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Viva Laldjérie (2004)
Three Women Weathering The Storm
Viva Laldjerie (Hooray for Algeria) portrays three women Goucem (Lubna Azabal), her mother Papicha (Baya Bouzar stage name Biyouna), a former night club performer and her friend Fifi (Nadia Kaci), a prostitute set against the background of the terror attacks of the Algerian civil war. Goucem and her mother have come into Algiers flying their home in a town controlled by Islamists.
Viva Ladjerie does not attempt to discuss the rights and wrongs of either side in the Algerian civil war. It does show the impact of it on the three perspective characters.
Goucem though in a dead end job at a photography shop and in a dead end relationship with a doctor projects strength. She cuts her own path in dealing with men. However despite her break with the tradition role of women in Islam, when she appears in public in revealing Western clothes, Goucem wears a sheet over her dress. The prostitute Fifi goes one step further. Fifi covers her hair and mouth as part of her clever duplicitious act in public.
Old and new overlap throughout the movie. On streets that look like they could be part of Europe, you can hear the call to prayer. Goucem tells the soothsayer that Fifi drags her to, "This is 2003!" The soothsayer replies, "Then what are you doing here?"
There's a sad end for Fifi who despite her occupation is a good person, but Papicha does fulfill her dream of being restored to the limelight after she tracks down the owner of a club which closed its doors. Having opened a new club La Gorge Rouge (The Red Throat? The Red Gulch?), and having inherited the clientele of all the old Algiers clubs where Papicha used to danse, the owner puts Papicha on stage as a chanteuse.
In the end, Goucem is permitted to overcome red tape in order to bury Fifi, killed by her client the police official but Goucem's story nonetheless ends as one of hope, meeting new friends in the park.
Riscado (2010)
Being There
The Craft (Riscado) gives you a rare look backstage in motion pictures. Meet Bianca (Karine Teles). She's an atres (actress) or she'd like to be one. She works for a special events company which hires her out as an impersonator for special occasions. At birthday parties and retirements, Bianca dressed as Marilyn presents the cake.
Acting requires commitment in the face of adversity. Her landlady wants Bianca to get a real job so that the rent is timely paid. Bianca may not be Marilyn but she is unwilling to give up pursuing her craft even if the craft consists of taking on the personality of the various Ikons of the silver screen ... especially Marilyn Monroe. Then there's the quirky audition for the part of Veronica. The producers of a play want each actress to improvise. Unlike other actresses acted to extemporize, Bianca re-enacts Marilyn' s famous singing of Happy Birthday to President John Kennedy afew weeks before each of their deaths.
Once cast in the role, the producers have even bigger plans for Bianca. Using her life story as the backdrop to a film, the producers have been contemplating a tour de force about the acting world.Although Bianca devotes all her energy to the project, vigorously studying the lines, quitting the Special Events Company, taking the producers about town to suggest various shooting locations and even donning the costume to pose for some promo pictures to sell the concept to backers. Te producers are willing to stick Bianca with the bill for the bank for the promotion pictures but the role cannot go to Bianca. When backers want a more internationally visible actress; Bianca is relegated to EXTRA in the film.
But Bianca is an actress. Pain is part of the job. There she plays a small part in one of the scenarios she had suggested.
Le métis de Dieu (2013)
Jean - Paul's Buddy
Cardinal Lustinger's confession of faith is a compelling story. Yet, I do not find Catholics speaking much of him. I suspect there is an important clue in this movie why Jean - Paul gave Lustinger the Red Hat. In their first meeting Jean - Paul told Lustinger "there are alot of perfumed Italian priests who'd like to teach me how to be pope." Jean - Paul also spoke of his childhood Jewish playmate, Jerzey. I suspect Jean - Paul, the master of languages, needed someone nearby with whom he could converse privately in a tongue incomprehensible to snooping ears. In addition to negotiating the departure of the Carmelite nuns from Auschwitz, Cardinal Lustinger must be credited for being the very first in the Christian world to detect the fallacies in a popular movie about the passion.
Des hommes et des dieux (2010)
The Last Supper
If you say you stayed up late watching a French movie, eyebrows are raised, but the French are capable of producing religious inspirational films as well.
Welcome to a French monastery in the Algerian mountains. It supports a little village that depends on the monastery for support. Neither the monastery nor the little village have anything to do with the Civil War raging between purported Islamists and the Algerian government. The movie does not purport to explain the rights and wrongs asserted by either side, although the Prior Bro Christian knows the Koran as well as he knows the Testaments..
After an initial encounter with the Islamists, the monastery falls under the protection of the Islamic chief. Bro Christian's knowledge of the Koran saves the day. The monastery uninvolved in politics renders medical assistance to both sides.
Ironically, the Algerian army's killing of the chief local rebel brings down the wrath of the Islamic rebels on the monastery. The monastery's Prior Brother Christian forced to identify the body is prohibited from offering prayer.
Just before the reprisal when the blow falls, the monks unanimously vote to stay in Algeria. The scene replicates the Last Supper. The characters and scenes are realistic. The film was shot in an abandoned monastery in Morocco.
La rafle (2010)
The Occupation
06 June 1942, just one year has passed since Germany invaded and France succumbed in a few weeks. The country is now divided into a free zone led by the aging Marshall Petain, a world war I hero who's now past it and an occupied zone which includes northern France and the capital of Paris. It would seem that the Germans are less interested in the removal of the French Jews than the French VP Pierre LaValle who takes an even more aggressive stance on the subject than the aging Marshall would allow. Some French are hostile to the Germans; some are indifferent; some cooperate; some go along; only a few resist. The view of this movie is more realistic than American movies on the occupation of France.
Amazing Grace (1974)
Redemption Thanks to Amazing Grace
Tipped to a political machination which will put a dullard in city hall as a stooge for corrupt politicians, Moms Mabley as Grace leads a popular movement to set things aright. Successful in her efforts, Grace is too busy with her usual chores about the house and garden to take a seat at the victory celebration. The story is cute and delightful. But of course only Amazing Grace can save us.
Men Go to Battle (2015)
BEHIND THE LINES: Daily Life in the border states
Men go off to Battle is an interesting study of the Civil War far away from the hotheads of Massachusetts or Georgia.
Welcome to Small Corners KY. Kentucky can go either way. There's talk of Rebels In Bowling Green seeing their lands seized; Betsy Small the object of many a young man's affection including both Henry Mellon and Francis Mellon expresses fear to her coterie that the slaves might rise up. But Kentucky slaves are mostly household servants seen only passing through the scenes.
Kentucky sits on the fence between Union and Confederate. As Betsy Small (Rachel Korine) tells a well groomed young man courting her it's nice to visit New York City and also New Orleans.
Her Daddy the local owner of the general store is the richest man in town to whom all the farmers owe money."If it were five years ago or even last year..." Mr Small (Steve Coulter) rejects a plea for assistance from Francis Mellon (David Maloney)who with his brother Henry (Timothy Morton) are struggling to maintain a run down farm.
At the party which Francis and Henry crash to seek medical attention for Henry, Francis excels at dancing leaving Henry and Betsy on the porch outside. Henry kisses the weaping Betsy who shrieks, "My first kiss from a man came from Henry!"
Humiliated Henry runs off to join the Union (US) Army where he learns to read and write. Henry corresponds with his brother Francis; Betsy drives out to read to Francis.
Then comes the Battle of Perryville in October 1862. Surviving the decimation of his unit, Henry desserts only to find at home everything has changed: the Smalls'stately property was seized. Betsy has married Francis who might have liked the Confederacy but has made his fortune selling tobacco to the US Army.
Henry who finds he bores Francis with some of the Army tales takes some money and steals off.
The costuming and setting are excellent. In recreating the civil war era outside of one of the flash points of war, the writers, choreographers and actors attained technical perfection. They all deserve to be made Colonels of Kentucky.
A viewer expected the grand vision of the civil war home front of GONE WITH THE WIND or STREETS OF NEW YORK or the battle scenes of GLORY would be disappointed. I'd say this film would have made a great item for THE HISTORY CHANNEL when it played history.