:: FRIDAY, JULY 7 - THURSDAY, JULY 13 ::

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

The Dirty Stories of Jean Eustache

Gene Siskel Film Center – See below for showtimes

Jean Eustache's THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE (France)
See Venue website for showtimes
Besides THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE, there are few works in narrative cinema where personal confession transcends self-inquiry and poses questions of all human existence. In its achievement, Jean Eustache's masterpiece feels more like epic literature than it does most other films, yet for all its literary qualities, it is absolutely cinematic. Eustache's extended scenes of natural behavior, filmed mostly in voyeuristic long takes, invite empathy at first but become crushingly pitiless over the marathon duration; indeed, the very structure is a test of the viewer's ability to care about others. (The most important reason to see this film in a theater is that you have no choice but to let it wear you down, which is exactly what it’s supposed to do.) Inverting the warm naturalism of Rohmer and Truffaut, Eustache creates a cinema of scrutiny in which every gesture is slowly revealed to be somehow poisonous. This aesthetic betrayal (shot by one of Rohmer's former cameramen and starring Truffaut's most famous actor) mirrors the film's epic subject—the disillusionment of the French Left post 1968, whom Eustache presents as living in hell even when they're gratifying their basest desires. THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE can be a repulsive film, though less for its explicit sex than for the odious unchecked male privilege at its center. It doesn't help that Jean-Pierre Léaud's incredible lead performance (based directly on Eustache, but also playing on and criticizing his role in the French New Wave) is so charismatic that many viewers mistake him for a hero, but Eustache is very much critiquing the posturing and arrogance of a certain male know-it-all type, one that’s very familiar within cinephile communities the world over. Indeed, Alexandre comes to suffer for his arrogance; however, because he's so selfish, he brings down with him the two women he comes close to loving: the older boutique owner (Bernadette Lafont, another mainstay of the Nouvelle Vague) who supports his layabout lifestyle and the younger nymphomaniac nurse (Francoise Lebrun) with whom he becomes infatuated. Their collective failure, which transpires over several days but feels like a lifetime, speaks to the perils associated with liberty, a heavy subject that can't be summarized easily and has rarely been addressed so extensively by a single film. Despite Eustache's Proustian obsession with capturing his lived experience with pinpoint accuracy, THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE remains wholly—beautifully—alive to the present moment. The film's primitive-looking (though meticulously rehearsed) long takes celebrate cinema's power to capture time; like Chantal Akerman's comparably revolutionary JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES (which premiered just two years later), convey excitement with adapting the innovations of Andy Warhol and other '60s experimentalists to narrative form. Just as invigorating is Eustache's dialogue, which is among the richest in movies. The characters speak at length in order to confess their worst behavior, expound on pet theories, bullshit, seduce, and better understand their experience. Like the characters of Dostoevsky or O'Neill, their monologues remind us of the profound depths that consciousness can reach. (1973, 217 min, New 4K DCP Restoration) [Ben Sachs]
---
Jean Eustache’s ROBINSON’S PLACE and SANTA CLAUS HAS BLUE EYES (France)
Saturday, 1pm
The iconoclastic French director Jean Eustache carries a reputation as an incisively autobiographical voice of the post-New Wave era, a stature borne out in his two narrative features, THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE (1973) and ‎MY LITTLE LOVES (1974), both of which plumb the romantic anxieties of a surrogate male protagonist. But his first completed work, the daylong saga ROBINSON’S PLACE (1963, 42 min, DCP Digital), centers on a rascally masculine dyad—as if, for his introductory statement, Eustache felt a need to diffuse his foibles and obsessions across two characters. The black-and-white featurette unfolds in and around Paris largely in real time, catching up with suburban-weaned Daniel (Daniel Bart) and balding Jackson (Aristide Demonico) at a cafe pinball machine; the camera volleys between them as they take turns pulling the levers and debate strategies for picking up women, all with a coarse shorthand that suggests untold similar outings in their past. Eustache would go on to make a series of documentaries in his career, and that spirit prevails in the peripheral detail during the duo’s travels between destinations: Daniel and Jackson dart among oblivious passersby as they ogle various storefronts, and car traffic streaming through the foreground occasionally interrupts the view of their sidewalk wandering. The men soon strike up an acquaintance with a woman (Dominique Jayr) who has separated from her violent husband and has plans to dance the evening away. Sensing a perfect opportunity to “score,” Daniel and Jackson assist in helping her find a suitable venue—but hilariously, once they secure a booth, neither of them feels like dancing, and another man swoops in and takes their place. Eustache reveals these troublemakers to be creatures accustomed to defeat, at once venal and incompetent—a curious combination that achieves a dash of poignancy when, during a chat over scotches bought with pilfered funds, Daniel mutters, “What a pair of bastards we are.” Eustache’s subsequent black-and-white, medium-length movie, the Narbonne-set SANTA CLAUS HAS BLUE EYES (1966, 47 min, DCP Digital), unites the director with the New Wave dignitary Jean-Pierre Léaud, who plays another Daniel, this one also a hard-up, adrift youth mystified about how to impress women. Where ROBINSON’S PLACE zeroes in on the rituals of a lone night out—down to registering at the coat check and paying for a round of drinks—this piece adopts a more episodic approach, its scenes punctuated by gentle fadeouts and framed by Daniel’s looking-back voiceover. Eager to afford one of the trendy duffle coats of the holiday season, Daniel engages in piddling money-making schemes with his gaggle of obnoxious friends: stealing books off the shelves, scouring the market for discarded wallets. The character’s hardscrabble circumstances come to the fore in moments of aching specificity, as when Daniel, to the disgust of his companion, lights up a half-finished cigarette left behind in an ashtray. Luckily, Daniel stumbles into a gig dressing as a streetside Santa Claus for a photographer—a position that not only pays a daily salary but gives him an obvious icebreaker with the women who pose beside him. (In a touch of frustration typical for Eustache, Daniel immediately follows the good news of his hiring with a memory of a summer when he was quickly canned from a brick-layer job.) Daniel’s behavior matches the unsavoriness of the ROBINSON’S PLACE pair—he boasts of fondling the ladies he’s photographed with—and Eustache exposes his insecurities with ruthless precision. This includes a three-minute-long nighttime shot in which Daniel tries to charm a girl walking home from work—a circuitous, going-nowhere bit of small talk that exemplifies the desperate neediness and exhausting verbosity of Eustache’s onscreen counterparts. [Danny King]
---
Jean Eustache's MY LITTLE LOVES (France)
Saturday, 3:30pm
Jean Eustache’s second feature film, MY LITTLE LOVES, delves into the harshest realities of male adolescence. Shooting tranquil landscapes and city gutters in color, Eustache presents pastoral and urban images that reflect lives of innocence and experience. The setting coincidentally conjures the works of William Blake in his famous collections, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. Taking an encompassing approach, Eustache truthfully depicts an age where carnal desire begins. Opening in a pastoral setting, Daniel (Martin Loeb) enjoys the garden of boyhood and the splendor of naïveté by living alone with his grandmother. A good student, he leads a simple life, playing make believe with the other neighborhood kids and seeing the occasional magic show that passes through town. Ironically, Daniel’s song of innocence ends with the visit of his mother, who takes him to live in the city of Narbonne. Along with her lover, José, a Spanish farmworker in the process of divorcing his wife, they live in a small apartment. In the dysfunctional living situation, Daniel begins as a fish out of water but soon adapts to the crude environment of city life. Unable to afford his studies as a seamstress, his mother lands him a gig apprenticing for a mechanic. He still longs to learn, and so he makes a last-ditch effort to learn through books. His academic aspirations suffocate under the new conviction presented by older teenage boys: carnal temptation. Eustache paints a hardened loss-of-innocence story, presented through a channel of the working class. Over the course of the film, we see a bright young boy’s potential dwindle; the final 30 minutes of the film feel as tense as Hitchcock’s “bomb under a table” analogy. Set on edge, the placement of lascivious teenage boys within the vicinity of an unsupervised young girl, the audience worries for the girl's safety. Described by Olivier Assayas as the "provincial cousin" to the French New Wave, Eustache said that his films were as autobiographical as fiction could get. If THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE (1973) depicts the battle of the sexes, MY LITTLE LOVES is where first blood is drawn. Through personal anecdotes, he diagnoses the causes of heterosexual tension within modern society's training of the male eye, particularly within the working class. For a contemporary, post-#MeToo audience, MY LITTLE LOVES can be read as a horror film. From the last shot, the audience dreads what happens next for Daniel; he continues this path of behavior into manhood. (1974, 123 mins, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ray Ebarb]
---
Jean Eustache’s NUMÉRO ZÉRO (France/Documentary)
Monday, 6pm
On the one hand, Jean Eustache’s documentary about his grandmother Odette Robert is a straightforward exercise in oral history: for most of the film’s duration, Eustache sits with Robert (who was born around 1900) and asks her questions about her life, eliciting truths about provincial France in the first half of the 20th century through stories of personal experience. On the other hand, NUMÉRO ZÉRO is a groundbreaking work of essentialist cinema that reveals how much can be achieved through the spoken word. Barring a short introductory sequence of Robert and Eustache’s son Boris walking outside, the film consists entirely of Robert and Eustache sitting at her kitchen table; sometimes we see Robert in close-up, sometimes she’s presented in medium shot that also shows Eustache’s back. Through Robert’s vivid storytelling, Eustache creates a dense, shifting mise-en-scène that exists entirely in the spectator’s mind, leading one to consider cinema’s limitations in conveying historical perspective. Robert speaks quickly, darting between banal anecdotes and profound realizations, personal truths and social observations—her approach to recounting the past really couldn’t be channeled into a traditional narrative or a more illustrative documentary without breaking the flow of her memory. The deliberate aesthetic primitivism of NUMÉRO ZÉRO has ties to Warhol’s films, though Eustache’s approach is warm and intimate where Warhol’s was cold and detached; the film also looks forward to Wang Bing’s great documentary FENGMING, A CHINESE MEMOIR (2007) in its stripped-down visuals and seemingly haphazard organization. (It may even have inspired Wang’s film; the Chinese documentarian has cited THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE as a direct influence on his epic history DEAD SOULS [2018].) The key word here is seemingly—Eustache, like Wang after him, is interested above all in the contours of individual consciousness, and his film, in addition to serving as a compelling history lesson, is also an extraordinary internal portrait. (1971/2002, 112 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ben Sachs]
---
Jean Eustache Shorts Program (France)
Wednesday, 6pm
Jean-Noël Picq, who memorably played Jean-Pierre Léaud’s crypto-fascist friend in THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE (1973), is the primary speaker in HIERONYMUS BOSCH’S GARDEN OF DELIGHTS (1981, 34 min, New DCP Digital Restoration), an extended analysis of the titular painting. Addressing two women and one man, Picq describes various details of Bosch’s triptych and muses on the particular psychosexual imagination that brought them into being. While Bosch was instructed to paint panels representing heaven, purgatory, and hell, our host contends that the Dutch artist was truly inspired only by the last of these settings. Picq expresses awe over the vivid fantasies of torture and suffering; considering the images through psychological, historical, and aesthetic lenses, he concludes that Bosch’s exemplary perversion made him an artistic movement unto himself. The short is impressively dense in spite of its simple découpage, which consists exclusively of shots of people talking and closeups of the triptych. That’s because spoken language was always a source of richness for Eustache, who loved oral communication and used it to paint intricate pictures in his viewers’ imaginations; given all the associations conjured by Picq’s narration, Bosch’s work seems to come at us from several directions at once. Eustache achieves something comparably complex in the prizewinning short ALIX’S PICTURES (1980, 20 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration), which asks to think about two contradictory images simultaneously. Seated at a table, the photographer Alix Clio-Roubaud presents examples of her work to Eustache’s son Boris (about 20 years old and noticeably younger than Cilo-Roubaud—their age difference is a source of unaddressed sexual tension); as the film proceeds, her synopses diverge more and more from what actually appears in the photographs. The formal paradox may remind you of such experimental filmmakers as Hollis Frampton and John Smith, but ALIX’S PICTURES also feels like something that Abbas Kiarostami might have made, a not-quite documentary about the construction of a narrative that may or may not be factual. EMPLOYMENT OFFER (1982, 20 min, New DCP Digital Restoration), Eustache’s last completed film work, occupies a comparable shadow territory between documentary and fiction, using a thin story about one man’s job search to delineate the process by which employers publicize job openings, interview candidates, and ultimately hire someone to fill the position. It’s clearly meant to portray the dehumanizing nature of the contemporary working world—in one sequence, the employer contracts a handwriting expert to analyze the candidates’ cover letters to determine how they might behave as employees—yet Eustache’s characteristically unemphatic presentation might render the subject matter banal to anyone who’s ever been on a job search. There are moments here that showcase the filmmaker’s brilliance, namely the Langian cut away from the ostensible hero (the middle-aged job seeker) to a heretofore unseen figure mercilessly controlling his fate (the hiring manager of the company the hero has applied to). Eustache’s analytical intelligence, which he applied with equal violence to society and himself, is on full display; one can’t help but watch the film and wish the world could have gotten a follow-up. [Ben Sachs]
---
Eustache’s THE VIRGIN OF PESSAC '79 (1979, 71 min, DCP Digital) and THE VIRGIN OF PESSAC (1969, 66 min, DCP Digital), presented in Eustache’s preferred exhibition order, screen Sunday at 5pm; and LE COCHON (1970, 52 min, DCP Digital) and UNE SALE HISTOIRE (1977, 50 min, DCP Digital) screen Tuesday at 6pm.

Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky's THE TURIN HORSE (Hungary)

Chicago Film Society at the Music Box Theatre – Monday, 6:30pm

THE TURIN HORSE begins with an unnamed narrator recounting a central episode in the life of Friedrich Nietzsche. Shortly after he achieved enlightenment through his philosophy, the 45-year-old writer witnessed a peddler beating his horse; the sight so overwhelmed Nietzsche that he stopped the man in his action, embraced the horse, and wept. Several days later, Nietzsche would be diagnosed with mental illness and retreat to the care of his mother and sisters, with whom he'd remain for the last ten years of his life. This anecdote, it should be noted, contains more plot than anything that follows in THE TURIN HORSE. The film proceeds as a gradual shutting down, ridding itself of detail and ultimately momentum, ending on a note of morbid finality. Is this an allegory for Nietzsche's mental breakdown? Are we watching the end of civilization? Is the film something else entirely? The direction is careful and poker-faced; like all of Béla Tarr and company's films since DAMNATION (1987), it's rooted in slow, hesitant camera movements that approach every action like it were a 50-foot statue or the stuff of biblical verse. The movie depicts an old man (possibly the one who beat that poor horse) living with his daughter on a small, isolated plot of land. They subsist on the little they make from delivering goods from their horse-drawn cart. But when their animal stops eating and refuses to walk, the two are effectively stranded; when a violent, prolonged dust storm kicks up, they're unable to leave their house. The minimal story is rendered consistently gorgeous by the work of cinematographer Fred Keleman (a noted filmmaker in his own right, here shooting in stunning high-contrast black-and-white) and Steadicam operator Tilman Büttner, the muscle behind Aleksander Sokurov's single-take feature RUSSIAN ARK (2002). The camera skulks through scenes or else hovers in place before some elemental detail, such as the wrinkles of an old bed sheet hanging to dry. Some viewers will be hypnotized by the aesthetic; for them, it might feel as though the filmmakers have stopped time itself. People who hate the movie will probably feel this way too, but it's hard to deny that Tarr, Hranitzky, and their collaborators have created a theatrical experience like very few before it. Preceded by Guvnor Nelson’s 1969 short film MY NAME IS OONA (10 min, 16mm). (2011, 146 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

John Ford's THE SEARCHERS (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 4pm and Saturday, 7pm

The greatest western ever made is also arguably the greatest American movie ever made. Before filming began, director John Ford described THE SEARCHERS as "a kind of psychological epic" and indeed his complex take on the settling of the West, with its head-on—and daringly ahead-of-the-time—examination of racism, finds an appropriately complex and tragic anti-hero in the character of the mysterious Ethan Edwards (John Wayne in his best and most nuanced performance). Spurred on by an unrequited love for his deceased sister-in-law (Dorothy Jordan), the maniacal, Indian-hating Edwards will stop at nothing to recapture his nieces who have been kidnapped by Comanche Indians. "We'll find 'em," Ethan says in one of many memorable lines of dialogue written by Frank S. Nugent but worthy of Herman Melville, "just as sure as the turning of the earth." The dialectic between civilization and barbarism posited by Ford, with Ethan standing in a metaphorical doorway between them, would have an incalculable effect on subsequent generations of filmmakers—from Martin Scorsese to misguided Ford-hater Quentin Tarantino. If you've never seen THE SEARCHERS, or if you've only seen it on home video, you owe it to yourself to catch it projected on 35mm: both the breathtaking Monument Valley vistas and the minute details of the film's production design (e.g., the "Confederate States of America" logo on Ethan's belt buckle), gloriously captured by Winton Hoch's splendiferous VistaVision cinematography, only really come through on the biggest of big screens. Screening as part of the Programmers’ Picks series. (1956, 119 min, 35mm) [Michael Glover Smith]

Deborah Kaplan & Harry Elfont’s CAN’T HARDLY WAIT (US) and Claire Denis' US GO HOME (France)

Highs & Lows at the Music Box Theatre – Tuesday, 7pm

While CAN’T HARDLY WAIT follows the familiar form of the teen comedy that takes place over one night, writing and directing team Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont (JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS) capture something unique about this transitional moment. There’s a looseness to the film, a reflection of the messiness of graduating high school and moving into the beyond; it manages to take this coming-of-age shift seriously while also stressing it’s so often simultaneously hilarious. Characters speak directly to camera at times, highlighting the fuzziness of one-sided relationships so often manifested in high school crushes and disputes alike. Through the meandering night of relationship disarray, CAN’T HARDLY WAIT also emphasizes that this perceived external chaos is frequently about internal struggles, namely reckoning with identity and figuring out an independent one outside the world in which you grew up. The film follows a post-high school graduation house party. Centering multiple stories following different cliques is Preston (Ethan Embry), whose longtime crush, Amanda (Jennifer Love Hewitt), has been dumped by her popular boyfriend (Peter Facinelli). Preston sees this opportunity as the last chance to tell her exactly how he feels, much to the chagrin of his best friend/ex, Denise (Lauren Ambrose), whom he drags to the party. She quickly gets locked in a bathroom with Kenny (Seth Green), a problematic poser out to lose his virginity. While many partygoers are determined to get laid or find love, others are out for revenge, others to make a lasting impression before everything changes. This large ensemble cast include teen movie stalwarts like Clea DuVall, Sean Patrick Thomas, Nicole Bilderback, and Breckin Meyer, to name only a few. CAN’T HARDLY WAIT is truly a late ‘90s time capsule, including in its soundtrack which, despite its title coming from an ‘80s Replacements song, features multiple tracks from the bands Smash Mouth, Eve 6, and Third Eye Blind. (1998, 101 min, 35mm) [Megan Fariello]
---
Two young teenage girls have the night of their lives in US GO HOME, Claire Denis' nostalgic but clear-eyed ode to a youth not unlike her own. Living in a nowheresville suburb of Paris, the girls' desperation for adult experience is both relatable and endearing. Martine (Alice Heuri) is dead set on losing her virginity and strongarms her more worldly best friend, Marlène (Jessica Tharoud), and over-it older brother, Alain (Grégoire Colin), to make sure the deed gets done. Buoyed along by the sounds of "Wooly-Bully," "Try a Little Tenderness," and a dozen other early rock and soul classics, they spend their night wandering from a stiff middle-school party to an unchaperoned older kids' free-for-all. Friendships are strained, lessons are learned, and, in the end, Martine accomplishes her goal via a most unlikely source. Commissioned as part of a French TV series of coming-of-age stories along with other notable directors like Olivier Assayas and Chantal Akerman, Denis' entry is the perfect mix of sour and sweet and, at just over an hour, is just the right length to tell a small story that feels epic for the adolescents to whom it's happening. (1994, 67 min, HDCAM Video) [Dmitry Samarov]

Ron Ormond's IF FOOTMEN TIRE YOU, WHAT WILL HORSES DO? (US)

Music Box Theatre – Saturday, 9:30pm and Sunday, 11:30am

Unremarkable exploitation filmmaker Ron Ormond established himself as a reliable director of "cave women" trash films in the 1950s, until a late 60s plane crash, which he survived, caused him to re-think his life and his faith. Ormond soon became an arch conservative born-again Christian and, in 1971, directed one of the finest pieces of cinematic propaganda ever conceived. IF FOOTMEN TIRE YOU, WHAT WILL HORSES DO is a post-apocalyptic glimpse of what could happen if Communists took over the United States and forced all citizens to renounce Christ. Running barely over 50 minutes, FOOTMEN is an astounding collage of jaw-dropping violence and subversive sexual references, presented as a pro-Christianity marketing tool. In spite of its religious purpose, FOOTMEN is a pure piece of exploitation cinema and succeeds in being just as over the top and shocking as the works of the era's top exploitation mavericks. In perhaps the film's most iconic segment, a 14-year-old boy is beheaded for refusing to renounce his faith. But what separates this film from the countless lackluster exploitation works of the era is its honesty and conviction. Ormond's agenda is not a financial one, but rather a completely sincere and personal statement of his beliefs. (1971, 52 min, DCP Digital) [Joe Rubin]
---
Screening with Ormond’s THE BURNING HELL (1974); Ormond’s THE EXOTIC ONES (1968) and PLEASE DON’T TOUCH ME! (1963) screen Friday at 9:30pm. Presented by the Music Box of Horrors. Author Jimmy McDonough will appear in person for context on the Ormond family and their Nashville-based exploitation empire; he will also be selling his new biography of the Ormonds, The Exotic Ones, at a discounted price.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s BOOGIE NIGHTS (US)

Music Box Theatre – Thursday, 7:15 pm

For me, no Paul Thomas Anderson film has yet topped the dynamic experience of watching BOOGIE NIGHTS. This is exemplified by the film’s vibrant pool party scene—set to Eric Burdon and War’s “Spill the Wine”—as the camera follows those just having fun and those deep in significant conversation. It’s a film that perfectly seesaws the audience between scenes of pleasure and of real darkness. It’s hilarious at times while also containing one of the most horrifyingly tense scenes in cinema. It is both brutally honest yet sweetly empathetic to its main characters. It’s dazzling in its meandering and colorful '70s and '80s set pieces, its memorable costuming, and influential soundtrack. Set in Los Angeles during the Golden Age of Porn—and based on an earlier mockumentary short film by Anderson—BOOGIE NIGHTS follows the rise and fall of Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg), a young aspiring adult film star. He is discovered by Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) and joins his community of filmmakers and stars. This group includes outstanding performances from Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, Don Cheadle, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, just to name a few. The film combines an overarching narrative with distinct vignettes, making the stories of even the most minor of characters matter. Dirk may be the central figure around which the rest of the characters revolve, but the film makes it clear everyone else is just as significant, just as complicated, and everyone else is also struggling and succeeding in their own ways. Rollergirl (Heather Graham), a porn starlet who never takes off her skates the entire film, could easily be a background character solely based on her visual gimmick but instead is fully allowed to both find joy in and rail against her situation—the striking costume and period setting is so entertaining but never overshadows the characters. BOOGIE NIGHTS constantly takes time for these characters, stressing that their experiences are also essential. The result is intimate while simultaneously suggesting worlds of possibility both on and off camera. Screening as part of the New Adventures in 70mm, which goes through Wednesday, July 19. (1997, 155 min, 70mm) [Megan Fariello]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Wes Anderson's ASTEROID CITY (US)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

Through ten feature films made over nearly thirty years, Wes Anderson has honed an exacting Lionel Model Train set aesthetic in which human history and emotions often play second banana to design considerations and deadpan humor. Especially since his first stop-motion animation film, FANTASTIC MR. FOX (2009), Anderson's movies have mostly dispensed with any pretense of naturalism in favor of a strictly controlled environment in which the puppeteer's hand often invades the frame to rearrange the furniture or to recast his doll-like charges' fates. Depending on your tolerance for his near-autistic compulsion to demonstrate mastery over his domain, these films can be either an unbearable slog or a charming detour from humdrum reality. I'm an admirer of Anderson's steadfast dedication to his vision but often find that not much about his toy constructions follow me out of the theater after the credits roll. Though he often puts his characters in fraught world-historical settings and programs them to emote after heartbreak or other traumas, these feelings and reactions rarely break through the symmetrical compositions and wind-up gizmos buzzing about in the background. The need to deflect and distract oneself from pain through obsessive hobbyism is a time-honored strategy, especially for men, or, more precisely, boys who refuse to grow up. Anderson's latest has all the hallmarks of his previous work but adds a layer of present-day resonance. Though set in the 1950s, in a small western town on the edge of a nuclear testing site, and featuring a cascade of major and minor movie stars and even an alien landing, the references to COVID lockdown life are everywhere. This time the unreality, panic, and erratic behavior—while still often played for laughs—is not cribbed from beloved short stories or arcana, but from the very recently experienced every day. This gives the film a gravity the previous ones lacked. We all lived through a thing even a control freak like Anderson can't ignore by descending into his basement tinkerer's kingdom and his work is all the better for it. (2023, 105 min, DCP Digital) [Dmitry Samarov]

Alice Winocour’s REVOIR PARIS (France)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Check Venue website for showtimes

Mass shootings may be most prevalent in the United States, but they aren’t exclusively ours. France has had its share of attacks, though they usually come from political terrorists instead of disturbed hotheads. One such attack at the Bataclan Theatre and several bars and restaurants in Paris in 2015 touched the life of director Alice Winocour, whose brother survived the assault that left 130 dead and 416 wounded. How those who have undergone such a trauma cope with it and move forward with their lives is the subject of REVOIR PARIS. The central character is Mia (Virginie Efira), a translator who lives with her physician boyfriend, Vincent (Grégoire Colin), and a very pretty cat. The pair are out for dinner one night when Vincent is called to the hospital. Mia mounts her motorcycle and heads home, but gets caught in a downpour. She stops at a brasserie to have a drink and wait out the storm. Not long after she is seated, a well-armed gunman enters her part of the restaurant and opens fire as part of a coordinated terrorist attack that, we learn later, also will claim lives in two other restaurants. After a blackout, the film moves forward three months. Mia’s torso wound is being examined by a doctor, who says they will try to lessen the appearance of the scar but can’t perform miracles. Mia contemplates going back to work, but she is haunted by the attack, which she can’t remember. During the film, she will slowly recover her memories as she revisits the scene, interacts with other victims and their family members, and tries to track down the person she clung to for strength during the worst of it. Winocour’s staging of the attack is terrifying and realistic, and the lead-up to it is well-executed. Working a radio interview with a Russian dissident, Mia translates that he’s not worried about being attacked in Paris. Later, a pedestrian hits the window next to Mia at the restaurant where she and Vincent are dining, startling her. Then, Vincent uses the formal “Excusez-moi” with her when he leaves to take a call, signaling trouble in their relationship before the attack. Throughout the film, Winocour interjects first-person narratives of other survivors and the memories of a teenager (Nastya Golubeva Carax) of the night she learned that her parents were in the brasserie. She also takes us into the world of undocumented workers from Africa who comprise much of the restaurant workforce in Paris. I appreciated being able to see the hidden life of a city many—even Parisians—think they know. I found the film somewhat sketchy, particularly in its character development, and a bit facile, but I appreciated the heartfelt effort to dramatize this undercovered topic. (2022, 104 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Greta Gerwig's LADY BIRD (US)

Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – Saturday, 12pm

"You stole my life!" Greta Gerwig wails at the climax of MISTRESS AMERICA, the terrific neo-screwball comedy that Gerwig wrote with Noah Baumbach. The object of her scorn is Lola Kirke, the Columbia University undergrad who pilfered Gerwig's neuroses to spice up a short story. I came out of LADY BIRD, Gerwig's solo directorial debut, and expressed much the same sentiment. It's not just that the story is set in Sacramento, the town where I grew up, or that its central character, Christine "Lady Bird" McPherson (Saoirse Ronan), yearns to escape high school in the Operation Iraqi Freedom winter of 2003, a year before I graduated. Every single detail in this movie is right: the unnamed supermarket where Lady Bird's brother works is a dead-on replica of the tan-and-artichoke-green Raley's grocery chain in the early Bush years, before the chain was forced to gentrify and update its color scheme; the ruby red Sacramento News & Review boxes dot the sidewalk cafes, where scruffy hipsters read Howard Zinn and make exotic-for-Sactown references to Maurice Pialat; a non-religious family of Unitarian Universalists send their daughter to a Catholic school because they reflexively refuse to subject her to that purportedly gang-infested, one-time flagship Sacramento High School. (Actually, in 2002-2003, Sac High was subject to a hostile take-over from one-time NBA star, charter school entrepreneur, future mayor Kevin Johnson—but the family's very obliviousness to this debate rings true, too.) But LADY BIRD's achievement goes beyond its exacting production design and precise recall of seemingly trivial details. The rituals of Lady Bird and her mother (Laurie Metcalf)—a shopping spree at Thrift Town, a disingenuous tour of model homes—track so closely to the aspirational lower-middle-class activities that I know but which rarely wind up on screen. There's a strip mall-sized gulf between the articulate and affectionate depiction of this social strata in LADY BIRD (and Kogonada's COLUMBUS) and the gawking condescension that undergirds the misogynistic screeds of Alexander Payne. LADY BIRD is particularly smart in the way Gerwig expresses gradations of class through competing neighborhoods, accessories, and body language. Compare the belabored set piece about buying a cell phone in Richard Linklater's recent LAST FLAG FLYING, also set in 2003, with the subtle way that a phone pulled out during class stands in for pages of expository dialogue in LADY BIRD. One movie's throwaway comic relief is another's freighted shorthand. Sacramento is front and center in LADY BIRD's logline and I haven't read a single review that fails to describe Ronan as a Sacramento teenager. LADY BIRD was photographed primarily in Los Angeles, with a few days of exteriors shot in Sacramento. That hasn't stopped Sacramentans from claiming every piece of LADY BIRD that hasn't been nailed down. Thrift Town sent out an e-blast promoting the cameo from its El Camino location while Lonely Planet compiled a location guide highlighting the convenience store that Ronan visits in one short scene or the blue house where her first boyfriend lives. The Tower Theatre, which appears on screen for a second or two in a montage towards the end, has been playing LADY BIRD for twelve weeks straight and grossed over $500,000 with the picture, a new house record. But while LADY BIRD is achingly precise in its overall social geography (of course the selfish rich classmate lives in Granite Bay!), there's one detail that's been left deliberately hazy: Everyone I know from my mother to my ex-girlfriend to high school classmates with whom I haven't spoken in over a decade has an opinion about where exactly Lady Bird's house "on the wrong side of the tracks" might be found. In Gerwig's earlier FRANCES HA, her twentysomething Manhattan transplant spends a Christmas at her parents' house in Sacramento at 214 Camellia Ave—an address that doesn't quite exist, but suggests the cozy East Sac bungalow belt that many assume to be the de facto neighborhood of LADY BIRD. In 2003, anything in the city proper would've been considered déclassé, coming as it did right before the debt-financed building boom that finally reversed decades of exodus to suburban Citrus Heights and Fair Oaks. Love and attention are one and the same. It's rare to find a movie that can be subjected to this kind of loving scrutiny, but does any of it matter unless you hail from NorCal? Sure, hella. Even if you can't tell the Tower Bridge from the H Street Bridge, LADY BIRD still feels intensely rooted, evoking a rich sense of personal geography that's at once deeply specific and effortlessly universal. It's an effort to conjure the past with every piece in place, but the mystery at the center remaining exquisitely preserved. LADY BIRD is first and foremost a memory play, though Gerwig obscures that form by eschewing traditional markers like voice-over narration and present-day bookends. We sense the presence of an older, wiser Lady Bird through what's left out and what lingers just beyond our comprehension. Lady Bird appears in almost every scene, but there are a handful of moments outside her direct experience—a quietly humiliating job interview for her father, Tracy Letts, or the tender scene of her drama teacher Stephen McKinley seeking treatment for an unspoken malady—that acknowledge the emotional wholeness but ultimately inaccessibility of other people. Our parents are people, our teachers are people, and we're people, too. Someday. (2017, 93 min, DCP Digital) [K.A. Westphal]

Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s WHEN MARNIE WAS THERE (Japan)

Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – Sunday, 11am

Now that Studio Ghibli has passed out of the hands of producer/directors Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, animation fans have wondered about the future of the legendary studio. The first feature film out of the blocks was Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s WHEN MARNIE WAS THERE. Hallmarks of Studio Ghibli are evident, from the incredible illustration and limited animation that make each of the studio’s films a work of art to a supernatural theme. The story of a troubled 12-year-old girl who feels alienated from her foster parents echoes Miyazaki’s classic SPIRITED AWAY (2001), but the treatment by co-screenwriters Keiko Niwa, Masashi Andô, and Joan G. Robinson based on the latter’s young adult novel, is far less fanciful. Anna Sasaki (voice of Sara Takatsuki) is sent to the country by her foster mother (voice of Nanako Matsushima) to recover from both her asthma and an apparent case of depression. Her kindly aunt and uncle (voices of Toshie Negishi and Susumu Terajima) allow her to do pretty much whatever she wants. A talented artist, Anna finds herself fixating on the Marsh Mansion, a dilapidated stately home where she encounters and befriends Marnie (Kasumi Arimura), the blonde-haired Anglo daughter of a rich couple. It is clear that Marnie is a spirit whose love for Anna helps her stop hating herself and start opening herself to other connections, including with her parents. Their relationship could, however, be read as homoerotic, as Anna has a masculine appearance and is something of an outcast, as a queer girl or trans boy might be. The film may be most affecting for teen and queer girls and trans boys, who will see themselves in this story. The rest of us may miss the whimsical Miyazaki touch. (2014, 103 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Cédric Klapisch’s RISE (France)

The Wilmette Theatre (1122 Central Ave.) – See Venue website for showtimes

For the life of me, I can’t understand what film critics have against Cédric Klapisch. They say his characters are cliché. His plots are predictable. He doesn’t offer any original insights. He’s too lackluster, but also too ebullient. What’s a romcom director to do? What I love about Cédric Klapisch is his unabashed celebration of life and its possibilities. In his wonderful new film, RISE, there is every reason for his central character, Élise Gautier (Marion Barbeau), to despair. About to premiere as the lead in the Paris Opera Ballet’s production of La Bayadère, she sees her boyfriend making out in the wings with another dancer. Devastated, she loses concentration and lands a grand jeté awkwardly on her bad ankle, after which she is told by her physician that she may be able to dance again in four months, two years, or never, forcing the ballet company to fire her. Moreover, she lost her mother when she was a girl and has been raised by an inept father (Denis Podalydès) who provides for her materially, but not emotionally. At 26, Élise was nearing the end of her ballet career, but being forced prematurely to plan her “second life,” as all ballet dancers must, leaves her confused and rudderless. Another dancer (Souheila Yacoub), whose career was ended by an injury at 18, invites Élise to come with her and her chef boyfriend (Pio Marmaï) to work at an artists’ colony in Brittany. She peels carrots and watches modern dancer/choreographer/composer Hofesh Shechter (himself) and his company rehearse a new dance. Slowly, Élise starts to envision a new future—one not lighter than air but rather planted firmly on the ground. It’s only fair to say that RISE had me a “hello”—the opening shot is of the exquisitely supple arm of Barbeau, a principal dancer with the Paris Opera Ballet. But Barbeau does more than dance beautifully. Her acting is incredibly strong for a debut performance, adding the kind of nuance and exhilaration she infuses into her dancing to a part that requires quite a few colors. RISE is also laugh-out-loud funny at times, mostly when focused on Élise’s New Age physical therapist (François Civil), who is twice unlucky in love. Most notable are the generous amounts of dancing that are brilliantly filmed by Alexis Kavyrchine. Kavyrchine is able to isolate a small step en pointe, but also the facial expressions that communicate a dancer’s motivation beyond just executing moves. One standout scene is on the cliffs off the Atlantic coast, where the dancers allow the wind to push them around and swirl them together in chains that, from above, resemble Matisse’s human daisy chains, an artistic companion to his more formal shots a la Degas of the corps de ballet lounging and stretching in their white tutus at the beginning of the film. Kavyrchine’s greatest moments come during the premiere of Shechter’s thrilling contemporary dance. He maintains the energy and movement of the heavy steps and swirling runs of the dancers as they weave in, out, and around each other, while never cutting away from the ensemble for too long. His work finds the perfect balance between Fred Astaire’s insistence on full body shots and the frenetic editing that is more impressed with its own movement than the choreographer’s. RISE really gets inside the heads and hearts of those who commit their lives to the stringent discipline of dance, and with one literal leap of faith, fills us with their joy. (2022, 117 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS –
ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Chicago Film Archives
The Chicago Transit Authority, in partnership with the Chicago Film Archives (CFA), presents a new, one-of-a-kind temporary art installation now playing at the Cicero Green Line station (4800 W. Lake St.). The installation, called we love, is a filmic exhibition of home movies and amateur films selected from collections housed and preserved at CFA. The video, which has a runtime of approximately 48 minutes, will be projected onto a wall in the mezzanine area of the station. The video will run day and night through mid-March next year. More info here. 

⚫ Cinema/Chicago
Eric Barbier’s 2020 French film GAGARINE (97 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 6:30pm, at the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St.). Note that advance tickets are no longer available. Please pick up a Rush Card when doors open at 5:45pm to reserve your place for a last-minute ticket. Open seats will be made available to Rush Card holders 15 minutes prior to showtime on a first-come, first-served basis. Admission is not guaranteed. More info here.

⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Frank Pierson’s 1976 version of A STAR IS BORN (139 min, DCP Digital) screens on Friday at 7pm and Saturday at 4pm as part of the Some Dreamers of the Silver Screen: L.A.'67-'76 series. More info here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
It’s officially Music Box Garden Movies season! See Venue website for films and showtimes. 

Pietro Marcello’s 2022 film SCARLET (103 min, DCP Digital) begins this week. See Venue website for showtimes.

The Friday and Saturday midnight shows are Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 cult classic THE ROOM (99 min, 35mm) and Jim Sharman’s 1975 all-around classic ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (100 min, 35mm), respectively. 

Looney Tunes on 35mm screen Saturday and Sunday at 11am through 3pm. Screening as part of the Southport Art Fest 2023 with live music in the lounge, a build-your-own bloody mary bar, beer tastings from Bell's, Half Acre and New Belgium plus wine tastings from Dablon Vineyards in the Music Box Garden. Free admission.

An advance screening of Alex Winter’s 2022 film THE YOUTUBE EFFECT (99 min, DCP Digital) takes place Wednesday at 7pm, with a full run beginning Friday. After the Wednesday screening Winter will appear in-person for a post-film Q&A moderated by Parker Molloy. More info on all screenings and events here.

⚫ Sideshow Gelato (4819 N. Western Ave.)
The Sideshow Gelato shop presents Sideshow Sinema!, during which they will screen films connected to the shop theme, every Thursday. More info here.

⚫ Sweet Void Cinema (3036 W. Chicago Ave.)
Find information on the Humboldt Park microcinema, including its screening and workshop schedule, here.

CINE-LIST: July 7 - July 13, 2023

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Maxwell Courtright, Ray Ebarb, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Danny King, Joe Rubin, Dmitry Samarov, Michael Glover Smith, K.A. Westphal