A Heart of Gold? Only If It’s 24 Karat.

by Brandon Colvin

Detached, cynical, and sleek, multitasking auteur Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience locates within the upscale escort industry the urbanized ennui and pervasive isolation of a culture engaged in a self-destructive obsession with superficial transaction and endless commodification. Soderbergh – who produced, directed, wrote, photographed, and edited the film on a miniscule budget – cuts to the metaphorical heart of contemporary American society by centering The Girlfriend Experience around a high-class prostitute, Chelsea (controversially played by hardcore porn actress Sasha Grey), whose daily routine consists of a series of vapid sexual encounters, distant social performances, and stoically willful exploitations, all taking place within the glossy modernized environs of jet-black limousines, expensive hotels, and fashionable apartments. Using mostly non-professional actors playing roles very similar to their actual lives – reminiscent of Bresson’s theories on performance and “models” – The Girlfriend Experience is as stylistically detached from its subject matter as its characters are from their own lives, employing obstruction, monotony, and muted drama to emphasize the disconnected banality of exchange rates, investment opportunities, and self-marketing.

Swirling with the hushed political and economic anxiety of its setting (just before the ’08 presidential election), Soderbergh’s film tracks Chelsea and her live-in boyfriend, Chris (Chris Santos), a physical trainer who struggles with the reality of Chelsea’s line of work, as they navigate through what seems like a perpetual stream of bullshitting businessmen and power-centric professionals. There is no sincerity – only straight-talk alternating with double-talk, both being equally impersonal. The two lovers are the only characters in the film that even appear to genuinely grasp for anything that might be emotionally substantial, attempting to disrupt their hollow routines for a chance to recover themselves and their lives. Their actions, however, are futile, and the film is haunted by an aura of understated disappointment, an inability to transcend calculated transactions for something spontaneous, something fulfilling – something real. Ironically, despite its lack of sincerity, The Girlfriend Experience feels heartbreakingly factual, no doubt due to its fantastic casting and effectively uninvolved style.


Soderbergh’s decision to cast his actors as themselves is really what makes the film come to life. Delivering their lines with a humdrum sense of normalcy and ordinariness, The Girlfriend Experience’s character are believable to the point of being nearly uninteresting. Their selfishness and self-consciousness are so utterly self-centered that one feels an understandable lack of sympathy for them, any sense of concern coming from sheer proximity and duration. This, of course, is Soderbergh’s aim, to expose the meaningless pattern of their lives for what it is – a series of self-serving manipulations. Who better understands this than the economists, stockbrokers, CEOs, and sexual performers themselves? Even if they don’t communicate this consciously, the actors’ authenticity lends a certain believable automatism to their performances, epitomized wonderfully in Chelsea’s monotone voiceovers recounting the matter-of-fact details of her encounters with various clients, transforming sexual pleasure into a disinterestedly recited laundry list.

The fractured and languid visual rhythms, distanced framings, and antiseptic locales of The Girlfriend Experience accentuate the film’s sense of unconquerable detachment. Soderbergh’s editing style throughout the film alternates between rapid, impressionistic successions of architectural, connective shots and lethargic long takes of conversations and mundane behavior, all of which are repeatedly joined by dialogue sound bridges and a brilliantly low-key score. Reflections, lighting fixtures, metallic surfaces, and skyscrapers are featured in most of the fleeting quick cuts, establishing the cold mood of shallow sleekness and formulating a disorienting landscape, a clashing mish-mash of indistinguishable urban settings and painfully modern design. The film’s slow scenes are even more evocative of The Girlfriend Experience’s banal tone, lingering with bored attention to the pathetic events of Chelsea’s life and imparting a feeling of empty tedium to her circumstance, as well as to that of those around her.

Nearly every shot in The Girlfriend Experience exudes the distanced quality of Chelsea’s life. Featuring mostly medium and long shots that are almost always obscured by foreground objects or in which the characters are out of focus/frame, the film’s compositional approach is removed, like visual eavesdropping, but more a result of the walls erected by the characters to sequester themselves from real contact and connection than any sort of sly attempt at observational realism on Soderbergh’s part. The detached editing patterns and distant shot compositions combine with the minimalist design of the various domiciles and locations to give the film the overall ambiance of a mildly occupied airport. Repeatedly throughout the film, the somber sounds of Brian Eno’s Ambient 1: Music For Airports seem as if they would provide the perfect soundtrack to the clean-lined, impersonal, public isolation that dominates much of The Girlfriend Experience. Indeed, the characters talk and talk but communicate very little, their real feelings coming through only in brief moments between financial concerns. Tragically separated from one another by their self-interested obsessions with preserving a certain affluent lifestyle, the characters are as alone as strangers casting glances across a row of seats in the waiting area of sleepy terminal.
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Hmm...

So, I don't usually do posts like this, but I was researching a movie today that I'm supposed to be writing on soon for Film For The Soul's Counting Down The Zeroes Project and ran across this poster for Code Unknown, which made me think of another poster and movie with [perhaps] similar ideas behind it, at least from the reviews I've read. Anyone else weirded out by this? Or am I stretching for the sake of stretching?





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"The Girlfriend Experience" Trailer

Thoughts?



And the second version of the trailer with Glenn Kenny, per Tony D's request.


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New York Film Festival 2008- Cannes You Dig It?

Most of the reports out of Cannes this year said it wasn’t such a strong year for film. While many big name directors were present, they were turning in middle of the road work, neither masterpieces or disasters. With over half of the NYFF films coming from Cannes, I was hoping to find that most critics were giving the festival a hard time. That with high expectations come slight disappointments and they things were blown a little out of proportion. Nevertheless, I have been having a similar NYFF experience and, with only one week of screenings left, it seems like things won’t change too much. It isn’t that most of the films are bad; it’s just that they have only been good, not great. But, as NYFF selection committee member Jim Hoberman reported, a festival can only be as strong as what is out there. What’s out there, so far, are a lot of good movies, a couple great ones, and a lot of technically accomplished films with some severe issues. I always try and be fair when it comes to expectations, and, considering how little I have known in advance about the films that were screening, I think I’ve given all these films a fair shake. Granted, a lot of the films I’ll complain about are better than most of what I’ve seen this year (it’s been a weak year, eh?) so I’ll be sure and call myself out on unfairness when/if I see the films a second time come their wide release.

Let’s start with the good stuff.


One of the few all out, balls to wall triumphs thus far has been Steven Soderbergh’s 262 minute, two part Che, a film greeted at Cannes, and now in New York, with violently mixed reactions. For the life of me, I straight up don’t know how or why anyone would HATE Che. And while the few lukewarm reactions I have read are perfectly sensible, but they seem to have complaints that have nothing to do with the film. (Glenn Kenny recently wrote about Che and his biggest movie-response pet peeve being when people complain whether films make them care or not. I agree with him, but the reaction that really chides me the most is when people reject the film asking why it was made. This necessity complaint drives me right up a wall and is one I have heard quite a bit regarding Che from plenty of critics I admire.)

So why do I love Che? Technical accomplishments aside (I can’t say anything more, or say it better, than Amy Taubin did in the most recent Film Comment) Che is likely the only film at NYFF that works within the confines of genre and not only reworks them (as did Afterschool, The Class, Gomorrah, A Christmas Tale, Serbis, Hunger, I’m Gonna Explode, and, to a lesser extent, Changeling, and The Wrestler) but also restructures, resituates, and reconceptualizes each genre as well. What makes Che so dynamic is the genre triptych it works under. Che reframes the biopic within the action genre (The Argentine- part one) and thriller (Guerilla- part two), and uses these techniques as a way to problematize and challenge the person, icon, and symbol that is its protagonist. The elliptical, distanced storytelling, especially in The Argentine, recalls Malick’s best work. Che doesn’t ask for the audience to root for Che, but only to exist and flow moment to moment with the events in the film. Many critics have complained that this distance from the characters makes the film tedious, boring, uncaptivating, and unwatchable. This response really baffles me. Che, and its incredibly nuanced camerawork, keep this distance precisely so the audience can hold its own position within the film and the dialectical debate created between the two parts. It is as if we can only drop in on key moments and can only be so close to the action, the characters, and the historicized world of Cuba and Bolivia. This position is affirmed by Mr. Soderbergh when, in a post-film press conference, he stated, “I’m obviously not a communist...there was no place for me to exist in Che’s world.” The artist, and even the audience, can only get so close to that world, that history, that icon. This is an idea that, and one executed on every level, that of all the biopics ever made, only Che seems to comprehend.


Leading me to believe that I might be insane (although it's something I've noticed for a while), I constantly love uber-art house fair that most others dismiss. Anytime I hear "Cannes walk-out champ" (as Jim Hoberman called Pedro Costa's incredible Colossal Youth) my ears tend to perk up. Antonio Campas’s Afterschool, a film greeted with very hostile reactions at the festival, may not have been the walkout champion, but it appears to be the most aggressively disliked at the festival (other than maybe A Bullet In The Head, a film I have yet to see, and Lucrecia Martel's The Headless Woman. I'll have more to say about the Martel in my next post.) I was talking the film up immediately after its press screening, but, other than Mike D’Angelo and Dennis Lim, I haven’t read, or heard, (m)any positive reviews of the film. I can understand complaints to some extent. Afterschool is, without a doubt, ruthless, risky, cold, and bold. Still, detractors are dismissing the film far too quickly in labeling Campos a mini-Michael Haneke with some Gus Van Sant thrown in. While these comparisons are fair, and, to my mind, positive, they quickly abandon the originality of Campos’s use of alternative media and some down right amazing camerawork. Oh, but that’s pretentious, right? Too ambitious for its own good? Slant goes so far to call Campos a “borderline con artist” (they lump in Lucrecia Martel as well.) Well, haters, I’m sorry if Afterschool is full of mundane characters and preoccupations. Sure, the camerawork “calls attention to itself”, but who can complain when it is done at such a high level? Or is that precisely why there have been so many complaints? Is it really so egregious today to display some ambition today? Maybe the film is shallow compared to best Haneke or Van Sant films, but I don’t think so. It works within a category that either of those great directors have yet to confront. Afterschool isn’t just another movie about postmodern alienation and voyeurism, although it is about those things too. What Afterschool displays is a digital world so full of “real” images that the borders of reality and fantasy have almost completely broke down. The struggle to differentiate between the two creeps into every facet of life. Afterschool is beautifully rendered and each subject is handled with a muted delicacy that makes the film, despite its obvious ambition, so authentic.


Speaking of films that a lot of people think is ambitious but, unfortunately, takes a third-act turn to the typical, Turner Award winning video artist Steve McQueen’s Camera d’Or winning film Hunger has some really incredible images, some great, tough scenes, but its last third keeps the film out of masterpiece territory. Hunger tells, or, more appropriately, shows in great detail, the story of IRA member Bobby Sands who wages a hunger strike to improve living conditions among fellow prisoners. Hunger is sharp and precise throughout in highlighting how the prisoners live and survive. There are some really brutal scenes that aren’t for the faint of heart, most of which come in the first and last third of the movie. What comprises the middle is essentially two scenes, which are the two best in the entire film. One is a soon-to-be-famous 25 minute long scene (done almost completely in one shot...the use of cigarettes blew me away); a fierce debate between Sands and his priest discussing the meaning, purpose, and decision to pursue the hunger strike. This is followed by an very long shot of a guard sweeping the hallway clean of the urine that is dumped underneath the doors of the prisoner’s cells. These two scenes together are totally electrifying, and I have to be truthful here in saying that I thought that point was the end of the film. One super long, but extremely riveting scene followed by an incredible metaphorical shot. It’s all I needed and wanted. Not kidding, I wrote in my notebook “What a fucking incredible last shot.” Maybe I was thinking that I was in a Bela Tarr movie and got too hopeful in thinking that we wouldn’t see the hunger strike. That it was about the why more than the gruesome how. Given the importance of showing the beatings and abuse in the first part, I thought it had made the point. We know, at this point, that Sands will not falter. That he will go through with the strike and die for this cause. If it ended there, Hunger would likely be one of my favorites of the year. But it continues on to show, in even more precisely gruesome detail, Sands’s deterioration and death. Hunger loses some emotion and narrative drive in the last third and starts feeling a little too much like The Passion of the Christ rather than the unique and biting critique that the first two sections display. There are scenes and images from Hunger that I won’t soon forget (and it’s still a very good movie), but I’ll remember just as strongly the slight frustration I have knowing how great the film could have been.


Similarly frustrating, but even moreso, is the Israeli animated documentary Waltz With Bashir. Waltz With Bashir follows director Ari Folman’s journey to recover his suppressed memories from the 1982 war with Lebanon. From stories and personal testimony, the film locates these memories and presents them within the scope of what Folma calls “the historical imagination.” I have always been a fan of infusing animation into other filmic forms and how important this can be for showcasing that animation isn’t just something for children. Waltz With Bashir sounded like a huge step in the right direction and, for a lot of the film, it seems to be. Even though I found the much of the film not all that enthralling or meandering, what made it interesting was the animation and the experimenting with different colors (and entirely different color pallets) for returning memories and dream sequences. The lively and distinct colorizations create a distinction between all these different aspects of memory and history. I’ll feel like to much of a spoil sport if I go into much detail here (I’ll have more to say when the films gets it wide release) but I really believe that the final sequence undercuts the entire process and progress that Waltz With Bashir tries to make. What is this sequence doing in here? Why did they choose to show it this way? While it doesn’t remove or change what Folman is trying to say, this last sequence is a total reversal and blatant contradiction of the importance of how it should be said. And, for a film so invested in its technique, this is a gigantic and unforgivable misstep.


But at least I have feelings about that, right? The same can’t be said for my reaction to Chouga, a film from “Kazakh master director Darezhan Omirbayev”. I put that in quotes because I don’t know this director and can’t confirm his mastery. Chouga, a very truncated version of Anna Karenina, shows strong formal elements and has some interesting ideas, but I just can’t work up a reaction. It seems like a perfectly acceptable movie that probably loses a lot in translation. It feels a little flat and has some long lifeless sections, but there are some nice scenes and moments that make the film worth seeing, if only to say you saw a Kazakh movie this year.


You saw a Kazakh movie this year, you say? Haha! I saw two! And if you only see one, it should be Tulpan. “Kazakh master documentarian” Sergei Dvortsevoy’s first feature film Tulpan won the Un Certain Regard award at Cannes this year, which was a good sign going in, and I have to say if his earlier work is anything like this then I definitely need to see them. Tulpan tells the story of Asa, a young man who recently completed his naval service and returns to the Kazakh steppe to live with his sister and her herdsman husband. Although Asa dreams of having a herd of his own, he must marry before this can happen. Unfortunately, in the desolate steppe, there aren’t many women around. The only one is Tulpan, but she doesn’t like Asa because of his big ears. Asa refuses to give up on his dream. This is a nice little description and hints at some of the comedy infused throughout the entirety of the film. With some really great performances, particularly by Asa’s boob-loving friend Bali, it’s easy to invest in the people that Dvortsevoy’s film presents. Moreover, the real images that are captured are breathtaking and oftentimes funny. (Tulpan was shot in a very remote section of Kazakhstan called Betpak Dalla.) A dog sits with lightning striking in the background. Dust storms arise in the middle of herding. A ram enters a shack to give solace to a weakened man. A sheep struggles to give birth. There is much more to the images than mere description can provide (the scene with the lamb’s birth is the most important scene in the film) but they all match one another to make one hell of a debut feature. Dvortsevoy’s combination of fiction and reality is fresh. No matter the kind of film he makes, Dvortsevoy is a filmmaker to watch, and Tulpan is a film you should see.

by James Hansen
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Sneaky Cinema Standouts: Top 5 Heist Films

Like the proverbial velvet bag of precious stolen jewels, getting a grasp on exactly what constitutes a heist film is more slippery than one might imagine. Since the first luckless thieves with ambitions too big for their britches stumbled upon the ultimate score in John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle (1950), the heist movie has thrived as a sub-genre of the crime film, one that is nearly universal in its concept (are there any places where people don’t steal shit?) and which found a particularly comfortable home in French cinema, becoming one of America’s most influential cinematic exports.

But qualifying a heist film as a pure heist film is messy business – and we all know the key to a successful score is precision. A true heist picture is about process, not success. Planning, preparing, practicing – and let’s not forget double-crossing – are the essential elements of a memorable heist movie. Sometimes, this process reveals itself as well-paced foreplay, building up to a climactic procedural (which usually goes wrong).

Alternatively, the pre-thieving can also be used to conceal preparatory information as a mystery, keeping the audience in the dark before sneaking up and slyly saying, “You’ll never guess what I just did.” The forethought is the fetish in the heist film, regardless of the time of revelation. It is a genre of curiosity (Who? What? When? Why? Where? How?), with varying emphases on each query and varying proclivities for depicting desperation, humor, betrayal, existential tragedy, and, most of all, absolute cool.

I tried to maintain a good mixture of iconic classics, revisionist works, and modern standouts in my list, so there should be something for everyone. If you don’t find your favorite amongst the following then either A) I haven’t seen it, or B) I don’t like it quite enough – either way, you should leave a comment and rep for your most beloved burglars.


1. The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville [Bob le flambeur (1956), Le Doulos (1962), Le Deuxième soufflé (1966), Le Cercle rouge (1970), Un Flic (1972)]
Okay, so I’m cheating a little bit with my first pick. If I didn’t, this list would be unfairly overpopulated with films from the master of heists: proto-French New Wave filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville. With deftly defined archetypal characters and a unique stylistic flair, Melville created a collection of the most influential heist films, working in the genre more frequently than any other filmmaker (though Soderbergh may overtake him). Melville’s laconic, no-nonsense heroes – played by the likes of Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo – confront their criminal missions with an almost religious solemnity and seriousness. His films are imbued with a quiet intensity that churns in crescendo just below their calm, collected surfaces, boiling over during dramatic robbery sequences.

Melville’s most celebrated heist films are Bob le flambeur and Le Cercle rouge, and deservedly so, as they are certainly his best. The great director’s stamp on the genre is undeniable: Bob le flambeur has been remade by Neil Jordan as The Good Thief (2002) and was heavily influential on Paul Thomas Anderson’s debut feature, Hard Eight (1996), while Le Cercle rouge is in the process of being remade by Hong Kong director Johnny To with a cast featuring Liam Neeson and Orlando Bloom – preserving Melville’s larcenous legacy.

A lasting influence on the films of the French New Wave and many others, including the next movie on this list, Melville’s oeuvre represents the absolute apex of the heist genre.

2. Reservoir Dogs (1992) dir. Quentin Tarantino
Perhaps most noteworthy about Tarantino’s much revered post-modern robbery-gone-haywire flick is that it is a heist film in which the actual heist is omitted. An undercover cop amongst the ranks of a group of would-be thieves (referred to as Mr. White, Mr. Brown, Mr. Blue, etc.) foils their diamond robbery, leading to a bloody whodunit clusterfuck that involves the surviving members of the group attempting to piece together what went wrong while hiding out from the police in a warehouse.

A non-linear film with loads of flashbacks and a decidedly elliptical mode of storytelling, Tarantino’s oddly-titled masterpiece is a violent, stylish, witty movie in which the big job is invisible and the preparation is presented after the failed robbery, filling all of the detailed planning, particularly that of the undercover policeman, with an inescapable sense of doom.
A cultural cornerstone as memorable for its lengthy discussion of tipping waitresses as it is for its infamous ear-slicing scene, Reservoir Dogs is a film whose freshness and energy is still palpable over 15 years later.

3. Rififi (1955) dir. Jules Dassin
Directed by then-blacklisted American filmmaker Jules Dassin after having fled the U.S. for France, Rififi is a seminal heist movie that established many of the tropes that would come to be associated with the genre: the rag-tag team of specialized experts, the use of exact models and practice rooms to hone efficiency, the commitment to pulling off “one last job,” and the breathlessly tour-de-force breaking-in sequence.

Adapted from a racy French novel by Auguste le Breton, the film follows the aging Tony le Stéphanois as he corrals a team of seasoned criminals in order to cap his delinquent career with a high-paying jewelry store send-off. A very brutal, unrelenting film, Rififi expands the novel’s short heist scene into a 32-minute, totally wordless set piece that comprises over one-quarter of its runtime. Shockingly, the safecracking and breaking-in techniques used in the movie were so effective that Mexican authorities had to ban the film in their country because so many thieves were successfully using methods borrowed from Rififi. While the film may not be the most sensational of all heist movies, its dedicated attention to realistic detail distinguishes it from nearly all of its counterparts.

4. Ocean’s Eleven (2001), Ocean’s Twelve (2004), Ocean’s Thirteen (2007) dir. Steven Soderbergh
Since 1996’s Out of Sight, Steven Soderbergh has proven himself to be the much-needed Viagra of the heist film, and his Ocean’s trilogy represents the genre’s 6-hour boner. Everything is in full effect with this trio of stealthy stories: the hugest stars, the richest pay offs, the most implausibility, the largest production budgets, the trickiest plans, and the funniest self-referential humor.

Soderbergh’s films inject 70s suaveness and outsider playfulness into the overblown Hollywood aesthetic, emitting an ultra-hip, super-sleek, often ridiculous vibe that comes across as nothing less than charming. Riffing off of the debonair cool of the original 1960 Lewis Milestone-directed “Rat Pack” flick, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, et al, epitomize the modern heist hero – always collected, always one step ahead, always keeping the audience guessing. Exercises in style and flamboyance, the Ocean’s films are not only entertaining, but also valuable in that they got the heist movie its groove back, introducing a whole generation of moviegoers to the alluring world of breaking and entering.

5. Bottle Rocket (1996) dir. Wes Anderson
A heartfelt, offbeat, independent comedy, Bottle Rocket is certainly an anomaly in the heist genre. Absurd and touching, the film is filled with characters that would go on to be mimicked and copied in numerous indie films of the past decade, while serving as a jumpstart to the movie careers of Luke and Owen Wilson, as well as whimsical writer-director Wes Anderson.

With a more hair-brained series of schemes than any other heist film in my memory (what do you expect when the plans are concocted by a mental patient and a guy who robs his parents?) Bottle Rocket presents what happens when amateurs pretend to be pros. A lighter yang to the heavy yin of 1, 2, and 3 on this list, the film pleases with its surreal silliness, expanding the dominion of the heist film from the hardboiled to the hysterical – even throwing in a bit of romantic comedy. Worthy of the praise of crime film maestro Martin Scorsese, who called it one of the top ten films of the 90s, Bottle Rocket is an essential and unusual entry in the heist film canon.

by Brandon Colvin

This article original appeared in Rise Over Run Magazine.
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