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

White Material, Making Plans for Lena and Rompecabezas at IFC

Though I didn't find any official announcements of such, it looks as if Claire Denis' White Material and Christophe Honoré's Making Plans for Lena [Non ma fille, tu n'iras pas danser] have landed at IFC Films. BAMcinématek is presenting a three-day spotlight on IFC Films beginning 19 March, and both films are on the line-up along with Ken Loach's Looking for Eric, Elia Suleiman's The Time That Remains, Kim Ji-woon's The Good, the Bad, the Weird, Bruno Dumont's Hadewijch, Johnnie To's Vengeance and Tales from the Golden Age. For those in NYC, both Honoré and star Chiara Mastroianni will be present for a Q&A following the 20 March screening of Making Plans for Lena; this will be the fourth Honoré film that IFC has released following Dans Paris, Les chansons d'amour and La belle personne. More information here. In addition to the films above, IFC did officially announce their acquisition of Puzzle [Rompecabezas], the directorial debut of Natalie Smirnoff who previously worked as an assistant director on Lucrecia Martel's La ciénaga and The Holy Girl and casting director on The Headless Woman. Starring the amazing María Onetto, Puzzle was the sole Latin American film in competition at this year's Berlin International Film Festival.

The 2010 Rendez-vous with French Cinema

The 15th annual Rendez-vous with French Cinema, presented by The Film Society of Lincoln Center and UniFrance, was announced recently, though the line-up isn't much to get excited over. Rendez-vous with French Cinema usually highlights the previous year's Gallic offerings that hadn't already premiered at the New York Film Festival. Last year's series screened the new films from Claire Denis, Agnès Godard, Claude Chabrol, Costa-Gavras, André Téchiné and Benoît Jacquot. While there are some big(-ish) names represented this year like François Ozon, Michel Gondry, Christophe Honoré and Claude Miller, the line-up as a whole doesn't read as "thrilling" by any stretch (keep in mind I haven't actually seen any of the films yet). On the bright side, Alain Guiraudie's Le roi de l'évasion [The King of Escape] will make its US premiere at the festival (and, really, I am quite anxious to see the new Ozon and a couple of the others).

Jules Dassin's The Law [La loi], a French/Italian co-production from 1959 with Gina Lollobrigida, Marcello Mastroianni, Melina Mercouri and Yves Montand, is the only feature more than a year old that screens this year. Recently remastered in a new 35mm print, The Law will make the rounds theatrically and on DVD later this year from Oscilloscope Pictures. Thierry Frémaux, artistic director of the Cannes Film Festival, will also bring a collection of newly restored shorts from the Lumière brothers. The selection of short films will include a film called The Girls, the directorial debut of actress Anna Mouglalis. Of the 2009 features, four currently have US distribution (with Lorber Films announcing their acquisition of L'armée du crime earlier today). The complete line-up is below, but click here for short synopses, screening dates and online ticketing.

- À l'origine [In the Beginning], d. Xavier Giannoli, w. François Cluzet, Emmanuelle Devos, Gérard Depardieu
- L'affaire Farewell [Farewell], d. Christian Carion, w. Emir Kusturica, Guillaume Canet, Alexandra Maria Lara, Fred Ward, Willem Dafoe, Diane Kruger, Benno Fürmann
- L'armée du crime [The Army of Crime], d. Robert Guédiguian, Lorber Films, w. Simon Abkarian, Virginie Ledoyen, Robinson Stévenin, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet, Yann Trégouët, Adrien Jolivet
- Les beaux gosses [The French Kissers], d. Riad Sattouf, w. Noémie Lvovsky, Valeria Golino, Irène Jacob, Emmanuelle Devos, Marjane Satrapi, Christophe Vandevelde
- Le bel âge [Restless / L'insurgée], d. Laurent Perreau, w. Michel Piccoli, Pauline Etienne, Eric Caravaca
- L'épine dans le cœur [The Thorn in the Heart], d. Michel Gondry, Oscilloscope Pictures
- La famille Wolberg [The Wolberg Family], d. Axelle Ropert, w. Serge Bozon
- Le hérisson [The Hedgehog], d. Mona Achache, w. Josiane Balasko
- Huit fois debout [8 Times Up], d. Xabi Molia, w. Julie Gayet, Denis Podalydès, Frédéric Bocquet
- Je suis heureux que ma mère soit vivante [I'm Glad That My Mother Is Alive], d. Claude Miller, Nathan Miller
- La loi [The Law], d. Jules Dassin, Oscilloscope Pictures, w. Gina Lollobrigida, Yves Montand, Marcello Mastroianni, Melina Mercouri, Pierre Brasseur
- Mademoiselle Chambon, d. Stéphane Brizé, w. Vincent Lindon, Sandrine Kiberlain
- Non ma fille, tu n'iras pas danser [Making Plans for Lena], d. Christophe Honoré, w. Chiarra Mastroianni, Marina Foïs, Jean-Marc Barr, Louis Garrel, Julien Honoré
- OSS 117: Rio de répond plus [OSS 117: Lost in Rio], d. Michel Hazanavicius, w. Jean Dujardin, Louise Monot, Rüdiger Vogler
- Rapt, d. Lucas Belvaux, w. Yvan Attal, Anne Consigny, Alex Descas
- Le refuge [The Refuge], d. François Ozon, Strand Releasing, w. Isabelle Carré, Melvil Poupaud
- Les regrets, d. Cédric Kahn, w. Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Yvan Attal
- Le roi de l'évasion [The King of Escape], d. Alain Guiraudie, w. Ludovic Berthillot, Hafsia Herzi
- Welcome, d. Philippe Lioret, Film Movement, w. Vincent Lindon

The Decade List: Les chansons d'amour (2007)

Les chansons d’amour [Love Songs] – dir. Christophe Honoré

Approaching the films of Christophe Honoré is a lot like walking along a tightrope. The odds always seem to be against you making it to the finish line without a gust of wind (or, in Honoré’s case, of bullshit) blowing you off. Even the worst of his films have glimmers of effulgence, but in most cases, they’re buried so deep in self-indulgence and shallow affronts that those moments are quickly forgotten. In every one of his films, Honoré “borrows” from considerably better pieces of French cinema, namely Godard and Truffaut, but in Love Songs, he takes on Jacques Demy, and the results are the most fruitful and satisfying of his career, even if you do still have to scrape a little shit off the bottom of your shoe afterward.

Love Songs exists in a magical, musical world of pliable sexuality during the winter months in Paris. The cold does provide more fashionable attire for the cast of beautiful people, does it not? It’s also the sort of world in which love and despair are grossly exalted, a world in which people can actually die of a broken heart. The ever-charming Ismaël (Honoré’s favorite actor, Louis Garrel) and the ever-lovely Julie (Ludivine Sagnier) have what would seem to be a harmonious love affair together… and with Ismaël’s pretty coworker Alice (Clotilde Hesme), but something’s awry. Ismaël feels like the third wheel, even though he’s a hit with Julie’s family, and Julie appears unsatisfied with both of her partners, though she only shows it when pressed by her mother (Brigitte Roüan) or sister Jeanne (Chiara Mastroianni). Quickly, we begin to realize that this particular ménage à trois isn’t a progressive way of looking at romance, but a last resort to keep a once bright flame from extinguishing.

Honoré hasn’t fully allowed himself to step away from his lame visual quirks, from a title sequence where the entire cast and crew are identified by last name only to a stupid moment where the camera pans across the titles of the books the three love birds are reading in bed. His grasp of sequencing, cause-and-effect and timing is off, especially in the convenient, lazy ways he threads characters into the film. But dammit if Love Songs isn’t kinda wonderful in spite all that. The songs, composed by Alex Beaupain who makes a cameo in the film as a musician whose show the lovers attend, are almost uniformly superb, even if Roüan and Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet’s singing voices are truly unremarkable (I still can't decide how I feel about Hesme's). It’s as if Honoré wanted to alert his audience to which of the characters hold the most weight in the film based on the quality of the actors’ serenades (it says a lot about the youngest of Julie's sisters, who only exists as an inconvenient plot contrivance).

Sagnier had already proven her vocal abilities in François Ozon’s 8 Women, and though according to the presse dossier Garrel hadn’t sang much before the film, his voice is pleasant. But it’s really all about Chiara Mastroianni, who plays Julie’s slightly uptight, certainly sheltered older sister. It would be giving Honoré too much credit to suggest that her presence is what links Love Songs to the film it aspires to, Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (which, of course, starred her mother). Not only does Mastroianni have the richest singing voice of the cast (she recorded the album Home in 2004 with then-husband Benjamin Biolay), but she delivers the moment that brings the film to its knees with the song “Au parc.” Her Jeanne is the sole character whose sorrow stretches deeper than just sulking and pouting, and it’s profoundly felt in the scene at the Parc de la Pépinière.

Andrew O’Hehir accurately points out that Honoré takes more from Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau’s Jeanne and the Perfect Guy [Jeanne et le garçon formidable] than it does Les parapluies de Cherbourg, even if he does find an excuse for placing Mastroianni beneath an umbrella as she walks Julie to the métro station. Compared to Jeanne and the Perfect Guy, a marvelous tragi-comédie musicale about a young woman (Virginie Ledoyen) who meets her dream man only to discover he has AIDS, Love Songs comes up short, but still it cast its own bittersweet spell on me. Even when it comes to Christophe Honoré, I can admit defeat.

With: Louis Garrel, Chiara Mastroianni, Ludivine Sagnier, Clotilde Hesme, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet, Brigitte Roüan, Jean-Marie Winling, Alice Butaud, Yannick Renier, Alex Beaupain
Screenplay: Christophe Honoré
Cinematography: Rémy Chevrin
Music: Alex Beaupain
Country of Origin: France
US Distributor: IFC Films/Red Envelope Entertainment

Premiere: 18 May 2007 (Cannes Film Festival)
US Premiere: 21 March 2008

Awards: Best Music (César Awards, France)

The Decade List: (Some of) The Worst Films (2006)

I've been using the IMDb as a reference for film years when compiling films for the Decade List, and while I realize the site isn't always correct, it's a lot easier than looking elsewhere to find the first official screening of Phat Girlz. However, I've run into my first altercation when using the IMDb for 2006. By their records, 300, easily one of the worst films I've ever seen, is a 2006 movie because it played at something called the Austin Butt-Numb-a-Thon in December of that year. I don't know anything about this "fest," but I'm going to go ahead and disqualify that as a legitimate "film premiere." Black Snake Moan falls under the same category.

Anyway, I have little to say about the films below, but I've included links to shit I've written on them in the past. I've placed an asterisk next to the films that have a special sort of "awful" appeal, failures of a certain charm. I haven't given all of those titles a second look to gauge their level of camp appeal, but I can assure you both Snow Cake and Notes on a Scandal rise to the occasion. Cate Blanchett asking Judi Dench, "You wanna fuck me, Barbara?" and Sigourney Weaver's hilarious performance as a woman with autism in Snow Cake (not to mention how many bad-ass points Alan Rickman lost with his schoolgirl fussiness after confronting the man who killed Sigourney's daughter) are absolutely worth wasting your time over.

- Alpha Dog - d. Nick Cassavetes - USA
- Another Gay Movie - d. Todd Phillips - USA
- Art School Confidential - d. Terry Zwigoff - USA [also here]
- Basic Instinct 2 - d. Michael Caton-Jones - USA/Germany/UK/Spain [also here]
- The Black Dahlia - d. Brian De Palma - USA/Germany [also an appendix; and here]
- Boy Culture - d. Q. Allan Brocka - USA
- Broken Sky [El cielo dividido] - d. Julián Hernández - Mexico
- The Bubble - d. Eytan Fox - Israel [Winner of the "Best Way to Revive Your Otherwise Awful Film" Award at my first, and only, Fin de cinéma awards]
- Cars - d. John Lasseter, Joe Ranft - USA
- Confetti - d. Debbie Isitt - UK
- Cowboy Junction - d. Gregory Christian - USA
- Dans Paris - d. Christophe Honoré - France/Portugal
- Dirty Sanchez: The Movie - d. Jim Hickey - UK
- Eating Out 2: Sloppy Seconds - d. Phillip J. Bartell - USA
- Eternal Summer - d. Leste Chen - Taiwan
- Factory Girl - d. George Hickenlooper - USA
- For Your Consideration - d. Christopher Guest - USA [also here]
- The Fountain - d. Darren Aronofsky - USA*
- Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus - d. Steven Shainberg - USA
- Grimm Love [Rohtenburg] - d. Martin Weisz - Germany
- The Hills Have Eyes - d. Alexandre Aja - USA
- Idlewild - d. Bryan Barber - USA
- Marie Antoinette - d. Sofia Coppola - USA/France/Japan
- Murderous Intent [Like Minds] - d. Gregory J. Read - Australia/UK
- The Namesake - d. Mira Nair - India/USA
- Notes on a Scandal - d. Richard Eyre - UK*
- O Jerusalem - d. Elie Chouraqui - France/UK/Italy/Greece/Israel/USA [also here]
- Off the Black - d. James Ponsoldt - USA
- The OH in Ohio - d. Billy Kent - USA [also here]
- On ne devrait pas exister [We Should Not Exist] - d. Hervé P. Gustave - France
- One Third - d. Kim Yong-man - USA
- The Page Turner [La tourneuse de pages] - d. Denis Dercourt - France
- Phat Girlz - d. Nnegest Likké - USA
- Psychopathia Sexualis - d. Bret Wood - USA
- The Pursuit of Happyness - d. Gabriele Muccino - USA
- Snow Cake - d. Marc Evans - Canada/UK* [more on Sigourney]
- Southland Tales - d. Richard Kelly - USA/Germany/France*
- Tan Lines - d. Ed Aldridge - Australia
- Things to Do - d. Ted Bezaire - Canada
- The Tripper - d. David Arquette - USA
- The Unknown Woman [La sconosciuta] - d. Giuseppe Tornatore - Italy/France*
- Vacationland - d. Todd Verow - USA
- The West Wittering Affair - d. David Scheinmann - UK
- The Wicker Man - d. Neil LaBute - USA/Germany/Canada*
- The Wild - d. Steve 'Spaz' Williams - USA
- The Young, the Gay and the Restless - d. Joe Castro - USA
- Yours Emotionally! - d. Sridhar Rangayan - India/UK

The Decade List: (Some of) The Worst Films (2004)

On the fourth year of the Aughts, I realize that the (Some of) The Worst Films chapter has become rather drab. The lists never really amount to anything of substance, except mildly pissing a few people off, and simply expose the lousy crop of films I had the misfortune of seeing in some form. Is there any need to mention that Christmas with the Kranks blew or that an incompetently-made coming-of-age tale of a young European that no one's seen like Shem was even less enthralling than Catwoman?

I speculate that I continue to make these lists for two reasons. 1.) They're easy to compile and don't require me to sit down and watch them again (unless you strongly suggest I reevaluate my thoughts); and 2.) I derive great pleasure in spitting (and re-spitting) venom onto films as contemptible as Paul Haggis' Crash as often as possible. Yes, though it would go on to become the hands-down worst Best Picture winner in Oscar history in 2006, Crash technically made its premiere at Toronto in 2004. Once guaranteed to emit an angry tirate out of me, the process of aging has caused me to forget many of my reserve of arguments against that garbage. Or maybe I spend less time dwelling on the bad than I used to.

As for the common themes outside of Ben Affleck, lousy "adapatations" of Georges Bataille make a dual showing in 2004. Christophe Honoré's "faithful" adaptation of Bataille's final book Ma mère finds little more than a naked Louis Garrel and Isabelle Huppert on auto-pilot, while The Story of the Eye suffices in merely quoting the writer and proceeding with an inspid "art" video "porno" which shares no commonality with the book other than a central ménage à trois.

And for general comments: Oliver Stone can cut Alexander any way he wants to, but it'll never be a good film; despite Tracey Ullman being a fair substitute for Divine, A Dirty Shame is not good (at all); without trying, The Notebook is funnier than Napoleon Dynamite, which tries... hard; as hard as it is to offend me, the tween comedy Sleepover managed to do so; and Palindromes is the ill-conceived and -realized film I'd always expected to come from Todd Solondz.

- Alexander - d. Oliver Stone - USA/Germany/Netherlands/France/UK
- Along Came Polly - d. John Hamburg - USA
- Catwoman - d. Pitof - USA/Australia
- Christmas with the Kranks - d. Joe Roth - USA
- Club Dread - d. Jay Chandrasekhar - USA
- Crash - d. Paul Haggis - Canada/UK
- Crutch - d. Rob Moretti - USA
- The Day After Tomorrow - d. Roland Emmerich - USA
- A Dirty Shame - d. John Waters - USA
- Eating Out - d. Q. Allen Brocka - USA
- Garden State - d. Zach Braff - USA
- George Bataille's Story of the Eye - d. Andrew Repasky McElhinney - USA
- House of Flying Daggers - d. Zhang Yimou - China/Hong Kong
- Jargo - d. María Sólrún Sigurðardóttir - Germany/Iceland
- Ma mère - d. Christophe Honoré - France/Portugal/Austria/Spain
- Melinda & Melinda - d. Woody Allen - USA
- Most High - d. Marty Sader - USA
- Napoleon Dynamite - d. Jared Hess - USA
- The Notebook - d. Nick Cassavetes - USA/Portugal
- Palindromes - d. Todd Solondz - USA
- People: Jet Set 2 - d. Fabien Onteniente - France/Spain
- Ray - d. Taylor Hackford - USA
- Saved! - d. Brian Dannelly - USA
- Shem - d. Caroline Roboh - UK/Israel
- Sleepover - d. Joe Nussbaum - USA
- Slutty Summer - d. Casper Andreas - USA
- Surviving Christmas - d. Mike Mitchell - USA
- Until the Night - d. Gregory Hatanaka - USA

IFC Films in 2009, including Assayas, Ozon, Garrel, Sang-soo, Arcand, Tarr

In a press release, IFC Films laid out a number of films they'll be presenting through their various platforms of release, which includes theatrical, Festival Direct Video-On-Demand and their DVD rental partnership with Blockbuster (which seems to have stopped their releases of DVDs elsewhere, which is extremely disappointing). I use Netflix, and my cable provider doesn't offer Festival Direct... so I'm sort of fucked when it comes to their releases, but I have to hand it to them for getting so many films out there. Their 2009 release schedule includes:

Angel - dir. François Ozon - with Sam Neill, Charlotte Rampling, Michael Fassbender
Frontier of the Dawn [La frontière de l'aube] - dir. Philippe Garrel - with Louis Garrel, Laura Smet
Summer Hours [L'heure d'été] - dir. Olivier Assayas - with Charles Berling, Juliette Binoche, Jérémie Renier
La belle personne - dir. Christophe Honoré - with Louis Garrel, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet
Let It Rain [Parlez-moi de la pluie] - dir. Agnès Jaoui - with Agnès Jaoui
Days of Darkness [L'âge des ténèbres] - dir. Denys Arcand - with Diane Kruger, Rufus Wainwright, Emma de Caunes
Night and Day - dir. Hong Sang-soo
Disengagement [Désengagement] - dir. Amos Gitai - with Juliette Binoche, Jeanne Moreau
Dog Eat Dog [Perro come perro] - dir. Carlos Moreno
Everlasting Moments [Maria Larssons eviga ögonblick] - dir. Jan Troell
Fear Me Not [Den du frygter] - dir. Kristian Levring - with Ulrich Thomsen, Paprika Steen
I'm Going to Explode [Voy a explotar] - dir. Gerardo Naranjo - with Daniel Giménez Cacho
The Man from London [A Londoni férfi] - dir. Béla Tarr - with Tilda Swinton
The Necessities of Life [Ce qu'il fait pour vivre] - dir. Benoît Pilon
Paris - dir. Cédric Klapisch - with Juliette Binoche, Romain Duris, Fabrice Luchini, François Cluzet, Albert Dupontel, Karin Viard
When a Man Comes Home [En Mand kommer hjem] - dir. Thomas Vinterberg
White Night Wedding [Brúðguminn] - dir. Baltasar Kormákur - with Hilmir Snær Guðnason
A Year Ago in Winter [Im Winter ein Jahr] - dir. Caroline Link
Alexander the Last - dir. Joe Swanberg - with Jess Weixler, Justin Rice, Jane Adams, Josh Hamilton
Zift - dir. Javor Gardev

There are more titles at the link above, and I've also heard from elsewhere that Jean-Claude Brisseau's À l'aventure and Antti-Jussi Annila's Sauna are on the roster for 2009. I could be wrong, as I thought both Paris and Disengagement belonged to Samuel Goldwyn and Sony Pictures Classics, respectively. Expect plenty more acquisitions throughout the year following 2009's big film festivals.

2009 Notebook, Volume 2: Expanded

There's a scale I use to place a certain type of film - the micobudget, tongue-in-cheek horrorcomedy. The scale slides along a plane with Terror Firmer (or Citizen Toxie) at the highest pole and Gutterballs at the furthest. Most of these films flutter around the Gutterballs arena with their tasteless (and humorless) gore fests, but Yeti: A Love Story is probably one of the few that sits on high. It's intermittently amusing, particularly in its coining of the sexual term "Mellancamping," which is described by the douchebag frat guy who eventually falls in love with the yeti as "making one hurt so good." Though heavy on beastial sodomy, it never reaches the brilliance of Toxie giving birth to his mother in Terror Firmer, but color me amused.

Queer cinema has always been my focal point in writing about the medium, which forces me to endure some of the most scathingly awful pieces of celluloid (or, more likely, consumer-level video). Piccadilly Pickups is easily one of the most taxing endurance tests I've undertook in this realm. Starring a pre-op Alexis Arquette as a porno film director named Henri de la Plus Ooh Arrgh, the film crawls its way through thankless gender-fucking sex scenes like Bruce LaBruce's two-legged puppy. It doesn't deserve any of the words I'm using for it, which is about the biggest crime I can give any film, and if you need perspective, I dedicated at least twenty-five pages of my thesis to Another Gay Movie.

On a happier note, I finally got around to Christopher Larkin's seminal A Very Natural Thing, one of the first American films to explicitly deal with the love life of a gay man, played by Robert Joel who also starred in Russ Meyer's Up! Megavixen. A Very Natural Thing is appropriately flawed by its mix of documentary and fiction footage, the former of which containing interviews with individuals at the 1973 New York City Gay Pride Parade. However, its intentions are always just, and its vision is always surprising. In addition to the film's final, breathtaking slow-mo nude run across a beach, A Very Natural Thing hits so many right notes in terms of narrative disposition, a brilliant precursor to some of queer cinema's more recent high points (Presque rien being the most obvious).

Christophe Honoré is such a perplexing figure in French cinema. He's absolutely inferior to his co-patriot peers (François Ozon, Sébastien Lifshitz), and yet there's still some sort of attraction in his glaring failures. While Les chansons d'amour suggests he might be heading in the proper direction (his more recent film La belle personne was bought by IFC Films last year), his directorial debut, 17 fois Cécile Cassard, is a giant mess of a film. Supposedly divided into seventeen "moments" of a woman's life, surprisingly downplayed by the wonderful Béatrice Dalle, the film begins awkwardly with Dalle speaking to her dead, naked husband (Johan Oderio-Robles), rear-projected into her otherwise empty bedroom. Every "moment" in not just this film but all of his others excluding Chansons and Tout contre Léo has been done before more successfully by finer directors like Arnaud Desplechin and Jean-Luc Godard, whom he embarrassingly emulated in Dans Paris. And yet, there's still something mildly compelling here. With the benefit of enlisting actors who are too good for their material (Dalle, Romain Duris, Jeanne Balibar), Cécile's confusing journey to Toulouse after abandoning her young son seems guided by good intentions, even if the overall result is a bit lackluster. None of the characters make much sense in their life decisions. Why did Cécile abandon her son and become Toulouse's resident fag hag all of a sudden? What exactly does Duris see in his friendship with Cécile anyway? Like Ma mère and Dans Paris, it's easier to just allow for Honoré to thoughtless throw the occasional juicy sequence to hide the dramatic shortcomings.

The morbid curiosity of witnessing Tony Ward, model and former love interest to Madonna, expose himself in just about every way is the only thing that keeps Jochen Hick's Sex/Life in LA interesting. His attempts to name-drop the icon at every given moment, including a story about her burning him with a cigarette, are just as curiously desperate as allowing the director to film him jerk-off in a bathtub. Nothing about Sex/Life in LA, or its sequel Sex/Life in LA 2: Cycles of Porn, is particularly revelatory or enlightening, even though it stands as a weird Behind-the-Music exposé of many of the people involved with Bruce LaBruce's Hustler White. Along with Ward, performance artist Ron Athey, co-director and photographer Rick Castro and irritating surfer boy porn star Kevin Kramer are all featured here, alongside shitty sub-porn music and under no worthy direction at all.

Poor Anne Hathaway. She's just begging to keep that Oscar out of her grasp. After giving me (and probably many others) justification for liking her in Rachel Getting Married, she's following that up with films like Passengers and Bride Wars. Though I don't think I can bring myself to watch anything with Kate Hudson in it, I did sit through Passengers which finds Hathaway treating the reluctant survivors of a terrible plane crash. With Hathaway finally finding the shoe that fit in Rachel, her role choices of bland romantic leads and professional women feel even more out of place. Under the pretense of being a mystery, Passengers waits until the end to reveal its cop-out "twist," which almost pushes the film into Seven Pounds territory. Strangely though, Rodrigo García actually has dramatic reasoning for the shitty rug-pull he does, and even though it doesn't work on the dramatic level he wanted it to, the fact that he didn't just want to pull the strings of his audience keeps Passengers from being the utter failure it might have been. You've seen it before, trust me.

I'm not planning on speaking at length about any of the 2000-and-beyond films I'm revisiting, as many of them will turn up on my planned best of the decade list, but I've learned a thing or two about myself with another viewing of Vicky Cristina Barcelona. I know Woody Allen has a pretty large fan base, and I know most of which has lost faith in the director's recent oeuvre, but falling in love with Vicky Cristina Barcelona all over again just proved that I will never have my finger on the pulse of America. I saw Vicky show up on plenty of top 10 lists this year and I've enthusiastically suggested many of my friends to go see it, and I have yet to find anyone I know personally that shares the relief and elation I felt with both viewings. It's so ravishingly complex in terms of characterization, narration (which is brilliant, despite many people's gripes about it), visualization and humor that I just can't wrap my mind around all the people I know who thought it was "good, but didn't blow me away." More on Vicky around the month of November, for sure. PS: It's my dark horse candidate for a Best Picture Oscar nomination.

2009 Notebook: Vol 2

I still haven't quite figured out how to categorize the films I watch yet, so most of them are getting their own special categories until I can think of something more universal. [I know this sounds really anal, but I'm really pissed off with iPhoto, as it won't let me set a cropping size for my photos... annoying, I know]

Better Than Expected

A Very Natural Thing - dir. Christopher Larkin - USA - 1974 - Water Bearer Films - with Robert Joel, Curt Gareth, Bo White, Anthony McKay, Marilyn Meyers

Yeti: A Love Story - dir. Adam Deyoe, Eric Gosselin - USA - 2006 - Troma - with David Paige, Brie Bouslaugh, Laura Glascott, Eric Gosselin, Adam Malamut, Joe Mande, Loren Mash

Passable

17 fois Cécile Cassard [Seventeen Times Cécile Cassard] - dir. Christophe Honoré - France - 2002 - N/A - with Béatrice Dalle, Romain Duris, Jeanne Balibar, Ange Ruzé, Johan Oderio-Robles, Tiago Manaïa, Jérôme Kircher, Julien Collet, Jérémy Sanguinetti

Disquiet - dir. Matthew Doyle - USA - 2006 - Self-Distributed - with Matthew Doyle, David Tuchman, Brandon Slagle, Niki Notarile

Lousy, Though Not Without Some Small Amusement

Pieces [Mil gritos tiene la noche] - dir. Juan Piquer Simón - Spain/Puerto Rico/USA - 1982 - Grindhouse Releasing - with Linda Day, Christopher George, Edmund Purdom

Sex/Life in L.A. - dir. Jochen Hick - Germany/USA - 1998 - Strand Releasing - with Tony Ward, Ron Athey, Rick Castro

Almost a Nightmare

Passengers - dir. Rodrigo García - USA/Canada - 2008 - with Anne Hathaway, Patrick Wilson, Andre Braugher, Dianne Wiest, David Morse, Clea DuVall, William B. Davis, Ryan Robbins

A Nightmare

Piccadilly Pickups - dir. Amory Peart - UK - 2000 - N/A - with Alexis Arquette, Jake Darby, Shawn Stone, Rod Hunt, Chris Green, B.J. Wallace

Revisited

Mother of Tears: The Third Mother [La terza madre] - dir. Dario Argento - Italy/USA - 2007 - Myriad/Dimension - with Asia Argento, Cristian Solimeno, Udo Kier, Moran Atias, Adam James, Daria Nicolodi

Vicky Cristina Barcelona - dir. Woody Allen - Spain/USA - 2008 - MGM/Weinstein Company - with Javier Bardem, Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson, Penélope Cruz, Patricia Clarkson, Chris Messina, Kevin Dunn, Pablo Schreiber

...And John Waters' Best of 2008

Looks like John Waters has posted his annual best of the year list via Artforum, naming a tie for the top slot: Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona ("gives heterosexuality a good name!") and Christophe Honoré's Love Songs. I always feel like I'm just one-off with the Prince of Filth, this year being his inclusion of Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely, which I would have hated if it deserved that much energy. And I love that he described Julianne Moore in Savage Grace as "the best Isabelle Huppert performance of the year." The list is as follows, though I suggest you follow the link as his brief run-downs are highly amusing:

1. (tie) Vicky Cristina Bareclona - dir. Woody Allen; Love Songs [Les chansons d'amour] - Christophe Honoré
2. Mister Lonely - dir. Harmony Korine
3. Savage Grace - dir. Tom Kalin
4. Man on Wire - dir. James Marsh
5. The Last Mistress [Une vieille maîtresse] - dir. Catherine Breillat
6. My Winnipeg - dir. Guy Maddin
7. The Wrestler - dir. Darren Aronofsky
8. Taxi to the Dark Side - dir. Alex Gibney
9. Milk - dir. Gus Van Sant
10. Cassandra's Dream - dir. Woody Allen

2008 Progress Report, Part 3

In looking back at the past six months, I'm more than a little surprised at how many films not only managed to succeed in their respective endeavors, but actually ended up affecting me deeply. Of course, there may be some extraneous circumstances at work, but overall, I'm pretty assure in ranking these films on the higher tier of contemporary cinema. Let's just hope that the rest of the year is as rich. I also included two special mentions for astounding films that didn't see a theatrical release stateside, but thankfully hit DVDs uncensored.

La crème

Billy the Kid – dir. Jennifer Venditti – USA – Elephant Eye Films

Boarding Gate – dir. Olivier Assayas – France/Luxembourg – Magnet Releasing – with Asia Argento, Michael Madsen, Carl Ng, Kelly Lin, Joana Preiss, Kim Gordon, Alex Descas

Duchess of Langeais, The [Ne touchez pas la hache] – dir. Jacques Rivette – France – IFC Films – with Guillaume Depardieu, Jeanne Balibar, Bulle Ogier, Michel Piccoli

Edge of Heaven, The [Auf der anderen Seite] – dir. Fatih Akin – Germany/Turkey/Italy – Strand Releasing – with Baki Davrak, Hanna Schygulla, Nurgül Yesilçay, Tuncel Kurtiz, Patrycia Ziolkowska

Flight of the Red Balloon, The [Le voyage du ballon rouge] – dir. Hou Hsiao-hsien – IFC Films – with Juliette Binoche, Simon Iteanu, Fang Song, Hippolyte Girardot

In Bruges – dir. Martin McDonagh – UK – Focus Features – with Brendan Gleeson, Colin Farrell, Ralph Fiennes, Clémence Poésy, Jérémie Renier

Irina Palm – dir. Sam Garbarski – UK/Belgium/Luxembourg/Germany/France – Strand Releasing – with Marianne Faithfull, Miki Manojlovic, Kevin Bishop, Siobhan Hewlett, Jenny Agutter

Last Mistress, The [Une vieille maîtresse] – dir. Catherine Breillat – France/Italy – IFC Films – with Asia Argento, Fu’ad Ait Aattou, Roxane Mesquida, Claude Sarraute, Yolande Moreau, Anne Parillaud, Amira Casar

Love Songs [Les chansons d’amour] – dir. Christophe Honoré – France – IFC Films – with Louis Garrel, Ludivine Sagnier, Chiara Mastroianni, Clotilde Hesme, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet

Noise – dir. Matthew Saville – Australia – Film Movement – with Brendan Cowell, Maia Thomas, Henry Nixon, Nicholas Bell

Otto; or Up with Dead People – dir. Bruce LaBruce – Canada/Germany – Strand Releasing – with Jey Crisfar, Katharina Klewinghaus, Marcel Schlutt, Susanne Sachße

Paranoid Park – dir. Gus Van Sant – USA/France – IFC Films – with Gabe Nevins, Taylor Momsen, Jake Miller, Lauren McKinney

Reprise – dir. Joachim Trier – Norway – Red Envelope Entertainment/Miramax – with Anders Danielsen Lie, Espen Klouman-Høiner, Viktoria Winge

XXY – dir. Lucía Puenzo – Argentina/France/Spain – Film Movement – with Inés Efron, Germán Palacios, Valeria Bertuccelli, Martín Piroyansky

Special DVD Mentions

Free Will, The [Der Freie Wille] – dir. Matthias Glasner – Germany – Benten Films – with Jürgen Vogel, Sabine Timoteo, André Hennicke, Manfred Zapatka

Inside [À l’intérieur] – dir. Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maury – France – Dimension – with Béatrice Dalle, Allyson Paradis, Nicolas Duvauchellerianne Faithfull, ermany/France - Strand es, llon rouge] - dir.ist. them into three convenient categories. onal festivals