It seems like the dialogue surrounding the romantic relationships between Black men and White women are being negatively sensationalized more than ever. A professional athlete is seen with a White wife and everyone loses their mind and assumes this is not only the norm but something bad (fyi - 85%-88% of Black men that are married are married to Black women). A lot of prominent Black films and tv shows have some Get Out-ish subplot where a White woman tricks a clueless Black man in to ruining his life. There’s a very specific lane of chronically online White guys that deal with what appears to be Black male penis envy by going online to call White women with Black male partners or biracial sons things like “mud shark” or “race traitor”. As a Black man with a White wife and a biracial son, I sometimes find myself fascinated by this. When I have some down time I take a couple of minutes to comb through the comment sections of various tweets, tiktoks and IG posts thinking to myself; “I never come across these people offline”. It's weird.
On the opposite end of the bench is a very specific lane of pro-Black online pseudo activist who’s entire personality is dick-policing and penis-watching Black men in relationships with White women. They swear they don’t care who dates who but they always write some thesis-level explanation as to why they supposedly don’t care then constantly give their thoughts and opinions on interracial relationships that don’t concern them. That’s an interesting way to not care about something. And I as I stated in my review on Sinners, it’s almost always only a critique on Black men with White women but silence on just about any other interracial combination. Funny how that works. You’ve got meme-fied online figures like Dr Umar Johnson who has officially become the face of straight Black male dick-policing. Last time I checked, it’s odd behavior for straight men to concern themselves with who other straight men date. That’s something gossipy girls do. Men aren't supposed to do that. But perhaps I was just raised with a different set of values.
I say all this because Nicolas Provost's 2011 film The Invader addresses all of this and more. The basic premise follows an undocumented construction worker that becomes obsessed with a mysterious woman (it also isn’t clear if he has mental illness or is just really immature). I'm just not sure it succeeds at the end of the day. The signals are very mixed.
I saw this at the Toronto film festival 14 years ago and got so caught up in the overt racial commentary concerning Black men and White women that I completely overlooked the cinematic influences and the obvious commentary on the growing fear of African and Caribbean migrants (men specifically) entering Europe. The movie is literally called “The Invader”. I’m not sure how I missed that.
It’s been a long time since I watched this movie from start to finish but every once in a while a random scene from it will pop up in my head. Again - I don’t know if this movie is a success but there's clearly something thought provoking about it. I guess any movie that takes an unflinching and naive/borderline unrealistic look at interracial relationships and immigration is going to leave an impression.
A big chunk of The Invader is shot like a Hitchcock movie. The film's main character spends a lot of the movie stalking a woman like Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo...
Vertigo / The Invader
Vertigo / The Invader
Vertigo / The Invader
the people who brought me the most are Hitchcock, Lynch and Kubrick. To me they are the most important masters. They made me dream the most – Nicolas Provost, filmmakermagazine.com
Psycho / 2001... / Blue Velvet / The Invader
The Invader also shares a lot of coincidental similarities with Steve McQueen’s Shame and Lodge Kerrigan’s Claire Dolan. From a subject matter standpoint – The Invader would pair well with Claire Denis’ No Fear, No Die in that they’re both clearly about the fear of Black migrants coming over to Europe…
Shame / The Invader
No Fear, No Die is a much better execution of what Nicolas Provost tried to do with The Invader. A lot of the shots in Denis' film are Black migrants holding and man-handling the French national animal to represent the fear of outsiders taking over Fracnce/Europe. A little on the nose but it still works...
No Fear, No Die
No Fear, No Die
No Fear, No Die
I’m kind of glad The Invader came out in 2011 instead of today. If the right/wrong people caught wind of it, we would have gotten some of the most insufferable commentary from people who’d use this movie to fit their personal agenda. That’s sort of the problem with this movie. To be clear – it’s incredibly well-made and very thought provoking. But it’s one of those movies where the audience should be required to read at least one interview of the director so you could see where his head was at when making it. But that’s obviously unrealistic. Most people aren’t going to make the effort to read an interview with an obscure arthouse Belgian filmmaker. Nicolos Provost is incredibly liberal and anti-racist. He also doesn’t appear to be anti-immigration.
I wanted to create a feeling where this story is not just an anti-hero story. It’s also about our projection on immigrants. It becomes the monster that we project on immigrants, sometimes. I’m not trying to judge anyone. That’s what I hope is clear with the film, that I’m not taking parts. I’m not trying to come up with a voice for the immigrants, and I’m not blaming the Western world. It’s a tragic situation – Nicolas Provost, filmmakermagazine.com
But without doing some quick research on the director and his personal views, one might think his film was an anti-immigration/anti-interracial relationship propaganda movie. This is potentially dangerous. That doesn’t necessarily make it Provost’s fault. Most people are either very stupid or disingenuous or a combination of both. Like I said earlier – people are way more in to making art fit or speak to their own personal agendas. Someone could watch The Invader and think it’s a nationalist tool to promote hatred towards Black men and their “invasion” of Europe. If you’ve been keeping yourself up to date with current events, then you know immigration is a hot topic all over the world (especially concerning darker-skinned migrants). Folks online, specifically the archetypes I laid out at the start of this entry, want to believe those negative stereotypes about migrants. They want to believe the taboos concerning Black men and White women. The Invader is the type of film that might give those people validation to go “I KNEW IT!”. The opening scene alone, where the lead Black male is ogling a naked White woman on a beach, is enough to fuel their insecure beliefs.
At the end of the day this movie kind of leaves you wondering “so…what was the point of all this? The message seems a little mixed.” Normally, a mixed message or something left up for different interpretations isn’t always a bad thing. But when you take the director’s own words and put them up against the movie itself – certain things don’t align.
No matter how much of a mixed message this movie sends, I certainly encourage any and all viewers with the ability to think abstractly to seek it out. If you’re able to find a digital copy and come out confused, I think that’s perfectly understandable. If you’ve seen this and think I’m off or missing something, please let me know.
It makes sense that Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round was put out by Lars Von Trier’s production company (Zentropa). The story kind of plays out like an actual Lars Von Trier film to some degree (Von Trier & Vinterberg have had a 20+ year friendship & working relationship). The basic plot of the film is centered around a set of loose/unofficial rules. Four school teachers come up with the idea/theory that by keeping alcohol in their system constantly it will help & improve their overall life. There’s lots of games that people add alcohol to in order to make them more fun. From peer pong to taking a shot every time someone does something repetitive, alcohol - when consumed as responsible as possible - can make things slightly more enjoyable. The teachers in the film adopt this basic premise and apply it to every day life. If you stop and think for a second, this sounds like something out of a Lars Von Trier film. Anyone familiar with his work knows that the plots to his movies, the process/making of his movies (or both) are usually bound by a set of rules (The Idiots & Epidemic), chapters/sections (Breaking The Waves, Manderlay, Dogville), laws and/or beliefs (The Element Of Crime). Another Round is no different. Our characters set out a basic set of rules & guidelines to live life by. Thomas Vinterberg is no stranger to setting rules, guidelines, laws or restrictions around his movies either. His directorial debut (The Celebration) was the first Dogma feature so it was created by following rules. The characters in his misunderstood/underrated movie Dear Wendy are also bound by a set a specific guidelines they follow. This latest effort fits in with the rest of his (good) body of work perfectly.
It’s important to note that the main characters in Another Round are teachers. My mother was a high school teacher so I’ve seen that side of things. It can drain you and break your spirit. Dealing with teenagers that aren’t your own can be tiring even for one day (sometimes you have to deal with the teens and their parents). Imagine that being your job for decades. I’m not saying teachers deserve unconditional sympathy just because they’re teachers. They chose their line of work. No one forced them to do what they do. But with teaching, and almost any other profession, you sometimes hit a wall. You become jaded and less passionate about what you do every day (the first 20-25 minutes of Another Round are incredibly sad & depressing). In an effort to combat the sadness & depression and make life “fun” again, the four friends/teachers keep their alcohol levels at a specific range at all times to feel some form of happiness. To me that’s both funny and sad. Mostly sad. If drinking is the only thing that makes life enjoyable then there might be a bigger problem to address (which does slowly come out in the film).
The experiment starts to work. The teachers find meaning again. Their students are happier and the overall tone of the film changes and that sad depressed vibe we get at the beginning is replaced with silliness, joy & happiness. But, like most humans, the teachers push things too far and what starts out as a fun experiment eventually breaks down and becomes a problem.
When Thomas Vinterberg isn’t phoning it in (Kurske, Far From The Madding Crowd, etc), he has this unique ability to show how childish, silly & irrational adults can be in a really fascinating way. The family in The Celebration, the brothers in Submarino and the supporting cast in The Hunt are all perfect examples of this. The childishness & irrationality of men comes out in Vinterberg’s films more than anything else. But not necessarily in a judgy way. It just is what it is and a lot of men are wired a certain way. I don’t mean to make this all about gender but Another Round plays out like an updated slightly more sensitive Danish remake of Cassavetes’ Husbands. Besides the obvious fact that alcohol fuels both movies, it shows how, at times, men revert to being little boys even when they’re pushing 50. Women do the same thing but this particular movie just so happens to be about about men. I may be reaching here (this wouldn’t be the first time), but Another Round speaks to the people who sometimes grow sick of their family life and daydream about doing whatever they want as a way to both “escape” and avoid a life of predictability & monotony. To have those thoughts is understandable. As humans we have a lot of irrational & unrealistic thoughts every day. That’s fine. But acting on it is another thing. Not everyone subscribes to what I’m about to say but when you hold a job, have a wife and children (like the main characters in Another Round), you sometimes have to put others first. You should always take care of yourself first in order to do for yourself and others to the best of your ability, but when you have a family you really can’t do whatever you want (even if you don’t have a family you can’t just do whatever you want).
That’s part of the problem with characters in this film. They try to intellectualize & romanticize what they think alcoholism is when in reality they’re just grownup dummies that have no idea what it is.
What’s so great about Another Round is that in someone else’s hands it could’ve been a mediocre goofy comedy about teachers being drunk on the job. But Thomas Vinterberg made a sad, soulful & somewhat celebratory film about men dealing with a mid-life crisis and I honestly love that.
I'm not a diehard Pedro Almodovar fan but I do recognize that he is an important figure in modern cinema and, like I mentioned in my recent write-up on The Paperboy, he has a pretty unique visual style and that counts for something (when I think of his work, the term; "NEON-noir" comes to mind). But my issue with Almodovar's work is that in the last ten years or so, his films have become SO formulaic that I can practically predict half of whats going to happen in the story along with half of the characters we're going to see - the overly feminine gay male caricature, the transgender character, the religious figure (nun or priest or both) and the ridiculously handsome straight male lead. And at some point in his films, someone will be raped, the music will be overly dramatic, the colors in his films will be extra bright (we get it, Pedro - you like pink, orange & red) and half of the story will be told out of chronological order. I'm not the only person whose called Almodovar out on his recent predictability. Ever since Bad Education through Broken Embraces, there's been endless reviews that have complained about the very same thing.
At first glance, one would think Almodovar took these criticisms in to consideration with The Skin I Live In - there are no transgender characters this time around (...or so we think), for the first time in a while we get a gay female character instead of strictly gay men and Almodovar went back to working with his old collaborator; Antonio Banderas, after over two decades.
But in reality, The Skin I Live In is a middle finger in disguise from Almodovar to people like me and others who've complained about him in recent years.
He still recycles the same themes & elements but this time around he made it work and managed to make one of his best films since Talk To Her (almost 10 years ago). Not that The Skin I Live In is a game-changer (although it did make the top 10 in the honorable mention category of my 2011 wrap-up) but its still a major improvement from what he's been doing.
I'm not even offended by the middle finger Pedro Almodovar gave to all the critics. Its reminiscent of his early work (which, on some level, were carbon copies of John Waters' early films, but still...). It's a cliche statement, and it almost makes me cringe writing this but, Almodovar's early work was very "punk rock" and anti-establishment when compared to other classic Spanish filmmakers from the late 70's/early 80's. Instead of dealing with the impact Franco had on Spain in the same poetic/artsy way as Carlos Suara (Cria Cuervos) & Victor Erice (The Spirit Of The Beehive & The South), Pedro Almodovar pretty much jumped on a chair, pulled his dick out and slapped it against the camera lens as if to say; "There's gay people in Spain, we listen to loud noisy music, we dye our hair green and have free will!" As far as Spanish cinema goes, I prefer the work of Erice & Suara over Almodovar but I still respect him for not trying to be another slow "artsy" Spanish filmmaker. The Skin I Live In is FAR more mature than Labrynth Of Passion (1982) or Pepi, Luci & Bom (1980) but his approach is still the same - "Fuck you. I'll make what I want."
In The Skin I Live In, Antonio Banderas plays "Robert Ledgard" - a radical plastic surgeon whose invented a new type of artificial skin (imagine stockings for the whole body) specialized for burn victims. The inspiration for Ledgard's invention came from his wife who was badly burned in a car accident years ago leaving her almost unrecognizable (she eventually committed suicide after seeing her deformed face). In addition to his wife, Robert's teen daughter, who was mentally unstable, also killed herself after she was sexually assaulted. The death of Robert's wife & daughter, which both took place over the span of a few years, has caused him to go quietly insane. I say "quietly insane" because to the outside world he seems fine but behind closed doors he's losing his grip on reality and is working on a disturbing experiment that we slowly see unfold through the course of the film.
***SPOILER ALERT (skip ahead to the next paragraph if you haven't seen this and are planning too)***
As it turns out, Robert has been keeping a beautiful woman ("Vera") captive in his mansion and experimenting on her. But as the story unfolds we discover this woman was once a young man ("Vicente"). And not just any man. This was the same man who sexually assaulted his daughter which ultimately triggered her suicide. As a form of revenge Robert kidnapped and performed various surgeries on Vicente in an effort to transform him in to a woman (anatomy and all). However, during the transformation, Robert falls in love with his creation (he kinda made him/her look a little too beautiful) and forms a romantic relationship with the newly transformed Vera whose now suffering from a bit of Stockholm syndrome.
Although two different actors play the part (Elena Anaya for Vera & Jan Cornet for Vicente) Almodovar cleverly cast Cornet for the part of Vicente because his body frame is a tad bit small for an average man which makes the male to female transformation angle more believable (midway in to the film I found myself noticing how tiny he is but when its revealed that he's to be transformed in to a woman, it all made sense).
There's some underrated imagery in The Skin I Live In. Almodovar even throws in a Bergman/Persona reference...
I understand the revenge aspect of the story but once Almodovar throws in the love angel I get completely thrown off. One minute you want revenge on the person who raped your daughter and triggered her suicide then you end up falling in love with the very same person later on? I get that Vicente has been completely changed in to someone else but I thought this element of the story was a little strange.
Upon my initial (and only) viewing of The Skin I Live In, I wasn't sure if I liked this or not. It felt like an odd mixture of The Bride Of Frankenstein & Oldboy with a touch of Hitchcock. But over time I grew to appreciate it very much. The Skin I Live In is surprisingly darker than I thought it would be and Antonio Banderas' over the top acting, which is sometimes difficult to take seriously, fits perfectly with the tone of the film. It's as if he drew upon Dr. Mabuse, Caligari & Nick Cavanaugh (Boxing Helana) for inspiration.
For something directed by such a big name, The Skin I Live In certainly came and went pretty quickly in the U.S. I wrote about this from memory (I saw it over two years ago) so I guess that says something about the small impact it had on me. Almodovar seems to be returning to form with his latest film (I'm So Excited) which makes The Skin I Live In stand out more among his recent body of work. I'm always hesitant to say this when it comes to recent work of important modern filmmakers but The Skin I Live In may be one of Almosovar's best.
I’m not a TIFF Vet like my buddies John & Chris but at this point I know enough to know that around the end of day 4/beginning of day 5 of the festival all the movies start to meld together and you feel like you’re watching one mediocre day-long movie. Faust was the last memorable film that I saw at the festival in 2011 before everything started to get all jumbled (and almost anything is enjoyable after just sitting through Rampart).
Apparently winning best picture at a major festival like Venice doesn't always guarantee that a film will get a descent run in theaters (art house theaters, but still…). Such as the case with Alexander Sokurov's latest; Faust - another retelling/reworking of the famous tale of Faust's quest/struggle to find ultimate enlightenment and the deal he makes with Mephistopheles. To my knowledge this hasn't been released yet outside of festivals & special screenings. Maybe I’m being a bit naïve but I assumed that Sokurov’s recent stuff like Russian Ark (a feature length film shot in one take) & his “power trilogy” (Moloch, Taurus & The Son) had solidified his spot in the art house cinemas but I guess not. In my opinion Sokurov has reached “master auteur” status (if you refer to 5 Questions with Guy Maddin, he considers Sokurov to be the best active filmmaker around) and Faust felt kinda special to me as this was the FIRST film of his I saw on the big screen. This version of Faust isn't your typical German fairytale. Even though this made my top 10 in 2011 it's still not the easiest thing to sit through. This Faust is a world full of deformed characters (in this version, Mephistopheles reveals that his penis is located on the back of his gross pear/squash-shaped body. ...yeah), the creepiest homunculus of ALL the Faust films and dissected bodies (in one of the film's earliest scenes we see Faust inspecting the inside of a body he's just cut open in order to find where the "soul" is). This almost doesn't feel like an adaptation. It’s as if Sokurov brought Faust, Mephistopheles, Gretchen and all the other characters into HIS dreamy world of dense beauty & intentionally slightly un-synced audio where everything feels just a bit...off.
In 2011 much was made of Terrence Malick's Tree Of Life and I couldn't help but think that if there was a place in theaters for that - then why not Faust? Both films have a similar disorienting vibe, deal with vague subjects & issues like; science (on some level) & the origin of life and both films have what many believe to be hidden messages. With Tree Of Life it was the message of Christianity, religion & evangelism whereas with Faust it was apparently a hidden message about Russia’s integration with the rest of Europe (honestly…I don’t see it, but that’s what people are saying).
While Faust shares a strange & unexpected connection with the cinema of Terrence Malick in terms of content, it also shares a connection with Post Tenebras Lux in terms of style & execution. Faust & Post Tenebras Lux, which are both directly inspired by the cinema of Tarkovsky (as well as psychotropic drugs) are two of the few recent works that come the closest to conveying the feel of an actual dream on the big screen.
If I had to describe Faust in one word it would be; dense – the kind of film that you make confused facial expressions at while watching it. On one hand, Faust is a beautiful & rich piece of art that almost feels like a moving painting. The costumes & set designs are excellent...
an appearance from Fassbinder regular; Hanna Schygulla
But on the other hand, Faust is dizzying & tough to watch in some parts (and not just the scenes of grotesque deformed bodies or the guts & organs we see in the beginning). It’s almost like watching an actual headache in the form of a movie (I realize the point of these write-ups are to shed a positive light on these mostly unseen films and I may have just turned you all off by that last statement, but it’s true). It’s a bit difficult to describe, but the ambiance of Faust was very very “thick” & cloudy in both the “feel” and the actual look. The beautiful Gothic-looking images & stills you may find on the Internet paint one picture but the actual moving images tell another story (look at the trailer at the bottom of the review). Sokurov used some kind of filter or special setting on the lens of the camera to give the film an intentionally blurry/cloudy perspective (like that feeling when you first wake up in the morning and haven’t rubbed your eyes yet). This is a challenging film to say the least. Not everyone is gonna wanna sit through something like this for OVER two hours (Faust clocks in at 134 minutes). Alexander Sokurov, who is an amazingly talented director with a unique style, is an acquired taste. Faust is a film that you have to ease in to and it should NOT be anyone’s introduction to his work (no matter how good it is). I genuinely found myself mumbling “…what the fuck?” under my breath more than once while watching this. Faust sometimes seems intentionally alienating. For such a dense, disorienting & trippy piece of work, it didn’t need to be as long as it was. I honestly can’t be mad at anyone if they don’t like this or need more than one sitting to finish it. Depending on the film you have to be kind of a trooper in order to make it all the way through some of Sokurov’s work and Faust REALLY weeds out the true fans (there were quite a few walkouts throughout the screening I attended).
But the beauty of the lead actress; Isolda Dychauk (who plays Gretchen) counters all the roughness & ugliness. Whenever Faust starts to become too much & unbearable her presence (just her face alone) calms the nerves and eases the anxiety that this film may bring on.
Faust might be the oldest and most adapted story in cinema (1926-2011). Every director that’s tackled it has told it in their own unique style. I'd been sitting on an unfinished proper length write-up of Sokurov's Faust for quite some time. Before finishing it off I sought out the original Murnau version and re-watched the Jan Svankmajer version last year at The Museum Of The Moving Image. Apparently there's an adaptation of Faust directed by Brian Yuzna (of Society fame) I still have yet to see. The Mephistopheles character has taken many different forms over the years...
Murnau (1926)
Gorski (1960)
Svankmajer (1994)
Sokurov (2011)
What is it about the story of Faust that has directors of almost every era since the silent era want to adapt this? I can still think of a few modern filmmakers that I'd personally like to see adapt this and put their own twist on it (Guy Maddin, Manuel De Oliviero & Catherine Breillat to name a few)
An interesting fact I recently learned about Faust is that it’s actually meant to be part of his “power trilogy" (which makes it a tetralogy I guess) but I honestly don’t see this fairy tale of a film fitting in with his biopics on Hitler (Moloch), Lenin (Taurus) & Hirohito (The Sun). Yes, Faust deals with similar themes & elements as Sokurov’s aforementioned works, like power & and the misuse of it, but Faust is a standalone work in his filmography. Faust pretty much became a misunderstood masterpiece before it even left the festival circuit. It has all the characteristics – a work of art to some and a piece of crap to others, frustrating to sit through yet rewarding at the same time and some attempt at originality.
Beneath the Argos, Money Balls, Descendants and other big/buzzworthy movies that play at the Toronto International Film Festival are smaller films that may never get any kind of real distribution. And if they do, its for a short run in a few small theaters in random parts of the world. This new series is designed to shed light on some of those small films that I've seen at TIFF in the last two years...
Here's something I was disappointed by (although didn’t completely dislike) but its been stuck in my head for almost two years. Carre Blanc is one of those small French films that probably didn’t even get much play in its own country which obviously means it won’t make it to the states. This was one of the reasons I made it a priority to see it at TIFF in 2011 (naturally there's a lot of big films that play at Toronto but at a festival like TIFF it’s a good idea to take advantage of checking out stuff you may never get a chance to see again). In the few reviews I was able to find on Carre Blanc before Toronto, I saw Tarkovsky's name pop up a few times. I could see how one would make that comparison without putting much thought in to it. There's even a scene lifted directly from Solaris in Carre Blanc (the highway scene)...
Carre Blanc (2011) Solaris (1972)
But a Tarkovsky comparison is pushing it. Carre Blanc lacked soul. Tarkovsky's work is full of soul & spiritualism. The only comparison Carre Blanc deserves when put next to Tarkovsky's work is imagery. My main issue with Carre Blanc, a sci-fi dark dramedy about a suicidal married couple ("Philippe" & "Marie") who have to hide their emotions in an odd futuristic dystopian society, was that there was actually a pretty good movie hidden somewhere underneath all the "big brother"/Kafka-esque atmosphere that's been done a million times already (there's also a subplot about cannibalism which was clearly a metaphor for fast & processed food consumption). There's not a whole lot to work with when it comes to this film. It’s not even 80 minutes long, there isn’t a lot of dialogue and most of the scenes seemed forced & random in an effort to try and be "different". This is a case of too much style and not enough content (much like Park Chan Wok's latest; Stoker, which we may get in to at a later date). But there's this almost unexplainable reason why it deserves a write-up longer than a small blurb. Carre Blanc had a few things I love when it comes to film: cold atmosphere, dreary (yet strangely beautiful) weather and an emphasis on bold & solid colors (reminiscent of Kubrick's work). I'm also a fan of cold, droning, electronic music (Brian Eno, Boards Of Canada, Sigour Ros, Jan Jelinek, etc) and Carre Blanc's score is full of nothing but that kind of music. This is also a very architectural film (once again for those that don’t know, that's what I studied in school). The buildings & designs in Carre Blanc are pretty sleek & rhythmic. Its almost as if Le Corbousier came back to life and worked on the set design...
Architecture & Design in Carre Blanc...
Selected architecture of Le Corbusier...
The Carpenter Center (Cambridge, Ma)
Unite D'Habitation (Berlin)
Unite D'Habitation (Interior)
Le Corbusier Sketch - "A City Of Towers"
Bottom line - this film was beautiful to look at but after a while even that started to wear off and I wanted more. There was some nice haunting voice-over narration and a few interesting scenes (a waiter being kicked to death by a group of businessmen for spilling a drink on one of them while people pass by and go about their business as if nothing is happening) but I still found myself checking my watch more than once (which is bad because, like I said; Carre Blanc isn't even 80 minutes long!). There weren’t any real memorable performances and I found it hard to even care about the characters. Everything just felt so...empty, bordering on pointlessness. What is the point of all this? What is Carre Blanc telling us that Michael Haneke didn’t already perfectly convey in his first three films (The Seventh Continent, Benny's Video & 71 Fragments)? After about 40 minutes in to Carre Blanc I found myself thinking; "why don’t I just watch Michael Haneke's early stuff instead of this. He did a much better job at getting across that cold, urbanized, depressed, working ourselves to an early grave "thing" much better. Carre Blanc is trapped somewhere between the flaws of Vinterberg's It’s All About Love and Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9 yet it has the BEAUTY of both films as well.
Sami Bouajila (who plays "Philippe", the main character) is a great actor and his character's story is actually pretty interesting - At a young age he watched his mother jump to her death. Before committing suicide she left him with a list of strange guidelines to live his life by in order to survive in this cold futuristic world. He grows up to work for some big nameless corporation where his job is apparently to put the employees through a series of strange tests to keep them sharp & on point. He lives with his depressed wife ("Marie") who is on the verge of cracking up. And although it isn’t outright said, its clearly implied that they lost their child at some point in their marriage. There just wasn’t enough time for the audience to latch on to Philippe & Marie. I don’t mean to keep getting on the length of this film but that's also what kinda hurt it big time. It shoulda been longer in my opinion. On the drive up to Toronto in 2011 Chris Funderberg (the pink smoke) made an interesting statement along the lines of how movies should be either just under 80 minutes or over 3 hours. There's some serious validity to that and this film is a good example. Carre Blanc dealt with way too many issues (depression, suicide, globalization, parenting, the loss of a child, the future, marital problems, processed food, etc) and crossed to many genres (dark comedy, dramedy & science fiction) to only be a 70-something minute long film.
As you can tell from this write-up it’s a very visual/image heavy film and if you're in to architecture & design you'll probably appreciate this a little more than the average person but at the end of the day it needed more substance, a bit more dialogue & some cohesiveness.
