Dobermann (1997)

As long as I've been watching Vincent Cassel movies, I've always been curious about Dobermann. There was something about it that always stuck in my mind, like as if i remember it being set-apart in the media that it caused any uproar but i don't think that happened. The other weird thing for me is I was convinced this came out in 1993-94, when it was definitely 1997. There is a crucial difference of being inspirational and being inspired by, in the case of this film.
Now I like it; it's kinetic, brash, cinematic and entertaining. It's an ambitious feature debut from a visionary action director.
BUT... it would have been so much more remarkable if Jan Kounen had made it 4years before he did. Because now it just looks like a rip-off of an early Rodriguez or Álex de la Iglesia movie in French. Maybe this is unfair baggage to put on the film.
It all started in my mind, when i was watching it and watching Tchéky Karyo do his french Bad Lieutenant bit and the thought occurred to me that Michael Bay must have seen it at put him in Bad Boys(1) because of how great he is as this sick, corrupt cop. But Bad Boys was '94. So now it's like lets put Tchéky in this because he was coming off Bad Boys. So there's that but as the film continues there's things like that the music and style of the film. There's only one licenced song in the film and that's The Prodigy's Voodoo People and everyone is dressed in what looks like Jean Paul Gaultier haute couture.  The film has that day-goofy filter effect pervading everything. There's even explicitly put-up posters for Trainspotting and The Usual Suspects!
Look, i'm a Tarantino apologist-I'm into wearing your influences on your sleeve but reference a whole year's culture 4years later! I'm sad to say but it just looks like you were late to marketplace. Also one of the sets looks like it was borrowed from Barb Wire. Argh. Ignore me, these things probably bother no-one else or give it a second thoughts but i can't help it. It would be like if i brought a book out in 2014, about a shy magical orphan vampire with glasses who falls in love with a pale white girl tattooed hacker in upstate Washington, who's mutual best friend was ginger... and a Transformer. Even if it was well-made, which this is, it would still seem completely derivative.
Anyway Cassel is awesome as always, Monica Bellucci is at her height of oozing sexual sexy sex and Tchéky Karyo is good value in this and Kounen is a great director and i noticed that he never made a similar film to this but I really want to see more of this films, they all look really facinating for different reasons.

I watched Dobermann (1997) on DVD, via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Chico and Rita (2010)...

Read My Lips (2001)

I'm trying to spread the Audiard thinly over this year...  It's been 2months since I watched The Beat My Heart Skipped. I wasn't as take with that as i was with his colossally majestic, A Prophet but as i said before, it was pretty darn good and A Prophet is an extremely high watermark, in my eyes. For me, Read My Lips is another step down 'The Beat...' But is still incredibly original and Audiard has sweated out another modern-day example of Stanislavsky-status acting- this time from lead actress, Emmanuelle Devos.
Read My Lips is the story of an relatively deaf and dowdy office manager and the ex-Con she hires to assist her at work, played by Vincent Cassel. Gee... Vincent Cassel. I love that man. I even love saying his name in an overt French lilt, 'Vin-senca-ssselle'. In this movie, he's kinda 'playing-the-wall' - he's not really do that intense brooding sex asteroid, he normally plays; his character in this is just a bit of a impotent doof. A wannabe Cassel. I that it means something that he can tone it down and play a lighter version of the usual alpha-male you might expect but... hmmph. I guess you could argue that this is not this film is less about his character and more about Devos' character, Carla. Carla is a woman struggling to have the things, that seem to come naturally to others like love, excitement and respect. She feels constantly self-conscious because of her hearing disability. So when she's given the opportunity to have an assistant, she immediately sees it as an opportunity to use to hire some exciting companion. Preferably tall and handsome, what she get is this malnourished excuse for a Cassel, who she's fully prepared to dismiss until he tells her that he'd been released from being inside.
Inside where? She asks.
What are you shitting me?, the bad-teenage moustaches Cassel says. Snort. I can't imagine any French person using the phrase 'are you shittng me?'. The subtitling dept. at Pathe must be having me on.
But they develop this bond, where they begin to depend on each other and though the air of potential coupling is likely, their relationship develops from a working one to a friendly one and so on. But Devos is really brilliant. She just gives everything and is completely self-less in this part. She's half-manipulator and half-victim.
In the end, I guess what's lacking in the film is not that it's necessarily aimless but that the plotting seems obtuse, there's this thing about stealing some local hood's money, in the 3rd act and Carla has to use her power of lip-reading to get answers so they can steal it but you don't really care. It seems wrought and over-the-top and unlike the tone of the rest of the film. But I'll keep going back through Audiard's ouvre and it means he does get better with each proceeding movie....

Black Swan (2010)

Via here

Look- Black Swan is not allowed to be shitty. 
It can only be phenomenal. I feel like it's been kept from me and i needed to see it NOW since I saw the trailer, which seems like years ago. Not that i'm not rabid about Darren Aronofsky or Natalie Portman. They're generally pretty good but it seems like they've struck a nerve with Black Swan, especially with Portman- it's like this role is going to be the one that defines a career. I mean we all love her in Leon but you wouldn't want to be defined by something you did while you were a child. So i'm looking forward for to some bat-shit crazy Giallo.

Sit-down. Oh. You are sat, anyway this is gonna take a while.

Black Swan is about so many things. I feel- right now, having just seen it- like it's the definitive film on so many subjects:- Illness, The Human Body, Femininity, Performing and Stardom.

It can be so simple to forget that our bodies are these amazing machines. You might have problems with your body but when you think about the way it’s constructed and repairs its self, it’s astounding. Black Swan (amongst the things above, which I’ll get to) is about a body at its limit. Not a conked-out Model T but a Lamborghini that’s been going full speed for so long without stopping. The difference between the human body and say... a washing machine is the brain; the consciousness and unconsciousness. Natalie Portman’s Nina has her body telling her, she has to Slow. Down.

Her brain will not allow it.

I want to say Nina has body dysmorphia, but it’s not quite that. Body dysmorphia is ‘a preoccupation with an imagined defect in appearance causing significant stress or behavioral impairment’. Nina is imagining body defects but she’s quite relaxed about them. For example, if she where to accidentally seriously cut herself, she would nonchalantly seal the cut and work through the pain. Her brain is dulled to physical pain. The only pain she can feel is deeply psychological and it’s constant and it can’t be moderated.

Playing this character must have been exhausting for her- Natalie Portman is highly strung in almost every scene. It feels her hallucinations are her body sneaking into her brain to remind to stop but her brain is so consentrated on perfection in her dancing that nothing else is going through.

Not that the dancing is the challenging part for Nina, if anything she probably feels ‘on top’ of the dancing; it’s performing aspects of her character she’s not in-tune with, that will be her struggle.

As the Queen Swan, she has to be the white swan- virginal and pure but she also has to be the black swan- sensual and alluring. How can she be seductive, when her whole being is so closed to anything that isn’t ballet.

Nina is the white swan; she is studious but she’s ultimately asexual. In the same way, you go on a course to build your skills at work- Nina objectively devises she will need to discover her sexuality. She's beginning to realise that sensuality is as important to her female identity as her poise and grace.

Obviously developing your sexuality to the point, you feel in control- that it’s part of your equilibrium is something that takes years to develop and has the tendency to be messy even in the most ideal conditions. Nina is trying to rush it through in a matter of weeks.

But when she does become the Black Swan, it’s simply joyous. It’s the visual definition of a flower in bloom, a star being born; the experience absorbing of a transcendental performance. You're watching Nina ascend to greatness but also Natalie Portman. At the end of the performance/film, you feel like you've just seen The Beatles at the Cavern Club or Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire.

It's for this reason, i feel sorry for anyone else in Black Swan that isn’t called Natalie Portman.

Everyone else is set-dressing; props in the Natalie Portman Show. Not that she’s over the top, Norma Desmond-like in her performance- it’s just that she has to be and is the best thing in every scene. It’s almost like she has to nail the character of Nina 100%, so she never has to do it again like she’s exorcising everything that came before in her career. The reason people love Black Swan so, is that you are literally watching an actor shedding their skin and maturing into their future-self. As much as I love Vincent Cassel, he can’t attempt to get a look in. It must be the only film, where he’s not the best thing in it.

That said, Barbara Hershey is pretty terrifying as Nina’s obsessive stage-mother. I’d imagine that after seeing Black Swan, a lot of girls will call their mothers and say ‘Mom, I’ve overreacted in the past- You are definitely not that bad…’

As I’ve said Aronofsky’s ouvre has not always excited me- Pi is far too cold, The Fountain is far too ponderous, Requiem For A Dream is too bleak for my taste BUT The Wrestler was a massive sea-change. There was compassion and emotion there. I don’t think he’s an auteur in the conventional sense but he can tell a story.

Because Black Swan is so much about hallucination and façade, Aronofsky’s uses this sense of visual distortion. He uses mirrors, lookalikes and blurring and obviously the shakiness’ of hand-held digital photography.

His use of hand-held digital camera shows is a subtle but implicit style choice. People misconceive hand-held photography in fiction as an implication of ‘reality’/vérité but being so close-up to people is unreal, the act of being in someone else’s face is about implying tension.

I think my mother (Hi Mom!) summed up the experience of Black Swan best, when she told me that when the lights went up after she’d seen it- all these guys were mouthing to their dates, ‘What the fuck was that about?!'
I'm constantly wondering the female experience but after Black Swan, I feel like I'm a bit more informed.


I watched Black Swan (2010) at the cinema.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Le Diner de Cons(1998) ...