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Reviews
Det som ingen ved (2008)
A long way from Dogme
Soren Kragh-Jacobsen was one of the original Dogme 95 signers, but this genre film contains plenty of stunts and frequent (though effective)underscoring. And, for that matter, rather quaint (classical?) editing within scenes. File under: conspiracy/paranoia/rogue intelligence unit/CIA/Cold War/biological weapons. (The de rigeur references to the CIA and the Cold War don't let the bad guys off the hook. They seem to act under their own moral agency and exhibit the usual range of thuggish behavior: surveillance, breaking and entering, violence, kidnapping, extortion.) The ostensible theme of the movie is liberty undermined by ubiquitous surveillance--but is it anything more than just another tool of menace used by men who would otherwise still manage to find the means to harm the innocent? And it's overplotted, too, working in a teenage romance that underlies subsequent events. Yet there's a sense of compulsion behind the behavior of Anders Berthelsen's character--a mix of curiosity and vengeance, and a growing sense of futility and a battle of unequal forces. The film works but not necessarily the way the director wanted it to.
The Ghost Writer (2010)
Phoned in
If one were to provide a fairly lengthy synopsis of this movie, beginning with " A writer is hired to ghost write the memoirs of a former British prime minister," you'd pretty much get as much out of it as seeing the film. It has a topical political background that seems to be of little interest to the director (or to the protagonist), uninteresting mise en scene and a trite pseudo-Herrmann soundtrack. The characters' actions are compelled by neither necessity or moral conviction. It's a tired and tiring film. A nice look to the film, though, which made me hope that some additional intelligence would poke through. Not the case.
Comme si de rien n'était (2003)
An actor's life for me
The director admits that his first love is the theater, and all the scenes in the theater - rehearsals, performance - have a certain credibility that's often lacking in "backstage" films. Synopsized, the plot might seem maudlin: a passionate affair threatened by a serious illness. But the film is essentially a romantic comedy anchored by a sensational performance by the director as an unassuming nervous type - but someone entirely at home in the theater. The director has claimed that the film was produced at a cost of $400,000, thus putting the usual bloated-budget American and French films to shame. And one more thing: Only a director who loves actresses would give them as many crying scenes as there are in this film.
Elle est des nôtres (2003)
Disturbing
An unsettling film about a woman unable to fit into her surroundings, out of place at work, at home, with her parents. Shot in a very clinical manner - it should come as no surprise that the director admires Resnais and Antonioni. There is some humor in the film, though even that is undercut by some dialogue about wishing to laugh for once without it being at the expense of others. The film manages, however, to include some melodrama: a murder, a police investigation, an off-screen suicide.
I saw the film at a series of French films in New York and was inclined, despite everything, to give the director the benefit of the doubt on a film which, though unpleasant, seemed to have a great deal of sympathy for those who just don't fit in. Unfortunately, the director was present and explained that the film was above all a critique of the workplace, which saps the creativity of workers. Despite my upper middle-class status, I could only think at that point: Elitist bulls**t! For most people, work is the means by which they support and protect themselves and their families. And for many, the workplace is the locus of their creativity--or at least where they can draw on the support and friendship of their co-workers.
There were in this film no children, no books, no sign of the civil society that sustains people faced with earning a living, being decent, facing mortality. The film seemed to succumb, ultimately, to the fallacy of form: only something lifeless, dreary and unrelenting could describe the situation of the workplace. Convinced me more than ever of the formal validity of the work of leftist filmmakers like Loach, Leigh and Godard (at least the early Godard), who are able to depict the contradictions of modern life with vitality and humor and, ultimately, respect for those who have to endure it.
So, yes, a provocative film, but the work of a scold.