treddy Reviews

Seventeen Times Cécile Cassard (2002)

a work of beauty

[9/10 · 26 October 2002]

a portrait of a woman in 17 fragments, a woman who has just lost her husband, a woman who leaves behind her a life in the provincial city of Tours where every person, every object and every gesture holds memory of a love she cannot bear to have lost, a woman who proceeds forward, a bit blindly, as she essays to remove a great distance that has between her and her heart, which has become, in her mind, an unsafe place. beatrice dalle incarnates this woman, cecile cassard, giving a beautiful performance worthy of recompensation. perhaps even the cesar for best performance for this year. she doesn't merely act well, she inhabits this woman: dalle doesn't lie when she tells us, as she often does, that she lives a character while she is making a film.

the director, christophe honore, not forgetting that it is he who illicits dalle's wonderful performance, demonstrates a masterful command of visual storytelling in remembering that, in film, pictures have a more important weight than words in advancing a narrative story-line. much is heard in the french press and on television that this is an experimental film, a film without a linear narrative. no, in fact, the film is a conventional narrative at heart for it follows a linear journey of a woman as she strives to refind herself. and it is a beautiful story, mixing pain and loss with laughter and love. i look forward to more films by him in the future.

also of note is a good soundtrack by alex beaupain and les lily-margot and the beautiful cinematography by remy chevrin: they achieve a perfect symbiosis, such as in the opening sequence, the scenes at the abatoir-factory in Toulouse, and the dancing scene between dalle & romain duris, who plays the director's alter-ego of sorts, in the hotel where cecile first stays in Toulouse.

September 11 (2002)

most definitely NOT an anti-american film

[9/10 · 19 September 2002]

i chose to see the this film on the day it opened nationally in france, as a personal way for myself to reflect on what had happened a year previous; the collection works as intended: it provokes a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions, working as an intellectual hommage, never stooping to cheap sentimentality nor knee-jerk reactionism.

there have been many allegations made that the film is anti-american: while i cannot speak for everyone in this regard, i am one american who found such statements to be completely untrue. people make much noise about the egyptian segment, by Chahine, because it voices perspectives of palestinian suicide bombers asserting that civilians in a democracy are "fair targets" for they elect the governments the bombers are seeking to attack, but this ignores much else in the piece: several perspectives are discussed, no one being held up as the truth, and critics--if they even saw the piece--seem to forget the fondness and warm dialogue that takes place between the director and the ghost of the american dialogue, and the director's intense sadness upon hearing of the tragedy.

pretty much all of the films are beautiful, thoughtful & inspiring, in particular the brilliant work by Mahkmalbaf, Tanovic, Loach & Inarritu. Nair, good as usual, effectively tells a true story of an injustice committed against a muslim family in the wake of anti-islam hysteria that swept--and still sweeps--the states. i did find Gitai's piece a bit vulgarly loud and simple in it's critic of media hysteria in the face of terrorism, and Penn's piece was too impressionistic and elliptical for my tastes, though i had expected to like it. Borgnine is very good and brave in it. SPOILER WARNING: one reviewer below incorrectly read the falling of the towers as being a happy moment for the character; my read is rather that the falling of the towers is what, because light floods his room, keys him into the loss in his life that he refused to recognize. again this is a sort of impressionistic piece, for we know that if the towers were really blocking the light to this man's flat, then there would have been nothing but smoke and ash, not light, flooding through his window.

Street of Shame (1956)

a gorgeous street of shame

[10/10 · 13 April 2002]

a remarkable coup de grace to mark the end of a remarkable film career. here mizoguchi deals once more with a theme that dominated the length of his film career, prostitution and its effects, exploited on one side of society, shamed through the eyes of another (interesting here is how the family, for example, operates both as exploiter and as judge of these women in mizoguchi's vision). interestingly melodramatic while never losing even a momentary grip on its naturalistic intent, this film is a pure joy, intellectually and emotionally, to watch. the acting, on every side, in particular the five excellent women who play the modern-day geishas, is perfection. a must-see.