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NEW REVIEWS
Jacques Rivette’s CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING (France)
Available to stream on the Criterion Channel (subscription required)
In 2012, the critic Miriam Bale coined the phrase “persona-swap film” to describe a previously unacknowledged genre, one that stretches from Howard Hawks’ GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES in 1953 through David Lynch’s MULHOLLAND DRIVE half a century later. She cites Jacques Rivette’s 1974 masterpiece CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING as an essential entry in this unique cycle of movies that focuses on the female experience by examining how two friends with contrasting personalities—one eccentric, the other more conventional—either swap or magically merge identities. The publication of Bale’s essay coincided with the rehabilitation of Rivette’s reputation when a number of his major films that were previously difficult to see started to become more widely available in the wake of his 2009 retirement. CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING, the most accessible film from Rivette’s greatest period (1969-1976), is only now receiving its long-awaited streaming debut in America, having never been released on DVD or Blu-ray in this country. (This, by itself, is a good reason to subscribe to the Criterion Channel.) Based on a 2017 restoration of the original 16mm elements by France’s Centre National du Cinéma, the movie’s colors are now tighter than ever, while the plentiful grain within its Academy aspect ratio is beautifully preserved—at times giving the image the quality of a pointillist painting. But the irresistible central performances—by two actresses with pointedly contrasting styles (the theatrically trained Dominique Labourier as Celine and the natural-born movie star Juliet Berto as Julie)—have always been and still are the main draw. Berto and Labourier, who also co-wrote, have admitted to consciously drawing on Bergman’s PERSONA for inspiration (while Rivette, more typically, was thinking of Hawks) as they created the scenario of a magician befriending a librarian and, with the aid of a psychotropic hard candy, entering into a “house of fiction.” This location is a literal Parisian mansion inside of which the same 19th-century mystery story (involving a love triangle and the murder of a young girl) plays out each time the women pay it a visit. Eduardo de Gregorio, Rivette’s regular co-writer during this period, apparently scripted these “film-within-a-film” scenes based on two stories by Henry James. The way Celine and Julie start out as passive spectators of the Jamesian mystery but gradually become active participants in its plot underscores the most intellectually provocative aspect of this otherwise supremely playful opus: A lot of filmmakers have made great movies about the process of making movies—but only Rivette made a great one about the process of watching them. The result is one rabbit hole I am happy to go down again and again. (1974, 194 min) MGS
Cousin: Cycle 0 (Experimental)
Available for free here from Friday (5/8) 11:00 pm CST until Sunday (5/10) 10:59 pm CST. Live streams are scheduled for Friday, 5/8 at 7 pm CST (Program 1) and Saturday, 5/9 at the same time (Program 2), both followed by a post-screening Q&A with the artists
In 2018, filmmakers Alexandra Lazarowich, Sky Hopinka, Adam Piron, and Adam Khalil converged at the six-day cinematic pressure-cooker that is the Flaherty Film Seminar. From this convergence, two important developments emerged: first, the four Indigenous artists successfully lobbied to change the Seminar’s logo: an exoticizing image from Robert Flaherty’s NANOOK OF THE NORTH. Second, the group conceived of Cousin, a collective of film artists dedicating to supporting and exhibiting experimental film and video by Native makers. Supported by a grant from Cinereach, the organization has launched an initiative to commission new works; the first round of recipients has just been announced, and this weekend, Cousin will present Cycle 0, an online presentation of previous works by the nine grantees. Divided into two, roughly hour-long programs, Cycle 0 is a marvelous introduction to some of the most exciting moving-image work being produced today, and a tantalizing glimpse of what we might expect from the commissioned artists in the future. Program 1 begins with a stingingly beautiful piece by Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, the Mixtec film collective whose work is perhaps the most widely known among the Cousin grantees. COYOLXAUHQUI (2017, 10 min) begins in an ecstatic mode, capturing cactus fruits and Oaxacan landscapes in kinetic 16mm brushstrokes reminiscent of Teo Hernández. Towards the end of the film, the film’s cast darkens, as the camera registers women’s discarded shoes and undergarments amidst the desert dust, indexes of the femicidal violence that surrounds the region’s many factories. In a sense, COYOLXAUHQUI sets in motion many of the themes to be found in the two programs: A SONG OFTEN PLAYED ON THE RADIO (2019, 23 min), by Raven Chacon (Diné) and Cristobal Martinez, and NISGUYA CHU (2020, 6 min), by seth cardinal dodginhorse (Tsuut'ina, Amskapi Piikani, Cree) also interrogate landscape, attentive to the histories of displacement, exploitation, and violence engraved therein. COYOLXAUHQUI likewise constellates divergent qualities of beauty, tragedy, irony, defiance, and deliverance, all common among works in Cycle 0, through acute attention to cinematic materiality and form. This investment in materiality is acutely felt in Métis animator Rhayne Vermette’s dizzyingly inventive DOMUS (2017, 15 min), which does miraculous things with tape splices and direct animation. Materiality also emerges as a signal concern in multiple works which invoke the water protectors of Standing Rock, suggesting that the ontological richness of experimental film offers a powerful vehicle to communicate urgent battles over resources. Among these works, Ipai Kumeyaay and Payómkawichum filmmaker Laura Hinman’s SAN DIEGO (2020, 32 min), in Program 2, hits hardest—perhaps, in part, because it’s also the freshest, the first experimental film I’ve seen to fully reckon with the post-COVID 19 reality. Hinman’s video stages casually-gathered fragments of daily life together with drone footage of violent assaults on Indigenous sovereignty and bittersweet scenes of gatherings and dances held in quarantine-imposed isolation; the densely-edited video explodes with a pent-up force, yet resolves with unexpected grace. At one point, an electronically manipulated voice lays out the philosophy of Seven Generations, entreating listeners to consider the care we owe to those who come before and after us. The weight of these inheritances is elegantly illustrated in Bolivian filmmaker Miguel Hilari’s documentary BOCAMINA (2018, 18 min), which takes as its starting point an 18th-century painting of Potosí, where generation after generation have worked extracting silver from mountain mines. As his camera takes us from the depths of the mines to the city’s classrooms, Hilari pivots unerringly from immersive observation to portraiture to playful interviews, in which the city’s schoolchildren reveal how much the history and the culture of mining weighs on their own futures. Indigenous futures are, ultimately, the primary subject of Cousin’s Cycle 0 program: not only do these selections promise a wave of exceptional works from commissioned artists a little down the line, they also betoken a major new center of gravity in Indigenous and experimental film making. Also showing: GIIZIS MOOKA’AM GIIWE (2018, 13 min) by Eve-Lauryn Little Shell LaFountain (Turtle Mountain Chippewa), a gorgeous time-lapse portrait of Northeast Los Angeles that recalls classics by Pat O’Neill and Gary Beydler; PAHÁ KIŊ LENÁ WAKHÁ (2017, 8 min) by Kite (Oglála Lakȟóta); WE ONLY ANSWER OUR LAND LINE (2019, 6 min) by Olivia Camfield (Mvskoke Creek) and Woodrow Hunt (Cherokee and Klamath). MM
Cristi Puiu's THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU (Romania)
Available free on Kanopy through participating libraries with your library card and Vudu with ads (also available to rent as well); streaming on Netflix (subscription required)
[SPOILERS] My sense-memories of this film are inextricably bound up with the circumstances in which I first watched it, during the 2005 Chicago International Film Festival at a screening that was the capper to a terrible day. Early that morning I realized that I had caught a cold. I only felt sicker as the day went on, which led to cancelling a dinner reservation. Stubbornly though I refused to miss the movie; so, despite a mishap with the CTA that nearly made me late to the show, I was seated uncomfortably with a wad of Kleenex nestled in my lap as the house lights went down. THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU unfolds in near-real time, composed entirely of long takes. A 62-year old man who lives by himself in a sad apartment on the outskirts of Bucharest feeds his cats one evening, and then calls for an ambulance. He’s been throwing up since morning and has a headache. The ambulance takes upwards of 30 minutes to arrive, and in the meanwhile, he gets an earful from his next-door neighbors. Everyone nags him about drinking too much and no one seems to want to take his ailments seriously. And he doesn't get much sympathy even after the ambulance arrives and he finds himself shuttled around from hospital to hospital, his condition steadily deteriorating. Most of the medical personnel seemed more concerned with their own problems and maintaining their social status among the other staff. And then finally, Mr. Lazarescu dies. As I sat in the theater that night, feeling like garbage, the film triggered visceral flashbacks to the times in my life that I've been a sick patient: moments when you’re so out of it and incoherent and weak that you can’t speak, you can’t move; and yet you never lose awareness of what’s going on around you, the doctors and nurses speaking of you in the third person as they hover over your bed. Doctor after doctor asking the same questions, running the same tests, putting you through periods of waiting that feel endless. And though the style of the film is a lot like a Frederick Wiseman documentary, no music score and all straight cuts, it's shot through with a vein of jet-black humor that can only be compared with writer Paddy Chayefsky's undersung satire THE HOSPITAL. In this time of pandemic, is there room in our cinematic diets for a film that suggests that the systemic failures of a health system can be farcical? Or, watching Puiu's film now, are we more apt to sympathize with the medical workers in the film, who are overworked and underappreciated? If you've got a strong constitution, now's the time to find out. (2005, 144 min) RC
Abner Pastoll’s A GOOD WOMAN IS HARD TO FIND (Ireland)
Available for rent through Facets Cinémathèque here
Sarah Collins is a recently windowed mother of two drawn into the world of drug dealing and organized crime by a stranger who invades her home. After robbing a local gangster, Tito, a low-level drug dealer, barges into Sarah’s house. Threatening her life, he decides to use her home as a stash spot for the stolen drugs. Tito comes by every day to conduct business, terrorizing Sarah and her children. In his weird addict logic, he now considers Sarah his business partner, putting her in the distressing situation of benefiting from the money he gives her as her cut of the sales. Soon enough, the local mobster figures out who robbed him, and that Sarah is somehow connected. Throughout all of this Sarah is having to deal with the local police, who, believing her recently killed husband died in a drug deal, have been apathetic about catching his murderer and have called child services because they see her as a potentially unfit parent. Completely out of her depth, Sarah must protect her children while navigating gangland Belfast and confronting everyone who seems to want to unravel her world. The film’s title suggests the influence of the great Southern Gothic author Flannery O’Connor; the film’s characters and content unquestioningly confirm it. There a level of relentless indifference that the world of A GOOD WOMAN IS HARD TO FIND maintains that gives Sarah’s journey a type of hope that is without sentimentality. It’s not as though her world lacks beauty, or is only steeped in violence. It’s a world in which a concept like weltschmerz could never exist. There is no time for such nonsense. In fact, it’d be dangerous to even begin to be so precious or nostalgic. Everything simply is as it is, and Sarah must make do. And like the best aspects of Flannery O’Connor’s work, this film showcases an uncaring world that can only be successfully walked by those with a strict personal morality. Characters here must live their life by an unwavering constitution—any alteration and they may become subject to a stronger, inexorable force. Rather than recreate the short story this film’s title plays homage to, what we have here is an interpretation of the conceptual O’Connor World. By treating this cruel ur-world as unquestioningly real, both the American South of O’Connor and A GOOD WOMAN IS HARD TO FIND’s Belfast become nothing more than a patina of locale. It’s actually quite easy to see how O’Connor’s particular style of religiously derived realism could be transplanted to Northern Ireland. Screenwriter Ronan Blaney and director Abner Pastoll (what a wonderfully O’Connor-esque name that is!) have done a wonderful job of creating, and placing Sarah Collins in, this unforgiving world. To present it as a captivating council estate neo-noir is just the crowning stroke (2020, 97 min) RJM
Allan Arkush and Joe Dante’s HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD (US)
Available free on Tubi
HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD is a minor movie by most standards. Shot in ten days and on “short ends” to boot, it makes up for a lack of original material with plenty of footage blatantly taken from other films. There isn’t a plot so much as a collection of episodes with the same characters, and, to make it feel even more like a burlesque revue, there’s also a musical performance and interruptions for T&A. Like many an early sound-era quickie, it feels like it was made up as the filmmakers went along—it’s a crime movie for ten minutes here, a slasher flick for fifteen minutes there—and like lots of those talkie programmers, the movie just breezes by. The tone is genial and goofy, and little of the action seems to be of much consequence. (The heroine rebounds from traumatic, even life-threatening, situations so often that it becomes a running gag.) So why, then, does HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD require so much exegesis? Because every scene contains enough references to suggest the film was directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Candice Rialson plays a naive young woman from Indiana who comes to Hollywood in search of an acting career; she finds one at a low-rent company that’s pointedly similar to Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, which happened to produce this. Before Rialson lands a gig, she hires an agent played by Dick Miller; the character shares a name, Walter Paisley, with the schlemiel Miller played in Corman’s A BUCKET OF BLOOD (1959). The director Rialson works for is played by Paul Bartel, who directed the Corman-produced DEATH RACE 2000 the year before this was made, and the studio’s D-list star is played by Mary Woronov, who’d played a key role in that film. Much of the recycled footage comes from DEATH RACE 2000, though at least another half-dozen Corman pictures enter into the brew. The film makes no attempt to hide how cobbled-together it is; the editing calls attention to the mismatches, making them into metafictional jokes. Dante is likely responsible for the witty montage (he takes credit for editing along with Amy Jones and co-director Arkush), having first attracted Corman’s attention with the no-budget found-footage film THE MOVIE ORGY (1968). One can also see seeds of future Dante movies like GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH (1990) and SMALL SOLDIERS (1998) in the MAD magazine-style, gag-filled frames. A lot of those gags, incidentally, are about the crass, exploitative nature of Corman’s production tactics; HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD might well be deemed the New World version of BEWARE OF A HOLY WHORE. (1976, 83 min) BS
In Treatment: Season 3: Sunil (US/Television Series)
Available with a subscription to Amazon Prime Video, HBO Now, HBO Go, and DirecTV
In 2005, a 30-minute TV series premiered in Israel. The series, Be Tipul (In Therapy), dealt with the private travails of a psychotherapist and the various clients who came in for treatment. It ran only two seasons, but such was the quality of the award-winning show and the curiosity people have about the secrets spoken in our modern confessionals that it spawned imitators around the globe. Among the 14 versions of Be Tipul was In Treatment, the superb U.S. series starring Gabriel Byrne as Dr. Paul Weston that aired on HBO for three seasons. Like its Israeli counterpart, In Treatment was nominated for and won numerous awards, but sadly overlooked for any honors was Irrfan Khan (who died of cancer this past April at the much-too-young age of 54) as Sunil Sanyal, a retired Bengali math teacher and recent widower who has not adjusted to living in the United States with his son, Arun (Samrat Chakrabarti), and daughter-in-law, Julia (Sonya Walger). Khan’s work as Sunil, arguably the best of his English-language career, pulls back a curtain on the difficulty so many immigrants have in internally reconciling clashing cultures, as well as the loneliness, regrets, indignities, and lost freedoms the elderly are expected to bear “nobly.” The decision to seek therapy for Sunil is Julia’s. She feels uncomfortable around him and is infuriated by his small acts of rebellion, like refusing to bathe. Over the course of his treatment, Paul and Sunil behave more like friends than therapist and client, sharing tea together and calling each other by their first names. Sunil even persuades Paul to allow him to smoke during treatment. Because the series focuses on the relative inaction of talking therapy, we are privileged to watch closely two acting masters at work, making every gesture and word count as a door into the personalities of Paul and Sunil. Each tries to draw the other out, Sunil commenting on Paul’s Irish accent and probing for personal details, and Paul trying to make therapy seem like the conversation Sunil craves. Khan finds the pauses in scenes that indicate a change in mood—abruptly digging into his tobacco pouch to roll himself a cigarette, looking off into a corner of the room and remaining silent when Paul asks a question or makes an observation. Khan’s seductive, hooded eyes draw us in, arouse our sympathy for the losses he has suffered and the petty tyrannies he is forced to endure. Yet, he is an intelligent man, a member of the ruling Brahmin caste, and one should never take a wounded lion for granted. He is studying Paul, too, subverting the therapeutic process for his own ends, as many unmotivated clients do. The tragedy is that Paul drops his professional objectivity under Sunil’s spell, as Julia points out during an unscheduled visit, because Sunil offers him—a divorced, middle-age man and awkward father to a teenage son—a friendship he so desperately needs. In Treatment is as engrossing an experience as you’ll ever find, and the heartbreaking, complex performances of Byrne and Khan in the “Sunil” episodes are about as good as it gets. (2010, 210 min total) MF
David Macián’s THE INVISIBLE HAND (Spain)
Available free on Kanopy through participating libraries with your library card
In 1759, economist and philosopher Adam Smith coined the phrase “the invisible hand” to characterize how free agents acting in their own self-interest will, through their very nature, bring about beneficial economic and social outcomes. The invisible hand, roughly translated in modern parlance, means “greed is good.” In 2020, it seems abundantly clear to everyone but the unmasked no-nothings who parade with “arbeit macht frei” signs that the free market is no match for a tiny virus, but Smith’s unintentionally benevolent hand was discredited long ago by the results of the free exercise of self-interest—slavery, genocide, and a great many other ills. In THE INVISIBLE HAND, based on a novel of the same name by Isaac Rosa, film producer David Macián makes his directorial debut with an inventive examination of the effects of neoliberal economics on the working stiff. The film takes place inside a large warehouse in which a theatrical production will feature ordinary workers performing their jobs according to a prescribed routine for a paying audience. We watch as a butcher chops up animal carcasses and throws the meat away, a construction worker builds a brick wall and then knocks it down with a sledgehammer, a telephone surveyor questions individuals about their attitudes toward work, a seamstress sews on bra straps and then cuts the bras in half and throws them away. Other workers perform similarly rote tasks that accomplish nothing day after day after day while a cleaning woman and food vendor take care of the audience’s needs and get roped into doing work they aren’t being paid for. In between performances, we hear each worker’s story at their job interview; all have sad stories of a broken economy and callous employers that make them eager to be cast in the play. The company that employs these workers—we may suppose it is a theatre company, but the generic term “company” used by the workers universalizes their dilemma—begins making greater demands on their productivity, with wage penalties if they don’t meet their quotas. Inevitably, the real dynamics of an economic structure designed to benefit only the company’s bottom line and the rapacious desires of consumers are revealed. The workers are played by actors, but so real were their interactions, their breakdowns, their sheer vulnerability to the forces over which they had little control that I believed them completely. There are few people who will not be able to relate to and feel the absurd pain in the Kafkaesque landscape Macián and his talented cast lay before us in the urgent and timely THE INVISIBLE HAND. (2016, 83 min) MF
Helen Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s LET THE CORPSES TAN (France/Belgium)
Available to stream on Amazon Prime Video (with membership) and Kanopy through participating libraries with your library card
This is the third genre bending feature film by the married writer/director team of Helen Cattet and Bruno Forzani, whose two prior features, AMER (2009) and THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY’S TEARS (2013), upended and de/reconstructed the giallo film. This time we have an absolutely perfect re-imagining of both spaghetti westerns and the poliziottechi films of 1960s and 70s Italy. The filmmakers’ masterful grasp on the mechanics and aesthetics of Italian exploitation cinema makes this film feel like a movie out of time—a Sergio Corbucci or Fernando Di Leo film, but instead of their populist vulgarisms, here there is a conscious attempt at artfulness. The plot of CORPSES is pure poliziottechi: a gang of criminals heist a truck full of gold ingots and then go hide in the remote mountainside dwelling of a hermetic artist and her alcoholic former lover. Once the police get involved, and the thieves’ den is under siege, we start to see the rats scatter with series of double crosses. The film ignores linear storytelling, constantly cross-cutting through time and space, in order to show the reactions of different characters to the unfolding events. To be fair, the plot does get somewhat convoluted. It’s sometimes hard to keep track as to who is turning on whom, especially when jumping back and forth in time. But to make up for this Cattet and Forzani bewitch the audience with some of the most beautiful on-screen imagery in recent years. This film drips with style. Every shot meticulous, every angle calculated, every edit so precise that you completely forget the muddled story line. This movie is cool. It’s cool like BREATHLESS is cool. How Andy Warhol is cool. It’s a cool that is so meticulously combed over and presented that it comes off as completely natural and effortless. It’s a beautiful, beautiful lie. LET THE CORPSES TAN is a movie that Quentin Tarantino wishes he could make. If not Tarantino, at least his cadre of ultra-fans. It borrows the same kind of pastiche/homage of European B-films that Tarantino loves to stitch his films together with, but with far less vulgar winking at the camera and obvious elbow nudging to trash cinema connoisseurs. Thank god. Though in the same style, this film actually has some restraint. And I say that knowing how much blood and urine it puts on the screen. The filmmakers understand that crisp plot was often beside the point of the films that LET THE CORPSES TAN borrows from, so here plot is a device to get you from one gorgeous shot, one breathtaking scene, to the next. A heist leads to a shoot-out, leads to a double cross, leads to violent death. Because we already know all this, we can just sit back and let its lusciousness wash over us. LET THE CORPSES TAN purposely keeps you at arms’ length. It wants you to watch, admire, be seduced by its cruel beauty. If you want a Michael Mann-esque taught, procedural heist, look somewhere else. But if you want to gorge yourself on a Dionysian feast of beauty and style, where blood becomes paint, sand becomes canvas, and aesthetics conquer all, you can’t do much better than this. (2017, 92 min) RJM
Albert Serra’s LIBERTÉ (France)
Available for rent via Facets Cinémathèque here
The least likely thing an audience might take away from LIBERTÉ (if they don’t turn it off in revulsion first) is the stillness and sustained ambiance found during the evening of debauched games of perversion it presents—perversions far removed from the chaste and sterile “eroticism” seen in so much modern cinema today. Despite all of the powdered wigs dogging in a forest, an undeniable, contrasting mood and ambiance breaks through, enveloping the non-narrative images (sound and picture wholly integrated), prevailing over some very funny images of people beating off in the dark. The sonorous woods, full of poison, serenaded with nocturnal late night birdsong, occasionally layered with the scrapings of wood on dirt, the snapping of twigs, the collapsing of belt buckles, and, more often than not, bodies and skin slapping against each other, saliva lubricating the muscles and organs of bodies, threatening, but never overtaking, the sustained stillness of the surrounding forest. The ambience embraces everything we will see, as dusk gives way to night, and eventually to dawn. Night, however, is when most of the film transpires, though the faint notion of time is one of several barely discernible elements: the hardly-there narrative and dimly lit images become wholly pleasurable as moments that make up an entire night separate into a few hours as we begin to anticipate the dawn. The “narrative” features a group of late 17th-century French libertines hiding from the courts in the middle of a forest along the Prussian border. Their libertinage has had cast them out, their days surely numbered. Time stretches into long passages, every moment surrendering to the sensual atmosphere, the “plot” escalating as the sexual acts rise and fall. We wait for moments that remind us of THE DEVILS or SALO, yet we only seem to get glimpses of flesh and fragments of sounds through the trees in the dense darkness. The legendary Helmut Berger, who plays a much older Duke and a sort of idol to the group, is murdered, but, like most of the violence, one is almost unsure whether it happened or not. We see the Duke apparently being murdered, his body lying on the ground, but is all this the projection of some sex/death drive fantasia? A sort-of horny revolution for the death of hierarchy? Or is it just selfish carnality misinterpreted as liberation, a momentous opportunity taken full advantage of? The libertines frequently praise one of the women taking part in the naughty acts, crediting her as “the greatest actress,” while most of the violence is only ever discussed, never taking place on screen, or possibly at all. Serra’s use of lighting adds to the pervasive sense of uncertainty, fragmenting objects, focused on the beauty of an eye, a branch, the moon, or a bare ass; the sexual acts themselves remain harder to fully perceive (but are still graphic). Two of Serra’s most recent films, STORY OF MY DEATH and THE DEATH OF LOUIS XIV, are (despite their giveaway titles) depictions of worlds on the precipice of change, where a moment has happened and passed, yet not fully turned. The slow stillness of Serra’s camera in LIBERTÉ highlights this feeling, as the languid passing of minutes and seconds give way to the steady flow of space and time, highlighted by some of the most beautiful digital imagery to date. (2019, 132 min, Digital) JD
Christophe Honoré’s ON A MAGICAL NIGHT (France)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
Writer-director Christophe Honoré thanks Woody Allen and Bertrand Blier in the end credits of this comic fantasy, and it’s easy to see why. Like the comic fantasies of Allen and Blier, ON A MAGICAL NIGHT wastes little time on exposition, taking viewers straight into a whimsical scenario without providing any rational explanation for it. This strategy could be described as “head first” in more ways than one: with minimal context, the fantasy feels like something out of a dream, and watching it develop is akin to burrowing ever deeper into the subconscious mind. The film makes haste of is set-up in a few minutes. Maria (frequent Honoré collaborator Chiara Mastroianni) is a middle-aged professor who’s been married to her husband for about 20 years. One evening her husband finds out about her recent extramarital affair, which she’d been hiding from him. He gets upset, and she leaves the apartment, renting a room at the hotel across the street to figure things out. But who should she find waiting for her in the bathroom but her husband as a 20-year-old man. He’s neither a time-traveler nor a figment of her imagination, he’s just… there. Naturally he’s curious about the sort of woman his wife will become when they’re both 20 years older, just as she’s curious to revisit what attracted her to him in the first place. The mutual curiosity intensifies until the two go to bed together; as is often the case in French cinema, sex makes everything crazy. Other visitors stop by the hotel room over the course of the night, including Maria’s dead grandmother, the human embodiment of her will (who, for some reason, resembles Charles Aznavour), the piano teacher with whom Maria’s husband had an affair in his late teens, and in what may be the movie’s best gag, the few dozen men with whom Maria’s had extramarital affairs over the years. The conceits arise gracefully, even effervescently, all the while deepening our understanding of the heroine. With each visitor, we learn about a different facet of Maria’s past or personality; what emerges is a recognizably complicated individual capable of both good and terrible decisions. The film’s lighthearted tone betrays the incisiveness of its characterization. (2019, 86 min) BS
David Marmor’s 1BR (US)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
1BR plays with one of the most American of all stories, that of the Byronic individual moving to Los Angeles to start a new life. Sarah wants to be a costume designer in Hollywood, so she leaves a past haunted by a cheating father and a dead mother behind. Things appear to work out surprisingly well as she meets a charming man at an open house viewing of an apartment who helps her secure a lease in the building complex. The first night there, however, she notices that things are not just strange, but downright terrifying. Strange noises keep her up all night, and threatening letters are slipped underneath her door. Shadows of strangers in her apartment rush across the wall without her noticing. Soon enough the cultish reality of her new living arrangement is revealed. The handsome next-door neighbor that seduced her into renting, the affable building manager, the aged former Hollywood B-actress, the prominent doctor, all of them want Sarah to be a perfect neighbor. All of them are willing to kill her to make sure she becomes one. 1BR plays loosely enough with the mass perception of the most Hollywood of all religions-cum-cults, Scientology, and overlays it with the city’s most infamous recent tabloid sex-cult, NXIVM. What is created is a unique daylight horror where Los Angeles itself is the villain. There is far more terror and implied violence than actual bloodshed. Isolation is weaponized. Though when bloodshed is necessary it’s downright Biblical. If you’re tuned into the current cult obsessed, true crime zeitgeist that 1BR mostly definitely is, then perhaps you’ll enjoy these 90 minutes of “what if?” fan-fiction. (2019, 90 min) RJM
Jacques Tati’s PARADE (Sweden/France)
Available to stream on the Criterion Channel (subscription required) and for rent on Amazon Prime
Over six features, Jacques Tati established himself as one of the most ingenious of modernist auteurs, his films masterworks of fastidiously choreographed mise-en-scène and biting satire. Initially, PARADE—which was originally made for Swedish television and would become the director’s final film—doesn’t seem to bear much resemblance to the rest of his oeuvre. Instead of pristinely organized tableaux, it abounds in unruly panning shots on fuzzy videotape. The narrative-threading antics of Tati’s iconic Monsieur Hulot, and the increasing disarray he fosters, are replaced by a plotless procession of variety-show acts, recorded in front of a live audience at Cirkus Stockholm. But true to Tati’s penchant for crafty illusion, this reality is deceptive. What appears to be a mere document of a live performance is actually an elaborately constructed multimedia tapestry, in which the circus video, shot in 1971 by Bergman cinematographer Gunnar Fischer, is intercut with studio-shot 16mm and 35mm footage filmed years later. The audience, meanwhile, features a mix of real spectators and extras, in addition to cardboard cutouts promoted from their background roles in PLAYTIME. What emerges from this unusual hybrid form is a sense of mischievous, boundary-flouting play totally in line with Tati’s method and philosophy; distinctions of “real” and “performed,” “spectator” and “participant,” become productively dissolved in the carnivalesque space of the arena. “We’re pleased to present a show in which everyone’s invited to participate,” Master of Ceremonies Tati declares. “The artists and clowns are you and me.” Thus, the crowd joins the roster of on-stage performers, from jugglers, musicians, acrobats, and magicians to Tati himself, who resurrects his old 1930s mime routines. While the “gags” lack his typically dazzling construction, the best of them still remind us of his aptitude for mining surreal, impish comedy from human activity. I especially like the audience member who, gestured by the woman behind him to remove his bike helmet, does so only to reveal an even more obstructive bulk of hair. Or the photographer-contortionist who bends himself into ever more inexplicable shapes for the winning shot, or the mule scene, in which an eager businessman defies his wife to ride, and then be ridden by, the bucking animal. Critics at the time bemoaned PARADE as being a lazy sop to mass media, but knowing Tati, that’s not at all what’s going on. His televisual aesthetics work to realize the film’s true project as a celebration of communal creativity, and a final affirmation from the director that the world is, to paraphrase Shakespeare, a stage upon which all of us are players. (1974, 89 min) JL
Joseph Cornell’s ROSE HOBART (US/Experimental)
Streams free at the National Film Preservation Foundation here
Ever since I first laid eyes on them, I’ve been enamored of the boxes of artist Joseph Cornell. These assemblages of found objects, neatly arranged in glass-fronted or interactive boxes, arouse a wonderful feeling of nostalgia, fun, and creative surprise in me. Cornell extended his assemblages to films, buying boxes of them that were languishing in New Jersey warehouses, cutting and cataloging them according to his interests, and eventually splicing them into a number of short films. The most famous of these films is ROSE HOBART, assembled from the 1931 film EAST OF BORNEO and what looks like a motion study that depicts circular ripples of water. On the rare occasions when he exhibited the silent film, he accompanied it with a recording of “Holiday in Brazil” (1957) by Brazilian composer Nestor Amaral, who contributed a couple of uncredited songs to THE GANG’S ALL HERE (1943) co-starring fellow Brazilian Carmen Miranda. Cornell would project the film at a slowed-down speed through a blue filter, though in later years, he took to using a rose filter. The blue tints suggest night, a perfect complement to the dreamscape Cornell conjures from the remnants of EAST OF BORNEO and an evocation of the feminine. Together with images of an eclipse blotting out the masculine sun and an erupting volcano, evoking the feminine Pele, he pays homage to the Goddess. Here the Goddess is given form as the star of EAST OF BORNEO, Rose Hobart. Cornell’s editing allows for intense observation of the Goddess, who, like the eclipse suggests, is sensed, even desired, but never really known. Our world, he suggests, may be the conjuring of Her own dreams, as She is shown in the beginning of the film reclining behind a mist of mosquito netting. The Goddess inhabits an exotic land of palm trees, servants in sarongs, and luxurious surroundings. Sitting females praise her with clapping and singing. She is entreated by two men, one of the East and one of the West, but neither finds favor. Her most meaningful interaction is with a wild creature—a monkey delivered to Her by a servant that She talks to and pets until it, too, lays down to slumber. Alone, She is most Herself, gathering together Her bag of tricks that includes both a lace handkerchief and a pistol, a reminder that the Goddess responds as often with natural violence as with delicate beauty. The image of the concentric rings of displaced water fascinate Her—the pool of the unconscious and its perfect, circular form. Cornell invites us to enter this pool several times in the film; only the most hard-headed observer will resist. Cornell doesn’t dwell in the lasciviousness of many dream films, for example, those of Luis Buñuel, declaring as he once did that he did not identify with the dark magic of the surrealists. He preferred white magic. That is very plain in his gentle art and films, and the care with which he treated his found objects and reassembled them, like ROSE HOBART, into works of wonder and delight. (1936, 20 min) MF
Matt Wolf’s SPACESHIP EARTH (US/Documentary)
Available for rent through the Wilmette Theatre and the Chicago International Film Festival Virtual Cinema
In 1991, much of the developed world was transfixed by the media circus surrounding the start of a great experiment. Biosphere 2, a geodesic structure on three acres in Arizona had been seeded with plant and animal life from around the world and was now ready to receive the eight people who agreed to be sealed in it for two years to run experiments in sustainability should humans ever populate distant planets. The idea behind the project was initially sparked by the environmental movement of the 1960s, particularly the ideas of R. Buckminster Fuller in his classic book Spaceship Earth, and even more specifically by a group of about 25 free-thinking, like-minded young people who had been exploring the biomes of the world in a series of adventures on an ocean-going vessel called the Heraclitus that they taught themselves to build. The story of these intrepid, idealist men and women is told through talking-head and archival footage in Matt Wolf’s engrossing SPACESHIP EARTH. The older, charismatic leader of the group, John Allen, as well as several of the biospherians and those who helped them complete their mission talk about the philosophy and camaraderie that began during the Summer of Love in San Francisco and continued through the building of an Arizona ranch that is still up and running today, the Heraclitus, and Biosphere 2. Although the media attempted to paint the group as a dubious cult that indulged in strange rituals (in fact, theatre pieces), its members did not do drugs, were businesspeople who bought property and set up for-profit ventures in various parts of the world that are still going, and conducted real science that is now being continued in Biosphere 2 by the University of Arizona with support from Ed Bass, the wealthy heir to a Texas oil fortune who had been bankrolling the group’s various projects for many years. A surprise appearance by Steve Bannon doing what he does best proves the point that biospherian Sally Silverstone makes: if you want to make a difference in the world, you have to recognize the very brief moments in time when it is possible to accomplish something and then act. SPACESHIP EARTH is interesting viewing for all of us and must-viewing for the young change agents of tomorrow. (2020, 113 min) MF
Films by John Torres (Philippines)
“Short Film Collection” available for rent or purchase here
John Torres' films and videos are unkempt shaggy ruminations on love, urban life, and ritual. Inspired by his childhood experience of Filipino cinema of the 70s and 80s with dialogue and colors and stories that were overblown and unnatural, Torres felt granted a freedom to take liberties and create his cinematic language wholecloth. His first film, TAWID GUTOM (2004), plants his flag in the sand with a somewhat overwrought romantic voiceover with playful multiple layers of video curtains being opened and closed with bold Jarman-esqe flourishes. SALAT (2004) is the most directly poetic in structure, beginning with beggar children eating sherbet, an on-screen poem about soccer, romantic on-camera performances, with rhyming themes and sherbet cones returning throughout. HAI, THEY RECYCLE HEARTBREAKS IN TOKYO SO NOTHING'S WASTED (2009) is a mournful, moody low-res cellphone piece with deliberately obscured imagery. VERY SPECIFIC THINGS AT NIGHT (2009) is another cellphone piece with cooler hazy interior images of bedroom interludes. SILENT FILM (2011) uses a stuttering broken celluloid camera to create an unsteady urban reflection. MUSE (2011) is a powerful stark little punch that dwells in the mystery yet feels completely familiar. MAPANG-AKIT (2011) is a dizzying film that repurposes outtakes from a documentary that Torres was working on to create a film that varies between realistic shambles through the village to wholly invented narratives with obscured and altered dialogue. While defiantly questionable as documentary, this deeply impressive film has a lot to say about storytelling and storytellers. All of Torres' work could be described in as poetic in some sense or another. Some literally use poetic voiceover, some of the miniature work exhibits a powerful rhetorical punch, and the longer work lives in a hazy languorous idyll that contain a seductive power. (2004-11, 82 min total) JBM
Marcelo Gomes’ WAITING FOR THE CARNIVAL (Brazil/Documentary)
Available to stream through OVID
Well photographed and amiably realized, Brazilian filmmaker Marcelo Gomes’ WAITING FOR THE CARNIVAL is most interesting for the way its interviewees unabashedly profess their capitalistic desires in light of their lamentable circumstances, which, ironically, are imposed upon them by capitalism. The documentary’s subject is Toritama, a city in the Agreste, described as a dry, poor region of northeastern Brazil, which Gomes had visited as a child; it’s also where 15% of all the jeans made in the country are produced. As a result, the so-called Capital of Jeans is overrun by production of this particular clothing item, which mostly takes place in small shops and residences, called factions, where individuals and families can work for themselves and be “owners of their own time.” Gomes approaches these people casually, with the air of a friend rather than an interloper; as a result, the residents speak openly about their experiences, which they consider largely positive. They describe working six days a week, upwards of 12 hours a day, sometimes even more, their incomes dependent on how much product they manufacture. Footage of workers making the jeans—long, short, and in between, some with hastily applied decoration, some without—is engrossing. One rarely thinks about the process, so it can be jarring to see such common garments being made, not by machines in a factory, but by people, and by hand, no less. It’s enraging, too, as the work is physically grueling and done in facilities that seem less than ideal. Still, the workers’ apparent enthusiasm for their jobs is intriguing, as it combats a firmly held notion that anyone living like this must be miserable. The film’s title refers to the yearly festival that takes place prior to Lent, when even the most assiduous workers head to the beach for a much-needed vacation. A lengthy sequence shows the workers attempting to sell phones and household appliances in order to raise funds to attend. Gomes captures the festivities by agreeing to pay for most of one worker’s family’s trip provided they document it. The resulting footage is jubilant, but a bit sad, the hard-won fruits of their labor no doubt paling in comparison to the vacations taken by those who benefit from their hard work. In stark contrast to the cheerful disposition of the locals, Gomes laments that the region has changed from a quiet one, where farming was the dominant economic activity, to one bustling with the din of sewing machines and sprawling markets where jeans are bought and sold. Ultimately, however, he seems content with letting us decide for ourselves whether this is a good or bad thing, though doing so comes with its own difficulties. As a portrayal of an individual capitalist environment, it’s absorbing and, at times, gleefully uncanny; as a microcosm of a capitalist society, it’s simply unnerving. (2019, 86 min) KS
SUPPORT LOCAL THEATERS AND SERIES
As we wait for conditions to improve to allow theaters to reopen, consider various ways that you can help support independent film exhibitors in Chicago weather this difficult time. Memberships, gift cards, and/or merchandise are available from the Gene Siskel Film Center, the Music Box Theatre, and Facets. Donations can be made to non-profit venues and organizations like Chicago Filmmakers, the Chicago Film Society, South Side Projections, and many of the film festivals. Online streaming partnerships with distributors are making films available via the Gene Siskel Film Center and the Music Box Theatre, and Facets has its own streaming service (see below).
The Gene Siskel Film Center is one of a number of theaters around the country partnering with film distributors to offer new and recently restored films via streaming, with part of the rental cost going to the theaters. The Film Center from Your Sofa: Stay Connected and Stream with Us series features new titles each week through the end of April.
The Music Box Theatre also has partnered with several distributors to offer streaming of films, with part of the rental cost supporting the theater. Check their website for details.
Facets, too, is doing distributor partnerships, and also has a subscription-based streaming service, FacetsEdge, that includes many exclusive titles.
COVID-19 UPDATES
All independent, alternative, arthouse, grassroots, DIY, and university-based venues and several festivals have suspended operations, closed, or cancelled/postponed events through the end of March at least. Here is the most recent information we have, which we will update as new information becomes available:
Asian Pop-Up Cinema – Spring series postponed till the fall
Beverly Arts Center – Closed through the end of March (tentative)
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) – Spring calendar on hold with no definitive start date
Chicago Film Archives – the CFA’s annual “Media Mixer” event, previously scheduled for May, is postponed until late summer (date TBA)
Chicago Film Society – Remaining March and April screenings on their current calendar are postponed, with intentions to reschedule at future dates
Chicago Filmmakers – All screenings postponed until further notice, with the intention of rescheduling at future dates
Comfort Film (at Comfort Station) – Programming cancelled with no set start date
Conversations at the Edge (at the Gene Siskel Film Center) – Remaining programs cancelled, with plans to reschedule at future times
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Spring programming cancelled
Facets Cinémathèque – Closed through April 17 (tentative date)
Film Studies Center (University of Chicago) – No April screenings/events; May programming is wait and see
filmfront – Events postponed until further notice
Gene Siskel Film Center – Closed until further notice
Music Box Theatre – Closed until further notice
The Nightingale – March and April programs postponed
The Park Ridge Classic Film Series (at the Park Ridge Public Library) – Screenings cancelled through the end of March at least
Festivals:
The Cinepocalypse film festival (June) – Postponed with plans to reschedule at a future time
The Onion City Experimental Film + Video Festival (March 12-15) - Postponed with plans to reschedule at a future time
The Chicago Latino Film Festival (April 16-30) – Postponed with plans to reschedule at a future time
The Windy City Horrorama festival (April 24-26) – Cancelled; will possibly be rescheduled or reconfigured at a future date
The Chicago Critics Film Festival (May 1-7) – Postponed until further notice
The Chicago Underground Film Festival (June 10-14) – Postponed (tentatively in September)
CINE-LIST: May 1 - May 7, 2020
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs, Kyle A. Westphal
CONTRIBUTORS // Rob Christopher, John Dickson, Marilyn Ferdinand, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, JB Mabe, Raphael Jose Martinez, Michael Metzger, Michael Glover Smith