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And two movies in French:
Nous Trois Our Rien, directed by Kheiron: autobiographical movie about the director's father and mother, in which he also acts and plays his father, Hibat, who first was an activist against the Shah - which got him 7 years in prison and plenty of torture -, and then against Khomeini & Co., at which point he and his wife Fereshteh left the country. They end up in the Parisian Banlieues in which they manage, through a decade of hard social work, turn one of the most dangerous and neglected suburbs into a thriving multicultural community (which posts of the fewest votes for Front National anywhere in the department, as the director told us in the Q & A later.
Despite being set in Persia/Iran for two thirds, the movie is entirely in French, and while I'm shamefully rusty, I got some of the jokes before the subtitles told me. This movie manages to include some deadly serious subjects (oppression in two different regimes, resistance, torture, exile) and yet be a really funny comedy without belittling the enormity of what happens. It's also a family story, and Habit's wife, Fereshtre, is the opposite of the looking-in-fear-at-her-man cliché of wifes of rebels (who aren't depicted as gun-totting warriors). (She also gets a job as a social worker before he does. For that matter, Habit is also the opposite of a lot of clichés about rebels and revolutionaries. He's not angry and ranting and smashing things in frustration, but soft spoken, witty yet unrelenting. When he refuses to eat the cake the prisoners are offered at the Shah's birthday, which gets him months of isolation cell and beatings, he does so without big rethorical fanfares. He just does it. (Incidentally, the Shah shows up in this movie, as a comedy dictator. Khomeini, otoh, is presented via newsclips instead of being played by an actor.) And when Habit and Fereshtre have crossed the mountains from Iran to Turkey and turn around to look at their country for the last time, it's a big moment, but not because there is a speech; Kheiron as an actor trusts himself and his fellow actress Leila Bekhti to get across what they feel.
Because of the anti-immigration, anti-multicultural feeling on the rise in so many countries in and out of Europe right now, such a film - which ends, among other things, as an example of what the papers deem "successful integration"; Habit and Fereshtre have become part of a new community, which itself consists of many immigrants or descendants of same, of Arab and Morrocan origin - is more than timely, as one woman in the audience observed when during the Q & A she stood up to thank the director for this. But even in a better time, it would be a film worth watching. The humor and the affection the characters have for each other pulls you through the hardships, and the result is something I definitely hope will be released soon over here.
La Mort de Louis XIV, directed by Albert Serra: this, otoh, is a movie I probably won't watch again. Not because it was bad, mind: it was superbly photographed and acted, and I get the philosophical point: the process of dying in old age, which hits the most powerful man of his era just the same (only not, as a poor man would not get dozens of doctors and servants), the fantastic palace he built for himself reduced to a chamber that starts to stink of his gangrene leg. Legendary French actor Jean-Pierre Léaud returned to the screen for this movie, and there is that meta dimension you always get when an old man and living legend who could die at any point plays an old man dying (who also was legendary in a different way). But still, this draaaaaaags so much. Which is part of the point, I get it. But it doesn't make it easier to watch for me. I love my share of "slow" movies. This isn't one of them.
Maybe it's also a matter of wrong expectations: after the short summary in the program, I expected to see scheming courtiers while Louis is dying, and scheming courtiers in Versailles usually are very entertaining. But no; you only have some rivalries between doctors (and the main doctor, Fagon, versus the main valet who seems to never get to sleep as he has to be on call for Louis through the agonizingly slow days of dying all the time), but no power plays, and very little verbal fencing. (In fact I can remember only one such exchange. "As for the Doctors of the Sorbonne, I think Monsieur de Moliere has described them perfectly." "This is not the time to quote Molier, Dr. Fagon!") Verbally, it's more a competition between different actors of in how many different intonations - pleading, cajoling, pitying, fearing, etc. - the word "Sire" can be pronounced. Which is great for half an hour, but not two. The one point which got my imagination going was when Louis ordered papers from his father's day burned after having looked at them one last time. Clearly, these were letters between Aramis and his mother proving Louis' paternity.
One more, I get the point about death. But, you know: I Claudius, the tv version, did it more elegantly in five minutes, in the death of Augustus sequence, with Brian Blessed doing probably his finest acting entirely silent, the camera unrelentingly staying on his face while Livia tells him, off screen but very present through her voice, her version of the truth for the first time.
In conclusion: maybe watch it on a long intercontinental flight when you need to fall a sleep in a very cultural way.
Nous Trois Our Rien, directed by Kheiron: autobiographical movie about the director's father and mother, in which he also acts and plays his father, Hibat, who first was an activist against the Shah - which got him 7 years in prison and plenty of torture -, and then against Khomeini & Co., at which point he and his wife Fereshteh left the country. They end up in the Parisian Banlieues in which they manage, through a decade of hard social work, turn one of the most dangerous and neglected suburbs into a thriving multicultural community (which posts of the fewest votes for Front National anywhere in the department, as the director told us in the Q & A later.
Despite being set in Persia/Iran for two thirds, the movie is entirely in French, and while I'm shamefully rusty, I got some of the jokes before the subtitles told me. This movie manages to include some deadly serious subjects (oppression in two different regimes, resistance, torture, exile) and yet be a really funny comedy without belittling the enormity of what happens. It's also a family story, and Habit's wife, Fereshtre, is the opposite of the looking-in-fear-at-her-man cliché of wifes of rebels (who aren't depicted as gun-totting warriors). (She also gets a job as a social worker before he does. For that matter, Habit is also the opposite of a lot of clichés about rebels and revolutionaries. He's not angry and ranting and smashing things in frustration, but soft spoken, witty yet unrelenting. When he refuses to eat the cake the prisoners are offered at the Shah's birthday, which gets him months of isolation cell and beatings, he does so without big rethorical fanfares. He just does it. (Incidentally, the Shah shows up in this movie, as a comedy dictator. Khomeini, otoh, is presented via newsclips instead of being played by an actor.) And when Habit and Fereshtre have crossed the mountains from Iran to Turkey and turn around to look at their country for the last time, it's a big moment, but not because there is a speech; Kheiron as an actor trusts himself and his fellow actress Leila Bekhti to get across what they feel.
Because of the anti-immigration, anti-multicultural feeling on the rise in so many countries in and out of Europe right now, such a film - which ends, among other things, as an example of what the papers deem "successful integration"; Habit and Fereshtre have become part of a new community, which itself consists of many immigrants or descendants of same, of Arab and Morrocan origin - is more than timely, as one woman in the audience observed when during the Q & A she stood up to thank the director for this. But even in a better time, it would be a film worth watching. The humor and the affection the characters have for each other pulls you through the hardships, and the result is something I definitely hope will be released soon over here.
La Mort de Louis XIV, directed by Albert Serra: this, otoh, is a movie I probably won't watch again. Not because it was bad, mind: it was superbly photographed and acted, and I get the philosophical point: the process of dying in old age, which hits the most powerful man of his era just the same (only not, as a poor man would not get dozens of doctors and servants), the fantastic palace he built for himself reduced to a chamber that starts to stink of his gangrene leg. Legendary French actor Jean-Pierre Léaud returned to the screen for this movie, and there is that meta dimension you always get when an old man and living legend who could die at any point plays an old man dying (who also was legendary in a different way). But still, this draaaaaaags so much. Which is part of the point, I get it. But it doesn't make it easier to watch for me. I love my share of "slow" movies. This isn't one of them.
Maybe it's also a matter of wrong expectations: after the short summary in the program, I expected to see scheming courtiers while Louis is dying, and scheming courtiers in Versailles usually are very entertaining. But no; you only have some rivalries between doctors (and the main doctor, Fagon, versus the main valet who seems to never get to sleep as he has to be on call for Louis through the agonizingly slow days of dying all the time), but no power plays, and very little verbal fencing. (In fact I can remember only one such exchange. "As for the Doctors of the Sorbonne, I think Monsieur de Moliere has described them perfectly." "This is not the time to quote Molier, Dr. Fagon!") Verbally, it's more a competition between different actors of in how many different intonations - pleading, cajoling, pitying, fearing, etc. - the word "Sire" can be pronounced. Which is great for half an hour, but not two. The one point which got my imagination going was when Louis ordered papers from his father's day burned after having looked at them one last time. Clearly, these were letters between Aramis and his mother proving Louis' paternity.
One more, I get the point about death. But, you know: I Claudius, the tv version, did it more elegantly in five minutes, in the death of Augustus sequence, with Brian Blessed doing probably his finest acting entirely silent, the camera unrelentingly staying on his face while Livia tells him, off screen but very present through her voice, her version of the truth for the first time.
In conclusion: maybe watch it on a long intercontinental flight when you need to fall a sleep in a very cultural way.
