45 years

A married couple preparing to celebrate their wedding anniversary receive shattering news that promises to forever change the course of their lives.

Well yes, that is the basic plot of this highly-regarded indie British flick - but it is a slow-moving, leisurely paced examination of a marriage which may be coming apart at the seams, just as the couple - Kate and Geoff - are holding a party to celebrate their 45 years - he was ill for their 40th and may not be around for the 50th .... We see their contented life in retirement in Norfolk: that idyllic cottage, walks with the dog in the country, boat trips. Suddenly though Geoff gets a letter - something from the past has come back. 50 years earlier he and his then girlfriend Katya were holidaying in the Alps when she fell into a glacier and was killed. Her body has now been found preserved in ice. This is unsettling for Kate as she sees how it affects her husband, who is now up in the loft in the middle of the night, digging up old letters and photos. Then it is revealed that he is listed as her next of kin, as they had pretended to be married (it was 50 years ago) ...

Kate becomes unsettled by it all as she slowly thinks their 45 years is all a sham, that she has been second best all along, which is unbearable to her, as Geoff confesses he would have married Katya if the accident had not happened..She braves the ladder to the loft herself and sees all the slides of a maybe pregnant Katya - but Kate and Geoff had never bothered taking pictures of themselves By the time the party comes round, there may not be a marriage to celebrate .
.. 

It is virtually a two-hander for Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay as we get absorbed in their lives and wonder how it is going to pan out. We grew up watching them in screen since their early '60s triumphs (BILLY LIAR, GEORGY GIRL). Sir Tom has quietly excelled over the years on film, stage and television. Charlotte was 'The Look' as directors like Visconti, Woody Allen, Sidney Lumet wanted her for their films, then came the controversial THE NIGHT PORTER, as she settled in France and became (like Romy Schneider before her) a fixture of French cinema, with some adventerous choices (MAX MON AMOUR, HEADING SOUTH) and she excelled in those Francois Ozon films like the unsettling UNDER THE SAND and SWIMMING POOL. Lately she has been back on British television in the underwhelming second series of BROADCHURCH and LONDON SPY. Here, she mesmerises under Andrew Haigh's direction as Kate reacts to Geoff and what she finds out about him. 
We leave them at the party with that long close-up showing emotional devastation as "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" plays on and on ...

I was not too enthusiastic about Haigh's previous film: the 2011 gay romance WEEKEND, which seemed too contrived, but 45 YEARS is something else indeed - a melancholy chamber-piece as the ghost of Katya hangs over this troubled marriage. At least Rampling got an Oscar nomination which will boost the film's visibility, after being snubbed by BAFTA. It is certainly worth 90 odd minutes of your time. There is a sense of Antonioni alienation here too, particularly as Kate wanders around that market town .... 

BAFTA goes dafta ....

Award Season madness is here once more!  Watch those actors on the award trail - even if they won last year! BAFTA announced its nominations and puzzled/annoyed a lot of us, the Golden Globes are tonight, and the Academy Awards nominations are out later this week ....

BAFTA (the British awards) chose to ignore maybe the best British film of the year: 45 YEARS and its great performance by Charlotte Rampling - which seemed a shoo-in after all the rave revews , but then they also ignored Timothy Spall and MR TURNER last year.  Tom Hardy has also been ignored here, despite having 4 films out this year. .... plus I hardly see Rooney Mara as 'supporting' as per my other comments on CAROL, and, much as we like her, Julie Walters hardly merits a nod for BROOKLYN, where she phones in her standard performance and is barely in the film. Alicia Vikander (new to us) is nominated twice - as lead and supporting - so they may hardly want her to go away empty-handed ..... ROOM has not even opened here yet, so we know nothing about it. Ditto Leo's THE REVENANT. 

Maybe its a moot point who is up for best actress - sorry, Saoirse - as I am sure BAFTA will not want to miss honouring Maggie Smith one more time, 57 years after her first nomination as most promising newcomer in 1959, and a mere 47 years after her win for MISS BRODIE for what may well be her last leading role. 

Tom Hooper winning-director of the pedestrian KING'S SPEECH gets nominated for THE DANISH GIRL while the more interesting and quirky Andrew Haigh gets ignored for 45 YEARS ..... which is only nominated as one of the Best British Films .

The awards are dished out at the Royal Opera House on Valentine's Day, Feb 14 .... meanwhile, 45 YEARS has just arrived, so we will review it properly tomorrow. 

London boys and spies ...

LONDON SPY is a new BBC series (5 parts - the first aired last night) about spies in London, and the selling point is they are all gay - even Jim Broadbent as our hero Danny's sort of sugar-daddy. There has been a lot of buzz about this one, and it may be too early to review it yet, lets see how the drama unfolds, as last night's opener had a terrific first half hour, and then a baffling, oblique second half, with a brooding sense of dread. Just who led Danny to the keys to Alex's apartment, the keys he was led to in that creepy warehouse where he works, and then that weird sequence as he finds the secrets in the loft of Alex's apartment .... It is all very similar to the 'body in the bag' case which was a sensation here in the UK in recent years, that also dealt with spies and possibly gays.

LONDON SPY is the story of a chance romance between two people from very different worlds, one from the headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service, the other from a world of clubbing and youthful excess. Whishaw plays Danny – gregarious, hedonistic, romantic and adrift, who falls for the anti-social enigmatic and brilliant Alex, played by Edward Holcroft. Just as the two of them realise that they’re perfect for each other, Alex is found dead. Danny, utterly ill-equipped to take on the complex and codified world of British espionage, must decide whether he’s prepared to fight for the truth.

LONDON SPY has attracted a top notch cast: Ben Whishaw plays Danny, a lonely hedonist who bumps into a handsome jogger the morning after another night in clubland, and experiences something of a coup de foudre. (I too remember those Vauxhall dawns as one, sometimes worse for wear, left the clubs and made one's way along the river back to Victoria - good to see the London one knows depicted accurately).The series is billed as an espionage thriller, but most of this first episode is about the unfolding, in heartbreakingly slow and tender fashion, of their love story. Alex is a mystery man, he says he works for an investment bank and his parents are dead and he has never had a relationhip of any kind before ... for a while the two are blissfully happy but then Alex suddenly disappears and when someone mysteriously furnishes him with the keys to Alex’s flat Danny finds in the loft an array of S&M equipment, a laptop and a trunk, the last of which contains a dead body which may or may not be Alex. He smuggles a key hidden in the laptop out after calling the police (by swallowing it, cue scene at toilet ...) who discover that Alex is not Alex but a man called Alistair whose parents are definitely not dead and who is definitely not an investment banker.

The modern gay scene is nicely depicted without sensationalism, and it will be interesting to see where the story goes, particuarly as Charlotte Rampling turns up in the next episode, along with Harriet Walter, Adrian Lester, Mark Gatiss and James Fox, and the ever-terrific Broadbent. This could be a slow-burn thriller, like the hit BROADCHURCH, but with extra gay added. Written by Tom Rob Smith and directed by Jakob Verbruggen (THE FALL). Could this be a British HOMELAND? We will see ... 
We did see - and what a load of, baffling, pretentious piffle, crawling at a snail's pace. what did the cast see in it?

Here is the trailer:  

https://youtu.be/d5CWWaF06uM

Julie goes shopping, plus ...

I came across this a few weeks ago in a British paper I will not name, and I felt I should ignore it, but it ties in with some other stuff. Julie Christie, now 75, was snapped on her way going to the shops and the dry cleaners, near where she lives when in London, so of course the paper had to compare this with her DARLING and DR ZHIVAGO heyday, it was all rather snarky. But you know what, people, even screen icons, age and get older - deal with it. I think Julie looks mighty fine here and is ageing wonderfully, how do they expect a 75 year old to look?, when 80 is the new 70 it seems. 

Two of her contemporaries (following on from Terence Stamp and Vanessa Redgrave teaming up the other year) Tom Courtenay (78) and Charlotte Ramling (a mere 69) have been gathering widespread rave reviews for their new film 45 YEARS directed by Andrew Haigh of gay romance WEEKEND acclaim - one expects Bafta nominations at least. Great to see them back in quality stuff 

Now that we have slid into autumn here in the UK after a washout summer, at least that backlog of interesting new movies are on their way to screens, a lot of them are screened too in the upcoming London Film Festival (I expect the brochure today) with gala screenings for Todd Haynes's CAROL, finally unveiled here (It was shot last year), it was a sensation at Cannes back in May, from Patricia Highsmith's groundbreaking lesbian romantic novel of the early Fifties (so Cate Blanchett will have to have another stunning dress for the red carpet - she already has two Oscars but it looks like her next campaign is underway, that new Armani advertisement should be a plus too); also opening in November John Crowley's BROOKLYN from Colm Toibin's marvellous novel finally arrives too, and then there is Tom Hardy and Tom Hardy as the Kray Twins, in LEGEND, which should be at least fascinating for seeing how it is done, and we also finally get Maggie Smith in that role she initally played on stage, THE LADY IN THE VAN by Alan Bennett, and directed by Nicholas Hytner. Bring them on. Awards season should be hotting up this year.

Francois, Francoise, Charlotte, Catherine, David, Tom

A relaxing Sunday with warmer weather, the newspapers and some interesting stories on favourites of ours, before cooking dinner and later unwinding with a drink at hand, for that 1940s wartime saga HOME FIRES ....

An interesting interview with Francois Ozon (right) in "The Irish Times" where the gay French director talks about his new film THE NEW GIRLFRIEND (about to open here) and has some interesting comments, particularly on those films of his featuring women like Deneuve or Rampling. As the paper's feature (by Tara Brady) says: "8 WOMEN brought together France’s grandest dames for a 1950s-set musical murder mystery; 5x2 plays five key scenes from a divorced couple’s relationship backwards; SWIMMING POOL exuded Hitchcockian menace as Charlotte Rampling became a young woman’s reluctant caregiver and voyeur; POTICHE saw Catherine Deneuve as a rejected trophy wife, lead her husband’s employees to rebel.

Many of Ozon’s films are smaller, more tightly focused; TIME TO LEAVE sees a young man push everyone away as he enters the final stages of terminal cancer".

"Charlotte Rampling is one of many actors who have returned again and again to the troupe of Ozon players. Others include Ludivine Sagnier and Catherine Deneuve.

“There is a lot of pleasure in working with women,” says Ozon. “Very often actresses are more pleasurable and easier to work with than men. There are some actors I work with and once is enough. But there are others, like Charlotte, who have a depth and maturity.”

What is it, I wonder, about French cinema’s love affair with a certain kind of British woman, such as Rampling, Jane Birkin and Kristin Scott Thomas.

“In France we have a fascination with foreign actresses,” Ozon says. “One of the most popular French actresses of the 1970s was Romy Schneider who was German. And then there are the English actresses who fell in love with French men and come to France. They often tell me the French offer very good parts as a woman gets older. In England or America they get to play the mother or the grandmother.”

Ozon has had Hollywood offers since Swimming Pool became a global sensation, in 2003. But the director is not for turning.

“In America, film is not about art or culture. It’s a business. So they make movies for teenagers, because it’s easier. And they have a different way of working. The producer does not direct the film, but they do make all of the decisions. The director is a technician more than an artist. I don’t want to work that way. I don’t feel the necessity of losing my soul.” 

Charlotte Rampling herself is interviewed too in "The Daily Telegraph" - 'Le Legende' at 69 now feels she has "the face she has earned". Like Catherine Deneuve her career spans 50 years and she still works now, turning down scripts she does not like - "it has to be something that makes me want to leave the house, where I can stay very happily with my books and my cats". Presumably, like playing a barrister in that second series of BROADCHURCH for British television recently (we loved the first series, the second less so... ). She has come a long way from the 'partying Sixties It-girl' with The Look, as exemplified by her breakthrough film GEORGY GIRL in 1966. Interesting to see that this year she is starring with Tom Courtenay (another Sixties actor in it for the long haul) in 45 YEARS, by Andrew Haigh (LOOKING tv series, WEEKEND) which is an unsettling portrait of a marriage. . She credits Ozon and working with him on UNDER THE SAND as revitalising her and re-realising her potential as a cinema actor. She is as busy now as she has ever been: "I'm working because good work is coming"

Catherine Denueve, another Ozon regular, could probably say the same. Her STANDING TALL was the opening film at this year's Cannes Film Festival, and as the Times put it: "Deneuve adds punch to delinquent drama", where she is the steely judge in this gritty downbeat drama. The critics were not sneering, as at last year's opener GRACE OF MONACO. Let's hope London sees this new Deneuve drama before too long .... I found Catherine hilarious in Ozon's POTICHE with her portly housewife out jogging and communicating with nature, before taking over the family factory to avert a strike and then going into politics, and her dancing with the even portlier Depardieu a delicious treat, with that Seventies background, and the increasingly gay son (Jeremie Rennier). See Ozon label for reviews on all these, his serious TIME TO LEAVE is devastating too. 

BBC4 ran a fascinating documentary as well on French popular song - chanson - where a very spry Petula Clark, now 82, took us through the golden years of French popular song from Edith Piaf and Charles Trenet, including Petula's own French career, to that great early Sixties era, with Francoise Hardy and the others. Francoise was the Face of the early sixties, her Vogue 4-track EPs were the first records I bought, even before The Beatles. Utter bliss then. Francoise too is still going and still singing though the hair is short and silver grey now. 

Tom joins the Hockney set

David Hockney is back in the news too with a new exhibition at the Annely Juda Gallery in London, with some fascinating new paintings. The artist, now 77, is selling that house in Bridlington  in East Yorkshire, where his assistant Dominic Elliott died in 2013. His new work includes 'The Potted Palm' - below - which include Olympic diver Tom Daley and his partner scriptwriter Dustin Lance Black, who are now part of the Hockney circle, David said he likes Tom and praised his coming out last year, of course Tom does lots of diving into those blue pools, but not making "a bigger splash"! Hockney - subject of many posts here, see label - recently bemoaned the demise of what he calls Bohemia, the lifestyle once led by gays, who now want to get married, settle down and have children - he finds them boring and conservative, wanting to lead ordinary lives ... He now goes to bed at nine, and don't go to parties or films as he has got increasingly deaf. He continues to work though, as he says "When I'm painting, I feel 30. Of course I have no plans to retire, artists don't retire. So I'll go on until I fall over, dying ideally at the easel". One somehow feels that other blonde painter who smoked endlessly - Joni Mitchell, maybe still in a coma and also in her Seventies, would somehow agree. Hockney also said in another recent interview that "maybe" the love of his life was Gregory Evans, his 62 year old manager, they were lovers for over a decade but have worked together for 40 years - not Peter Schlesinger of A BIGGER SPLASH then ... The new paintings are certainly fascinating and sees Hockney going in a new direction. 

Binge on boxsets ...

Having a binge with boxsets seems to be the new way to watch television - not just an episode a week any more. and now that Netflix can put whole series on-line, one can certainly binge on them - I am rationing my GRACE & FRANKIE episodes (as per recent post), and got their HOUSE OF CARDS reboot on dvd. Has television ever been better? Despite all the crap stuff, there are some terrific series out there, our Sky Atlantic being particularly good (like HBO with THE NORMAL HEART and other dramas). PENNY DREADFUL is particularly stunning - amazing sets and gothic horror mixing in Frankenstein's monster, Dorian Gray, bloody vampires, werewolves and other assorted Victorian nightmares - Eva Green, Rory Kinnear (a touching monster, left), Timothy Dalton, Billie Piper, Helen McCrory and upcoming Douglas Hodge and Patti Lupone will keep one watching .... not for the faint-hearted! I have not even got around to GAME OF THRONES or BREAKING BAD or ...

THE AFFAIR looks like another must see, after recent stunning series like HAPPY VALLEY and the delicious Sky sitcom by Ruth Jones: STELLA  - now on Series 4 with those inhabitants of Pontyberry in deepest Wales. More please ! Hard to believe Ruth's Stella was also GAVIN & STACEY's Nessa and LITTLE BRITAIN's Myfanwy (with Daffydd, the only gay in the village) and played Hattie Jacques too. Actress and writer Ruth, right, with Patrick Baladi. 

Incidentally, I will have to catch the new MAD MAX: FURY ROAD this week, I need a big screen experience with an action movie everyone seems to love .... I will probably be seeing it in 3D!

Back to the cinema for a Minnelli double-bill, plus ...

I posted before about London's National Film Theatre (run by the British Film Institute) running their current retrospective on Vincente Minnelli, showing all his films *. So it was up to the South Bank yesterday for 2 of my favourites: THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE and DESIGNING WOMAN - both of which have been blogged about here before (see labels). I just want to say how marvellous it was seeing them on the big screen again, I can always pop the dvds on of course, but it was just splendid sitting in front of a Cinemascope screen again with an audience of like-minded devotees, including my IMDB pal Jerry (who gave me Fellini's 8 1/2 as a gift, a movie I had been meaning to get back to as only saw it once back in those 60s days - I gave him that new documentary THE LOOK on Charlotte Rampling).

To recap, Kay was marvellous in DEBUTANTE with that perfect Balmain wardrobe - wearing that boa  (maribou ?), Rex seemed in good mood here and Angela also was having a good time. Sandra Dee seems a little wan here, I liked her more at the time in her other films. And again Vincente creates a marvellous space for them with that great apartment with the red and yellow chairs and cushions (I wore a yellow tee-shirt, as it was a favourite Minnelli colour), and also that ideal shade of green for those other armchairs and lamp. It was all actually filmed in Paris (the interiors at any rate) in early 1958 in just 7 weeks (in between the New York and London runs of Rex's hit MY FAIR LADY) - Vincente had just finished GIGI there, and would go on to SOME CAME RUNNING next in that great year of his 1958.

DEBUTANTE was a popular stage play at the time by William Douglas Home who adapted for the screen. It originally featured Celia Johnson and Wilfrid Hyde-White as the parents, and one can just picture them in the roles, with the young Anna Massey as the reluctant deb (Massey died last year, RIP label). It was glammed up and nicely changed when the Harrisons came on board, making Kendall the second wife (as she would have been too young to be the deb's mother) and making the daughter raised in America, to suit the teen stars Dee and Saxon. It nicely captures that era, where the rich came down for breakfast with everything - all those scrambed eggs etc - set out in silver salvers for them. How did the ladies wear those long gloves which they are forever putting on and taking off ? The audience applauded at the end .... This and Cukor's LES GIRLS remain Kay's greatest roles, and she had one more in 1959 in Donen's ONCE MORE WITH FEELING (more on these at Kendall label).

DESIGNING WOMAN is also bliss to see again now, where Peck and Bacall are prefectly teamed as Mike and Marilla and it remains the height of 1957 chic (along with FUNNY FACE and LES GIRLS), and Dolores Gray scores too, as per my previous posts on it. Again, great compositions and those '50s interiors.

This afternoon I am settling down with another perennial I can watch anytime (and have to whenever it is screened)  Powell & Pressburger's BLACK NARCISSUS from 1947: which may well be the most distinctive and vivid of all British melodramas: those sets for the convent in the Himalayas, Jack Cardiff's marvellous images and colour schemes - the great cast in this intense, exquisite drama which captures the steamy repression in Rumer Godden's novel. The tensions among the nuns prompt all manner of emotions in Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr at 26) and Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron) when the agent Mr Dean (David Farrar in those short shorts) comes to call - add in Sabu wearing the heady perfume of the title, Jean Simmons as Kanchi and the Ayah and the other nuns including Flora Robson ... and of course that marvelous climax at the bell tower and those luscious '40s Technicolor flashbacks to Ireland. I also love that ending with the final meeting between Sr Clodagh and Mr Dean as the convent is swallowed up by the mountain clouds and the rain begins to fall on those giant leaves .... all created in the studio. it was one of the first movies I recorded on the then new vhs video I got in late 1979. It is now practically my favourite film of all, up there with BLOW-UP and L'AVVENTURA etc !

Kay & Lauren at the theatre, 1959

* 6 Degrees of ... : Just to show how everything is linked: I began watching a Dirk Bogarde movie before I went up the NFT for the Kendall, Bacall films with the Rampling dvd for Jerry, and I was reading Gavin Lambert's novel INSIDE DAISY CLOVER (see post on the Natalie Wood film below) which I rescued from the garage recently. I have often said that I consider Dirk Bogarde and Lauren Bacall to be the man and woman who knew practically everybody (one could also make a case for Christopher Plummer and Angela Lansbury, they certainly worked with everybody!): Kay Kendall was one of Dirk's best friends in the '50s, he evidently knew Bacall as well - she visited him the day before he died in 1999 - and Bacall knew Kendall as well, as per the photographs I posted here, at Showpeople label (there is another of them with Vivien Leigh & Noel Coward); there is also a photograph in one of Dirk's books of Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner visiting the Bogarde residence in the South of France, and Charlotte Rampling became another his his best friends in his later years, after their co-starring in THE DAMNED and THE NIGHT PORTER.

To see and review this week: Bogarde with Ava Gardner and Timothy Dalton in a 1975 rarity PERMISSION TO KILL, which I somehow missed at the time, its hardly been seen since, maybe with good reason ...

Summertime blues ...

SUMMER THINGS, 2002. A quite amusing French comedy by Michel Blanc (MONSIEUR HIRE) who also wrote it. A disparate group go on vacation to Le Touquet: the wealthy Charlotte Rampling whose husband Jacques Dutronc decides to stay at home as his life is rather complicated – he has been having an affair with their friend, Julie a single mother, and is now seeing his personal assistant who seems to be a transsexual. Their friends Vero (Karin Giard) and her husband are broke and trying to keep up appearances – they are staying in a caravan site. Their teenage son Loic (Gaspard Ulliel – THE SEA WALL) hates this and manages to get a bed at the hotel as Vero is looking after Julie’s baby.
Julie falls for a hotel lothario, and Loic meets a rich girl who takes him sailing. There is also Michel Blanc who is insanely jealous over his beautiful wife Carole Bouquet as he imagines every man is having sex with her. Charlotte and Bouquet becomer friends and drink lots of champagne while poor Vero tries to keep up. Lots of comedy situations then, including Rampling and Dutronc’s sex-mad daughter who is in Chicago with an employee of his who has stolen some money for the trip and is promptly dumped by the daughter for a guy she meets on the plane – he is then mugged and robbed and left on his own in Chicago. By the end of it all Loic comforts Charlotte who is having a miserable time and gives her the courage to confront the holes in her marriage as she insists on separate bedrooms. It is all fitfully amusing in a Gallic way as Blanc works out his Robert Altman/Woody Allen inspired interweaving tales, it almost makes one feel like one has been on holiday too. Rampling is effective as usual in another of these late starring roles of hers (SWIMMING POOL, UNDER THE SAND, HEADING SOUTH etc).

SUMMER HOURS, 2008. A more sombre richly textured French drama by Olivier Assayas. Helene (Edith Scob – the mad doctor’s disfigured daughter in 1959’s EYES WITHOUT A FACE, reviewed here last year, French label) is the 75 year old matriarch facing her imminent demise as she sorts out the legacy she will leave for her 3 children. She was the mistress of a great artist so there are a lot of valuables which Museums are interested in. Two of the children though no longer live in France and rarely return – Juliette Binoche is the successful designer living and getting married in New York, Jeremie Renier and his family now live in China, only the eldest Charles Berling and his family live in Paris. He wants to keep the family home for all of them and their children to enjoy but the other two want to sell.


They get their way as we see the ramifications following Helene’s death. The house and grounds are loving explored, Isabelle Sadoyan is just right as the aged retainer. We see some pieces on display at the Musee d'Orsay as the house is stripped and teenagers have a farewell party there. There is a lot of sadness at the nature of how things change as families splinter and heritage takes over. A very satisfying movie then, like a good read with well-rounded characters.

10.30 PM SUMMER, 1966. A return visit to Dassin’s film of Marguerite Duras’s story which I had not seen since its release. A very oddball confection but with three people I like, heading by Melina Mercouri who is travelling around Spain with husband Peter Finch and friend Romy Schneider. A great cast then but it is all somehow very risible as Melina goes into over-drive. There is a murderer on the loose whom Melina tries to assist escape, as Finch and Romy also get involved. This provided a lot of hilarity at the time, I remember Pauline Kael being particularly choice on this version of exploring threesomes. For me though Finch and Schneider are always endlessly fascinating and I like Melina a lot too – I spent an afternoon with her once in 1968 when she was leading a protest march in London in Trafalgar Square about poverty in Africa – in Biafra then. I was an idealistic twenty-two year old and Melina looked terrific in a long red dress with lots of gold chains. The Dassin-Mercouri films get a lot of stick now but I like them! Melina can often resemble a croaky drag queen but she is certainlty intense here - that scene where she watches Finch & Schneider (a terrific pairing of favourite people of mine) together on the balcony as the rain beats down and the wanted murderer also hides on the roofs is brilliantly staged.



Now that summer is gone perhaps more summer movies?: SUMMERTIME, SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT, SUMMER AND SMOKE, SUMMER OF THE 17TH DOLL, LAST SUMMER, THE LONG HOT SUMMER ......

I will now be away for maybe two weeks - not alas on vacation as in SUMMER THINGS but have a hospital engagement (knee replacement surgery) followed by extensive physiotherapy, and I am not allowed my laptop! but I shall be returning with an appraisal of Visconti's LUDWIG, Antonioni's rare OBERWALD MYSTERY [below, with Monica Vitti] and his segment in I TRE VINTI, 5 Catherine Deneuve films (I shall keep her A CHRISTMAS TALE until that time), 4 versions of DORIAN GRAY, more silents like THIEF OF BAGHDAD and BEN HUR (1925), NATHALIE GRANGER and other Marguerite Duras films, KINSEY and other gay interest movies, and more People and Movies We Like and of course more Art, Trash and lots of Glamour!

Francois, Charlotte et Melvil sur la plage

A brace of sombre films by Francois Ozon, featuring the beach and meditations on mortality....
UNDER THE SAND (SOUS LE SABLE) When her husband goes missing at the beach, a female professor begins to mentally disintegrate as her denial of his disappearance becomes delusional, as the brief synopsis puts it. This 2000 French film by Francois Ozon is notable for a stunning performance from Charlotte Rampling as Marie who has to adjust her life after her husband presumably drowns. She goes into denial and continues as though he is still there but gradually it all becomes too much. As she cannot accept his death she cannot access his funds and her friends, including a nicely mature Alexandra Stewart worry about her. What are her motives for getting involved with another man (Jacques Nolot) whom she is toying with? We see the husband (Bruno Cremer) as she imagines he is there with her – but tellingly at the beach we also see his expression before he goes into the sea.



His aged mother taunts Marie that her son has faked his death to get away from her as he was bored, or even committed suicide. Finally, a body is found – will Marie be able to accept that is her husband or does she continue in denial? Is it in fact her husband? There is that powerful scene at the morgue. The overweight husband does seem older and tired and weary in the early scenes as the couple head to their holiday home. It is splendidly directed by Ozon who focuses tightly on his star, but one does begin to get exasperated by Marie's behaviour by the end. It is a meditation on aging, loss, mourning, which would seem the domain of a more senior filmmaker [Ozon was 35 when directing this], but he has accomplished a thoughtful, serious, and compelling movie that we can all identify with, even if we do not share the extent of Marie's mourning process.

TIME TO LEAVE (LE TEMPS QUI RESTE) – Nice that Ozon’s new film POTICHE with Deneuve and Depardieu is an international hit. I had been putting off watching this, his 2005 more sombre drama as I imagined it might be too harrowing. Romain (Melvil Poupaud) a gay fashion photographer (who seems to have it all) is given a death sentence by his doctor – he has terminal cancer. He becomes reclusive as he begins to give up the world and people close to him, alienating himself from his lover, sister and parents. The only person he tells is his grand-mother (Jeanne Moreau, marvellous as ever) as she will be dead soon too. It is not harrowing at all but rather affecting at times, and also nicely compact at 75 minutes. Improbably, he is asked to impregnate a waitress he chats to whose sterile husband he quite fancies, which he at first refuses, but later all three get together.


Poupaud must have seriously lost weight by the final scene at the beach as the solitary man enjoys himself, with visions of his childhood past – one shocking moment has him throwing his ringing phone into a trashcan as he leaves the world behind him. The film’s pared down style is similar to his previous UNDER THE SAND and is a meditation on what it means to find out you only have a short time left to live. Melvil Poupaud carries the film beautifully and gives a performance that is both affecting and un-selfpitying, morphing from a fit, athletic young man to an emaciated invalid. It is indeed affecting as the sun goes down and people start to leave the beach... Francois Ozon continues to be one of the more interesting (and openly gay) directors around. I must return to that boxset of his earlier films: 8 FEMMES, 5 X 2 and SWIMMING POOL with Rampling again, and I also must watch that BFI dvd of his earlier shorts, REGARDE LA MER. It is good to see POTICHE is popular, one wonders what he will deliver next?
Soon: a new Andre Techine boxset, Assayas' SUMMER HOURS, several Catherine Deneuve and Belmondo titles and back to Chabrol and Melville, and summer repeats of Demy and Varda, and finally Truffaut's FINALLY SUNDAY, and Charlotte again HEADING SOUTH.