REVIEW: DVD Release: Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno

Film: Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno
Release date: 12th April 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 100 mins
Director: Serge Bromberg & Ruxandra Medrea
Starring: Romy Schneider, Serge Reggiani, Bérénice Bejo, Jacques Gamblin
Genre: Documentary
Studio: Park Circus
Format: DVD
Country: France

185 film reels hidden in silence for forty-six years - these constitute the cinematic treasure Inferno (L’Enfer) that remained trapped in the abysses of forgetfulness for almost half a century, before being dug up by Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea in 2005.

Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno sees the documentary makers return to a film whose production was stopped after only three weeks of shooting, leaving many questions unanswered.

The original plot of Inferno records a couple of newlyweds - Marcel Prieur (Serge Reggiani), and his younger wife Odette (Romy Schneider) - who have just moved to the French countryside to take over a hotel.

The life of Marcel turns gradually into a night-and-day nightmare when he becomes suspicious about his very attractive wife cheating on him, with the local hunk Martineau or with her friend Marylou. As he starts to follow Odette, his mistrust towards her grows into distrust, which ultimately rots to the point of blurring his perception of reality tremendously…

In this framework, the film Inferno tracks the descent into hell of a man whose pathological jealousy leads him to madness. The film does not contain anything remarkable on this level. Nevertheless, the genius of some directors – like Henri-Georges Clouzot – stands out in the alchemy to transform an ordinary story into a masterpiece in the history of the seventh art…


To quickly put the film in context, it is important to mention that Henri-Georges Clouzot was renowned in France and beyond its borders thanks to the thrillers Wages Of Fear (Le Salaire de la Peur) in 1953, Diabolique (Les Diaboliques) in 1955, or La Verite – starring Brigitte Bardot – in 1960. Inferno would mark his comeback after four challenging years in his personal life spent away from the public eye. It would be as well a means to express his resistance to the ever-critical New Wave tendency for improvisation.

In actual fact, the core of the documentary – and its main interest – lies in the primary resources, such as the selection of camera tests and visual shootings chosen from the fifteen-hour reels. “Inferno for Clouzot was the determination to make another kind of filmmaking.” In order to seize the experience of neurosis, the director explored kinetic art and colours to transpose it into visual experimentations (“optical coitus”), which would eventually depict an accurate representation of his imagination. These precious images unveil Romy Schneider as Odette Prieur – the centre of attention of Henri-Georges Clouzot and Marcel Prieur respectively – like nobody has ever seen her before. Most people remember the actress as Sissi (1955), but if Inferno had been released, the realm of Bavaria and the rest of the world would have been seriously shaken by the sequences. Furthermore, we can make a hint at the test recordings, from music to voices, and especially Clouzot’s when interpreting scripts. All these parts tend to prove the minutiae of his filmmaking method, and to call our attention to pay him solemn respect. Ultimately, the director Serge Bromberg, as an omniscient narrator, reveals stories behind the camera, and notably for the reasons why the artistic perfectionism of Henri-Georges Clouzot would lead to a dead end.

Original scenes with corresponding dialogue are spread out throughout the film, interspersed with interviews, re-enactments, and also extracts of scriptless pictures. It opens with an interview of Clouzot, in which he explains the motives that led him to the genesis of Inferno, and his aspiration to capture the darkest depths of neurosis, through Marcel’s eyes. He would make it happen on the screen with the finesse of a meticulous surgeon, by dissecting this ambition according to different key components – visual and audio in particular. As a consequence, the series of interviews of prominent staff on duty then allows the audience to catch the spirit behind each experiment conducted, and to discover the titanic works implied and realised for the sake of Clouzot’s visionary art, as well as it reveals the general atmosphere and the individual moods. Then, because all the film cans discovered are soundless, Serge Bromberg added a personal touch by inputting the participation of Berenice Bejo and Jacques Gamblin to complete the missing audio elements. Firstly, their voices are used to dub Odette and Marcel Prieur; and then, interestingly, they are filmed reading some scripts in a dark and empty space, with no mise-en-scène at all. These bland pictures absolutely contrast with the richness and the quality of the original ones; nevertheless, it is a useful strategy to keep the viewer focused on Clouzot’s work.


Blomberg and Medrea succeed to make the viewer fantasise about what Clouzot did, but also said: “Le cinéma est une invention permanente (cinema is an endless invention).” MCR

REVIEW: DVD Release: Eloise

Film: Eloise
Release date: 5th April 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 92 mins
Director: Jesus Garay
Starring: Leo Casamitjana, Felipe Arago, Diana Gomez, Laura Conejero
Genre: Drama/Romance
Studio: TLA
Format: DVD
Country: Spain

When a movie is entitled only by a first name, like Frida or Amelie, the audience can confidently assume the filmmakers are introducing the main protagonist to the audience as someone special or unique, whose life is going to be observed from an intimate viewpoint.

The focal character here, however, is not Eloise. Before we learn who this person is, the first scene gives straightimmediately sets atheway the tragic tone of the movie. It opens with a long dark corridor that a little girl is walking whilst holding the hand of her mother; simultaneously, as the sound of the heels solemnly mimickmimics heartbeats, the voice of a young woman haunts the gloomy atmosphere - with a premonitory dialogue, the young woman tells Eloise that she dreamt she was dying.

The second scene tracks the steps of a mother who rushes to the hospital, where her daughter – called Asia (Diana Gomez) – lies in comatose, for reasons (temporarily) unknown to the audience. As these two scenes are intertwined, we get to discover that the two mothers are the same person, and thus, we can confidently infer that the little girl is as well the unconscious body in the hospital bed, but grown as a teenager. From this moment on, the story rewindsards the succession of events that will lead eventually to the announced tragedy.

Asia is a pretty young lady who studies architecture; she has got two girl friends, and goes out with a nice lad. She lives in a comfortable flat with her single mother.; Tthe latter is a control freak that decides for instance, how long Asia shall study at home, and what she should wear on the first anniversary of her relationship with her boyfriend - in other words, the mother shapes her daughter in the way she judges it successful. One day, in the student food quarter, while her friends slander a girl sitting behind them, Asia witnesses with bewilderment the unwavering attitude of this girl – whom we notably learn that she is a lesbian, according to her friends.

Later on, Asia applies in person to an ad requiring a model for an art student’s drawings; when she finds out that the student is Eloise (Ariadna Cabrol), her friends’ fool, her cravedesire for excitement and new experiences prevents her from stepping away from this enigmatic character…


Eloise captures the emotional growth of a teenager: the bearings of Asia’s existence – rigidly framed and quite narrow – are suddenly shaken by the arrival of Eloise in her environment, who contributes to unlock the maternal golden birdcage. In this respect, we can point out the reference to Hermann Hesse’s Demian – the book that Eloise reads in the food quarter, and that also pushes Asia to model for her – and draw a parallel between Demian/Sinclair and Eloise/Asia, as for a sort of mentor/disciple relationship that binds both ‘couples’. However, the discovery of a wider horizon for the apprentice is not easy: Asia struggles to spread her wings and fly independently – because she does not know where to fly to. In this framework, the confusion of feelings is efficiently shown on the screen by the succession of short-length past and present events, smartly ordered to guide the audience to a gradual understanding of the facts.

It is also interesting to highlight that some pervading motives emphasise, and almost build the sentimental tension that Asia is going through - like the excitation from the sound of a charcoal pencil, or the anxious silence of corridors, for instance. Thus, due to this functioning construction, love as a feeling is depicted with reasonable decency and shyness that contain together a flood of energy (positive or negative, depending on the situation), while love as a physical act looks almost flat, shallow and forgettable - Asia has a massive hole to fill with love, so the first rules then over the second one in this context , giving extra charm to the romance. Furthermore, Diana Gomez performs Asia with lsweetness, ovability , making an angel of her.

Despite the pleasant, light sensuality emanating from these sweet scenes, Eloise still lacks in emotional intensity – and actually, it is a reference to both the movie and the character: the protective detachment of Eloise seems so markedly deeply seated that nothing could reach her, and therefore her attempts of tenderness do not appear to be as realistic as Asia’s. Yet, the balance of emotions is respectable, as it is neither overdramatic nor excessive. Firstly, in the structure of the tragedy, despite the issues raised, such as familial influence and impact, sexual orientation and death, there is no heavy burden to carry all along the movie. Then, even though Asia and Eloise play a high school version of Rachel and Luce in Imagine Me & You, the way towards cheesy romance is fortunately avoided with the brutal interruption by of tragedy.


If you have high expectations on the representation of homosexuality and on the actual illustration of its complexity in films, go for Happy Together or Les Filles du Botaniste (The Chinese Botanist’s Daughters) instead. Nevertheless, this is enjoyable light entertainment. MCR

REVIEW: DVD Release: Tony Takitani

Film: Tony Takitani
Release date: 24th July 2006
Certificate: U
Running time: 75 mins
Director: Jun Ichikawa
Starring: Issey Ogata, Rie Miyazawa
Genre: Drama
Studio: Axiom
Format: DVD
Country: Japan

One shall be someone special to deserve the right to have his or her name as the title of a movie (Amélie Poulain, Zatoichi, Forrest Gump…) or any other form of artwork; Tony Takitani (Issey Ogata) is just a man whose existence is severely tainted with loneliness unwillingly.

The film actually starts with the period preceding Tony Takitani’s birth: it pictures the life of Shozaburo Takitani (also played by Issey Ogata) – Tony’s father – in the Japan of the early 1940s. Being a jazz player appreciated by the Chinese army leads him to experience the endless isolation of prison, and to witness the shallowness of life when death can knock unexpectedly on the door. He is released in 1946, and marries a relative, who then gives birth to their child, but dies three days after the delivery. Being a lonely man before everything – including paternity – Shozaburo momentarily disappears from the screen and from Tony’s solitary childhood; the latter becomes the central character of the story from that point.

In this framework, the audience witnesses Tony Takitani’s progress through different ages of his life: his childhood is followed by successful academic years in technical illustration, during which his drawings speak more accurately than his voice or his feelings, still mute apparently. Some years later, he meets Eiko (Rie Miyazawa), an elegant client – “born to dress up” – about fifteen years younger, in his workplace. In this favourable environment, where he can fully express himself – professionally speaking - he falls for her, and as a consequence, he tries to court her (with success, ultimately). Her presence brings him to a blissful life that he never experienced in the past, and simultaneously it makes him realise the long-time burden of loneliness that his life was carrying; thus he feels the fear of having it back. Also, her presence is not without any cost: Eiko fills the emptiness of her own existence with compulsive shopaholic behaviour, and whose taste for fashion is at a very high standard, fetching and unceasingly accumulating brand new clothes that she barely wears in actual fact. Unfortunately, Tony Takitani’s world of rapture fatally falls apart, soon after he asks the young woman to refrain from her demented obsession with designer labels.

This leads us at last to the third part of the story: while he mourns in silence, Tony Takitani advertises for a position similar to personal assistant, but whose primary requirements are physical measurements…


Based on the short story Tony Takitani by the successful Japanese author Haruki Murakami, the director Jun Ichikawa perfectly recreates important elements from the structure of short stories, such as a few characters, a context efficiently set into place, short descriptions or details, and an unexpected climax. But beyond this fidelity, he transforms the words into beautiful pictures, ornate with great aesthetics and without ostentation. Indeed, the whole movie runs like a timeline that nothing can stop from moving forward, no matter what happens - it records each scene into the past, with black-and-white photographed frames or close-up shots in dull tones. The whole visual experience is told by the smooth voice of the omniscient narrator (Nishijima Hidetoshi), who sails quietly along with the film, with neutrality or possibly disempowerment.

Moreover, the precise performance of Issey Ogata is admirable. Ogata plays Tony’s reserve about his inner misery with marvel, and without the slightest sign of betrayal. He possesses the relevant features to express the lack and the loss of emotions of the Takitani’s, both disengaged from post-World War II Japan – implicitly the most forlorn place on the Earth after the ravages of war, and of the nuclear bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By playing both father and son, he initiates a reflection about the unfathomable bonds with family and cultural heritage, as for instance, when ‘they’ respectively lie on the floor of the rotten prison cell, and of the previously luxurious closet. As for Rie Miyzawa, her double interpretation of Eiko/Hisako is pretty accurate – especially when playing Eiko – but she does not succeed to transcend the superficiality and the emptiness that describes her characters’ reality. This is possibly because the focus is obviously on Tony, restricting thus the extent of her pervasiveness in his life - in any case, Eiko is described through the way she dresses (she “inhabits her clothes”) from the beginning, so it is not necessary to expect depth coming out of her haute-couture shell.

At last, the bonus features provide a making of that must be highlighted. The audience will get to discover that the whole shooting has been made in modest conditions that firstly have had no negative impact on the final cut, but above all, that has nothing to do with its quality.


Tony Takitani is a great tale about loneliness and emptiness that conveys a visual artwork of an ineffable beauty that is tending towards perfection. Its tiny weakest link is based on the emotions vanishing too quickly, but I give Jun Ichikawa the benefit of the doubt that it was a deliberate choice. MCR

REVIEW: DVD Release: Chungking Express

Film: Chungking Express
Release date: 26th January 2009

Certificate: 12

Running time: 96 mins

Director: Wong Kar-wai

Starring: Bridget Lin, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Faye Wong, Valerie Chow

Genre: Drama

Studio: Artificial Eye

Format: DVD

Country: Hong Kong

There is possibly one and only one context in which you could stare for about 45 minutes at a Taiwanese woman whose identity is utterly protected by a faded blonde wig, a pair of bright red opaque sunglasses and a trench coat, without the slightest impulsion of calling her a weirdo or worse; there is no way this woman is comic or ridiculous, and on the contrary, fascination increases with the secret hope that she may reveal what she hides behind the mask at some point. Wong Kar-wai possesses the hypnotic power that prevents the audience from taking even one eye from her, or the movie.

The film is entitled Chungking Express, which echoes Midnight Express, the name of the snack corner shop located in the outskirts of Hong Kong’s busy streets. As the first narrative tells the audience, people cross one another’s way everyday without knowing each other. As the Midnight Express is the actual place where people can stop for a break from the constant urban hustle and bustle, it stands as well as a crossroads where people can have the opportunity to meet others, and to take the time to create a bond. However, these connections are obviously of no secure balance of interests towards each other; thus, in this framework, Wong Kar-wai catches two Express male-female encounters, that are not directly related, but linked by his desire to explore the construction of potential love stories between a man and a woman in a random environment..

In the first part, the audience follows on the one hand the gentle torments of Cop 223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro – Fallen Angels, House Of Flying Daggers) running after criminals, and after love: his ex-girlfriend May split from him on 1st April – April Fool’s Day - and since then he has bought every day one tin of pineapple whose expiration date is on his birthday – 1st May - the day when ideally his love for her will be completely consumed and the pain will be digested alongside the pineapples. On the other hand, a woman with a blonde wig (Brigitte Lin – Ashes Of Times) is in trouble after she has been tricked in a failed drug-smuggling mission. Both fooled characters end up in the same bar on 1st May, and Cop 223 – determined to fall in love with the first woman he meets - initiates the bond between them.

The second part pictures another policeman, Cop 663 (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai), who stops daily at the Midnight Express, either for coffee at the start of his shift, or for takeaways at the end, which he takes to his girlfriend, an airhostess. Faye (Faye Wong - 2046) is a relative of the snack bar’s owner, has recently started to help him out; as she has fallen for Cop 663, she startles out of her reverie and gets the chance to break into his life and his flat when the latter is left by his ex-girlfriend, too, like Cop 223...


Even though the two stories mix a man and a woman in order to observe the possibility of a love match, there is much more than kind sentimentalism. Wong Kar-wai firstly captures the loneliness of these lives in the alienating city, where they are primarily identified by their job and thus losing their individual identity - we can notice that most of the positive interactions work on duty. Possibly because of these pervading masks, the characters struggle to create bonds. This is accurately illustrated by the absence of dialogue that haunts the scenes in which the making of a relationship could progress (Cop 223 and the woman with a blonde wig in the bar and a hotel room; and Cop 663 and Faye at the counter).

Then, Wong Kar-wai manages to produce the touch of melancholy that stands for his signature in this art. Some sweetness comes out from the pineapples of consumed love, the empty uniform of the ex as a souvenir, or the tune California Dreamin’ that rocks the audience to nostalgia for an imaginary past. This melancholy is reinforced by the subtle expression of sadness among the male characters. At last, Wong Kar-Wai’s new wave way of filming creates vivid motives and energetic pictures in absolute harmony with the congested atmosphere… So many points could be endlessly raised and discussed, but it is also the delight of the audience to find its own pleasure whilst watching.


Another masterpiece based on the recurring theme of random encounters. This movie is a sublime representation of the quest of sentimental love from individual perspectives, and the focus on the process and not the product gives a greater insight of its complexity. MCR