Movie Review: High Life

High Life **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Claire Denis.

Written by: Claire Denis & Jean-Pol Fargeau & Geoff Cox and Nick Laird.

Starring: Robert Pattinson (Monte), Juliette Binoche (Dibs), André Benjamin (Tcherny), Mia Goth (Boyse), Agata Buzek (Nansen), Lars Eidinger (Chandra), Claire Tran (Mink), Ewan Mitchell (Ettore), Gloria Obianyo (Elektra), Scarlett Lindsey (Willow Baby), Jessie Ross (Willow). 

 

I’m not sure I ever asked myself the question of what a space movie directed by Claire Denis would look like, but if I had, the answer would undeniably be High Life – the French auteur’s latest film in which she is deliberately playing with time and space, and narrative constructs – and putting a host of images into your mind that you will not soon forget, some because they are haunting and beautiful, and some because they are revolting and vile. This is what you expect from Denis when she takes on more genre fare – like her vampire film (Trouble Every Day) or her noir-esque detective story (Bastards). She will give you some of what you think you want, and a whole lot else you never knew you needed.

 

High Life is a film about a doomed space mission. It opens with Monte (Robert Pattinson) and a baby girl named Willow – who he feeds, rocks to sleep, comforts, talks to, etc. – much like any parent would, except he’s on a big, bulky, square spaceship floating through space, and there is no one else around. As in common with Denis’ film, the narrative here is fractured – so we will flash back and forth in time to a time when there was no baby on board, but there were more people alongside Monte. Eventually the basics will become clear – that this is a group of convicts, who are being used as scientific guinea pigs, and although we know there is no way for them to ever get back to earth, they don’t – at least not at first. There seems to be a very loose leadership structure on board – but basically Dibs (Juliette Binoche) is running things. She’s conducting experiments on the rest of them – trying to get the women pregnant, and able to carry to term in space. Boyse (Mia Goth) is one of those women – and doesn’t much like it – but doesn’t have much of a choice. There are others on board – like Tcherny (Andre Benjamin) who really only bonds with the plants on board that help keep them all alive.

 

On a basic plot level, yes, High Life does describe everything – it describes how that baby got there, and why no one else but that baby and Monte are there by the time we see them at the beginning of the film. Along the way, there will be haunting images you will not forget – the beauty and horror of dead bodies floating in their space suits. There will be moments that may well shock you – as any movie that contains a room called the Fuck Box is bound to. It is not a movie that is afraid of bodily fluids – any of them – as they all pretty much get their opportunity for a close-up here.

 

But it is the larger meanings of High Life that will haunt you long after you’ve left the movie. This isn’t a simple sci-fi film – there are great special effects, sure, but this isn’t a space opera or a Star Wars film. You will likely be reminded of perhaps Kubrick’s 2001 or Tarkovsky’s Solaris rather than typical Hollywood film. Denis has made a film full of ideas, and doesn’t really feel the need to explain them to you. This is true right up until the end of the film which is perhaps hopeful or terribly sad depending on how you want to see it, and more than likely both.

 

Denis is aided by the performances from her cast. Pattinson has become one of the most interesting around since Twilight made him a star (and likely, enough money for him to live on forever). Since then he’s concentrated on working with interesting filmmakers – James Gray, David Cronenberg (twice), David Michod, the Safdie brothers (where he delivered one of the best performances of the decade in Good Time), Werner Herzog, Brady Corbet – and upcoming films by Christopher Nolan, Antonio Campos. Robert Eggers, Ciro Guerra and Joanna Hogg. He is best in High Life when he is quiet – and he’s quiet most of the time. It’s an interior performance as much physical as anything. Binoche once again proves that she up for just about anything (she gets the most memorably sequence in the aforementioned Fuck Box), and it’s not even her most memorable sequence in the film. Mia Goth continues her run of really strange, interesting work (Suspira, A Cure for Wellness, Nymphomaniac) – and has become one of those strange screen presences I light up when I see on screen.

 

Denis’ film is probably best seen with people who like to talk about and argue about a film after seeing it – or, as in my case, when you have a while to at least sit with it in your own head. If you see it in the theater (and you should) there will be walkouts – and more than likely someone will say – loud enough for everyone to hear when the credits start to play – “What the fuck was that?” as they did at the screening I attended. Love it or hate it, you may well ask yourself the same question when the film ends.

Movie Review: Let the Sunshine In

Let the Sunshine In **** / *****

Directed by: Claire Denis.

Written by: Christine Angot & Claire Denis based on the book by Roland Barthes.

Starring: Juliette Binoche (Isabelle), Xavier Beauvois (Vincent), Philippe Katerine (Mathieu), Josiane Balasko (Maxime), Sandrine Dumas (Ariane), Nicolas Duvauchelle (L'acteur), Alex Descas (Marc), Laurent Grévill (François), Bruno Podalydès (Fabrice), Paul Blain (Sylvain), Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (La femme dans la voiture), Gérard Depardieu (Denis, le voyant).

 

The best scene in Claire Denis’ Let the Sunshine In is the first one – an intriguingly film sex scene, between two middle aged characters, which by itself marks itself as unusual in films. Film is close-up, the scene between the beautiful Isabelle (Juliette Binoche) and her overweight lover Vincent (Xavier Beauvois) is an odd one as it takes in part of their bodies at a time, and has the pair of them obsessing over the other one finishing. The intrigue lasts longer than the sex does, as there is some kind of undeniable sexual chemistry and tension between these two characters, even as it becomes increasingly clear they aren’t right for each other, and in fact she may not even like him all that much. As the opening scenes play on, it becomes clear their relationship is doomed – if for no other reason than the casual cruelty in which he sometimes treats her (“I will never leave my wife. I like you, but my wife is extraordinary” he tells her). He is a wealthy banker, used to getting what he wants – when he shows up at her apartment one night and says “I just arrived from Brazil and felt like fucking you” he seems genuinely surprised when she throws him out. And this is just the first of several men Isabelle will be with over the course of the film – all of whom are whiny and needy and disappointing, but in different ways. Undeterred, she keeps trying to find love – and along the way, she continues to have sex – although after that first sex scene, we don’t see another one.

 

You can imagine this film made in Hollywood – there have been any number of them over the years, about middle aged women who get divorced, and then go on a journey of self-discovery, which often involves them travelling to exotic locales, and falling in love with some hunky, personality free man. But because this film is directed by the great French filmmaker Claire Denis, we know this isn’t going to be the case with this film. The film is mainly made up of two kinds of scenes – the first, when Isabelle first meets a new man, and is instantly drawn to him, and then a flash forward – to the next day, the next week, the next month, whenever, when everything falls apart. The banker is an asshole using her, although he allows herself to be used, the actor wanted an emotional sounding board more than anything else (and is, of course, married), an artist may be using her, as she is a more successful artist, to advance his career. There are other flirtations, and almost connections, that don’t go very well either. The film ends, not in either disappointment, or reverie, but with a scene between Binoche and Gerard Depardieu – who we have just witnessed being his own version of a disappointing man to another woman (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi), that at least seems to indicate Isabelle is going to keep on pressing forward.

 

If the film had continued to be as good as that opening scene, it would be one of the very best films of the year. It doesn’t, but in a way, I think what is captured in that opening would both be impossible to keep going at feature length, and not advisable. It’s there, in its way, to get the audience off-kilter from what they expected – perhaps what they were marketed (the poster, featuring a smiling Binoche, and the misleading English title, don’t tell you a thing about the film). The film, was directed by a middle aged woman, who co-wrote it with another middle aged woman, and stars a middle aged woman – and is a film about how middle aged women are so rarely seen, acknowledged, or treated like real people – either in the movies, or in life. The film may sound like it is dark, but it isn’t – not really. There are at least fleeting moments of joy on display in the film, and some of the darker moments are just mentioned, not dwelled upon. We never see, for example, Isabelle’s 12-year-old daughter, who apparently reports back to her dad that mom cries herself to sleep every night. This isn’t a movie about a woman juggling parenthood with a career with trying to find love. It’s more about the disappointment of trying to connect, and failing, and yet you keep on going.

 

On the surface, this seems like an odd choice of Denis – especially after her last film, Bastards, was a dark noir that featured rape and torture, and has often made more ambitious, more inscrutable films that Let the Sunshine In. Here though, she takes the same care telling this story, and gets the same level of performance out of Binoche as anyone else has. It takes a clichéd story, but treats it with seriousness. It may seem like minor Denis – heck, it may even be minor Denis, but it’s further proof that she can do just about anything.

Classic Movie Review: Trouble Every Day (2001)

Trouble Every Day (2001)
Directed by: Claire Denis.
Written by: Claire Denis & Jean-Pol Fargeau.
Starring: Vincent Gallo (Shane Brown), Tricia Vessey (June Brown), Béatrice Dalle (Coré), Alex Descas (Léo), Florence Loiret Caille (Christelle), Nicolas Duvauchelle (Erwan), Raphaël Neal (Ludo), José Garcia (Choart), Hélène Lapiower (Malécot), Marilu Marini (Friessen), Aurore Clément (Jeanne).

Claire Denis’ Trouble Every Day is one of the most disturbing movies you will ever see – a bloody, sickening film that has two scenes of sex turning to bloody violence that will likely stick with you forever after seeing them. It is no wonder that the film has divided critics and audiences since it premiered at Cannes back in 2001 – it is certainly not an easy film to watch. It’s also true that it would be easy to poke holes in the plot of the film – which is admittedly fairly ridiculous if taken at face value – but Trouble Every Day works in spite of that plot. It’s a film that haunts you – stays in your head for days afterwards, even if you don’t want it there.

The plot of the movie follows two couples. The first one we meet are the French couple, Core (Beatrice Dalle) and Leo (Alex Descas). They live on the outskirts of Paris, in a big, empty house. When he has to leave the house, he locks her inside and makes her promise not to leave. He is keeping her prisoner – but it’s for her own good.  If she gets out, there will be a mess to clean up – and he’ll have to do it. The second couple is Shane (Vincent Gallo) and June (Tricia Vessey) – newly married, and in Paris for their honeymoon. There is something not quite right about them – and it’s not just that he looks like Vincent Gallo and his most Vincent Gallo-esque (that is to say like a thug in a Death Wish movie) and she is almost the visual approximation of innocence, with her adorable pixie haircut. That part is intentional. It’s more to do with the fact that he won’t have sex with her – when they come close, he has to flee to the bathroom to masturbate as she bangs on the door wanting him to come out and talk to her. The other major character in the film is Christelle (Florence Loiret Caille), a young, beautiful maid at the hotel where Shane and June are staying. Denis captures Christelle at casually intimate moments, and from the beginning her camera sexualizes her in ways that make us know something with her is coming.

As you can probably guess, yes, Core and Shane, share the same affliction – although whether that makes them cannibals, vampires or something in between, I don’t know. The movie gives a complicated (and unnecessary) explanation about a science experiment gone wrong years ago – but it hardly matters. What matters is these two relationships, each one having a monster in it that takes different courses. Leo, of course, is trying to protect the woman he loves from herself – she cannot keep doing what she’s doing and getting away with it (as the movie shows us). Shane is trying to protect the woman he loves from himself – he loves her so much he could just eat her right up, literally. He thinks Leo can help him – and if he can’t, he doesn’t know what he’ll do.

The film is told in Denis typical, elliptical style. There isn’t a lot of dialogue for the first part of the movie – and the movie only hints at its darker secrets for about an hour or so. Denis likes to toy with the audience, but also trusts them to put together the pieces she is assembling all on their own. The last act of the movie gives you all the violence you can handle – and then some. It is just about the two bloodiest scenes I can recall in a movie, and they are not done in a cartoon like way either. These are long, bloody scenes that make you squirm – and then keep going and going.

Perhaps the most daring thing about the movie is that Denis asks us not to relate to the victims – or potential victims – but with the killer himself. Shane looks like a creep – but he’s really trying to be a good guy. He doesn’t want hurt anyone – and the terror in the film is about his terror of not being able to control himself. The victims, and potential victims, in the film have no idea they are being targeted until it’s too late. They have no fear – Shane does.

Trouble Every Day is a disturbing film. No, it doesn’t make all that much sense if you want to stop and think about the plot (how did Shane and June get to the point where they got married, without having sex. Why did he marry her in the first place if he wants to protect her. What the hell kind of research were they doing that led to this)? But those are logical questions for a movie that doesn’t require that level of logic to work. Denis is a filmmaker who likes the leave the audience shaken – and sometimes shocked. Her most recent films was Bastards – which was almost as disturbing as this one, and upends the tropes of film noir like this one does for horror. But the great thing about Denis films is there is something there behind the shock value – a sadder, more tragic core. Trouble Every Day is often linked the New French Extemity movement – films like Inside, Baise-moi, Enter the Void, Frontiere(s), Haute Tension, Ils, Irréversible and Martyrs – but I think it stands apart from them. Some of those films are good (Ils in particular ranks as one of the scariest films I have ever seen), some of them are awful (you couldn’t pay me to sit through Baise-Moi or Martyrs again), but all have shock value and scares at the forefront. Trouble Every Day doesn’t – and that makes it even more disturbing and tragic and memorable.

Movie Review: Bastards

Bastards
Directed by: Claire Denis.
Written by: Jean-Pol Fargeau and Claire Denis.
Starring: Vincent Lindon (Marco Silvestri), Chiara Mastroianni (Raphaëlle), Julie Bataille (Sandra), Michel Subor (Edouard Laporte), Lola Créton (Justine), Alex Descas (Dr. Béthanie), Grégoire Colin (Xavier), Florence Loiret Caille (Elysée), Christophe Miossec (Guy), Yann Antoine Bizette (Joseph), Jeanne Disson (Audrey), Laurent Grévill (Jacques).

The opening frames of Claire Denis’ Bastards lets us know we are in the film noir world. A bald man, in a fancy suit looks out into the dark, raining night – looking miserable. Soon, he’ll be on the dead on the concrete – having thrown himself to his death. A beautiful young girl walks naked down the street – wearing only a pair of high heels that click as she walks slowly, a dazed look on her face. A woman blames the police and their apathy for her husband’s suicide, and the state of her daughter. A grizzled older man gets a phone call – a family emergency – which makes him go AWOL from his job at sea, and head back to land to help his family. As with many of Denis’ films, she makes no effort to explain everything from the outset – preferring instead to let events unfold, and the audience to figure them out as they go along.

The second man, we soon learn, is Marco Silvestri (Vincent Lindon). The first man was Jacques (Laurent Grevill), an old friend, and current brother-in-law, married to Marco’s sister Sandra (Julie Bataille). The naked young woman is Justine (Lola Creton), their daughter, Vincent’s niece. Jacques and Sandra run a failing shoe factory, and Sandra blames all of their problems on Edouard Laporte (Michel Subor), an exceedingly wealthy, powerful man – not only does he own most of their debt, he is also the man they have accused of abusing Justine – and when we find out just how abused she was, it is stomach churning. Marco has come back to help out – although it isn’t immediately clear just what that means. What we do know is that he is moving in upstairs from Raphaelle (Chiara Mastroianni), the younger mistress of Laporte, and her young son. He charms his way into her life – and her pants – but maybe charms is the wrong word here. He is an old fashioned type of guy, and his seduction of her is gruff, and almost wordless – she puts up little resistance to his advances.

Marco is a classic noir “hero” – a normal guy who is duped into doing things he would not normally do. He is tough and intelligent – but also almost hopelessly naïve. In classic Hollywood noir terms, he is the type of character Robert Ryan would have excelled at playing. You really cannot call Mastroianni’ Raphaelle a femme fatale – she doesn’t seduce him into doing anything for her – some will even complain that she is too passive. She doesn’t seem too interested in who he is, what he does, or why he is there. Given the sexual relationship we see between and the older Laporte, it may well be that she just wants him for sex. He tries to get under her skin, but she seems impervious to his efforts – she doesn’t judge him – doesn’t want to know why he’s living in an expensive apartment, with no furniture, and yet has pawned his watch and sold his car. Marco is drawn back in by his sister – who has a one track mind of getting even with Laporte – but he doesn’t ask her the right questions – in fact, he doesn’t really ask her anything at all. That something doesn’t quite seem right about everything she is saying seems obvious to the audience – but not to Marco, who just accepts it – and then is shocked as secrets start being revealed. The film gets darker and darker, right up until its shocking final scene – which finally explains what precisely happened in a dirty shack, littered with bloody corn cobs.

In many ways, Bastards is more straight forward than much of Denis’ recent work. Yes, there are flashbacks and forwards, and she never gives the audience all the information they want until the final scene, yet the film is more straight forward than films like White Material or The Intruder. The film’s violence – sexual and otherwise – is strong and shocking, but then given the material it pretty much needs to be. Denis is not just using the violence to shock the audience, its part of her larger narrative arc, inspired by Faulkner’s Sanctuary. It will likely offend some, as the victims in the movie seem passive – almost accepting of their victimization (they certainly do not fight back against it). A character like Lola Creton’s damaged young woman remains an enigma right until the end – a victim of just about everyone else in the movie, but one whose interior world is never explored. Raphaelle is a character who also threatens to be an enigma as well – is she just using Marco, or is there something deeper going on there – right until her final moments, when the character snaps into focus. Sandra goes from grieving widow into something much more insidious as the movie goes along. Laporte, we sense from the outset is sinister – it doesn’t help that he seems to be made to look like Robert Blake in Lost Highway – but just what his character does still surprises. Into this world, Marco comes wholly unprepared. Lindon does a marvelous job in his role – making Marco into a man’s man – the type we don’t see much of in films anymore – but one who ultimately is a lot softer than he first appears. The poor bastard has no idea what’s coming for him.

The Best Films I Have Never Seen Before: The Intruder (2004)

The Intruder (2004) *** ½ 

Directed by: Claire Denis.

Written by: Claire Denis & Jean-Pol Fargeau based on the book by Jean-Luc Nancy.

Starring: Michel Subor (Louis Trebor), Grégoire Colin (Sidney), Yekaterina Golubeva (Young Russian Woman), Bambou (Pharmacist), Florence Loiret Caille (Antoinette), Lolita Chammah (The Wild Woman), Alex Descas (The Priest), Dong-ho Kim (Ship Owner), Se-tak Chang (Ship Owner's Associate), Hong-suk Park (Man at the Fish Market), Edwin Alin (Le patron de la quincaillerie), Henri Tetainanuarii (Henri), Jean-Marc Teriipaia (Tony), Anna Tetuaveroa (The Mother), Béatrice Dalle (Queen of the Northern Hemisphere).

Claire Denis demands a lot from her audiences. She does not make films that are cut and dried, linear or even narratively clear. You have to do the work to get what you should from a film by Denis, because often times, her visuals take over her storyline. The Intruder is clearly her most enigmatic film – the one that requires the most work on the audience’s part. If you go in seeking narrative cohesion, you will be disappointed. The Intruder is a film that mixes the main characters real life with his subconscious – often without letting you know which is which.

The film centers of Louis Trebor (Michel Subor), an aging man living alone with his two big, white dogs in the mountains near the France-Switzerland border. He has a heart problem, and ends up buying a heart on the black market from a young Russian woman, who will stalk him for the rest of the film – at least in his mind. He then heads to Korea, buys a boat and sets sail for Tahiti, where he once lived and fathered a son that he wants to reconnect with. That he has another son, living close by his house in France that he completely ignores, doesn’t factor into his decision.

This is what happens in the film, but it doesn’t explain the effect that the film has. The film is made up of images, more than words, and some of the images are haunting – a heart being torn apart by dogs, the beauty of the mountains along the border, the sky that is both beautiful and ominous in Tahiti, etc. Denis is a visual storyteller, and her film is one that you have to give yourself over to, and flow along with the images, because if you fight it, than more than likely you’ll end confused and frustrated.

But the title of the movie is surely apt. The film is about intrusion in many different ways. The heart is an intruder into Louis’ body – and an unwelcome one at that as slowly his body starts to reject it. But Louis is also an intruder into the natural world, and into the culture of Tahiti – and is also unwelcome. The tribe in Tahiti that Louis goes to find his son holds auditions among the young men in their tribe to find a suitable son for Louis – they don’t care about him, they just want the money. But Louis is a character it is impossible to feel for – the way he ignores the son living close by, his cold demeanor with a pharmacist he sleeps with, the way he tries to pick up a local dog breeder, who correctly tells him he is crazy – even the way when he cannot find anyone to look after his dogs, he simply abandons them and drives away. Played by Godard veteran Subor, Louis is a violent loner, whose screen presence is precisely what is needed in the film, as he creates a haunting, enigmatic presence at its heart.

The Intruder is one of the those films that people are either going to love or hate. I really cannot argue with people who do not like it – who consider it too slow or too confusing, because the film is slow. It is confusing. But being confusing is not the same thing as being confused – Denis’ purpose from the outset of the movie is clear. The opening scenes are mesmerizing, and show the hypocrisy of the people like Louis – afraid of the invading hordes from down south, Louis and everyone around him gets big fences and big dogs to keep them out, and yet at the same time feel that down South somewhere on an island is paradise. That the film takes place on the France-Switzerland border is really beside the point – it could be any border, anywhere.

Ultimately, Denis has crafted a challenging film with The Intruder – one that many audiences will reject outright, but for the adventuresome filmgoer, the film is a must see. If I feel that the film isn’t quite Denis’ best (and I still have quite a few of her films to see, including her acknowledged masterpiece Beau Travail), it is because to me, as mesmerizing and beautiful as the film is, as complex and challenging, it remains more of a intellectual exercise than a film unto itself. Sometimes those work, as is the case with The Intruder, but often they don’t make for the most satisfying movies.

Movie Review: White Material

White Material ****
Directed by: Claire Denis.
Written By: Claire Denis and Marie N'Diaye and Lucie Borleteau.
Starring: Isabelle Huppert (Maria Vial), Christopher Lambert (André Vial), Nicolas Duvauchelle (Manuel Vial), Isaach De Bankolé (Le Boxeur), William Nadylam (Chérif), Adèle Ado (Lucie), Ali Barkai (Jeep), Daniel Tchangang (José), Michel Subor (Henri Vial).

Depending on how you look at it, Maria Vial’s determination in White Material could be construed as brave, insane or just downright suicidal. She plays a woman in an unnamed African nation on the brink of Civil War. Early in the film, the French military flies over her plantation and tells her that she and her family should leave - they are pulling out and won’t be able to protect her anymore. But she knows everyone in the area - she thinks she has good relationships with everyone. This plantation has been in her ex-husbands family for generations, and she has run it for years. She is under the mistaken impression that this is her land - this is her country. The reality is that this country now belongs to the young men - children really - with the guns.

Isabelle Huppert, one of the bravest actresses in the world, gives a fearless performance as Maria in this film. It is quite different from many of her roles - yet what is shares with the best of her work, is the repression that she plays here. Throughout the whole film she is a study in repressed anger and fear. She ignores the warning signs that are clear to everyone else. She only needs a week to harvest the coffee, and damn it, she is going to see it done. Even when her entire staff walks out on her, she doesn’t give up - she simply heads to town and hires more people. And even though she has to go through road blocks, manned by gun toting men she thought she knew, doesn’t dissuade her. Everywhere she looks, things are changing - people are telling her to leave, but she simply will not go.

The career of Claire Denis has been an interesting one. To a certain extent, I’m sure some people will look at White Material as yet another movie about Africa told from the point of view of the white people in the area. Yet Denis has always concentrated on the outsiders - her last film was 35 Shots of Rum, and took place in Paris, yet was about an immigrant family. The two films are polar opposites in many respects, but are really the flip side of the same coin. The family in White Material is close - perhaps too close - but know that they will always be outsiders in France, so they depend on each other. The family in White Material doesn’t communicate with each other at all - and seem to not realize that they are not welcome in their adopted country. They are the last remnants of imperialism, and yet because they have always had “good relationships” with her workers, and the people in town, she believes that she will be safe. The reality is they have these relationships because she has money, and she has the backing of the French army, they had to respect her. But with the country descending into chaos, that protection is gone, and the reality of what they think of her and her family is becoming clear - at least to everyone except for Maria.

One of the interesting things about White Material is how Denis portrays the child soldiers, and the differing sides of the Civil War. Denis regular Issach De Bankole is the disposed soldier known as The Boxer, who is hiding out and waiting for help, and his enemies close in. He remains an enigma - as doe the politics of the situation - I had an impossible time telling what the differing sides were, and which side, if either was correct. The child soldiers are portrayed just as that - children with guns. They are still full of life and humor, but slowly becoming dehumanized because of what is going on.

The ending of White Material is a stunner - it is finally when Maria realizes what is going on, and more important, is able to admit it to herself. She finally lets out all that rage, all that fear and humiliation out of her. Huppert’s performance in this film is fearless - and should at least be in the Oscar conversation. She wanted to do this movie, and brought it to Denis, who then took the material and made it her own. This is a great partnership, and it produces one of the best films that either of these women has ever made.

DVD Views: 35 Shots of Rum

35 Shots of Rum *** ½
Directed By: Claire Denis.
Written By: Claire Denis & Jean-Pol Fargeau.
Starring: Alex Descas (Lionel), Mati Diop (Joséphine), Nicole Dogue (Gabrielle), Grégoire Colin (Noé), Jean-Christophe Folly (Ruben).

Claire Denis is one of those foreign filmmakers who is admired by critics and cinephiles, but has never really broken through with general audiences. Whereas a filmmaker like Pedro Almodovar has a large following in North America, Denis has never really had a big audience hit, and is virtually ignored come Oscar time. That she is one of the best filmmakers in the world is undeniable, but I also understand why her films have never really broken through. They are quiet and introspective more than anything else. It takes a long time for the film to reveal what it is really after.

Lionel (Alex Descas) works as a driver on the Paris subways. He lives in a working class neighborhood with his daughter Josephine (Mati Diop) who is in university, and one the verge of moving on with her own life, independent of him. This scares Lionel, whose wife died years ago, but also scares Josephine. Although she wants free of the neighborhood and of her responsibilities - she has essentially become more of a wife surrogate for Lionel - but cannot let go.,

There are other characters who circle around these two. Gabrielle (Nicole Dogue) has been in love with Lionel for years, and cannot seem to let go of him even though it is clear that they will never be together. She is a cab driver who lives in the same building as Lionel and Josephine, and continually tries to insert herself into Lionel’s life. Lionel provides just enough tenderness to her to string her along. Then there is Noe (Gregoire Colin), a young man who makes enough money to live somewhere else, but cannot quite seem to let go of the apartment that his parents lived in for years. These characters are, in there own messed up way, a family. They certainly more like a family than a group of friends, as they cannot seem to let each other go. They are stuck with each other, for better or worse.

35 Shots of Rum is a methodically paced movie. It only gradually reveals its secrets, and then simply sits back and allows the characters to behave like really people, instead of just pawns in a game played by the filmmakers. There are many great filmmaking moments in the film. Denis is one of the most gifted visual filmmakers out there right now, and 35 Shots of Rum continues this tradition. There are haunting images throughout the film, and her sound design is also excellent. A truly interesting technical film.

Denis’ films have as much in common with music then it does with movies themselves. They move along with the effortless grace of a jazz piece, where nothing is ever spelled out but everything is clear. The films best sequences takes place in a café, where the four main characters take refuge from a rainstorm. There is hardly any dialogue in this sequence, and yet it is the scene where all the relationships in the film are most sharply defined. The way the characters move toward, or away, from each other, tells us more than dialogue ever would. This is fine, because the story itself is the same type of thing that we have seen before - it was a favorite theme of Ozu for example - so Denis does not feel the need to hit ever plot point over the head. She simply allows the characters to move with each other. It is quietly beautiful in its own way.

I’m sure that much like Denis’ other recent films - including Beau Travail, Friday Night and The Intruder, that the critics are going to be the only ones who go nuts for the film. The film has not made a lot of money at the theaters, and I wonder if many more people are going to discover the film on DVD, like I did. That’s a shame, but at least I understand it. In a world where the movies seem to have to move quicker and faster than ever before, films like 35 Shots of Rum seem almost alien. To those adventuresome filmgoers, 35 Shots of Rum is a must see. I’m sure you know who you are.