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La La Land

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2016)

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Damien Chazelle’s La La Land, the opening night presentation for the Chicago International Film Festival. I like its stars—Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling are great in just about everything they’re in; in fact, they both have the rare ability to elevate even superb material. I adore Los Angeles, too. I figured at worst, I’d have some decent eye candy and some lovely scenery to take in.

Thankfully, La La Land is far better than the worst case scenario I imagined: it’s glossy, colorful, and pretty, even if it’s not Moulin Rouge. It starts out strong with a vibrant dance number that takes place in a traffic jam on a freeway, probably the 101. The scene reminds me of a more exuberant version of R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts” video. Attention grabbed! This is where our heroes meet, one flipping the bird at the other.

We soon learn that both Mia (Stone) and Sebastian (Gosling) are trying to make it, she as an actress and he as a jazz pianist. She puts herself out there; he doesn’t. They cross paths over the course of nearly a year, flirting and pulling back then flirting some more. Some of their interactions are hilarious, like Sebastian’s stint in an ’80s cover band playing at a party that Mia happens to attend. They finally click; it’s exciting to watch them come together. They have a real chemistry. They also have dreams and goals that require sacrifice. Sadly, nothing is what it’s built up be—neither dreams coming true, fame, nor love. At its heart, La La Land is a relationship film, and a tragically decent one at that.

Undeniably well-done, La La Land definitely has a certain magic to it. Linus Sandgren’s cinematography is gorgeously eye popping; of all the films I’ve seen that came out this year, it’s second only to Hell or High Water. Some songs are better than others, but the acting all around makes up for it. John Legend has a role that turns out to be more than a cameo, and he’s actually pretty good. Essentially a love letter to Los Angeles, there’s no shortage of romantic moments here, not the least of which takes place floating midair under the stars at Griffith Observatory after closing time. Or in a movie theater for Mia and Sebastian’s first kiss.

The story is an emotional roller coaster that pulled me along through its ups and downs. The final scene got to me in a way that no film has in awhile—it actually fucking hurt. So in that sense, La La Land surely stands on its own. I question how memorable it will ultimately prove to be, though. I can’t put my finger on exactly what, but it lacks that extra element that would make it a truly great film. Perhaps its story is conventional, or perhaps its execution is too restrained and not over the top enough. I don’t know. As much as I enjoyed it, I can think of other movies the actors have done that are better. Time will tell where this one lands, but for now it’s worth the investment to see it.

128 minutes
Rated PG-13

(AMC River East) B

Chicago International Film Festival

http://www.lalaland.movie

Annie Hall

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1977)

“A relationship, I think, is like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.”

“You know, this guy goes to his psychiatrist and says, ‘Doc, my brother’s crazy. He thinks he’s a chicken.’ And the doctor says, ‘Well why don’t you turn him in?’ The guy says, ‘I would, but I need the eggs.’ Well, I guess that’s pretty much now how I feel about relationships: you know, they’re totally irrational and crazy and absurd, but I guess we keep going through it because most of us need the eggs.”

—Alvy Singer

Classic Woody Allen is an acquired taste, kind of like gefilte fish: too weird and off putting to appreciate right off the bat, you find that you actually look forward to his annual appearance once you get what he’s about. There’s no way around it: Woody Allen is for the urban set.

Annie Hall is hands down my favorite Woody Allen film, at least out of the ones I’ve seen—and I haven’t seen them all. It’s everything that makes a Woody Allen film great: lots of nervous banter, self-deprication, uncomfortable situations (usually but not always related to sex), an obsession with manners and etiquette, and hilariously pointed observations on the absurdities of modern life. It sounds like Seinfeld, but Allen was first.

The plot is simple enough: Alvy Singer (Allen) examines his relationship with Annie Hall (Diane Keaton), an aspiring Manhattan singer and photographer. They play a cat-and-mouse game because neither wants to make the first move. Alvy and Annie are awkward and bizarre, but I still found myself rooting for both of them. The relationship doesn’t work out, but it’s really something while it lasts. Along the way are small, sublime parts for Carol Kane, Shelley Duvall, Jeff Goldblum, and Christopher Walken.

Annie Hall stands out even as a Woody Allen film, and for an obvious reason. Underneath its entertaining and brilliant storytelling, underneath its many bells and whistles—subtitled subtext, a cartoon segment, and cameos by Marshall McLuhan, Paul Simon, and the Evil Queen from Snow White? Fuck yeah!—is a poignant reality: people change. For all its warmth and wit, Annie Hall spends more time showing its protagonists fall out of love than in it. Rich and layered, it’s funny yet wrenchingly accurate. While we laugh out loud, it plays on our worst fears—none of us wants to end up where Alvy and Annie do.

In 1992, the United States Library of Congress deemed Annie Hall “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry (https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing/).

96 minutes
Rated PG

(Music Box) A

http://www.woodyallen.com

The Kid

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1921)

I must confess that I never saw a Charlie Chaplin film until The Kid, his first full-length feature—he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in it. He also composed the score, something I didn’t know silent movies had; I guess I assumed organ players picked their own music to accompany films in those days. It’s a small miracle that The Kid made it out in one piece, as its production faced some financing difficulties (http://about.bankofamerica.com/en-us/our-story/making-of-charlie-chaplins-the-kid.html#fbid=eIQZsBMJxKN) and its release was entangled in Chaplin’s divorce proceedings and studio double-dealing. It was a huge success, becoming the second-highest grossing film of 1921 (http://www.filmsite.org/1921.html) (http://www.wikiwand.com/en/The_Kid_(1921_film) ). It’s easy to see why.

I enjoyed The Kid more than I expected. I was taken aback at how well this film, nearly a century old, works even by today’s standards. It’s a beautifully executed story with elements that seem way ahead of its time. A penniless unmarried woman (Edna Purviance) abandons her illegitimate newborn in the back seat of an expensive Model-T type limo parked in front of a mansion. Two gangsters who steal the limo pull over and dump the baby among some trash in an alley when they discover him crying. The tramp (Chaplin) happens upon him. After a few failed attempts to pawn off the baby on someone else, he finds a note inside his blanket, begging whoever finds him “to love and care for this orphan child.” The tramp takes him in, names him “John,” and raises him as his own in the tenement where he lives.

Five years pass. The tramp has taught John (Jackie Coogan, who later in life would play Uncle Fester on The Addams Family) how to help him eke a living off a window repair scam. By now, the woman is a rich performer who does charity work to help the poor. She crosses paths with John, but of course doesn’t realize who he is. The tramp calls a physician (Jules Hanft) when John gets sick and unwittingly sets in motion a chain of events that threatens to separate them when child welfare authorities take custody of John to place him in an orphanage.

The Kid may very well be the first “dramedy” ever; the opening card (this is a silent picture) gets that out up front, revealing it to be “[a] picture with a smile—and perhaps, a tear.” Chaplin’s trademark slapstick is a prominent ingredient, but he infuses serious drama into the story. The opening sequence that tells us about John’s parents is tragic, but it doesn’t compare to the scene in which the child welfare authority agents take John away from the tramp: the kid is in tears, desperately reaching out of the truck for the tramp to rescue him. Soon, the tramp is running after the truck in an intense rooftop chase and ultimately gets to it, pulling John out of the back. You feel every rush of emotion the characters do—amazing considering it’s accomplished without sound or words. Chaplin and Coogan adeptly convey feelings with simple body movements, facial expressions, and their eyes. Even the mundane parts of their day—like making breakfast and getting dressed—ooze a tenderness that emphasizes their bond.

I picked up on a few themes, but two struck me in particular. The first is religion, though I’m not entirely sure how to interpret it. Much of it comes from the hospital at the beginning and the notorious weird dream sequence the tramp has toward the end of the film—I found this scene curious because I’m not sure how it fits into the whole picture. The point could have something to do with a number of things: mercy, the golden rule, resurrection (this film has a few examples of rebirth and reinvention), salvation, hypocrisy, or something else altogether. The second theme is urban poverty; Chaplin is obviously making a statement about it in the way he shows authority figures—cops, child welfare agents, the doctor who turned him in—barging in on his low-status life and throwing it into turmoil.

The Kid is interesting not only for the autobiographical elements Chaplin incorporates, but also for the time period it depicts. The restored print I saw was luminous and crisp, vividly showing details from the sets (bricks on the buildings, dust in the streets, the tramp’s shabby furniture), the textures of the characters’ clothing, and even the skin tone and hair quality of some of the actors. It’s simultaneously cool and mildly creepy. The exteriors, shot mainly in Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles, remarkably capture the look and feel of a grimy Victorian city. An extra bonus was a live organ player at the screening I caught.

Speaking of Los Angeles, many of the filming locations still exist. Here’s a great blog that shows them today: https://silentlocations.wordpress.com/2016/01/09/how-charlie-chaplin-filmed-the-kid-2/.

The Kid is more complex that it looks. It’s thoroughly satisfying on multiple levels: narrative, visual, social, and historical. I’m thrilled I had an opportunity to see it on the big screen.

In 2011, the United States Library of Congress deemed The Kid “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry (https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing/).

68 minutes
Not rated

(Music Box) A

Full movie (with sound):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNyttSbCUCU

 

Harold and Maude

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1971)

“And if you want live high, live high;
And if you want to live low, live low;
Cuz there’s a million ways to go, you know that there are.”

—Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam), “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out”

 

“Dinner at eight, Harold. And do try and be a little more vivacious.”

—Mrs. Chasen (Harold’s mother)

 

“I feel that much of the world’s sorrow comes from people who are this, yet allow themselves to be treated as that.”

—Maude

For a double date night, we caught a screening of Harold and Maude at Chicago Tribune film critic Mark Caro’s series, “Is It Still Funny?” I was astonished to learn that this film was a box office bomb. Indeed, many respected critics, Roger Ebert and Vincent Canby among them, were not impressed when it originally came out (http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/harold-and-maude-1972 ) (http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=990CE7DF1138EF34BC4951DFB467838A669EDE ). Maybe its morbid overtones and absurdist deadpan black humor put people off. Maybe, like some of the authority figures in the film, the idea of the title characters “doing it” grossed them out. Maybe they couldn’t see beyond the obvious to get the point of the whole thing. Whatever it was, they clearly missed the beauty here. I don’t know, but Harold and Maude is one of my all-time favorites.

Young Harold Chasen (Bud Cort) is obsessed with death, probably because he’s not particularly invested in his own privileged life. He stages elaborate and often gruesome suicides to distress his wealthy, prim, socialite mother (Vivian Pickles). He drives a hearse. He hangs out in cemeteries. He crashes random funerals. One day, Harold crosses paths with Maude (Ruth Gordon), a crazy old lady he saw scarfing down an apple and sneezing loudly at a burial just a few days earlier. She approaches him in church during a funeral mass, and afterwards drives off in the priest’s car. Harold doesn’t know what to make of her. Maude is wacky and carefree with a rebellious streak. She lives in an old train car. She talks incessantly about life. She used to “liberate” canaries from pet shops, and now she enlists his assistance in rescuing a tree from a city sidewalk. Maude takes Harold on something of a roller coaster ride, going on adventures and showing him life’s many pleasures: art, music, dancing, flowers, just being alive. After he sabotages his mother’s attempts to find him a wife through a computer dating service, Harold decides to marry Maude. Their relationship culminates with a surprise party he throws for her 80th birthday—and a surprise she gives him.

Harold and Maude, which started out as a masters thesis that screenwriter Colin Higgins wrote at UCLA, easily could have slid into a mawkish mess. It doesn’t, though: it’s deceptively deep, and director Hal Ashby strikes an inimitable balance of sweet and weird. For one thing, he keeps things simple and lets them unfold naturally. Harold and Maude are both odd, but not in a forced or creepy way; they’re tender, relatable, and even adorable despite the fact that they make an unlikely match and cause discomfort to everyone around them. Their chemistry, like this entire film, has an easiness to it. Cat Stevens’s breezy soundtrack is the perfect accompaniment—I can’t imagine anyone else’s music here (Ashby originally approached Elton John: http://mentalfloss.com/article/69546/10-perfectly-paired-facts-about-harold-and-maude ). The story is interesting far beyond a formulaic romantic comedy; it maintains its edge with biting and macabre humor—fake suicides, dates gone horribly wrong, sessions with a psychiatrist, Harold’s fake murder of Maude, and that hilariously ghasly denouncement from a repressed priest (Eric Christmas). Pickles is flawlessly uptight and understated, and watching her is a delight in every single scene she has. Tom Skerritt (he’s the cop) in a small early role is a bonus. The tone and look both grow cheery as Maude pulls Harold out of his shell and he starts making his own choices.

This film has so many moments that still give me chills, not the least of which is Harold’s cry when he learns what Maude has done on her birthday. The hospital scene is wrenching for so many different reasons. The conversation in the daisy patch that pans out and turns into a graveyard (a la Arlington National Cemetery) and the momentary glimpse of the tattoo on Maude’s arm are subtle but jolting. Harold’s metamorphosis is the best part: standing on top of a cliff holding his banjo, he walks away playing “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out.” It’s one of the few happy endings to a film that I truly love.

In 1997, the United States Library of Congress deemed Harold and Maude “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry (https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing/).

91 minutes
Rated PG

(Music Box) A+

https://youtu.be/869cNCAqoZE

Medusa: Dare to Be Truthful

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1991)

“Brooke Shields. Dawber, Pam. Personality of Spam. Christie Brinkley. Brosnan, Pierce. Bland and boring, something fierce. Wilson Philips love to sing and wreck the cover of a magazine. Daniel Quayle’s brain is gone. Debbie Gibson gives good yawn.”

—Medusa, “Vague”

 

“You don’t understand. If I use a smaller penis it would be compromising my artistic integrity.”

“Come on, suck my toes in my documentary. Nobody’s done that yet!”

—Medusa

Made for Showtime, Medusa: Dare to Be Truthful is comedian-turned-MTV “personality” (not the late ’80s hipster V.J. with the identical name) Julie Brown’s scathing spoof of Madonna’s Truth or Dare (https://moviebloke.com/2016/08/26/truth-or-dare-in-bed-with-madonna/)—not to mention the icon herself. The whole thing is juvenile, mean, and absolutely hilarious. At just under an hour, it’s over right before the joke is.

Brown is Medusa, a bratty, self-obsessed, controversial, overhyped, oversexed, and very much untalented pop star. She’s making an explosive “no holds barred” documentary of her Blonde Leading the Blonde World Tour, a sordid affair that relies on sleaze and controversy to hide the fact that her work is so…well, vapid. Did I mention the tour takes place over five days?

Lifting sets, costumes—including conebras, that fluffy pink negligee, and the I Dream of Jeannie clipon ponytail—and dance routines right out of Madonna’s Blond Ambition Tour, Brown doesn’t miss a beat; she nails the overdone hamminess Madonna exhibits throughout Truth or Dare. Masturbating on a red velvet bed? Check. Visiting a deceased family member at the cemetery? Check—although here, it’s a pet cemetery where a dog whose name she can’t remember is laid to rest. Totally ragging on a celebrity who compliments her performance after a show? Check—here, it’s Bobcat Goldthwait. Giving head to an inanimate object? Check—here, it’s a watermelon, not a bottle of Evian.

Gay dancers (Sergio Carbajal, Thomas Halstead, Stanley DeSantis) fawn all over her, she screams at her manager (Chris Elliott) and her crew, and ex-husband Shane Pencil (Donal Logue) can’t deal with her antics. Kathy Griffin plays a backup singer. Plus, Brown gives us dead-on song ripoffs like “Expose Yourself,” “Like a Video,” and “Vague.” Fucking brilliant!

According to Wikipedia, Madonna sent Brown a gift after she saw this—a half-finished bottle of warm champagne (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medusa:_Dare_to_Be_Truthful).

51 minutes
Not rated

(YouTube) B+

https://youtu.be/wQB_li4FxnU

The Bride [La novia]

Link posted on by moviebloke

(Spain 2015)

I love a Latin melodrama, and The Bride definitely delivers. Adapted from Federico García Lorca’s 1933 tragedy Blood Wedding, it has all the elements of a telenovela: hopelessly beautiful characters with secrets and family drama, caught in a torrid love triangle that comes to a catastrophic head at a wedding.

The Bride (Imma Cuesta) has been involved with both the Groom (Asier Etxeandia) and Leonardo Felix (Álex García)—the sole character with a name—since the three were kids. She has a past with hunky Leonardo, who left her to marry her cousin (Leticia Dolera). By circumstances not entirely clear in the film, the Bride ended up with the Groom and is marrying him for less than noble reasons. Woefully, the Bride and Leonardo are still into each other. An ever-present apparition (María Alfonsa Rosso) warns the Bride early on not to marry the Groom if she doesn’t love him. Leonardo and his wife (and their baby) attend the wedding, and shit unravels.

Director Paula Ortiz makes some interesting choices. She’s coy about time and place, casually throwing together cars and clothes from various decades of the first half of the Twentieth Century while nothing appears to be powered by electricity. Leonardo gets around almost entirely on horse. The dusty vacant desert setting evokes an old Western film, though it could just as easily be the Middle East or Mars as Turkey (where The Bride actually was filmed). The time sequence is out of order, jumping back and forth between past and present. The whole thing moves like a dance, which I took to be a kind of nod to García Lorca’s poetry.

Luisa Gavasa is downright amazing as the Groom’s grim, venomous mother—she has the audacity to wear black to the wedding, if that says anything. Cuesta and García make a hot couple, and they have an extended sex scene worthy of a porn, complete with a flash or two of dick. Miguel Ángel Amoedo’s dreamy, sun-bleached cinematography is so gorgeous, it literally elevates the story. Shigeru Umebayashi’s score is equally gorgeous. This is a very sensual film.

The Bride has its problems, though. The scenes of the Bride’s hallucinations are pretty—lots of floating glass, ice-like daggers, and a big white moon—but they’re distractingly cheesy. The opening scene, which is actually the end of the story, comes off as superfluous; in fact, the time-jumping mechanism doesn’t add a thing. Worse, Ortiz seems to sacrifice depth for decoration. I haven’t seen or read Blood Wedding, but I’m familiar with García Lorca’s work. The Bride is dramatic but superficial—the symbolism is there, but it only hints at the weighty themes García Lorca explored. The focus is clearly on the story—not what’s behind it. So much more could have been said here: I see glimmers of statements on gender, class, mental illness, self-will. Ni modo.

96 minutes
Not rated

(Gene Siskel Film Center) B-

http://cineuropa.org/f.aspx?t=film&did=296362

Desperately Seeking Susan

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1985)

“Yeah, well, fortunately for everyone, I’m here and I’m thinking.”

—Susan

Promoted as “the Madonna movie” when it came out just before the Virgin Tour kicked off in the spring of 1985, Desperately Seeking Susan is an ’80s time capsule: the story revolves around personal ads, the style is big hair bows and junk jewelry, the score is all synth, and of course there’s that catchy dance track “Into the Groove”—a deliciously raw demo, at that. It might seem unlikely, but this film has held up over time and has turned out to be an interesting little gem.

Desperately Seeking Susan is light and fun, but it’s not a fluff piece. Loaded with mistaken identities, missed connections, double reversals, and loopbacks, the plot is clever and tight even if it isn’t terribly complicated. Roberta Glass (Rosanna Arquette) is a lonely, unfulfilled housewife from Fort Lee, New Jersey. Neglected by her husband, Gary (Mark Blum), a hot tub salesman, she reads the personals for diversion and becomes obsessed with a recurring one between Susan (Madonna) and her boyfriend, Jim (Robert Joy). Roberta steps out to the City to spy on them when Jim summons Susan to Battery Park one afternoon. A series of finely timed events, including the exchange of a jacket with the Eye of Providence on the back of it and a nasty bump on the head, literally pulls Roberta into Susan’s wild life.

Director Susan Seidelman executes the whole thing nicely. The vibe is scrappy and energetic. The story is packed with great characters, and the actors all bring it to make them interesting and believable—even Madonna playing a far less ambitious version of herself. The standouts are Arquette; Laurie Metcalf, who plays Gary’s sister as a neurotic shrew; and Aidan Quinn, who plays projectionist and knight in shining armor Dez with the right amount of gruffness and sexiness. Notable small roles are John Turturro as Ray, the owner of the Magic Club; Steven Wright as Gary’s dentist; and Richard Hell as Bruce, the guy Susan leaves in a hotel room in Atlantic City. The best character, though, is New York City itself; all the exterior shots are fabulous if only for the fact that they capure a city that no longer exists. C’mon, I’m waiting!

104 minutes
Rated PG-13

(Home via iTunes) B

http://www.mgm.com/#/our-titles/524/Desperately-Seeking-Susan

Paris Is Burning

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1991)

“Opulence. O, P, U, L, E, N, C, E, opulence. You own everything. Everything is yours!”

—Junior LaBeija

Before The Crying Game and Transamerica, RuPaul’s Drag Race, Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner, and Scissor Sisters’ “Let’s Have a Kiki,” there was Paris Is Burning. I first saw it at a screening on my college campus, I think, when it was fairly new—I remember a double feature with Madonna’s Truth or Dare, so it had to be summer or fall 1991. I’ve since seen it countless times. It’s one of the films I quote most. I love it, even as it turns 25 years old. It is, in two words, fucking fabulous!

Shot in 1987 with a short check in three years later, Paris Is Burning is ostensibly a documentary about the Harlem nightlife ball culture (pronounced “boo-wall” by most here). The film takes its name from one said ball, a rather clandestine affair held in a shabby party hall somewhere near Lexington/125. A world unto itself, ball culture was loaded with costumes, wild dancing, attitude, hierarchy, and tons of rules. There was blood, sweat, tears, and fighting—but there was also community and (for some) glory. As one subject, Willie Ninja, informs us, the balls may have been long and drawn out, but they were never boring. Amen! This is clear.

Much to her credit, director Jennie Livingston goes—excuse how this sounds—beyond the balls, getting into the daily challenges not only gay men and drag queens faced, but also actual bona fide transgender women. This was probably the first exposure I had to that. I mean, being gay in the Reagan Era was bad enough: if you weren’t destined to live a long and lonely life in the closet, you were going to get AIDS. Either way, the only thing straight about you was your road to hell. Transgender was…something else altogether. America was not ready for it when Paris is Burning came out, which makes it all the more remarkable.

Paris Is Burning is a big middle finger to all that thinking. While not everyone subscribed to that view, Paris Is Burning was the first film to show a lifestyle like this in a positive light. It was effective; it showed how fun and liberating it could be to walk a ball, fake tits or not. Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side. Damned fun! No wonder Madonna co-opted vogueing and snagged two Xtravaganzas for her tour.

Although there are undertones of sadness throughout, every person in this film is a hero. They were courageous simply living their lives how they did, when they did. The key was a mix of self confidence and major guts. Dorian Corey gave me a crash course on reading and shade. Pepper LaBeija showed me that living the good life takes more than money. Venus Xtravaganza showed me that life is a negotiation. Whatever category you choose, you better work it!

Sadly, the era and the players of Paris Is Burning are long gone, but their spirit doesn’t just live on—it thrives. Paris Is Burning and its subjects are legendary.

Side note: everything has its dark side. This is a perfect example: http://dangerousminds.net/comments/dorian_corey_the_drag_queen_had_a_mummy_in_her_closet

In 2016, the United States Library of Congress deemed Paris Is Burning “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

71 minutes
Rated R

(Home via iTunes) A

http://www.jennielivingston.com/paris-is-burning

My King [Mon roi]

Link posted on by moviebloke

(France 2015)

No one makes films about bad relationships better than the French, and Maïwenn’s My King is a fine if not entirely original example. Attorney Tony (Emmanuelle Bercot) and restaurateur Georgio (Vincent Cassel) are two upper middle class Parisians who probably never should have gotten together despite their chemistry and affection for each other.

After crossing paths in a nightclub, Georgio invites Tony (short for Marie-Antoinette) and her entourage—her brother Solal (Louis Garrel) and his fiancée Babeth (Isild Le Besco)—to his apartment for breakfast after last call. Solal and Babeth fall asleep on a couch, but Tony and Georgio hit it off. He’s dashing, smart, and full of ideas for cool things to do. It’s not long before they’re emotionally and carnally involved—and Georgio, the smooth guy that he is, is assuring Tony that her vagina is magnifique. As hooked as Tony is, something isn’t quite right from the outset: Georgio has a penchant for escape, whether through wine, his friends, or his ex, cover model Agnes (Chrystele Saint-Louis Augustin), who is all too present in his life, sometimes summoning him to her place in the middle of the night for emergencies. Things get complicated when Tony gets pregnant.

WARNING: Potential spoilers ahead!

My King is less about the events that occur onscreen than its characters and what makes them tick. Tony’s insecurities don’t mix with Georgio’s restlessness, the latter of which manifests itself in his buying stuff, drug benders, pool parties, and even renting his own apartment down the street from her and the baby. She loves him, but he brings out the worst in her. The story is told through flashbacks as Tony goes through rehabilitation after a skiing accident, ultimately suggesting that maybe she hurt herself on purpose. As Tony gets stronger in rehabilitation, she opens herself to the other patients—most of them younger and more relaxed men who are less sophisticated but nicer than Georgio. It’s not clear where she’s headed, but let’s hope it’s somewhere healthier.

Maïwenn’s directing is competent, but she takes a rather pedestrian approach here. The dramatic tension is a bit uneven, particularly the scenes of Tony in rehabilitation. The screenplay itself is okay but nothing special—I’ve seen this movie before. What really makes My King soar is its players, especially the leads. Bercot and Cassel are expressive, engaging, and raw. They’re totally convincing and sympathetic, and watching them interact is a treat. This would be a forgettable film without them.

124 minutes
Not rated

(Gene Siskel Film Center) B-

Mon Roi

Private Property

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1960)

Private Property, a weird and fascinating psychological thriller written and directed by Leslie Stevens and shot over the course of five days in 1959, is the best film I never heard of. Believed “lost” for decades, a print was recently discovered in the UCLA film archives, restored, and shown for the first time in more than half a century just this past May at the TCM Classic Film Festival (https://hqofk.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/2016-tcm-classic-film-festival-private-property-1960/)(http://filmfestival.tcm.com/programs/films/private-property/). It is, in a word, a treat.

Duke (Corey Allen) and Boots (Warren Oates) are two shady Southern California vagabonds who subsist by stealing, usually intimidating their victims into giving them what they want—orange soda, cigarettes, a lift to Beverly Hills. All it takes is Duke’s thinly veiled threats delivered in his cold, menacing manner and a flash of their knives. The boys are sitting on the sidewalk outside the gas station on the Pacific Coast Highway where they just scored some loot when Ann Carlyle (Kate Manx), a beautiful kept housewife in a Corvette, pulls in to ask the attendant for directions. Duke is clearly intrigued by Ann, and he immediately hatches a demented plan to follow her and get Boots, a virgin, laid for the first time.

Ann unwittingly leads them to the Hollywood Hills, where she lives a seemingly idyllic life in a gorgeous home with her husband, Roger (Robert Ward), an insurance executive. Duke and Boots scope out the area and find an empty house for sale right next door to Ann. They squat there and spy on her from an upstairs window as she sunbathes, swims, gardens, eats, and comes and goes throughout the day.

In the privacy of their home, it becomes plain that Roger is more interested in work than in Ann, who not so subtly throws herself at him—splayed out on the living floor with her legs spread in one scene, and all dolled up in a negligee (no doubt from Frederick’s) in another—but can’t seem to get him to take a bite of her apple, so to speak. She stands in front of their bed and cries when she emerges from her dressing room ready for love one night, only to find him sound asleep.

Duke, who deduces that she’s unfulfilled, devises an introduction with Ann: he knocks on her door after Roger leaves for work and poses as a day worker looking for someone else’s house—the Hitchcock residence, of all places. He makes small talk about landscaping and offers to do some gardening work. The exchange sets off an unsettling connection that culminates in a bizarre lunch date in the back yard when Roger flies to San Francisco for the day.

Even with its flaws, I absolutely loved this film—it completely lured me with all it’s got going on. Simmering with sexual tension, ambiguity, and mystery, Stevens lets the plot unfold slowly, step by eerie step—very much like Hitchcock or, much later, David Lynch. It works: Duke is a psychopath, and watching him plot his next move made my skin crawl as much as it kept me glued to the screen. Boots is gay. His relationship with Duke is strange and undefined: it’s not clear whether they’re lovers, but Boots is definitely the submissive one. Roger is asexual. Manx, who has a sweet Barbara Eden thing about her and who was married to Stevens when Private Property was shot (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-leslie-stevens-1159807.html), brilliantly depicts the gamut of feelings Ann goes through: frustration, confusion, longing, hope, and loneliness. She’s a vulnerable character, and it hurts to watch her at times. Side note: knowing that Manx committed suicide a few years later makes her performance here all the more tragic (http://mobile.nytimes.com/1964/11/17/kate-manxactress-is-suicide.html). Ted McCord’s shimmering black and white cinematography and camera work add a ton of character to an already stylish and unusual film.

Promoted as “the boldest story of a planned seduction ever to scald the screen,” Private Property had to be scandalous in its day. It promises the kind of smut in a pulp paperback. It’s simultaneously groundbreaking—for its time, anyway—with its subject matter, yet surprisingly inoffensive. Sex is not shown—it’s all implied. Ann never says she’s horny—she shows it, for example, by rubbing along her neck the big phallic stopper of a huge perfume bottle and lying in bed with Duke’s belt under a towel next to her (oddly, she also puts his belt around her neck at one point). Profanity is whitewashed—in one of the film’s most ludicrous moments, an exasperated Duke utters, “What the flop?” He doesn’t call Boots “gay” or even “homosexual”—the closest he gets is something about finding a daddy.

The ending is disappointingly predictable, but it’s not so bad that it ruins the wonderfully suspenseful ride that brought us to it. From a historical perspective, Private Property stands as a seething criticism of post-War American values. It’s also got great exteriors of a long gone Los Angeles. I won’t forget this one.

79 minutes
Not rated

(Facets) A-

Private Property

https://youtu.be/dISWFu6wBKk