The Decade List: Ne touchez pas la hache (2007)

Ne touchez pas la hache [The Duchess of Langeais] – dir. Jacques Rivette

Set in the early 19th century, The Duchess of Langeais begins with the final hours of a man’s widespread quest. Bowlegged French general Armand de Montriveau (the late Guillaume Depardieu, in probably his finest performance) finds his estranged lover Antoinette (Jeanne Balibar), or best known as the Duchess of Langeais, sequestered in a Spanish convent, in an attempt to escape the treacherousness of their doomed affair. From Armand's rediscovery of Antoinette, the film moves back in time to their first meeting as courageous soldier and married duchess at a lavish ball. Following that initial meeting, their relationship unfolds in games of humorless wit and searing manipulation with Jacques Rivette, working from a novel by Honoré de Balzac, never shadowing the lovers' selfishness and despicability.

The Duchess of Langeais, or Don’t Touch the Axe as it’s properly translated, is what I often refer to as the anti-period film. Though, in certain people’s minds, the “period film” (or “costume drama”) exists as a legitimate genre of film, it isn’t. While it’s merely a superficial association, it’s hard to deny that within that set there are films that follow an unwritten set of stylistic and narrative rules (most of which appeal greatly to the voting members of the Academy). The Duchess of Langeais is not one of those films, nor should anyone who recognizes Jacques Rivette’s name suspect that it might be. Instead, The Duchess of Langeais is a rigid, brilliant and trying piece of cinema, something of a “breeze” at 140 minutes (compared to most of the director’s work, excluding his latest 36 vues du Pic Saint-Loup, which is his first to clock in at under two hours). It’s difficult to call Rivette a director who puts every minute of his films to the best use, but I’d never call some of his more laboring moments “filler.” He’s a director that understands the rewards of time and the sort of magic that can only occur after the viewer has fully dedicated himself or herself to the film. For the dedicated viewer, The Duchess of Langeais reaps that sort of reward handsomely.

With: Guillaume Depardieu, Jeanne Balibar, Bulle Ogier, Michel Piccoli, Anne Cantineau, Marc Barbé, Barbet Schroeder
Screenplay: Pascal Bonitzer, Christine Laurent, Jacques Rivette, based on the novel La duchesse de Langeais by Honoré de Balzac
Cinematography: William Lubtchansky
Music: Pierre Allio
Country of Origin: France/Italy
US Distributor: IFC Films

Premiere: 15 February 2007 (Berlin International Film Festival)
US Premiere: October 2007 (Chicago International Film Festival)

The Decade List: Clean (2004)

Clean - dir. Olivier Assayas

[Edited from an earlier post]

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

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

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

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

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

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