R.I.P. Patrice Chéreau: A Great, Under-Appreciated French Filmmaker

One of French cinema's finest directors, Patrice Chéreau, died yesterday at the age of 68. Famous as a writer and director of both the screen and the stage, Chéreau made his film debut in 1975 with The Flesh of the Orchid (La chair de l'orchidée), an adaptation of British mystery author James Hadley Chase's sequel to No Orchids for Miss Blandish. The film starred Charlotte Rampling, Simone Signoret, Edwige Feuillère, Bruno Cremer, and Hugues Quester. Chéreau would subsequently re-team with Signoret in 1978 for his next feature, Judith Therpauve. He would come to prominence in the international film circuit with this third film in 1983, L'homme blessé, a gritty, sexually explicit tale of an eighteen-year-old boy (Jean-Hugues Anglade) and his infatuation with a drug-addicted hustler (Vittorio Mezzogiorno). Premiering in competition at Cannes that year, L'homme blessé launched the career of Anglade, who would work with Chéreau again in Queen Margot and Persécution, and awarded Chéreau and his co-writer Hervé Guibert the César for Best Original Screenplay.

His next film, Hôtel de France—which starred Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Vincent Perez, Marianne Denicourt, Agnès Jaoui, and Bruno Todeschini among others—played in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes in 1987, followed by Chéreau's participation in the Amnesty International-funded omnibus feature Contre l'oubli (Lest We Forget), alongside Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, Claire Denis, Chantal Akerman, and several others. His best-known film, Queen Margot (La reine Margot), played in competition at Cannes in 1994, winning the Jury Prize as well as the Best Actress prize for Virna Lisi. The lavish, violent costume drama was nominated for an Academy Award for costume design, a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film, and received Césars for cinematography, costume design, and for three of its cast members: Isabelle Adjani, Jean-Hugues Anglade, and Lisi.

Chéreau returned to his queer roots in 1998 with the splendid Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train, an ensemble film surrounding the funeral of a beloved painter (Jean-Louis Trintignant). The film also starred Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Vincent Perez, Pascal Greggory, Charles Berling, Bruno Todeschini, Roschdy Zem, and Dominique Blanc. Césars were given to Blanc for Supporting Actress, Éric Gauthier for Cinematography, and Chéreau for Direction. Chéreau made his English-language debut in 2001 with the controversial Intimacy, one of the first mainstream, English-language films in to feature unsimulated sex between its two leads, Mark Rylance and Kerry Fox. The film, which was based on the writings of Hanif Kureishi and also starred Marianne Faithfull and Timothy Spall, won the coveted Golden Bear at the Berlinale. He would again find himself on the award podium at the Berlinale two years later, winning the Best Director prize for his wonderful Son frère. Son frère featured Bruno Todeschini, who had co-starred in several of Chéreau's earlier films, and Éric Caravaca as a pair of estranged brothers who are brought back together when the elder, Thomas (Todeschini), is diagnosed with a deadly disease.

Both of his last two films, Gabrielle and Persécution, would compete at the Venice Film Festival, in 2005 and 2009 respectively. Chéreau and his frequent writing collaborator, Anne-Louise Trividic, adapted Gabrielle from a short story by Joseph Conrad. The film featured Isabelle Huppert and Pascal Greggory as a couple whose seemingly happy marriage dissolved when Huppert leaves Greggory a letter on their tenth anniversary announcing that she's leaving to be with another lover . Chéreau's final film, Persécution, starred Romain Duris as an unhappy man with a distant girlfriend (Charlotte Gainsbourg) whose life gets shaken up by a mysterious stranger (Jean-Hugues Anglade) who claims to be in love with him.

In addition to being a great director of actors, Chéreau, too, acted in a number of notable films, including Andrzej Wajda's Danton, Michael Mann's The Last of the Mohicans, and Claude Berri's Lucie Aubrac. He also played Napoléon in Youssef Chahine's Adieu Bonaparte and provided the voice of Marcel Proust in Raúl Ruiz's Time Regained (Le temps retrouvé). His last appearance onscreen was in Michael Haneke's Time of the Wolf (Le temps du loup), memorably sparring with his wife, played by Béatrice Dalle.

Though his many accolades may suggest otherwise, I've always felt that Chéreau was rather undervalued in the world of cinema. As a director, Chéreau had a truly uncompromising vision. From the dark tunnels of L'homme blessé, the impossible red bloodshed in Queen Margot, the shadowy interiors of the taken train and its inhabitants in Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train, the sea-swept blueness—literal and otherwise—of Son frère, the grainy floorboards and the stains of sex in Intimacy, and the mood-lit sets of Gabrielle, each of his films burned a deep impression in my memory. All of his films (at least those that I've seen) challenged the audience in unexpected ways, and none of them were the least bit easy to swallow. I admired that about his films, how no matter how prepared I thought I was for what I was about to see, he was always giving me something more, something different, or something unexpected. I'm pretty sure my liking of every single one of his films came in hindsight, or in my inability to shake any of his work for weeks after. His explorations of darkness were always rewarding. He will be missed.

Voluptuous Horror: RIP Karen Black

The world lost one of its shining stars yesterday, as legendary actress Karen Black died following a long battle with cancer. An actress with a look that was just as striking as her presence, Black saw her career take off at the very beginning of the 1970s after co-starring in Dennis Hopper's iconic Easy Rider and Bob Rafelson's stunning Five Easy Pieces, which garnered the actress an Academy Award nomination as well as the first of her two Golden Globes wins. Her other Golden Globe win came four years later for Jack Clayton's adaptation of The Great Gatsby, in which she played Myrtle Wilson. The '70s were a particularly lucrative decade for Black, who also appeared in Jack Nicholson's directorial debut Drive, He Said, John Schlesinger's The Day of the Locust, Robert Altman's Nashville, Dan Curtis' Burnt Offerings (as well as Curtis' cult TV movie, Trilogy of Terror), Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot (his final film), Jack Smight's Airport 1975, and Peter Hyams' Capricorn One.

Black brought her talents as a stage actress to the screen as well, reprising her role in Altman's film adaptation of Ed Graczyk's play Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, alongside her Broadway co-stars Cher and Sandy Dennis. From the 1980s on, Black's film career comprised of a number of cultish oddities, of the horror ilk (Tobe Hooper's Invaders from Mars, David Winters' The Last Horror Film–playing herself, Alex Cox's Repo Chick, and Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses) and the arthouse variety, starring in a pair of films from directors Lynn Hershman-Leeson (Conceiving Ada, Teknolust) and Henry Jaglom (Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?, Irene in Time). She also had cameos, playing herself, in Altman's The Player and in the TV mini-series version of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City. Black's presence as something of a gay icon for queer movie lovers lead to a number of supporting roles in low-budget, American LBGT films, like Todd Stephens' Gypsy 83, Tag Purvis' Red Dirt, Steve Balderson's Stuck!, and a few others not worth mentioning.

In addition to acting, Black was also a gifted singer and songwriter, which carried over into a number of her film roles (Nashville, Gypsy 83, Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?). In the music world, performance artist Kembra Pfahler named her band The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black after the actress. Pfahler herself posted a few photos to her Instagram page yesterday regarding Black's passing. Musician Cass McCombs featured Black on vocals on the song "Dreams Come True Girl," off his 2009 album Catacombs; she also appeared in the music video for the song. The two are pictured above. Karen Black, you will be forever missed.

RIP Sylvia Kristel

 

Dutch actress Sylvia Kristel, best known to the world as the sensual, globe-trotting heroine of the Emmanuelle films, died in Amsterdam on October 17 at the age of 60. After beginning her career as a model in the Netherlands, Kristel got her big break as the title character of the French erotic sensation Emmanuelle, which spawned numerous sequels and even more imitators. Kristel reprised her role in four subsequent Emmanuelle features, as well as continuing on to play the character in a series of made-for-French-television movies in the early 1990s. She re-teamed with the director of the original Emmanuelle, Just Jaeckin, in a saucy, English-language adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover in 1981 before starring in a pair of American sex comedies (Private Lessons and Private School, no relation). Kristel's other notable films include Walerian Borowczyk's La marge opposite Joe Dallesandro; Roger Vadim's second, "unofficial" adaptation of Les liaisons dangereuses, Une femme fidèle; Claude Chabrol's loose adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, Alice ou la dernière fugue; Alain Robbe-Grillet's surreal mystery Le jeu avec le feu (Playing with Fire); the American espionage spoof, The Nude Bomb; Curtis Harrington's trashy Mata Hari film; and Fons Rademakers' dark thriller Because of the Cats.

Suave

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Auf Wiedersehen, Werner Schroeter

German filmmaker Werner Schroeter, one of the significant queer cinéastes from Germany in the 1970s, died yesterday, just a week after turning 65. Though relatively unknown in the United States, Schroeter began making films in the late-1960s, often collaborations with another important (though still little known in the US) queer filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim. In 1980, his film Palermo or Wolfsburg [Palermo oder Wolfsburg], currently (as of February 2010) the only film of his available on DVD in the US, won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. Schroeter also appeared in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Beware of a Holy Whore [Warnung vor einer heiligen Nutte] as the cinematographer and had a brief role in Fassbinder's television mini-series Welt am Draht [World on Wires]. Since then, Schroeter worked consistently in both Germany and France. His films include the lavish, multilingual musical Der Rosenkönig [The King of Roses], a film adaptation of Ingeborg Bachmann's novel Malina (scripted by Elfriede Jelinek) with Isabelle Huppert and Mathieu Carrière, the documentary Love's Debris [Abfallprodukte der Liebe / Poussières d'amour] in which Huppert and Carole Bouquet interview some of the director's favorite opera singers and Deux, also with Huppert. His last film Nuit de chien, which stars Pascal Greggory, Bruno Todeschini, Amira Casar, Jean-François Stévenin and Bulle Ogier among others, screened at both the 2008 Toronto and Venice Film Festivals.

For the invisible man who can sing in a visible voice

March has been a sad month for music lovers, with Alex Chilton, lead singer of Big Star, dying of a heart attack yesterday and Mark Linkous, the mastermind behind Sparklehorse, taking his life over a week ago. Big Star was one of the great American rock bands of the 1970s, headed by Chilton and the tragic, late Chris Bell. While commercial success eluded the group in their heyday, their influence could be heard on countless American rock bands from the mid-1980s on, from R.E.M. to Primal Scream. Chilton's musical legacy was immortalized twice for subsequent generations by Paul Westerberg and his The Replacements' brilliant anthem to the singer, titled simply "Alex Chilton," and Ivo Watts-Russell's 4AD "supergroup" This Mortal Coil, who covered "Kangaroo" (with vocals by Cindytalk lead singer Gordon Sharp) and "Holocaust" (sung by Howard Devoto of The Buzzcocks) on the album It'll End in Tears. A Big Star tribute album was released in 2006, which featured covers by Wilco, The Afghan Whigs, The Posies and Teenage Fanclub. Chilton and Big Star's music started appearing in a number of Gen X films like Noah Baumbach's Kicking and Screaming and Empire Records and more recently in both Adventureland and Thumbsucker.

Mark Linkous was the brains behind Sparklehorse, one of the great, lesser known bands to come out of the mid-90s. Sparklehorse reached its greatest success in 2001 with the album It's a Wonderful Life, which featured guest vocalists PJ Harvey, Tom Waits and Nina Persson of The Cardigans. In 2009, Sparklehorse and Danger Mouse collaborated together on a project entitled Dark Night of the Soul, which was to be accompanied with a photo booklet from David Lynch. The vocalists on the album included Iggy Pop, Persson, Julian Casablancas, Lynch, Frank Black, The Flaming Lips, James Mercer of The Shins, Suzanne Vega and the late Vic Chesnutt. Despite legal troubles with the release, Dark Night of the Soul was available streaming on NPR's website, and it rumored to have an official release sometime this year. A number of musicians have been offering requiems for Linkous, including Steven Drozd, Steve Albini and Patti Smith.

R.I.P. Zelda Rubinstein, J.D. Salinger

Both with their oh-so-memorable voices... only one could you hear. I like to imagine them sharing a bottle of brandy in the sweet hereafter.

Eric Rohmer, 1920-2010

Way Harsh, Part 2, a Small Photo Tribute to Brittany Murphy

Because I should be doing other things... and because I very sincerely am saddened by Brittany Murphy's passing... and because I don't know how to capture video... and because the video would likely be taken down promptly... and because I don't know where my copy of Drop Dead Gorgeous is... here are some of my favorite caps of the late actress, whom my friend Jessie described as "a staple of our generation" (so accurate)... Nathan from Film Experience Blog probably said it best with "I missed her before she was gone." The stills are from Clueless, Freeway and The Dead Girl.

Totally Buggin' with a sad face

While doing some factual research for the Decade List (character names and what-not), I saw the horrific headline at the top of the screen: Brittany Murphy Dies at 32. From my pre-teen years watching Clueless more times than I would prefer to admit, Murphy has always had a special place in my heart (made even more solid by her all-too-brief role as Reese Witherspoon's lesbian bunkmate Rhonda in Freeway). Though her career was fairly patchy afterward, especially the big Hollywood vehicles like Just Married and Uptown Girls, she gave a truly memorable and heartbreaking performance in 2006's The Dead Girl, which now feels even more haunting than it once did. In addition to acting, she sang on a Paul Oakenfold track, "Faster Kill Pussycat," one of my not-so-guilty pleasures. I may have to put off rewatching Gerry to remember some of Murphy's finer offerings (those being the aforementioned Clueless and Freeway, as well as Drop Dead Gorgeous... I didn't think I'd ever feel sad watching any of those three). I wonder if the proposed Clueless sequel/reunion will still happen. Terrible news.

R.I.P. Dominick Dunne

Though his contributions to cinema fell second to his journalistic accomplishments, Dominick Dunne acted as producer on three significant films from the 70s: adaptations of his sister-in-law Joan Didion's novels Panic in Needle Park and Play It As It Lays, as well as William Friedkin's The Boys in the Band. His daughter Dominique was the victim of a notorious murder scandal shortly after completing her work in the mythically cursed Poltergeist. He was 83.

Blow Out the Candles; Plus More from Toronto

R.I.P. John Hughes, who died of a heart attack today at the age of 59 today. His contributions to cinema were a mixed bag at best (Curly Sue, Dennis the Menace and fuckin' Baby's Day Out), but he certainly captured something special in his better offerings (Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off). Making overnight stars out of the likes of his teen stars, most notably (for me) Molly Ringwald, it's hard to say whether he really chronicled a generation; I guess it depends on who you ask, as I've heard the same unqualified claim about Bret Easton Ellis. Whether it's cheap nostalgia or not, his (good) films certainly have stood the test of time. In other news, Toronto announced another eleven titles, including new films from Mika Kaurismäki (L.A. Without a Map, Tigrero: A Film That Was Never Made), Ana Kokkinos (Head On, The Book of Revelation), Jan Hrebejk (Beauty in Trouble, Divided We Fall) and Harmony Korine, as well as an omnibus Paris je t'aime-esque portrait of Bangkok from Pen-ek Ratanaruang (Last Life in the Universe, Ploy), Wisit Sasanatieng (Tears of the Black Tiger), Aditya Assarat (Wonderful Town) and Kongdej Jaturanrasamee (Midnight My Love, Spasm).

Contemporary World Cinema

- Beyond the Circle - d. Golam Rabbany Biplob (On the Wings of Dreams)
- Blessed - d. Ana Kokkinos - w. Miranda Otto, Frances O'Connor
- Giulia Doesn't Date at Night [Giulia non esce la sera] - d. Giuseppe Piccioni (Light of My Eyes) - w. Valeria Golino
- Heiran - d. Shalizeh Arefpour
- The House of Branching Love [Haarautuvan rakkauden talo] - d. Mika Kaurismäki
- Por vida [For Life] - d. Alan Jacobs (American Gun, Nina Takes a Lover) - w. Danny Glover, Snoop Dogg, Elizabeth Peña, Emily Rios
- Rabia - d. Sebastián Cordero (Crónicas) - w. Gustavo Sánchez Parra, Àlex Brendemühl
- Sawasdee Bangkok - d. Wisit Sasanatieng, Aditya Assarat, Kongdej Jaturanrasamee, Pen-ek Ratanaruang
- Shameless [Nestyda] - d. Jan Hrebejk
- Slovenian Girl [Slovenka] - d. Damjan Kozole (Spare Parts)
- Tanner Hall - d. Francesca Gregorini, Tatiana von Furstenberg - w. Amy Sedaris, Chris Kattan, Anne Ramsay, Tom Everett Scott

Visions

- Between Two Worlds - d. Vimukthi Jayasundara (The Forsaken Land)
- Gaia - d. Jason Lehel
- Hiroshima - d. Pablo Stoll (Whisky)
- I Am Love [Io sono l'amore] - d. Luca Guadagnino - w. Tilda Swinton
- Lebanon - d. Samuel Maoz
- To the Sea - d. Pedro González-Rubio
- Trash Humpers - d. Harmony Korine

R.I.P. Yasmine Belmadi

Tragic news from France, young actor Yasmine Belmadi was killed in a car accident over the weekend. Belmadi made his debut in Sébastien Lifshitz's Les corps ouverts, later co-starring in Lifshitz's made-for-television Les terres froides in 1999 and the exquisite Wild Side in 2004. His other credits include François Ozon's Criminal Lovers [Les amants criminels], Gilles Marchand's Who Killed Bambi? [Qui a tué Bambi?], Robert Salis' Grande école and, most recently, Nassim Amaouche's Adieu Gary, which won the Grand Prix at the Semaine de la Critique in Cannes this past May.

IFC Films on DVD, Round 2 + Akerman + Petzold - Michael Jackson

Though you might have other things on your mind, I thought I'd post another DVD update. Through their new deal with MPI, IFC Films announced their second round of DVD releases after that Blockbuster/Genius drought. Unfortunately, all of their titles so far have been part of their Festival Direct package and not their theatrical releases (The Last Mistress, The Duchess of Langeais, A Christmas Tale, Hunger, Gomorrah, My Winnipeg, etc). On 15 September, look for Spiros Stathoulopoulos' single-take thriller PVC-1 and Baltasar Kormákur's White Night Wedding [Brúðguminn], which stars the Icelandic director's frequent actor Hilmir Snær Guðnason. On 29 September, Madonna's wretched directorial debut Filth and Wisdom and the Spanish thriller Fermat's Room [La habitación de Fermat] will be released.

Icarus Films has set a release date for Chantal Akerman's acclaimed, little seen From the East [D'Est] for 6 October, as well as David Barison and Daniel Ross' documentary The Ister for 3 November. Kino will release a double-feature of sci-fi/horror films from director Graham Reznick, I Can See You and The Viewer, on 28 September.

Cinema Guild will follow Project X's July release of Christian Petzold's The State I Am In [Die Innere Sicherheit] with his latest Jerichow on 27 August. And finally, it appears as if the elusive Phantasm II will make its way onto DVD on 15 September (though I can't back this up) from Universal. I know you've been waiting.

TY

I'm taking this opportunity to do what so many others on my Facebook news feed are doing and thanking Bea Arthur for being a friend. She will be missed. And God knows the gays will be dropping their tears into a glass or three this evening. Wear some shoulder pads tonight in remembrance. Goodbye, Dorthy Petrillo Zbornak.

R.I.P. Jack Cardiff

RIP Natasha Richardson

Natasha Richardson's passing is pretty dreadful news. The daughter of Vanessa Redgrave and Tony Richardson, granddaughter of Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, niece of Lynn and Corin Redgrave, sister of Joely Richardson and wife of Liam Neeson, Natasha made memorable screen performances in Ken Russell's Gothic, Paul Schraeder's Patty Hearst, Volker Schlöndorff's The Handmaid's Tale and Schraeder's The Comfort of Strangers. Terrible.