Change Your Image
mrodent33
Reviews
Engrenages (2005)
Very good but flawed
So many things to like about this... but the seemingly unconscious sexism and ethnicist stereotyping become more pronounced as the seasons succeed one antoher. Almost certainly because ageing white middle-class male Meja producers will have started to influence the plots as the series became more mainstream.
In Gallic terms, this series is quite revolutionary if only because it actually includes many people from France's large ethnic population. The attempts to overturn gender stereotypes are also partly successful. And yet despite this, the ethnic and gender biases prove remarkably persistent. Series 5 is particularly alarming: there is a gang of four "wild" and violent female teenagers, all of them except one BAME. It transpires that it is only the white member of this gang who eventually turns out to be slightly less than totally psychotic. Truly amazing that that got past the editorial team without just wondering if maybe there was something a bit off here...
"Spiral" is blinkin' awful as the English title for this. One translation for "Engrenages" might have been "Machinations", except that that word is no doubt too ironic.
Alléluia (2014)
Pahahahahah!
This is compelling viewing. One of the funniest films I've seen in a long time.
The problem is that I've lived in France and can only take a certain amount of naive French ideas about "la passion" seriously. Without wanting to give away any of the plot, I believe most people in most countries will be able to watch this and laugh out loud most of the time.
At it. Not with it.
Starred Up (2013)
Oo's The Daddy?
Hahaha... recorded this last night and watched it for free today.
This is obviously intended to be a Scum for the 2010s, with the emphasis, however, very much on the pyrotechnics ... I was laughing for most of it, thinking: "how many seconds are we going to have to wait for the next bit of 'Moindless Mayhem' (as they might say in Sarf London)?" Funnily enough the stuff at the beginning identified the funders for this film as being Scottish and Northern Irish film funding bodies... and yet it was entirely Southern English based, with nary a non-London accent to be heard. If I were a taxpayer in Scotland or "Norn Iron" I might feel a bit miffed about that.
Central to the film is the relationship between the young whippersnapper and his Old Man, and the cliché for each is that "E can look after 'imself", if you get my drift. Chip off the old block, innit? Please don't pay money to watch this film if you are looking for sociological insight. But I've seen worse entertainment films.
Le conseguenze dell'amore (2004)
Old man's film
It costs a lot to put a film together, and you have to believe in it from start to finish.
This film is utterly professional and stylistically wonderful but at the heart of the central theme driving the film is a male fantasy thread which tells one a lot about who finances film in Italy, if nothing else.
Why the beautiful waitress should take any interest in the older man (who looks a lot older than his ostensible 50 by the way), if not for his money, is completely unexplained. And clearly, as the plot makes abundantly clear, money is not a motivation on her part. Furthermore, as the title makes pretty clear, his apparently reciprocated infatuation is the central theme of the film.
I presume we are simply meant to take this as a "given" without any explanation, and to go along with its absurdity, but the trouble with this is that you never see it the other way round, specially not in Italian cinema, and that it reflects and indulges a tired male fantasy throughout cinema which we really don't need any more of.
To compound the unhealthiness, indeed, she nearly dies in a random road accident towards the end which incidentally forms a clunky plot device. The trope "pretty girl must die" (or nearly) is a common feature in this sort of Latin old blokes' type of film-making.
Tony Manero (2008)
Disturbing, intelligent, memorable and perfectly crafted
Hollywood at its best has very occasionally made films of this subtlety and power, so have the French. The reviews here have picked up on some of the symbolism, but not enough: Raul *is* Chile, yes, but Travolta and Saturday Night Fever also symbolise the trashier American values for which Pinochet's Chile murdered democracy in 1973. The symbolism in this film is staring you in the face, and yet at the same time it is not annoying or even obvious! In the tradition of such films of subtlety, the actual physical presence of the regime is very marginal, barely hinted at with one scene with a couple of brutal plain-clothes cops. And in fact the film, oddly, does work perfectly well as a story of an obsessive, murderous maniac. The lead actor has a compelling screen presence, far superior and more convincing, to my way of thinking, than the mannered nonsense of an Al Pacino, for example. Another powerful offering from recent South American cinema, which like so many of these recent films, works on the slow-burn principle, and does it with great artistry.
Séraphine (2008)
restful but Frenchly formulaic
Speaking as someone who would rather have my teeth pulled out individually and slowly than be forced to watch Hollywood product of any kind Séraphine wasn't so bad - at least I watched it to the end. But I've lived in France for many years and seen hundreds of French films and there are many like this one. The main objection is that "cultural" French films like this are quite a bit less than the sum of their parts: they are "full of themselves" with an idea that it's sort of "cool" to be understated, not to tell a story, but just to depict a slice of life, albeit of an extraordinary person in a period setting, and say "now, look at that...", and we're meant to go "hmm... fulfilling". So often I'm afraid this is film-making about film-making. There were things to be asked here, which might have been useful to know but which would have (horror, how uncool!) involved exploring character a bit more - particularly of Uhde: why was there a gap of 14 years between his departure from Senlis and his decision to go back and rediscover his protégée? - perhaps a little more cynicism generally about the motivations, passions and prejudices and art dealers, who are obviously flawed individuals like the rest of us, would have made for a much more engaging film. But it would not have "complied" with the mandatory "film d'art et de contemplation" aesthetic.