Random viewing

Just a few brief notes to register several films I don’t intend to review in any detail.

Time to Leave (2005) is a so-so Francois Ozon film about a young fashion photographer who finds out he only has months to live -- it wasn’t a chore to watch but said nothing about the issues which led me to watch it (cf. Simon and The Sea Inside.) *6* (MC-67)

Narrow Margin (1952) is an effective low-budget noir from Richard Fleischer, about a cop trying to get a gangster’s widow from Chicago to a grand jury in L.A. on the Golden West Express. The dialogue is tasty and oh-so-hardboiled, the actors and actresses are A-1 B-movie characters, the twists keep coming through the swift running time, and the most is made of the least in the confined setting of a train. *7*

Flower of Evil (2002) is routine Claude Chabrol, in its depiction of the secret perversions of the bourgeoisie, but a pleasure to watch for the settings and three generations of very attractive women, Suzanne Flon as the grandmother, Nathalie Baye as the mother, and Melanie Doutey as the daughter. *6+*

La Vie en Rose (2007) takes an insanely discontinuous approach to the life of Edith Piaf, but has much of interest in it, primarily the performance of Marion Cotillard as “The Little Sparrow,” the Judy Garland-ish singer who was literally the voice of France in her era, and beyond. Also of interest were the original voice recordings, though they are maddeningly not subtitled on the dvd (apparently were in theatrical release.) Compared to Ray or Walk the Line, this shows that the musical biopic is one genre in which the Americans are way ahead of the French. *6+* (MC-66.)

The Long Good Friday (1979) is a generally overpraised film about a modern London gangster, played by Bob Hoskins in his breakthrough role, which I watched in my intermittent retrospective of Helen Mirren, who plays his classy wife. Updating the gangland genre to the era of globalizing business, John Mackenzie follows Hoskins on his yacht cruising the Thames, where he woos partners and investors to a plan for developing the Docklands (and building a stadium to host the ’88 Olympics.) Though he has avoided making enemies, suddenly someone starts blowing up his businesses and henchmen, and he must ruthlessly track down his nemesis, who turns out to be an unexpected group that gives the film even more topicality. Not my favorite sort of film, this has merit but does not transcend its genre. *6+*

Despite the critical raves and my own interest in monasticism, I couldn’t get with the program of Into Great Silence (2007), Philip Groening’s documentary about a year in the life of a Carthusian monastery in the French Alps. Intermittently lovely, the film was also interminable. It had to be quiet, slow, and repetitious to be true to its subject, but my feeling was enough is enough, too much of too little. Some critics saw the film as an antidote to the time and attention deficits of modern life, but that strikes me as a twisted form of sentimentality, as if boredom were a righteous discpline. To my mind, discipline was just what the film lacked. I could recommend it only if it lost a third of its 160 minutes. (MC-78) *6*