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Film: 35 Shots Of Rum
Release date: 19th October 2009
Certificate: 12
Running time: 100 mins
Director: Claire Denis
Starring: Alex Descas, Mati Diop, Nicole Dogue, Grégoire Colin, Jean-Christophe Folly
Genre: Drama
Studio: New Wave
Format: DVD
Country: France/Germany
35 Shots Of Rums is a minimalist study of love, and the sometimes inevitable separation with which love comes hand in hand. Claire Denis gently weaves a tale of intimacy between a group of people living in the same apartment building in the Parisian suburbs. The film was well received by critics after its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival.
35 Shots Of Rum follows a brief but undefined passage in the lives of Lionel (Alex Descas), a widowed train driver, and his grown daughter, Joséphine (Mati Diop), who live in a block of flats in the suburbs of Paris.
We are introduced to Joséphine's love interest, Noé (Gregoire Colin), who lives upstairs, and just as the absence of her mother is an ever-present spectre hanging over proceedings, so too is Noé's inevitable departure, as he dips in and out of the action due to work commitments. Although Noé's devotion to Joséphine is often questionable, Lionel struggles to come to terms with the fact that Joséphine will at some point fly the nest, whether it is with or without Noé. Lionel is also the recipient of what seems to be unrequited love from Gabrielle (Nicole Dogue), a taxi driver who also lives in the same building and clearly has feelings for Lionel.
The film follows the paradox of Joséphine and Noé’s blossoming romance, along with Lionel’s loosening grasp of his relationship with his daughter. As the characters' lives delicately interweave, we are introduced to minor characters that gently push the narrative along, enforcing the theme of separation which Denis skilfully keeps at the forefront of the piece. The climax of the action allows the audience to understand the true meaning of the 35 shots, and ultimately concludes the story in a vein in keeping with the piece's slow pace and minimalist style...
To put it bluntly, this film is slow. However, this is not a weakness, but rather adds weight to the film. Denis is dealing with real life, and unlike Hollywood, real life isn't lived at a frenetic pace with enough dialogue to make a script the size of War And Peace. Dialogue is sparse and no words are wasted, with Denis preferring to tell the story through her actors' demeanour, highlighted by expert camera work. For the majority of the opening ten minutes of the film, we are given subtle music set to the backdrop of trains criss-crossing their way through Paris, as well as a patient browse around the protagonists' home. This allows us to settle into the tempo of the film, and ease into the steady lives that Lionel and Joséphine lead.
Descas and Diop both play their parts in exemplary fashion. The intimacy between the two is beautifully crafted, so much so that it is at first perfectly feasible that the two are lovers. Descas finds the perfect balance between being a loving father who wants his daughter to be independent, and a man struggling with the realisation that he is about to lose his closest companion. Much of this should be credited to Denis whom, as writer, only gives Lionel a solitary line in the whole film with which to express his feelings towards his daughter's imminent departure - therefore forcing Descas to portray the emotion through body language alone. The same can be said for the rest of the cast, who play each part, no matter how small, with the level of skill required from such a thin script.
Denis shies away from informing the audience to such an extent that it affects the film in an adverse way. We never fully understand the relationship between Lionel and Gabrielle, yet both are main characters within the plot. We take a brief trip with Lionel and Josephine to visit the grave of their late loved one, where we meet a lady who is potentially a friend, or sister of Joséphine's mother. A tragedy which is important to one the central characters in the film is dealt with in a brief manner, and with no explanation whatsoever.
Along with unexplained instances within the plot, there is also a tendency for scenes to succeed each other in a rather awkward and clumsy fashion. Again, as a result of this, we are left wondering why we are now being shown a different setting, and being thrown straight into the midst of the action. This happens regularly within the film, and although this does not pose as much of a problem as the aforementioned holes in the plot, it adds a mild sense of confusion to proceedings and could have easily been avoided by adding small segments into the beginning of some scenes
35 Shots Of Rum stands out as one of the best contemporary films to deal with the minutiae of suburban life. Its main themes are dealt with by the deftest and most gentle touches, even if the overall lack of slickness to the film somewhat overshadows its many virtues. This film should definitely be seen, though, even if it is just to appreciate Alex Descas and Mati Diop giving a master class in the art of depicting subtle intimacy. CPA
Film: Rapt
Release date: 13th September 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 120 mins
Director: Lucas Belvaux
Starring: Yvan Attal, Anne Consigny, André Marcon, Françoise Fabian, Alex Descas
Genre: Drama/Thriller
Studio: Chelsea
Format: DVD
Country: France/Belgium
Reflecting a growing disaffection with the economic ruling classes, Belgian director Lucas Belvaux’s 2009 kidnapping drama is both thought-provoking and entertaining.
Parisian businessman Stanislas Graff (Yvan Attal) has the kind of life most people can only dream of. He is hugely wealthy, enjoys powerful connections, and has a wonderful home, complete with a loving, beautiful wife, Francoise (Anne Consigny), and two doting daughters, but all of this doesn’t seem to be enough for him. As we soon discover, he has made a habit of being unfaithful to his wife, and has a serious gambling problem that is spiralling out of control.
When he is kidnapped, and one of his fingers is cut off to be sent with a ransom demand, we feel more sympathy for his wife and daughters, if not his coldly indifferent mother, than we do for him. It becomes clear, as his gambling and womanising ways are exposed by a baying media, that his personal wealth is not as large as previously thought, but his business colleagues agree to advance the money to his wife for his ransom payment, perhaps more out of expediency and the desire to put an end to the embarrassing media revelations than any genuine concern for their director’s well-being.
As the media revelations continue to mount, and the police increase pressure on Francoise and the board of Stanislas’s company to do things their way, the kidnappers begin to lose patience, but are in no hurry to forfeit their chance at getting their hands on the kind of wealth that Stanislas allowed to slip through his fingers…
Given the nature of the story, and Stanislas’s flawed personality, it would have been easy for Belvaux to slip into a heavy-handed social commentary about the dispossessed trying to even the score against a rich and unscrupulous tycoon, so it is to his credit that Rapt functions primarily as a taut human drama that is as subtle as it is stylish. Stanislas may be an arrogant scion of wealth and a cheat, but he is only human, and in the hands of his kidnappers his perceived power, in a cruel twist, only makes him more vulnerable.
What also gives Rapt an edge over most other films of this type is the way Belvaux focuses on the fear and confusion experienced by Francoise and her two daughters. The daughters, in particular, are forced to confront the fact that Stanislas may not be the perfect man they thought he was, and when they discover that their mother was at least partially aware of his philandering ways, they feel that she is complicit in having created the illusion of a perfect life that now lies shattered around them.
Where the film does take on a more pointed political edge is in its treatment of the business and political figures that Stanislas works with. Belvaux takes care not to overdo this side of the film, but he does not shy away from presenting the majority of these characters in an unflattering light. Most of them are only concerned with what they see as a public relations problem and the ongoing profitability of the company, while Stanislas’s second in command, Andre Peyrac (Andre Marcon), seems to quietly relish the opportunity to take control.
As the tension mounts, and Stanislas unravels under the pressure, it begins to look as though certain parties would prefer him to disappear for good, and there is even a suggestion that he may have organised the kidnapping himself in order to get the company to pay off his debts.
Aided by editing and cinematography that add to the slowly building tension, and sense of emotional unease, Belvaux has delivered an absorbing and, at times, almost austere dramatic thriller that avoids mainstream gimmicks. If there were a Hollywood remake, which is apparently on the cards, Rapt could well end up looking like a cross between a big budget advert and a pop video, with lots of flashy editing, saturated colours, pointless effects, fanciful camera work and an obtrusive soundtrack, but Belvaux knows when to hold back and maintain a sense of distance.
An experienced actor himself, Belvaux has also coaxed excellent performances from his cast. Yvan Attal handles Stanislas’s transition from an assured man of power to a cowering physical and mental wreck with consummate skill, but it is perhaps in the latter part of the film - spoiler alert - when he impresses most. Once he has been released from the clutches of his kidnappers, Stanislas is arguably at his least likeable. Reunited with his wife and daughters, he is more interested in seeing his dog than confronting the conflicted emotions of his family, and responds with petulance and remarkable selfishness to their feelings of betrayal.
Anne Consigny is even more impressive as Francoise, and is nothing less than mesmerising as a woman who struggles to keep her dignity and sanity intact while trying to support her children in the face of agonising humiliation and fear for her husband’s life. In many respects, Francoise is the heart of the film: a woman torn between the old order and the uncertainty of the new; between her priviledged, if fatally compromised life and the chance at another, less submissive existence.
In some respects, Rapt is a conventional kidnapping drama, but Belvaux invests it with a heady sense of weight and an awareness of context that transforms it into a film of unusual power and intelligence. JG
