TEOREMA - #1013

Teorema. Theorem. “A general proposition not self-evident but proved by a chain of reasoning; a truth established by means of accepted truths.”

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1968 film Teorema presents a fictionalized social experiment, playfully rooted in a false reality, starting off with what seems to be documentary footage, presenting the thesis that the bourgeoisie can be pushed towards change, but they will never really go all the way.

The Italian auteur’s set- up has a Bunuel quality to it. Essentially, Pasolini takes a standard upper-class family and drops a grenade into the middle of their existence. Terence Stamp plays an unnamed houseguest who arrives without explanation, and immediately seduces all members of the household--father, mother, daughter, son, and even the maid. In many cases, his mere presence is enough, a blank canvas for each person to project their desires upon, from the sex-starved mother to the (supposedly) misunderstood father, whose perceived sorrow alienates him. In some cases, one family member sees what is going on with another, but that doesn’t stop anyone from giving themselves to the young Brit.

Things get even more interesting, however, when the stranger leaves, and suddenly these people are once again faced with the void, only this time far more aware of what it means to have found something to fill it. And so each goes chasing the experience. The maid (Laura Betti, La dolce vita [review]) removes herself from the mansion and pursues an ascetic life, seeking absolution. The mother (Silvana Mangano, Conversation Piece [review]) drives through the city looking for a stand-in for the lover who abandoned her. The son (André José Cruz Soublette, The Specialists) seeks to revive the missing man through art.

In each case, the resolution is up to interpretation, the success subjective, but if we consider these outcomes through the lens of Pasolini’s initial statements, then we can start to question whether his theorem holds water. For instance, the maid rejects all exploitation, but the matriarch seeks it out. The daughter (Anne Wiazemsky, Au hasard du Balthazar [review]) shuts down all expression, while her brother hunts a pure vehicle for emotion.

All eyes are on the father, however. Paolo (Massimo Girotti, Last Tango in Paris [review]), as it turns out, is the bourgeois factor owner referenced at Teorema’s beginning, the progressive boss who turned his business over to his employees. But is this the full expression of his change? Paolo’s discussions with the stranger seemed to suggest that he needed someone else to understand him, or to be more simplistic, to see him. Thus, with the visitor gone, the older man strips himself bare in ways both literal and metaphorical, all to draw others closer to him.

But are any of these people doing the “right” thing? And what are we really saying when we suggest the moneyed class never can? Pasolini offers no ground rules, and arguably, all of his characters consistently act in their own interest. There is nothing selfless or noble about their dalliances, nor in their chasing after the phantoms the encounters conjured. The stranger isn’t looking for any desired effects, he is just identifying their individual levers and pulling them. If even that. He is merely there, and the family takes from him what they want.

Terence Stamp is an interesting choice for this. The star of Far From the Madding Crowd [review], The Limey, and The Hit [review] is known for him slow burn, his quiet smolder. Here he says little. His grandest gesture is to return a glance. The audience is left to project as much onto him as the Italian family. His appearance is Pasolini’s provocation of his viewer, and his removal our challenge to find meaning.

It’s all very intriguing, and surprisingly light on pretention. It features the agitprop of Godard and the surrealism of Marco Ferreri but without the former’s stridency and the latter’s excess. It’s Pasolini at his most artful, relying on subtle stratagems rather than the direct confrontation that colored some of his more infamous work. The result is a theorem that is partially proven but ultimately unsolved; yet, Teorema invites further study and likely welcomes different conclusions each time.

This disc provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.

THE DAY HE ARRIVES - CRITERION CHANNEL

This review was originally written in 2012 for DVDTalk.com. It is reprinted here on the occasion of the Criterion Channel launching a triple feature of Hong Sang-Soo films that also includes Claire's Camera and On the Beach at Night Alone.

Seongjun is a filmmaker who made four films before abandoning the craft and becoming a professor at a small school in the Korean countryside. On the occasion of The Day He Arrives, the latest from Hong Sang-soo (Woman is the Future of Man; In Another Country [review]), the emotionally wounded artist (played by Yu Jun-Sang) has returned to Seoul to visit a friend, Youngho (Kim Sang Jung). On that first day, the friend is nowhere to be found, and so Seongjun wanders his old stomping grounds, running into an actress he knows, drinking with some film students, and when deep in his cups, visiting his ex-girlfriend, Kyungjin (Kim Bo-Kyung). There is still pain between them, and also some love, though when she sends him away, it seems for the best.

When we see Seongjun again, it's the next morning, and he is back on the hunt from Youngho. If the circumstances look the same, it's because they are. The Day He Arrives, for the purpose of this film, is every day, and every drunken night gives over to the same hungover morning. Seongjun realizes it...and he doesn't. The only time he acknowledges the passage of days, it's when he runs into the actress again. He remembers seeing her the day before, and she remembers seeing him. The air around her is different.

On day 2, Seongjun connects with his friend, and they go out together, hooking up with his colleague, a woman named Boram (Song Seon-Mi). Youngho and Boram are film professors, as well, and they teach together in Seoul. Boram is attracted to Seongjun, she likes his films, and she's curious about his broken heart. He is distracted, however, when they go to a bar called Novel, and the pretty owner turns out to be a dead ringer for Seongjun's ex-lover. Indeed, in a move reminiscent of Bunuel (or perhaps Lynch), Kim Bo-Kyung also plays Yejeon. The director is drawn to this woman, the coincidence is too overpowering. It must mean something, right?

This is the central philosophical question that Hong Sang-soo sets out to examine in his mesmerizing drama. The repetition of events in The Day He Arrives is not an empty gimmick, it's a considered choice that has been undertaken with purpose. As each new version plays out, different things happen. On day 3, an actor friend joins the group. Seongjun also makes progress with the bartender. On day 4, Youngho is drunk and reveals himself a little more. Each character is getting a kind of do-over. They take more risks, speak more truths, and essentially get at what they are trying to get at.

I suppose how you interpret the changes and escalation is going to determine how you assess The Day He Arrives. It may also be a personality litmus test. The liner notes to the film, written by critic James Quandt, are titled "Déjà Vu," but I think that's too tidy a concept for the existential riddle that Hong is posing. His main character sets the parameters when he says he doesn't believe that coincidence has meaning. Life is a series of random events, and we spend so much time trying to connect them, we risk missing that there is only one inevitable outcome. Whatever circumstances keep bringing these people together, whatever common thoughts drive them (throughout the movie, conversations are repeated with speakers switching roles and/or echoing each other in the discussions), this is all chance. For the optimistic among you, the repetition of these happenings ultimately puts luck on your side. In a kind of Groundhog Day romantic scenario, the characters can get better, do better, and get closer to some kind of true connection. If you're pessimistic like me, the randomness only proves to emphasize how alone we, as humans, really are. Every day, Seongjun gets to know the barmaid a little better, gets to like her more, and eventually succeeds in being with her...only to let his own emotional dysfunction dictate his next move. It's like the old saying goes, no matter where you go, there you will be. Seongjun can't help but be alienated. He is eternally the outsider, always arriving, never staying.

The Day He Arrives, for all its long scenes of conversation, is a tightly edited film. For its surreal concept, it's also surprisingly grounded. The acting and the writing are naturalistic. Hong never forces the drama, nor does he spell out his intentions through overly explanatory or self-reflexive dialogue. Instead, his references are subtle, and he lets the actors be themselves within the scene, lets them find the truth. The camera probes occasionally, moving in tighter on a moment when further intimacy is required, but otherwise it's unobtrusive. We hang back and watch, we aren't pushed into the center of the intellectual mystery. This, of course, makes it all the more intriguing. Hong seduces us with the unknowable, and it's hypnotizing. Even as we begin to discern the magician's tricks, the illusion is never dissolved--meaning we are there wholly and completely when the final devastating day comes at last.

DEATH IN THE GARDEN - CRITERION CHANNEL

This review was originally written for DVDTalk.com in 2009.

I haven't seen a lot of movies from Luis Buñuel's Mexican period, but what I have been able to catch suggests to me that this fruitful work time often saw the surrealist director turning to more conventional stories rather than the looser, more anarchic films that bookended his creative career. 1956's Death in the Garden (La morte en ce jardin) is no exception. Based on a novel by José-André Lacour, it's one half political drama, one half adventure movie, with a lot of steamy melodrama mixed in.

Death in the Garden is set in a remote South American village that has sprung up around the area diamond mines. A military revolution is underway, and the new ruling class demands that the independent miners move off their claims, surrendering their land to the government. This inspires heated protests that threaten to split the town. The scoundrel Chark (Georges Marchal) unexpectedly wanders into this charged atmosphere on his way to Brazil. Where he's coming from is never really explained, though after he drifts into the bed of Djin (Simone Signoret, Diabolique [review]), the town madam, she gives him up to the police. They claim that the money belt he is wearing is full of stolen cash. It's not clear whether this is true. Chark resists his arrest, but he never really denies the charges.

Amidst all this are an upstanding priest (Michel Piccoli, Belle de Jour [review]), an old prospector (Charles Vanel), and his deaf-mute daughter (Michèle Girardon). All three are looking to get out of town, but the situation explodes before they can. Chark escapes from prison and joins the violent uprising, and the easily identifiable prospector, who is named Castin, is branded alongside Chark as one of the instigators and a bounty is placed on both of their heads. Castin has a pretty sizable cache of diamonds, and he's in love with Djin, who will help him escape and become his wife in hopes of inheriting his riches. She books herself passage on a pimp's boat, sneaks Castin and daughter on board, and is then much chagrined when Chark, who has a grudge against her, hijacks the ship. Oh, yeah, and the priest, Father Lizardi, is there, too.

That's a lot of plot for one movie, and that's just the first half. The cops take off in hot pursuit after the fugitives, and Chark and his crew run aground midway between the village and Brazil. They have to take the rest of the journey on foot, contending with a hostile jungle they are not prepared for. Greed and their natural selfishness begin to take over as they revert to animalistic ways. It's kind of an if-you-can't-beat-'em-join-'em scenario. Humans in the wild will become wild. Here the old rascal Buñuel gets playful, filling the speakers with the cries of jungle creatures, the sounds hedging in on the wanderers as much as the trees. It's a harsh environment where the strongest isn't always the most obvious candidate. Chark--whose name is meant to sound like "Shark," just as Lizardi is a "lizard"--kills a snake, and the snake carcass is set upon by fire ants. The closer you get to the ground, it seems, the deadlier the predator.

Buñuel stages all of this potboiler action in an exaggerated fashion. The melodrama is cranked all the way up, nuanced acting taking a backseat to bald, on-the-face-of-it emoting. Though the early part of the picture has political undertones, with Buñuel and his writers taking aim at oppressive governments and the exploitation of the working class, even before the group gets to the jungle, it's clear that man is hopelessly divided. It's every crook for himself, regardless of class. Amusingly, this means some personality switch-ups. Chark grows compassionate, becoming protective of Castin's daughter, whereas Castin becomes selfish and nihilistic. Not that he doesn't have plenty of reason to hate Chark. The tough guy ends up stealing Djin, who has softened under his impromptu leadership. While before she was willing to marry Castin for his diamond bag, she surrenders the lost jewelry she finds at the site of a plane crash to Chark as a symbol of love and partnership. Through it all, Lizardi is caught in the middle, constantly compromised--or at least caught in compromising positions. Prior to leaving town, he was found in Djin's bedroom, a humiliation he must endure rather than reveal he is there to see a wanted man.

Death in the Garden is fun to watch, full of Buñuel's trademark pranksterism and evocative imagery. He plays it larger here, enjoying the wide emotional expanse the potboiler provides him. I do think, however, that the more focused first half is more interesting. The communist-leaning message gives Death in the Garden some bite, and the action sequences and dirty dealing make for an exciting plot. The jungle trek, on the other hand, feels more conventional and overly long. The broad strokes don't work as well on the confined canvas.

Things pick back up in the final reel, when all the craziness starts to take its toll. With the Promised Land in site, the last vestiges of civility drop. It's a cynical ending, paying off on Buñuel's conceit that the bad will make good and the good will go bad, and actually full of quite a few surprises. In fact, regardless of the familiarity of the territory or even the slowness of some of the walking through it, Buñuel rarely makes the predictable choice. I assume he picked such typical stories for the intended purpose of making them atypical, and he does just that. You know, it strikes me that if this script had been shot in Hollywood at the same time as Luis Buñuel was shooting it down in Mexico, it could have been a fairly decent Raoul Walsh picture. As it is, it's a fairly decent Luis Buñuel one and worth checking out.

BLU-REDO: THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL - #459

A few years on since Criterion’s 2012 release of The Exterminating Angel (and my lengthy review), this new Blu-ray upgrade of Luis Buñuel’s 1962 social satire couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time. As political climates change and divides deepen across the world, this surreal masterpiece turns the tables on the social classes. Though wealth and standing were not part of Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson’s infamous horror movie rules in Scream, a deeper examination of the genre, particularly the sort of isolating event they were sending up in their movie, I am sure would reveal that most often, things go bad for the poor, not the rich. Or, when they do, someone from the underclass is there to save the day. The outsider that tagged along with her moneyed classmates for the weekend being the only one to emerge from a slasher plot alive.

Not that The Exterminating Angel is at all like a slasher film, but it is very much a horror film. Dark forces are in the air right from the get-go, when the servants of a Mexican dignitary start exiting his home just before a big dinner party. There is a suggestion that they are not colluding, that they are not aware of what compels them to go. Did they enact a curse on their snobby boss and his guests, or are they simply falling under the same spell? While this strange happening forces them to leave, it requires the others to stay.

What exactly happened is never explained, nor does it need to be. The closest we get to maybe being able to surmise the motivation of whatever force is holding sway is The Exterminating Angel’s closing scenes. We’ve switched from the wealthy to the pious. Buñuel is targeting social institutions and ideologies, isolating them so as to expose and ridicule. His main scenario, borrowing a little from Sartre’s No Exit, is that following their meal, the partygoers discover they cannot leave. There is no visible obstacle keeping them in the room, yet they can’t find the ability to simply walk out. Food disappears, as do other pleasures; the group splinters, factions form. Stripped of the trappings of status, these people are left to be themselves--and who they are is not necessarily very likable.

In a society where the gap between the rich and the poor, as well as many moral and political divides, is becoming more pronounced than ever, there is much we can glean from The Exterminating Angel. The film makes the division real, blocking the rich from the rest of the world, but in doing so, takes everything away, turning them into the people they might otherwise judge, forcing them to go without. In added prescience, Buñuel’s turning the whole thing into a media spectacle is not unlike reality television being a platform for celebrity, wealth, and now leadership. Though, the gawkers outside the mansion seem positively quaint in the age of 24-7 surveillance, paparazzi, and, of course, oversharing.

The critique is sharp, but Buñuel’s approach is often playful. He watches his characters with the mirth of a prankster. Which, of course, he is. It’s the director who locked these people in this mansion, and only he can let them out once he’s seen all he wants to see. They can be craven and petty, but their desperation is also horribly human. As with the best horror, the awful things that happen prove to remind us we are alive, and that we are all in this together. The rich are no better than anyone else, no more capable--but when they finally do get out, it’s because they push together.

The high-definition transfer on this disc is very nice, bringing The Exterminating Angel into its Blu period. I don’t believe this is any different than the transfer used for the previous DVD edition, but the image is crisp and the uncompressed soundtrack sounds fantastic. All the extras from the original disc, including a 2008 documentary tribute to Luis Buñuel, are carried over to this re-release.

The images used in this review are from the standard-definition DVD and not the Blu-ray under examination. 

This disc provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.

3 WOMEN (Blu-ray) - #230

“I’m trying to reach toward a picture that’s totally emotional--not narrative or intellectual--where an audience walks out and they can’t say anything about it except what they feel.”

Robert Altman’s description of his intentions with 3 Women doesn’t really decode the entire thing, but it does give a key to opening up whatever secret book holds the answers. Because 3 Women, which Altman wrote and produced under his own Lion’s Gate banner as well as directed, is not a story that works on paper, it’s not a script with a traditional plot. Its act breaks are more like psychotic breaks, in that the movie transforms twice, shifting when its main characters face trauma, swapping their roles, and yet never stopping to explain. Altman is clear in his nod here to Luis Bunuel, naming a pushy boss Mrs. Bunweill as tribute, and interestingly enough, holds much in common with the movie the Spanish filmmaker released that same year. 1977 brought us both 3 Women and That Obscure Object of Desire. In Bunuel’s film, the lead actress changes mid-way through the picture, a confounding narrative conceit that demands the audience take a leap of faith that it all means something. Altman plays a few parlor tricks of his own. Both these men were driving down Mulholland Dr. a couple of decades before David Lynch.

The story here begins normally enough. A young woman named Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek) is starting work at a nursing home, and she is assigned Millie Lammoreaux (Shelley Duvall) to train her. The two couldn’t be more different. Millie is tall and composed; Pinky is small and shy. Millie talks constantly, yet no one ever seems to listen; Pinky is always watching, yet others often don’t see her. Millie pretends to be the sophisticate; Pinky is a child. Millie likes dressing in yellow; Pinky is nicknamed Pinky for a reason.

Pinky is also somewhat of a mimic. An emotional and physical chameleon. She is drawn to Millie and soon begins copying her. She borrows a phrase here, a detail there. When Millie needs a new roommate, Pinky seizes on the opportunity. What better way to observe her new obsession than in her natural habitat? It’s like Single White Female for the art house, but without the murderous intent.

Things are up-and-down for the new roomies. Millie notices things being slightly off about the younger woman. Likewise, the landlord’s wife and proprietress of the saloon where Millie drinks, the similarly named Willie (Janice Rule), appears suspicious of the new girl. I suppose in this pyramid, Willie is the crone, and indeed, she and her elaborate paintings have a kind of bewitching effect on Pinky, drawing her in the way the moon draws the tide. The spying girl often observes Willie through water, or in relation to water, like in a fish tank or at the bottom of an empty pool, and every time, Willie can sense the staring almost immediately.

Altman makes great use of the murals that Willie paints (though in reality they were created by artist Bodhi Wind). She does small abstract work that can be hung on walls, though those she tends to riddle with bullet holes, which only calls further attention to their humble size. Her masterpieces, on the other hand, are large and impressive, covering walls or the floors of swimming pools. She depicts mythic creatures, alien and surreal, masculine and violent. In one, which also ends up being the final image of the movie, her bizarre creatures rant and rave at an object in the heavens, suggesting they are as primal as the apes at the start of 2001 [review]. One can presume she is painting the world she sees around her--the saloon is populated by men riding dirt bikes and shooting pistols--but maybe she also feels that desperate pull herself.

Everythng changes midway through 3 Women. In a surprising twist--though not really a spoilery one, it would be sort of impossible to spoil a movie this unconcerned with conventional narrative--after Millie turns on her, Pinky tries to drown herself. Feeling guilty, Millie stands by her while she is in a coma, only to find the girl who wakes up in that hospital bed is radically changed. Pinky is now the assertive one, and Millie can only do her best not to be completely subsumed, to have her entire identity swallowed. It takes another tragedy, this time involving Willie’s baby, to shake things up again. (Digression: It might be interesting to compare how Altman allows the birth to affect the lives of the main characters in a movie about women vs. how the birth scene at the end of his male mid-life crisis picture Dr. T and the Women [review] affects Richard Gere. Is there something to be said for why it is magical and liberating for the man and not for the ladies?)

I briefly considered tracking my feelings throughout my viewing of 3 Women, but that seemed to kind of miss the point of the experiment by intellectualizing it too much. It would also pull me away from the screen and make me focus on the paper, and 3 Women requires undivided attention. That said, in the first half of the movie, there is definitely a feeling of desire and hope, but that translates to pity, as well--which is an audience reaction, not a function of the storytelling. Neither Pinky nor especially Millie are that self-aware. Later, I felt in sync with Millie, as Pinky’s attempted suicide and the fall-out thereafter inspires anxiety in both the viewer and the actress. Duvall is a fascinating onscreen presence. She almost doesn’t seem like that good of an actress. Her delivery can be flat, and she can appear ill at ease. Her gawkiness can be hypnotic, in much the same way her Margaret Keane-like features make her beautiful. I am always hyper aware she is Shelley Duvall, whether she’s playing the scared wife in The Shining or Olive Oyl in Popeye. Yet I find myself enjoying watching her all the same.

It’s a demeanor that is ideally suited for a movie as intentionally dreamy as 3 Women. Shelley Duvall is practically surreal unto herself. This makes it all the more smart to cast Sissy Spacek opposite her. Spacek is naturally more grounded. As Pinky, she maintains the girl-next-door vibe she had in Badlands [review] and Carrie, and yet is utterly convincing when she becomes the more confident and mean of the two roommates. One could posit she’s putting the little-girl-lost routine to bed for good. Performance-wise, she is as natural on screen as Duvall is awkward. I would almost try to argue that all of 3 Women is Millie’s dream, given how menacing a figure her counterpart becomes, but the changes occur in Pinky’s vision. She observes, she sees the rifts, and she dives into them.

Altman approaches all this with a measured gaze. He doesn’t push the odd happenings too hard, he doesn’t go all wonky or psychedelic. Pinky’s early “visions” are more practical. The first superimposition of waves over the image, for instance, uses water that is actually in the scene. It’s only near the end that Altman steps away from this, indulging in one short yet meaningful dream sequence, a kind of quick run through the greatest hits of everything we’ve seen so far. He’s practically working at odds with his own skewed motives here. 3 Women deals with strange events, but Altman makes most of it seem as real as possible. Even the obvious symbols, like the pair of twins that work with Millie and Pinky, are really just twins who work with Millie and Pinky. Though, they do allow for some leading dialogue. “Do you think they know which one they are?” Pinky asks. “Maybe they switch back and forth.”

This earthiness and lack of show makes it easier to go along with the more obtuse occurrences, just as Gerald Busby’s distant and ominous music provides a throughline in the sometimes rambling narrative. Altman is far from indulgent, he’s giving the audience as much as required to keep them invested and on track. It’s only in the final scenes, when the lever on the cinematic slot machine is pulled one last time and the titular trio of women slides into its final roles, that some might end up truly confounded. I’ve seen the movie twice now and I’m still not sure if it’s a jackpot of “Ah-ha!” or otherwise some combination of “what’s that?” and “why this?”

I like it anyway. I am fascinated and enraptured, hypnotized by its vibrant colors the way Pinky is hypnotized by Willie’s paintings, every time I watch it. And I don’t worry about what is happening or what it’s trying to say. Which would mean Altman is successful in creating an all-in experience, one that entices and teases and provokes even if it never explains.

Note: 3 Women will be playing the NW Film Center on Sunday, January 18, as part of a Robert Altman weekend.

SIDELINE: MORE REVIEWS FOR 5/13

IN THEATRES...

* Frances Ha, Noah Baumbach, having found a new muse in Greta Gerwig, strikes out anew.

* Gimme the Loot, street-level cinema verite following two graffiti artists preparing for a big tag.

* The Great Gatsby in 3D has two-wasted dimensions. Shtick and spectacle from Baz Luhrmann.

* The Iceman, a biopic about one of America's most notorious contract killers. Michael Shannon lends the role intensity, but the script only touches the material gingerly.

* The Purge, Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey in a tense little thriller with inklings of political allegory.

* Sightseers, the new film from Ben Wheatley, a rebel in search of applause. Take a tour of misanthropy.

My Oregonian columns:

* May 3: the food documentary The Food Hunters, Harold Lloyd's classic Safety Last! newly restored, and the 18th-annual HP Lovecraft Film Festival.

* May 10: a two-week film noir festival at Cinema 21; Rock Hudson starring in John Frankenheimer's whacky psych-out Seconds, and the political/social documentary The Mosque in Morgantown.

* May 17: a rare noir Fallguy; Luis Bunuel directs Catherine Deneuve in Tristana; and Guy Pearce sends 33 Postcards

* May 23: Douglas Fairbanks as The Thief of Bagdad; Paul McCartney gives us a Wings Rockshow; the Experimental Film Festival 2013.

* May 30: Take a visit to Skull World; look at the making of two different forms of art with Becoming Traviata and Bel Borba Aqui; get gay married for a greencard in I Do.

* June 7: underground crime fiction by way of Flamingos; the activist-focused environmental documentary Elemental; and Stress Position, an agitprop art school prank.

ON BD/DVD...

* Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing, a 1973 disjointed road-trip romance from Alan J. Pakula.

* Save the Date, a wedding-centric sorta rom-com with Alison Brie and Lizzy Caplan, co-written and featuring artwork by cartoonist Jeffrey Brown.

* Wake of the Red Witch, a seafaring, bodice-ripping potboiler with John Wayne.

PIERRE ETAIX: LE GRAND AMOUR/HAPPY ANNIVERSARY - #655

If you're unfamiliar with the name Pierre Étaix, don't worry, you're not alone. Up until recently, the celebrated French comedian's films have been largely unavailable due to a legal tangle with the distribution rights. I don't know the particulars of what finally caused those rights to be untangled, but soon all film fans will have a chance to get to know Étaix's artistry, thanks to a touring retrospective of his work and an upcoming Criterion boxed set.

The writer/director/star only made a handful of feature films and shorts through the 1960s, following stints as an assistant and gag writer for the likes of Jacques Tati, Robert Bresson, and Nagisa Oshima. Étaix left film to return to his first career as a clown, but not before leaving an indelible mark on the cinematic landscape. In reviewing his final comedy feature, Le Grand Amour, released in 1969 and leading the dual weekend of Pierre Étaix films playing the NW Film Center [full schedule here], it's easy to see why. His playful flights of fancy, careening out of conventional narrative and into the realms of imagination, are delightful and intoxicating. One can't help but imagine that movies like Le Grand Amour were an early influence on Jean-Pierre Jeunet, whose Amélie would not be out of place as one of the many girlfriends Pierre fantasizes about throughout this rumination on love and marriage. (Etaix actually had a small role in Jeunet's film Micmacs [review].)

Le Grand Amour begins with a wedding, as befitting any such movie. Étaix is at the altar, waiting to tie the knot with Florence (Annie Fratellini), and remembering his past loves and imagining a few paths not taken. The ceremony ends, and the film jumps ahead a decade. Pierre and Florence have settled into their married life, with all the ups and downs that entails. They are mostly happy, despite the gossip that's being passed around about them. In one ingenious sequence, Étaix shows the evolution of a rumor, as a chance greeting is soon inflated into a full-grown affair, the moment replaying and escalating with each added whisper. Pierre takes some lumps for this false story, before falling into a similar trap for real. He becomes quite smitten with his new secretary (Nicole Calfan), despite her being 20 years his junior.

The rest of Le Grand Amour shows Pierre trying to concoct a way to have the young girl and be free of his wife. He lives out the illicit, though amusingly tame, relationship in dreams, both of the sleeping and waking variety, debating the pros and cons. One amusing scene shows him obsessing over a strand of hair left on his desk, going back and forth between it and a portrait of his bride. It's one of the more straightforward segments of the film; other bits break the bounds of reality. When Pierre consults with a friend, that man becomes a part of the daydream, often to have his own speculations backfire (pie to the face!) because he doesn't understand Florence the way her husband does.  In Le Grand Amour's most memorable stretch, Pierre's bed leaves his room and goes out onto the open road, joining the traffic of other slumbering dreamers as he searches for the object of his affection. The beds, in their way, have become cars, and Étaix ups the ante by having their drivers suffer from engine trouble, crash into one another, and other mundane experiences normally reserved for regular metal automobiles.

Étaix is a charming presence. His approach, at least here, is quieter than the likes of Tati or Rowan Atkinson, who bears a slight resemblance to the French comic. Le Grand Amour has some slapstick, but it's mostly situational. Étaix prefers mix-ups to pratfalls. His pacing is more languid, as befitting a dreamer. The laughs are subtle and unforced. Some jokes sneak up on you, such as when Étaix leaves his apartment to go downstairs and hang up on his mother-in-law in person. In that same scene, the strains of violin that have been playing under the action are revealed to be coming from a live player, Pierre's henpecked father-in-law. The comedian otherwise doesn't use music to emphasize his punch lines, that would be too obvious. Étaix lets the humor happen, he doesn't telegraph.

This allows for a cleverly ironic ending, one that maybe I should have seen coming, but that is funny enough to transcend cliché. Suffice to say, Pierre learns to appreciate what he has, only to find himself becoming jealous via the same kind of speculation that already bit him on the butt once.

It should probably be noted here that the majority of Étaix's films were co-written by Jean-Claude Carrière, a prolific screenwriter who also worked with Luis Buñuel on most of his movies through the 1960s and 1970s and who also worked on the script for Schlöndorff's adaptation of The Tin Drum. The Étaix/Carrière collaboration dates all the way back to the clown's earliest film efforts, including his second short, Happy Anniversary (1962), which makes for a nice thematic pairing with Le Grand Amour (probably why the NW Film Center is showing them together). In this black-and-white comedy, Pierre Étaix plays a husband trying to get home for his anniversary dinner, only to end up stuck in traffic and himself causing further disruptions for his fellow drivers as he tools about running errands. Some of the on-the-road humor, as we ping from car to car, traveler to traveler, is reminiscent of Tati's Trafic [review], which was still over a decade away.

SIDELINE: MORE REVIEWS FOR 3/13

The non-Criterion movies I saw last month...

IN THEATRES...

* Spring Breakers, Harmony Korine's hotly debated, inconsistent subversion of Girls Gone Wild and thug life.

* Stoker, the weird, creepy, baffling English-language debut from Oldboy director Park Chan-wook.

* The We and the I, Michel Gondry's social experiment following a group of Bronx high schoolers on their bus ride home.

My Oregonian columns:

* March 7: featuring Tess, Roman Polanski's adaptation of Thomas Hardy; a climate change documentary called Greedy Lying Bastards; and an absolute waste-of-time horror anthology entitled The ABCs of Death.

* March 14: the documentaries A Place at the Table, about food distribution and poverty, and Turning, featuring a special performance piece by Antony & the Johnsons. Plus, Yossi, a sequel to the Israeli gay-themed love story Yossi & Jagger, picking up ten years after the events in the first film.

* March 21: horror-based documentary My Amityville Horror and war drama The Kill Hole. (Worst title of the year?)

* March 29: the poker documentary Drawing Dead, an indie "trapped in a car" thriller called Detour, and the Faux Film Festival.

ON BD/DVD...

* China Heavyweight, a documentary following three Chinese boxers on their way up and maybe on their way down.

* College: Ultimate Edition, the latest Buster Keaton reissue is predictably hilarious.

* Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel, a documentary about the legendary fashion editor, whose career spanned half a century.

* Diary of a Chambermaid, the Jean Renoir adaptation from 1946, almost twenty years before Luis Bunuel.

* For Ellen, the third film from So Yong Kim is as emotionally wrought as her others, but lacking certain connections. Starring Paul Dano.

* The Great Magician, a recent period piece set in 1930s China, with Tony Leung as an illusionist. The movie wants to be old-style entertainment, but it's not much fun.

* Killing Them Softly, Andrew Dominik's crime film was my second favorite movie of 2012, and it's even better the second time. Starring Brad Pitt.

* On Approval, a witty British comedy from 1944, directed by and starring Clive Brook.

* The Song of Bernadette, a dismal religious picture from the 1940s, starring Jennifer Jones as the girl who sees visions.

* Strangers in the Night, a middling early career melodrama from Anthony Mann.

* This is Not a Film, the lauded political documentary from Iran turns out to be much ado about nothing.