Last Year at Marienbad (L'année dernière à Marienbad) A Film by Alain Resnais (1961)

"...The spectator will let himself be carried along by the extraordinary images in front of him, by the actors' voices, by the soundtrack, by the music, by the rhythm of the cutting, by the passion of the characters...and to this spectator the film will seem the "easiest" he has ever seen: a film addressed exclusively to his sensibility, to his faculties of sight, hearing, feeling. The story will seem the most realistic, the truest, the one that best corresponds to his daily emotional life..."

These are the words of Nouveau Roman author Alain Robbe-Grillet, who penned the screenplay for Alain Resnais' famously unconventional Nouvelle Vague film Last Year at Marienbad. What he's saying though, that the film is likely to be the gentlest, most malleable viewing experience possible, would undoubtedly contradict with the overwhelming majority of the film's approximately fifty-year audience. The quote also comes from a preface to the screenplay that was published prior to the release of the film, in which Robbe-Grillet sung sweetly about the perfect osmosis between he and Resnais in working on the project, a sentiment that he gradually and bitterly altered in the years after. The discontinuity between his statement and reality however may be by design, posed as yet another unkempt stitch in an already ruffled patchwork, a film that literally (and many would say figuratively) takes game-playing as one of its subjects. For good reason, Resnais and Robbe-Grillet have been named the biggest fibbers and pranksters in the history of the cinema.

I'd like to think though, with its immensely satisfying visual and aural rhymes, its subtle mutations in tone, and the rigorous performances of its two unnamed leads, that Last Year at Marienbad is much more than just a game. Instead, there is some truth in Robbe-Grillet's assertions: the film, through its unusual alchemy of repetition and minor variation, approaches the mechanics of the mind, specifically the way memory and fantasy work within the human brain. Whether or not this results in the kind of viewing Robbe-Grillet predicts is a different question. It is no way an "easy" film, but rather one that constantly asks questions, or perhaps only appears to ask questions. It can be aggravating or hypnotic, off-putting or encouraging, daunting or lean. Why its effect varies so much from viewer to viewer (the film caused one of the most divisive critical responses in film history) is and always will be a massive mystery, but it says a great deal about Resnais and Robbe-Grillet's achievement, and in a way, is naturally symptomatic of a film dealing with the elusive nature of human thought.

Last Year at Marienbad features three central figures identified only as X, A, and M in the production notes. X (Giorgio Albertazzi), encounters A (Delphine Seyrig) at an opulent hotel getaway somewhere in a void in Europe (possibly Marienbad, but there is no certainty, as the exteriors change conspicuously), and attempts to convince her of their meeting a year back in the same place, where they agreed to reconvene in exactly one year and run away together. Like Resnais' previous fiction debut, Hiroshima, Mon Amour (scripted by Robbe-Grillet's contemporary, Marguerite Duras), the male/female dynamic here takes on an aggressor/resistor stance, with X relentlessly insisting and A guilelessly denying any knowledge of such a meeting. As the film progresses, there are ever-so-slight variations in A's reaction to the stubborn perseverance; most of the time she staidly and somewhat playfully brushes off X, but then her tone grows serious, until in the end the two reach some sort of consensus, though a shaky one at that. X's recollections of specific moments that marked their meeting seem convincing enough to warrant A's continued attention, but he appears to be in pursuit not of a tangible romantic relationship but of something deeper, something essential to his being, something metaphysical perhaps. The enigmatic M, a lanky, stone-faced man who appears to have a significant connection to A, stalks the film in near silence most of the time, strolling down the corridors of the hotel and frequently playing a Chinese strategy game called Nim with X, mirroring the supposed battle between the two over A, and on a larger level emblematic of the film as a whole.



This meeting constitutes the primary conceit of the film, which is more a situation than a plot. Nothing more happens, and it also might be accurate to say that the same thing happens again and again, played out with minor discrepancies. No one scene can be said to have occurred in reality or in the minds of the characters, and with so many fragmented moments to choose from, the film only obscures itself more and more as time passes. We see contradictions arise once again when X's narrated recollections don't match up exactly with the images onscreen, colliding with them in a way that disorients the viewer. Such a mystery yields several potential explanations: X has been lying all along, and his stories are no more certain in his mind than they are in ours; like an instance of déjà vu, X's memories only arise in glimpses, so what he has to work with cognitively is then rearranged as scenes with slight changes; or there is the possibility that the whole film is from the trajectory of A, who is trying with some difficulty to piece together the images created by X's consistent, obstinate words.

An atmosphere of static, free-floating menace permeates through this drama, which Resnais capitalizes on with stunning visualizations of the numerous planes that Last Year at Marienbad inhabits; that is, past, present, future, fantasy, memory, dreams. Sacha Vierny, one of the gifted cinematographers on Hiroshima, lets the camera slide through the hotel and around its premises with both effortless grace and physical detachment, echoing the fluid yet cold forms in the magnificent marble architecture. It is no more likely to focus on its ostensible human subjects than it is to pause and marvel at the icy beauty of its surroundings, tracking across the gilded ceilings, expansive hallways, or palatial spiral staircases as X's voice-over describes the alienating quality of these elements. Yet the human presence in the film tends to be just as lifeless; immobile, unemotional figures dressed in fancy nightwear occupy the spaces in schematic orientations, lending a ghostly peculiarity that certainly, among many other things, influenced Stanley Kubrick in The Shining (1980). Some of the most confounding shots in Marienbad though are the simplest technically, such as the repetitious use of static mirror compositions, which uncomfortably plunge us directly out of the present and into the very embodiment of the temporal refractions that are the film's bread and butter. It is in these moments where Robbe-Grillet's manifesto seems truest, where space and time are obliterated in the name of unique cinematic expression.

Pickpocket (1959) A Film by Robert Bresson

It's easy to miss narrative details of Robert Bresson's Pickpocket. So much becomes of so little. The story, that of a compulsive thief named Michel (Martin LaSalle) and his repetitious existence, is constantly expanding outward and the claustrophobic frames which contain it seem to be choking for breath, looking for a way to accommodate for any plot threads that are left unexplored. Yet this effect is all carefully devised by Bresson to approximate the perspective through which the loner Michel sees the world, and also the one-sided state of mind he has backed himself into. It is with rigidly uncompromising minimalism, eerie silences, and austere performances that Bresson is able to achieve this unique atmosphere. With Pickpocket, he manages to effectively render the damaged subconscious of a criminal by supporting the film throughout with his lead character's narrated diary entries, a technique that acquires the confessional immediacy of Claude Laydu's musings in the aptly named Diary of a Country Priest.

Not only does Pickpocket reach back towards Bresson's own oeuvre, but it also is heavily influenced by one of his favorite writers: Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The film is often said to be the cinematic equivalent of the Russian author's Crime and Punishment, although it makes no attempt to adapt it note-for-note. Both films ponder about the nature of the common man and morality in society and deal with pro(anta?)gonists who commit illegal acts based on a justification of some sort, although the precise one in Michel's case is in question. His character is solemn and blank for the film's entirety despite the several options he has before him that could improve both his spiritual and financial well-being. There is Jeanne (Marika Green), an unassumingly gorgeous woman who lives in the same apartment complex as him and occupies a space directly next to his dying mother. Even when she suspects him of crime, she offers her guidance. There is also Jacques, a teasing friend who nonetheless is willing to help Michel find a job. With all of this help, one assumes he should not feel so alone in the world. Why then, does he resort to pickpocketing?

Bresson's cinema is famously a cinema of questions, questions that permeate through every aspect of the film, be it related to mise-en-scene, narrative, or theme. Where is this scene taking place? Who was he just talking to? What leads him to behave the way he does? These often lead to dead ends when considered logically. But it's also necessary to point out that Bresson wants you to feel before you comprehend, and also wants you to acknowledge that the journey you take to reach supposed answers is just as important if not more important than the answers themselves. It is significant, then, that the title of the film is as succinct and pragmatic as it is; Bresson wants us to first and foremost get inside the head of a pickpocket. Consider the life of a pickpocket: isolated, focused, sneaky, drifting. We experience these traits through Bresson's exquisite cinematography, which creates an endlessly self-contained world of hands, doors, mechanically moving crowds, wallets, and blank glances. Bresson does not show us any exteriors in their entirety, nor does he ever reveal Michel's whole room at once. When on a subway or on the street, the camera stays fixed on Michel, following him as he scouts victims who are diminished to black blurs across the screen. The film's quietly elaborate centerpiece, in which Michel and his new accomplices devise a ballet of theft in the train station, is the towering technical achievement of the film, yet it is never ostentatious. Instead, the form perfectly reflects the action.



The film also makes mindful use of sound as well as image. Reminiscent of Bela Tarr's application of post-synchronized sound, Pickpocket exists in a Paris where the clatter of footsteps is cumulatively louder than the sound of human voices and even motor vehicles. It all works to deindividualize the masses; after all, Michel prefers not to see them as separate people with individual strengths and weaknesses, but rather as a collective whole which he has elevated himself above by reading books. Nearly everyone wears black suits and is ripe for the picking, or pickpocketing, rather. It also should not be noted that hands, which take greatest precedence visually, create not the faintest of sounds. To Bresson, hands tell as much about a person as anything else on a physical body, and here, their silence helps to emphasize their deft movement and underscores the fact that Michel speaks only through action. The whole of his existence is defined by the choices he makes with his hands, as they are both the vehicles of his downfall and the sources of his pleasures.

If pleasure sounds like a impossibility in the life of Michel, take into account the different meanings of the word. When he commits theft, he gets a perverse and - as some critics have argued - sexual thrill out of it, no matter how briefly that thrill lasts. It is the danger of the encounters that excites him, the rush of being inches away from someone breathing on your neck while still slipping a hand into their coat pocket. Pickpocket is indeed a thoughtful inquiry into the way we live our lives, the meaning of our existences, and the shaky divide between right and wrong, but it is also a film that speaks strongly about compulsion and the intangible force that drives people to continue harmful behaviors. Michel gets his due in the end when he foolishly, and perhaps deliberately, steals from an undercover policeman, but his imprisonment is not a judgment on Bresson's part as much as it is another question. When he finally embraces Jeanne between metal bars and the emotion breaks through, reaching a level of transcendence, as Paul Schrader suggests, we wonder whether or not Michel's crimes were worth it.

35 Shots of Rum (35 Rhums) A Film by Claire Denis (2008)

Claire Denis' 35 Shots of Rum - like Hirozaku Kore-Eda's recent Still Walking - uses a beloved Yasujiro Ozu film as a jumping off point but ultimately morphs to its own context and sensibility. The story of Lionel (Alex Descas) and Joséphine (Mati Diop), an intimate father/daughter duo living together in a Paris apartment building mirrors that of Shukichi (Chishû Ryû) and Noriko (Setsuko Hara), a similarly affectionate but physically closer relationship evolving in Tokyo; both tales contain their fair shares of trains and reveal the weight of passing time as it influences the lives of family members. I won't sing about the ways in which Denis deftly reintegrates the elements of Late Spring into 35 Shots of Rum, as if the film can only be seen as a particularly bright spot in a long shadow of greatness cast down by the monumental Japanese work, but instead take it as the rich, plaintive gesture that it is, a singular entity as much as it is an homage.

Much has been made of Claire Denis in recent years, especially on The Auteurs Notebook and in the BFI's Sight and Sound Magazine, where Nick James declares her the finest filmmaker in the world. 35 Shots of Rum comes directly before her most recent fest-film White Material and it potently evokes a mood of tranquility. It eases us ever-so-gradually into a not-so easy sentiment: that we must find peace in our own routines and submit to the fact that the lives that run beside ours do not run on parallel tracks, that they criss-cross, intervene, and sometimes lead to isolation, as we see in the opening frames which assume the rickety point-of-view of Lionel as he yields to his occupation as a train driver. Shortly thereafter, he reunites with his daughter Joséphine in their apartment for a quiet night of brief expressions of admiration and modest downtime. A pattern is established that the film effortlessly maintains of work in the day and home at night, a seemingly endless systemization of separation and reconvening.

It is only through the passing of time that this pattern is mildly obstructed, ushered along by two figures - Gabrielle (Nicole Dogue) and Noé (Grégoire Colin) - who tug lovingly and desirably at our respective main characters. Gabrielle is an ex-lover of Lionel and also acts as the quasi-mother figure for Joséphine, and Noé is a young man living alone on a floor above them. Together, the four presume the awkward stance of a real family, with the two not linked by blood filling in the holes that are left enigmatically gaping. Not until the final quarter of the film does Denis subtly reveal to us hints of the mother through dusty material remnants in the apartment, and the exact state of affairs that defines her absence is left unanswered, just as the tangible course of events that lead Lionel and Joséphine to tension remains flexibly open to interpetation. Those familiar with Denis' work will acknowledge these ambiguities as par for the course; she never once judges her characters but at the same time does not take this opacity to an extreme, providing us evocative evidence in the behaviors of characters that suggests potential inquiries.



35 Shots of Rum is formally splendid and has an admirable inclination not to ogle at pleasurable images. Instead, Denis' exquisite cutting rhythms create a precise flow that matches the interconnecting nature of the characters and constructs what is specifically a montage of abstractions. Time and space are delicately scattered when Denis promptly excises the the conceivable payoffs of a scene to pursue other plot lines, a move that approximates the abrupt veering of a train at a fork. Even when the four central characters occupy the same space, leaving nowhere for the film to exit to, Denis discovers a way to obscure the ontological surfaces of the scene. Most memorably illustrating this is the rainy night that is in some ways the crux of the film. The four characters are heading to a concert when their car breaks down en route, leaving them defenseless in the pouring rain. During the drive there, Denis resists all-encompassing views of the car, instead shifting rhythmically between tight close-ups of their lowly lit expressions as the droplets of water on the windows blur the outside world they are contained within. The "family" then makes a spontaneous decision to have a rendezvous in an African restaurant on the side of the street, and once again Denis limits her vision to the central figures in comfortable but indecisive motion as they sway to the music in what is surely one of the most sublime renderings of the wit's-end-waltz-scene I have ever witnessed.

Moments like these stand out beautifully in what is otherwise an extremely consistent film, absent of many significant tonal or narrative leaps (besides a particularly unexpected and chilling moment of gore when Lionel confronts a dead friend in a train tunnel). Denis has an elegant way of suffusing profundity into the elliptical gaps where more conventional directors would resort to an emotional apex, such as when Joséphine arrives at Noé's door after a tension between the two in a previous scene. We expect a flush of emotion culminating in a kiss but instead get a cut to a new scene, letting mysteries regarding what happened simmer over. Similarly, one could argue that the final scene is a more fundamental example of this restraint; the characters dress up and Joséphine dons her mother's necklace, but the true content of the sequence is mysterious. Is it a marriage, linking Joséphine to Ozu's Noriko? And if so, for whom? The answers are left within the viewer's own projection, and Denis supplies enough emotion to want to search for them.

Irreversible and Salo (2002/1975) Films by Gaspar Noé and Pier Paolo Pasolini

French Director Gaspar Noé specializes in dishing out horrible experiences. Even if you consider yourself to be an especially audacious spectator of extreme cinema, Noé will manage to shock you out of your wits. Uniquely, this is not to say he is a poor director. In what is widely considered to be the apotheosis of Noé's expectation-bending oeuvre, Irreversible (2002) boasts considerable technical skill, comprised of only 12 excruciatingly tense, semi-improvised shots that tell a revenge tale in reverse. Within ten minutes of the film, there is no question that Noé is a filmmaker who is giddily willing to push boundaries, even if that means inducing severe headstrain in the face of topsy-turvy cinematography that careens around a seedy alleyway as if from the point of view of someone who had way too many drinks. Without a doubt this type of singularity should always be a breath of fresh air. However, once Noé's camera plunges into the depths of a homosexual nightclub called "The Rectum" to capture one of, if not the most unrelentingly savage sequence in cinema history, one wonders what the purpose of originality is if it's used for something so cruel. Significantly, that's not even the end of it; since we are given subliminal clues as to what happened before the events onscreen, we can only brace ourselves for what's to come.

My experience of watching Irreversible reminded me obliquely of the only other film I've seen that has disturbed me so profoundly: Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975). Although the two films were made in such distinct contexts - Italy in the 1970's and France in the 21st century - their unique ability to boost cinema to a level of uncontested vileness is something they share. Pasolini's film took on a more political urgency when it was made, focusing in on a group of perverted Fascist officials who subject a large group of kidnapped teenagers to brutal physical and sexual torture in a remote mansion in Nazi-occupied Italy. Constructed of a series of painfully detached tableaux, Pasolini works up to a rhythm of aloof symmetrical compositions that are all the more horrifying for their absence of directorial intervention. When the head dignitary forces a young blond to eat her own fecal matter, Pasolini's static camera sits like a dead duck, disallowing our eyes to wander.

This type of voyeuristic gaze is another element that Irreversible and Salò share. Whereas Pasolini at least settles into a groove of detachment so that we know what's coming, Noé prefers only to cease the camera's perpetual whirl when there is something terrible to look at. The culmination of the "Rectum" club scene is a still, sideways view of brutal manslaughter: the film's "protagonist", Marcus (Vincent Cassel), pummels a man's skull with a fire extinguisher. Marcus' reason for doing so is observed a few scenes down the road in an even more notorious effrontery as the narrative rewinds in a manner similar to that of Christopher Nolan's Memento (2000). His girlfriend Alex (Monica Bellucci) regrettably passes through a deserted subway underpass before being stopped by a tough womanizer known to the mob community as "Le Tenia", who violently beats and rapes her in a terrifyingly realistic shot that lasts just short of ten minutes. In moments of evil, Noé and Pasolini are challenging our complicity as viewers. Our inability to help the characters onscreen mirrors our blindness to such events in reality, as grim naturalism seems to be rooted in both of the films, albeit more pointedly in Irreversible.



The presentation of objectivity, Noé and Pasolini wisely realize, is therefore capable of the greatest debilitation. More so than manipulative "horror" films that make an audience jump by venturing into the unknown, Irreversible and Salò prove to us that in order to get under a viewer's skin the deepest, the best method is to insist on a front seat to such matter-of-fact depravity. After all, one question that both filmmakers seem to prioritize is "what is considered acceptable to show?" and furthermore, "what does it mean for an image to be acceptable?" Noé and Pasolini function by the credo "if it could happen or has happened, the audience needs to be aware". It is no mistake that the miserable dehumanization of the teenagers in Salò occurs in a Nazi-occupied territory, linking their degradation explicitly to that of the Jews during the Holocaust. More abstract but no less substantial is Pasolini's integration of Marquis De Sade's controversial 18th century text The 120 Days of Sodom, from which the film version takes its shape. Pasolini loosely visualizes Sade's words - which were written while imprisoned - in his own contemporary context to prevent them from being tied down to one specific generation. Evil, he implies, can exist anywhere, anytime.

Noé undoubtedly agrees, but his film contains a bit more specificity, which obviously provokes a different reaction. An essential distinction between the two films is the two types of affliction they elicit in the viewer. Given Salò's highly deliberate pacing and calculated visuals, it is no surprise that its effect is more cerebral. By the end of it, and it is no quick endeavor at 145 minutes, one is left with a gaping lack of humanity, thus its aftermath is more fundamental and dehumanizing. I've neglected to mention thus far that Irreversible's provocations do not come without their warm, tender counterparts at the end, or rather, the beginning, and therefore we are not simply conned by quasi-pornographic nonsense. Regardless, its first 45 minutes are more viscerally intense than any single scene in Salò. For instance, during the "Rectum" sequence, Noé layers an unsettling percussive industrial drone over his already manic camerawork that bounces furiously from Marcus's angry expression, the dim red lights of the club, fragmented gay sex, and the genuinely unnerving scowls of the onlookers. The result is a sequence that defies the viewer to sit through its entirety, no matter how much of a disturbing sensory overload it becomes.

Salò is more of a homogeneous experience in the sense that there is rarely an individual scene that is particularly harsher than any other. Instead, it is the creepy persistence of anti-emotionality in the visages of the four head Fascists that ratchets up the terror. Never do their expressions change, whether they are anal raping a teenager, leading a competition among the victims for the finest behind, or observing through peepholes as their cohorts put on the finishing touches in the excruciating denouement. The closest they come to genuine emotion is the Duke's robotic sneer that is seen several times in close-up, but we still never get the sense that it is anything more than a mechanized response to his own sadistic acts. Irreversible at least treats us to some good old fashioned human feeling: vengeance, anger, debauchery, even love and compassion in the end. Pasolini, being an oppressed individual himself - as a filmmaker, he was put into exile consistently for his racy films - was too strict with his execution and intent to provide the audience with anything familiar to latch onto. He wanted to display without any restraint the capacity for evil within the human soul.

Cumulatively, the two films show more naked human flesh than a doctor is likely to see in his entire career. Irreversible flaunts it so routinely that it becomes unsurprising whereas Salò materializes the physical body, reducing the strategically placed figures to pawns on a chess board, forever inferior to the dominant Kings. On that note, Salò is almost, dare I say, recommendable for its formal rigor; nearly every composition is of intense mathematical symmetry. Similarly, if one can handle the arduousness of Irreversible, what emerges is a thought-provoking study of the nature of time, littered with unbelievably difficult set pieces. "Enter at your own risk" though is really the motto here - which is certainly something I should have given more credence to when I brushed off the warning sticker emblazoned on both film's DVD covers - because the effects that the two films have on the viewer is potentially irreversible as well. They are "scarier" than any film in the horror genre, if only for the fact that they convincingly reveal the abysmal depths to which humans can descend.

Made in U.S.A (1966) A Film by Jean-Luc Godard

As a turning point in Jean Luc-Godard's career, Made in U.S.A is also one of the director's strangest endeavors, an overtly self-indulgent grab bag that chops up the American film noir by way of dry political musings and random allusions to movie lore and historical figures. It features Anna Karina playing a modish private eye named Paula Nelson investigating the story surrounding her recently dead ex-lover in an imaginary oasis of France called Atlantic-Cité, encountering hip political workers and ominous buffoons linked tangentially to crimes committed along the way. For a film that is so readily billed as a substantial, albeit unusual, narrative - Criterion even wittily calls it "a Looney Tunes rendition of The Big Sleep gone New Wave" - the film could hardly be less plotless, even by Godard's standards. One expects the narratives of Godard's late films to be nonexistent, but in 1966, Made in U.S.A was an explosive deconstruction of filmmaking conventions, while simultaneously being rooted in them in a giddy, almost childlike manner. What Godard is doing in the film is leaving behind any commercial perception of what makes a film interesting, and is instead using the medium as a launching pad for his own obsessions, preoccupations, and ideas, in no matter how frenzied a manner.

And yet, for all the times Made in U.S.A is labeled as one of the defining moments for a revolutionary, the film is hardly suitable for anyone but Godard. Shot in an improvisational manner in extreme brevity, no less during the shooting of Two or Three Things I Know About Her, one can't help but think it was merely a hiccup for him. With characters carelessly named Doris Mizoguchi, Richard Nixon, and David Goodis, a hapless slapstick cameo by New-Wave favorite Jean-Pierre Léaud, and pounds of obscure poetic tidbits spoken by Karina, the feeling that Godard was simply pulling arbitrarily from his catalog of cinematic, literary, and political knowledge is never inconspicuous. In some of the most technically harsh moments in Godard's career, he rants on and on over a small radio system about the political state of French, the consolidation of the Left and Right, and the necessary onslaught of Maoism, all while the soundtrack blares in a high frequency for god know's why. While this type of explicit directorial intrusion is no surprise in the New Wave master's oeuvre, here it drones on so incessantly and with such little inflection that it stands as one more irksome departure from the alleged story.

His leftover infatuation with Karina, a subtext already explored heavily in Vivre Sa Vie and Pierrot Le Fou, is also omnipresent. For the entirety of Made in U.S.A, the camera is less interested in the content of what she is doing than it is in how she's doing it, pausing all forward motion to watch her lie down and mutter cryptic lines about her lost lover, jaunt around a crime scene as if a hooker looking for a client, and stare longingly into the camera in pristine panoramas that look like fashion spreads for Alienation Weekly. She looks gorgeous throughout the film with her makeup perpetually laid on just right, and Godard is aware of this when he subjects her to such prolonged scrutiny. But there's also a hostility in her screen presence, as if Godard is creating a pointedly mysterious and unlikeable character to justify his own divorce. The character of Paula Nelson lines right up with the rest of the modern women from 60's arthouse cinema as a beautiful but cold and indifferent enigma that will ruin a man with the same level of seeming carelessness, even shooting characters in Made in U.S.A with the gun that is persistently slung by her side.



In terms of this violence, despite its frequency, Godard presents it as non-violently and unrealistically as possible. Karina seems to brush off murderous acts with the same nonchalance with which she commits them. Furthermore, victims of gun-shooting in the film display only the scantest and most laughable evidence of physical disintegration, with either a perfect circle of vibrant red dabbed on their forehead or a puddle of the same substance that looks like red leather. The dead victim usually remains locked in a pose that could still pass off as fashionable, with their skin and clothes remaining in tip-top shape. This is not to say that Godard can't tell real from fake if his life depended on it; rather, one can see it as hysterically cartoonish violence for a point. It is both flagrant mockery of the Hollywood predilection to only equate overt believability with substance, and further proof of Godard's ongoing inclination to question the nature of the image, to challenge the notion that "seeing is believing". At the same time, given the pop-art aesthetic of the film, Godard sees these stylistic touches as all part of the same form. To him, flashing a cartoon still of the word "BING!" when Karina is pulled from her path by an unidentified stranger is just as effective and valuable a film technique as adding the appropriate sound effect to the scene.

These instances, along with several magnificent compositions courtesy of Raoul Coutard's typically flashy cinematography (one of the finest being Karina wandering through a backroom between gargantuan film posters), give Made in U.S.A a tickle of interest. When it comes down to it though, the film only contains a smattering of ideas rather than a coherent picture. I'm still unsure of what is gained by setting the visual essay loosely around the genre of film noir or procedural crime drama, other than that it vaguely comments upon these frameworks in a purely reverential manner, something that is by no means new to Godard's work. Whereas Two or Three Things was held together firmly by its thematic base, Made in U.S.A dances around a jumble of slightly interconnected themes, so there is nothing to grab onto besides Karina's face and Coutard's colors. And when Godard sloppily adds another disjunctive sound effect that smacks ten decibels too high, I'm not struck by the denial of film form it embodies, but rather, I'm just annoyed.

Persepolis (2007) A Film by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Parronaud

The comic book to film adaption has seen distinct results: there are the slew of superhero films such as Spiderman, The Hulk, and Watchmen, and then there are decidedly smaller, more introspective comedy-dramas, like the excellent episodic Harvey Pekar film, American Splendor, and now Marjane Satrapi and her artist collaborator Vincent Parronaud's Persepolis. The latter arena roots its milieu in everyday life as it attempts to extract comedy and pathos out of autobiographical tales of normal existence, whereas the former shoots for a fantastical reality infused the grandiloquence of a myth. While Persepolis does hold true to these trappings, it also expands broader than the quotidian distress of American Splendor into something more politically minded and socially relevant. It is a documenting of the trials and tribulations of a feisty Iranian woman as she grows up through a turbulent era in Iran - the oppressive Shah regime, the subsequent hint at democracy, and eventually a turn towards a strict Fundamentalist system. The young woman is indeed Marjane Satrapi herself, and the story takes on an almost confessional bent at times with Satrapi utilizing the autobiographical mode to its fullest extent, revealing her successes and failures with a copious blend of self-mocking and self-aggrandizement.

Considering the film's sources are the two comic books Satrapi authored of the same name (Persepolis and Persepolis 2), it's a given that the film should adopt a fragmented, rapid-fire storytelling technique, as if each scene was plugged from the individual frames in the comic book. Satrapi's character - voiced by Gabrielle Lopes Benites as a child and Chiara Mastroianni (the daughter of Marcello) as a teen and young woman - guides the film via narration, and it takes the many excursions that her words entail, into dream, flashback, and fantasies. Sometimes the scenes are so anecdotal that they undermine the flow of the narrative as a whole, which favors shifting thoughts rather than wholly logical progression. Nonetheless, they are stitched together by Satrapi's consistent humanity. Her world-view, which takes on a hint of gentle rebellion, has been shaped by her intellectually independent role models: her loving mother and father, an Uncle Anoush she had never met until he was imprisoned, and her idiosyncratic grandmother, whom she lives with for a time. The first section of the film details Marjane's youth, which is probably the most dramatically diffuse. Like the bubbly child she is, and the Nike-wearing, punk-rocking adolescent she becomes, the narrative clamors with vibrancy but loses out on coherence.

As Persepolis progresses and Marji is sent away by her parents in the interest of acquiring a better education, it also gains more assurance on the level of fluidity. She is confronted with the decadent culture and introduced to such previously unspoken taboos as smoking and alcohol, thrasher punk, and spontaneous dating. Each of her flings, from flimsily characterized artistic weirdos to booger-eating grotesques, is presented in a slapdash manner, emphasizing the roller-coaster ride of emotions experienced in Marjane due to the displacement from her beloved but flawed homeland and her caring family. It all ultimately leads to depression, which she unsatisfactorily discovers when her doctor tells her after she vomits up a black liquid from too many cigarettes. Marjane vows to straighten up and heads back to her native land as a way of doing so, only to find it is in a much more dire position than she could have ever imagined. This is where the film is most successful, in its juxtaposition of the childlike view of the revolution in her early days to the slap of reality she gets upon returning as a fully formed woman. Perhaps this is why Marjane's youth is told with an almost naive structure. It allows for the later sequences to mold to that of a matured woman's mind.



Enough talk about narrative, for Persepolis' most recognizable achievement is its beautiful visual language. Satrapi's comic books are known for their minimalistic line-drawing, which admittedly gains infinitely more expressiveness in its commitment to animation. The aesthetic fascinatingly combines this simplistic method for the faces and bodies of people with textured shading on objects in the background. Such a technique allows the bodies to stand out even when they are reduced to white eyes on black shadow figures, as if animal eyes peering out from behind bushes. The backgrounds are wonderfully descriptive and often times willfully expressionistic; for instance, a wall frequently becomes a blob of black with a patch of white in the middle, recalling the eerie domestic interiors of David Lynch's Eraserhead. Contrasting this straightforwardness are the instances of cartoonish dreams that Marjane has. In her youth, a majestic God cushioned between one-dimensional cloud formations guides her frustration during sleep, and she even travels the seven seas. Satrapi and Parronaud draw these images with great innocence and detail, giving them the look of paper thin layers that move in and out to convey depth.

This artistic acumen is ultimately able to punctuate the otherwise rambling narrative with poignancy. The images are also coupled perfectly with a rustic soundtrack tinged with French classical and jazzy pop ditties, or even in one bizarre, out-of-step instance, Marjane's rendition of "Eye of the Tiger" during her self-realization. Satrapi and Paronnaud evidently have a skill with the pairing of image and music alone to create emotion, proved when the characters walk through the Iranian streets and a lovely snow falls. Persepolis is able to sidestep the conventional coming-of-age drama where some particular contrivance elevates the character to maturity, instead achieving the feeling of an accumulation of life events that help to shape a person, particularly a person who has been through political and social upheaval but has never lost her values.

Two or Three Things I Know About Her (2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle) A Film by Jean-Luc Godard (1967)

Released in 1967, cushioned by the simultaneously produced Made in U.S.A and the subsequent La Chinoise, Jean Luc-Godard's Two or Three Things I Know About Her represents a crucial transition in his career, the moment when he most blatantly abandoned cinematic narrative tradition in favor of a more contemplative immediacy. From this point on his films steered ever closer to mere reflections of his own personal outlook at the time of their geneses, be it political or artistic. It's in no way a subtle transition; while Two or Three Things claims to tell a day-in-the-life story of a workaday housewife cum prostitute on the side, one can tell by Godard's literal interaction (some would say intrusion) with the film - he narrates the whole affair in a whispered dialect, sometimes even mocking his own "narrative" - that this is anything but the fun 60's genre riffs he became iconic for, even at their most unconventional. Two or Three Things is quite simply a collection of ideas and ruminations, all of which are, to some extent, responses to the newly instituted project of modernization under the idealistic government of Charles De Gaulle.

It is, of course, De Gaulle who set in motion a vast revamping of Parisian society in the late 60's, churning out high-rise apartments on the outskirts of Paris to accommodate for the transforming cultural center. Such a movement spawned intense economic hardship, forcing a populous of women, like Juliette (Marina Vlady) in the film, to take up prostitution as a complement to their low-income occupations. Godard cites hard proof of this phenomenon - an anonymous letter in response to an article on prostitution in the French newspaper "The Shooting Stars" - as the basis for the film, in which the woman wrote an intensely personal passage that was coincidentally also a scathing indictment of the social situation, lamenting, "that's the way of the world." The film is less specific to this end. Indeed, Juliette's acts of prostitution are never shown, only implied, and when she is in fact in the room with one of her many clients, Vlady spends most of the time talking to herself, beating around the bush so to speak, while Godard's camera dispassionately pirouettes around the room observing objects. Two or Three Things is more speculative, using the prostitution conceit as a mere passage through which to communicate about the larger concept of prostitution in a more metaphorical sense, the way in which every citizen "prostitutes" themselves in one manner or another in order to survive financially, and also the more slippery concept of the landscape itself as a prostitute through advertisement, language, architecture, and images.

Godard's not necessarily condemning the situation as much as he is simply reacting to it. He is not interested in passing judgments, but rather is excited by how the situation opens up possibilities for meditations on consumerism and anything that falls under that umbrella, such as the impossibility of communicating without language despite the stranglehold language frequently creates, the power of perception, the nature of objects and people, and the future. In an attempt to reach this wide philosophical plane, Godard creates a homogenized milieu where the cold cosmopolitan buildings, the people who inhabit the film, the omnipresent signs, household objects, and random foliage are all of equal importance. Furthermore, Julette's story is no more valid a subject than Godard's own interspersed voice-over, the other women Juliette encounters in her bouts of window-shopping, or the observant interludes of poetic imagery Godard presents. The tactics of narrative cinema - story, score, traditional aesthetics, even character - are completely eschewed. The central figure is equal parts Juliette and Marina Vlady, which Godard makes perfectly clear in the beginning when he directly addresses her as both, and her husband, who works translating radio talk, is profoundly astray from the attributes necessary to form a character: personality, goals, intuition, meaningful dialogue. The humans in the film are concepts, and rarely, despite their stylized performances, do they break free from that.



One can forgive Godard for this absence of character because he makes up for it by giving the rest of the film personality that is all its own. Two or Three Things is loosely divided into segments which begin with footnotes, basically close-up shots of magazine titles or slogans (some of many instances of mere wordy detritus in the film). In each segment, Godard obtusely expands on the distinctive footnotes, sometimes commenting on the action, purposely removing us from the action, or fiddling with it. In one memorable scene during a segment which purports to discuss the interaction of languages and images, he ruminates on the nature of using certain words or pictures to describe events by showing from several different perspectives Juliette's meeting of her husband at a car wash. As we watch this little red car scramble around the setting, not unlike the sped-up ploys of silent comedy, Godard is essentially asking us, "from which perspective is this event truer or more objective?" More famously, Godard zooms in on the swirl of a cup of black coffee in a cafe while musing on how things separate and come together again, while the bubbles do quite the same. The camera adamantly hangs on this image, an obvious detour and literal visual entrapment from the surrounding "story", just as it does shortly thereafter to the leaves on a tree and more repetitiously with panoramic shots of the modernizing landscape, the pervasive construction sites and tall gray buildings.

Shot as usual in wide Technicolor by Raoul Coutard utilizing vibrant primary colors, Two or Three Things often is more pleasing visually than it is intellectually. Godard's ramblings, while most of the time thoroughly interesting and provocative, sometimes come at such a rapid pace that they get lost in translation, leaving us to marvel at the sights. The film is just as fascinating when Godard's hands are removed somewhat from the material, as in an extensive scene towards the end, reminiscent of Richard Linklater's Slacker, that takes place at a café and lacks Juliette altogether. In long, static takes (this aesthetic, which pervades throughout Two or Three Things, is antithetical to the kinetic jump-cutting of Breathless), Godard shuffles between random conversations occurring at different tables in the room, all while the annoying racket of a pinball machine persists and two holy fools quote sporadically from a heaping pile of books. Godard is doing much the same as these two in Two or Three Things, letting his referential, speculative racket seep into the many excurses along the way, although his is far more invigorating, and provides both a fragmented snapshot of Paris under Gaullian rule and a daring precursor to his following essayistic films.

The Last Mistress (Une vieille maîtresse) A Film by Catherine Breillat (2007)

Catherine Breillat's The Last Mistress kicks off like a demure French period piece that will seem closer to reading Jane Austen than it will like witnessing Breillat's explicit sensibilities. In 19th century France, we see the prestigious elderly discuss thoroughly the romantic exploits of a young, penniless aristocrat named Ryno de Marigny (Fu'ad Ait Aattou), whose impending marriage to a wealthy blonde, Hermangarde (Roxane Mesquida), is somewhat marred by his ten-year connection to his Spanish mistress, Vellini (Asia Argento). Their conversations move in a heavily mannered fashion, steeping us in what is perceived as the ethical wisdom of the time, and Breillat's camera is chiefly a respectful, non-confrontational observer, serving the dialogue more than satisfying the opulent surroundings. Gradually however, once Breillat has established her milieu dutifully, giving it a classic, sedate period treatment, abstractions begin to seep into the material. Once we're ready to confirm that Breillat has put the provocative eroticism of her previous features behind her, something magical happens, and dark, conflicting undertones start jabbing their way tangentially into the material. It's like the otherworldly eroticism of David Lynch broke through its cage and snuck into a Merchant-Ivory production. And although these spurts arrive abruptly (see Breillat's jarring cuts to Marigny and Vellini making love on the floor or Vellini's vampiric lunge at Marigny's bullet wound), they never feel staunchly out of place.

This phenomenon can perhaps be credited to Breillat's storytelling mechanics. Following the aforementioned setup, Hermangarde's grandmother (Yolande Moreau) confronts Ryno to gain insight on his relationship with Vellini, fearful that her granddaughter may be entering a faithless marriage. Ryno, convinced of his love for the petite Hermangarde, obliges, subjecting her to a long-winded account of his history with Vellini. Ryno's words are interspersed with flashbacks to this history, such detailed ones in fact that it comes as a surprise when Breillat positions the scene right back in the living room where Ryno and the intelligent grandmother discuss. Nonetheless, Breillat's temporal shifts are effortless; Ryno's entire story is told, from its fiery origins to its wanton disconnection, and the grandmother's dignified attention and perky ear for suspicion is never absent. She gives Ryno consent to marry Hermangarde, ushering in the third section of the film: the two elope, head to a peaceful seaside retreat (with shades of a medieval village), but Vellini remains attached, geographically and physically.

Marigny, with his plush skin and sizable red lips, and Vellini, with her distinguishable armpit hair and dangerous aggression, are both faintly androgynous figures, and it is their destructive physical relationship which is Breillat's main focus rather than that of Ryno and Hermangarde, which would have been the more conventional subject. (In fact, Hermangarde is rarely seen in the film, other than as a silent, enigmatic sweetheart.) In doing so, Breillat is taking the opportunity to challenge the sexual expectations under the established society as well as reverse the familiar storytelling angle. With Vellini's magnetic presence nearly hogging the screen, it is largely through her physicality and Ryno's reaction to it that we observe the French society. Argento is fearless with the performance, recalling the exoticism of Barbara Steele in Mario Bava's Black Sunday. She vacillates between feral and inaccessible and sensuous and desperate, always however, remaining an outsider. Vellini does not subscribe to the restrictions of proper romantic love, at once scoffing at Ryno's description of Hermangarde as a prude. Ultimately, it is this female bravado that keeps Ryno coming back even through his marriage to Hermangarde, and that Breillat so passionately embraces.



It is tempting though to denigrate The Last Mistress according to its feminist stance. Breillat is clearly making a comment on the dynamism of woman, their ability to stranglehold a male partner so shamelessly, and also of the necessity for female freedom. Certainly, Breillat's task becomes much easier when she adds enough makeup around Ryno's dreamy eyes. Ryno and Hermangarde's marriage scene is telling along this line; two scriptures are read from the Bible, one expounding on the spiritual connection of a male and female in marriage, the other, spoken by the Priest, reassuring Man's place as the creator of life, and therefore of his dominance over the female. Argento's character skillfully breaks this credo, luring Ryno into her new getaway by the sea in a seeming attempt at indefinite closure for him which inevitably results in more sex (often times more like manifestations of convoluted modern art sculptures). Reading the film this way is certainly important, but mustn't be the only line of thought, for it gets in the way of some of the broader points Breillat makes about fidelity, dignity, order, and the individuality that lurks beneath oppression.

When all is said and done, there's more to praise here than to decry. That Breillat does not relish the makeup, hair, costumes, and sets in a historical drama, and does not reveal obvious beauty, is admirable. The camerawork is never ostentatious, but rather shines when necessary, such as when dotting Ryno and his horse against the distant sea line and the archaic houses. Some scenes even brush up against the avant-garde, which she handles tactfully. In particular, Ryno recounts to Hermangarde's grandmother one stretch of time that he and Vellini spent in the Algerian desert, where the two gave birth to a baby that was soon after bit by a scorpion. Beside a fire that extinguishes the baby, the two make love on the sand, Argento's reeling, naked body eventually framed against the crystalline blue sky. This scene has more in common with Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo than it does with the talky drama that the film opens with. The Last Mistress shines with these types of conflicting qualities.

Contempt (Le mépris) A Film by Jean-Luc Godard (1963)

At first glance, Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt may have seemed to the international art cinema audience of the 60's a first step towards commercialism for the previously radical director. The French theatrical poster borrowed its look from the sensational Hollywood advertisements of the time: one of the film's subjects, the gorgeous Brigitte Bardot, is painted prominently across the front, giving her the implication of a radiant Hollywood starlet rather than her Godardian counterpart - a cynical, utterly impenetrable woman. Contempt also had direct ties with America, both in the casting of Jack Palance as the hot-headed producer and in the involvement of American executives who asked Godard out of marketable interests to include Bardot's behind at least once in the film, a request that Godard did indeed heed in the opening minutes of the film. Although they wanted more than his brazenly dispassionate observation of Bardot's body while her playwright husband selflessly lauds it - a scene in which red and blue color filters are added with a seeming lack of motivation - Godard's story, based off of Alberto Moravia's A Ghost At Noon, does not call for any more sensuality as its central couple steadily disconnects.

Palance's character, Jeremy Prokosch, a stern American producer who must constantly speak through a cute interpreter, hands Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli in his first role), a failed, artistically flimsy French playwright, the job of commercializing a film script for The Odyssey which is to be directed by Fritz Lang. Prokosch does so with determination, taking Paul to see Lang (played by himself) in his studio and then capping off the request by inviting Paul and his wife for lunch at his place. Paul is mildly reluctant about the whole affair, in part because he wants to attempt to balance his artistic integrity and the prospect of payment but also because upon finishing lunch with the producer, he finds his wife Camille (Bardot) out of love with him. Is it because he took the job so spontaneously? Could it have been his offhand stab at flirtation with the producer's interpreter? Or is it something that perhaps he was entirely oblivious to?

This confusion is something that is frequently felt in the males of Godard's films, who are always artistic, aloof, and quietly apprehensive. It's always tempting to read these characters as Godard's onscreen surrogate, with their respective partners as his wife of the time. Little else would explain the aching honesty and firm handle of the thirty minute disintegration between Paul and Camille in the high-rise apartment that follows their lunch with Prokosch. Jonathan Rosenbaum observed a likeness to Antonioni in the film, and nowhere is that comparison more apt here. Camille shifts emotions like a chameleon in the scene, first calmly expressing discontent to Paul, then teasing him with love that doesn't exist, and finally growing cold and non-confrontational, pushing Paul into feelings of deep confusion and anger. The apartment, with its inhospitable, hygienic look - blank white walls, an occasional beaming red couch, and utterly underdeveloped design (there is a door that appears to have glass in the middle but proves to just be a wooden frame) - act as a perfect architectural counterpart to the unfolding drama. Godard shoots in long, distant takes that pan around the flat, usually leaving only one character in the frame while obscuring the other behind the empty modern walls. The labyrinthine structure of the interior acts like a funhouse, baffling Paul while the object he attempts to become close to seems to be perpetually receding into the layers of white. Not only is the scene dramatically involving, but it is also choreographed with deftness.



Godard's narrative flow isn't exactly polished, because the apartment scene lasts for so long it seems for a moment that it may even conclude the film. However, the two go to the pastoral shores of Capri to meet Lang and the producer to work on The Odyssey. In doing so, Godard makes an acute statement about the public and the private. Camille's behavior takes a visible leap from talky and incomprehensible to absolute silence and impenetrability. Here is where she makes her boldest statement of contempt, and although the beautiful setting seems ideal for love, Godard's camera, which remains restrained, absent of the frenetic visual style he introduced with Breathless, and almost completely without close-ups, emphasizes the irresolvable damage done to the marriage. This dichotomy between the public and private display of emotions also mirrors Paul's uncertainty about his art and whether he's selling out. He too oscillates between expression and stifling. Therefore, Godard's stance is that when cinema becomes an industry instead of an art, it interrupts on a personal level, a sentiment that is echoed in a shot of Paul and Camille seated on opposite sides of an aisle at a theater with a photographer placed in between, and also in the absurdly frequent interjections of Georges Delerue's overtly tragic and "cinematic" score.

Contempt is shot in CinemaScope and Technicolor by one of Godard's most noted collaborators, Raoul Coutard. Godard was not entirely keen on shooting the film in this format, after the bulk of his previous films were so much of the opposite, but in truth it was a blessing in disguise. The splashy colors in the film and the expansive, eye-catching compositions foreshadow much of Godard's subsequent work, especially Pierrot Le Fou, also lensed by Coutard. It is a film that sticks out in Godard's oeuvre for its uncharacteristic restraint and its focus on dissolution that owed a great deal to his influences. Also, it is one of his more deceptive films on the surface; despite the whiff of commodification it hinted at, it is actually a thoroughly rewarding art piece with a tapestry of visual and conceptual ideas.

The Case of the Grinning Cat (Chats perchés) A Film by Chris Marker (2004)

At 85 years old, I suppose it's not a surprise to see Chris Marker grappling with the new millennium in a way that feels as if it was being witnessed by a filmmaker in the 1980's. The Case of the Grinning Cat, his hour-long documentary on the public and political changes that have come in the first four years of 21st century both internationally and in his native France, feels, in contrast to some of his groundbreaking films of the 60's and 70's, twenty years behind. Marker's mode of observing the world has remained hands-off and his approach even has a keen similarity to an earlier film of his, Grin Without a Cat (1977).

It seems Marker has carried a very old-world disposition along with him, so his transition to video is somewhat dissonant. The film was aired on French television and understandably so; it doesn't look too far off from a low-budget PBS documentary. The images, as usual, are shot entirely by Marker and have a strictly on-the-fly feel, as if they were taken by a tourist. There is a motorcade of shaky footage as well as clumsy zooms and cuts. News footage, still photos, and intertitles are also cycled into the muffled aesthetic, making it a grab-bag of media matter surrounding events such as 9/11, the French political campaign of 2002 (between Jacques Chirac, a right-wing, and Lionel Jospin, a leftist), and the genesis of the Iraq War. In the midst of these events, Marker watches a graffiti image of his favorite animal, the cat, pop up sporadically in France on buildings, bridges, trees, and in metro stations. The cat is illustrated in sharp, bold lines, has a maniacal grin from cheek to cheek, is colored bright yellow, and is signed "M. Chat". Just as much as the mix of cultural happenings he documents on screen, this rapidly duplicating piece of street art is Marker's focus. He seems to be interested in the evolution of the symbol, at one point appearing haphazardly as if nestled inside tree bark, likening the cat to an owl, and then on a placard amidst a public protest on Parisian streets regarding Bush's decision to invade Iraq. The grinning cat matures from a whimsical street logo meant to elicit smiles from passersby to a far-reaching symbol of freedom making rounds on network news programs.

While Marker does describe this very transition quite plainly himself via intertitles, he still does not give one element in his film higher precedence than another, frequently raising a point and then moving on right when a more manipulative filmmaker would hammer this factoid home with a subjective stance. This is what lifts The Case of the Grinning Cat out of the vat of mediocrity that its aesthetics may suggest it belongs in. If one can tune out the terse narration that was added to the English-language release of the film (not a product of Marker whatsoever), what we get is a characteristic observation of society by a thought-provoking French documentarian. It's just that the film feels so minor and almost pedestrian in comparison to some of his more accomplished works.

My Best Friend (Mon meilleur ami) A Film by Patrice Leconte (2006)

My Best Friend is the kind of film that is bound to elicit unabashed waves of light compliments, most specifically describing it as "cute". In truth however, the flimsy charm that the film dishes out disguises what is by all means a pedestrian, predictable, aggravatingly unrealistic film. Certainly it is enjoyable to an extent, but French director Patrice Leconte is dressing up something that is really closer to a schematic (in the worst way) scriptwriting exercise as a sophisticated parable.

The premise feels off-kilter to begin with: an uptight, unsociable antique dealer named Francois (Daniel Auteuil) strikes up a silly bet with a co-worker stating that if he can prove to her that he has a best friend, he will be able to keep the company vase he received in an auction. Unfortunately for Francois, he does not have a best friend, or any real friends for that matter, so his pursuit of friendship becomes an increasingly absurd expedition whose solution is, of course, "right under his nose". He milks the sociable gifts off of a kind, chatty taxi driver only to realize in the end that doing so was insincere in the face of a simple bet he had placed. And quite conveniently, Francois learns lessons that tip him off towards the meaning of true friendship.

Leconte may have forgotten at some point that he's dealing with adults here. In his hands, Francois is a dimwitted fool - it is a surprise that he has a job in the first place - and those around him are no less juvenile. It has somehow escaped him that the people he knew and considered "friends" in high school are leading entirely separate lives and would inevitably be unhinged by the less than ideal meetings he has with them, all in an attempt to be coincidental. Auteuil does his best to deal with his character's clueless nature, but even his mature acting, which is the high point of the film, cannot overturn the fact that he is set astray from the realities of upper class adults. Of course, adults can at times be as immature as children, but My Best Friend's treatment is undeniably hyperbolic.

Where Leconte falters most heavily is in his unsubtle storytelling. Everything that occurs in the film is in direct relation to Francois, either augmenting his feelings of isolation (the consecutive sights of friendly people on the streets, the fact that everywhere he goes someone or a billboard is telegraphing the importance of friendship) or balancing his smug side and his newly sociable side. In Leconte's Paris, it seems no ordinary life is in motion; everyone walks the streets in order to make a connection with Francois for better or worse, teaching him how he should act in life or denying his kindly offers at the bar. After Francois' shallow pursuit of companionship and his bet fall apart right before his eyes and those of his co-workers and the taxi driver friend whose graciousness he is blind to, his life becomes worse off than it was to begin with.

So, detrimentally, Leconte concludes the film with an arbitrary plot turn. The taxi driver, whose vat of trivial knowledge is well known, makes his way onto the French version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and eventually is desperate and must phone a friend. Francois is, of course, not his true friend, but knows the answer. This sequitur, which felt like Slumdog Millionaire all over again with its implausibly coincidental questions, was too ham-fisted a way of revealing the true emotions of the two men. My Best Friend is as flat and contrived as the expression of the host on the show.

La Lettre (1998) A Short Film by Michel Gondry

Michel Gondry is an artist who has created some of his finest work in short form or in collaboration with other directors. Like his segment for Tokyo! (2008), La Lettre comes from a collaborative program, in this case designed to center around the coming of the new millennium (2000). Gondry gave the new millennium the feel of an encroaching deadline destined to prove one boy either a man, with the approval of his been-there-done-that brother, or a teenage outcast.

The story details a typical childhood love and the difficulty to reconcile one's tacit desires with reality. Stéphane is a pouty-eyed boy on the brink of adolescence with an interest in photography that somewhat acts as a mask for his consuming affection for Aurélie, a girl he goes to school with who is leaving town for a few days. While Stéphane is enlarging a photo of Aurélie in the family's dark hallway at night (to add to his already extensive collection of photos of her), his brother advises that he "french her" before the year 2000 or else he'll regret it.

His brother's rather imposing warning sets off for Stéphane a swirl of uncertainty and self-doubt, visualized in one of Gondry's characteristically evocative dream sequences. At a cramped party high atop the city with the omnipresent clock tower placed nervously outside the window - the scene looking purposely, as usual, like it was constructed directly in a set - Stéphane trudges around the room with a physically impeding camera on his head, eyeballing the barrage of couples nuzzling each other as they dance. Eventually he makes a move on Aurélie only to clunk her in the face with his lens-face, causing the entire room to quake and the clock tower to inevitably come crashing down on them. The symbols are all quite pronounced: the clock tower acting as the outside forces threatening Stéphane, the camera as the hobby that he veils himself behind.

Gondry's tale is a simple one, but it's unlikely that another director could manage to realize it so imaginatively. Stéphane snaps out of his dream and heads to Aurélie's house at her request, for she has a letter for him. Obviously, as any child in his situation would, he believes that it will be her pronouncement of her love for him. Life however, unfortunate as it is, does not come so satisfyingly. Upon reading the letter he is startled, bombarded by the complexity of life, and, through a series of tactful old-fashioned camera techniques, retreats back into the subjective "reality" of his photographs. This procession would stand as another time Gondry has explored the different realms of reality one utilizes to escape the truth, often in a romantic situation.

La Lettre is brilliant short film with the intimate look of Truffaut's 50's work and a straightforward score that matches Stéphane's minor predicament. It is also one of Gondry's most personal films because he has admitted to his childhood unfolding congruently with Stéphane's; he too was a child enthused by the art of photography and withheld the unattainable romantic desires that are inherent in the era.

Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) A Film by Alain Resnais

Alain Resnais and novelist Marguerite Duras were discussing over tea the likelihood of there being dozens of bomber planes circling above them on one afternoon in France. A few days later, Duras listened in on the conversation between a French woman and a Japanese man. These separate events become the unlikely seeds for Hiroshima Mon Amour, Resnais' profound masterpiece of a debut feature. Resnais had beforehand been toiling with a documentary project on the atomic bomb, a work that would hopefully attract Japanese and French interest. After giving it some thought, he found it to be an inane act considering the number of excellent, undistributed films on the subject already. This led him to Duras, whom he hoped to work with on a more classic love story that could feature the Japanese postwar situation simply as a backdrop. Hiroshima Mon Amour however, is anything but a classic love story; in fact, it is quite the opposite. It deals with the anxieties of romance and the personal turmoil it can often bring from a symbolic viewpoint, ruminating within an uncertain environment (dreamy postwar Hiroshima) on how the vagaries of time can both increase the intensity of a relationship and ultimately render it worthless.

The film begins with one of the most incisive, obscure opening acts of French New Wave cinema. For about 10 minutes, we do not see the faces of the two main characters that we spend our time with for the rest of the film: a lovely French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a rigid Japanese architect (Eiji Okada). Resnais intercuts abstract shots of their tangled, naked bodies with newsreel footage of the horrors of the atomic bombing to coincide with the woman's narrated recollections - which may or may not be entirely factual. The woman fleshes out what she remembers from a previous trip to Hiroshima, quite literally at one point, as we see what looks like powdered rubble from the bombing sprinkling on her pale arm. Her soft utterances are continuously denied by her partner in the affair, a metaphor for the suppression of memory. Nonetheless, the woman remains steadfast throughout the sequence as she does for the rest of the film, refusing to stop emptying out her unfiltered memories in the face of the man. Appropriately for two characters that remain nameless enigmas for the film's entirety, Resnais eschews full body shots, preventing the viewer from garnering a solid impression of the characters. Following this cryptic scene - a scene that has an unknowable place in time - the romantic affair between the two feels distant and intrapersonal, a vehicle solely for self-inspection.



As the film progresses, Resnais establishes a tapestry of contrasts. The architect is devoted to getting to know the actress and convincing her to stay in Hiroshima with him rather than returning to Paris, whereas the woman stolidly denies his offer, realizing that he is damaging her. When reminiscing on a similarly brief love affair she had with a soldier in Nevers, France years back, she begins speaking with "you's" instead of "he's", personifying the architect as the lost lover of her memory. Therefore, the architect's presence unceasingly reminds her of the pain she experienced back in occupied France simply due to the fact that her situation with him is nearly congruent. This sets off a split in the actress' own personality, on display in a compelling scene where she enters the empty hotel room the two are staying in and immerses herself in sink water, her self-directed statements alternating in and out of voice-over. One side of her urges not to get involved in another passionate fling (a subconscious transmission) and the other is torn between the love she inevitably feels and the prospect of future anguish due to the loss. There is also the political context of postwar Japan. The actress heads there with the task of acting in a film that is vaguely about "peace", but on another level, her purpose is simply to ground her identity in something concrete. She hopes to find herself in Hiroshima, a place rife with the strength of humankind (rallies take place in the streets), but conversely is thwarted by her own lack of clarity.

Hiroshima Mon Amour was described by the cohorts of Cahiers du Cinema - including Godard, Rohmer, and Rivette - as perhaps "the first modern film of sound cinema". It denies classical aesthetics, warps traditional narrative dogmas, and simultaneously references a very current theme (for 1959) and embodies universality. Alain Resnais was truly constructing an inventive way of creating films; his temporally chopped-up method of voice-over, fragmentation, and flashback imagery roots itself in the theories of Eisensteinian montage but also takes them further, allowing him to tell a story that perceptibly only occurs over a few hours in the present but stretches to the dark corners of the past and ahead to the future. It is an introspective drama that utilizes subtle shifts aurally - a scene where Riva's character vents to the architect in a tea house amplifies the ambiance when her memoirs become heavy-handed and muffles them when she realizes she is getting carried away - and visually - Michio Takahashi and Sacha Vierny's pristine monochrome cinematography captures nuances of feeling in a distinct way in each scene - to expand on the psychology of its characters. The crushing final lines (the woman calling the man "Hiroshima" and the man calling the woman "Nevers"), suggest the assignment of the two as objects, the complete and utter extinguishment of a relationship that, as time passes, will inevitably be forgotten.

Diary of a Country Priest (Journal d'un curé de campagne) A Film by Robert Bresson (1951)

The final moments of a Robert Bresson film always leave me with a sense of great melancholy and loss, which I believe stems mainly from his use of non-actors who never appear again in his oeuvre, but also because his films frequently end on a shot which neither sneers at nor bemoans the death of a main character. In Diary of a Country Priest, that character is the titular priest, suffering abysmally from stomach cancer and an uninviting community that is driving him further and further from God. Bresson looks at his death - which is the apogee of his spiritual character study - in a matter-of-fact manner, treating it as a harsh inevitability while also leaving deceptive whiffs of its metaphysical significance.

Not only is the death inevitable in the mortal sense, Bresson makes us well aware that it is approaching in a narrative sense too. There is no question as to where his suffering is taking him as reflected by the impending Ambricourt, which gives Claude Laydu's young priest the connotation of Christ. He is turned away from the congregation, and the townspeople - save one cute schoolgirl who Bresson makes about as fun and youthful as a stone - also flick him off on account of his austerity, adhering to his depressing diet of wine and bread with utmost rigor. Eventually he begins to lose grip of God and in his attempts to offer guidance to the townspeople, he is as inept as Tomas in Bergman's Winter Light. The priest is a character more or less congruent to the donkey Balthasar, suffering from the hostility of men and being about as classically human as a donkey. He is a staunchly religious figure, one of the great religious characters ever put on screen.

If he's the best, it's because Bresson brings such stunning realism to the entire film. It may be a stretch to say, but Diary of a Country Priest is likely the most accessible launching point for a viewer new to Bresson's filmmaking. It's only his fourth feature, and more specifically, his first that starts to apply his stylistic philosophy. Therefore, the benchmarks of his style - hyper-formal direction, stiff non-actors (or "models"), extreme narrative and cinematographic simplicity - are less overt; the characters are by no means animatronic and there is even a fully functional score, an element Bresson eliminated entirely as his career progressed. The outstanding sense of isolation however, is present as ever; atmospheric sounds tend to dissipate as soon as they arrive and the camera carefully reveals the priest boxed inside his stark room by windows and doors. L.H. Burel, who worked as cinematographer for the film, originally scoffed at Bresson's preference for foggy, slightly unfocused footage, however the effect is tranquil. The diffused light seeping in through the windows beautifully adds irony to the priest's crisis of faith. Diary of a Country Priest is without a question another one of Robert Bresson's devastating, essential works.

La Jetee (1962) A Film by Chris Marker

Told entirely with still photography, unorthodox French filmmaker Chris Marker's 28 minute La Jetee is a chilling evocation of a postwar Paris where radiation endangers the surface of the city, creating an underground laboratory of survival experiments. The remaining humans look into time travel in hopes of salvaging the food and supplies that the past contained. One man is put to the test specifically because of the strong mental image of a woman that he possesses. Admittedly somewhat of a preface to Terry Gilliam's 1995 film Twelve Monkeys, La Jetee makes for an index of great black and white lo-fi photography. It's also a substantially enigmatic work that has left me puzzled through even my second viewing.

Our tragic hero embarks on a quest through his romantic memory bank, visiting the home of his youth, a museum of his youth, and the diversions he enjoyed with the curious girl. In the end, he is forced to decide on a life in the past or in the future, one of which has already offered humanity's solution. He opts to search for the woman on the pier (la jetee), the image that has stained his mind for so long. With a droning voice-over, fascinating sound design that includes incomprehensible whispers, heartbeats, and bird chirps, and an occasional musical score, La Jetee is just as much a story for the ears as it is for the eyes and mind. Marker once said his work was to "question images", so perhaps the shadowy characters who test the man are simply brainwashing him, resulting in a labyrinth of existential continuum. Whatever the message is, there's no doubt that it's fun to be brainwashed by Chris Marker.

Pierrot Le Fou (1965) A Film by Jean-Luc Godard

Pierrot Le Fou, yet another one of Jean-Luc Godard's French New Wave triumphs, is nothing if not a fantastic ode to life and living. This stylish and spontaneous creation by Godard makes for one of the most enjoyable film experiences one could ever imagine. From a filmmaking standpoint, its risky and extemporaneous style does not owe itself to firm calculation or narrative logic; rather, its the ecstatic enthusiasm that Godard conveys through Jean-Pierre Belmondo and Anna Karina that heightens this film. In the first several minutes of the film, we are introduced to Belmondo's character Ferdinand who reads to his daughter in a bathtub the words of the painter Diego Velasquez. Godard excites the senses with visions akin to Belmondo's words. However, in an instant he is interrupted by his wife, whose sudden request for Ferdinand to dress up for a classy adult party comes as no surprise in light of her flashy bourgeois lifestyle.

At the party, Ferdinand is surrounded by "imbeciles", as he puts it, which include the American film director Sam Fuller, who describes the cinema as a battleground of emotions. These uncomfortable diversions lead Ferdinand to leave the party and take off excitedly with the babysitter at his house, Marianne Renior (Anna Karina). From here on out we are in a world of the hyperreal, where Marianne and Ferdinand's actions are venturesome and romanticized. Supporting the "opposites attract" concept, Belmondo plays an apostle of cool and contemplative whereas Marianne is an antsy free-spirit. Her unusual connections with Algerian gangsters continually divert her attention and thus ruin Ferdinand's mad hopes of a simple existence by the Mediterranean Sea, quietly working on his writing and enjoying Marianne's company. Essentially, she destroys him personally, spiritually, and artistically. However, their relationship is so lucid and radiant that he can't abandon her.

They are on an idealized tirade of the French countryside, doing whatever they feel like with no regard to the repercussions, and this is precisely what Godard is doing in a filmic sense. If ever a filmmaker is splashing buckets of paint onto a blank canvas, this is that film. Godard's relentless visual and conceptual ideas are marvelously entertaining, telling the tale with outbursts of emotion in short and often times unconnected sequences. The film is like a memory or a dream, and this notion is further supported by Ferdinand and Marianne's unpunished ruthlessness. Not to mention we get that sense of colors being ultra-saturated to the point of blinding vibrancy with the help of Criterion's dazzling transfer. Raoul Coutard, the cinematographer, uses red and sky blue with such remarkable coherence. I am tempted to say that it's one of the most magnificent uses of color I've ever seen in a film. The imagery of the peaceful abodes by the Mediterranean is ravishing and transcendent, clearly representing the lavish side of life in contrast with the "gangster film" that Karina speaks of in voice-over. Pierrot Le Fou, because of its ecstatic vision and Belmondo and Karina's great chemistry, cannot be missed.