The Month has a Flavour

Charlize Theron plays a manic pixie dream girl who seeks to rescue Keanu Reeves from his own personality in 2001's Sweet November. Set in a sanitised version of San Francisco where everyone seems to wear colour coordinated clothing, it's definitely a softball drama and earns its 15% on Rotten Tomatoes. But it is kind of interesting seeing two action stars play off each other in a romantic feature.

Reeves plays Nelson, a ruthless ad man who has no time for his girlfriend Angelica, played by Lauren Graham in a brief appearance. His vicious tenacity loses him both his job and his girlfriend but luckily he meets the beautiful Sara (Theron) at the DMV. He tries to get her to help him cheat on the driver's written test but the instructor catches her whispering and disqualifies her from taking the test for a month. When Nelson offers to pay her salary for a month as an apology for preventing her from doing any work related driving, she tells him he treats women like whores and instead insists that he move in with her and let her change his whole life. I assume at some point there may have been a screenplay with an intelligible thread of logic.

Sara really likes the colour of rust. In her effort to enforce a regime of free spirited independence, she gives away Nelson's clothes and gives him a hoodie the same rust colour as her scarf and the walls of her apartment. It turns out the hoodie belongs to Jason Isaacs who plays Sara's drag queen neighbour. It's a stock "gay best friend" character (no less stock than Sara's manic pixie dream girl) but I liked Isaacs in the role. I don't know why he doesn't get more lead roles.

Reeves is, well, Reeves. Theron is always great but there's nothing she can do to break out of how generic the screenplay and costumes make her. I suppose if I had to be in a prison camp, I'd prefer the warden to look like her.

The Omnipotence of the Courtesan Poetess

Nowadays, we have superheroes. In 16th century Venice, apparently that role was filled by courtesans, if 1998's Dangerous Beauty is to be believed. Which it shouldn't be. This supposed biopic of real life courtesan and poetess Veronica Franco is such a softball, filtered, and sugared treatment, it's kind of hilarious. If you forget about that, though, it's a diverting little romance.

Catherine McCormack plays Veronica, whom we meet as an innocent young woman gazing in astonishment at the courtesans flaunting themselves on gondolas.

Amusingly, this film was lauded for its feminism but Veronica's whole motivation throughout the film is to win the love of a man, her childhood crush, Marco (Rufus Sewell). He's a senator and he feels compelled to marry for politics, as it turns out to an almost unrecognisable Naomi Watts.

Veronica's mother (Jacqueline Bisset) consoles her daughter, explaining she can still have Marco if she becomes a courtesan, as her mother was before her. Veronica is shocked to learn her mother was a courtesan, apparently having never had any hint of her mother's vocation in twenty or so years of associating with Venetian aristocracy. I guess people didn't like to gossip in 16th Venice.

If you believe that, maybe you'll believe the whirlwind training Veronica's put through in apparently a matter of weeks (incidentally, her father's never mentioned). Her mother has to explain to her that courtesans are the only women allowed in libraries but Veronica just takes it in stride when a naked man is suddenly in her home for training purposes.

I was talking to the screen at this point; "Who is this guy?" While Veronica's mother is going on about the importance of a courtesan expressing sensual pleasure in order to give sensual pleasure, I just kept asking, "Who is the naked guy?" Is he a male prostitute? Is he a john? Shouldn't Veronica's first time be something her mother asks a high price for? We never see the guy again or get any explanation. There are a lot of inexplicable things in this movie.

For instance, her sword fight with Oliver Platt, who plays a rival poet. Although this was apparently an unplanned duel, she rips off her skirt to reveal a pair of man's knee breeches.

Yet this is not worthy of comment. The director shoots around it a lot, it was difficult for me to get a screenshot. It's as though he was embarrassed. I wouldn't blame him.

The best is saved for the climax, though, when Veronica is put on trial for witchcraft by the Inquisition. The real Veronica Franco apparently was tried by the Inquisition, a scapegoat for the plague, but while Wikipedia suggests she was acquitted thanks to the influence of some of her important clientele, it's a safe bet to say it did not play out as it does in the film. In this version, Marco stands and declares his love and argues for the rights of women and demands respect for courtesans so convincingly that all the men in the room stand up in her defense. I'd be readier to believe she was rescued by Santa Claus. But if this feminist film accomplishes nothing else, at least it portrays men as pretty terrific.

Twitter Sonnet #1709

Absconding pods of whales abduct the dame.
Ebullient depths beheld the dastard route.
In bed, the stripper 'pined on lingual fame.
But devils die from normal, painful gout.
Above horizons red with jam's the sun.
Adventures sought and tried, the day retained.
Through charnel scuppers, pirate's life doth run.
With ruddy paints the splintered deck is stained.
A ruffled cloud dispersed to show a star.
Rejected ears return beneath the cat.
With waxy time, the fated flame was marred.
Relaxing shade accrued beneath the bat.
The super lady stunned the courtly crowd.
An easy shape absorbed the glitter cloud.

Lifelong Party Girl

It seems I wasn't the only one who preferred to see more of Sophie Marceau because 1982's La Boum 2 focuses almost entirely on her character, Vic. Without the weird need to prop up Claude Brasseur (who's still in the film in a reduced role) the story becomes mostly an easy-going treat.

Vic is now looking very much like a young woman as her mother observes when watching her in a dance studio. She imagines Vic as Debbie Reynolds in Singin' in the Rain and then as Cyd Charisse and we can see the skinny girl from La Boum is, in La Boum 2, able to match Charisse toe to tip.

The film becomes a sequence of mildly amusing episodes in which Vic agonises about parties and the boys she has to choose from to break her cherry. Only one scene really recalls the tedium of the first film, when Vic loses a bet at a party and has to dress as a streetwalker and stand on the curb for three minutes. Of course, her father immediately just happens to find her.

But mostly this is a sweet showcase for Marceau who was fortunate to grow up beautifully.

Between Success and Sex

Nelly's husband is the perfect mate but she only wants to have sex with a drunken ex-con called Loulou in 1980's Loulou. Isabelle Huppert and Gerard Depardieu star as Nelly and Loulou, both giving unrestrained performances which are charming because they're both so cute. The cinematography is beautiful and well composed to pair nicely with free-wheeling direction and editing.

Nelly goes to a disco with Andre (Guy Marchand), her husband. He also owns the advertising agency at which she works. They see Loulou at the disco and he and Nelly become quickly enraptured with each other.

Theirs is a relationship of few words but of a lot of sex and giggling. She doesn't make much of an effort to hide the fact that she and Loulou start spending most of their time in a hotel room. Andre tries to be cool with it at first, to be modern.

For all this picture's nonchalance, it does intend to be a commentary on post-'60s sexual mores. Loulou and Nelly's hazy future plans when she gets pregnant by him make you wonder if a firmer marital institution would have been better for Nelly. Or is it okay for her to just get an abortion and for the two to keep happily boinking until their money runs out? And then what?

Loulou doesn't seem to spare a lot of thought for to-morrow. He does have a sense of honour, which he displays when beating up Andre after he sees him getting rough with Nelly. It's curious the film is named for his character since all the dramatic decisions revolve around Nelly. But what is to be done about a Loulou? Maybe some guys just exist to sexually please a few people before meeting a violent and/or embarrassing death somewhere, somehow. The movie makes it seem more romantic than that. Good cinematography and cute stars will do that.

Loulou is available on The Criterion Channel.

Looking for Clues in Clueless

Somehow I ended up watching 1995's Clueless last night. I don't think I'd seen it all the way through since it came out though I must have seen bits and pieces whenever my sister watched it. It's certainly a relic of a bygone era, isn't it? Could you make a movie about a dumb rich blonde girl to-day? I mean, one who's supposed to be sympathetic? Maybe there are examples among movies and TV series I haven't seen.

I find myself watching it through two lenses--a nostalgic lens, for '90s America and my youth, and an English teacher in Japan lens. Japanese teachers have asked me more than once, "What's school like in the US?" Usually I recommend The Breakfast Club or Pretty in Pink. I suppose Clueless and Mean Girls should be on the list, too. Clueless might be perfect to show kids in Japan because Cher (Alicia Silverstone) is so positive, and positivity is a message that's vigorously pressed on students.

Wikipedia quotes writer/director Amy Heckerling as saying,

"The most successful character in anything I'd ever done was Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times. People think that's because he was stoned and a surfer. But that's not it. It's because he's positive. So I thought, 'I'm going to write a character who's positive and happy.' And that was Cher."

Plus, Cher's a virgin, which is valued much more highly in Japan than in the US. Cher and her friends are all wealthy but no-one in the movie mentions it, there are no class issues present, which would also make it ideal. Two of the American movies that have clearly gone through committees to be officially endorsed at schools I've worked at, Wonder and Back to the Future, both show characters living comfortably and economic disparity is never mentioned (so maybe I shouldn't be recommending Pretty In Pink). The only real problem with Clueless is that it features two characters who smoke pot. Drugs are talked about casually and sometimes approvingly in the movie. Oh, well.

Anyway. I enjoyed Clueless. The moment at the climax when Alicia Silverstone and Paul Rudd are staring at each other is so sweet and really made me want to watch more romantic films. Why do those two work? All of the moments meant to prove that Cher isn't so dumb are very circumstantial and ultimately meaningless, like when she knows the Hamlet quote better than the supposedly smart girl. There's no real indication that Cher is as interested as Josh is in exploring concepts. She just likes being nice. She can be manipulative but only to please her father and her friends. The fact that her manipulations are transparent and sometimes clumsy adds to her charm. She and Josh adore each other, each kind of pities the other, which would be a red flag if Josh bothered consulting Nietzsche on the subject.

If you zoom in on that book, you can see the name "Friedrich Nietzsche" is taped onto the back. Heckerling really wanted you to know who Josh was reading. Nietzsche considered pity a demeaning and ultimately harmful thing, for both the one who pities and the one who is pitied.

Josh pities Cher because she's dumb and Cher pities Josh because he's unfashionable. Is that good enough? I can't help thinking about . . .

You see that? You can't kill Woody Allen, he's in our heads forever . . .

Clueless is available on Paramount.

Twitter Sonnet #1680

With icing lost behind the crash we ate.
With frozen food we made a home at large.
And wandered out across the tundra late.
We saw the gathered flakes of blizzard charge.
Confusion clouds the rink before the freeze.
Above the falling skate a beauty cries.
A frosted glass contains a thousand seas.
Preserved in glacier ice, her lonesome sighs.
Combining cherry red with fuchsia wins.
But phantom dates revolve the living room.
To make the grade, she seeks the aid of sins.
Effective colours break the party tomb.
Mistakes allowed the lace to top dessert.
And now the tea and coffee might invert.

To His Lady's Bower

For Valentine's Night, I chose something a little more tried and true and watched 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood again. Now that's a romantic film, in the classical sense, and Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland certainly had chemistry.

How lovely is that scene where he visits her chambers? She's so innocent but clearly smart enough we know she knows what she's getting into. And somehow subsequent iterations have never managed anything like Flynn's blend of sauciness and gentleness.

I love de Havilland's shiny costumes and how every set was cavernous, as though it were a requirement in the '30s for every Hollywood set to be capable of supporting a massive dance number, should inspirations strike. I'd love to have a massive stone room with a fireplace big enough to be another room.

Being the king's ward certainly has its perks. Maid Marian does represent a fantasy of cultivation. Now the standard impression is that being raised in privilege inevitably corrupts a person but at one time people thought prudent, expensive upbringing could produce refinement. That's a lovely dream. No, it's not fair. But when has life ever been?

Love Among the Canal Kittens

On a barge in France, crowded with cats, a marriage is in jeopardy. 1934's L'Atalante may be the most adorable movie ever made.

We meet the crew of L'Atalante, an old man named Pere Jules (Michel Simon) and a boy (Louis Lefebvre), as they prepare for the return of their captain, Jean (Jean Daste) and his new bride, Juliette (Dita Parlo). Cleaning up the deck, Pere finds some of the omnipresent cats and kittens. He absently puts a kitten on his shoulder where it remains throughout the ensuing scenes.

Michel Simon's performance is nothing short of astounding. I was convinced he was a real old man whom director Jean Vigo found lounging on a wharf one day. It turns out he was only 39, four years younger than I am, and is the same actor I remember fondly from Boudu Saved from Drowning.

A scene where he shows Juliette his esoteric collection of knickknacks, tattoos, and porn from his world travels is absolutely captivating. From the shaggy marionette to the naked woman scrawled on his back, each item is captivating in its own way.

So often in films set aboard ships, the cabins are improbably large in order to accommodate filming. Here's one film that keeps in mind just how cramped it is. Vigo must have made sets that disassembled easily in order to accomodate a variety of angles with his bulky 1930s camera and equipment.

It pays off and there are fresh inventions in virtually every shot.

As Juliette, Dita Parlo is adorable as any of the kittens. Most people watching the movie probably root for her to leave Jean for Pere but the film blessedly presents a more complex, and simpler, situation. I loved this movie.

L'Atalante is available on The Criterion Channel.

From One Bed to Another

The wheel turns and lovers change in their significance and identity, each caught in the ever changing stream of reflections in 1950's La Ronde. Max Ophuls' adaptation of the 1897 play was considered obscene in America, of course, as it not only acknowledged the existence of sex but of extramarital sex. But it's a lovely, delicate, oddly sweet film about how people are isolated in a crowd by discreet lies and the roles they play.

Anton Walbrook plays our interdimensional host, striking a graceful, slightly melancholy, ruminating tone as he tells us how people are doomed to only seeing one half of their relationships. He alone, a strange figure who stands outside the logic of the film, sees La ronde, sees the unending cycle. Identifying the film set and the artificiality of the production, he transports us to 1900. "I adore the past," he says. "It's so much more peaceful than the present."

He meets with the first of the film's magnificent ensemble cast, Simone Signoret, playing a prostitute. Frustrated at being unable to find a john, she finally offers free sex to a soldier. He hastily accepts. Clearly she expected some consideration in the end, but she ends up loudly rebuking him for not even giving her a cigarette as he rushes off to his girlfriend, a chambermaid played by Simone Simon, whom he will also abandon.

Walbrook consoles her that she will find a better situation, romantically and professionally, as a chambermaid to a wealthy family. She makes love to their handsome son, perhaps his first love, and then we follow him to the arms of a wealthy, married woman (Danielle Darrieux). We follow her seemingly sexless husband to a scene where he seduces a 19 year old shopgirl (Odette Joyeux).

This after a lecture to his wife about the moral decrepitude of adulterous women. With his wife and with the shopgirl, he arranges things to be perceived as a moral and/or sexual authority, but to us, and, to some extent, to them, he only looks small and foolish. But everyone in this chain tells lies, clings to a perception of sexual dynamics, however obviously false. To borrow a phrase from Bob Dylan, do any of them on line know what any of it is worth?

La Ronde is available on The Criterion Channel and HBOMax.

A Fantastic Event at an Abnormal Time

A high school girl's affections are torn between a fellow student and her homeroom teacher in 2017's Daytime Shooting Star (ひるなかの流星). It's a pretty lightweight romantic comedy that very gently flirts with the idea of a high school girl dating one of her teachers, a bit more conservatively than After the Rain. The film is filled with safely cliche beats but the leads are genuinely cute and charming, particularly Mei Nagano as Suzume.

Suzume's a girl from the country who goes to live with her uncle (Ryuta Sato) in Tokyo. She's overwhelmed by the city and faints when she spots a shooting star in the daytime. A scruffy young man catches her who turns out to be a friend of her uncle's--as well as her new homeroom teacher, Shishio (Shohei Miura).

On her first day at school, the nervous but earnest Suzume finds she's also sitting next to a handsome boy named Mamura (Alan Shirahama) who gallantly offers to share his text book with her. But he recoils when she accidentally brushes his hand and cgi gives him a fierce blush. It turns out he's deathly afraid of girls.

Suzume also makes a female frenemy, Yuyuka (Maika Yamamoto), who has a crush on Mamura. In a pretty standard scene, Yuyuka tries to pull a prank on Suzume but, when it looks like she'll be caught in the act, Suzume covers for her, and the two are friends after that. It's amazing how cliches can cross cultural boundaries.

For most of the film, it feels like Suzume's going to end up with Shishio and Yuyuka's going to end up with Mamura. That would be a pretty radical outcome, though, in a country where I just read about the latest four teachers to be arrested for sleeping with students (and I hear about a lot more that don't get caught). It's a sad problem. Girls should be free to innocently fantasise about this stuff without adults who take advantage of their innocence.

I watched this movie because many students recommended it to me in the letters they wrote to me. Now I know why they kept asking me if I like Mei Nagano. She's cute. With her big nose, she kind of looks like Setsuko Hara. For some reason, the kids aren't thrilled when I recommend Mikio Naruse movies from the '50s.

Daytime Shooting Star is available on Netflix in Japan.

A Valentino for You

An exceptionally handsome young Cossak becomes an exceptionally handsome outlaw in 1925's The Eagle. Rudolph Valentino stars in this lovely romance in which the main attraction is definitely his chemistry with Vilma Banky.

Dubrovsky (Valentino) is happy in his life serving the Czarina Catherine II (Louise Dresser) until the Czarina takes notice of him and decides she wants more from him than prowess in combat.

When he walks out on her, she signs his death warrant. His castle is handed over to a corrupt nobleman named Kyrilla (James A. Marcus) who condemns Dubrovsky's father to death in a miserable cottage. Young Dubrovsky vows revenge and he does so by becoming the Black Eagle, swooping down on Kyrilla's thugs.

Very little of the film is actually spent with Dubrovsky wearing the mask and being a highwayman. It turns out Kyrilla has a beautiful daughter, Mascha (Banky), whom Dubrovsky had met before and sparks had already ignited. He ends up posing as her French tutor and most of the movie is spent with him insinuating himself into the household and her heart. Come to think of it, that's almost the plot of Parasite, isn't it?

Valentino and Banky have such magnificent chemistry. I love how they hold a long pause just gazing at each other, each captivated by the gaze of the other, maybe her a little more than him.

The Eagle is public domain so it's available all over the place.

The Right Heart for the Wrong Letters

Happy Twelfth Night, everyone. To mark the day, I thought I might watch a production of Shakespeare's play of the same name but instead I watched 1942's Lettres d'amour (Love Letters). Being a romantic comedy involving mistaken identity, economic class, and misdirected affections, it's not dissimilar to Shakespeare's play, and is a delightful film in its own right.

Set in the mid-19th century, the film stars Odette Joyeux as Zelie, the postmistress of a small town. Her friend is a wealthy aristocrat called Hortense, played by Simone Renant, who's just as beautiful as Joyeux.

Hortense is having an affair with a handsome young bureaucrat called Francois (Francois Perier) and receives love letters from him, written under the name "Hedgehog", secretly through Zelie. Only Zelie knows the secret and Hortense leads Zelie to believe the Hedgehog is an Imperial guard. So Zelie is without suspicion when Francois comes to town as the new district attorney.

Interwoven throughout the film is a complex courtroom drama involving tensions between the two town factions called the "Shop" and the "Society", or, working class and aristocracy. Zelie, as postmistress, belongs to the former but she's a widow with a large fortune. This seems to be what enabled her to become friends with Hortense. Francois finds himself charmed by Zelie's wit and enjoys quizzing her about his own love letters which she mistakenly believes came from an Imperial guard.

It's a fast moving, very sweet comedy about love and bureaucracy. It also has beautiful costumes designed by Christian Dior himself.

Lettres d'amour is available on The Criterion Channel.

A Jaguar on the Road to Love

Is love the natural result of long familiarity or the product of intimate, impassioned exchanges of ideas and feelings? 1962's I Hate but I Love (憎いあンちくしょう) presents both kinds of relationship, centring on a young couple who have been together a long time but haven't slept together. Starring Yujiro Ishihara and Ruriko Asaoka, both young and beautiful, the film, for a low budget Nikkatsu film, is surprisingly captivating for its violent sensitivity to subtext.

Daisaku (Ishihara) is a multitalented celebrity, a reckless crooner, TV interviewer, and radio host who often can't be bothered to read ad copy. The film opens with tracking shots of him angrily stalking out of the radio studio then driving madly through a crowd before stumbling through his apartment, tearing off his clothes, and collapsing naked in bed. But not before writing on the door outside, "Wake me up and I'll beat you to death."

But that doesn't stop Noriko (Asaoka) who gleefully puts an alarm clock in a bowl, sliding it into his bedroom. She's not just his girlfriend but his manager as well.

The two are comfortable goofing off, dancing, and arguing--they argue quite a bit--but they have a rule, instituted by Daisaku, never to kiss or sleep together. Originally he'd been concerned over complicating their professional relationship, now it's almost a fetish as she's comfortable dancing about his apartment in just a shirt and underwear while he sings for her. Ishihara's voice, by the way, is terribly beautiful.

Then two things happen; the producer of Daisaku's TV show finds a human interest story for him, a potential juicy interview, and Daisaku and Noriko, bored in his apartment one day, decide to break their rule. At the last moment, just as Daisaku is tearing his own shirt off Noriko in bed, she decides not to go through with it.

The human interest story is centred on a young woman living in Tokyo who has been exchanging love letters with a doctor in Kyushu, far to the south. The woman has placed an ad for someone to drive a jeep to Kyushu to deliver letters to the man.

Noriko laughs that her and Daisaku's relationship is exactly the opposite of the man and woman's, insisting the two can't really be in love because they've never met. Still worked up from Noriko's rejection the previous night, Daisaku impulsively accepts the job of driving cross country in the jeep despite pleas from Noriko and the producer.

Of course, she follows Daisaku. He drives the decrepit jeep, she drives his sporty Janguar, and it becomes a road movie. The longer the trip lasts, the less his fervour seems strange and the more Noriko's intense desire to stop him seems like it reflects deeper, difficult to articulate issues. If Daisaku succeeds in completing a romantic gesture, would that mean something about romance Noriko doesn't want to acknowledge? His music is so beautiful and obviously romantic, it's hard to believe she doesn't believe in it. But maybe that's part of the job of a manager, to be only pragmatic so the artist doesn't have to be. It turns out to be a good way to talk about two different aspects of love. It helps a lot that these kids have massive star power.

I Hate but I Love is available on The Criterion Channel, in the U.S. and Japan.

Hiding Brigitte

Keeping a gangster's beautiful daughter hidden while her father is on the lam can be trickier and involve more slapstick and songs than you might imagine. In 1956's Naughty Girl (Cette sacrée gamine) a suave nightclub singer has just such a task which makes for a delightful screwball comedy that is overshadowed slightly by the loveliness of its star, Brigitte Bardot.

Jean Clery (Jean Bretonniere) is kind of a low rent Dean Martin who sings at a cabaret club. He's engaged to a fussy psychotherapist named Lili (Francoise Fabian) before his life is upended after a gang boss he's indebted to (Bernard Lancret) tasks him with caring for his young daughter. Jean not only has to hide young Brigitte (Bardot) from the authorities, who'd want to question her in connection to her father's crimes, he also has to keep hidden from her the fact that her father is a gangster, something the old man's kept her ignorant of so far.

It's a good set up for screwball and it starts paying off immediately when Jean goes to retrieve Brigitte from a dance school where she's being taught some kind of group Grecian ode to spring dance in a tiny white dress. He's much more panicked than she as the two run from the cops through the showers and then out onto the lawn and into a car. She reminds him with only mild perturbation that she's almost naked.

Bardot easily outshines Bretonniere. Director Michel Boisrond contrives several creative teases for the audience with her. The first time we see her, greeting her father outside their mansion, she seems to be fixing some dirty machine while wearing only a shirt and panties.

Then she takes the shirt off to reveal a perfectly innocent (well, really scandalously two piece) swimsuit before diving into a pool that was nearby all the time.

Hiding in Jean's home Bardot is great in plenty of the inevitable suspense comedy as she manages to stay just out of the eyeline of a visiting police inspector and hilariously tries to give a parrot to a gang courier who assumes she's speaking in code. The film also has a few nice musical numbers--Bretonniere's singing underwhelms but Bardot is great in the dance numbers, particularly in a series of Jean's fantasies. According to Wikipedia, this movie was more successful at the box office than the contemporaneous And God Created Woman, and I think I do like this film better.

Twitter Sonnet #1141

A fluttered page retracts a progress out.
A system cut from scattered eyes appears.
The telling steam is whispered through the spout.
A rolling heat expands for sick arrears.
The neon stars displaced a cup of dice.
Familiar streets of film support the train.
A starving king absconds with sacred rice.
A brilliant queen converts her scotch to rain.
Reports reflected false and true combine.
The thorn's decisions planed to steady hum.
Collected leaves import the weird divine.
Discussion ceased for grim reporting drum.
In bouncing off the cave a hail collapsed.
The atmosphere in silence sure relapsed.