Atom Egoyan's films really sell for 7 figures?

I read earlier today that Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisition Group had nabbed the latest from Atom Egoyan, but IndieWire is reporting (and maybe I missed this detail when I read it elsewhere) that Sony "negotiated the low seven figure deal" for Chloe, which premiered to lukewarm reception at Toronto last month. As of 27 September, Egoyan's last film Adoration has yet to cross $300,000 at the domestic box office, and that was a Sony release as well. I suppose Julianne Moore, Amanda Seyfried and Liam Neeson are a draw, but remember, Chloe is a remake of Anne Fontaine's abysmal Nathalie... from 2003, and that film had Fanny Ardant, Emmanuelle Béart and Gérard Depardieu. I have yet to see a film I wouldn't describe as a waste of my time from Fontaine, and while that's certainly not a claim I could make for Egoyan, his recent output has been dismal (and not exactly profitable). It's quite possible though that a low seven figure deal for worldwide rights is a modest deal. We'll just have to wait until spring to see how well this pays off.

Oh, Betty!

Also thanks to IndieWire, the studio CinemaLibre has acquired the rights to just about all of the films of Jean-Jacques Beineix (not including Diva). Their deal includes the rights to the director's cut of Betty Blue (with Jean-Hughes Anglade and Béatrice Dalle in her star-making performance), which went out-of-print shortly after Sony released it a few years back; Mortel transfert (with Anglade and Miki Manojlovic); La lune dans le caniveau (with Gérard Depardieu, Nastassja Kinski, Victoria Abril and Vittorio Mezzogiorno); Roselyne et les lions; IP5: L'île aux pachydrermes (with Yves Montand and Olivier Martinez); and his doc/shorts: Locked-In Syndrome, Otaku and Le chien de Monsieur Michel. Other than Betty Blue, this will be the first time these titles will be available in the US; no word on when these films will become available.

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

Jeanne Moreau and other divas...

blaq out will be releasing Marguerite Duras' Nathalie Granger, from 1972 and starring Jeanne Moreau and Gérard Depardieu, in both single disc and double-disc editions on 27 May. Both editions run pretty steep (the single disc is $39.95, the deluxe edition is $69.98) for a film I doubt many people have heard of. For that matter, I doubt many people even know Duras directed films, as the most famous of her directing work, India Song, is only available in Japan.

New Yorker will release Manoel de Oliveira's Belle toujours, starring Bulle Ogier and Michel Piccoli, on 3 June.

In other news, it looks like Criterion will not be releasing Jean-Jacques Beiniex's Diva on DVD, but Lionsgate instead, under a collection entitled Meridian. Neither Eric at Filmbo's Chick Magnet nor I have any idea what this label is all about, except that they will also be releasing The Red Violin on 6 June. More info as I find out.

Resnais en février

Kimstim/Kino will be throwing four Alain Resnais films from the 80s on your shelves on 19 February 2008. The titles include I Want to Go Home (1989) with Gérard Depardieu and Geraldine Chaplin; Life Is a Bed of Roses [La vie est un roman] (1983) with Fanny Ardant, Vittorio Gassman, and Chaplin; Love unto Death [L'amour à mort] (1984) with Ardant; and Mélo (1986), also with Ardant. I'd have rather Criterion announced Last Year at Marienbad, but take what you can get.

Paris je t'aime... moi non plus

[This is intended as an introduction to the Short Film Week Blog-a-thon hosted by Seul le cinema and Culture Snob.]

“Short film” is such a broad term that, really, no rules do or should apply to them, yet we can all agree that the same rules for feature-length films or documentaries need not be the same. The general ideas of storytelling, character arc, rising- and falling-action, climax, and whatnot limit vision in a feature, so why try to infuse them into a smaller frame of time? In fact, “short film” is the perfect method for experimentation with mood and even tonality. With Paris je t’aime, it appears as if most of the directors, typically known for the features, forgot the possibilities and, perhaps, limitations of the format, leaving us with a bunch of filler and one of the least impressive assemblies of unrelated short films to be seen by a wide audience.

Paris je t’aime sounded like an ambitious project. The creators had designed the film to cover each of the twenty arrondissements of Paris, but directors Christophe Boe (Reconstruction) and Raphaël Nadjari (Tehilim) backed out, and what we’re left with, quite literally, is an unfinished, misstructured vision of the City of Lights with most of its directors seriously under- or over-estimating the medium of the short film. [Note: New York, je t’aime is on its way, in case you were wondering, though it will likely change names to something like I Heart NY]

What ends up problematic about most of the shorts is the directors’ inability to adhere to their time limitations. In Gurinder Chadha’s “Quais de Seine,” she examines similar themes as she had in feature-length Bend It Like Beckham and Bride & Prejudice, namely the assimilation of Indian and western European culture, yet here, she packs the yawn-inducing culture clash and subsequent tolerance into five minutes, instead of a more watered-down version that would stretch throughout an hour and a half or so. Her motives and message in both features were apparent, even without having to watch the films, but in five minutes, she fails to capture slice-of-life and depicts racial fantasy, in which a young French boy abandons his crude buddies to help a young French-Indian girl stand up after tripping. The moment she falls becomes effectively startling, as her veil comes off revealing long, beautiful black pearl hair, but the moment is quickly ruined by a comic scene with the French boy attempting to put the veil back on her. Had Chadha focused on the small, revelatory moments instead of the overbearingly “meaningful” ones, she might have accomplished what I can only believe the creators of the project wanted: small moments in the lives of those on the streets of the most romantic city in the world.

In “Parc Monceau,“ Alfonso Cuarón also fumbles in his endeavor, relying poorly on a five-minute excursion in cinematic deceit. He uses his now-famous single-take as smoking American (Nick Nolte) makes a rendez-vous with a young French girl (Ludivine Sagnier), crudely not mentioning the reason for their meeting. He ends up being her father, in Paris to babysit her baby, though they speak of the baby as if it were Sagnier’s lover. The deception is juvenile storytelling, providing the cheap surprise at the finish. It’s been twenty-five years since Cuarón last directed a short film (Cuarterto para el fin del tiempo, available on the Criterion disc for Sólo con tu pareja), and he appears to have forgotten how to use time.

On the other hand, Gus Van Sant’s “Le Marais” uses its closing “surprise” expertly, not just by contrast to Cuarón’s (Van Sant’s film actually comes before Cuarón’s sequentially). The revelation that the boy in the factory (Elias McConnell) doesn’t understand the questions that the French boy (Gaspard Ulliel) asks him does embody that knee-jerk “ha!” that seems to have plagued many of the shorts featured within Paris je t’aime, yet Van Sant’s vision is more clear. The set-up (boy comes as translator for Marianne Faithfull to sell some sort of artwork) never introduces the possibility for suspicious cinematic deception, instead unfolding beautifully in probably the most “romantic” of the segments. There’s an afterthought of “well, why didn’t the American boy just tell the French one he didn’t speak English,” which ultimately doesn’t hinder too harsh a judgment as Van Sant’s vision of disconnect and romanticism is so controlled and uncompromised.

Similarly balanced is Olivier Assayas’ “Quartier des Enfants Rouges,” in which American actress (Maggie Gyllenhaal) leaves a party to buy some drugs from her dealer (Lionel Dray). Though it’s hard to step away from Assayas possibly making fun of Kirsten Dunst (Gyllenhaal is working on a film that looks not-so-coincidentally like Marie Antoinette), yet he never feels compelled to make his short more than it needs to be. Unlike Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas’ “Loin de 16ème,” in which Catalina Sandino Moreno drops off her baby to babysit a rich woman’s, “Quartier des Enfants Rouges” uses foreshadowing dialogue/scenes more effectively cryptically. The line, “attention, il est fort” (or “be careful, it’s strong”) eventually conjures up dual meanings, particularly though Gyllenhaal’s face as the second drug dealer finishes the line with, “mais, tu le connais” (“but you know that”). Salles and Thomas’ repeating of the Spanish lullaby Moreno sings to the babies feels heavy-handed, socially important. The drug dealers’ warnings to Gyllenhaal work more effectively in their, perhaps, simplicity.

Alexander Payne’s “14ème Arrondissement” is the pick of the lot (though a lot of people viewed it as terribly condescending and anti-American… ha!). It works, possibly, because it’s the only film that doesn’t feel like a “short feature” or “fragment,” but a wholly realized five-minute film. Carol (the amazing Margo Martindale) clumsily recites a paper she wrote for a French class about her first trip to Paris. It’s charming, beautiful, and surprisingly touching without condensation or unnecessary expansion. “14ème Arrondissement” ends Paris je t’aime, blazing past all the other shorts in every regard and unfairly making the audience wonder, “shit, maybe this wasn’t a total waste of time.” The creators knew what they were doing with its placement, but botch the project further with the end montage to Feist’s “We’re All in the Dance,” in which Paris je t’aime becomes less a collection of shorts as it does fucking Crash. It’s almost worth it to see Juliette Binoche raise her glass to Gena Rowlands, but not really.

I don’t really care to research the filmmaking history of the directors who participated in Paris je t’aime to see if they began their careers in the realms of the “short film,” because it really doesn’t excuse most of the missteps therein. What remains (other than the inevitable sour taste) is a fine example of successful feature directors’ inability to adhere to limitations (I remember Lumière et compagnie, in which a bunch of directors like Peter Greenaway and Spike Lee made shorts with the camera the Lumière brothers used in the 19th century, to be a bit more fascinating). With the short film week blog-a-thon, I doubt I’m going to (or anyone else, really) establish any truths about short format filmmaking, but let Paris je t’aime be your cautionary tale of unfortunate missed opportunity.

Quelque fois...

Sometimes, a film, no matter how good or bad it may be, just cannot connect with me. Today, I received Cassavetes' Opening Night and Maurice Pialat's Loulou in the mail from Netflix, popped Loulou in (which I had seen years ago), and promptly pushed the stop button twenty minutes in. It had nothing to do with the quality of the film, but my particular mood. I just couldn't bring myself to get into a Cassavetes-esque film after watching an actual Cassavetes film. Plus, how many times do I have to see Gérard Depardieu as the rugged French tough guy? And how many times do I have to see Isabelle Huppert slapped? Don't get me wrong, I could watch Huppert get slapped 'til the cows come home... but not today. So I did what I had to do: I sealed the envelope up and dropped it in the mailbox. Maybe another day.

Images and Trust

Nathalie... - dir. Anne Fontaine - 2003 - France/Spain

There's something terribly calculated about Nathalie..., a French star vehicle from director Anne Fontaine (Comment j'ai tué mon père, Nettoyage à sec). I'm terribly skeptical of star vehicles in the first place. When you get three big French stars in a film that takes three years to come to the United States, something's wrong. And wrong, indeed, is the film Nathalie... As a regular film viewer, we tend to trust the images less and less. Aside from the obvious fact that the images are constructed by a person who has chosen the framing, lighting, color, etc., it has become obvious that audiences today don't want cohesive films and endings; they want surprise and awe. Now, as for awe, I can't blame them for this. But surprise and trickery are hardly substitutes for old fashioned dramatic conclusion. To put Natahlie... off the hook for a minute, it's hardly as treacherous as certain other films that rely on this element of surprise.

From the earliest moments of the film, we cannot trust Nathalie... Catherine (Fanny Ardant) has planned a surprise birthday party for her husband Bernard (Gérard Depardieu), but he can't make it. He "missed his flight," which we already assume to scream affair. The set-up is so familiar: a beautiful, middle-aged bourgeois woman plans an event for her husband, he can't make it, nor does he realize this event was intended to bring some life into their failing marriage. Catherine later listens to Bernard's voice mails, in which a young woman, of course, thanks him for the great night. Though she does confront him, she begins a ploy to hire a prostitute (Emmanuelle Béart) to have an affair with him and report back to Catherine about the details. The real indication of the final deceit of the film comes when "Nathalie" first reports back to Catherine. We don't see Nathalie or Bernard fuck; we just hear her testimony, and then Catherine pays her. A contemporary French film that is hiding the sex from us? There's something fishy going on here. In fact, we really don't see any of the saucy sex that is supposedly taking place offscreen in Nathalie... We're only told, with our imagination to run wild (or, at least, that's what Fontaine hopes for).

Fontaine hopes our imagination can run wild, and we can forget the fact that we never actually see any action. Unfortunately, we (or maybe simply I) have been conditioned to not trust films and certainly not their directors. As the film progresses, you almost hope that it's not going to go the way we expect. Unfortunately, our fears are realized in the final ten minutes. And that's really just the jaw-dropper, deal-sealer. It goes everywhere else we expected (in addition to telling her erotic encounters with Bernard, Nathalie also brings the "life" out of bored Catherine) and to no real satisfying degree. Some people can appreciate star vehicles as simply a way to exploit the familiar faces and traits of some of our favorite stars. This was big in the Golden Age of Hollywood... and still exists, even in France (for a truly wretched example, see Isabelle Huppert in La Vie promise, in which she plays a worthless sketch of a very typical Huppert "heroine"). Though Dépardieu is barely even there, Ardant and Béart are quite competent, and, for that reason, we stick with Nathalie... until its bitter(sweet) end.