My
love of scrappy outsiders who break into the American film industry
through the back window has led to me following the films of Brit
Marling probably out of proportion with their actual quality. For those
who don't know, Marling was one of Hollywood's many disregarded
aspiring actresses until she got fed up with the lower rungs and decided
to create opportunities for herself, writing and starring in a series
of indie-budget-friendly sci-fi films (Another Earth, Sound of My Voice) that all have imaginative concepts
and problematic third acts. She's a compelling figure in the
post-Darko Sundance-scape, and this, her latest film, even attracted the
financial backing of Tony and Ridley Scott. But like the rest of her
films, it feels both promising and unfinished: key sections near end are
tin-earred or overplayed—I'm not sure she realizes how silly some of it
is—and she has a habit of throwing in late-movie sex scenes that are
neither necessary nor convincing. I'm still waiting for a really good
movie from her. For the sake of scrappy outsiders everywhere, I'm sure
she has it in her.
2 out of 5 stars.
**********************
The East is currently playing in select theaters and enjoying a long run at that one arthouse in Palo Alto.
No, I didn't really understand the end of Shane Carruth's Primer, but I'll go on record and say that I don't think it needs to be understood—the physical mechanics of its overlapping time-travel narrative (who did what, and when) aren't nearly as important as the dark and delirious feeling of the main character going insane. Essentially, it's a puzzle film where you're intrigued by the gamer as much as the game. Tone and psychology are given even more emphasis—hell, almost all the emphasis—in this, Carruth's long-awaited second film, which conjures a remarkable atmosphere on consumer-grade equipment and resembles nothing so much as a suburban sci-fi geek's version of Eraserhead, Marienbad, or (gulp) Tree of Life. Formally, it's a triumph, edited with such exactitude and uncanny repetition that a detail has just enough time to register before the story moves on then loops back, leaving you wondering how all the details fit. And how do they all fit? Well, it's something about love, and memory, and god, and life, and growing older, and isolation, and other heady hard-sci-fi ideas. It undoubtedly reaches for more than it delivers, and casting himself as the male lead was an inexpressive mistake on the director's part. But this is such an intriguing and well-crafted film—truly "independent" in a way that few notable Sundance films are these days—that I'll still be turning it over in my mind long after cleaner, neater, tighter films have floated away.
4 out of 5 stars.
********************** Upstream Color is now available on Netflix Instant. Watch it late at night, with headphones.
Befitting
its style and attitude, there's an in-joke in The Bling Ring before the opening credits are even over. As the titles roll, the camera pans
over a table of tacky, gilded accessories, and Sofia Coppola's credit
comes just as a necklace that says "Rich Bitch" is in the center of the
screen—a graphical placement that essentially reads, from left
to right, "written and directed by rich bitch Sofia Coppola." It's an
acknowledgement that Coppola, a lifelong Hollywood insider, is very much
a part of the very system she's about to satirize, and this nod to insiderism, especially for a story about outsiders
squeezing through the back door, works very much to the film's advantage. Because
while a film like The Social Network can't shake off Aaron Sorkin's
"those damn kids" attitude towards the age of digital media, The Bling
Ring has sympathy for its lost young people who gaze longingly at fame
and access. That's not to say the film approves of their actions—stories with morals are so old-fashioned—but it understands where
they get it from, giving the film an approach where huge photos on
nightclub walls and songs playing on the radio rise above props and
coloration to become as significant as any "real" person on screen. The chief drawback
is that the female ring-members are treated more as fashion icons and
butts-of-jokes (miniature Paris Hiltons of their own?) than as psychological human
beings, which is at first a potent statement, but becomes more and more
of a liability as the story ends on the most obvious note in the whole
film.
4 out of 5 stars.
********************** The Bling Ring is now in theaters, having crossed over from limited release to multiplexes.
A sequined Santa hat, a slot machine in a living room, pigs-in-a-blanket served on a silver platter, Matt Damon's thong tan-line, Gordon Gekko and Jason Bourne sharing a hot tub—Steven Soderbergh's latest (and reportedly last) film is a sharp vision of American mass culture gone wild, which befits the ironic story of a closeted gay man who spent a career turning his wildest instincts into entertainment for an unwitting hetero audience. It's a cheeky show biz satire and a very twisted "love story", where genuine love gets so enmeshed with other motives (money, sex, celebrity, emotional codependence) that it's magnificently difficult to gain your bearings, as it should be. Exhibitionism tangles with privacy, and the heroes (or anti-heroes) seek to recreate the traditional ideal of domestic bliss at the same time they defy it. Like Soderbergh's earlier and equally coy The Informant!, Candelabra tackles the proceedings with a frequently bemused, empathetic detachment, leaving us unsure about feel about the characters except to marvel that this bizarre story and all its contradictions are part of the American fabric. But its view of fame is also as creepy as a horror movie. If you want to know what the Overlook Hotel would look like if it were completely fabulous, Soderbergh has a tracking shot for you. Unique, tragic, and perversely moving.
4 out of 5 stars.
********************** Behind the Candelabra recently premiered on HBO because it was deemed too risky for theaters.
Given that auteur theory has long since won the war, if not every battle, it's good to give due credit to the role that actors play in collaborative filmmaking. Auteurist staples like 8 1/2 and Pierrot le fou are essentially films set inside their makers' heads, but owe a tremendous amount of their universality to the performers, who provide a vital link between the man behind the camera and the outside world. So it's significant that Noah Baumbach, who directed the best autobiographical film of the last decade before falling into a relative slump, found a partner in actress Greta Gerwig. In Baumbach's previous film, Greenberg, Gerwig (not in the title role) presented a lackadaisical sweetness that put the snark and self-destructive pretension of the hero in relief. And FrancesHa, for which she co-wrote the screenplay, is her film at least as much as it is his: a union between actress and director that has yielded some of the best results for both.
The summary that IFC, the film's distributor, has kindly posted on IMDb says that it's about a young woman who "throws herself headlong into her dreams." Well, that's one way of looking at it. The film is more of an observational shaggy dog story, as Frances (Gerwig) bounces from living space to living space, never able to plant roots anywhere as her friends move on and her lack of direction (and gainful employment) leaves her sputtering behind. Set amongst the terminally hip, it's very much the same milieu that Lena Dunham taps for Girls, and like that lightning-rod HBO series, Frances Ha is probably not immune to the criticism that it's as self-involved as its characters. But the perspective it maintains is outward-facing and emotionally-attuned (hipsters are people too), and the looseness of structure, which a minority of critics have singled out as a flaw, is actually one of its most sincere saving graces. Being 27 is nothing if not a series of plans that don't work out, conversations that settle nothing, and trips that end right back at the beginning, andthe film captures it with sympathy and humor. "I don't know if I believe everything I'm saying" is definitely a line
of dialogue for our time, and it's vital that Gerwig delivers it
without self-awareness.
As for Baumbach, this is easily his most satisfying work since The Squid and the Whale. As a writer and a director, he understands the way small moments can replace big, "finalizing" climaxes, which is perhaps the best trait of his cinema. He gives Frances Ha plenty of cinephile cred as well, paying homage to the French New Wave by raiding his Georges Delerue record collection and shooting in black and white, if only because it's easy to forget how beautiful the city looks if you only see it in color. It's a good sign for 27-year-olds when a film can traffic largely in embarrassment and thwarted desires but still finish on a positive note without feeling forced, or relying (too much) on patently cinematic twists. If this is indeed a "minor" film (and it is), let it be said that minor triumphs are something else that deserve their dues. They're how we get by.
4 out of 5 stars.
************** Frances Ha is currently in theaters, probably in your small local arthouse with broken seats.
