French Film at the New York Film Festival

Oh, Mercy!

Sept. 30

 

 

Oh Mercy! (Roubaix, une lumiere in France) is not an easy film to love.

The director, Arnaud Deplechin, wrote a reverse-“love letter” to the city he grew up in. While most directors try to make a splash in their appreciation for their hometowns, Deplechin prefers, instead, to examine the raw grittiness of the city that raised him. There is a seeping malaise throughout the film, accentuated by the music.

Although I have a healthy skepticism for police procedurals, Daoud (“Roschdy Zem”), the protagonist, drew me in. His quiet elegance was his strength. Even when facing the most brutal of crimes, he remained stolid, stoic, always observing, always assessing. He is of Algerian origin, and the director makes a point to focus on Algerians in the film, rather than reducing them as simply “North African.” The film, at first, follows two police officers – the head investigator of Algerian origin, and a white rookie cop. While the former has a cool elegance about him, the latter is overly eager and unpredictable.

Lea Seydoux doesn’t feature prominently until far into the film, when we arrive at the murder investigation. Claude (Lea Seydoux) and Marie were an interesting pair of suspects. Drawn out and birdlike, Seydoux plays a perfect woman-living-on-the-edge.

 

Sibyl

Oct. 5

 

 

Sibyl, according to director Justine Triet, depicts the paths of two (unstable) women moving in opposite trajectories. It is equal parts a drama and a comedy.

The titular character, played by Virginie Efira, is a jarring narrator. Most of her actions are inexplicable, starting with her abrupt decision to fall back from her comfortable work as a psychotherapist to attempt to return to writing. Yet, she can’t resist the plaintive Margot (Adele Exarchopoulos), who is intensely, demandingly falling apart.

The juxtaposition of Margot as an actress at the end of her rope, a figure of the unraveling damsel-in-distress, and Margot as the glamorous rising star, needing to remain in control at all costs, is enough to draw me in.

 

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Oct. 13th

“Don’t regret. Remember.”

 

the power of female anger

Adele Haenel’s character Héloïse is so tangible and unbreakable in her anger at being forced into a marriage against her will. her jawline is so strong as her chin juts out in unrelenting defiance. Noemie Merlant’s character Marianne is the witness to her anger, tasked with softening her hard edges on the canvas.

the setting

Set in Brittany, France in 1760, the beach and the cliffs and the water represented Héloïse’s intense need to get out of herself. her spontaneous burst of energy running, running, running, to the tip of the cliffs, stopping herself just in time to avoid falling into the water, was all-in. it also threaded their moments together, from Marianne’s earlier careful study of Héloïse for her painting, to the outpour of emotive love when their union is threatened later.

female-driven family dynamics

Outside of each other, Marianne and Héloïse spent a great deal of time with the servant girl in Héloïse’s bourgeoise home. the three central characters fell into comforting, tender little family dynamics. the trio care for each other so gently. in the setting of the candle-lit kitchen, cooking and eating and drinking and playing together, the cozy intimacy grew.

artistry

There was something so soothing and pleasureful in watching Marianne’s painting style. Then, we see Héloïse as the “model,” holding herself in place for Marianne’s creations. It is in those scenes that they truly get to know each other, mutually closely observing each other. One striking scene was when Marianne listed off the subtle expressions and movements adele makes when she’s feeling emotional. Naturally, she’s been really looking at her closely in order to capture her essence in the painting. Then, Héloïse catches Marianne off-guard, telling her, “I’ve been looking, too,” and releases a stream of observations of Marianne’s little tells of her subtle feelings.

the love story

The moment I could feel them truly falling in love with each other was at the piano, when Marianne began to play, and Héloïse just watched her, really seeing her, peering intently at her face.

I’m not going to spoil anything, but there is a painting of Héloïse at the end, holding a book slightly open at a certain page, that made me tear up in the face of an enduring symbol of their ephemeral love story.

ending shot

The ending shot in Portrait of a Lady on Fire rivals the emotionally arresting ending shot in Call Me By Your name, in which Timotheé Chalamet’s raw melancholy matches perfectly with the mournful music of “Visions of Gideon” by Sufjan Steven. In Portrait of a Lady on Fire, the camera focuses on Adele Haenel’s face as she listens to “the Four Seasons” by Vivaldi live. Héloïse’s acting is so contained yet so expansive at the same time. It is like she is feeling the music in every fiber of her being, pulling her emotions out of her. I walked out of the theater feeling like I was still in the presence of that moment, and I instantly started listening to that same piece of music through my headphones, needing to keep that moment alive inside of me.

 

 

Marriage Story Review: Ying and Yang

“Who really won in the end??” I asked my companion Alex, as we started to make our way from our seats out of the theater. We had just finished watching Marriage Story at the Paris Theater in New York City.

“Not Henry,” she responded, quick as a whip.

A moment of silence for Henry, the much fought over kid who, in the end, was just a symbol of his two separated parents’ clashing personalities.

Nicole and Charlie. Ying and Yang. Anima and Animus. The Sun and The Moon. LA and New York.

I can’t stop thinking of that moment, near the end, in which both parties have their own, separate, musical number. Nicole doesn’t need a spotlight because she IS the spotlight. Her emphatic dance along with her singing is infectious as well as hypnotizing. Charlie is hugged by the spotlight, which soothes his melancholy. His voice carrying in the intimate space is his whole heart, on its own, breaking out from his lungs into the space between. Nicole looks like she’s never been more alive and free, magnifying the love and energy she feels surrounded by her family. Charlie is laying himself bare to his chosen family, his theater troupe, who don’t have to say a word to him for him to know that they’ve got his back. Nicole’s voice is amplified by her matriarchal unit, her mother and her sister, in a sunlit, open, airy living space. Charlie is accompanied by somber live music in a dim, monotone, quiet restaurant. Nicole has never been more LA and Charlie has never been more New York.

Scar Jo secured her best actress nomination with her monologue near the beginning of the film. It tells an entire story of love, from the first spark to the heartbreak. Director Noah Baumbach (in a fantastic turn) deliberately shoots this in a one-take close up. Nicole had felt like the star in Charlie’s eyes, until she felt like she was feeding him her star essence for his own dream. She felt like a supporting cast member in her own life, a feeling I know all too well. She needed to walk her own path before she lost herself entirely. To her, Charlie only saw her as a piece of himself. Her heartbreak made her look like a fragile bird.

Adam Driver wore Charlie’s grief on his sleeve. Every betrayal he feels kicks him in the chest a little more than the last. At times, it was almost too painful to watch his face as the agreements they’d made, both coupled and separated, were entirely reneged upon, he felt, by Nicole. There’s denial that Nicole would do that, bargaining to try to keep whatever they had left, anger at the ensuing legal battle, depression at the loss of his life as he’d known it, and, finally, acceptance at having to make necessary changes.

The legal battle lit me up like a livewire. Laura Dern as Nora, Nicole’s lawyer, is the perfect mix of righteous and amoral. She is so, so transparent that I adore her. She is a poodle who wins dogfights by outbarking her opponents. In another layer of her, she delivers a powerful speech on the demands on mothers while fathers are nonplussed.

I loved getting to see my civil procedure knowledge from law school play out onscreen, like how important it is in the service of process that neither one of the parties serves the other. Outside of the procedural stuff, the “legalese” was just so exciting. Nora met her match with Charlie’s bombastic lawyer. The two of them, in an excellently adversarial court scene, went to bat for their respective clients, crafting masterful sparring narratives from the exact same set of facts.

In the personal battle, there is an explosive argument that contains some of the best-written dialogue I have ever witnessed. Noah Baumbach deserves a nomination for best screenplay for that alone. The acting by Scar Jo and Adam Driver was like a duet, leading up to the feverish intensity of the crescendo and the cathartic release of the denouement. This is something that I need to watch again when this film comes out on Netflix so that I can dissect every little detail.

The continuity in this film is amazing. The beginning scene, with the expressive list by each partner about what they love about the other, written for therapy, mention all of the qualities that brought them together, and then wedged them apart throughout the film.

This film, in its entirety, is a masterpiece.

It’s so interesting, because even though this film is about a couple, I can see all sorts of different relationships I’ve been a part of, and how we relate to each other. How I can be friends with someone, and so close, and know them so instinctually, and yet also feel like they can’t see me for me, for who I am outside of our friendship. I see the relationship I’ve had with my mother, in which I have to assert my independence while also wanting reassurance that she understands why I have to go. How, when I’m fighting with someone I’ve been physical with, there is the heat that comes from yelling at each other that is also the heat that comes from loving them.

The thing is, at the end of the day, the perspective shifted from Nicole to Charlie and it lingered on Charlie for the rest of the film. Charlie is clearly the character from the director’s point of view, especially given that Charlie is a theater director himself. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised by how Nicole’s perspective was shone on earlier in the film. It was shown compassionately and empathetically. And then, it swerves to Charlie, and his bewilderment, and his furious paddling to keep up with the throes of the divorce. I worry that Scarlett Johansson’s voice as Nicole is going to be overshadowed by Adam Driver’s performance as Charlie. She deserves to be regarded as an equally sympathetic figure.

However, when it comes down to the resolution, Charlie did lose. He had to concede. He moved away from his theater troupe in New York City, to take up a residency at UCLA. He is due more than just a twinge of sympathy. Still, we can’t get too heartbroken for Charlie. As Nicole’s lawyer reminds us, Nicole had spent all those years in New York, living Charlie’s dream, while Charlie had never taken her desire to spend time in LA seriously, reducing the agreement they’d made to move to LA as a family into a mere “discussion.” We would be remiss to ignore that.

Nicole’s physical transformation throughout the film was great. She starts out kind of folded into herself, wearing neutral clothing and a neutral haircut. The moment she moves back to be with her family in LA, it seems, it feels like she’s being watered because she stops wilting. She dyes her hair noticeably light blonde, and it suits her lighter personhood. She wears clothes that fit and flare, that she can freely move in. Her entire physicality shifts, so that she can swish around in her feelings instead of holding them in. It’s beautiful.

In the q&a afterward, Noah Baumbach said that it’s when something stops working is when you really look at it. like when a doorknob isn’t working and you suddenly look at its inner machinations. I think that says it all, really.

The two love letters bookend the film, from Charlie reading out what he loves about Nicole at the beginning, to him reading what she wrote about her love for him in the end. Perhaps this really is a love story.

Henry, at the end, wears a shirt that says, “things will be okay.” Maybe they will be.

 

Rating: A