chaderek Reviews

The Bridesmaid (2004)

Age and Youth = Sublimity!

[9/10 · 20 March 2005]

Director Claude Chabrol has been around a long time, and actor Benoit Magimel is a comparative newcomer, but their chemistry results in a sublime entertainment. Magimel had a supporting role in Chabrol's last film ("La Fleur du Mal"), but here he's top-billed and he's superb. As a hard-working sales rep for a French home-improvement firm, Magimel projects his diverse skills with great subtlety. He portrays the dutiful, loving son to a hard-working single mom and older brother to two sisters (one, a preoccupied bride-to-be, and the other a snotty layabout), and he's a real straight-arrow, jacket-and-necktie clad guy. But he meets one wild and messy love-target at his sister's wedding. This thoroughly disorganized and slovenly young woman may (or may not) be a certifiable fruitcake and chronic liar, but -- through her -- our very proper sales rep is introduced to carnage and murder on a major scale. Watch Magimel's handsome but expressive face as he struggles with new-found passion, love, doubt, dismay, fear, loathing and about a hundred other mixed emotions. If you don't know his prior work, you'll be discovering an actor of consummate skill. And with this twisty, funny and consistently suspenseful film, you'll be enjoying one of the best films in Chabrol's long and distinguished career.

Kinsey (2004)

Amazing!

[14 November 2004]

This is a flat-out masterpiece of direction, acting,and screen writing. Let no one be put off by the hysteria of prurient, right-wing fringes that seek to boycott this film (the fringes forget that this is the United States, not Franco's Spain, and that we have a cherished Constitution that protects our basic liberties). The story of a lonely, awkward young man who became our first acknowledged scientist of sexual behavior moves with a quiet, forceful momentum that is sure to engross and enlighten film audiences around the world. Told with rare sensitivity and grace, considering the explosive subject matter, this film reminds us that during the l940s and l950s an astonishing majority of Americans knew little about their own sexual natures and often feared their erotic yearnings because of the prudishness and hostility of religious and legislative leaders, who dictated our national mores and intruded upon our private lives. No, society hasn't changed all that much in 2004, but the fact that this bold and beautiful film can be made is proof of some progress after all.

The Flower of Evil (2003)

Choice Chabrol!

[4 November 2003]

Baudelaire wrote about the many flowers of evil that enchant and destroy men and women, but director Chabrol picks only one from this pernicious garden -- the intergenerational betrayal that afflicts an upper-middle class French family. Just as Aunt Line's husband betrayed the French resistance to help the Nazis, so does the present father and husband of this household betray his wife's political ambitions (he's the author of the scurrilous tract that slanders her and her family, and personally betrays her through his adulterous affairs). Yet this tense and elegant thriller is never didactic or judgemental: its wry and sometimes boisterous sense of humor, typically Chabrol and very Gallic, is just one of many tones that this splendid director wields. Acted with great mastery by, especially, Suzanne Flon (as Aunt Line) and Benoit Magimal as her hunky grandson, this is one flower of evil that delights the eye and ear of sentient moviegoers.

King of Kings (1961)

It Still Delivers!

[4 April 2003]

A recent screening of "King of Kings" at New York's Museum of Modern Art (Gramercy Theater) proved the durability of this production. A sizable group of people were prepared to titter or howl at what they thought would be another mindless Biblical epic -- instead, they were quickly absorbed and attentive to the film's virtues: its reverence, economy, visual beauty, and especially Jeffrey Hunter's quietly commanding Christ. Yes, this is still the good film based on the New Testament (with some subtle and searching script additions). Thanks still go to Nicholas Ray for his tactful, expert handling of a timeless story.

Safe Conduct (2002)

A Master's Masterpiece

[10/10 · 14 October 2002]

Bertrand Tavernier is, arguably, the greatest living director of French films, and "Laissez-Passer" ("Safe Conduct") is his masterpiece. By recreating the working and personal lives of two actual French artists, screenwriter Jean Auranche and director Jean Devaivre, Tavernier provides a rich tapestry -- at once funny, tender, exciting, and moving -- of the French film industry during the darkest days of World War II. Although the studio for which Auranche and Devaivre worked was under Nazi patronage and control, almost every writer, director, and technician who made French comedies, dramas,and musicals tried to subvert Nazism by subtly incorporating themes of revolt and resistance into the films they made. Tavernier asserts this truth while he explores his heroes' real-life participation in the French underground: stealing German documents and passing these on to the Allies and finding jobs for creative, but indigent, friends. Moreover, the affection with which Auranche and Devaivre regarded the cinema talent of their days -- Pierre Fresnay, Raimu, Danielle Darrieux, Harry Baur, even the lightly satirized Fernandel -- is part of Tavernier's epic vision of the French film scene of its time. And he gives us invaluable insights into how brave people continued to work at their craft despite the poverty, hunger, and oppression they suffered daily. It's a pity that some of Tavernier's younger critics cannot appreciate either his concepts or his visually fluid and arresting style (for sheer cinematic beauty, he captures the squalor of everyday French life during the Resistance by alternating it with glowing sequences of the country's rural life). "Laissez-Passer" is faultlessly acted; seldom has such a large cast of players -- of all ages -- been in such beautiful synch with a director.

White Oleander (2002)

Academy Award Actresses

[13 October 2002]

It's rare to find compelling female characters in today's male-dominated film market, but here is a movie with intricate, complex roles for four Oscar-worthy actresses. As a cool and calculating woman who justifies murdering her boyfriend, and whose major gift to her daughter is maternal malice, Michelle Pfeiffer paints a quietly devastating portrait of a controlling egomaniac, convinced of her superiority to those around her. After she's imprisoned, her teenage daughter (Alison Lohman) is shuttled between juvenile care centers and the homes of several foster moms. These include a hip-swinging former coke-head and born-again Christian (Robin Wright Penn) and a genuinely kind but weak-willed minor movie actress (Renee Zellweger). The actresses offer scalpel-sharp performances that will enthrall moviegoers of both sexes;"White Oleander" (a poisonous flower symbolic of Ms. Pfeiffer's character) is a mature, powerful film not to be missed.

Take Care of My Little Girl (1951)

An early anti-establishment film with warmth and wit

[9/10 · 20 October 2000]

Released in l95l and not often revived, this well-made blend of comedy and social criticism attacks the American sorority-fraternity system that once prevailed in our colleges and dictated the values of former generations. The heroine, beautifully acted by Jeanne Crain, is the "little Girl" sent to a fashionable college where her mother had once reigned as a sorority queen. Slowly, and abetted by a gently cynical former soldier, Crain sees that the snobbery fostered by trendy sorority "girls" and "boys" can disturb and even destroy pledgees too weak or insecure to fight the system. Fine performances are given by Dale Robertson, as Crain's ally and boyfriend, Jeffrey Hunter in one of his earliest triumphs as a frat-boy narcissist, and the late Jean Peters, who is alluring and a trifle menacing as a sorority girl who measures people by the cut of their clothes. Atmospheric in its delineation of campus life and rituals and graced by first-class production values, "Take Care of My Little Girl" should be available to new audiences on videotape (and theater revivals). It's a film that Martin Scorsese appreciated before making his own films.