*A Thoughtful Film From The French Cinema- "I've Love You So Long"

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of The Trailer For "I've Love You So Long".

DVD Review

I’ve Loved You So Long, starring Kristen Scott Thomas, directed by Phillipe Claudel, 2008

I have had a long time interest in well-made foreign films from an earlier period, mainly the then French New Wave. There will be reviews of some of that work in this space in the future but the mood of this recent film (2008) by Phillipe Claudel very much reminds of those earlier efforts.

*****

What is not to like about a very well done film (with French subtitles) about two estranged sisters, Lea and Juliette, who, because the older sister Juliette was in prison for the “murder” of her young son (that really is, as we find out toward the end, whatever moral qualms you might have to the contrary was a mercy killing and not some ruthless, senseless crazy cold-blooded act as one is led to assume at the beginning of the film ) have to come to grips with the fact that they are strangers. Have no fear though blood ties will out here, as the older sister returns to normalcy though an exploration of her truncated relationship with her sister, the sister’s husband, their two adopted children and assorted other interested parties. All through this film starring Kristen Scott Thomas, the woman who was Ralph Fiennes’ love interest (or he her’s) in the excellent “The English Patient”, as Juliette I kept thinking that while American director’s specialize very well in a number of film genres they could never pull this off, with a length of almost two hours to boot. It deserved an award for “Best Foreign Film”. No question.

Out In The 1950s Crime Noir Night-French-Style- Jean Gabin’s Touchez Pas au Grisbi

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Jean Gabin’s Touches Pas au Grisbi

DVD Review

Touchez Pas au Grisbi, starring Jean Gabin, 1954

Hey, I have been touting crime noir films for the past couple of years so why not review, as here with Jean Gabin’s 1954 Touchez Pas au Grisbi, a French crime noir in honor of, well, the name of the genre. And a later generation of French directors who went crazy for Hollywood gangster epics in such films as “Breathless” and Don’t Shoot The Piano Player. Especially when said this crime noir stars Jean Gabin, last reviewed here in a very different film, Children Of Paradise.

Well, let’s cut to the chase (literally, as this plot unfolds). It seems that long- time crime boss Max (Gabin) has pulled a caper (heist, okay) to set himself and his confederate Riton up for a well-deserved retirement from the rackets. And everything was going along just fine until old buddy Riton got a loose tongue over some show girl (played by a very young Jean Moreau) and spilled his guts out to her about how he could keep her in clover. Problem is that young showgirls are as fickle and calculating as any other woman mixed up with bad actuarial table criminals and she has another crime boss on the hook, one Angelo. Naturally she mentions the loot to Angelo and sets off an explosion of maneuvers by him to get the kale, and by Max to keep it.

The cat and mouse of this pair drives the rest of the movie with old Max showing one and all why he was (and is) the king of the hill, even if he may have lost a step or two. Angelo’s big mistake (besides thinking that Max was over the hill and easy pickings) was kidnapping Riton, an act that set Max on a fight to the finish. See the film to get the details of that fight to the finish. What is important though is the use by the director here of the many tough guy moves made by Hollywood gangsters in the heyday 1930s including a few off-hand beatings of opponent gangsters to get information, a few off-hand slaps at show girls (by Gabin of all people but that is part of being a boss and no chump), and a car chase, natch complete with machine guns ta-ta-ta-ing. Ya, the French picked up the genre very nicely. Gabin might be a little too suave (except for those off-hand girl slaps) to be an American 1930s gangster but he fit the more demure 1950s just right.

*Nothing But The Truth, Maybe -The Film Version

Click On Title To Link To Trailer For Film "Nothing But The Truth".

DVD Review

Nothing But The Truth, starring Kate Bakendale, 2009

In the normal course of my work in this space I don’t generally review current commercial films, except when they provide some kind of political or social comment that is in line with my aims. Or I have an ax to grind. The latter turns out to be the case here. The plot of this film revolves around a First Amendment freedom of the press question of a high profile, Type-A newspaper women protecting a source at least that is the way it unfolds, although it is done in a somewhat ham-handed and obviously benignly liberal way.

On the face of it, a film about the praiseworthy efforts of a doggedly determined print reporter bound, seemingly beyond reason, to protect her source of knowledge about why the President of the United States called in a patently erroneous retaliatory strike on Venezuela (you can see where the problem is already, I assume) seem to be tailor –made for praise from this reviewer. Except everything is wrong here. That includes everything, from the source the reporter is protecting to her refusal to divulge her source under very trying circumstances, to say the least, (I won’t give that source up here either. I am not tattle-tale and moreover that revelation provided the only real twist in this whole sorry plot line.) to the nasty twist and turns of the federal special prosecutor who is trying to nail her in the interest of “national security”.

Don’t get me wrong, or at only get me wrong a little. We better fight tooth and nail to maintain a free press and other forms of expression against governmental interference. But one must pick and choose one’s battles. Off of this plot line and off the moral dilemmas the reporter willingly placed herself in there is certainly a question about her political acumen, to say nothing of her common sense.

But the real issue here, aside from the liberal bend of putting up the good fight to maintain the free press that drives the film, is that the vaunted “forth estate”, of late, has been pretty sorry in real life when it comes to opposing the American government’s propaganda lines. A medium that was asleep at the wheel, in many cases willingly so, during the lead up to the Bush portion of the Iraq War, and for a long time after, is hardly worthy, as the people associated with this production seem to think, of positive treatment, even when one could admire the tenacity if not the common sense of the reporter in this drama. While we desperately need to protect free expression this film did not add much to our real life knowledge about how to defend it. Certainly not the way it played out in this film, that is for sure.