I've Loved You So Long (2008) Film Review

Plot Summary - French language film centering around two sisters. Older sister Juliette arrives to live with her younger sister Lea and family after being in prison for fifteen years for murdering her young son. The secret is kept from friends, colleagues, and Lea's two little girls who can't understand why they never met Auntie before. Juliette is very quiet and stand-offish but gradually starts to come out of her shell, get a job, and reconnect with her sister.

Review - This is an absorbing film, quiet and slow for the most part - it completely held my interest. Kirstin Scott Thomas does an excellent job playing the quietly troubled Juliette. Rating - 8.5/10 stars

Liliom (1934) Fim Review - Fritz Lang Charles Boyer

Plot Summary - French film, directed by Fritz Lang and starring Charles Boyer as Liliom, a carnival barker who runs the carousel - he's cocky, he sings, he's a confident ladies man, he's got the "gift of gab", and he always wears the same dirty-looking, tight striped t-shirt. One day on a rollicking, song-filled carousel ride full of happy patrons, Liliom flirts with a young blonde house maid named Julie, sparking jealousy in the heart of the female carnival boss. She accuses Julie of "solicitation", Liliom comes to her defense and is fired. He doesn't seem to mind much as he attempts to seduce innocent Julie on a park bench, she's in love and the next thing you know they are married, he doesn't work, she does, they're fighting, and he's slapping her around. Thought by some to be a "brute, a hooligan, a lazy bum", Liliom plays cards and runs con games with a low-life pal. Meanwhile, a middle-class carpenter wants to marry Julie - but she loves Liliom, beatings and all. POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD: Liliom is considering an offer to leave Julie and go back to the carousel, his only real success, but Julie reveals she is going to have a baby. Liliom, amazingly, is over the moon about the coming new arrival - so to get some big money to help support his growing family, he agrees to his pal's scheme to steal a payroll and knife the carrier to death in the bargain, a task assigned to Liliom. Liliom is reluctant to kill as he's worried about what will happen when he gets to the "other world". When the robbery doesn't go as planned, Liliom sees that other world sooner than expected. God's policemen escort him up through the clouds, straight through the stars, and into God's police station - a place in-between heaven and hell where Liliom must defend himself and await justice.

Review - This is a very entertaining film, it went by real fast. The scene in the afterworld is really interesting and quite surreal, I love stuff like that in films - an amusing comparison is shown between an earlier scene in the film where Liliom is at police headquarters and his experience at the police station in the other world. Charles Boyer seems to be made for playing someone so cocky, the actress who plays Julie, Madeleine Ozeray, is appropriately big-eyed and innocent - I do have to wonder though how her character puts up with a guy beating her around like that, the last scene in the film is also questionable. This film is a rare treat, it was later remade into the musical "Carousel". I saw this on a Kino DVD and the print looked reasonably good, the English subtitles very easy to read. Real good. Rating - 9 to 10/10 stars

Le Plaisir (1952) Film Review - Max Ophuls

Watched this one Friday afternoon.

Plot Summary - French-language film, directed by Max Ophuls - three short tales of pleasure, set in 19th century France. The first, the story of a ball where all of Paris from Can-Can girl to Baron have come for an evening of fun and debauchery. A strange, large-nosed, small mustached dandy arrives, pursues women, and dances up a storm - until he faints on the dance floor. POSSIBLE SPOILER : ends up he's an elderly man, doped up on absinthe and wearing a mask to disguise his old face; he's taken home where his wife relates the story of his lost youth. END SPOILER. Second - the story of a popular brothel in Normandy, the Madame and her "girls" one day off on an adventure in the country to attend a first communion, and the sad men in town who find the house "closed" and are left alone and lonely on a Saturday night (wives aren't enough, apparently). Third - the story of a painter, his love for a beautiful model, and his loss of lust for her after a very short time.

Review - Nothing complex here, these are simple tales brought visually to life via interesting camerawork and sets, outdoor locations, lush costumes, and descriptive voice-over narration done in a fairy tale/storyteller-like fashion. It's almost like the extraordinary happening in the ordinary world (or should that be the other way?!), the film is unusual, sort of dream-like almost - it kind of sticks with you. It includes lots of moving shots through windows and groups of people. I enjoyed the first of these three stories the best - it was odd, short, and interesting with it's lively party atmosphere and most odd masked man. The second story was a bit too long, though visually appealing. This DVD was from the Criterion Collection, the black and white print looked pretty nice. Rating - 8/10 stars

Eyes Without a Face (1960) Film Review

Plot Summary - French language horror film about a young woman, Christiane, who has "no face", after being disfigured in a car accident caused by her father, a professor/doctor, who will go to any lengths to see that her face is restored - even if illegal, evil, and totally gruesome. The professor and his secretary/assistant "nurse" (Valli) lure young, blue-eyed, pretty women who resemble the daughter to their villa in the French countryside outside Paris - and - um, chloroform the girls, then remove their face while still alive to graft onto Christiane's face - ugh (the Doc is seen at the beginning of the film giving a lecture on transplanting living tissue from one human to another). Dad has actually gone to the morgue and identified one of these young women, found in a river dead and without a face, as his "missing" daughter. The still living Christiane meanwhile, hides out in the villa, wears a white mask that looks like her to cover the disfigurement - only her eyes show through - and awaits dad's next surgical attempt, as each one so far has been a failure.

Review - Well, this film is pretty creepy - it would be a good one to watch on Halloween. It is quite atmospheric and surreal, with it's foggy, cold days, people in coats, their breath showing in the air, barren trees, wet streets, and waif-like masked Christiane roaming the villa like a gliding ghost figure, her eyes as big as saucers. The doctor's operation room where he performs his work looks like a mad scientist's laboratory, dogs bark loudly in the background as he keeps them in cages in a room connected to the lab and uses the poor animals to test his grafting procedures (ssssss - creep). One thing I wonder about: Christiane seems like a nice girl, why does she allow the dad to do something like this for so long, simply for her sake?! Really nice music score by Maurice Jarre enhances the film, by the way. The Criterion Collection DVD of this looks very good, the subtitles easy to read. Quite a good film, with memorable, haunting black and white imagery. Rating - 9/10 stars

French Cancan (1954) Film Review

Plot Summary - French language backstage musical, directed by Jean Renoir. In 19th century Paris at a nightclub in Montmartre we meet Nini - pretty-in-pink laundress who loves to dance the Cancan. A group of the well-heeled set have arrived going "slumming for thrills", so-to-speak, and along with them is Danglard (Jean Gabin), owner of the Paris nightclub "The Chinese Screen", who spots lovely little red-headed Nini as a potential prospect to dance in one of his shows. Next day he heads into Montmartre where he sees Nini and asks her to become a dancer - and soon he's sold his first club for a down-payment on the Montmartre club, where he plans to put on a new version of the French Cancan at his newly renovated establishment, renamed the "Moulin Rouge". Jealousy, money troubles, and the like slows down the progress in opening the new club, and meanwhile Nini romances and juggles three men - 1. her neighborhood boyfriend Paolo - a brooding, jealous youth who works in a bakery, 2. Alexandre, a rich, handsome prince who is madly in love with her, and 3. Danglard himself, her older man - and somewhat of a Svengali to her as he tries to mold her into a star.

Review - This film, shot in Technicolor, is a lavish and lush production - a vividly colorful and wonderfully atmospheric portrayal of the opening of the famous Moulin Rouge in Paris, literally every scene looking like a Toulouse-Lautrec or other Impressionist painting. The scenes with the woman drinking Absinthe at a small cafe table especially reminded me of one particular painting, "L'Absinthe (In a Cafe)" by Degas. The art direction for this film is expertly done, the costumes and gowns are really gorgeous. Scenes where the group of girls are being selected and then learning and practicing their Cancan dances while dressed in pantaloons and black tights are fun to watch and the big Cancan finale is absolutely wonderful - wild, brightly colored, terrific fun. An excellent, pretty-to-look-at film, and just a touch bawdy. The DVD I saw of this was from the Criterion Collection and the print looked really nice. Rating - 9/10 stars

Les Enfants Terrible (1950) Film Review

Plot Summary - Unusual French-language film, based on the novel by Jean Cocteau, about what seems to be an incestuous relationship between a sixteen-year old youth, Paul, and his slightly older sister Elisabeth. After being pelted by a snowball enclosing a rock by Dargelos (a "bad boy" schoolmate) Paul must leave school for complete bed rest. Paul appears to have a crush on Dargelos as he keeps a photo of him dressed in drag (not to mention a number of photographs of young males tacked all over the wall behind his bed). Though Elisabeth is rather a shrew and the two siblings fight constantly, they happily share a bedroom where odd behavior is the norm - they play their secret "game" (normally played in Paul's bed - hypnosis is mentioned), she calls him "darling" and gazes at his face while he sleeps, he asks for her bed to be pulled closer to his, and they keep a collection of junk, including a gun, in a set of dresser drawers they call their "treasure chest". Paul's friend from school, Gerard, often sleeps over on the floor and the three of them take an excursion to the seaside under the lax supervision of Gerard's uncle. Paul and Elisabeth continue to bicker as they both try to get into a just run bath together, and the three young people shoplift (the siblings have a pact to only steal "useless" things) while uncle buys a new hat. When Elisabeth gets a job as a model, she brings home fellow model Agathe to live at their house, and to Paul's surprise Agathe looks exactly like the female version of his schoolboy crush, Dargelos (played by the same female actress that plays Agathe). Interesting relationships and rather strange behavior to follow.

Review - This is a really odd film which is a wee bit surreal and very strange in nature - the plot is really interesting and different with implications of both bisexuality and incest. The background music running through this is classical, the photography beautifully done with many extreme facial close-ups - the film is highlighted by a voice-over narration done by Jean Cocteau that tells the inner thoughts of the characters as they interact. The relationship and sexuality of the two siblings is very complex - the majority of the film takes place in their bedroom haven, their shared childhood room that they just don't seem to ever want to grow up and leave - they also seem to spend the majority of the film dressed in bathrobes. Nicole Stephane, the actress who plays Elisabeth is really good in this, very memorable - Edouard Dermithe who plays Paul, looks quite a bit older than sixteen, but it works (and he does resemble Stephane). The DVD of this from the Criterion Collection features a print that is very clear black and white, with a great deal of contrast - the subtitles were especially easy to read on this DVD version. An excellent film - I believe this one will stick in my head for some time to come. Rating - 10/10 stars