The Line of Beauty

The Line of Beauty (2006, Saul Dibb)
If the pleasure of reading and film watching differ, then books are more closely like lovers: we create them in large part in our minds, and the act of reading is sexual in the sense that we collaborate with the words on the page, in the same way as we do in sex with our partner. We control the speed at which we read; with a film, we are slaves to the tempo, we allow sensations to wash over us. That extra effort involved in reading may be why we grow so attached to books, and to characters. I think Saul Dibb's interpretation of Alan Hollinghurst's "Line of Beauty" novel does some justice to that pleasure we derive from reading. Fittingly divided into a three-part mini-series format, the segments are not unlike novel chapters, and while I wouldn't describe Dibb's film as epic, he does, by the nature of his allowed time, present enough different characters and points of story to make us feel as if we're leaving something behind. He specializes in a kind of ache, the combination of stiff BBC values and the romanticism of New Order and Spandau Ballet.

I'm not sure if gay life in the '80s is the most profound dramatic subject matter in recent history, but it's certainly what I respond most strongly to, and it's rich for creating drama. This, in Britain, has to its advantage the backdrop of pride and hypocrisy in government, the unrelenting AIDS, and a drug- and sex-fueled nightlife for young people. The film accurately presents the camaraderie lifestyle of gays that seems in decline now; men of all ages, young and beautiful and old and decrepit, swimming in all-male beaches. The charming duplicitous nature of some men who have sex with men is beautifully portrayed by one storyline concerning an exotic, gorgeous Lebanese heir (Alex Wyndham) who feigns heterosexuality to the outside world as he indulges in cocaine and orgies with any men who want him. I admire how the film doesn't moralize with sex or drugs; my own moral compass gets uneasy when I see decadent cocaine use and casual sex, but the film rightly allows its characters their pleasure, regardless of the foreboding we may sense knowing more than the characters do. The main Nick character, who is taken in by the rich political family, is at one point on the receiving end of a critical speech about the leeching nature of gays, and the sense of depression is finely wrought out, as he is in the unfortunate position of being somewhat beholden to the family and having no option but to take the abuse and quietly slink away.

My So-Called Life

I've been watching a lot of "My So-Called Life" lately, which for me is the most accurate teen drama, even if at times it emotionally feels more sophisticated than the teenagers I went to school with. It specializes in mixed-up, unexplainable emotions, and unlike most shows about teenagers it's the rare drama where the adults are as complex as their children. You get as wrapped up in Angela's parents' dilemmas -- should her father start a career as a chef mid-life? Is her mother too skeptical? -- as you are in her ongoing love for Jordan Catalano. It is a highly realistic show in style, and yet there have been occasional moments, not unlike the opening credit sequence with whispers "Go... now... go!", that work their way into the floating free-for-all of dream states. It went where no other family drama went before, daring to ruminate on existential crises such as Angela's narration, "People always say how you should be yourself. Like your self is this definite thing, like a toaster or something. Like you know what it is, even."

Georgia Rule, Romance

Georgia Rule (2007, Garry Marshall)
What fond memories I have of the acting in "Overboard," the comic exaggeration and artifice in Goldie Hawn's performance, is regrettably tempered with Marshall's weirdly and alternately sensational and conservative world-view and at the same time lack of overall point of view. Lindsay Lohan's character says she was molested when she was young, and throughout the movie we're not sure if we believe her or not, she keeps changing her story and characters flip-flop with their own minds. That's strange enough for a Hollywood entertainment, and it's stranger still when Lohan wrestles with a pre-teen boy only to point out that he's "hard," before venturing on a fishing trip with a local stud where she provides his first glimpse of a vagina. It's very hard to swallow a drama where the only sane character is a veterinarian who treats people, which uses a was-she-wasn't-she sex abuse question to bring home family values.

Romance (1999, Catherine Breillat)
I would say that this is the gentlest Breillat film that I've seen, and in this case the gentleness includes images of erect penises, hairy pubis, ejaculate, and a newborn exiting a vagina in close-up. To act in a Breillat film must be something, because so much of the words are given to us in narration. The acting, and for this film it's coming mostly from Caroline Ducey, relies heavily on the face, in looking, and in the placement of the body, as in the graceful poses she assumes when being tied up. Breillat is a serious philosopher, much like Bergman in the statements that get made in her films, a poet of the interior thoughts rarely expressed. In her explicitness, which is never sensational (though it may accurately be labeled bold), she invites us to a greater degree of intimacy and a kind of collaboration with her as we notice and react to the private realm she exposes to us. There is a major lack of judgment on her part, to the degree that what may come across as shocking, even degenerate behavior -- much adultery, even a form of prostitution decided on a whim -- is viewed with sensitized eyes. While her plot would sound illogical if explained -- a partnership that includes rigid refusals of sex -- it, as well as her anarchist streak which is brought out in the finale and complimented with a quick poetry, exists in a world that makes sense, not particularly emotionally, or even really philosophically or sociologically; it makes sense in a more active, inner way -- biologically.

Criminal Lovers

Criminal Lovers (1999, Francois Ozon)
Superficially similar to "Badlands" and "Bonnie & Clyde" but stylistically closer to the gleeful depravity of John Waters. I have only seen one Ozon movie prior to this, the slight, touching "Time to Leave," and from what I gather part of Ozon's shtick is how he effortlessly jumps from style to style; his "5x2" is apparently told in reverse, and here he skillfully tackles another kind of narrative ingenuity in having the lead-up to their opening murder told in snippets, after they become makeshift prisoners to a forest-dweller possibly intent on administering his own brand of justice. You couldn't call "Criminal Lovers" a satire the way they do "Natural Born Killers," but the sensibility it has is decidedly over-the-top -- certain gestures and facial expressions will be accompanied by a dramatic swell of the score, and some scenes that would be considered serious elsewhere -- sex, escape -- are played triumphantly. The fable aspect of the film brought to mind some of the cartooniness of Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Ozon has a definite talent for mounting tension, and for the playful mix of repulsion and erotica.

The Walker

The Walker (2007, Paul Schrader)
It's easy to present a mood of stylish decadence with romantic underpinnings when you use a Bryan Ferry song repeatedly throughout, and while Schrader is at times a definite stylist -- and while this film heavily recalls the sharp atmospherics of "Light Sleeper," even though the plot bears closer similarity to "American Gigolo" -- his film, though certainly intended to incorporate the disillusionment of the public with the avarice of behind-the-scenes politicos, comes across as an anachronism in film form. Woody Harrelson's performance as "The Walker," a specialized social position of "walking" rich women from place to place, is the kind of leisurely Southern put-on that we'd look for in noirs of the '50s, and the obscureness of his job -- and, I assume, its diminishing role in the current high-class landscape -- belongs in old Hollywood. Schrader's bordering-on-obsessional interest in homosexuality, like Neil Jordan's, continues to permeate his work; I don't mean it as a criticism, because Schrader clearly takes it seriously and there's nothing in his film or his sensibility that could be accused of being derisive or exploitive, although certainly his version of homosexuality is of the rough, manly steaminess of the '70s, however fussy of a dresser Harrelson's walker may be.

Be Kind Rewind, Metropolitan, A Sight for Sore Eyes

Be Kind Rewind (2008, Michel Gondry)
Perhaps lacking in plot but mostly enjoyable, it has worthwhile things to say about small business, creativity, and community -- and if those aren't ingredients for making a movie "human," I don't know what is. The presence of Jack Black may make people expect obnoxious slapstick, but this rings closer to Richard Linklater's "School of Rock," a mostly-mainstream light comedy that's really an excuse to espouse underdog values to a mass audience.

Metropolitan (1990, Whit Stillman)
While it's mostly genial, and admittedly the last little bit has some good absurdist one-liners, I feel like there are better movies about young college folk having discussions about life; albeit not as lofty, you may look to what has unfortunately been deemed "mumblecore" and been widely denigrated for examples of young people struggling with their own existence and love lives. While their dialogue is less precise than Stillman's, their aims are more of stilted bursts of expression and young thought processes, however selfish and pretentious they may be. Stillman's characters have the kinds of discussions that screenwriter's think up, and while he thankfully doesn't ridicule these rich Manhattan whites in the current fashionable mode, his eye and ear is less critical than I would like. I find his visuals to be bland, along with the majority of his actors (Chris Eigeman excepted), and his insights are closer to that of a director than a human being.



A Sight for Sore Eyes (2003, Gilles Bourdos)
Mostly a mood piece, but when the mood is informed by one of the cinematographers of "In the Mood for Love," the very fine score by Alexandre Desplat, a story by Ruth Rendell, and the big dark eyes of Gregoire Colin, mood is mostly enough. It may short-change the considerable accomplishments of the film not to note the confidence the director shows in allowing his story to progress quite slowly; a fair share of time is allotted to scenes of Colin, an artist, to spray paint walls and engage in other kinds of physical art-making. An equal amount of consideration is given to simple moments in life. The murders that occur are at first deaths of necessity, and from there morph into continual acts of covering-up until eventually becoming merely preferential. Although early scenes depict childhood tragedies for its main stars, the story mostly avoids psychological explanations, either for murder or the emotional attachment the two young characters develop for each other. The look of the film is somewhat stunning; objects that obstruct view, gorgeous, minimal white space. While the string of deaths don't attain the awful Greek tragedy accumulation that the best murder dramas do, the mess and degeneration -- slow, mostly wordless -- rises above the beautiful moodiness.

Raising Victor Vargas

Raising Victor Vargas (2002, Peter Sollett)
By turns charming and touching in a lightly humanist way, "Raising Victor Vargas" gently follows an arc of the title character and a budding love interest. One might say the entire film is "budding"; there are similarities to Martin Scorsese, if not exactly in content or approach, but the poor-if-not-squalid household and ne'er-do-well youngsters brings to mind a PG-13 "Mean Streets" while the casting of Victor's grandmother character, who enjoys listening to one of her grandsons play the piano but does not enjoy catching him popping one off in the bathroom, reminded me a lot of the same kind of entertaining, easily-upsetting mother character in "Goodfellas." I wouldn't say that the honest reality of this film would compare to the same in, say, Ken Loach's "Sweet Sixteen" -- I must say I find it odd that the fighting in the household centers around teenagers learning about sex, and not about things like lack of money or weather too warm for the boys to ever wear shirts. You won't learn anything about life from watching it, but it's pleasant enough to observe for a while.

Cold Showers

Cold Showers (2005, Antony Cordier)
After an aborted attempt to both assess Sydney Pollack's career and simply be entertained by watching "The Firm" (possibly not the best place to start, given that it ranks 17th on his best-to-worst movies on IMDb), I switched to "Cold Showers," in the hopes that it might actually have something to say, or some feeling to express. Thankfully, it does. Treading along what's almost a French cliche, that of the threesome, the movie takes a relatively thorough look at a young couple who introduce a second boy into their sex games. While there are a couple scenes of threesome sex, it's much more about the home life of Johan Libereau (the star of the upcoming Andre Techine film, "Witnesses," and my reason for renting the movie); the sex is, like his judo tournaments, his extra-curricular activity of choice, but it's made more complex and upsetting with the introduction of the third. Although the film is rounded enough to tackle questions of class difference and sexual freedom it more closely concerns itself with the choices people make regarding relationships, their reactions, and how they change things from being the way they once were.

Code Unknown, Son of Gascogne

Code Unknown (2000, Michael Haneke)
Michael Haneke, like Stanley Kubrick, is a director I feel polarized about in his extremities: he's profound and shallow at once, a technical wizard with oh-so-serious commentary that comes to us through cruelty. He's not as bloated as Kubrick -- those bloated "meanings" in Kubrick's films are ultimately worthless, impressive cinematically but empty -- in that he addresses somewhat thoughtful issues seriously, but it's hard to discern whether it's the issues he takes seriously or his minimal long-take aesthetic. "The Piano Teacher" was too vile for me to handle; I have some gay friends who love it, like John Waters does, presumably for the outrageous nastiness perpetrated by its pint-sized redheaded vixen. I thought "Cache" was an original statement, even considering its "surveillance" theme is the kind of thing that college students dust off for brownie points, and I found myself admiring "Funny Games U.S." despite most American critics attacking it for the kinds of things I normally despise in other movies. "Code Unknown," closer to "Cache," is sort of like a serious-minded "Crash," a movie dealing with race and people being victimized with a relatively subdued approach.



Son of Gascogne (1995, Pascal Aubier)
A charming French film farce which treads two lines simultaneously, that of the history of New Wave (by setting the story around the possible son of a fictitious French film star, incorporating '60s film clips and recreations a la "The Dreamers") and of the light love story between the boy and a girl. The points it makes about the metaphorically "lost" children of the New Wave -- in essence, young cinephiles in the '90s, or simply young lovers in the '90s -- aren't hammered home, but rather made felt through the film's attachment to the boy and the girl. It's a New Wave film about the New Wave. Just look at his shirts!