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Summertime at the movie house brings out sweeter, easy-on-the-eyes movies, that often can’t find traction (for good reason) at the box office. Nevertheless we all need our movie fix. So here are four that I thoroughly enjoyed. My one summertime caveat: Never trust Gazette nitpicker reviewers: whose assessments are invariably ungenerous.

 

Finding Vivian Maier

It’s already disappeared of course, but this fine doc has been my favorite movie of the summer. A young guy buys a box of 35 b&w negatives at an auction, and then devotes years and this film to finding out who took them.

Trailer

 

Begin Again

Made by John Carney (Once), A sweeter version of Inside Llewan Davies. Lots of Greenich Village music, the ever likeable Keira Knightley & Mark Ruffalo.

Trailer

 

Million Dollar Arm

Despite a Disneyesque version of both India and major league baseball, this Jon Hamm  sappy rollout has a few enduring charms.

Trailer

 

Jersey Boys

A delightfully odd adaptation of the Broadway musical oddity (albeit a bust with  the critics), Clint Eastwood directing for Frankie Valli, a biopic about Valli and his group, The Four Seasons. To my great surprise, I remembered vast swatches of lyrics to songs I thought I had never heard of.

Trailer

From Manohla Dargis,  New York Times.

The first shot in Boyhood, Richard Linklater’s tender, profound film, is of a cloudy sky. The second is of a boy staring up at that sky, one arm bent under his head, the other flung out straight on the ground. He’s a pretty child with calm eyes, a snub nose and a full mouth. It’s a face that you get to know and love because, even as this child is watching the world, you’re watching him grow. From scene to scene, you see the curve of his jaw change, notice his thickening brows and witness his slender arms opening to embrace the world and its clear and darkening skies.

Filmed over 12 consecutive years, “Boyhood” centers on Mason, 6 when the story opens and 18 when it ends. In between, he goes to school; argues with his sister, Samantha and watches his mother, Olivia (Patricia Arquette), struggle with work and men while paying the bills, moving from home to home and earning several degrees. Every so often, her ex-husband, roars into the children’s lives, initially in a 1968 GTO. It isn’t a dad car (although it does belong to one: Mr. Linklater).  These are people you know, maybe people like you.

The realism is so brilliantly realized that it would be easy to overlook. In “Boyhood,” Mr. Linklater’s inspired idea of showing the very thing that most movies either ignore or awkwardly elide — the passage of time — is its impressive, headline-making conceit. Starting in 2002, he gathered his four lead actors each year for a three- to four-day shoot, working on the script as they went along.

The structure is crucial. Mr. Linklater’s films are sometimes mischaracterized as having no plot, perhaps because they may seem so, when compared with aggressively incident-jammed mainstream movies. One of the fascinating things about “Boyhood” is that a lot happens — there are parties and fights, laughter and tears — but all these events take place in a distinctly quotidian register and without the usual filmmaking prodding and cues.

Instead, the movie ebbs and flows from year to year, interspersed with temporal signposts like a Britney Spears song or a Nintendo Wii. For a filmmaker known for the loquaciousness of his characters, Mr. Linklater has an almost un-American rejection of overexplanation. The film’s visual style is precise, unassuming to the point of seeming invisibility and in the service of the characters, with compositions that remain unfussy and uncluttered, even when the rooms are busy. When Mr. Linklater films a landscape, your eye locks not on the camerawork but on the beauty of these spaces and the people in them — the enveloping greenness of the neighborhood in which Mason first rides a bike, for instance, and the tranquillity of the watering hole that, years later, he swims in with his dad. Mr. Linklater is especially fond of showing two people walking and talking, and you learn as much about the characters’ relationships from how they inhabit space — his two-shots speak volumes — as from what they say. He’s a poet-geometrician of intimacy.

Radical in its conceit, familiar in its everyday details, “Boyhood” exists at the juncture of classical cinema and the modern art film without being slavishly indebted to either tradition. It’s a model of cinematic realism, and its pleasures are obvious yet mysterious. Even after seeing the film three times, I haven’t fully figured out why it has maintained such a hold on me, and why I’m eager to see it again. There are many reasons to love movies, from the stories they tell, to the beautiful characters who live and die for us. And yet the story in “Boyhood” is blissfully simple: A child grows up. This, along with the modesty of its physical production — its humble rooms, quiet moments, ordinary lives — can obscure Mr. Linklater’s ambitions and the greatness of his achievement.

It’s no surprise that watching actors age on camera without latex and digital effects makes for mesmerizing viewing. And at first it may be hard to notice much more than the creases etching Mr. Hawke’s face, the sexy swells of Ms. Arquette’s belly and Mr. Coltrane’s growth spurts. You may see your own face in those faces, your children’s, too. This kind of identification is familiar, as is the idea that movies preserve time. André Bazin wrote that art emerged from our desire to counter the passage of time and the inevitable decay it brings. But in “Boyhood,” Mr. Linklater’s masterpiece, he both captures moments in time and relinquishes them as he moves from year to year. He isn’t fighting time but embracing it in all its glorious and agonizingly fleeting beauty.

Here are a few excerpts from interviews.
Voici quelques extraits d’entrevues…

—

Q: Isabelle is hard to get a read on.

She’s a mystery, that’s what interested me. I wanted to show that when you are a teenager, you are very mysterious to other people. I wanted to play a game with the audience. I don’t have one answer. She is many things. There’s many reasons for her behavior. I wanted people not to judge her, but to try and understand her. For me she’s like many teenagers — they don’t have words to express themselves. Everything is changing in their bodies, and in their emotions. It’s very difficult for them to communicate. That’s something I had experienced when I was a teenager. I wanted to show that.

So there’s some of you in her.

Don’t worry, I didn’t do prostitution. For me, it was a terrible time, I didn’t like it. I wanted to show the difficulty of this period. I was not able to say what happens inside. I didn’t realize the violence of my emotions, of my desire. When you’re a child you think your parents are heroes. When you realize they’re not the heroes you made them out to be, it’s a strong dissolution.

Why did you choose therefore to make the film about a young woman coming of age, and not a man?

“In the House” was about a young male character, so this time I wanted to do a portrait of a young woman. To me there is no big difference between male and female. Very often you could change the sex of the character. What interests me was to show the power of this young woman. She knows her power, she knows her beauty and she uses it. It could be the same for a man.

At Cannes, you got nasty press after making those comments to The Hollywood Reporter. Do you feel you were misquoted?

I didn’t want to do the interview—but you know you have to do it—I had the feeling the journalist liked the film, I’m not sure, but she was nervous about the fact that it was about prostitution. What I tried to say was just the fact that prostitution could be a fantasy. It could be a fantasy of men and women. Just a fantasy. What I tried to say was about the character of Charlotte Rampling who at the end of the film says, “I have always this fantasy, but I never did it.” I wanted to say that every woman has this fantasy. Because the film is not a polemic I think.

I was the new Lars von Trier, I should have spoken about Nazis too. Nazis and prostitution would have been bigger.

You complete your projects at such a rapid rate. What can you tell me about your next film, “The New Girlfriend“? How do you keep this pace up?

I like to do movies. For me it’s always a pleasure. Actually, I suffer more when I don’t do movies. Because my films are very low budgets I’m able to find the money to finance the films.

Do actresses come to you, begging for you to write for them?

In France there is a real pleasure to make movies about women—and very often it’s films that could be successful. Under the Sand with Charlotte Rampling was quite strange. Nobody wanted to put money on the film, everyone said that Charlotte Rampling was over. When the film was released it was a big success.

—– 

Ozon, artiste virtuose, s’impose désormais comme l’un des meilleurs cinéastes français actuels. Réputation non usurpée, talent certifié.

Il ne faut surtout pas conclure qu’Ozon est un parvenu. Bien au contraire. Sa carrière ne se résume pas à deux trois films grand public mais à une longue traversée semée d’embûches avec des films fascinants et politiquement incorrects. Avec une moyenne d’une fiction par an depuis 1997, feu l’enfant terrible du cinéma français continue de tracer son parcours. La première fois qu’on a entendu parler de lui, c’était avec ses courts métrages. La petite mort, un petit chef-d’œuvre bouleversant sous son vernis provocateur, ou Scènes de lits, un court métrage kaléidoscopique et inquiétant. Des films complexes, subtils, d’une grande richesse émotionnelle, qui montrent que le démon Ozon a une double face : celle qui célèbre l’amour mais aussi l’autre, plus sombre, qui fait grincer les dents.

Après les courts, les longs…

Regarde la mer fut une transition permettant au cinéaste de passer au long métrage. Dans Théorème, Pasolini faisait entrer Dieu dans une famille pour étayer une parabole sur le pourrissement de la bourgeoisie. Dans Sitcom, Ozon prend un rat comme élément perturbateur, catalyseur des fantasmes enfouis : lorsqu’un personnage touche le rat, sa vraie personnalité prend soudain le dessus et révèle tous ses désirs secrets. Les amants criminels est un film d’horreur psychanalytique qui mêle le fait divers aux contes de fées et autopsie la crise identitaire de deux adolescents avec son cortège d’ambiguïtés (morales, sexuelles) et de sentiments refoulés (l’homosexualité de Luc). Il en résulte un film troublant, envoûtant, idoine pour le jeune ado en pleine confusion des sens, mais aujourd’hui plus maladroit que foncièrement dérangeant.
Un an plus tard, Ozon sort Gouttes d’eau sur pierres brûlantes, une adaptation d’une pièce inédite de Rainer Werner Fassbinder, un huis clos qui sonde les rapports SM entre des personnages dominés par un homme à la fois charmeur, tyrannique et cruel (Bernard Giraudeau, dans son rôle le plus dur). Sous le sable, le quatrième long du cinéaste, traite du deuil de la façon la plus elliptique qui soit (tout est suggéré) ; ce sera le film de la consécration. Il marque également le retour de Charlotte Rampling au cinéma.

Après le succès critique, le succès public

Le public viendra définitivement vers François Ozon avec Huit femmes, son cinquième film (le plus ambitieux, pas le meilleur) qui réunit un casting de rêve. La bande-annonce, parfaite, laisse entendre que nous allons assister à une partie de Cluedo. En fait, l’ambition d’Ozon est ailleurs. Peu importe la résolution du film, peu importe l’identité du tueur : on n’est pas là pour cela ; et ceux qui s’attendaient à une enquête policière lambda ont fatalement été déçus. Huit femmes, c’est avant tout un magnifique hommage au métier d’actrice et par extension au cinéma.
Après un tel film, Ozon aurait pu prendre une pause bien méritée, mais non. Le réalisateur signe le mystérieux Swimming pool, sorte de shyamalanerie française glacée, dans lequel Sarah Morton (Charlotte Rampling), auteur anglais de polars à succès, venue se reposer et travailler dans la maison de son éditeur, voit sa quiétude perturbée par Julie (Ludivine Sagnier), la fille de ce dernier. Le cinéaste observe les rapports de force entre ces deux femmes qui, tour à tour, se disputent, se manipulent, s’aiment. Un thriller original et érotique, cérébral et drôle qui précède 5 x 2, autopsie implacable d’un couple en crise à la méthode Irréversible, nouveau trouble instillé par un cinéaste définitivement épatant. Qui revient un an plus tard à ses anciennes amour “trash” en signant Le temps qui reste, où il décortique ses obsessions avec une générosité souveraine.
Après ce feu d’artifice, on lui pardonne volontiers le faux-pas d’Angel, beau spectacle un peu vain sauvé cependant par quelques réjouissances visuelles. On reste à nouveau dubitatifs devant son mystérieux Ricky. Avec Le refuge, le cinéaste revient à un cinéma intimiste qui semble lui réussir davantage.

Mavens:

Nobody makes such deliciously insouciant French Comedies like the French. Here are some of my favorites, mostly recent.

 

Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain
An innocent develops her own sense of justice, helping those around her.

 

 

 

 

 

Delicatessen
Grotesquely larger-than-life inhabitants of a scrofulous tenement have their own little story; visually, the film evokes Gilliam, Lynch, the Coens The sets, special effects, photography, pace and performances all contribute to the brash comic-strip vivacity. Increasingly inventive as it progresses, Jeunet fast, funny feature debut entertains from sinister start to frantic finish.

 

Les Visiteurs
An 11th century knight (Jean Reno) and his servant (Christian Clavier) are transported from the past into the present and learn to deal with and survive in the modern world.

 

 

 

 

La Cage Aux Folles
Two gays, living in St. Tropez have their lives turned upside down when the son announces he is getting married. They try to conceal their lifestyle when the fiancée and her parents come for dinner.

 

 

 

Mon Oncle
French auteur Jacques Tati employs his signature character, Tatischeff to bumble his way through the idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies of modern life, albeit in his idiosyncratic but ultimately humorous manner.

 

 

 

 

2 Days in Paris
Julie Delpy takes her American boyfriend to Paris to meet her parents and several of her ex-boyfriends.

 

 

 

 

Les Saveurs du Palais
Christian Vincent’s spoof on the cooking obsessions of the Elysee Palace.

 

 

 

 

 

Les Intouchables
A quadriplegic and an ex-con make the best of living within their means: sky-diving, Vivaldi, modern art. Evocative of The Diving Bell and Butterfly.

 

 

 

 

Trois Hommes et un Couffin
Jacques, an Air France steward, One day a package arrives with a cradle, a baby, and the three guyhs find themselves trapped between work obligations and diapers. The bachelors find their lives changed.

 

 

 

Guillaume, Les Garçons, à table
Guillaume’s rather temperamental upper middle-class mother, has three children, two of whom she considers as her sons and another she calls Guillaume. Through a series of painful chain of experiences, Guillaume will discover little by little who he is actually and will manage to break free from her pernicious influence.

 

 

La Nuit Americaine
Truffaut’s hilarious movie, in the pantheon of films about filmmaking Also of interest – is the manner in which Truffaut captures behind-the-scenes shenanigans, employing gliding crane shots and flashes of abrupt editing to make us fully aware of the majestically artificial way the world is depicted by filmmakers.

“We create monsters and then we can’t control them.”
Joel

“You’re doing it to make the character as specific as possible, so that it’s a specific individual that you’re talking about, not that whole class of people.”
- Joel

“You have to love all your characters, even the ridiculous ones – they’re your weird creations in some kind of way. I don’t even know how you approach the process of conceiving the characters if in a sense you hated them. It’s just absurd.”
- Joel

“I guess there’s a certain amount of poking fun at certain characters, but that’s because there is something amusing about them or about the way they behave, so I guess you can say that that’s poking fun at the character. But the character is your own invention, so who cares?”
- Joel

“There’s no doubt that our Jewish heritage affects how we see things. “We’re Jewish film-makers, for sure. We’ve never tried to hide that or tip-toe around it. Hollywood has always been largely Jewish, although made of Jews who wanted to assimilate. As a friend of ours once said: ‘If the movie business wasn’t difficult, God wouldn’t have given it to the Jews. What’s interesting to us are the people you know that are very good at what they do but aren’t necessarily successful.”
– Joel

“We aren’t the grandfathers of any movement. In the 1980s, the so-called indie film movement was a media creation. What I found irritating is that ‘independent’ became an encomium. If it was independent, it was supposed to be good, and studio films were bad. Obviously, there are bad independent films and good studio films.”
- Ethan