Jan 17: Les roseaux sauvages/Wild Reeds (1994-- Andre Techine)

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I have to guess that Wild Reeds has gotten so much more notice than Ma Saison Preferee and J’embrasse pas because it involves the Algerian War, a trauma that France is still dealing with. But there’s a strong link among all these strong films of this period of Techine’s career.

The biggest link I see here is between Reeds and Saison: both focus on showing us personal relationship is a detailed, intimate way. In Reeds, there are four people rather than the two of Saison, and there’s more variety among the four, but Techine still manages to make us intimate with all four of them. Part of that is the detail, and another part is the film technique. Reeds takes us from one intimate conversation to another; I only have to think of the conversation between Maite and Francois when the boy comes out to his girlfriend to get the sincere, conflicted personalities of each. I love this dialog – it’s so first-hand and honest.

And as my French is getting better as I progress through these movies, I can actually watch them more, and what I’m seeing is a lot of close-ups. Lots. This is an effective way to create intimacy between the viewer and the characters, and it works like a charm. Of course, it only works if the actors can act, and the four leads are great. And the casting of the four based on their looks is dead-on, too. Gael Morel as Francois just looks sincere, fragile, and youthful. His earnestness and vulnerability are always visible when we see his face, and he plays these qualities beautifully. There’s a scene of him riding on his moped to Toulouse with his arms around Serge’s chest and a look of transcendent happiness on his face (and with Barber’s Adagio in the background and a earnest voiceover) that can bring tears to your eyes with its poignancy since we know at this point that Serge is straight and that Francois’ love is going to be unrequited. Elodie Bouchez’s Maite has a silent movie face with its expressive, mercurial changes to reflect her moods: love, confusion, anger, desire. She is France. Great casting of Stephane Rideau as Serge, too. Serge is nature, and he has a big, broad body and is slightly cross-eyed. He doesn’t show a huge range of emotion; he takes things as they come having learned living with hardship on the land. Frederic Gorny does a fine job with Henri, too. Gorny has a handsome, sculptural face that he uses to allow only hints of the hurt and anger it mostly conceals. All these actors have an authentic appearance and play their characters with a unique specificity…and the scenario lets them interact intimately. It’s the same focus I saw and appreciated in Saison.

But there’s more here. There’s a symbolic overlay as the film is also about France herself. You can see the farmer, the intellectual, the nubile and the North African here, classic elements of how the French see themselves. This is about France growing, being the reed of La Fontaine’s fable and not the oak. This is a France trying to move toward liberte, fraternite and egalite, even if that achievement is halting, uncertain, not wholly successfully. These fabulous kids move toward that vision with their sincerity, innocence and occasional stumble. It’s hard to say whether they’ll achieve this vision or not. But La Fontaine would have hope for a people with the attitudes of these four.

OTHER THOUGHTS: Again, no fathers, though Maite’s mother has some of the depth to her that Techine often gives his auxiliary characters. And there’s the same economy of editing here I like in all the Techine I’ve seen, sparing us unnecessary detail. AND I’m finally taking this opportunity to comment on a shot that I’ve seen in several Techine films but have forgotten to mention: the long tracking shot with the camera on rail following the subject but with something in the middle ground that shouts the motion. Saw this Rashemon but don’t know enough to say whether Techine got this idea from Kurasawa or from another source. But it’s effective. And last thought: I’ve also seen the camera move in circles several times to show the range of action taking place at the scene. This must be hard to do and is more something I’d expect from Scorcese more than from Techine, but Techine uses it often.

Jan 16: Ma saison préférée/My Favorite Season (1993--Andre Techine)

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I was completely engaged in this film, and when it was over, I didn't know how to talk about it.

There aren't many traditional elements to deal with Ma saison preferee. There's a story, but it’s hard to find any Aristotelian structure to it unless you focus on the mother, and she’s not who you spend most of your time with in this film. And there are characters, but they don’t move to any revelations, act on hubris, learn anything or experience personality growth. Well, not much….

Ma saison preferee, instead, just shows us relationships and gives us info about the people involved in them to let us fill in the gaps. But it does this by showing us such a rich breadth that we feel like we know who these people are, and by the end of the film, we almost predict how they’ll act and what they think. It’s a very unique movie in giving so much information and insight but not seeming to move in any particular direction. We watch Emilie and Antoine interact with each other, with their mother, with others they know, and we learn about them intimately as they do so, but in the end, we’re left with a brother who is so close to his sister that he’s truncated his own life and a sister who has always coped by organizing and directing. We see these two personalities reveal and express themselves throughout the film, we learn what has created them, but by the end of the film, there’s no great insight of social importance. We’ve simply seen an intimate portrait of how a particular brother and sister relationship has developed and how it functions. It’s the depth and intimacy of the portrait that makes this movie so fantastic.

And as I see so often in Techine’s films, there’s a fabulous excess in Ma saison preferee. If the film were simply giving the history and present of Emilie and Antoine, there would be no need for the kids Anne, Lucien, and Khadija. Yet the three, along with Bruno, get plenty of screen time and have their own depth. They’re more shallow than Emilie and Antoine, but the other characters do more than reflect or introduce element of the main two siblings. They have their own development, conflicts and personalities, the kids perhaps beginning to reflect the influence of the parents as Emilie and Antoine reflect the influence of theirs (Antoine’s talking to himself if an especially obvious example of this since his mother does the same thing).

It’s a film about families, about modernity, about France and about generations and siblings. On reflection, I’m delighted at the range of experience and knowledge in this film.

Last note: Again, I note the absence of a father in a Techine movie. This film focuses on Berthe and her effect on her kids Emilie and Antoine. And of the parents in the film, we see much more of Emilie than of Bruno, who appears just a little hapless even though Anne is partial to him. All the fathers I’ve seen so far are inarticulate or clumsy. Techine is certainly partial to the role of the mother, another original element of his work.

Jan 15: J'embrasse pas/I Don't Kiss (1991-- Andre Techine)

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I loved this movie, and it's very clear to me that Techine had hit his stride when he made it. You could see it as an homage to 400 Blows, but it's more than that. I think it's an update of Truffaut's film to a time that's got its own brutalities and in a medium with more flexibility because of relaxed social mores. J'embrasse pas considers what would have happened to Antoine Doinel if he'd been born in the late 70s and convincingly finds he'd have ended up a hustler in the Bois de Boulogne.

Like Doinel, Pierre faces some hard obstacles. He leaves a less-than-ideal family for Paris, and I was cringing at his beatific smile and naive optimism as soon as he got there. He's used, robbed, beaten and raped in the course of the film, a series of events that hammers the adolescent.

But many of his problems are also self-inflicted. Like the kid Thomas in Le lieu du crime, Pierre fiercely rebels against any authority or external control. He’s sexually attracted to Mireille, though when she gives him money to try to hold him, he immediately leaves. He goes with Romain to Spain, but when he feels (imagined) pressure to join the Romain’s team, he bolts. His knee-jerk rejection of authority eventually leads him to cross the path of a particularly vicious pimp, and that encounter gets him severely beaten.

In each of these situations, Pierre is following his heart, though his heart isn’t always right. With Mireille, Pierre was only interested in sex and didn’t care about her or her situation. Romain (a precursor of Adrian in Les temoins) was more concerned about Pierre’s future than sex, a fact that Pierre’s visceral homophobia prevented the kid from seeing. Pierre’s obsession with Ingrid eventually leads to his getting beaten. In all these, Pierre doesn’t have a good perspective on himself or on others, and this lack of perspective is what leads him into making bad decisions and becoming disillusioned.

Pierre also lacks perspective about himself. He doesn’t have the education to play Hamlet, and the scene in the film where he fails at that reading is painfully honest; after his failure, Pierre drops his dream of being an actor, a dream so naïve that even the kid working at the hotel remarks on it. Pierre then focuses on money, but when Romain asks him what he’d do if he had it, Pierre can only say he’d be respected. He doesn't have a vision and doesn't know what he wants to do, but he's dogged. His are a much stronger version of the problems Doinel faces in 400 Blows.

As life in Paris takes its toll, Pierre seeks refuge and eventually lands in the army. He’d previously rejected military service because he rejected authority, but after his beating, perhaps he saw he wasn’t handling life as well as he’d thought. He had plenty of money as a prostitute, but it didn’t get him Ingrid, didn't get him respect, and didn't prevent his beating. He sought refuge, if an unhappy one. Unable to control his determination even in the army, he spends evenings berating himself in the mirror. Unlike the other army kid, Pierre doesn't reject love; he rejects failure to follow his own ideal.

And upon leaving the base, Pierre heads yet again to follow his dream, and J'embrasse pas makes its most explicit reference to 400 Blows. The responsible, societal thing to do would have been for Pierre to visit his aging parent nearby like his brother advised him, but he heads to the coast to see the sea that Ingrid had told him about. The final shot of Pierre in the ocean , and the scene has the same bittersweet tone as that in 400 Blows. Pierre hasn't changed, and the same world awaits him.

One of the things I especially notice in this film is how it doesn't leave gaps in psychology that I can't fill. Unlike in Le lieu du crime, for example, when Lili is suddenly in love with Martin, none of the shifts in Pierre's character are so sudden that I couldn't follow them. Perhaps Techine made Pierre easier to understand because Pierre is the sole focus of the film. Rather than trying to bring 2-4 characters along, J'embrasse pas brings along only one, and it therefore has the time to look at Pierre in some depth.

Techine doesn't neglect secondary characters. Mirielle has her motivations and conflicts, and so does Romain. Even Said has personality. One of the things I like in Techine is the character richness that his films have and his willingness to wander off on details that don't necessarily have to be in the film. I wonder if Hollywood would have kept Said as a character at all. And I don't see that the scene with Romain and Dimitri had to be there. Nor, for that matter, the all the scenes with the Brazilian transvestites. These, though, give a huge depth to the film that makes J'embrasse pas resonate even more.

Jan 15: The King's Speech (Tom Hooper -- 2010)

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This was a good, competent movie in the usual Hollywood style. It was quite touching, especially in the climax were George VI gives his speech. I liked the way he was in a closed room for the speech: that setting made the speech simultaneously the private victory of an individual as well as the hugely important political event it was for the citizens of the nation. His success there was a great, Hollywood climax, not to take anything away from it for being that. (And the Beethoven 7th, second movement, is one of my fav pieces of music).

The other thing I liked in the film was the portrayal of Edward VIII and Wallace Simpson. I think of Edward's abdication as the triumph of love over privilege, but how striking to see Guy Pearce's interpretation of Edward as a self-absorbed, oblivious weakling. And the infamous Ms. Simpson as a bossy, superficial flapper. Given the historical moment, that interpretation has some resonance.

I'd also have to say that Colin Firth carried the film though Geoffrey Rush clearly could have if the script had given him that opportunity. And Helena Bonham Carter reigned herself in and did a very capable job, too.

I don't get what all the fuss is about this film. It's good, for sure, but it seems very conventional.

Jan 14: Le lieu du crime/Scene of the Crime (1987-- Andre Techine)

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I liked this film much more than Hotel des Amerique.

For all the apparent focus on the boy, on the criminals and the crime, it's very much about...the grandmother! I like how that fact sneaks up on you in the film until you realize that much of the action revolves around how the various characters deal with her. It should have been clear to me quite early in the film when we see her bossing her grandson and conspiring with her son-in-law, and I didn't even get it in the excruciating First Communion celebration when she compels everyone into fitting into the universe the way she wants it. She's the missing center, the energy that drives most of the protagonists' actions.

I really only got it when Techine uncharacteristically includes a clunky line of dialog for Lili to the effect that she always tried to please her mother, and that had been the problem with her life. Her affair with the good criminal Martin was her (finally!) rebelling against her mother. The drama and punishment around her love with Martin was preferable to her following her mother's desire for a conventional, bourgeoise life, and she ends on the road to a new life...having lost much of the love in her life and looking at confinement.

Lili's son, Thomas, is a parallel character. Unlike Lili, though, Thomas rebels from the beginning and suffers mightily for it. Outspoken, disobedient and insolent, he fights grandmother, school, church and father. Had Lili rebelled earlier, as she says she wishes she had, she would have been Thomas. Thomas, too, ends on the road to a new life, one with less love in it than he might have had.

I've seen parallel characters in Techine before -- Adrian and Sarah from Temoins, for example. I like the way Techine guides pairs like this through a narrative, connecting them via the criminals (Scene) or free-spirit (Temoins) and leading them on similar and contrasting paths. And in each case, the elements that connect the parallel characters leave their traces on the protagonists; that's almost a theme, too.

I also appreciated the link between Thomas and Lili in this film. You don't often see the relationship of a boy and his mother at the focus of a film, and it's tender and painful here. Perhaps I'll revisit Almodovar's All about My Mother to see how he deals with this topic.

Even though I like so much of this film's character and plot structure, I still felt left jerked through some of the character development -- I didn't see Lili falling for Martin so fast; I didn't see Maurice as in love with Lili. I like the decentered story here, the misleading focus, the fast editing, but I'm (again) put off by some of the gaps in the characters. Not sure why I can take the gaps in everything but the characters. Perhaps because the film is so set in a mimetic paragdigm I want to see the mimesis in the characters, too.

Jan 13: Hôtel des Amériques/Hotel America (1981-- Andre Techine)

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I just didn't like this movie even though I really wanted to.

It has a lot going for it. I like the editing, the compression of the story; I'm alway appreciative of a movie that shows someone walking to a car and cuts to driving, sparing me having to sit through the predictable door opening, key insertion, blah, blah. And like in Temoins, there's engaging psychology here and what is, for me, the frankness about relationships. Hélène is complicate, Gilles is complicated and even minor characters like the sister, the gay postal guy and the two women friends of Hélène are complicated. And lots of the visual is nice, from Catherine Deneuve to her primary-colored wardrobe and the views of Biarritz from the perspective of a local.

The problem I couldn't get past was the blockiness of the narrative. Hélène is distant, then vulnerable, then suffering in mad love; Gilles is sweet, then depressed, then crazy. There are too many big jumps and jolts in the movie. In the later Temoins, there are also jumps and empty places in the narrative and portrayal of the characters, but these gaps aren't so far or abrupt that my experience would keep me from filling them in. Here, though, there is so much distance in the jumps that a scene loses touch with the previous, a mood or attitude loses touch with the previous, so there's no overall arc or unity. Maybe the movie just tries to cover too much story and character development in too short a period of time, but I caught myself thinking "What!?" more often than a viewer should have. And the hackneyed music doesn't help matters.

Sixteen years before Temoins, Techine is already looking at some of the same themes: the difficulty of expressing and realizing love, the persistence of love after loss, the pain that accompanies love, and the complexity of individuals' psychology and desire. There are also gay characters, openly interacting with straight society (though out of the main narrative here), and there's even cruising in a park.

Techine does a much better job of controlling the range and gaps in is films in the later Temoins than in this one, and that's a pity. I would have liked to know Hélène an Gilles as well as I know Sarah and Adrien.

And was I in France in 1981? Those narrow ties brought back some uncomfortable memories of my life at the apex of fashion.

Jan 12: Les temoins/The Witnesses (Andre Techine--2007)

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Not sure why this movie hasn't gotten more note; David Jones recommended it to me, so I checked it out.

And loved it. Touched seeing on screen the frankness of so many parts of gay life I've been familiar with: cruising, younger/older, AIDS, gay/bi interface, gay (male)/straight (female), dealing with being gay, love...even the quotidian details involved with transporting the body. And like so many French films, this one deals so (refreshingly) frankly with sex, love and relationships. I know of no other national cinema that can look love so directly in the face and not blink.

Film is not only direct, but it leaves so much unexplained. Michel Blanc's fully-realized Adrian is touching, loving Manu as a mentor but also desiring him, but the others are harder to see into. Mehdi totally loves Manu and Sarah, Manu loves Adrian as well as Mehdi, Sarah loves Mehdi, Adrian and her writing. And the movie explores none of this in an analytical way. In fact, Adrian moves on, Mehdi moves on, Sarah writes the movie and even Manu's sister Julie moves on.

All are touched by the episode with Manu and carry him with them, but their lives continue. Ironically, it's probably Sarah who most honors Manu.

The film observes all these relationships -- no interpretation, no analysis -- so we follow what we see: surface, in a keenly observed context. I'm impressed at Techine's way of portraying such intense, complicated relationships and think I'm going to watch more of his films.

Thanks, David!