Five Short Recommendations, Available on Netflix

A friend of mine who just finished school asked me if I could suggest some films for him to watch on Netflix Instant. I've written a number of annotated recommendations for him, so I figured I may as well share slightly edited versions here as well. I'll roll these out every so often, and I may write longer pieces on any of these in the future. Each of the films below were available on Netflix Instant in the USA at the time this was published.

House of Pleasures
L'Apollonide (Souvenirs de la maison close) / House of Tolerance
2011, France
Bertrand Bonello

You could spend an entire day coming up with adjectives to describe this film about the young women, their madame, her children, their clients, and the ghosts that inhabit a Parisian whorehouse at the dawn of the 20th century: beautiful, frightening, elegant, decadent, erotic, mysterious, haunting, radical, moving, difficult, luminous, and so on. But none of those words could accurately describe the total experience of watching Bertrand Bonello's unshakeable masterpiece.

With: Noémie Lvovsky, Alice Barnole, Céline Sallette, Adèle Haenel, Hafsia Herzi, Iliana Zabeth, Jasmine Trinca, Laurent Lacotte, Xavier Beauvois, Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, Jacques Nolot, Judith Lou Lévy, Anaïs Thomas, Pauline Jacquard, Maïa Sandoz, Joanna Grudzinska, Esther Garrel, Pierre Léon, Jean-Baptiste Verquin, Michel Peteau, Marcelo Novais Teles, Guillaume Verdier, Justin Taurand, Damien Odoul, Paul Moulin, Henry Lvovsky, Paolo Mattei, Frédéric Epaud, Anaïs Romand, Vincnet Dieutre, Bertrand Bonello, Pascale Ferran

Domain
Domaine
2009, France/Austria
Patric Chiha

In what was John Waters' unexpected (but not unusual) favorite film of 2010, Béatrice Dalle, still a smoldering presence onscreen twenty years after Betty Blue, plays an alcoholic mathematician who is also a sort of mentor to her beautiful gay teenage nephew (Isaïe Sultan). It's neither a coming-of-age story nor a PSA for addiction, but instead a rather intimate portrait of the alternately tender and toxic relationship between these two misfits. There's a great club scene a little over half way into the film where a bunch of people dance bizarrely in a smoke-filled, infinitely negative space.

With: Béatrice Dalle, Isaïe Sultan, Alain Libolt, Raphaël Bouvet, Sylvia Roher, Bernd Birkhahn, Udo Samel, Tatiana Vialle, Manuel Marmier, Gisèle Vienne, Gloria Pedemonte, Thomas Landbo

Flirting with Disaster
1996, USA
David O. Russell

Flirting with Disaster was a film I couldn't appreciate at a young age for a variety of reasons, but revisiting it as an adult had me crying with laughter. David O. Russell's brand of humor is a unique blend of chatty New York high-brow and slapstick-y absurdism, which you can also see at work in I Heart Huckabee's, a film I've changed my opinion on at least three times. While Ben Stiller is easily replaceable in the central role of the new daddy who wants to find his birth parents before naming his son, the entire supporting cast is priceless, particularly Mary Tyler Moore as Stiller's high-strung adoptive mother, Téa Leoni as the hapless psychology student documenting the eventual reunion, and–above all–Lily Tomlin, who steals the show.

With: Ben Stiller, Patricia Arquette, Téa Leoni, Mary Tyler Moore, George Segal, Alan Alda, Lily Tomlin, Richard Jenkins, Josh Brolin, Glenn Fitzgerald, Celia Weston, David Patrick Kelly

Mademoiselle
1966, France/UK
Tony Richardson

It would be too easy to dismiss Mademoiselle as simply a historical oddity. The screenplay was originally written by Jean Genet as a present to actress Anouk Aimée, but he reportedly sold it unbeknownst to her, and it was eventually reworked by author Marguerite Duras to be the first (and only, I believe) French-language film by director Tony Richardson, starring the one-and-only Jeanne Moreau (for whom the closeted bisexual Richardson left wife Vanessa Redgrave) and, at some point, Marlon Brando, though his casting never actually panned out. All that bizarre history aside, Mademoiselle is perfectly wicked, and Moreau is flawless as the child-hating, sexually repressed, arsonist schoolteacher, whose loins become inflamed when she meets a strapping Italian woodsman.

With: Jeanne Moreau, Ettore Manni, Keith Skinner, Umberto Orsini, Georges Aubert, Jane Beretta, Paul Barge, Pierre Collet, Gérard Darrieu, Jean Gras, Gabriel Gobin

The Lovers on the Bridge
Les amants du Pont-Neuf
1991, France
Léos Carax

Les amants du Pont-Neuf was a highly-ambitious project from French auteur Léos Carax–whose latest film Holy Motors (which stars his usual leading man Denis Lavant alongside Eva Mendes and Kylie Minogue!) is supposed to be absolutely spectacular–one which involved numerous reshoots, delays and eventually an entire reconstruction of the Pont Neuf, the oldest bridge across the Seine. There's probably no more appropriate way to describe Carax as an artist other than a visionary, and this is (not counting Holy Motors, which I haven't seen) his magnum opus, a small tale of a romance between a street performer (Lavant) and a painter (Juliette Binoche) who is going blind, told with dazzling opulence in grand measure. WARNING: Unfortunately, Netflix seems to be streaming a cropped version of the film. It looks like it's in 1.33:1 ratio, when it should be 1.85:1 (see the photo above). Such a shame for a film that utilizes the entirety of its frame so beautifully.

With: Denis Lavant, Juliette Binoche, Daniel Buain, Edith Scob, Klaus-Michael Grüber, Marion Stalens, Chrichan Larsson, Paulette Berthonnier, Roger Berthonnier, Georges Aperghis, Michel Vandestien

(You're Not) Rid of Me

After just over two years of hibernation, I've finally decided to reemerge from the volcano. A lot has changed over that time of radio silence – most of which doesn't pertain to matters at hand, but for the first time in my life, I've found myself living in a "film city." San Francisco, to be precise. It's my understanding (and correct me if I'm wrong) that here and New York City are possibly the only US cities where going to the cinema to catch John Huston double-features or a bunch of Curt McDowell shorts is commonplace. Like a wide-eyed, paler-skinned, hopefully-less-uptight Mary Ann Singleton, I moved to the The City by the Bay, with its rich and strange film history (from The Maltese Falcon on down to Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit), which has been my home for just over a year.

So if you're wondering where I disappeared to, there's one answer. I've appreciated the e-mails some of you have sent during my absence. But what took so long? I rather fool-heartedly assumed that I would return when the "time was right," when the desire to write would be so consuming I wouldn't be able to stop my fingers from running wild across my keyboard. Of course that never happened. It wasn't that I didn't wish to write any longer; I've done plenty of writing in my free time. It was that, among other things, I wasn't sure what I was doing with the blog any more. Although, truthfully, I just didn't like what I was doing with it. In the same way my fingers didn't start writing on their own, a clear idea of what I did want to do with the blog never came either, and its absence just gave me another excuse to delay making a decision about whether to return to the blog or bid it a fond farewell. I'm not sure what finally got me to realize that, if the universe had anything to say on the matter, it probably wasn't going to tell me in the ways I had been waiting for. So I stopped anticipating, and started to listen to the encouragement I'd been given by my friends, and now here I am.

As I mentioned earlier, I still don't have a vivid image of what direction I want to take the blog. My interests and attention have shifted over the past couple years, away from DVD and Blu-ray release dates and studio acquisitions. There are plenty of resources out there for those things. I've also lost the desire to try to see as many films in a given year as possible (particularly with regard to the Academy Awards and my prior attempts to see all of the nominated films... what a colossal waste of time that was). Somewhere along the line, I started to understand the value of time (with regard to watching films, that is; I still have plenty of other ways to carelessly waste it) and the rising number of films I'd seen over the years whose existence has nearly (or completely) vanished from my memory.

I would like to, instead, spend my time writing about films that are bold and that I think are important, worth my time and yours. And, of course, there will likely be some words and time dedicated to garbage like The Dark Knight Rises (the film's dumbest moment – among many – is pictured above) Midnight in Paris, and Shame, so I can spew my venom onto the page/screen instead of in the ears of my friends. And then again, in trying to resurrect my blog, I might find that it was better off dead.

If you're in dire need of some film suggestions, the four best films from 2011 that I saw are as follows: Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret, Bertrand Bonello's House of Tolerance (L'Apollonide (Souvenirs de la maison close)), Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights, and Nadav Lapid's Policeman. And if you're looking for House of Tolerance in the US, note that IFC Films re-titled it the more crudely "provocative" House of Pleasures.

New Films from Bruce LaBruce, Isild Le Besco and Christophe Honoré at Locarno Film Festival

The official line-up for the 63rd annual Locarno Film Festival was announced yesterday, including new films from Bruce LaBruce, Christophe Honoré, Isild Le Besco, Aaron Katz and Denis Côté screening in competition. Katz's Cold Weather, which IFC picked up for US distribution after its premiere at SXSW, is the lone American film competing for the Golden Leopard this year. French porn star François Sagat looks to be the unexpected star of competition line-up, appearing as the lead in both LaBruce's LA Zombie and Honoré's Homme au bain [Man in Bath], the latter co-starring Honoré's muse as of late, Chiara Mastroianni. LA Zombie, a porn-ier counterpart to LaBruce's earlier Otto; or Up with Dead People, screened in Berlin earlier this year and stars a handful of gay porn stars, as well as Tony Ward (who memorably played the object of desire in LaBruce's Hustler White in 1996), pin-up boy Trevor Wayne, rapper Deadlee and Project Runaway finalist Santino Rice (hello, St Louis). In addition to presenting Bas-fonds, her latest project as a director, actress Isild Le Besco can be seen in front of the camera in Benoît Jacquot's Au fond des bois [Deep in the Woods], which marks the sixth collaboration with Jacquot. Au fond des bois also stars Nahuel Pérez Biscayart of Alexis Dos Santos' Glue and will be the opening film in the Piazza Grande section.

Other films in the International Competition: Pia Marais' Im Alter von Ellen [At Ellen's Age], with Jeanne Balibar in the title role; Morgen, the feature debut of Marian Crişan, whose short Megatron won the Palme d'Or in the courts-métrages section at Cannes in 2008; Pietro, the latest from Italian director Daniele Gaglianone (I cento passi); and Curling, from Canadian director Denis Côté who won the Directing Prize at Locarno in 2008 for Elle veut le chaos [All That She Wants]. Elle veut le chaos is available to stream (in certain territories) on MUBI.

Also in the Piazza Grande section: the Duplass' brothers Cyrus, currently in theatres across the US right now; the second directorial outing from respected editor Valdís Óskarsdóttir (The Celebration, julien donkey-boy, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), entitled Kóngavegur [King's Road] which stars Daniel Brühl and Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson; L'avocat [The Counsel], from director Cédric Anger–who co-wrote Xavier Beauvois' Le petit lieutenant and Selon Matthieu and Werner Schroeter's Deux–starring Benoît Magimel, Gilbert Melki, Aïssa Maïga, Eric Caravaca and Barbet Schroeder; Quentin Dupieux's killer-tire film Rubber, which premiered during the Semaine de la Critique at Cannes this year; also from Cannes, Aktan Arym Kubat's The Light Thief, which played in the Quinzaine des Réalisatuers; and restored prints of Ernst Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be and Francesco Rosi's Uomini contro [Many Wars Ago].

In the Cinema of the Present portion: Memory Lane, the "feature" debut of Mikhaël Hers, whose previous three films (Montparnasse, Primrose Hill and Charell) premiered at the Cannes Film Festival over the past few eyars and all clock-in around an hour-long; Ivory Tower, from first-time director Adam Traynor which marks the acting debut of musician Peaches; and Norberto apenas tarde [Norberto's Deadline], the directorial debut of actor Daniel Hendler, best known as Argentinean filmmaker Daniel Burman's cinematic persona.

And Out of Competition, a number of shorts from notable directors will be playing:

- Get Out of the Car - Thom Anderson (Los Angeles Plays Itself)
- Hell Roaring Creek - Lucien Castaing-Taylor (Sweetgrass)
- Low Cost (Claude Jutra) - Lionel Baier (Garçon stupide)
- Avant les mots - Joachim Lafosse (Nue propriété)
- Return to the Dogs - Lodge Kerrigan (Clean, Shaven)
- Where the Boys Are - Betrand Bonello (Tiresia)
- Pig Iron - James Benning (RR)
- Les lignes ennemies - Denis Côté
- Rosalinda - Matías Piñeiro (Todos mienten)
- Chef d'oeuvre? - Luc Moullet (A Girl Is a Gun)
- Toujours moins - Luc Moullet
- O somma luce - Jean-Marie Straub
- Corneille-Brecht - Jean-Marie Straub
- Joachim Gatti - Jean-Marie Straub
- Europa, 27 Octobre - Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet

I don't know exactly how Kerrigan's Return to the Dogs relates to his experimental Grace Slick feature Rebecca H. (Return to the Dogs) which played in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes in May. And finally, there will be a special retrospective of director Ernst Lubitsch at the festival this year, as well as a new, restored print of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's little-seen Ich will doch nur, daß ihr mich liebt [I Only Want You to Love Me], which was made for German television. The 63rd Festival del film Locarno runs from 4-14 August. The full list of films in competition is below:

- Bas-fonds, d. Isild Le Besco, France
- Beli, beli svet [White White World], d. Oleg Novković, Serbia/Sweden/Germany
- Beyond the Steppes, d. Vanja d'Alcantara, Belgium/Poland
- Cold Weather, d. Aaron Katz, USA
- Curling, d. Denis Côté, Canada
- Homme au bain [Man at Bath], d. Christophe Honoré, France
- Im Alter von Ellen [At Ellen's Age], d. Pia Marais, Germany
- Karamay, d. Xu Xin, China
- LA Zombie, d. Bruce LaBruce, Germany/Canada/USA
- Luz nas Trevas, a Volta do Bandido da Luz Vermelha, d. Helena Ignez, Ícaro Martins, Brazil
- Morgen, d. Marian Crişan, Romania/France/Hungary
- Periferic, d. Bogdan George Apetri, Romania/Austria
- La petite chambre, d. Stéphanie Chuat, Véronique Reymond
- Pietro, d. Daniele Gaglianone, Italy
- Saç, d. Tayfun Pirselimoğlu, Turkey/Greece
- Songs of Love and Hate, d. Katalin Gödrös, Switzerland
- Winter Vacation, d. Li Hongqi, China
- Womb, d. Benedek Fliegauf, Germany/Hungary/France

The Decade List: Cindy: The Doll Is Mine (2005)

Cindy: The Doll Is Mine – dir. Bertrand Bonello

Musician-turned-filmmaker Bertrand Bonello crafted something extraordinary with his short Cindy: The Doll Is Mine, an ode to three of my favorite things: Asia Argento, Blonde Redhead and, especially, Cindy Sherman. As Sherman, Argento plays the dual role of the artist and the model. As the artist, her hair’s cropped short, and she wears a loose, button-down shirt; as the model, she dons a blonde wig and a dress better suited for a poupée. As Cindy the artist arranges Cindy the model around the room, nowhere seems appropriate for what she’s looking for. At one point Cindy the artist asks Cindy the model to stand more feminine, more curvy and seductive. However, it turns out that what’s missing are tears, which Cindy the artist asks, very reluctantly, of her model.

Sherman is thanked in the credits, but beyond that, I don’t know that she had any involvement in the film itself. Bonello’s film offers the most flattering of appreciation to the artist, more than Sherman’s own film directing attempt Office Killer (I have yet to see the doc Guest of Cindy Sherman). Aside from the specifics of the artist though, Cindy: The Doll Is Mine is like an abridged version of Catherine Breillat’s Sex Is Comedy, both fascinating looks into the strife in the process of creating art. Combining two of the most famous collections Sherman has done (the self-portraits and the doll photography), Bonello thankfully avoids the sort of cinematic tricks that might have come from casting Argento as the artist and the model (though that’s absolutely imperative considering the subject) and forges a truly haunting work, which also happens to be one of the finest showcases for the great Asia Argento. You can stream it online via Dailymotion.

With: Asia Argento
Screenplay: Bertrand Bonello
Cinematography: Josée Deshaies
Music: Blonde Redhead
Country of Origin: France
US Distributor: N/A

Premiere: 19 May 2005 (Cannes Film Festival)

Tragedy!

I was extremely saddened to hear that Guillaume Depardieu, the actor son of Gérard, passed away yesterday at the age of 37. GreenCine reports that he died of pneumonia. This is very sad news indeed. Guillaume followed brilliantly in his father's footsteps, taking on challenging roles with skilled directors. He currently has two films playing in theatres in France: De la guerre, alongside Mathieu Amalric and Asia Argento, and Versailles. He was currently filming Alex Iordachescu's L'Enfance d'Icare with Alysson Paradis and set to act in his first English-language film Men Don't Lie with Michael Madsen, Leo Gregory and Margo Stilley. He shall be missed.

Notable Filmography

Versailles - dir. Pierre Schöller (2008)
De la guerre [On War] - dir. Bertrand Bonello (2008)
Peur(s) du noir [Fear(s) of the Dark] - dir. Various (2007)
La France - dir. Serge Bozon (2007)
The Duchess of Langeais [Ne touchez pas la hache] - dir. Jacques Rivette (2007)
Process - dir. C.S. Leigh (2004)
Peau d'ange - dir. Vincent Perez (2002)
A Loving Father [Aime ton père] - dir. Jacob Berger (2002)
Pola X - dir. Leos Carax (1999)
Tous les matins du monde [All the Mornings of the World] - dir. Alain Corneau

Tidbits français

Thanks to Gala.fr, I discovered some quotes by the incomparable Miss Béatrice Dalle. She mentioned her admiration for Isabelle Huppert as an actress (of course; the two starred together in Michael Haneke's Le Temps du loup [Time of the Wolf]). And did you ever wonder what makes Mlle Dalle shiver? Pasolini's films. Above is a photo that I accidentally, and amiably, stumbled upon using the Google Image Search of my two favorite screen sirens, Béatrice and Asia Argento (although I do wonder if it's been photoshopped).

Also thanks to Gala.fr, I found some photos of my favorite contemporary French actor, Romain Duris, during his first audition for Cédric Klapisch's Le Péril jeune. He was barely 20 and surprisingly dreadlocked. He would go on to act in five other Klapisch films: Chacun cherche son chat [When the Cat's Away], Peut-être, L'Auberge espagnole, Les Poupées russes [Russian Dolls] and the most recent, Paris.

Back to Pasolini, I found an interesting video entitled Enfants de Salò, which is featured on the French DVD of Salò, of four controversial French filmmakers talking about the impact the film had on them. Gaspar Noé (Irréversible), Catherine Breillat (Fat Girl), Claire Denis (Trouble Every Day) and Bertrand Bonello (Tiresia) each discuss the power of Pasolini's final film and how it reflected on their own work, or at least understanding of the cinema. The film is entirely in French and without subtitles, so non-French speakers beware.

Mine

Cindy, the Doll Is Mine - dir. Bertrand Bonello - 2005 - France

I suppose, with me, it was bound to happen. It was bound to happen that Asia Argento's power over me would become uncontrollable... and with Bertrand Bonello's short, Cindy: The Doll Is Mine, it's happened. Within the past two months, I've probably watched more of Ms. Argento's films than most have seen in their entire life, and while I have have gotten frustrated around the time I saw Tony Gatlif's Transylvania, it all changed with Olivier Assayas' Boarding Gate. A lot of people, myself included, may suggest that Ms. Argento isn't exactly the most capable of actresses, but in my book, that means nothing now. Any detractor of her "acting ability" obviously hasn't seen this, and even if you had, you don't understand the appeal. Argento is like Grace Jones to me: this utterly fascinating persona of media personality... one we've never seen in quite such a way before. Here, she plays both artist Cindy Sherman and model Cindy Sherman, to the most effective of extents, examining what, perhaps, it truly is to be artist and subject. Bonello (Tiresia) received support from Sherman herself, but is that so surprising? Is Cindy: The Doll Is Mine not just the perfect extension of Sherman's self portraiture? Does it not become even more fascinating seeing someone else interpret this...? (Much more so than Sherman's own directorial debut Office Killer) And is Argento not the perfectly molded subject to convey this? I officially have a woman of my dreams, and I just hope she stops acting in her father's films.

Un Certain Regard

The line-up for the Un Certain Regard category was also announced today with a few familiar faces. The line-up is as follows:

- Versailles - dir. Pierre Schöller (screenwriter of Hotel Harabati) - with Guillaume Depardieu
- Johnny Mad Dog - dir. Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire
- Sol Cowboy - dir. Thomas Clay
- Wolke 9 - dir. Andreas Dresen (Summer in Berlin)
- O' Horten - dir. Bent Hamer (Factotum)
- Tokyo! - dir. Bong Joon-ho, Michel Gondry, Leos Carax
- Tulpan - dir. Sergei Dvortsevoy
- I Want to See [Je veux voir] - dir. Joana Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige - with Catherine Deneuve
- Le Sel de la mer - dir. Annemarie Jacir
- Los Bastardos - dir. Amat Escalante
- A Festa da Menina Morta - dir. Matheus Nachtergaele (an actor from City of God making his directorial debut)
- Afterschool - dir. Antonio Campos
- Tokyo Sonata - dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Doppelganger, Bright Future)
- Ting che - dir. Chung Mong-Hong
- Yi ban Haishui, Yi ban huoyan - dir. Liu Fendou (writer of Shower, making his directorial debut)
- Wendy and Lucy - dir. Kelly Reichardt (Old Joy) - with Will Patton, Larry Fessenden, John Robinson
- Tyson - dir. James Toback (Two Girls and a Guy, When Will I Be Loved)

Thanks to GreenCine Daily for the updates. And I must second one of the reviewer's disappointment that Claire Denis' latest, White Material, with Isabelle Huppert, Nicolas Duvauchelle and Isaach De Bankolé was either not ready in time or not selected. The same goes for Bertrand Bonello's De la guerre, with Asia Argento, which also makes zero appearances this year from last year's princess of Cannes.

May Fools

God, I totally forgot that the line-up for this year's Cannes film festival will be announced in a mere month, and The Hollywood Reporter has a line-up of possible films to make their way into this year's festival. Among the possibilities are:

- Michael Winterbottom's Geneva with Colin Firth, Catherine Keener and Hope Davis
- Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona with Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Messina (the only Jew in the cast, likely playing the Allen role) and Patricia Clarkson (you might know the film better as the one where Cruz and Johansson have a steamy lesbian sex scene)
- Two films from Steven Soderbergh, The Argentine and Guerilla, the first with Franka Potente, Benicio del Toro, Catalina Sandino Moreno, and Demián Bichir, the latter with all the above plus Jordi Mollà, Benjamin Bratt, Joaquím de Almeida, and Julia Ormond
- Bertrand Tavernier's In the Electric Mist with Tommy Lee Jones, John Goodman, Kelly Macdonald, Peter Sarsgaard and Ned Beatty
- Anh Hung Tran's (The Vertical Ray of the Sun) I Come with the Rain with Josh Hartnett and Elias Koteas
- Fernando Meirelles' Blindness with Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Sandra Oh, Gael García Bernal and Danny Glover
- Wim Wenders' The Palermo Shooting with Milla Jovovich, Dennis Hopper, Sebastian Blomberg, Patti Smith and Lou Reed
- Arnaud Desplechin's Un conte de Noël with Catherine Deneuve, Mathieu Amalric, Chaira Mastroianni, Melvil Poupaud, Emmanuelle Devos and Hippolyte Girardot
- Bertrand Bonnello's De le guerre with Asia Argento, Mathieu Amalric, Guillaume Depardieu, Aurore Clément, Michel Piccoli, Elina Löwensohn and Laurent Lucas
- Barbet Schroeder's Inju with Benoît Magimel.

Sounds fucking good to me, whether these films make it into the festival or not. Oh, and via the same source, Wong Kar-wai may debut his Ashes of Time Redux, a new version of his martial arts epic. A new version? That doesn't sound like Wong! (I'm being sarcastic, see below). Anyway, I can't wait until May.

To Cannes, we go!

Cannes has reached year 60, and their official line-up was announced yesterday with exciting results -- easily one of the more exciting line-ups in years. The opening film will be Wong Kar-wai's latest, his first English-language film, entitled My Blueberry Nights, starring singer Norah Jones, Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Rachel Weisz, Ed Harris, Tim Roth, and David Strathairn. The rest of the films in competition are listed below:

Fatih (Head-On) Akin's Auf der Anderen Seite
Catherine (Fat Girl, Anatomy of Hell) Breillat's Une vieille maîtresse, starring Asia Argento, Anne Parillaud, Amira Casar, Lio, Roxane Mesquida, and Sarah Pratt (not with either Jeanne Moreau or Louis Garrel, as it was originally rumored)
The Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men, with Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Woody Harrelson, James Brolin, and Kelly Macdonald
David Fincher's Zodiac
James (The Yards, Little Odessa) Gray's We Own the Night, with Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix, Robert Duvall, and Eva Mendes
Christophe (Ma mère) Honoré's Les chansons d'amour, with Ludivine Sagnier and Louis Garrel
Naomi (Shara) Kawase's The Mourning Forest
Kim (The Isle, Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall... and Spring, 3-Iron) Ki-duk's Breath
Emir (Underground, When Father Was Away on Business) Kusturica's Promise Me This
Lee (Oasis) Chang-dong's Secret Sunshine
Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
Raphaël Nadjari's Tehilim
Carlos (Battle in Heaven, Japón) Reygadas' Silent Light
Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's Persepolis, in their first film
Julian (Basquiat, Before Night Falls) Schnabel's Le scaphandre et le papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), with Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, and Marie-Josée Croze
Ulrich (Dog Days) Seidl's Import/Export, with Susanne Lothar (Funny Games)
Alexander (Russian Ark) Sokourov's Alexandra
Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof, without Rodriguez's Planet Terror in an extended hour-and-fifty-six minute version
Béla (Werckmeister Harmonies) Tarr's The Man from London, with Tilda Swinton (!!)
Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park, with a bunch of non-actors
Andrey (The Return) Zvyagintsev's The Banishment (Izgnanie)

Of course, two of the films have already hit the U.S. theatres (Zodiac and Death Proof, though I'm pretty sure the version they will show at Cannes will restore the "missing reel" of that pig-nosed girl from Shadowboxer doing a lap-dance for Kurt Russell), but I have to say I'm most excited about The Banishment and Une vieille maîtresse. Zvyagintsev's The Return was easily one of the finest film debuts this decade (alongside David Gordon Green's George Washington), and the fact that the premise of his film has been kept under wraps makes me even more excited. Asia Argento, in an interview, stated that one shouldn't expect the usual graphic nature of Breillat's early works with her new film, which is a period piece, apparently not written by Breillat. Regardless, the line-up looks phenomenal, and even though I know nothing about Tarr's latest, here's my fingers crossed for a Best Actress win for Tilda Swinton!

The jury will be headed by Stephen Frears (The Queen), and will include Toni Collette, former Best Actress winner Maggie Cheung, Maria de Medeiros (Henry & June, Pulp Fiction), Sarah Polley, Marco Bellocchio (Fists in the Pocket, Devil in the Flesh), author Orhan Pamuk, Michel Piccoli (Belle de jour, Phantom of Liberty), and Abderrahmane Sissako (Waiting for Happiness).

The closing film will be Denys Arcand's L'âge des ténèbres, starring Diane Kruger, Emma de Caunes, and Rufus Wainwright. Arcand has previously won a screenwriting award for The Barbarian Invasions (Les invasions barbares) and a jury prize for Jésus de Montréal.

Three promising filmmakers, among twelve others, will be presenting their works-in-progress: Bertrand (Tiresia) Bonello's De la guerre, João Pedro (O Fantasma, Two Drifters) Rodrigues' To Die Like a Man, and Tsai (Vive l'amour, What Time Is It There?) Ming-liang's Salome -- I would urge you to check out these directors' other films.

Playing in the Un Certain Regard competition will be a bunch of first-time filmmakers from all over the world, in addition to new films from Valeria (It's Easier for a Camel) Bruni-Tedeschi's La rêve de la nuit d'avant, Harmony (Gummo) Korine's Mister Lonely, starring Diego Luna as Michael Jackson, Samantha Morton as Marilyn Monroe, Anita Pallenberg as The Queen of England, Denis Lavant as Charlie Chaplin, as well as starring Werner Herzog and magician David Blaine, and Barbet (Barfly, Maîtresse) Schroeder's L'avocat de la terreur.

And, finally, Michael Moore's Sicko, a documentary about health insurance in the United States, Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Thirteen, and Michael Winterbottom's A Mighty Heart, with Angelina Jolie, will be screened out of competition. Olivier (demonlover, Irma Vep) Assayas' first English-language film Boarding Gate, with Asia Argento and Michael Madsen, Abel Ferrara's Go Go Tales, with Willem Dafoe, Bob Hoskins, Matthew Modine, Sylvia Miles, Pras, and the two It-Girls of this year's Cannes Anita Pallenberg and Asia Argento, and Catherine Owens and Mark Pellington's U2 3D will be playing at midnight screenings.

Whew, I hope you're now informed... and you can, of course, expect updates when the festival goes underway on the 16th of May.

Friday Morning: Dual Roles, Karen Black, Visionary Trannies, Middle-Class Malaise, and Tinto Brass' Love of Ass

Here's a rundown of a couple of films I watched in between posting my four-part 100th blog. Each of these films have been released on DVD within the past few weeks.

Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? (Warum läuft Herr R. Amok?) - dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Michael Fengler - 1970 - West Germany

Similarly to Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout, Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? falls under the category of films that you essentially “get” more than half-way through. But in a good way. You find yourself sitting through most Todd Solondz's films saying the same things (well, in the case of Palindromes, you probably realize there’s nothing to “get”), but it’s much different when it comes to this film. It’s most similar to Katzelmacher, where we receive single-takes of long scenes that seem to go on longer than our comfort level would allow. Specific scenes like one where Kurt Raab tries to find a record of a song he heard briefly on the radio play like Curb Your "Begeisterung" in its awkward hilarity. The girls at the record store laugh at Raab, just as we do. When the film comes to its climax, we are not greeted with a worthy tension-release as in films like Breillat’s Fat Girl; instead it climaxes with a huge dud. The dud, though, completely works, as even in Raab’s escape we find him to be utterly pathetic. There’s also a strange relief and optimism in our pessimistic final twist, as you almost want to applaud the tragic Raab for doing what we all could have subconsciously wanted to do. Also see: Michael Haneke's The Seventh Continent.


Tiresia - dir. Bertrand Bonnello - 2003 - France/Canada

Based on a Greek myth about a person both man and woman at the same time, Bertrand Bonnello’s new film presents us with a man (Laurent Lucas) who kidnaps a transsexual prostitute named Tiresia (Clara Choveaux), holding her captive in his cellar. As time passes, Tiresia begins to transform back into a man, as she’s not able to take her hormones. I don’t like to give away much about films when I write about them, but like the majestic Tropical Malady, Tiresia completely changes its form about an hour in. After being left for dead and blinded, Tiresia (now played by Thiago Telès) develops a clairvoyance, seeing events in the future and cautioning those he sees in his visions. A friend of mine called Bonnello’s first feature, Le pornographe, a disaster, remarking that his use of hardcore sex during one scene was simply a way to get more people to see a bland film about a son trying to reconnect with his father. I didn’t dislike it as much, but it left very little imprint in my memory. Tiresia, though dark in theme, works as a mood piece about faith instead of addressing really any issue of gender. It’s certainly a film that most audiences would easily reject, yet it’s almost easier to just allow Bonnello to take you where he wants you to go. Tiresia plays by its own rules and that alone is commendable. It also helps that Bonnello accomplishes a haunting mood and atmosphere, even if it's not easily discernable what he’s doing or where he’s going.


Cheeky! (Tra(nsgre)dire) - dir. Tinto Brass - 2000 - Italy

Tinto Brass still makes films as if it were the 1970s. We open Cheeky! with our heroine, Carla (Yuliya Mayarchuk), strolling through a London park like Jayne Mansfield in The Girl Can’t Help It to an amusingly high-cheese score, where it just so happens everyone around her is engaging in lusty sex. Everywhere she turns, there’s a woman uncrossing her legs to reveal she forgot to put her panties in the laundry that morning. Or there’s a couple in heat, appeasing one another’s sexual urges. Of course, Carla, looking like an Eastern-European streetwalker dressed up as Brigitte Bardot, joins in on the fun, wearing a see-through skirt and exposing her buttocks to passer-byers. There’s a story that follows involving Carla’s tight-ass boyfriend and her search for an apartment, but really this is only an excuse to introduce Carla to as many sexual partners as possible or place her in a situation where others are about to bang. The playfulness of Cheeky!’s sexuality is admirable and refreshing, even if the film is simply pretext for close-ups of Mayarchuk’s ass and sexual experimentation.

Firecracker - dir. Steve Balderson - 2004 - USA

I saw this horrible film a couple of months ago called Stillwater, a thriller about a man's search for his past that made my student films look like Antonioni, and remarked, "if you're going to be fucking Lynchian, at least throw in some dancing midgets." Though I only stated that in my Netflix "Two Cents," I'm convinced Steve Balderson saw that remark and one-upped me. If he was to be Lynchian, he was gunna give me a midget with pasties on. God bless him for that, but fuck him for everything else. He tried so hard to make this film look like he was the heir apparent to Lynch that he actually tried to get Dennis Hopper to play a character named Frank (Hopper backed out, thankfully). Set in Kansas, Firecracker is about an abusive brother (Mike Patton, of Faith No More) who pesters the shit out of his pussy, piano-playing kid brother (Jak Kendall) against his mother's (Karen Black!!) wishes and ends up dead. Somehow this is all linked to a travelling carnival, where he is having an affair with the main attraction of a girlie show (Karen Black!!! again). It's a terrible fucking mess, shot in both black and white and color (a huge pet peeve of mine) and filled with a plethora of blank references to Lynch. Balderson's first feature, called Pep Squad, was equally messy and just as unsuccessfuly lofty in ambition, a black comedy slasher film that eventually turned into a ridiculous indictment of America. He couldn't direct "actors" then, and, even with top talent like Karen Black (!!!!), he still can't. Even on the grounds of seeing Ms. Black play dual roles, one of them a character obviously written for a woman twenty years younger, I cannot allow you to satisfy this curiosity. (Note: Balderson couldn't and didn't read my remarks about Stillwater, as Firecracker was made a year before Stillwater, not that I really needed to clarify this or anything...)