NYFF 2009: Trashing Concepts/Conceptual Trash - [online text reviews of four films, two of which the writer of the text loves]

This third dispatch from the New York Film Festival features reviews of one highly anticipated work (any work from Rivette at a site named after a film of his is a major event), two works that I was cautiously looking forward to (Pedro Costa's Ne Change Rien and Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers), and one work that I knew absolutely nothing about (Raya Martin's Independencia). I've already previewed my response to Trash Humpers, which comes at the end of this post complete with a defensive tangent that I probably shouldn't publish, but that I left anyways as a way of working out my own thoughts and ideas about the work and about how we should write about films in general. I meant to post this third dispatch sooner, and now am falling behind in my attempt to write about everything I see, especially with a busy last week of screenings this week. I'll attempt to persevere with good content. This post, above all others, seems to have contrarian written all over it, considering the other responses I have read to a couple of these films. Nevertheless, I stand by my rankings and unexpected love (well, one was unexpected) of these controversial works. There's nothing quite like the challenge of writing about a work you really care about (much less two in one post!) while also being genuine and not aggressively overwriting for the sake of your excitement. Lets see how well I did...


Around A Small Mountain (Jacques Rivette, France) - Maybe this just feels slight from the get go because of the running time. Clocking in at 84 minutes, the shortest film in Rivette’s oeuvre by half an hour, Around A Small Mountain sets a mystifying stage, this time quite literally, by centering on a sparsely attended circus. Following a wordless exchange, an Italian gentleman, Vittorio, befriends a carnie and subsequently spends his time wandering the premises, meeting more eccentrics, and discovering long hidden secrets of the circus many of which revolve around an infamous trick gone awry. At times dry, if not outright stale, Around A Small Mountain has the all the elements of Rivette’s strongest work, but, in the concise brevity of this tale which could have headed in various directions, it gets a bit of a short shrift. From the overlapping mysteries to the numerous rehearsals, Rivette chooses not to dwell on subjects or moments longer than needed. This refuses the world of characters, so often the lifeblood of ecstatic energy present in Rivette’s films, the chance to pivot, rotate, and revolve around each other. The world seems more isolated, the figures more singular, and the mysteries less interesting. Maybe its just the marathon movie fan, but I would have loved to spend another hour or two really getting lost in the fascinating world that Rivette establishes. My criticism is perhaps harsher than Around A Small Mountain deserves. It really is a perfectly fine film with interesting characters, an odd location, plenty of hidden mysteries, and a unique assemblage of theater, cinema, and performance (read: everything you want from Rivette), but I can’t help but think this could have been a lot more. B-


Independencia (Raya Martin, Philippines) - If last year’s inclusion of Brillante Mendoza’s Serbis at NYFF introduced New York to an uprising in Filipino cinema, Independencia displays the wildly different kinds of work being done right now. Independencia was one of two films Martin, age 25, had at this years Cannes Film Festival where the Best Director prize was won by fellow countrymen Mendoza for his controversial film Kinatay. With Independencia, Martin shows some real promise, even while the film never completely works. Set in the Filipino jungle in 1943, a family awaits the arrival of American troops into their country. A bit obviously, the family waits for most of the film until a massive storm finally comes and sends the characters in different directions. Martin, above all else, does what he can to achieve the look of a 1940s Hollywood film, complete with beautifully hand drawn sets that give Independencia a remarkable look while creating an undercurrent of the American invasion of Filipino culture. Still, this concept only goes so far, as the flowing cinematography overwhelms this small amount of dramatic tension given to the actual plot in the first two-thirds of the film. The storm sequence is rather tremendous and won me over for Independencia as a whole. Wonderfully executed, Independencia ends with the mood and attitude it needed to sustain throughout. Though its not a complete success, its shows some real complex thinking from Martin about his films and should help in turning Martin’s idea around on him by finally bringing a larger Filipino presence to the US film scene. B-


Ne Change Rien (Pedro Costa, Portugal)- Apparently most people hate this. It drew the smallest crowd of any press screening I’ve been to throughout the festival (partially because of the canceled press conference with Mr. Costa, I assume) and still managed to have the largest number of people walk out. I imagine this has something to do with the labeling of Ne Change Rien as a music doc for French actress/singer Jeanne Balibar. Certainly its a somewhat accurate description – you do, in fact, listen to Balibar rehearse and perform for the entirety of the documentary – yet it lacks in identifying Ne Change Rien as perhaps the most experimental feature at NYFF. Costa’s is able to transition his long take form, introduced to New York audiences in 2007 with a retrospective and the presence of his short Rabbit Hunters at NYFF, into Ne Change Rien with almost alarming effect. With no narration and no interviews, Ne Change Rien shows Balibar in never-ending rehearsals, looping the same chords, the same notes, the same sections of songs over and over searching for perfection in every nuance of the voice. Using two or three different pieces throughout the film, from a strange Gainsebourg-esque rock number to an Offenbach opera, Balibar’s face is shown in shafts of light as she ceaselessly counts, thinks, and ponders every detail of her performance. Ne Change Rien, shot digitally with high contrast black-and-white, shows the dancing of the light across Balibar’s face as she sways through the frame in isolation. Drenched together in more muted tones of white and gray during collaborative sequences, an equally important story of the reflection of light, creating profound nuance in black blacks, light blacks, mid grays, light grays, and bright whites as the very process of creation and perfection shimmers across the screen. Costa’s engagement with Balibar’s quest for perfection is found in the smallest of details. The long takes give ample time for the mind to soak in every bit of the soundtrack while becoming enamored with each subtle shift in Balibar’s voice and the light as the performers directly influence the way the camera records Balibar and, subsequently, the way we see the film. This may sound like a small feat, but make no mistake: Ne Change Rien is a major accomplishment. A-


Trash Humpers (Harmony Korine, USA)- Unearthed from a hidden ditch somewhere in Tennessee, Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers serves as an artifact from a unknown culture of deformed villains – a hybrid of The Hills Have Eyes and the laughing baby. The humpers exist in a world not so unlike our own, yet one where they have free reign of the ditches, parking lots, and backyards of whomever they choose. Acting partly as perverted peeping Toms and deranged lunatics, Trash Humpers acts as a piece of found footage in which the humpers run around hysterically cackling and chanting as they break TVs, smash lights and concrete blocks in the middle of abandoned parking lots, and find a host of unforgettable friends: a kid who smashes baby dolls with a hammer, a homophobic comic who tells jokes with no punch lines, and a man who plays a one-stringed guitar and sings songs about his oh-so-large penis. Yes, Trash Humpers is essentially a celebration of anarchy. Very funny but at times quite haunting, Korine has described Trash Humpers as a kind of horror movie, perhaps of the American Dream being flushed down the toilet. But how then, amidst the nonsensical cackling and hysterical, neverending chants (“Make it, make it! Don’t fake it!) and recitations (“Three little devils jumped ovvvverrrr the waaaaallll...”) is Trash Humpers so genuine, so heartfelt, and so damned inspired? Korine’s connection and return to the South seems pertinent, as this return home has also returned him to non-commercial practices and more of an exploration of images and ideas, which is where Korine’s films have been most comfortable in the past. But where each of his past features has seemed overstretched by their strangest elements, Trash Humpers, despite, or maybe because of, its [purposefully] haphazard construction, is undoubtedly Korine’s most complete work yet. The ending sequence, at once bizarre and strangely moving, is the final punch card for the way Trash Humpers works through its characters and finds an open ended space for the humpers to go on...and maybe in a different way. Chaos reigns? Maybe not.

And now a tangent: While several critics have questioned Korine’s effort, calling the deck stacked and the concept of creating an artifact as one in which you can’t fail, these criticisms seem largely unfounded to me – not only because I can cite one film in the festival that has the same central concept and is less successful, but mainly because, frankly, that its just a flat out stupid criticism. If critics actually attempt to meet films on the films own terms (which I’m not exclusively advocating, mind you), then a success is a success and a failure is a failure based on the work, not on what you read or what someone else said about it. Whether success means accomplishment is a different matter completely, but I find it hard to suggest that a work with a concept that is achieved is a fraud, a fake, a sham, or anything else. Moreover, it becomes the same criticism of contemporary art (where Korine’s work may more comfortably lay as a kind of performance piece) in that “my kid could paint that” or “its just a shark in a tank.” These questions might purvey through Trash Humpers to certain viewers, but, if we’re wanting to play the Artist card, then who is that did create it, that did ask the question, and that did make you think about all this to begin with. So go conceptual works, and so goes Trash Humpers. I suppose its just going to work for some people and won’t work for others, but to suggest something as a failure because you don’t think the effect is difficult to achieve is fundamentally flawed. Last year, I remember many critics (not sure if they are the same ones who have excoriated Trash Humpers) suggested after Manohla Dargis’s negative review of The Reader that Holocaust films should be judged differently because of the subject matter. most everyone disagreed with that at the time, but now it seems its being flipped back over when convenient to attack someone for creating an admittedly lo-fi thing that “might not even be a movie” (so says Korine). I wouldn’t be so worked up, I suppose, if I hadn’t so bought into Trash Humpers and been impacted by what it captures and how genuine it is while doing it. (It is the only movie I bothered seeing twice, and almost a third time, fearing it may not be coming to a theater near anyone anytime soon). I’ve gone on a huge, largely unnecessary tangent here, so I’ll avoid going on another about why I might connect to Trash Humpers on another level – lets just say it has something to do with also being from the South, also shooting shitty looking movies on VHS in high school, and finding many of the voices and events of Trash Humpers not only funny but frighteningly familiar. If you’re still reading at this point, congratulations! You made it! And, in case I hadn’t mentioned it, Trash Humpers is without a doubt one of the best new works in the festival. A-
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The Holy Grail- My Second Dirty Dozen

Wow, it has been a busy month! Between attending press screenings for the New York Film Festival, researching/reading/writing for my MA Thesis, working 30 hours a week/weekend, and working for Columbia University Seminars, I have been swamped and am, for the first time ever, finding myself unable to balance all I have going on and what I need to do. Of course, Out 1 is really what I want to spend the most time with, but my longer writing has dwindled. This should end soon with a slew of posts covering the films from NYFF (I plan on seeing all of the new films and will catch up on the repertory titles soon, as they all open in NYC in the next month). Amidst my busy-ness, I totally forgot to thank The Dancing Image for using us as a source of inspiration for his Holy Grail entries, which have spawned quite a following and response around the blogosphere. Despite mentioning me as a source of inspiration, I never actually made my list of films to be added to the ever-growing list of holy grail films. So, at long last, here they are!

For longtime followers of the site, some of these titles will look familiar from our All I want For Christmas series from last Christmas. However, many of the titles are new and even though I have seen one of these films since the initial Christmas list (that being Oliveira's Doomed Love, a film I traveled to the National Gallery of Art in DC just to see), I thought it should be included as it is not on the list from any other blog thus far. Thanks again to The Dancing Image for citing us as a source of inspiration. If you haven't checked out his site yet, it is quickly becoming a must-visit on a daily basis. I hope these titles can get added to the complete Holy Grail list that is being compiled!

One final note...as I haven't seen 11 of these 12 films yet, I don't really have much to say about them other than that I have read about them and would do backflips to see them. Better start training to do that now...

24 Hour Psycho (Douglas Gordon)
L’Amour Fou (Jacques Rivette)
Beauty #2 (Andy Warhol)
*Corpus Callosum (Michael Snow)
Doomed Love (Manoel de Oliveira)
Dyn Amo (Stephen Dwoskin)
Inquietude (Manoel de Oliveira)
Khrustalyov, My Car! (Alexei Gherman)
NOEMA (Scott Stark)
Shit Film (Martin Creed)
Under Satans Son (Maurice Pialat)
Any/All Dardennes Brothers film pre-1996
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A Tale of Two Halves

With cinematic (re)emergences this year from Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, and Claude Chabrol, you may look at your calendar and think it to be 1968 rather than 2008. Stranger yet is that each of the new films from these old new wavers is that they each revolve around sex (or the lack thereof) and sexual relationships. Rivette’s conspiratorial would-be love affair recalls his best work. Rohmer’s bittersweet film, while far from his best film, takes a period piece, as does Rivette’s, and evokes a thoroughly modern context. What is, then, most odd about Chabrol’s A Girl Cut In Two, the only of the three films to take place in modern day, is that it feels the most out of touch and outdated. While the film features the most taboo relationship in the three films, that of a S&M relationship between an old rich famous author and a peppy young weather girl, seemingly famous in her own right, Chabrol’s script fails to be comfortable with the subject it broaches. With A Girl Cut In Two, Chabrol, always obsessed with the hidden lives of the bourgeois, opens up this “dangerous” taboo for discussion, but, much like a character in the film, when the topic is spoken aloud, he simply leaves the room.


What makes this more disappointing is that A Girl Cut In Two is a very well acted for its entirety and a playfully smart thriller in its first half. Gabrielle (the always wonderful Ludivine Sagnier) is a local TV weather girl with increasing popularity and opportunities coming her way. These opportunities are popping up at her work as well as with encounters with famous author Charles Saint-Denis (Francois Berleand) and Paul Gaudens (Benoit Magimel), a young playboy with an unlimited amount of wealth due to an inheritance. The upper class bourgeois games for the control, and sexual use, of Gabrielle are what carry the bulk of the more successful first half of the film. Charles is sly and experienced, charming Gabrielle at a local book signing and inviting her to an auction where he buys he a rare copy of a classic S&M novel. Paul, insecure and unstable, practically begs for the chance to be in Gabrielle’s presence and attempts to woo her at all costs. The three lead performances feature great nuances which add depth and resonance to the film’s excellent first half and are enough to hold our interest in the sloppy, directionless second half.

A Girl Cut In Two never really delves into why Gabrielle chooses who she chooses at the points in the film when she sporadically changes her mind. While the audience can, to some extent, attempt to fill in the blank of Gabrielle’s reasoning, it becomes an increasingly frustrating experience, and not just because things start going poorly for the naive protagonist Gabrielle. Despite waiting for years for Charles to leave his wife in favor of her, Gabrielle’s decision making becomes more naive as her experience increases throughout the film. The narrative jumps forward in time at several points, yet the mindset of the lead character bends backwards rather than progressing. Maybe this is a psychological detriment that comes with being “cut in two”, as an unnecessarily blunt visual metaphor shows Gabrielle to be at the end of the film, yet it seems rather tactless that Chabrol’s script showcases the young female as increasingly inept in her decision making even as she should become smarter in recognizing her past mistakes, as she seems to do...just without the results.


Gabrielle is strongly influenced by the people (men and women) around her, and Sagnier allows enough space to make the character’s choices believable. However, when the film turns into a murder mystery in disastrous final act, excessive (and, to my mind, unimportant) backstory highlights how easily manipulated Gabrielle continues to be. Manipulating Gabrielle becomes so easy for everyone associated with her that it falls into being one-note and rather simple minded. Chabrol’s script continually falls back into one frame of mind without ever attempting to deal with the choices Gabrielle makes in shaping her own experiences.

Gabrielle is rightfully torn apart by the end of the film, but A Girl Cut In Two does very little to show why this happens. Rather than confronting the upheaval of the bourgeois in the face of taboo controversy, Chabrol falls back into the bourgeois ideology it appears to attack by being simple minded, non-confrontational, and typically masculine. Though the top notch performances keep the film interesting, A Girl Cut In Two undercuts its first half strengths with extreme second half weaknesses. Chabrol certainly shows the ability to remain at the top of his form, but his command needs to be stronger and more apt than his female protagonists for his films to be completely successful.

by James Hansen

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James Hansen's 12 Movies Meme

I'm a little late on posting this (sorry!) but better late than never. I'll assume everyone remembers the rules of this 12 movie meme, started by Lazy Eye Theatre. This is my list of 12 movies for a week of programming at the New Beverly Cinema. It may not make any money, but hey...a boy can dream, right?

MONDAY

The Flicker (1965) and Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son (1969)

There isn't a better way to start the week than a couple films that explore and deconstruct the medium. Tony Conrad's The Flicker uses alternating black and white frames to create a 45 strobe-like effect that goes right to your brain. Ken Jacobs's work analyzes Thomas Edison's short film and discovers all the details that can be found within any given frame. All the flickering may cause some headaches (anyone with epilepsy should probably not attend), but these films would highlight the distinctiveness of the medim of film; a great starting point for the week.

TUESDAY

Side/Walk/Shuttle (1992) and D'est (1993)

The messages of these two "travelogues" are quite different, but seeing the similar, yet distinct, method each film takes in evoking sadness, memory, and (de)construction within the different locations (whether San Francisco or the whole of Eastern Europe) would be breathtaking. Ernie Gehr and Chantal Akerman are masters of form; these films could work as an introduction to each artist, but are also key (if not the best) works from each director.

WEDNESDAY

Flaming Creatures (1963) and Pink Flamingos (1972)

After two nights of serious meditation, the festival's halcyon days are over. It's time to have some fun with these manically hysterical works from Jack Smith and John Waters. Smith's film is an admitted inspiration for Waters, so it seems fitting to place the two side by side. And really, what is a film festival without flaccid penises and incestual blow jobs?

THURSDAY

Blue Movie a.k.a. Fuck (1969) and Crash (1996)

Continuing on Wednesday's sexual themes, these works from Andy Warhol and David Cronenberg use sexuality as a means to identify and explain other elements of human existence. Warhol's Blow Job could also work here, but for its mundanity and placement within the violence of the Vietnam War, Blue Movie is a compelling partner to Cronenberg's better known, highly controversial film.

FRIDAY

Cache (2005) and Numero Deux (1975)

Made 30 years apart, these video works are definitive statements on the changing landscapes of cinema in the face of (post)modernism and new technology. Michael Haneke and Juc Luc Godard are keen observers of people, families, and politics; these work highlight these similar obsessions and provide, at least to a small extent, a thematic counterpoint to the filmic works of Conrad and Jacobs.

SATURDAY

Doomed Love (1978) and L'Amour Fou (1969)

At a combined 517 minutes, Manoel de Oliveira and Jacque Rivette's almost completely unseen masterpieces may create an incredibly long, draining double feature, but I am convinced that it would be the best day of my life. The titles create a double feature pairing and so do the filmmakers. Always on the edge between theater and cinema, Oliveira and Rivette playfully explore convention while taking cinematic art to new heights. What a way to end a week.

Thanks to Piper from Lazy Eye Theatre and Jeremy from Moon in the Gutter for connecting us to this great meme! It was a lot of fun. Hope another one this fun comes along soon!

by James Hansen

PS- Please let me know if this post has a strange format or something. I am posting it from a really old computer at my work, so I'm slightly worried...

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Jacques Rivette Poll Results

Hello all.

It appears that we are still having some issues with the site, which can only be traced back to Blogspot since I have not changed the template, html, or anything since the problems began. Hopefully everything will work itself out and everything will be back on track soon. I am also have issues having the "continue reading" labels appear below some of our longer posts, but, as you all know, if you click on the titles the entire articles will appear.

I think out hiatus has hurt our readership a little, as the results from our Jacques Rivette poll were much lower than I would like. If you are a new reader, thank you for coming! Please make us a regular stop on your internet reading! If you are an older regular reader, we appreciate your continued support. Please do all you can to get word back to people we have lost that Out 1 is back in full swing with some of the best full reviews you can find anywhere on the "blogosphere."

And now...onto the results!


HOW MANY JACQUES RIVETTE FILMS HAVE YOU SEEN?
0............................................12 (48 %)
1-2 ........................................ 4 (16 %)
3-4........................................ 2 (8 %)
5-6 ....................................... 3 (12 %)
7-8......................................... 3 (12%)
9-10....................................... 1 (4%)

The moral of this poll...everyone who visits the site should vote in the polls, and go see more Rivette films!
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Great Period...period.

Admittedly, the spell that Jacques Rivette casts in the course of his best films is one I am constantly under. Sometimes meandering, constantly conspiratorial and infinitely obsessive, Rivette is one of the directors that I am most obsessed with having flown to New York to see his 13-hour masterpiece Out 1 after having seen only of his films (Celine and Julie Go Boating, for the record). Rivette’s early films have a manic sense of style, story and improvisation that go to the extreme end of the French New Wave making Rivette, in my mind, even more iconic if equally inaccessible. To call Rivette’s latest film, The Duchess of Langeais, a change of pace from the previous Rivette films I have seen is an understatement. All the same, this playful period piece exudes the sprightliness of of a teenage sex comedy while foregrounding the tonal differentiation in character that leads The Duchess of Langeais to its unexpected clarity and profundity.

Adapted from a novella by Balzac (one of Rivette’s obsessions that has equal prominence within the “narrative” of Out 1), The Duchess of Langeais follows the romantic entanglement between Marquis de Montriveau, a war hero who has recently returned to Paris from Africa, and the Duchess of Langeais, a vicious coquette who is not afraid to gamble to see how far love will go. Starting in a Spanish monastery where the Marquis has found his lovely “Antoinette” (posing as Sister Theresa), the Marquis forces a confrontation that the other Sisters find none to pleasant, literally pulling a curtain between the Marquis and the Duchess, and providing one hell of an act break for the filmic audience.

Flashing back 5 years, the elongated courtship of the Duchess is followed in great detail, highlighted by Rivette’s use of intertitles of text from the novella. Although it is easy to jump at the literariness of the intertitles, Rivette and the character’s mode of communicating allows the film to gloss over the intertitles without breaking up the film’s drama. In using this disjunctive sense of time, Rivette’s adaptation makes time something that may be a factor, but is ineffective in stopping the fates of the characters. When the Marquis vows that the Duchess will be his mistress, neither he, nor the film, take into consideration the amount of time this may take, especially without understanding how strong the mind games of the Duchess are. Is this just a playful attitude on her part? Is there something more vicious behind it? And maybe more importantly, does the Duchess really care?

Rivette’s narrative, of course, complicates matters to the nth degree making The Duchess of Langeais on the brink of the theatric at all moments. Not theatric in the sense of melodramatic, although it certainly is that, but theatric in the sense that this could be theater. Rivette continually miffs the line between theater and film plus the real and the unreal throughout his features. Though these obsessions are a constant in Rivette’s work, they never feel rehashed or tired in The Duchess of Langeais. Rivette’s ability to keep material fresh and alive no matter the datedness of the material (whether it be a period costume drama, an 1818 novella, or his obsessions) is an incredibly remarkable quality that many may overlook. However, when a 135 minute (long in general, short for Rivette) period piece can feel this fresh and (hey!) fun, there is really some feat behind the scenes that must be recognized.

At the same time, even more compelling is the film’s ability to sway from the typical theatrical melodrama into Rivette’s full on conspiratorial assault. Without giving away too much of the darkly comedic drama in the second half of the film, when the major shifts in story occur, there is never a sense of confusion or displacement. This not only signals that this may be Rivette’s most traditional work, but that the subtle intricacies of the story all lead to its most dramatic, and tragic, moments. Beyond splurging all credit on Rivette, the performances by Guillaume Depardieu (as the Marquis) and Jeanne Balibar (as the Duchess) are beyond phenomenal. Given Rivette’s highly improvisation style, Depardieu and Balibar match a level of intensity in their battles with the other even with the enormous differences in wit, presentation, and mood. Depardieu is at times a weak man crippled by love, but can quickly become a thundering herd that will not be denied. Depardieu is crippled in real life, having lost a leg in a motorcycle accident, but that weakness becomes a forceful attribute of the Marquis. Balibar matches this with a constant face of innocence, while not shying away from her inner devil when the time is right. The scheming, devilish tactic all lead to a surprising, if inevitable, conclusion that is executed with a stylishly calm grace, perfectly fitting given the film’s other unexpected variations.

More appropriately titled Don’t Touch The Axe (its literal title from Balzac, and also the film’s name in every other country but the United States), The Duchess of Langeais seems too formal a title put in place to sway older viewers into seeing another film about royalty of some sort. However, if this is the only major misstep for the film and its release, so be it. The Duchess of Langeais is as much a tease of a movie as the title is. Rivette, at age 80, has made a uniquely complex period dramedy that, if it does not transcend it, certainly is a play on a genre that the younger readers may not be drawn to. Do not let yourself be fooled. In the midst of what has been a winter film drought, The Duchess of Langeais is a intricate, timeless, beautiful poem.

by James Hansen
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