Reviews

This film is awash with rich color, much like those of Douglas Sirk in 1950s Hollywood - remarkable, given that this is Ozu's debut effort in color filmmaking. And the film is indeed very much of its time - 1958 and a transition to "contemporary" Japan. In the course of our protagonist's day he goes from an office, with its rows of "company men" toiling over paperwork in a modern high rise, to his traditional home with tatami mats. He sheds his Western clothes each evening by dropping them on the floor (for his wife to pick up) and transforming himself into the stern paterfamilias in his yukata.

This is a domestic tale of a man and the three (or four) young women he advises in matters of the heart. No King Lear, this is rather a Japanese "Father Knows Best - not". Travel gently to this non-ironic look at a Japanese family in the era of early "Mad Men", and let the color,time period,and Ozu's visual clarity carry you along.

Farewell My Queen screened recently at the Rendezvous with French Cinema festival in New York. A different take on the oft-told story of Marie Antoinette and the storming of the Bastille, this French film focuses on the difficult behind-the-scenes life at Versailles. An "Upstairs Downstairs" at the grandest palace of all, the protagonist is not the queen but rather her "lectrice" - a lady in waiting whose job is to read books to the bored Marie Antoinette. The film is best at depicting the petty backstabbing, gossiping and ambitions of the hangers-on at court. The crowded and dirty "back stairs" rooms are vividly contrasted to the opulence of the grand state halls. A well acted, nicely paced historical drama.

FREE MEN was just screened to a sold-out crowd at the Rendez-vous with French Cinema in New York. It was a wonderfully acted, well told fictional film of Arabs helping resistance fighters (including North African Jews) during the German occupation of France during WW2.

Dramatic and suspenseful, pitting collaborators versus resistance fighters, gestapo officials versus the authorities at a mosque.

Given the ethnic tensions in Paris today, this film offers an alternate vision of unity in the face of oppression.

Definitely worth seeing on the festival circuit or in art house release.