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Reviews
Wandafuru raifu (1998)
Ranges from flimsy at best to silly and unconvincing at worst.
If this film had been made by Atom Egoyan, then we might have been treated to a serious, interesting and complex reflection on media, memory and surveillance. Instead, we end up with a foolish, naive, thin and superficial film that has nothing to say about the myriad connections between memory and cinema/films. A ragged, laboured effort, held together by a few bits and pieces of amusing characterisation. Don't bother.
8 femmes (2002)
A film with real French flair, charm and lightness.
Charming, elegant, witty, incredibly entertaining, playful, funny and captivating, brimming with all kinds of beautiful nuances on all levels, both "form" and "content" (if one may be allowed to make that distinction?). It's also quite a silly film, and ridiculously "stagey" in many ways, of course, especially with its endless plot twists and turns, but I had no trouble overlooking the silliness and the "stageiness". Some of the song and dance numbers - especially those of Fanny Ardant, Isabelle Huppert and Emmanuelle Béart - are brilliantly done, even if, as singers, none of them will likely be signing any recording contracts in the near future. Shows a well-judged parodic balance between absurd farce, melodrama and drama. After the quiet grimness of "Sous le sable" and "Regarde la mer", a most unexpected change of direction and pace for Ozon.
Fontane Effi Briest (1974)
The word "masterpiece" comes immediately to mind...
This film has everything one could ask for: astonishing visual intelligence and imagination, wonderfully evocative, impeccably composed images that draw on silent cinema and painting, all perfectly adapted to the very moving story being told, and the period/milieu in which it unfolds: Effie Briest is presented as enclosed in the many different spaces (most of them - especially the interiors - saturated with stifling formality, social rectitude and conformity) through which she moves and in which she lives, or tries to live (the bird in the cage being a transparent symbol of all this). Quite simply, Fassbinder knows - knew - what "mise en scene" really means. The passage of time is brilliantly handled (through, for example, the use of the fade to white, intertitles and a moving voice-over narration), and the cast is flawless, as well as being flawlessly directed. A film of immense dignity and power, yet it somehow remains understated...
My Brother Tom (2001)
A complete mess from go to woe.
If utterly facile, regressive, self-indulgent, anti-establishment, anti-civilisation juvenilia appeals to you, then this is the ideal film. Very poorly scripted, with often inaudible dialogue and infuriatingly tiresome hand-held camera throughout, this is a film that presents the world in appealingly simplistic, Manichean terms: all adults (especially teachers, parents, priests and doctors) are insensitive and bumbling at best, and predatory monsters at worst. The only escape from the horrors of civilisation as a whole is plenty of primal screaming (yawn) and infantile regression (literally) in a primitive cave-like space in the woods, with utopia taking the form of a rave party - again, in the woods (naturally...). Displays all the weaknesses of a first film, and plenty more besides.
L'île d'amour (1944)
A largely brainless provincial melodrama, slightly redeemed by some fine cinematography.
Provided you're not violently allergic to Tino Rossi bursting into song at any and every pretext, and provided you can overlook simple-minded melodrama built around (for the period) standard, simplistic oppositions between sleazy, city-slicker Parisians and wholesome Provincials (in this case Corsicans, some of them not averse to a spot of banditry, which adds to the authentic "local colour" of the film), then this film has one or two qualities that, to some extent, make up for its overall silliness. There are several quite beautifully lit and filmed scenes, with an almost startling sultriness in the key love scene between our local hero equipped with golden vocal chords (Bicchi/Tino Rossi)and the Parisian "femme fatale" (Xenia/Josseline Gael) who entices him into bed (upon which, fade to black, of course). This film is the "pendant" to "Au son des guitares" (1936), in which Tino (playing a Corsican fisherman) is foolish enough to follow a Parisian siren/tramp back to Paris, leading to the predictable catastrophes (poverty, homelessness), momentary success (cabaret singer), and eventual return home to happiness in Ajaccio...