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.

Canadian Film Review: Pontypool (2009)

* * * 1/2
Director: Bruce McDonald
Starring: Stephen McHattie, Lisa Houle, Georgina Reilly, Hrant Alianak

Pontypool takes a page out of the Jaws handbook, providing a vague, mostly unseen danger to our heroes that looms all the larger for its near total absence from the screen. If you’ve seen Jaws, you know how awesomely effective that method of storytelling is. What we see might be scary but it will never be as scary as what we can’t see and so it is with Pontypool which finds a radio show host and his two producers being bombarded with stories of strange and violent behaviour on the other side of town and knowing that this undefined threat is moving closer and closer to them.

The film takes place over the course of a few hours on a snowy, dreary day in Pontypool, Ontario. Radio show host Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) has a strange encounter on the road, which leaves him shaken up and which he decides to discuss with his listeners. The discussion is cut short, however, when word starts to come in about a demonstration of some kind outside the office of a Dr. Mendez (Hrant Alianak). While Grant editorializes regarding the scant amount of information they have about the unfolding event, his producers Sydney (Lisa Houle) and Laurel Ann (Georgina Reilly) try to find some kind of official corroboration for the eye witness accounts. Though there is no official confirmation from the police about what is happening, people continue to call in to discuss the increasingly violent and disturbing events outside of Dr. Mendez’s office.

As the day progresses, the death toll mounts, and words like "cannibals" start getting tossed around, Grant starts to lose it, believing that this is all part of some big hoax being perpetrated on him. It isn't until the appearance of Dr. Mendez himself at the radio station (which is actually just a church basement), that the reality of the situation starts to sink in. There is a virus of sorts going around, he explains, one that isn't passed through the blood but through the English language itself. This presents something of a dilema for the radio team, who wonder how they can explain the situation and warn people if the language is infected and are also forced to question their own culpability in spreading the virus through their medium.

Save for a few moments, the film takes place entirely in the church basement and much of it takes place in the sound booth itself after Dr. Mendez reveals that the afflicted hunt with their ears not their eyes. Safely (for the time being) locked up in the soundproof booth, Grant and his crew have to figure out what they're going to do to save themselves and how they might cure those who have the virus, but haven't reached the fatal stage yet (those who have the virus and don't find a victim to pass it on to kind of... explode). This minimalist approach makes the film all the more effective because the tension rises as the safe space becomes smaller and smaller. The fact that we don't actually start to see the effects of the virus until about 2/3rds of the way into the film is also quite effective and credit for that goes to the actors, who so successfully convey and transfer their growing sense of terror to the audience. There isn't a lot of gore in this movie (a little but not much) but it's about a hundred times scarrier than most movies that dispense with buckets of blood from openning to end credits. The terror is psychological and that can be pretty hard to shake off.

It's difficult not to read a political meaning into this film when its protagonist is a radio show host who prides himself on "telling it like it is," language is the enemy, and one of the characters is a soldier recently returned from Afghanistan. One of the symptoms of the virus is repeating a word ad nauseum which, if you've ever watched certain news shows, you know that simply repeating "talking points" in an increasingly loud voice is what passes for political analysis these days. Pontypool isn't aggressively political but this criticism of the way that language is being abused is definitely there.

Bruce McDonald, who directed last year's "love it or hate it" The Tracey Fragments, keeps the film really lean stylistically speaking. The simplicity of his style here adds immensely to the growing feeling of claustrophobia that the screenplay and the actors work so hard at creating. Pontypool is apparently the first film in a planned trilogy from McDonald - I'm not really sure how that will work given how this one ends, but I'll definitely be looking out for the next installment.

Review: Sweet and Lowdown (1999)

* * * *
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Sean Penn, Samantha Morton, Uma Thurman

I’ve been a Woody Allen fan for a while and I’ve seen some of his best films and some of his more dreadful pieces, but somehow I’d missed out on Sweet and Lowdown until recently. My loss because while I was giving movies like Anything Else a chance, I missed out on this delightful film and the extraordinary performances contained within courtesy of Sean Penn and Samantha Morton. This isn’t just good Woody Allen, this is Woody Allen at the very top of his game.

The film is constructed by incorporating documentary conventions into its story, ostensibly the true (well, truish) story of Emmet Ray (Sean Penn), who was once the second best guitar player in the world. Woody Allen appears alongside other experts and historians in interview segments disbursed throughout the film in an attempt to get at the man behind the legend, telling anecdotes of varying believability, including one story involving a hold-up at a gas station that is told three different ways. The only thing that isn’t really in dispute is that Ray was a genius and underappreciated in his own time.

A few facts, just to get them out of the way: Ray idolized Django Reinhardt – the best jazz guitarist in the world – and couldn’t be near him without fainting; if he showed up for a gig at all, he usually showed up drunk; he was briefly married to a dilettante novelist named Blanche (Uma Thurman, who makes her entrance into the film as if she’s auditioning for a Marlene Dietrich biopic); and he had an obsession with watching trains and shooting rats down at the dump. All of this, while supplying amusing moments in the story, are secondary to Ray’s relationship with a mute laundress named Hattie (Samantha Morton). Although he treats her badly, repaying her unconditional affection with meanness, infidelity and mocking of her muteness, not to mention simply disappearing on her one night, she is ultimately the glue that holds him together.

The relationship between Ray and Hattie is inspired by the relationship in Fellini’s La Strada, though it leans more to the comedic than the tragic, at least up until the very end. Despite the great difference in tone between the two films, Ray’s final moments on screen – which find him sad and broken with the too-late realization of what he had and lost – are as moving as the final moments of Fellini’s Zampano. Although Ray is indisputably selfish and occasionally even cruel, Penn provides him with enough humanity that you can still feel for him even while knowing that he’s gotten exactly what he deserves. Penn is also able to blend Ray’s brilliance in one respect (as a musician) with his buffoonery in nearly every other respect without making the character seem inconsistent. Ray is a man who knows that he’s great at this one thing but never really feels secure about it because he’s not certain that everyone else knows he’s great, too. He is, in his way, more vulnerable than Hattie, which is perhaps what draws her to him and then keeps her there long after most women would have left. As with Penn, Morton is terrific in the role, suggesting the inspiration of Fellini’s story without allowing Hattie to become simply an imitation of Gelsomina. Her performance is a thing of absolute beauty and the impression she leaves is remarkable given that she never utters a single word.

Allen’s mix of fact (Django Reinhardt) and fiction (Ray) and his joining of “talking head” segments with traditional narrative segments works really well in this film. Allen’s obvious enthusiasm for the subject matter, being a well-known jazz fan and musician himself, also helps immeasurably. Though he is inarguably a great writer and director, it is also difficult to argue that every once in a while he puts out a film that seems to simply go through the motions and in the last 15 years, or so, those less than great films have outnumbered those worth remembering. Sweet and Lowdown is one of Allen’s great films, totally deserving of being ranked alongside such films as Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Hannah and Her Sisters.

Great Last Scenes: All About Eve

Year: 1950
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Great Because...: Comeupance is oh so sweet. Sure, Eve succeeds in becoming a bona fide star, lauded and awarded and hated by those she climbed over to get there, but she's about to get a taste of her own medicine in the form of her own "biggest fan." Any ending other than this one would ring patently false.

Eve Harrington has scratched and clawed her way from nothing to stardom by latching herself on to Margo Channing and systematically usurping her in all areas. Starting out as Margo's assistant, she finagles her way into being her understudy and as luck, or something more nefarious, would have it, gets to take the stage when Margo uncharictaristicly misses a show. Eve is a hit and, as everyone quietly agrees, more suited for the ingenue roles than Margo.

Not content to just take Margo's place professionally, Eve also makes an attempt to steal Margo's boyfriend, Bill, although in this she is less than successful. Her manipulations have caused her to make many enemies, but that doesn't matter to her. All that really matters is that she's a star and once a star, always a star... right?

Following her big win at the awards ceremony, Eve has a close encounter with Phoebe who claims, much like Eve once claimed to Margo, to be a fan. Flattered by Phoebe's attention, Eve decides to take her on as an assistant, having apparently never heard the adage that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. As Phoebe tries on Eve's clothes, picks up Eve's award, and gazes at herself in the mirror, we can guess where this is headed.

Review: (500) Days of Summer (2009)

* * * *
Director: Marc Webb
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel

There aren’t a lot of movies that deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as Annie Hall, but (500) Days of Summer is one of them. While most romantic comedies centre on the romance of possibility and end at the real beginning, this one focuses instead on an actual relationship, with all its inherent ups and downs, and knows that just because something is good, doesn’t mean it’s meant to be permanent. I can think of no better way to introduce this movie than to quote another great comedy: “Love don’t make things nice – it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren’t here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. We are here to ruin ourselves and break out hearts and love the wrong people and die. The storybooks are bullshit.”

Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a hopeless romantic. How hopeless? He thinks The Graduate has a happy ending. The first time he sees Summer (Zooey Deschanel), he’s smitten, as many men are. Alas, she does not want a boyfriend, as she prefers to be independent and not “belong” to anyone. Because he wants her so badly, he allows himself to believe that he can change her mind, that he can convince her as he’s convinced himself that they’re fated to be together. Their relationship begins casually (for her, anyway), gets serious, and then abruptly ends, leaving him heartbroken and confused. As he looks back on the relationship, he just can’t understand where it all went wrong. They were so right for each other so how can it just be over?

The problem is that despite Tom’s proclamations that Summer is the love of his life, he doesn’t really know her. He’s so fixated on his idea of a perfect, permanent love and so determined to make her fit into the mould that he’s always had in his mind that it prevents him from really seeing her as a human being in her own right. This disconnect is exacerbated by the unconscious knowledge that as much as he wants to he can’t actually make her fit into his vision, and all the anxieties that that knowledge entails. One of the most telling scenes for me is when Tom and Summer go to a bar and she’s relentlessly hit on by some idiot. The guy expresses disbelief that Tom is Summer’s boyfriend and Tom punches him, which upsets Summer. “I did it for you!” he laments, which is absolutely not true. He may have done it because of her, but he certainly didn’t do it for her. He did it for himself because the guy in the bar wounded his pride and expressed Tom’s own fear that Summer is out of his league, that she’s going to realize it and that she’s going to leave him.

As a character, Summer is thinly conceived. Since we only see her through Tom’s eyes this makes sense because he either can’t read her or doesn’t really want to. Late in the film, one of Tom’s friends compares his girlfriend to his dream girl and declares that his girlfriend is better because she’s real. Tom thinks he can have both the reality and the dream and so he ignores those things about Summer that don’t conform to his ideal. To emphasize this the film incorporates many elements of fantasy, including a dance number and a sequence done in split screen, dividing Tom’s dream version of an event from the reality of it. These elements are folded easily into the larger narrative and provide a lot of insight into Tom’s character and state of mind.

I went into (500) Days of Summer somewhat guarded. Having been bombarded with the trailer for the last couple of weeks, I felt a bit over the movie before even seeing it, but my enthusiasm for it was renewed once I was watching it. It isn’t a perfect movie – I could have lived without the “wise child” character and I think that the ending is perhaps too clever by half – but it is pretty great and features wonderful performances from both Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel.