First a worm@work/roujin/schmerite double feature from last Wednesday:
Morvern Callar - OK, so this isn't depressing at all. I won't believe that about
Ratcatcher, however. Anyway, I did like this quite a bit. What is it with Scotland and amoral anti-heroes with great soundtracks? I don't know, but this totally reminded me of early Danny Boyle, namely
Shallow Grave and
Trainspotting. The colors are terrific (so much red!), and director Lynne Ramsay uses blinking lights in the corner of frames as well as I've ever seen. I thought the plot, such as it is, was kind of gimmicky and not really believable, but I didn't really care that much. Interesting that Morvern never really does anything that's technically immoral, if you assume there's no afterlife.
Friday Night - My first Claire Denis film, and while I liked it, I don't think I fell in love with it in the way a lot of other people did. It's got the second best traffic jam in film history, and a wonderful dreamlike quality with a few magical moments thrown in and just enough rewinding to make you unsure of whether what you're seeing is "really" happening or not. I understand the conceit of the two main characters never interacting verbally in a way that reveals anything about themselves, revealing their personalities through action, but I don't know that I liked it. It created an emotional distance that for me precluded the kind of romantic feeling the film seemed to be going for.
And tonight:
A Christmas Tale - My second Arnauld Desplechin film this week, and I think I preferred the other (
Kings and Queen), though I did like this a lot. He's clearly a master at the film-as-novel, a genre of film that doesn't get made much because it's oh so hard to do correctly (Marcel Carné's
Children of Paradise is my favorite film of this type). It requires a director willing to be both patient enough to allow the characters to develop slowly without ever letting the narrative feel like it's moving slowly. Having a cast full of great actors helps a lot, and I was glad to see most of the cast from
Kings and Queen show up here: Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Devos, Jean-Paul Roussillon (who shined in a small role in the other film and equally great in a larger one here as the father) and Mathieu Almaric, who I'm now convinced is one of my favorite actors working today. The film is gorgeous in the Criterion Blu-Ray, though Desplechin's visual style is never flashy but rather subtle and unobtrusive.