Reviews

Bogus physics that do not even require junior high credentials to completely reject drive a very narrow and unimaginative story which feel like watching the Little Flintstones, where every grown up character is exactly mimicked by a younger version of themselves, and the relationships are linear.. All the pseudo science is thrown in a bunch that probably no one on the team even feels like trying to make sense of. Twin Peaks, this is not even close. And rubik cube aside, it should not be mentioned in the same sentence as Stranger Things.

Seeing the poor cinematographic qualities of this movie, I pondered for a while whether it was intentional or not for the director to make this movie look like a soap opera. Given that Franco, in the movie, is a soap opera comedian, and he has discussions with his director about theatre and cinema vs TV.

I thought there was some kind of clever smart-ass postmodern metaphor about the movie itself, to it. And I kept watching, and watching.. and .. no.. it never came.

It really just is a cheap movie that looks and feels like a very bland soap opera.

Just like Heidi wasn't prepared for the way she was treated in Vietnam, I wasn't prepared for watching this emotionally violent documentary. I expected a "good feeling" documentary, showing what could be perceived as some kind of reconciliation between USA and Vietnam, by the public.. How can a daughter-finds-back-her-mother ever turn our to be a sad story? I had better braced myself.

The first moments of the reunion, at the airport, already start to show a distance between the mother and daughter. Such violent emotions.. You can feel the daughter shying away. I was thinking that the documentary would hide the bad stuff and only focus on superficial emotions. It did not, and that's why it's such a great documentary.

First off, it doesn't present a negative view of Americans nor Vietnamese. It just shows a few individuals from those two cultures, without attempting to make them look bad or worse. Heidi is not the typical American girl and neither is her mother the typical Vietnamese mother. It isn't any more Vietnamese than American to have strong emotions like Mai and pour out every time. Such characters exist in both cultures. Just watch Oprah and Dr. Phil and you'll see lots of crying and overreacting. As a matter of fact, many Vietnamese consider improper the display of strong emotions in public.

Now this being said, the movie shows what culture shock is all about.

Heidi has been raised in America, where bread is white and meat comes in burgers. She can't stand the smell of fresh fish in a hot market. She can't stand being in Vietnam for so long, with such heat, humidity, without her commodities. Many Americans and Europeans would feel just the same. To show it on film is not a stab at American culture or a display of American egocentricity. It is a mere fact of life : if you grow up in comfort, even at the expense of freshness and excitement, it is hard to give it up.

On the other hand, the whole "fillial obligation" thing in Vietnam is real, but it is not just about the money. I don't think Heidi was crying because she was being asked money, but rather because she saw them clinging desperately at her as if she were a Saviour. No one can handle that kind of emotional pressure, combined with all the extra attention she kept getting. However, she just needed say No and they backed off.

I think that the two sides need to work a little to make this a better relationship. I wonder how the viewing of this movie was perceived by both parties. It must be terribly difficult for them to watch.

I enjoyed this joint effort mainly because of the work of Denis Villeneuve and André Turpin.

For a 1996 movie, Villeneuve's take on so-called underground cybernetic culture is quite insightful and at the same time, light and funny. Convincefully played by David Lahaye.

André Turpin's short, "Jules & Fanny", is thoroughly funny and original. It showcases two persons whose on-screen personalities have nothing spectacular (Jules is a rather small guy, Fanny is a typical woman next door) and yet in a short time we are brought to be fascinated by their personalities. This was before "Matroni & Moi" and "Bureaux", so we weren't quite as fed up with Martin's obsession with the death of god yet.

Turpin's camera work also holds the film together. Otherwise, Manon Briand segment is extremely predictable, not to say boring (let me guess.. it's about someone who happens to be gay), M-J Dallaire's short is amateurish and completely lacking in substance, Jennifer Alleyn's effort is a tribute to her own personal nostalgia with French Theatre of the 1950s, while Paragamian's finale is just not very entertaining.

I'd give it a 9 if it were for VIlleneuve's and Turpin's segments alone.

Questions of diasporic national identity are brilliantly addressed in the concept of a modern society, through various media, paralleled to more personal and private issues such as jealousy, stubbornness and personal pride. Only a person with very little life experience could not comprehend anything to what is going on in this movie. Atom Egoyan succeeded in making a very universal film that is touching at more than only one level. With this film, he proves that he is more than a good film director, but truly an artist who is able to transpose a world view through simple a medium, with low budget. This is personally my favorite Egoyan film, though it's by no means the longest or most commercially successful.

The resemblance between Rachel (Clara Furey) and her real-life mom (Carole Laure, director) is striking. This movie succeeds at undertaking difficult themes and weaving them with beautifully choreographed dance scenes (reminding some scenes of Carole Laure's music videoclips). Dance, here seems to be shown as a path for healing.

The problem is that these interludes are somehow too frequent, and sometimes not very well integrated with the film. The general practice with Rachel and other young dancers is thrown in the middle of the film as if from nowhere, and drags on and on. Aside of that, the language level also bothered me. Dialogs didn't quite felt natural, and one could sense that the tension to render the French neutral (international) vs retaining some local flavour, was not handled very well.

There has been a string of very bad films coming out of Québec lately, but "Comment ma mère accoucha de moi" is surely the lowest cinematographic moment ever reached in this once-proud province. Yes, there are still good movies made in Québec, but they don't feature already famous local names known through locally produced TV soap operas, children TV shows or stand-up comedy.

Edulcorating its propos with psycho-pop, humanities 101, quotes by Sun Tze, Saint-Exupéry, Machiavelli and some poor man's Freudism, reflecting the writer's lack of culture, the film throws together a bunch of downright stupid scenes mingled with social comments, some of which are lame reflections on local problems such as the health system. This shows perfectly Rose's lack of ability to write a movie that would stand on its own, and he rather capitalizes on easy social-comment and typecasting in order to have local movie-goers clap to whatever they recognize on the screen as being "theirs". It is clear that complacency is the very heart motive of this movie.

The scenes where Micheline Lanctôt sings along some English tune which is recurrent in the movie should have been cut, as they are very nightmarish; she clearly can not be convincing as a "radiating menopausal woman", and while most of her role would require her to be sexy, she is as sensually appealing as a dead trout in advanced stages of decomposition. In the same way, pre-detox, fat Ahmarani is as convincing as a Don Juan as our interest in his master's thesis is maintained through the movie.

Many clichés from successful movies (Tanguy, among others) were mercilessly stolen. I never thought I'd say this, but Patrick Huard manages to bring some life to this movie, but not very long until his antics become as tiresome as ever (viz, by telling jokes that are already too well known). His wearing of moose antlers is unfortunately not as entertaining as Michèle Richard's in "La Postière", and thus can not save the film alone.

This movie suffers from bad screenplay and general bad romantic comedy . Its story and dialogues draw on many clichés about "newspaper life" that most of us Québecois know from late 80's and early 90's TV shows. I sometimes felt like watching a bad episode of "Scoop" or "Lance & Compte".

It is sad to see that this film-making team thought their movie would do better with puns and references to public figures like Céline Dion or Gilles Proulx. Seems to me that any good movie should stand on its own, without trying to become partly a "Bye bye" or "Rira bien".

It also seems they tried to tackle too many political issues (tobacco, abortion), wishing to give a political flavor to the movie rather than developing cinematographic aspects.

Also evident in the movie are Petrowski's despise of the post-boomer generation and her pathetic attempts to glorify her own generation (making them look cool despite they are nearing 40, the picture was altogether fake). A few 'mots d'auteur' were too much. In this regard, Arcand is much more reasonable and efficient as a filmmaker, exploring this aspect more rationally and thoroughly.

I however appreciated Bouvier's reference to his (excellent) former co-directed movie, "Les matins infidèles", by naming Huard's morning radio show this way.

A spin-off focusing with the character played by A-M Cadieux was also made by more or less the same people.

A much more actual, modern, original, altogether better and funnier movie on a similar topic is "Horloge Biologique"; made by younger people.

Not at all a film noir, Klapisch's "Ni pour ni contre" is a run off-the-mill "heist", "coup du siècle" movie, with no original standpoint. The story is a poor justification for a series of beautifully filmed, very bright, colorful and sunny photographic scenes that parallel the aesthetics of this "more than perfect" gang, their associates and their "Appat" film heroine.

There is no justification for the use of a camera in the first "coup" scène, other than the set up of how this very particular innocent girl is being recruited by this band of criminals. Other incoherent sequences appear through the movie that one doesn't get to criticize for fear of sounding too realistic nowadays. Contrarily to other heist movies, nothing goes unusually wrong after the robbery to justify the mess up that ensues.

The attempts at building a camaraderie between the gangsters also falls short and shows clearly that too many people were involved writing this movie.

All and all, this movie is Klepisch's take at a genre he never tried before (american crime movies, not film noirs by any means, and surely not thrillers or polars), and he succeeds less-than-averagely.