Review: Allied (2016)

* * *
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Starring: Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard

Allied is one of the most beautiful looking films of the year. Meticulously assembled and working very hard to evoke a more classical style of movie storytelling, Allied is a different kind of film than those that populate the multiplex these days, though I wouldn't quite agree with critics who call it "old fashioned" or a "throwback" to the films of the 1940s. It draws its inspiration from films of the past - borrowing visually from David Lean (but also from the not-so-old The English Patient), a little bit from Casablanca, and structuring its second half like a noir - but its sensibility is too modern for it to properly be called old fashioned. The sex is too explicit, the violence is too explicit, and its depiction of WWII servicemen and women as surrendering to a "we could die at any moment so anything goes" hedonism is definitely outside of the realm of any old school film. It exists somewhere in between the movies of yesteryear and the movies of today and though it's not flawless in every step it takes, it succeeds in being entertaining.

Review: Macbeth (2015)

* * *
Director: Justin Kurzel
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard

Like so many of Shakespeare's plays, Macbeth has been brought to the screen so many times - most famously by Orson Welles in 1948, Akira Kurosawa in 1957 (as Throne of Blood), and Roman Polanski in 1971; shockingly neither Laurence Olivier nor Kenneth Branagh ever did a screen version - that it's difficult to image how anyone could have a fresh interpretation to offer. Justin Kurzel's Macbeth is, generally speaking, a pretty faithful adaptation, telling a story that most will know in broad strokes even if they've never read the play, not deviating too wildly from the original text (though this version amps up the violence). Kurzel's version doesn't offer any new insights into the psychology of its protagonist, but it succeeds thanks in large part to a fascinating performance by Michael Fassbender in the lead - though when a film is this visually bold, the real star is the cinematographer (in this case, Adam Arkapaw).

Review: Two Days, One Night (2014)

* * * *
Director: Luc Dardenne & Jean-Pierre Dardenne
Starring: Marion Cotillard

Over the course of 27 years and 9 films, the Dardenne brothers have become the modern masters of the moral quandary. Often their films center on one act or event, one decision which will have heavy consequences, depicting that choice through the eyes of a person who lives on the fringes of society who doesn't necessarily have the luxury to make the wrong choice. This isn't to say that the Dardennes are preachy; their stories may often center on the decision between doing the "right" thing or the "wrong" thing (and what it means for something to be right or wrong, given a character's circumstances), but their tone is never judgmental, merely observational. In that respect, Two Days, One Night fits easily with previous films like L'Enfant and Lorna's Silence, all being films which are concerned with questions of guilt and morality. In other respects, this film is a departure, being a bit more overtly plotted, feeling slightly less free-flowing than the directors' previous works, though it is by no means a "lesser" film for that. Two Days, One Night is a deeply engaging, riveting film; it is a small movie and a short one, but man is it ever great.

Review: The Immigrant (2014)

* * * *
Director: James Gray
Starring: Marion Cotillard, Joaquin Phoenix, Jeremy Renner

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
            - "The New Colossus" - Emma Lazarus

The immigrant story is one of two competing narratives. One is a story of hope and opportunity, the other is a story of hardship, marginalization and, in some cases, exploitation, both framed by another set of competing narratives, one in which immigrants are desired for their contributions to the growth of a nation, and one in which they are villified and characterized as leeching off the strength of a nation that they did not help to build up. James Gray's The Immigrant functions in both modes of the immigrant story, beginning and ending in hope, but bridged by a prolonged period of despair and pain. It is a thematically rich and visually stunning work anchored by great performances from Marion Cotillard, Joaquin Phoenix, and Jeremy Renner. No wonder its distributor (The Weinstein Company strikes again) has essentially abandoned it in release.

Review: Contagion (2011)

* * *
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Gwyneth Paltrow

Steven Soderbergh's Contagion is a frightening film - not because of the virus that sweeps across the planet, seemingly unstoppable, but because of how it portrays society as little more than a thin veneer easily dismantled in a few quick steps. The almost apocalyptic vision of chaos and destruction that ensues when desperation and greed set in as a population becomes increasingly distrustful of the government's ability and desire to help them, is thought-provoking and skillfully rendered. While the film as a whole is not quite as strong as this particular element, it is ultimately an effective thriller, well-crafted and excellently acted by a cast packed with great actors.

Review: Rust and Bone (2012)

* * * *
Director: Jacques Audiard
Starring: Marion Cotillard, Matthias Schoenaerts

A broad description of Rust and Bone’s plot would make it sound like an over-written melodrama that throws as much at the wall as possible: an unemployed single father who gets involved in underground fighting to support himself, and a trainer at a marine park who loses her legs in an accident, develop a relationship that is part friendship, part sex, and part business. A lesser film would be sunk under the weight of that kind of plotting, but Jacques Audiard’s follow-up to his Oscar nominated A Prophet is so nuanced and sensitively wrought that it makes all of it work, creating a film that is intelligent and moving.

Review: Midnight In Paris (2011)

* * * 1/2
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Owen Wilson, Marion Cotillard

These days, when Woody Allen is off, he tends to be way off. Fortunately, every once in a while, he's capable of being right on target and it's the fact that for every couple of clunkers there's a Vicky Cristina Barcelona or a Match Point that keeps us coming back. Midnight in Paris is one of his winners, a charming, magic realist comedy that just might be his best film since 1999's Sweet and Lowdown.

Review: Inception (2010)

* * * *
Director: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Ken Watanabe

Thank God for Inception because, other than a couple of smaller movies in limited release, this has been a very uneventful summer for me, movie-wise. Fortunately Inception was worth waiting for, as it's a smart, slick movie that engages the mind as much as the eye.

The story takes place at an unspecified time in the future when technology allows for shared dreaming and shared dreaming allows thieves to break into a person's subconscious to steal information. One such thief is Dominic Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) who is attempting in the film's opening minutes to extract information from a man named Saito (Ken Watanabe). The job is unsuccessful but Saito is so impressed with Cobb's work that he offers him a new opportunity. Maurice Fisher (Pete Postlethwaite), a powerful tycoon, is on his death bed and his son, Robert (Cillian Murphy), is about the inherit his empire. Saito wants Cobb and his team to venture into Robert's unconscious and plant the idea of selling off the pieces of his father's business. Though his partner, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), insists that it can't be done, Cobb is persuaded to take the job after Saito informs him that he can pull some strings which would allow Cobb to return to the U.S., where he's currently a wanted man.

Cobb puts together a team which includes Arthur, Eames (Tom Hardy), a forger capable of assuming someone else's identity in dreams, and Ariadne (Ellen Page), the architect who will design the dreams. Since inception is more complicated than extraction, the process will involve dreams within dreams within dreams and since each dream level is more unstable than the last, the team also includes Yusuf (Dileep Rao), a chemist who can make a compound that will allow them to submerge themselves deep enough to enter the lower levels. The team goes under but almost immediately things begin to go awry. For one thing, Fischer has been trained to fight attempts at extraction and his subconscious fights back fiercely against the invaders. For another, Cobb is dragging along a lot of baggage in his own subconscious that threatens to derail the entire operation.

Written and directed by Christopher Nolan, Inception is a labyrinth of ideas, the density of which makes this a particularly ambitious film. Using Ariadne - who is new to the process of shared dreaming - as a surrogate for the audience, Nolan methodically sets up the rules of the unconscious state in the film's first half and then plunges us into action in the second half as level upon level upon level of unconsciousness first open out of each other and then collapse in. There is the threat that the characters will go too deep, that they'll submerge themselves so far that they'll be trapped in the unconscious indefinitely or that they'll no longer be able to tell reality from the dream state. Both risks are associated with Cobb who has essentially been to the other side and come back, though the things he left behind constantly threaten to pull him back. The final scene is ambiguous and already scores of theories have been put forth as possible explanations; this is a film that is obviously inspiring a lot of discussion and thought and I think that it's worthy of all of that effort.

The film has been described as "cold" by some critics and while I agree that it's cold, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Stanley Kubrick's films are cold and his coldest - 2001: A Space Odyssey which Nolan references here - is widely considered one of the highest achievements in film history. Besides which, I think coldness is entirely appropriate given the subject. If our unconscious is home to our baser instincts and our consciousness is tempered by our humanity, doesn't it make sense that it would get colder the deep you go? Just a thought.

Other criticisms of the film are, I think, more legitimate. There is a heavy handedness in terms of the naming of characters (aside from Ariadne there's also Mal, French for "bad" and the name of Cobb's destructive projection) and aside from Cobb, none of the characters is really fleshed out (though even that isn't necessarily a criticism, depending on your theory about the film). Still, Inception is an engrossing and often challenging film that makes up for whatever weaknesses it might have through the sheer force of its many strengths. I think it's safe to say that with this film and the rebooted Batman franchise under his belt, Nolan has a blank check to do whatever crazy shit he wants for the next ten years at least.

Review: Nine (2009)

* *
Director: Rob Marshall
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Judi Dench, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson, Sophia Loren, Fergie

Oh, Nine, you disappointed me. Maybe it's my own fault because I had such high expectations for so long, but why shouldn't I have had high expectations? The cast is phenomenal, it's based on both a popular play and a classic film, and it's directed by Rob Marshall, whose feature film debut Chicago I loved (seriously, I will defend its win for Best Picture to the death). So what went wrong? Maybe it's a case of too many good things in one place, but make no mistake: something has gone terribly, terribly wrong here.

The film is an adaptation of the stage play that is itself an adaptation of Federico Fellini’s 8 ½ and follows director Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis) as he struggles to pull his next film together. Sets have been built, costumes are being made, screen tests are being performed, interviews about the impending work have been conducted; the only thing missing is a script. Contini is blocked, hindered by the failure of his most recent films and driven to distraction by the women in his life; he just can’t pull himself together long enough to find inspiration and put it down on paper.

Now, about those women: there’s his wife Luisa (Marion Cotillard), once a great actress but now just his support system; his mistress Carla (Penelope Cruz); his muse Claudia (Nicole Kidman); his confidante/wardrobe mistress Lilli (Judi Dench); his mother (Sophia Loren); and an American reporter (Kate Hudson) determined to get an exclusive, of sorts, with him. There is also Seraghina (Fergie), the local prostitute of his childhood memories who still sparks his imagination. Now, when I first saw the cast list for this film and read Day-Lewis, Cotillard, Cruz, Dench, Loren, Kidman, Hudson and Fergie, my first thought was something along the lines of, “one of these things is not like the others.” Let it be said, however, that Fergie’s brief time on screen the only time when the film really seems to come alive and her number, “Be Italian,” is the only one with any genuine fire in it (though Cruz gives it the old college try with “A Call From The Vatican”). The film’s biggest problem, ultimately, is that aside from “Be Italian,” none of the musical numbers is particularly memorable. Not a good sign for a musical.

The other problem, one which might not be so glaring if the music itself was stonger, is that the characters don't have much in the way of depth. We get to know Guido pretty well and Cotillard is given enough time to etch out a moderately distinct character (truth be told, the only resonant moments in the film are in the scenes between Day-Lewis and Cotillard), but the others are as thin as paper. In dress and manner Carla is the antithesis of Luisa - that's apparently all we need to know about her in order to understand her relationship with Guido. What is it about Claudia that inspires Guido so? What are we supposed to take away from Guido's flirtation with the sycophantic reporter? Nine depends on the audience to respond to the actors rather than the characters so that you fill in the blanks by saying, "Guido is drawn to Carla because she's Penelope Cruz; Guido is inspired by Claudia because she's Nicole Kidman; Guido flirts with the reporter because she's Kate Hudson; etc." This isn't the fault of the actors; it's because, metaphorically speaking, the film is too busy looking down at its feet and counting the steps to invest itself in the moment and create a genuine foundation for its glossy, beautiful surface. It all looks amazing but it never relaxes enough to become anything more than an assemblage of parts.

Structurally, Nine is quite similar to Chicago, with the musical numbers taking place on a stage in the imagination of the protagonist. This worked marvellously in the earlier film, but here it feels disruptive and a bit clunky. What's the difference? Roxie Hart was a spunky gal with delusions of grandeur; Guido Contini is a brooding genius who can't find happiness despite having everything available to him for the asking. Aside from the fact that Roxie is a more relatable/sympathetic character (everyone, at one point or another, has imagined being a "star" of some sort), there's also the fact that a story about wanting something has more and better energy than a story about having everything and still being unhappy. Chicago was fun and had a lot of bite to it; Nine is gloomy and kind of aimless - to be honest, there were times when I was actually quite bored with it. Like I said, it looks good (the cinematography, in particular, is gorgeous) and there are a few good moments scattered throughout (there would have to be with that much talent in front of and behind the camera), but it's ultimately a failure as a film.

Review: La Vie En Rose

They say that when you die, your life flashes before your eyes. Those of us who’ve never had such an experience tend to think that this means a chronological account of events, but why should it be so? The unconscious mind works in ways we don’t understand. It makes connections that might at first seem absurd, it holds on to things we think unimportant and lets go of things we’ve vowed to remember. Knowing this is the first step to understanding La Vie En Rose, which is told less as a story, and more as a series of moments feeding into one another.

The film follows the life of Edith Piaf, her rise to fame as a singer, and her death at the age of 47. It’s amazing to realize that Piaf was only 47 when she died. In the film we see her crippled by arthritis and other illnesses – some of which naturally befall her, others she brings on through hard living – barely able to move, but insisting that she’s well enough to go onstage. For Piaf, not being able to sing is tantamount to being dead, so there’s little point in living if she can’t be onstage. By the end of the film, we understand why. Most of Piaf’s life is spent being abandoned by the people she loves, or otherwise torn away from them. But when she’s onstage people come to her, people want her, and it gives her a reason to carry on. Why else would she push so hard to get back in front of her audience, killing herself to share her gift with them?

I’ve heard the film described as being “jagged” and “jarring,” and so it is. You don’t leave the film feeling like you know the life of Edith Piaf, so much as you leave feeling as if you know the person of Edith Piaf. Large portions of her life are omitted from the film – there is no mention, for example, of her resistance work during World War II – and there are characters who depart in the early stages of her life (her mother and, later, her sister) and reappear later without any explanation as to how such a thing came about, but that’s in keeping with the central element of the film’s structure. “I’m losing my memory,” Piaf laments on her deathbed. “There are things I’m trying to remember, and other things keep coming to the surface.” What we’re seeing are her memories as they come back to her, and memory doesn’t flow according to our understanding of time or the principles of storytelling. Instead of giving us the story of a character, director Olivier Dahan has given us the essence of a character so that she’s a person existing in her own right, rather than as the center of a narrative.

Even if you’ve never heard of Piaf, there is a very good reason to see this film and it goes by the name of Marion Cotillard. This is an absolutely astonishing performance. Two other actresses play Piaf at various stages of childhood, but Cotillard carries the bulk of the picture, playing Piaf from the age of twenty onwards. It’s difficult at times to believe that the same actress who plays Piaf at twenty, singing on street corners in order to avoid having to turn to prostitution, is the same actress playing Piaf at the end of her life, looking decades older than her actual age, the life slowly fading out of her. It isn’t a trick that can be attributed to makeup; it’s all in the performance. Cotillard doesn’t simply play Piaf, she completely embodies her. It’s in the eyes, so large you can’t help but be drawn to them, at once hopeful that finally happiness is on its way, scared that some new tragedy will befall her, and yet defiant of anything or anyone that might stand in her way. She wants to be liked, but if she isn’t, that’s not as much her fault as it is the failure of her audience to appreciate her. The film itself can perhaps be described in the same terms. Those seeking a traditional biopic may leave disappointed. But those seeking simply to see a showcase for the most exhilarating performance of the year, will leave very satisfied indeed.