jürgen fauth’s muckworld

So this is why they invented the phrase “va-va-voom!” The second most pleasant surprise about this film is the ending, which eschews the usual moralizing. Take note, Smiley Face: just because you have a female main character who behaves comme un animal sauvage (sexually or herbally) doesn’t mean you have to make her pay for it. Guess that’s what makes And God Created Woman such a libertine landmark. But why don’t we leave the analysis to Chuck Stephens and ogle Bardot in the trailer instead? This movie would make a fine double-feature with Le Gendarme de St. Tropez.

Et Dieu…créa la femme. Roger Vadim, 1956. ****

• And God Created Woman at Wikipedia
• Brigitte Bardot at Wikipedia

A woman director working in black and white on a limited budget, a capricious main character with a looming fate, a city that is playground and character at once, a summer’s day full of promise, distraction, and chance encounters, a cast of strangers whose snippets of overheard conversation work themselves seamlessly into the texture of the film, and a fresh New Wave approach to life and art — it’s thrilling to confirm how many similarities Agnès Varda’s celebrated Cleo from 5 to 7 shares with May Spils’ overlooked classic Zur Sache, Schätzchen.

Cleo is now being reissued as part of a shiny new Varda box set from Criterion. May Spils’ films are, so far, unavailable in the US. Zur Sache, Schätzchen is one of my all-time favorites, and I have translated and created English subtitles for the film in hopes of a stateside DVD release. There have been promising stirrings lately so keep your fingers crossed for Zur Sache.

Cléo de 5 à 7. Agnès Varda, 1961. *****

The trailer:

How do we relax from the New York Film Festival’s two-movies-a-day schedule? With an old classic, of course, courtesy of the Criterion Collection. Jim Jarmusch’s episodic 1991 taxi cab confidential moves around the globe while Tom Waits growls and hasn’t lost a bit of its spirit and charm. Especially after seeing a film as cynical as Sidney Lumet’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, I was struck by how good-natured and kind Jarmusch’s vision was.

In the confined spaces of cabs in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome, and Helsinki, strangers are meeting strangers and, with the exception of the “bishop” who has the ill fate of running into Roberto Benigni, good things happen. I was especially pleased to note connections between the episodes and to other movies that I’d previously missed. Since this is a Criterion DVD, I shouldn’t have to mention that the quality of the transfer is first rate. Jarmusch won’t watch his own movies after they are completed, so there is no director’s commentary, but he does answer fan questions. Other extras include commentary by the DP and location sound mixer, a Belgian TV interview with Jarmusch, and essays by Paul Auster and others.

Night on Earth. Jim Jarmusch, 1991. *****

A new disc from the Criterion Collection can feel a little bit like trying a new vegetarian dish. Sometimes it’s juicy and delicious, sometimes you feel like you ought to like it just because it’s oh-so-healthy (and then you’re glad you did), and sometimes it’s broccoli rabe.

Robert Bresson’s final black-and-white film, an adaptation of a tragic novel by Georges Bernanos, delivers a striking portrait of abject poverty. The early scenes, when young Mouchette shuffles on oversize clogs between school and flop house home (drunken father, wasting mother, screaming baby) are quite affecting. Bresson is up to his usual exposition-less tricks, and the stark naturalism is bracing. Mouchette is unloved at home and abused at school, so who’s to blame her when she throws some mud at the pretty classmates in their fancy dresses? But then, she turns out to be a character with no options, and storylines involving a) poachers and b) epileptics and c) rapists are always a problem for me. When there are poaching rapists with foaming epileptic seizures, I’m in deep trouble. Au Hasard Blathazar struck me as sublime evocation of suffering, but here, after only 81 minutes, I was just glad that the suffering–Mouchette’s and mine–was finally over. The DVD comes out tomorrow.

Mouchette. Robert Bresson, 1967. **

[tags]2 stars, film, french, robert bresson, criterion collection, tragedy, suffering, poachers, epileptics, rape, poverty, alcoholism, suicide[/tags]