Tinikling or 'The Madonna and the Dragon' (1989)

Tinikling or 'The Madonna and the Dragon' (Samuel Fuller, 1989)

French Title: Tinikling ou 'La Madonne et le Dragon'

“A film is like a battleground. It’s love, hate, action, violence, death. In one word: emotions,” answered Samuel Fuller when asked by Jean-Paul Belmondo what cinema is in Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le fou (1965). The statement is in fact the guiding principle in most of Fuller’s films, which are fundamentally inspired by all of the things that Fuller has mentioned pervade a war. His masterpieces like Pickup on South Street (1953), Shock Corridor (1963), The Big Red One (1980), and White Dog (1982) are films that are charged with the rawest of those emotions, unhindered by any pretense of subtlety. Even in the twilight of his colorful career, a period which critics have disregarded as his weakest, Fuller still made films that move and stagger like emotional soldiers in the heat of victory or defeat.

Tinikling or ‘The Madonna and the Dragon’, made for French television and shot entirely in the Philippines, is the last film Fuller directed. The film starts with the display of several photographs of domestic strife from various parts of the world like Beirut and Nicaragua. After which, photographs of Ninoy Aquino’s assassination, leading to the declaration of the elections between overstaying president Ferdinand Marcos and Aquino’s widow, Corazon. The film, set a few days prior to the elections, has foreign journalist photographers chasing around Manila for that perfect picture that will catapult Manila’s chaotic situation to international standards. It pits the distance from their subjects these journalists have to acquire to succeed with the very human situations that they are forced to witness and only document.

The action begins in the middle of a trash dump. Fuller opens with an extreme close-up of the withered face of an old man who is frantically praying. The camera pans to reveal the barrel of an automatic rifle, sticking against the back of the old man. The rifle’s owner, an intoxicated soldier, orders another person to shoot him at the count of three. The other person, a female photographer named Patty (Jennifer Beals), is cursing the soldier for his inhumanity while readying her camera to shoot the soldier at the exact moment of the old man’s execution. The soldier counts to three, kills the old man, and angrily asks Patty if he shot his proud moment. Patty curses the soldier and says that she couldn’t, forcing the soldier to angrily point his rifle at her, readying to shoot. Before the soldier could pull the trigger, he is shot by another photographer from behind. Simon (Luc Merenda), Patty’s savior at that time is also her ex-husband.

The opening sequence is one that fulfils Fuller’s description of what cinema is. In a matter of a few minutes, Fuller was able to completely characterize Patty as a woman too concerned over the welfare of her subjects to be truly successful. Simon, on the other hand, is more of a mercenary, adept not only in photography but also in other skills that would land him the perfect sensational photo. The photograph he takes later on, a photograph featuring a soldier shooting an old lady who refuses to reveal the lair of the rebel vigilante group of Mindanao (Ben Cervantes), becomes the object of the film’s story.

Wanted by Marcos’ men and Mindanao’s men for political reasons because its raw power which can steer the election towards Corazon Aquino and by the foreign press because it encapsulates the situation of the Philippines under the regime of Marcos, the photograph is suddenly stolen, leading Simon and Patty to deal and connive with Manila’s underworld which features Mama (Christa Lang), the shrewd owner of a casino cum brothel, Pavel (Patrick Bauchau), a suspect goon who has ties with both Mama and Mindanao, and a prostitute (Pilar Pilapil) under the care of Mama whose romantic dealings with Mindanao seems to be the picture’s only avenue to a real dramatic heart.

Tinikling or ‘The Madonna and the Dragon’ is commendable for dealing with a very specific event in Philippine history. Inaccuracies are inevitable. For example, the film makes it seem that Corazon Aquino officially won the elections, leaving out the People Power Revolution which eventually led to Marcos’ ouster. I suppose the several days of the peaceful revolution would throw the film’s quick pace off. I also suppose that Fuller did not have full control over the final product, which is why the film is not as tightly edited as it could be. However, the film has enough Fuller in it to be assessed alongside the director’s best films.

Aside from the astounding opening, the film also features a gun fight set inside a movie theater. As Mindanao’s men are firing against Marcos’ soldiers, Fuller cuts to the gunfight that is happening in the film being screened. Fuller seems to be channelling his Pierrot le fou quote by juxtaposing the violence of cinema and the violence of the realities of Marcos’ regime in that brilliantly conceived action sequence.

The film suspiciously ends rationally. Patty finally gets the picture that betrays her earnest characterization, shooting a boy (Reginald Singh), whom Patty rescues from the trash dump from bloodthirsty scavengers early on, who kills a man who turns out to be a Marcos supporter. Simon shoots Patty shooting the picture. Corazon Aquino has replace Marcos as president of the Philippines. Against the man-made peace provided for by a luxurious hotel pool, Patty and Simon are reunited. The boy, whose peculiar grasp of the English language was learned from growing up being fed by gangster movies, is reunited with his passion for rock and roll and everything else American.

Tinikling or ‘The Madonna and the Dragon’ concludes in a way that everything that happened before, from the extreme poverty that turns children into ingenious murderers to the treachery of freedom fighters, seems to be nothing more than plot points in a continuing history of a nation. From the perspective of foreign eyes, it seems that the very real atrocities of the country are but mere subjects of pulp fiction. Fuller, like the foreign photographers he chose to concentrate on instead of the fractured Filipinos whose stories may prove to be more endearing, chose to tackle his subject from a safe distance, turning the film into an enjoyable, sometimes intellectually stirring but ultimately emotionally shallow trip back to the final days of the Philippines under Marcos’ rule.

(Cross-published in Lagarista.)

Tales of the Night (2011)

Colored Shadows

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

Nightly collaborations by a boy, a girl, and a master technician give rise to tales that burst with magic in Michel Ocelot’s Tales of the Night. It is impossible even for the sternest of critics not to enjoy the film and be reminded of times when things were simpler and did not involve elaborate plotlines and super-sophisticated designs. Ocelot pits shadow puppets, whose details are reliant on the lines and curves dictated by costumes, against lush backgrounds, creating an otherworldy atmosphere in settings that are based in history. The six tales, all equally charming, explore these settings, whether it be modern Africa or medievel Europe.

As opposed to James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) and the dozens of other Hollywood productions that utilise 3D to create an illusion of depth in an otherwise flat space, Tales of the Night makes use of 3D only to further a crucial element of shadow puppetry, which is the separation of subject and background. Ocelot replicates the wonderment of the ancient craft onscreen, telling the six stories with refreshing clarity and a distinct look.

Compared to Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed, which remains the pinnacle of this underepresented style, Tales of the Night lacks the unrestrained sensuality that Reiniger, even without the conveniences provided by modern film equipment and 3D technology, has so masterfully injected in her film. Perhaps, had Ocelot resisted romanticising love in a way that is similar to nearly all of the Disney studio’s many retellings of classic fairy tales, the film could have been less saccharine and more alluring about love and romance.

Despite that, Tales of the Night remains a fine piece of work. In a festival that puts a premium on the more serious aspects of life, Ocelot has conjured up tales that value fantasy and the allure of happy endings. This way he has created a film that is remarkably universal despite the myriad of cultures from which it liberally borrows. The film celebrates the power of stories and how, in both their creation and their consumption, they unite humanity.

(First published here. Read more in the Berlinale Talent Press website)

The Girl on the Train (2009)

The Girl on the Train (André Téchiné)

French Title: Le fille du RER

Dubbing the two halves of The Girl on the Train circumstance and consequence only tempts the film’s audience to utilize common logic within the context of the film's vaporous contraption, which is a narrative that left turns, right turns, u-turns, and jumps in and out of situations exactly like life. As a matter of fact, there is actually no puzzle to solve, no mystery to unravel, and no mess to unspool.

Téchiné's connected characters, Jeanne (Émilie Dequenne), the eponymous girl on the train, Franck (Nicolas Duvauchelle), the tattooed wrestler who indefatigably courts Jeanne and eventually becomes her boyfriend, Louise (Catherine Deneuve), Jeanne's mother who had an erstwhile romance with Jewish advocate lawyer Samuel (Michel Blanc), appear in and out of each other's lives, completely un-designed by any intelligent force. If the subtitles of the two halves of the film have any relevance at all, it is only to elucidate the film's underlying conceit, which is about Jeanne's overblown lie about being mugged by anti-Semitic hooligans while on the train which led to much public exposure, and to detail what happened before the lie and what happens after the lie, nothing more.

The film’s narrative is snatched from the headlines of the newspaper, about a girl who conjures a hate crime incident that was blown out of proportions, and hatched by Téchiné into a collection of moods loosely spun together by the conveniences of fate and human nature. Thus, Jeanne’s daily routine of rollerblading through the streets of Paris to look for work to going home with the persistent greetings of her mother to find better job opportunities, say, a secretarial job in the law firm of Samuel, is abruptly interrupted by Franck, a sullen-looking young man whose demeanor betrays his affinity for hopeless romanticism. The carefree disposition of Jeanne, as punctuated by how she rollerblades or commutes completely oblivious of her surroundings, morphs gradually as she becomes more and more involved with someone or something, turning into something more brazen yet restrictive, even suffocating.

Consider this particular montage in Jeanne and Franck’s budding romance, where we get only glimpses of an internet conversation, infrequently cut to detail the progression of the video conference, starting from the two being completely clothed, then a top off, another article off, and the rest falls into the audience’s already enticed imagination. More than exemplifying the expanded bounds of sexual relationships in the digital age, the sequence spices it up with foreboding, an unexplainable sense of mischief and danger in the steaming eroticism. Never have I seen internet sex depicted with both arresting frankness, and the effect is quite stirring: a mixture of being seduced into their pixelated seduction and of being forewarned of the brewing pixilated love affair. Simply, Téchiné inflicts tension with astounding precision.

Even in the most genial of situations and surroundings, Téchiné’s astute sensibilities expand moods, further possibilities and consequences, and evoke mysterious undercurrents. There is always a sense of things not being right, not what they seem, and that there is more to Téchiné’s filmmaking than what you can see, hear, or even feel from the moving images and sounds he so efficiently conjures; that the film is hardly about these pertinent portions of its characters’ lives, or even about the nagging bigger picture of a national insecurity that was momentarily exposed by an insignificant girl’s irrational decision to lie. It is all that and more of that, and as the film exchanges perspectives, from the volatile and emotional motivations of Jeanne to the calculated machinations of Samuel, his son, and son’s wife, we are exposed to a matrix of human relations --- cultural, social, political and whatnot --- that governs lives that can only be experienced and not explained.

Summer Hours (2008)

Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas, 2008)

French Title: L'heure d'été

Olivier Assayas' delicately magnificent Summer Hours is bookended by two gatherings in a rustic summer house that is located a few hours from Paris. The film opens with children hunting for treasure. The children, offspring of siblings who have been separated by a rapidly globalizing culture and are only reunited during important family events like birthdays or funerals, run and play around the house, apparently oblivious of the intricacies of what’s going on with the adults. It is the 75th birthday of Hélène (Edith Scob), the family’s matriarch and safe-keeper of the estate of her late uncle, a famous painter who has amassed a collection of valuable art pieces. The celebration, seemingly warm and sun-drenched like the summer house, is more than meets the eye. The family reunion, beneath the token gift-giving and the heartfelt well-wishes, is a precursor to Assayas’ astute discourse on mortality and immortality, as exemplified by life and its limits, and the things, both tangible and intangible, that humanity leaves behind.

Hélène dies. Her children, Frédéric (Charles Berling), an economist living in Paris, Adrienne (Juliette Binoche), an art designer working in New York, and Jérémie (Jérémie Renier), a factory manager residing in China, have been left with the decision of what to do with the house and the treasures therein. The dilemma is seemingly straightforward: Frédéric wants to preserve the estate for gatherings in the future and for their children, while Jérémie and Adrienne, who foretell their inevitable disconnect with France given their jobs abroad, opt to sell everything. As the pieces are sold and hauled away from the house, values are revealed and sentimental attachments are disclosed. Assayas, who fascinatingly documents the goings-on with astounding near-objectivity and hardly any emotional attachment in display, crafts a resounding elegy of legacy as opposed to estate, the former being objects inherently co-existing with memories formed with them and the latter being objects appreciated only for their utilitarian value.

Summer Hours, while fundamentally a family drama that tackles the most intimate of familial interactions, reaches further to comment on the current world of globalized culture where factories in China, ran by a French expatriate, are manufacturing Puma shoes to be sold in the United States, or design houses in New York are conceptualizing vases to be sold in Japan, or an unpaid mortgage by Californian blue-collar worker triggers a global financial crisis. Globalization has seeped into what is believed to be the proudest of cultures; as the staple American influence, from the preference of wearing a pair of Converse sneakers instead of China-made Pumas to having your children be educated in the English language, have found themselves not only in the extremities of familial reunions but in the utmost core of decisions. The Berthiers, coming from a line of cultural workers with the great grand uncle being a famous painter, have succumbed to the globalization malady.

Further manifested through showings of how cheapened culture is being turned into via its commodification through auction houses and other institutions whose capitalist intentions simplify culture to maximize financial worth and nothing more, Assayas’ subtle lament becomes more meaningful. In the guise of democratizing appreciation for what is advertised as cultural or artistic heritage, placing the Coron and Redon paintings, the Majorelle and Hoffman furniture, and the Bracquemond and D’Auteuil vases in museums for everyone’s limited and momentary pleasure, the meaning and essence of these objects dissipate as they are relegated the sole function of time capsules to everyone, from the previous owner who acknowledges these pieces as soulless outside the summer house that housed the memories that they keep to the random passerby whose appreciation for the object is limited to what is written in the label or what is mentioned by the paid lecturer.

By communicating conflict through minute gestures instead of grand emotional displays, Assayas has created a film so elegant and graceful it seems to belong in another era. Conflicts are enlarged not by what is visible and immediately felt, but by what are merely suggested: Hélène’s monologue, which caps her 75th birthday, fades out to after her death several months after the reunion; the housemaid who parts with the summer house from the outside looking in; the long conversations between the siblings which end with Frédéric crying alone in the dark. Civility has never been this tenuously depicted, as if a sudden burst of violent disagreement would function to sever ties forever. Outbursts are quick and apologies, even quicker. Aches, experiences and reminiscences do not make opulent appearances. They only function as defining moods and nuances, sources of understandings and misunderstandings, the very thing, fragile and incorporeal as they are, that keeps the family a family.

Ultimately, Summer Hours feels like a swansong to an era that was and is still beautiful but is being rendered obsolete by a world that is so fascinated by materialism. Yet, survival dictates that humanity move on and adapt. The film ends in the same house where the children of Frédéric are throwing a party before the sale papers are signed and the summer house transfers ownership. This is the torch being given to the next generation, where the opening’s gathering is pastoral in its simplicity and gracefulness, the ending’s gathering is rowdy and noisy. Assayas seems to suggest an ominous future where the next generation are nothing more than uncouth, uncultured, and unappreciative lots. However, Assayas slows down and allows a glimpse of the next generation, a glimpse that the entire movie seems to have neglected in giving. Frédéric’s daughter, in a surprising sincere expression of somber regret, tells her boyfriend of what her grandmother has told her and the value of the house to her. Promises were broken. Objects fade. Memories remain. Memories are all that we share.

JCVD (2008)

JCVD (Mabrouk El Mechri, 2008)

Mabrouk El Mechri's JCVD opens with a high-powered action sequence. We see Jean Claude Van Damme dodging endless barrages of bullets, knocking out hordes of nameless villains, and getting past impossible explosions before ending up being ignored by his disinterested director (imported from Hong Kong, in obvious reference to John Woo, who Van Damme introduced to the American market but never paid back the favor by giving Van Damme a role in any of his Hollywood projects after Hard Target (1993)). As the opening sequence, where we witness in one spectacular shot the action star quickly metamorphosing from indestructible hero to just another man in the film set, depicts, El Mechri's goal is to remove Van Damme out of the myths of superhuman mettle (Van Damme has often been referred to "The Muscle from Brussels") his roles in films like Blood Sport (Newt Arnold, 1988), Universal Soldier (Roland Emmerich, 1992) and Double Team (Tsui Hark, 1997) have supplied him, and turn him into something more convincingly human: a victim of circumstance, aggravated by his fame and notoriety.

The portrait of Van Damme we see in JCVD is vastly different from the characters, all of whom are exquisite representations of brash masculinity (indestructible cage fighters, no-nonsense hitmen, and virile ladies' men), he played in several of his B-movies and actioners. Here, he is aging (his face is riddled with lines and wrinkles), with a physique that could not have belonged to the same person who fought to the death in Blood Sport. Here, he struggles at diplomacy, turning his Brussels cab driver from adoring fan to nagging annoyance in a matter of minutes. Here, in the midst of a crisis that should logically be easy for the man named the Muscle from Brussels, he can only imagine, but cannot actually do, the spectacular stunt moves that would get him out of trouble.

The Van Damme we see in JCVD here is closer to the Van Damme that magazines and tabloids cover and more often than not, make fun of. Here, Van Damme is struggling with the impending loss of his daughter because of his uphill battle for her custody, while playing mind games with his agent whose incompetence lost Van Damme a direct-to-video B-movie project to Steven Segal (who agreed to cut his mullet for the starring role). JCVD partly succeeds as entertainment because of its tabloid sensibilities, dwelling on the mostly negative predisposition of a pathetic has-been. However, JCVD does more than expose the incapacities and failures of a fading superstar for sheer entertainment's sake. El Mechri succeeds in turning Van Damme from infamous icon to encumbered human being, worthy of our sympathies. Van Damme succeeds in exposing himself, not as a devious fraud and agent of moronic cinema, but as a victim of circumstance and his own ambitions.

JCVD may not turn prepubescent boys into Van Damme idolizers. It does, however, add a deeper dimension to a nearly forgotten pop icon, allowing him the opportunity to address the several issues that have been thrown to him (his womanizing, drug addiction, his worsening notoriety and declining fame) and in turn, transforming himself into a figure that is not dissimilar to the rest of us. His previous films may have given him the legacy of brute ability. JCVD cracks that legacy, and allows us an intimate peek to Van Damme's persona.

In the middle of the agonizing hostage drama which El Mechri composed as the narrative device to put his fictional version of Van Damme in, everything suddenly stops except for Van Damme. His chair ascends, and we see the film set's klieglights and other movie-making mechanisms behind him. The internal movie logic of JCVD takes a pause to allow its hero respite from the conventional untruths of cinema and media he has been accustomed to. Van Damme delivers his confessional, unscripted and intimate (the still camera centering on his face, no cues, no direction except for his own). He talks about his problems, his past as a scrawny teenager who dreams of making it big in Hollywood, his frustrations and disappointments. Finally, Van Damme, the Muscle of Brussels, the sonic-booming soldier in Street Fighter (Steven E. de Souza, 1994), and time-traveling sci-fi hero of Timecop (Peter Hyams, 1994), cries. This undoubtedly is Van Damme's greatest onscreen performance ever, and the fact that he isn't acting makes the sequence more astounding.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel, 2007)

French Title: Le scaphandre et le papillon

Jean Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), editor of the French Elle magazine, suffered a stroke while driving his son. He wakes up, completely immobile except for his left eye. His condition, aptly called "locked-in syndrome," makes it extremely difficult, if not entirely impossible, for him to communicate to other people. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the novel Jean-Do (Bauby's nickname) authored and released a few days prior to his death, proves otherwise. Jean-Do dictates by blinking his left eye as his assistant (Anne Consigny) patiently connects the dots through the process, involving the complete alphabet organized and spoken in the order of frequency of use, Jean-Do's speech therapist (Marie-Josee Croze) devised.

Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly opens in overt absurdity, with Jean-Do waking up to the flurried questionings of the doctors around him, for which he has legible answers for but is unable to vocalize due to his locked-in condition. Jean-Do's inherent wit and personality is reflected by his internal monologues while his initial confusion and later on, other emotions which cannot be enunciated effectively by his immense wit and vocabulary, are communicated through Janusz Kaminski's cinematography, which exquisitely approximates Jean-Do's limited visual perspective. Amidst the atmosphere of prevailing excitement, the camera swings back and forth the faces of the doctors, though limited in reach and motion causing the frame to be composed of incomplete figures and visages. When he blinks, the camera blinks with him. When he cries, the camera moistens, blurring the frame and turning the figures into indecipherable clouds of emotions repressed and covered by his physical paralysis.

Jean-Do sees his reflection from the metallic walls of his hospital as he is moved from his room to the balcony. His internal monologue provides ample humor to the travail of seeing himself in a sorry state, his face carries a permanent grimace while pasted in a head that is nestled uncomfortably by his static shoulder. Previously, Schnabel visualizes a portion of Jean-Do's memory, where he dashingly blasts through a photoshoot for his fashion magazine, with the studio teeming with half-naked female models and photographers, all of whom worship beauty. Schnabel fathoms the unpredictable and cruel nature of fate, prompting Jean-Do's internal and external torture with memories of the past that painfully connect to his present situation.

Schnabel further enunciates the irony of Jean-Do's fate, diverting the narrative to another of Jean-Do's bittersweet memories, where he shaves his father (Max Von Sydow, in a performance that is quietly spectacular, especially in one scene where he attempts to talk to his son by phone but gets irked by the unavoidable mechanicality of their communication) and they talk about their respective lives and ex-wives. Jean-Do returns to his miserable present, still surrounded by beautiful females and caring companions, yet burdened by his fated incapacity and diminished existence, altogether banished by his astounding feat of completing his novel.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly could have gone the road of typical underdog stories (glamorizing psychological afflictions the way Ron Howard did in the abysmally syrupy A Beautiful Mind (2001)). Instead, Schnabel withdrew from convention, knowing fully well that the a one-sentence synopsis of Jean Dominique Bauby's triumph is enough to inspire and that the tale does not require further amplifications and embellishments to elicit inspiration, and did something remarkable. He crafted a film that is fueled not by the uniqueness of the human story it intends to tell, but by the mostly internal procedures that dominate Jean-Do's struggles, from the gloominess of his stagnant predicament to the life-saving expanses of his vast imagination. Schnabel weaves into Jean-Do's story threads that direct the attention from the inspiring underdog tale to the intricacies of Jean-Do's persistence in maintaining his humanity. Schnabel succeeded not only in telling the story in a manner that is both visually alluring in a way that is technically intriguing but also penetrated the surface melodrama, examining the mechanism that drove Jean-Do from lavish Earth to dismal Hell and finally, into immortality.

La Jetée (1962)

La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962)
English Title: The Jetty

Memory is the thematic and aesthetic core of Chris Marker's masterpiece La Jetée (The Jetty). Set in the far future, during the aftermath of third World War, the film tells the story of a man haunted by a distinct memory from the past, a beautiful woman he has seen as a boy in the airport just before the eruption of the war. That memory makes him a unique and indispensable individual to the victors who in trying to connect with the past and the future to salvage the present from a scarcity of important resources, are experimenting on its prisoners who have concrete mnemonic images. This man's most persisting memory is represented by a still picture of a woman in a pleasantly feminine posture, her face beaming with comforting contentment, and her hair flowing peacefully with the wind. It is his last memory of peace.

It isn't highfalutin science fiction. Actually, La Jetée is simplistic in its science and entirely evasive of the details of time travel, but accurate in the atmosphere and the emotions of being confronted by a recurring image of the past. It is oddly romantic and fluently scary, especially in the way it belabors memory as a fathomable obsession and a manipulated resource. The plot's elliptical form only reinforces Marker's thematic quirk, the way the mysteries of time, of the human mind, and the human heart converge in a highly intimate tale of emotional longing.

La Jetée's aesthetic stance approximates a cinematically unconventional act of mnemonic recollection. While cinema has represented memories as elegant trips to the past through fluid flashbacks which are often granted the same clarity as the present, La Jetée takes a different course, visually experimental but still conventional in its storytelling methods. The film can accurately be described as a photo-montage, where black and white images are flawlessly stitched together. Guided by a narrator, the film takes the shape and feel of a storybook being told from start to finish.

Let not its unique form and style intimidate you. La Jetée showcases Marker as a filmmaker adept in the basics of filmmaking. The twenty nine-minute film is perhaps the most impressively edited film I've ever seen. The black and white stills magically move through the fades to black, the perfectly-timed cuts, and the transitions that are all the more made effective by pertinent yet bare sound effects and the memorably apt musical score. In one sequence, the man is first experimented upon by the victors. The rhythm of his heartbeat provides an unmitigated tension that fuels the ethereally ravishing photographs of the man suffering; his teeth sinking on the reed hammock which serves as his bed and his hands contorting in manifestly pained shapes.

There's a single moment in La Jetée wherein Marker decides to suddenly erupt from the confines of still memory, and allows one of his subjects to move, although very momentarily. It's intriguing because it is both startling yet magical, the way the girl awakes from slumber and truly awakes, blinking and smiling. It is as if the image has escaped from being merely encapsulated as a figment of memory but has become a part of the present, unlimited by the inadequacies of the human mind. But why did Marker choose that moment to break his unique style? It is perhaps it is only in that moment wherein the man has sufficiently let go of the memory, and believed it as a present emotion: of comfort and relief. In contrast, it is only in the museum where the animals of the past have been frozen for perpetuity did the man truly perfect the art of time travel (probably in acceptance that the past, like these frozen animals, need to be immobile for that is memory's most innate nature). That was exactly what the man's captors needed, a perpetuated memory not a fleeting emotion.

La Jetée is a film that is continually changing and evolving. It inhabits the very quality that makes photography a veritable art form, the way it captures a real moment in time for perpetuation and incessant interpretation. Similarly, La Jetée has the story of a man and his obsession with his memory of a girl waiting in the jetty made eternal. Yet beyond that story is Marker's art which plays differently every single time it is seen. The first time I saw it, it impressed me with how the narrative was perfectly told through mere photographs. The second time I saw it, I was left enchanted by its subtle tackling of the interconnections of time, memory, love, and obsession. The third time I saw it, I became fascinated by Marker’s fluency in his medium. Metaphorically put, La Jetée is as open as the clear skies that day when the image of the girl was engraved on the man's mind, and as tremendous and terrifying as the apocalypse that befell the world after it.

La Vie En Rose (2007)

La Vie En Rose (Olivier Dahan, 2007)
French Title: La Môme

La Vie En Rose, Olivier Dahan's bloated biopic about French singer Edith Piaf, is enjoyable precisely for one reason, Marion Cotillard's wonderful performance as the iconic popular vocalist. It's already a widely known fact that Cotillard shaved back her hairline, completely shaved her eyebrows to accommodate ones that are penciled in, and endured five hours of make-up to look like Piaf from her early twenties up to her demise at the age of 48. It's a performance that relies on maturity since the temptation of basking on the stylized make-up and larger-than-life personality of the celebrity is immense. Cotillard gives a lovely performance, avoiding the easy allure of impersonation and instead gives her version of Piaf a delightful depth and humanity, a semblance of humanity amid the heavy make-up, the stylized gestures, and the less-than-enthralling filmmaking.

As with most biopics, La Vie En Rose makes the mistake of condensing the life of a person in a span of two hours or a little bit more. The results are usually redundant and utterly sentimental episodic messes like Taylor Hackford's Ray (2004) or James Mangold's Walk the Line (2005). Other biopics who have fallen in the same trap rise above the rest through sheer inspired workmanship. Such is the case of The Aviator (2004), Martin Scorsese's exhilarating although rather conventional (in the typical Hollywood Oscar-whoring epic scale) take on the life of Howard Hughes. In a way, Piaf's life is perfect for the traditional kind of biopic. She has achieved national and international success to evoke a semblance of veneration or at least interest from the moviegoing public. Her public life is near-legendary, especially with her bouts with alcoholism, her several doomed loves, and her early death. Her private life, which includes her troubled childhood and her obscure work during World War II among many others, is both intriguing and mysterious.

Thus, La Vie En Rose is mostly composed of probably fictionalized moments of Piaf's life. The film strings these moments together, not through the traditional straightforward narrative construct, but through frequent mind-boggling chronological jumps, facilitated by indications of time and place and usually accompanied by Piaf's own songs. There seems to be a cohering element in Dahan's narrative conceit, but even that fails to register. It feels like Dahan contemplates on telling Piaf's life, not from childhood to death, but from a standpoint of themes that differentiate Piaf from other singers. The film is told through these aspects --- Piaf's devotion to St. Therese, her struggle to be within the concept of an artist, love, and lastly mortality. Unfortunately, it's just very difficult to the confounding narrative's denseness. It just doesn't work.

Dahan starts out with Piaf collapsing during a concert while we overhear her praying to St. Therese to delay her death. The film flashbacks to her childhood, where she succumbs to blindness but is miraculously cured after a pilgrimage to her saint's tomb. In one scene, most probably doctored to fit cinematic standards, the saint appears from the embers of a circus-hired fire eater's flames, assuring young Piaf of guidance and protection. The film overindulges in romanticizing Piaf, from her childhood being cared for by prostitutes with hearts of gold, her above mentioned devotion to St. Therese, her paramount alcoholism, even her swooning romance with French boxing champion.

Inevitably, more interesting points are overshadowed. Her supposed questionable role in World War II, or her relationship with her first husband are left out, brandishing a celebrity that seems self-contained in her own world. Piaf then becomes ultimately less human than Dahan wishes to present her, inevitably turning her into a mere reactive subject of the circumstances that the director plagued her story with instead of a human being with complex morality and psychology. Dahan merely reads to us his version of her story instead of creating a cinematic persona out of Piaf, resulting into, despite his narrative risks, an uncompelling biopic.

Persepolis (2007)

Persepolis (Vincent Paronnaud & Marjane Satrapi, 2007)

Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis is quite the delectable treat. The Cannes Jury Prize winner (the film has the distinction of being the first time an animated film won anything from the prestigious film festival since René Laloux's The Fantastic Planet in 1973) inhabits the same pulpy aesthetic as its graphic novel predecessor as well as the comic's deliciously subtle and playful heart.

The film, like Satrapi's graphic novels, plays like a moving memoir; it's nearly embarrassingly personal yet touches on that very universal need to rebel and rise above the norm. The film itself could've been done as a live action film, or a cuter, cuddlier and more beautiful version of the comic books, but to do that would lose the edgy charm the present film has to offer. As it is, Persepolis is a breath of fresh air most especially from recent animated films (computer generated or otherwise) produced by the Hollywood factory.

A plain-looking Marjane (in appropriately dull colors) awaits her scheduled flight to Tehran; as accustomed, she puts on her Muslim veil (fellow travelers in the restroom give her suspicious glances --- post-9/11 prejudice in cartoons feels a lot more ridiculous, a lot more enraging); but she's no typical Muslim as she's clearly unhappy with that bothersome veil and starts smoking a cigarette (another fellow traveler gives her the evil eye --- second hand smoke kills more efficiently than the one inhaled and exhaled by chain smokers). She is to go back to her motherland, yet it is clear that fear and worries overpower excitement and nostalgia.

Most of the film is told in flashbacks, where the colors of Marjane's contemporary experiences are filtered to give an ancient black and white aesthetic. Her personal history precedes the overthrowing of the Shah; we get a glimpse of her naive mind that addresses heroism by the number of years spent in jail, and patriotism by the person's pedigree (she starts a violent chase of a kid whose father is rumored to be a prison warden responsible for the torture and deaths of so many patriots). Marjane's family is composed of her very politically aware parents and a grandmother who espouses modernity amidst the claustrophobic cultural diminution of the new government. The lovely mix-up comprises a huge chunk of the film's charm, humor and heart.

Most delightful about Persepolis is how Paronnaud and Satrapi were able to capture the volatile imagination of a young girl living during hard times. I was enamored when Marjane's uncle's tales (which are really oft-told political stories with abundant backbiting and legalese) are turned into to become gorgeously crafted fairy tales visualized like the shadow puppets of the late great Lotte Reiniger; or how more violent sequences are filtered of the usual crimson of blood and severed limbs but retain the same horrifying factor that keeps us wary of mindless wars and battles.

There's a mature sense of political thinking in the film's rather simplistic manner of storytelling, and when Marjane's youth-inflected curiosity is exchanged with coming-of-age apathy, we still sense an overpowering air of her poor Persia suffering while she is battling her personal demons in a strange European land. Satrapi (and co-director Paronnaud) knows her own story too well, well enough to tell it resoundingly right.

2 Days in Paris (2007)

2 Days in Paris (Julie Delpy, 2007)

When Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke reunited, although belatedly, in a little book shop in Paris, it felt just perfect. Paris seems to be that essential romantic rendezvous, especially with its gorgeous architecture, that distinct air of all the many lovers that have fallen in love with each other, the lights, the permanent structures of history. Delpy's 2 Days in Paris felt like it choked on the extravagant amore France's capital city has been delegated with; and regurgitated a romantic nightmare that would test the less-than-perfect bonds of a two-year relationship, instead of the predictable nightcap to a couple's European vacation.

Delpy has a crazy sense of humor. After delighting the world with the possibilities of perfect romantic endings in this schizophrenic modern age (in Richard Linklater's beautiful Before Sunset (2004)), she comes up with this film, the perfect antithesis to everything Linklater's film represented. The characters are similar --- a couple in their mid-thirties (American and French) testing the dynamics of a relationship (although here, they've been together for two years unlike the years of absence between Linklater's Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset).

The similarities end there, Delpy's Marion is a perfect eyesight-deprived nymphomaniac (she collects polaroid pictures of all her boyfriends naked with helium balloons tied to their penises) and her partner Jack (Adam Goldberg, who has none of Hawke's physical charm) is the typical Manhattan native (as exemplified by the quintessential Woody Allen character --- hypochondriac, witty, and confused).

Paris is no longer the city forever draped with that romantic golden sunlight; instead it felt like the messy bedroom you are so embarrassed to exhibit to your friends since it has all the pieces of evidence of your shady past and other secrets. The cab drivers are either too generous to donate their sperm to impregnate you, or are neo-Nazis on a perpetual diatribe against the abundance of Arabs in the lovely streets of their beloved city. Each corner of the city has a memory or dirt attached to it --- either a past boyfriend or a current fuckbuddy, a father's mission to rid the city of sidewalk parkers or a mother's tale of sexual relations with the late Jim Morrison, an art gallery of art about sex or a guardian angel-like British fairy on a mission to rid the world of GMO's and fast food joints.

2 Days in Paris is crude in a way that Linklater's ode to Paris is elegant (with all its random conversations captured in gorgeous long takes). The beautiful thing about Delpy's filmmaking is that it's so raw and un-manufactured (Delpy directs, stars, edits, and composes the music for this film; according to one interview, she's also an errand girl) that its un-elegant turnaround (wherein narration accompanies the visuals; I would've appreciated if Delpy made the film sans the lengthy narrated expositions as the narrations felt like rationalizations or justifications of Marion's quirky characteristics) in the end is quite miraculous that it worked magically despite feeling rather rushed and tacked on.

Paris, Je T'aime (2006)

Paris, Je T'aime (Olivier Assayas, Frédéric Auburtin, Emmanuel Benbihy, Gurinder Chadha, Sylvain Chomet, Ethan & Joel Coen, Isabel Coixet, Wes Craven, Alfonso Cuarón, Gerard Depardieu, Christopher Doyle, Richard LaGravanese, Vincenzo Natali, Alexander Payne, Bruno Podalydès, Walter Salles, Oliver Schmitz, Nobuhiro Suwa, Daniela Thomas, Tom Tykwer, Gus Van Sant, 2006)
English Title: Paris, I Love You

Watching through Paris, Je T'aime is like eating through a box of mixed chocolate truffles. The eighteen five-minute shorts are all undemandingly commercial; a few touch on more relevant issues but most maintain an atmosphere of pure saccharine joy. Like those expensive chocolates comfortably sitting in a box, the short films come in different shapes and sizes, with different fillings and tastes --- sometimes the effort reveals a surprisingly satisfying delicacy; other times, it comes out as bland or just indescribably bad.

The omnibus starts with Bruno Podalydès Montmartre (the eighteen films' titles are derived from the different districts of Paris), where an adult man struggles to find a parking space only to end up with a woman who serendipitously faints beside his car. Most of the short films aren't complete tales. They are mostly beginnings or ends, with the other parts inconveniently left out for the imaginations of the viewers. Gurinder Chadha's Quais de Seine, about a young man who falls for a Muslim woman, and Gus Van Sant's Le Marais, about a guy who attempts to hook up with another guy he meets in a shop, can be described as starting stories for blossoming relationships. They directly address the city's ability to spark romance, even against cultural barriers.

Some of the films are anecdotes like Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas' Loin du 16e, a sentimental look at an immigrant who during the early morning, placates her baby by singing a native lullaby, and spends the rest of the day earning her keep by taking care of the baby of a more affluent mom. South African Oliver Schmitz mixes the cruelty of romantic destiny and the plight of African immigrants through his Place des Fêtes. Christopher Doyle playfully experiments while addressing the difficulty in communication between Chinese immigrants and Parisians with the largely absurd, mostly confusing Porte de Choisy.

More touching are the short films that hint of closure. The aforementioned Place des Fêtes details a relationship that ended before it even began. Isabel Coixet's Bastille narrates a break-up that goes awry when a cheating husband suddenly learns of his wife's cancer. Richard LaGravanese's Pigalle delivers a quasi-romantic wrap-up to a partnership that has aged through time. Most satisfying is Frédéric Auburtin and Gerard Depardieu's Quartier Latin which inflicts dry humor to a cordial yet painful divorce settlement. Nobuhiro Suwa's Place des Victoires portraits a heartbreaking closure for a mother mourning over the death of his son.

Alfonso Cuarón misfires with his Parc Monceau, a conversation between an old man and a younger woman walking in the streets of Paris with a not-so-insightful revelation in the end. Tom Tykwer's Faubourg Saint-Denis unsuccessfully breezes through the ups and downs of a relationship between a blind man and an aspiring actress. Opposite Tykwer's meager attempt is Olivier Assayas' more daring Quartier des Enfants Rouges which similarly discusses a relationship between an actress and a drug peddler, although aborted by their respective addictions. Unique yet disappointing is Vincenzo Natali's Quartier de la Madeleine, which puts a vampire twist in the oft-used trope of Paris being the city of lovers.

The Coen Brothers' play a prank on American tourist (wonderfully played by Steve Buscemi) in Tuileries, while Wes Craven declares that a little bit of Oscar Wilde (imagined or not) can put any rocky relationship at ease with his hilarious Père-Lachaise. Magical however is Sylvain Chomet's Tour Eiffel. The short film details the story of a Parisian mime who unintentionally wreaks havoc in Paris, and meets the love of his life in prison. Chomet, who magnifies the mundane as he has done in The Triplets of Belleville (2003), colors the already colorful streets of Paris with the imaginative antics of a less-than-charming mime artist.

Wrapping Paris, Je T'aime is Alexander Payne's 14e Arrondissement which summarizes the directors' efforts through the surprising wisdom of a middle-aged, middle-income and oversized American woman who spends her savings to stay a few days in Paris. Narrated by the American in poorly rendered French, we witness Paris in its least magical (stripped away of all the drama, the comedy, the tragedy, the romanticism and the enchantment of the short films previously shown), where food is the same as in America (burgers and faux Chinese food), the parks are the same as in America, and the people are the same as everywhere else. Yet despite its ordinariness, it still listens and speaks and accepts and gives out love proposals, as experienced (depicted with wry and typically Payne humor) by that faceless American.

The omnibus is concluded with a love song to Paris playing side by side with the resolutions of each depicted tale. Expectedly, I was on a sugar-rush. The high inflicted by the eighteen whimsical tales will soon be drowned and forgotten. What remains is that permanent desire to experience a Parisian anecdote of my own.

Rosetta (1999)

Rosetta (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, 1999)

Midway through the film, Rosetta (Émilie Dequenne) recites a personal prayer before heading to bed. Previous to that, she was befriended by a waffle stand salesperson (Fabrizio Rongione) who takes her in into his apartment; feeding her French waffles; allowing her to listen to his amateur drum recordings; and teaches her (although quite unsuccessfully) to dance. It is that state of normalcy that Rosetta has longed for --- to live in an urban flat, instead of the trailer camp where she and her mother resides in; to have a normal relationship with a concerned friend, instead of keeping every bit of concern alone; to have a stable job, instead of spending days getting fired and subsequently looking for employment in vain. Her prayer is like a routinary mantra that keeps her surviving through the inequality of society, but like most prayers or mottos, fails to materialize.

The following day, Rosetta is replaced in her work by her employer's lazy son. Her life falls once again in that perpetual limbo of uncertainty; and the only thing stable are the little peculiarities that surround her everyday life. Her daily breakfast of waffles and tap water, her shortcuts through the forest that surrounds her trailer camp, her daily means of catching fishes through a home-made fish trap, her eternal suffering because of stomach cramps made bearable by home-made cures of a pill and a glass of water and the sound and vibrations of a hair dryer --- these are the things that characterize Rosetta aside from the fact that she's in a continuous state of rage and discontent.

Rosetta is the second film made by the Dardenne Brothers and their first film to win the much-coveted Golden Palm in the 1999 Cannes Film Festival. It is uncompromising and bleak. The camera mostly focuses on the face of the titular character; concentrating the viewers' attention to the nuances of Dequenne's performance. From the first scene when we see her storming along the hallway to the factory where she confronts a co-worker and her boss on her being fired, we immediately sense desperation and fear. It certainly feels that employment for Rosetta is her state of normalcy, her proof of humanity. Without it, she is drowned with her mundane yet unique routines and her larger-than-life domestic problems, including taking care of her alcoholic mom who succumbs to whoring herself for a few bottles of alcohol.

The pervading atmosphere of desperation and futility overcomes the entire film, that the moments wherein Rosetta allows herself a momentary feeling of glee, sadness, or any other emotion other than anger feels rather awkward. It is that misogynistic quality of the Dardenne Brothers' film which I dislike. It is that quality that purposely limits the titular character to situations of suffering and cutthroat moral choices that strips any sense of lingering humanity to the film, and thus gives the final product an unlikable aftertaste despite its redeeming social commentaries on unemployment and inequality. We only see Rosetta as an unwavering force of negative energy, irreversible yet depletable; never as a human being with valid needs and a bevy of emotions.

Imprisoned by poverty, Rosetta's fate seems trapped in her earthbound hell. The Dardenne Brothers play their cruellest trick on their heroine by preventing her from escaping that prison through the easiest way out. The final few minutes of the film seemed taken out of a magician's hat; wherein the desperation that pervades and fluctuates undramatically is concluded by a final act of futility, only to be stopped by their own poverty (the gas tank becomes empty before completely suffocating her and her mother). She purchases a new gas tank from the camp caretaker and carries it off to her trailer. Her former friend, consumed by anger because of her treachery, makes her task even more difficult by covering her path with his motorcycle. She gives up, falls on her knees and cries, with the final scene showing her former friend picking her up from that defeated stance.

The question arises as to the directors' motives. They create a character who has fallen from grace because of her poverty and her family's state in life, only to experiment with her or toy with her by enlarging her burden. That final scene where Rosetta finally cries and whimpers concludes the experiment, pleasing the directors curiosity as to the limits of Rosetta's conditions --- when will she succumb to the fact that even death has given up on her, when can we truly say that she's fallen and needs a helping hand to rise again? That also concludes my appreciation for the film as that moment has assured me that the Dardennes Brothers have inflicted on me an imaginary concern for their experimentation, rather than genuine pathos for a human individual.

L' Enfer (2005)

L' Enfer (Danis Tanovic, 2005)
English Title: Hell

Krzysztof Kieslowski's premature death gave us a treasure trove of great films (Decalogue (1989), Three Colors Trilogy (Blue, 1993; White, 1994; Red, 1995), The Double Life of Veronique (1991), etc.), including three unfinished screenplays (co-written with his long-time collaborator Krzysztof Piesiewicz) that forms a trilogy inspired by Dante Alighieri's Divine Trilogy. Heaven (2002), the first part of the trilogy, is directed by German helmer Tom Tykwer and is set in Italy, wherein a disgruntled woman accidentally kills innocent victims and later on escapes with a sympathizer and achieves a symbolic redemption in the end. The second part of the trilogy L' Enfer (Hell) is directed by Bosnian director Danis Tanovic, whose No Man's Land (2001) won him plenty of accolades worldwide, and is set in France wherein three sisters struggle with their disparate lives after a traumatic event during their childhood.

Much like what Kieslowski and Piesiewicz did with Decalogue and Three Colors Trilogy (wherein they stripped the ten commandments of their religious connotation, and the three colors of the French flag and their respective ideals of their political meanings), the three levels of the afterlife are removed of any of their Catholic dimensions, and what remains are basic human concepts that encapsulate these states in a completely human and worldly experience. In Heaven, it is redemption; a complete escape from the troubles that plague earthly life (that final scene in the film is both fantastical and yet completely understandable). L' Enfer, on the other hand, dictates a scenario of inescapable strife --- wherein strings of coincidences (or much more poetically, because of their destiny to have unfortunate lives) keep the three sisters from achieving a semblance of happiness.

It's more infernal than the typical descriptions of hell; while the French communes seem normal, actually sunny and pleasant at times, there is an unbearable sense of claustrophobia that traps these characters. The eldest sister Celine (Karin Viard) takes care of their physically incapacitated mom, suffers through a routine of taking the train from her apartment to the convalescent home (not to mention her self-imposed duty to fetch the daily papers and bread for her elderly neighbor), that when a handsome stalker Sebastian (Guillaume Canet) suddenly starts to hound through that routine, she fantasizes a romantic escape. In her masochistic sense of duty, she literally sleeps through opportunities for coincidences that might lead to her metaphorical redemption --- that same train conductor who lovingly observes her sleeping through the train ride.

Sophie (Emmanuelle Béart) gets obsessed with her husband's infidelity. She carefully follows her husband through his sexual escapades with a beautiful model; literally, consumes herself with the idea of punishing herself (and in a way, her two minor children) because of her husband's cheating. Their eventual separation connotes freedom from the inescapable repercussions of an unhappy married life; yet the reality of the matter is that, like her apartment that has been stripped off its beautiful decors and interiors, she has become empty and falsely complete.

The youngest sister Anne (Marie Gillain) is madly in love with her married professor (Jacques Perrin); she allows herself to be emotionally maltreated, be left unreciprocated with her immense romantic longings, with that fantastic idea that the professor would leave his family to be with her, taking in the idea that their getaway in Acropolis is as permanent a symbol of love as that of marriage and family. She symbolically releases herself through such longing, but in the end, that release is a mere facade, an unguaranteed repression, that will inevitably explode when the cruel tricks of fate seek to expose her true emotions.

It's a complex web of unhappy lives that Kieslowski and Piesiewicz paint; three separately told experiences that are devoid of any sense of redemption, thrown in a pit by fate and circumstance, enunciated by myth and literature as expressed through the Greek tragedy of Medea. While Heaven, the redemption may be conceived as cheaply constructed and maybe too easily realized, in L' Enfer, it's a doom that can be described as permanent and ravaging. The film dictates instances of possible escape (when the train conductor tries to announce her love by giving a gift to Celine, or the sisters' eventual reconnection), but again, fate and an unmistakable sense of human cruelty and emotional torture, get swayed in the equation that would make happiness elusive, or even impossible.

It's quite amazing how L' Enfer feels very much like a film directed by Kieslowski. The hues, the music motif, even little signature touches (the old lady trying to throw a bottle in a trach receptacle or that bee trying to escape from drowning), the overall atmosphere --- all these are Kieslowski-an in spirit. It felt like a departure for Tanovic (whose sense of satire made No Man's Land a rather involving political statement) who opens himself to be possessed by the great director's aesthetic and philosophical traits. And while the film is mostly melodramatic at times, there are quiet touches of black humor that surface throughout; the film is actually as interesting and as amusing as the bee struggling to get out of the liquid. But while the bee frees itself and flies to safety, the characters in this piece won't die and won't get freed --- they wriggle and strugglingly swim in a life-long emotional, mental, and philosophical emptiness as punishments inherited from a society rules over by an irrational god, or no god at all.

Trial of Joan of Arc (1962)

Trial of Joan of Arc (Robert Bresson, 1962)
French Title: Procès de Jeanne d'Arc

Robert Bresson's Trial of Joan of Arc opens with robed steps scurrying towards a ranking church official. We never get a sense as to who exactly are these people until the central figure speaks; declaring that her daughter has lived a religious past and has been convicted and burned for false crimes. She reads her declaration from a scroll of parchment, and we can guess that the speaker is the mother of Joan of Arc. Drums interrupt the declaration, and as the opening credits are shown on screen, the image of the kneeling robed figure presumably still reading from the parchment persists. We learn from Bresson's introductory statement that the opening sequence is from the rehabilitation which took place 25 years after Joan's burning. More importantly, we also learn that no portrait or image remains of Joan, and that the film is completely reconstructed from the minutes of Joan's trial.

We first see the menacled hands of Joan (Florence Delay), atop the bible. The film is predominantly just a series of exchanges between Joan and her inquisitors, the Bishop Cauchon (Jean-Claude Fourneau) --- with Joan recitingly dictating her answers to her judges' interrogations. Whenever she's not in the trial, we see her in her cell; her hands are free but her foot bounded with metal chains. Moreover, there's a peeping hole in the cell where Joan's English guards consistently make remarks on their prisoner's disposition.

The atmosphere is claustrophobic --- when in trial, Joan is always surrouded by the heads of clergymen while being led by the Anglophile bishop to reveal relationships with witchcraft. Even more so while she's in the cell wherein walls of heavy stone (the film was shot in the exact prison where Joan was detained) surround her, and privacy and even remnants of her feminine dignity are being encroached. She claims that her martyrdom is her imprisonment, definitely unaware that her burning has been pre-destined by her English captors.

France is captured by England. The bishops are being controlled by their English-speaking masters. Joan is physically, mentally and psychologically restrained by both her captors and the voices that dwell inside her head. Bresson explicitly explores the struggle for release, for that philosophical freedom, by tackling the enigma of Joan of Arc. Imperatively, he doesn't allow much creative freedom from his actors, restricting their dialogues as to what has been transcribed from the historical trials. There's a feeling that the actors are merely reading their lines (the same way that the mother is reading from the parchment what she thought of was her daughter's life), restricted from enunciation or emotions. Like the characters they are portraying and Bresson is depicting, the methodology is quite restrictive to what is historically preserved from the life of Joan. It's uncomfortably straightforward, spartan in method, and rarely punctuated with humanity (we do see Joan cry, but it is probably due to Bresson's understanding that the lass is merely nineteen and is burdened with a spiritual duty).

From the narrative sparseness and the thematic intensity, Bresson develops a journey from corporeal imprisonment to freedom. There's a curious preoccupation with steps and footwork. Bresson's camera focuses a number of times on the feet of his characters; as if proclaiming our body's gravitational attraction with the Earth. That theme predominantly surfaces in Joan's trial --- the unsurprising uncomplementary nature of spiritual redemption and human politics (bureaucracy, justice, punishment). Bresson again captures Joan's bare feet finally lightfootedly walking towards the stake --- it's quite an unusual walk; it seems that she's scurrying or floating against the cement road; even an onlookers attempt to make her trip is met with failure as she continues her hurried steps.

We first see the free sky (a refreshing scene) when Joan is tied to the stake. While she burns, she says her last words --- that her voices did not deceive her (she begins to understand that she was meant to escape all corporeal imprisonment, not imprisonment dictated by the terms of human relations). When she breathes her last sigh, Bresson cuts to doves atop the canvas that separates the bishops from the sky, then again cuts to the stake with only ashes as remnants of Joan's body-bound self. It's quite a touching depiction of spiritual release.

Arthur and the Invisibles (2006)

Arthur and the Invisibles (Luc Besson, 2006)
French Title: Arthur et les Minimoys

The English title is actually very misleading; there are no invisible creatures in Luc Besson's live action-animation hybrid Arthur and the Invisibles. Instead, there are creatures called Minimoys --- ant-sized elf-like critters who were transported from their native Africa by an intrepid explorer-inventor, missing grandfather of titular Arthur (Freddie Highmore). The Minimoys have built a sort of underground civilization complete with a monarchist government (with its accompanying bumbling king (voiced by Robert de Niro), overly enthusiastic heiress-princess (voiced by Madonna), and annoying and practically useless prince (voiced by Jimmy Fallon)), and a rival evil kingdom ruled by deformed and disfigured Maltazard (voiced by David Bowie).

Arthur, through a telescope-like contraption and with the help of some tall, surprisingly English-fluent tribesmen, shrinks himself to save the Minimoy kingdom, find his grandfather's rubies to pay off his family's debts, and discover love in the person of the Minimoy princess. The subterranean world of the Minimoys is an idea we've already seen before; the underground caverns of our familiar homes have already been home to plenty of cinematic mysterious creatures (just last year, computer animated The Ant Bully (John Davis, 2006) hypothesized a community of insects who are out to teach a kid a lesson; Antz (Eric Darnell & Tim Johnson, 1998) felt more sophisticated). Besson, at least, tries to actually develop his own microscopic civilization (he wrote the series of children's books that the film was adapted from) with a distinct cultural identity rather than mere microcosms of the above-ground human world. Sadly, it turns out that Besson's imaginative creation is mostly redundant children's fare, and has no dreams of transcending to Miyazaki realm (more substantial family fun).

There's also something very bothersome about the film. At first, I thought the tepidness of the film was a result of the substandard writing but when the end credits start rolling, and I get reminded that the princess is voiced by Madonna, and the kid is Highmore, I suddenly got goosebumps. Of course, there's a difficulty in establishing a convincing romantic angle between a kid actor and a married forty-plus actress (even if they're just voice overs). However, in this case, the forced rapport between the two performers turn what could've been witty or deep verbal exchanges between the characters into bland and discomforting tirades.

Mia Farrow (who rarely gets work nowadays) plays Highmore's grandmother. Decades after her turn as haunted mother in Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968), she actually pulls off a lovely performance as the kid's proxy mother figure. Sadly, she's just one of the few positive things to say about this Besson film. The computer animation, at first, was actually quite impressive. Besson has a knack for creating visually rich alternate universes and he does not fail us in this regard. However, after the initial wonder (which I thought was a mere aftereffect of the unremarkable live-action cinematography thus, the excitement when my eyes were treated to something colorful and vibrant), everything becomes drab; the elfish character designs do not astound; the locales are at times stunning but are not enough to sustain an entire feature. If you're looking for kid-friendly adventure, look elsewhere. Not even David Bowie's presence (or at least his aural presence) can save this shtick from the dumping ground of forgettable fantasy flicks.

Gandahar (1988)

Gandahar (René Laloux, 1988)
a.k.a. Light Years

Gandahar is probably the closest René Laloux ever came in replicating the level of sophistication he gave alien civilizations in The Fantastic Planet (1973). He opens the film with an overview of a seaside community: blue skinned humanoids living life in utter simplicity. Laloux presents the planet of Gandahar as a utopian paradise where everything is in joyful order; nature and civilization coincide like connecting puzzle pieces (a plant gives birth to a pet, the pet is then taken care of by a female Gandaharian by breastfeeding it). The supposed peace is disrupted when laser rays start targeting the peaceful Gandaharians, turning them into stone.

Laloux cuts to the capital of Gandahar, Jasper. Beneath the carved bust of a female Gandaharian, the council of elders is debating on who to send to uncover the mysterious enemies of Gandahar. Sylvain is chosen; and is sent to the vast ocean to learn more about Gandahar's attackers, an army of metal men. On the way, he discovers an underground civilization of deformed Gandaharians (botched experiments of Jasper who were completely forgotten), and an oversized brain (again, another botched experiment of Jasper thrown to the sea when it was getting too big to destroy).

It's an interesting concept, sprawling in its seemingly unlimited area of creation; which is perfect for the highly imaginative Laloux. Laloux eats up the concept, and populates the alien world with a civilization that becomes too advanced (probably not industrially; but the scientific experimentations to turn nature into a tool for advancement cannot relate Gandahar as naturally perfect), too selfish and perfectionist (the deformed Gandaharias have turned into a mere tall tale; and instead of turning them into a distinct class, Gandahar has totally forgotten them (class structures cannot exist in a Utopian society)), and too complacent that it is almost powerless to any external struggle. The plot relies on time travel for its movement; Sylvain seems to be the chosen one to enact the prophecy but the prophecy's cyclical syntax connotes an impetus for salvation. I suggest that the sudden appearance of the Gandaharian dinosaur-like creature that saves Sylvain and love interest Airelle from their egg-shaped cell as the impetus; Sylvain thought that the dinosaur as extinct; I thought that the dinosaur is one of those Gandaharian creatures that have escaped Gandahar's god-like machinations and is therefore the proper turning point (it being pure from Gandahar's "sins against nature") that could enact the cyclical prophecy and in turn save Gandahar.

Gandahar is released in the United States as Light Years. The plot remains relatively unchanged except that the script was revised by Isaac Asimov, the music is modified to include generic sci-fi melodics and sound effects, the director's credit shamelessly grabbed by Harvey Weinstein. Asimov's translation turns Laloux's film into an unexciting talkfest; Asimov delights in several voice-over narrations, suggests a maternal relation between the Gandaharian queen Ambisextra and Sylvain, lightens the romantic angle between Sylvain and Airelle. Asimov's screenplay is also riddled with hyphaluting wordplay, which somehow lessens the natural transition of Laloux's original film --- the result is a disorienting flow, a boringly sexless characterization, and an inevitably less enjoyable film. Harvey Weinstein does employ several actors and actresses to provide voice talents for the characters (Glenn Close as Ambisextra, Christopher Plummer as Metamorphis the evil oversized brain). However, the delivery remains flat; presumably because of Asimov's distancing semantics.

Seeing both versions, I cannot deny that Laloux's final feature film is indeed a worthy feature; still miles away from his masterpiece The Fantastic Planet, but definitely up and above Time Masters (1982). Even with Weinstein's mutated Light Years, you can still observe Laloux's undeniable artistry and imagination in cooking up an alien civilization complete with its social and governmental structures, and biological make-up.

Time Masters (1982)

Time Masters (René Laloux, 1982)
French Title: Les maîtres du temps

Time Masters is the second Stefan Wul novel ("L'Orphelin de Perdide") director René Laloux adapted. The first one being "Oms En Serie" which Laloux turned into the now classic The Fantastic Planet (1973). It certainly feels like Laloux's cinematic style is compatible with Wul's tales of otherworldly lifeforms, civilizations, and struggles. Laloux breezes through the planet of Perdide with its interesting landscapes and living curiosities, while accommodating a storyline that invokes a gripping twist in the end; a twist that all of a sudden turns the tale into an involving temporal puzzle.

The plot follows a troupe of space mercenaries in a race against time trying to rescue a little boy who is left alone in the wilderness of Perdide. The boy, who is merely kept alive by an intergalactic radio (from which he receives information and company from the space mercenaries) he, by his youth and innocence, thinks of as a friend called "Mike."

Time Masters feels a less serious effort compared to The Fantastic Planet. Unlike the latter film wherein adult themes surface from the planetary rebellion by the little aliens against their blue-skinned humanoid masters, Time Masters is pretty much a straightforward rescue film wherein the heroes jump in and out of problematic scenarios and try to arrive in Perdide before the boy gets devoured by locust-like creatures. There are scenarios wherein Laloux seems to be pushing a certain theme --- the troupe lands in a deserted planet inhabited by faceless angel-like creatures. These creatures would kidnap visitors and through a ceremony turn them into "puppets" just like them. The scenario feels like a commentary against organized religion (especially with the utilized imagery of angels, the ceremonial baptism to a common ideology). The scenario being a mere point within the entire film betrays the depth of the commentaries for narrative ease and straightforwardness. It feels like Laloux is kept from truly exploring these alien environs by his adherence to storytelling; something i never felt while watching The Fantastic Planet.

Time Masters marks the first collaboration between Laloux and comic book artist Jean Giraud. Giraud is most famous for co-creating The Silver Surfer, and would later on work on as concept artist for films like Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979), Willow (Ron Howard, 1988), and The Fifth Element (Luc Besson, 1997). This is perhaps the reason why there is such a huge difference between the designs of The Fantastic Planet and Time Masters. The Fantastic Planet's art is grotesque, surreal, and at times, downright disturbing. Time Masters feels much more cartoon-y and friendly. Giraud is responsible for the sketches, and there is indeed a comic book feel to the film. There is very minimal movement, and more often than not, Laloux bathes the film in sedentary moments; giving us the opportunity to examine and enjoy his and Giraud's collaborative art.

The animation is not smooth, which shouldn't pose a problem, especially when one is already used to Laloux's cinema. Time Masters seems to be confused of its classification; whether or not it is a children's film or an adult-centered animated film. Most of the alien designs are clumsily conceived (especially if compared to the dangerous flora and fauna of The Fantastic Planet), on the verge of being silly in the level of those Hanna-Barbara cartoons. Yet at times, it's quite fantastic and the level Laloux infuses these made-up alien landscapes with real ecosystems and cycles is just compelling.

How Wan-Fô Was Saved (1987)

How Wan-Fô Was Saved (René Laloux, 1987)
French Title: Comment Wang-Fo fut sauvé

Watch René Laloux's animation now with eyes trained to detect the individual strands of fur in a character or the realistic human-like movements of digitized children and your bound for disappointment. Laloux's animation is not about emulation of what's real. Animation is after all a means to release the restrictions of reality. Laloux's most popular feature The Fantastic Planet does not have anatomically accurate beings; it is sci-fi and its world is populated by blue skinned aliens, little humanoid creatures, a host of bizarre fauna, and a compelling environment that stretches the boundaries of human imagination. Laloux has made only three feature length films in his career; most of his other works are short films. How Wan-Fô Was Saved is his favorite among his works. Adapted from a short story of Marguerite Yourcenar, which is also rewritten adaptation of a Chinese parable, How Wan-Fô Was Saved is told in a simplistic yet thought-provoking manner that is quite absent from the mainstream animated cinema of today which seems to be more interested in mundane details than adept storytelling.

The animation is coarse. Laloux is not interested in smooth movements. His characters are limited in their mobility; most of the action is suggested by the narration which supplies a level of psychology to the immobile artworks. Yet with the little movement that is portrayed, the accuracy of human experience is felt. The air of alcohol intoxication is portrayed with deliberate accuracy by Laloux using the most economic of details. From the point of view of the narrator, the apprentice of master painter Wan-Fô, the entire tavern feels alive in a drunken man's perspective. Movement is slower; laughter is louder; visual points of interest are more profound (a lady roasting a pig; his master's finger painting spilled wine; personal musings of the depth of art).

With less than fifteen minutes, Laloux was able to manipulate a story to serve his philosophical interests. He details the master and his apprentice's capture and delivery to the emperor of the Han kingdom. He emotionally paints a background tale on the pale-skinned emperor; his character design establishes himself as a heartless villain, but his back story tells otherwise. He plants an indefatigable sense of loyalty in the apprentice's character for his master and his master's craft, to the point of lethal jealousy for his beautiful wife. In a sense, the characters of How Wan-Fô Was Saved are as alien as the humanoid citizens of The Fantastic Planet, despite being grounded on an exotic yet real Chinese culture, with their warped psychology that befits the constructs of its narrative genre.

The ending is even more brilliant. The apprentice is punished for loyally defending his master; the palace guards behead the defensive apprentice and Laloux does not shy away from the portrayal of violence. He nonchalantly depicts the beheading as mere background noise --- a thud accompanying the animated fall of the headless body. Wan-Fô is ordered to complete a painting that has been bothering the emperor since his childhood days. Again, Laloux insists on immobility. Bystanders and the emperor statically watch the master complete the painting of a vast ocean; then the painting bursts with life, a little boat inches closer and closer to rescue the old master from his fate. Laloux, before he did his first animated short film, worked for a psychiatric ward and has opted to describe his cinema as schizophrenic. In a sense, Laloux achieves an unfathomable excellence in planting imaginative unrealism in his animated works; he allows us to lose ourselves in our imagination and join the old master in his escape from the clutches of a tyrant who misunderstands the value of art.

******
This post is my contribution to the Short Film Blog-A-Thon hosted in Only the Cinema and Culture Snob.

Just Before Nightfall (1971)

Just Before Nightfall (Claude Chabrol, 1971)
French Title: Juste avant la nuit

It was exactly like a dream, an erotic one. Advertising executive Charles Masson (Michel Bouquet) sitting and pondering with a naked blond woman inviting him to bed "Come and play... or I'll make you pay." The woman successfully seduces Charles to bed wherein they exchange sexual advances. The woman is Laura (Anna Douking), the wife of Charles' best friend Francois (François Périer). Charles is also married to Helene (Stéphane Audran) and has two children with her. We didn't know such complexities of that sexually tense initial encounter when we see it; the same way we didn't know that the encounter will end with Charles putting his hands upon Laura's neck; successfully killing her. The dream has turned into a nightmare, a nightmare that will haunt Charles.

Just Before Nightfall may be informally divided into two halves. The first half concerns Charles' efforts in evading the moral dissolve post-murder. Guilt will slowly grip Charles' psyche as a sense of safety from punishment is assured. Just minutes after the murder, he enters a bar to drown his stress and guilt. Although the murder might still be undiscovered, Charles acts as if he's already hunted --- he vomits minutes after in a sense of trying to withdraw the initial shock of his actions. Thereafter, he wears sunglasses inside the common darkness of a Parisian pub. Coincidentally, Laura's husband Francois is also there; sees the person beneath the sunglasses; invites him to a drink and a ride home (despite Charles' upper middle class stature in French society, he denies himself the luxury of having his own transport). He goes home to his family and struggles to contain his knowledge through the night. The morning papers brought the news; that Laura has been murdered. The formalities of death involves Charles and his family since Francois is a dear friend. Despite all the possible linkages of Charles to Laura's death, a connection is proven impossible and it seems that Charles has escaped criminal justice.

The second half involves the shift from evasion from justice to evasion from the corruption of knowing that one has committed a moral wrong and has successfully evaded its societal consequences. A late night nervous breakdown forces Charles to a vacation wherein he tells his wife the entire story. The remarkable twist here is that while we witness Charles deteriorate with guilt, the focal murder is exposed to be merely accidental and not an act of moral depravity; a mere aftereffect of an act of sexual perversion. It's a point of rationalization for his wife to maintain the status quo, a fulcrum in Charles' determination of his moral dilemma (he suddenly feels that he might've wanted to kill Laura; just to logically explain his guilt), a sudden shift for the audience to rethink Charles' methods.

Charles' revelation proves to be merely a temporary cure to his moral dissolve; he suddenly holds affinity to criminals (an accountant at work swindles money from the company coffers to escape with his mistress --- this sideplot is a further complication to the natural occurrence of guilt and how it is almost an act of fate that gestures will often bring a criminal to justice); his revelations (later to his friend) result in complacency (not even forgiveness which should be preluded by an acknowledgment of the wrongdoing) which further deepens the moral scar that Charles harbors ever since the murder.

Just Before Nightfall is a carefully structured psychological drama. Claude Chabrol further dissects middle class society by placing one at the mercy of his guilt; that same guilt later places the people around him (his wife, his friend, probably his mother and children) in a test of moral ambiguity. Their reactions prove to be dissatisfying, at least to the perpetrator who has broken the lines of social class by pasting his mindset alongside that of the outcasts of civil society --- the criminals and the victims of a socially imposed moral structure. Is class structure, that innate reaction to protect the status quo (an always recurring question when Charles opts to bring himself to justice is: what will happen to the children; how will your mother react; what will happen to us?) a viable reason to separate from traditions of justice? Chabrol further blurs these questions by insensitively making the victim an active seducer, who might've called the tragedy to herself.