Movie Review: I Lost My Body

I Lost My Body **** / *****

Directed by: Jeremy Clapin.

Written by: Jeremy Clapin & Guillaume Laurant based on the novel by Laurant.

Starring: Hakim Faris (Naoufel), Victoria Du Bois (Gabrielle), Patrick d’Assumcao (Gigi), Alfonso Arfi (Naoufel – kid), Hichem Mesbah (Father), Myriam Loucif (Mother), Bellamine Abdelmalek (Raouf).

 

There is, I believe, an even better version of the wonderfully weird, original animated film I Lost My Body that could have been made – one with little, or perhaps even no dialogue at all – a more impressionistic kind of animation told entirely from the point of view of the main character – a severed hand, who spends the narrative trying to get back to its owner after escaping from some kind of medical storage facility. When we are with that hand – that scurries around like The Thing from The Addams Family (or Bruce Campbell’s hand in Evil Dead 2) the film is a delight – we get a street level view of Paris as the hand makes its way across the city, encountering dangers that most of us will never see. The story is intercut with what we assume is the hand’s owner – Naoufel – a not very good pizza delivery boy, in the days, weeks, months, leading up to whatever happened to make him lose the hand. These scenes are at their best when we are flashing around to various memories of Naoufel’s tragic past – all centered on the hand itself, as if the hand is remembering its past life a little at a time. The film loses a little bit when it focuses on Naoufel himself though – who you can choose to view either as a sympathetic, lonely person, or as a kind of stalker – the type of person who may go online to rant about how women don’t want “nice guys” anymore – depending on how generous you want to be with him.

 

Directed by Jeremy Clapin, from a screenplay he co-wrote with Guillaume Laurant based on his novel, I Lost My Body is one of the highlights of animation this year. It is another reminder that the rest of the world is well-ahead of North America in considering animation a suitable vehicle for storytelling not aimed at children. I Lost My Body is a macabre story – it’s not an overtly scary film, although there are any number of tense moments in it (perhaps not more so than a confrontation with some rats in the subway system) – and Netflix has made it available in an English dubbed version – so perhaps older children (10 and up) with a twisted sense of humor will enjoy it – but it’s clearly a film meant for older audiences.

 

Whenever the hand is onscreen, I Lost My Body is at its peak – I probably could have spent the entire 85-minute runtime just with that hand on its adventures, and been satisfied (had the film done so, and kept the quality level high, it would easily be the best animated film of the year). The hand is resourceful, finding ways to get around, mostly unseen, and fend off any number threats to its safety. The wonderful, mischievous score by Dan Levy buoys these beautifully animated sequences along just fine, with no dialogue needed. I loved the snippets of the past we get, as remembered by the hand itself – sometimes in black and white, sometimes faded colors, as it remembers its past life.

 

However, about a half of the film centers of Naoufel – the owner of the hand – in the time before he loses it. We know he has a tragic past – which is why he lives with some relatives who don’t seem to care about him at all. He delivers pizzas – but it horrible at it. He develops a crush, if you’re generous (an obsession if you’re not) with Gabrielle, a young woman he fails to deliver a pizza to one night – and has a lengthy discussion with her on her apartment intercom, the two never seeing each other. After that, he tracks her down, and integrates himself into her life – without telling her the truth. His intentions may be good – but it’s more than a little creepy.

 

You do (or at least I did) become sympathetic of Naoufel over the course of the movie, which helps these scenes – which still do look great – work. They aren’t nearly at the level of the hand-centric parts of the film – and strikes me perhaps as someone getting nervous that you couldn’t actually make an entire film about a severed hand (a short, sure – but not a feature). The scenes work – but they do feel like padding.

 

Still, I Lost My Body is a wonderfully animated, truly original film – which is a rarity in films in general, and in animation in particular. It is a very odd film – and its best, no other animated film this year tops it.

Movie Review: Klaus

Klaus *** / ***** 

Directed by: Sergio Pablos.

Written by: Zach Lewis and Jim Mahoney and Sergio Pablos.

Starring: Jason Schwartzman (Jesper), J.K. Simmons (Klaus), Rashida Jones (Alva), Joan Cusack (Mrs. Krum), Norm MacDonald (Mogens), Will Sasso (Mr. Ellingboe), Sergio Pablos (Pumpkin/Olaf), Neda Margrethe Laba (Margu).

 

You can tell that Klaus director Sergio Pablos spent much of the 1990s in various roles in Disney animation when watching the Netflix animated film Klaus. The film isn’t quite a carbon copy of the style of those classic Disney animated film – particularly from the ones later in the decade (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) – but is close enough to make you nostalgic for the time before Disney decided to do away with their traditional style altogether, and make all movies – under the Pixar banner or otherwise – with the computer animation style. The film looks great from beginning to end – and will delight parents and children looking for a new animated Christmas movie this year, instead of (or in our case, in addition to) watching the same ones you see year over year. It’s perhaps a little too goofy for its own good, a little too pat and predictable – especially since we know where the story is going from the first frames, and it takes a while to get there – but overall, it’s a delightful new Christmas movie for kids.

 

The film’s hero is Jesper (voiced by Jason Schwartzman), the spoiled son of a wealthy family, whose father is tired of him lounging around doing nothing. To teach him some responsibility – or maybe just to punish him – Jesper is sent to the island of Smreensenburg, and isolated community, full of people who hate each other, and told that he has to run the post office there for one year – and stamp 6,000 letters in that time. The problem is that no one on the island sends or receives letters of any kind. However, when Jesper finally meets Klaus (J.K. Simmons), a woodworker who lives in isolation even in a place known for living in isolation – he comes up with an idea. And hence, children start writing letters to Klaus for toys – and Klaus, and Jesper, start to deliver them.

 

So yes, this is another Santa Claus origin story – and while I will always be partial to Santa Claus is Coming to Town, this one works as well. The film is fun and goofy – with as much slapstick as an old Warner Brothers cartoon, but not so much that it overwhelms the earnest emotions on display from beginning to end. It’s hardly a Christmas movie if it doesn’t make you cry at some point – and as goofy as it is, the final moment in the film at least made me mist.

 

The plot is probably too busy – especially as it winds down, and the two families at the heart of the feuding are brought more into play, probably because the film felt you it needed a more action packed climax than it really did. To bring up Santa Claus is Coming to Town again, that TV movie worked just by bringing color back into the grey lives of the children – and while it had a villain, it didn’t have a lot of action (especially a moment that directly lifts from How the Grinch Stole Christmas). For me, the film works best when its goofy fun.

 

It saddens me more than a little that this is a film that went straight to Netflix – that Netflix had to salvage when no one else wanted to make it, despite Pablos’ background with Disney and others (he produced Despicable Me as well). It’s good news that Netflix takes a chance on these types of films – but bad that they need to, because everyone else is so risk averse that they don’t want to make an animated film unless it looks like all the other animated films. Klaus isn’t one of the very best animated films of the year – but it certainly is among the best looking – and certainly among the most distinctive looking. The world of animation would be richer if Hollywood studios realized there is more than one way these films can look. Klaus is a refreshing throwback in that – and a few other regards – which makes it worth seeing this Christmas.

Movie Review: Freaks

Freaks **** / *****

Directed by: Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein.

Written by: Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein.

Starring: Lexy Kolker (Chloe), Emile Hirsch (Dad), Bruce Dern (Mr. Snowcone), Grace Park (Agent Ray), Amanda Crew (Mary), Ava Telek (Harper Reed), Michelle Harrison (Nancy Reed), Matty Finochio (Steven Reed).

 

I am not a spoilerphobe – not really anyway. I don’t spend my time policing what everyone says in their reviews for spoilers, and I don’t get that upset about them – knowing full well that there are any number of masterpieces I knew the “surprises” to before watching them and it didn’t ruin them. Having said that, typically if I know I’m going to see a movie, I don’t read many reviews of them before I do – trailers already give away too much, so why add more? I do get a general sense of the critical reaction is, and then look away. One of the reasons I did this was because of a tweet by critic Sam Adams in the wake of 10 Cloverfield Lane where he basically said if you liked knowing nothing about the movie going in, you could have that experience with every movie if you just didn’t pay attention to the pre-release hype.

 

I bring all this up at the top of my review for Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein’s Freaks because it’s a film that’s been on my radar since TIFF 2018 – where a few critics (Glen Weldon, Tasha Robinson) talked about it briefly, and I filed it away for later use. The film came and went in theaters very quickly a few months back, and now it’s available on VOD – and I watched it, knowing next to nothing about it – other than the basic premise – a girl and her dad, living in an old house where she cannot go outside, and Bruce Dern as a creepy ice cream man. That is the best way to see Freaks. I assumed it was a horror movie – I assumed wrong. I’m not sure it’s a particularly original movie – but I do know I enjoyed watching it unfold, as up until the last act, the film surprised me with its narrative developments – to go along with fine direction, writing and performances. You should see this movie knowing just that.

 

Now, if you’re still here, I assume you have already seen Freaks, or don’t care about spoilers. That basic outline of Freaks is what happens – 8-year-old Chloe (a very good Lexy Kolker) lives in a dilapidated dump with her paranoid father (Emile Hirsch) – who refuses to let her outside for any reason, and only goes out occasionally himself – telling her that the people out there want to kill them. They do have stacks of money somehow though – and strangely, Chloe seems to know the neighbor’s names, and at the very least is aware of Mr. Snowcone (Bruce Dern) who often sits outside their house in his ice cream truck, and even drops off a homemade book for her. For a while, you wonder if this is going to be a movie about an abusive, mentally ill father – someone who believes people are out to get him, when really they aren’t. But slowly, we start getting hints that the outside world isn’t normal – that there really may things that aren’t right outside.

 

Basically, what Freaks becomes is the third alternate superhero/villain origin story of the year – and the best following Brightburn and Fast Color. It smartly limited our point-of-view’s to Chloe’s, so that we understand how wrong everything is well before she does – but not quite why. Gradually things snap into focus. It’s like the origin of every one of the X-Men – hinted at here and there in the movies, or covered in a minute, but expanded to 104-minutes – and ending on a note where you’re not sure if you’ve watched the origin of a hero, or someone who will be destroy us all.

 

Writer/directors Lipovsky and Stein smartly keep things fairly low-tech for most of the film – there was clearly a special effects budget – but not a huge one – and they save it for the final act, when the cats out of the bag of just what is happening, and why. Until then, they’ve crafted a tense little thriller – one that keeps you on your toes. I was honestly a little disappointed in the final act – I wanted them to push things further than they do, get weirder, and instead they play it fairly straight. Still, the movie is really effective, surprising and entertaining – all the more the less you know heading into it. It’s a pleasure to be surprised like this in a movie.

Movie Review: Burning Cane

Burning Cane *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Phillip Youmans.

Written by: Phillip Youmans.

Starring: Wendell Pierce (Reverend Tillman), Karen Kaia Livers (Helen Wayne), Dominique McClellan (Daniel Wayne), Braelyn Kelly (Jeremiah Wayne), Cynthia Capers (Marsha Bland), Emyri Crutchfield (Sherry Bland), Erika Woods (Dianne).

 

That writer/director Phillip Youmans was only 19-years-old, and still a NYU film student when he made Burning Cane is remarkable to me. This is a film full of potential – who already has an innate sense of where to place the camera in each and every scene in his debut feature. The film will likely recall for some the early films of Terrence Malick or David Gordon Green – with a little bit of Charlies Laughton’s Night of the Hunter torn in, or perhaps a little Charles Burnett. That Youmans has drawn on such varied inspirations though, and synthesized it something else, shows his innate skill and originality. Yes, the plotting and the characters in Burning Cane are more than a little thin – the film doesn’t even run 80-minutes, and I’m not convinced by its closing moments. Still, there is no denying the skill Youmans has – and the potential for greatness that this film shows.

 

The film opens with voiceover narration by Helen Wayne (Karen Kaia Livers) – talking about her beloved dog, Jojo, who has the mange – and all the different home remedies she has tried – and of course, they have all failed. She lives somewhere in the poor, rural South – a place in which time seems to have forgotten – the cars, and a reference to the tolerance of boys in dresses, really the only signs that the film is taking place today – otherwise, it may then be any time since the 1960s or so. Helen is a powerful female character – even if she’s older and walks slowly with a limp, she is still the only character in the film who is a true believer – who is truly interested in being good.

 

The two other major characters in the film are both men. There is the Reverend Tillman (Wendell Pierce – brilliant) – and fire and brimstone preacher in the black church, who is also a drunk, and getting worse since his wife died – shortly after revealing how miserable she was being married to him, and having to mop up her own blood, in scenes we do not see. We hear a lot of Tillman’s sermons – but it’s clear he doesn’t live up to the standards he sets for his congregation. The other major character is Daniel (Dominique McClellan) – Helen’s son. He is also a drunk, with a cigarette constantly dangling from his lips, newly unemployed, and not doing much to fix that. Being unemployed means he now spends more time with his son – the almost completely silent Jeremiah (Braelyn Kelly) – and he is teaching him the ways to become a man, in ways that are borderline abusive. He goes well past that border line with his wife Sherry (Emyri Crutchfield) – who now supports the whole family, and angers him by “nagging” him.

 

This is a world where God is talked about a lot – but most of the people doing the talking aren’t very good at following his word. It is a world where the patriarchy still reigns supreme – in part because of those sermons by Tillman, that have filtered in so deep that even if Daniel isn’t hearing them anymore, that have shaped his worldview. In this insular, rural community what else stands in the way of the evil – other than people like Helen?

 

As I said, the runtime is slight at 77-minutes, the story is told more in impressions than narrative – scenes and moments, voice overs and feelings, etc. than in traditional terms. Visually, the film is excellent – with Youmans camera either there to capture glimpses of these moments from a perspective of an outside observe, sneaking a peek at the secrets in town. The only interior life we hear is Helen’s – but that’s more about her dog than anything, or her conviction to do the right thing. The rest of the characters we are left to judge ourselves.

 

Burning Cane isn’t a great film – but it has the feel of the first film by a great filmmaker – that feel of someone who is still figuring themselves out, but will get there – and soon. It wouldn’t surprise me if Youmans makes a truly great film – and sooner, rather than later.

The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville: Le Silence de la Mar (1949)

Le Silence de la Mer (1949) 

Directed by: Jean-Pierre Melville.

Written by: Jean-Pierre Melville based on the short story by Vercors.

Starring: Howard Vernon (Werner von Ebrennac), Nicole Stéphane (The Niece), Jean-Marie Robain (The Uncle).

 

The French Auteur Jean-Pierre Melville would make some visually brilliant films – films that often don’t rely on dialogue at all, but their visuals. He would also go onto to make one of the defining films of the French resistance during WWII in his 1969 masterpiece Army of Shadows. His first film as a director though was Le Silence de la Mar – which he shot in 1947 just after the war, and was released in 1949. It is a much quieter film about a much quieter form of resistance by the French in WWII – and also an angry film about what was done to his country. It is essentially a three-person drama, almost all set inside one house is rural, occupied France. There an Uncle (Jean-Marie Rabin) and his niece (Nicole Stephane) live out their lives under occupation, until there is a knock on their door – and soon they have been assigned a German officer to stay with them. This is Werner von Ebrennac (Howard Vernon) - a Francophile of a sort. Much of the film takes place around the fire, in the sitting room of this house. Werner talks and talks and talks about how this war will ultimately be a good thing – it will bring together the German and the French culture and people. The Uncle and Niece don’t say a word. We hear the Uncle – extensively – in voiceover describing the action. But if the Officer is around, they don’t speak.

 

The film then, probably shouldn’t work. It breaks the cardinal rule of show, don’t tell – and even does it one better (worse) in that the Uncle is often describing action that we are quite literally watching at the exact same moment – the definition of redundancy. And it, once you sink into its rhythms, it becomes very quietly involving. The voiceover works, if for no other reason than without it, the film would be so quiet if Werner isn’t talking, and also there would be no way for the Uncle’s point-of-view to come across (in part, this is because of the strange decision to cast a man in his 30s to play the Uncle, then place him in old age makeup – which isn’t so much distracting, as confusing, as it doesn’t allow much acting by Robain through his face – he doesn’t need it though, since the whole point is that the two of them are essentially emotionless whenever the officer is around.

 

The film, I think, shows the quiet resolve of the French people. This old man and this young woman have no other way in which to resist the occupation that has taken over their country. They cannot fight – it would mean their death – and they cannot do much else. What they can do is be quietly defiant in the face of this intrusion into their home. And they do that. It is also an interesting choice to have Werner be one of the “good ones” as it were. Werner really does see this war as a good thing. When he talks he is full of hope for the future – he is optimistic. He knows they are ignoring him, and yet he wants to reassure them anyway.

 

For the most part, the attempts to open up the narrative don’t work as well – the film is best, when it is this quiet war in the home. But it’s necessary for the final turns in the movie. As Werner talks to the other German officers, he realizes – apparently for the first time – just what his country is doing, and what it plans to do. He is horrified and sickened by what he hears – and he cannot live with himself anymore. This leads to the climactic scene – which, of course, is very quiet – where for the first time instead of just walking into the living room, he knocks at the door – and waits for a reply. He finally gets one – just three short words by the Uncle, and upon entering, and telling them what he’s going to do, he gets one word from the niece as well. It’s as shocking as four words could ever be in a movie.

 

This film isn’t that masterpiece that Army of Shadows is – or Le Samourai, or several other Melville films are. But it’s a very interesting starting point for Melville. It’s also not as bitter and angry as the opening title card – which says reconciliation between France and Germany is impossible – would lead you to believe. Yes, it’s hard to believe that there could be a German officer like Werner, shocked by the reality of what his people are doing. But it’s interesting to think of one of them having morals enough to be sickened by it, but not enough to actually do something useful. Melville would go onto make several masterworks. This isn’t one – but it’s still a damn good place to start.

Movie Review: In Fabric

In Fabric **** / *****

Directed by: Peter Strickland.

Written by: Peter Strickland   

Starring: Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Sheila), Fatma Mohamed (Miss Luckmoore), Gwendoline Christie (Gwen), Jaygann Ayeh (Vince), Hayley Squires (Babs), Leo Bill (Reg Speaks), Richard Bremmer (Mr. Lundy), Sidse Babett Knudsen (Jill).

 

Peter Strickland has made a career out of making weird, fetishistic horror films that show off his love of the lower class of European art house films of the 1970s. The excellent Berberian Sound Studio is literally about a British sound designer who goes to work on a giallo film, and is slowly driven insane (or always was – and just slowly reveals it) and The Duke of Burgundy disguises itself as a soft core porn film, but uses that to explore its unconventional central relationship with more thought and care that most movies would even attempt. His latest film is In Fabric – and it is clearly the most insane film on his resume, and perhaps the most out and out entertaining, even if it’s also the least ambitious of these three films. Still, it’s such an insane visual and aural feast, I find it impossible to complain.

 

The film is basically split into two separate stories – although the first is significantly longer – and follows the strange journey of a killer red dress. In the first story, Sheila (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) plays a newly divorced, middle age bank teller – who works for a pair of bosses who would fit in at the company in Office Space – who leaves with her teenage son, Vince (Jaygann Ayeh), whose girlfriend Gwen (a delightful Gwendoline Christie) is always around, and rubs their sex life in Sheila’s face. Sheila wants to get back out into the dating world – and what better way to do that other than to hit the sales post-Christmas. She finds a strange store, and an even stranger sales woman – Miss Luckmoore (Fatma Mohamed – a Strickland favorite), who sells Sheila a killer red dress – and things get stranger and stranger. In the second story, that red dress is bought at a second hand shop, and forced onto Reg (Leo Bill) as a bachelor party prank, and then ends up in the hands of his fiancé, Babs (the wonderful Hayley Squires) – again, with horrific results.

 

So, yes, In Fabric is a horror movie about a dress. The film knows damn well that its premise is ridiculous, and instead of hiding that fact, it embraces it outright. The scenes set in the store where the dress was sold – where Miss Luckmore may well be strange, but her boss Mr. Lundy (Richard Bremmer) could easily be stranger – would not be out of place as a non-sequitur on Twin Peaks. Strickland, who has always embraced outlandish visual tricks, outdoes himself here – the film starts off over the top, and just keeps going. He also finds a strange undercurrent of just out and out hilarious moments throughout the film – which makes the films more disturbing moments stick even more.

 

But perhaps the smartest thing he does is cast the film well. Yes, Fatma Mohamed is insane and brilliant, but Marianne Jean-Baptiste is the MVP here, somehow managing to ground this film is some sort of believable reality, even though it is about a killer dress. Everyone in her part of the film feels like they are out to get her in some way, shape or form, even while being endlessly polite. Leo Bill, who has the lead role in the second half, cannot quite match Baptiste, but he’s fine – but it’s Squires, who isn’t really a Bridezilla as I’ve heard her referred to elsewhere – but it is certainly a little bit of a nag, and talks non-stop (one moment she keeps talking gets perhaps the biggest laugh in the film).

 

If there is a larger message to In Fabric it is clearly about consumer culture, giving us unrealistic expectations as to what one shopping trip, one purchase can actually do for us, as well as the never ending drudgery of heading to work day-after-day, doing the same thing again and again. But the film hardly needs that extra messaging – the surface of In Fabric provides so many delights, it hardly matters. This is a crazy film – and I loved every frame.

The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville: An Introduction

Why haven’t I seen more films by Jean-Pierre Melville? It’s a question that I cannot answer, because the films of his I have seen, I’ve all quite liked. For years and years, that meant just three films – Bob La Flambeur (1956), Le Samourai (1967) and Army of Shadows (1969) – and nothing else. I know why I didn’t watch more at that time – many weren’t easy to find – but as they’ve all become available, I don’t know why I didn’t keep up. On Criterion Channel a few months ago, I caught up with his debut – Le Silence de la mer from 1949 – and loved it, and having been meaning to see some of the others. Now I see that all but his third film – When You Read This – are available there, and the whole filmography is only 13 features and a short. I plan to watch the other 12 features in the coming weeks. No pre-ranking, since I’ve only seen four at this point – but I’ll watch the 12, review them, and rank them at the end.

 

1. Le Silence de la mer (1949)
2. Les Enfants Terribles (1950)
3. Bob la Flambeur (1956)
4. Two Men in Manhattan (1959)
5. Leon Morin, Priest (1961)
6. Le Doulos (1962)
7. Magnet of Doom (1963)
8. Le Deuxieme Souffle (1966)
9. Le Samourai (1967)
10. Army of Shadows (1969)
11. Le Cercle Rouge (1970)
12. Un Flic (1972)