The Decade List: L'intrus (2004)

L’intrus [The Intruder] – dir. Claire Denis

In what Claire Denis described as her own mood piece inspired by Jean-Luc Nancy’s book of the same name, The Intruder is the most ecstatically puzzling of her career, a haunting exploration of a man dying of heart failure (Michel Subor). Denis subtly takes you into the mind of Louis, blending his fantasies into the already challenging narrative. What we do know is that he has a son (Grégoire Colin) he barely sees, a failing heart and is visited by a young Russian woman (Katia Golubeva), to whom he owes a large sum of money and might be a manifestation of his imagination (or “the Angel of Death,” as some have speculated).

I don’t think I’m alone in claiming The Intruder to be Denis’ most difficult in deciphering (nor in my total fascination with it). And still, it’s somehow everything I want out of one of her films: frustration, bewilderment and atmosphere. Similar to Beau travail, my other favorite film of hers, The Intruder only seems to strengthen through memory, even if returning to it still proves to be an extremely complex endeavor.

With: Michel Subor, Grégoire Colin, Katia Golubeva, Bambou, Florence Loiret-Caille, Alex Descas, Béatrice Dalle, Lolita Chammah, Kin Dong-ho, Henri Tetainanuarii, Jean-Marc Teriipaia, Anna Tetuaveroa
Screenplay: Claire Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau, based on the book by Jean-Luc Nancy
Cinematography: Agnès Godard
Music: Stuart Staples
Country of Origin: France
US Distributor: Wellspring

Premiere: 9 September 2004 (Venice Film Festival)
US Premiere: 18 March 2005 (Rendezvous with French Cinema)

The Decade List: Wild Side (2004)

Wild Side – dir. Sébastien Lifshitz

With the great Agnès Godard working as the director of photography, Sébastien Lifshitz’s second narrative feature Wild Side invites the very easy comparisons to the cinema of Claire Denis. Lifshitz’s allusions to Denis aren’t simply visual, however. Following Presque rien and Les corps ouverts, Lifshitz has mastered the art of the elliptical narrative, a trait often met with disdain after it become all-too-common in the ‘90s as well as the best tool for directors to dish out cheap “surprises.” For both Denis and Lifshitz, the elliptical narrative provides something genuine; the gaps and shifts in time are poetic decisions, not mischievous ones.

Nearly the entire “story” of Presque rien lies outside of its frame, never truly explaining the specifics of its central character’s mental state or how his summer romance fell apart. Like Presque rien, Wild Side is framed around what most people would qualify as a significant moment in Stéphanie’s (Stéphanie Michelini) life. For Mathieu (Jérémie Elkaïm) in Presque rien, it was his “first love;” for Stéphanie, it’s the return home to care for her dying mother (Josiane Stoléru). Lifshitz only uses these scenarios as reference points; neither leads to sudsy bits of melodrama. They almost begin to function as anti-melodramas, films that adopt the foundation of the genre while consciously evading its dramatic signifiers. The focal points of Lifshitz’s films exist in their aftermath of those evaded criterions, something that beautifully mirrors the way he defines his characters through their unarticulated emotional wounds.

Alongside the Denis associations, there are hints of Ingmar Bergman’s middle period work, when the director became obsessed with faces and the truths that hide within them. For Bergman, those faces belonged to brilliant actors he had worked with for the better part of his career. In Wild Side, Lifshitz used a cast comprised mostly of non-actors, aside from the late Yasmine Belmadi (who made his acting debut in Les corps ouverts) and Stoléru, predominantly a theatre actress. It’s uninteresting to ponder how much of reality there is to be found in the characters of Stéphanie and Mikhail (Edouard Nikitine) than to simply admire the depth and history conveyed through their faces.

More than just faces though, Wild Side, which obviously takes its name from the famous Lou Reed song, is about the body and the mysteries within them. Opening with a collage of medium close-ups of Stéphanie’s naked body on a bed. Shots of her back, her legs, her ass and eventually her cock provoke the underlying question in Wild Side. Following the opening montage, we see Stéphanie at a nightclub where Antony Hegarty, the transgendered lead-singer of Antony and the Johnsons, performing the song “I Fell in Love with a Dead Boy,” ending with another question, this time explicitly uttered in the form of song, “Are you a boy, or are you a girl?” Hegarty stares at Stéphanie as he sings this bit, though gender identification is only a small facet of the question Lifshitz asks in Wild Side.

Composed of a functional ménage à trois between Stéphanie, who sells her body for a living, Russian immigrant Mikhail who speaks very little French and Djamel (Belmadi), a young prostitute of French/Arab descent, the characters in Wild Side search for the answer through their broken blood relations, in their physical make-up and the changes it has gone through, natural or otherwise, and in each other. Mikhail and Djamel can barely communicate with each other due to language barriers, while Stéphanie and Mikhail’s outlet for verbal interaction is in English, their second language. These limitations offer the biggest clue to their introspective quests, as well as providing something of a correlation to Lifshitz’s cinematic world, one defined best by its implicit beauty.

With: Stéphanie Michelini, Edouard Nikitine, Yasmine Belmadi, Josiane Stoléru, Benoît Verhaert, Christophe Sermet, Fabrice Rodriguez, Amine Adjina, Corentin Carinos, Perrine Stevenard, Antony Hegarty
Screenplay: Stéphane Bouquet, Sébastien Lifshitz
Cinematography: Agnès Godard
Music: Jocelyn Pook
Country of Origin: France/Belgium/UK
US Distributor: Wellspring

Premiere: 8 February 2004 (Berlin International Film Festival)
US Premiere: 16 May 2004 (Boston Gay and Lesbian Film Festival)

Awards: Teddy: Best Feature Film, Manfred Salzgeber Award (Berlin International Film Festival); Special Jury Award – Sébastien Lifshitz (Gijón International Film Festival); Grand Jury Award: Outstanding International Narrative Feature (L.A. Outfest); New Director’s Showcase Award (Seattle International Film Festival)

The Decade List: Or (Mon trésor) (2004)

Or (Mon trésor) [Or (My Treasure)] – dir. Keren Yedaya

Keren Yedaya’s debut feature Or (My Treasure) is a truly disconcerting experience, surprising and bold. For starters, the frame never moves; each shot is taken from a stationary camera that exposes with crisp precision every unflattering detail. The story, about a woman who can’t bring herself to quit pulling tricks and her daughter who can't bear to see her mother waste away to that lifestyle, sounds familiar. However, the emotional and personal conflicts within the daughter, Or, make for juicy, complex cinema. Ronit Elkabetz (so perfect in Late Marriage) and Dana Ivfy, who also play a separate mother/daughter pair in Yedaya’s 2009 Jaffa, deliver some wonderful, difficult performances. Or (My Treasure) has the ability to quietly disturb and revolt.

With: Ronit Elkabetz, Dana Ivgy, Meshar Cohen, Katia Zinbris, Shmuel Edelman, Sarit Vino-Elad
Screenplay: Sari Ezouz, Keren Yedaya
Cinematography: Laurent Brunet
Country of Origin: Israel/France
US Distributor: Kino

Premiere: 17 May 2004 (Cannes Film Festival)
US Premiere: 5 October 2004 (New York Film Festival)

Awards: Caméra d’Or, Critics Week Grand Prize, Prix regards jeune (Cannes Film Festival); Best Actress – Dana Ivgy (Awards of the Israeli Film Academy); Best Israeli Feature (Jerusalem Film Festival); New Voices/New Visions Special Mention (Palm Springs International Film Festival)

The Decade List: When Will I Be Loved (2004)

When Will I Be Loved – dir. James Toback

If I were to guess which film on The Decade List would be scorned the most, it’d have to be James Toback’s When Will I Be Loved. I’ve never heard or read anyone casually dismiss the film; vicious abhorrence colored the (many) pans it received from what few critics and audiences actually watched the thing. Like Abel Ferrara, a fellow NYC filmmaker with the uncanny ability to sharply divide his audience, Toback has a strange and distinctive idea of what America is and what values it holds. When Will I Be Loved is a very unofficial continuation of the director’s Black & White, set in a world filled with generally unlikable souls with overactive libidos who have run-ins with an unlikely lot of celebrities.

Toback even repeats Black & White’s Central Park orgy, which shocked the MPAA in 1999 but, even with the addition of another body, was left in tact here.

While situated in a homogeneous world, When Will I Be Loved feels more like an overhead tale that might have happened to someone one of the characters in Black & White knows. It’s Toback’s fucked-up version of fairy tale, in which a petty conman (Fred Weller) arranges for a reenactment of Indecent Proposal, prostituting his girlfriend, a sexually adventurous heiress of some sort (Neve Campbell), to an aging Italian media giant (Dominic Chianese) for a six-figure sum. Toback and Campbell’s Vera are wiser than anyone involved with Indecent Proposal, so instead of blasé marital guilt, we’re treated with a premeditated act of revenge.

Though I can see what turned so many people off When Will I Be Loved (the sleaziness, the meandering, chatty walks through the city, the absence of a single “likeable” character), something about the film just pops for me. Maybe it’s the oversaturated color scheme, Neve Campbell’s surprising transformation into an interesting actor, or possibly my liking of it is for the very reasons most people don’t.

One of Toback’s greatest charms in his fantasy film worlds is the wonderfully oddball cast he acquires. Take Exposed (where you get Nastassja Kinski, Harvey Keitel, Bibi Andersson, Pierre Clémenti and Rudolf Nureyev) or Black & White (where Claudia Schiffer, Robert Downey Jr., Mike Tyson, Marla Maples, Method Man, Brooke Shields, Ben Stiller, Bijou Phillips and Joe Pantoliano cohabitate), both of which provide messy delights in their casting alone. When Will I Be Loved isn’t as expansive as those two, but we still get to see Neve Campbell stop to flirt with Lori Singer, playing herself, while in the park, just after running into Mike Tyson, claiming to be a man named Buck who “doesn’t give a fuck,” yelling at someone on the street. Karen Allen is also pretty memorable in her small appearance as Vera’s mother. Proceed with caution, but thank me later if you happen to be among the happy few.

With: Neve Campbell, Dominic Chianese, Fred Weller, Karen Allen, James Toback, Joelle Carter, Barry Primus, Alex Feldman, Ashley Shelton, Damon Dash, Lori Singer, Mike Tyson, Jason Pendergraft
Screenplay: James Toback
Cinematography: Larry McConkey
Music: Oli ‘Power’ Grant
Country of Origin: USA
US Distributor: IFC Films

Premiere: 4 June 2004 (Lake Placid Film Festival)

The Decade List: Innocence (2004)

Innocence – dir. Lucile Hadzihalilovic

Profoundly peculiar and picaresque, Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s feature debut Innocence ranks among the most startling, magical cinematic portraits of adolescence in recent memory. Set at a mysterious all-girls boarding school where new recruits arrive in caskets marked with a giant star on top, the film tracks three of the near-forty girls who find themselves at this school, hidden away from the world by nature and a giant wall along its perimeter. Iris (Zoé Auclair) is the youngest of her house, wide-eyed and confused, missing her little brother and clinging to the eldest of the house, Bianca (Bérangère Haubruge), who’s in her final year and slowly approaching sexual maturity. In the middle of them, age-wise, is Alice (Lea Bridarolli), an awkward-looking young girl who dreams of leaving the community by impressing the directrice (Corinne Marchand) with her dancing skills.

There seems to be something overly schematic about Innocence, like an unbreakable code surrounding physical attributes of the young girls, based on the specifically colored ribbons that adorn their hair, which signify the age, or grade, the girls are in. A not-so-small detail that is hard to ignore is that the young girl who disappears early in the film is the only one of her peers to tie her hair in a straight ponytail as opposed to side pigtails. It’s not a coincidence surely, but Hadzihalilovic never makes breaking this code simple, if even possible, an act that keeps the narrative’s focus from feeling as clean as it appears.

Instead, Innocence comes across like a dream-like fable of pre-menstrual female adolescence (the girls are sent away from the school around the time they have their first period). Gorgeously rendered by cinematographer Benoît Debie, who shot Hadzihalilovic’s husband Gaspar Noé’s two most recent films Irrèversible and Enter the Void, Innocence never drops its visual spell, making the girls’ journeys formed out of a balance of obedience and childlike curiosity. It’s hard to know what to make of the two adult teachers, played by Marion Cotillard and Hélène de Fougerolles, who are both sympathetic to the girls’ maturation and working toward a strange archetype of feminine elegance. Innocence is a haunting parable, one that’s neither easy to decipher nor quick to leave one’s mind.

With: Bérangère Haubruge, Zoé Auclair, Marion Cotillard, Hélène de Fougerolles, Lea Bridarolli, Alisson Lalieux, Astrid Homme, Ana Palomo-Diaz, Olga Peytavi-Müller, Corinne Marchand, Sonia Petrovna
Screenplay: Lucile Hadzihalilovic, based on the novella Mine-Haha or the Corporeal Education of Girls by Frank Wedekind
Cinematography: Benoît Debie
Music: Richard Cooke
Country of Origin: Belgium/France/UK
US Distributor: Leisure Time Features/Home Vision

Premiere: 10 September 2004 (Toronto International Film Festival)
US Premiere: 16 March 2005 (Rendez-vous with French Cinema)

Awards: Best New Director (San Sebastián International Film Festival); Bronze Horse, Best Cinematography (Stockholm Film Festival); FIPRESCI Prize – International Competition (Istanbul International Film Festival)

The Decade List: 3-Iron (2004)

3-Iron – dir. Kim Ki-duk

When rewatching Kim Ki-duk’s 3-Iron, I had the fear that the very stylized contrivances that made me initially like it would have worn thin. As admirable as it may have seemed to situate your films around characters that barely utter a word to one another (if at all), this action proved a little too precious when I revisited The Isle, despite its occasional grotesqueness. Kim Ki-duk has proven by now that his chattier films, like Bad Guy and Samaritan Girl, fall short of his minimal works (like the splendid Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring), so I was pleased when 3-Iron managed to retain its poetic charms the second time around.

Tae-suk (Lee Hyun-kyoon) spends his days nimbly breaking into the homes of vacationing families, observing the details of their living spaces and quietly exiting before its inhabitants return. Eventually, he makes the mistake of entering a home that’s not empty, where the sullen Sun-hwa (Lee Seung-yeon) resides while her asshole husband (Kwon Hyuk-ho) is away on business. Sun-hwa bests Tae-suk at his own game of phantom lurking, and naturally they fall in wordless love. Altogether tighter and more elegantly composed than The Isle, 3-Iron works because it’s more of a fable than an obtuse allegory. And like all the best fables I can think of, 3-Iron is perfectly, equally lovely and sad.

With: Lee Seung-yeon, Lee Hyun-kyoon, Kwon Hyuk-ho, Choi Jeong-ho
Screenplay: Kim Ki-duk
Cinematography: Jang Seong-back
Music: Slvian
Country of Origin: South Korea/Japan
US Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics

Premiere: 7 September 2004 (Venice Film Festival)
US Premiere: January 2005 (Sundance Film Festival)

Awards: Special Director’s Award, Little Golden Lion, FIPRESCI Prize – Competition (Venice Film Festival)

The Decade List: My Summer of Love (2004)

My Summer of Love – dir. Paweł Pawlikowski

Something about the title My Summer of Love evokes the not-so-distant-past. It’s not a sentence, so there’s no verb tense to indicate such. However, it conjures a memory. “That was the summer where I…” And don’t all those summers occur during the strange and exciting period of “growing up?” Everything about Paweł Pawlikowski’s second feature supports the notion of a moment in time remembered rather than one transpiring in some variation of real time on the screen.

Filmed in lush sun-drenched hues of gold, Ryszard Lenczewski’s cinematography is almost too lovely, and as I said before when comparing the film to Sébastien Lifshitz’s Presque rien, rewatching the film never fully lives up to your recollection of the visuals. In fact, revisiting the film as a whole never really lives up to your first encounter with it, which ironically stands as one of My Summer of Love’s strengths, of which there are many.

The catalysts for this particular summer, which takes place in no specific year as Pawlikowski eliminates all cultural indicators of time, arrive within the first minutes of the film. Mona (the wonderful Natalie Press) lies on the grass, next to her engine-less moped, as Tamsin (Emily Blunt), suspended from her boarding school, rides up to her on a horse. After this initial meeting, where an invitation to hang out is offered by Tamsin, Mona returns to her home, a pub left to her and her brother Phil (Paddy Considine) by their deceased mother, to find Phil emptying the liquor bottles and announcing his conversion to Christianity. The scene that follows shows the final sexual encounter between Mona and the married man (Dean Andrews) she’s having an affair with. Within ten minutes, the slate has been wiped clean, each of the characters (Mona, Tamsin and Phil, that is) given a new beginning.

This quick succession of events would have come across as a crude narrative convenience, but Pawlikowski and co-writer Michael Wynne use this as a clever framing device, bookended naturally with the shattering of the characters’ many illusions. I always seem to return to a quote Roger Ebert made about the film: “This isn't a coming-of-age movie so much as a movie about being of an age.” My Summer of Love isn’t about first-love, sexual maturation or identification. Love really doesn't factor into the film. It’s about the intoxicating possibilities three people, all lost in some form and with seemingly interminable free time, develop with one another, each so immersed in their own fantasy that they fail to notice the harm it inevitably causes the adjacent parties.

With: Natalie Press, Emily Blunt, Paddy Considine, Dean Andrews, Paul Antony-Barber, Lynette Edwards, Kathryn Sumner
Screenplay: Paweł Pawlikowski, Michael Wynne, based on the novel by Helen Cross
Cinematography: Ryszard Lenczewski
Music: Will Gregory, Alison Goldfrapp
Country of Origin: UK
US Distributor: Focus Features

Premiere: 21 August 2004 (Edinburgh Film Festival)
US Premiere: 20 May 2005 (Seattle International Film Festival)

Awards: Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film (BAFTAs); Best European Film (Polish Film Awards)

The Decade List: The White Diamond (2004)

The White Diamond - dir. Werner Herzog

If 2005's Grizzly Man displayed Herzog's wry meditation on the destructive, inalterable makeup of nature, The White Diamond offers the flip-side. Making himself a very involved presence (more visably than in Grizzly Man), Herzog joins Dr. Graham Dorrington, a British aerospace engineer, at the Kaieteur Falls of Guyana to test Dorrington's helium airship invention. The expedition comes with a shroud of melancholy and a suggested despondence as a similar excursion took the life of Dorrington's close friend Dieter Plage ten years prior.

Herzog, never the unbiased onlooker, finds a remarkably different view of the relationship between man and the natural world in The White Diamond. Chatting with the locals, filming Dorrington's bittersweet recollections of Plage as well as the team's oscillating failures and successes, Herzog discovers a sort of harmony Timothy Treadwell foolhardily believed to exist in this world. The White Diamond is sumptuously beautiful, visually of course, but the film's weight, a central theme both literally and figuratively, stems from Herzog's invigorating portrait of the healing and fortifying power that the natural world can (sometimes) provide.

Screenplay: Rudolph Herzog, Annette Scheurich; story by Rainer Bergomaz, Marion Pöllmann; commentary by Werner Herzog
Cinematography: Henning Brümmer, Klaus Scheurich
Music: Ernst Reijsiger, Eric Spitzer
Country of Origin: Germany/Japan/UK
US Distributor: Wellspring

Premiere: 13 November 2004 (Cinemanet Europe Opening Festival)
US Premiere: 30 April 2005 (San Francisco International Film Festival)

The Decade List: La niña santa (2004)

La niña santa [The Holy Girl] - dir. Lucrecia Martel

Few filmmakers can depict a sense of wonder quite as breathtakingly as Lucrecia Martel can. Her command of the cinematic form is evident throughout her second feature La niña santa, but it's fully realized in a singular moment midway through the film. Within the film, the scene, best described as the one where the "miracle" occurs, functions as somewhat of a springboard for teenage Amalia (María Alche) to carry out the muddled idea of salvation she's constructed, but for me personally, it's one of those rare instances in which one is reminded of why they fell in love with the cinematic arts in the first place.

Like the other exemplary scenes I can trace this love back to, it doesn't work its magic when extracted from the whole it came from. Martel's cinema is one of highly concentrated sensory immersion; few artists can entrance me the way she does. She brings me to a point in which I'm rendered silent, unable to convey with any efficiency the swarming thoughts she conjures or speculate why that is. Forgive my inarticulateness.

With: Mercedes Morán, María Alche, Julieta Zylberberg, Carlos Belloso, Alejandro Urdapilleta, Mía Maestro, Marta Lubos, Arturo Goetz, Alejo Mango, Mónica Villa, Leandro Stivelman
Screenplay: Lucrecia Martel, Juan Pablo Domenech
Cinematography: Félix Monti
Music: Andres Gerszenzon
Country of Origin: Argentina/Spain/Italy/Netherlands
US Distributor: HBO Films/Fine Line Features

Premiere: 6 May 2004 (Argentina)
US Premiere: 10 October 2004 (New York Film Festival)

Awards: Best Director, Best New Actress - Julieta Zylberberg (Clarin Awards, Argentina)

The Decade List: The Tulse Luper Suitcases (2003-2004)

The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story - dir. Peter Greenaway
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The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 2: Vaux to the Sea - dir. Peter Greenaway

[Edited from an earlier post]

As my interest in the world of film (and, really, everything else) has been going in and out of periods of remission, fancy my surprise that a director I’d “written off” could give me a much needed jump-start. Thanks a marathon on The Sundance Channel, I got to witness Peter Greenaway’s three film entries in his epic, confusing multimedia project The Tulse Luper Suitcases (none of the films have been released theatrically in the US or even on DVD anywhere outside of Russia and Spain, still to this day). Might I suggest that the trilogy—the first titled The Moab Story, the second Vaux to the Sea, the third From Sark to Finish—is a dizzying array of brilliance.

With the combined efforts of 8½ Women, Nightwatching and, to a lesser extent, The Pillow Book, Greenaway shifted from a primary obsession of mine to a director I’d pegged as “losing it.” The Tulse Luper Suitcases encompasses all the good things about the aforementioned films and expands upon his examination of cinema and its boundaries. In short, the films depict the life of 20th century collector/traveler Tulse Luper who is better known as Greenaway’s alter ego and has received mention in other of the director’s work. The films contain sixteen “episodes,” each of which surrounding Luper’s imprisonments, both physical and metaphysical.

In episode four or five (forgive me, I can’t remember which except that it happens in Vaux to the Sea), it becomes more clear that The Tulse Luper Suitcases are to Greenaway as Histoire(s) du cinema are to Godard. It’s a quite literal comparison as this segment focuses on Luper’s confinement in a cinemahouse in France which plays The Passion of Joan of Arc and Boudu Saved from Drowning, among others. Here, the cinema becomes a reflexive look at the newly shaped world for Luper, ever advancing through each stage in his own personal reflection. Greenaway even introduces Joan of Arc and Boudu as characters into the series with character numbers; all of the expansive cast of individuals receive a number and their name in text upon entering the films. However, it isn’t simply the cinema that is the mode of Greenaway’s examination, as history itself reveals itself as the catalyst for the understanding of both man and Luper himself.

The band news, unfortunately, comes in the final film, From Sark to Finish, a confused, unpolished and rushed conclusion to Luper’s adventures. Gone are the glorious fascinations of narrative and visuals, the latter of which is, at times, completely astounding particularly in Greenaway’s use of frame-on-top-of-a-frame. Even the original Luper, JJ Feild, is replaced briefly by Stephen Billington and later by Roger Rees, who plays the aged Luper/double in Vaux to the Sea. Missing too are the recognizable faces, from the wonderful Isabella Rossellini to Steven Mackintosh to Valentina Cervi as Luper’s mistress Cissie Colpitts (a name you should recognize from Drowning by Numbers). However, most damning is that, perhaps through budgetary constraints, episodes are glossed over; one, which depicts Luper’s homoerotic relationship with one of his former captors, doesn’t even include any filmed footage. It’s a sad conclusion to a remarkable experiment, albeit one I won’t soon forget.

The Moab Story

With: JJ Feild, Valentina Cervi, Steven Mackintosh, Jordi Mollà, Tom Bower, Scot Williams, Caroline Dhavernas, Raymond J. Barry, Drew Mulligan, Yorick van Wageningen, Jack Wouterse, Naím Thomas, Debbie Harry, Michèle Bernier, Isabella Rossellini, Molly Ringwald, Keram Malicki-Sánchez, Ana Torrent, Nigel Terry, Patrick Kennedy, Francesco Salvi
Screenplay: Peter Greenaway
Cinematography: Reinier van Brummelen
Music: Borut Krzisnik, Eduardo Polonio
Country of Origin: UK/Netherlands/Spain/Luxumbourg/Italy/Hungary/Russia/Germany
US Distributor: N/A

Premiere: 24 May 2003 (Cannes Film Festival)
US Premiere: 12 April 2004 (Philadelphia International Film Festival)

Vaux to the Sea

With: JJ Feild, Valentina Cervi, Isabella Rossellini, Roger Rees, Raymond J. Berry, Franka Potente, Ana Torrent, Steven Mackintosh, Jordi Mollà, Ornella Muti, Maria Schrader, Scot Williams, Francesco Salvi, Anna Galiena, Marcel Iures, Gaspard Ulliel, Keram Malicki-Sánchez
Screenplay: Peter Greenaway
Cinematography: Reinier van Brummelen
Music: Architori, Borut Krzisnik, Eduardo Polonio
Country of Origin: UK/Netherlands/Spain/Luxumbourg/Italy/Hungary
US Distributor: N/A

Premiere: February 2004 (Berlin International Film Festival)

The Decade List: Clean (2004)

Clean - dir. Olivier Assayas

[Edited from an earlier post]

Someone over at the Internet Movie Database, a horrible source for user activity and input, has decided to throw around the word "cliché" on the subject of Clean as if it were... yes, going out of style. A drug-addicted mother (Maggie Cheung) has to straighten out her life before getting custody of her son. Yeah, we’ve seen it before, which always begs the question as to whether we need to see it again. No, we really don’t need to. Yet, this “reviewer” (or "reviewers") never really wants to question the intention or whether or not, with these said clichés, the film works.

Well, it does. Approaching melodrama the same way he did with the various genres at work in demonlover, Assayas doesn't wish to breathe new life into tired notions but to find meaning within those confines. Clean's tale is a familiar one, build on pre-established motifs of stylized drug sequences and/or cinema vérité rawness, both problematic in their usual depictions. In cautionary tales of addiction, stylized drug sequences tend to glamourize the lifestyle they wish to condemn. By now, cinema-vérité has become something of a filmic decoration, a spurious creature that no longer suffices. Clean is not a medium between these two, but a longing and observant alternative. Nothing is magnified, glamorized, or exploited; Clean is level-headed and intimate, without sickening us with its closeness or getting so close as to hit the characters, or us, with the lens.

Cheung's performance, which won the Best Actress prize at Cannes, is exactly what you don’t expect it to be. This is not to say she doesn’t cry or stare pensively into the distance, because she does. The magic, however, of her performance is not because of this, but because we don’t register it as a “performance.” It's maybe significant that between Assayas and Cheung's two collaborations, the other being Irma Vep in 1996, the pair had married and divorced, giving their cinematic relationship a separate meaning altogether. Was Clean the last thing the former spouses had to give to one another? Cheung would retire from acting after a double-showing at Cannes in '04 with this and a brief reprisal of her role in Wong Kar-wai's sequel to In the Mood for the Love, 2046. It's been rumored that her scenes in Quentin Tarantino's upcoming Inglourious Basterds were cut (we'll know for sure later this month), so if Clean is in fact Cheung's swan song, I couldn't have hoped for anything more.

With: Maggie Cheung, Nick Nolte, James Dennis, Béatrice Dalle, Jeanne Balibar, Don McKellar, Martha Henry, James Johnson, Rémi Martin, Joana Preiss, Tricky, Dave Roback, Metric
Screenplay: Olivier Assayas
Cinematography: Eric Gauthier
Music: Brian Eno, David Roback, Tricky
Country of Origin: France/Canada/UK
US Distributor: Palm Pictures

Premiere: 21 May 2004 (Cannes Film Festival)
US Premiere: 18 March 2005 (Rendez-vous with French Cinema)

Awards: Best Actress - Maggie Cheung, Technical Grand Prize - Eric Gauthier (Cannes Film Festival)

The Decade List: Awards (2004)

There's maybe too much to say about the year 2004 in regard to its various film festival and industry awards, but I'll keep it brief. 1.) Tropical Malady was the best film to play at Cannes in 2004, hands down, so was it the fact that Quentin Tarantino was head of the jury that it only nabbed the Prix du jury? I'd venture to say yes. Although Isabelle Huppert's jury also quite liked Park Chan-wook's Thirst, so... 2.) Hilary Swank wins her second Best Actress Oscar, and for some reason, I don't mind, if only because Annette Bening gives me a raging headache. 3.) 2004 was the douche-iest year for the Independent Spirit Awards. A Sideways sweep? Best first film: Garden State? Best film made for under $500,000: Mean Creek? Best documentary: Metallica: Some Kind of Monster? I think I was happier with the Oscar picks. 4.) Fuck the Razzies. I still do not understand what it is they're trying to convey by giving George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Britney Spears "awards" for their roles in Fahrenheit 9/11. Someone please explain what it was they were trying to say to me with that. 5.) I still haven't seen Vera Drake, but I'll always think fondly of it as it was the punch-line of one of my favorite moments of Ricky Gervais' Extras.

Cannes

Palme d'Or: Fahrenheit 9/11 [d. Michael Moore]
Grand Prix: Oldboy [d. Park Chan-wook]
Prix du jury: Tropical Malady [d. Apichatpong Weerasethakul]; also Irma P. Hall - The Ladykillers, for her acting
Best Director: Tony Gatlif - Exils (Exiles)
Best Actor: Yûya Yagira - Nobody Knows
Best Actress: Maggie Cheung - Clean
Best Screenplay: Agnès Jaoui, Jean-Pierre Bacri - Comme une image (Look at Me)
Technical Grand Prize: Éric Gauthier - Clean; Diarios de motocicleta (The Motorcycle Diaries)
Camera d'Or: Or (My Treasure) [d. Keren Yedaya]

Venice

Golden Lion: Vera Drake [d. Mike Leigh]
Grand Special Jury Prize: Mar adentro (The Sea Inside) [d. Alejandro Amenábar]
Best Actor: Javier Bardem - Mar adentro
Best Actress: Imelda Staunton - Vera Drake
Career Golden Lion: Manoel de Oliveira, Stanley Donen

Toronto

People's Choice Award: Hotel Rwanda [d. Terry George]
Discovery Award: Omagh [d. Pete Travis]
Best Canadian Feature: It's All Gone Pete Tong [d. Michael Dowse]

Berlin

Golden Bear: Gegen die Wand (Head-On) [d. Fatih Akin]
Best Director: Kim Ki-duk - Samaritan Girl
Best Actor: Daniel Hendler - El abrazo partido (Lost Embrace)
Best Actress: (tie) Catalina Sandino Moreno - Maria Full of Grace; Charlize Theron - Monster
Jury Grand Prix: El abrazo partido [d. Daniel Burman]
Outstanding Artistic Achievment: Om jag vänder mig om (Daybreak), to its outstanding cast
Honorary Golden Bear: Fernando E. Solanas
Teddy (Feature): Wild Side [d. Sébastien Lifshitz]
Teddy (Documentary): The Nomi Song [d. Andrew Horn]

Sundance

Grand Jury Prize (Dramatic): Primer [d. Shane Carruth]
Grand Jury Prize (Documentary): DiG! [d. Ondi Timoner]
Director (Dramatic): Debra Granik - Down to the Bone
Director (Documentary): Morgan Spurlock - Super Size Me
Special Jury Prize (Dramatic): (tie) Rodney Evans - Brother to Brother; Vera Farmiga - Down to the Bone, for her performance
Special Jury Prize (Documentary): Catherine Tambini, Carlos Sandoval - Farmingville
Cinematography (Dramatic): Nancy Schreiber - November
Cinematography (Documentary): Ferne Pearlstein - Imelda
Audience Award (Dramatic): Maria Full of Grace [d. Joshua Marston]
Audience Award (Documentary): Born into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids [d. Ross Kauffman]
Audience Award (World Cinema): La grande séduction (Seducing Dr. Lewis) [d. Jean-François Pouliot]
Audience Award (World Cinema Documentary): The Corporation [d. Jennifer Abbott, Mark Achbar]

Academy Awards

Best Picture: Million Dollar Baby [d. Clint Eastwood]
Best Director: Clint Eastwood - Million Dollar Baby
Best Actor: Jamie Foxx - Ray
Best Actress: Hilary Swank - Million Dollar Baby
Best Supporting Actor: Morgan Freeman - Million Dollar Baby
Best Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett - The Aviator
Best Original Screenplay: Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry, Pierre Bismuth - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Best Adapted Screenplay: Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor - Sideways
Best Cinematography: Robert Richardson - The Aviator
Best Documentary: Born into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids [d. Ross Kauffman]
Best Foreign Film: Mar adentro (The Sea Inside) [d. Alejandro Amenábar]
Best Animated Feature: The Incredibles [d. Brad Bird]
Honorary Award: Sidney Lumet

BAFTAs

Best Film: The Aviator [d. Martin Scorsese]
Best Director: Mike Leigh - Vera Drake
Best British Film: My Summer of Love [d. Pawel Pawlikowski]
Best Actor: Jamie Foxx - Ray
Best Actress: Imelda Staunton - Vera Drake
Best Supporting Actor: Clive Owen - Closer
Best Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett - The Aviator
Best Original Screenplay: Charlie Kaufman - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Best Adapted Screenplay: Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor - Sideways
Best Cinematography: Dion Beebe, Paul Cameron - Collateral
Film Not in the English Language: Diarios de motocicleta (The Motorcycle Diaries) [d. Walter Salles]

European Film Awards

Best Film: Gegen die Wand (Head-On) [d. Fatih Akin]
Best Director: Alejandro Amenábar - Mar adentro (The Sea Inside)
Best Actor: Javier Bardem - Mar adentro
Best Actress: Imelda Staunton - Vera Drake
Best Cinematography: Eduardo Serra - Girl with a Pearl Earring
Best Screenplay: Agnès Jaoui, Jean-Pierre Bacri - Comme une image (Look at Me)
Best Documentary: Darwin's Nightmare [d. Hubert Sauper]
Discovery: Certi bambini (A Children's Story) [d. Andrea Frazzi, Antonio Frazzi]
Screen International: 2046 [d. Wong Kar-wai]
Audience Award (Actor): Daniel Brühl - Was nützt die Liebe in Gedanken (Love in Thoughts)
Audience Award (Actress): Penélope Cruz - Non ti muovere (Don't Move)
Audience Award (Director): Fatih Akin - Gegen die Wand
Life Achievement Award: Carlos Saura

Independent Spirit

Best Feature: Sideways [d. Alexander Payne]
Best First Feature: Garden State [d. Zach Braff]
Best Director: Alexander Payne - Sideways
Best Male Lead: Paul Giamatti - Sideways
Best Female Lead: Catalina Sandino Moreno - Maria Full of Grace
Best Supporting Male: Thomas Haden Church - Sideways
Best Supporting Female: Virginia Madsen - Sideways
Best Debut Performance: Rodrigo De la Serna - Diarios de motocicleta (The Motorcycle Diaries)
Best Screenplay: Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor - Sideways
Best First Screenplay: Joshua Marston - Maria Full of Grace
Best Cinematography: Eric Gautier - Diarios de motocicleta
Best Documentary: Metallica: Some Kind of Monster [d. Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky]
Best Foreign Film: Mar adentro (The Sea Inside) [d. Alejandro Amenábar]
John Cassavetes Award (for features made for under $500,000): Mean Creak [d. Jacob Aaron Estes]
Someone to Watch Award: Jem Cohen - Chain

Golden Globes

Picture (Drama): The Aviator [d. Martin Scorsese]
Picture (Comedy/Musical): Sideways [d. Alexander Payne]
Director: Clint Eastwood - Million Dollar Baby
Actor (D): Leonardo DiCaprio - The Aviator
Actress (D): Hilary Swank - Million Dollar Baby
Actor (M/C): Jamie Foxx - Ray
Actress (M/C): Annette Bening - Being Julia
Supporting Actor: Clive Owen - Closer
Supporting Actress: Natalie Portman - Closer
Screenplay: Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor - Sideways
Foreign Film: Mar adentro (The Sea Inside) [d. Alejandro Amenábar]
Cecil B. DeMille Award: Robin Williams

Césars Awards

Best Film (Meilleur film): L'esquive (Games of Love and Chance) [d. Abdel Kechiche]
Best Director (Meilleur réalisateur): Abdel Kechiche - L'esquive
Best Actor (Meilleur acteur): Mathieu Amalric - Rois et reine (Kings and Queen)
Best Actress (Meilleure actrice): Yolande Moreau - Quand la mer monte... (When the Sea Rises...)
Best Supporting Actor (Meilleur acteur dans un second rôle): Clovis Cornillac - Mensonges et trahisons et plus si affinités
Best Supporting Actress (Meilleure actrice dans un second rôle): Marion Cotillard - Un long dimanche de fiançailles (A Very Long Engagement)
Most Promising Actor (Meilleur espoir masculin): Gaspard Ulliel - Un long dimanche de fiançailles
Most Promising Actress (Meilleur espoir féminin): Sara Forestier - L'esquive
Best Screenplay (Meilleur scénario): Abdel Kechiche, Ghalia Lacroix - L'esquive
Best Cinematography (Meilleure photographie): Bruno Delbonnel - Un long dimanche de fiançailles
Best Foreign Film (Meilleur film étranger): Lost in Translation [d. Sofia Coppola]
Best European Union Film (Meilleur film de l'Union Européenne): (tie) Ae Fond Kiss... [d. Ken Loach]; Život je čudo (Life Is a Miracle) [d. Emir Kusturica]
Best First Film (Meilleur premier film): Quand la mer monte... [d. Yolande Moreau, Gilles Porte]
Honorary César: Micheline Presle

Razzies

Worst Film: Catwoman [d. Pitof]
Worst Director: Pitof - Catwoman
Worst Actor: George W. Bush - Fahrenheit 9/11
Worst Actress: Halle Berry - Catwoman
Worst Supporting Actor: Donald Rumsfeld - Fahrenheit 9/11
Worst Supporting Actress: Britney Spears - Fahrenheit 9/11
Worst Screenplay: Theresa Rebeck, John D. Brancato, Michael Ferris, John Rogers - Catwoman
Worst Remake/Sequel: Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed [d. Raja Gosnell]