Change Your Image
ulicknormanowen
Reviews
Twilight of Honor (1963)
What lies beneath.
This is an interesting thriller , notable for one of the last appearances by Claude Rains , as an aging ailing attorney who comes to the rescue of youthful colleague Chamberlain. This is quite derivative , "autopsy of a murder " all over again...The brilliant young lawman has become a cliché. But Rains can survive a cardboard role.
On the other hand ,the supporting characters are more absorbing :Ben, the brave soldier , who appears first as a crude brute with a whole town against him ; little,by little,the viewer sides with him ,this man who has got a raw deal and who is overtaken by events; his wife is a nymphomaniac ,who recalls Dorothy Malone in " written on the wind" .Cole and Amy Clinton make an odd couple , the former first hailed as the beloved citizen before one reveals his true colors ; the character of the wife should have been more developed , being more ambiguous and interesting than the female lead , just in it to secure a happy end.
Histoire de rire (1941)
Just for a laugh!
A woman thinks that her husband is not jealous enough and puts him to the test by diappearing with clueless Achilles who woos her; his best friend has an affair with a married woman .The victim and the sinner .
A pleasant harmless comedy , it's "just for a laugh" (the meaning of the title) ; can manly friendship survive the numerous problems with women? Well acted by Micheline Presles ,Fernand Gravey ,Pierre Renoir and Marie Déa,but a lot of filler (music hall scenes)
L'Herbier 's follow-ups ("la nuit fantastique" with the Gravey /Presles couple again and "l'honorable Catherine" )during the occupation ,were highly superior to this théâtre de boulevard .
Seven Ways from Sundown (1960)
A nice pair.
A little western ,definitely off the beaten track ; a ranger/outlaw relationship you do not see every day;when one first meets the renegade ,he's taking with a brat,near the water ;theIr conversation deals with the sturgeons,that provide the European crowned heads with caviar .Later ,the prisoner and his escort does not really act as you expect ; "Seven Ways of Sundown " (youthful Murphy)has probably never got over his big brother 's loss and is looking for a replacement ;his prisoner is a bon vivant , who tries to strike up a friendship with the ranger :together,they would almost rule the world ,should one believe him .
Although we guess very soon who's responsible for the death of the brother, the ranger/prisoner relationship is not derivative ,it's really endearing.
De nos frères blessés (2020)
A man's life counts for little
Algier, October 1956: a communist and a member of the FLN (independence fighters), Fernand Iveton volunteers for carrying out sabotage using a bomb in the Hamma gas factory where he works .
November 14, 1956 at 2 p.m. , he placed the bomb in a cupboard in an abandoned room at factory . The objective is purely material sabotage which aims to cause a power outage in Algiers and Iveton takes precautions so that the explosion does not cause any casualties . He requested that the bomb be set to explode after the workers left.
Iveton is spotted by a factory foreman, who warns his boss. Iveton was arrested at 4:20 p.m. The bomb is defused by the military. There was no damage or casualties.
Iveton did not kill anybody and he did not intend to do so ; in spite of it all ,he was sentenced to death ;his plea for clemency was refused by the French government ,(president Coty and French garde des sceaux -French minister of justice- future socialist president Mitterrand ) , who at the time was keen to reconciliate with the USA (witch hunt in the fifties )
He was the only European (among 178 executions) to be guillotined after a travesty of a trial : he was tortured (no need to show the act, the accused's bruised body tells it all ) but it does not play any part in the final verdict,applaused by the populace .The doctor 's examination does not carry much weight for a political prisoner ,sentenced as an example.
The film is certainly courageous, showing a side of French history which is too often passed over in silence ,but it is sometimes marred by insignificant flashbacks ; some of them make sense : the wife,whose father is still behind the iron curtain and who does not approve of eastern communism; the stepson,admiring the husband and even trying step in his shoes .
But too many scenes deal with a pathetic love story ,not always convincing ,and too little time is given over to the questioning , to the trial and to the situation in France ; the scenes with his brothers -in- arm are few and far between ; his last lines (historically accurate)were prophetic: "A man's life, mine, counts for little. What matters is Algeria, its future".
In spite of some reservations ,a film which must be seen .
Sean Connery vs James Bond (2022)
You can live twice.
To shed the image of the most famous secret agent in the world was not such an easy task ; the actor had to undergo psychiatry (and other methods) to come to term with his true identity.
Sean Connery was a fascinating actor and this doc does him justice: he did not stand to be called James Bond,except if it were a child .He was conscious that it was an unheard of phenomenon -which still carries on today - ,and was furious when he realized he had signed a contract which was not so lucrative as people generally thought (Roger Moore made much more money than him afterwards ,and on a "you only live twice" poster ,his name was not even mentioned !)
But this clever man saw the danger :to be stuck up in a role ;many actors and actresses were not able to get over it ;he did, and he has all the credit. At the beginning ,what's bred in the bone comes out in the flesh : in 'the woman of straw " ,he wears the same suit as in "Goldfinger" .
His sheet anchor was director Sidney Lumet who gave him a role which would be his very favorite : "the hill" ,a settlement of scores with his time in the British Navy and his Bond-rock of Sysiphus ; later he would completely destroy his sexy macho image in the absorbing "the offense " ; Two hustonesque works -even though the latter was directed by Huston followed :"the lion and the wind" ,and mainly my personal favorite "the man who would be king " in which he and Caine blew your mind .If the late seventies were less successful , the eighties and nineties showed that he was not a spent force .
Like Robert Anderson , who urged him to become an actor,he became a mentor for the young actor of "finding Forrester" ;full circle indeed. The star had not forgotten his destitute childhood .
Includes interventions of Andy Garcia ("the untouchables") and John Boorman ("Zardoz" ,with a funny anecdote ).
L'oeuf (1972)
Egg on his face
Jean Herman was a director for about a director ;his most memorable works are thrillers ,both starrring Alain Delon :"Jeff" and mainly "adieu l'ami" where the French star met Charles Bronson .
"L'oeuf " is his final effort before he became a writer (Jean Vautrin) who was awarded the Goncourt prize and who notably wrote the "garde à vue" screenplay.
His decision to call it quits after "l'oeuf" was a good one ; in spite of talented stand up comic Guy Bedos and good actresses (the luminous Marie Dubois and Bernadette Laffont) , the movie does not avoid vulgarity and its heavy-handed treatment does not help.
The best scenes are to be found at the beginning : the hero,hearing about his friends' numerous conquests wonders how they try and pick up so many girls ;his akward attempts to imitate them are pathetic and really funny ;then the hints at mythomania are quite relevant : are these affairs really real?
Ripley: VIII - Narcissus (2024)
Death in Venice
Highsmith was always fascinated by Venice ; her novel "those who walk away" and her short story "the rat of Venice " would bear this out. It was only natural that the novel (and the miniseries) should end in the stately palaces of this magic city ;in spite of an occasional gaffe , this final episode ,the longest of them all, is an apotheosis.
To confront the superintendent and newly-born Ripley ,without arousing the cop's suspicion is a scene hard to swallow -Highsmith did not include such an implausibility - ;although he's got the gift of the gab and he was a born impersonator , Ripley is not Arsène Lupin ,all the same!
The rest is excellent : the old art amateur (special guest appearance by John Malkovich !), Marge revealing her true colors -actually a self-interested girl who uses her ex-lover's affair to launch her book , she's nothing but a fortune hunter , says Greenleaf Sr-, the relevant intervention of the black private eye we met in the first episode ,and the way Ripley imagines how his questioning could be ; in the same way ,he imagines the murder of Marge even when he has no motives but his contempt ,,and the trick of the signet ring with Ripley holding a heavy ashtray , echoing Freddy's slaying , is Hitchcockesque .
Stephen Zaillian is to be praised for his precise directing ,his aesthetic sense as he films on location the riches of Italian art and architecture .
Although he does not inherit Dickie's fortune, Tom possesses something of great value which may be a forerunner of season two ,as Tom makes his way through the world of forgeries in the second book "Ripley under ground"
Ripley: VII - Macabre Entertainment (2024)
Rehearsals for resurrection
I've already said I thought the former screenwriters missed the point as far as Madge is concerned: Paul Gégauff made her Tom 's lover in "plein soleil "; and Minghella turned her towards the ending in some kind of young detective who had discovered Tom 's ominous plan .
Although Tom 's hatred for that "silly goose " was somewhat sweetened , you may remember his disgust and his boredom when he corrected the so -called writer's gibberish ;that his book was finally published is entirely due to her short-lived rise to fame as an actor of the Greenleaf affair ;the letter in which Madge tells Dickie that she knows he prefers his boyfriend appears earlier in the novel,but you should hear Tom laugh out loud when he reads those "melodramatic" sentences .
This episode is slow-moving and prepares the future Tom 's comeback to his true identity ; all the actors, from the concierge to tycoon Greenleaf must be aware that Dickie is suicidal and eaten with remorse ....Macabre entertainment indeed .
Ripley: VI - Some Heavy Instrument (2024)
Cat and mouse,or mouse and cat?
Tom's nightmares and spooky visions did appear in this episode ,which includes two of them ,dealing with his victims raising from the dead (a wet Dickie) or still sleeping in his hotel ( Freddy); anyway ,even though he's totally immoral ,the death of Dickie will haunt him in the whole saga ;even though he would commit more murders,this one was the one he was never really able to get over ( in the fifth and last volume -perhaps the weakest though- he hears his so called voice on the phone) .Another obsession : the fear of the police ; the end of the first volume, in spite of the denouement, deals with that.
The presence of Freddy's lover (?) ,Max ,amounts to nothing here; the viewer will like best the Colombo-like superintendent who plays cat and mouse with Tom (and the other way about is truer) .Playing two characters at once is not an easy task ,and the screenwriters ,faithful to the novel ,do not need two extra-characters like Minghella (Meredith and Peter ) to perform his conjuring trick.
Ripley: V LUCIO (2024)
Black cat crossed my path.
Some users complain that Andrew Scott was too old for the part (Alain Delon was 23 when he starred in "plein soleil") but the cast and credits read :"based on Highsmith 's novelS" ; they probably intend a season 2 and maybe more; in the 1959 movie,the ending was "moral" and did not ask for a sequel ;such is not the case here: the five Ripley volumes span at least a decade ,so the choice of an older actor made sense .
On the other hand ,the choice of Eliot Sumner as Freddy Miles is weird beyond comment : Miles was a womanizer bon vivant, a stout man (René Clément forced his star Delon to drag his victim's body from the apartment to the car in real time in 1959);That he may be Dickie's friend is all the more unlikely , since he has only contempt for the inverts -see episode 3-. The choice of an androgynous actor will later be "justified "
(by Tom) during the investigation .
The title of the episode ,"Lucio "is the name of the cat of the concierge ; its part is minimal ,even the traces of blood can't arouse her suspicion ;in fact ,it's a nod to Highsmith ,whose great fondness for cats was well known. She would live with plenty of them in her house.
Ripley: IV La dolce vita (2024)
An impostor of genius
It should be pointed out ,that ,from that moment on, the novel often uses an epistolary style:for instance Tom only meets Marge in the flesh once before Venice ; Minghella opted for another character created from start to finish by him,Meredith (Cate Blanchett )whereas Clément introduced a love affair between Tom and Marge .
As far as Marge is concerned ,both missed the point ;Dakota Fanning ,with her zeitgeist-like ponytail ,is Marge as Highsmith depicted her ; people who read the book know that Tom HATED this girl who took away Dickie from him,and the writer,herself a lesbian, deeply despised her character ;the conversation they have when Tom tells him that Dickie is to settle in Rome for the whole of winter , though inspired by the girl's letters which call Tom "your little boyfriend " , is downright embarrassing ;talented Fanning leaves no doubt about her feelings : though she does not spell it out, she does think that both men have a gay affair .
Tom ,an impostor of genius,little by little , becomes Dickie (he's always known he would be him some day ,for ,since the second episode, he has trained himself in the art of imitation ); he is not so self-assured though ,the policemen,on the station platform ,give him the jitters ....
The ending with a fake letter in which Tom praises himself in the Mr Greenleaf Sr 's eyes, while a choir is singing "silent night" and horrible pictures of San Remo's tragedy appear on the screen, is masterful.
Le miroir (2020)
Can you smash the mirror?
Confusing ,not derivative ,but not always satisfying psychological drama; the wide screen is sometimes reduced to a small rectangle, probably to indicate that the mirror of the title reflects some events of the pass .Except for the moment when the hero smashes it, a la Who's "Tommy ", the mirror trick is not really convincing.
The characters are interesting but their attitude does not always make much sense ; a mother who marries a younger man , it has become common nowadays ;but the husband remains at the beck and call of his over possessive mother ;to crown it all , the wife committed suicide because,after embracing Buddhism without a moment's hesitation , she reached nirvana ; funny wisdom, isn't it?
The husband and the son (with his girlie on tug) claim the legacy ,but the latter,who has not seen his mom for five years , has a dark side to him: a terrible secret buried in his past ....
Ripley: III Sommerso (2024)
The human pyramid crumbles.
Andrew Scott's performance becomes more and more impressive as the story progresses ; he often blows Johnny Flynn off the screen whereas ,in Minghella's movie ,it was the other way about ,Dickie-Law outstripping Ripley -Damon .
The most violent episode of the story ; although as far as the murder is concerned, the 1959 Clément 's "plein soleil " has technically the upper hand ,Scott makes us feel the hatred, the rancor against a sellfish boy who dismisses him like his father did before in a humiliating letter :it makes him feel like a servant , even though Dickie tells him it was a true friendship ; the pivotal sequence on the beach with the boys practising gymnastics tells it all (Highsmith depicts it but she makes no comment on their sexual orientation ) : "they are inverts" Dickie says,in a contemptous voice,and one has the strange feeling he fears he may be one of these friends of Dorothy .The "final solution" makes sense .The dolce vita's up.
Ripley: II Seven Mercies (2024)
The dark side of the sun.
Now the action takes place in Italy ,not in Mongibello,but in another small sea resort ; the luminous landscapes of italy in black and white ? It works quite well for ,behind the dolce vita, a vague menace creeps ; see Tom's despising look upon Madge 's body ,lying over Dickie's.
The architexture of the places with its cavernous stairs which lead to Dickie's and Marge's dwellings ;the attitudes become apparent : Marge considers Tom an intruder whereas the boy born silver spoon in hand ,whose friends are few, is looking for a pure friendship ; there's a certain ambiguity ,even on his part, but such was the case in Highsmith 's words .
Tom pretends to appreciate Dickie's mediocre paintings though ,and it's even more obvious in other Ripley books , the self-taught crook will reveal himself a genuine art connoisseur .
This somber atmosphere sharply contrasts with the luminous lanscapes of the 1959 "plein soleil " ( which means "full sun") ; the youthful handsome Delon ,who was the writer's favorite Ripley (she said that Dennis Hopper in "der Amerikanische Freund "was not MY Ripley )was ideally cast in this context even though his joie de vivre was thwarted by a cruel joke of a nastier Philippe (Dickie) ; thus Scott's more mature and mysterious look is better applied on the black and white cinematography.
Late Italian fifties songs are included and contributes to the dolce vita atmosphere ; the singer whom Tom gazes into may reveal his bisexual nature ;once again Highsmith never reveals his sexual orientation :she only mentions ,in her other books that ,though married to a rich heiress, Tom only occasionally sleeps with her ;even in "the boy who followed Ripley ",she kept things vague)
All promises of the first episode fulfilled .
Ripley: I A Hard Man To Find (2024)
Patricia Highsmith would have loved it.
I feared that Netflix mIght butcher one of my favorite thrillers of all time; after all ,there had been two versions before : "René Clément' s 'plein soleil ' (purple noon),starring Alain Delon and Minghella's "the talented etc Mr Ripley" starring Matt Damon .It should be pointed out that these movies, though excellent on their own, took many liberties with the initial novel : Clément's 'main drawback was the Marge/Ripley 's love relationship ,whereas Minghella made Ripley do his coming out when Highsmith,herself a lesbian , always kept things vague ,and would even marry her hero (to a heiress named Héloise ) in the other books of the saga.
Much to my surprise,this is an excellent miniseries , and mainly the most faithful adaptation of Highsmith I have ever seen; filmed in stark black and white , it harks back to the films noirs of yore : Ripley's background and his two-bit swindles ,his crummy flat in NYC , his longing for a life of luxury ( Roy Orbison 's magnificent "in dreams " fits like a glove in the picture) all rings true .Besides ,and for the first time ,sweet auntie Dottie is shortly featured : an orphan ,Tom was brought up by a spineful spinster who humiliated her all along his childhood (see the episode of the car in the book ;here she's in the dentist's office and is given a bad time ), an important thing in the hero's personality .
In direct contrast with that,we have the Greenleaf's wealth ,which represents all that Tom desperately wants ; for him,opportunity knocks ,and he will take no chances.....
This first episode really did bode well for the ones to come ....
Petites vacances à Knokke-le-Zoute (2009)
Beep -beep beep -beep yeah !
Some kind of update of René Allio 's "la vieille dame indigne" ,though Miou- Miou , only nearing sixty at the time, and who ages gracefully , does not look like an old woman at all .
Micheline has been living in her house (kitchen more like) for all her life;the perfect housewife , she gave birth to three children,now grown-ups ,and she has made an important decision :to take her driving test ; for the macho husband (Jean -Luc Bidault) ,it's a waste of money because a woman's place is her home .She will have to pay her lessons with her savings.
The first part is primarily funny:the new student almost drove her driving instructor to distraction :she does not even know that the first thing you must do before starting is to fasten your security belt; going into first or reverse is not evident. Miou-Miou's stupefied looks are riotously comic .
The second part ,is more nostalgic , and sometimes leaves a bitter taste in the mouth ; the driving license is her liberation, the opportunity to go where she wants ,without her hubby's burdensome presence ; for her trip to Knokke-Le -Zout ,Belgium ,she takes with her the neighbours' teenager , an autistic : for him,too ,it's his first real travel ; this odd couple is really endearing ; all in all,in spite of some filler , a nice little film.
Simone Signoret, figure libre (2020)
Actress at the top.
An excellent doc about one of the greatest French actresses of all time, the first one to be awarded an AA ("Room at the top")
Her film career began with "bad girls " parts ("Dédée D'Anvers " the extraordinary "casque d'or" and the terrifying film noir " manèges" ) or calculating characters ( "les diaboliques ",known all around the world, remade and imitated )
When she gets older ,she was not left in the cold and carried on with Melville 's "l'armée des ombres" and her final triumph "La vie devant soi"
Her political commitment was famous and sometimes went against her ; her career was waning between 1957 and her AA : she was a communist before accompanying her husband Montand in his USSR tour"where the faces told another story "; but she remained an activist ,notably against the Algeria war and all abuses and injustice, championing all the good causes (she tells she received lots of letters which asked her for help in their struggle.)
Conversation avec Romy Schneider (2018)
Somewhere in Europa.
An excellent doc in which Romy Schneider tries to come to terms with her somber past : her mother who was Hitler's friend (and maybe more) ;many color archive films are included ; the shady relationship with Magda Schneider's second husband .The stranglehold both had on the young girl till she turned down an one million marks fee to shoot a fourth "Sissi" ; Alice Schwarzer reminds us of the prominent part the Sissi trilogy played for a defeated country , trying to make the world forget an awful past .
A long part of the movie is given to her affair with Alain Delon ,which ,after she turned her back from "Sissi" was her second act of rebellion ; Germany never really forgave her and in the seventies she was considered a French star !
Miss Schwarzer bases her film on a recorded interview with Romy in Kôln ,1976,now in French ,now in German ; sometimes her voice falters and she asks the journalist to switch off her recorder .
A must for the actress' fans.
Inferno (1953)
Crawling across the desert.
Survival has become a trendy subject nowadays, particularly at sea ; RW Baker located his story in the desert,but it's a gripping suspense,nothing to do with the "who will be the lucky guy (more likely girl) who will escape death?
RW Baker had already tried his hand at thrillers ("the October man" " don't bother to knock" ) but this one is far superior , renewing the hackneyed love triangle in a film noir in color under the blistering sun of the desert.
The story is masterfully constructed :the first picture shows Lundigan and Fleming on the road ;the viewer thinks they are lost till they tell what has happened before ;the woman tries to persuade herself "it's not a crime" .
At a time mobile phones did not exist, with a broken leg , Ryan tries to crawl across the desert :The use of his voice over is here totally justified ;the editing is smart : a picture of him missing a rabbit is followed by Lundigan in front of a copious meal; when he digs the earth to find some water , the following picture is his rival fixing himself a drink ; his crawling across the sand echoes to Fleming and Lundigan enjoying the pool .
Excellent performance by Ryan and Fleming is eye candy.
Les amours secrètes (2010)
Que reste-t-il de ces amours?
Perhaps inspired by the love affair between glorious actress Arletty and a German officer in WW2,although the young girl is a Jew, which may remind some people of "the exception ". They even sing 'comme de bien entendu" ,which is an obvious nod to Arletty in "circonstances atténuantes "
Moving subject , but mediocre treatment : one expects a tragedy , one gets a Harlequin romance ; there is absolutely no chemistry between the two lovers (unless sex scenes count) , the characters are all rather flat and the only good actors , Anémone and Richard Bohringer are given so insignificant parts that the former lies bedridden all the while ,and the latter is smart enough to slip out after the very beginning before reappearing one hour later .
The young German love is bland ,and his superiors are rather nice -and even naive-, and we deal with the SS men,all the same! The picture is so dark that it's sometimes impossible to follow the plot. The evident lack of means cannot excuse the paucity of the dialog ,and a story which drags on, which a listless directing does not help.
Gunman's Walk (1958)
Hunter's best part
I was blown away by the relentless mechanics of the scenario; a lot of things had escaped me on first viewing, in particular the quality of Tab Hunter's performance , unfairly labelled as B series actor: at the beginning of the film, he is just a bad boy, who wants to equal a father with a busy past (but of which he is proud) and who feels above the others: he does not speak to his brother in the first sequence; in fact the episode of the mare shows that at this moment in his evolution, the Cain of the story still loves his younger brother to whom he wants to present with the horse, but we can also think that it is to impress his father: the tragic end of the ride was not premeditated, even if being surpassed by a "half race" would be unbearable: the episode in the store showed us how Son Hackett treats those half-breeds and their squaw; because the racist element runs throughout the film (what is a half-breed's life worth? A mare and 100 dollars?); it is only gradually that this bad son , wanting to compete with a father-God who will gradually lose his control over him, despising his younger brother, Abel in love with a mixed race ("who will give me lousy nephews"), that he will slowly but inexorably become a criminal who seems connected to electro-shocks (this is very clear in the last sequences where he wants his crimes to make him a celebrity greater than that of the father ;Hunter with his piercing "metallic" gaze is terrifying). The character of the younger brother is more conventional (and James Darren is duller) but it is his revolt against a tyrannical father ("one of my sons in prison, the other in love with a mixed race full of lice") that the viewer embraces: it also highlights the importance of the absence of the mother ("as you look like her" says the minister) and justifies the female character who allows the reconstruction of the family (Van Heflin takes them both by the waist, a gesture which would have been unthinkable a few hours before)
Dames galantes (1990)
I want to make love,not war.
Brantôme (c. 1537 - 1614), commendatory (or secular) abbot of Brantôme Abbey and lord of Saint-Crépin de Richemont, was a French soldier and writer , best known for his "light" writings recounting his life as a courtier and soldier and that of the illustrious people he met. (wikipedia)
After a fall off a horse he began to write his memoirs , a romantic refined ruffianly soldier, who preferred to make love than war; Richard Bohringer is well cast as the colorful lover who reportedly never left one of his mistresses. The movie avoids vulgarity and it's got subtle humor going for it :one of his numerous mistresses,Victoire (Isabella Rossellini), sexually "killed" ,so to speak ,three husbands ,and ,during an interminable confession before the Extreme Unction ,a catholic priest (and she asked for a Protestant minister too, just in case.....)Good idea to cast an Italian actress (laura Betti) as Catherine De Médicis ; the movie may seem sometimes monotonous ,but a bevy of beautiful dames makes up for it.
Et la fête continue! (2023)
Remember....The fifth of November.
The collapse of the buildings on rue d'Aubagne in Marseille occurred on November 5 , 2018 at 9 a.m. And caused the death of eight people. These were two dilapidated buildings in the city center.
This tragedy opens the movie; Robert Guédiguian has become the committed director of our times. Like his English peer ,Kenneth Loach,Robert Guédiguian depicts the other side of the mirror ; on the feel-good French scene ,his works are,more than ever ,pivotal ; because they are not exactly what they call 'feel-good" even though there are moments in his work which give the viewer more joy than the trendy hip flicks.his masterworks " La Ville Est Tranquille" " Les Neiges Du kilimandjaro" or the neglected "Une Histoire De Fous " are endearing tales that go straight to the heart :generous, brash, full of compassion .
Rosa (the wonderful Arianne Ascaride , Guédiguian's partner in life ,and the principal in most of his films has these lines which are the key to the movie :"whe should have two lives :one to take care of ourselves ,and one to take care of our fellow men ".
Like many of the director's movies , "et la fête continue! " is a chronicle of a family in Marseille. A "la ville est tranquille" in miniature , the screenplay is made of subplots (I have always thought that Julien Duvivier was Guédiguian 's closest relative ,particularly "la belle équipe" "sous le ciel de Paris " and "la fête à Henriette" ( of which "à l'attaque " is a political remake of sorts )
Rosa ,now sixty , takes stock of her life : a devoted nurse -the scene when she comforted her black colleague, desperate because she didn't hold her patient's hand when he died ,is admirable -,she is also an activist,she has so many tasks on the go at once it becomes impossible to see them through ; despondency is near ,and breaks out during the meeting for the list candidates .
Her son has found the woman of her life and he intends to have plenty of children ;besides the father of the future bride is also an activist who falls for Rosa ; it may seem melodramatic on the paper , but Guédiguian 's treatment avoid pathos and dramatization ; The young man's love, after escaping a would be shame, shows him that life can goes on, even if not according to his plans . Her daddy (the wonderful Darroussin, Guédiguian 's favorite actor,he often played opposite Ascaride), will be the light that still shines in Rosa's darkest night .Together they will fight against the "marchands de sommeil" (sleep dealers) who rent flats unfit for habitation ,in the scene ,around the bust of Homer, where the voices multiply until they become one.
The heroine eventually relaxes to the point of acknowledging that the personal is personal ,as well as political;that in turn makes her more endearing and more effective ;the Aznavour classic."emmenez moi" -unlike most of his colleagues , Guédiguian uses the FRENCH songbook - is a transparent metaphor : outside the hard realities of life, happiness is not out of reach.
Le gang des pianos à bretelles (1953)
The problem disappeared of its own accord ion
The union of Chicago gangsters frets. There's something to worry about : the FBI is to use French 15 horsepower cars Citroen ;so they send Al Pat to Paris to spy on them.
After such a ludicrous beginning ,what can you expect ? A bomb ,and that's exactly what you get ;the story is so absurd ,so stupid,that even the actors (Jean Tissier ,Ginette Leclerc ) cannot save it;the young Georges Poujouly, masterfully directed by René Clément in "jeux interdits" (forbidden games ,1952) ,here hams it up all along the way and is almost unbearable. Besides a quarter of the movie is given over to "strappy piano",French colloquial expression for accordion , that is to say ,if you like popular dance to the accordion , ok , if you don't ,pass this up .
Smile, c'était écrit (2023)
In the mouth of madness.
Why an English title for a French movie?;it's all the more annoying since the subtitle sounds better in the French language. It's also a most adequate title, since the borders of imaginary and reality are blurred;the girl alone in her bed is really a good trick and puts a question mark over the whole movie."Smile ",on the other hand , is a poor main title. It makes the final scientific explanation overkill ; keeping things vague would have been a better choice .
The first time I've watched it ,I fell asleep halfway through. But I decided to give the movie a second chance and it deserved it.
A treatment a la Polanski in its first hour, it only turns horror in its last third where the "delirious episodes " (2% of the population reportedly suffers from it ) take their toll , where the principal obviously opts for the umpteenth imitation of Anthony Perkins in "Psycho" : hasn't he childhood traumas too (in the prologue )?
A series of bizarre details, of strange warnings creep into an apparently normal life : although the visit to the good friends may be just out from of a "feel good" movie, cracks appear in the mirror: the masks, the boar blood on the windshield (not seen but told,and it's better that way) ,the teenager in the shack who talks too an imaginary(?) friend;Even the scenes in the editor office retains something offbeat .