skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Film: Read My Lips
Release date: 6th September 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 115 mins
Director: Jacques Audiard
Starring: Vincent Cassel, Emmanuelle Devos, Olivier Gourmet, Olivier Perrier, Olivia Bonamy
Genre: Crime/Drama/Romance/Thriller
Studio: Optimum
Format: DVD
Country: France
Audiard has made waves with his twist on the crime genre. If A Prophet was the film that made his name, then Read My Lips is the film that first got him recognised. After A Self Made Hero and See How They Fall in the mid-90s, this 2001 release went on to cause a huge buzz in France. With Cesar nominations and awards galore, Audiard creates a probing look at the not so pretty side of Paris that has gone on to become his trademark.
Carla is a thirty-something office worker in central Paris. She is single and deaf with only a hearing aid to give her partial hearing. When she faints at work, Carla is offered an office assistant to help with her workload in the building industry. The agency sends her an attractive young man named Paul for the position - an ex-convict desperate to make an honest living whilst he is on parole.
Paul starts work, shakily struggling to get to grips with the office environment that is so foreign to him. When Carla finds him spending the night in one of the store rooms, she offers him a place to stay, giving him the keys to a flat in one of the company’s unfinished buildings. In response to Carla’s charity, Paul makes a sexual advance on her, but she turns him down much to his frustration.
Carla’s timid nature is not only affecting her personal relationships but is getting her no respect in her job - she has the ability to lip read and constantly picks up on her cruel colleague’s snipes and jeers about her. When she is overlooked for a lucrative opportunity at work, she asks Paul to help her get an upper hand on her disrespectful superiors, and he reluctantly steals files that help her seal a big deal with one of the company’s partners.
When Paul is called up by club owner Marchand, he is forced to leave the office to repay his debt, and Marchand makes him a bar-man at his club. When Paul dreams up a plan to scam Marchand, he calls Carla back into his life. He has thought up a plan to use Carla’s lip reading, and it’s time she repays him for his help...
Audiard is a director whose heart lies in his roots. Parisian born, Audiard is dedicated to telling stories in the backdrop of his home city. The French capitol is famed for its beauty and iconic scenery, but in Audiard’s Paris there is rarely a postcard picture in site - he surrounds his films with run-down buildings, dank city streets and ominous night life. This bleak version of the city is not an entirely new concept when considering the realism of classics like Irreversible and La Haine but Audiard installs an atmosphere entirely of his own.
He does this by portraying the mundane struggle of the inner-city as well it’s very exciting dangers. In The Beat That My Heart Skipped we saw the daily bump and grind of a real estate broker, in A Prophet the solitude of prison, and here the utterly dull routine of office work. Audiard’s world is an uncomfortable place to be, as it displays an air of discontent and turmoil in surroundings that are bleak with a capital B.
This discontent is felt most strongly here by Carla. She is an oddball whose behaviour is more empathetic than it is endearing - scenes of her stood naked in the mirror show her longing with agonising pain. She is an outcast as much for her timid nature as she is for her deafness - subsequently she is unappreciated by friends, disrespected by co-workers but also intriguing to Paul. With themes of crime and the complexity of the heist the two dream up, it is their relationship that is the film’s main drive and most appealing arc.
Their relationship is something all together uncomfortable and fascinating to watch. It evolves with a tension that is both sexual and emotional - Audiard puts his main focus on the complexity of his characters. The two leads are a most unlikely pairing, but what they lack in common ground they make up for with a shared vulnerability and lack of social place.
This leads to them having the most bizarre of cinematic understandings. They show a fair amount of contempt for each other also - their relationship is heated stemming from an early advance from Paul which is aggressive and entirely miscalculated. However, throughout the course of the film, we see how their extreme differences compensate for each other’s shortcomings. We see Paul defend Carla against an attacker in the same way we see Carla lying for Paul to his parole officer. They are two characters that alone are hopeless but together are something extremely special.
The romance is central to the film but the crime-drama motif that features is also done with the upmost conviction. Paul’s scam is simple but engrossingly risky. Working in a bar for Marchand, he is sent to deliver bottles of champagne to his boss and two of his shady associates in a flat opposite the club. He steals a copy of the key and tells Carla to watch and lip read the gang’s moves so they can steal the expectedly large riches they bring back to the flat. As Carla sits on a rooftop clad with a sleeping bag and binoculars, you can’t help but think of Rear Window - it is the tension and discomfort of watching them carry out their plan that truly matches the suspense of a Hitchcock film.
Emmanuelle Devos won the Cesar award for her performance, and it is a treat to see a strong female role stand out in Audiard’s work. He has made a habit of revolving his films around strong male leads, such as Roman Duris and, more recently, Tahar Rahim, but despite a great turn by the consistently watchable Cassel, it is Devos who really stands out here. Supported by a fantastic script, she plays the part as a timid loner for whom we feel every blow and put down, but simultaneously feel every piece of progress she makes.
For fans of A Prophet, this is a film you should strive to see. Audiard starts here his attack on the crime drama with a piece that is daringly erotic, entirely compelling and, despite its grim facade, beautiful. LW
Film: Black Venus
Running time: 159 mins
Director: Abdellatif Kechiche
Starring: Yahima Torres, Andre Jacobs, Olivier Gourmet, Elina Löwensohn, François Marthouret
Genre: Drama/History
Country: France/Italy/Belgium
This film was screened at the 67th Venice Film Festival in September 2010.
While some will attest that the armless Venus De Milo is a work of art, actual physical faults are treated with considerably less vigour – even when they’re a result of nature itself. The Venus in Abdellatif Kechiche’s biographical drama never comes close to attaining the stature of a God, but nevertheless provides the basis for a fascinating meditation on how one can be judged by the sum of their apparent parts.
Kechiche’s depiction of 19th century London successfully brings the squalor of the city to the fore, gaudily presenting the low-brow tastes of working class, pre-Victorian England, and all of its sensationalist hypocrisy. In the very first scene there we sense that this is an ugly place to reside, the folk attracted to businessman Caezar’s star attraction, the ‘Hottentot Venus’, tangibly baying to be entertained, and gladly feasting on the novelty of an unusually-shaped African woman. Saartije, the woman deemed a “freak of nature” for her sagging breasts and abnormally huge buttocks, is playing along with the theatrical aspect of the turn, engaging in tribal-style dancing, and behaving like an aggressive animal whenever a member of the audience dares to approach her.
Even if the unsightly deformities and circus escapades suggest that “Black Venus” be some feminised form of The Elephant Man, Saartije is at least aware of the meretricious aspects of the production, and appears to neither want nor need rescuing. The film addresses the implications of Caezar’s use of Saartije (whether she is his slave or his colleague) early on, profiling this case in a lengthy, over-staged courtroom scene that lathers tabloid-style brushstrokes onto the argument. It’s rather surprising that Saartije’s issue is held so firmly within the public sphere at all, an observation noted by the British bravura of a court official; “It is a credit to this country that it protects the interests of even a Negro woman.” As well as demonstrating a tongue-in-cheek criticism of the indefinitely flawed logic behind moral hierarchy, Kechiche asserts that individual accountability is a peripheral concern within his film, and as he formally deals with the motives behind Caezar’s governance of Saartije “Black Venus” becomes much more of an indictment of society’s failures than anything Caezar does personally.
The film’s primary theme of exploitation unravels slowly, Saartije’s iconisation as the “Venus” shrewdly de-humanising her as a commodity to indulge in. This is a completely different world from John Hurt’s refined surroundings, as Saartije has to contend with Parisian sex parties rather than formal dinners, but their journeys follow the common trope of the outsider’s need for acceptance. Black Venus stresses how one can become so dependent upon habitual pleasures, and bound by the constraints of a circle of friends, that we can so easily conform to a lifestyle that we haven’t chosen for ourselves. Social indoctrination can occur on a multitude of levels, and in this story Kechiche finds a way to demonstrate how a person’s unique qualities and attributes can be modulated to accommodate a certain gaze.
The richness of Black Venus and its assured sense of the period extends (and “extend” really is the key word here) to several lengthy scenes in which Saartije is on display, gyrating her hips and bearing her teeth. As a debilitation of her dignity and condition the surfeit of spectacles serve a purpose, but Saartije’s fetishisation leads to a disconnection between her and the audience. Kechiche seems short on ideas to demonstrate the effect that British life has had on her, opting instead to distract with displays of degrading 19th century pornography. “Black Venus” and its prolonging of the inevitable is a torturous emotional device, which pads out the film to a dauntingly overlong 160 minutes and produces a dawning sense of the anti-climactic.
In the Venus role, Yahima Torres gives a display that is so introspectively devastating that it defies belief. Often an escalating vessel for the film’s thematic presentation, rather than an active proponent within the narrative study, her moves to suggest Saartije’s ideological shifts (both past and present) add valuable substance to the character. As she gives a personal account to a packed courtroom she states, “I am an Actress,” with such an inflected sense of motioned duty, realising just as she utters the words that they are ridiculous. Torres reveals Saartije’s sense of performance, ensconced in a culture that shuns any real esteem, her bemusement with science reflecting that, on some level, she has accepted what she has become.
Although the film opens with a scientific lecture about the Black Venus, and the cultural derivation of her various bodily intricacies, it then veers to a much looser, freer tone, almost mythologizing the concrete knowledge already offered. This is not a well-known pocket of history, and so its sudden shift into a detached world reads as a way of spurning encyclopaedic technicalities, and proclaiming that there was more about this woman than her female form. The sad truth about Saartije is that few people in the film realise this, her objectification in the five or six years of her life that Black Venus covers maintaining that the woman was never treated as anything other than an ephemeral study: her legacy defines her.
The film’s value lies in its ability to interconnect human sciences with medical science, genuinely accessible as an historical biopic of sorts, but never exclusively tied to a timeline. In avoiding becoming too self-righteous towards his subject, Kechiche achieves a lot with his ambitiously-scoped examination of cultural ignorance, and integrates conventional biopic stamps into his outlandish topic. Even if a chunk of Black Venus could acceptably be consigned to the cutting room floor, it’s difficult to condemn its unrelenting vision, and the level of interest in its unique appeal makes for a thoroughly worthwhile experience. CR
Film: Home
Release date: 23rd August 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 98 mins
Director: Ursula Meier
Starring: Isabelle Huppert, Olivier Gourmet, Adelaide Leroux, Madeleine Budd, Kacey Mottet Klein
Genre: Drama/Comedy
Studio: Soda
Format: DVD
Country: Switzerland/France/Belgium
Setting up home is the aspiration for most people – a place to unwind with a sense of personal security, and privacy from the outside world. But what happens when this peaceful haven is taken away after ten years of happiness?
Marthe & Michel, and their three children, live a fairly idyllic lifestyle, with their home situated next to an abandoned highway that they’ve converted into their personal playground (son Julien uses it as a bicycle race track, they play games of street hockey, whilst their property’s space is extended, using the highway to place furniture, a satellite dish and other items), and only a stone’s throw away from beautiful countryside.
However, the strength of this tightly knit family unit (they sit around the dining table to eat together, an increasingly rare occurrence today for busy and detached households – they even bath together!) is put to the test when the serenity of home is upset by the reopening of the road to which their house is in such close proximity…
Setting a light-hearted tone to the film early on (Julien is constantly fooling around, and there’s plenty of laughter), the director allows you to share in the family’s sense of wonder and intrigue, when they first become aware that the route, which will bring heavy traffic past their door, will soon be back in use. There is no official notice for the family – workers in high visibility overalls turn up, move their possessions off the road and block their point of entry with crash barriers (they do not speak, almost giving the impression of invaders from another world) – and only the father expresses any concerns initially, although he quickly falls into line (sleeping outside overnight in anticipation of the first car passing). The son stands outside and waves as they retarmac the road, using the road’s freshly painted white lines to decorate his face, whilst predicting the colour of the first passing car is turned into another family game.
It’s apparent, however, that not everything is as perfect as first impressions suggest. Early on, we see mother Marthe (Isabelle Huppert) almost forcing her reserved, younger daughter Marion (Madeleine Budd) into a bikini – a daughter whose melancholic nature and academic prowess go unnoticed or ignored, and who is told their home is “not a prison,” when she enquires why her mother hasn’t returned to work. We also see the adult daughter bathing naked (cigarette in hand) together with her brother, whilst both parents are present – and it’s in this situation that first indicators of the mother’s mental instability are revealed, as she holds back tears in distress at the thought of possibly having to move. She soon becomes dependent on the radio’s motorway updates, and is unable to even walk her children across the road.
Older daughter, Judith (Adélaïde Leroux) stays completely oblivious to changes in the status quo – initially set-up as the odd family member, you soon realise she is the most sane and stable person in this household. She drowns out events with loud thrash metal, and provides the film’s best comic moments – even with a constant stream of traffic passing by, she continues to sunbathe in next to nothing, aggressively gesturing at horn-tooting lorry drivers, and attracting a sizeable crowd when an accident causes the traffic to grind to a halt.
Whilst the father does his best to hold it together (though taking his children through drainage culvert, which passes beneath the road, when they are unable to navigate through heavy traffic almost proves too much), and appease the sleep deprived and increasingly worrying (at one point smothering her husband with a pillow) mother (from ear plugs to blocking up windows and doors with breeze blocks), the young daughter’s darker personality begins to infiltrate the son’s psyche. Soon paranoia levels are out of control – Julien wetting his bed and checking his “leading poisoning mark” in the early hours, his fears fed by a sister who covers herself head to toe (and uses a gas mask), checking the grass for toxins, and listing various illnesses they will soon suffer from due to the increased levels of pollution (including anorexia!).
With the family unable to cope with disruption to their previously exclusive lifestyle (Marthe can’t even cope with the thought of drivers sighting her underwear on the washing line), the slight uneasiness to the film’s early joviality takes a stranglehold, from darkly comic to outright eerie (the silence as the family creep around their freshly blocked up house) and upsetting – when the father decides enough’s enough, his attempts to remove his wife requires physical force in dramatic scenes that see her clawing to grab hold of furniture and fittings, and screaming, “leave if you want!” and “take them away!” (in reference to their children).
Director Ursula Meier maximizes the role of sound as the musical score alters with the change in the film’s mood. Early on Michel (the father, played by Olivier Gourmet) arrives home from work to upbeat jazz, and rather pleased with his lot, he taps his fingers across the dashboard. However, by the end we are coming to terms with recent events to the haunting voice of Nina Simone – the use of silence is also used effectively, breaking from the noise of the family/traffic to highlight the lost, dazed state the mother finds herself in.
The film’s evolution threatens a more harrowing conclusion, and arguably cops out. Viewers may feel the film’s abstract ending, open to personal summation, may suit, but others will cry out for the director to finish the job - and give them the ultimate payoff!
Though the director takes a fair few liberties with his artistic freedom in setting his one up, he never forgoes realism in its execution, whilst he cleverly handles your uncertainty till the very end. DH
