disposal. Three successive friends (Michel Davenne, a married lover; Raoul, a fellow thief; Mauricette Dargelos, a photographer and fellow prisoner) help her learn from her mistakes.La Petite Nympheuse.
6/10
As usual, when commenting on a (typical) European movie, I am not going to sheepishly quote pseudo-poets like Bob Dylan or talk pretentiously about the "recurring alienation theme". (If you're a Marxist, hence obsessed with alienation, then you'll pretty much see it everywhere - even in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.) I prefer to say it like it is. If you're a loveur of la cinema Francophonique and everything Truffautesque, you might want to skip this text.
LPV is yet another typical French male fantasy with distinct Lolita overtones. No other nation in the world makes so little effort in hiding this passion on the big screen. Quite to the contrary, they love this stuff and will probably never tire of making movies in which young female nymphomaniacs throw themselves at middle-aged men. (Doesn't that remind you of the plot of every other porn film?) To be fair, one cannot speak of pedophilia here because a fully-developed 17 year-old Gainsbourg plays a 16 year-old (which might disappoint some Lolita-movie purists posing as connoisseurs of filmic art). However, we do have a young - and in certain ways very naive - virgin here seeking sex. That's tacky enough as it is.
As I mentioned, it's not the middle-aged man who hunts down the nubile - it's the other way round. This premise has less realism to it than the story of Dumbo the Flying Elephant. And guess what? As in any fantasy, the middle-aged man at first REJECTS the girl's sexual advances - on moral grounds. Ah, these movie men have such impenetrable moral fiber! Or almost: eventually he succumbs to her charms, and does it with her, after which the director is only too happy to satisfy the male segment of the film's audience by showing Gainsbourg's breasts in full view. (Not that I'm complaining about nudity, but then don't pretend it's "arte".)
Not that he himself deflowers her. Young and crazy Gainsbourg was far too impatient for this middle-aged man to finally come around, so she did it first with a ginger handyman she'd just met. All in all, she has sex with three different men (not all middle-aged buffoons, to Truffaut's credit). The total sum would have been four, but the Catholic priest rejected her offer early on in the movie. (Hmm, I do wonder why...)
LPV, in spite of its faults, is fairly watchable, somewhat entertaining; the plot moves at a brisk pace with plenty of things happening - even if half of them lack credibility or are plain moronic. However, while it does have a beginning, LPV has no middle or end. It just trots along like the first installment of a 6-part TV mini-series bio. The "ending" constitutes of a pitiful, brief epilogue which serves as a poor substitute for a real conclusion. (Or was Truffaut aiming for a Lolitaesque "Star Wars"-type saga that covers different epochs of the life of a young harlot? We'll never know...) The epilogue informs us that she (predictably) changed her mind about having an abortion, and that her doctor said that the infant's over-activity in the womb indicates it might turn out to be a hyperactive little moron - just like its mother! Touching. And so informative.
The other problem with the movie is that it's not easy to either identify with or sympathize - hence to be too interested - in the trials, tribulations and mishaps of a mostly unlikable, lying, thieving, promiscuous, treacherous, borderline-retarded little slag. Perhaps you have to be a film student to laugh at a bomb being thrown at a bunch of cows...
I don't see what's supposed to be so damn "cute" about theft. This is not some silly heist comedy in which immoral behaviour can be laughed at and dismissed as a mere movie gimmick. However, it isn't surprising: European movies, and particularly French ones, have often been mysteriously devoid of morality, with decadence lurking around every corner. (Ah, those Socialists and their hedonism... such role-models for the youth...) Another example of this is when Gainsbourg's female boss congratulates her for hooking up with a married man: "A married man, huh? Bravo!" she says, and this is a PREGNANT woman we're talking about here. Typically, her reaction wasn't meant to be either funny or full of hypocrisy. Another reminder where this movie was made...
From whom did Gainsbourg learn to break into locked houses? Was the director trying to present us with your average juvenile delinquent or was he giving us a glimpse into the life of a master criminal in-the-making? Silly.
Yes, Truffaut must be a genius for writing a Lolita script about a dumb, horny girl. She must be utterly alienated from society, and I'd quote some Bob Dylan poetry right now if only I cared to remember any of that charlatan's lyrics... - DirectorAlexandre BustilloJulien MauryStarsAlysson ParadisJean-Baptiste TabourinClaude LuléFour months after the death of her husband, a woman on the brink of motherhood is tormented in her home by a strange woman who wants her unborn baby.Scream Bloody Gore... Rivers of blood pouring through the streets of Paris.
3/10
The French cinema has always indulged with glee in the most extreme sexual and sadistic perversion that one can(not) imagine, more than any other country in the world. After all, it may not be a mere coincidence that the French Revolution encapsulated so much joy and happiness among the populace during the processes of decapitation and other lunatic behaviour, and for a stretch of 3 entire years. A great example of this Francophonic over-the-top brutality is this very stylish, deftly directed, superbly photographed - but ultimately moronic - horror thriller about an insane but all-powerful female killing-machine who slays approximately half of Paris on a Christmas night. Forget "Saw", perhaps even "Hostel", because "Inside" has more torture and stabbings than the average Turkish prison.
The movie starts off with a good soundtrack and a road accident. A heavily pregnant woman, Paradis, survives and four months later she is still heavily pregnant (12-month pregnancy?). It's Christmas and she is home alone, soon to give birth (but not how she pictured it), still very depressed about losing her boyfriend in the accident. Very soon Beatrice Dalle starts stalking her. She enters her flat and stabs her in the navel with a pair of scissors while Paradis is sleeping. Paradis wakes up, the two wrestle, and Paradis manages to escape to the bathroom where she will spend most of the movie's remaining time. Enter Paradis's middle-aged boss: he gets into a conversation with Dalle, not even vaguely suspicious about what this strange woman might be doing in Paradis's house. He even flirts with her, strokes her legs. Alas, Dalle isn't interested in sex this particular night, hence moves away from him. A couple of minutes later Paradis's mother arrives.
"Knock, knock". "Who's there?". "Paradis's mother. I've come here to be brutally killed."
The mother suspects something foul and goes to the bathroom where she is stabbed to in the neck with a knife (or something) by her daughter. "Sorry, Mom, I thought you were Beatrice Dalle... Shucks!". Oh-oh, the movie's first unintentionally comedic faux-pas.
Don't get me wrong, the movie isn't actually "funny": it's much too dark and unpleasant for that. However, when nonsense starts piling up, even in the most technically well-made thriller, then you've got nothing left than to smirk cynically.
Anyway... The boss predictably rushes upstairs to see what the hoopla is all about, followed by Dalle who catches him, castrates him, then pierces him in the eye, and then finally stabs him thoroughly through the whole face while choking him with a pillow. Dalle then gets her arm pierced by a metal object: i.e. Paradis finally stops killing her parents by mistake and gets an actual stab at the psycho woman herself... Some time later Dalle gets her revenge in this little female tit-for-tat tête-à-tête by nailing Paradis's hand to the wall with those infamous scissors. (Not that either Dalle or Paradis are ever impaired by all these severe wounds at any point... The fight must go on, says le directeur.)
To cut a long slaughter-fest short, three cops and their Moslem prisoner enter the house later on, and they all get killed by Dalle, one by one, in some rather unconvincing ways. "Hey, Jacque, arrest that woman!". "Sorry, Jean-Paul, I wasn't concentrated enough on the job, she sliced me in half." More eye-stabbing, blood all over the floor, in fact rivers of blood pouring directly into the Seine River. The Moslem rioter walks around like a zombie, parts of his face missing; Paradis is forced to kill him. In the kitchen she burns Dalle's face beyond recognition, and yet Dalle manages to miraculously recover, so she catches Paradis in a moment of weakness (Paradis's toddler finds the anti-perfect time to wanna get out of the bloodied tummy), and Dalle does what any psychopathic bitch would do in her place: perform a less-than-skilled emergency caesarian on Paradis with - what else - that damn pair of scissors. She lovingly takes the baby in her arms, nurses it for years, gives it a solid education, and that baby is now Prime Minister of France. (Just kidding...)
The problem with this movie is two-fold: first of all, excessive violence is always the easy way out. Any idiot can conceive a story in which he can live out all his most bizarre, sadistic thoughts onto the screen. Secondly, what starts off as a thriller suddenly seems to be unsure whether it wants to be a supernatural demon-female zombie film. That, of course, is unacceptable. Either you make a realistic thriller or you do a classic horror film with demons, monsters and witches with God-like powers. There is no in-between. (It's like saying "she's half-pregnant".) We are also never told why Paradis was informed that no-one survived the crash in the other car. So did Dalle rise up from the dead? Apparently. Or perhaps she hid in the bushes right after the accident, and ate her dead baby? Nothing would surprise me anymore...
If France only had just a dozen of these Beatrice Dalles when Germany invaded it in WW 2... Perhaps then they wouldn't have fallen so easily. - DirectorMichel SpinosaStarsIsabelle CarréGaëlle BonaGeneviève MnichIn the grips of delirious illusion, Anna, a young, gentle and shy young woman convinces herself that Doctor Zanevsky is fervently in love with her. Nothing can shake her certainty... But after hope will come resentment, followed by hatred...The French have discovered editing.
6/10
I'll have to admit that French movies have come a long way since the 60s and 70s, a period during which vastly overrated - but occasionally barely competent - filmmakers such as Godard, Bunuel, and Rohmer bombarded the viewers with plot-less, overly political, and usually pretentious easy-to-make, pointless, free-for-subjective-interpretation, fill-in-the-meaning-yourself baloney. France is still the source of many dumb films (but, hey, so is Hollywood), yet the direction has become far more skillful, and French editors have finally left the unemployment lines and started being hired to do their (underrated) jobs. Many of the older French flicks look as if ALL the scenes that were shot were stuck into the end-product...
ANNA M isn't exactly the first movie to deal either with insanity or stalkers, but it's one of the better ones. This is due in large part to Isabelle Carre's charisma and her ability to pull off an ideal, gradual schizophrenic jump from the likable, naive young spinster to the malicious, tunnel-vision-obsessed loon.
The only significant drawbacks can be found around the middle, when the movie drifts slightly into far-fetched territory: the whole nonsense about no-one in the police believing the doctor went into overkill drive for a short while there...
The ending is somewhat problematic. The birth of her child "cures" her, calms her down: I don't buy that. - DirectorAlexandre BustilloJulien MauryStarsChloé CoulloudFélix MoatiJérémy KaponeThe suggestion of a big treasure hidden somewhere inside Mrs Jessel's once renowned classical dance academy will become an irresistible lure to a fiendish trap for Lucie and her friends.A vast improvement over "L'interieur".
8/10
Considering what an utter piece of crap "Inside" was, it's a good thing I didn't know that "Livide" came from the same pens and minds – otherwise I would have avoided it. While with several loose ends, the plot of "Livide" is infinitely more logical than the legendarily idiotic and sadistic-for-the-sake-of-it "Inside": this – in spite of "Livide" being a supernatural horror film, whereas "Inside" is a thriller. Still, at least "Inside" has a lot of style going for it (if only zero substance), having hinted that its creators might be able to achieve something worthwhile eventually; and they did, a surprisingly good job.
"Livide" is a refreshingly original take on the by-now very worn-out vampire genre. Frankly, if I see another set of fangs going into a screaming maiden's neck, I'll either puke or break my jaw yawning. "Livide" is nothing of the sort though; in fact, vampirism isn't even revealed until about an hour into the movie. Once it is, it is given a whole new spin for the viewer to have fun with. Not to mention how well-filmed all of this is; French movies rarely disappoint in the visual department.
Plot-holes abound. 1) What happened to the three young zombie dancers, and who are they? 2) Was Lucie's mother (Dalle) some kind of a witch or perhaps even a vampire herself? 3) Did Lucie and Anna switch minds or not? There is evidence to support both options. 4) Why did Lucie not panic like her male companions, but chose (?) to "go with the flow"? Why did she give Ms. Dracula her hands for a telepathic session for exposition? From the scarce information given, it is quite impossible to connect all the parts of the story into a cohesive whole.
On the other hand, there are advantages to the story's unresolved, and later even further deepened, mystery. The viewer doesn't always need to have everything drawn for him. Besides, it is so much easier to forgive loose-ends when a movie is executed so well. And it's unpredictable, which is always both a blessing and a rarity, not just in horror films. I always criticize French cinema for being "style over substance", but the style suffices this time around, and the semi-complete/confusing but original premise and events make up for the logic flaws. And anyway, there are no aspects of "Livide" that make it overtly cretinous; merely a little "unfinished".
I do have to wonder though what the French have against little girls. Dozens of their films deal with underage Lolitas having affairs with ugly, aging men; an annoying tradition of pedophilic themes that is almost uniquely French. This time around no young girls flirt or have sex with smelly old men, but an innocent little girl is savagely butchered and dismembered. France, leave them girls alone! Frcrissakes, extreme violence against children should be a no-no in films, I'd think that would be quite obvious. - DirectorFrançois OzonStarsCharlotte RamplingCharles DanceLudivine SagnierA British mystery author visits her publisher's home in the South of France, where her interaction with his unusual daughter sets off some touchy dynamics.This Ozon definitely has a hole in it.
5/10
It is a bit sad when reviewers have to read other people's interpretations in order to decipher a movie. I will admit that this was the case with me, too. Now, I am a fan of ambiguous movies ("Picnic At Hanging Rock", "2001", "Possible Worlds", to name the best – sorry, no Continental Euro-trash here) but there is a certain line that shouldn't be crossed: the line of "now nothing makes sense anymore and CANNOT make sense no matter how hard you try to make it so". This line was crossed, for example, by Lynch in "Lost Highway" – which in the end meant ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Lynch had tied himself in knots, whether through stupidity or laziness or just good old-fashioned pretentiousness, and by the end of writing the script he knew he couldn't untangle (without re-writing heavily) so he just wrote anything that came to his somewhat confused mind.
It is easy to write such a script, where nothing can realistically add up. It requires no concentration.
"Swimming Pool" isn't that extreme, but it's also less interesting than "Lost Highway" and some other ambiguous movies that crossed the line. When the line is not crossed, there are valid interpretations based on ACTUAL EVENTS in the movie. But when it IS crossed, the interpretations can vary as much as Christina Aguilera's wigs. And, judging by what other IMDb reviewers wrote, that is exactly what happened. The ones that liked the film have (over-)rationalized it. Even Ozon, if he reads his fans' interpretations, must chuckle or shake his head in disbelief. "Did I imply that? I don't remember doing that." I agree with what a reviewer wrote in a review for another movie ("2046", I think). He said that "the medium has failed me if I need to get outside information to understand the film". Do we really have to dig through interviews with Ozon to get to the truth? I've got better things to do. Skimming through other people's partly laughable, partly fascinating (and sometimes both) interpretations of "SP" in 10-15 minutes is as much as a movie like this will take out of my "extra-curricular post-movie time".
Some people think that Dance had sex with the midget lady and Julie was the result of it! Isn't that hilarious? Many people think it's a it-was-all-a-dream shtick – which wouldn't be too original for such a hyped-up "art" film. I do very much agree with a reviewer who hated the movie who argued that Ozon, had he not been French, would not have had half the hype with his movies. Just imagine that an American made this. Do you really think Cannes would have "honoured" it? (I put honoured in exclamation marks because Cannes lusting over your movie is more of a warning that a recommendation, just like with the Oscars and other silly award ceremonies.) Was it all a dream? It had better be, because many of the later events make no sense, and the characterization gets increasingly absurd: for example, the Lolita saying she murdered the guy, and Rampling's reaction being a mere "why?" as in "why did you buy the pizzas and not Chinese food?" Was it all a dream? Who cares. The bottom line is that the movie wasn't interesting enough. The direction was far from mesmerizing, the characters were of average interest, the movie dragging on and on in the first half. I don't mind a slow pace, but few directors have the talent of a, say, Kubrick to make a slow movie fascinating.
The themes? An old frustrated Englishwoman who finds her total opposite in a young French Lolita, and is gradually fascinated by her? Sorry, that is not interesting enough. Done with humour – yes, but there is not enough humour here.
Basically, both the people what hate this movie and the ones who think it's a cinematic revolution are exaggerating, i.e. should calm down and have a pill for their heart-rate. It's neither bad nor brilliant. It is merely average, just like the dialog and the acting.
One reviewer wrote that Ozon keeps hiring the blonde nymph (Sagnier) because she is a brilliant actress. How naive can you get... There are other reasons why directors stick to the same actresses, especially ones as attractive as she is. (Do I have to spell it out? He is SCREWING her.) Her nudity is (for a male) the highlight of the picture – whereas her acting silly at times. Ozon loves her to undress in all his movies even if it doesn't always serve the story (as if nudity can serve the story as often as many would like to think). Plus, he knows that you cannot impress the Continentals unless you have plenty of artistic – but of course, ARTISTIC - nudity. - DirectorJacques RivetteStarsMichel PiccoliJane BirkinEmmanuelle BéartThe former famous painter Frenhofer revisits an abandoned project using the girlfriend of a young visiting artist. Questions about truth, life, and artistic limits are explored.It's that old tortured artist drivel all over again... with implants.
3/10
Summary of a 4-hour movie: a sex-starved old bald artist gets to watch a beautiful naked woman for hours every day.
If you want to see the height of French (or European) cinematic pretentiousness, go ahead and watch this dull piece of celluloid nonsense. However, if you want REAL entertainment, no need to watch a different movie: I suggest you take a peak at many of the favorable reviews of LBN. However, if you're a fan of drivel like this, you'll most likely enjoy them and mark this with a "NO" (and then phone up all your friends to mark it with more "NO"s). Just make sure you don't break your keyboard when you smash a "NO" vote...
Piccoli plays an old artist, who has stopped painting/drawing i.e. scribbling crap-on-a-canvas, due to some tortured artist reasons. More likely, he stopped because he lives in the South of France and he'd rather just have fun in the sun and have sex a bit, occasionally wining and dining with friends. It's understandable. In the movie, however, the reason for this becomes apparent later: he tried painting his wife, and that pretty much ruined the fun in art forever for him. After all, would YOU want to spend hours and days painting your wife? Especially when she looks like Jane Birkin. No wonder Piccoli is tortured, suffering and all that: with a wife like Birkin it's a miracle he didn't end up killing himself like all those young tortured poets.
But... Voila! Ms.Beart enters the picture, his life. She is young, has a pretty face, and likes to be naked in front of old men. What man, old or young, could resist that? Suddenly, and veeeeery mysteriously, Piccoli is interested in painting again! Of course, officially his reasons are artistic, not sexual. How dare I even suggest that an artist might think with his genitals first, and his divine artistic soul/mind second?? No, no, no: Piccoli is NOT sexually attracted to the beautiful Beart; he just wants to paint her because she has that certain... aaahh... je-ne-sais-quoi.
What follows in this monstrously long movie are scenes of Beart undressing, dressing, posing, changing poses, getting bored, and Piccoli trying to calm himself down, i.e. Piccoli hiding his pitched tent while trying to focus on his "art". It is a pervert's dream. A movie the pervert doesn't have to hide from his visiting friends, but actually boast about. Two flies with one swat: watching breasts AND being able to pretend you're a clever art-movie lover. Or loveur.
Occasionally, there is some rather dull dialog that serves more as relief for male viewers who are struggling with their sexual feelings towards the naked Beart.
In the end, we get to see a large collection of drawings, all based on the body of one called Beart. Needless to say, the drawings are all horrible. All that effort, and for nothing! The reason they are so bad is two-fold: 1) nowadays bad art sells better, and 2) it is very difficult to concentrate on your artistic outpourings of inspiration when sexual feelings hang over you like an albatross. I understand Piccoli's character fully.
Oh, and those breasts are fake. This is Beart in her post-silicon, pre-enlarged-lips-like-a-duck phase. I am not a fan of implants at all, but I guess art lovers will not be bothered by the only bit of fakeness in an otherwise impressive feast of utter genuineness. The movie stinks of authenticity. It reeks. I'm impressed.
I wonder what the shooting of this movie was like? Did Piccoli have sex with Beart every morning, before the shooting commenced, so he can focus more easily on his lines? No, that can't be it. I just remembered: he barely has any lines. He just sits there and draws.
I once watched a chimp with a brush, a canvas, and some paint. There's much more to be learned from that... - DirectorJean-Jacques AnnaudStarsTchéky KaryoBart the BearYouk the BearAn orphan bear cub hooks up with an adult male as they try to dodge human hunters.Only 15 bears were killed during the filming of this motion picture.
People who criticize this movie for lack of realism regarding bear behaviour have missed the point. This is not an "Animal Planet" documentary; it is a movie. One reviewer bitches that an adult male bear would have killed or even eaten a bear cub. Who cares? This guy probably watches "Dumbo" and then scratches his empty head, wondering whether he ever saw an elephant that can fly.
I wish more of these knuckleheads would put that much "thought" and scrutinize Michael Moore's fantasy propaganda "documentaries" with the same kind of nit-picking zeal.
Watching the film, I was torn between enjoying it and wondering if some animals weren't hurt in the making of it after all - in spite of the obligatory end-credits statement that "no animals were harmed". Of course, if any animals WERE harmed, they'd hardly be able to take the film-makers to court, now would they? And their animal relatives? Animals are far too poor to afford lawyers that can go head-to-head against Hollywood's finest scheissters.
Obviously, bears can be trained to do all sorts of things, being the intelligent creatures that they are, but some of the scenes were a little dubious. "Look... We'll just drop the cub into a fast stream, and see if he does something funny. If he dies, we'll get another one. Who'll notice?" Am I being paranoid? I don't trust film-makers, especially European ones (not to mention French ones)...
"The Bear" is a solid movie. It has its slow/dull moments, but some highlights, as well. The dream sequences were unusual, an interesting approach to trying to get inside the mind of an animal. The bear cub himself was also quite amusing in a number of sequences.
The only major criticism I have is that they gave the cub human "baby-voices", i.e. half of the noises we hear from him come from some French actress sitting in a dubbing studio, goo-gooing her a** off to please the director. It just sounds stupid. I would think that the noises a bear-cub makes would be sufficiently amusing/entertaining on their own without such nonsense having to be thrown in. - DirectorJean-Luc GodardStarsEddie ConstantineAnna KarinaAkim TamiroffA U.S. secret agent is sent to the distant space city of Alphaville where he must find a missing person and free the city from its tyrannical ruler.More cheap Kafka imitations coming your way
3/10
This very French philosophical sci-fi is basically an excuse for Godard to unleash his favourite thoughts about mankind and life onto the viewing public. There is no story to speak of, just a bunch of absurd scenes - and not particularly interesting at that - filled with various very very very very deep thoughts. Do I even have to use the "p" word? Pretentious. The unavoidable word when it comes to reviewing so much of the vastly overrated European crap.
Alphaville is NOT a city of the future. It's a 60s city which hasn't heard of moon-travel, let alone "galactic travel" - which is so laughably mentioned at one point. (Lemmy Clochard at one point refers to Alphaville as "Zeroville", and he pretty much speaks the truth.) If you don't have a sufficient budget, either don't do your own version of Metropolis at all, or use your directorial imagination as to what you should film in order to create the illusion of such a city with what little money you have. But Godard is no Tarkovsky ("Solaris"/"Stalker"), not even at knee-level. He desperately needed that 50-mil budget. In fact, I can see why Billy Wilder called Godard a "lazy bum": this little Frenchman (I assume he's little) wasn't bothered much with either the look of the movie or the story. He just got a cameraman, a crew, some very average actors, and his damn I-wrote-it-in-an-afternoon script. Any of Godard's philosophical preachings could have been placed anywhere in the movie: he literally stuck them anywhere, most of the time. By having no meaningful plot, he established a perfect terrain for himself to throw in any speech about anything anywhere in the movie. For example, that stuff about Communism and Capitalism needing to establish plans might as well have been in the first 5 minutes or the last 5.
The movie actually starts out fairly interestingly. While some people may be put off by the narrator's voice, I liked it - at least for a while, until its overuse undermined the overall effect it could have had. ("Less is more".) Nevermind that computers don't sound like fat old Euro-trash grease-balls with encroaching throat cancer, but the voice did lend the movie some much-needed atmosphere. (But to suggest Kubrick's Hal 3000 is in any way related to this computer's voice is quite silly.) The music at first seems appropriate, or at least an interesting choice, but the repetitive nature of it very quickly becomes headache-inducing. ("Less is more." But this particular piece of fortune-cookie movie-making true-and-tried philosophy is something Godard has never heard of, being too immersed in the works of Sartre or Hegel to have time to learn the craft of film-making.) After only 10 minutes I realized that "this movie isn't going to make much sense and won't have a story", so I basically decided to patiently sit it out, hoping that at least I might find something interesting/worthwhile in it.
I've checked Godard's filmography and - sure enough - the man made about 4-5 films per year, in the mid-60s. This movie is a rushed job, and it's obvious. On the other hand, considering how quickly he did it, it's not even that bad! Maybe he's some kind of genius after all.
How can Godard have his characters use "light-years" as a replacement term for "years" or "decades"? Did this divine intellectual wannabe have no time to read up on some BASIC science, especially physics, in-between all those mostly bulls**t philosophical ramblings from the "exalted" German, Greek and French household names? What's with the French Bogart's description of the leading lady's teeth being "sharp and vampire-like"? Only moments later we are shown her face - as she smiles - and her teeth seemed absolutely normal. Or maybe I'm just too DUMB to understand the rationalization (i.e. bulls**t explanation) behind this? Nah...
Maybe the French Bogey is delusional for saying this (about the vampire teeth) hence I missed out on an essential clue regarding his character? More evidence of Godard's embarrassing lack of knowledge about science comes in form of this supposed future world having conquered not "just" our Solar system, not "just" the neighbouring stars, not even "just" our galaxy, but OTHER galaxies, too! In the meantime, this superior human race (at least the ones in Zeroville) can't even guard their own most important "control" buildings, hence any clochard like Lemmy Clochard can just barge in and out of them, killing everyone in sight with his cheap pistol.
And then the movie ends in a silly finale in which Godard hired all of Paris's unemployed mimes to stumble around like drunken fools. Apparently, the computer had been screwed over by Lemmy Scarface in some way, and the inhabitants of Crapoville are disoriented. Whatever...
And then the movie's final words: "I love you". How cheesy. Love conquers technology: you can't get any more poetic than that! (Nevermind that Lemmy has a face only a mother can love (unless the girl was referring to love for mankind or some such crap), provided of course that his mother is a lizard.)
This is the kind of movie best "enjoyed" by people with an inferiority complex regarding their own intellect i.e. lack of it, the kind that insist on liking and "understanding" Picasso, just so they can "prove" to themselves and others how smart they are...
Btw, if you want a chuckle, check up on a black and white photo of Godard looking at a film-reel with his sun-glasses! WAY too cool, way way too cool for this world Charlatan...
(This comment is dedicated to all the hard-working French syndicate members who are seeking a 30-hour work-week.) - DirectorTom TagholmStarsStephane CornicardDavid BertrandMichael DacreJean Dubois is the latest in a seven generation tradition of truffle hunters and, without a doubt, he is the worst of them. He lives with his pig Carinne with whom he has quite a close relationship. When his landlord serves notice due to an unpaid back rent of 126 months, Jean reaches his lowest point and decides on a fateful course of action. But just when things appear to be at their worst, a discovery changes his life.A unique love-triangle.
6/10
If nothing else, this relatively stylish little film might be remembered for having had introduced a unique set of relationships into the movie world: a man, a pig, and a truffle. (Man loves pig. Truffle appears into man's life. Man falls for truffle. Pig is jealous.) Hence it's suitable that ABDT was filmed in French and set in France. Maybe the French will watch this and realize that if one wants to be sexually deviant one does not need to make movies about under-age girls: there's always le swineaux to have fun with. And anyway, this particular le pig seems to be underage too, so the French would still get to keep their tradition of middle-aged-man-meets-underage-le-sex-objet.
Am I hallucinating or is the title a word play meaning "About The Truffle"? Did the truffle peasant actually sexually molest the truffle in one scene? Apparently the movie won a short-film award; it has no left-wing politics as far as I can tell, so I have to wonder if I missed something. Nowadays only politics gets you acclaim... - DirectorFrançois TruffautStarsJeanne MoreauOskar WernerHenri SerreDecades of a love triangle concerning two friends and an impulsive woman.Since everyone else is too scared to write what they really think - for fear of appearing "uncultured" - I will.
4/10
A better title would have been "The Two Suckers".
The movie starts off with a one-minute summary/prologue of some events that transpired between and around J&J. It went by so quickly that I could barely catch anything, except that Jules failed humping a number of women whereas Jim had them all, the French narrator pretty much being hell-bent on setting a new world-record in speed-jabbering. "Well, that must have been the movie then!" I thought, for there was enough plot in that speedy recount of events for an entire prequel to J&J. I guess that prequel would have been called "Jim & Jules: Their Happy Life Before Katherine".
We find out that J&J are poets, writers, artists... Oh, no! Not another pretentious Euro-trash saga about the sensitive souls that inhabit Paris while discussing the meaning of life! But no fear. While the movie IS pretentious, though, it's not about the meaning of life, but about the meaning and intentions of a particularly empty-headed French bimbo by the name of Katherine. After all, this is a French movie.
Before meeting this "apparition", as Jim so pretentiously calls her, J&J see a woman's "mysteriously smiling" face carved out of a rock. J&J "both dressed the same way" to see this work of art, we are told by the narrator, by not WHY they dressed the same way. And what happens if I dare ask why? I will be called an uncouth philistine who doesn't appreciate the "depth" that this movie has to offer. Nevertheless, I still ask why. If anyone out there can tell me, feel free to e-mail me. I look forward to reading your silly hallucinatory psycho-babble.
Anyway, predictably they meet a woman who fits the rock's smile, and it's of course Jeanna Moreau, whose beauty is vastly overrated. Katherine wants to set a bunch of papers (letters?) on fire which she refers to as "lies" (how poetic!), and in the process she nearly burns herself and her house down. Conclusion? Katherine is a moron. J&J have just fallen in love with a dumb floozy. That's what happens when penises do the thinking, nothing new there.
After watching a play, J&J disagree with Katherine on whether it was good or not. Realizing that J&J are far superior to her intellectually - i.e. she ran out of arguments - she spontaneously decides to jump into the river. The narrator calls it her "victory". So, all you women out there, if you ever find yourself out-argued: jump into the nearest batch of water. That'll show 'em!
WW I breaks out. Symbolically, J&J get split up to fight on opposing sides. The thing that made me smile was that both of them expressed fear of killing the other in battle. Are artists that dumb? What are the odds that they kill each other, in a war in which millions upon millions of soldiers participate? Still, this part of the movie was not bad at all, but this was probably due to the stock-footage of trenches and battlefields. I.e. these scenes were NOT directed by Truffaut so there was nothing much to criticize.
The war was over, Jim's side won. It turns out Jules has a child with Katherine (which is probably not even his), a woman who is not only dumb but also turns out to be a slut, having cheated on her husband numerous times. Jim sees his chance!
Btw, there is a silly scene in which Katherine lists various wines, and this moment reminded me of Monty Python's "cheese sketch". Nevertheless, the movie was improving at this point somewhat.
Eventually, Jim hooks up with Katherine: they're together, they split, they hook up, they split, they hook up, they split up - and then Katherine drives them both off a bridge, leaving Jules as the sole survivor of this French game of "who's the ass?". (The moment I saw her driving the car I knew she was going to do that.)
I love the way Truffaut (through his alter Ego, Jules) makes up excuses for Katherine's behaviour. When she's unfaithful, she is "exploring the boundaries of experience" or some such "poetic" malarkey. Jules is always covering up for her selfishness like some demented moron with his semantic bulls**t, which has nothing to do with the real world. Truffaut's skewered views are on display in other parts, too: Jules says that Katherine is "neither too beautiful, intelligent, or sincere" but that's what "every man wants"! What???? Maybe French men! Similarly, the quasi mini-hippie commune that the two morons, the harlot, and the child briefly form is supposed to be exalted, oh-so progressive, advanced. But what's one to expect from a decadent left-wing European director?
I was also fascinated by Katherine's penis-hopping. At one point she had dinner with three of the men she was involved with. There are pro prostitutes that can't achieve a feat like that... Truffaut tries to inject a philosophical slant to the whoring around, but no words, no matter how cleverly articulated, can mask the truth: namely that Katherine just gets bored with one penis far too easily then jumps on to the next. Just another floozy, what's there to discuss?
I found the narration to be too robotic, matter-of-fact. The narrator talked about all these complex emotional happenings, but he recited them with the passion/interest of a school-kid forced to recite a poem. In fact, they might as well have used Stephen Hawking's voice-box... Plus, some of the things said in the narration were superfluous, e.g. when Katherine walks Jim to the station in an obvious fog; it is then that the disinterested narrator informs us that "a fog has fallen". No kidding??
Oh, yes, and the movie is about destiny, for example Jim missing Katherine by only ten minutes in the bar, an event that could have changed everything... and... oh, whatever... - DirectorLuis BuñuelStarsCatherine DeneuveJean SorelMichel PiccoliA frigid young housewife decides to spend her midweek afternoons as a prostitute.So she wants to be mistreated and be a prostitute? So what.
5/10
Some would have us believe that Deneuve's expressionless face is right for the role. Or perhaps she can't act? In her other movies she is similarly "detached", i.e. unable to act. I guess this kind of underacting, or "non-acting" was suitable here, but that's not to say she's brilliant as some people think.
The movie is again about kinkiness, Bunuel's favourite theme. Sex and sexual perversion, the hallmarks of European cinema. Bunuel was just a dirty old man, living out his own fantasies on screen, and yet film critics would have us believe that it's a "master at work". Well, even if he were a master – which he's not (he is merely a solid director) – the fact remains that he's a dirty old man. Isn't this obvious? Or is this ARTIST above such "low" human qualities
Film students and movie critics ought to stop regarding some film-makers as gods, i.e. stop worshipping them blindly and regard them as the mere humans that they are. Some of the dialogue in the early parts of the movie is absurd, and I don't mean weird, but unrealistic and just badly written. I have a distinct impression Bunuel wrote his scripts within days, hours maybe even; there is also very little perfectionism in the way he sets up scenes.
The movie is okay, nothing more. It isn't dull, and it keeps one's attention: but why shouldn't it? Anything that goes on in a brothel is easy to watch without getting bored. Does one need to be a "master of cinema" to create an interest in watching the daily goings-on in a brothel?
Watching some of Bunuel's sex-themed films, I am often reminded of Germany's "Der Schulmaedchenreport" films, which is a cheap soft-porn movie series filled with humorous and sometimes perverse anecdotes. Why are those films considered junk compared to Bunuel's "masterpieces"? Let's face it, his movies are solid, but were he not a left-winger he would not have had nearly this much admiration from the film world which is so infested by Marxists.
Roger Ebert, that genius, is particularly mesmerized by the scene with the Chinaman. This happens to be the most badly acted scene in the movie - but to Ebert the mystery surrounding what's in the Chinaman's box seems to be of prime importance. "What's in the box?" writes Roger in his pretentious review. WHO CARES?! That guy probably had some metal balls in there which he wanted Deneuve to insert you-know-where. Big deal! What was Ebert expecting to be in the box? Litte green men? Diamonds shaped like elephants? Letters he wrote to his first girlfriend? Amazing...
Denueve is sexually not attracted to her "dull" fiancée. What she really craves is excitement, beatings, sexual perversion, submission and what-not. So what? Is this supposed to be "deep"? Believe me, I understood this movie - what's there not to understand? However, I do not see what's supposed to be so brilliant about this overrated little movie about sexual fantasies. - DirectorLuis BuñuelStarsJean-Claude BrialyAdolfo CeliMichel PiccoliA series of surreal sequences that critique morality and society in a stream of consciousness style.The Pythons are much funnier.
5/10
Roger Ebert informs us, in his infinite wisdom or infinite stupidity (all depends on whether you take this bloated nincompoop seriously or not), that the vignettes in this movie are disconnected because the theme is freedom, and where there is freedom one cannot expect any kind of flow or logic because anarchy rules. Huh? This is a typical example of what's been wrong with movie critics in the last 50 years: reading meanings into things that don't mean anything, or rationalizing even the most absurd/abstract scenes or plots to the point of insanity and unintentional self-mockery. This has been IN PARTICULAR the case with pompous European dramas, and occasionally even "comedies".
Bunuel's TPOL is merely a series of sketches, the way Monty Python had done them before him and far better. (How could the French/Spanish possibly compete with the British in humour, whether it be outright silliness or clever satire?) But while some of Bunuel's sketches have a good/humorous premise, they are often not directed or even acted too well. (When Lonsdale, otherwise a good actor, says "why can't the monks at least stay?" it isn't funny. It's a decent line, but it has to be PRESENTED and said the right way in order to be funny on film; it's tough to successfully transfer a funny line from text to the screen, and Bunuel is not a master of this, clearly (though better than many of his contemporaries).) The toilet-seat dinning-room idea would have been produced with hilarity by the Pythons, whereas Bunuel's direction merely makes one grin slightly.
What I'm saying is: IT ISN'T JUST THE IDEA THAT COUNTS, BUT HOW YOU DEVELOP IT ON SCREEN. This simple fact is something pretentious critics have rarely failed to neglect.
The only vignette that came close to being truly funny is the pedophile's photos sketch. However, most of the vignettes, while interesting, aren't funny. Borat is funny, Bunuel's material is merely unusual, maybe a tad clever at best.
Honestly, I am not some hormone-driven teen (I am not a teen at all), but one of the highlights of the movie is Asti playing the piano in the nude. And isn't nudity and sexual perversion the real reason why a number of people watch supposedly intellectual European "masterpieces" anyway? Let's be honest here (Btw, that vignette was okay, as was the one in police class.) Does anyone really laugh like a hyena watching this type of comedy? I only wish that I could be made to laugh as easy as some people out there
Some of the premises here are not funny nor clever nor anything. For me the dumbest vignette was the missing child one. The idea is too dumb, maybe worthy of a 30-second piece, but when stretched over 5-10 minutes it just gets tedious and quite pointless. Another dull bit was the spree-killer leaving the court-room: badly acted and not funny. So what was the point of that sketch? That freedom might mean that a man can kill people randomly, implying that the fine line between anarchy and freedom is hard to balance between? Or what? Whatever the brilliant and no doubt left-wing - message Bunuel had for us here doesn't get me excited at all. Style without substance in movies is not enough. But substance (even if there is any here) without (an adequate) style is insufficient, too.
Watching this movie I was not only reminded of Monty Python, but also of Lyndsey Anderson's brilliant "O, Lucky Man!". That movie is relatively disjointed, too, but directed, acted and photographed with such class, such style that Bunuel should have studied that film to learn from the true masters of cinema. Bunuel, Truffaut, and other overrated film-student darlings could also have learned a lot from Kubrick, compared to whom they are mere amateurs. A little perfectionism can't hurt at all, you know, when making a movie Btw, monks praying - and then playing poker? Is that supposed to be original? Funny? I've seen porn films with better gags. - DirectorFrançois TruffautStarsCharles DennerBrigitte FosseyNelly BorgeaudBertrand Morane's burial is attended by all the women the forty-year-old engineer loved. We then flash back to Bertrand's life and love affairs, told by himself while writing an autobiographical novel. A film about romantic relationships, the need to charm, and the literary creation.Much better than some of Truffaut's other, overrated stuff.
7/10
Unlike Truffaut's other movies, this one doesn't have dull bits, and the bits that are supposed to be funny sometimes are. A French comedy with some funny/amusing moments?? Is that possible? Apparently, yes. Once in a blue moon, of course. Apparently there was a blue moon in 1977. It's about a guy who has affairs with countless women, is literally obsessed by them, eventually deciding to write a book about his sexual exploits. At first glance, it's hard to accept the little hook-nosed Morane as being some sort of Casanova. However, you get used to that quickly, partly because a lot of the women he gets aren't that great-looking, either. (Although, I'm sure this was neither Truffaut's point nor intention.) The movie is quite pleasant to watch, the dialog and the narration are interesting. The only drawback, and it's not a major one, is that occasional situations and supporting actors aren't too convincing, but this is to be expected from a European movie (UK films not included). - DirectorFrançois TruffautStarsJeanne MoreauJean-Claude BrialyMichel BouquetJulie Kohler is prevented from suicide by her mother. She leaves the town. She will track down, charm and kill five men who do not know her. What is her goal? What is her purpose?Solid Hitchcock rip-off with some flaws in logic.
5/10
Before De Palma did his "homages" to Hitchcock, Truffaut did one and it's this movie. When you "borrow" someone's style for a movie, it is called "doing a homage". And like all "homages" to Hitch, this one is flawed, too as flawed as Hitch's own movies.
The movie is stylish and the photography is quite nice. The music is also good, being by Hermann who did Hitch's movies. Also, the film isn't too dull, though there are patches of brief tedium (after all, this is a European movie).
The problem is the story. The premise of a woman losing her husband on wedding day by a shooting would be okay. I can even live with it being an accidental shooting. However, the way the shooting occurred is a little bit silly. The flashback clarifies things but it isn't quite satisfactory.
There are some other problems, mostly various plot-devices, illogicalities: 1) the politician's son says that Moreau isn't his teacher Becker, and he repeats this several times on the night of the third murder, yet a day later he insists that it WAS Miss Becker. This is done just so Truffaut can have the wrong person arrested so that Moreau can show how "good" she is by telling the cops that woman is innocent. 2) When she visits her fourth victim, the artist, she sees a drawing of a woman that looks 100% like her. However, this man had never seen Moreau before. Minutes later, the artist notes this "similarity" and says some nonsense like "nature imitates art". More like "Truffaut uses silly plot-devices by imitating Hitch's illogic". 3) What's with that absurd coincidence when she wants to kill the bald guy and he gets arrested JUST as she appears at his firm FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER?? 4) Why would the artist tell Moreau, just minutes after she had an "accident" with the bow and arrow, that she should point the arrow at him??! Does he not believe she could get "clumsy" again with the arrow and kill him? 5) In fact, the ease with which she gets to some of her victims without them ever getting at all suspicious about her motives is a bit far-fetched. 6) Do they have co-ed prisons in France? If they do, the more power to them. How is it that Moreau could ever get a chance to kill the bald guy in prison??? And the easer with which she gets the kitchen knife?? They let HER serve food, a convicted four-time murderer of men??!!! 7) And finally, why the hell would Moreau even let herself be caught before she killed the bald guy especially since it was he who pulled the trigger in killing her husband? How could she possibly know she'd get to him in jail? Again, I have to ask, do/did they really have co-ed jails in France? I would let a lot of those things go if this were a surreal movie. However, it is stylish not surreal, so I consider these things as holes in logic that hurt the movie.
Sick and tired of overrated Euro-trash dramas? Email me and I'll send you my altered mock-subtitles for "Passion Of Anne", "Cries & Whispers", "Autumn Sonata", or "Der Untergang". - DirectorFrançois TruffautStarsJean-Pierre LéaudClaude JadeDelphine SeyrigAfter being discharged from the army, Antoine Doinel centers a screwball comedy where he applies for different jobs and tries to make sense of his relationships with women.When they tell you a movie is "character-driven", that's usually a nice way of saying "there is no plot".
4/10
A dweeb who lacks charisma gets dishonorably discharged from the army, and then goes through a series of different jobs and women. This is as much plot as you'll get in this typical French (read = European) drama without a plot or a real point.
But hang on. After finishing the movie, I was informed by various movie catalogs that this is a comedy. Comedy?!! Leonard Maltin calls this an "alternately touching and hilarious film". Touching and hilarious? What movie was he watching??? I tell you, there is absolutely NOTHING touching about this movie. The movie is emotionally uninvolving. And there wasn't one funny moment in the entire picture unless you consider French humour funny. In fact, French humour is so unfunny that it is difficult for the non-connoisseur to even identify which bits are supposed to be funny. Maltin was probably referring, for example, to the early scene when an elderly detective catches a customer's wife cheating on him with another man. Is this supposed to be funny? Good Lord, if this is funny what isn't? It's a badly-directed scene with bad acting, absurd reactions by the characters, haphazardly put together. And that's funny Maltin further "informs" us that the dweeb is "inept but likable". Likable?! This man is so charismatic he makes the likes of Kyle MacLachlan seem like Sean Connery of Clark Gable by comparison. In another movie catalog I am informed that the dweeb is more-or-less Truffaut himself, i.e. the movie is autobiographical. Fair enough. If Truffaut was a dweeb, that's his problem. I am also informed by BOTH reviews that this movie is considered as Truffaut's best by many!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What are his other movies like then Don't get me wrong. The movie is by no means a disaster. It is watchable, which is the most important thing, and the photography is solid. But there is nothing here that will make you laugh (unless you laugh at other French films), and there is certainly nothing touching here. The dweeb sleeps with prostitutes, falls in "love" easily, flirts for years with a girl who is probably frigid and played by an actress who is probably even less interesting than he is. A stone-faced actress. Which brings me to the acting. Some of the cast aren't particularly good. And Truffaut, the "great director", occasionally offers us scenes that are, for want of a better word, "off". There is clumsiness in the editing, and clumsiness in scenes with many characters.
If you could just forget that this was done by one of the supposed "greats of cinema", and watch this without knowing anything about the movie, you'd have to be lying if you thought this was anything but an average movie.
By the way, Maltin also calls this "one of the best treatments of young love ever put on the screen". This comes from a man who thinks that "Teenage Caveman" is a better movie than "Blade Runner". 'Nuff said.
(Sick and tired of bad European dramas? Email me, and I'll send you my altered subtitles for various Bergman films, plus "Der Untergang".) - DirectorLouis MalleStarsCathryn HarrisonTherese GiehseAlexandra StewartTo escape a gender war, a girl flees to a remote farmhouse and becomes part of an extensive family's unusual, perhaps even supernatural, lifestyle.This is French Cinema's equivalent to Confuse-A-Cat Limited, except that the viewer is the cat and there are no Pythons around.
7/10
Did Alice stumble into the French version of Wonderland, or does this merely take place on Planet Goofball, in the Zany Critters planetary system, in the vicinity of the Silly Dream Nebula, located right smack at the outer rim of the Loony Galaxy?
A beautiful blonde, resembling Maria Sharapova a bit, experiences a series of hallucinations(?), roaming about in a world which isn't explained to us at all (or is it? maybe I'm just too daft for Malle's undoubtedly multi-layered hidden intellectual musings). There are animals doing strange stuff, there is a rather absurd i.e. overly symbolic war between men and women (carrying whatever left-wing meaning it probably carries), and there is an old woman that seems to have a taste for fresh human milk. (Milk, not blood, though she could have fooled me.) This strange, perhaps alien, wasteland even features Andy Warhol's own Joe D'Allessandro, acting as badly as ever, not having his little friend dangle about but this time pretending to be mute even though he quite clearly sings great opera, mere hours before frantically trying to lop off the head of a brown eagle, which sets of a battle between him and his sister Lily, while Maria chats with a semi-grumpy unicorn. Did I mention that Joe's name is also Lily?
Where else but in a 70s European "art film" will you see a 75 year-old hag suck on the nipples of a young woman (her own daughter)? You won't see that in a Disney or Spielberg flick. The goofy old witch even gropes Maria at one point. But considering that this is a European "arthouse" flick, the perversion takes quite a back seat. After all, most Euro-art flicks have to have either masturbation (preferably involving a boy aged 9, peeking through a key-hole, watching his hairy aunt shower), incest, cannibalism, or at the very least homosexuality. "Art" as an excuse to indulge in depravity and the baser forms of human behaviour? I'm just asking, not saying. Don't shoot the messenger.
Thankfully, apart from the cringe-wrothy scene of the old biddy cop-a-feeling the wonderful English dyevochka (Rex Harrison's grand-daughter, nepotism working for once), the film is just weird. Bizarre, but without hurling us into the oftenh inevitable lurid depths of necrophilia, pedophilia, or any other "philias" that Euro-trashy "art" directors seem to be so fond of. No-one is eating poo here, no-one gets their head lopped off by a family member, and no children get gang-raped by a group of sex-starved cannibalistic Fascists. No such "art" here, thankfully. BM is quite enjoyable.
But even more bizarre than the nipple-sucking were Maria's very very odd temper-tantrums. Bad acting, senseless characterization, or flawed choices by the director? You tell me. I kind of liked it. Indeed, I thoroughly enjoyed Maria, whatever she may have been doing, and the same could be said of the excellent photography, courtesy of Sven the Svensky, who finally put his talents to some good use after having previously shot a string of utterly pointless, monotonous, ugly Bergman dramas.
BM starts off with the brutal though accidental(?) slaying of a luckless badger, not exactly the most enjoyable scene in the picture. I wondered what meaning this strange killing had in regard to Maria and her character. I didn't wonder for long. About a half-hour later I ceased wondering altogether, stopped trying to figure out this film because it became evident that there was absolutely nothing to figure out, sort of like trying to analyze the mind of Sean Penn – nothing there. Even "Eraserhead" has more structure and meaning.
The old woman mocks Maria's "small breasts", but her daughter's chest turned out to be only marginally larger. So much for senseless nit-picking, Grandma! You only wish your daughter were as hot as the loony blonde!
I'm discussing breasts and grannies instead of the story, you say? Well, that's hardly my fault. BM has no plot to speak of. It is merely an almost random collection of interesting images and strange goings-on.
At almost exactly the half-point of the movie, Maria asks Granny: "Would you please tell me what's going on around here?" And not a moment too soon. I guess she spoke for us all. Perhaps that wasn't even in the script, and she add-libbed it, directing the question right at Malle himself. The decadent old bint responds to the question by laughing wickedly (for the umpteenth time), which is how I imagine Louis may have reacted had anyone dared ask him what the hell this movie is about. So in a sense perhaps the granny is the Malle's alter ego: she likes to grope blond girls, loves sucking on their nipples, and she laughs at any attempts made to comprehend the plot. The non-plot.
The upside to this kind of film – i.e. a totally plot less, "allegorical" one (allegory as an excuse to not have to come up with an actual story?) - is that the unpredictability level is high. You simply cannot tell what will happen next, sort of like watching an insane person alone in a shopping mall or a zoo. However, where the movie draws nearly all of its advantages are the amazing visuals and Maria's good looks and charisma. Since the movie offers no actual content (apart from a blond, a hag, an Andy Warhol Z-movie-budget reject, and a bunch of animals pretending to speak) it remains for the visual aspects to shine, and they do, hence saving this movie from the usual oblivion of euro-crapdom. If you're a sucker for high visual quality in movies, as I am, then you will enjoy this film. However, if you are looking for a plot to carry you through, stay away. - DirectorJoël SériaStarsJeanne GoupilCatherine WagenerBernard DhéranTwo bored Catholic schoolgirls spending summer in the countryside decide to become Satanists, and begin committing a series of morbid and increasingly dangerous crimes."And God created French cinema ". Or was it Lucifer?
3/10
Oh Lord, deliver us from evil or don't deliver us from it, or deliver us to evil only on every other Tuesday, while delivering us away from it on the weekends – but whatever you do, Oh Lord, please do not deliver us to French cinema, for we have done little to deserve that.
What do you get when you mix the German "Der Schulmaechenreport" with the American "Last House on The Left", and add some French sexploitation cinema with some onions and vinegar? You get a rundown, diluted version of the New Zealandish "Heavenly Creatures", but with more "senseless nudity".
Two bored, confused and somewhat dimwitted Catholic schoolgirls pledge their allegiance to Satan, scheming endlessly in their pursuit of evil. Anna (the brunette) starts off by torturing her cat, then advances to canary-poisoning and sparrow-strangulation (after which she gets a sudden, unexplained, and totally idiotic sob-attack; this director's mind moves in mysterious ways).
So far as sins committed against the animal kingdom. Now on to the humans. Anna and BFF Satanist friend (i.e. BSFF) Lore (the cute blond girl) seduce a dumb farmer, after which he predictably tries to rape the blond. Naturally, the director shows us how his tongue connects to her underage vag**a - all in the name of cinematic art, mais oui. But it was all just a ploy to let his cows loose! Later, our junior Satanists engage in a demonic ceremony (well, intended as such), with the help of a retarded old peasant, after which they almost drown him in a nearby pond, giggling for the umpteenth time like runaways from a "Carry On" set. He too feels sexually provoked by the two, and after having dragged both girls down into the pond with him, he tries to get his hands on the blond dyevochka. Lore screams yet again, he fails in his attempt, and the two girls scamper away from the completed Satanic ritual, giggling (and giggling, and giggling). Eventually they find a stranded motorist, invite him home, undress in front of him, taunt him by questioning his sexual prowess, and when he very predictably tries (I mean, wouldn't we all?) to rape Lore, Anna kills him with a large log. (The blond Lore always got the heavy end of the sexual-assault stick, for some reason. Perhaps her movie-contract included full-body nudity and Anna's didn't.)
It isn't quite explained how the girls managed to clean all traces of blood from the floor, let alone how they managed to move an adult man's corpse all the way to the pond, but they do vow to each other that the cops will never separate them. At this point even the slowest viewer will have guessed the ending: double suicide. They perform some rather dull, unintentionally funny, somewhat Satanic poetry in a school play in front of nuns and parents, and then set themselves on fire. The end.
Trust a French trashploitation director to glorify death-by-burning, and in such a laughable way: the girls seem to be standing BEHIND the fire, while they hug each other, with not a trace of pain or panic (or second thoughts) regarding their predicament, burnt to a crisp but happy. How profound. And this symbolizes what? That true friendship never dies? God help anyone who falls for this crap.
DDUFE is very much an older European product, this obvious fact best exemplified by the non-use of editing. Some scenes drag on into what seems like infinity (many Euro-trash "art" films are much slower even), giving the viewer ample time to make his plans for the next day or to wonder about what movie he will watch next or simply to get a snack from the kitchen. Or to engage himself in conversation over the phone, i.e. to forget about the movie that he's watching, entirely. It sure happened to me. While the movie wasn't exactly boring, it was a little difficult to keep my mind on the goings-on (or lack of) during certain scenes. NEWSFLASH: The French HAVE discovered editing in the 90s (finally).
I will never understand how needlessly drawn-out scenes constitute "intellectual depth" or "higher art". It must be the same con-job which pop-art painters use when presenting a "work" with almost no paint on the canvas (or a few random brush-strokes here and there). The empty canvas and its evil twin-sister, the non-eventful film screen: instruments of torture or means of artistic expression? Fall for that charlatanry and you might as well tattoo "chump" in big capital letters on your forehead – in English and French, so nerdy film students on both sides of the Atlantic can claim you as one of their own.
One extremely gullible reviewer (very much a typical and ideal victim of cinematic con-artists) says: "Joël Séria doesn't shy away from featuring nudity in the film." Shy away? The entire raison-d'etre of this film (hey, a French phrase, shows how smart I am, right?) was to show gratuitous nudity! Minors' nakedness. Oh, but not to worry, they only play underage schoolgirls. The sly director managed to find 19 and 21 year-old actresses who only look no older than 15, so no need to call the Pedo Squad on him just yet.
This is not a "horror drama". I'd label this a "wacky sexploitation drama" without a trace of horror, except of course for the couple of birds that may or may not have given their lives for a higher cause. Well, a lower cause: i.e. the making of this silly, barely realistic nude-Lolitas snuff film.
Still, at least DDUFE doesn't try to make some left-wing statement about evil being brought on by society instead of it being inborn in certain individuals. In fact, the movie has no statement – which naturally won't prevent film critics and "film buffs" from finding it here in copious amounts, just so they can justify their lustful arousal. - DirectorRobin CampilloStarsGéraldine PailhasJonathan ZaccaïFrédéric PierrotThe lives of the residents of a small French town are changed when thousands of the recently dead inexplicably come back to life and try to integrate themselves into society that has changed for them.The dead rise from their graves, followed by the bored looks of the living.
6/10
I suppose it was about time someone approached the whole "living dead" shtick from a different angle, i.e. from a non-cannibalistic, non-flesh-ripping, non-moaning-and- walking-slowly-while-longing- for-fresh-live-human-flesh perspective.
While "Les Revenants" doesn't tackle the subject stupidly, I do fell as if they hadn't gone far enough, as if they'd not gone much further than scratching the surface. There is mention of the financing, the pensions, old jobs, fear, re-introduction to society and all that, but I felt there was so much more that could have been included. In fact, a TV series should have been made out of this (were it not for the simple fact that nearly all TV series turn out crap), simply due to the large scope of interesting dilemmas and questions that the premise offers.
The realism was somewhat lacking at the outset, as regards how the world reacted to the dead coming back to life. There would have been massive panic, plenty of chaos, emotions would have run high all across the board. Not in this movie. Here the living seemed to react with as much apathy as the dead reacted to having been risen. Everyone looks downbeat and morose, like in some daft Bergman drama. So yes, this movie's Euro-roots are showing. You'd expect scenes of people who have recently departed relatives and friends to rush to morgues and "zombie camps" – but no. The zombies walk around as if not too happy they'd been brought back to life, while the living watch the processions of zombies with almost as little emotion. This, of course, makes no sense whatsoever. Even an annual city parade evokes far more emotion. Even a game of bingo in a retirement home evokes more reactions, fcrissakes. But I guess the director was so focused on making a serious zombie film, a "zombie drama" if you will, that he subdued the emotionalism. He overdid it. This is the one aspect of the movie where the writer miscalculated when it came to human behaviour and the psychological impact of such a staggering event.
The zombies are even described as "full of energy, always wanting to move about", which is kind of ironic since they looked so sleepy and disinterested.
Interestingly enough, the director chose not to delve into the question of why it happened. Perhaps because if he had done so he would have had to go down the obvious route of admitting that such an event could only have been sponsored by a divine being, i.e. the Bearded One. Furthermore, if God existed and suddenly raised the dead, that could only mean that it was some kind of test for mankind. (The Bible is full of God's endless testing of his luckless human subjects/guinea-pigs.) Maybe the director wanted to avoid the whole religious aspect of it which is why no explanation was given for the bizarre occurrence.
I guess if anyone truly insisted on an explanation of why God had risen 70 million dead, one could always use the tried-and-true, self-serving, all-purpose explanation, a perennial favourite: "He moves in mysterious ways".
But what I really sorely missed in TCB was not an explanation. I missed seeing Geraldine Pailhas's breasts. The director teases the (male) viewer time and time again, but always only from behind, in the dark or showing too little. In the end we don't get to see them at all. So Geraldine's breasts are much like the premise here; a lot of teasing but in the end nothing. Still, an interesting movie. - DirectorEric ValetteStarsGérald LarochePhilippe LaudenbachClovis CornillacFour prisoners find an ancient diary in the wall of their cell which might be the key to getting out.The usual bag of French-movie perversion.
7/10
In a French prison cell a sociopathic transsexual with very large breast implants cuts off his insane lover's fingers, one by one, whenever his lover wishes to spend some time in the prison's infirmary. His lover, a giggling mentally-challenged masochistic mess, had been raised in a pig-sty, and when he had escaped from it the first thing he saw was his little sister, whom he then proceeded to cannibalize. The transsexual occasionally "breast-feeds" this loon. The third celly is an old, quiet, well-educated geezer who killed his wife "during two minutes of dementia", and who blames books for the murder. The old man allegedly isn't gay, but he occasionally requires the sociopath to sodomize him, simply because "it means I make choices which means I have freedom".
You get the picture.
Yes, this is very much a French movie. No opportunity is missed to wallow in perversion, debauchery, sexual violence, degradation and gore, that's how movies are made over there, especially in recent years. What is it with the French psyche that makes them so over-the-top nuts? Their cinema has become the no.1 world leader in perversion and sadism, even Japanese films can't compare, and if you think this is a coincidence, think again. Two words: French Revolution.
The scene of the retarded kid eating his little sister is strangely absent from the movie, but don't think it's because the director thought it was too tasteless. Most likely the reason was so all the events stay within the prison walls. Otherwise we would have doubtlessly been forced to watch that, too, in all its full big-screen "glory".
While the movie is well-acted and interesting, the first half has to be somewhat endured rather than enjoyed. Watching old men getting nailed by a muscular transsexual with large droopy boobs is not my cup of tea by any means, so it's almost a relief when the movie finally moves into horror-movie territory. The last half hour is a marked improvement over the preceding events, turning this into quite an original horror flick.
And yet I believe there was potential for a much better movie. If only a competent, level-headed American or British director had tackled this script. (I am not implying this director is incompetent, but merely French.) That could have resulted in a brilliant horror film, without all the unnecessary "French perversion baggage". - DirectorÉric RohmerStarsJean-Claude BrialyAurora CornuBéatrice RomandOn lakeside summer holiday, a conflicted older man is dared to have a flirt with two beautiful teenage half-sisters despite his betrothal to a diplomat's daughter and the fact that the girls have boyfriends.If I gave you a brief synopsis, you'd think I was summarizing a porno.
4/10
How many male-fantasy Lolita flicks do the French have to make before they finally tire of them? CK is like a "Barely Legal" porn film, but with no nudity and above-average dialogue. The fanciful way in which such movies are presented allows the more devious among film-buff perverts to openly enjoy teen-based male fantasies without feeling (too much) shame.
The movie starts off with three warnings.
Warning 1: Winner of some silly award.
Warning 2: Best French Film of the Year.
Warning 3: this is installment no.5 in Rohmer's pretentiously entitled "6 tales of morality" series. (Sort of like the goofy "Three Colours" series.)
You'd been warned at least.
Jerome stumbles onto an old acquaintance of his, a Romanian writer (Aurora), played by an "actress" who I couldn't at first decide was an amateur or continually high on drugs during the shoot. (Her odd behaviour is fascinating.) Jerome hasn't seen her in years, and yet he can't get his hands off her. He is constantly touching her, hugging her, stroking her hair - while he tells her of his engagement to another woman (Lucinda)! C'est la vie. That's how they do it France, I suppose. Or at least Rohmer's France. We find out that Jerome had lived in Morocco. Did he touch women like that THERE?
In this strange Rohmer-world people bump into each other often, whether they be in the Riviera or even Beirut. Either Rohmer-world has a population of only 59 people, or he is telling us something about "destiny". How profound. I'm getting the jitters already. (I always get the jitters when a deeply intellectual French director is about to reveal something amazingly new to me about the world, life, and destiny.)
"When something pleases me, I do it for pleasure", says our thoughtful knee-worshiping hero. Wow. You can't get any more perceptive than that. I'd have expected that from the Pythons, but Rohmer is full of surprises.
Speaking of unhinged French hedonism, an underage girl called Laura appears (17, but 16 here). This is a French movie, so a potential underage seduction story always lurks around every corner. Sure enough, very soon the lurid Romanian woman tells Jerome that Laura is in love with him. (Child-molesters/film-students, get ready to unzip your pants.) Just a minute after she says this, she mentions the possibility of them sleeping together. Ts ts. Won't they EVER "leave us kids alone"? Aurora even says that "there are no innocents these days", sort of trying to undermine the seriousness of this little forbidden-fruit sexual affair, and to suggest that if it happens it carries no victims in its wake. If Aurora hadn't been a writer/diplomat she's have had a perfect career as a Madame in a brothel.
Aurora pushes the idea of an affair with Laura to Jerome, justifying it by saying she needs them both "as an inspiration for her (filthy) novel". (We're lucky Aurora wasn't writing a murder mystery or she might have asked Jerome to kill someone.) Or perhaps she just wants to sneak up to the keyhole? In any case, she mentions her own multiple affairs with "very young boys". (We can only guess the age. 11?). Voila! Now Rohmer's titillation is complete; those thirsty for virgin blood can now smile!
Turns out, Aurora was right: Laura indeed has the hots for this skinny middle-aged man. Every other French movie seems to at least touch on this "forbidden" male fantasy.
"In the 6 years with Lucinda I've never tired of her," says Jerome quite seriously - yet hilariously. 6 years is hardly a "test of endurance" or compatibility when: 1) you'd cheated on your fiancée "with several affairs", 2) you "split-up with her 5-6 times", proving that perhaps you DID tire of her, as much as 5-6 times even, and 3) you spend many weeks and months separated from each other. Duh, Rohmer, duh.
Jerome actually has the cheek to suggest to Laura's mother that he cannot guarantee self-control when alone with her underage daughter Laura when he says: "I'm not so sure (about being level-headed i.e. keeping it in my pants). Perhaps you should count more on your daughter to be level-headed (i.e. keep it in her pants)."
Laura is given dialog that is absurdly adult/sophisticated for her age. Rohmer suggests that an uber-intelligent young girl such as Laura is more likely to involve herself in such a reckless older-man adventure, but in reality it's quite the opposite: dafter girls do this. Besides, ever meet a 16 year-old girl who talks like this? Rohmerian science fiction with aspirations of wisdom-drenched "art".
The 46th minute of the movie, and Claire's knee finally makes its first appearance. What can I say? It's a 15 year-old female knee, like any other. But the ideal age for French writer-directors, and Jerome later describes her bony body as HIS ideal. (She's built like a stick, what a perv he is.) And shouldn't the movie be called "Claire's Knees", plural? Women usually have two of them, and both look the same to me. At this point, I sort of half-expected Aurora to nudge Jerome into seducing Claire too. She might have become a true pimp. But there was no need; by this point Jerome had tasted blood!
The way Jerome endlessly rationalizes (through over-intellectualizing) his basic sexual urges is quite funny (no idea whether this is intentional). He keeps talking about Lucinda's perfection, how he needs no other women, and yet he chases every skirt he sees. Some people hate Rohmer's dialog, but I thought it was fascinating/amusing how this "exalted thinker" tries to justify lustful, hedonistic and decadent urges through semantic diarrhea. Sugar-coating taboo sex? Yup.
In the end, Jerome submits his daily report to Aurora of his flirting-with-teens shenanigans, actually boasting about his "courage" of having fondled a 15 year-old's knee. Hooray for French cinema.
Sle-azy. - DirectorWalerian BorowczykStarsLise DanversFabrice LuchiniCharlotte AlexandraAn erotic collection of short stories, an anthology comprised of tantalizing tales about sexual desire and its diverse manifestations."Drama/romance" says IMDb. One story is about a woman shoving a cucumber up her fanny.
4/10
All 4 stars are for the boobs. I took points off for the dangling penises and for the overall crap-level of the movie. This is, after all, much like a Pasolini offering, only slightly less daft and a tad less amateurish.
1st story: a dweeby Frenchman has oral sex with his cousin on a beach.
An aunt leaves her daughter and her nephew alone in a large house - finally. But what does the nephew do? Would you think he is smart enough to take this unique opportunity to be with his cousin? Hell no: the one time when the house is finally empty, he takes his 16 year-old cousin to climb around a rocky beach instead, where he robotically/unemotionally instructs her to perform fellatio. The guy has the passion of a dry umbrella; they might as well have hired an android to play him. There is a disgusting scene that lasts an entire minute (trust me, an eternity), in which the camera closes up on his filthy finger making circles around her mouth. (I had to fast-forward that.) She gets naked, does the deed - while he babbles on and on about tides - and then the story ends. Yes, it's that kind of crap. Romance/drama? I think not.
2nd story: a religious girl visits a church and then inserts a cucumber up her triangle.
With barely any dialogue, the 2nd story starts off with a beautiful blond who sees little difference between religion and pornography. She is in a church, but far from being in a praying mood, she is all but ready to explode with sexual tension. Every fresco, painting, drawing and statue make her swoon with delight, the loony, ungratified creature. God isn't exactly helping matters by insinuating that He too is getting horny, which only makes the girl lose it even more.
Eventually she leaves the church (without having climaxed, the poor thing) and returns to her farm(?). An old woman runs with her through the property; they seem to be both enjoying themselves. Alas, it turns out they're not so much running gaily as it's really about the old woman actually chasing the girl; the old bag looks angry. So why did she look happy just moments ago? (These are soft-porn/erotic-flick actors so obviously one can't expect them to actually make an effort to act; that would be asking too much.)
What is grandma angry at? It isn't clear, but the punishment is being locked up "three days and three nights" in a room: a room containing a pornographic book, and a couple of large cucumbers. It seems grandma is either totally daft, or she left those on purpose, for whatever bizarre reason. Is she perhaps the director of this film?
Not being one to disappoint the wannabe "art crowd", who watch this film - mouth watering - while convincing themselves that this is a profound drama, the blond prepares for the much-anticipated and rather predictable cucumber insertion. Before she does it, though, she wastes about 10 minutes of precious screen time on swooning over a bunch of drawings, and fondling paintings. Bo-ring. She finally undresses (as the cucumber would have wanted, had he a mouth to utter demands with), and then - apparently with God's own words as encouragement - she sticks the green object inside.
Here is the troubling bit; the director seemed to be more focused on filming the cucumber in all its incredibly fascinating greenish detail than filming the blond. Was this story intended for veggie-fetishists? Or did the director simply assume that half of his audience consisted of sexed-up cucumbers. In the end, she finally climaxes, as all women that had just returned from church and are then shoved into a room with a penis-like object do, and then escapes with ease through the window. Apparently, her tearful pleas to grandma were a fluke. She must have known she can leave the room as soon as the last cucumber had been violated (or is that the wrong word?).
3rd story: A couple is doing it in a barn. A very young girl watches them, then goes to milk a cow. (How symbolic; eat your heart out, Antonioni!). A rooster shags a chicken; he is done after 3 seconds, so we cut next to Countess Bathory. She is visiting this village in order to (predictably) find some virgins whom she can slay in order to use their blood for an eternal-youth bathing session. The foolish woman obviously knew nothing about young teen virgin girls; instead of having her henchmen round them up forcibly, she could have hired a boy-band to do that, and she would have ended up with thousands instead of dozens.
One question: why would a woman as homely as this want to live forever? It just makes no sense.
Except of course if the REAL Countess didn't look anything like Picasso's daughter Paloma who was cast here for her very obvious talent and immense charisma - which is exactly why her movie career took off like a rocket after this film.
Would Pablo have approved of this movie? Why wouldn't he; he loved crap.
4th story: Lucy Borgia, her brother, and the Pope. Guess what happens in this one.
You think you know? The Pope shows her pornographic drawings of horses and then tickles her breasts with a bird-feather. Now that's the stuff of cinema legend.
Some of the naked females appear to be underage. Did the French police commence an inquiry into this seedy matter? Yes, they probably did: the cops spent an evening with the director, looking at nude outtakes of the minors in question. They were offered wine by their gracious host, and then went back to the station where they filed a fictional report. - DirectorYannick DahanBenjamin RocherStarsClaude PerronJean-Pierre MartinsEriq EbouaneyAn end of the world battle between gangsters, cops and zombies.7/10
France is in the grip of utter chaos and anarchy, a country at the end of its tether. It has been overrun by zombies. The silly creatures now make up nearly all of the country's population. Yes, it has finally happened, what every sane Frenchman and every free-loving French citizen had always feared: France has become nearly 100% Socialist.
This movie should serve as a stark reminder what happens when nearly everyone starts voting for the Left. There is no worse thing.
Much like "The Meaning of Life" is invaded by a short film, this movie starts off as a crime thriller that soon gets invaded by a horror film, sort of like "Deep Rising".
"Le Hordes" is a slickly directed film, if a little too dark (to hide the CGI flaws probably), another reminder of the quickly improving French cinema. Once just a place where pretentious award-winning dramas were made, but now a top force in the world film market. Of course, this has as much to do with the U.S. film industry's demise in the past decade (quality-wise, of course, I'd never question the dollars pouring in from bird-brained teens watching the likes of Kristen Stewart clown around in big-screen turds).
By French standards, this is almost a Disney version of a horror film. Quite violent and bloody, yes, but next to the ultra-sadistic/perverse offerings such as "Malefique", "L'interieur", or "Martyrs", it is "Happy Sunny Otters Frolicking In The Mud" practically. I would have preferred a little less talking and more action, but the writer deemed it necessary (for whatever reason) that we should get to know these irrelevant soon-to-be-zombie-fodder characters a bit better.
Characters nearly all of whom are cops and gangsters – which is possibly why nobody in this movie ever manages to figure out that a shot in the head is what is required to kill a zombie. I waited and waited, but it never happened; at no point did a cop or gangster say "hey, notice how they drop to the ground after we shoot them in the head!" There is plenty of mean-cop/rough-gangster tough-guy Mediterranean-movie macho-bull posturing, too much in fact, but this isn't a major problem.
I don't expect a zombie film to be original, but I do expect SOME measure of effort or imagination when it comes to the ending. Unfortunately, this movie has none, no real ending to speak of, just a cop-out finish. The alpha-male black gangster and the wiry female cop escape the building, she executes him, and then we hear sounds of more hordes surrounding her. Last scene. Simply not good enough.
After that, it's the end-credits. If you thought rap was a ridiculous form of "music", you ain't heard nuthin' yet, at least not until you've heard French rap: it's absolutely ridiculous.
Aside from the vapid ending, the other minor problem I have with the movie is Claude Perron. No, he's not an actor. He's an actress. But you can be easily forgiven for mistaking her for a guy. This woman is far too unattractive for a horror action flick. (I could see her in a dumb costumer or a moronic chick-flick; isn't that where they're supposed to be casting all the uglies?) If I am forced to watch yet another modern-day gung-ho feminist take on "girl power" – in form of yet another anorexic-yet-somehow-amazingly-strong power-chick shtick chop-socking bad guys left-and-right – then I at least want the woman in question to be a looker, and not this. Still, the action sequences which involve her aren't too lara-croft-ish, I guess; it could have been much sillier when one considers what absurd skills these skinny ex-models are usually given in the recent spate of action turkeys. Hint hint James Bond films and Milla Jovovich. - DirectorLucile HadzihalilovicStarsMax BrebantRoxane DuranJulie-Marie ParmentierThe only residents of young Nicholas' sea-side town are women and boys. When he sees a corpse in the ocean one day, he begins to question his existence and surroundings. Why must he, and all the other boys, be hospitalised?A stylish but random feminist art-house flick with no story.
3/10
This movie is what happens when an "arty" film-maker comes up with a few original images/scenes but can't be bothered to develop them into a story.
Can't be bothered or is incapable of it? Probably the latter.
When you give the audience too much information you treat them like children hence make things boring. When you give them too little information you treat them like fortune-telling mind-reading deities. It is hence essential to take a moderate middle ground, the extent of which depends on the genre, the story and the themes.
It is this arthouse treatment of audiences as geniuses that can predict the future and that know everything that appeals to hipsters and film students: hence why they pretend to be fans of such movies. Because they want to convince everyone that they are "the chosen few". Ever hear of virtue-signaling? Well, hipsters praising such movies is genius-signaling. Just as virtue-signalers nearly all lack virtue, genius-signalers lack intelligence.
From the word go it was abundantly clear that this "puzzle movie" wouldn't be a puzzle so much as a plot-free 5-minute short film stretched into 80 minutes. Because Lucille made it, and because it's a French film. It's not unlike "Amer" and a host of other European-made hipster "arthouse" films that make almost zero sense, lack a story, ultimately even failing to make a point - which is ironic because pseudo-intellectuals thrive on "profundity", or at least their own personal hallucinations of it. (Bolivian mushrooms are never far from their reach.) There is no point to be had here. Whatever "meaning" your brain ekes out of this cinematic nonsense is purely in your own head, a figment of your own imagination. Fill-in-the-gaps-cinema this is (Yoda agrees), which mistakenly gets confused with "profoundly intelligent cinema". Some film-goers struggle to tell the difference, which is fortunate for the likes of Lucille who capitalizes on their intellectual confusion. She builds an entire career on these people, so their confusion is paramount to her. Kinda like Picasso. After all, he was a pioneer of this approach.
It's stylish alright, I'll give it that. Certainly much improvement for Lucille whose previous boring/pointless movie "Innocence" didn't impress on that front. However, for yin to have its yang, style needs to have its substance. Otherwise the result is a half-baked attempt at a masterpiece. Not that this would have been a masterpiece even with a proper story (or just A story), because I am fairly certain that Lucille would have cobbled together a rather lame script full of logic holes. Writing isn't her forte, mildly put, as is the case with numerous writer/directors of this "me me me" era. An era in which film-makers feel they should be doing everything, just so lame movie critics can refer to them as "auteurs" - a word that gets Lucille and her writer/directing colleagues wet. Hey, Ed Wood wanted to do everything himself too...
The basic "premise", If we can call it that, is not bad at all. A mysterious island or coast town, located somewhere in Greece, Portugal or Spain by the looks of it, in which only two demographics reside: young women and 11 year-old boys. So far so not bad at all, an intriguing set-up. But also a set-up that would be very difficult to rationalize, which is why I accurately predicted that this was a non-plot movie, or at the very least a no-explanations-given flick. I decided to stick it out anyway, because the movie is mercifully short, because the coast-line scenes are awesome, and because I was curious which perversions the French have in store for us this time. Well... Lucille isn't French but the movie is.
Young boys and young women. Would Lucille actually dare...? Yes, she would, and she did. There is a scene in which the mouths of the male and female protagonists connect, for very long, underwater. A young boy and an adult woman. Yes, French cinema is awash with sex with minors, so am I surprised? Not at all, especially not with this demographic set-up. Of course, Lucille cleverly conceives the scene, in such a way as to suggest that they aren't kissing but she is giving the boy oxygen.
Why? Is she a fish? Sort of, yes. In fact, these women are aliens, or at the very least advanced octopus-human hybrids. Not satisfied with having conquered both land and sea (how why or when - we are never told), these octopoossies spend their time conducting sadistic experiments on young abducted boys. This gang of mollusk Mengeles actually impregnate the boys with various strange creatures. You know how they say "you can tell a man wrote this"... Well, you can tell a woman wrote this... nonsense. It reeks of barely restrained extremist feminism. Only a twisted mind infected with lush doses of Cultural Marxism can actually come up with this "concept", then decide to actually film it. The male pregnancy theme is similar to that of Romola's in "Amulet", which is another recent feminist horror film. But at least that movie has a story.
There is also a scene in which the boy protagonist witnesses the octos during what appears to be a lesbian night orgy. Lucille must be enamored by the Amazon women myth, and is projecting her own sexual fantasies, perhaps?
So yeah, people who complain about perversion are not making anything up. This is yet another filthy Euro-trashy bundle of "pervert's delight" masked as an art film. Because decades ago, several psychopath film-makers realized that you can get away with almost anything as long as you wrap it all up in arty foliage. Kind of the way a modern photographer opens a gallery featuring naked 10 year-old girls on the guise of "Childhood Angst" or some such malarkey, when he perfectly knows that the exhibition will be a huge hit among the numerous pervs. Young boys being ritually abused by adult women is at the very least borderline unacceptable. The movie gets away with it to some extent because it is stylish and so extremely vague.
How about if we reversed this? A remote village in which adult males hold abducted 10 year-old girls captive, conducting medical experiments on them to implant male genitals on them. How would this fly? It wouldn't. It wouldn't even get financed, let alone released. And rightly so. But hey, grrl power. Under the guise of "gender rights" the Left is getting away with murder these days. This movie seems to me like nothing more than a deranged feminist fantasy, a sort of subliminal revenge statement. Revenge for what though? Either that or an LGBT-inspired attempt to champion androgyny and sexual ambiguousness, something that the most extreme wing of the leftist western media has been trying to push in recent years. MTV is ample proof of it.
OK, I am merely guessing at this point. After all, how am I supposed to know what octos want and why! Lucille tells us almost nothing.
Check out my "Horror Films Ranked, Rated & Reviewed" list, it has over 1000 entries. - DirectorMarc CaroStarsLambert WilsonLinh-Dan PhamDominique PinonA prisoner is brought to psychiatric detention space station orbiting a prison planet. He was exposed to aliens and gained healing power. A new doctor wants to experiment on the 7 prisoners/patients.Before filming "Dante 01" one needs to first finish "Scriptwriting 101".
7/10
First, a WARNING: the storyline on D01's main page is NOT to be taken at face-value. It's not to be taken at ass-value, not back-value, and I'd recommend against it being taken at breast-value too. It is not to be taken at any value: it's utter drivel, written by someone who either hadn't seen the movie or was high on Amazonian mushrooms while watching it. In this ludicrous "summary", there is talk of "an alien force", "a power that infects (everyone)", "a violent rebellion" and ends with some gobbledygook about everyone having to "confront their own dragon". None of this is true: 1) aliens are never even hinted at, 2) the stranger's power does not infect but actually does the opposite – heal, 3) there is no rebellion except a ship-sabotage perpetrated by one prisoner, 4) and there is certainly no "dragon" i.e. "inner demon" to be confronted by each character; this isn't a wrist-slitting Bergman drama. Appropriately enough, this utterly misleading and fallacious storyline is written by "Anonymous". I'd hide my name too if I'd written such piffle.
D01 is too convoluted, highly confusing, and plot-hole-ridden, but also interesting, unusual, visually appealing, and fun. The deciding factor whether one finds this to be a good film or not is whether one considers the positives heavy enough to outweigh the negatives. I would say that they do, though not by a wide margin.
The first plot-device that is highly problematic is that Charon (the space-station's chief) actually throws an advanced computer into the hands of a psychopathic suicidal nutcase, the reason being that Attila is a "computer whiz" hence can obtain information for him. Sillier still, Charon is the boss of a psychiatric unit – with Attila being a criminally insane patient of his - so for Charon to make such a crass blunder makes no sense on any level. Are we to believe that this advanced distant future is run by utter idiots? If the bosses are this daft, then how dim must the lower-level employees at such institutions be? Nevertheless, even though this kind of nonsense would normally annoy me greatly, in D01 it didn't bother me much.
Another problem is Cesar's so-called "sacrifice". Are we to believe that he saved the space-station? How?! We see him exiting the boiling-hot water, covered in third-degree burns and from what I could see he did not manage to enter any code need to save the station. In fact, all he did was scream in agony and fumble on the floor for a bit. Bad direction, clumsy editing, or did I miss something?
Another example of flawed directing – in an otherwise well-directed movie, from a technical standpoint – was not showing the demise of the Asian chick and Lazarus in more detail. Their death, which I consider a relevant enough event in the story, is just briefly skimmed over in a 10-second sequence during which the two of them didn't even show terror or fear as they approached the planet's atmosphere. The ship's explosion is seen from a distance: hardly the proper way to present the downfall of the film's most evil two characters. It's this kind of lack of paying attention to detail that enables American cinema to still be one step ahead of the Europeans. American movies may have as many dumb plot-twists as the French ones, but at least when it comes to editing and direction there is generally no confusion as to what is going on – as dumb as those goings-on may sometimes be.
The movie's main problem, however, is the confusing, inconclusive, bizarre ending. "His destiny could only be fulfilled here, at the threshold of Hell," says the elderly bald female, in one of her many bouts of half-useless narration. Next up: St. George actually terraforms the planet Dante. Why? This is one helluva (n.p.i.) ending, which fails to connect to previous events in any way. It's not as if the story had been revolving up to that point around mankind searching for new pastures - hence terraforming as the number one priority; nothing of the sort. If that had been the case, then St. George's last act would have made sense. The terraforming of Dante is so far-removed from what the previous 80 minutes were about that the viewer doesn't even have a lead: not even a vague hint as to what all of this might be about. There isn't even room for speculation, unless you consider totally wild guessing as a valid way to go about finding an answer to this insolvable riddle. One can theorize all one wants, but this movie doesn't have a point to make. It's just there, pretending as if it had a point.
The fact that St. George's background and origin aren't an iota clearer by the movie's end is something that I see as more of a cop-out ending than a brilliant, vague mystery to be solved by the viewer's imagination. To solve a mystery with these many unknowns, one needs to be high on South American mushrooms (like Mr. Anonymous). Any less imagination than those plants bring simply wouldn't be enough.
It is a pity that this script, which had real potential, wasn't fixed i.e. script-doctored by an experienced and intelligent writer. The story has a mysterious introduction, an interesting (if flawed) development, but no valid conclusion whatsoever.
Apparently, there were all sorts of budget problems during the making of D01, but I simply don't care. As a viewer – and not a film historian – I only judge the film by what I see on the screen i.e. the end-product.
Somebody here wrote that D01 is one big metaphor. Naturally, this mushroom-sucking person didn't care to tell us what exactly this grand metaphor might be, because in his words: "I don't want to spoil the movie for you". Another cop-out. - DirectorFranck RichardStarsYolande MoreauÉmilie DequenneBenjamin BiolayOne winter morning, while driving through the desolate French countryside, traveler Charlotte picks up hitchhiker Max. Together they stop at a roadside diner, where a strange and depraved horror awaits.3/10
"New French Extremism", they call this. How about "Old French Lunacy"?
"I told you not to pick up hitchhikers" says the buffoonish old cop to the damsel-in-distress, as he frees her from her cage. So that must be the movie's message: don't give rides to hitchhikers because they might be merely bait to get you to stop over in a seedy backwoods diner, where a fat woman will kidnap you, and then prepare you as food for her brood of dead/undead bloodthirsty demons-from-beneath-the-surface sons. I think it's a lesson we can all agree on is both useful and intelligent.
I, for one, have often considered picking up hitchhikers, but then changed my mind at the last moment, fearing that the hitchhiker might be one of those numerous cannibals (or at the very least friends-of-cannibals) so I always thought "nah, not worth the risk; if they stick me in a cage and try to force-feed me with weird nutrients through a tube as I sit shackled in a torture-chair, how do I know that I won't be annoyed, or even eaten?" This is probably why I am still alive and not being digested in the guts of a French-movie hell-demon-zombie.
So how did the events in this highly original flick even come about? It all started when the family from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" downloaded the "Motel Hell" DVD one day. They became instant fans of this "classic". This life-changing cinematic experience lead them to the decision to take an extensive French-language course. A year later they moved to rural France, where the male clan members got jobs at the local mine. A mine accident occurred and the fine young cannibal males all died. Then – as is the case with all buried/killed miners - they rose from the dead, then lost their eyesight, started looking like the creature from "Pan's Labyrinth", and then cried out in one voice, loudly: "Mom, we're moles now, and we want be to fed like moles sort of. Human Tofu, pleeeeease!" All clear?
It's just another brainless, depraved, sadistic-for-the-sake-of-it French flick, without an ounce of logic or purpose. The only thing that differentiates LM from similar turds, such as "Martyrs" and "L'interieur", is that this particular celluloid disaster has elements of fantasy in it, whereas most other Nouveau Extremisme de la France turdeuax don't.
The movie completely lost me in what I consider a crucial scene – and by "crucial" I mean crucially MORONIC scene: when the girl and the hitchhiker approach his farm early on, they see a young woman wrapped in cellophane, running frantically and bumping into furniture, eventually knocking herself unconscious. This amazingly odd event, which would have had anyone suddenly very wary of entering the diner, left our damsel COMPLETELY cold. She just didn't care. Are we to assume that in rural France it is customary to welcome diner guests by hiring women to run around, wrapped in cellophane, while they bump into things randomly? Judging from the damsel's reaction – yes.
This scene was crucial because it took me out of the movie, i.e. from that point onwards I simply couldn't take these absurd characters seriously, hence I stopped taking the movie seriously, hence I didn't care what happens. When a few minutes later three absurd/fictional bikers started pounding the cellophane-wrapped girl in the face viciously, that merely confirmed that I was watching an extremely dumb movie. A little later, guess what happens? Well, what MUST happen in every perverse French movie: a man has to be raped. (The cinematic tradition of male-on-male rape is a one that French film-makers carefully nurture.) Fortunately for her son, Momma Texas Chainsaw arrives with a shotgun at the last moment, points it at the very unrealistic bikers, thereby sparing her offspring a very painful introduction into the bizarre world of French-movie sodomy.
It's not entirely clear why Momma Texas Chainsaw's mole-sons had decided not to eat the damsel when she was on their menu that one evening. Perhaps they preferred Tofu that day? (Their Oriental victim had the word "Tofu" branded on his forehead. I did say the movie was fairly retarded.) Nor is it at all clear why Momma Texas Chainsaw is immune to bullets; she got shot, point blank, and yet she stood up later without even a bullet mark or any trace of blood staining her beautiful peasant-slasher attire. Later on, we have more confusion when the three very fictional bikers reappear, and then barely react to having a freshly severed head thrown at them through a window. Apparently, rural French bikers get that all the time – body parts being hurled at them. It doesn't faze them.
In fact, these bikers later UNITE with the damsel and Momma Texas Chainsaw's only non-mole son, against her and her mole brood. And no, it's not a tongue-in-cheek movie. IT'S. SIMPLY. STUPID.
Nor is it clear why the old cop behaves in such a bizarre way. (Nor why he is so daft as to lean on the cage where the obviously undead Momma Texas Chainsaw resided.) Must everyone be insane in a French horror film? Even the good guys? Sure, why not. This is a very French movie, don't forget.
LM can't even stick to its own rules. First the mole-zombies move very slowly, but later on they're suddenly Olympics sprint champions. Even their numbers shift. At first there are four, but later a dozen of them – and we know that Momma Texas Chainsaw fed only a handful.
At the end of these 80 minutes of sheer twaddle, the damsel eventually loses her battle against evil, and ends up hanging from a rope, upside-down, while her 38th liter of blood drips down her face (she's got a leg missing, see). In LM, it's not just the mole-zombies that defy the laws of physics, biology, and even the most basic logic. - DirectorJean RollinStarsMarie-Georges PascalFélix MartenSerge MarquandA young woman discovers that the pesticide being sprayed on vineyards is turning people into killer zombies.4/10
There is a certain irony that grapes and wine made this movie possible, and yet it aged so abysmally.
The zombie flick starts off promisingly, with an incredibly dumb brunette abandoning a train after her friend had been murdered by a confused, slowly decomposing semi-zombie. Mind you, when I say that GOD starts promisingly, I don't mean that in a "Blade Runner" promising kind of way, but more in a decent-zombie-B-flick promising manner. However, GOD starts sinking rapidly with the appearance of Brigitte Lahaie. Don't get me wrong, it's not her fault; she gives us a splendid view of her perfect body and boobs, just minutes before being blown into bits. It's the fault of the damn script, which quickly disintegrates into bull's dung from this point onwards.
Lahaie plays an uninfected villager who – somehow and for whatever bizarre/idiotic reason – acts as Svengali to the zombies around her. She helps them snatch and kill the uninfected, rather than abandon the village. There is absolutely no explanation for this; it's merely a dumb plot-device to prolong the movie or to make it forcibly unpredictable. Nor is it explained why the zombies don't want to kill her and obey her.
The brunette is incredibly stupid, possibly the most dim-witted and confused movie heroine I've ever seen. One of her many foolish decisions was to refuse to tell the blind girl about the danger – as if making the girl think she is not surrounded by the living grape-dead actually makes her safe. Predictably and logically, the blind girl is appalled and confused by the lies and runs away and is murdered. Beheaded, no less; there's the French for ya, saving the most sadistic demise for a helpless invalid dyevochka. Her end is a direct result of the dumb brunette's idiotic decision-making process which dominates GOD. It's just part of a string of dumb decisions and actions she makes. A little later, the dumb brunette meets Lahaie who requests to hold the brunette's revolver only minutes after they'd met; typically for our bird-brained brunette heroine, she suspects nothing, even turning her back to Lahaie so that the chesty blond can attack her with more ease.
Just minutes after she'd been betrayed by Lahaie, the awfully dumb brunette approaches her, carrying a torch. To get her revenge? To prevent another attack? Not really. Instead of attacking her, the brunette just stares at Lahaie – as if she were a dumb zombie herself; Lahaie predictably takes advantage of the situation and pounces on her. Duh. Lahaie's character is so absurd, she even has an unintentionally funny moment when she tells the two armed villagers that she "didn't hear anything" right after the dumb brunette lets out a very loud scream nearby. The two dolts predictably don't suspect anything, never questioning why she'd lie about it.
GOD then even manages to contradict itself when the brunette describes the peasant's daughter as "crazy" in spite of having "only a small sore". That's the same peasant's daughter who tried to SAVE the dumb brunette from her own father and got killed in the process: she wasn't crazy at all. That's the thanks you get for trying to save a Frenchwoman! (But isn't it such a typical trait of the French to confuse sanity with insanity?) The dumb brunette shows yet more "gratefulness" (or grapefulness?) a little later when she murders two unarmed uninfected men – the same men who had come to her rescue so selflessly just a day earlier! And she is supposed to be GOD's heroine! We're supposed to root for this illogical female moron. But it's things like these that make a French movie so French; they have such a skewered sense of morality, bless 'em; it's almost comical at times.
The dumb brunette actually suggests to the armed men that they go to her fiancé's wine-brewery right after they'd concluded that grapes are the culprit! That's like traveling to the Arctic just as scientists announce that a new Ice Age had started. On their way there, the trio engages in a moronic political discussion in which the military and nuclear power-plants are named as the enemy of man and society – i.e. the writer's pet-peeves. No scene is too silly for those left-wingers to advance their cretinous propaganda with; no opportunity or situation, no matter how unsuitable or daft, is missed out to harass viewers with their fanatical, logic-free ideology.
Strangely enough, it turns out that it wasn't nuclear waste that turned the normally happy-to-please grapes into sour grapes of death, but her fiancé's experimental pesticide. When "The Simpsons" plays around with these kinds of dumb left-wing fantasies at least we can laugh WITH it, because it's a comedic cartoon. But GOD we laugh AT, because the film-makers try to lend "socio-political/environmental relevance" to a goofy little zombie movie. God knows George Romero had tried this and failed, time and time again, the Marxist putz. You can't preach while standing on your head. You can't preach while taking a dump. And you certainly can't preach in a zombie movie. There is a time and place for empty-headed preaching, and these three situations just aren't it.
Film buffs – nearly all incurable Marxists - like to describe GOD and other movies like it as "subversive". They must mean "idiotic". But then again, they DO get awfully confused.
The script is a mess in every sense of the word. So badly written is this "zombie message movie" that GOD manages to unintentionally turn its politically-correct heroes into villains and morons, while turning the supposedly narrow-minded trigger-happy hick into the voice of reason. How had they achieved this? By having the dumb brunette murder her rescuers, the writer inadvertently turns the gun-happy old geezer into the hero and smart guy, because it turns out he'd been right all along about killing everybody. This, in turn, renders his left-wing-thinking young buddy wrong/stupid because he proposed a softer approach to the zombies. Wow. - DirectorDavid MorleyStarsHélène de FougerollesFrancis RenaudDida DiafatIn the middle of a zombie apocalypse, a resourceful couple hides out in an isolated abandoned building. The woman is pregnant and the man is infected, slowly transforming into the kind of inhuman monster they are trying to escape.5/10
More invincible, modern zombies who should be winning medals in track and field.
If this movie had been made in the 50s, it would have been called "I Was Pregnant with Child from a Zombie".
We've all grown accustomed to French movies lacking logic and credibility; they've been that way ever since French cinema's inception. Where the movie succeeds is visual realism; other than that, forget about it. If one day the French learn to add intelligence and sense to their slick directorial/visual style, they will make the best movies in the world. But until that happens, they will keep churning out a very mixed bag of filmic debris.
The first criticism: rather than give us slow, dull-witted – i.e. traditional - zombies, we get an army of fast-moving killing-machines, each zombie as versed in hand-to-hand combat as a Green Beret. In such a world, there wouldn't be any human survivors at all. Imagine a handful of humans fighting against millions of Green Berets who never tire, and who kill efficiently and at any opportunity. That's the premise here, and it's too stupid even for a dumb little zombie flick. I am surprised that the main characters lasted a minute, let alone a few days or weeks. This new and annoying trend of speedy zombies started in 2004's "Dawn of the Dead" has got to stop. God forbid Spielberg should start making zombie movies, because then they'd be intelligent as well as fast (hints: "Jurassic Park" and "Jaws"). A big part of the zombie "charm" is their stupidity and physical ineptness. Take away those two things and they become just like regular human psychos, and that's pointless and dull.
Which brings me to the main criticism: in a speed-runner zombie-athlete apocalypse, the few human survivors would be forced to BAND TOGETHER. On the contrary, in this zombie flick most humans are as deadly to each other as the zombies are to them. Dunno, perhaps it's a French thing, this egotistic, everyone-for-themselves mentality, but it's not an approach that would get the (French) population very far – for very long - in a post-apocalyptic speedy-zombie environment. In reality, a threat as extreme as record-breaking 100-meter-sprint zombies would force all remaining humans to swiftly unite. The people least likely to survive in such a scenario are precisely the kind of sociopathic characters that infest this dumb movie; a sociopath is unable to function within a group, but collective effort and mutual support would certainly be the only path to survival. So why do we have so many sociopaths here as remnants of humanity? Perhaps all of France is that way, dunno. Or the script is stupid: that's possible also.
A white couple is held HOSTAGE (?!) by a uniformed black woman with a deep voice. They are absurdly ambushed by an autistic kid at a gas station. How the hell a mentally-challenged kid gets to survive while everyone else succumbs to the zombie invasion is anybody's guess. Idiotically enough, the white woman insists on bringing along this dangerous autistic fella (who attacks people and zombies alike, randomly), the result of which is a heated argument with their black female captor, and an ensuing battle results in the white woman's beau getting both shot – and infected. Yet it is HE who keeps apologizing to HER throughout the next (rather tedious) half-hour for becoming a zombie, instead of blaming her for bringing them in that predicament with her totally unreasonable request to bring along the highly unstable autistic teen.
Eventually, a stereotypical French-movie gang of psychos predictably shows up, headed by a leader straight out of French Cinema's Guide For Overacting Your Butt Off In The Role Of A Bad Guy. The fact he looks like Phillip Kohlschreiber doesn't exactly help matters either. Worse yet, this supposedly tough-as-nails band of criminal misfits fail abysmally in their first crisis, and very easily get taken out by the Green Beret Olympic athletes. I mean the zombies.
When all is said and done, it's once again style over substance – the age-old French movie problem.
And frcrissakes, next time don't make it so easy for zombies to kill the humans: that reduces the tension, rather than increasing it. Sometimes less is more. - DirectorPascal LaugierStarsVirginie LedoyenLou DoillonCatriona MacCollAnna is a servant who accepts a post at the St. Ange. She arrives to confront an unsettling lack of orphans, save for one. Then the bizarre sights and sounds begin, which seem to elude detection by the other servant or the gloomy director.5/10
A muddled script, some bad casting - and voila! Awesomeness completely avoided.
Yet another one of those newer writer-directors... Usually they can do one or the either, and sometimes neither. Laugier should stick to directing and let others write screenplays for him. But hey, in the age of narcissism and self-overestimation, everyone is an "auteur".
The story is utterly muddled. Ledoyen's motives are unclear, her reactions are contradictory, nor do we understand what she knows or doesn't know about the mystery. Her bad acting only compounds the confusion, although perhaps Laugier as director carries partial fault for this. After all, he cast her and gave her instructions. He also cast the supremely unappealing (trying to be diplomatic and PC here) Lou Doillon, one of the many useless nepotists from the vast and awful Gainsbourg/Birkin clan. The only thing she CAN be cast as is a loony like this character, because that gives her the freedom to overact and to not react in a logical hence natural manner. Basically, this role allows her to get away with being a crap actress, or at least partially.
The grand finale is well directed, and relatively interesting, somewhat unusual. But how does it rate on a logic scale? Not high. The ending offers zero answers. It plays out like an abstract arty film almost, consisting of nothing more than interesting images, i.e. Style but no substance. It is entirely unclear who did what to whom, what happened 15 (or 12) years ago, whether some orphans were murdered or not, or even what exactly happened to them. Nor do we understand why they killed the little boy in the intro, or whether this as even intentional murder.
HOV leaves far too many questions hanging while offering no usable hints and no explanations. Lazy and average. - DirectorJean RollinStarsFranca MaïBrigitte LahaieJean-Marie LemaireA runaway criminal breaks into an eerie chateau, taking its two frightened chambermaids hostage. As night falls, a group of mysterious aristocratic women arrive and the criminal begins to realize the women are hiding a sinister secret.5/10
Amateur characterization, but overall solid.
I was pretty much mystified how many reviews praise this typical 70s Euro-trash as an "artistic endeavor". Once again ample proof that most movie reviewers are a) utterly clueless about cinema, and b) trying very hard to be pretentious, to get respect for their "meaningful" analysis of movies.
The first scene is the worst part, so that's a good thing. It only gets better from there.
Just to illustrate what a clumsy movie this is, an irrelevant character informs us right at the start that the plot takes place in 1905 - by actually saying it out loud rather stupidly, kind of like "and considering that we are in 1905", as if he knows he's a character in a movie; certainly the people he addressed had no questions regarding which year they were in. What a silly way to do exposition. Couldn't they just have placed a "1905" caption instead?
But that's symptomatic of everything about this movie, especially the often goofy dialog and some awful acting. Admittedly, the actresses playing the three key "bourgeois" characters and the actor playing the blond thief are OK, but the actors that play the gang are rank amateurs. The scene in which the gang and the thief become enemies is like something out of a school play.
The characterization is B-movie too. This is best exemplified by Elizabeth who at first seems to not be interested in the thief and has a big crush on Eve, of whom she is jealous. But just a little later she is suddenly smitten with the thief. She even kills her lesbian lover Eve in order to save him, but after they escape she suddenly "realizes" that she's not in love with him after all, and proceeds to shoot him for no particularly strong reason. In other words, she kills both people she loves. She doesn't even drink the thief's blood. Why? Is she a schizo then?
More inconsistencies. When the thief first enters the castle, the two lesbian "vampires" are scared of him. Then - out of the blue - they do a 180, becoming supremely confident, starting to flirt with him, even mocking him somewhat. That's just another example of the script's dilettantism. Not to mention the thief's weird decision to enter the castle with aggression, as if someone had told him that its occupants are his enemies. The logical modus operandi would have been to go inside and inspect the situation before going on a potential rampage.
Still, given how shoddily scripted the characters and (some of) the dialog are, and how clumsy the direction is in segments, this is not a half-bad film. For one thing, it's rarely dull, and secondly, it has a certain B-movie 70s charm. It's an oddity, a movie made interesting and weird mostly by its ineptitude. Thirdly, the plentiful nudity. This is a bit of a sexploitation film, after all. The lesbian scenes are rather lame, but Brigitte Lahaie is quite sexy. The one playing Elizabeth is very cute too.
The story itself i.e. The premise isn't bad at all, it's the film's biggest strength. In competent hands this could have been a very good movie. The premise of wealthy ladies spontaneously becoming vampires is rather silly but I suppose it could work. - DirectorRobin AubertStarsMarc-André GrondinMonia ChokriCharlotte St-MartinIn the aftermath of an infectious outbreak, inhabitants of a village in rural Quebec find themselves confronting an invasion of ravenous zombie-like beings.5/10
Are these religious vampires or just zombies?
So many little things are off here. The characters' behaviour, their reactions to situations, the zombies too...
The quasi-zombies, more like. The French love their zombies to scream and sprint, that much we already know, even if this is a Canadian movie i.e. Not strictly French. But it's French in nature, in language and in attitude.
These "zombies" also have a weird kind of sect-like behaviour. They even build a huge "temple"-like structure made up of pieces of trash. A large, tall junk-pile which they stare at, transfixed and in "awe". Zombies can experience awe? These are religious, spiritual zombies, it seems. It's as though they bite the non-infected just to make them join their cult, not because they love fresh flesh. Door-to-door Jehovazombies.
True, we haven't had religious zombies yet, not even in zombie comedies. But hey: it's a French take on zombies, and the French prefer to be weird about most things, including zombies.
These zombies are a mix of regular zombies, "Children of the Corn" slaves, and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" aliens. They don't necessarily attack immediately. Sometimes they stare you down first, lure you. Then they shriek very unpleasantly to alert your presence to their brethren, so they can hunt you down in packs.
I can't say I'm too thrilled with these quasi-zombies. I've always hated sprinting zombies, and I really dislike any kind of higher intelligence in them. You give a zombie intelligence and great speed - and what do you get? A vampire! That's why zombies need to remain slow and stupid, otherwise they lose their identity.
Speaking of vampires, these zombies nearly always bite the neck first, which is kinda dumb, not to mention breaks yet another zombie rule set by the Geneva Zombie Convention in 1978.
The humans are weird too. The black guy risks getting out of the van for literally no reason. He predictably gets bitten. His pal, the white bald guy, upon first seeing the little girl treats her like air, ignores her completely - but a little later wants to make her laugh by telling adult jokes. Why such contradictory behaviour? The yuppie woman starts telling her life-story - to the teen boy of all people - and her timing is as ridiculous as her choice of listener: she does this minutes after the boy had been bitten. As if he gives a hoot about her biography at such a distinctly unpleasant moment. The bald guy's new love-interest carries a bloody harmonica with her at all times! Not a mouth harmonica, but the big French harmonica. Harmonica Girl leaves the safety of the car (earlier on) to wander around a field... Why?
Then there's the "jump-scare" guy, the loon who keeps "surprising" the others with his sudden appearances. He is a sort of comedy-relief, which is a problem because this isn't a comedy, and his appearances anyway make very little sense. In a countryside teeming with cunning, sprinting, shrieking zombies, this guy somehow manages to stay alive without a vehicle, and even unarmed as far as I can tell.
"He's crazy" says Harmonica Girl. Yeah, he is, but do zombies care or know that he is? His very existence and cheery attitude have no place in the movie; he is a walking absurdity. Like a character from a goofy French farce who wandered off his comedy movie-set and walked into a zombie drama. A religious zombie/vampire drama, to be exact.
The interactions between the quasi-zombies and quasi-humans are less baffling, but not entirely logical either. The zombies attack the farm at night, yet despite this infallible plan ALL six of the survivors manage to get away unhurt! It makes no sense. Sprinting zombies pursuing 6 people in the dark - most of them women and children - yet the zombies fail? Wut?
Then, days later, two survivors get killed in broad daylight, almost at the same time, one per zombie. So how did a large pack of zombies fail to kill ANY humans during the night - yet two humans got bitten during the day through lone zombie attacks? This is especially stupid since this happened on an unknown farm the survivors were investigating. Surely you'd expect more caution from them? Mais non. Ne pas de necessaire.
The grand finale is a little arty, which is strange. An arty zombie film? It includes another large trash-pile temple, but this time one made entirely out of chairs, about 10 meters high. How zombies managed to build it that high is really anybody's guess: certainly the movie isn't offering any explanations.
A big plus though are the colours. The nature looks great; this isn't yet another modern mono-colour film with drab shades of grey and nothing else.
And the bald guy's jokes are good. - DirectorJean RollinStarsMarina PierroFrançoise BlanchardMike MarshallA toxic spill revives a beautiful, dead heiress who, with the help of her childhood friend, must quench her insatiable thirst for blood.5/10
It's French, it's got subtitles... so it must be artistic. Right? Wrong!
Isn't it ironic and so endlessly silly how chemical waste barrels are used in fiction? Either the green goo kills the living, or, as in this case, brings back the dead to life: it sort of has the opposite effect either way. What would alchemists have called this miraculous substance, based on this weird property? The Philosopher's Green Goo?
But before I delve further into the specifics of this exploitation flick, a sub-topic: American vs. foreign films. There is a certain spell that subtitles seem to have on film-goers, rendering them incapable of noticing a movie's flaws, sometimes even the very obvious ones. This is one of the main reasons why "foreign" (i.e. non-English-speaking) films get much higher ratings (and more accolades) than their American counterparts. Visit any film site, read any movie guide and you will see how extremely true that is. Perhaps it's the fact that we're reading as well as watching and listening that makes the experience seem more "intellectual" - at least to some people. "Hey, I'm READING this movie! It must be so deep and stuff. It's like kind of like a book within a movie and stuff, so it must be good." This film, fortunately, has a few bits spoken in English - when the spell is broken; it's during these brief scenes that the more discerning viewer might notice just how bad the dialog and the acting is. Or does someone think that English is not a good language for movies? Perhaps "foreign" actors are better? Maybe European and Asian films benefit from some secret ingredient in the water, food and air? No no no no. It's the fact that you don't understand the language that makes the dialog seem more mysterious which helps Americans and other English native speakers perceive these films with more respect and awe - a delusion heightened by the fact that most (non-Hispanic) Americans don't speak a second language; American are so impressed, after all, whenever a European tells them he speaks 3-4 languages. Besides, not understanding a language means not being able to tell how well the actor is saying his dialog; most of the errors and nuances are obscured. Why do (American) film-goers (usually hipsters and snobs) allow themselves to be so influenced by something as trivial, and unrelated to quality as subtitles? Because most people are easily impressed zombie sheep who confuse easily, and because so many film-goers out there have a huge chip on their shoulders.
After all, isn't some of the gore make-up in this silly movie fairly shoddy? It sure is; it is almost pedestrian. Isn't the zombie girl a little too well-preserved for someone who'd been dead in a tomb for several years? Sure is. In fact, she actually looks better than all the living characters! This might lead to the conclusion that corpses actually improve aesthetically with time, which is a fairly brave point for the movie to make. I mean, people have been searching for the fountain of youth for centuries, not realizing that snuffing it is the best way not only to preserve one's looks but to improve them! Oh, what stuff one won't learn from silly zombie flicks with subtitles. The dialog is on the level of upper-level porn films, and the acting isn't much better. BUT: it's not only a "foreign" film - it's a FRENCH film, so please, let's continue the inane tradition of overrating films not spoken in English, espousing their imaginary brilliance.
Frcrssakes, the zombie girl's childhood friend arrives to the mansion finding a dead naked girl butchered, so what does she do? Does she scream in horror, run away and call the police as any sane person would do? Of course not. She actually goes inside the house! But then again, this is a "foreign" film so obviously we don't "nit-pick" about the logic and trivialities such as common sense, quality dialog or good performances. If it's French or Italian or Swedish or especially Iranian then it must be brilliant by default, right?
Consider again that scene right after Helene finds a naked corpse on the doorstep of the house: she then goes inside (as I mentioned), and starts talking to the her naked zombie all-bloodied vampire childhood friend as if she were just another person. Does she seem phased by yet another butchered fresh corpse on the couch? No, of course not. Does she seem at least mildly shocked that she's talking to a vampire zombie? Hell no. This is, after all, a goofy French horror flick - but it's also in FRENCH and has SUBTITLES so please let's not nit-pick because it must be terrific because the Continentals are so much more deft at making movies than Americans - at least so goes conventional non-wisdom among (U.S.) hipsters. It's so convenient for Catherine, though, how Helene just happens to have a mind-set of a serial-killer, not at all perturbed about the fact she's surrounded by dead innocent people. Helene adapts to this otherworldly, bizarre situation with the speed and calmness of an Indian guru, as if she deals with witches, UFOs and Bermudic triangles fairly often.
Soon thereafter, we find out that Catherine is not in fact a zombie so much as she's a vampire. We couldn't know this earlier because neither did she. Apparently, Catherine herself doesn't know what she is: first she behaves like a zombie (the slow walking, the lack of speech, the random/instant killing of everyone she comes across) but then she discovers that she likes blood (not flesh). This makes her the most confused zombie/vampire/thing in horror cinema. The way she goes on about eating/sucking her 5th victim is a perfect example of her indecision whether to suck blood or eat flesh. No wonder she's depressed.
The fact that she's lost her ability to speak (yet regained all her other physical functions) leads us to the inevitable conclusion that she'd become lobotomized. Vampires are not supposed to be dumb like zombies but than again Catherine is a sort of zombie-vampire mish-mash, the kind horror films generally steer away from. But this is no ordinary horror flick: this is a porn-dialog, porn-actor French "arty" subtitle movie, which means it must be great, regardless of how many dumb things we find in it. Nor does it matter that it's never scary, because it totally lacks a horror atmosphere, what with the unadventurous direction and an under-use of music. Again, this is not important to how we rate the movie, because it's a FRENCH SUBTITLE movie, so we owe it the respect it doesn't deserve.
If Catherine is physically together, and is mentally sufficiently human to be able to recognize her friend Helene, WHY does she kill everyone else without hesitation, and so brutally? This film wanted a blood-thirsty mindless zombie AND an emotional woman who cries to the memories of Helene: two things that, I'm afraid to say, are mutually exclusive.
The entire cast are rank amateurs, but the actress playing Helene is especially bad. She seems to kill people with glee, but then she suddenly looks as if she has pangs of guilt: it's quite comical. Actually, it's a coin-toss whether the character of Helene or the actress who plays her is dumber.
There is a genuinely cute moment when the camera shows a tiny bat while Catherine is eating/sucking Helene. Though I doubt cuteness was what the director was after. - DirectorClaude ZidiOlaf WijnantsStarsChristian ClavierGérard DepardieuRoberto BenigniInhabitants of the last unconquered village in Gaul (ancient France) use a magical potion to hold their independence from Roman invaders.1/10
A rather shambolic mission impossible.
I never had interest in watching these Asterix flicks, despite having been a big fan of the comics as a kid, because I could tell from a mile away that they must be really bad. But the other day this crap was playing on some TV channel and I chanced a peak.
I have to admit that I was instantly mesmerized. By the badness. It's so bad it's almost fascinating in a way. Really bad this ain't, this is actually horrible trash. It is unbelievably bad at times, and I mean Wes Anderson levels of bad almost. Adam Sandler? Worse.
Any attempt to turn a cheerful caricature comic-book into a real-actors feature is bound to fail - always. (James Cameron proved that even a huge budget can't help you create a good movie about sci-fi Smurfs.) No amount of CGI or script-fixing or attention to detail can come even close to helping replicate or match the kind of unique feel of the comics themselves: they're just two different dimensions, and one can never ape the other with any degree of success. Sure, some comic-book adaptations of movies may work, in their own cute little way, but they end up being entirely different in tone, feel and everything else. Already due to this simple and obvious fact (not so obvious to certain film-makers) this project was doomed from the start.
The other thing that helped doom it is French humour, which, while it may translate well into comic-books, nearly always fails on the big screen. French humour is extremely broad, bombastic, farce-like, the total opposite of subtle; basically way too buffoonerish to work on film. Banana-peel humour, the worst kind there is.
Yes, of course I'm saying this is almost as bad as Hollywood's Flintstones. Perhaps the fact that there was no Rosie O'Donnell helped Asterix be that ever-so-slightly little bit better than that turkey.
Visually, the flick has its moments. Some outdoor scenes look good, but that's pretty much it. The gags all bomb with the megatonnic nuclear power of Uranium-stuffed cringe-warheads. Every lame gag has the power to annihilate one entire civilization - that's how devastating they are.
The casting is pretty awful too. Gerard Depardieu is/was of course the only half-way reasonable option for the impossible role of Obelix, but even he can barely do anything to lift the curse. It's like asking an actor to perform magic; they're just actors, they can't perform miracles. The rest of the roles are mostly bad or mediocre casting choices.
What am I even saying... As if anyone could properly cast a movie such as this. It's undoable. It's like trying to defy gravity by buying lighter boots. - DirectorGaspar NoéStarsSofia BoutellaRomain GuillermicSouheila YacoubFrench dancers gather in a remote, empty school building to rehearse on a wintry night. The all-night celebration morphs into a hallucinatory nightmare when they learn their sangria is laced with LSD.3/10
Shlock cinema with a "message". So original...
If you decide to watch this silly nonsense, do yourself a favour and skip directly to the 50-minute mark, roughly. That's where the movie starts. No joke.
The first 50 minutes are "character development", which is fairly odd considering there is no time to develop/introduce 15-20 characters in the space of a mere movie, much less a horror flick. Suffice it to say, the first 10 minutes consist almost entirely of monotonous "VHS" interviews with (mostly) airhead dancers, after which we get tortured with a bloody silly 5-minute musical number(!), this in turn being followed by 30 minutes of random and brief conversations between the extremely dim-witted low-life characters. This segment includes yet another utterly pointless lengthy musical number. Needless to say, I fast-forwarded that too.
Then the violence erupts. Apparently, someone spiked the alcohol with LSD - although I suspect it's more likely to be the notorious "New Extreme French Cinema" drug - and all hell breaks loose. But because this isn't an American movie, the violence is generally perpetrated by blacks, with usually whites as their victims. It's hard to say whether this was intentional though, especially because so much of the movie seems random and improvised. (At one point the camera turns upside-down, and stays that way for a long time, and I wouldn't necessarily bet that this was planned either.) If Americans or Brits had made the same movie (I know, very difficult to imagine them producing something so intrinsically French as this cuckoo-for-caca drivel), the blacks would be victims of white violence: it's pathetic how each region/country/culture has its own (hidden) political/social agenda; nobody is innocent anymore, and everyone wants to preach and teach, rarely to entertain. Bias bias bias everywhere: there is racism among racists and "anti-racists" alike. Nevertheless, there is no obvious or at least central racial agenda or theme here, aside from one of the black dancers shouting "you white pigs!" while severely beating a white dancer.
I am convinced hipster cinemaphiles love this flick though. Aside from the fact that it tackles some of their favourite subjects such as insanity, drug use, incest, anti-social behavior, masturbation, homosexuality, weirdness, and extreme violence, it is an unusually (read: stupidly) structured film which is to their liking. It's very much fringe cinema (though nothing remotely as extreme as the depraved 70s underground cult scene), and to a hipster fringe cinema can do no wrong, just as commercial cinema can do no right. (Hipsters have strict rules which they must abide by, otherwise they risk losing credibility with their militant peers. This goes for music too, and perhaps even hats and coffee.)
The plot, despite the "elaborate" i.e. arty set-up, is very basic. It is even more primitive than some zombie movies. I specifically mention those because this essentially plays out like a zombie flick: the difference being that people aren't bitten/infected but high on drugs. The effects are very similar though: total barbarism and random violence. I guess this is why the film-maker decided on such an odd structure, because he perhaps felt that the story was so ultra-simplistic that the film required additional "decoration", something to impress the art-crowd with. Correction: the bloody-thirsty art-crowd...
Yet, this pretentious decision to over-decorate is more-or-less why the movie fails. Wasting FIFTY minutes of screen-time, i.e. more than half the movie, on superficial/dull banter involving very dull nitwits makes it impossible for me give the film a rating better than 3/10. I had to fast-forward large chunks of the movie, so it's a wonder the film gets even that much from me.
Naturally, the movie has no point to make, at least not any new or intelligent point - despite what hipsters might claim. I haven't read any reviews, but they probably believe that the film makes some "powerful statement about our inherent barbarism" or some such pretentious laughable malarkey. Although, to be fair, this is mostly true: give idiots half a chance, and they will become violent. Nevertheless, hipsters being staunchly left-wing would mean they contradict themselves and their idol Marx if they adopted the view that humans are still essentially easily manipulated savages with an intrinsically evil essence. After all, don't (millennial) hipsters foster the illusion that they are so much smarter and more evolved than older generations? Don't these "trendy" young dancers qualify as "evolved, hip, and smart" to hipsters? Doesn't Marx elevate humans to an almost god-like status? (No, wait, that highly optimistic "great and sudden evolution" comes AFTER the great overthrow of evil capitalism, according to the pompous 19th-century couch philosopher...)
The director tries hard to give this shock-cinema "art-house" nonsense a stamp of intellectual credibility - through the use of cheesy quasi-intellectual captions - but whoever falls for that lame fortune-cookie "trick" only has their own gullibility to blame. This film is just an excuse to create train-wreck situations for thrill-seeking blood-thirsty film buffs. Most of these film buffs are completely unaware of this thirst for blood in themselves, and those who are justify their interest in it by treating the quasi-intellectual captions as poignant rather than laughable, thereby allowing such movies to get away with murder - simply on the pretext that "it's all symbolism anyway". - DirectorJean-Luc GodardStarsJean-Paul BelmondoAnna KarinaGraziella GalvaniPierrot escapes his boring society and travels from Paris to the Mediterranean Sea with Marianne, a girl chased by hit-men from Algeria. They lead an unorthodox life, always on the run.5/10
Two mental patients with delusions of poetry roam through France, stealing, killing and wasting away their time on Earth.
And not just any mental patients but French ones.
A great gift to all hipsterdom, just as any Godard film is. After all, isn't it hipsters that need Belmondo to tell them that "life is a mystery even when you know where you're going and who you are"? Hipsters don't know stuff like that, you see, so they watch these pretentious but ultimately intellectually shallow films to tell them this kind of stuff. Hipsters are like little children unaware of the world that surrounds them, confused by the tinniest things (no, not pensive: I mean confused), but instead of actually learning about their environment they prefer to be reminded time and time again how confusing and mysterious it is by Godard, Bergman and all the other con-artists who just love injecting their silly films with aimless fortune-cookie wisdom. Give a hipster a fortune cookie and he will discard it with pseudo-intellectual contempt. Give that same hipster the exact same fortune-cookie within the context of a hipster movie and he eats it up like a juicy hamburger.
The difference between an American and a Frenchman doing a Bonnie & Clyde type of story is that the American doesn't expect you to identify and sympathize with the sociopath couple. (Unless he is Oliver Stone.) Godard is such a demented, pompous little "poet" that you just know he condones the couple's behaviour, and I mean fully. He is absolutely in love with their anarchy, nihilism and sociopathy. (He's a left-winger, after all, they love evil – which is ironic since they don't believe it exists.) Of course, Godard might have second thoughts if they stole HIS car, took HIS money; then again, the godards of this world don't think that deeply: they only ever scratch the surface, which is oh-so romantic. As the girl says: "isn't there thought in emotion?" No, there friggin' isn't, you onion-smelling fruitcake. Romanticism and its child-like love-affair with emotion are the reason we eventually received that divine gift called Marxism that killed at least 100 million people and ruined the lives of 10 times that much. It's the pompous and delusional cloud-9 pseudo-intellectual clowns such as Godard that make the work and mission of ISIS so much easier. The more such buffoons we have (hipsters) the easier lunatics will get to lop off all of our heads. (I believe that hipsters secretly want to have their heads lopped off. The self-loathing ninnies are misfit losers.)
Still, the movie is semi-fun to watch (the first half), if nothing because it was nicely shot. There's no hand-held camera poop, no ugly mono-colours, no lack of music. This was the 60s, after all, decades before the leader of the New Wave Of European Hipsterism started raping the cinema world. Lars von Trier, you dope, I'm talking about you. The scenery is quite nice, and for once a French movie features an attractive leading lady, which is even more incredible than Belmondo's fanciful story about Moon's sole inhabitant.
Godard has his ass so far up his head No, let me start over. Godard has his head so far up his ass that he sees nothing embarrassing about a road-movie psycho writing a journal into which he injects stale New French Wave poetry. Or pottery, as the Pythons would say. You know the deal: random words and musings piled together. I can only imagine what a stuck-up, arrogant bastard Godard must have been to actually do this. The balls this tiny man must have had to be so openly and unabashedly pretentious, without fearing ridicule. Not ridicule from hipsters, of course, but from intelligent people, you know, non-hipsters, who can smell horse-manure from miles away. Whenever Belmondo looks at the viewer, we just go "oh no, there he goes – he's gonna preach again!" Or say some non-sequitor that in hipster logic actually has a connection to the plot or the characters. The last thing I need is actors looking at me with a dumb glare. You're not being smart, Luc, just silly.
The humour never works. After all, this is a French movie. The most embarrassing attempt at failed comedy is the Vietnam War scene in which Bonnie impersonates a Vietnamese woman. As much as self-loathing U.S. hipsters adore any criticism or mockery of their own nation, how are these politically-correct modern-day hippies ever going to look past that? Oh, but I forget: it's OK to mock Orientals, it just isn't acceptable to make fun of blacks. That's the no-no line a hipster will never cross. Blacks are the protected species, never Orientals. Who's the racist now?
How about "tourists are modern-day slaves"? Man, Godard, you were wise beyond your height. That's the stupidest and the most blatantly left-wing thing I've heard in the movie. Also, what appears to be Godard's hatred of Hollywood is just a thinly-veiled extension of his predictable anti-Americanism. So this "great artist" resorts to being just another cheesy French stereotype who hates Americans? Ts ts ts, not very unique or artistic at all. Godard's laughable, amateurish, hate-filled depiction of U.S. sailors is about as accurate as Criswell's predictions that people will colonize Mars by 1988. Through this one scene (not to mention his entire filmography) Godard reveals a shoulder-chip that's the size of his Ego – and that's one damn big chip.
So how does a typical hipster watch this film? For example, when Belmondo says some meaningless drivel such as "we have reached the age of man and his double". The hipster goes "yes, wow, so profound!". Ask the hipster what it means, and he'll have to first think hard – and THEN give you some gobbledygook answer that waxes poetic, spinning even bigger nonsense out of the quote.
The movie disintegrates in the second half. That whole midget sub-plot is just random writing, totally pointless. - DirectorFernando ArrabalStarsGerard BorlantJean ChalonFrançois ChateletRunning away from the police, Aden goes to the desert where he meets an uncivilized man who has a special link with Mother-Earth. He ends up by convincing the hermit to come along with him into another desert... the big town!1/10
If an "art" film has any sexual perversion or dung-eating, hipsters flock to it like flies.
This degenerate twaddle is merely another example of shock cinema, with the usual blend of perversion and fake profundity. If movies had a stupid-scene alarm, this film would be ringing constantly. And the "symbolism"! This movie has more skulls than the booklet of a Manowar album.
I pity every fool who was suckered into financing this. I pity the fool who wrote and directed this. I pity the fools who agreed to make asses of themselves in front of the sperm-stained camera-lens in this. But most of all, I pity the fools who actually enjoy this crap. (These are the people who walk around children's parks in large coats – and those who fantasize about doing that.) Whose more foolish, the fool who makes a foolish film or the fool who believes him that's it's a piece of art?
Then again, I also envy any fool who enjoys this flick. Fools have it easy: they live in a Disney bubble.
A stupid movie title that sounds like a pompous indie rock album? Check. Two men defecating together? Check. A man biting off the heads of chickens? Check. A mother lighting up her son's erection? Check. A small boy's penis having nails thrown at it? Check. A boy watching her mother get spat on during sex and then getting an epileptic seizure? Check. A woman getting cum all over her face? Check. A man putting on his mother's lingerie and then "giving birth" to a skull? Check. A man eating sand and goat turds? Check. A noble-savage midget with god-like powers? Check. A midget collecting goat urine? Check. A women getting her tongue nailed to a table? Check. Another woman later on having her tongue pulled? Check. (Probably "symbolizes" censorship or some such Marxist fetish topic.) A boy playing with the erection on a wooden doll? Check. A woman cumming all over legs after her young son bites her on the shoulder? Check. A rooster getting its head lopped off for this shitty film? Check. White-clad priests wearing gas-masks dancing stupidly in a desert? Check. A naked woman French-kissing a skeleton? Check. Fake testicles and penis attached to a naked actress's body? Check. Close-up of a penis urinating? Check. A guy killing a prostitute because she refuses to have sex with a bad-smelling virgin midget? Check. Cannibalism? Check. A dwarf sticking a flower between a woman's bum-cheeks? Check. The dwarf pulling out the flower from her ass, seeing that its petal is dung-stained and eating the dung? Check. Idiotic Nazi songs played over random scenes? Check. A man getting quartered by camels while a kindergarten song doodles? Check. Naked men being rolled in a large plastic bubble by angry church-goers? Check. Imbecilic religious imagery thrown in completely randomly throughout the movie? Check. A man devouring photos and letters? Check. A man counting the number of a midget's nail-clippings? Check. A midget spontaneously offering to chop off his finger to prove his friendship to a guy he just met? Check. Me shaking my head at tons of Euro-trash nonsense posing as profound art? Triple-check.
Pretentious pseudo-philosophical left-wing propaganda thrown in every 30 minutes to try and convince dupable morons (hipsters and film students) that this isn't just a cheap snuff film? Check.
Now take into consideration that the movie only lasts under 90 minutes and you get some idea what a cluster-duck of random "arty" scenes this movie is. Every hipster's wet dream personified. This idiotic trash offers the self-loathing modern wimpy male (the hipster) an endless possibility of film essays. He can weave poetic for years, writing up delusional gibberish about what this movie allegedly means and even more importantly how it helped him get through a very emotional and turbulent part of his life (like the time his pizza came an hour late).
If the list of "checks" I gave you make you watch this dumb film instead of warning you not to, I both pity and envy you. Keep enjoying the bubble. - DirectorAlain ResnaisStarsClaude RichOlga Georges-PicotAnouk FerjacAfter attempting suicide, Claude is recruited for a time travel experiment, but, when the machine goes haywire, he may be trapped hurtling through his memories.4/10
Unimaginatively shot, dreary New Wave nonsense. Groundfrog Day.
The typically pretentious, existentialist French mon-Dieu-what-is-this-thing-called-life-all-about nonsense wears out its welcome fairly quickly, leaving us to survive the drudgery of 90 minutes of two dull characters droning on and on, with scenes thrown around as if discarded by a garbage-disposing stewardess leaning out of the window of a flying plane.
I would have loved to be in the editing room when they made this flick.
"Where does scene 59 go?" the editor asks.
"Just stick it somewhere in the first half," replies the director.
"But what if it confuses or bores the viewer?"
"What's your point?"
Therein lies the film's crucial rub: the notion that pasting together a bunch of often unrelated or only vaguely related scenes in an almost random order can somehow make for riveting cinema. The movie drags on and on, and the tedium rarely lets up. One keeps hoping that eventually the director gets tired of his collage-like approach, but he never does. Yes, we get it; this isn't a conventional time-travel sci-fi but a semi-pretentious psychological drama with plenty of fortune-cookie philosophy hoping to pass of as profound insight into life's many mysteries. Or is it just a pointless analysis of the downfall of a skinny Frenchman? Bla bla bla bla. Big f-ing deal. The whole existential shtick is some kind of a loony obsession by France's New Wave buffoons, and gets old fairly quickly (except the cat hypothesis).
JTJT is also typical of many French dramas from the 60s and 70s: 1) the male protagonist is skinny, 2) he sleeps around with attractive women, 3) he is unfaithful, 4) his unfaithfulness is portrayed as commendable and a badge of honour not to mention proof of high machismo, 5) he is way out of the league of all the women he sleeps with and yet he somehow gets them into bed despite not being a wealthy man, 6) all the women he has affairs with are half his age (admittedly, that's a small difference; many French films have an age ratio of 56:15 i.e. a 56 year-old man dating a 15 year-old Lolita), 7) at least one of the characters is a hobby philosopher, constantly musing about this fascinating world, and 8) the skinny Frenchman cheats on his attractive women – rather than the other way round, which would make a whole lot more sense.
How many women have any of you ever met that constantly philosophize about the world? Who make up unusual theories about the world? Exactly: you don't know any and you've never met anyone who has ever known such a woman. It is characteristic of French movies to be cut off from reality, i.e. how real people behave. God forbid a Frenchwoman in a French drama should talk about shopping all the time – that would be too realistic (though in this case no duller than most of the conversation pieces we're subjected to). After all, French movies are to the most part male fantasies disguised as meaningful dramas, to varying extents: either the middle-aged male protagonist dates women in their 20s or those in their early teens; that's the only difference. Also, sometimes the male protagonist is bald and ugly, whereas sometimes he is merely skinny and average-looking, as is the case here. But essentially it's the same shtick over and over: male fantasies told in a number of more-or-less not-that-different ways: this time it's time-travel, but Resnais could just as well have picked a costume drama, or a rundown post-office.
By the time the plot's tempo finally shifts from turtle speed to occasional frog-hops (baby frog), I'd lost interest. Claude's time-travel maze is hardly a cinematic extravaganza. Instead, the time-hopping is filmed and offered in such a dry, lazy and sterile manner that it makes a mockery of the genre term "sci-fi". The photography is fairly poor for its period, the hundreds of scene-changes were glued together in a dull, unexciting manner, and the characters are neither interesting nor likable. It's hard to give a toss about this man; he is neither fascinating nor a man of high morals. So why give us this much insight into his life? Given a choice between a more conventional time-travel flick and a lame character drama, the choice is simple – at least given THIS kind of dialogue, this director's lack of imagination (or sheer incompetence?), and the non-exceptional cast.
Catherine's "God as Cat" idea, however, is quite good. (She says that God might have created the cat in his own image, and then created man to serve the cat.) It would certainly explain why cats rule the world, whereas French movies don't.
A clever twist would have been the revelation that the team of bored-looking scientists had in fact used this man for the experiment over and over, time and time again, leaving the movie in a sort of endless loop. Obviously, some scenes at the beginning would have to be re-written, and it's not terribly original either, but at least that would give us SOMETHING as a conclusion. As it is, we find out that the experiment had failed (well, not really: he did travel to the past, didn't he? So why was everyone so down on themselves?) and that's pretty much it. Not enough by a long shot.
I shall now explain to you why this movie has such a high average. It is because it is a French drama made in the 60s (although any other period would do) and by a left-wing French director. If this had been an American drama, with the exact same kind of dreariness and Philosophy for Beginners 101, it would have had a much lower rating. That's because movie-goers – generally so against prejudice – are prejudiced against American cinema, while prejudiced in favour of French, Iranian and Swedish ones. Stupidity and confusion have many manifestations, and this is but one of many. - DirectorLuis BuñuelStarsFernando ReyDelphine SeyrigPaul FrankeurA surreal, virtually plotless series of dreams centered around six middle-class people and their consistently interrupted attempts to have a meal together.3/10
The proletariat, ironically, don't watch this kind of pap.
When even pompous and pretentious movie critics such as the food-lover Roger Ebert says that this movie isn't about anything, then we REALLY know it's about nothing. (As if we need the likes of him telling us that, of course.) Naturally, that didn't prevent him from liking it (or at least he claims he does), because, after all, the GREAT WIZARD OF European CINEMA Bunuel HIMSELF made this glorious masterpiece. How can it not be terrific??? Or is that "a master piece of crap"?...
TDCOTB is a self-indulgent collection of scenes, which bored me to the most part. Bunuel's left-wing anti-Americanism/anti-Capitalism was pathetic, as was the very bland and ugly look of the movie. (No doubt some pro-Bunuelists would say now that this was done on purpose because the main characters are so bland and ugly as well, or some such unconvincing malarkey ) Bunuel hates Nazis, but adores mass-killers like Mao. He portrays terrorists as young, good-looking idealists, and not the psychopathic degenerates that they really are.
Bunuel's contempt for the "Bourgeoisie" i.e. his tender love and caring for the "proletariat" is truly touching, I had so many handkerchiefs ready so as not to drown in my own pool of tears. The greatest irony, of course, is that this "proletariat" COULDN'T CARE LESS ABOUT HIS MOVIES. They are not the ones who watch his movies, but UPPER AND MIDDLE-CLASS ART STUDENTS. Isn't that a wonderful irony, almost like poetic justice, so fitting for this senile old hypocrite.
Anyone who condones large-scale Marxist violence i.e. mass-murder in gulags, while passionately advocating revolution against fascist regimes (or what he considers to be such) lacks any kind of moral foundation to preach to ANYONE let alone me.
But let's forget the blatant and embarrassingly naïve left-wing politics that lurk in every other scene of this mediocre non-feast. The movie is mostly dull. The soldier's dream, for example: what was the point of that? If I ever had such a dull dream I wouldn't even tell it to my most bored friends let alone put it in a movie for millions to watch! Or how about that lieutenant's story? Why did he approach the three women? Just to tell them about how he poisoned his step-father? That sequence doesn't fit into the movie at all; Bunuel seems to have literally SHOVED IT into the plot, by sheer force. "Let's see, I have this nice little pointless childhood revenge-poison story that I wrote in 3 minutes Where shall I put it? Oh well, nevermind, I can put it anywhere. After all, the film will have no flow, so who cares where I stick it?" The endless series of "it-was-just-a-dream" twists get rather tiresome after a while not to mention predictable. The movie is repetitious. What about that supposedly very clever "they-never-get-to-eat" theme/running-gag? I would laugh at it if only I didn't know beforehand what real humour was. If I want to watch absurdist humour on a high level I'll put in a Monty Python disk. Bunuel's movies aren't funny. And often they aren't even clever.
The only scene that was both original and interesting was when the 6 characters find themselves eating on a stage. (Or TRYING TO EAT ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. So so very funny, them not getting to eat because they keep getting interrupted Hilarious Oh, I nearly wet myself ) No wonder this movie won the Best Foreign Picture Oscar! - DirectorHélène CattetBruno ForzaniStarsCassandra ForêtCharlotte Eugène GuibeaudMarie BosAs a young girl Ana was a rebellious child. She was also tormented by images of death and a shadowy, ominous figure in black. Now an adult, she is once again tormented by shadowy, other-worldly forms.3/10
Sexual awakening? Hey, whatever works for you! The movie can be interpreted as a study of navels, too.
No story, no point, no script. Please, viewer, fill in the blanks yourself, and then feel as if you're smart. (Absurdist cinema as a confidence builder – the con-job that has healed many.)
Why have an actual plot? That's so old-fashioned, so passé. It's so much more "artistically valid" to throw in a few loosely related - or even better, totally unrelated - scenes together and then hope that there are enough suckers out there to mistake your laziness for genius. It certainly worked for Godard and a host of other cinema la-la-land charlatans.
"Amer" is a girl of few words. But then again, so is the movie which is dedicated to her rather confusing life. There are perhaps a dozen lines of dialogue in the entire thing. Note that I said "thing" and not "movie". Just because "Amer" runs for 90 minutes doesn't necessarily make it a movie. But that's debatable, I admit.
The thing/"movie"/whatever starts off with a little girl who lives with her parents and her zombie/dead/undead/barely-living/perhaps-living grandparents in a large mansion near the French coast. One would think the fresh air and beautiful vista of the French Riviera would lift the spirits of the population of French people that have amassed there, but that's not entirely or at least not always the case. There is an air of doom and gloom about (as is fitting for a dull flick aiming to be "artistic"). The living are constantly peeved except when they're having sex in upright position (the girl's mother), and the dead/undead are even worse: they are harassing little girls (she's alive, at least for now).
The girl, Amer, plays a game of hide-and-seek with her zombie grandma who may or may not be a flesh-eating demon. It's tough to tell, because grandma certainly acts like a hell's minion, chasing her poor granddaughter throughout the house, trying to snatch some sort of amulet or something from her. The same amulet that Amer hijacked from her dead?/undead?/zombie grandpa while he was lying asleep?/dead?/undead? in his bed.
To cut a 29-minute non-story short, the girl Amer escapes the clutches of evil Granma and makes it all the way to puberty, which is where the second part of the movie takes us. Yes, at hour 0:29 we are finally spared the continued shenanigans of the living dead (coz it does get a little tedious after about 5 minutes) and their 29-minute long game of hide-and-seek. Not exactly a cinematic experience to tell your (dead/undead/not-yet-born/unborn) grand-kids about.
Part 2. Cut to the girl some years later. I can't quite tell how old she is, strangely enough. At first she appears to be around 20, but after a 12-to-14 year-old boy attempts to kiss her pouty French lips, I start thinking that perhaps Amer 2 is meant to be in her puberty, around 15 or even less. Oh, well, who the hell knows. At least she doesn't meet a 55 year-old bald man and falls in love with him, which is the premise of 35% of all French dramas and comedies. This segment doesn't last long. Soon we are to enter Amer 3. Ehem, I meant, we're to enter Part 3 with Amer 3.
Part 3. At around 35 Amer is pretty much into masturbating all the time. This is a French movie, after all, so obviously she's going to be obsessed with sex 24/7. She does it during taxi rides while sticking her head out the car window, and she does it in her bathtub. In the bathroom, an unknown assailant tries to drown her. It's a half-hearted attempt because Amer 3 manages to save herself simply by unplugging the water in the tub. Not exactly a master-killer this one. Or perhaps he was just teasing. Who knows. It's a French art-film, we are not supposed to understand anything, so just the fact that I can tell you that someone was trying to kill her is a phenomenal success in itself, meaning I actually managed to understand SOMEthing here.
Some time later, the taxi driver approaches the house. He must have come for sex. Someone bars the exit of the mansion so the taxi driver draw out his knife (don't all cab drivers carry knives while on their sex-related rendezes-vouzes?) But before long he is being cut to pieces by the mysterious assailant. Hmm. Was it Amer 3 herself? We are meant to think that, but then she is attacked too (perhaps ANOTHER assailant? anything is possible in a silly flick like this; after all we had a retired old zombie couple chasing around a young girl). The movie ends with Amer 3 stiff in a mortuary. Dead. Braindead. Just like the movie.
If you haven't seen this goofy little French bundle of pointless pretentiousness then you might think I'm joking. But I'm not. This really is the basic outline of "Amer 1-3", so if you enjoy absurd, lazily written, meaningless "art horror" flicks about sex, mutilation and the "coming of age" (ha ha), then rent this out or download it from a torrent. Have a ball. Just don't get upset if you start yawning, because this is "art", after all. - DirectorAlain ChabatStarsGérard DepardieuChristian ClavierJamel DebbouzeAsterix and Obelix go to Egypt to help architect Edifis who is building a palace for Cleopatra.2/10
French humour is very peculiar: it seems to work very well in comics, but in movies it falls flat on its face way too often. Too broad, too stupid.
Of course, in French comics (at least the Golden Age Era, 60s to the 90s) there was great talent working behind the scenes, both the illustrators and (to a lesser extent) the writers, whereas the French film industry is mired by nepotism, pretentiousness, hipserism, extremism and confusion. Totally different two worlds even though from the same country. During the 60s and 70s French BDs were king, while their movies were rather iffy. On the other hand, American 60s/70s films were superior to the American comics. Strange how things work out. - DirectorFrédéric ForestierThomas LangmannStarsGérard DepardieuClovis CornillacBenoît PoelvoordeAsterix and Obelix compete at the Olympics in order to help their friend Lovesix marry Princess Irina. Brutus also tries to win the game with his own team and get rid of his father Julius Caesar.5/10
This is probably as good as the awful Asterix franchise was ever gonna get. The fact that there are a few good gags and that's it somewhat watchable places this episode well above the rest.
Read the comic series instead, which is excellent: wonderfully illustrated hence a million times more visually appealing than this CGI nonsense, and very well-written. Turning a caricature comic-book into a live-action movie is such a dumb and uber-optimistic endeavor, there is no point even in discussing such futile efforts at length... - DirectorMarc CaroJean-Pierre JeunetStarsMarie-Laure DougnacDominique PinonPascal BenezechPost-apocalyptic surrealist black comedy about the landlord of an apartment building who occasionally prepares a delicacy for his odd tenants.4/10
- DirectorFranck VestielStarsClovis CornillacVimala PonsZohar WexlerA man wakes up in an underground cave, next to a dead body. He has no memory of how he got there and starts to try and work his way to the surface and escape from the network of tunnels, which seem to be some kind of ancient civilisation.8/10
- DirectorRobert LepageStarsRobert LepageAnne-Marie CadieuxMarco PoulinAfter the death of his mother, a man tries to discover a meaning to his life, to the universe and to rebuild a relationship with the only family he has left: his brother.5/10
From the maker of "Possible Worlds", this follow-up to that seemed somewhat promising, at least in terms of plot. However, this is nothing of the caliber of PW, which is a sci-fi classic (despite having Tilda Swinton in it). In fact, it's hard to believe the same guy wrote-directed it.
But that's modern-day film-makers for ya: the talented ones make one or two good/great movies early on and then they quickly deteriorate. By middle age - at the very latest - they are completely uninspired and non-creative. Very different to how it used to be. There are no more guys like Kubrick who keep improving then hit a creative high, or those like Scorsese who quickly find their best then maintain that level for 20 plus years after which they sink into mediocrity. Those days are over. Why that is, I don't know exactly, but it must have something to do with the counter-productive environment of the current film industry, plus to a lesser extent the effects of cultural cretenization that play a role too.
Whatever it is, Lepage is one of the many who started off with a bang then disappeared. Of course, on a far lower level because for some dumb reason PW never made a breakthrough, never became a cult favourite among the increasingly unintelligent cinephiles.
I can't recall anything from this film, all I know is it was disappointing and very average. - DirectorLuc BessonStarsAnne ParillaudMarc DuretPatrick FontanaConvicted felon Nikita isn't going to jail; she's given a new identity and trained, stylishly, as a top secret spy/assassin.
- DirectorJean-Pierre JeunetStarsAudrey TautouMathieu KassovitzRufusDespite being caught in her imaginative world, Amelie, a young waitress, decides to help people find happiness. Her quest to spread joy leads her on a journey where she finds true love.5/10
This movie received so much hype, and I don't quite understand why. What's so unique or good about it? Nothing. - DirectorPhilippe de BrocaStarsJean-Paul BelmondoJacqueline BissetVittorio CaprioliWriting his 43rd spy novel, François includes people from his life. He's the competent, sophisticated secret agent Bob in stark contrast to François. His cute neighbor is Tatiana who helps Bob in Acapulco.5/10
- DirectorMichael HanekeStarsIsabelle HuppertAnnie GirardotBenoît MagimelA young man romantically pursues his masochistic piano teacher.8/10
Unfortunately, I am unable to post a review because it's been many years, but I do know it was a fascinating film at times, and the ideal role for Huppert who always anyway has the same facial expression in nearly all of her movies. (It's a French thing, this non-acting acting method.)
I'd written a text on female masochism, you can find it on my political blog... The movie touches on something few would have dared. But if anyone would dare touch on such subjects it would be the French. Or at least that's how it used to be, I am not so sure this movie could have been made nowadays, what with all the current massive preparations to turn the western world into a new Orwellian society devoid of freedom of thought and speech. The mere suggestion that a woman, or WOMEN, might have a masochist streak is too frightening and "offensive" to the current crop of young amoeba who'd been brainwashed to only obey and avoid "taboo" subjects (all 10,000 of them)... - DirectorMathieu TuriStarsGaia WeissPeter FranzénRomane LibertA woman finds herself locked in a series of strange tunnels full of deadly traps.5/10
So we're NOT the most sadistic species in the universe? Well, that's a (small) comfort...
SPOILERS
The beginning is pretty much the only part where you'll find anyone walking, on their two legs, at least for the next 70-80 minutes. (They're mostly sitting, but that's beside the point.) That's a warning.
After that, the film goes to a crawl, literally and figuratively, as the next 70 minutes is basically Weiss crawling through narrow corridors, trying to evade deadly traps. I can't say I was particularly impressed: this is neither an original idea nor does it create much suspense because the pace slows down ridiculously.
Yet, despite all these sadistic traps and obvious intent to torture, in her first encounter with an alien she utters these fascinating words:
"I know you don't want me to die."
Really? After she'd come across two corpses and after she'd witnesses the murder of the serial-killer, she still believes the aliens like her?
So she's either insane or stupid - or both.
Which makes sense. She was in the middle of nowhere in a foreign country, so clearly she could be both. Plus, she'd just undergone stress and abuse the kind that can kill people. Yet, she somehow has the energy to plow on, to crawl on and on like an energizer caterpillar, with as much stamina as 48 Olympic swimmers. Try crawling for "just" 2-3 minutes: if you can - especially at a fast pace. Anyone who did military service knows how extremely tiring it is. We have big apes as our ancestors, not slugs. Unless Weiss is related to a mole or a worm, I really don't know how she could have done all this crawling without passing out at least 30 times, plus all the stress, panic, anxiety, fear and with just a bit of water and from what I can tell no food at all.
Yes, this is sci-fi, but SHE isn't the alien here. She is a human hence I need her to behave like a human, not like a Crawl Champion emperor-worm. It's way too far-fetched.
Then, when she meets more aliens, she actually SMILES at these ugly deviants who are putting her through this torture, as if she does this sort of thing every day, and as if she'd met aliens before. This was by far the stupidest scene. No human, unless they were some kind of uniquely masochistic and schizophrenic specimen, would behave the way she does. She is friendly, cheerful and trusting with the aliens - none of which makes any sense at all. Any normal person would either want to punch them in the face or flee. Or both.
And how the hell does she constantly keep outrunning (outcrawling) the monster? His only job is to hunt down humans, that's literally his job description, yet somehow grrl power always wins over him.
Who couldn't predict that she'd end up back where she started? Raise yer hands all ye fools who had seen "Cube" yet couldn't figure out that obvious "plot twist". After she finds herself there, somehow she figures out what the symbols denote! That'd be like a person running a marathon while juggling 5 balls being able to do complicated calculus at the same time. There's no way in hell anyone in this kind of extreme, completely bizarre situation would be able to think halfway clearly, let alone analyze these symbols which are as vague as can be. Besides, what the hell do directions such as "left right right left left" mean in a complex 3D maze where even gravity changes!
Nor can she be that smart. After all, check out her dumb daughter, how she died. At the age of 9 any halfway intelligent, normal child should know not to walk out of open windows. I mean, duh. So silly. Weiss blames herself for this incident, yet she isn't at fault. One should be able to leave a 9 year-old alone without having to worry that the dummie will fall out of a window! It's so stupid... That was natural selection at work right there!
Still, after Weiss goes to Heaven (or a remote planet) she gets a new-and-improved daughter, who appears to have made a huge evolution from a window-falling brat all the way to a planetary guide working for the sadistic aliens. It isn't even clear whether this replace-daughter will keep her company or not. Where is Weiss supposed to live? There were no accommodations, perhaps at best a cave, in that barren landscape. That's her reward??? Being stuck on a distant planet, all alone, with just one weird dress? Don't these aliens know that a French woman has a fashion sense? She's not gonna be too happy wearing the same thing every day. Where will she shop? Whom will she share gossip with? (And which gossip? There's nobody else there.) She will likely stay there alone forever, because for sure no other humans will manage to pass that ultra-difficult crawly marathon thingy in the tunnels. This is supposed to be her "Heaven" after she died "many times over" (as she's informed). That is a depressing ending, not a positive one - as this film may (or may not) suggest. All that struggle - just to get more punishment?
So lemme get this right... Aliens abduct random humans and put them through extreme physical, emotional and mental torture - and only the survivors get to "enjoy" the scenery of some barren crap planet? This is not a premise nor a concept, this is goofy nonsense. These aliens must be weird at best, extremely malicious at worst.
Still, the French have a good aesthetic sense and the interiors are nice, the movie is slickly done, it's professional not amateur - although the acting can be iffy at times. Especially the girl-alien comes off flat. I just wish there were more of a plot, less crawling, and a tiny little bit more logic to it all. - DirectorMarc CaroJean-Pierre JeunetStarsRon PerlmanDaniel EmilforkJudith VittetA scientist in a surrealist society kidnaps children to steal their dreams, hoping that they slow his aging process.