Andrea Arnold Interview

With only three feature films under her belt, Andrea Arnold has already established herself as one of the most prominent British film directors currently working today. Her brooding, sensual, class-conscious dramas, Red Road and Fish Tank, were well received by cinephiles world wide. But I wasn't really ready for her thrilling adaptation of Emily Brontë's gothic novel Wuthering Heights. It's an enrapturing experience to watch, especially on the big screen.

After making the festival rounds, it is finally getting a release in New York this weekend with further cities to follow. Even though jetlagged, Arnold was very friendly and chatty in discussing her breathtakingly beautiful re-conceptualization of the classic.  

You were known as a writer/director prior to Wuthering Heights. I was surprised that your next film after Fish Tank was an adaptation and also a costume drama. Why adaptation? How did it come about?

I often wonder why too. (laughs) It was a strange journey in a way. I was writing something else on my own and out of the blue I got an email from my agent if I was interested in doing Wuthering Heights. I knew it was in the works with a different director attached. I was quite jealous thinking, 'oh, I wish I could get my hands on that!' So I immediately stopped what I was doing and asked about the project a little bit more. Then I went on a journey, I just couldn't put it down. I couldn't stop. It was as if something possessed me. It wouldn't let me go. My first thought was of Heathcliff: In the book, Heathcliff turns out to be quite a dark character and that he had a really abused childhood. And I remember thinking, yes, his story needs to be told. But it was a difficult journey. I knew at some level it was a stupid thing to do because it is such a famous book, and I was joining something that had already been in production with two directors and actors attached, [it] had history and momentum and there was a script. There were producers who had been involved developing it and wanted to take [it] on quite fast. In hindsight, I don't want to join something in the middle of it ever again. But I couldn't put it down, worrying about Heathcliff and telling his story.

Was it a fast process? How long did it take you to do the project?

I think it took longer than they expected to. I wanted to get things right from script to everything. I remember when I first had a meeting with producers and they asked me about the crew and I hadn't even looked at the script properly. And I remember thinking, 'oh, this is a bit quick'. I remember feeling a bit alarmed by that. So there was this constant push to do it fast and there was a constant pull back from me trying to do the way I wanted to do it. And at the same time you try to do it right by everyone else. So you get into a muddle. It was tough actually and I wouldn't want to repeat that really.

So when I have an image in my mind, I can't just leave it alone and that's what happened. I always have an image that keeps me on track when I'm passionate about something. My image for this (which was never realized in the film), was on the moor in the twilight when the sky is blurring the land and in the middle of that is this large animal, you don't exactly know what kind of animal until you come closer and realize it's a man with rabbits on his back: that was my image of Heathcliff. That was the image! And every time I lost my way I would remember this and it would keep me going. But when it came to film that scene, we had ten minutes to film it and there was bright sunshine with blue skies and we didn't have very many rabbits to cover Solomon (Solomon Glave, who plays young Heathcliff)'s back. The string broke on the rabbits, so they kept falling off and we didn't have time to wove them back up to get a wide shot. The moor was not the moor I imagined that day. The shot came out completely different. But it's in the film.

I love it though. It's all hand-held, we see the back of Heathcliff with rabbits.

It was completely different than how I imagined. But you know the essence of it is in the film. But that's filmmaking for you.

Obviously the second half of the book is omitted from your film. How did you decide where to stop?

Yeah somebody asked me if there was anything that I missed out from the book that I feel sorry about, I say the whole second half (laughs). Partly it was because I joined something that was already going. But I actually believe that it's good to be instinctive. The filmmaking is such a deliberate process, especially [since] there is a lot of money and people involved. I do like when things are moving fast, that can bring about some interesting, instinctive decisions. And I always felt that the second half of the book was too complicated. I never intended to make a 'faithful' adaptation anyway. I just wanted to capture the essence of what Emily was going for. The kind of film I like to make is where I can explore details. For that, the book was just too much to deal with. I do love the second half of the book. It comes a full circle with Heathcliff's death and as a book it's fantastic. I don't like Heathcliff wandering by himself on the moor. That's sad. I'd rather he died. So I wasn't happy about leaving it out. But I couldn't see a way to include that in unless I had a resource and the right circumstances to do a ten-hour film. (laughs)

About casting black actors as Heathcliff...

Right.

I mean it's about time, I thought. We are not living in the time of Laurence Olivier...Where they put cocoa powder on his face. (we both laugh)

I know that the movie came out in the UK last year. I was wondering how it was received with a black Heathcliff.

I can only go by Q&As (where people are always nice) I did, because I don't read reviews or anything. And people always ask me about that. There must be a big debate about that on some Brontë webpage, I'm sure. It's always mixed.

I think having a black man playing that role was the right choice. I mean, he is describe as a foreigner in the book. It's very topical for this day and age.

I wanted to ask you about your process with non-actors in this film. I remember you describing the process in Fish Tank in a Q&A session a couple years back. You said you were holding back parts of the script from actors until just before the shoot, and encouraged them to improvise. Did you do that with Wuthering Heights?

Well, it's a famous book everyone knows. Everyone knows what happens at the end. So I didn't really do that too much in this. Obviously with Solomon and Shannon (Shannon Beer, young Cathy) I did that a bit because they are new and I didn't want to overwhelm them too much. We couldn't afford to shoot it in chronological order anyway. So no, not really on this one.

The look of the film, my god, it's so gorgeous.

Probably too gorgeous actually.

Too gorgeous?

If the style sticks out that much, you failed a bit actually. That's what I think. (Dustin laughs) I always think that if one of the disciplines sticks out, I failed to bring all the elements together. But I think there is no music and much of the dialog taken out, it relies on the images even more and sticks out more. But I can't really tell if it's sticking out the right way or wrong way.

It's stunning. For me, definitely the right way. I mean it takes place on the moor where everything is elemental. It has rain, wind, mud, blood, sweat and tears. It has to be cinematic. I first saw it on a smaller screen, then I saw it on the big screen.

Yeah, it has to be seen on the big screen.

That's what I mean! The emotional impact is much stronger when you see it on the big screen.

I wonder how your collaboration process with your DP Robbie Ryan went. I mean, he will be known for this film (he won various cinematography awards for Wuthering Heights). There are some absurd amount of hand-held scenes.

He loves to run around. He gets a little depressed when he can't run around. Yes, we've done four films together now. We have a shorthand: he pretty much knows what I want. We did a lot of tests with different stocks and we talked about what we try to achieve. The moment I worked with him, I immediately felt in tune with him in terms of aesthetics from the very first film together.

So will you always choose shooting full frame (4:3 ratio) from now on?

I've done it twice now (starting with Fish Tank). I didn't think about shooting this in 4:3. But we did some tests and we projected on the screen. You know 35mm in raw form is 4:3 and it looks so beautiful. It's great for portrait. It's very respectful for one person, like in Polaroids. I also like that you are not cropping anything. You are using the whole negative. So you get all that information. It feels more honest. It is quite hard to frame a two shot. But because I'm always telling the story from one person's point of view, I think it works. Also, it gets more sky. If you go this way (pointing to the sides), you get more green shooting on the moor. With full frame you get a different version of landscape. For me it takes away nothing. I think it adds more.

Was there any inspiration for the look of Wuthering Heights?

I showed Robbie some Todd Hido photos. I love his pictures, especially the ones through the glass. We did some of it for the film but didn't keep it in too much. I always like the shot of a person looking in from outside and vice versa. For some reason there are a lot of scenes like that in the script and that's why I thought of Hido's photographs. Back then, the glasses were pretty thick and they obscured the image and gave sort of water color feeling- things blurred into each other or [were] hard to see. For some reason that was very important to me. So I encouraged that sort of look.

It must've been tough shooting on the moor.

Yeah really. I think everyone on the crew said it was the hardest thing they've ever done. But they were a really great crew. Without their perseverance and their determination I don't know how I would've gotten it done really. The mud was really deep and it got deeper and deeper as more people trudged along in it. And we couldn't take vehicles so we had to carry all the camera equipment. So if we wanted a wide shot, we had to walk with the heavy camera boxes on our heads. That was very physical. And we had a lot of heavy layers of clothes and big boots because it was always cold and wet. And if you are unlucky, you get boxes with all the lenses in, which was really heavy. Nobody wanted to get that one. (laughs) and you always want to be fair and take what's handed to you. I remember it was the last week of shooting, I think. I was climbing up the hill with a heavy camera box on my head. I was really tired. And my knees gave in and I collapsed, with the box still on my head. I started to cry because I couldn't get back up. I pulled down my hat so no one would see me cry. When I finally got to the top of the hill I saw Rachel (Rachel Clark), Robbie's Camera Assistant, also crying with a camera box on her head (we both laugh). I mean, we were physically exhausted. It was mud everywhere, so we didn't have any place to sit and rest, really. And I don't know why they built the house up there. Because when it rained, all the water came gushing in to the house. And there were all these dead round moles from the ground washed up everywhere. They were so fat gauging on all the earthworms, I imagine. God, it was a tough, tough shoot.

So when we saw the film for the first time projected on the screen, we said, "damn it, that doesn't look nearly as bad as it was. How can I make you feel as bad as it was? You sit there for an hour and a half while we were out there ten hours a day?

Oh, it's beautiful (we both laugh). It's a great story. Do you plan to do another period piece?

No. I don't think I'll ever do it again. It was an experiment and an adventure and in some ways quite liberating for me to do something completely different.


Wuthering Heights opens in New York on Oct. 5 with a national roll-out to follow. For more information, please visit the Oscilloscope website.

My Wuthering Heights Review

The Anatomy Lesson

Barbara (2012) - Petzold

As a leading figure of Berliner Schule, director Christian Petzold has been portraying 'lost' people in both literal and metaphorical sense: desperate souls cornered into making tough and sometimes wrong decisions brought on by economic hardships in the post-global recession era. In his new film Barbara, even though the setting is East Germany and the year is 1980, that portrayal of characters in (im)mobile state fits well and works superbly here.

It's East Germany and the year is 1980. Barbara (Nina Hoss) is a city doctor who gets banished to the country as a punishment when she applies for her exit visa to go west. In her new environment, she is under constant surveillance by secret police and subjected to inspections and body cavity search routinely. Deeply distrustful about her new neighbors and colleagues, she tries to keep a distance and concentrate on what she is good at- taking care of patients, all the while planning her escape to the west with her wealthy West German lover.

A young, good-natured fellow doctor Andre (Ronald Zehrfeld) slowly wins her trust with his talent and sincerity. It turns out that he shares a similar history. Andre uses Rembrandt's painting The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp as an analogy for what it's like to be living under communist regime in the 1980s: you want to divert the attention of the spectators (or in this case, of government officials) to obtain a little bit of relief/freedom in a rigid society. And this applies to Barbara's situation as well. There is a mutual attraction growing.

Things get a little more complicated when Stella, a teen runaway from a labor camp with meningitis is admitted to the hospital. She immediately latches on to Barbara. The official policy is to send her back to the camp as soon as she is well. Later Stella confides in Barbara that she is pregnant. Going back to the camp undoubtedly means an end to her unborn child. As the planned escape date approaches, Barbara's personal ethics and morality are being challenged.

Barbara is the fifth collaboration of Hoss and Petzold. As it is revealed at the skype Q & A session after the press screening, the role was written specifically for Hoss. And she is mesmerizing in it. She gives the character a quiet resolve and strength. Deeply moving and humanistic, the film concentrates on the small heroism of one person rather than looking accusingly at a failed ideology.

Barbara screens on Oct. 1, 6pm, Oct. 6, 12:15pm and Oct. 9, 1pm at Film Society of Lincoln Center. For tickets, please go to NYFF 2012 website.

Invisible Borders

Here (2011) - King





Music video director Braden King (Bonnie Prince Billy, Dirty Three, Totoise)'s meta-road movie Here isn't quite what he hopes it to be. But it's still quite beautiful. Filled with stunning images of Armenia, affable actors (Ben Foster and luminous Lubna Azabal) and poetic audio-visual interludes (by different experimental film artists, narrated by Peter Coyote), it tries to invoke a dream state. But the whole set up is pretty much grounded in reality- Will, an American satellite mapping engineer, Gadarine, a semi-famous photographer, a prodigal daughter coming back home.

As they travel through Armenian countryside as their projects intersect, they fall in love. There are a lot to admire in Here: Foster and Azabal have real chemistry together and the film is gorgeous to look at. And I wish someone put up the compilation of all the Coyote interludes under one roof. Because I can watch them over and over and over again. I really do think wanderlust, being lost in somewhere not familiar is innate human nature. Will trying to eradicate 'the edge of the world' so everything can be viewed on google map and Gadarine's effort to preserve the fleeting moment of time and place clash despite their attractions.

In the age of google, what does it mean being here instead of over there? Why do people have to separate? These are questions King touches upon but never follows through. But does he have to? The film lets us ponder the arbitrariness of the invisible borders between places and human beings. I would've liked it a lot more if King went all abstract and non-linear. It's a lofty concept he is playing with, but not fully realized but only we can, in our minds long after the end of the film.

Beautifying Death

Dredd (2012) - Travis

If anything, the new Judge Dredd movie should be lauded for its unabashed visual aesthetics. Presumably unintentionally, it has taken JG Ballard's body/machine atrocity exhibition to a new height. Dredd's post apocalyptic future narcotic is called 'slo-mo'. It literally serves as stand-in for beautifying death in super slow motion- bullets penetrate and exit bodies, explosions makes human skin ripple like a plastic bag in the wind, flying bodies hit the floor from 100 story building Jackson Pollock style. Dredd (Karl Urban), Rookie (Olivia Thirlby) and Narco king pin Mama (Lena Headey in her quite possibly best role) have little or no back story. It's no nonsense comic book adaptation and doesn't seem to have any qualms being an R rated ultra violent 'this is your brain on drugs' campaign.

3D is totally unnecessary for this movie. If you are still curious, save your money and watch it in 2D.

No Boys

17 Girls (2011) - Coulin

17 Girls, the debut feature of the Coulins (novelist Dephine and documentary filmmaker Muriel, hailing from Brittany), transcends its tabloid material and digs deeper into what it means to be young and female in the post-global recession era. Based on a real life story of the pregnancy pact in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where 17 girls became pregnant in the same school year, the film tells a story of a group of 16-year-old high school girls in Lorient, an economically depressed, grey seaside town in Brittany, who decide to get pregnant after one of their popular friends, Camille (Louise Grinberg) accidentally gets knocked up.

These girls, neglected at home by busy, working-class parents, living in the post-war-bright-future-never-delivered small town, decide to use their bodies the only way they know how, to express their somewhat distorted sense of rebellion and freedom. Dreaming of a utopian future where everyone takes care of each other and where the childhood friendship lasts forever, the girls decide to get pregnant together in one night at a beach party. Their idea should come across as childish and completely irresponsible, but it doesn't, thanks to the sensitive writing and direction of the Coulins and the portrayal of youth by many of its young actresses. The film achieves presenting something that is much more than a skin deep interpretation of the promiscuous girls gone wild scenario.

The film traipses a territory between Lynne Ramsay and Sophia Coppola sans their ethereal portrayal of youth. Sure, all the girls in the film are cellulite & blemish free and homogenous, looking like they just walked out of a Abercrombe & Fitch catalog, but their camaraderie seems genuine and their collective feelings of hope and despair ring true through their natural interactions. Shot on Canon 1D, 17 Girls almost feels like a documentary- intimate and immediate. More revealing are static shots of various girls in their rooms in their most private, contemplative moments- isolated, vulnerable and full of longing.

The one big difference of this film compared to other teen girl dramas is its lack of male characters. The boys are good for one thing and one thing only- an instrument for getting pregnant, but after that, they are almost non-existent. The girls' utopia has no room for them.

As the due dates approach, their resolve to stay together gets tested and their future seem more uncertain. But when it's all said and done, 17 Girls is a thoughtful memorialization of the fragile, fleeting beauty of youth.

[Premiered at last year's Critics Week in Cannes and featured in this year's Rendez-vous with French Cinema, 17 Girls has a limited release on 9/21 in New York and will be available on VOD.]

Bye Bye Cinema

Goodbye Dragon Inn (2003) - Tsai





Minimal dialog, great use of large spaces and framing, Tsai Ming-Liang's Goodbye Dragon Inn is a mesmerizing experience. Taking place almost exclusively in a grand, dilapidated movie theater, this atmospheric, moody, nostalgia driven ode to cinema doesn't sacrifice Tsai's usual theme - isolation and disconnectedness and a bit of eroticism. Exquisite. One of the best shot films I've seen in recent years.

The Sea is His Mistress

Remorques/Stormy Water (1941) - Gremillon





I'm slowly beginning to realize how these non Hollywood oldies are so exceptionally written- the characters are complex and dialog non derivative. It's as if they went against everything you were taught in modern screenwriting class. Surely there are melodramatic flare but nothing seems deliberate and there is no 'hitting right on the nose'. Note that Jacques Prévert wrote Port of Shadows and Children of Paradise among others.
Remorques tells an affair of a sea captain André Laurent (Jean Gabin). The films shows once again, Gabin's greatness- beneath stoney manliness, lies a complicated man who is just as fragile as his sick wife. Michèle Morgan once again, plays a girl who steals Gabin's heart.

There are some Wellesian craftmanship going on here- tracking shots in the wedding banquet and a zooming out shot from the second story window are truly gasp-worthy. Even though it's a seafaring movie and does have some spectacular rescue mission scenes with the miniature boats but everything takes a back seat to the main story. I really loved it.

Too bad I'll miss seeing it on the big screen. :(

Bridging

Le Pont des Arts (2004) - Green



Le Pont des Arts' highly theatrical style- actors talking directly into the camera, back to back reverse shots, no overlapping dialog and flat lighting almost threw me off in the beginning but I'm glad I stuck by it. There are two young mismatched couples: Pascal and Camille, both university students and Manuel and Sarah, computer scientist and a classical singer, respectively. It's a ponderous movie about the power of art connecting life and death. It's funny, tragic and touching. Eugène Green seems to have very unflattering view of the philosophy/music/theater establishment. The most hideous scene of all that shows his contempt is Jean-Astolphe (Olivier Gourmet), known as 'the Baroque genius' performing from Phédre in full drag in front of a male prostitute he just picked up. Natasha Régnier plays Sarah who is going through existential crisis. I gave in as soon as I saw her anxiety ridden eyebrows starting to twitch. The main attraction is of course, Monteverdi's Lamento della ninfa, a mournful song which is supposed to transcend life and death in appreciation, is indeed heart-wrenchingly beautiful. Loved it.

Ghosting

Gespenster/Ghosts (2005) - Petzold
I don't like those intricate puzzle piece films where all the elements neatly tie together and where everything gets explained at the end. Christian Petzold's Gespenster (Ghosts) is a beautifully structured film without sacrificing much of its enigmatic quality. And it's also mad affecting.

A sullen young girl Nina (Julia Hummer) who lives in a group home, witnesses Toni (Sabine Timoteo) getting physically assaulted by a couple of roughnecks in an wooded park. Lonely Nina is at once infatuated with Toni, a hard edged, snarling bad girl, who is in turn, unafraid of taking advantage of Nina and everything else. Then there is Françoise (Marianne Basler), a mentally disturbed French woman in Berlin, looking for her long lost daughter.

There is a revealing scene with Nina where she talks about her dream in her tiny voiced monologue- Toni is her best friend, protector & lover and it's been that way for a long time, even before they met.
Toni is her desire incarnate. There are desirers and desirees. There is fantasy and there is real life. The lines among them blurs in Gespenster, but not in an ethereal, non-sensical way. Nothing feels deliberate in a world Petzold creates.

Timoteo is a force of nature. Her cold stare breaks your heart a thousand times and her smile amends it a thousand before she breaks it again. But it's Hummer who shines in a demanding role as both desirer and desiree. It's a sad film. Nina is the Red Riding Hood or Alice who ends up exactly in the same place where she started. The implication of Nina being a ghost (not in physical sense) deeply affected me more than any other films I've seen in recent years.

Life as It Is

High School (1968) - Wiseman

I like Wiseman's matter of fact approach to his subjects. He must have spend a lot of time around them, because no one's looking at the camera, no one does anything out of ordinary. It's High School kids being High School kids in 1968 which was kind of crazy times. These mostly white kids in the North Eastern High, Philadelphia, are smart enough to admit that they are in a bubble- well protected and well off. It's endearing to see High School in the media saturated age of reality shows and High School Musical and Glee and Skins. From a tough gym teacher with a crew cut to a wisecracking gynecologist in sex ed., to a blowhardy, disapproving parent of a student at the Teacher & Parents conference, everything seems authentic and rings true. A great doc.

Germany's Reincarnation

Germany Year 90 Nine Zero (1991) - Godard







The film is Godard's contemplation of Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The aged Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine) from Alphaville, slated as the last spy, marooned in East Germany, wanders across grey landscapes asking in French, "Which way is the west?" to equally confused bystanders. There are no similarities between the two films. Godard merely re-appropriates Caution as the archetype of cold war (in itself a parody) whose stone carved face stood on a solid ground and even more solid philosophy. Some thirty years later, he is nothing more than a relic and out of his element.

Godard is as critical of the failure of communism in the East as the Germany's Fascist past and rampant capitalism of the West. With jarring grey old film clips playing constantly sped up or slowed down and the classical music soundtrack by the greats- Liszt, Mozart, Bach, 90 Nine Zero is also contemplates the decline of culture and art. It works better in the last third when Caution finally reaches the West. He notices an East German girl he saw before, working as a maid in a fancy hotel he is staying in. He asks, "So you wanted to be free, huh?" and she answers, "Work makes you free (Arbeit macht frei)," which was the trademark of the concentration camp slogan. It is fitting even in the opulent west. With the soundtrack by Mozart, Liszt and Bach, 90 Nine Zero is yet another beautiful, biting one by Godard.

Aloft

Another Lomokino film by me, starring our friends Lisa, Jodi and my lady Nicole. Lisa and Jodi were gracious enough to invite us on their sailing expeditions. This is dedicated to you guys. You are awesome!

The Rat is the New Unit of Currency!

Cosmopolis (2012) - Cronenberg

Faithful word by word to Don DeLillo's source material, Cronenberg breezes through the one day in the life of the master of free market Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson). Spending most of his screen time in an indistinguishable white stretch limo, surrounded by glowing screens of charts and numbers and the interior design straight out of Prometheus, Packer conducts his daily business there. The president is in town. The streets are packed, with cars, protesters and ordinary people you will barely see or hear. It is Packer's universe we are living in, not the other way around.

There is a tangible threat to Packer's life, according to his high-tech security team. But he really need to go across town to get a haircut. Dialog is stilted and encounters are stagey just like in many of the other Cronenberg films. He is betting against Yuan (whatever that means) and by the end of the film he would be penniless. His demeanor doesn't change- he doesn't get hysterical or have a sudden epiphany. Detached as ever, his death wish gets fulfilled in the hand of a former employee (Paul Giamatti) living in a squalid building.

Cronenberg brilliantly captures DeLillo's take on the hideous amount of wealth accumulated by the Wall Street types before the crash. Packer's glass kingdom is done in not by the global protest movement, but by him questioning himself 'what's all this for?' He needs constant physical act to feel something- screwing, being voluntarily tased , shooting through his own hand. Juliette Binoche shows up for a quicky, only to be told by him to make an offer to buy an entire chapel filled with Rotko paintings, Samantha Morton drops in as his chief theorist and Matthieu Amalric cameos as the world's greatest pieing activist. Pattinson is perfect as a dead-eyed 28 year old master of the universe and the rest of the casting, impeccable like everything else about the film- sound design, cinematography, etc. You can take Cosmopolis as the driest black comedy in years- it's hilarious. One of the year's best.

Storytelling

Three Crowns of the Sailor (1983) - Ruiz







A sailor (Jean-Bernard Guillard) promises his job to a fresh faced student who just murdered his employer for no good reason and needs to escape. All he wants in return is three Dutch crowns (croners?) and have his story listened to. Ruiz's take on Ship of the Dead is a nasty riddle. His play on the nature of narrative 'storytelling' is not meant to be satisfying- episodic stories within stories within stories never pan out. Rather, they go around in circles then change directions at a moment's notice. His typical visual style- wide lens, no depth of field trickery adds to our confusion and its dreamlike imagery and colors are constantly dazzling (Shot by Sacha Vierny of The Last Year at Marienbad and many of Peter Greenaway films). After a while you give in, and have his symbolic images wash over you, wondering how it will all end. Not as mesmerizing as City of Pirates, but Ruiz's filmography is definitely something I can see myself getting into.

Lunacy

In a Year of 13 Moons (1978) - Fassbinder




It's Fassbinder's version of Will O' the Wisp. Only in his version, the alchoholic protagonist is a fat, pathetic tranny Erwin/Elvira (Volker Spengler). She is first seen being verbally abused by her not around much anymore live-in boyfriend Christophe. It is apparent that his love for her is long gone and the same scene has played out many times before. We follow her for the final few days of her life as she encounters the assortment of people from her past and strangers whom she engages in philosophical conversations about life and death. Elvira's back story (all told breathlessly by others) is as dramatic as it gets - a boy who was abandoned at an early age and grew up in an orphanage ran by nuns where he learned to lie to please affection-hungry nuns. After he learned that there was no chance for him to get adapted, he became a sullen young man. While working for a butcher, he married a butcher's daughter and had a daughter with her. But after an offhand remark of a handsome meat market runner (now a ruthless industrialist Anton Saitz, played by young Gottfried John), that he would love Erwin back if he were a woman, Erwin flew to Casablanca and had a sex change operation and became Elvira.

In a Year of 13 Moons is filled with long monologue, absurd humor, spurts of raw emotions, many elegant visuals and lots of nutty characters. Spengler shines as a tragic heroine who made some grave mistakes in search of love and forced to live with the consequences. Not sure I want to try any more Fassbinder, but 13 Moons is an interesting, if not exhausting experience.

Love in the Time of Hope, Love in the Time of Fear

Beloved/Les Bien-Aimes (2011) - Honoré

After 2007's Love Songs, writer/director Christophe Honoré tackles musical comedy genre again, with a deeply personal film, Beloved. This time it's a period piece with the legendary Catherine Deneuve and the famed Czech director Milos Forman, along with his regular set of collaborators- Louis Garrel, Chiara Mastroianni and Ludivine Sagnier. Mastroianni, last seen in the title role of Lena in Honoré's 2009 non-musical, Making Plans for Lena, takes another leading role here, as a woman slogging through a messy love life in a sinister decade we call the 90s. As in Lena, she is mesmerizing in this.

The film also reunites real life mother-daughter team playing mother-daughter -Deneuve and Mastroianni appeared together in two films- André Téchiné's My Favorite Season and Arnaud Desplechin's Christmas Tale, but never in forefront and intimate way as their relationship is portrayed here.

The sprawling film examines loves in two different eras: Madeleine (portrayed by Sagnier and later by Deneuve) goes through somewhat naive yet free-love decade of the 60s and and Vera (Mastroianni), the AIDS and terror stricken 90s - 2000s, the time of fear in many ways. Honoré does a good job in conveying the former decade very economically and effectively, referencing his hero Jacques Demy's pastel color palette (shoes and raincoats) for Paris and a lone Soviet tank in the street for Prague (The Russian Invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968).

So it's the 90s. Things are more complicated, if not emotionally but in being intimate with someone. After aggressively pursuing a handsome American musician Henderson (Paul Schneider), Vera finds out that he is gay. That doesn't stop them from having a meaningful, long distance relationship. But for Vera, it means a lot of fear, uncertainty and unhappiness.

Milos Forman, the esteemed Czech New Waver, known mostly for his award winning American films (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus, People vs. Larry Flynt) turns up as Jaromil, Madeleine's old flame. Gregarious and uninhibited, Forman's performance gives an unexpected jolt to the film.

Beloved is a dense, literary film that could've been a novel (a sizable 500 pager at least). Honore manages it in 135 minutes, still, the longest in his filmography. Not everything works perfectly- the period settings make the film less fluid and inhibited in terms of character dynamics compared to the present setting and immediacy of Love Songs.

At the end, despite the unconditional support and love from her parents, Vera, fraught with unrequited love, self destructs. Both of Honoré musicals turn out to be about grieving, not the happiest subject in musical comedy genre. But Alex Beaupain's music continues to be lovely and light and catchy lyrics reflect the feelings of these lovelorn characters very well.

Beloved is an ambitious film and has a lot to admire, especially for its emotional resonance and unconventional playfulness. It's one of the more memorable French films I've seen in a long while.



Beloved opens Friday Aug 17 at IFC Center and Lincoln Plaza Cinema in NY. Director Christophe Honoré will be on hand for 6:55pm screenings on Aug 17- 18 at IFC Center. For more information and tickets, please visit IFC Center website.

Christophe Honoré Interview

With his sprawling new musical Beloved, starring Catherine Deneuve, Chiara Mastroianni, Ludivine Sagnier, Louis Garrel and Milos Forman(!) getting a limited release in North America, I sat down with writer/director Christophe Honoré, a former columnist of Les Cahiers du Cinema and the French New Waver's heir apparent.


I went to the screening of Beloved with my mother-in-law, who is 70 years old and a big fan of musicals, Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Catherine Deneuve and all that. The film takes place in the 1960s and the 1990s spanning two generations. It's very literary, dense and much longer than your previous films. How did it all come about?

Before I answer that, what did your mother-in-law think about it?

She loved it.

Good. It's important for me to know because first and foremost, the film is from a first person's point of view. It concerns my parents' generation and mine. I can imagine what it was like but I can't be one hundred percent sure when it comes to portraying their perspective. So it is interesting for me to know how it rings for somebody who is actually from that generation.

She was saddened by the later part of the story. But we agreed after the film that there isn't really a difference in how we experience love no matter what decades we were in. She really loved it.

It was a project for me of course. In my parents' generation, there were the pills, the sexual liberation, etc., that the feeling of love was linked to hope. Where as for me whose sex life took off in the late 80s, it was a lot different. With AIDS, love was not associated with hope but with fear. We had to be watchful.

Now that I'm a father, I realize how nerve wracking it must've been to be a parent of an adolescent in that time period. Me as a gay person, starting to go out into the world, I can only imagine how my parents felt.

Even though we have this grand ideal that love is eternal and everything, but our intimate lives are shaped by our surroundings in that particular time. And that's why I was interested in this block of time to see how the characters were coping with their intimate lives.

This was the first time you were doing a period piece, correct?

Yes, but I'm not really sure there will be a next time.

Oh?

For me, it is very difficult to reconstruct a certain period. It is difficult for me because I realize that I like working in the present. Doing a period piece means that I have to artificially reconstruct whatever the time periods, and it's not something I really like to do.

Was choosing these two decades any way influenced by you being a father?

Of course, it's drawn from my life and anything I write is influenced by it. Though I guess what's missing from this film is the ensuing (younger) generation. I did have characters Justin in Montreal and Omar in London who are younger and have their particular relationships in regard to their homosexuality but a lot of their scenes are cut in the editing process.

The problem is that you still don't want to have that reflexive censoring of yourself when you have children and family. Before shooting Beloved I shot a short film called Man at Bath. It was shot during the course of a week and it's very sexual and absolutely not for children. I hope I'll never make something that is 'parent of a student' film, something that my daughter will be proud of me later on when she sees it. I'd prefer to make something that she'd feel a little ashamed of me. (laughs)

Nice!

It was good to see all the actors you worked with before again in Beloved- Ludivine Sagnier, Louis Garrel and Chiara Mastroianni of course. But I didn't expect to see Milos Forman there and singing! How did that come about?

Well I wanted a Czech actor who is Catherine Deneuve's generation. Unfortunately, there aren't many Czech actors from that generation still working. I kept saying, to casting directors that I needed someone like Milos Forman. Then I thought, 'Hey, I should just write to him and ask him'. And I think he was really happy to come back to France and to see Catherine again. Because when the (Soviet) tanks came into Prague, it was two French directors- François Truffaut and Claude Berri who drove up to Prague and rescued Milos and his family and brought them to France. So he has that relationship with French cinema. It was also the time when Truffaut was very close to Catherine. So I think all that played a role in him accepting my proposal.

What about the singing part? How did he react to the suggestion?

I had sent him my previous film Love Songs and he was gracious enough to tell me that he liked it. And I think he likes Beloved. He told me that I take a lot of risks in making films. I think he is someone who is very joyous in relationship to cinema. At no point on the set he made any comments that put pressure on me. I mean, he's done some amazing films and I was very self-conscious about him being there. But he is very much like Catherine- they both have a genuine respect for cinema and at the same time, they don't take it too seriously.

Once they realize that you hold the bar high and have high expectations, they jump right in and are very easy to work with. Because at the end of the day, you don't really know how exactly things will turn out in films.

How is the collaboration process with Alex Beaupain?

Alex is someone I've known since we were kids. He wanted to be a singer and I wanted to be a filmmaker and we feel very lucky that we've become what we wanted to be. So it's always fun to blend our stuff together and what better than a musical comedy.

I work in parallel with him from the beginning of the script and when I see a dialog that would work better as a song, I send it to him with general melodies I'm looking for. Since he is really fast, he sends me songs with some skeletal piano accompaniment within few days. And as I work on the script, I just integrate the songs into it, so when the script is finished, it's all there, ready to go.

I spent my twenties in the 90s. Everyone tells me that the 90s were the modern Dark Age for culture. I want to know what your take on that decade is.

I don't really agree with that sentiment. Certainly not in America since there were many great filmmakers in the 90s there. On the other hand in France, it's clear we were on the decline. Obviously French cinema is no longer a leader aesthetically or from an industrial standpoint. I would say Asian cinema was the leader in the late 90s and early 2000s.

When I started making films, there was a general reactionary movement harkening back to the old times. The values that are put on cinema today in France are the same as, I would say, during the war (WWII) and just after the war. What it means is that the filmmaking today is at odds with the spirit of the New Wave. So what I'm trying to say through my films is that the golden age of French cinema was the New Wave and I want to keep that spirit alive. But I realize that's a very minority viewpoint.

It is 2012 already and I wonder if there will be any difference in the post-Sarkozy era in French cinema?

In any case, French cinema that works abroad now is very Sarkozian cinema- like the Artist. If you look at the Artist, it corresponds with the idea of cinema that is really to the right of Sarkozy. I'd say right now the filmmakers who are revered, like Jacques Audiard, do very bling-bling kind of cinema. And that's not really what I strive for as an artist. But I have to say those kind of cinema works- it gets prizes and do well abroad, etc. So from the outside perspective they are what the best of French cinema can offer. I don't know if the change of political scenery will bring change in the value of cinema. But I don't think it's an accident that that kind of cinema is lauded when Sarkozy took over.

Let's hope it does.

Dying of a Broken Heart

Stellet Licht/Silent Light (2007) - Reygadas





I’m still not convinced Carlos Reygadas is a great director. Yes, I get his Bressonian use of non-actors to convey real truth in human interactions. Yes, he is arguably one of the most technically daring contemporary directors that got me excited about current Latin American filmmakers. In Reygadas universe, those exchanges with true human feelings seem to be existing in extremes (and therefore everywhere?) – in Japon, it is in improbable September-December romance, in Battle in Heaven, it’s in btwn rich/beauty and poor/ugly. In Stellet Licht, it’s in an isolated Mennonite community in Mexico.

Johan, a Mennonite farmer, father of six, is having an affair with Marianne. He told his quietly suffering wife Esther when the affair began. He tells his father and best friend that he made a mistake marrying Esther because Marianne is a better match for him. Even though it's wrong, he just can’t end the relationship. It's been two years like that.

For Reygadas film, Stellet Licht is a surprisingly subtle one. It starts out with five minute long take of dawn breaking. The camera slowly rotates from the star studded sky down to the horizon then dollies slowly forward with the sound of barnyard beasts breaking its morning orchestra of insects: the scene is truly a virtuosic filmmaking. There are many measured, beautiful sequences throughout the film. His non-actors bring out some genuinely moving moments also.

Then the magic realism ending comes around and Reygadas leaves everything up to the audience to decide what to make of it. There are some indications to this conclusion- when Johan and Marianne were having one of their last rendez-vous in a small room, a leaf falls from the ceiling. Surely without that ending, the Stellet Licht is nothing but some technical brilliance and turgid melodrama. I haven't seen Carl Theodore Dreyer's Ordet which Reygadas pays an homage to. Maybe it's my cynicism that got a better of me. I just can't easily buy into films that someone dying of a broken heart anymore. I can see the beauty in the modern fairytale, but it's very hard to swallow.