Foreign Film Wednesday: The Quiet Girl (2022)

 

The Quiet Girl (2022). Directed by Colm Bairéad. Starring Catherine Clinch, Carrie Crowley and Andrew Bennett.

The Quiet Girl is a moving, slow-paced movie set in 1981 Ireland, although you wouldn't know it from anything in particular about the setting. Cáit is the quiet girl in question, the youngest daughter of a troubled family. She is a bit of a loner, very introverted and the subject of teasing and scorn from her sisters and her community. Her mother is about to give birth and her parents want Cáit out of the way, so they send her away to live with her mother's cousin, a married woman with a secret.

This is a Sunday-morning movie, one to enjoy with a cup of coffee and the tissues handy. The movie is about 60% in Irish and I think I've never heard so much Irish spoken in a film. It really is an incredibly beautiful language. 

Cáit blooms under the care of Eibhlín and Seán, farmers who are both a good deal better off than Cáit's family and a good deal kinder too. But she's only there for the summer, and the summer will end.

The movie is based on Claire Keegan's book Foster, published in the United States in 2022.  I know I'll be adding that to my wishlist, and you should add both to your lists, too.

The Quiet Girl is available to stream on multiple services.

French Movie Mercredi: 36 Fillette

 

36 Fillette. 1988. Directed by Catherine Breillat. Starring Delphine Zentout and Etienne Chicot. 

The title, 36 Fillette, refers to a clothing size that a teen girl might wear. The movie is about Lili, a 14 year old who wants to lose her virginity and thinks she might have sex with Maurice, an older man (I mean if she's 14 that's not saying much) probably in his 30s or so, who is not sure he wants to have sex with her. And she's not really sure either. She meets him while on vacation with her family and it's the second movie I've seen by Breillat about girls on vacation. Something about being away from home, even with your parents in tow, gives a girl ideas.

Lili is petulant and difficult but she's pretty and eager and doesn't really understand the forces she's playing with. Things don't go well between her and Maurice but all seems well in the end.

The movie is pretty explicit as you might imagine. The opening scenes show her talking to a celebrity played by Jean-Pierre Léaud, an actor who starred in what might be the best coming of age movie of all time (or at least the best one made about boys), Les 400 Coups, François Truffaut's 1959 classic. He's mentoring her a little and the casting choice is hilarious. 36 Fillette is not the best coming of age movie made about girls, or even Breillat's best (that for me is Fat Girl) but it's good and worthwhile if you are interested in girls' stories and renderings of adolescent sexuality that are honest and raw.

I'm glad I finally got around to seeing it.

 

36 Fillette is not available on streaming to my knowledge. I rented a DVD from Netflix.

French Movie Mercredi: Un beau matin (2022)

 

Un beau matin (2022). Dir: Mia Hansen-Love. Starring Léa Seydoux and Pascal Greggory.

Un beau matin, or One Fine Morning, is a sweet and moving film about a single mother, Sandra, who is trying to find a good nursing home for her ailing father and navigate parenthood and love five years after the death of her husband. 

Sandra, played by Léa Seydoux, works as a translator and has a young daughter named Linn. Her father Georg is a philosophy professor suffering from some version of dementia who has gone blind and is rapidly losing the ability to care for himself. When the film opens Sandra is facing up to the very daunting task of finding him an appropriate and affordable place for full-time care.

At the same time, she bumps into an old friend, a married man named Clément, and the two launch into a romantic relationship. It may or may not succeed.

One Fine Morning is a very affecting movie, bittersweet and complicated, and Seydoux is luminous in a role that could not possibly be more different than the one she plays in France, which I talked about last week. I'm not sure she even wears makeup at all! It's a far cry from the many glamorous or historical roles she often takes, more like some of her earlier work but instead of playing a confused teen she's grown up and is playing a full grown woman finding her way. 

Highly recommended. 

One Fine Morning Available to stream on mulitple platforms.

French Movie Mercredi: France (2021)

 

France (2021). Directed by Bruno Dumont. Starring Léa Seydoux and Benjamin Biolay.

France is a hot mess.

It's billed as a satire about celebrity and the media, and stars one of the biggest stars in France (the country), Léa Seydoux, as France de Meurs, a celebrity journalist who begins to question her life after hitting a young man on a bike with her car. She has a husband, Fred, and a best work friend and assistant, Lou, who is half accomplice and half enabler. France leaves the limelight but she doesn't stay out for long and when she comes back it's an open question whether or not it will be business as usual.

The movie runs a little over two hours and it's entertaining and will keep you watching. I didn't love it but it was fun. It has some pretty crazy sequences, which I will leave you to discover. It's definitely not a movie to take too seriously. There is no real sexual content but there is one pretty shockingly violent scene towards the end.

I'm a big fan of Seydoux and will happily watch anything she's in. She's very appealing always, she has a terrific energy and always seems like she's a little smarter than the character she's playing. I'm glad I picked this one out for my Sunday night.

French Movie Mercredi: Le Monde Après Nous (2021)

 

Le Monde Après Nous (2021). Starring Aurélien Gabrielli and Louise Chevillote. Directed by Louda Ben Salah.

Le Monde Après Nous, or The World After Us, is a very enjoyable love story about Labidi (Aurélien Gabrielli) a young Franco-Tunisian struggling writer, and his love affair with Elisa (Louise Chevillote), a pretty student, as he tries to get his first book, and his life, off the ground.

Elisa and Labidi meet in a cafe. He takes her back to the studio apartment he shares with his roommate Aleksei; both men are trying to make a go of it in life and love but they are young and poor. Labidi actually sleeps on the floor on a yoga mat. He wants better for himself and for his new pretty girlfriend so he rents them an apartment neither can afford and it's a question of whether they will be able to make it. At the same time he is negotiating his relationship with his immigrant parents who run a bar nearby. The film is set in Lyon.

I liked this movie a lot. This is a good one for Sunday morning maybe, it's sweet and romantic and I found myself rooting for this young couple. I will say I wish Elisa had been developed a little more. Her job is to be pretty and motivate Labidi to get his act together and she doesn't have much more to offer than that. They go through some perfunctory ups and downs but I promise things will be okay in the end. A cappuccino would go well with this somewhat frothy romantic drama.

 

Le Monde Après Nous is available to stream on Apple+ and elsewhere.

Movie Review Wednesday: Margaret Atwood: A Word After A Word After A Word is Power

 

Margaret Atwood: A Word After A Word After A Word is Power (2019). Directed by Nancy Lang and Peter Raymont.

Anyone who knows me knows I'm a Margaret Atwood superfan, so when I had a chance to see this documentary recently I jumped on it. Atwood has a new book out, a book of short stories called Old Babes in the Woods, and yes I do have my copy although sadly it's not signed and I'm not sure if I will be able to get a signed copy. Boo hoo. 

Anyway the movie is a really beautiful and moving biography of Atwood, starting with her childhood and going more or less to the present day. I enjoyed learning about her time at Harvard and her activism, and the trajectory of her literary career and personal life. I've had the honor of meeting her and speaking with her several times and it's such a treat to listen to her talk and get a glimpse of her personality. Her books mean so much to me and to so many readers all over the world.

It was also fun to get a glimpse into her creative process- how she writes, her routines etc. and talks about her rise into a media figure and Internet celebrity. We also get a look at some behind the scenes stuff on both adaptations of The Handmaid's Tale including the time she was a featured background actor on the Hulu series.

I definitely recommend this to anyone who loves her books or is just curious to learn about her. If you haven't read her before I can make some recommendations for you on where to start based on your tastes; feel free to leave a comment or even email me because her books are some of my favorite things to talk about. 

Such fun!

Margaret Atwood: A Word After A Word After A Word is Power is available to stream on Kanopy and elsewhere.

Foreign Film Wednesday: Darr (1993)

 

Darr (1993). Directed by Yash Chopra. Starring Shah Rukh Khan, Sunny Deol and Juhi Chawla.

Spoiler alert: I love Indian movies movies and Shah Rukh Khan.

Darr stars Shah Rukh Khan relatively early in his career as Rahul, a young man who is obsessed with Kiran, a college student engaged to manly Sunil. He proceeds to stalk her by phone and in person, insinuating himself into the life of the young couple until a harrowing showdown aboard the world's flimsiest fishing boat settles the matter. It's disturbing and suspenseful but doesn't shirk on the musical numbers, so its energy is a little all over the place. But it's still pretty great.

There's not much else to say about it. It's kind of long (3+ hours) but that's normal for Indian movies. The music is fun even though the two big numbers showcase Rahul either singing about his obsession with Kiran or actively stalking her at a Holi celebration. At first his obsession seems kind of funny and then it really turns scary and disturbing, especially after Kiran and Sunil actually marry, when the creep factor really amps up. I have to say though that last fight scene is comedy gold.

I am a huge Shah Rukh Khan fan and will watch anything he's in so was a no-brainer for me. There is a four-part documentary series on Netflix called The Romantics, about the Indian film industry and the Chopra film family in particular; Khan is interviewed about this movie and his other big movie with the Chopra family, DDLJ. It's interesting and fun to watch alongside this movie.  Khan is now one of the best known actors in the world and the Chopra family helped make him a star.

It was neat to see him play against the type he'd later be known for, the dorky comedic romantic hero, and although this wasn't my favorite of his films, if you like Indian movies like I do and you want to see some baby Shah Rukh, it's worth your while.

 

Darr is currently available to stream on Amazon Prime.

French Movie Mercredi: Félix et Lola (2001)

 

Félix et Lola (2001). Starring Philippe Torreton and Charlotte Gainsbourg. Directed by Patrice Leconte.

A fairgrounds operator, Félix, played by Philippe Torreton, becomes enamored of Lola, an enigmatic young woman who hangs out at the fairgrounds and gets a job there. She is played by a morose short-haired Charlotte Gainsbourg. She has some kind of shady past and present connected to a singer whom Félix is seen shooting at the beginning of the movie.

I have to say this is one of the blander of Leconte's offerings, at least in my opinion. I love Charlotte Gainsbourg- she is both French movie royalty as the daughter of icons Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin and an icon in her own right- but her heavy eye makeup, sloppy hair and downcast attitude render her character kind of like a My Chemical Romance song come to life and I'm not sure I get what Félix sees in her. Or what she sees in Félix, who doesn't seem to have a lot to offer either.

Leconte does a nice job with that opening scene building interest and suspense. I think I like Leconte more when he's using source material he didn't create himself, like with Monsieur Hire, or when there is a little more pointed satire, like Ridicule. I want to watch Ridicule again now that I mention it and maybe some of his other movies that I saw a long time ago like The Hairdresser's Husband and The Widow of St. Pierre. I think I can blame a lot of my adolescent and post-adolescent angst on him. This movie would not have made much of an impression even on teenage Marie though. 

You can watch this on a Sunday morning but your attention might wander if you have breakfast with it. I watched it on a Sunday night and it did not 100% hold mine. Maybe this is one for Leconte completeists only.

French Movie Mercredi: Zero F***s Given (2022)

 

Zero F***s Given. 2022. Directed by Emmanuel Marre and Julie Lecoustre and starring Adèle Exarchopoulos.

Rien à Foutre or Zero F***s Given is a 2022 film about Cassandre, a flight attendant on a mid-range airline based in Brussels who is just trying to make a go of life. The film depicts her ups and downs, her daily challenges and her longer term efforts to make something out of her life as she self-sabotages again and again. It reminded me a lot of what it was like to be a young person stuck in a depressing loop of work and more work with no real way out.

Cassandre is a pretty average 20-something more ore less on her own and working in a demanding and often degrading profession. She's just about treading water most of the time- neither successful nor failing. She's not sure what she wants beyond just getting from one day to the next.

Exarchopoulos, whom you might remember from Blue is the Warmest Color (2013) is charismatic even when her affect is flat and her character seems disconnected from what's happening to her. She portrays an alienated young woman very convincingly. When Cassandre's life comes to a crossroads, she must face some things she'd been avoiding and come to terms with a tragedy that's haunting her.

I liked this movie a lot even though it was pretty light on plot and action. It was a very absorbing character study whose dramas are quiet and very true to life. It could be a Sunday morning movie but not really in the feel-good sense. Maybe a Saturday afternoon movie, something to pass a lazy day or a quiet evening.

Currently available to stream on multiple platforms.

Foreign Film Wednesday: My Favorite Studio Ghibli Movie

 

The Tale of Princess Kaguya. 2013. Directed by Isao Takahata.

My favorite Studio Ghibli movie isn't Howl's Moving Castle or even the very popular Spirited Away. It's the 2013 release The Tale of Princess Kaguya, which isn't even directed by Hayao Miyazaki but by the lesser-known Isao Takahata, whose movies are just as enchanting as Miyazaki's if maybe a little more for grownups. It was nominated for Best Animated Film in 2014.

The Tale of Princess Kaguya tells the story of a being who comes to Earth from the Moon in the form of a little girl whose parents decide her destiny is to be a princess. A woodcutter finds her in a bamboo field as a tiny woman on a leaf; she transforms into a human baby and the woodcutter and his wife raise her. She grows up happily in the forest with other farmers but eventually and much to her dismay the woodcutter decides to raise her to be a royal princess and moves the family to the capital.

The movie is on the long side- 2 hours plus- and touches on adult themes like social class and burgeoning sexuality in ways that I haven't often seen in Ghibli films which I tend to think of as more for children. Princess Kaguya has some darker moments than I'm used to for these movies. It is incredibly beautiful to look at and listen to- the animation is so gorgeous, every panel is like a painting, and Ghibli vet Joe Hisaishi does much of the soundtrack which includes piano, orchestral and koto pieces. The big number at the end, "When I Remember This Life," made me cry before I even learned the English lyrics.

If you haven't seen it I really recommend you check it out. It's just magnificent.

French Movie Mercredi: Late August, Early September (1998)

 

Fin Août, Début Septembre (1998). Directed by Olivier Assayas and starring Mathieu Almaric, Jeanne Balabar and Virginie Ledoyen.

Late August, Early September is a moody French relationship melodrama from 1998, about growing up and growing older, and a group of friends making the transition from youth to middle age and from one relationship to another etc.

Directed by Olivier Assayas, master of such films, and starring Mathieu Almaric and Jeanne Balabar as Gabriel and Jenny, a couple splitting up and moving on, it's talky and immersive. When the movie opens Gabriel and Jenny are selling the apartment they shared for a number of years. Gabriel is seeing Anne (Virginie Ledoyen) a younger sexpot version of Jenny and he seems to be at a crossroads with the two women. Jenny still means a lot to him but he's clearly besotted with Anne at the same time. Alongside this threesome is François Cluzet as their friend Adrien, a struggling author with health problems and a burgeoning romance with a teenager that he's keeping a secret.

I liked this movie a lot. I think it qualifies as a Sunday morning since the adult content is pretty minimal (one somewhat edgy sex scene) and the relationship between Adrien and his young girlfriend Véra is kept out of the bedroom. Anyway it's a thoughtful drama, not too heavy but filled with nuance and acting that brings out the subtle relationships between all of these people and the various characters circling around them.  I'm a big fan of Assayas in general and I think this is a pretty solid drama for adults that will make you feel things if not think too too much.

It's available currently on HBOMax.

French Movie Mercredi: The Skies of Lebanon (Sous le Ciel d'Alice) (2020)

 

In the 1950s, a young Swiss woman named Alice comes to Lebanon in search of work and adventure. She dislikes her native country and takes the first opportunity to leave; she is trained to be a nanny and accepts a job offer from a Lebanese family. She only speaks French and Italian and soon meets a handsome Arab man named Joseph; they fall in love and marry, and Alice and Joseph make a life. 

When civil war breaks out in Beirut, the family comes under increasing pressure to emigrate and the movie opens with Alice apparently leaving her husband after much struggle. The flashbacks start out cotton-candy-beautiful, their cardboard and green-screen animated backdrops reflecting Alice's youth, her hopefulness and her excitement at building a new life for herself. Time passes; things get harder but then they might get better too.

I loved this movie a lot. Alba Rohrwacher is so moving and engaging. She reminds me of Julie Delpy, the French star of the Before Midnight series, but older and wiser. Her costar Wajdi Mouawad is charming and sweet. I was rooting for them and their family every step of the way.

I've been waiting for Sous le Ciel d'Alice to hit streaming for a while now and I was happy to be able to watch it finally.  It would be a fine Sunday morning movie. The violence is all off-camera and the ending is sweet and satisfying. Get your tissues ready. 

Note: Alba Rohrwacher is the narrator of the first three seasons of the HBO series My Brilliant Friend and will play Elena in season four. Stay tuned!

Available to stream on multiple platforms.

French Movie Mercredi: Monsieur Hire (1989)

When Monsieur Hire came out I was 16 and saw it in the theater in my town because I was studying French and took every opportunity to hear and practice the language. I was a regular at the theater but they really should not have let me into a movie whose tagline should be: Psychosexual Obsession- When You're Georges Simenon and Patrice Leconte, It's What You Do!

I did not know at 16 that the movie was based on a Georges Simenon book, (Les Fiançailles de Monsieur Hire, or Mr. Hire's Engagement, roughly) but I was not at all surprised to learn this when I saw it again recently. It did make me a fan for life of the director, Patrice Leconte, and I've seen a number of his movies since. I haven't read the book, but the movie has an atmosphere of claustrophobic eroticism similar to other Simenon books I have read, like Tropic Moon and An Act of Passion. And it's definitely of a piece with Leconte's other works.

It's been a while since I've seen it but I have to say it holds up.

Monsieur Hire, played by Michel Blanc, is a reclusive loner who likes to watch his neighbor, pretty Alice, played by Sandrine Bonnaire, through his window. Alice has a boyfriend who may be involved in a murder. Monsieur Hire is not well-liked in his neighborhood and is openly suspected of the murder himself. He then gets into his head that he is actually in love with Alice and things kind of go downhill from there.

I enjoyed this movie for its suspense and its subtle sexiness. The ending is a downer but what can you expect from the dynamic duo of Simenon and Leconte. I saw it on Kanopy which I've mentioned before; it's a free streaming service available to many U.S. public library patrons. If you like thrillers with a tinge of eroticism this might be a good choice for you. Adults only though.

I watched this on Kanopy.

Halloween Foreign-Film Wednesday: Let The Right One In (2008)

Let the Right One In asks a very interesting question: what would happen if you took a genre-savvy 12-year-old vampire and her stressed out familiar and plopped them down in modern day Sweden, and introduced them to a lonely boy with no friends? Probably just kind of what you might expect to happen.

This movie, released in 2008, tells the story of Eli and Oskar. Eli is the vampire; she looks like she's 12 but we don't really know how old she is. She's been 12 "for a long time" and she lives with a middle aged guy called Håkan, who is basically her familiar. And being a familiar is not the glamour job you think it is if you watch What We Do in the Shadows; you've got commit and cover up lots of murders, and buy lots of tarps and buckets and splashproof pants, and try not to draw attention to yourself or the very pale "12 year old girl" you live with.  I mean the laundry bills alone, amirite? So it's a tough row to hoe. Meanwhile Oskar, a fellow preteen, is a loner who is bullied at school by some mean kids. He is drawn to the enigmatic Eli who along with being a cute girl is very low key and does weird stuff like climb on things and move fast and get obsessive about Rubik's cube. She only hangs out at night and at first insists they can never be pals. What friendless loser could resist that siren's song?

Not super gory, Let the Right One In is like an art-house vampire movie for people like me who like The Smiths but don't watch a lot of horror. It's got its share of the gruesome, like when Håkan's last grocery run goes very very bad, or like when the Swedish Scut Farkas finally gets his at the school swimming pool.

I liked this movie a lot and my husband and I were still talking about it days later- all the little genre touches, the character development, the narrative twinning of Oskar and Håkan, how they are like past and future versions of each other, and that weirdo ending.  So I'd definitely recommend it in general, including to people who generally eschew horror like me. It's like the thinking person's vampire movie.

Happy Halloween!

Literary Movie Wednesday: The Miracle of the Little Prince (2018)

Dir: Marjoleine Boonstra.

The Miracle of the Little Prince is a documentary about the power of literature to save language and the power of language to save literature. The Little Prince is of course Antoine de St-Exupéry's classic children's book originally published in 1943. It is one of the most-translated books in the world; outside of religious texts, few books have been translated more often. This movie tells the story of four translators representing four endangered languages- Sami, Tibetan, Nawat and Tamazight. 

It's slow moving and almost hypnotic, opening in the deserts of Morocco and traveling from there to icy Finland, El Salvador and Tibet by way of Paris. Themes of exile, oppression and alienation tie these cultures together along with the book that symbolizes nostalgia and hope as well as the things we all share as humans on this Earth.

The film is moving and emotional and makes me want to learn more about the story behind these languages and the stories behind the translations- these and the many many others that have been done of this singular and beloved book. It's a great Sunday-morning movie, something you'll find both fascinating and enjoyable on many levels.

French Movie Mercredi: Happening (2021)

 

L'événement (2021) Dir: Audrey Diwan. Starring Anamaria Vartolomei, based on the novel by Annie Ernaux.

I had L'événement, or Happening, on my to-be-watched list before Annie Ernaux was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature last week, but that award definitely bumped it up for me and luckily it was available to stream from several services. This 2021 movie is set in the 1960s in Paris and tells the story of Anne, a fiercely ambitious college student who gets pregnant at a time when abortion often meant death or prison. 

Anamaria Vartolomei isn't the only actor in the movie but she might as well be, so fully does she command the screen as Anne, who is determined to end her pregnancy one way, or the other, and continue with her studies. I think she's in every scene. It all hinges on Anne's drive and grit. Nothing comes easy. Even the people who try to help her seem like they either don't care or don't have the necessary power or agency to act. What would happen to Anne if she fell in line too?

It's a depressing movie for sure especially in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling which threatens to send us all back into the world she lives in, where abortion is talked about only in whispers, where a pregnant person's agency and freedom don't exist or exist only at the whims of whatever doctor they happen to run into. It's really terrifying and unfortunately all too real. One word will determine her fate.

It made me angry, and sad, and then angry and sad again. You should watch it.

Foreign-Film Wednesday: The Handmaiden

The Handmaiden (2016) Dir: Park Chan-wook. 

Based on Sarah Waters'  2002 novel Fingersmith, The Handmaiden transposes Waters' Victorian-Britain setting to Japanese-occupied Korea and concerns a pair of con artists and a woman yearning to escape her brutal and sexually-exploitative uncle who wishes to marry her for her money.

Sook-hee is a thief and petty criminal who poses as a handmaiden to a wealthy woman, Hideko, who has been raised by her aunt's husband, a collector of rare erotica. "Count Fujiwara" is an associate of Sook-hee's who is conspiring to marry Hideko with Sook-hee's help. Shenanigans ensue.

The first time I saw this movie, when it was in theaters in 2016, I didn't know anything about it nor had I read Fingersmith; I still haven't read the book but I want to. The movie is constructed in three parts; by the end of part one, what I thought was going on, wasn't what was going on. By the end of the movie, I didn't know what was going on, but it seemed like everyone got what was coming to them, more or less. So it was satisfying in that sense.

The movie has a lot of explicit and frankly edgy sexual content and I'm not talking about the sex between the two women. A friend of mine took someone on a first date to this movie and I would not recommend that. LOL. It's genuinely suspenseful, twisty and intense. It's beautiful to look at and the actors are graceful and convincing. There is some gruesome violence towards the end.  

It's a long-ish movie at about 2 and a half hours but you won't feel the time pass at all, so firmly will it grip your attention. Pop some popcorn and settle in for a wild ride.

(Non-French) Movie Wednesday

 

I finally got around to watching the film adaptation of Delia Owens's 2018 hit novel Where the Crawdads Sing, this past weekend. I read the book in galley as part of the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize; I've been a first-line reader for them for several years and I think that 2018 was my first year participating. I didn't review the book here but I remember enjoying it, a crime novel/melodrama about a sweet little lamb of a young woman living in the marshes of North Carolina who is accused of killing the town jerk/hottie by a sheriff who railroads her with a truly convoluted theory of the crime. Owens's writing hits that spot between popular and literary fiction- beautifully descriptive in some places, fairly pedestrian in others- and features a heroine who also ticks a lot of boxes- beautiful, gifted, abused and neglected, and finally victimized, first by a man and then by the whole community. Or is she?

What a setup.

The movie is about as good as it could have been with that material. It looks great- gorgeous scenery featuring blue skies, beaches, trees, the glory of the outdoors, all replicating Owens's lush descriptions. The actors look like they fit the part too. It-girl Daisy Edgar-Jones, late of Hulu's Normal People and Under the Banner of Heaven, is perfect for the role of Kya, the aforementioned America's Sweetheart protagonist. She played victims of various kinds in those productions, too. Maybe that's her schtick. Anyway she's pretty and makes her character pitiable and appealing. The two guys are kind of nonentities- the good one is blond, the bad one is darkhaired- and David Straitharn shows up as the kindly town lawyer who takes her case.

Like I said the movie is a solid adaptation of the book, faithful and true, and fans of the book will not encounter any surprises. Pretty to look at but kind of vacant, I enjoyed it for what it was- a pretty distraction- but that was it for me.

(Not French) Movie Wednesday

So, back in 2012 a book came out that I was a big fan of, Lawrence Osborne's The Forgiven (link is to my review). Both the film and the book tell the story of David and Jo Henniger, a wealthy couple on their way to a lavish party in the desert of Morocco. On the way they hit and kill a young man, Driss, who was trying to stop their car. They take the body to the party and then the family shows up.  What happens is both inexorable and agonizing. The book is lush and atmospheric and genuinely suspenseful, a vivid morality tale crossed with a travelogue. When I heard about the movie, which came out last year, I was nervous and hopeful.  Well, it was pretty great.

The movie stars Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain as David and Jo, along with Matt Smith as the party's host and Saïd Taghmaoui as David's guide and companion into the world of Moroccan Berbers. Fiennes get David's disdain and eventual transformation so right; honestly I don't remember enough about the book to tell you how faithful an adaptation it is but I feel like it's probably pretty close, and the filmmakers certainly get the tone and atmosphere and the characters. Matt Smith is great; his character reacts to the accident with enough concern to make him likeable and enough pragmatism to wear the edge off of his likeability just ever so much. Taghmaoui is an actor you might recognize from Wonder Woman (2017) among other things, and I just always enjoy the heck out of him. 

 

The movie touches on a lot of issues around colonialism, whiteness, culture clash and more. The characters don't exactly have secrets but everyone is more complicated than they let on-just like in real life. The one place the movie let me down was not giving Driss any character development or backstory like Osborne does in the book. There is one, sweet, character detail included that touches David deeply, not that it does him any good.

I'm not someone who believes the book is always better than the movie; here I think we have a very good book that was made into a very solid movie. It looks great, it sticks to the source and the actors bring it all to life. The run time is just under two hours but it really flies by. I was glued to the screen; you will be, too.

French Movie Mercredi: Les Illusions Perdus (Lost Illusions) (2021)

 

Lost Illusions, a 2021 film based on a novel by Honoré de Balzac, is kind of a classic French art-house-period-piece, set in the 19th century among both high and low society, about an up-and-comer from the provinces who's trying to make it not just in the big city but in the biggest city of the time. Paris is a garden of delights, a hornet's nest and viper pit rolled into one- glamorous, treacherous, full of promise and full of sorrow.

Lucien de Rubempré, as he styles himself, is a lower class man and a poet working in a print shop in Angoulême- the sticks. He is having a passionate affair with a local noblewoman, Louise de Bargeton. They decide to go to Paris but are unprepared for what awaits them there. Soon, Lucien connects with a young newspaperman who tutors Lucien in the ways of the press- its dizzying levels of corruption, its power, the ups and downs that come with weathering the storms of Parisian life. Lucien falls in love with a young courtesan, Coralie, and soon her fate is bound to his.

I think what I enjoyed about the movie is the way the narrative is both so 19th century and so contemporary- how little has changed about the mechanics of power, the power of the press, and the power of the heart to love and to hate in equal measures. It's a good old fashioned costume drama but it also speaks to issues we care about in 2022 in ways that I did not find overly didactic or academic. The narrator speculates about the future of the press and you can infer commentary about the internet and influencer culture too.  There is a great deal of humor here as well as pathos and irony and while Lucien's fall may be preordained, it is still tragic. But he does have the chance to start again, and we are reminded that even that is a privilege that is not shared by all, in his world or in ours.