DAMNED IF YOU DON’T is Friedrich’s subversive and ecstatic response to her Catholic upbringing. Blending conventional narrative technique with impressionistic camerawork, symbols and voice-overs, this film creates an intimate study of sexual expression and repression. Featuring Peggy Healey as a young nun tormented by her desire for the sultry irresistible Ela Troyano.
“Damned If You Don’t was an important contribution to the inauguration of a feminist cinema of visual and sexual pleasure, a contentious issue for feminist filmmakers and theorists more than a decade after Laura Mulvey’s germinal “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975). Featuring a narrative structure and the depiction of women’s bodies—forms and images proscribed by Mulvey’s essay—the film reclaims the pleasures of character identification and of the sensual visual field. The heart of the film’s narrative follows the episodic seduction of a young nun (played by Peggy Healey) by a woman (Ela Troyano), but Friedrich interweaves the story with both experimental cinema’s use of poetic images and documentary’s analytical contextualization. The film begins with a humorous deconstruction of a classical narrative, Powell and Pressburger’s Black Narcissus (1947), as a voiceover emphasizes how, in the film’s conflict between a “good nun” and a “bad nun,” evil becomes associated with acting on forbidden desire. This binary of good and bad, sexual repression and sexual expression, is metaphorically expressed in the film’s gorgeously optically-printed high contrast shots of seals, swans, and snakes gliding in water, their sensuous energies barely contained by the frame. Meanwhile, another voiceover text cites Judith Brown’s Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy, a text which functions, like Black Narcissus, as a framing device for the central narrative seduction. Uncovering the sexual energies thinly disguised in nuns’ submission to Christ, Immodest Acts adds an historical dimension to Friedrich’s story, suggesting how the prohibitions on lesbian sexual desire have been negotiated and transgressed for centuries (often precisely through the indirection and mediation of metaphorical imagery).”
After ten years away, Jacques Pruez, an unmarried, 50-year-old, modestly successful actor, returns to his home village to comfort his dying mother. His father Yvan, a family barber who’s counting on his “successful” son to support him in his old age, refuses to believe that his wife is sick and insists that her doctors are killing her. She dies, and Jacques finds out that Yvan is not his real father. Besieged by memories of his childhood, the village and the past, Jacques wanders the streets at night, reliving the moments that set him apart from the rest….
Actor and scripter Jacques Nolot made his directorial debut with this French drama, winner of the Prix Georges Sadoul. The film written by Nolot, was initially going to be directed by Claire Denis, but when the project with Denis felt through, he took the direction. The film’s original title translate as the Back Country and makes reference to Nolot’s rural village where he grew up.
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Après dix-ans d’absence, Jacques Pruez, cinquante ans, célibataire, acteur de second rôle, retourne dans son village pour assister aux derniers jours de sa mère. Il habite pour la circonstance chez ses tantes Aimée et Jeofrette, renoue avec le passé, avec les ragots du village… Yvan, son père, compte sur son fils qui a “réussi” pour assurer ses vieux jours. Il ne croit pas à la maladie de sa femme, pense que ce sont les médecins qui la tuent. Après la mort de sa mère, Jacques apprendra un secret familial : son père n’est pas son vrai père. Prisonnier de son enfance, de son village, du passé, Jacques erre la nuit dans les rues, revit les moments qui ont marqué sa différence…
From Rotten Tomatoes Once upon a time, there were two children who had the same nanny: Azur, blonde and blue-eyed, son of the lord of the castle, and Asmar, dark-skinned and black-eyed, the nurse’s child. Brought up like brothers, the children are suddenly torn apart. But Azur, haunted by the legend of the Djinn the nanny used to tell him, intends to find it in lands beyond the seas. When they grow up, the two foster brothers each go separate ways in search of the fairy. Daring rivals, they find magic lands in a medieval Maghreb, full of dangers and enchantments.
Quote: Just three years after earning Academy Awards for Best Picture and Director for 1960’s The Apartment, Billy Wilder re-teamed with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine for another look at love and relationships. But this time the drab New York insurance building was traded for the bawdy streets of Paris, and secretaries replaced with prostitutes. Once again, Wilder poked fun at the taboo subject of sex and again, his instincts paid off: Irma La Douce was Wilder’s biggest commercial success yet, and received three Academy Award nominations, winning one for Andre Previn’s lush score.
Irma La Douce (MacLaine) is the most popular “lady of the night” on the Rue Casanova, the red light district of Paris. With her green tights and French poodle, Irma has a prime hooking spot on the corner outside the Hotel Casanova. Nestor Patou (Lemmon) is the one honest cop patrolling this beat. Naïve in the ways of love, Nestor suspects what everyone else already knows—that sex is being bought and sold at the hotel. He promptly orders a raid. Unfortunately, one of the girl’s customers is Nestor’s boss, and he’s soon back on the street, but without a job. Nestor returns to the Rue Casanova and befriends Irma…
For fans of The Apartment, Irma La Douce is akin to that film’s redheaded stepchild. It cannot match its predecessor in terms of sheer brilliance and wit, pathos, and charm, but we love it nonetheless. For one thing, Irma La Douce gives us a chance to see yet again what Billy Wilder can do with the perfect comic foil, in this case Jack Lemmon. This was the duo’s third film together and their comfort level shows. Lemmon’s physical comedy in Irma La Douce is the best of his career (with the exception of Some Like It Hot) and in my mind ranks him among the best physical comedians. His early fight scene with Irma’s mec is a portrait of ineptitude. Later, his shyness in undressing in front of Irma is hilariously pathetic. When Nestor morphs into Lord X, Lemmon embraces the alter ego with as much energy as he did with Jerry/Daphne. The film also continues the on-screen relationship of Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, though here his love is requited, unlike in The Apartment. Wilder and writing partner I.A.L. Diamond remained at the top of their game with this picture. The story is clever and very risqué for its time, dealing with serious themes of sex, fidelity, and jealousy with trademarked barbs and one-liners. The film looks beautiful too, with art director Alexander Trauner wonderfully recreating the bustling Rue Casanova with glorious sets and vibrant colors.
Despite all of these terrific elements, Irma La Douce has flaws. Though the film was adapted from the stage musical of the same name, all of the songs have been cut. The film still maintains the look, feel, and whimsical illogic that audiences accept from a musical comedy. At times, it feels like the characters should break out into song, but they never have that release. For his part, Wilder felt that the songs got in the way of the story and I think (dare I say it) he was wrong. The pacing is uneven as well. The first hour of the film is the best, with Lemmon inhabiting the role of pathetic schnook that he plays so well. As Nestor gains confidence, the picture loses some momentum. It’s a robust two hours and 23 minutes and could’ve used a little trimming.
It’s interesting to hypothesize about what Irma La Douce might have been. Despite the horrible shooting experiences of The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot Wilder was anxious to give the role of Irma to Marilyn Monroe. Monroe would’ve brought innocence to the role that MacLaine lacks. One complaint about the movie is Irma is so easily duped about Lord X’s true identity. With Monroe, this might’ve been more believable. After Monroe and Wilder had a falling out, Elizabeth Taylor was signed for the part. When the film was pushed back in favor of Wilder’s One, Two, Three, Taylor had to drop out and MacLaine was in. Charles Laughton, Wilder’s star from Witness For The Prosecution, was intended for and interested in the role of Moustache. In his final days, Wilder even read lines with the ailing star, knowing that he’d never survive to make the film. Lou Jacobi is adequate in the role, and often quite funny (he’s the Dunkin Donuts guy from the old “time to make the donuts” ads), but a legend like Laughton would’ve made the film extra special.
Quote: Brad Collins, former stevedore, is rising fast in a shipping company when local communist agitators use his former Party affiliation to extort his help in stirring up trouble. When Brad resists, communist femme fatale Christine works through his brother-in-law Don. But Brad’s new wife Nan sees that her husband and brother are under pressure; when she investigates on her own, party boss Vanning takes ruthless action.
Quote: An inspiring tale through London by pictures narrated by Paul Scofield.
NY Times wrote: The city of London is not a hospitable-looking place in Patrick Keiller’s exceedingly arch cinematic meditation on England’s largest city. Filmed during Prime Minister John Major’s 1992 re-election campaign, “London” examines a metropolis whose stately old architecture is increasingly dwarfed by hideous post-modern skyscrapers and mocked by garish billboards.
A gray pall of air pollution hangs over the Thames. Members of the English royal family, shown discharging their ceremonial duties, look like wind-up dolls surrounded by toy soldiers. And terrorist bombings by the I.R.A. inflict staggering property losses in the heart of the city. Because the film has no live soundtrack apart from the narration and some faraway sound effects, it has the feel of an examination conducted through thick one-way glass.
Although “London,” which opened today at the Film Forum, has the appearance of a documentary, this eccentric movie is really a sly combination of fact and fantasy. Paul Scofield, who narrates, plays a man who has returned to London after a seven-year absence and tours the city with his former lover, an unseen, unheard character named Robinson. His narration is largely an account of Robinson’s observations on the decline of the city, as the two of them visit historical sites associated with famous authors and painters.
The tours they undertake are part of a vague research project whose purpose is never stated. The first of three trips takes them from Strawberry Hill to Twickenham (where Horace Walpole wrote “The Castle of Otranto”) to Vauxhall (the area associated with Sherlock Holmes). The second expedition begins at a house once occupied by a woman who rejected Guillaume Apollinaire’s offer of marriage and ends at a school where Edgar Allan Poe was once a pupil. The final jaunt, in the city’s outer suburbs, follows the River Brent.
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SIGN UP Along the way there is a lot of prattle about the French poets Baudelaire, Verlaine and Rimbaud’s impressions of London. The narration is heavily seasoned with lofty quotations on the character of the city and on urban life in general. One of the most resonant comes from the 19th-century Russian socialist Aleksandr Herzen, who observed: “There is no town in the world which is more adapted for training one away from people and training one into solitude than London.”
Although the film makes a token attempt to celebrate the vitality of neighorhoods where immigration has created a multi-ethnic swirl, it is at heart an extended cranky complaint against modernism and the decline of civility. The unrelieved hauteur of Mr. Scofield’s character eventually becomes tedious, and “London” takes on the tone of a dry, circuitously worded editorial.
“Can’t Go Wrong Without You,” the three-minute music video by the Brothers Quay that opens the program, is a typically eerie visual nightmare by the experimental film makers. In this black and white film for the underground rock band His Name Is Alive, a stuffed rabbit battles devilish forces for the possession of an elusive Easter egg.
Berkeley Art Museum – Pacific Film Archive writes: Ray Milland is both repellent and compelling in this Victorian thriller, directed with bleak panache by Lewis Allen (The Uninvited). Milland plays a charming thief, forger, and all-around blackguard who spots a prime mark in Ann Todd, a missionary’s widow and proprietor of a boarding house where Milland takes up residence. Under the influence of Milland’s advances, the straitlaced Todd abandons her inhibitions, eventually becoming complicit in larceny and blackmail—but her seducer will learn that a woman’s passion, once unleashed, can be difficult for even the most calculating con artist to control. A carefully drawn backdrop of British respectability heightens the drama of Todd’s decline: as so many English mysteries have proven, crime can be all the more thrilling when draped in crinoline.
Quote: In Fabric is a haunting ghost story set against the backdrop of a busy winter sales period in a department store and follows the life of a cursed dress as it passes from person to person, with devastating consequences..
Quote: Black and White that bursts into vibrant bright colours for the rave dance scenes.
Scotland. 1994. As the Criminal Justice Bill clamps down on UK rave culture, ‘Beats’ tells the story of two teenage boys, best mates discovering music, sexuality, rebellion and the irresistible power of gathered youth. Set to a soundtrack as eclectic and electrifying as the scene it gave birth to, ‘Beats’ is the story of the jilted generation.
Beats is a coming-of-age story that works regardless of (post-rave) generation. Teenagers finding their way in the world. Best friends struggling to deal with change. The excitement of drugs, sexual awakening and being part of something bigger than oneself. A universal story of friendship, rebellion and the irresistible power of gathered youth – set to soundtrack as eclectic and electrifying as the scene it gave birth to, BEATS is a story for our time.
Online review of film: Eventually it may be that Noah Baumbach could turn into this country’s answer to France’s Eric Rohmer, turning out a steady diet of small, circumspect dramas about the lives and neurotic times of New York-era literary bourgeoisie. That’s one of the things that comes to mind as one takes in Margot at the Wedding, Baumbach’s fourth time out as writer/director and one that seems to set a template for the future. It’s a chill breeze of a film steeped in ugly inter-familial squabbling and the blinkered mentality of its self-absorbed characters who can generally only raise their gaze from their own navels long enough to find something lacking in the person they’re addressing. The sour tone which was shot through Baumbach’s previous work, The Squid and the Whale, has almost completely curdled here, though without losing any of that film’s swift tartness.
As the titular Margot, Nicole Kidman does the yeoman’s share of the work here, as the bitchy and borderline sociopathic older sister who’s reluctantly comes up from Manhattan to her sister Pauline’s wedding at the ancestral country home, where she’s marrying a guy she finds barely even worthy of her contempt. “He’s not ugly, he’s just completely unattractive,” is one of the many evil bon mots that Baumbach gives Kidman to spit out in her seemingly compulsive need to find fault in and drive to despair anyone within eyesight. She makes quite a pair with Jennifer Jason Leigh as Pauline, the two of them strangely beautiful while nestled under stringy and flyaway mouse-brown mops. Kidman’s eyes are flashing and penetrating as Leigh’s are dreamy, the two of them seemingly not of this planet but in entirely different ways.
There’s some ugly secret back in the familial past of this punchy and screwed-up family unit which has left them unable to truly connect to the other humans surrounding them, but there’s not going to be any great reveal, as evidenced by Pauline’s half-hearted attempt to psychoanalyze her and Margot’s speedy bedhopping in their younger years. Meanwhile, the venom that boils inside Margot keeps spilling out, whether it’s in attacking Pauline’s fiancé Malcolm (Jack Black playing a less manic version of his standard oaf), criticizing the son she’s dragged along, or loudly critiquing the parenting skills exhibited by the dangerous rednecks living next door (non-urbanites being a rare and not exactly understood species in Baumbach’s work).
While the marriage of Pauline and Malcolm hardly seems ideal (she’s a space cadet while he’s a prototypically unambitious slacker), they do seem a comfortable pair with an easy, lived-in rapport. But that doesn’t deter Margot, an emotional terrorist hell-bent on destruction, who’s left a caring husband (John Turturro) behind in the city in order to sabotage what’s left of her life by carrying on an affair with an author (Ciarán Hinds, practically the only adult on view here) who lives near Pauline. One gets the feeling that the viewer is only dipping briefly into this dysfunctional stream, that the bitter badinage between all the characters as the wedding plans slowly unravel is just the same as it has always been, no better or worse. Lessons will most likely not be learned and attitudes only hardened, never changed.
While Margot at the Wedding is certainly a smart and honestly ugly film, with well-toned dialogue and an acute understanding of neurotic compulsion, it’s hard to see it as anything but a minor piece of work; a stop-off on Baumbach’s road to (hopefully) bigger things. Or, he could follow Rohmer’s path; there are worse things. — filmcritic.com
DVD Extra Interview: [A] conversation between Noah Baumbach and Jennifer Jason Leigh. It’s thirteen minutes mixed with some clips and is a deeper discussion than you get in your standard promotional interviews, possibly because the pair knows each other so well, having been married since 2005. They talk about the work process for both the actors and for the writer/director who was guiding them. — dvdtalk.com
The same morning that carnival begins, a serene finds in Madrid the corpse of a rich and greedy lender who has been murdered. The main suspect is a seller of watches that owed much money to the old woman, but her daughter, not content with the arrest of his father, begins to investigate on their own …
Based on Patrick Galvin’s memoir, ‘Song for a Raggy Boy’ is set in the grey, grim surroundings of a brutal Irish reform school in 1939. While the storyline has unmistakable parallels with ‘The Magdalene Sisters’, it deserves more than to be dismissed as this year’s indictment of religious orders.
As the film opens, William Franklin (Quinn) has just been appointed as the only lay teacher at St Jude’s. This central character’s outsider status lets the audience see the enclosed world of the reformatory school through his eyes – and it’s not a pretty sight. The Christian Brothers, particularly the prefect in charge of discipline, Brother John (Glen), use verbal and physical abuse to control and terrorise the children, dehumanising them further by refusing to use their names and calling them by their identification numbers.
Franklin, who fought against Franco’s fascists in the Spanish Civil War, is opposed to the blind violence meted out to the boys. In his classes he tries to instil a love of poetry and learning in his students, but soon makes an enemy of Brother John when he interferes in a beating that he is giving new pupil Patrick Delaney (Newman). A defeated man when he arrives at St Jude’s, haunted by memories of his fellow communists and the wife he lost in Spain, Franklin gradually awakens to the boys’ plight and battles against Brother John to save these already damaged children from more harm.
Although the cast of boys was drawn more from boxing clubs than drama schools, their performances are remarkable, in particular Chris Newman and John Travers who plays the tragic Liam Mercier. Brooding widower William Franklin is a step up for Aidan Quinn from his last Irish role in the mawkish ‘Evelyn’ and Ian Glen’s portrayal of the heartless disciplinarian is chilling.
Director Aisling Walsh does not shy away from portraying the physicality of violence – there are moments of sheer brutality and a particularly harrowing scene of sexual abuse at the hands of one of the Brothers – but a happy ending, lifted straight from ‘Dead Poets Society’, is unworthy of what’s gone before.
It’s a tough film to watch but ‘Song for a Raggy Boy’ is a timely and important reminder of the tortures that thousands of Irish children suffered in similar institutions, pointing the finger not only at the perpetrators of violence but at those who facilitated it by their silence
Quote: Interweaving the forms of personal filmmaking, abstract animation, and the rock opera, this animated musical documentary examines the rise and fall of a nearly-defunct poster and postcard wholesale business; the changing role of physical objects and virtual data in commerce; and the division (or lack of) between abstraction in fine art and psychedelic kitsch. Using alternate lyrics as voice over narration, the piece adopts the form of a popular rock album reinterpreted as a cine-performance.
After the generational upheaval of May ’68 and its aftermath, and the personal upheavals of drug addiction, depression, and shock therapy, Garrel made the conscious decision to turn away from the increasingly private poetry of his earlier work, at the center of which was his great love Nico. He turned to the great screenwriter Annette Wadamant, who helped him to organize his thoughts into a narrative of “things that happened to me,” and the result was this spare, elemental, devastating film about two damaged souls (Henri de Maublanc and Anne Wiazemsky) trying to build a life together as her child (Xuan Lindenmeyer) is taken away. As Serge Daney wrote, “It’s as if this autobiographical film has succeeded in holding its bearings without forgetting the trace of each stage of the journey it’s passed through.”
SYNOPSIS: This is an Italian adaptation of The Sea Gull by the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. A young writer is trapped between his awful actress mother (Laura Betti) and the knowledge that he has only a mediocre talent as a playwright and almost no force of character. After the young man in this story suffers the loss of his mistress to his self-satisfied novelist stepfather, his self-respect is so shattered that he commits suicide. (allmovie)
Quote: Summer time. Two teenagers, a boy and a girl, have their first date in a park. Hesitant and shy at first, they soon discover each other, get closer as they wander, and end up falling in love. But as the sun goes down, it is time to separate… And a dark night begins.
Kerekes believes he is wanted by the police when his friends play a practical joke in this unusual comedy drama. He returns to his hometown where he was accused of turning a Jewish druggist and the druggist’s wife over to the Nazis. With his friends following him, Kerekes tries to find out what became of the couple after they were deported. After being subjected to a mock trial by his friends — and found guilty — Kerekes becomes despondent and attempts to kill himself. Flashbacks and hallucinations are employed to tell this story that occurs during the Eichmann trial.
Summary: Wilbur Gray (Cushing) visits Frank Richards (Milland) so he can get his book published. This book Gray has written are about cats. Cats watching everyone and controlling everything. He mentions the stories in the book are all true, and gives three examples. The first involves the murder of a cat-loving old woman (Greenwood) who gives her entire fortune in her will to her cats. Not everyone is happy about the wills, but would have to get past the cats to get the the will. The second story is a tale of black magic between two girls and the third story is a tale of murderous revenge…by a cat. -imdb-
Wilbur Gray, a horror writer, has stumbled upon a terrible secret, that cats are supernatural creatures who really call the shots. In a desperate attempt to get others to believe him, Wilbur spews three tales of feline horror. Written by Humberto Amador
In 1977, in Montreal, the scared writer Wilbur Gray visits his publisher Frank Richards to disclose his new book about the evilness of cats. Wilbur tells that the felines are supernatural creatures, and that there is a saying in which the cat would be the devil in disguise. Wilbur tells three tales to illustrate his thoughts. In 1912, in London, Miss Malkin is a wealthy woman that rewrites her will leaving her fortune to her cats rather than to her nephew Michael. Her maid Janet, also mistress of Michael, steals one copy of the will from the lawyer’s briefcase and tries to destroy the original copy which is kept in the safe. When Miss Malkin sees her attempt, Janet kills her and the cats revenge Miss Malkin. In 1975, in the Province of Quebec, the orphan Lucy comes to live with her aunt Mrs. Blake, her husband and her cuisine Angela after the death of her parents in a plane crash. Lucy brings her only friend, the cat Wellington, but her mean cuisine forces her parents to get rid off Wellington. Lucy uses the witchcraft book of her mother to revenge Wellington. In 1936, in Hollywood, the actor Valentine Death replaces the blade of a fake pendulum to kill his wife and also actress and give a chance to his young mistress and aspirant actress. The cat of his wife revenges her. -imdb-
Au fond d’une zone industrielle à l’agonie, Mao, un patron musulman, possède une entreprise de réparation de palettes et un garage de poids-lourds. Il décide d’ouvrir une mosquée et désigne sans aucune concertation l’imam…
Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche has a way of framing shots that can make an industrial landscape look like an art project. The dominant images in Dernier Maquis are of rows of carefully stacked red pallets towering in a truck yard located on the outskirts of Paris, where most of the film takes place. Under the direction of Ameur-Zaïmeche, these unaesthetic objects become fascinating to contemplate. Since his visual approach exhibits so strong a sense of control, it is fitting that he cast himself as the company boss. The yard workers call the boss “Mao,” as his leadership style feigns benevolence to keep them from organizing for better wages.
Like most of the Arab and African workers in the yard, the boss is Muslim. His latest strategy is to convert an empty room into a mosque where the workers can pray. As much as any pious aim, he seems motivated to calm tensions through prayer. The workers appreciate the chance to worship, but they see his mosque-building efforts as an attempt to dodge meeting their other demands. They argue among themselves, tending to divide by ethnicity, over whether the boss has the right to pick their imam and if they should form a union.
The same careful attention that Ameur-Zaïmeche applies to visuals, he also gives to the film’s sound design. He uses mechanical noise the way other directors use music to accentuate mood, from the roar of an airplane flying overhead to the warning beep of a forklift backing up. Against this soulless backdrop, the humanity and individuality of each character gradually emerge. Titi is a somewhat simple-minded Islamic convert deliberating over the need to be circumcised. The lumbering worker named Giant gets spooked over a large rodent. The imam grapples with maintaining loyalty to both the boss and the workers. The mechanics Jamil and Bachir stir the discontent towards a strike.
Ameur-Zaïmeche places these characters in striking tableaux that emphasize how they are affected by their environment. The towers of pallets loom like walls, entrapping everyone in an inevitable struggle for power. (Cameron Bailey)
