| The Lady and the Duke Director: Eric Rohmer You'd be hard pressed to find a flatter film on display anywhere this year than Eric Rohmer's take on the French Revolution. Based on Grace Dalrymple Elliott's Journal of My Life During the French Revolution it deals with a year in the life of a Scottish damsel in distress during the Revolution. Grace Russell plays the lead as the woman caught in the middle. Throughout the film with a little luck she avoids bad situations, imprisonment and death. Her connections to the Duke of Orléans (Jean-Claude Dreyfus) don't hurt either, although he eventually will be in trouble himself. While it's true Rohmer inventively uses painted backdrop set pieces for each scene and gives the film (actually video) a stage-like feeling the film drags along like paint slowly crawling down a canvas. Rohmer is really out of his element and it shows. Look, I'm a fan of slow films (having seen more than most will ever see in a lifetime) but if you don't have a compelling storyline, good acting or at least some kind of aesthetic presentation then all you have is an image to look at and little else. Andy Warhol would be proud, perhaps. |
| The Piano Teacher Director: Michael Haneke "My main attraction towards Isabelle was that, on the one hand she can be very vulnerable and on the other she can be very icy and intellectual. She's the victim in the same moment that she is the perpetrator, and there are not many actresses that have that range." Michael Haneke The Piano Teacher is bound to be one of the year's better films if only because it has the ability (as do most of Haneke's films) to get under our skin. Based on the celebrated book by Elfriede Jelinek the film is like a refined horror film without the gore. Isabelle Huppert plays a very dysfunctional piano teacher who walks around with a frown, lives with her domineering mother and spends free time at the porno shop. Basically this is a psychiatrists wet dream of a movie - anybody this screwed up deserves a good story. She takes a liking to a young man (Benoît Magimel) and soon is involved in a sexual relationship that, from the start, takes a sado-masochistic turn for the worse. The piano teacher has no way of having normal relations and at first she totally dominates and frustrates him. But when the young man turns the tables on her she freaks out and cannot handle the aggressive behavior. In the end she is forced to face her demons alone - when it can clearly be seen that she wants others to understand (or at least witness) her suffering. What's not evident though is that the film has a good amount of humor - or maybe people laugh only to fend off the serious nature. Like most of Haneke's films the scenes are shot in a sterile, cold way thus making the whole thing rather uncomfortable for the audience. And it all works well too because he doesn't show us much - instead relying upon our imagination to work it all out. |
 |
|
| Time Out Director: Laurent Cantet Like director Cantet's previous film Human Resources this is a character driven drama that takes a simple story, twists it a bit and adds a subtle political tone into the mix. In this case a man named Vincent (Aurelien Recoing) has lost his job but he hides the fact from his family. He instead tells them that he has started a new job working for the United Nations. Each day he heads off to 'work' and instead just drives around or hangs out in office buildings. He is found out by a kindly man who recruits him to deliver shipments of watches across the border for the black market. But he doesn't make much money and eventually must come to grips with reality. It's interesting and a little suspenseful witnessing all his lies and wondering how long he can keep up the deception. Each scene builds a good amount of tension. In time his own wife and kids begin to suspect something is up and they start acting strange and scared when he is around. The film is slow moving but involving because of the way Cantet handles the subject matter and because of the subtle, realistic performances he gets from the cast. Cantet also toned down the real life story (which ended in the man killing his family) and chose to comment on man, modern life and the expectations that we have in a competitive capitalistic society. |
| MONTAGE HOME / REVIEWS / BOX OFFICE / LINKS |
| Nine Queens Director: Fabián Bielinski This entertaining Argentinian film is about two con artists Juan (Gastón Pauls) and Marcos (Ricardo Darin) who attempt to pull off a large swindle involving valuable postage stamps and find themselves in a tricky situation. One cannot explain too much without giving away the finer points of the plot but suffice it to say that like George Roy Hill's The Sting or David Mamet's House of Games there are many tricks up the sleeves of the characters as well as the director. The movie is also as enjoyable as both of those films and shows that Argentianian cinema is on the rise. - Matt Langdon |
|
 |