Review: Clouds of Sils Maria (2015)

* * * *
Director: Olivier Assayas
Starring: Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, Chloe Grace Moretz

The key is that the older woman and the younger one are, in fact, one and the same, just at different ages. So argues the younger woman, at any rate, as she tries to help the older one figure out how to play her character. Olivier Assayas' Clouds of Sils Maria is a story about two women working at unraveling a story about two women and like 2011's Certified Copy, another recent and excellent film starring Juliette Binoche, this is one in which the lines between "fact" and "fiction" blur often, sometimes even from one sentence to the next within a scene. It's a film that you really need to pay attention to, and perhaps even watch multiple times, in order to get its full effect as it is so rich in meaning. It is also beautifully, artfully made, full of shots and moments which stun you with how aesthetically entrancing they are. Clouds of Sils Maria is a film that can leave you feeling unbalanced from time to time, but it's also one that your mind will keep turning back to long after the fact.

21st Century Essentials: Caché (2005)

All eras have works of art that are fundamental to our understanding of not only the craft itself, but the culture from which it was created. The 21st century is still nascent, but it isn't too early to start creating a canon that demonstrates the heights to which film as an artform has reached since the year 2000. These are the essential films:


Director: Michael Haneke
Starring: Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche
Country: Austria/France/Germany/Italy

Peace of mind is a fragile thing – it can be shattered in an instant and in such a way that it can never be properly repaired. Michael Haneke’s unsettling drama Caché explores the way that the life of a seemingly ordinary family is disrupted by the arrival of a videotape on their doorstep which reveals that someone has been watching them and that he or she wants them to know that they’re being watched.

Review: Certified Copy (2011)

* * * *
Director: Abbass Kiarostami
Starring: Juliette Binoche, William Shimell

If something is beautiful but a copy, does that diminish its value or is its value determined by what it inspires in the observer? This is the question at the heart of Abbass Kiarostami’s Certified Copy, a film of elusive construction and surprising comedy. This is a film that I've been anticipating seeing for months and it definitely wasn’t a letdown. This is a great film and, as always, Juliette Binoche gives an absolutely luminous performance.

The Best Picture Countdown #69: The English Patient (1996)

Director: Anthony Minghella
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas, Juliette Binoche

Though I am an ardent fan of Fargo, I must admit that I have a soft spot for The English Patient. It’s just so grand, so beautiful, so epic in every way. It boasts terrific production values, a compelling story, and great performances. It is the perfect movie of its type and would be a great Best Picture winner were it not for the pesky fact that it beat what is arguably the best Coen brothers film to date. As it is, by besting Fargo, it has a rather qualified legacy.

The English Patient begins at the end, with a critically burned man known as “the English patient” who is being nursed by Hana (Juliette Binoche) in an abandoned monastery. Reluctant at first, he slowly opens up to her and tells her his story, revealing that he’s Count Laszlo de Almasy (Ralph Fiennes), a Hungarian geographer. Before the onset of World War II, Laszlo and his partner Madox (Julian Wadham) were making a map of the Sahara Desert when they came into contact with Geoffrey and Katherine Clifton (Colin Firth and Kristin Scott Thomas). With Geoffrey frequently absent, Laszlo and Katherine fell in love and into a passionate affair, which ultimately led to tragedy when discovered by Geoffrey. Laszlo survived - in body if not in soul - but Katherine died a slow and agonizing death, one which continues to haunt Laszlo.

In the present day timeline, Laszlo and Hanna are joined by a mysterious man named Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe), who lost his thumbs to the Nazis and believes that Laszlo was part of a spy ring and killed the Cliftons. Meanwhile, Hanna begins a tentative romance with Kip (Naveen Andrews), a British-Indian soldier, with whom she is at first reluctant to get involved, having already lost one man during the war. As the story moves towards its conclusion (and the war towards its end), Caravaggio’s desire for vengeance subsides and Hanna’s sense of hope is renewed.

Directed and adapted by Anthony Minghella from the novel of the same name by Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient moves gracefully between time periods and storylines. The story exists on both a large and a more intimate level, combining an epic sweep with a great attention to character. The relationship between Laszlo and Katherine takes up the bulk of the story and is, in my opinion, one of the more compelling and engrossing cinematic love stories of the last 15 years; made so both because of the care that Minghella takes in drawing the characters and their relationship, and because of the performances by Fiennes and Scott Thomas. Both received Oscar nominations (rather inexplicably, neither has received a nomination since) and they bring depth to the characters and their relationship that is complemented by the lush sensuality that Minghella brings to his direction.

The supporting cast fares just as well, led by the always luminous Binoche, who won the Best Supporting Actress prize for this performance. She’s terrific here – but, then again, she’s always great. Her Hanna is a gentle and surprisingly fragile soul, someone who can be a source of strength for others but hides an intense vulnerability in herself. Her very cautious relationship with Kip is just as compelling as that between Laszlo and Katherine, just on a smaller scale, and Mingella expends just as much care in exploring it as he does with the main story.

The English Patient is a great film. It is not as great as Fargo (how many movies are?), but it is a beautifully made film that excels at every level. Its reputation has been somewhat damaged by the comparison and the inevitable “the Academy got it wrong” conversation that is inspired by just about every movie the Academy names Best Picture. A better movie was nominated that year, but that doesn’t mean that The English Patient had no business being nominated at all. It’s a great film, very moving, very well constructed, and it holds up very well.

Review: Summer Hours (2009)

* * *
Director: Olivier Assayas
Starring: Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling, Jérémie Renier

Memories are precious, elusive things, often more tenuous than we’d like to admit. Summer Hours explores the death, of sorts, of certain memories and the impact that that has on members of a family. It is a languid, beautifully crafted film that doesn’t really hit you until well after you’ve seen it. I saw it about a week ago and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it, haunted by certain images. This is a solid, graceful film that's definitely worth a look.

It opens with the birthday of Hélène (Edith Scob) and the gathering of her family at the old family home to celebrate. It is a great occasion for her because it is one of the rare instances on which she is with all of her children – daughter Adrienne (Juliette Binoche) lives in New York, younger son Jérémie (Jérémie Renier) lives in China, and elder son Frédéric (Charles Berling), though he lives in France, is always working – and their children, but also sad because she knows that realistically she doesn’t have much longer and that once she’s gone, part of the family history will fade away with her. The home once belonged to Hélène’s uncle, an artist whose memory and reputation she has spent most of her life trying to preserve, though she doesn’t expect her children to do the same once she’s gone. She tries to talk to her children about what she does want, but they insist that there’s time and no need to make a happy occasion morbid and so the subject is more or less dropped.

Within a year Hélène has died and the siblings are together in France once again to sort out the estate. Frédéric assumes that they will keep the house and certain pieces of art to pass on to their children, but Adrienne and Jérémie have other ideas. Neither plans to be in France much over the next few years and the house is a luxury they can’t afford. Reluctantly, Frédéric agrees to sell, though he doesn’t really want to let go. Much of the film centres on him and his attempts to hang on to memories that aren’t really his at all, but memories of his mother’s memories of a time long since passed when her uncle was still alive; and the slow realization that he has to let it slip away. Frédéric wants to have things for the sake of keeping them, rather than because they necessarily mean something to him. By the end of the film he’ll visit some of his mother’s furniture in a museum. It’s strange, he admits, but life must go on.

Written and directed by Olivier Assayas, the film unfolds in a simple, unintrusive way. It doesn’t ask us to judge Adrienne and Jérémie, for example, for wanting to sell the house and most of its contents – it’s a sensible, reasonable thing to do under the circumstances. It does, however, focus quite directly on Hélène’s loneliness and the fact that she has things to say and no one to listen. After the birthday party, when the children and grandchildren have all gone on their way, Hélène’s housekeeper Eloise (Isabelle Sadoyan) remarks that the grandchildren forgot to take the cherries they’d picked. Hélène responds that their parents were too busy thinking of other things such as their journeys home. It’s a very sad scene and the image of Hélène sitting alone in her dark living room is striking. Part of the reason why her children, particularly Frédéric, focus so much on her things is because they know they should have been focused more on her - objects don't have meaning in and of themselves, but derive meaning through the way that we associate them with other people. Given the opportunity to have something of Hélène's as a keepsake, Eloise chooses a vase. The vase is incredibly valuable, but she doesn't know that; she chooses it because Hélène loved to have fresh flowers in vases and now whenever she puts flowers into it, she'll be able to remember her friend.

The film was conceived as part of a series produced by Musée d’Orsay that also includes Flight of the Red Balloon. This film strikes a similar tone as Red Balloon, though it does a better job of incorporating the museum itself into the story. Stylistically and in terms of subject matter, I know that this is the kind of movie that can an acquired taste because it just sort of drifts towards its conclusion rather than being driven there by the force of the narrative, but I found it to be very moving and thoughtful.

Review: Flight of the Red Balloon (2008)

* * * 1/2
Director: Hsiao-hsien Hou
Starring: Juliette Binoche

Hsiao-hsien Hou’s Flight of the Red Balloon is a gracefully directed film about a Paris family as seen from the perspective of an outsider. Based on Albert Lamorisse’s 1956 short film The Red Baloon, this new film glows with nostalgia and sadness as it follows the characters through the ordinary events of their lives and the extraordinary occurances of imagination. It's an absolutely lovely film, though one that's not likely to be to everyone's taste.

It must be stated first and foremost that this film is very slow moving and requires patience. Some will find it maddening because it goes “nowhere” while others will celebrate the film’s attention to ordinary, everyday details. Personally, I fell somewhere in between in that I liked the film’s careful study of the characters and their lives, but also wished at times that it would pick up the pace a bit. I would further venture to say that it would probably be helpful to see The Red Balloon prior to seeing this film. I’ve never seen that film but I did get the feeling that I would have gotten more out of this one if I had.

The film centres on Song (Fang Song), a Chinese student studying film in Paris. She takes a job as a nanny for young Simon (Simon Iteanu), whose mother Suzanne (Juliette Binoche) is burdened by many obligations due to the long absence of her husband. Slowly but surely, Song takes on an increasingly important role in the family, sharing with Simon a magical make-believe world that includes an ever-present red balloon, and becoming a confidante and friend to Suzanne.

Though the red balloon and Simon’s relationship to it are important aspects of the film as a whole, it is Suzanne and the details of her life – revealed to us gradually and naturally from Song’s perspective – which give weight and substance to the film. Suzanne’s husband has been away in Montreal for some time and may or may not come back. Her daughter, Louise, is currently living in Brussels but is expected to return to Paris shortly – an expectation which will end in disappointment for Suzanne. The tenant downstairs gives Suzanne no end of grief but removing him is problematic due to the agreement that was struck between himself and Suzanne’s husband. Between all these issues and her work obligations, Suzanne has no time for herself and little for Simon. In the final moments of the film Simon and his classmates look at a painting that they describe as being of a child with a red balloon and parents watching from a distance. The description also applies to Simon’s life, of course, as Suzanne’s problems drive her further and further away despite her desire to spend more time with him.

Binoche, an actress who consistently makes it look so easy that you forget just how good she is, carries the darker elements of the film and also incorporates moments of levity into her performance and character. My favourite scenes involve Suzanne’s work doing voice-overs for a puppet show in which Binoche gets so animated and into it that I honestly could have watched that for two hours. Her performance in this film is rich and engaging, moving seamlessly through a host of emotions as Suzanne struggles to keep things together though her candle burns at both ends. This is one of Binoche's better performances and for an actress of her caliber, that's really saying something.

The direction is unintrusive and measured, allowing us to simply observe the situation along with Song. Though the film doesn’t make too much of it, it does touch on East/West dynamics through Song’s relationship with Suzanne, highlighting the ways in which they see the world differently and doing so in a quiet, meditative way. Watching this film reminded me of Hemingway's iceberg theory of storytelling, wherein only the tip is explicitly stated while the body of the story remains subtextual. This method of storytelling requires more work on the part of the audience, but it also gives the story in question a stronger sense of realism. Flight of the Red Ballon is a film that mixes realism with a more magical, dreamlike quality and, to its infinite credit, does so successfully. My only qualm with the film is its pacing, which I found just a little bit frustrating.

Review: Caché (2005)

* * * *
Director: Michael Haneke
Starring: Daniel Auteil, Juliette Binoche

I think it’s fairly safe to say that writer/director Michael Haneke is uncomfortable when other people are comfortable. I mean, just look at some of the titles on his CV: Funny Games (the original and the American remake), The Piano Teacher, and this film. These are all films designed to challenge and unsettle the audience, films that take a heavy psychological, and sometimes physical, toll on their characters. Caché is a film that looks at the way that two people are changed by the knowledge that they’re being watched and it is utterly fascinating.

The film opens with a shot of a Paris street. The camera remains stationary as people and cars pass by; there’s nothing extraordinary about this scene until we realize that we, and the two protagonists, are watching a video. For Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche), this is a very bizarre video indeed, having been left on their doorstep without further explanation. Soon another video arrives, this time with a crude drawing. The voyeur makes no attempt to approach them, but that isn’t the point. The very fact that someone is out there watching them - and wants them to know that they’re being watched - completely destabilizes the way that they’ve been going about their lives. Further, they feel increasingly powerless as they learn that there’s absolutely nothing that police can do about it until the voyeur physically attacks them. The fact that he or she is psychologically attacking them makes no difference.

More tapes are sent along with more drawings and Georges begins thinking of an event far back in his past, which leads him to believe that he may know the identity of the voyeur. The recent invasion of his privacy has made Georges fiercely protective of what secrets he believes he has left and the result is that he tries to keep his suspicion from Anne. When Anne later learns that Georges has been actively keeping pieces of the puzzle from her, it introduces a new form of discord into their marriage: distrust of each other. Simply by watching Georges, the voyeur manages to isolate and alienate him from everyone in his life, effectively dismantling that life.

As played by Auteuil, Georges is a man who at once believes that he has done nothing wrong – though he perhaps doesn’t fully believe that – but increasingly behaves as though he’s guilty as sin, as though he’s been caught red handed at something when in fact he has not. It’s a good performance and you at once find yourself sympathising with him for the strange position he finds himself in, but also frustrated with him because he doesn’t do himself any favours with the way he handles the situation. As for Binoche, she’s wonderful but that should be no surprise. I have never seen her give a performance that was merely adequate; she seems absolutely at home in every character she plays. She doesn’t have as much to do as Auteuil, but Anne perhaps has a secret of her own – an idea the film toys with but leaves mired in ambiguity, just one of several unanswered questions.

Haneke creates a very effective story out of a simple premise, using the seemingly innocuous act of looking to produce pure terror. A fair portion of the film is seen through the camera of the voyeur, who somehow manages to remain unseen even when the positioning of the shot would suggest that he ought to be clearly visible to those nearby. The result of this is that we, the audience, feel like voyeurs ourselves and the film itself occasionally seems to be the voyeur, as though it’s watching itself unfold. It unravels itself slowly, almost clinically, as it moves towards its conclusion, which isn’t really a conclusion at all. The final shot is not unlike the first, although the two observe different locations. It seems as though nothing is happening but pay close attention to the left hand side of the screen, where two characters meet and have a conversation (unheard by the audience), which raises far more questions than it answers. The fact that these two characters know each other at all is intriguing and deeply unsettling, which is of course the point. It isn’t just being watched that can disturb your equilibrium, but watching as well.