Category: French film

Amélie (2001, Jean-Pierre Jeunet)

I’m hesitant to call Amélie whimsical, though it’s the closest adjective. The film’s kind of a French New Wave-inspired fairy tale, except instead of being about magic magic, it’s about the magic of the everyday and, especially, its residents. There’s also something decidedly not fairy tale about protagonist Audrey Tautou’s quests. Broadly, Amélie is about Tautou interceding in her neighbors’ lives for good, but getting reluctant when she needs to act with as much agency in her own life.

The film sets Tautou’s character up with narration, something it keeps up throughout the whole film (flawlessly performed by André Dussollier). In summary, we meet Tautou’s individually and collectively odd parents—father Rufus and mother Lorella Cravotta—who keep young Tautou (a delightful Flora Guiet) isolated from other children. When Cravotta dies tragically, it gets even worse. A time-lapse and some narration later, Tautou enters the film.

She lives alone, except when babysitting someone’s cat, and keeps to herself. Then one day, she discovers someone’s forgotten treasure and charges herself with returning it to the person, who she doesn’t know, and who she doesn’t have any good information about. Getting better information requires Tautou to branch out into the world, which also provides her with further “do-gooding” opportunities (the film’s—or at least the English subtitles—word) for later as she discovers the sad state of her neighbors.

The film runs two hours, which includes a full subplot about annoying but apparently not dangerous and still lusty Dominique Pinon. Tautou works at a café near her apartment. Pinon used to date her co-worker, Clotilde Mollet, and now spends his day in the café stalking Mollet. Does France not have the right to refuse service? Café owner Claire Maurier knows Pinon’s harassing Mollet, knows Pinon’s interfering with Mollet doing her work, and being disruptive to other customers, but just shrugs at the inevitably of some men being that way. Eventually, as part of her new lifestyle approach, Tautou decides the best solution is to set Pinon up with another employee, hypochondriac Isabelle Nanty.

Tautou also gets involved with grocery clerk Jamel Debbouze and his abusive boss, played by Urbain Cancelier. Despite Cancelier being profoundly shitty to Debbouze, this subplot is probably Amélie’s lightest or at least most played for laughs. Tautou ensures Cancelier gets his just desserts in a pair of hilarious echoed sequences.

But her two most significant relationship developments are with dad Rufus and neighbor Serge Merlin. Rufus and Tautou start just as detached as the flashbacks show; once she realizes her capacity for playfully interfering for good, she also figures Rufus can benefit. It’s another subplot played for humor, with Merlin taking on the surrogate dad-for-character-development part.

Merlin’s a painter with osteogenesis imperfecta. Tautou’s only slightly aware of him, seeing him through the window in his apartment where all the furniture is covered in pillows so he doesn’t break any bones on it. The narration fills in the rest—the narration foreshadows all the pertinent characters, pausing on everyone long enough to give a brief character description and (usually for a smile) likes and dislikes. Amélie’s narration spends the first act handing the film over to Tautou and then shares some space with her alter ego and potential love interest, played by Mathieu Kassovitz. While Kassovitz doesn’t really join the action until halfway through the film, the film at least lets Tautou find out about him in scene. Tautou’s ground situation is dead mom, distant dad, isolated childhood, now in her early twenties. She doesn’t have a character development arc because the film never takes the time to establish her as a character, which allows for fun, impromptu diversions, but—even for something straddling magical realism—is a noticeable dodge.

Tautou’s charming, but director Jeunet’s exceptionally deliberate about framing her as such. In the third act, when people around her have to conspire to get her more active in her own destiny, there’s a slightly jarring shift in the narrative distance. Kassovitz suddenly becomes more the co-lead and even protagonist, with Tautou reduced to her life only having meaning as a romantic pursuit. At that point, Amélie starts leaning hard on the affable supporting cast—Debbouze and Merlin in particular—to distract from Tautou’s agency going out the window.

Though I suppose the approach would work just fine if Jeunet and screenwriter Guillaume Laurant (well, Jeunet and Laurant did the scenario, then Laurant did the dialogue; no WGF, I guess) were trying to comment on Tautou’s interfering adventures when she’s on the other side, but they don’t. Tautou’s strangely disinterested in the results of her actions, regardless of their positive or negative outcomes.

All the acting’s good or better. Ditto the technicals. Hervé Schneid’s editing is excellent, and while surprisingly muted, Bruno Delbonnel’s photography is strong. Good music from Yann Tiersen. And while I’m curious if Jeunet asked costume designer Madeline Fontaine to make Tautou dress like an Audrey Hepburn character or if it was Fontaine’s idea, very good costumes.

It’s a little long, and the third act’s wobbly (but most of the second act already forecasts the wobble, so it’s not a surprise); Amélie’s often hilarious, usually funny, and always delightful.

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972, Luis Buñuel)

Buñuel arranges The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie as a series of vignettes. Occasionally there will be a surreal bridging device—the cast walking in search of a meal on a highway in the country—sometimes it will turn out to be a dream, sometimes it will be another layer (a narrated flashback, a dream-in-a-dream), sometimes it will be more traditionally epical. Mostly in the first act.

The film opens with four people getting to a dinner party, only they’re a day early so they have to go out. But then it turns out fate’s against them having dinner that night. They’ll try again.

The initial dinner guests are Fernando Rey, playing the ambassador from the South American republic Miranda, Paul Frankeur as his friend, Delphine Seyrig as Frankeur’s wife, and Bulle Ogier as Seyrig’s sister. They go out to dinner with Stéphane Audran, who was expecting them for dinner the next night. Because it’ll turn out her husband, Jean-Pierre Cassel, is kind of flakey. Though everyone in Charm is flakey at one time or another, though only a few with any malice behind it.

In the first act we also learn Rey, Frankeur, and Cassel are coke traffickers. Rey brings it in via his ambassador bag—diplomatic immunity—selling to Frankeur and Cassel. The wives don’t appear to know anything about it. There’s a bunch of funny dialogue about ambassadors as smugglers. Charm is often very obviously, intentionally funny. Buñuel will occasionally break out the jokes–especially when introducing Julien Bertheau as the local bishop who moonlights as Audran and Cassel’s new gardener. Bertheau even becomes one of the dinner-seekers—tagging along to various events before his subplot goes its own way.

Because Charm’s also got a some very strong narrative arcs. The second act, after the film introduces the layering device (starting with a great narrated flashback from Christian Baltauss), slowly becomes about centering the narrative focus on Rey. He’s always kind of the lead—he’s sleeping with someone he shouldn’t be and he’s also a cocaine smuggler so he’s on edge; also there are revolutionaries from Miranda in Paris trying to assassinate him—but the process of making him protagonist and directing the narrative, even passively—takes Buñuel a while.

Every one of the dream sequence reveals in the film is a surprise. Even as the events become more absurd—eventually there’s a ghost and it makes perfect sense because ghosts are real in Charm—Buñuel never lessens the intensity of the scene. The drama is always very real. So we gradually come to understand Rey’s self-conscious about being a South American diplomat with these bourgeoisie white French people. There’s never a clarifying scene about whether or not he should be—Buñuel always leaves the judgment of the characters up to the audience; especially when it’s part of the story. Charm’s narrative distance and how Buñuel adjusts it throughout is stunning.

All the acting is excellent. Rey gets the biggest part, obviously, then probably Audran—who gets one more scene without her significant other than any of the other women—then actually Bertheau as the priest. Bertheau’s arc is one of the film’s standout successes. Because Buñuel introduces Bertheau as another angle giving insight into the main cast; he’s an observer too, one who’s socially acceptable to have out to dinner, unlike Milena Vutokic as Audran and Cassel’s maid; Vutokic gets a lot to do (and even gets one of the last big jokes) but she’s all reaction to the cast, she’s got nothing of her own, which ends up being part of the joke.

Ogier and Seyrig both get a couple really good spotlight scenes. Cassel’s always support, but getting more to do than Frankeur, which is kind of funny because from the introduction it seems like Frankeur’s going to be a scene-stealer, which raises a question about whether or not Charm is unpredictable. I mean. Ghosts exist so anything’s on the table, which affects plot anticipation.

Because even though all the dream reveals are surprises, they’re never “gotchas.” Discreet Charm is never about being fantastical; the film’s incredibly grounded. Otherwise a bunch of the jokes wouldn’t work and Buñuel makes sure they work. There’s one about Americans where it’s edited to wait for the laughs. Excellent editing throughout from Hélène Plemiannikov.

The other technicals are similarly strong. Edmond Richard’s photography is a lot less flashy than Plemiannikov’s editing, Pierre Guffroy’s production design, or Jacqueline Guyot’s costumes, but Charm’s photography is appropriately clinical in its presentation. The film never feels stagy, but it does have long scenes in single locations. There’s a personality to the photography’s lack of personality, especially as Buñuel even trades on how reliably the photography showcases the sets. It’s all wonderfully intentional.

While The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie sometimes takes darker turns, it’s always genial and well-mannered, which is just the perfect tone.

Charm’s a rare, strange delight.

Parade (1974, Jacques Tati)

Parade somehow loses the plot after intermission. Given the plot is just a night at the circus, usually showcasing director Tati’s pantomiming, it shouldn’t be possible to lose such a thing. But Parade does.

Maybe intermission not coming halfway through the film should be a sign. And at least the post-intermission material sails by relatively quickly, even as the content itself starts to strain. Probably because it’s entirely focused on the orchestra, which wasn’t in the opening half, and the film kind of gives up on the idea of verisimilitude and narrative distance.

Obviously, being a combination of a videotaped live performance and—I guess—staged and filmed material (i.e. not all the shots from the live videotaping), Parade gets some stylistic allowances but post-intermission, all of the insert shots fail. The lengthy orchestra sequence has numerous problem framings where people and settings change, not to mention lighting, and no one seems too concerned with it, which is rather strange given at least the dedication to showcasing the talent in the pre-intermission part of the film.

The first half has at least three good Tati pantomimes and another one where he’s “in character” too much and it feels like it should be in a movie, it has a great magician sequence, and a phenomenal juggler sequence. Plus there’s a cute mule sequence. The cute mule sequence goes on way too long and gets cloying at the end, but there are some really good laughs in it. It’s also where the audience starts losing the plot themselves and can’t quite gin up the enthusiasm.

Not audience as in Parade watcher, but the audience in the film, the live circus audience there for when Tati videotaped. There’s a whole subtext just to their attitude as the film progresses and it’s hard for it not to be contagious. At times it’s difficult to get enthused about the onscreen action—Tati showcases the performer doing a bit, not the performer, so all long shots—because the audience has checked out and they’re a big cue as to how impressive an act should play.

There’s also this “subplot” involving two kids at the circus—who happen to be the only two kids at the circus; the audience is otherwise entirely some very groovy French hippies from the early seventies who all came on moped—and it seems like Tati’s saving them up for something and it goes nowhere. It goers nowhere fast, which is kind of nice—once Parade gets tiring post-intermission, which is in the last third, it’s at least a speedy run downhill.

Parade has some great parts—and some exceptional performers—but it doesn’t come together, which is a bummer. It seems like the initial impulse could’ve gone somewhere. Instead, it ends with a bunch of tedious gag inserts and manages to screw up Tati’s exaggerated dancing, which should be a great sequence. The videotaped portions of Parade are its best, capturing the speed and grace of the performers. The filmed sequences never match the intensity.

Like I said, it’s a bummer.

Trafic (1971, Jacques Tati)

For the first hour, Trafic has a lot of gems. The film opens with a car manufacturing plant with a lot of nice, precise composition and editing, and director Tati maintains an interest in the goings-on of cars and their drivers. The action centers around an auto show in Amsterdam (presumably filmed at a real auto show for some of it) and there are a handful of wonderful montage sequences showing off the latest and greatest in technology. But more the old standards—how’s the trunk work, how’s the door work, how’s the hood work—with Tati going a little absurd but never completely there. Usually because they cut away not because the scene couldn’t go totally absurd, it’s just not there long enough.

During that first hour, there are these various gag setups without any follow through; instead Tati finds something else in the action, like how people yawn when driving or, you know, pick their noses. A lot. The nose picking montage would break a lesser film but Trafic can manage it just fine. In fact, when the subsequent montages break out amongst the random drivers driving unobserved… nothing can quite beat the nose picking. Though they never really try as hard again either.

Tati plays a car designer whose company is sending him to the auto show to help exhibit their camping car. It’s a station wagon with a camper built into the back of it and there are all sorts of gadgets. The film takes a long time to get around to introducing the gadgets, but once it does, they’re amusing and all a little silly. But their reveal comes after the first hour, when Trafic is starting to sputter about aimlessly. When it does find the plot again, it’s an entirely unpredictable one, which would be fine if it were good but instead the last thirty plus minutes of the film embraces all its weakest elements.

First and foremost is Maria Kimberly. She’s playing the public relations person in charge of presenting the car. She’s always changing her clothes—in her adorable little car—and it’s immediately a tired gimmick because Kimberly’s obnoxious. It’s not her fault she’s obnoxious, the character’s obnoxious, but she’s profoundly unpleasant to be around. All she does is whine, under-act, change her clothes, have guys ogle her. She’s got this dog with her the whole movie, occasionally getting into antics, and it takes an hour for it to be believable she’s the dog’s person she’s so indifferent to it.

Kimberly, Tati, and Marcel Fraval are in charge of getting the model camping car to the auto show. Except the car company’s truck is a junker and it starts breaking down immediately, leading to multiple mechanic stops. At one point Tati could juxtapose incapable, glamorous Kimberly—who the film establishes in her first scene as an inept jerk—with a female mechanic who has to do all the work while her dad sits and watches the Apollo 11 mission on TV, but the female mechanic doesn’t even get a credit. She also doesn’t get anything to do. While the film holds together for an hour, Tati seems done trying to do any juxtaposing—flashy new auto show cars against cars in junk yards—around thirty minutes in. Trafic is frustrating because you can see it starting to go downhill. It’s very clearly happening and for a while it seems like Tati’s got to have it under control because he’s so unconcerned.

And then it crashes and never recovers. Worse, there’s a crash and a recovery in the narrative, so the whole thing becomes a self-analogy.

In the end, Trafic doesn’t work out. It’s got a solid enough first hour—a little soft near the end but certainly recoverable—then the rest is one miss or another. Except this utterly sublime moment where one of the subplots pays off unexpectedly and brilliantly and magically and then Kimberly ruins it.

But by that point, the only thing more surprising than Kimberly messing it up would be Tati trying to patch Trafic after her latest puncture.

L’Atalante (1934, Jean Vigo)

L’Atalante begins with a wedding procession; village girl Dita Parlo has married commercial barge captain Jean Dasté and is going off to live with him on the barge. The wedding guests drop all these details through exposition—we’re not privy to the newlyweds’ conversations as they walk through the village to the barge. Juxtaposed, first mate Michel Simon and cabin boy Louis Lefebvre race ahead to have the boat ready for the captain’s wife’s arrival.

Both Simon and Lefebvre bumble comically while the guests’ exposition establishes Parlo’s never even left the village before and is also a bit more of a dreamer than the rest of the town. The exposition drops turn out to be important as one of Parlo and Dasté’s problems is going to be their inability to talk to one another. It’s also going to allow director Vigo to do these wonderful sequences inspecting how Parlo’s experiencing her new reality. There’s never any discussion of what she expected or what Dasté told her, but she arrives readier to work than he’s comfortable with, leading to a fine comedy sequence involving the laundry.

Life on the barge is initially as idyllic as it’s going to get with outrageously eccentric Simon making things interesting, but the newlyweds have discovered the pleasures of the flesh so they can put up with a lot from Simon. In addition to being a tchotchke and junk collector, Simon has an uncounted amount of cats aboard the barge, leading to some adorable comic relief moments.

But when Parlo starts to get bored—after Dasté’s back to piloting the barge instead of keeping her warm in bed—things start getting testy. Especially after Dasté gets into a fight with Simon, which acts as the inciting incident for the rest of the couple’s troubles.

All Parlo wants is to see something besides the barge and the riverbank, but Dasté’s responsibility is to the barge and Simon’s not in the mood to do him any favors. Pretty soon Parlo (and the audience) learns Dasté’s jealous outbursts aren’t rare but rather the norm. And neither of them wants to talk things through, leading to a couple impulse decisions, but one with far greater consequences for the couple and the film.

L’Atlante has a handful of dreamlike sequences, usually from the perspective of the characters, though sometimes Vigo gets so enthusiastic he lets the film get lost in them. Most impressively he’s able to maintain the dream in one character’s plot while toggling back and forth to another’s; the latter threatens to turn the former into a nightmare, but Vigo doesn’t let it intrude, with Maurice Jaubert’s helping keep the two threads in balance. It’s precise and glorious work.

Starting towards the end of the second act, Vigo’s also able to tighten the focus on Dasté’s performance, something the film had never suggested would be an emphasis. Not with Simon able to handily walk off with any scene, his costars and Vigo enthusiastically giving him all the room he needs or wants. So when the focus tightens on Dasté, Parlo and Simon maybe not fading but definitely given some distance, everything all of a sudden hinges on Dasté being able to be sympathetic without the narrative giving him any help in deserving it. Vigo changes up the narrative distance, but maintains the same approach to characterization. It ends up letting Vigo leverage the supporting cast, which works out and keeps from letting Dasté get mawkish.

The film’s a technical delight. Boris Kaufman does a great job shooting it all, with he and Vigo getting some amazing shots on the barge and of the barge. Louis Chavance’s editing is magical, especially with Jaubert’s music running under his cuts.

Parlo and Dasté are both good. The film incidentally builds their character relationship, letting everything else take precedence—okay, usually Simon, but how isn’t he going to walk away with a scene, but again, Vigo makes it work—so once they start having troubles, there’s no real inherent sympathy. Because L’Atalante can be a fairy tale, a day dream, a nightmare, and a dual character study all in one. No one—not Vigo, not Dasté, not Parlo, not Simon—even has to toggle. They’re able to do all of them simultaneously, no doubt thanks to Vigo, but the cast keeps up.

Of course, Simon’s the best performance. He’s an aged sailor who’s traveled the world and ended up on the barges, he likes his drink, he likes his cats, and he likes ladies. Maybe too much. The way Vigo and Simon balance Simon right up until the end is phenomenal. Even as Dasté gets more and more volatile, the energy always buzzes off Simon. So good.

Lefebvre’s fine as the cabin boy. He’s entirely support. Gilles Margaritis’s good as a flirty traveling salesman who happens across the naive but separately so newlyweds.

L'Atalante’s glorious.

I Lost My Body (2019, Jérémy Clapin)

I Lost My Body is the profoundly vapid tale of a man (Hakim Faris) and his hand. The hand has been chopped off and as it travels through a computer animated Paris, the film flashes back to Faris’s tale and, presumably, how he lost his hand.

Along the way, the hand kills a young mother and terrorizes a family, while Faris concentrates on stalking Victoire Du Bois. Faris is a pizza delivery guy and a bad one. During one of his failed outings, he meets Du Bois over the intercom and stalks her to her place of work, then home—or so Faris thinks—but instead finds a way to insert himself into her life via a sickly uncle, Patrick d'Assumçao.

Also important is Faris’s tragic backstory—he distracted his parents while they were driving, resulting in a car accident and killing them and shipping him off to poor relations.

Body doesn’t have anything going for it—not the direction, as Clapin seems to think he’s composing his shots for live action or at least CGI, then relying on computer shadow effects for the “hand style” animation. If you don’t mind your precious being insincere, I guess it could be worse. It could actually cause nausea to watch.

Similarly insincerely precious is Dan Levy’s music. Not “Schitt’s” Dan Levy. Another Dan Levy. One who does fine enough montage music just on bad projects.

The script’s terrible and profoundly unaware of itself. When the third act hints at some amazing possible turns of events before the film chickens out of all of them, there’s a moment where I Lost My Body might actually achieve something. Albeit something related to its stalker, toxically masculine hero, but at least it’d be trying. Instead it gives up, which is what everyone should do when confronted with the possible viewing of I Lost My Body.

Give up.

Boudu Saved From Drowning (1932, Jean Renoir)

I was really hoping Boudu Saved From Drowning would have a spectacular finish so I wouldn’t have to write an opening paragraph about how it’s a pretty funny misanthropic class comedy until the titular character, played by Michel Simon as a mischievous, mean-spirited pervert variation on Chaplin’s Tramp, amps up the behavior and rapes one of the two women.

But don’t worry, turns out it’s just what she needed to get her interest in sex going again.

Initially she’s just interested in getting with Simon because he’s a love god, but eventually it spills over to decidedly not sexy dirty old man Charles Granval. Granval’s a moveable dirty old man though, not like Simon. Who’s not old.

It’s kind of a lot all at once. And the ending just shrugs it all off, not doing anything with the now blended debris in Granval’s household, which includes wife Marcelle Hainia and maid Sévérine Lerczinska. Really, Boudu could be remade as a slasher movie where the women eventually just kill the dudes and it’s a happy ending. Director Renoir doesn’t want you to like the characters, because then it’s funnier when bad things happen to them. Only Renoir’s way to keep his distance is to get really naturalistic, really flat, which ends up just separately the good part of the movie and the bad part of the movie. The beginning, with Granval, Hainia, and Lerczinska making each other’s lives complicated juxtaposed against Simon’s search for a missing dog… it’s really good. When the action moves into the connected house and shop and gets into Lerczinska’s duties as maid and shop girl and how Simon’s going to make them difficult because he’s trying to get some action with her… it’s immediately exhausting. The Simon “showcase” in the second half, where he gets long scenes to goof off and be a dick, don’t add up for Renoir. He’s making a comedian’s showcase and getting so bored with the comedian he’s doing complex tracking shots to make the film feel less stagy. He succeeds in making Boudu a less stagy stage adaptation, but he does so in a way it’s very obvious it’s a stage adaptation. He’s trying to keep himself entertained.

Everyone’s playing a caricature. Granval, Hainia, Lerczinska, Simon. When Simon’s got his final look for the film, you almost think it’s a comic strip adaptation. A comic strip adaptation would make more sense as a source for Simon’s performance. Hainia and Lerczinska get the worse parts—not just because of lecherous old men and raping tramps—but also because their characters are even slighter than Granval or Simon’s. But everyone’s perfectly good at their caricature. Simon’s disgusting but so’s humanity, he’s just disgusting in a different way. At least food is good and wine is good and women are willing. Okay, maybe it’s more nihilisting while French than general misanthropy.

Excellent photography from Georges Asselin and Marcel Lucien; good editing from Suzanne de Troeye and Marguerite Renoir, who know more about cutting screwball-ish comedy situations than director Renoir appears to know about directing it. Before the happy rape, there’s at least a nice scale to the comedy situations. The film doesn’t cheap out.

The end is a little self-indulgent, with Renoir going hard on appearing very thoughtful about the previous eighty minutes. Boudu isn’t a riff on a morality play because the characters are too thin to be capable of it. But when it doesn’t add up to anything else, Renoir goes for it in the postscript. And botches it pretty bad.

Though prettily. Very prettily, with great photography.

This post is part of the Viva la France! Blogathon hosted by Eve of Lady Eve’s Reel Life and Christian of Silver Screen Modes.

Jour de fête (1949, Jacques Tati)

It’s about fifteen minutes before lead (and director) Jacques Tati appears in Jour de fête. The film opens with a travelling fair arriving at its destination and starting to set up. Paul Frankeur and Guy Decomble are the two main fair workers–actually they’re the only fair workers with anything to do except Santa Relli as Decomble’s wife. Besides starting to set up the merry-go-round, Decomble has time to make eyes at local girl Maine Vallée. Delcassan plays another resident, an old woman who narrates the goings on for the benefit of the audience–and, presumably, the goat she’s always got with her. The device is rather charming. Tati usually employs long shots, letting the action play out gradually, individual elements building until they intersect–for example, Tati, as actor, gets introduced in dialogue when Relli sends Decomble to mail a letter instead of making eyes at Vallée.

Jean Yatove’s music perfectly accompanies the gentle action.

Tati–as actor–arrives as some men are trying to put up a pole for the fair. Decomble and Frankeur are on the sidelines, offering unhelpful commentary, then draft Tati into action. He’s a bicycle postman, he gets around, he should know how to put up a pole. For most of the film, Jour is a series of intricately connected vingettes. Tati and cowriters Henri Marquet and René Wheeler occasionally pause one vignette to move on to another–Tati’s postman is easily distracted, whether by putting up a pole or getting blasted at the café, making the movements organic.

There’s a lot of physical comedy and callbacks to previous gags. Tati introduces himself biking into town and battling a bee. As he moves, in the distance, across the frame, the bee jumps forward to pester the farmer who’s in the foreground of the shot, before returning to Tati as the bicycle moves past the farmer. There’s a lot of subtle, inventive shots. There are also some obvious sight gags, which usually work–and manage to be charming thanks to the filmmaking and, particularly, the music–but are still kind of cheap.

After introducing Tati’s postman and getting the fair setup on track, the film jumps ahead a bit–with Delcassan offering some more commentary–as the townspeople head to square for the fair, which includes a cinema. The cinema becomes important later. Before it does, however, there’s a lot more with Tati. He can’t refuse the multiple invitations to drink at the café, culminating in Decomble and Frankeur–in a genial malice–getting him incredibly drunk. Sober, Tati’s postman is scatterbrained. Blasted, he’s wholly incompetent.

In between some of the drinking, Tati sees a short film in the cinema showing the U.S. postal service, which implements all the latest technology to deliver the mail. Latest technology like helicopters and skydivers and stunt motorcycles. How can the French compete. Especially since Tati spends the rest of the day in the bar before heading out at night to finish his deliveries. The townspeople have gone to bed, leading to multiple complications, before Tati just passes out drunk.

The next day, however, he’s invigorated and ready to show off how fast he can deliver the post. No surprise, Decomble and Frankeur have given him multiple bad ideas on how he can increase his efficiency.

Tati’s wild ride–which includes some incredible physical comedy and elaborate action direction–happens about an hour into the film’s ninety minute runtime. It doesn’t take the whole last third, but most of it. It’s always inventive, always amusing (or better), but somewhat detached from the rest of the film. Jour’s no longer about the townspeople or the fair, now it’s all Tati and the hyper-speed mail delivery.

Tati, as director, brings it all together for the finish but far less organically than anything else in the picture. The long sequence works–Tati’s hitting familiar places populated by now familiar faces–but it doesn’t fit with the rest. The wrap-up is well-executed, effective, closes all the open threads, but is far from seamless. It treats Tati’s wild ride as a tangent, while the rest of the film built up to the wild ride as though it were the intended result.

So a disjointed–while still more than adequate–finish.

Wonderful direction from Tati throughout. Great composition, great pacing, whether he’s setting up for comedy or narrative–though, really, it’s always both. Mostly excellent cinematography from Jacques Mercanton and Jacques Sauvageot. The day-for-night is somewhat lacking but the content makes up for it. Similarly, Marcel Morreau’s editing only has any hiccups when they’re trying to get goats and chickens to behave.

Jour de fête is superb. Sure, the last third has its problems, but they’re masterfully, sublimely executed problems.

Delicatessen (1991, Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet)

Delicatessen is often adorable. There’s a romance between Dominique Pinon and Marie-Laure Dougnac; they’re both adorable, so Delicatessen is often adorable. They’re star-crossed, though Pinon doesn’t know it (Dougnac does), living in a post-apocalyptic future where people eat people (though there are some vegetarians, but they’re considered terrorists).

I suppose they’d actually be vegan, give all the animals are gone.

Anyway, Pinon works for Dougnac’s father–Jean-Claude Dreyfus–as a handyman in Dreyfus’s building. Dreyfus is mainly a butcher. He hires handymen, kills them, sells their meat to his tenants. Delicatessen is rather dark, but never too dark. Darius Khondji shoots the film with a haze (mostly greenish) and directors Caro and Jeunet are extremely expressionistic with their composition. But even without that visual distance, the film never tries harder than farce. Peculiar farce to be sure, but farce.

Dougnac isn’t happy with her father–who doesn’t care his daughter’s falling for his next victim and is more than happy to foist her off to the gross postman (Chick Ortega). The mail service’s fascist, post-apocalypse. Ortega’s dimwit. Dougnac doesn’t welcome the dimwit fascist’s violent affections. She much prefers Pinon, who used to be a clown with a chimpanzee sidekick.

Delicatessen has a lot of style. But it never wants to talk too much about that style. For instance, it would appear the apocalypse happened sometime in the fifties, but it’s immaterial to the story. It does provide some mood–particularly for Pinon, who’s excellent and able to find a lot of nuance in the part. Of course, he does have the most thoroughly realized part in the script. But he’s just one of the many excellent performances.

Caro and Jeunet get some phenomenal performances of Delicatessen’s cast. Dougnac, for instance, is better than Pinon, even without as much nuance. She’s got the family problems with Dreyfus, but they don’t get anywhere near as much attention as Pinon’s backstory. His backstory crosses subplots, bringing in Dreyfus’s lover Karin Viard (she’s his lover for free meat), for example. Pinon’s the mystery to be discovered, even though he’s the one in danger from the mystery he has yet to discover.

Most of the first half deals with Pinon getting situated at the building and the film introducing the various other residents. Silvie Laguna, who keeps trying to kill herself with these Rube Goldberg contraptions, gets a lot to do even though she doesn’t really figure into the main plot. Delicatessen is always willing to meander, especially in the first half. In the second half, there’s just not enough time because it all of a sudden becomes very intense. Even with the film played for humor–the revolutionary force of de facto vegans are silly looking guys (all guys) in raincoats–once Dreyfus decides it’s time for Pinon to go, Delicatessen all of a sudden gets rather dangerous.

Because for all the cannibalism and post-apocalyptic whatnot, it’s always a lot of fun. Not even gross fun. There’s more hinted gore in the introduction than in the rest of the film. It primes the viewer, gets them on edge, but Caro and Jeunet use that attention for other things.

Like that touching love story between Pinon and Dougnac.

So Pinon, Dougnac, and Dreyfus are great. Viard’s good but she doesn’t have much of a part (she’s excellent in the situational stuff). Ortega’s good. Anne-Marie Pisani is real good. Laguna’s great. Rufus is great (he’s got a crush on married Laguna). All the revolutionaries are fine. They’re played a lot broader than anything else. How could they not be with the raincoats and headlamps.

Technically, the film’s marvelous. Caro and Jeunet’s composition, Khondji’s photography, Caro’s production design, the costumes, all of it. But then there’s Hervé Schneid’s editing, which is exquisite. And might be why the film can get away with what it gets away with. The cuts, especially in the third act action sequence, smoothly move between the contrary, exaggerated shots. It’s marvelous.

Delicatessen is beautifully acted, technically marvelous, imaginative but unfocused farce.

3/4★★★

CREDITS

Directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet; written by Jeunet, Caro, and Gilles Adrien; director of photography, Darius Khondji; edited by Hervé Schneid; music by Carlos D’Alessio; production designer, Caro; produced by Claudie Ossard; released by Union Générale Cinématographique.

Starring Dominique Pinon (Louison), Marie-Laure Dougnac (Julie Clapet), Jean-Claude Dreyfus (Clapet), Karin Viard (Mademoiselle Plusse), Chick Ortega (Postman), Ticky Holgado (Marcel Tapioca), Anne-Marie Pisani (Madame Tapioca), Silvie Laguna (Aurore Interligator), Jean-François Perrier (Georges Interligator), Rufus (Robert Kube), Jacques Mathou (Roger), Boban Janevski (Young Rascal), Mikael Todde (Young Rascal), Edith Ker (Grandmother), Patrick Paroux (Puk), Maurice Lamy (Pank), Marc Caro (Fox), and Howard Vernon (Frog Man).

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The Fire Within (1963, Louis Malle)

Director Malle sets up The Fire Within as a series of events. They don’t feel like events–or even vignettes–because protagonist Maurice Ronet is so transfixing. As the film progresses and the viewer gets to know Ronet better, gets to understand him better, Fire changes. The film is always about Ronet’s plans, Ronet’s actions and how the viewer anticipates them, but once it becomes clear he’s not in control… Well, it doesn’t just change the last third of the film, it changes the first two-thirds of it as well.

Ronet is a recovering alcoholic. He can’t get out of his recovery clinic. The first third of the film, after beautifully establishing his normal days by showing an abnormal one (visiting with his lover–and his absentee wife’s friend–played by Léna Skerla), is mostly just Ronet by himself. Fire is about monotony but never monotonous. Malle has to establish Ronet’s routines to best break them later.

The majority of the film takes place during Ronet’s day trip to Paris. He’s suicidal, saying goodbye to friends from his old life as an amiable, popular Parisian drunk. He’s not an artist, but he’s friends with artists. He’s not an intellectual, but he’s friends with intellectuals.

Fire is simultaneously an exploration of Ronet’s alcoholism (after the fact) and the society he’s abandoned. Malle’s able to juxtapose the two so successfully because of the film’s structure–Ronet moves from conversation to conversation, person to person, moment to moment. It wouldn’t work without the gorgeous black and white photography from Ghislain Cloquet but, technically, the marvel is Suzanne Baron’s editing. Whether cuts between scenes or cuts between shots, Baron brings a calm to even the most hectic moments. Given Malle frequently cuts to closer shots to emphasis Ronet, then out again to longer ones (though never too long, even outdoors), Baron’s ability to maintain that tranquility is even more impressive.

Acting-wise, Ronet is the whole show. He’s surrounded by great performances, but they’re all in small parts. Jeanne Moreau is wonderful, but it’s basically a cameo. Same goes for Bernard Noël. They’re great, but they’re great because Ronet’s so great. The chemistry between the actors, how Malle has a slightly different style for each interaction, all while maintaining a particular deliberateness.

The Fire Within devastates, but it’s also glorious in its intensity. It’s relentless and breathtaking.

4/4★★★★

CREDITS

Directed by Louis Malle; screenplay by Malle, based on a novel by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle; director of photography, Ghislain Cloquet; edited by Suzanne Baron; production designer, Bernard Evein; released by Lux Compagnie Cinématographique de France.

Starring Maurice Ronet (Alain Leroy), Jean-Paul Moulinot (Dr. La Barbinais), Bernard Noël (Dubourg), Jeanne Moreau (Eva), Alexandra Stewart (Solange) and Léna Skerla (Lydia).

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