Peter Beard: Scrapbooks from Africa and Beyond
July 2nd, 2007
Palm Pictures is releasing this made-for-TV documentary about photographer Peter Beard in August. It’s an unassuming portrait of a versatile artist that made me feel that it would be lovely if TV was in the habit of introducing fascinating people every day instead of carpet-bombing us with familiar bores. An adventurer, playboy, fashion photographer, and friend of Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon, and Mick Jagger, Beard moved down the road from Karen Blixen and documented his life in Africa in photographs and gorgeous collage diaries. A little googling reveals a fact the documentary politely omits: Beard was born to a wealthy family and could afford to concentrate on his art and travel thanks to a large trust fund. Good for him.
Scrapbooks from Africa and Beyond. Guillaume Bonn and Jean-Claude Luyat, 1998. ***
Molière
June 8th, 2007
“One day, they won’t say ’speak French to me,’ they will say: speak to me in the language of Molière!” Says Molière, played by an exuberant Romain Duris, waving his tankard before he falls of the tavern table, much to the amusement of the assembled Parisians. But we all know it’s true. And once a country’s Greatest Writer has been canonized, it’s only a matter of time before he gets a movie that conflates his life with his work in the style of Shakespeare in Love and Factotum. Unrestrained by fact, the liberties taken by this approach are more shapely and palpable than the usual flabby biopic. Molière turns out to be an especially endearing attempt at the budding subgenre.
The film uses an undocumented period in Molière’s life to imagine the genesis of his play Tartuffe–which allows writer and director Laurent Tirard to have fun with the classic comedy. The story begins in 1658, when the actor is offered a deal he can’t refuse: Monsieur Jordain (Fabrice Luchini), a wealthy merchant, will pay off Molière’s debt if he trains him as an actor to impress the haughty widow Célimène (Ludivine Sagnier). For this task, Moliere takes the name of Tartuffe, pretends to be a priest, and moves into Jordain’s house–which leads to all sorts of farcial and amorous hijinx involving Jordain’s wife (Laura Morante), daughter (Fanny Valette), dog, and scheming society friends.
Accomplished and witty, the film even manages to wring morsels of truth out of the highly entertaining complications: who knew Jean-Baptiste Molière was the artistic forebear of Preston Sturges’ Sullivan, endlessly distraught over the value of comedy? Molière is scheduled to open on July 27.
Molière. Laurent Tirard, 2007. ****
La Vie En Rose
February 14th, 2007
Marcy thought this epic Edith Piaf biopic was torture, but I fell for it. Sure, all the cliches of the genre are in full effect, from Piaf’s childhood in brothels and circuses to discovery and rise in cabarets and music halls, with generous helpings of suffering, drug addiction, old age, loss, and death. But… non, je ne regrette rien… Unlike Ray, which covered similar stations of the artist’s passion with thudding predictability, director Olivier Dahan uses Marion Cotillard’s abrasive performance and Piaf’s fantastic music to good effect. La Môme just opened the Berlin Film Festival and is playing at the Lincoln Center’s Rendez-Vous with French Film festival. It’s scheduled to open in the US in June.
La Môme. Olivier Dahan, 2007. ***
- Official US Site
- David Hudson’s Review
- The real thing:
[tags]music, film, 3 stars, edith piaf, la mome, olivier dahan, biopics, artists, drugs, booze, marion cotillard, youtube, gerard depardieu[/tags]
Klaus Kinski: Ich brauche Liebe
November 14th, 2006
I bought this book as a joke, an afterthought, just because I’d already spent twenty minutes in the dusty Prenzlauer Berg used book store where the salespeople were playing Warcraft in the corner. “Kinski’s always good for a laugh,” I figured, and forked over my three Euros. Little did I know that the joke would blossom into a full-fledged obsession. I’d grown up with an idea of Kinski based mainly on the German TV shows I saw during the 80s: Gottschalk, talk shows. Whenever Kinski was on (and he seemed to be on a lot), he could be counted on to rave and rant and make a public spectacle of himself.
We watched Woyzek in high school, and it freaked me out. Since, I’ve seen Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo, Nosferatu, and countless of the two hundred B pictures, Edgar Wallace and Karl May adaptations he appears in, and Herzog’s mean-spirited My Best Fiend. Still, Kinski’s artistry seemed to consist of Kinski just being Kinski, a megalomaniac who could outcrazy everybody on screen because he was a madman offscreen, too.
No longer. I can’t say that I understand him after reading his outrageous, boundless autobiography, but at least it’s possible now to imagine what the world looked like from inside Kinski’s head. As he puts it, everything about him was too too: he felt too much, loved too intensely, reacted too quickly, fought too viciously; a raging, fucking, screaming beast of a man whose emotions were too close too the surface, whose appetites where too ravenous, who had no sense of proportion. Put him in a TV studio and ask him idiotic questions about his international success or the endless bad movies he appeared in, and he would show his disdain, question the intention of the hosts and refuse to answer. He talks too quickly and he pounces too early, but you can’t deny that he has a point.
Rewatch his films, and you can see it there, right on the surface: every twitch of his soul is written on an unbearably intense face, threatening, seductive, almost too alive. The agony, the joy, the madness–if our senses weren’t so dull compared to his, we would appear mad, too. It’s no surprise that before the backdrop of mid-20th century German mainstream culture, a creature as fearless as Klaus Kinski should seem completely nuts.
