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

Since I’m behind the curve on most items in this Konsum roundup, the soundtrack for today’s post is provided by Talking Heads, performing “The Great Curve” in Rome in 1980. You can download a DVD of the entire show from Dimeadozen.

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
As apparently the last critic in New York City to see the freshly Academy-snubbed 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, I don’t have much to add to the universal acclaim the film has garnered — only this: if you take a look at the Rotten Tomatoes page, you’ll see adjectives like “excruciating,” “harrowing,” “wearing,” “wrenching,” “bleak,” and “unblinking.” All of those fit, but it seems to me the terminology applied to blockbusters like The Bourne Ultimatum isn’t inappropriate, either: 4 Months is also an edge-of-your seat thriller.
4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile. Cristian Mungiu, 2007. ****

Woman on the Beach
My favorite at NYFF06 — at least until INLAND EMPIRE showed up — is currently playing at Film Forum. Reason enough to take another look. Lo and behold, it’s still a wonderful film. J. Hoberman.
Haebyonui yoin. Hong Sang-soo, 2006. ****

The Duchess of Langeais
An About.com review of Rivette’s Balzac adaptation starring Jeanne Balibar and Guillaume Depardieu is forthcoming.
Ne touchez pas la hache. Jacques Rivette, 2007. ****

The Wire, Season 1
Yes, we’re ridiculously far behind, so I can barely participate in the conversation at this point. Anybody who’s been following this blog knows that I’m a sucker for structure, and The Wire’s intricate plot lines left my head spinning. Looking forward to catching up with the remaining four seasons, like, this weekend. ****

30 Rock
I love every single character on Tina Fey’s show, from Alec Baldwin’s head of TV and microwave programming to nutso Tracy Morgan and Kenneth the Page, and I haven’t seen a TV show that delivers as many smart laughs per minute since the first season of Arrested Development. 30 Rock makes me happy. ****

Californication
Thoroughly enjoyable HBO series about a sex-and-booze addicted writer (David Duchovny) who is still in love with his ex-wife (Natascha McElhone), and whose novel God Hates Us All was adapted into the “Tom and Katie” vehicle Crazy Little Thing Called Love. ***

Marcy’s got this one covered: Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Flight of the Red Balloon
is a charming homage to the 1956 French classic by Albert Lamorisse and
an intimate portrait of a unique Paris family. A blond Juliette Binoche
stars as Suzanne, an accomplished puppeteer who a hires a Taiwanese
nanny (Song Fang) for her gentle seven-year-old son Simon (Simon
Iteanu). Read Marcy’s review of Flight of the Red Balloon.

Le Voyage du ballon rouge. Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2007. ***

• All posts related to the New York Film Festvial

Chabrol’s latest is a delicious love triangle between a pompous writer (François Berléand), a wealthy fop (Benoît Magimel), and the “divine” TV weather girl (Ludivine Sagnier) who loves them both. Funnier than most of Chabrol’s films, A Girl Cut in Two fascinates with deft characterizations and, of course, the trademark plumbing of depravity gaping beneath the bourgeois veneer. Sagnier shines as Gabrielle Deneige, luminous while wearing a motorcycle helmet, a red evening gown, or nothing but a plume of peacock feathers. We’ll have a full review on About.com soon.

La Fille coupée en deux. Claude Chabrol, 2007. ****

• Previously
• More from the New York Film Festival
  

Dreadful. As destructive goofball Mr. Bean, Rowan Atkinson shuffles and grimaces through a ramshackle plot about a trip to France, a mistaken kidnapping, and the Cannes Film Festival. Bean’s near-silent physical comedy always worked better in short sketches, but there aren’t very many funny bits in this second movie at all. You know how sometimes the only good jokes were in the trailer? Well, my favorite trailer gag didn’t even make it into the actual movie. <makes horrid leering face>

Mr. Bean’s Holiday. Steve Bendelack, 2007. *

• Rotten Tomatoes

From highly enjoyable exercises in pop style (8 Women) to over-conceptualized constructs that left me completely cold (5×2), Francois Ozon’s films are hit-or-miss. Misgivings about his adaptation of the novel by Elizabeth Taylor arose the moment the snooty Berlin box office dude made fun of our choice of movie — was this really going to be “Rosamunde Pilcher hoch zehn,” a terrible melodrama that we hadn’t packed enough tissues for?

Yes and no. The story of Angel Deverell (Romola Garai), the precocious grocer’s daughter who transforms herself into a successful writer only to lose it all to love, war, and the unpredictable currents of taste is indeed what we used to call a Schmonzette, an overblown melodrama that should be the object of our ridicule, and that of ticket takers everywhere. Anybody with a hankering for rustling fabric, lavish sets, trembling bosoms and tragic turns of events is certainly welcome to enjoy Angel at face value.

But Ozon manages to keep a generally winking attitude even while he’s presenting a fully functional romantic epic. Through the use of rear-projection, a lush score, and especially Romola Garai’s finely tuned performance, Angel has its melodramatic cake and keeps its post-ironic distance, too. The movie itself very much resembles the preposterous stories with which Angel Deverell makes her fortune — and is thus also a target for the snide comments of smarter people within the movie. With the help of an editor’s wife played by Charlotte Rampling and grim painter Esmé (Michael Fassbender), Ozon provides sophisticated commentary on the film from within the film. As recreation of a (mostly) defunct genre, Angel feels less self-conscious than Todd Haynes’ faux-Sirk Far From Heaven; thanks to Romola Garai, it is also more engaging.

Angel does not have a U.S. release date yet.

Angel. Francois Ozon, 2007. ****

The trailer:

Yeah, we snickered more than a few immature snickers at the name of this town in northeastern France. Bitche, pronounced just like you think, is dominated by a massive citadel that withstood an entire year of siege during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Today, you can take an audio-visual tour through the underground fortifications. As you pass through the bakery, the well, the officer’s quarters and so on, bits and pieces of a movie about the siege are projected on screens slyly installed below the vaulted ceiling.

It’s a peculiar way to see a movie, akin to sitting inside the real Helm’s Deep watching a version of The Two Towers where Gandalf and Éomer never show up. But despite the presence of Virginie Ledoyen as the scheming wife of Napoleon III, the film never takes on a life of its own beyond the cheesy illustration of historical events and some vague points about the futility of war in general. We didn’t feel the need to pick up the full-length DVD in the gift shop. Let me tell you though: there’s a patisserie downtown that serves some truly bitchin’ chocolate cake.

La Forteresse Assiegee. Gerard Mordillat, 2006. **

View Larger Map

In Sarreguemines, France, Ludivine Sagnier and Claude Chabrol hold their own among the blockbusters. (Here’s the trailer.)