Something in the Air: The Cinema of Olivier Assayas. Films reviewed: Something in the Air, Cold Water, Late August, Early September
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Olivier Assayas is a leading French filmmaker in mid-career whose current work is some of his best. He was born in 1955 and came of age amidst the violent uprisings of 1968. Assayas is a devotee of Guy Debord, whose Situationist International, which combined avant-garde art and architecture with revolution is said to have been instrumental in 1968.
He was born in the business of movie making. His father, Jacques Remy, was a famous screenwriter. I first heard of 
Assayas in the 1990s, but somehow never saw his movies until recently with Clouds of Sils Maria (review here) and Personal Shopper (review here). Both star Kristen Stewart as 
a young woman working among ultra-rich celebrities. In these films the characters are introspective and detached, more apt to observe events than participate in them.
Now there’s a comprehensive retrospective playing through August that lets you see his lesser-known works. They totally change how I thought of him. This week, I’m looking at three of his movies showing at Something in the Air: The Cinema of Olivier Assayas. Two of them are based on memories of his adolescence and one about family and friends in their forties.
Something in the Air (2012)
It’s the late 1960s/early 70s in France. Gilles (Clément Métayer) is an upper middle class high school student in a town where chickens still peck on the street. His father adapts scripts for Inspector Maigret movies. But Gilles feels more at home on the streets of a Paris, where student protesters are violently clashing with police. Gilles has two passions: Art – he wants to be a painter – and politics — he’s a non-communist leftist, inclined toward anarchism. His third passion used to be a 
beautiful woman named Laure, also an artist. They would meet in the woods off country roads to smooch and read beat poetry. Until she dumped him.
His teachers want him to read French classics, but Gilles craves direct action. So he and some friends crank out sexy posters on a gestetner, grab some spray paint and set out on a 
graffiti trip in the middle of the night. But something goes wrong. As they run away they injure a security guard who falls into a coma. Does he know who threw the rock?
Gilles and his friends decide to get the hell out of there, and drive off to Italy in a VW van with a film collective. On the way, he debates China’s Cultural Revolution, and whether films should shock the masses with experimental, new techniques or educate them with “things they’ll understand”.
Meanwhile he smokes hash, and falls for a young woman named Christine but refuses to commit to everlasting love. Will he remain true to his artistic and political ideals? Or follow his father’s profession?
Cold Water (1994)
It’s the late 60s/early 70s in France in a small town outside Paris. Christine and Gilles (Virginie Ledoyen, Cyprien Fouquet) are young lovers both from divorced parents. He comes from an upper-class family with a Hungarian housekeeper and a frustrated dad. Christine lives with her Scientologist mom, her Egyptian soccer playing stepdad. Her birth father owns a 
corner store. Gilles and Christine hang out and do daring and impulsive things together, like shoplifting from a record store. She makes a commotion and is tackled by security guards while he runs away with the loot. But the scheme falls though. The police get involved and hand Christine to her despised father who immediately commits her to a mental hospital called Beausoleil. Gilles meanwhile is physically thrown out of class by an angry 
prof. And for some reason Gilles secretely buys ten sticks of dynamite. What is he planning?
Gilles and Christine manage to meet again with friends at an outdoor party by an abandoned house, listening to loud radio music, smoking hash and dancing like Wickerman devotees around a huge bonfire. But can they stay together despite all the forces set against them?
Cold Water and Something in the Air are both semi-autobiographical works about Assayas’s adolescence, but made 20 years apart. I watched them in quick succession which is a mind-blowing experience. The two films have a lot in common. They both feature Gilles and Christine as young runaways but with very different results. In both films Gilles deals with a disapproving school teacher and a disappointed father, which suggests they are based on important events in his life. Bonfires, beat poetry, and period American music also play crucial roles in both films.
Maybe because Assayas is so much older now, Something in the Air can look back at the politics and visual details of the era with a cynical eye. Of the two films, I found Cold Water much more passionate, more gutsy. It’s imbued with a nihilistic punk streak, missing from the later film.
Although called semi-autobiographical, Something in the Air places Gilles and Christine in the student uprisings in Paris in 1968, while in Cold Water they dance to music from 1972. (Born in 1955, Assayas would have been 13 in 1968, 17 in ’72.) I guess that’s where the “semi-” comes from.
Late August, Early September (1998)
Gabriel and Adrien (Mathieu Amalric, François Cluzet) are close friends in their forties in an unequal relationship. Adrien is a famous writer committed to his craft. He once spent his last centime on a small work by Joseph Beuys. But how he’s broke and his star has dimmed. Gabriel works as a literary editor. He idolizes Adrien and everything about him even while he has a clandestine affair with a beautiful but impulsive young woman named Anne (Virginie Ledoyen). He recently broke up with long-time partner Jenny (Jeanne Balibar) who is also close to Adrien. But things take a turn for the worse.
Adrien has cancer and publishers have rejected his latest book. Gabriel, meanwhile, has risen to a high-ranked position at a magazine, high enough that he can hire Adrien to do paid gruntwork. And unknown to most of them, Adrien is having a clandestine, though non-sexual, relationship with a teenaged girl named Vera.
The film follows all of them, as well as a much wider circle of family, friends and ex-partners, each with past loves and unsettled grudges.
Like Assayas’ other movies, this is not a plot-heavy film, it’s a realistic slice of life of Parisian intellectuals. I didn’t immediately love this movie, but it’s the kind of film that gradually grows on you, leaving a lot to think about afterwards.
One remarkable thing: this might be the first movie I’ve ever 
seen where the biggest shock comes in the closing credits. Vera (Adrien’s much younger girlfriend) is a minor character, but crucial to the plot. The last line in the film, “On verra” (“we’ll see”, a pun on her name), is spoken by Gabriel who interrupts a conversation when he glimpses Vera through a window. Vera is played by none other than Mia Hansen-Løve, who eventually became Assayas’s own much-younger wife. This film was her first appearance on the screen; she is now a well-regarded Danish director.
Late August, Early September, Something in the Air and Cold Water are all playing through August at the Tiff Bell Lightbox in Toronto as part of the Olivier Assayas retrospective. The director appears in person at some screenings; go to tiff.net for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Exceptional people with hidden histories. Movies reviewed: Gifted, I Called Him Morgan, Frantz
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Spring Film Festival season continues with the upcoming Images and TIFF Kids film festivals, celebrating their 30th and 20th anniversaries (respectively).
This week, I’m looking at movies about exceptional people with hidden histories. There’s a musical genius in Manhattan, a mathematical prodigy on the Florida coast, and a man of mystery at the border of France and Germany.
Gifted
Dir: Mark Webb
Frank (Chris Evans) is a youngish guy living in a shack in Florida. He lives a quiet life, fixing boats and hooking up with women at laguna bars. The rest of his time is spent home-schooling his niece Mary (McKenna Grace), a foul-mouthed seven-year-old with blonde pigtails. Mary likes math, dancing to pop songs and playing with Fred, their one-eyed stray cat, a castoff like the two of them. How did they end up in Florida? Frank’s sister, a math genius, left Mary with him as a baby… just before killing herself. She made him promise to let Mary have a normal life, in case it turns out she’s a genius too. Normal means keeping the child free from math profs and universities, and most of all away from their obsessive mother Evelyn 
(Lindsay Duncan). She’s the one who pushed Frank’s sister over the edge with her relentless ambition: solving one of the Millennium Prize Problems.
Frank is protecting Mary from all that. But how can she live a normal life hidden away in their clapboard shack? It’s time to send her to public school — despite his savvy neighbour Roberta’s warnings not to (Octavia Spence). Right away the 
dominos start to fall: teacher tells principal Mary is gifted, Principal goes online and soon Evelyn is in Florida demanding a proper Harvard education for her gifted grandchild. Who has Mary’s best interests at heart – her wealthy patrician grandmother or her salt-of-the-earth uncle Frank?
I like the idea behind Gifted, and was looking forward to a story about a genius kid trying to live a normal life – but aside from a few scenes the movie isn’t about that. It’s actually a child custody drama, which is never much fun. Throw in foster parents, courtrooms and lawyers and the movie becomes a trial to watch. While the acting is not bad – Captain America as a single dad – and there are a few big secrets revealed along the way, I found Gifted disappointing.
I Called Him Morgan
Dir: Kasper Collin
Lee Morgan was a young jazz trumpet player from Philly, featured in Dizzy Gillespie’s big band as an 18 year old. 15 years later he was shot dead outside a Manhattan jazz club in a snow storm by a much older woman named Helen. How did he get there, who was this woman, and how did it happen? A new documentary looks closely at both their lives.
Morgan was a hard-bop trumpeter who dressed in Ivy League suits and drove his Triumph 
through Central Park. He played with Art Blakey and John Coltrane, later breaking away with his own band. Helen was born in a small town near Wilmington, North Carolina, with two kids by age 14, and widowed by 18 after a short marriage to a bootlegger. She left her kids with grandma, moved to New York City and never looked back. She cut an impressive figure on the streets, hanging with Manhattan’s demimonde, sexual outlaws and drug dealers. That’s how she entered the jazz scene. By the time she met Lee Morgan, he was a 
junkie who had pawned his trumpet for some heroin and was virtually homeless. She washed him, got him into a Bronx clinic and set him back up in the jazz scene. She served as his mother, lover, manager and protector. But when he began to fool around with a young woman from New Jersey, things started to go wrong…
I Called Him Morgan is an amazing movie about the two lovers’ lives. Helen gave only one interview in a bar on a cassette tape a month before she died, but in it she tells what really happened. Interviews with the friends and musicians he played with fill in the blanks, and it is illustrated with B&W photos from Blue Note (the club and record label where Morgan played and recorded), all set alight by Morgan’s cool trumpet sounds. Fascinating musical documentary.
Frantz
Dir: Francois Ozon
A small town in Germany, right after WWI. Anna (Paula Beer) is a strong and pretty young woman all dressed in black. She is in mourning for her fiance Frantz Hoffmeister, who died in the trenches. She still lives with Frantz’s father, the good Doktor Hoffmeister, and Magda his mother. They treat her like one of the family. One day, Anna spies a young man with a pencil thin moustache laying white roses by Frantz’s grave. Who is this man and what does he want? His
name is Adrien Rivoire (Pierre Niney) and he is a musician. It seems he knew Frantz before the war, in Paris, and he carries a letter he wrote. He is visiting the town to pay his respects and to say something to Frantz’s father. But the war wounds are still raw, and townsfolk can’t believe a frenchman would dare set foot there. Eventually, nervous Adrien spends time with Anna and her family forging a deep emotional friendship, but 
one based partly on lies. What isn’t he telling them?
After Adrien returns to France, Anna decides to track him down in Paris, and retrace the museums and music halls Frantz had loved. But Adrien is nowhere to be found. Like a detective, she tries to locate him far outside Paris, which leads her to a sumptuous villa in the country. 
And now Anna must reveal secrets of her own.
Frantz is a fantastic, novelistic melodrama spanning Germany and France, about secrets, lies, guilt and class. It’s a romance full of unrequited love, fuelled by letters and whispered confessions. I told very little of the story, to avoid spoilers, but believe me this is one great movie. It’s shot in stunning black and white with a hitchcockian musical score, beautiful costumes and great acting. Francois Ozon’s movies are often light family dramas or superficial sexual comedies, but this one is a sumptuous, epic story, perfectly made. I recommend this one.
Gifted, I Called him Morgan and Frantz all start today in Toronto; check your local listings. This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Family relations. Films reviewed: The Second Time Around, Wilson, Personal Shopper
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Family ties can span generations. This week I’m looking at movies about family relationships. There’s a grandmother looking for love, a middle-aged misanthrope looking for his daughter, and a young woman in Paris looking for her twin brother… even though she knows he’s dead.
The Second Time Around
Dir: Leon Marr
Katherine (Linda Thorson) is an elegant, silver-haired widow who loves the opera. She dreams of someday seeing a performance at La Scala. She lives with Helen, her grouchy daughter (Laura de Carteret), Helen’s husband, and her granddaughter Sarah, an art student (Alexis Harrison). But when she breaks her hip, she is placed in a retirement home for rehab and recovery. It’s a huge 
change. Up to now, she has always lived in a family home: with her parents, then her husband and finally her daughter. Not to worry, her temporary home is full of new friends.
There she meets Isaac (Stuart Margolin), a gruff and grumpy old man who complains about everything. A former tailor, he smokes cigars, plays poker with his buddies, and is never far from a mickey of rye. But when she catches him unobserved, mending clothes for a friend while softly singing a yiddish tune, 
she discovers Isaac is actually a pretty nice guy. Sparks fly and their relationship develops… perhaps to something bigger?
The Second Time Around is a gentle, low-key drama with the feel of a high school movie of the week. Retirement homes apparently 
have clubs, cliques, lunchroom gossip, even a senior prom — in a place where everyone’s a senior. It also deals with a slew of real life issues, including death, disabilities, depression… as well as passionate sex. And it features Canadian TV stars from the past half century: Louis Del Grande, Paul Soles, Jayne Eastwood and the late Don Francks in his last movie role. I just felt it hard to connect with what was, essentially, The Retirees of Degrassi Street.
Wilson
Dir: Craig Johnson (Based on the graphic novel by Daniel Clowes)
Wilson (Woody Harrelson) is a middle-aged man who lives in a tiny house, with a small dog, in an unremarkable city. He has two personality traits that don’t go together. He 
loves social contact and will talk to strangers; but he also hates people and thinks the world is going to hell. He’s an opinionated, overbearing misanthrope who swears like a sailor. When his old man dies and he realizes he’s all alone in this world, he climbs into his wood-panelled station 
wagon and sets out to find his ex-wife Pippi (Laura Dern). She was a pregnant, drug-addicted sex worker when she left him 17 years earlier. Last thing he heard she got an abortion and moved far, far away. But Wilson doesn’t use computers, smartphones or social networks. So he doesn’t realize she lives in the next county over, and that all those years ago, she put their baby up 
for adoption. Now they team up to find the 17- year-old. But can a misbegotten family hold together based only on rude behaviour patterns and DNA?
Wilson is a very funny, dark comedy about a man looking for his place in a world he doesn’t like. It’s based on the graphic novel by the amazing cartoonist Daniel Clowes, who brought us works like Ghost World, and Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron. It’s not your typical slapstick comedy. Rather, it’s a hilariously sad look at the fate of unlikeable outcasts and what they can learn.
Personal Shopper
Wri/Dir: Olivier Assayas
Maureen (Kristin Stewart) is a personal shopper for a super celebrity named Kyra. Her boyfriend lives in Oman, and her twin brother is dead. She roams the aisles of haut couture houses choosing sequinned gowns, leather harnesses and priceless baubles for her boss. She carries blank cheques to pay for it all but earns little money herself. She puts up with Kyra’s tyrannical 
behaviour because she needs to stay in Paris until she receives a sign from her twin brother. Lewis had the same heart defect she suffers from and they both vowed who ever died first would communicate with the other.
She spends the night in the spooky, empty house where Lewis used to live, to see if he would talk to her. Instead she sees a troubled spirit that scratches crosses into the 
furniture. Later she starts receiving anonymous texts on her phone, by someone who seems to know her every thought. It pays for hotel rooms and sends her cryptic paper notes. Is the mysterious stalker a man or a woman, living or dead? And should she be excited… or terrified?
Personal Shopper is a great new drama – in English, but set in Paris – from French director Olivier Assayas, who recently brought
us Clouds of Sils Maria. This one’s even better. It neatly combines theosophy and spiritualism with high fashion and celebrity culture. Maureen bridges the two sides. I like Kristin Stewart – my main problem with her is she’s not a great speaker. She tends to mumble and always speaks the same way. Luckily in this movie she relies less on her voice, and more on her body, her face, her movement. She broods and she panics. She poses with her naked torso at a fashion house, or curls up into a ball in a haunted mansion. Stewart is the movie, and she does a good job of it. I really liked this movie.
Personal Shopper, Wilson and The Second Time Around all start today in Toronto; check your local listings. The Canadian Film Fest is on now, and Sundance Now — a curated indie, doc and art house channel — starts streaming in Canada today.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Black History. Films reviewed: A United Kingdom, I Am Not Your Negro
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s Black History Month, so I’m looking at some historical movies that fit the profile. There’s a British drama about forbidden love and a united kingdom, and a French documentary about a writer’s look at African Americans in the divided United States.
A United Kingdom
Dir: Amma Asante
It’s London in the 1950s. Ruth (Rosamund Pike) is an attractive, professional woman who lives with her parents. One night she meets a handsome student from Oxford at a dance. After a few dates he reveals he’s a prince, destined to become the king of a far off country called Bechuanaland. They fall in love, decide to marry, and move there… it’s like a fairy tale. But they face one problem. Seretse Khama (David Oyelowo) is black, and Ruth is white. This doesn’t 
matter much to them, but it does to the people around them.
Ruth’s parents are dead set against it, and as a mixed race couple they face abuse and even violence from strangers on the streets of London. In Bechuanaland, a British protectorate in Southern Africa, Seretse also faces trouble. He’s going against tradition by not choosing a wife from his own tribe. His uncle, the current Regent, objects strongly. And then there’s Sir Alistair Canning (Jack Davenport), a highly-placed diplomat in the foreign service. He’s condescending, snotty, racist and sexist – he 
assumes Ruth works in a typing pool (because she’s a woman) when she’s actually an underwriter at Lloyds of London. And he has ulterior motives.
Bechuanaland (now Botswana) is a British protectorate completely surrounded by Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), South Africa and South-West Africa (Namibia). Since 1948, South Africa has been under apartheid rules which make it illegal for whites and blacks to marry. For the king of Bechuanaland to openly flout these racist laws might undermine South 
Africa’s legitimacy. South Africa is a commonwealth member and the region is a huge source of mineral wealth for multinationals. Under current laws, Seretse and Ruth are not legally permitted to share a drink in a restaurant… in the land he’s supposed to rule!
Politics is strange. Seretse is forced into exile, while Ruth – and their new baby – remain in Africa. Can Ruth and Seretse win the trust of their countrymen? Can they win the sympathy of the British public? Can they bring justice and prosperity to a remote arid country? And can love hold a separated family together?
A United Kingdom is a historical drama, with equal helpings of romance and British parliamentary politics. It’s based on a true story I knew nothing about. Although it ends abruptly, it has a surprisingly fascinating story. I liked this movie.
I Am Not Your Negro
Dir: Raoul Peck (Written by James Baldwin)
James Baldwin was an African American writer, the author of Notes of a Native Son, and novels like Giovanni’s Room. Born in Harlem he took part in the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s. But because of the racism and potential violence he faced in America he left for Paris where he spent most of his life. He joined the expat community there, including Nina Simone and Josephine Baker. He wanted to be known not as a black writer, not as a gay writer, but 
as a writer.
This film follows Baldwin’s writings on three important figures in the struggle for civil rights: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr.,
They represented, respectively, the NAACP, Black Muslims, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. All three were spied on and harassed by the FBI and labeled “dangerous”, and all three were assassinated before the age of 40.
Courtesy of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
Baldwin looks back at their stories and his encounters with them, but also sets himself apart. He’s not a Muslim, not a Christian, not a member of the NAACP or the Black Panther Party.
The title, I Am Not Your Negro, is Baldwin’s central point. The story of the Negro in America, he says, is the story of America, and it’s not a pretty story. It’s a history of violence and racism.There is no difference between the North and South, Baldwin says, just the way you castrate us. He covers slavery, lynching, segregation, and incarceration. And the film neatly connects the slaying of Medgar Evers by a white supremacist with current racist murders, like the deaths of Tamir Rice and Trayvon Martin
Samuel L Jackson’s narration of Baldwin’s prophetic words alternates with Baldwin’s own voice: on the Dick Cavett show and at the Cambridge Debates. Baldwin – and director Peck — tells his story with a barrage of Hollywood images. From the pink-scrubbed face of a dancing Doris Day, to John Wayne’s 
confidence in killing native Americans. Baldwin recalls his childhood shock at a John Wayne Western when he realized he’s not the “cowboy”, he’s the “Indian”.
I Am Not Your Negro is about the fear and violence faced by African Americans. It’s a terrific documentary, a cinematic essay told through the masterful use of period still images. These are not the photos and clips you’re used to but jaw-dropping, newfound pictures. There’s lush nighttime footage and a fantastic juxtapositions of words and images. (The film reminds me of the work Adam Curtis.) It’s nominated for an Oscar for best documentary.
A United Kingdom and I Am Not Your Negro both start today in Toronto; check your local listings. Also opening this weekend: if you’re a cat person, there’s Kedi, about the street cats of Istanbul; or if you’re a zombie or a zombie-lover, there’s the wonderful horror movie The Girl with all the Gifts (read the review here).
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Daniel Garber talks with Paul Verhoeven about Elle at #TIFF16
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM
Elle is a hardboiled businesswoman in Paris who co-owns a video game development company. Divorced with a grown son, she’s as ruthless in the boardroom as she is in the bedroom. But her normal life is shattered 
when she is violently raped in her own home by a man with a black balaclava covering his face. Instead of telling the police, she takes the matter into her own hands, and vows to track 
down her attacker and get revenge. But even as Elle stalks him, he threatens further attacks on her in a deadly game of cat and mouse.
Elle is the latest from filmmaker Paul Verhoeven, known for his playful movies filled with sex, violence, intrigue and war. From his Dutch greats like Soldier of Orange, the Fourth Man and (a personal favourite) Black Book, to his over-the-top Hollywood classics Robocop, Starship Troopers, and Showgirls… they all share his inimitable style.
I spoke with Paul Verhoeven at TIFF in September. Elle opens today in Toronto.
Photos of Paul Verhoeven by Jeff Harris
Hidden identities. Films reviewed: Made in France, Moonlight, The Handmaiden
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Hallowe’en weekend is a time of mysteries and hidden identities. If you want to stay home and shiver, there’s a new movie streaming channel called shudder.com that only does the scary. Everything from Japanese horror, to low budget slashers, to classics like Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu. (And don’t miss The Editor, the hilarious spoof of 1970s Italian giallo horror.) But if you want to head out, there are some great movies opening in Toronto. This Hallowe’en, no monsters; instead I am looking at hidden identities. There’s a shy Korean maid who’s actually a con artist, a French terrorist who’s actually an undercover journalist, and a black kid in 90s Miami, whose sexual identity is a secret… even to himself.
Made in France
Dir: Nicolas Boukhrief
Sam (Malik Zidi) is a red-bearded, freelance journalist, the son of an Algerian dad and a French Marxist mom. To research a story, he attends a radical mosque that holds meetings in a metal-gated storage locker. There he meets three other French men. Christophe (Francois Civil) is a rich Catholic guy who sees himself as 
a gangsta, like Tony Montano in Scarface. Driss (Nassim Si Ahmed) is a tough boxer, radicalized while in prison for drug offences. Sidi (Ahmed Drame) is a good son, whose African cousin was killed by French soldiers in Mali. Ironically, only Sam, the undercover journalist, has any religious training or can speak Arabic.
They fall under the command of a mysterious man named Hassan (Dimitri Storoge). His motives are a secret. He says he trained at a bootcamp in Pakistan and is in contact with a terrorist group. Sam is married with a kid, and is staying in a flop house to keep them safe. But when he reports his story to the police, they threaten him with prison unless he stays with the cel and finds 
out who their “big boss” is. Can he survive life with this ragtag gang and the sinister Hassan? And will innocent people die in the process?
Made in France is a tight thriller told from the point of view of would-be homegrown terrorists. It has never been screened there, for obvious reasons – it was made just before the terrible Charlie Hebdo shootings and postponed again following the Bataclan massacre. But it still stands up as a good crime thriller.
Moonlight
Wri/Dir: Barry Jenkins
Chiron is a small, shy kid who lives in a mainly black neighbourhood in 1990s Miami. He is relentlessly bullied after school, with his crack-head mom never there to defend him. Juan (Mahershala Ali, Luke Cage) comes to his rescue when he sees the kid chased into an abandoned building. He takes him home where his wife feeds and comforts him. But Chiron remains completely silent, not trusting himself to speak. Juan vows to be his protector and 
serves as his mentor, teaching him to swim at the local beach. The boy views him in awe and adulation. Ironically, Juan is the neighbourhood drug kingpin, the one supplying the crack that’s destroying his mother.
Chiron is relentlessly bullied and beaten up. Only one friend, Kevin, shows any affection. He can’t understand why he lets other kids beat him up, and call him the “F” word. He gradually matures, but is always drawn back to that stretch of moonlit beach where he formed and later expressed his sexual identity.
Moonlight is a superb coming-of-age drama, portrayed by mainly unknown black actors. It’s moving and surprising. The gradually-paced, subtle story is told in three chapters: as kid, adolescent and adult (wonderfully played by Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, Trevante Rhodes)
Chiron goes through a troubled childhood, an explosion in high school, adopting an unexpected persona as a grown-up. But in each section he revisits his declining mother, his unreliable best friend Kevin, and that stretch of moonlit beach. Fantastic film, brilliantly told.
The Handmaiden
Dir: Chan-Wook Park
It’s 1930s Korea. Sook-Hee (Kim Tae-Ri) is a shy handmaiden who lives in a grotesque mansion run by a fabulously rich Japanese baron. Hired for her Japanese ability, she works for an uptight heiress named Lady Hideko (Kim Min-Hee). Imperial Japan annexed Korea in 1910, and is now trying to Japanize the entire country. When a suitor arrives seeking the Lady’s hand in marriage, Sook-hee serves as her confidant. The 
dashing Count Fujiwara (Ha Jung-Woo) has swept her off her feet and promises a wonderful life in Japan. But Sook-Hee seems to have fallen hopelessly in love with her naïve mistress, and wants to school her in the Sapphic arts. This love triangle spells trouble.
But wait! Nothing is quite what it seems. All the players in this drama are actually Korean speakers. Uncle Kouzuki is a nouveau riche 
Korean robber baron who invested his money in Japanese erotic books. His proper niece reads them aloud to a select crowd of well-paying gentlemen. Meanwhile, both Sook-Hee and the Count belong to a Korean street gang of pickpockets and con artists, who, in a complex scheme, have infiltrated the mansion to defraud them of their millions. Jealousy, lust romance and deceit swirl around 
this strange foursome. But who’s fooling whom?
Based on Sarah Waters’ Dickinsian novel, The Handmaiden is a fun, sexual romp relocated from Victorian England to prewar Korea. With trapezes, bondage, marionettes, even tentacles, this movie is a total perv-fest. The story is told and retold from the point of view of the three characters. But far from a lesson in lesbian politics, the movie seems told from a male perspective, its twisted plot serving mainly as a vehicle for the audience’s sexual titillation.
Made in France is playing tonight as part of the Cinefranco International Film Festival. Go to cinefranco.com for details. Moonlight and The Handmaiden both open today in Toronto: check your local listings. This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
At a Crossroad. Films reviewed: The Seventh Fire, Cafe Society, Phantom Boy
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Your life may seem to follow a straight path, but at some point we all face a crossroads. This week I’m looking at movies about points of change. There’s a man in Minnesota heading to prison, a boy from the Bronx heading to Hollywood, and a flying boy with cancer heading toward the stars.
The Seventh Fire
Dir: Jack Pettibone-Riccobono
Rob is an Anishnaabe man in his 30s who lives near Pine Point. It’s a small town on a reserve in rural Minnesota. He’s spending his last week as a free man, before he is sent back to prison. He turned himself in. He is giving up a thriving business with lots of eager customers. He makes a dry pink powder, adding things like laxatives to his meth to add a more dramatic finish, he says.
It’s a life of bingo games and gang tats, burning sofas and leach traps. House parties turn to coke fests and fistfights. But, Pine Point is his home. Now he has to leave it pay for his past and live with his legacy – and what it did to his community.
This film follows three people: Rob, a young man looking to leave the state, and a young pregnant woman, as they decide where to take their lives. Their voices, on- and off-screen, narrate the story. This verite documentary shows a bleak — if realistic – slice of life on an impoverished reserve (and in a prison). But it’s visualized amidst striking scenic beauty, along with occasional whimsy and hope.
Café Society
Wri/Dir: Woody Allen
It’s the 1930s, the Great Depression. Bobby (Jesse Eisenberg) is nebbishy kid who lives with his parents in the Bronx. He has two older brothers. One is a communist intellectual, the other, Ben (Corey Stoll) is a gangster. Bobby heads west to find his own fortune. He shows up at his uncle’s office. Phil (Steve Carell) is a Hollywood bigwig, a shaker and mover. An agent to the stars, 
he is seen with his wife at all the best pool parties and cocktail lounges in town. Bobby is pasty and pale, dressed in a woolen suit amidst suntanned beauties — a real greenhorn. He gets to meet socialites by the dozen, including Rad Taylor (Parker Posey) who promises to show him the highlife if he ever goes back to NY. But when Bobby asks his uncle for an actual job, Phil balks. He says there aren’t any. Instead he gets his secretary, Vonnie, to show Bobby around.
Vonnie (Kristin Stewart) is a charming, plainspoken woman from Nebraska. She doesn’t mince words. When Bobby senses some mutual attraction, Vonnie nips it in the bud. I have a boyfriend, she says. Little does Bobby know, her boyfriend is his Uncle Phil – and Vonnie is his mistress. Which one will she choose? Young Bobby or established (but married) Phil?
Years later, Bobby finds great success in Manhattan. He hosts a popular nightclub – that’s the café society of the title – that his gangster brother snatched from a competitor. Bobby hobnobs with the in crowd, but he still seems lonely. 
Has he made the right decisions in his life?
Woody Allen narrates Café Society as a bittersweet look back to the 1930s, loaded with period costumes and music. Even so, it felt like a mishmash more than a movie. In only 90 minutes, it goes off on side plots and tangents about crime and family differences, high society and black jazz clubs, NY and LA. There’s even a painfully laborious scene about Bobby’s misadventures with a Hollywood prostitute – but why? Is it even from the same movie? What does it have to do with the love of Vonnie and Bobby?
Jesse Eisenberg and Christen Stewart also co-starred in last year’s American Ultra, (a stoner-comedy/action-thriller) but don’t have nearly the chemistry as they had in that one. Eisenberg is excellent as a surrogate Woody Allen, he has the accent and hesitation down pat, while Kristen seems honest and likeable as Vonnie. While Cafe Society does have a good finish, it’s clearly not one of his best.
Phantom Boy
Dir: Jean-Loup Felicioli, Alain Gagnol
Leo lives in New York with his parents and little sister. He’s a gawky kid in a baseball cap and a smiley-face shirt who is crazy about mysteries, especially detective stories. He’s in hospital now, undergoing chemotherapy. But he has a secret power: while he sleeps his phantom self can leave his body and float through walls, high in the sky, all around the city.
Detective Tanner is a great cop, singlehandedly stopping criminals, solving crimes and saving lives. He meets Mary Delaney, a prize-winning investigative journalist, when he stops two men robbing a grocery store 
they’re both shopping at. But his captain regards him as a pain in the ass — too much paperwork. So he gets assigned to a crime-free zone, patrolling the docks.
Meanwhile, an ingenious master criminal is terrorizing the city. He looks like a Picasso painting… but from his cubist period. His face is a patchwork of bright colours. He plunges the city into darkness, until he’s thwarted by Detective Tanner who spots him on the docks. But he escapes capture and Tanner ends up in hospital with a broken leg. While unconscious he encounters Leo, or Phantom Boy. Phantom Leo is only visible to injured or dying people while they are dreaming.
But somehow, the detective remembers his dream and recognizes Leo when he’s awake. But he can’t leave the hospital with his broken leg. Leo says he can help him catch the criminal. Here’s how: when Leo is semi-conscious his phantom self can float around the city, while the corporeal Leo, though asleep, can murmur to the cop what he sees. And Mary the journalist can investigate it all on foot.
But can they beat the master criminal, or will he kill them all.
This is a terrific animated kids movie. I saw this one last year – the original French version – last year and I loved it. Beautiful, classic animation, simple lines, elegant design. The one opening today is the English dubbed version, also great, but sounds a bit cornier to my English speaking ear. In any case, it still brought tears to my eyes. Wonderful music, great story, beautifully done.
The Seventh Fire, Café Society, and Phantom Boy all open today in Toronto: check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Anti-heroines. Films reviewed: The Bride Wore Black, Absolutely Fabulous: the Movie
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Anti-heroes aren’t hard to find. They’re in films, novels, and comic books: Hell Boy, Travis Bickle, or the characters in any private eye or crime novel.
But what about anti-heroes who are women? They’re a much rarer bird. This week I’m looking at two movies about anti-heroines. There’s a British comedy about two women who like to add names to their lists; and a French mystery/thriller about a woman who wants to cross names off her list.
The Bride Wore Black (1968)
Dir: François Truffaut
Julie Kohler (Jeanne Moreau) is a pretty young woman dressed in black. She should be happy after her recent wedding, but she’s not. Something went wrong and she’s depressed. Jump-out-the-window depressed. When her repeated suicide attempts are thwarted, she sets of on a journey. She leaves with just a small suitcase and a list of five names: Bliss, Coral, Fergus, Morane and Delvaux. Who are these people, what do they have in common and and why does she want to meet them?
It turns out they are all men, all strangers – she’s never met them, nor they 
her. They live in different places across France, and work at wildly different jobs. Nothing seems to connect them.
Julie sets out on her mysterious mission. Her first stop? The handsome young playboy named Bliss (Claude Rich). She leaves him flowers and messages. Bliss is intrigued – he wants to meet this mysterious woman, described as beautiful by the man at the front desk. He’s about to get married but figures there’s always a chance for another notch in his bedpost. But things don’t go exactly as planned. He’s in for a big shock.
She crosses his name off her secret list and heads off to meet Coral, a lonely, petty office worker (Michel Bouquet). He lives a solitary, depressing life, marking his liquor bottles in case his nosy landlady takes a nip while he’s away. Julie meets him at a concert and joins him in his bleak rented room. He thinks his success with women is finally changing. It is, but not in the way he expects.
There’s Delvaux, a shady gangster who works in a junkyard, heading out to commit a crime. And Morane, a successful, married man with a son. She sends his wife off on a fake emergency, then talks her way into his home by 
convincing him she’s her boy’s schoolteacher, despite the kid’s denials.
Her most difficult case is Fergus, a successful artist (Charles Denner). She becomes the live model for a painting he’s working on, of a naked woman holding a bow and arrow. He’s sure he knows her, but he can’t put his finger on it.
Who are these men? What do they have in common? Why does Julie want to meet them? Is it love, revenge, or bloodlust?
The Bride Wore Black is a fantastic mystery from 1968, Truffaut’s homage to Alfred Hitchcock. He filmed this right after publishing his famous book of interviews (I spoke about last week) called Hitchcock/ Truffaut. The directing and editing were done in Hitchcock’s spare style. (He doesn’t explain the backstory — it;s up to the viewers to figure out). He even hired Hitchcock’s favourite composer Bernard Herrmann to write the soundtrack, and based the story on a book by crime writer Cornell Woolrich. (He wrote the story for Hitchcock’s Rear Window.) And it’s playing as part of the TIFF Cinematheque retrospective.
Absolutely Fabulous: the Movie
Dir: Mandie Fletcher
Edina Monsoon (Jennifer Saunders) is a rich Londoner who lives an all-female life. She works in the woman-dominated world of publicity, specifically fashion PR. She lives with her widowed Mum (June Whitfield), her single daughter Saffie (Julia Sawalha), and her granddaughter, Lola. And works with her 
eccentric Lancashire assistant Bubble (Jane Horrock) who handles the day-to-day. But she spends most of her time with her best friend Patsy Stone (Joanna Lumley).
Eddie and Patsy are different from most people. Self-centred hedonists, they don’t think about ordinary things like food or money. (they don’t even know 
what that is) Life is one long party, followed by a perpetual hangover. They subsist on cigarettes, drugs, champagne and vodka straight out of the bottle. Self-conscious Eddie always worries about her weight, while Patsy remains rail thin. She’s always ready for a roll in the hay 
with any man between 15 and 90… she’s not picky.
At home, plain Saffy acts like the de facto mother, worrying about money and manners and responsibility, and disapproving of Eddie’s lifestyle. Eddie longs to be loved, but acts like an irresponsible whiney, spoiled teenager. Patsy is the bad friend who always leads Eddie into trouble. The two of them are the epitome of baby-bomer excess without any conscience.
But life is good. Money seems to appear magically in Eddie’s bank accounts (from her ex-husbands). Until now. Suddenly, the champagne supply goes dry, the bank accounts are empty, and Eddie has no new clients. They have to find someone to represent. But in a frenzy to sign a supermodel, Eddie accidentally pushes Kate Moss off a balcony into the river Thames. She’s a murderer!
Patsy and Eddie are on the lam. They flee to the French Riviera, to find a billionaire for Patsy to marry. If the police don’t find them first….
Absolutely Fabulous (aka AbFab) is based on the cult British sitcom from the mid 1990s. Created by the famous comedy team French and Saunders it portrayed women, for the first time, as aggressive, selfish, trend-obsessed, politically-incorrect characters. They are hilarious and shocking in their audacity.
The movie continues where the TV show left off, and the actors — especially Saunders and Lumley — are all flawless in their timing. The movie is packed with celebrity cameos so it could be compared to Zoolander 2, but that would be an injustice — this one is much, much better. Not every joke is funny, the TV laugh track is missing, and it’s a shock to see these TV faces 30-feet-high on a movie screen.
But it’s still as funny as it ever was.
For more anti-heroines, you can catch the classic Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! presented by the Retropath and Ladies of Burlesque at the Royal Cinema. Absolutely Fabulous: the Movie opens today in Toronto; check your local listings. The Bride Wore Black is screening next Thursday as part of Hitchcock/Truffaut: Magnificent Obsessions series playing at TIFF Cinematheque. Go to tiff.net for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Unexpected combinations. Films reviewed: Queen of Spades: The Dark Rite, Hitchcock/Truffaut
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
What do these movies have in common? Cockneys vs Zombies, Cowboys 
and Aliens, Bambi Meets Godzilla. Obviously, they’re all movies with unexpected combinations. So this week I’m looking at two new movies (though nothing like the ones I mentioned) that combine things in unexpected ways. There’s a documentary about the historic meeting of two very different directors, and a ghostly horror movie… set in Russia.
Queen of Spades: The Dark Rite
Wri/Dir: Svyatoslav Podgayevskiy
It’s a snowy day in a Russian city. Four teenagers – Anya, Matya, Matvey and Seryozha – are playing a game. Matyev is a jock, Seryozha (Sergey Pokhodaev, Leviathin) is a nerd with glasses, Katya is an older redhead (Valeriya Dmitrieva), and Anya (Alina Babak) while tough is still just a 12-year-old girl who lives with her divorced mom.There’s an urban myth that says you can summon the Queen of Spades, a dead spirit, if you draw a door on a mirror in lipstick by candlelight, and repeat her name three times — Queen of Spades, Queen of Spades Queen of Spades. (Don’t try this at home, kids…) Naturally, nothing happens – well not right away.
After the game, the four friends go back to their respective apartments, as usual, but at night 
— that’s when the scary stuff begins. Turns out the Queen of Spades was a Russian aristocrat who murdered kids for their money. She was caught and the cut out her tongue and shaved he head, left to roam the streets in black rags – hence the Queen of Spades. But her spirit, if that’s what it 
is, will come to you by night with a scissors to snip off your hair, and kill you.
When the kids start dying, one by one, Anya’s and her divorced parents (Igor Khripunov, Evgeniya Loza) flee the father’s apartment. Will the ghost follow them there? Eventually they track down a former doctor (Vladimir Seleznyov) in a dacha in the woods.He’s an expert at getting rid of 
ghosts — and holds a grudge against this o ne in particular. But can anyone defeat the Queen of Spades?
This is a good scary horror movie. It feels like those creepy Japanese movies from the 90s like Ring and Dark Water (Hideo Nakata), with a good dose of the Exorcist thrown in. The plot is very conventional, but what I found so interesting was the look of the film. So that’s what a Russian funeral looks like. Or a hospital, or even a public toilet with curved tiled walls inside. And I never knew people upholster their front doors. Great austerity and cold creepiness.
The acting is generally good, and the suspense keeps you watching, but it’s the look I really like from this ghostly Russian pic.
Hitchcock/Truffaut
Dir: Kent Jones
Francois Truffaut is today known as a great French Director and one of the founders of the nouvelle vague, the French New Wave. But before he was a director he was a film critic. As a young movie enthusiast, he was taken under the wing of andre Bazin, and brought into the fold of an extremely influential magazine, the Cahier du Cinema. It’s the Cahier du Cinema (and Truffaut himself) that changed the way we look at films as a body of work of a single artist. Directors became 
“auteurs”, the authors of a series of films. Before that, they were employees of the huge factory mentality of Hollywood — important and well paid, for sure, but a cog in the wheel.
In the 1960s, the fledgling French director wrote to the incredibly successful Alfred Hitchcock. He asked if they could meet for a week in Hollywood for a series of detailed interviews for a book. Now, Hitchcock was rich and successful and his 
movies were often hits. But what he didn’t have was critical praise, He was dismissed as unimportant, popular entertainment. And he never received an Oscar.
So Hitchcock said yes.
The result was Hitchcock/ Truffaut an incredibly influential book that served as a bible for future directors. This film, with the same name, shows the original recordings and photos those interviews. It’s illustrated with crucial stills and clips from the two directors’ works. And many of the directors they influenced — Scorsese, Fincher, Linklater, Wes Anderson, Paul Schrader, Kurosawa Kiyoshi, and many others — appear to talk about these movies.
You find out Hitchcock didn’t have a great relationship with his actors — he said they were cattle that had to be moved around.
It turns out Hitchcock was a total perv and so were most his characters! He calls Scottie (the Jimmie Stewart character in Vertigo) a necrophiliac.
If you’re into movies, film criticism, cinema studies, or if you’re a filmmaker yourself, this one is a must-see. Fascinating documentary.
Queen of Spades: The Dark Rite opens today in Toronto: check your local listings; Hitchcock/Truffaut is part of a TIFF Cinematheque retrospective Hitchcock/Truffaut: Maginificent Obsessions running all summer long, with films by those two great directors. (Stay tuned, I’ll be covering some of the films later on this summer.) Go to tiff.net for showtimes.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
War and Peace. Movies reviewed: À la vie, Dheepan
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
The War and Peace Report is Democracy Now’s morning news show – it’s on the radio right after this one. Be sure to stay tuned because today
host Amy Goodman is broadcasting from Toronto. So my theme this week is war and peace, and I’m looking at two new dramas from France. There are three war survivors who carry their emotional baggage to the beach, and three other war survivors who arrive with minimal baggage at a crime-filled housing complex.
À la vie
Dir: Jean-Jacques Zilbermann
It’s the early 1960s in Calais, France. Hélène and Lili are good friends meeting up to spend three days relaxing on the beach in Berck in northern France. Hélène (Julie Depardieu) is a wispy, ginger- haired woman, always loving and giving. She works as a men’s tailor in Paris. Lili (Johanna ter Steege) arrives by bus from Amsterdam, a smartly-dressed modern woman with blonde hair. And she brings a surprise: their third friend, the voluptuous but petulant Rose (Suzanne Clément). She flew in all the way from Montreal for this get-together. And what is it that connects these three woman and why haven’t they seen each other since 1945?
They’ve been separated because they were all prisoners at Auschwitz. They survived 
together thanks to Lili getting them work in the kitchen. But in the death march at the end of the war they were separated, and thought the youngest one, Rose, died there. Now the three of them are together again, and all three married other survivors. Lili is divorced, Rose has a troubled marriage in Quebec, and Helene, though she loves her husband, Henri, lives a sexless life. She’s still a virgin since her husband suffered horrible mutilation in the camps.
They are staying at a beachside apartment courtesy of Raymond, a handsome communist 
from the French Resistance during the war. He still has a thing for the married Hélène. Haunted by their past the three friends save every scrap of food and reuse teabags over and over. They catch up on their missing history as they play in the waves. The beach is filled with girls in bikinis and boys in trunks, Club Mickey, and everyone dancing the twist. Especially a young animateur, a camp counsellor on the beach named Pierre. He likes Hélène, and he’ll kiss her if she lets him. Will Helene be faithful to her husband, forge a relationship with a rich communist or a try a fling with the Club Mickey counsellor?
A La Vie is a light friendship drama set against a heavy topic – Holocaust survivors. Aside from the period nostalgia – beach life in 1960s France — the best thing about the movie is the three friends and the actors who play them so well. Julie Depardieu as hesitant Helene Gerard Depardieu’s daughter, Dutch actress ter Steege is excellent as Lili, and Suzanne Clement (as Rose) who’s featured in Xavier Dolan’s movies – she’s fantastic as Rose. A light movie, but well done.
Dheepan
Dir: Jacques Audiard
Dheepan and Yalini (Jesuthasan Antonythasan and Kalieaswari Srinivasan) are a young Tamil couple in France. They arrive in France with their cute daughter Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby) and are resettled in a public housing complex. They are refugees from the Sri Lankan civil war. At last they have escaped the horror of death and violence, and can live like a normal family in France. The thing is, they’re not actually a family at all. Dheepan is a former Tamil Tiger who needed to get out of Sri Lanka, fast. They put together a fake family, strangers from the refugee camp
that would match the description on his visa – a married couple with a young daughter. It worked, but what will their life be like in France?
Not great. Far from paradise, their lives are cold, dark and miserable. They soon discover their housing complex is a haven for Russian gangsters, and a hangout for sketchy teenage druggies. Dheepan works as a caretaker for the buildings and Yalini finds work as a caregiver for a dying old man. Their fake daughter is doing worst of all, with no support at home; her parents are at best indifferent to her problems, and at worst outright mean to her.
But they face even more trouble from the outside. Yalini’s patient is the father
of an especially violent gang leader, holed up in his apartment, facing attacks from rival gangs. She’s Hindu but wears a make-shift hijab to stop unwanted sexual advances. Dheepan, though he keeps his head low, gets involved in conflicts between the buildings. And Tamil Tigers based in France want him to return to the fold and act as a gun runner for them. With a major gang war on the horizon, and violence escalating, Dheepan is forced to return to his past role as a soldier and fight 
for his family’s lives.
Dheepan is a dramatic action/thriller with a good story, but it didn’t exactly grab me. It was interesting to watch, but I could only observe, not connect with the main characters. I was troubled that it portrays refugees as potential sleeper-cell terrorists. It’s directed by Audiard – who made two fantastic French movies, The Prophet and Rust and Bone — so maybe I set my bar especially high. Dheepan isn’t as good as those two, but it’s definitely still worth seeing.
Dheepan is playing now and À la vie opens today in Toronto; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
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