SCREENING LOG - 9/25/2006-10/1/2006

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Belle Toujours (2006, Manoel de Oliveira)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0475224/
Luis Bunuel, who would be 106 today, passed away three decades ago; it's mind-staggering to think that Portugese master Manoel de Oliveira, only 11 years younger at age 95, is still with us, let alone offer a sequel to one of Bunuel's most popular films. The premise, itself an extended meditation on aging and long unfulfilled longings, is mouth-watering: Severine, the lusty ice queen played by Catherine Deneuve in BELLE DU JOUR, is discovered by her husband's best friend (Michel Piccoli) decades after the sordid series of events depicted in Bunuel's masterpiece, and this time the man doggedly pursues her to divulge a secret held from the earlier story.

While Piccoli resumes his scoundrelish ways, it's a near fatal blow that Deneuve declined to be involved for reasons unknown. Bulle Ogier is a game substitute but the film lacks a certain resonance with the original; without Deneuve the character of Severine, as played by Ogier, is a stubborn, unwilling muse to Piccoli's musings of romantic nostalgia, with no real connection to her past incarnation. Or is that not the point? Is this actually Oliveira's remake of THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE? The film comes off better in that light, though I admit an impatience with films about the unfulfilled desires of old men (cf. BROKEN FLOWERS). There are a handful of scenes with deadly long dialogues dissecting the action of the previous film (taking too literally the implicity notion of this film critiquing its predecessor), discussing on the nature of the old man's desires and desire in general.

On the other hand , the film is beautifully shot and achieves its most striking moments when nothing is spoken -- as with I'M GOING HOME, Oliveira in his dotage has tremendous patience in paying attention to moments most people don't give a second thought to, from the act of nodding off in a concert to the awkward silences that pass between couples dining. And it has some incredible aerial shots of the Paris cityscape underscored with Dvorak's Eighth Symphony -- images that one imagines would be quite contented if they were the last to pass through one's eyes.
mixed

Offside (2006, Jafar Panahi)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499537/
After years of making films that receive international acclaim while infuriating censors in his native Iran with his depictions of social injustice, Jafar Panahi has made an unqualified attempt at a bona fide crowd pleaser. It's got soccer! It's got exuberant teenagers! It's got a happy ending! Oh yeah, and it shows girls being locked up by soldiers for trying to have the same rights as boys by going to a World Cup soccer game to cheer on their national team. Oops.

Panahi's film unfolds in near-real time as several girls caught sneaking into the stadium by impersonating men beg their captors for freedom, or at least a trip to the bathroom. The stadium effectively becomes a microcosm of Iranian public space and women's virtually non-existent role within it. Perhaps the issues of gender double standards are made to the point of redundancy, with every character playing a thickly defined role in this cinematic civics lesson -- the simplicity of the story would probably appeal to a lot of viewers in his country; too bad its bluntness is also what's keeping him from being screened.

What isn't simple are Panahi's technical skills, here at an all-time high -- he seamlessly incorporates scenes shot at an actual national game and weaves several characters through the narrative, each giving a different shade to the situation; the perspective shifts even within a scene. And the performances he elicits from his non-professional cast are vibrant, ebullient and totally natural. For these merits I consider it a career highpoint for this consistently accomplished artist; let's hope that his countrymen finally get the opportunity to see for themselves.
YES (#7 for 2006 between TALLADEGA NIGHTS and MIAMI VICE)

The Science of Sleep (2006, Michel Gondry)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0354899/
After seeing this, I think I have a better handle on my equivocal praise of BLOCK PARTY and on Gondry's strengths and weaknesses in general. Both films are about individuals living out their dreams. Dave Chappelle in BLOCK PARTY gets to live out his fantasy of racial utopia by bringing people from his mixed-race Ohio hometown to a pimped up Brooklyn block party featuring his favorite hip hop artists, with Gondry assuming his self-designed role as a filmer of dreams come true. THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP is probably as near to Gondry's heart as BLOCK PARTY was to Chappelle; it's every bit as much about dreams come to life, but here they become reflections of a kind of existential nightmare, an endless solipsism that barely has room to let others in - including, ironically, the girl of one's dreams.

On a technical level, the film is immensely admirable for its use of old-school special effects dating back to the surrealist filmmakers of the silent era whom Gondry undoubtedly emulates. Using cellophane, paper and scraps of everything he can find in the arts and crafts store, he creates a psychic wonderland TV studio in which Gabriel Garcia Bernal's dreams come to life in a clutzy homemade splendor, drifting between three languages and slipping with jarring but uncanny ease into reality and back. For the most part it's both exhilarating and stultifying in its brilliance and slippery quirkiness.

As it goes on, though, one starts to wonder what all this restless inventiveness is leading to, and for me it began to seem less like a admirable wonder than a symptom of an illness that prevents its own cure. Gondry is so relentless in throwing all kinds of cool things that it becomes a compulsing, willfully resisting a more equanimitable exchange of ideas and feelings between its characters, and effectively sealing his solipsistic protagonist's fate. What starts off as a series of charismatic cinematic offerings seems more and more like a anal retentive exercise in narcissism. Yes, he's brilliant; yes, he suffers, yes he's misunderstood. It might help if he might try to understand others and lick fewer of his own wounds.

This lack of true engagement between individuals is what I see lacking in both BLOCK PARTY and SCIENCE OF SLEEP. BLOCK PARTY was a lot of fun, but it just wasn't enough to have Chappelle's fantasies of bringing suburban blacks and whites to watch A-list hip hop artists. It would have been fascinating to see them interact, to share their experiences with each other and see what the results would tell us about race, class and celebrity issues in America. Short of that, it's Chappelle's fantasy bestowed on us, nothing more. Same thing with SCIENCE OF SLEEP -- Gondry pushing his visual gifts on us, to the point of desperation. In both cases, instead of these fleeting fantasy fulfillments, he just needed to settle down and let his characters really talk to each other to arrive at a moment of substance.
yes

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