Jules et Jim (1962)

A long time ago I reviewed Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless and decided that that should be the start of a La Nouvelle Vague series. Alas, due to many disparate and long-forgotten reasons I never followed up on that. BUT we're back with the next most famous picture that originated from that feted cinematic epoch, Francois Truffaut's Jules et Jim. 

A tale that made Jeanne Moreau a legendary name in the annals of film, a movie that immortalised the buddy film. Not a buddy film forged in the retrogressive but fondly remembered style of 80s American cops but in the romantic, emotionally sophisticated Paris and verdant German countryside. The titular German Jules (Oskar Werner) and native Frenchman Jim (Henri Serre) are the closest of friends, who share literature and women in pre-First World War Paris. But like many other men of that time they are thrown about by the war, drafted, segregated and alienated from one other by the enforced boundaries of politics and war. 

Mixed up in those broader social movements is Jules' marriage to the young femme fatale Catherine to whom Jim shares a furtive passion. She is impulsive yet delectable, enviably prone to switching her exalted attention between the two stricken men at a moment's notice; and they are caught on her life affirming hook, drawn - like all men would be - by her idiosyncracies and intentionally controversial iconoclasm. Moreau plays Catherine as a woman who subverts female and romantic paradigms, able to sustain loving relationships with any man she chooses. Of course she features in some of the most famous scenes, like the song 'Le Tourbillon' which she performs for her three lovers about half way though. It's an autobiographical number that reveals precisely how she wishes to be perceived by them: as an ephemeral spirit, purposefully naive, untameable and unknowable, able to bounce fancifully from one romantic or lively situation to the next without any strings attached.

Yet her immorality and unfaithfulness eat away at her insides and facilitate her destruction; indeed Truffaut is keen to stress to inevitable victory of morality, that Catherine can only stave off the moral consequences of her whimsical, selfish actions for so long. In that sense, unlike other French New Wave films, it is an exercise in thematic idealism. Moral idealism.

Yet the film is called Jules et Jim. This is as much about the friendship of those two men which quite beautifully transcends jealousy or covetousness. Despite sharing Catherine's affection they remain as brothers. This is in part due to the soft, lenient, forgiving, indulgent (perhaps even weak) nature of Jules whose gentle love for Catherine allows her free rein to do what she pleases with whom she pleases; meanwhile Jim appears apologetic about his ardour for Catherine, the wife of his bff.

Undoubtedly a gorgeous story exploring the delicacy of affection and the tedium of a quiet life. Not Truffaut's though - this picture is based on the novel by Henri-Pierre Roche, who had been until Truffaut's adaptation relatively unknown and even recommended Moreau for the central female role. Now he has been immortalised. The narration segments, axiomatic of La novelle vague, were lifted directly from the original manuscript.

Truffaut did not intend this to be a standalone straightforward romance however - the lives of the characters take place in a broader socio-political world which the filmmaker eludes to. The war is the most obvious, and crucial to the development of the characters. The things Jules and Jim experienced whilst serving their countries changed their outlooks, fundamentally altering the laid-back laissez-faire attitudes they used to exhibit in Paris together: they value stability and the sanctity of life above all other things, in recognition of their fortune at not being critically wounded. Of course that was something that Catherine did not go through, and she remains the intentionally naive philanderer she had been pre-1914. A famous scene is the race across the bridge with Catherine impetuously dressed in the guise of a working class man and fooling a stranger into asking her for a light. Thus Jules et Jim engages, in an offhand humorous manner, with discourses of gender and class, parodying the way in which people segregate one another. The fact that she wins their sprint race, an athletic male-dominated pursuit, confirms the irrelevancy of gender specific prejudices. And yet,simultaneously, there is a sense that Catherine and the others are naively mocking the conservative or backwards characteristics of a pre-war society that was alien to Truffaut (in terms of temporal time) and them, in terms of social class - them being part of the bourgeois elite, engrossed in bourgeois pursuits like literature and opera.

Jules et Jim was stylistically and in technical execution, a part of the French New Wave. It utilised some of the techniques that that clique vociferously advocated: narration, freeze-frames, incorporated newsreel, panning shots - yep all that boring shit that renders the resulting movie fluid, smooth and sophisticated. And of course the sexually evocative yet elusive and enigmatically aloof female protagonist, one who conforms to her own unique moral code perhaps but strong-willed, obstinate and unfathomable. Similar to Patricia in Breathless. But whereas Godard's tone is less sombre, rejecting the subjectivity of morality even implying its absurdity, Truffaut perceives morality to be a recurring feature of modernity, remaining a central tenet to civilised life. I have absolutely no wish to devolve to philosophy and discuss the emphasis the Enlightenment put on morality (as an objective force), something that was kind of banished and ridiculed in the postmodern world of the 1970s - although if I was going to explore that avenue Godard, in retrospect, was the greater social visionary. Yet this has no bearing at all on the enduring relevance and prestige and romance of Truffaut's Jules et Jim which remains undiminished in its legacy.

Frances Ha (2013)

Frances from Frances Ha is full of joire-de-vivre, definably Iggy’s lust for life. She is infectiously optimistic about her place in the big wide world of New York City, concerned about her future as a dancer without allowing it to become a overwhelming worry. Perhaps she’s more anxious about the rate at which her contemporary’s lives are evolving both in terms of career and relationship, the perennial markers of headway in a bourgeois society.

That contemporary comes, primarily, in the form of her best friend Sophie (Mickey Sumner, a daughter of Sting). They are closely bonded having met at college then moved into an apartment together. Essentially this picture is about how their friendship changes as each, with varying degrees of success, relinquishes their younger carefree selves and take on the adult stuffs of career and relationship.

Greta Gerwig is jubilantly hilarious as Frances. She radiates the requisite optimism for Noah Baumbach’s character and adeptly enacts the wince-inducing scrapes that Frances gets herself into. Gerwig – who also writes – is the lifeblood of Frances Ha.

This is all shot in monochrome. Perhaps to act as a generous counterpoint to the titular character’s vivacity or to capture the suavity of early Godard, I’m not entirely sure. But Baumbach and his cinematographer Sam Levy certainly encapsulate the bohemian cool of New York City. There might even be a hint of fond satire for that hipster kind of culture, something which is so intrinsically linked to New York. Either way black and white photography, as always, looks cool. As is the rest of Frances Ha: a charming watch and a bit twee but not in the emotionally shallow way – twee in the coy sexy way.

Gravity (2013)

My mate:

'Dude you gots to see Gravity in 3D maaan. Seeeeeriously, bruv. It's da ting. Even famed 3D sceptic Mark Kermode says it makes 3D SENSE.' 

I was all, yeh but its well more expensive nevertheless I did plan a splash; I had financial room for a treat. So there I was, paying for a pair of format-specific glasses, hopping up some stairs in a real cinema, walking down the aisles past some rudimentary Chinese people and a Spanish speaking posse babbling in the premium seats. I sat near the front (even though I wasn't supposed to) to ingest as much 3D as possible - because that's how it works I think - and hear as much bass as possible. 30 languishing minutes of migraine-inducing advertisements later and the trailer's began to roll and then we were in. 3D vision always takes five minutes of getting used to but Gravity, it can be unequivocally confirmed, is the real three-dee mother-shit.

Even from the opening ten minute opening salvo, almost entirely one beautiful swirling shot, every filmmaking aspect is strangely realist and genuine and fibrous yet blessed with the photographic cerebral grace that cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki somehow bestows upon Alfonso Cuaron's film. How the sets and photographic angles were constructed completely confounds my admittedly limited knowledge of CGI and camerawork, but I just can't imagine how they were conducted... just staggering. I'm loathe to say 'gamechanger' because that's a horrible portmanteau word and lacks all the relativistic technological contexts of each individual film, but there's no doubt that every astronaut film, past and future, will be compared negatively to this one - with the arguable exception of 2001: Space Odyssey.

The Cuaron-Lubezki dynamic has got to be the edgiest partnership in cinema right now, trumping even the Christopher Nolan-Wally Pfister and Steve McQueen-Sean Bobbitt director-cinematographer thing. Lubezki is axiomatic of photographic legerdemain, one who pushes technical boundaries to forge new visual majesties that none thought possible. Here they even improve on the long action-packed tracking shots of Cuaron-Lubezki's previous movie, 2006's Children Of Men. The swinging cameras are just so damn good, me mouth was agape for every successive shot.

Of course their genius lies not only in technical accomplishment but in the more nuanced sections, knowing when to zoom into Sandra Bullock's eye when to pull out when to turn around. Each move feels fastidiously manipulated and studied to yield as much dramatic and emotional gain as possible. Every picture is tastefully loaded with aeons of thematic or existential indicators, like the dulled and blurred renderings of the earth or of faces or chaos on the visor reflections.

But flairy photography alone does not a seminal film make. The sounds and music have to be as geared towards the end result as everything else. Steven Price (whose only other feature-length film composer credits are, strangely, The World's End and Attack The Block, though according to his imdb page he has always been a part of the music department for big scores like Howard Shore's Lord Of The Rings) has composed a soundtrack that discards conventional melody in favour of the suspense and melodrama that Gravity required. His work splices in and out, often unnoticed, melding with other sounds like breathing or the clanking of technology, intensifying apprehension or facilitating a lighter emotional rebate where needed. Yet the most potent sound that Cuaron and Price utilise is... nothing. The unknown, frightening depths of silence. It's a rare feature in a major Hollywood picture and conveys the profundity of nothingness that no could device could possibly manage - the likes of Roland Emmerich and Zack Snyder should take note.

The story too, penned by Cuaron and Cuaron junior, is no let-down. It's as unique and ethereal as one can imagine a disaster/survival film to be, nor is it weighed by tediously orthodox emotional tropes like the search for parents or of love - this is about the singular survival of a person, about the desperation to return home to earth. This is Sandra Bullock. Like many I have  generally found Bullock irritating, both in her slippery rom-coms and the non-rom-coms where she acts like a fish out of water. But her excellence here is proof that one fine script can alter the path of an entire career; that top level actors aren't just pretty faces, but present on merit. Her on-screen colleague George Clooney is just as charming and delicately egotistical as he always he is, and ideal for the role that was originally written for Robert Downey Jnr.

Only when all these filmmaking strands blend skilfullly together can a film truly be considered great; but this is something Alfonso Cuaron has achieved, his directorship mixing everything with adequate emphasis on each to create this awe-inspiring work. I guess I want it to receive awards so that its transcendent brilliance can be formally recorded in the annals of film history, but I don't think I care that much. it should be made mandatory viewing ........... fully realises and justifies 3D too, the way tiny shards of debris buzz everywhere, utterly mesmerising. Soon I'll run out of adjectives, haven't touched on the broader themes of human existence and identity in the face of space exploration, can't do anymore. Over analysis would perhaps undermine its effects, 'specially if you haven't seen it yet..............

La Planète Sauvage (1973)

Picture the 1973 Cannes Film Festival. Look there's Rene Laloux, director of the animated film La Planète Sauvage, amongst the likes of Ingrid Bergman, Paul Newman, Luigi Zampa and Francois Truffaut. Laloux is sitting next to his animator Roland Topor, with jazzman Alain Goraguer the other side. They're deep in conversation, discussing the award they've just been handed by Monsieur Bergman from the Cannes jury - the 'special jury prize'. Laloux aloofly tosses the trophy into the air and Topor draws this irrationality into a surrealist art form, infusing the image with humanist allegory; Goraguer pours into his prog-funk-psyche manual and composes a broody, jazzy mesh to mirror Topor's renderings. All devolve into dots and boxes and nonsensically designed animals.

That scene is almost entirely fictitious. But one can imagine Topor picturing the 'real' world along those lines. He and Laloux worked together on the story behind La Planète Sauvage which was based on the 1957 sci-fi novel of Stefan Wul. They conjure a rich and beautiful but dangerous world inhabited by intelligent blue beings called Traags who keep tiny humans, or 'Oms' (which sounds like a bastardisation of the French word for man - 'homme' - to me), as pets. The Traags are a vastly intelligent species who spend most of their time 'meditating', underestimating the little Oms who splinter off to form their own colonies in the wilds of rural areas. Led by Terr a former captive human who has a Traag education, these organised Oms mobilise themselves and become a threat to the Traags. Both species learn to live symbiotically thus avoiding war and mutual annihilation.

As I say it's a heavily allegorical picture with, I'm sure, political allusions and ontological theories of being referred to throughout - certainly the idea of two powers in opposition to each another seems like a pretty overt nod of the head to the Cold War, which was in full swing at time of making (or at least in a period of detente, what with the diplomatic thawing between Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev). There is an examination of how humanity deals with new and alien things: the reception Terr first receives by the when he joins the wild Oms tribe is decidedly suspicious because he has knowledge of the Traags' writing. One of the chiefs attempts to suppress, even assassinate, Terr in a desperate bid to retain leadership. It's a fascinating aside in the film; a caveat to the human psyche, selfish in-fighting and back-stabbing even in the face of a superior enemy.

But without being party to the ideologies of any of those involved, or indeed of being present at the time of conception or of release it would be foolish to speculate.

On a purely visual level the artist Topor's visions are truly remarkable; he was demonstrably in possession of a unique imagination capable, not only of creating unorthodox eco-systems, but of instilling in them the personified qualities of humour and anger and curiosity. Each frame is resplendent in his vast unquantifiable creativity. It is a inventive scale almost matched by the music of Alain Goraguer. According to wikipedia he came from a jazz pianist background, a pal to the luminary Serge Gainsbourg, but in La Planète Sauvage he had demonstrably been keeping up with the developments in prog rock and German krautrock because many of the arrangements bask in wah-wah guitar and grooved bass-lines, not to mention surreal stylistic progression in keeping with the weird images of Topor. These arrangements tend to be lighter than the central theme which is broodier, more serious. With speech often at a minimum the music had to be prominent and able to stand resolutely by its self, yet compliment the oscillating moods of the pictures. Goraguer proved himself equal to that challenge; indeed the soundtrack has enjoyed something of a minor renaissance in recent years, with a vinyl re-release (D.C. Recordings I think).

Fundamentally, the story behind La Planète Sauvage reads almost like a Hollywood survival thriller. Loosely: man escapes captivity, man meets like-minded fellows, man returns to take revenge on marauding captors, man ends happily with his woman. Nonetheless Laloux and Topor's execution was so wildly and brilliantly off-kilter it would probably put off most modern film-goers.

Riddick (2013)

Our friend Riddick is stuck on an arid, inhospitable planet again the silly fool. Stuck fending for his life against hostile wildlife and some rough mercenaries. Again. But Riddick, being the best and alien (a species called ‘Furyan’), haunts them and hunts them; but there is a far greater threat out there waiting for the darkness to fall. Yes the third Riddick film peddles almost exactly the same material as Pitch Black. Of course it’s David Twohy who writes and directs again although this time he and Vin Diesel are without the financial backing of Universal – they shelved the original plan for a Riddick trilogy after the tepid reviews for the second The Chronicles Of Riddick.

The first act of Riddick is narrated by the eponymous anti-hero in film noir stylee; he recounts his downfall as Lord Marshal (after Chronicles) and how he has come to be marooned with his terrible festering wounds. The second is concerned with the bounty hunters and their attempts at capturing Riddick. Truly the screenplay is awful, riddled with cringe inducing dialogue drivel – as scripts often are when trying to introduce some bad-guy familiar ‘banter’. The third act sees the incoming darkness and the monsters that follow – how they let a chained Riddick loose to help them.

So basically it is Pitch Black except not as good – the original had claustrophobia, an unknown threat and diverse characters. This has none of these qualities. The eyes are still menacingly cool though.

Byzantium (2013)

Byzantium marks another Neil Jordan foray into vampiricism after his Interview With  A Vampire of the mid 90s. As in the latter, Byzantium deals with the existential angst of immortality in a world bereft of meaningful relationships and isolation; also like Interview some of the story is told through flashbacks. But we don't see any fangs.

Clara (Gemma Arterton) and Eleanor Webb (Saoirse Ronan) have led nomadic lives for two centuries, on the run from the mysterious misogyny of 'The Brotherhood'. They struggle to get by and feed - the usual themes of social displacement, of forging a life in a strange modern world. They are remnants of history. Clara thrives in the extroversion of normal humans but Eleanor is more artistically delicate, preferring the numbing comfort of solitude. She writes beautifully. But, in a gloriously romantic twist, is obliged to throw all her pages away one by one to protect their identities - of course later on it's her writing that unravels the whole shabang and undermines their safety. Lacking any deeper goals than simply 'to survive' Eleanor seeks something else - the company of a leukaemia suffering bloke called Frank (Caleb Landry Jones) and his dashing long hair.

Things go wrong of course. The story, written by Moira Buffini (who also penned Tamara Drewe and Jane Eyre), isn't necessarily bad but there is some cerebral essence missing. Of course it's all well and good me, being the critic, writing that there's something missing; I've got to articulate what it is. And I'm not quite sure. Perhaps - he says in full stream of consciousness mode - problems surround the character of Clara. For a central player in the story she is surprisingly superficial - yes we know that she does everything for the safety of Eleanor, her daughter, but what's behind her relationships with the other characters? Who knows. She veers between the controlling maternal figure and the typical vampirical demon, with a lust for carnage and liberality. She's hyper-sexualised by Arterton, as one would expect and want, but not in a particularly compelling manner, and there's a vague notion about her fighting the sadistic bullies to protect the weak; she just never feels fully resolved.

Photography is pretty swish though, as you would expect from cinematographer Sean Bobbitt, the same guy who worked on those Steve McQueen films. The Clara scenes are markedly lurid and debauched and nocturnal; Eleanor is usually placed in beige and bleak surroundings (although that is the natural colour of English seaside towns), reflecting the watery blue-grey of her eyes. And the axiomatic red of the blood is luscious and dripping. Blood red is of course an essential component to vampire semiotics, and so it's often difficult to construct any visually original images with it. But Jordan, Buffini and Bobbitt succeed: Clara, upon her turn to the undead, immerses herself in the gushing, bloody cascades of a waterfall in celebration of her mortal release. It's resoundingly brash and instantly memorable.

Why is it called Byzantium? I'm not sure.The voluptuous nature of the word perhaps, evocative, exotic and foreign; an imperial culture alien to us, lost in the folds of history (in case you're not sure what I'm referring to here: the Greek Byzantine empire, based in its vibrant capital city Constantinople, stood for a thousand years, from the fall of the Roman empire to the Renaissance). It is also the name of the hotel that Clara and Eleanor find shelter in, a building that, under the aegis of Clara, becomes a high class brothel - again, notions of (sexual) exoticism and glamorous mystery are redolent. 

It's a worthy addition to the filmic canon of vampires - and god knows there have been terrible additions to that roster - and certainly a fine example of luxurious storytelling but not as satisfying as one would wish it to be.

We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011)

Tilda Swinton won awards for her tortured portrayal of the mother of titular Kevin. Psyched out and raving she is followed by the colour crimson everywhere like the spectre of her past haunted life; Eva (Swinton) lives her life in the shadow of some post-traumatic event that gradually unravels itself in the course of the narrative with a series of flashbacks. She lives in the same town, regularly discriminated by its others inhabitants. They douse her small house and Volvo in red paint; Eva spends the film scraping it off, as a visual act of catharsis. It's blood, it's grief, it's guilt; it's an inversion of the 'anger' that red usually denotes because she is not angry; it's a visual reminder of what terrible events marked Eva's life; and it's not subtle. There is crimson everywhere.

Kevin is involved. He is the ultimate problem child, inhibiting the relationship between mother and son with his facetious behaviour, deliberately and demonstrably altering his demeanour from his mother to his father (John C Reilly). We follow Kevin's development through Eva's flashbacks. The child actor (Jasper Newell) infuses his Kevin with the black beetle eyes of a menacing disposition but its the teenage Kevin, played by the brilliant Ezra Miller, who adds a disturbing charisma and darkly witty humour to the role. Of course the self-destructive origins of their relationship lie not only with Kevin but Eva herself; though she tried initially to forge the necessary connection they faltered repeatedly, because of his obstinacy and her inherent reluctance. Indeed Eva appears to have been reluctant about bearing him in the first place.


But its the recurrence of the crimson that runs right through We Need To Talk About Kevin. The colour flares up in tangible objects, dream sequences, metaphysical visions and within the flashbacks - it reminds her of that moment when she saw the outrageous crimes that Kevin gleefully carried out, and resonates down the two years that have since passed in her life, suffused with every bad experience she subsequently suffers. 

But, perversely, by representing the duality of guilt (for the way she raised Kevin) and memory, the crimson performs a kind of redemptive role, contrarily bringing Eva and Kevin closer together. At the end he is suddenly fearing the black abyss of his imprisoned future, she feeling responsible for the torturous violence of his wayward teenage behaviour, and so for the first time they embrace sincerely.

I haven't read the original novel by Lionel Shriver but I should think Scottish director Lynne Ramsay took the story in her own artistic direction - as filmic adaptations ought to. She unites (because she co-wrote the screenplay) the strands of flashback and the present with inventive cinematography, employing all manner of compelling photographic techniques. By doing so she infuses every scene with a nihilism, questioning the nature of being in the modern world and, possibly, even the unconditional joy ordinarily felt in the bearing and rearing of children. We Need To Talk About Kevin is a movie without humour - even black comedy is non-existent. It's a depressing watch but in an unorthodox manner, incisively conveying its intended tone of rampant pessimism.

Steve McQueen Part Two: Shame (2011)

One brief wiki research later and I discover McQueen comes from an artistic background. Well quelle fucking surprise as the Peep Show quote goes. Shame is another dose of visual majesty - again with the endearingly appellated Sean Bobbitt as cinematographer: they gorge themselves voraciously on artistic camera effects, lighting and costume to enact another wonderful tale of emotional heartbreak and substance.

We get more flair and more Fassbender, this time trying to hide his own sexual desperation, a man lost in the over-stimulus of New York City. His character, Brandon, is at once charming, charismatic and desperate, depraved. His outside social face is struggling to remain ahead of the filthy darkness that pervades his private life: his safe place, home, where he can indulge in the activities he knows would be considered perverted and unhealthy outside of his mind, is

invaded by his sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) who brings her own wealth of problems into his life, forcing onto him a responsibility that serves only to worsen their already dysfunctional relationship. Nearly every image is dipped in grey hues, like Brandon himself who regularly wears blandly coloured scarves and coats, as a way of demonstrating people's outward normality belying internal turmoil. His only hope is the brightly dressed woman on the subway, a metaphor of narrative perhaps but nonetheless poetic.

McQueen crafts another picture that is constructed by the metaphorical building blocks and clues he craftily scatters throughout every frame, yet these are organic constructions that don't require inordinate amounts of attention. They are obvious yet subtle enough for us, the audience, to understand the life and inner workings of Brandon without immediate distraction. It's scary because he just an ordinary thirty-something man. Worse even, he is successful and financially secure; it undermines the central component to our capitalist societies, that wealth equates to unconditional happiness.

I don't know how McQueen has acquired such a striking command so early in his filmmaking career, just two films in (Hunger too of course). There aren't many others with the immediate grasp of directorial techniques that he has. His next, 12 Years A Slave, and out soon, looks muy muy promising.