Ce vieux rêve qui bouge (2001)

En mekaniker (Pierre Louis-Calixte) grejar med en maskin i en stor hall som är så gott som tom. Ett märkvärdigt ljus faller in genom fönstret, den sena eftermiddagens glöd som signalerar att arbetsdagen snart är slut. Mannen är fördjupad i vad han gör, ser ut att veta och kunna. En blyg förman (Jean Segani) kommer förbi och kollar läget, men vi iner efter ett tag att det inte är maskinen han är intresserad av. Den ska packas ihop och transporteras bort, som allt annat. Fabriken har lagts ner och nu är nästan allt jobb gjort, det är mest bara mannen som demonterar maskinerna som arbetar. Maskinisten kastar en blick på förmannen, och blicken besvaras. 

Alain Guiraudies Ce vieux rêve qui bouge (That Old Dream That Moves, en kort film på 51 minuter) skiljer sig ur mängden av filmer som i någon bemärkelse ställer arbete i centrum. Dels för att det här handlar om arbetets slut, det har jobbats färdigt men inget nytt skede har inletts. Bilderna utstrålar en outgrundlig stillsamhet och melankoli, arbetarna rör sig genom tomma miljöer som är bekanta för dem men ändå inte. Nykomlingen, mannen som plockar isär maskiner, får på arbetsplats efter arbetsplats beskåda uppbrottets stund, arbetsgäng som håller på att lösas upp och framtiden verkar oviss för dem alla på den här fabriken. Du har ju jobb så det räcker hela livet du, säger en i gänget, med giftpilens udd. Dels är filmen ovanlig som en (genom)queer berättelse. Bland filmer som tar ett queert grepp om arbetslivet kommer jag främst att tänka på God's Own Country, med det bistra jordbruket, och så Brokeback Mountain förstås (även om arbetet har en ganska marginell plats där). Och den mästerliga Billy Budd-historien Beau Travail. Och naturligtvis My Beautiful Laundrette. Tangerine, om sexarbete. Och många fler, hoppas jag. 

Vad maskinerna är för något och vad som tidigare har tillverkats i fabriken får vi aldrig veta. Vi hör ordet Ubitona, men vad det betyder vet nog bara de invigda, liksom all annan maskinjargong. Det handlar därför om arbete som en konkret abstraktion: på vissa sätt är det helt oviktigt vad vi gör, arbetet har platser och roller i livet som inte går att reducera till vad det är vi exakt håller på med. Och bland dessa roller är den skarpa dikotomin, instiftad i lag och övervakad av institutioner, mellan den arbetande och den arbetslösa. Som sagt är det bara mekanikern som utför något arbete. De andra dräller omkring. De dricker avskedsöl, småpratar, vankar runt och ser sig omkring. Snart är det ändå slutjobbat här. En ljummen bitterhet, något slags sorg. Så här har jag aldrig sett en fabrik på film förr, fabriken som icke-fabrik, det levande arbetet (om)begraver det döda arbetet i form av maskinen. Ännu har inte fabriken förvandlats till hipp restaurang eller event-lokal. 

Omklädningsrummet etableras snabbt som en erotisk zon. Flera av männen kollar in nykomlingen, han som ändå snart är på väg, liksom de alla är. Ce vieux rêve qui bouge är framför allt en skildring av erotisk attraktion, att erkänna den, kännas vid den, och att samtala om den. Att bjuda in, att bli avvisad, att bli kanske-avvisad. Guiraudie har gehör: hans minimalistiska film går djupt för att den berör något trassligt och svårfångat. Den tillfälliga erotiska attraktionen, och livsskedena som snabbt kan förändras och så kastas man in i ett nytt sammanhang. Med andra ord: en skärningspunkt mellan erotik och arbete. Mekanikern erotiseras som en sorts förlängning av maskinerna, de som nu stannat av och förfrämligats.

Filmen kan placeras i millenieskiftets tankar om samhällsomvandling, om the leisure society och det post-industriella tillståndet, the end of work, som det hette provokativt hos Jeremy Rifkin som drog stora och vettlösa växlar på allt. Många gånger fanns här ett eurocentriskt perspektiv, blint för hur arbetet flyttar runt globalt, och som fetischerade isolerade fenomen. I litteraturen kan man se strömningen i Ballards fascinerande Cocaine Nights (1996), en essä förklädd till detektivhistoria. Den sävliga, lulliga texten om hur den oändliga fritiden piggas upp av brott och sex (som även får kapitalismen att leva vidare när arbetet dött) är naturligtvis helt annorlunda än Guiraudies film. Ändå är han en regissör som har sagt sig influerats av Bataille, så helt ute och cyklar är jag inte (Cruisingfilmen Strangers by the Lake har jag inte sett). Jag kan inte låta bli att se en parallell, en historisk kontext som föder två reaktioner. Ballard målar upp ett slags dystopisk utopi, medan Ce vieux rêve qui bouge befinner sig i ögonblicket, på tröskeln, i en stillsamhet som innehåller turbulens och förändring, men det förflutna kommer aldrig tillbaka, fabriken är borta. 

Ja och det där ljuset. Som lyser genom fabriken. Som reflektioner och solkatter på väggarna ute. Den ständiga eftermiddagen. Det är som att tiden står stilla och löses upp, det är som att den där allra sista arbetsdagen levs om och om igen. Snart är fabriken helt och hållet tom.  

Lola (1961)

Nantes i ett Frankrike där minnet av kriget fortfarande sätter sin prägel på livet. Cabaretdansösen Lola (Anouk Aimée) har inte kommit över sin stora kärlek Michel men hittar tröst i tillfälliga möten, som med Frankie, en trånande sjöman från Chicago. Den grubblande Roland (Marc Michel) har just fått sparken för att han hänger sig åt dagdrömmeri och dyker upp sent. En dag stöter han på sin gamla ungdomskärlek Lola. "Jag vill inte göra någon illa, men ändå gör jag det fast jag inte vill, jag önskar att människor bara ska vara lyckliga", säger Lola. Hon sjunger om att behaga karlarna men i levande livet är det mera ambivalent. Hon är nämligen inte intresserad av att återuppliva relationen med Roland. Samtidigt har Roland utan sin vetskap tänt en gnista hos den ordentliga Madame Desnoyes som längtar efter, ja, en man (hennes make dog?). Desnoyes har i sin tur en 14-årig dotter som träffat Frankie på stan och i denne ser sina drömmar hägra. Drömmen om att åka iväg och bli dansös, som Lola, som hon påminner Roland om.

Detta är Jacques Demys tidiga film Lola. Först var den tänkt som musikal men så blev det inte. Tematiskt finns vissa överlappningar med den senare filmen Paraplyerna i Cherbourg. Till och med en karaktär återkommer (Roland). Också här handlar det om lycka och olycka, livsval och konsekvenser. Gemensamt för huvudpersonerna i Lola är att samtliga längtar efter ett annat slags liv, kanske någon annanstans, kanske med en häftig karriär. Det begär som beskrivs är en cementblandare av drömmar, intensiva känslor + fantasier. Det mesta brister och krossas, som då Roland faller för frestelsen att tjäna en hacka i fjärran land via en skum kontakt, som visar sig vara en brottsling som genast åker dit. I de allra sista sekvenserna frågar sig tittaren ännu vad lycka för de här människorna kan betyda, om det finns något bortom dröm- och projektionsvärlden. 

Lola är lätt att placera i sin tid och i sin kontext (fransk ny våg), men den är sin egen, den bygger upp en serie miljöer (hamnstadens gator, lägenheter, caféer, tivoli, bokhandel och, inte minst, kabaréteater) där fantasierna flödar. Men de flödar på ett liksom lågmält och ganska melankoliskt sätt, vilket är lite udda, för att filmen handlar ju just om rörelse, och uttrycker den också, inte minst genom Lolas dansnummer och Anouk Aimées nästan studsande manér. Eller som i den ganska ruggiga scenen när Frankie (Alan Scott) tar med Cécil (14-åringen) på tivoli och det är oklart vad slags rörelse & närmanden (grooming?) som vi får se här. Ja och allt börjar ju faktiskt med en amerikansk bil som vådligt rusar fram. Och så slutar det, in i en oviss framtid. Kanske är det mot bakgrund av det här, drömmarnas bräcklighet som kommer till uttryck på olika sätt i karaktärernas kroppar (här finns på ett tydligt sätt en uppmärksamhet på det kroppsliga, tycker jag), som alla dessa slumpmässiga möten av denna tittare kan tolereras (utan att bli fåniga alltså) och blir t.o.m. rörande. Den här rörligheten understryks dessutom genom Michel Legrands musik, som låter tragedi och komedi glida in i varandra.

Recensenter har jämfört med Viscontis Vita nätter, och det är ju helt rätt. Också här irras det runt i livet, om än mest i dagsljus. För det odrömmiga perspektivet står Michels moder som jobbar på café och är Rolands hyresvärd som också försöker ge den unga mannen några goda råd. Men goda råd och visdomar utdelade av andra, det är inte sånt som huvudpersonerna i Lola tyr sig till. Det här är den sortens film som bara blir bättre ju mer jag tänker på den, trots sin till synes lättsamma form så finns en allvarlig ton. 

Lola, 1961.

Regi: Jacques Demy.

I rollerna: Anouk Aimée, Marc Michel, Alan Scott, Elina Labourdette, Annie Dupéroux.

Emilia Pérez (2024)

Jacques Audiard har genom Emilia Pérez påmint oss om musikalens innovativa former. Men har filmen något mer än en snitsig yta, snyggt foto och djärva grepp? Mja. Den här historien om advokaten (Zoe Saldana) i Mexico City som får ett uppdrag av drogkartellboss (Karla Sofia Gascón) landar vad jag kan förstå inte riktigt i något annat än i ond gammal könsessentialism som jag helst av allt skulle se på soptippen, för här är den inte liksom analyserad eller framställt genom kulturens märkliga prismor utan framställd på ett underliggande och skumt sätt som en idé om att män är råa och våldsamma, medan kvinnors lott är att vara goda och empatiska? Nåja kanske är det nu inte riktigt så svartvitt här heller men den tanken spelar man på. Något intressant tycker jag inte att man lyckas vrida ur transtemat här, som mest fungerar som det kan göra i en såpopera, som en fond för saftiga intriger. Audiard minns jag mest från Un prophète (2009) som var ett gediget fängelsedrama, om än också där kanske tämligen tillspetsat, men också från det gripande migrantdramat Dheepan (2015). Emilia Pérez är en film lika självmedvetet snygg som den kvartersbiograf i Helsingfors där jag såg filmen. Jag satt i min lyxiga och enorma fåtölj med en dyr ipa-öl bredvid mig och undrade var jag hamnat. Varför har den här filmen fått så många priser, vad är det folk ser i den annat än de där ganska fina musiknumren? Men själva innehållet är ju bara konventionellt och strösslat med fantasilösa vändningar? 

Emilia Pérez, 2024

Regi: Jacques Audiard.

I rollerna: Zoe Saldana, Karla Sofia Gascón, Selena Gomez.

Mouton (2013)

Bressons ande, och kanske Bruno Dumonts och bröderna Dardennes, svävar tung över Mouton (Sheep), en fransk film om tillvaron på landsbygden i nord. Ju mer jag har tänkt på den, desto mer uppskattar jag regissörerna Gilles Deroos och Marianne Pistones existentiella drama i det otroligt vardagliga och, som sagt, rurala. 

I första delen av filmen följer vi en kille som kallas Mouton, som gestaltas med bravur av David Merabet. Han är 17, den alkoholiserade mamman har inte längre vårdnaden om honom och han har börjat jobba på ett hotell, i en restaurang i en liten stad vid kusten, Courseulles-sur-mer. Vädret tycks alltid vara grått och blåsigt, bilderna från stranden är långt från några semestervyer. Mouton har ett litet gäng där han är liksom med men ändå finns en spänning där som ibland exploderar. På jobbet verkar han accepterad, men: "du gör ett bra jobb men du kunde vara snabbare" får han höra när han håller på med fiskfiléerna. Det är som att en mängd saker pågår och vi ser lite grann sippra in. När en ny tjej börjar arbeta där hittar han sällskap. Sen bryts filmen genom en sak som utspelar sig under en karnevalistisk fest till helgonet S:ta Annas ära. Händelsen kommer som en chock, och filmen övergår till att använda voice-over för att, tänker jag, markera att det inte går att enbart "visa" innebörden i det skedda. I andra hälften av filmen är Mouton inte med, det är däremot den lilla staden med dess för oss bekanta invånare som försöker leva vidare. Framför allt ser vi Mimi som jobbar på kennel och som har blivit tillsammans med samma tjej som vi såg tidigare i filmen i gänget som Mouton umgicks med. På byakrogen anmäler de att de ska gifta sig. Några apploderar, andra ser helt ointresserade ut. 

Det som bär Mouton är den odelade uppmärksamheten vad gäller det vardagliga. Att röka en cigarett utanför sitt jobb, eller att dra en fylla på byafesten (en lång underbar scen från karnevalen med vindlande kameraåkningar), eller släppa lös (överge?) en hund från en kennel. Filmens ljud, ljus och klipp skapar känslan av utsnitt ur ett liv, eller, snarare, hur liv hänger ihop med varandra på sätt vi lätt är blinda för, som när vi tror att vi spelar något slags huvudroll i våra egna liv. På det viset blir Mouton en påminnelse om alla liv som pågår vid sidan av vårt. Och som exempelvis Wes Greene påpekar i Slant gäller det inte endast människoliv: den övergivna, men även befriade?, pojken, men också de andra karaktärerna, omges av vilda eller övergivna katter och hundar. Ett tema är med andra ord vilken beskrivning tittaren är benägen att dras till här. 

Det märkvärdiga regissörerna lyckas med är att inte ladda karaktären Mouton full med egenskaper eller särdrag som gör att hans frånvaro skapar ett tomrum. Det vi ser är underfundiga leenden, ett slags öppenhet men ändå vaksamhet, tonåringens blivande. Mouton beskriver på det sättet tomrummet som vi upplever när en inte ens speciellt särskilt avhållen person inte längre finns i krokarna, den där ena typen som brukade hänga runt i olika sammanhang, och nu finns hen inte längre där. Just det får Deroos och Pistone tag i genom att göra film med små bokstäver och kanske oavslutade meningar. 

Mouton (Sheep), 2013
Regi: Gilles Deroo, Marianne Pistone
Manus: Gilles Deroo, Marianne Pistone
I rollerna: Michaël Mormentyn, David Merabet, Audrey Clément

Vagabond (1985)

Most films about drifters are about men or boys who look for an escape, or who want to find a more free way to live. Agnes Varda's Vagabond is also about an outsider who does not want to settle down, who wants to be independent and free. But in contrast to the tradition of men who seeks to carve out a life in which they settle the conditions, Varda's film is far, far bleaker. The main character is a young woman - one of the harders characters I've seen on film. 'Hard' in a sense I cannot really decide on myself - is she world-weary, is she tough, has she hardened herself? She seems stubborn, but also fragile. Varda leaves all of this quite open, I think; the drifter remains something of a mystery. It is difficult to see what kind of person she is.

It is a simple film, consisting of several encounters between the main character, the drifter, and the people she meets on the road. The film's own harshness (including its wintry, rural landscapes) sometimes makes me think of Bresson. The film plays out as a quest to understand the young woman, and what happened to her. But there is no resolution here, no safe psychological explanations. There are just a few tableux, and we have to connect them and interpret them ourselves. The only thing we know is that she used to work in an office, but now she begs for money, or works on farms for food and shelter. We see her through the eyes of those who meet her. The documentary-like style, however, creates no false pretense at 'real story' (even the voice-over does not do that, the effect is rather the opposite, somehow). Thinking again of Bresson, what 'reality' is here must be defined in other, more existential, terms.

The encounters between the drifters and the people she meets are often a bit disturbing. There are the kind farmers that give her a trailer and some food - but she refuses to participate in their chores. This brings me back to the hardness. There is an air of refusal in her, of resisting something, of detaching. We see her with a professor who takes an interest in her. There is perhaps some erotic tension there. But she moves on, and as the film progresses, her life moves from carefree to miserable. She slides from a state that I would already call detached to a coma-like existence. Varda follows this downfall without sentimentality; we are all the time drawn into the drifter's world, but not directly, rather from the outside, from the perspective of those who meet her. We see her through people's anger, repulsion, attraction. People project their own needs onto her, and she is mostly a blank surface - sometimes playing along, sometimes being silent, stubborn. People feel rejected by her, but also tantalized by her absence-presence, her strange defiance.

Sandrine Bonnaire is marvellous as the mysterious drifter.

Blue is the warmest color (2015)

Is Blue is the warmest color (Abdellatif Kechiche) a harrowing description of the rush of falling in love (and the pains of falling out of it) or is it rather an exploitative sexualization of lesbians aimed at a male, straight audience? Controversies around this film abound, and it is difficult not to take them seriously. But what about the film (is there such a thing as 'the film itself' - I'm not sure, that type of distinction are valid at times.) The film does capture what it means to grow up in a way that does not quite fall into the usual traps (a cynical attitude towards what is perceived as 'innocence'), even though it certainly focuses on a process of maturation. The high-school kid we see in the beginning, who falls in love with the older art student, changes into a grown-up who has to decide what is important in her life. Blue is the warmest color is a story told from her perspective - it is her awakened and head-spinning love and also the isolation she later comes to feel in the relationship that the audience gets to know. Her partner is always the more experienced, better educated, and they both know it. Later on, the distance that grows between them is portrayed with regard to their different attitudes to the dying romance. This is where the film succeeds - it focuses on the rancor, the insecurity and the desire to reconnect felt by the ex-lovers.

An aspect that hasn't really been brought out in relation to this movie (when so much attention is paid to its sex scenes...) is its preoccupation with class. Adele and Emma are from different social backgrounds, and this is an aspect both of how their affair develops and how it fades out. One comes from a sophisticated family where you eat oysters and talk about art, while the other's family eat spaghetti and trying to act normal. Emma is an aspiring artist, and early on in the film, I worried that the movie would fall prey to the plentiful clichés about beautiful, romantic young artists who love to sketch their amour in a leafy park. But by and by, the image of the art world changed - the viewer notices that we see Adele's changed relation to Emma also from the point of view of the role art and the art crowd has in their lives. In one of the best scenes, a garden party is arranged in their garden. Emma has invited her artsy friends. Adele has prepared to food, and is trying to act the part of the easygoing hostess. The sadness and the insecurity she feels in the setting is forcefully conveyed.

What sets the film apart is how Kechiche never treats young love as an immature stage which you are suddenly over, so that you are now prepared to see what life is really about. The relationship between the two is treated as an encounter and a connection between two specific people, not a 'preparation' where the lover is just a sort of anonymous role. Kechiche, one could say, takes the lives and emotions of young people seriously - they are not reduced to, for example, cynical or plaintive ideas about What It Is Like To Be Young. This is revealed in how much of the film pays attention to nuances in how young people talk and act (and act in different settings). That said, I think the accusation of exoticizing sexualization of lesbians is not entirely unfounded - there are clumsy (yet sophisticated) scenes in which the audience is simply invited to ogle young folks' bodies; I simply don't agree with the people who argue that also these scenes in a precise way show the character of the relation. Instead, I felt that they were orchestrated in accordance with cinematic traditions about how to deal with sex 'without shying away'. There are also other, quite many, tacky details where the film leaves its perceptive route and chooses cheap symbols or references instead (the color blue...).

La bete humaine (1938)

The whirling and thundering train ride in the first images of Renoir's La bete humaine (based on a novel by Zola) a stunning introduction to an interesting, yet at times rather questionable, movie. These images of the speeding train are so vivid (nice tracking shots) that I am tempted to use the expression of "feeling as if you were there". The roaring sound and the almost sea-sick cinematography conveys a sense of a dangerous path. This is also what the film is about, a dangerous path. It is not strange that La bete humaine, with its doomsridden story, is considered to be a sort of noir-before-noir .

Jean Gabin plays a train engineer, Lantier. He loves his trains, he loves his work. When he meets the beautiful Severine something is awoken within him - something dangerous. It turns out that he is driven by dark impulses - rendered as veritable forces - that he cannot handle (these impulses are coupled with some shady ideas about hereditory character traits; his father was an alcoholic). Severine is married to a stationmaster. The husband is jealous because of an affair Severine is supposed to have had with her uncle many years ago. Much plotting takes place, some of it murderous. The stationmaster kills Severine's uncle and Severine tries to make Lantier kill the stationmaster.

La bete humaine chronicles a series of events where men are driven to violence against women, or driven to violence because of their jealousy. In one scene, we see the stationwagon talking to his wife about her uncle. It's a frightening scene that portays psychological violence. But La bete humaine treats its subject in an extremely problematic way. Violence is here almost an expression of a fatalist path; the violence we see is an expression of uncontrollable powers. Lantier is described as a man whose relation to women is necessarily violent. In an early scene, we see him together with a young girl. A romantic moment by the train tracks is suddenly transformed into a murder attempt - the women's scream is droned out by the sound of a roaring train. When Lantier meets Severine, we have the feeling that this will not be a cozy little affair. But strangely, Renoir still tries to infuse their relation with a bit of glossy and even melodramatic romance. The effect is very strange when this glossy romance turns into - well, something else entirely. This mix of the romantic/the foreboding is encapusated in a scene taking place in a dance hall. The music pounds, we see Lantier, increasingly strange-looking. Something weird is happening with the cinematography - the haze Lantier is in is magnificently conjured up.

La bete humaine is rewarding as a film precisely because of its strange perspective. Renoir seems to have been on a roll in his career; a year earlier he made the war movie The Grand Illusion and the year after he made the excellent The Rules of the Game.

Rust and Bone (2012)

Rust and Bone is a rugged romance. The story could have been ridiculously cheesy. A man falls in love with a woman and when she goes through a serious accident and loses her legs, he loves her even more. Jacques Audiard made the no-nonsense Prophet and Rust and Bone follows suit in this respect. Both: brutal descriptions of life as its harshest. What makes a difference here is the way the two major roles are played. Both are played without big gestures. Ali, ex-bouncer, is living with his sister's family, re-connecting with his son. He's passionate about boxing. Tough fights. He meets Stephanie, an equally tough person, who works with marine shows. When she has her accident, he sticks to her, first, for sex. It turns out he is the one to support her when she feels alone and isolated. What's so strange about Rust and bone is how its brutal tone accommodates the idea of love as a miracle without any fuss at all. The brutality is never left behind so that the film would switch tone into some kind of sugary romanticism. Love itself is described with the same brutal, visceral approach. - - - By no means a perfect film, but interesting because of its unusual tone. One reason I liked it may be that there are no grandiose gestures here, despite the theme: love as miracle. Audiard does something right here, for sure.

Love Crime (2010)

Business is business. There are some very good films about the cruelty of competition, the monsters people can become when they turn themselves (or are turned into) competitors. Sadly, Love crime is not one of these, even though it offers a few moments of sleazy entertainment. Alain Corneu goes for the excessive, the violent and the ... well, sleazy. The acting is not exactly top-notch and many of the twists and turns are overwrought. The story examines the relation between a senior exec and a junior exec. Manipulation turns into revenge. Skullduggery at the office, competition between women. Schemes: everywhere. There are erotic bonds, some of which are quite obvious, while some are harder to get one's head around (the relation between the two women). One of the trite plot solutions is to introduce a man to whom both are attracted. And then there's the murder, executed together with a score of schmaltzy dinner jazz.

All that glitters (2010)

If you want, you can say that All that glitters is a film about the conquer&divide-mentality of patriarchy. Patriarchy as male and class-based. The two main characters, Lila & Ely, live in the suburbs. They are bored. They want to try something new. One of them comes from a working-class district, while the other is a little bit more well off. The nightlife of Paris introduces them to a few upper-class types. Their friendship is under threat. What matters: to blend in, to act the part of saucy, attractive female. Lila hooks up with a rich boy, while Ely starts babysitting for an equally wealthy lesbian couple. All that glitters (directed by Geraldine Makache & Herve Mimram) is not an earth-shaking film, but its portrayal of deceit and friendship is energetic and evocative. Daniel Cohen is good as the cab-driving, kind-hearted father.

Les bonnes femmes (1960)

I am not a great fan of the French new wave. Even though some of the films associated with that wave are interesting enough, I am often put off by the sexism and the 'cool' vibes. Claude Chabrol might not be as famous as the Godards and the Truffauts, but Les bonnes femmes definitively has the hip, sometimes experimental and definitively über-cynical qualities of that era. The film sets out to demolish all kinds of romantic hopes about love and partnerships - and at the same time it focuses on the dreams and hopes of romance, only to see them crushed, of course. However, what sets this film apart, and what made me appreciate it, rather than being annoyed by its lofty coolness, is the phenomenal flow on display here. Les bonnes femmes takes us from one everyday scene to the next, from one crowd of people to another, without us knowing much anything about where it is all going to end. The main characters work in some kind of shop. The boss is an asshole, and they are bored, just waiting for life to begin - somewhere else. One of the salesgirls loves to party, while another engages in dreamy fantasies about meeting Mr. Right. A third girl defies this talk about romance. She leads a secretive life and sneaks off at night to sing in a club. A fourth girl has a relationship with a guy who is ashamed of her working-class style. In an awkward scene, we see his reactions during a dinner with his parents. Chabrol zooms in on the tragic-comic nature of the assemblage of emotions and repressive patterns.

Some of the most quietly thrilling scenes take place within the crazy-looking shop, amidst these shop-girls' dreams and longings. The film explores the disappointments and attachments connected with these longings. In one haunting scene, we see a group of young people, some of which are flirting with one another, in a parisian zoo. The place looks appaling, and the way the camera pans from one gruesome animal cage to another reveals an almost horror movie-like atmosphere. The last, rather erratic part, takes us to an unsettling rendezvuous between one of the shopgirls and an evil-looking motorcycle guy who has been following her around for a long time. There are some unnecessarily confusing scenes in this last segment, but all in all - a surprisingly evocative film.

While the structure of many nouvelle vague-film boils down to the idea of an eternal and frivolous struggle between (the so-called) sexes, Chabrol's film takes a slightly different turn, and can even be said to develop a feminist angle. The film starts with a scene in which two older men pick up two girls, and do everything they can to take them home. Chabrol focuses on the scheming of the men, and a destructive pattern of heterosexual play that has a strong violent theme built into it. This theme runs through the entire movie. In one scene in a swimming pool, the same two men we saw in the beginning catch sight of the two girls from the earlier occasion. The ensuing 'playful' chase-scene is uncompromisingly clear-sighted in its depiction of desperate male insecurity and normalized violence. The end of the movie brings home the point in the ultimate, sinister way.

Certified Copy (2010)

Many films benefit from allowing a level of ambiguity, allowing inexplicable lacunae or resisting trying to add things up into a neat interpretation. Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy is an example. For me, it's impossible to fit this film into a neat narrative - 'this is what was going on' - and if one would venture into such an attempt at explanation, I think one would impoverish what was good in Certified copy, a movie which is as a matter of fact not only attests to the difficulty of digging out a firm level of understanding but also thematizes that very impossibility. On a grumpier day I would perhaps have grumbled about the overworked themes of the film: the relation between the original and the copy. Perhaps, one could say, the film is too engaged in a certain theoretical puzzle. However, when I saw it, I was not only engaged by this puzzle, but was also dazzled by the way this puzzle was presented by a strange progression of events, and in the middle of it all, a sort of rapture that shook me out of many things I thought I knew about the people in the film.

Certified copy begins on a seemingly rather ordinary, realistic note. An art historian gives a lecture on the concept of the original: why is the original considered finer and more authentic than the reproduction in art? Afterwards, he hooks up with a woman in the audience. It turns out she owns an antique store. The story is set in Tuscany, Italy. The two head out on a drive, and the film contains some of Kiarostami's signature car motif: people sitting in a car, next to each other - interpersonal drama in a limited space. The art historian is snotty, and we see tension building up between the two. They talk about art and forgery, they flirt and they have their disagreements. When they enter into a cafe to have something to eat the owner assumes they are a married couple. Suddenly, something shifts. The two starts to act as if they were married. Or are they only pretending? Is it something we have assumed that we shouldn't have? I tried to maintain the openness of the scenes. The couple could be said to act 'as if', but perhaps, given another framework, they could be said to engage in the tired roles, the scathing nagging, a married life can contain, the 'certified copies' of what married life is? Kiarostami clearly sets out to tantalize the viewer with a lack of resolution. In other words, the relation between original/reproduction/copy is worked through on several different levels and ends up in a labyrinth of unresolved questions about art, human relations and the nature of the events of the film. (I suppose there is also a dose of self-reflection in the movie: what is it to make a film, a film with a 'story' that is supposed to 'engage' the viewer? What kind of response do we think movies elicit?)

The force this shift had on me would not have worked were it not for the excellent acting and the convincing ordinariness of the first part of the film. I was lulled into a scene and suddenly the way I had been viewing things was questioned. For me, this not only had the function of a fashionable philosophical little game: the effect was an emotional one, a sort of dizziness one can also experience in real life. The questions it raises about the difference between authenticity and 'the copy' are so well integrated in the flow of the movie that it didn't end up an academic teaser.

Summer Hours (2008)

I must confess I have had a rather prejudiced (non-)relation to the films of Olivier Assayas. Bourgeois prattling about love in a setting of some idyllic French countryside estate. Even though Summer Hours may correspond to that image to some extent (yes, it takes place in a gorgeous French summerhouse and yes the people in the film are all unabashedly upper-middle class), I was also a bit enchanted by it, regardless of my previous preconceptions. At best, the film resembles the best work of Rohmer, films in which every human encounter may have something unexpected in store and where human relations are seen both under the aspect of the history they carry with them and the way people constantly related to their pasts by relating to the present. Summer hours opens with a party. Helene turns 75 and her children and grandchildren have come to her house in the countryside to celebrate. She wants to settle the business of the estate and how it is to be managed when she is dead. The house contains numberless things and one of the finest aspect of the film is how it delves into diverse attitudes to possessions. The house once belonged to a fairly famous painter. We learn that there are things there that are valuable because they have a market value. Other things, knick-knacks, vases and such, have a personal history, and the family members are attached to these belongings. The mother dies, and now the grown children, some of which live abroad, have to sort out how all of these things, including the house, are to be disposed of.

The film ends beautifully with a sudden shift of attention. The grandchildren are having a party one last time in the house. We now see the house and the things that the different generations have collected, valued or neglected, from a fresh point of view. Surprisingly, this new entry into the history of the house does not take away the feeling of nostalgia, that was not always there before in this languidly told story that most of all carried an atmosphere of matter-of-factness, but rather brings it to the fore but showing that also these young folks have an attachment of their own, different from their parents', to the house and its stories.  

Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)

A kid is playing a small piano in an alleyway. This is one example of a scene that makes Agnès Varda's Cléo from 5 to 7 so great: even a small detail of urban life, like this one, is full of life in this movie, that is set in Paris during two hours packed with emotional scales. Cléo is a singer worrying about the diagnosis of a cancer tumor. The film follows her - from 5 to 7, and it goes through the tumult of her emotional life with a lightness and liveliness that makes the story all but a lugubrious brooding on mortality. The complexity, but also sometimes strangely fleeting quality, of Cléos emotions is beautifully captured. Thus, the film contains both seriousness and a sense of playfulness. Even when the film seems to burst with urban life and detailed settings we never lose track of Cléo and the things she goes through. She is used to being admired, looked at, desired. In the film, we see her differing attitude towards this attention. In one moment, we see her flirting and singing with a bunch of guys playing at a piano. In another scene, Cléo is walking on the street, pondering her impending diagnosis. The scenes is filmed from a subjective point of view, so that what Cléo experiences as the intruding gazes of the passers-by are highly present. She worries about being sick, losing her good looks, and thus the gazes remind her of the ambivalence of the kind of attention she is constantly the object of. These scenes remind the viewer of hir own perception and hir own conclusions: how do I view Cléo? What do I take her to be? What happens when I start to deride what she says as superstition? What do I perceive as masks, and what do I see as the 'real' Cléo? The dynamic and playful cinematic techniques employed in Cléo from 5 to 7 keep those questions at the heart of the film. One of those questions are, of course: what do I think happens in the last 30 minutes of 'Cléo from 5 to 7' that are not captured in the film, that runs at 1 hour, 30 minutes?

A Prophet (2009)

A Prophet is an ambitious film. Malik is doing time in prison. The film follows him through the hierarchies of the prisons that ultimately leads him to a gangster world that extends outside the gates of the prison. When we first meet him, Malik is an insecure, quiet guy. Gradually, he toughens. This may sound like a cliché but somehow Jacques Audiard, who directed the film, keeps enough interest in his protagonist so that the project never really slides into the territory of the all-too-familiar images of tough and masculine competition of who is on top of the prison gangs. Audiard focuses on the vulnerability of the newcomer and the way this vulnerability rather quickly transmutes into an almost invincible presence. Malik meets César (Niels Arestrup - brilliant in this role), the Corsican king of the prison. From the get-go, César has his eyes on the new guy, whom he incessantly calls a dirty Arab good for nothing but cleaning and servility. Malik is played like an errand boy, but who starts to become a player in his own right. In the prison, Malik learns to read and he takes economics classes. He also learns how to inhabit the role of ruthless criminal, a role that at first does not at all come naturally to him. At the end of the film, I am not at all sure whether it is proper to call what he is engaged in as performance of a role.

One thing A Prophet reveals is the moral irreversibility of these events. Malik becomes a murderer. Prison has changed this person forever. Malik starts to get a reputation in the prison and he treats his mobster protector with a mix of fear, reverence and disdain. He is given more and more tasks outside the prison, and he learns the skills of dispassionately doing what he is assigned to do. // Skeptical remarks could of course be raised against A Prophet. What I appreciated about it was that it, for all the explicit display of violence, or perhaps even because of it, kept an attention to vulnerability throughout and it is seen in the places we least expect it to exist: we see the anguish in the experienced killer Malik and in the mobster leader who wanders around the prison court, exuding a sense of loneliness amidst his power. A Prophet never tries to reveal what these character 'really' feel or think. They act, and we see their agility or clumsiness. This is the virtue of the film: it makes us ask, over and over again: what is this life really like, what would it be like to do these things? What separates A Prophet from many other prison films is that nothing of the life of violence and reputation is made to look cool. There are countless gruesome scenes that reveal the world in which the protagonist comes to inhabit.

Some of the scenes have a strange almost contemplative character. Two of these scenes are enhanced by music by one of my favorite bands, Talk Talk. An excellent choice!

Rififi (1955)

A while ago I wrote about Le cercle rouge. Jules Dassin's heist movie Rififi is definitively a predecessor that shares the same spirit and attitude towards the crime genre. Also in this film there is a drawn-out near-silent scene that conveys the methodical work of criminals, in this case a gang cracking a safe in a jewellry shop by first sneaking into the apartment above the shop, silencing the inhabitants and then cutting their way through the roof in order to access the safe... It's a brilliant scene that ends with some screeching drills. However, I can't say Rififi made a deep impression on me. The personalities of the thugs didn't really get a hold on me: I simply did not see much here beyond the routine toughness and snappy dialogue and showdowns against women. The only character that stands out is Tony, who likes to play with his grandson. I will remember it for its depiction of a wintry, damp Montmarte and the memorable last sequence of the film in which we see Tony going home with his gdson (whom he has gotten hold of from kidnappers) in a car. A car ride to remember, for sure. As has been pointed out, what makes Rififi special is the way Dassin uses locations. In one scene we see a jazz band jamming. The scene has no particular purpose. We just watch these types playing in a cavernous club, and that's all. Of Dassin's films, I prefer the equally gloomy Night and the City.

Le cercle rouge (1970)

Le Cercle rouge wants to look good and it really does. Jean-Pierre Melville's classic crime film is an extremely aesthetic affair that uses seedy locations and drawn-out silence skillfully. However, for all its visual and atmospheric brilliance, I kept feeling frustrated about the quasi-intellectual portrayal of fate and existential emptiness. For me, this was not so much a portrayal of existential emptiness, it was an exercise in existential vacuity. This vacuity is combined with an aesthetization of all-male codes of honor and respect. (The only time a woman appears as a character, she is naked and that is basically her purpose...) Corrupt cops mingle with talented criminals. The film culminates in the big heist, an extremely long section set in a jewelry store. The point is to show crime as a kind of ballet, or precision, or as an expression of these men's detached and cool attitude to what they do. But this is not Pickpocket. Melville's film shows the choreographic movements of the criminals in basically the same way as a George Clooney film does. The difference is just that this film is seedier and that the guys on screen are not as slick. One could read the film as a love story between two dispassionate men. That would make it a bit better. Corey and Vogel. A man just released from prison and the other a prisoner on the run. In the first scene together, one of them points a gun at the other. The gun business is dropped and they smoke together on a muddy field under the gray sky. Romance in the air! The film plods along in a series of encounters between criminals, mobsters and cynical police officers. The perfect crimes is weighted against the ultimate downfall, orchestrated by Melville as yet another series of images that are supposed to evoke some kind of gloomy Awe. For my own part, I couldn't help yawning at this massive piece of masculine pretentiousness. The best thing about this movie was the strange doubled scenes in which an elderly cop lolls around his apartment, feeding his fat cats. More of that, and less of the honor-code-precision, fatalist bullshit, and I would probably have loved this film.

Of Gods and Men (2010)

In Of Gods and Men, Xavier Beauvois tells a subdued and multi-layered story about civil war, faith and community. The central event of the film is the kidnapping of French Trappist monks during the civil war in Algeria in 1996. Most of the film takes place within the monastery. The aim is not, I think, to transform these monks into heroes. Very skillfully and maturely, Beauvois focuses on tensions and the disagreement within the community. What are they to do, what is the right thing to do? The calm and austerity of the film helps us understand the tragedy of the events. It is always the relations between the monk that stand out. The individuals appear only in these relations. These relations, both within the monastery and the relations to the villagers, are portrayed subtly. The villagers seem content to have the monastery there, and the monks provide some medical services, etc. Of Gods and Monsters does not give us a full-fledged image of the civil war. I suppose the point is not to conjure up any idea about fighting "sides". Of the jihadists who kidnap the monks we know very little. What we see more of are the reactions of the monk: their fear, but also their dignity. One theme that could have been developed more strongly is the legacy of colonialism. How are the monks situated within that legacy? The only scene in which the topic is explicitly touched on is when a police chief talks about how the colonial power relations have stopped Algeria from growing. However, one can of course understand the key dilemma of the monks in the light of this legacy. What would it mean for them to return to France? We sense that one of the tensions here is what it means to say that these monks "belong" in France, and that they were always mere visitors. The film gives no answers but in its solemn way it points at the difficulties and deep injuries at play here. Still, a lingering worry about the film is what perspective the film is offering. As I said, it is the dignity of the monks that stands out. One reading of the film that shows why it is potentially problematic is that the question whether the monks should return to France is rendered into a question about dignity alone: it is this dignity we see in their resolution. The risk is perhaps that this being the case, more political dimensions start to appear like very narrow, worldly concerns. I greatly appreciate Beauvois' portrayal of religious community. But is there a wider thesis, an anti-political one, he is trying to make here?

Orpheus (1950)

I have tried to get clear about the reasons for Jean Cocteau's Orpheus being a cinematic classic. I can't say that I have ever been a fan of the so called poetic realism. Orpheus did nothing to convince me of the originality or insight of that movement - and well, to be honest, it is more surrealism than realism, so maybe it's wrong to link it to that school anyway.

On paper, its oscillation between the ordinary and the dreamy sounds extra-ordinary. It could work. The actual film is, in my opinion, rather clumsy and even drearily pretentious at times. There are a few stunning scenes that could have been developed into something spectacular, but that never happened. In fact, there is an enchanting scene in which we see the central characters gliding through the rooms of the Underworld. Instead we have a lot of heavy-handed Mythological references that never quite make it into dynamic cinematic expression.

The film is based on the Greek myth about Orpheus, that guy who tried to save himself and his wife from the underworld. The updated version takes us to the cool corners of Paris, a quotidian marriage and, well you know, a love fling with Death. Orpheus reels from love triangle (or love square?) to mythical story to a meditation on the strange conditions of art and artistic inspiration. I guess Cocteau tried to say something about all of these things, but for me, the film is so unfocused that it succeeds in none of these specific respects.

At best, the film is a critique of art. The main character, an older poet, ends up in the underworld after an encounter with a younger man in a brawl - and then Death herself comes along and drives them into the land of mirrors and shadows in her Rolls-Royce. After returning to his home and his wife Eurydice, the poet is enchanted by a series of radio-transmissions, white noise. He sits listening to that in his car, mesmerized an unable to get out of his secluded world. Death, rather than Eurydice, present the stronger artistic or erotic possibility. - But too much is thrown into the film in order for this critique to gain any serious weight.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro (2011)

The Snows of Kilimanjaro (dir. Guédiguian) takes its departure from the reality of capitalism: there are lay-offs in the factory and among those laid off is Michel, a union man who lives with his wife and who plays tenderly with his grandchildren. He tries to cope with his new life and we start to think he is doing rather well. One night he is playing cards with a few mates. A pair of armed men break into the apartment and steal their money - Michel had some saved up for a trip they were about to make - and some belongings. After a while we realize that one of the robbers was a fellow workers. He has kids of his own. This is a movie that has its eye fixed on the everyday life of the main characters. Even when the rhytm of the everyday is broken by the robbery, life goes on. Guédiguian never lets the film slip into a sociological reports. Michel and his wife Marie-Claire are vividly portrayed characters. They are socialists, and they live a comfortable life. However, this is not a film in which Guédiguian sets out to ennumerate traitors of the working class. We see Michel and Marie-Claire through the eyes of the man who robbed them, a man who is far worse off than they are, and for whom these are two people who seem to have everything. The snows of Kilimanjaro reflects a sense for the fragility of life that I deeply appreciate. It is a story about forgiveness and hope and one could also say that it is a story about solidarity in a broken world. I am not sure whether the accusation of false consolation is accurate here. Even though the ending may have been a little too much on the sugary side, my general impression is that films like The Snows of Kilimanjaro are needed: I saw nothing false in the hope this film inspires.