Film: Wild Grass
Showing posts with label Anne Consigny. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anne Consigny. Show all posts
REVIEW: DVD Release: Rapt
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
REVIEW: Cinema Release: Wild Grass
Film: Wild Grass
Release date: 18th June 2010
Certificate: PG
Running time: 105 mins
Director: Alain Resnais
Starring: Sabine Azéma, André Dussollier, Anne Consigny, Mathieu Amalric
Genre: Drama
Studio: New Wave
Format: Cinema
Country: France/Italy
When two paths cross, lives entwine in a collision of unlikely, unexpected and fantastic new relationships. New Wave veteran Alain Resnais reveals an internal world of fanciful fairytale rationalised by reality in his adaptation of Christian Gailly’s L’incident.
Opening in a chic Parisian shopping centre, the viewer is introduced to Marguerite Muir (Azéma) - that is, introduced to her flaming bush of scarlet frizz, for she remains faceless for over six minutes as cinematographer Eric Gautier places the viewer in the midst of the city with voyeuristic shots. Content with her latest splurge, the camera follows Muir as she leaves her favourite shoe shop, but her joy is short lived when her bag is snatched by a petty thief.
This is when Georges Palet (played by Resnais regular Dussollier) enters the film. He stumbles upon her discarded wallet and sets the entire film in motion. Thanks to Muir’s pilot’s licence, Palet finds himself equipped with her phone number and address, and spends days contemplating whether to spice up his middle-class life by making contact with the stranger.
As he debates his course of action, the viewer is left to ponder his true colours and underlying motive - Palet’s voice over candidly admits to intentions that are less than savoury, creating something of an ongoing theme that is never fully explained, explored or even justified. Eventually the amateur detective leaves his mission to the professionals, and hands his discovery in to the police.
On retrieving her purse from the police station, Muir asks after its rescuer, and obtains Palet’s phone number. She politely calls him to thank him for his efforts, unwittingly provoking his fixation. The awkward conversation that proceeds sets the tone for the next chunk of the film, whereby Palet’s pursuit increases in intensity, resulting in him visiting her home, leaving letters in her post box and even slashing her tyres. In one of the film’s rare pinches of logic, Muir seeks advice from the law - but refrains from pressing charges. However, Palet’s attention is gradually igniting a spark of interest within her, and the stalker is in danger of becoming the stalked…
Resnais complains that the majority of filmmakers claim that their calling lies in revealing reality through film, adding that his sentiments therefore sway towards contradicting that trend. This may account for his obscure deviations from the main story, which is left as a frayed piece of rope with no tie to bring the loose ends together. For example, as Palet and Muir’s remote relationship draws them ever closer, Resnais and Gailly happily fulfil the inevitable prospect of having the characters meet in person. During the build up to this guiltily satisfying scene, the viewer is invited into their private lives; friends and family are introduced to the audience and each other - mingling across the Muir-Palet border.
On the other hand, the voiceovers that divulge the characters’ thoughts, although rather surreal and invalid in the context of the plot, indicate exactly what Resnais intends to avoid - reality; that is, real characters with real thoughts. Who hasn’t mulled over sinister fantasies when aggravated? That doesn’t make anyone a murderer, yet in the cinematic world, audiences have been conditioned to expect an extensive back-story to justify such an event. Resnais has escaped this anticipation, where he readily conforms in other scenes. These telling voiceovers make you unsure of the characters with Palet, in particular, having hints of schizophrenic tendencies - on occasion, the viewer is left to wonder whether he can actually distinguish between reality and fantasy.
Wild Grass is a stylised film, with Gautier’s presence shaping the entire film. Where voiceovers fail to convey the exact speculations of characters, hypothetical scenes are played out onscreen as thought bubbles laid over shots of the ‘real’ world. To add to that air of ambiguous uncertainty, they are often lived out several times, edited and then replayed, in an effective visual representation of a universal, if subconscious, mental process. Gautier’s eye for composition is often flaunted, with perfectly poised shots that see characters framed in such a way as to reinforce the voyeuristic values that penetrate the film. Use of colour is striking, at no point more so than when Muir drives through the nocturnal roads of Paris, her face reflecting the flickering neon lights that drench the deserted streets.
Wild Grass is a simple film made to appear much more complex than it really is. The peculiar characters, with their enigmatic backgrounds and sometimes surprising relationships, help dress the piece in robes of depth, but Resnais’s recent bias towards the light-hearted side of film is nonetheless prominent in his most recent effort. For all its eccentricity, the story is thin and flimsy, characters are somewhat frustrating and difficult to empathise with, and the plot digressions are meaningless.
Bizarrely, the climactic scene between the two protagonists, which is another trap that manages to surprise precisely because of its predictability, is not the climax of the film.
As aesthetically pleasing as Wild Grass may be, Resnais’s priorities seem to lie simply in contradicting, bluffing and double-bluffing audience anticipation. Rather than making a film of substance that tells a story, confusion seems to be Resnais’ sole motivation. RS
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