8.12.17



Beast  is an assured directorial debut
that's half claustrophobic family drama (in the manner of Lars von Trier),
and half serial killer whodunnit.
At the 58th Thessaloniki International Film Festival this last November,
I watched one afternoon
this ambitious and suspenseful slow-burner,
who manages to thrill and grip its audiences
from the offset.
It is set in a windswept Jersey,
which looks more like an out-of-season south of France.
And it is just a very beautifully acted
and fantastically shot tale of mystery,
rebellion and passion.
There is in this film a genuine air of ambiguity and intrigue.
 It begins with a strong and engaging opener
that leaves you feeling like you know exactly what’s happening…
…and then spends the rest of the film making you doubt yourself.
So it’s just a question of whether the bad boy is a killer, 
and if the couple are going to end up together.
It is a version of Hitchcock’s Suspicion and Hitchcock’s The Lodger.
It is a tale older than time. 
As old as the Victorians…
In Beast, there are a number of fairy tale-type characters dealing with several issues.
Moll is clearly a Cinderella-type character.
She is governed by her family
and subdued into doing everything with a smile.
But there’s no fairy godmother here.
Who could provide useful advice
or a carriage to take her away.
And although Pascal appears to be Prince Charming,
there’s always the risk
that he’s actually the Big Bad Wolf
killing little girls in the woods.
Meanwhile, Moll’s mother and siblings fulfill
the villainous roles usually designated
for step-family. 
At some point it would seem their control began  in the best interest of Moll.
But as time passed,
it turned ugly and oppressive.
When Moll (Jessie Buckley) ducks out of her own birthday party,
she has no idea
how much that night will change her life.
After she rejects a man’s advances,
she is rescued by Pascal (Johnny Flynn),
a local poacher, a hunter, blond, fascinating.
He threatens the man at gunpoint,and then escorts her home safely…
But young women are being found murdered around.
So, as Moll begins a relationship with her rescuer, the police become convinced
that he is the man doing the killing.
Moll embarks on a recklessly torrid affair
with the young man,
her absolute partner
in boundless eroticism and animae.
She then feels more alive
than she has ever felt before.
The narrative is driven by this awakening
and hope for liberation, ignited by Pascal. 

The pace of the story is woven together beautifully.
There is a golden kind of mystery
deepening throughout
and luring you in.
It’s intriguing and chilling,
and packed with raw and complex emotion.
Visually, Beast is a thing of beauty.
It enchants
by the stunning and moody landscape,
by the magic chemistry between the lovers. 
It perfectly blends fear and charm.
So that you’re never entirely sure
if you should feel afraid,
 or protected.
At this point Beast embarks on focusing
on the issue of suspicion.
Suspicion that also creeps into the mind of the spectator,
who never sleeps.
For Moll it is enough to trust those whom we love, those close to us,
but not ourselves.
That trust however will come to crack.
And the psychic disturbances of the protagonist will confuse the waters even more. 
And the relativism of truth
is combined with
an ethical relativism.
Are we all potential killers,
beasts,
if the conditions, extreme or mad,
lead us to more?
Moll has her own skeletons in the closet:
 as a girl she had tried to strangle a schoolmate.
Nobody saves himself among the characters of this film.
 Including the figure of the apparently good-natured inspector,
who then comes to abuse his prerogatives.
Buckley is a revelation as Moll,
offering a performance that is hypnotic.
There’s a scene very early on
when she is getting ready for her party
that is incredibly simplistic,
but conveys so much.
In this dialogue-free moment,
she fixes her hair,
adjusts her dress
and puts on her smile 
– and you just know that
she is worth following through this story.
But the film really belongs to Buckley and Flynn couple.
Buckley and Flynn have a strong understanding
of their characters’ nuances,
 as each new layer presents
a fresh challenge for their relationship.
Although Moll is in her late-twenties,
this is still a coming-of-age story.
Pascal gives her the confidence she needs
to become her own person.
However, she finds independence when  taking her own decisions.
This engenders other problems
that she must address
before the film’s conclusion.

With Beast, writer/director Michael Pearce has made something
that is thought-provoking like a motorcycle ride with a forbidden lover,
and often shocking.
And yet
it is a beautifully subtle
and underplayed film.
A beautifully twisted delight.
Buckley gives a breakout turn
as a young woman wrestling
with the beast within.
These stories of trauma
and memory
were unsettling tales,
 that lingered in my mind 
long after the credits rolled.

Giulia Dobre
December 8th, 2017



3.11.17

The Day after


L’Illusion perdue




Last year Hong Sang-soo signed four films.

“The Day after” is his latest and was competing at Cannes last may.

But it is mainly a piece of perfection
out of the blue sky of the cinema.


Its grace, when it looks natural, is mysterious.
Accorded to the rhythmic breath of the director.

Hong Sang-soo films as he breaths.

He scratches, he purrs. He is a cat.



His favorite game is to film the evidence.



And immediately after he retires it from our eyes, laughing.

See? You were seduced by this image and you haven’t even seen how fake it was.


And at this point I have already said too much about this Korean director.


It is more than simple to tell Hong Sang-soo’s stories.


There is a main character,
a coward and a proud man.
A critic and a publisher.

He is married,
but he has a romance with the girl who works for him.


We might believe that the film is built by flash-backs.

But it can only mean we have not understood well.

We thought seeing in the job interview scene the birth of love.



But it is both simpler and craftier than that.



Simpler, as this film is not only about the past.

It could even be about the present.



Craftier, as this film is also built
with many pieces of memory.


The director explores the wounds of the past
and the prohibitions.

There are days
when the past
abruptly becomes the present.

These are days
when we suffocate
with our mouth open.


This is a film built as a treasure hunt.

But also an incredibly literal and simple film.

A chronicle of memory
and withholding.

It speaks about the few fragments left alive
from a defeated love story.

It mixes also soft observations
on a relationship that hesitates to take a form.


But never forget that Hong Sang–soo
 is always fooling us.


Behind this thick black and white,
as those of Jean Eustache,

behind this compact air that circulates
between the beings,
like in the late Nouvelle Vague,

his directing

has  one adultery

in advance

on the world.



G G D



29.5.17

My Cannes (sharp) 70: Stirring Seagulls at 220 BPM





One of the first things I saw upon arriving in Cannes
was a seagull eating a pigeon
on the main commercial drag…
No doubt a living metaphor
for the wilderness I was entering…

It’s fitting that the Cannes film festival
would choose to open
with a film
of shameless
self-reflexivity.


 Arnaud Desplechin’s  Ismael’s Ghosts
is a pure and saturated Desplechin .
Detailing a love triangle,  
set to its maker’s characteristic pan-pan rhythm,
it is overloaded with formal decoration:
time jumps, iris-ins, rear-projection montage,
direct address to camera, and so on.

A swamp of information that can be seen
as a depiction of
all the women he could never touch.”

That quoted line, spoken by Ismael
(a film director played by Mathieu Amalric,
certified alter ego of Desplechin’s libido),
combines with other self-deprecating winks
(“You’re afraid of the film’s subject,”
“All you can do is direct!” etc.)
to make this a picture
that feels specific to Desplechin’s personal history.


A film that features more
than two dozen repetitions of the phrase
I’m too old now…”..

 Ismael’s Ghosts shows the sense of anxiety
that a man might experience
when the final traces of his youth
finally evaporate.

Impossible reunions …
spontaneous hook-ups…
quixotically resurrecting past relationships and desires …

The narrative juxtaposes horror,  
rom-com
and espionage tropes,
against classic Hollywood  hat-tips
(“five films compressed into one,
Desplechin dixit in the press kit).

The dissonance  is fresh and inviting.
But is only cathartic for its maker…

This is fine, because not all art
needs to appease an audience…

But these are bells
and whistles
that leave me cold...


On the other hand,
Andrey Zvyagintsev’s new film, Loveless,
is as unsentimental
as it is dim.

"Technically impressive” is about as close to a compliment
as I can give
to this misogynistic film
about a divorcing Russian couple’s missing 12-year old son.


Set at the end of 2012
and defined by its slow  push-ins,  
Zvyagintsev’s latest fills its mise en scène
with explicit references to Russia’s political climate,
with indications of the relationship with Ukraine, 
and the apocalyptic ethos
of  the end of the Mayan calendar.

The dramaturgy is marked by cliche representations
of marital life …
devoid of any sense of natural development…
despite having been modeled
after similar quarrels
seen in recent Romanian New Wave efforts…


…later on that night,
being bored over measure
on a taunting yacht party
around rocks and crystals,  
I assembled a small cabal who will not be named…

 Together we set about surrendering to the sea…

 On the shores of the party we all kissed adieu.  

Moments later
I was on another balcony at yet another party,
standing beneath a statue of a blue gorilla.


When a man with a bucket full of roses
down below
started throwing them up my way .

He wasn’t a very good arm,
so after several failed attempts, he found a friend to help.

The moment I caught the roses,
staring up at the starry night,

I watched as a seagull flew,
and smoked a Gitane...




…Last year, Rive Gauche icon Agnès Varda
and French photographer JR
went on a road trip through rural France,
documenting whatever locals they encountered .

“Faces/Places” is sweet and accessible,
like something of a redux for Varda’s documentary masterpiece The Gleaners and I (2000).

It chronicles their journey
and never misses an opportunity to turn inward.

The film is democratic even by Varda’s standards.
It generously accommodates any thought, detail,
or passerby, leaving space
for its makers
to analyze their own impulses.

Among the charms and anecdotes,  
there are Varda’s ruminations
on the  pleasures of photography: 
 the way the ephemeral of a print
mimics that of our bodies…
the sensations of seeing one’s own image…
how our portrait has the opportunity
to “see” things and places in the world
that we never will ...


Varda’s free-form 
accepts the inevitable finality of her life
— that moment when she will become,
as we all will,
an (exquisite) corpse…




Ruben Östlund’s bombastic new movie, The Square (Palme d'Or),
is composed of practically nothing but
moments and mannerisms.
It is obvious it tries very hard
to unify its myriad pieces
within a  critique of class.

Working through two parallel narratives —
one about a Swedish contemporary art museum’s efforts
to create a campaign for its latest acquisition,
an experience called “The Square,”
and the museum curator’s efforts
to retrieve some belongings he lost in a pickpocketing
— the film only really works
when it’s funny…

 …Though it’s rarely as funny as it thinks it is…

 Its shots at contemporary art are mostly clichés.

 And facile.

Indeed, the humour only really functions
when it’s doing something cute
with ambient sound or off-screen space.

 The frame is always intrusive.

It only keeps us off  the tension…

Elsewhere, another conceptual piece in the museum
— a simple white neon text  “YOU HAVE NOTHING”
— is also played for laughs, while a lecture is thrown
into chaos
by an attendee with Tourette...

I know Östlund likes to push buttons,
but come on, man!…




…And later on I hit the town
with Producer L and Acteur M
in search of the Magnum-branded beach club,
site of the A Ciambra afterparty…

What a morning that was.

Seagulls were flying high
and at tremendous speed.

On the beach we dropped down to our undies
and scoured the sand,
tits-deep dans la mer.

After about 20 minutes of blind hunting
I realized the purple in the sky was turning pink
and the pink to orange,
our nipples were about to mutiny.

Suddenly remembering we were indeed in France,
I sprant down the beach
baywatch clutching the sun,
while it was already penetrating the horizon…
Pure art!




…Speaking of art, I spent the morning with The Meyerwitz Stories, the new Baumbach.

 An opening scene of Adam Sandler  parking a Subaru
unfolds into an hour something of delightful variations
on the screaming same.

I must say of all the bards of male impotence,
Baumbach is probably my favorite…




 .........I spent much of the afternoon catching up on sleep,
then ate what was without a doubt
the best gnocchi of my life.

But I digress.

The evening’s activity was the Critic’s Week opening night party.

It felt a bit like a bar mitzvah I never went to.

Everyone was celebrating the fact
that we were all here in this place.

As the night slowly swung into the strange strip clubs,
I said my goodbyes and made for bed…

Early that morning I awoke
for an 8:30 screening of Yorgos Lanthimos’ new film
The Killing of a Sacred Deer.

The film was heroically boring.

Yorgos seems uniquely able
to align himself completely
with the mind of a torturing psychopath
and even delights in the game of his logic.

Perhaps is it a greek thing?

Call him a Haneke wannabe...


 Nothing to report on the seagulls today,
they seem to be minding their own for now…




Baumbach’s film was incredibly funny.

Why am I trying to hate Baumbach?

I love Baumbach.

Yorgos too.



Up at 7:00 for Coppola’s Beguiled.

Not a single brave or interesting choice in the whole damn movie !

Was it made for TV?

Or was she just asleep on the dolly?

Like Yorgos’ film,

 it also hosted the Kidman/Farrell lead team …

…do those two pair at discount?

I’m starting to think my filmic heroes are not leaving the retirement home much…

Whatever.

I know every generation is juiced to make it to the top,
but the olds are overdoing it
in so many arenas right now.

Give youngs a chance.

Let people who use the internet run the world for Christ’sake.




….Speaking of youngs.

 After another lunch,
I finally saw the shorts in Semaine de la Critique,
far superior to the half dozen Official Selection films.

Where the Palme d’Or competitors were conservative
and redundant,
la Semaine was raw and wild!!!

 New music unto the universe!

 So was Carlo Francisco Manatad’s Employee of the Month,
a visually  punk rock assault on capitalism,
all set at an unnamed gas station one fluorescent night.

As far as I’m concerned Manatad is the Philippines’ Godard!

Aleksandra TerpiÅ„ska’s The Best Fireworks Ever
was a crushingly beautiful take
on the suicidally forces of Poland’s imaginary streetscape.
There’s more heart
and pain
and beauty
and conviction
in her 30 minutes
than all the features I’ve seen here!...

Watch those directors.

………Cannes  is largely devoted to a cinema that presents
subjects with whom we are meant to empathize to some degree.

Far outside these benchmarkers ,
Bruno Dumont’s new film, Jeannette, the Childhood of Joan of Arc 
is one of the true UFOs I have encountered in my 20 years of Cannes attendance!
So aberrant! 
So ruthless in its pursuit of new forms of poetry
and of madness that it can be!!!

Dumont offers here something silly,
metal,
and deviant,
but no less rapturous.
The music, composed by French breakcore band Igorrr
(a.k.a. Gautier Serre),
constitutes at least half of Jeannette.

Dumont opted to use live sound for the finished film,
leaving in all the mistakes, stray sounds,
and ambient noise usually eliminated in the post-production.

The result is a work that,
in addition to being singular
(even by the standards of late-lunacy Dumont),
is present before us!
It delivers the young Jeannette’s dreams of divinity
as close as it could.





Another American tale,
Josh & Benny Safdie’s Good Time,
stars Robert Pattinson (as Connie)
and Benny Safdie himself (Nick) as brothers.
The movie detonates with a botch bank robbery
and never looks back.

The action is intense,
weaving through the city’s streets and businesses…
one wrong step triggers another
and triggers another
again...

Connie embodies the low-life persona  
in American crime films,
diving into the most foolish schemes
for attaining a better life
for his mentally-challenged brother
and fed-up mother.





…on my last hours in Cannes,
I hit the 8:30 AM preview-screening of Twin Peaks .

Showtime delivered indeed : 25 years later.

The actors were old, the pace was old,
even the locations felt  old.

It was interesting how the visuals of new computing
had entered the Twin Peaks world,
but remained true to an early ’90s look ...
It seemed clear Lynch/Frost don’t use them much.

It made me reflect on this particular moment
in cultural history,
where those in power
have yet to hand down the torch to youngs…


I still love Lynch
and I am curious to see where the series goes.

Even if it felt a bit
like folk tales
from an old tattooed biker
in a greek bar…

Fingers crossed, the return of real Cooper
will have a journey into light.


I, for one, have seen enough darkness for a while.


Sailors say seagulls
are the souls
of great marines departed.
Sometimes
a film
can be
like a ritual …
unwinding powers
that are…
or were…



giulia d