Cannes: Un Certain Regard, FIPRESCI, Queer Palm, Semaine de la Critique, Acquisitions...

Some early prizes at the 63rd annual Cannes Film Festival were given out today, in the Un Certain Regard sidebar (which was presided over by Claire Denis), as well as the FIPRESCI (Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique) awards, the Grand Prix of the Semaine de la Critique, the Art Cinema Award and Short Film Prizes of the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs... et plus.

Un Certain Regard Award: HaHaHa, d. Hong Sang-soo, South Korea
- Jury Prize: Octubre [October], d. Daniel Vega, Diego Vega, Peru/Venezuela/Spain
- Un Certain Regard Award for Best Actress: Adela Sanchez, Eva Bianco, Victoria Raposo, Los labios [The Lips]

FIPRESCI Awards
- Competition: Tournée [On Tour], d. Mathieu Amalric, France
- Un Certain Regard: Pál Adrienn [Adrienn Pál], d. Ágnes Kocsis, Hungary/Austria/France/Netherlands
- Quinzaine des Réalisateurs: Todos vós sodes capitáns [You Are All Captains], d. Oliver Luxe, Spain/Morocco

Queer Palm: Kaboom, d. Gregg Araki, USA/France
Grand Prix de la Semaine de la Critique: Armadillo, d. Janus Metz, Denmark
Art Cinema Award (Quinzaine des Réalisateurs): Pieds nus sur les limaces [Lily Sometimes], d. Fabienne Berthaud, France
Prix SFR (short films, Quinzaine des Réalisateurs): Căutare [Quest], d. Ionuţ Piţurescu, Romania; Mary Last Seen, d. Sean Durkin, USA

As expected, IFC Films snatched up the most films this year. Araki's Kaboom, Xavier Dolan's Heartbeats [Les amours imaginaires], Bertrand Tavernier's The Princess of Montpensier [La princesse de Montpensier], Jorge Michel Grau's We Are What We Are [Somos lo que hay] and Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy [Copie conforme] have all been picked up by the studio since the start of the festival. Prior to that, they had already struck a deal for Olivier Assayas' Carlos, along with The Sundance Channel (they're owned by the same company); The Sundance Channel will air the 333-minute-long version later this year, followed by a theatrical release from IFC of a shorter, three-hour-long cut.

The other US distributor that typically returns from Cannes with several films added to their roster, Sony Pictures Classics, has been more conservative than usual in their purchases thusfar (possibly due to the reportedly weak line-up this year), taking only Xavier Beauvois' Of Gods and Men [Des hommes et des dieux] and Mike Leigh's Another Year. They had already secured Woody Allen's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger and Stephen Frears' Tamara Drewe, both playing out of competition. The only other US purchase at the festival so far came from Magnolia's genre arm, Magnet Releasing, who picked up Quentin Dupieux's horror/comedy Rubber. Rubber, which screened during the Semaine de la Critique, stars Roxane Mesquida and Stephen Spinella (Milk, Love! Valour! Compassion!). The official closing ceremony of the 63rd Cannes Film Festival will begin in just a few hours.

Olivier Assayas' Carlos Will Be at Cannes

While it wasn't included in the competition selection, it was announced the other day that Olivier Assayas' latest, Carlos the Jackal, will play at Cannes after all. The film, about Venezuelan revolutionary Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, will be released in two formats: as a television mini-series and as a two-ish hour long feature. The mini-series is set to air in the US on The Sundance Channel at some point this year, and the shorter version will be released theatrically by IFC Films. The line-ups for both the Semaine Internationale de la Critique and the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs should be unveiled soon.

Assayas, Godard, Lumet and Lee on Criterion's April Schedule

Criterion announced their April titles this afternoon, with DVD and Blu-ray for Olivier Assayas' Summer Hours [L'heure d'été], Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre sa vie and Ang Lee's director's cut of Ride with the Devil. Sidney Lumet's The Fugitive Kind, with Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Joanne Woodward and Maureen Stapleton, will also be available on DVD only. In addition to the mainline releases, the fifth volume of their Essential Art House Collection will be released, with the Region 1 debut of Gillo Pontecorvo's Kapò. The other five titles are Fellini's 8½, David Lean's Brief Encounter, Ozu's Floating Weeds, Truffaut's Jules et Jim and Miloš Forman's Loves of a Blonde.

Can I Eternal Sunshine 2009, or Do I have to like the movie for that to work?

As 2009 slips away, sadly it has been chosen that I will be spending the evening at home, reliving the few moments worth salvaging before I Eternal Sunshine the year completely. It is just about that time for me to post something really maudlin that I'll regret later (and never end up taking down). But before I do so, I'll post some (hopefully) fascinating miscellany.

My entry to The Auteurs' Notebook's year-end writers' poll went up yesterday, alongside Andrew Grant, Glenn Kenny, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, Evan Davis, Gabe Klinger, Dave McDougall, David Cairns and Ben Simington's choices for our 2009 fantasy double features (of a first-run theatrical release and an older film we happened to have seen in the past 12 months). Mine covers 2 Olivier Assayas films (though I guess technically, I saw L'heure d'été in 2008, it was in the final two weeks of the year...). Glenn's beautiful screencap of Sheryl Lee as the Good Witch in Wild at Heart has become my current desktop pattern.

Cahiers du Cinéma posted their annual 10 Best of the year and continued to prove to us Yankees how much the French love Clint Eastwood (no, not for Invictus but Gran Torino; Invictus will surely make the 2010 list). Alain Resnais' Wild Grass [Les herbes folles] was their #1 (Sony Pictures Classics' website still doesn't have an official date for its release in the States), and the pleasant surprise of the list was seeing Alain Guiraudie's Le roi de l'évasion [The King of Escape] make it. One of the (many) regrets I have in regard to the final Decade List posting was that I didn't get around to rewatching Guiraudie's Ce vieux rêve qui bouge or Pas de repos pour les braves and left them off the 100 (though I'm pretty sure they should have been there).

So the Decade List posting... thanks to everyone for the nice comments. Aside from a clerical error in posting the two Abel Ferrara films in the wrong positions (Go Go Tales should be at 55, Mary at 76), I'm happy (enough) with the way things lined up, and I will be working on a "defense" if you will for my #1 within the next couple weeks. Anyway, to those of you who sent me your list, they will be posted by the end of next week, and if you're still working on yours, don't take the posting of my list as the curtain drop for the 00's nonsense...

...and though there's a purposeful hesitancy in the way I've spoken of the project in the more recent posts, I'm still possibly considering trying the previous decade on for size for 2010... but that depends on a number of factors, not least of which coming up with a (clever) name for it and determining the amount of time I will have to dedicate to it (it would really be better if I didn't have all the time, actually, as being gainfully employed and/or leaving the Midwest sound much more appealing).

2010 looks to be your year if you happen to be a Blu-ray player owning, French-speaking cinephile, as a number of really exciting releases have already been announced by Gaumont on high-definition format:

- Danton, 1983, d. Andrzej Wajda, 9 February
- La nuit de Varennes, 1982, d. Ettore Scola, 9 February, w. Marcello Mastroianni, Hanna Schygulla, Harvey Keitel
- Le silence de la mer, 1949, d. Jean-Pierre Melville, 25 March
- Un condamné à mort s'est échappé [A Man Escaped], 1956, d. Robert Bresson, 25 March
- Les maudits [The Damned], 1947, d. René Clément, 20 May
- Le général della Rovere, 1959, d. Roberto Rossellini, 20 May
- La peau [La pelle / The Skin], 1981, d. Liliana Cavani, 15 June, w. Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Burt Lancaster
- Le rouge et le noir [The Red and the White], 1954, d. Claude Autant-Lara, 15 June, w. Danielle Darrieux

All of the films will also be released on DVD on the same date, some for the first time in France, as far as I can tell. Also in France, though not exactly exciting, the film I've been blabbing about all year, Sébastien Lifshitz's Plein sud, opens today, to almost exclusively damning reviews... Though I will reserve judgment for when I do see it, I was hoping the weariness I felt after watching the blasé trailer and noticing it wasn't announced for any of the autumn film festivals was unwarranted...

And finally, I never got around to posting a 2009 music list for the Decade List, which is fine as I generally only made those for my own benefit, and while I had planned on doing some sort of "the 25 '00 albums that did the most to shape me into the cynic I am today" list... it's looking less likely. I have, however, collected 50 of my favorite singles from 2009. I looked past the disappointment I felt in (a lot of) the particular albums and selected the tracks that left their mark on me in some way. I had planned the list to only include one song per artist, but the thing ran out of steam around 43, so instead of nixing three, I tossed a couple alternate choices from the albums I did happen to like a lot this year (Fever Ray, A Woman A Man Walked By, Logos). So if my plan to Eternal Sunshine all of 2009 actually works, I guess I won't have to look far to play catch up in the music world (though my ability to discern which of the 50 aren't really good songs and don't belong has vanished today). I could post an mp3 link at some point, but I haven't the energy at the moment. It looks like I'm finished rambling, and it doesn't look as dejected as I thought I might. That's good, right? Bonne année à tous.

01. Annie - My Love Is Better [Don't Stop]
02. Fever Ray - Keep the Streets Empty for Me [Fever Ray]
03. The xx - Crystalised [xx]
04. PJ Harvey & John Parish - Pig Will Not [A Woman A Man Walked By]
05. The Hidden Cameras - Walk On [Origin: Orphan]
06. Japandroids - Sovereignty [Post-Nothing]
07. Bat for Lashes - Sleep Alone [Two Suns] (yes, the album version is much better)
08. Röyksopp (featuring Karin Dreijer Andersson) - This Must Be It [Junior]
09. Dizzee Rascal featuring Calvin Harris and Chrome - Dance wiv Me [Tongue 'N Cheek]
10. No Age - You're a Target [Losing Feeling EP]
11. Junior Boys - Parallel Lines [Begone Dull Care]
12. St. Vincent - The Party [Actor]
13. Atlas Sound featuring Laetitia Sadier - Quick Canal [Logos]
14. Vivian Girls - Before I Start to Cry [Everything Goes Wrong]
15. Whitney Houston - Million Dollar Bill [I Look to You]
16. Phoenix - Fences [Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix]
17. Sally Shapiro - Dying in Africa [My Guilty Pleasure]
18. Jay-Z - D.O.A. (Death of Auto-tune) [The Blueprint 3]
19. The Radio Dept. - David [David EP]
20. Peaches - Talk to Me [I Feel Cream]
21. The Legends - You Won [Over and Over]
22. Little Boots - Stuck on Repeat [Hands]
23. Passion Pit - The Reeling [Manners]
24. The Juan Maclean - Happy House [The Future Will Come] (the 12-minute version is much better)
25. Alcoholic Faith Mission - Gently [421 Wythe Avenue] (The song I would have chosen from this album doesn't seem to be available streaming anywhere)
26. Charlotte Gainsbourg - IRM [IRM]
27. Dirty Projectors - Stillness Is the Move [Bitte Orca]
28. Animal Collective - Bluish [Merriweather Post Pavilion]
29. Depeche Mode - Wrong [Sounds of the Universe]
30. Girls - Lust for Life [Album]
31. Deerhunter - Disappearing Ink [Rainwater Cassette Exchange EP]
32. Ciara featuring Justin Timberlake - Love Sex Magic [Fantasy Ride]
33. Bon Iver - Blood Bank [Blood Bank EP]
34. Beirut - The Concubine [March of the Zapotec / Rainpeople Holland EP]
35. Bill Callahan - Jim Cain [Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle]
36. Peter Bjorn and John - I'm Losing My Mind [Living Things]
37. Miike Snow - Animal [Miike Snow]
38. Antony Hegarty and Bryce Dessner - I Was Young When I Left Home [Dark Was the Night]
39. Grizzly Bear - Foreground [Veckatimest]
40. ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead - The Far Pavilions [The Century of Self]
41. The Decemberists - Sleepless [Dark Was the Night] (The only song I've ever liked by them, well at least 70% liked)
42. Fuck Buttons - Surf Sport [Tarot Sport] (The album version... exceedingly better)
43. Matt & Kim - Daylight [Grand]
44. Piano Magic - The Nightmare Goes On [Ovation]
45. Yeasayer - Tightrope [Dark Was the Night]
46. Atlas Sound - Shelia [Logos]
47. Annie - Anthonio [All Night]
48. Fever Ray - If I Had a Heart [Fever Ray] (my favorite music video of 2009)
49. Serge Gainsbourg featuring Jane Birkin - L'hôtel particulier [Histoire de Melody Nelson] (Obviously, this isn't new, but as the album was released for the first time in the US this year, and I needed to fill the 50)
50. PJ Harvey and John Parish - Cracks in the Canvas [A Woman A Man Walked By] (this isn't the 2nd best song off the album, but it's the perfect close and part of what keeps me wanting more)

Millennium Mambo, Part 3

More on the Best of the Decade list round-up from Mike D'Angelo and the Skandies, which was actually posted earlier this month (and which I thought I had already mentioned, but... I guess not) and from Glenn Kenny. D'Angelo and the Skandies listed 20 films and 20 performances, with Lars von Trier's Dogville and Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood topping the respective lists. First, the films:

01. Dogville, 2003, d. Lars von Trier, Denmark/Sweden/UK/France/Germany/Norway/Finland/Netherlands, Lionsgate
02. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004, d. Michel Gondry, USA, Focus Features
03. In the Mood for Love, 2000, d. Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong/China/France, USA Films/Criterion
04. Mulholland Drive, 2001, d. David Lynch, USA/France, Universal Studios
05. There Will Be Blood, 2007, d. Paul Thomas Anderson, USA, Paramount Vantage/Miramax
06. The New World, 2005, d. Terrence Malick, USA/UK, New Line
07. Memento, 2000, d. Christopher Nolan, USA, Newmarket Films
08. 25th Hour, 2002, d. Spike Lee, USA, Touchstone
09. Yi yi: A One and Two, 2000, d. Edward Yang, Taiwan/Japan, Fox Lorber/Criterion
10. No Country for Old Men, 2007, d. Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, USA, Paramount Vantage/Miramax
11. Before Sunset, 2004, d. Richard Linklater, USA, Warner Independent
12. Silent Light [Stellet licht], 2007, d. Carlos Reygadas, Mexico/France/Netherlands/Germany, Palisades Tartan
13. Kill Bill, Volume 1, 2003, d. Quentin Tarantino, USA, Miramax
14. Werckmeister Harmonies [Werckmeister harmóniák], 2000, d. Béla Tarr, Ágnes Hranitzky, Hungary/Italy/Germany/France, Facets
15. Irréversible, 2002, d. Gaspar Noé, France, Lionsgate
16. Zodiac, 2007, d. David Fincher, USA, Paramount
17. Ghost World, 2001, d. Terry Zwigoff, USA/UK/Germany, United Artists
18. The Man Who Wasn't There, 2001, d. Joel Coen, USA/UK, USA Films
19. Trouble Every Day, 2001, d. Claire Denis, France/Germany/Japan, Lot 47 Films
20. Gerry, 2002, d. Gus Van Sant, USA, Miramax

And the performances...

01. Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
02. Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain
03. Naomi Watts, Mulholland Drive
04. Imelda Staunton, Vera Drake
05. Isabelle Huppert, The Piano Teacher [La pianiste]
06. Summer Phoenix, Esther Kahn
07. Björk, Dancer in the Dark
08. Laura Dern, Inland Empire
09. Mathieu Amalric, Kings and Queen [Rois et reine]
10. Daniel Day-Lewis, Gangs of New York
11. Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
12. Christian Bale, American Psycho
13. Billy Bob Thornton, The Man Who Wasn't There
14. Johnny Depp, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
15. Laura Linney, You Can Count on Me
16. Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone
17. Q'orianka Kilcher, The New World
18. Julianne Moore, Far from Heaven
19. Peter Sarsgaard, Shattered Glass
20. Aurélien Recoing, Time Out [L'emploi du temps]

I don't have much to say about either list, aside from... Summer Phoenix? Really? Above Björk? Well, not just above Björk, but on the list altogether. I remember her lead performance in Arnaud Desplechin's English-language Esther Kahn to lack quite a bit. I'm still planning on revisiting that one before the year ends, so I'll let you know then. And I've complained enough about Ghost World; unless it starts showing up a lot more often, I'm keeping mum.

Glenn Kenny's list covers his "Seventy Greatest Films of the Decade," in alphabetical order from A.I. to Zodiac. Of the nice surprises on the list: Catherine Breillat's Fat Girl, Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience (which I don't think was a bit of personal bias, despite the fact that he played one of Sasha Grey's johns), Azazel Jacobs' The GoodTimesKid, Lucrecia Martel's The Headless Woman, Brad Bird's The Incredibles, Clint Eastwood's Invictus (which he can't talk about yet... but this inclusion isn't stirring any interest in me as Gran Torino is also on his list), Lynne Ramsay's Morvern Callar, Jacques Rivette's The Duchess of Langeais, Hong Sang-soo's Night and Day, Olivier Assayas' Summer Hours and Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon. I spotted a few other Best of the Decade lists floating around, but most of them were deplorable, so I'm not going to waste posting/linking to them.

I also meant to thank Eric over at IonCinema for first directing me toward the TIFF list I posted yesterday, and please do check out out Blake Williams' blog, who also included TIFF's picks for the 1990s, which was topped with Víctor Erice's The Dream of Life [El sol del membrillo], still without a DVD release in the US, and included my favorite first-time viewing of a not-2000-era film in 2009, Olivier Assayas' L'eau froide. Thanks guys. Now, on to some writing of my own...

Import/Export, You, the Living in the US; More Studio Canal Blu-rays in the UK; Plus Acquisition Update

Palisades Tartan has announced the DVDs of Roy Andersson's You, the Living and Ulrich Seidl's Import/Export for 12 and 26 January respectively. HBO re-announced the first season of the first season of The Life and Times of Tim, perhaps in preparation for a second season (though I haven't heard anything of the like, so who knows...). We can all utter a sigh of relief that IFC announced Joe Swanberg's Alexander the Last through their MPI deal; had it appeared on the Criterion label, I'd be whining for years to come. And finally, Unearthed Films, now back from the dead, will release John Albo's Flexing with Monty, apparently quite an oddity that's premiering on DVD after fourteen years of production; its star Trevor Goddard died six years ago, but I don't know that his death was the hold-up. As usual, the releases are in descending order of release.

DVD

- Flexing with Monty, 2010, d. John Albo, Unearthed Films/Breaking Glass Films, 5 January
- Big Fan, 2009, d. Robert D. Siegel, First Independent, 12 January
- Love + Hate, 2005, d. Dominic Savage, Cinema Guild, 12 January
- You, the Living [Du levande], 2007, d. Roy Andersson, Palisades Tartan, 12 January
- The Butch Factor, 2009, d. Christopher Hines, Wolfe, 19 January
- Import/Export, 2007, d. Ulrich Seidl, Palisades Tartan, 26 January
- Whip It, 2009, d. Drew Barrymore, Fox, also on Blu-ray, 26 January
- As It Is in Heaven [Så som i himmelen], 2004, d. Kay Pollak, Kino, 2 February
- No Boundaries, 2009, d. Violet Mendoza, Jake Willing, Breaking Glass Pictures, 2 February
- The Vanished Empire, 2008, d. Karen Shakhnazarov, Kino, 2 February
- The Life and Times of Tim, 2008, d. Steve Dildarian, HBO, 9 February
- Alexander the Last, 2009, d. Joe Swanberg, IFC, 23 February
- Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, 2009, d. John Krasinski, IFC, 23 February
- Colour from the Dark, 2008, d. Ivan Zuccon, Vanguard, 23 February
- Dead Snow [Død snø], 2009, d. Tommy Wirkola, IFC, also on Blu-ray, 23 February
- An Englishman in New York, 2009, d. Richard Laxton, Breaking Glass Films, 23 February
- Paris, 2008, d. Cédric Klapisch, IFC, 23 February
- Swedish Auto, 2006, d. Derek Sieg, IFC, 23 February
- Three Blind Mice, 2008, d. Matthew Newton, IFC, 23 February
- The Vicious Kind, 2009, d. Lee Toland Krieger, Image, 23 February
- Old Enough, 1984, d. Marisa Silver, Scorpion Releasing, 27 April

Date Changes

I wonder if Ichi the Killer will ever come out on Blu-ray; it's been moved more than Billy Jack.

The House on Sorority Row, 12 January
No Impact Man: The Documentary, 19 January
Ichi the Killer Blu-ray, 23 February

Blu-ray

Paramount is releasing the first two Godfather films (and laughably not the third) on Blu-ray separately on 2 February. In foreign Blu-ray news, Studio Canal has announced another batch of releases in the UK: Joseph Losey's The Go-Between (previously announced with the last group, still shockingly MIA on even DVD in the US); Alexander Mackendrick's The Ladykillers; Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless [À bout de souffle] and Pierrot le fou; Just Jaeckin's Emmanuelle; and Christophe Gans' Brotherhood of the Wolf [Le pacte des loups]. Though Pierrot is already on Blu in the US from Criterion, I guess we'll find out around 15 February whether the discs are region locked or not.

- Atonement, 2007, d. Joe Wright, Focus Features, 26 January
- Pride & Prejudice, 2005, d. Joe Wright, Focus Features, 26 January
- The Godfather - The Coppola Restoration, 1972, d. Francis Ford Coppola, Paramoint, 2 February
- The Godfather, Part 2 - The Coppola Restoration, 1974, d. Francis Ford Coppola, Paramoint, 2 February

Coming Soon from IFC

After their success with the director's Summer Hours [L'heure d'été], IFC Films has already nabbed the latest project from Olivier Assayas, Carlos the Jackal. Carlos focuses on Venezuelan revolutionary Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, played by Édgar Ramírez (The Bourne Ultimatum, Che), and will premiere as a television mini-series, airing on The Sundance Channel next spring. IFC will be releasing an abridged version of the mini for a fall 2010 release. In another IFC pre-sale, the studio has picked up Julio Medem's Room in Rome [Habitación en Roma], which will likely make its premiere at next year's Berlinale. Room in Rome is the director's first English-language film as well as a remake of the Chilean film En la cama by Matías Bize, though the remake substitutes the original's heterosexual lovers with a hot lesbian duo in Elena Anaya and Natasha Yarovenko. Room in Rome also stars Enrico Lo Verso and Medem regular Najwa Nimri.

Other IFC Films in the pipeline include Ruba Nadda's Cairo Time with Patricia Clarkson; Bahman Ghobadi's No One Knows About the Persian Cats; Claude Chabrol's Bellamy; the Red Riding Trilogy; Josiane Belasko's A French Gigolo [Cliente] with Nathalie Baye and Eric Caravaca (which actually opened over the weekend); Marco Bechis' Birdwatchers; Hong Sang-soo's Night and Day; Nanda Anand's Return to Rajapur; Marco Bellocchio's Vincere; François Ozon's Ricky; Bruno Podalydès' Park Benches [Bancs publics (Versaille rive droite)]; Bruno Dumont's Hadewijch; Marina de Van's Don't Look Back [Ne te retourne pas]; Ryosuke Hashiguchi's All Around Us; Yannick Dahan and Benjamin Rocher's La horde; Alexis Dos Santos' Unmade Beds; Safy Nebbou's Mark of an Angel [L'empriente de l'ange]; Nicholas Winding Refn's Valhalla Rising; and more.

More Acquisitions

- I Am Love [Io sono l'amore], d. Luca Guadagnino, Magnolia [w. Tilda Swinton]
- The Exploding Girl, d. Bradley Rust Gray, Oscilloscope
- The Good Heart, d. Dagur Kári, Magnolia [w. Brian Cox, Paul Dano]
- Mother and Child, d. Rodrigo García, Sony Pictures Classics [w. Samuel L. Jackson, Naomi Watts, Annette Bening, David Morse, Kerry Washington, Amy Brenneman, Marc Blucas, Tatyana Ali, Jimmy Smits]
- The Misfortunates [De helaashied der dingen], d. Felix Van Groeningen, NeoClassics Films
- The Joneses, d. Derrick Borte, Roadside Attractions [w. Amber Heard, David Duchovony, Demi Moore, Gary Cole, Lauren Hutton]
- L'amour caché, d. Alessandro Capone, Cinema Epoch [w. Isabelle Huppert, Greta Scacchi, Mélanie Laurent, Olivier Gourmet]
- Accidents Happen, d. Andrew Lancaster, Image [w. Geena Davis]
- The Wind Journeys [Los viajes del viento], d. Ciro Guerra, Film Movement, available in February for members of Film Movement's monthly program

The Decade List: Clean (2004)

Clean - dir. Olivier Assayas

[Edited from an earlier post]

Someone over at the Internet Movie Database, a horrible source for user activity and input, has decided to throw around the word "cliché" on the subject of Clean as if it were... yes, going out of style. A drug-addicted mother (Maggie Cheung) has to straighten out her life before getting custody of her son. Yeah, we’ve seen it before, which always begs the question as to whether we need to see it again. No, we really don’t need to. Yet, this “reviewer” (or "reviewers") never really wants to question the intention or whether or not, with these said clichés, the film works.

Well, it does. Approaching melodrama the same way he did with the various genres at work in demonlover, Assayas doesn't wish to breathe new life into tired notions but to find meaning within those confines. Clean's tale is a familiar one, build on pre-established motifs of stylized drug sequences and/or cinema vérité rawness, both problematic in their usual depictions. In cautionary tales of addiction, stylized drug sequences tend to glamourize the lifestyle they wish to condemn. By now, cinema-vérité has become something of a filmic decoration, a spurious creature that no longer suffices. Clean is not a medium between these two, but a longing and observant alternative. Nothing is magnified, glamorized, or exploited; Clean is level-headed and intimate, without sickening us with its closeness or getting so close as to hit the characters, or us, with the lens.

Cheung's performance, which won the Best Actress prize at Cannes, is exactly what you don’t expect it to be. This is not to say she doesn’t cry or stare pensively into the distance, because she does. The magic, however, of her performance is not because of this, but because we don’t register it as a “performance.” It's maybe significant that between Assayas and Cheung's two collaborations, the other being Irma Vep in 1996, the pair had married and divorced, giving their cinematic relationship a separate meaning altogether. Was Clean the last thing the former spouses had to give to one another? Cheung would retire from acting after a double-showing at Cannes in '04 with this and a brief reprisal of her role in Wong Kar-wai's sequel to In the Mood for the Love, 2046. It's been rumored that her scenes in Quentin Tarantino's upcoming Inglourious Basterds were cut (we'll know for sure later this month), so if Clean is in fact Cheung's swan song, I couldn't have hoped for anything more.

With: Maggie Cheung, Nick Nolte, James Dennis, Béatrice Dalle, Jeanne Balibar, Don McKellar, Martha Henry, James Johnson, Rémi Martin, Joana Preiss, Tricky, Dave Roback, Metric
Screenplay: Olivier Assayas
Cinematography: Eric Gauthier
Music: Brian Eno, David Roback, Tricky
Country of Origin: France/Canada/UK
US Distributor: Palm Pictures

Premiere: 21 May 2004 (Cannes Film Festival)
US Premiere: 18 March 2005 (Rendez-vous with French Cinema)

Awards: Best Actress - Maggie Cheung, Technical Grand Prize - Eric Gauthier (Cannes Film Festival)

C'est l'heure d'été...

Over at Gone Cinema Poaching, I was asked to rank some of the best films of the first six months 0f 2009. Since we were going by US release date, my list was bigger than it would have been otherwise (I've been in kind of a slump). The obvious #1 was Olivier Assayas' Summer Hours [L'heure d'été], but just to shake things up, I also included two direct-to-video French horror flicks: Fabrice Du Welz's Vinyan (think Don't Look Now by way of Apocalypse Now with Emmanuelle Béart as your substitute for Julie Christie) and Pascal Laugier's Martyrs. You can check the full "list" at the link above, and despite both titles ending with the same adverb, there's no clever way of combining Don't Look Now and Apocalypse Now... I've tried.

Family Ties

Summer Hours [L'heure d'été] - dir. Olivier Assayas - 2008 - France - IFC Films

Written for Gone Cinema Poaching.

Separating Olivier Assayas' films into two camps, the "globe-trotting erotic-thriller" and the "prestige" pic, is an easy action. On a superficial level, Boarding Gate and Summer Hours couldn't be more different. However, when it comes to Assayas' work, most people choose to make the simple connections, such as the one above or noting the similarities between demonlover and Boarding Gate without recognizing their strong dissimilarities. But really, pairing one against the other overlooks the central idea that appears in nearly his entire body of work (I haven't seen any of the films that came before L'eau froide): a search for identity within changing landscapes, even if it's indirect.

In Summer Hours, the search is quite apparent. After the passing of their mother Hélène (Edith Scob), three siblings (Charles Berling, Juliette Binoche, Jérémie Renier) must determine how to deal with their family's inheritance, with special consideration for the fact that each of them live on separate continents. Like really all of the director's films, Summer Hours is almost deceptively slight. Assayas keeps the film free of teary melodrama and unwanted sentimentality, restricting his camera from the actual death of Hélène as well as her funeral. Summer Hours isn't about a family's grief; it's about the value, monetary and sentimental, of what's left behind.

Though its persistent honesty is no small feat, the strength of the film reveals itself fully in its final moments. Once it's decided to sell the family home, the two eldest grandchildren (Alice de Lencquesaing, Emile Berling) throw a party in the nearly empty house. As teenagers and loud music occupy the rooms, Assayas takes the film in a place I never expected, though maybe I should have known better as he's always placed great emphasis on his films' closing scenes, even if they seem initially puzzling. As my hands down choice for the best film to hit theatres this year, I'd be surprised to find a film as sublime as Summer Hours in the remaining months of 2009.

Repost: Summer Hours

Olivier Assayas' Summer Hours opens in New York tomorrow, and as it won't be making its way here for a while (though it will be OnDemand), I haven't gotten around to see it again (or even on the big screen, where I'd imagine it looks even more lovely). So, here's what I wrote in my round-up of 2008. It's absolutely sublime.

Summer Hours [L'heure d'été] - dir. Olivier Assayas - 2008 - France - IFC Films

"Initially, I had listed Boarding Gate higher than Olivier Assayas' "official" 2008 release (Boarding Gate premiered at Cannes in 2007), even though I couldn't justify in words why. Summer Hours is likely the better film of the two, but there's something about the harmony between Asia Argento and Assayas that keeps Boarding Gate from leaving my mind. Placing Boarding Gate and Summer Hours at a tie was the only viable option, even though I probably could have done the same with Gus Van Sant. Like Van Sant, Assayas showed some impressive diversity in 2008. In juggling a metaphysical exploitation film and a somber drama about the dispersion of inheritance after the matriarch (Edith Scob) passes away, Assayas approaches the same multi-faceted issue of globalization, also addressed in Irma Vep and demonlover, in two astonishing arenas. Both Boarding Gate and Summer Hours are deceptively slight, lacking the sucker punch that Hollywood cinema cowardly uses to justify its existence. Yet in the final stretches of each of the two, Assayas makes everything transcendently clear. Both take the risk of being parodies of their expected conventions (Summer Hours consciously avoids showing any of the high drama that would typically factor into a film about the death of a mother) but emerge as profound works from the shamefully underrated director."

The Decade List: demonlover (2002)

demonlover - dir. Olivier Assayas

There's a certain difficulty on critiquing the "now." There's always a risk of getting lost in the unknown, particularly as Olivier Assayas confronts the digital, Internet medium, with technology advancing and shifting at a rapid pace. With demonlover, the film should have by all counts felt stone-cased in its early-'00s when revisiting it, but it doesn't. At all. This is one of the many reasons why Assayas is such a gifted (and undervalued) filmmaker. His films and his themes all surpass their "now" expiration date, and in demonlover, his missteps and "inabilities" in the film's final third feel strangely appropriate for a film with issues as unsolvable as demonlover.

More than a corporate thriller (which it is, to some extent), demonlover is the first, and maybe only, neo-neo-noir, confronting technological fears with no direct allusion to what came before it. As pulpy and sleazy as demonlover may appear (it has Gina Gershon wearing a T-shirt that says I Heart Gossip), it's almost entirely un-ironic. Its similarities to Hong Kong action-ers (mainly the ones the female-centered ones that starred his former wife Maggie Cheung) and corporate thrillers are seamlessly infused into demonlover's surfaces (which also include gorgeous photography from Denis Lenoir and a dazzling post-rock score from Sonic Youth). In evading the elitist cues one might expect from not only a film like this but from a former Cahiers du Cinéma writer, the female-dominated, amorally cutthroat corporate universe becomes as curiously real as the animated pornography the business is killing to acquire does.

However appealing demonlover's genre tricks may be, the most fascinating elements of the film are the ones that feel out-of-place. While Diane (Connie Nielsen), a corporate spy trying to derail a deal between a French corporation and a Japanese anime company, appropriately remains a mysterious figure in the whole entanglement (we're never given a nationality or a real name for her), the same can't be said for Elise (Chloë Sevigny), an American girl whose professional position is never clear in the offices. We're treated with brief glimpses of a life outside of this world: a boyfriend who's only seen momentarily in the airport, a daughter for whom she hires a babysitter when delivering nighttime threats to Diane and a peculiar fascination with playing violent video games in the nude. What is this pretty, awkwardly-dressed Yankee girl doing here, and where in this shaky hierarchy does she fall? I'm still not sure, though it's worth mentioning that Elise seems better versed in (and emotionally separated from) what Diane and company are trying to annex; Diane and her partners appear oblivious to any details of what they hope to acquire. And then there's the first interaction we see between Elise and her hospitalized maybe-boss Karen (Dominique Reymond), where Elise appears offended by Karen's statement that she feels like she's been raped. "C'est quand même pas la même chose [It's not the same thing]," she says, lowering her eyes, suggesting that her grip on reality is stronger (and more dangerous) than we might later suspect.

Like his later Boarding Gate, one of the film's best scenes occurs between the abject, ambiguous revelations between two of the characters. After Diane's bit of espionage has been uncovered, she dines with former partner Hervé (Charles Berling, almost unrecognizable in his shabbiness). The scene is layered in deception and dizzying performance as Diane unsuccessfully(?) tries to reassert the control she killed and drugged (but not fucked) to obtain. Around this point in the film (though I believe it begins when Diane agrees to Elise's uncertain conditions), demonlover derails. Most people saw this as the film's defeating flaw, but ultimately it adds to demonlover's mystique, as well as its horror.

Assayas is not a moralist, as many other critics have agreed; this keeps demonlover from being a mere cautionary tale. In the epilogue, where a suburban teenage boy steals his father's credit card to log into a torture porn site, I came to a stronger understanding of what Assayas was trying to portray. As Vadim Rizov states in his review of the film, "the heart of evil is located in innocence." But it's more than innocence, he explains, it's "numbed indifference." It isn't a sort of Columbine-era mentality that violence-in-the-media encourages violence-in-life. Instead, Assayas reveals the intricate chain of evil, from the Japanese company's "issue" with one of their animators using underage girls as models to Diane and Hervé's ignorance to Lara Croft to the parallels between Elise's professional involvements and her gaming to this teenager's dark fantasy indulgence. The chain has been set, and Assayas isn't foolish enough to speculate where it might have begun or will end.

In addition to Rizov's, I should also direct you to reviews of the film from Daniel Kasman, Ed Gonzalez and Michael Joshua Rowin (also here), as I scrapped two attempts at trying to tackle the film before settling on this one (and I took some inspiration, or direction, from their write-ups).

With: Connie Nielsen, Charles Berling, Chloë Sevigny, Dominique Reymond, Gina Gershon, Jean-Baptiste Malartre, Edwin Gerard, Abi Sakamoto, Naoko Yamazaki
Screenplay: Olivier Assayas
Cinematography: Denis Lenoir
Music: Sonic Youth, Jim O'Rourke
Country of Origin: France
US Distributor: Palm Pictures

Premiere: 19 May 2002 (Cannes Film Festival)
US Premiere: 19 September 2003 (New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago)

IFC Films in 2009, including Assayas, Ozon, Garrel, Sang-soo, Arcand, Tarr

In a press release, IFC Films laid out a number of films they'll be presenting through their various platforms of release, which includes theatrical, Festival Direct Video-On-Demand and their DVD rental partnership with Blockbuster (which seems to have stopped their releases of DVDs elsewhere, which is extremely disappointing). I use Netflix, and my cable provider doesn't offer Festival Direct... so I'm sort of fucked when it comes to their releases, but I have to hand it to them for getting so many films out there. Their 2009 release schedule includes:

Angel - dir. François Ozon - with Sam Neill, Charlotte Rampling, Michael Fassbender
Frontier of the Dawn [La frontière de l'aube] - dir. Philippe Garrel - with Louis Garrel, Laura Smet
Summer Hours [L'heure d'été] - dir. Olivier Assayas - with Charles Berling, Juliette Binoche, Jérémie Renier
La belle personne - dir. Christophe Honoré - with Louis Garrel, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet
Let It Rain [Parlez-moi de la pluie] - dir. Agnès Jaoui - with Agnès Jaoui
Days of Darkness [L'âge des ténèbres] - dir. Denys Arcand - with Diane Kruger, Rufus Wainwright, Emma de Caunes
Night and Day - dir. Hong Sang-soo
Disengagement [Désengagement] - dir. Amos Gitai - with Juliette Binoche, Jeanne Moreau
Dog Eat Dog [Perro come perro] - dir. Carlos Moreno
Everlasting Moments [Maria Larssons eviga ögonblick] - dir. Jan Troell
Fear Me Not [Den du frygter] - dir. Kristian Levring - with Ulrich Thomsen, Paprika Steen
I'm Going to Explode [Voy a explotar] - dir. Gerardo Naranjo - with Daniel Giménez Cacho
The Man from London [A Londoni férfi] - dir. Béla Tarr - with Tilda Swinton
The Necessities of Life [Ce qu'il fait pour vivre] - dir. Benoît Pilon
Paris - dir. Cédric Klapisch - with Juliette Binoche, Romain Duris, Fabrice Luchini, François Cluzet, Albert Dupontel, Karin Viard
When a Man Comes Home [En Mand kommer hjem] - dir. Thomas Vinterberg
White Night Wedding [Brúðguminn] - dir. Baltasar Kormákur - with Hilmir Snær Guðnason
A Year Ago in Winter [Im Winter ein Jahr] - dir. Caroline Link
Alexander the Last - dir. Joe Swanberg - with Jess Weixler, Justin Rice, Jane Adams, Josh Hamilton
Zift - dir. Javor Gardev

There are more titles at the link above, and I've also heard from elsewhere that Jean-Claude Brisseau's À l'aventure and Antti-Jussi Annila's Sauna are on the roster for 2009. I could be wrong, as I thought both Paris and Disengagement belonged to Samuel Goldwyn and Sony Pictures Classics, respectively. Expect plenty more acquisitions throughout the year following 2009's big film festivals.