This Week in Geek (17-23/06/19)

"Accomplishments"

In theaters: I think a lot of people want Late Night to be edgier and eschew formula altogether, take fiercer aim at discrimination in the work place, etc., but I don't think that's Mindy Kaling's persona, either on or off screen. What she's produced here with the help of many other talented people, including director Nisha Ganatra, Emma Thompson and John Lithgow, is light, funny and heartfelt, and it aims for happy endings where Kaling's sincere charms win the day. They don't all have to be savage critiques of our culture to make their points, and Late Night is winsome in part because it's utopian. It still makes its points about "diversity hires", ageism (both ways), racism and misogyny; it just isn't particularly angry in its stance. Really, if you took away the "one year later" epilogue, it would leave things in a place that's a little more ambiguous and truthful. Timid in approach or not, how great is it to have a female-led comedy that isn't blatantly a romcom, or at least applies that set-up to mentor/pupil rather than lovers? (There's still romance, but it's very much in the subplot column.)

At home: I love the story of how La Pointe-Courte was made. Agnès Varda goes to the titular fishing village to shoot footage for a friend native to the area. Somehow it evokes a story, and she returns with unpaid actors (including Philippe Noiret in his first credited role; he would go on to have an illustrious career) and instinctively creates a textured feature full of contrasts, something that gets her the title of "grandmother of the French New Wave". Though on the surface, the film is about a married couple of the verge of divorce, having a rather Bergmanesque conversation about their relationship, intellectual and really quite stagey, that story stands in complete contrast with the naturalistic village life, shot with the documentarian's eye, and yet still informing the couple's story. Varda's world is a rich, uncontrolled one, where cats and fishermen do their own thing in the background. When we catch up with the villagers, they're dealing with the health authority, gossip, death, celebrations, and traditions, essentially carrying on with the business of LIFE. The couple seems unwilling to do the same. They are in an arrested state, pondering their future, but not living the present. The village is the active part of their conversation. The polluted waters in certain parts of the bay mirrors their own unidentified troubles. The canal jousting plays out when one of them must perhaps win the argument (or take a fall). And since the man comes from this village, it is its charms that must win over the woman if they can. In visual terms alone, it's clear from Varda's shots what drew her back to Sète and La Pointe-Courte. The location is used wonderfully and meaningfully.

Cléo from 5 to 7 is Agnès Varda's second feature film, seven years after her debut, and I think it taps into a lot of the same things as La Pointe-Courte. Again we have a rich world filled with life (and cats!), and a protagonist that seems oblivious to it, Varda placing Cléo (Corinne Marchand) in real Paris locations and using documentary methods to get her shots. There are a lot of shots of real people looking at the camera, which creates Cléo's point of view, as if she was turning heads everywhere she went. It works because this is a film about self-centeredness and narcissism. The conceit is that we're watching 90 minutes of Cléo's life, in real time (what happens between 6:30 and 7 is part of the film's ambiguity), as she anxiously awaits medical test results. Her dread makes her selfish and self-obsessed, as it might anyone, and she tries to distract herself with hat shopping and other games of vanity, but keeps being reminded of her problems (because everything must be about her, of course). Cléo is probably self-centered normally. And that's where Parisian life comes into play, various dramas playing out in Cléo's vicinity, in a way all speaking to a certain selfishness in other characters. Perhaps I'm being unkind, perhaps I should simply say that the film recognizes that each person can only really view the world with a single point of view, though it's not impossible for people to share. Varda sets the film in her immediate present and current affairs (namely what's happening in Algeria) translates France into Cléo's character, a self-centered (read: colonial) nation, perhaps even a diseased one. From the intimate to a wider tapestry in less time than the film's title indicates, and plenty of cool experiments with color, editing, and camera angles. La Pointe-Courte could almost be said to be a happy accident, but Cléo is damn confident and clever. Even Varda's earliest work was no fluke.

Even when Agnès Varda is working in documentary shorts for the tourism board, she is still immensely clever and poetic. Just as Du côté de la côte - a portrait of the French Riviera - plays with words in its title yet has is lamely titled Along the Coast in English, I think it loses a lot in its English subtitles. In French, the text is full of clever word play and poetry that makes the short rise above this kind of fare. Varda shows the same photographer's eye scanning the coast for interesting imagery that she'd already mastered in La Pointe-Courte, both in terms of scenery and observing real people in action. And yes, she also manages to get a cat in there! In terms of tone, the portrait is a loving one, but is playful too, whether it's taking shots at British business encrusted in the region, or how German women don't follow the right trends, or even in the way the region is explored almost as stream of consciousness, cutting from idea to the next often with a wry smile.

Steinbeck's East of Eden is a multi-generation saga, but the movie that made James Dean a star (just in time for his death) reshapes only a sliver from the expansive novel. As it must, only hinting at some of the older characters' backgrounds and motivations, and sometimes using their story as surprise revelations. Inspired (as the title suggests) by the story of Cain and Abel - here: Cal and Aron - from Cain's perspective, the jealous brother desperate to get the love of his father, but as the fruit of a sinful mother, unable to get ever obtain it. The love of his brother's fiancée may be more in reach. It doesn't strictly adhere to the Biblical tale, coming to different conclusions by simply asking WHY Cain went bad. So it's really all about Dean's performance as a kid who breaks the rules for no good reason, which is both a quality and a fault in him. Many will empathize with the parent-child relationship even if Steinbeck fans may feel his work was butchered. For me, while I liked the performances and the psychology they suggested, the adaptation from the novel made for a meandering second act. As a result, I wasn't always invested as much as I needed to be.

The Courtship of Eddie's Father is a rather sweet movie in which 9-year-old Ron Howard steels the show, trying to get his dad (Glenn Ford) a new wife after his own mother's passing. He's too young to understand about grief, but from what he's learned from comics, so long as she doesn't have "skinny eyes", it should be okay. Though it plays (and looks) like a romantic comedy, it sometimes dips into melodrama, as needed, and has some truthful things to say about being a child, raising a child, and courtship in and out of that situation. The Jerry Van Dike subplot feels a little unncessary, though Stella Stevens playing the drums makes me absurdly happy, so maybe it was all worth it. I started by applauding L'il Ronny Howard who really was heads and shoulders above most child stars, but really, none of this would work without Glenn Ford who moves effortlessly between being kind, stern, neurotic, funny, and sad.

When I read The Red Balloon (Le ballon rouge), a short, won an Oscar for best original screenplay, I was intrigued. Especially considering the 34-minute film is practically wordless. It's totally deserved. What a charming piece of magical realism this is, about a young boy (played by director Lamorisse's son) finding a gorgeous red balloon and bonding with it, as one might a pet. From then on, it follows him around, sometimes drawing the attention of the wrong people (like the neighborhood bullies). You're practically on the edge of your seat whenever the balloon is in danger of being grabbed or burst, shouting at it through the screen to fly away. When you're watching something from 1956 and you can't figure out how it was made, you're looking at something special, on the order of stage magic. And that balloon... so big and red, it pops (sorry, bad pun) off the screen like a special effect even if it didn't have seeming agency. What a lovely, lovely piece of cinema. FAVORITE OF THE WEEK

Apparently Truffaut's inspiration for Les 400 coups, Little Fugitive is still a piece of Americana through and through. Its 7-year-old protagonist Joey wants to be included in the neighborhood street baseball, and has ambitions of becoming a cowboy. What's more American than that? After he's made to believe he killed his older brother Lennie, he runs off to Coney Island, spends all his money on rides as if without a care in the world, and becomes a little entrepreneur to keep the ride going over his two-day escape. Again, very American, but the film refuses to judge its characters. One might initially see admonition of gun control, the glorification of violence, and the American Dream which are all age-spoofed in this story, but after the French New Wave-inspiring first half, the movie switches to what is essentially a comedy as Lennie looks for his brother smacks of forgiveness, not just between brothers, but between film and subject matter.<

As My Life as a Dog shows, chaos breeds chaos, or so it would seem from the life of Swedish 12-year-old Ingemar, who has a real knack for getting into trouble. At least, while he lives with his mother and brother in a home that's less than nurturing. The mother is clearly overwhelmed, and she's ill to boot. So when Ingemar goes out to live with an aunt and uncle in another town, so as to give his mom a break, he finds order and support he never knew before. And he's at an age where he's becoming interested in sex, and those opportunities open up to him as well. Coming of age movies like to play it older, teenagers coming into adulthood, but My Life as a Dog dares show us the previous coming of age, from childhood to adolescence. All our experiences work to make us who we are, and it fits that part of the setting includes a glassworks, and that a recurring joke is about a man who never stops working on his house's roof. As the title ironically suggests, it's a film about shaping identity, and it includes a very interesting character in Saga, a tomboy who poses as a boy to play soccer, at least as important to the themes of the story as Ingemar is. For him, it's really a question of asking who he is without the chaos. Does he have to be troublesome? Is that just a matter of environment? Or is he stuck with it? A very complex portrait of the end of childhood.

Early in The Chocolate War, a teacher rather gauchely stages a social experiment in which his classroom becomes, through blind obedience to his authority, Nazi Germany. And that's basically what the film is about. We've all been there, right? High school, I mean, and the selling of chocolate, magazine subscriptions, etc. to pay for SOMEthing the Education Department (or Board, if we're talking private school like in the film) doesn't want to pay for. What if you said no? No, I will not sell this chocolate? I wish I'd had the balls, frankly. I'm no salesman, and I proved it year after year. But in the film, one kid DOES have the balls, and he will suffer for it. Everything in The Chocolate War asks whether we should follow a bad law. There's the head teacher pushing chocolate quotas to the point of corruption. There's the students' secret society and its absurd "assignments". And it culminates in a unique boxing match where our hero (and to be fair, we follow the "villains" more than we do him) has a shot at revenge, one with amazingly cruel and ridiculous rules that highlight how unjust and random rules can seem at that age (existentialism for teens). Do adults understand rules better, or do we just become inured and fall in line? This isn't your normal coming of age story; they push the conformity angle to an absurdist limit. I really like it. And this is a rare '80s movie with a strong soundtrack, smartly going with art pop greats like Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel and Yazoo that have aged better than a lot of era's music.

Before The Dirty Dozen, Lee Marvin led The Professionals into a western Mission: Impossible in Mexico to rescue the ransomed bride of a rich land owner. A well-produced, if formulaic flick, some characters easily outshine others, Burt Lancaster's pragmatic yet romantic demolitions expert and Woody Strode's Elven ranger especially (was this meant to be a role for a Native American?). (Robert Ryan has very little to do in comparison.) The Professionals isn't just uneven in its character focus, but in its pacing as well. We might spend a big chunk with Lancaster alone while he resolves his arc at the expense of everyone else's, and the team's action climax kind of happens in the second act. But it still works as a casual entertainment, especially if like me, you enjoy impossible mission films. This isn't The Magnificent Seven, but then what is? It still has a strong cast playing cool characters, some good action set pieces in between the walking around the desert, and a cracking great final line.

With News from Home, Belgian director Chantal Akerman shows she can capture tedium as brilliantly in non-fiction, as she did in fiction (i.e. her masterpiece Jeanne Dielman). As her immobile camera photographs New York's streets and subways, she reads from her mother's letters (but never hers, it's a one way conversation) in a lamenting monotone that's sometimes drowned out by ambient sound. In her mother's repeated motifs, we by turns sense the reason why anyone would move away from home, and feel badly for the supportive, albeit needy parent suffering withdrawal after years of making their child their entire life. In her mundane stories about people we don't know, we see the reflection of Akerman's images, filled with anonymous New Yorkers who quizzically look at the camera, or simply ignore its presence. The biggest mystery of all is Akerman herself from whom we get no real news, her camera entirely without judgment or fathomable motive. Does she feel that she's part of this great city, or apart from it? As the movie continues, we'll have more moving shots as the camera looks out of car and train windows, perhaps informing us that she's become a part of the bustle and hustle, or perhaps she's just trying to see everything before she leaves in that final shot from the Staton Island ferry, where it's hard not to see the seagulls following as nagging avatars of her mother. I'm often reminded of Tarkovsky's very still shots in Akerman's work, in both cases forcing you to think as you process and re-process an image. Akerman's frame is always more interesting, however, perhaps because it's less philosophical and more open to interpretation. This one creeps up on you. I admit I thought the noise in the first half was giving me a headache and the experiment quickly got old. And then Akerman sticks with it even longer and your head goes many places, examining your place in the world and trying to pinpoint hers. Not experimentalism for its own sake, the experiment actually yields a powerful effect. I'm all about this.

Where are all the mermaids in My Mother the Mermaid?! Blatantly false advertizing! This Korean film still has a fantasy element, mind you, but it's time travel. So this young woman who is still living with her parents, has real trouble dealing with her mother. But then, no one finds her easy. She's crass, stingy, perpetually angry, and abominably judgmental. And she likes swimming , ergo the title. Anyway, after the length of an act getting to know these people, our protagonist goes to her mom and dad's home village, somehow crossing into the past where she can witness their courtship and perhaps come to understand her mother better. Here's the thing. Though her teenage mom is a much nicer, happier person, and her daughter does come to some kind of understanding, I don't think WE do. I don't think we can understand how she became such a curmudgeon, nor is the romance all that believable. Even the time travel story isn't particularly justified, since the daughter can do nothing to change history, and is absent from the proceedings for long periods of time (doesn't help that the actress is playing a dual role as the young mother too). It's like she's occasionally haunting a flashback. While there's a good human story in there, it mostly lies in the present-day and its ambiguities (well played by Go Doo-shim). The past doesn't connect as meaningfully as it should.

Set time machine to a time and place where there might actually be mermaids. Grrr! Keywords: Mermaids!

Take the Little Mermaid, turn it into a dark and nasty goth punk musical in Polish, and you've got The Lure, a film that scores a lot of points for originality. As a musical, it has a lot of pleasant songs and dance numbers, some diagetic - the two mermaids work in a cabaret-style strip club - some not, giving much of the film the look and feel of modern music videos. Full props to the translators for giving the subtitles rhyme and meter appropriate to each. You could, in fact, sing along in English over the Polish singers and it would still make sense. The Lure plays with the Little Mermaid legend, but with a horror twist. It's a dangerous world where you might get eaten or turn into sea foam if you're not careful. So quite watchable even beyond the novelty aspect, but overall, I wish some things had been clearer. In particular, the lesbian element felt a little confused. Plot-wise, there's one character whose role I don't quite get, and I'm left questioning what the "sisters"' actual relationship was. On a thematic level, the film hints at the mermaid as a gay symbol, or at least of being true to oneself, which the "Little Mermaid" rejects for (male) love, but it's not entirely clear if this is the case because not all the pieces fit. Still, the world is more interesting for having The Lure in it.