Post by Capo on Jul 23, 2009 23:18:42 GMT
(Spoilers within.)
This one frustrated me.
It's excellent in parts, but I found its overall complacency annoying, and have, since seeing it today, been on some sort of mission to re-evaluate - perhaps unfairly, for now - Denis's style in general and the other works of hers I've seen.
Beau Travail, or my memory of it, hasn't been tarnished, but I assume the relative lucidity of that film gains much from the fact that it's a (loose?) adaptation, with the barest of plots already in place. That might allow for a more flexible approach to the storytelling.
The Intruder might be her best film; I'd really need to see it again, though. When I saw it last - and I've seen it only once - I went into it without any inkling as to the kinds of themes and issues it wanted to address. The physical experience came across through some of the imagery, but I might have missed the stuff about borders. I don't know; at any rate, if you like that sort of thing (I do), it's a formally beguiling film.
As is 35 Shots of Rum, in places. As with the two films I mentioned above, it owes a lot to its score, and to Godard's cinematography. The opening sequence sets a promising tone; whenever the narrative seems to hit a dead end, or show any kind of traditional conflict, it returns to these haunting, lonely images of Parisian rail tracks and tower blocks. I could personally and happily sit through hours of these kinds of images.
The acting's good. The two leads, playing father and daughter, are well cast; Descas has presence and Diop has an alluring beauty - but I don't think Denis pushes for much out of either of them. A mutual desire seems to be hinted at throughout - the two certainly act closer than normal - but Denis never seems brave enough to risk examining a sexual potency more fully. It seems to hover around the insinuating edges, and it's unsettling. It doesn't help that there's little dialogue, which would perhaps help to counteract their physical interactions.
Denis seems to operate on an "ambiguity = maturity" formula, and it's something I'm becoming less and less a fan of. There's a time and a place for a lack of resolve, of course - and I think the balance between elusiveness and clarity was most effective in Beau Travail - but the longer this film goes on, the more strained things become. It's more clumsy than aloof. The silences here are very stilted. In one shot, Denis shows Jo holding the unopened rice cooker she has bought on her lap, alone in her room; as if carefully directed to do so, Diop considers the package, feels it, and gives a little laugh. It has an affected air to it, slightly forced; I find the same thing bothering me throughout Bruno Dumont's films, too. Much of 35 Shots unfolds in this way.
Like Denis's other films, this has a casual structure; events are never foreseen, characters come and go, much is left to our own inference. A few peripheral characters are introduced but remain at the edges. Their inclusion and significance seem perfunctory: the two neighbours, Noé and Gabrielle, seem to offer some sort of potential relationship for Jo and Lionel respectively, but neither relationship is given enough focus. Likewise, Noé is given odd little character quirks - actually, there seems more charisma and detail given to him than to either of the main characters, which may or may not be the point (and if it is the point, what's the point?). He slurps his coffee as if to fill in for the lack of conversation; at several points in the film he declares he has no milk; later, he realises his cat has died, and without hesitation or emotion, puts the dead creature in a bin bag. None of these things seem to have any relevance.
More weighty, because of its narrative recurrence, is the importance of food, of dining, whether with loved ones as part of a routine, or as a spontaneous substitute for a missed musical concert. This latter example provides the film with a seeming central point (or a scene that, at the time of watching it, seemed to have some sort of significance to me, perhaps because of its length). Jo and Noé dance, embrace and kiss, only for Jo to withdraw almost immediately and sit down; food arrives, thus providing comfort once more. The camera lingers over this scene more than it seems to throughout the rest of the film. Just as Jo withdrew from Noé, Denis cuts the scene (and with it, most jarringly, the soundtrack) before any kind of emotional response can be established; again, at a potentially critical moment, we're denied comfort. (Likewise, Jo and Noé never get to eat the meal.)
As if frightened of "traditional" causal narratives, Denis halts her film every time it seems to get going. Perhaps tellingly, the one subplot that does offer resolve is that of René, Lionel's fellow train driver. Given an early retirement - for reasons unknown - René becomes "ill", seemingly lost, and kills himself. We might forgive the fact that it seems too convenient for Lionel himself to find René (lying headless on a train track); more crucially, though, is how René's situation could have comprised a film in itself. That would have been fascinating, to explore his tragedy by means of foregrounding his sudden unemployment, his sense of loss, the profession-as-identity theme.
As it is, though, Denis seems content to leave these "details" at the periphery, using them as a decorative (and actually more interesting) background to the main focus of her story. It's a shame, really, because the way things are set up, the film's power - beyond the arresting visuals and music - depends on whether or not the viewer can sympathise with the characters. That seems unlikely, given how little we're given of Jo and Lionel, and how little time is given to those around them.
Denis says the film isn't about black people but about working class people. That's fair enough, but it doesn't really get beyond surface details if it's wanting to address the more urgent issues of (for example) train workers and college students; Denis seems attracted to the visual appeal of trains and all things associated with them, but isn't clear enough on anything beyond that.
Aesthetically, as a result, the film at times feels like a worthwhile experience, with particular images lingering (and doing so far more than a secondary character picking up his dead cat) and the soundtrack involving us and bringing us in "deeper", in some sort of vaguely haunting, reflective, encouragingly introspective mood. But it tells us nothing about the plight of train workers, and the one scene depicting Jo in a college seminar among fellow students seems both curiously misplaced and insubstantially researched.
This one frustrated me.
It's excellent in parts, but I found its overall complacency annoying, and have, since seeing it today, been on some sort of mission to re-evaluate - perhaps unfairly, for now - Denis's style in general and the other works of hers I've seen.
Beau Travail, or my memory of it, hasn't been tarnished, but I assume the relative lucidity of that film gains much from the fact that it's a (loose?) adaptation, with the barest of plots already in place. That might allow for a more flexible approach to the storytelling.
The Intruder might be her best film; I'd really need to see it again, though. When I saw it last - and I've seen it only once - I went into it without any inkling as to the kinds of themes and issues it wanted to address. The physical experience came across through some of the imagery, but I might have missed the stuff about borders. I don't know; at any rate, if you like that sort of thing (I do), it's a formally beguiling film.
As is 35 Shots of Rum, in places. As with the two films I mentioned above, it owes a lot to its score, and to Godard's cinematography. The opening sequence sets a promising tone; whenever the narrative seems to hit a dead end, or show any kind of traditional conflict, it returns to these haunting, lonely images of Parisian rail tracks and tower blocks. I could personally and happily sit through hours of these kinds of images.
The acting's good. The two leads, playing father and daughter, are well cast; Descas has presence and Diop has an alluring beauty - but I don't think Denis pushes for much out of either of them. A mutual desire seems to be hinted at throughout - the two certainly act closer than normal - but Denis never seems brave enough to risk examining a sexual potency more fully. It seems to hover around the insinuating edges, and it's unsettling. It doesn't help that there's little dialogue, which would perhaps help to counteract their physical interactions.
Denis seems to operate on an "ambiguity = maturity" formula, and it's something I'm becoming less and less a fan of. There's a time and a place for a lack of resolve, of course - and I think the balance between elusiveness and clarity was most effective in Beau Travail - but the longer this film goes on, the more strained things become. It's more clumsy than aloof. The silences here are very stilted. In one shot, Denis shows Jo holding the unopened rice cooker she has bought on her lap, alone in her room; as if carefully directed to do so, Diop considers the package, feels it, and gives a little laugh. It has an affected air to it, slightly forced; I find the same thing bothering me throughout Bruno Dumont's films, too. Much of 35 Shots unfolds in this way.
Like Denis's other films, this has a casual structure; events are never foreseen, characters come and go, much is left to our own inference. A few peripheral characters are introduced but remain at the edges. Their inclusion and significance seem perfunctory: the two neighbours, Noé and Gabrielle, seem to offer some sort of potential relationship for Jo and Lionel respectively, but neither relationship is given enough focus. Likewise, Noé is given odd little character quirks - actually, there seems more charisma and detail given to him than to either of the main characters, which may or may not be the point (and if it is the point, what's the point?). He slurps his coffee as if to fill in for the lack of conversation; at several points in the film he declares he has no milk; later, he realises his cat has died, and without hesitation or emotion, puts the dead creature in a bin bag. None of these things seem to have any relevance.
More weighty, because of its narrative recurrence, is the importance of food, of dining, whether with loved ones as part of a routine, or as a spontaneous substitute for a missed musical concert. This latter example provides the film with a seeming central point (or a scene that, at the time of watching it, seemed to have some sort of significance to me, perhaps because of its length). Jo and Noé dance, embrace and kiss, only for Jo to withdraw almost immediately and sit down; food arrives, thus providing comfort once more. The camera lingers over this scene more than it seems to throughout the rest of the film. Just as Jo withdrew from Noé, Denis cuts the scene (and with it, most jarringly, the soundtrack) before any kind of emotional response can be established; again, at a potentially critical moment, we're denied comfort. (Likewise, Jo and Noé never get to eat the meal.)
As if frightened of "traditional" causal narratives, Denis halts her film every time it seems to get going. Perhaps tellingly, the one subplot that does offer resolve is that of René, Lionel's fellow train driver. Given an early retirement - for reasons unknown - René becomes "ill", seemingly lost, and kills himself. We might forgive the fact that it seems too convenient for Lionel himself to find René (lying headless on a train track); more crucially, though, is how René's situation could have comprised a film in itself. That would have been fascinating, to explore his tragedy by means of foregrounding his sudden unemployment, his sense of loss, the profession-as-identity theme.
As it is, though, Denis seems content to leave these "details" at the periphery, using them as a decorative (and actually more interesting) background to the main focus of her story. It's a shame, really, because the way things are set up, the film's power - beyond the arresting visuals and music - depends on whether or not the viewer can sympathise with the characters. That seems unlikely, given how little we're given of Jo and Lionel, and how little time is given to those around them.
Denis says the film isn't about black people but about working class people. That's fair enough, but it doesn't really get beyond surface details if it's wanting to address the more urgent issues of (for example) train workers and college students; Denis seems attracted to the visual appeal of trains and all things associated with them, but isn't clear enough on anything beyond that.
Aesthetically, as a result, the film at times feels like a worthwhile experience, with particular images lingering (and doing so far more than a secondary character picking up his dead cat) and the soundtrack involving us and bringing us in "deeper", in some sort of vaguely haunting, reflective, encouragingly introspective mood. But it tells us nothing about the plight of train workers, and the one scene depicting Jo in a college seminar among fellow students seems both curiously misplaced and insubstantially researched.
