"Comic Strip"

Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life

Gainsbourg (Vie héroïque)
2010, France
Joann Sfar

That Joann Sfar’s Serge Gainsbourg film was originally planned to star the famed musician’s own daughter, Charlotte Gainsbourg, as her father makes it difficult to imagine that, when Charlotte dropped out, anything or anyone that could have successfully taken her place. Sure, the casting of a woman in the role of an iconic, enigmatic singer/songwriter had been done (successfully) in Todd Haynes’ Bob Dylan pic I’m Not There., with Cate Blanchett, but the possibility of seeing Charlotte Gainsbourg in drag as her late father, seducing and romancing an actor playing her mother, would have been as decidedly pervy and enticing as Charlotte’s own teenage duet with daddy, “Lemon Incest.” So it came as a bit of a surprise (to me, at least) that Gainsbourg (Vie héroïque), sans Charlotte, is actually quite good.

Certainly Eric Elmosnino’s channeling of Monsieur Gainsbourg, which won him the Best Actor prize at the Césars, is impressive, but a solid impersonation does not a good film make. Instead, it’s the bolder choices made by Sfar, best known as a comic artist, in his first foray as a filmmaker that elevate Vie héroïque, which he adapted from his own graphic novel, beyond your factory-line Hollywood biopic. Sfar too won the César for Best First Film. Throughout the film, Serge–whether played as an adult by Elmosnino or as the child Lucien Ginsburg by Kacey Mottet Klein (of Ursula Meier’s Home)–is accompanied by a nightmarish, computer-animated version of himself, which serves as a visually exciting and narratively clever device.

 

Sfar also excels at one of the film’s more difficult tasks: introducing the many famed women of Gainsbourg’s life. It’s unfortunate that the two women who get the most screen time, Brigitte Bardot and Jane Birkin, are the least convincing performances in the film, despite both Laetitia Casta and Lucy Gordon’s strong physical resemblances to their respective characters. However, each of the women represented in the film enter the film explosively, almost the way I would imagine would befit the introduction of a series of recognized villains in a well-known comic book or video game. Villains these women, of course, are not, but they each provide their own individual challenges to our hero.

 

The more inspired performances come from Yolande Moreau as Fréhel, Sara Forestier as France Gall, Mylène Jampanoï as Bambou, and especially Anna Mouglalis as Juliette Gréco. Greco’s entrance is the most astonishing: a single shot of the opening her eyes to the sound of a thunder clap, as if she were waking from a hundred-year slumber. There’s also a funny, cartoonish cameo from Claude Chabrol (in his final appearance on the silver screen) as the record producer to whom Gainsbourg brings his new version of “Je t’aime, moi non plus” with Birkin filling in on vocals for Bardot. Again, it’s all about the eyes. Vie héroïque is probably the best biopic of Serge Gainsbourg that could have been made without Charlotte, and for that, Sfar should be commended.

With: Eric Elmosnino, Lucy Gordon, Laetitia Casta, Doug Jones, Kacey Mottet Klein, Razvan Vasilescu, Dinara Droukarova, Anna Mouglalis, Mylène Jampanoï, Sara Forestier, Yolande Moreau, Philippe Katerine, Deborah Grall, Ophélia Kolb, Claude Chabrol, François Morel, Joann Sfar

Can I Eternal Sunshine 2009, or Do I have to like the movie for that to work?

As 2009 slips away, sadly it has been chosen that I will be spending the evening at home, reliving the few moments worth salvaging before I Eternal Sunshine the year completely. It is just about that time for me to post something really maudlin that I'll regret later (and never end up taking down). But before I do so, I'll post some (hopefully) fascinating miscellany.

My entry to The Auteurs' Notebook's year-end writers' poll went up yesterday, alongside Andrew Grant, Glenn Kenny, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, Evan Davis, Gabe Klinger, Dave McDougall, David Cairns and Ben Simington's choices for our 2009 fantasy double features (of a first-run theatrical release and an older film we happened to have seen in the past 12 months). Mine covers 2 Olivier Assayas films (though I guess technically, I saw L'heure d'été in 2008, it was in the final two weeks of the year...). Glenn's beautiful screencap of Sheryl Lee as the Good Witch in Wild at Heart has become my current desktop pattern.

Cahiers du Cinéma posted their annual 10 Best of the year and continued to prove to us Yankees how much the French love Clint Eastwood (no, not for Invictus but Gran Torino; Invictus will surely make the 2010 list). Alain Resnais' Wild Grass [Les herbes folles] was their #1 (Sony Pictures Classics' website still doesn't have an official date for its release in the States), and the pleasant surprise of the list was seeing Alain Guiraudie's Le roi de l'évasion [The King of Escape] make it. One of the (many) regrets I have in regard to the final Decade List posting was that I didn't get around to rewatching Guiraudie's Ce vieux rêve qui bouge or Pas de repos pour les braves and left them off the 100 (though I'm pretty sure they should have been there).

So the Decade List posting... thanks to everyone for the nice comments. Aside from a clerical error in posting the two Abel Ferrara films in the wrong positions (Go Go Tales should be at 55, Mary at 76), I'm happy (enough) with the way things lined up, and I will be working on a "defense" if you will for my #1 within the next couple weeks. Anyway, to those of you who sent me your list, they will be posted by the end of next week, and if you're still working on yours, don't take the posting of my list as the curtain drop for the 00's nonsense...

...and though there's a purposeful hesitancy in the way I've spoken of the project in the more recent posts, I'm still possibly considering trying the previous decade on for size for 2010... but that depends on a number of factors, not least of which coming up with a (clever) name for it and determining the amount of time I will have to dedicate to it (it would really be better if I didn't have all the time, actually, as being gainfully employed and/or leaving the Midwest sound much more appealing).

2010 looks to be your year if you happen to be a Blu-ray player owning, French-speaking cinephile, as a number of really exciting releases have already been announced by Gaumont on high-definition format:

- Danton, 1983, d. Andrzej Wajda, 9 February
- La nuit de Varennes, 1982, d. Ettore Scola, 9 February, w. Marcello Mastroianni, Hanna Schygulla, Harvey Keitel
- Le silence de la mer, 1949, d. Jean-Pierre Melville, 25 March
- Un condamné à mort s'est échappé [A Man Escaped], 1956, d. Robert Bresson, 25 March
- Les maudits [The Damned], 1947, d. René Clément, 20 May
- Le général della Rovere, 1959, d. Roberto Rossellini, 20 May
- La peau [La pelle / The Skin], 1981, d. Liliana Cavani, 15 June, w. Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Burt Lancaster
- Le rouge et le noir [The Red and the White], 1954, d. Claude Autant-Lara, 15 June, w. Danielle Darrieux

All of the films will also be released on DVD on the same date, some for the first time in France, as far as I can tell. Also in France, though not exactly exciting, the film I've been blabbing about all year, Sébastien Lifshitz's Plein sud, opens today, to almost exclusively damning reviews... Though I will reserve judgment for when I do see it, I was hoping the weariness I felt after watching the blasé trailer and noticing it wasn't announced for any of the autumn film festivals was unwarranted...

And finally, I never got around to posting a 2009 music list for the Decade List, which is fine as I generally only made those for my own benefit, and while I had planned on doing some sort of "the 25 '00 albums that did the most to shape me into the cynic I am today" list... it's looking less likely. I have, however, collected 50 of my favorite singles from 2009. I looked past the disappointment I felt in (a lot of) the particular albums and selected the tracks that left their mark on me in some way. I had planned the list to only include one song per artist, but the thing ran out of steam around 43, so instead of nixing three, I tossed a couple alternate choices from the albums I did happen to like a lot this year (Fever Ray, A Woman A Man Walked By, Logos). So if my plan to Eternal Sunshine all of 2009 actually works, I guess I won't have to look far to play catch up in the music world (though my ability to discern which of the 50 aren't really good songs and don't belong has vanished today). I could post an mp3 link at some point, but I haven't the energy at the moment. It looks like I'm finished rambling, and it doesn't look as dejected as I thought I might. That's good, right? Bonne année à tous.

01. Annie - My Love Is Better [Don't Stop]
02. Fever Ray - Keep the Streets Empty for Me [Fever Ray]
03. The xx - Crystalised [xx]
04. PJ Harvey & John Parish - Pig Will Not [A Woman A Man Walked By]
05. The Hidden Cameras - Walk On [Origin: Orphan]
06. Japandroids - Sovereignty [Post-Nothing]
07. Bat for Lashes - Sleep Alone [Two Suns] (yes, the album version is much better)
08. Röyksopp (featuring Karin Dreijer Andersson) - This Must Be It [Junior]
09. Dizzee Rascal featuring Calvin Harris and Chrome - Dance wiv Me [Tongue 'N Cheek]
10. No Age - You're a Target [Losing Feeling EP]
11. Junior Boys - Parallel Lines [Begone Dull Care]
12. St. Vincent - The Party [Actor]
13. Atlas Sound featuring Laetitia Sadier - Quick Canal [Logos]
14. Vivian Girls - Before I Start to Cry [Everything Goes Wrong]
15. Whitney Houston - Million Dollar Bill [I Look to You]
16. Phoenix - Fences [Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix]
17. Sally Shapiro - Dying in Africa [My Guilty Pleasure]
18. Jay-Z - D.O.A. (Death of Auto-tune) [The Blueprint 3]
19. The Radio Dept. - David [David EP]
20. Peaches - Talk to Me [I Feel Cream]
21. The Legends - You Won [Over and Over]
22. Little Boots - Stuck on Repeat [Hands]
23. Passion Pit - The Reeling [Manners]
24. The Juan Maclean - Happy House [The Future Will Come] (the 12-minute version is much better)
25. Alcoholic Faith Mission - Gently [421 Wythe Avenue] (The song I would have chosen from this album doesn't seem to be available streaming anywhere)
26. Charlotte Gainsbourg - IRM [IRM]
27. Dirty Projectors - Stillness Is the Move [Bitte Orca]
28. Animal Collective - Bluish [Merriweather Post Pavilion]
29. Depeche Mode - Wrong [Sounds of the Universe]
30. Girls - Lust for Life [Album]
31. Deerhunter - Disappearing Ink [Rainwater Cassette Exchange EP]
32. Ciara featuring Justin Timberlake - Love Sex Magic [Fantasy Ride]
33. Bon Iver - Blood Bank [Blood Bank EP]
34. Beirut - The Concubine [March of the Zapotec / Rainpeople Holland EP]
35. Bill Callahan - Jim Cain [Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle]
36. Peter Bjorn and John - I'm Losing My Mind [Living Things]
37. Miike Snow - Animal [Miike Snow]
38. Antony Hegarty and Bryce Dessner - I Was Young When I Left Home [Dark Was the Night]
39. Grizzly Bear - Foreground [Veckatimest]
40. ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead - The Far Pavilions [The Century of Self]
41. The Decemberists - Sleepless [Dark Was the Night] (The only song I've ever liked by them, well at least 70% liked)
42. Fuck Buttons - Surf Sport [Tarot Sport] (The album version... exceedingly better)
43. Matt & Kim - Daylight [Grand]
44. Piano Magic - The Nightmare Goes On [Ovation]
45. Yeasayer - Tightrope [Dark Was the Night]
46. Atlas Sound - Shelia [Logos]
47. Annie - Anthonio [All Night]
48. Fever Ray - If I Had a Heart [Fever Ray] (my favorite music video of 2009)
49. Serge Gainsbourg featuring Jane Birkin - L'hôtel particulier [Histoire de Melody Nelson] (Obviously, this isn't new, but as the album was released for the first time in the US this year, and I needed to fill the 50)
50. PJ Harvey and John Parish - Cracks in the Canvas [A Woman A Man Walked By] (this isn't the 2nd best song off the album, but it's the perfect close and part of what keeps me wanting more)

Bio-Hazard

Within the past few years, we've gotten varied cinematic portraits of famous people: Édith Piaf, Séraphine de Senlis, Françoise Sagan, Uschi Obermaier, Che Guevara, Coco Chanel, Harvey Milk, Jacques Mesrine, Diane Arbus, George W. Bush, Charles Bronson (the prisoner), Idi Amin, Edie Sedgwick, Charles Darwin, Gustav Klimt, the Bouvier Beales, the Notorious B.I.G., Amelia Earhart, Ian Curtis, Queen Victoria and Jean-Dominique Bauby. Now you can add a few more to add to the list, for better or worse; and I'm sure there are plenty more in the works.

Without anything useful to say about Roman Polanski’s imprisonment in Switzerland, a friend of mine directed me to an unofficial Polanski biopic that was released this year. Already available on DVD, the film, now called Polanski: Unauthorized, is co-written, directed and starring some guy named Damian Chapa, who you may recognize from a small role in Under Seige or as “Ken” in that awful Street Fighter movie (the one that had Kylie Minogue and Jean-Claude Van Damme, not the other awful one). Polanski: Unauthorized looks like a disaster and surprisingly was made and released before all the new developments, though likely capitalizing on the newfound interest in Polanski’s exile after the documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired came out. Based on the trailer, it appears to cover the director’s life from the taking of his parents to Nazi concentration camps to the infamous court case, likely in flashbacks but I’m only inferring here. The actress playing Sharon Tate looks especially appalling; just listen to her tell Roman over the phone that she’s pregnant. As the cast list includes actors playing both Mia Farrow and Anton LaVey (ha!), the filming of Rosemary’s Baby probably takes up a good portion of the film. If anyone’s actually seen this, let me know… Variety’s review, by Todd McCarthy sounds amazing:

“Roman Polanski won't lose any sleep over Polanski Unauthorized, a basement tape-quality slum through the most famously traumatic episodes in a sensation-riddled life. Straight-to-DVD auteur Damian Chapa invested little money, and less talent, in depicting the subject's escape from the Nazis, flirtation with devil worship on "Rosemary's Baby," relationship with Sharon Tate and arrest for raping a 13-year-old girl, moments from all of which are shuffled together almost at random. With production values no better than homemade porn -- most scenes are played in front of drapes -- and dialogue that makes you feel sorry for the actors, this Friday the 13th Los Angeles vanity release isn't even fun in a bad-movie way. Paying customers will feel gypped.”

Like Coco Chanel, Romy Schneider, for whom Chanel designed numerous articles of clothing, is the subject of two competing biopics at the moment (though technically Chanel had three released within a year of one another). The first of the two, entitled Romy, will be airing on German television 11 November, followed by the DVD release the next day. Actress Jessica Schwarz (Kammerfilmmern) will play Schneider; the rest of the cast includes Thomas Kretschmann (The Pianist, King Kong, Queen Margot) as her first husband Harry Meyen and Guillaume Delorme as Alain Delon, a good friend and frequent co-star of the actress. The bigger of the two biopics, tentatively titled Eine Frau wie Romy [A Woman Like Romy], was scheduled to have begun shooting in summer 2008, but there isn’t a whole lot of information following that. Directed by Josef Rusnak (The Thirteenth Floor, Quiet Days in Hollywood), Eine Frau wie Romy has actress Yvonne Catterfeld as Schneider (no, not Beyoncé, unfortunately), and the IMDb lists Michel Piccoli, one of Schneider’s close friends, in the cast, as well as Jean-Hughes Anglade and Tchéky Karyo. I’ll let you know if I hear anything further about either version.

Breaking Glass Pictures, a new studio launched by former heads of TLA Releasing Richard Wolff and Richard Ross, has acquired the rights to An Englishman in New York, a sequel-of-sorts to The Naked Civil Servant from 1975, based on the autobiography of Quentin Crisp. John Hurt reprises his role as Crisp and is joined by Cynthia Nixon, Denis O’Hare, Jonathan Tucker and Swoosie Kurtz in the film, which earned Hurt a special Teddy Award from the Berlin International Film Festival for his performance. Breaking Glass will release the film sometime in 2010.

And finally, nothing looks to have changed about the Serge Gainsbourg biopic, Vie héroïque; it’s still set for a French release on 20 January.

Listlessness

I've been using last.fm, a program which logs all the music you listen to on your computer and iPod, for nearly two-and-a-half years. I suppose it's a way to catalogue your listening habits or maybe just to show off or maybe to meet other people... I'm not terribly sure. Though it was only a coincidence, I started using their "loved" tagging feature intermittently around a sort-of significant occurrence in my life a few months ago. I came to the round number of 200 yesterday (correction, today, after realizing I had tagged a Françoise Hardy song twice, once with the wrong spelling). Naturally, I love more than just 200 songs, and more than just THESE 200 songs, but for my own sake, I figured I'd post them on here, though it's more for my own self-curiosity than anything else, as they put into place my mind during the past few months. They're listed in order of when I "loved" (er, tagged) them.

Moonbabies - Ghost of Love
The Knife - We Share Our Mothers' Health
Big Star - Holocaust
Grizzly Bear - Don't Ask
PJ Harvey - Dear Darkness
Fleet Foxes - Blue Ridge Mountains
José González - Hand on Your Heart
CocoRosie - South 2nd
This Mortal Coil - The Jeweller
The Radio Dept. - The Worst Taste in Music
The Verve - Beautiful Mind
The Radio Dept. - Gibraltar
Misty Roses - Mario and Dario
Dolly Parton - Jolene
Eighth Wonder - I'm Not Scared
The Smiths - There Is a Light That Never Goes Out
Breathless - Stay Beside You
Atlas Sound - Recent Bedroom
Pinback - Versailles
PJ Harvey - Missed

The Verve - On Your Own
Tindersticks - A Night In
PJ Harvey - Liverpool Tide
Roy Orbison - In Dreams
Marianne Faithfull - The Ballad of Lucy Jordan
Tindersticks - Another Night In
The Sugarcubes - Birthday
Benjamin Biolay - Bien avant
The B-52's - Private Idaho
Devo - Mongoloid
The B-52's - Dance This Mess Around
Cyndi Lauper - All Through the Night
Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot - Bonnie and Clyde
Françoise Hardy - J'aurai voulu
Françoise Hardy - Träume
Röyksopp - What Else Is There?
PJ Harvey - Sweeter Than Anything
PJ Harvey - Legs
PJ Harvey - Snake
Röyksopp - This Must Be It

Atlas Sound - Ativan
Fever Ray - Dry and Dusty
PJ Harvey & John Parish - A Woman a Man Walked By / The Crow Knows Where All the Little Children Go
Liz Phair - Fuck and Run
Beirut - Venice
PJ Harvey & John Parish - Pig Will Not
Jacques Dutronc - Les cactus
Jacques Dutronc - Et moi, et moi, et moi
Yo La Tengo - Everyday
The Smiths - Bigmouth Strikes Again
The Smiths - Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others
Peter Bjorn and John - I'm Losing My Mind
Macy Gray - I Try
PJ Harvey & John Parish - April
PJ Harvey & John Parish - Cracks in the Canvas
Bedhead - Beside Table
Le Tigre - Fake French
Pinback - Loro
Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
The Knife - Heartbeats

Mark Lanegan - Resurrection Song
Animal Collective - My Girls
Animal Collective - Leaf House
Tindersticks - Cherry Blossoms
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Strange Form of Life
The Cardigans - Lovefool
Broadcast - Black Cat
Fugees - Fu-Gee-La
Doveman - Let's Hear It for the Boy
Anna Karina - Sous le soleil exactement
Hole - Retard Girl
Sonic Youth - Washing Machine
Fever Ray - Concrete Walls
ABBA - The Day Before You Came
Primal Scream - Higher Than the Sun
Slint - Good Morning, Captain
DJ Shadow - Midnight in a Perfect World
Daniel Johnson - Some Things Last a Long Time
Talking Heads - This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)
Sebadoh - Spoiled

ABBA - Summer Night City (Extended Version)
Vitesse - 2nd Thought
J.J. Fad - Supersonic
Kraftwerk - Trans-Europe Express
Sonic Youth - (I Got a) Catholic Block
Brigitte Fontaine - Kekeland
Kristin Hersh - Your Ghost
Desert Sessions - A Girl Like Me
Piano Magic - Saint Marie
Patti Smith - Pissing in a River
Palace Music - New Partner
The Radio Dept. - The City Limit
Slint - Breadcrumb Trail
The Replacements - I Will Dare
Yo La Tengo - Autumn Sweater
Architecture in Helsinki - Heart It Races
Mrs. Miller - Downtown
Olivia Newton-John - Magic
The The - The Beat(en) Generation
The The - Love Is Stronger Than Death

The The - Slow Emotion Replay
Kelis - Trick Me
The Knife - You Take My Breath Away
Sally Shapiro - I Know
Tom Waits - The Ocean Doesn't Want Me
The Sea and Cake - Parasol
Slowdive - Slowdive
Erykah Badu - Bag Lady
Portishead - It's a Fire
Broadcast - You Can Fall
The Magnetic Fields - Strange Powers
R.E.M. - Losing My Religion
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - In This Home on Ice
Feist - Let It Die
Shellac - Prayer to God
Boris - Farewell
CocoRosie - Beautiful Boyz (White Session)
PJ Harvey - Reeling
M83 - You, Appearing
Blondie - Hanging on the Telephone

Auburn Lull - Old Mission
PJ Harvey - Kick It to the Ground
Ryan Adams & The Cardinals - Stop
LCD Soundsystem - Get Innocuous!
Broken Social Scene - Shampoo Suicide
Tom Waits - Big in Japan
Tom Waits - Make It Rain
Bat for Lashes - Sleep Alone
Breathless - Is It Good News Today?
John Parish & Polly Jean Harvey - Taut
The Verve - Grey Skies
Gang of Four - Love Like Anthrax
Divine - T-shirts and Tight Blue Jeans
Kylie Minogue - Love at First Sight
Japandroids - I Quit Girls
Kelis featuring Nas - In Public
Elvis Perkins - Moon Woman II
Bat for Lashes - Good Love
PJ Harvey - Catherine
Lauryn Hill - Ex-Factor

The Knife - Silent Shout
Grizzly Bear - Particular to What?
Boris - Just Abandoned My-Self
Kylie Minogue - Secret (Take You Home)
The B-52's - Rock Lobster
Émilie Simon featuring Perry Blake - Graines d'étoiles
The Magnetic Fields - All My Little Words
Madonna - Everybody
Madonna - Lucky Star
Kelis - Good Stuff
The B-52's - 52 Girls
Michael Jackson - Rock with You
The Magnetic Fields - The Desperate Things You Made Me Do
The Magnetic Fields - When You're Old and Lonely
Yo La Tengo - Saturday
This Mortal Coil - Song to the Siren
Justin Timberlake - Last Night
Serge Gainsbourg - L'hôtel particulier
April March - Chick Habit
Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot - Comic Strip

Yo La Tengo - Our Way to Fall
Sonic Youth - 'Cross the Breeze
Hot Chip - And I Was a Boy from School
Grizzly Bear - Ready
Phoenix - Fences
Neil Young - Harvest Moon
Duran Duran - Save a Prayer
Nu Shooz - I Can't Wait
The Hidden Cameras - Shame
LCD Soundsystem - All My Friends
Bat for Lashes - What's a Girl to Do?
Serge Gainsbourg - Requiem pour un con
Lil Mama - Lip Gloss
Róisín Murphy - Overpowered
Pet Shop Boys - Domino Dancing
Busta Rhymes featuring Kelis & will.i.am - I Love My Bitch
Madonna - Causing a Commotion
Blonde Redhead - 23
Montag - Dormir sur les villes
Beirut - Nantes

Breathless - Pride
Neutral Milk Hotel - April 8th
Goldfrapp - White Soft Rope
Cocteau Twins - Pink Orange Red
The Knife - Neverland
Mark Lanegan featuring PJ Harvey - Hit the City
The Radio Dept. - We Climb the Wire Fences
Fleetwood Mac - Dreams
Antony and the Johnsons - Another World
Sufjan Stevens - To Be Alone with You
The Smiths - Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me
Stereolab - Super Falling Star
INXS - Don't Change
The Microphones - The Mansion
Kylie Minogue - I Believe in You
Electreland - To the East
of Montreal - The Past Is a Grotesque Animal
Dizzee Rascal - Pussyole (Oldskool)
Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg - Je t'aime moi non plus
Crystal Castles - Crimewave

Some Thoughts on the Closing Ceremony of the 62nd Festival International de Cannes

I trekked through the closing ceremony yesterday morning streaming via the Cannes Official website, which really is not conducive for the few of us who are fluent in both English and French, and had a few observations.

1. The best moment wasn't the long-overdue recognition for Alain Resnais or finally bestowing Michael Haneke with the fest's top prize, but instead, it was the humble acceptance of Charlotte Gainsbourg after being named Best Actress for Lars von Trier's Antichrist. With a "bien sûr" delivery, Isabelle Huppert read off Gainsbourg's name as if there were no other choice the jury could have made, which makes natural sense considering Huppert and fellow jury member Asia Argento's history of emotionally devastating roles. With her hushed voice, Gainsbourg thanked von Trier, co-star Willem Dafoe, husband Yvan Attal, her two children, mother Jane Birkin and, naturally, her late father, whom she hoped was looking down at her both proud and shocked. This was easily the best moment of the whole ceremony.

2. Worse than Isabelle Adjani's shameless plug for her film La journée de la jupe, which Andrew Grant informed me is not only "god-awful" but worse than Bon voyage, were presenter Terry Gilliam's laughless crocodile tears when host Edouard Baer informed him that he was not the winner of the Best Director prize, which he was introducing. IndieWire commented, "Across the stage, Isabelle Huppert, not laughing, remarks simply, 'OK?'" I was sort of hoping for a bitchier "OK?" than Huppert gave, with a half-smile, but her sentiment was precisely how I felt. I was more embarrassed for Gilliam in those three minutes than I was during the entirety of The Brothers Grimm.

3. While I was partly amused by Christoph Waltz's acceptance speech for Best Actor, I think I'm beyond the point of wanting to hear someone verbally jerk Quentin Tarantino off. He does a good enough job by himself.

4. Though it seems Isabel Coixet's Map of the Sounds of Tokyo was the hands-down worst film to screen in competition this year (not surprising after the steady decrease in the director's work from My Life Without Me to Elegy), I'm wondering if the boos that accompanied Brillante Mendoza's Kinatay and Lou Ye's Spring Fever from the US critics were appropriate or if the rumored "jury craziness" had some validity. I wasn't impressed with Mendoza's The Masseur or Lou's Summer Palace, but I'm certainly willing to give both another shot.

5. While this has nothing to do with the ceremony itself, I've read conflicting reports of how IFC Films is planning on releasing Antichrist in the US. Some have said we'll be seeing the film in all its genital-mutilation glory, but others have said it will be cut. Another source said that IFC will be releasing both versions, as certain cable providers would probably shy away from showing the film OnDemand. It'll be interesting to see how this is handled when IFC rolls the film out, hopefully later this year.

Requiem pour un con...

After the worldwide success of La vie en rose, it looks like an official Serge Gainsbourg biopic has started filming in France. No title yet, but still photographs show actor Eric Elmosnino (L'heure d'été) looking remarkable as Monsieur Gainsbourg. I'll post more as it comes to me, like the casting of the many women in his life: Brigitte Bardot, Anna Karina, Françoise Hardy, Bambou, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin (and, of course, Whitney Houston). Fingers crossed that this breaks the lousy musician biopic mold! By the way, Raro Video released his film Équateur, with Barbara Sukowa, earlier this year. Anyone see it?

Delirious? You mean the one with John Candy?

Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? [Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo?] – dir. William Klein – 1966 – France

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Mr. Freedom – dir. William Klein – 1969 – France

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The Model Couple [Le couple témoin] – dir. William Klein – 1977 – France/Switzerland

I ventured into the so-called delirious fictions of William Klein over a month ago and only when listening to Serge Gainsbourg this evening was I reminded of such. Touted as lost narrative classics of the ex-patriot photographer Klein, to say that they each left something to be desired wouldn’t be accurate. For, what’s most strange about these three films, particularly Mr. Freedom and The Model Couple, the two weaker of the three, is that everything is in place. Both Mr. Freedom and The Model Couple have their tables set for delicious satire, but maybe it’s their tidiness that makes them so forgettable. Or maybe that while Klein may have been thematically “ahead of his time,” his films just didn’t have much to say that couldn’t have been summed up in a sentence.

The delirium that The Criterion Collection speaks of can best be found in Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?, which is the only enjoyable one of the three. It’s amusing kitsch and a satire that sort of works overall, or at least in comparison. The other two, however, solely rely on pulpiness and their own proper table-settings which never equal anything substantial or even entertaining. Even with Mr. Freedom’s amusing cast of celebrities, which include Delphine Seyrig, Donald Pleasance as Dr. Freedom, Philippe Noiret, Serge Gainsbourg (with a horrible over-dubbing in English), and Yves Montand as Captain Formidable (in an uncredited cameo), the film hardly ranks high in its own novelty. I think I’ll just stick to my Serge Gainsbourg albums from now on, and I’ll probably soon forget the so-called delirium of a once-forgotten and should-be-forgotten-once-more artist.

Moi non plus...

CultEpics will be releasing Pierre Grimbalt's Slogan on DVD on 20 May. If you haven't heard of the film (as I hadn't), it's historical for being the film in which Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, who would produce a handful of children including Charlotte Gainsbourg and record the classic "Je t'aime, moi non plus" together, met and subsequently fell in love. Gainsbourg, naturally, scores the film as well as appearing in it.

In other DVD news, Benten Films will be releasing the film The Free Will, starring Jürgen Vogel, on DVD on 24 June. And on the subject of Benten Films, if you haven't picked up their latest release of two films by Aaron Katz (Quiet City and Dance Party, USA) do yourself a favor and do so. Lionsgate and After Dark Horrorfest will also be releasing Xavier Gens' Frontière(s) on 15 May, after delaying it from their stupid fest for its NC-17 rating.

Ecoutez l'histoire de Bonnie et Clyde

File this under, "about fucking time." Warner will be releasing a two-disc special edition of Bonnie & Clyde on 25 March 2008. The set will also include a hardcover book of photos and such, and who doesn't need more pictures of Faye Dunaway to look at? Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the disc will include Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot's music video for "Bonnie and Clyde." Dommage.