Voyage en Deuce

 

Director Michel Deville

VOYAGE EN DOUCE         A-                                                                                            France  (98 mi)  1980  d: Michel Deville

What women talk about when men aren’t around.                                                                        —film tagline

Michel Deville found great critical and box-office success in France, perhaps achieving his greatest success with LA LECTRICE (THE READER) in 1988, but was relatively unknown abroad, never to achieve the international notoriety of New Wave contemporaries like Godard or Truffaut.  While made in 1980, this film is reminiscent of the playful spirit of the 60’s, which was a decade obsessed with frequent flashbacks, an aesthetic that felt so liberating at the time, like an ode to freedom, including the dizzying flashback sequences in Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962), Federico Fellini’s 8 ½ (1963), Wojciech Has’ THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT (1965), Sergio Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968), or Robert Enrico’s ZITA (1968), and curious narrative experimentation in the early 70’s from Rivette’s Céline and Julie Go Boating (Céline et Julie vont en bateau) (1974), which this film emulates, where music seems to open an imaginary portal into the world of erotic daydreams through an elegant use of Beethoven Bagatelles (Beethoven: 6 Bagatelles, Op. 126 - 4. Presto - YouTube 4:18) played by Katia Labèque that provide a seductive, A Midsummer Night’s Dream spirit of reverie.  The lightness of touch is compelling, essentially the story of two women, friends since childhood, who relate to each other with such a tender affection, exquisitely expressed by the performances of Dominique Sanda and Geraldine Chaplin, with Sanda so riveting in Bresson’s Une Femme Douce (1969) and also Bertolucci’s The Conformist (Il Conformista) (1970) and 1900 NOVACENTO (1976), while Chaplin, the daughter of Charlie Chaplin who is best known for her ditzy, off-kilter performances of unstable characters, worked with Robert Altman in Nashville (1975) and A Wedding (1978), as well as Alan Rudolph in WELCOME TO L.A. (1976).  Hélène (Sanda) and Lucie (Chaplin) are both married, Hélène with two young children and Lucie childless, but like so many of us, their lives fall short of their youthful expectations.  Deville shows a distinctive interest in developing the female characters by exploring personality traits, as the blond Hélène is bolder, more outwardly aggressive yet culturally refined and sophisticated, a writer of children’s books, showing endless signs of being curiously inquisitive, while the brunette Lucie is fragile, emotionally torn, more easily hurt and brought to tears, something of a drama queen and prone to exaggerate, pampered and groomed by Hélène, with both exuding a charm filled with alluring feminine mysteries, as Deville displays a unique ability to direct women onscreen.  While this film is directed by a man, it’s a sensuous exploration of female desires and recollections, mostly seen through the eyes of Hélène, whose sexual fantasies are sensuously visualized on the screen, told in a very literary style, notable for its episodic flashback structure, derived from 15 different anecdotes by 15 different French writers of both sexes.  There is no limit to the reach of fantasy, especially in contrast to the banality of our lives, yet this film allows a deeply repressed sensuality and sensitivity to resurface, showing none of the surreal sexual perversity of Buñuel, as this is more tastefully refined, more character driven, where the luxurious beauty of the sunny French Provencal landscape is cleverly integrated into the dreaminess of the storyline. 

When Deville decided to become a film director, he asked Cahiers du Cinéma magazine editor Éric Rohmer, whose articles he appreciated, to cowrite his first film with him, but Rohmer was already working on The Sign of Leo (Le signe du lion) (1959), so instead he decided to work hand-in-hand with editor Nina Companeez, who was particularly gifted in dialogue, and the two ended up collaborating on 12 films together.  He also discovered another major influence, costume designer, assistant, producer, and cowriter Rosalinde Damamme, who he ended up marrying, so there is a distinct woman’s touch in this film.  Opening with a sensuous concert performance of Brahms Lieder by British soprano Valerie Masterson, Christa Ludwig sings Brahms "Sapphische Ode" - YouTube (2:59), it opens yet quickly departs from the conventional male gaze, where a point-of-view shot of a man sitting in front row seats next to Hélène drifts to the singer’s cleavage, where it appears she’s singing just for him, with everyone else erased from the room, ending with a long shot of the concert hall where all have left except this privileged male viewer and the singer still onstage locked in his gaze.  This diversion from reality sets the tone, disconnected from the rest of the storyline, but it does exemplify how the mind wanders into its own realm, as if on its own, where the essence of this film blends eroticism into elaborately realized flashback sequences, with men primarily relegated to the background, becoming more of an attempt to explore the female psyche.  Afterwards Hélène discovers Lucie sitting outside her door, terribly distraught and in tears after an argument with her husband, convinced its time to leave him, though what she describes hardly seems like grounds to break up, instead she’s unhappy with the trajectory of her own life, and he’s easiest to blame.  Hélène listens intently, but has to laugh when she discovers much of what she hears is completely made up, thinking a road trip is the right medicine, that it will nourish and revitalize the soul, so the two women decide to take a road trip from Paris to southern Provencal in search of a summer house to rent. The brief glimpse we have of Hélène’s home life paints a portrait of domestic happiness, yet it also feels equally restricted by societal convention.  So their trip is defined by an exchange of fantasies and flirtations, both real and imagined, which are smart and engaging, though nothing is ever clarified or spelled out, with reveries and flashbacks replacing a conventional narrative, as both women attempt to fill an emotional void, tenderly narrated by each women, opening up a more adventurous and risky world that has been notably absent from their more cautious lives, where the journey is an opportunity to taste undiscovered freedom, filled with eye-opening, voyeuristic revelations that may haunt viewers for years to come.             

Once they hit the road, a passing train, like in an Antonioni movie, evokes a fleeting childhood memory that suddenly resurfaces with its intensity intact, with Marion Gautier (Hélène at fifteen years old) and Myriam Roulet (Lucie at fifteen years old), offering personalized insight that literally teases audiences with a provocative sexual subtext, recalling the innocence of Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Valerie a týden divu) (1970), though channeled through a modern sensibility when expressed as an adult.  The closeness of the women is never in dispute, displaying surprising tenderness and affection, with titillating signs of a lesbian romance that is only hinted at and never realized.  Sanda is exquisitely sensual in her aloof beauty, appearing soft and cool, while the nervously impatient Chaplin is allowed to expand her range, delivering one of her career best performances, as the women flirtatiously dance around each other throughout their escapades.  In one encounter, Hélène coaches an adolescent male waiter delivering room service, both lying in bed in their hotel room, on the proper technique to kiss a woman, instructing him to pay attention to the surrounding erogenous zones, inflaming her desire merely by insinuating what’s about to occur, which has the effect of stimulating his own desire, which they teasingly make fun of, taking advantage of his youthful inexperience, exiting in a flurry of embarrassed humiliation.  In another rather amusing yet inflinching moment, Hélène sits around a table of elderly grandmothers sipping tea and starts masturbating, which they don’t even notice.  This sense of manipulative provocation empowers both of them, taking delight in exploring the beauty of the French countryside as they visit several picturesque houses, with Hélène photographing Lucie in the idyllic surroundings, who gets in the mood by getting au natural before the camera, telling stories that are tinged with fantasy, allowing them to play out in the viewer’s imaginations through the eloquent narrations while also seeing a luminous visualization, with the Beethoven piano music beautifully providing the texture of these sensitive stories.  As they explore their friendship, which encapsulates their lives, the mood shifts on a dime as Lucie recalls a horrific rape, which is heard on audio only, playing out the excruciatingly ugly details, think Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible (Irréversible) (2002), while Lucie and Helene are seen in a series of elegantly composed long shots walking slowly through the countryside in an idyllic setting of pastoral serenity.  The chilling effect of how this moment is realized is simply stunning, as it taps into a full range of raw emotions that defines just how well executed this small gem of a film really is, remaining imprinted into our imaginations, even after the passing of nearly half a century.  By the end of the film we return to the male gaze, and it feels so astonishingly different, with the women switching places, as the two personalities blend into one, having reconsidered and reevaluated their lives, with Lucie dutifully returning to her husband while Hélène sits on the landing outside her own door, having shed that former persona, now seeing herself in a new and completely different light.  Boldly adventurous, daring to go where few films are willing to go today, as the use of nudity is sparing, but effective, an unforgettable experience from such an impressionistic, female-forwarded film that resounds with such astute artistry.

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt

 

Writer/director Raven Jackson

Jomo Fray, Kaylee Nicole Johnson, and Raven Jackson

ALL DIRT ROADS TASTE OF SALT        B                                                                                 USA  (92 mi)  2023  d: Raven Jackson

A meditative and visually intoxicating film, more like a lyrically contemplative photo essay than a movie, made by an award-winning filmmaker, poet, and photographer from Tennessee (but her mother and grandmother are from Mississippi) with a Master’s Degree from both New York University’s Graduate Film Program and the New School’s Writing Program.  Jackson explores rural Mississippi landscapes with indefinable human experiences and emotions, seemingly spawned from Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (1991), while mixing in the dreamy and poetic resonance of Terrence Malick, specifically the near wordless To the Wonder (2012) or the transcendent 2011 Top Ten Films of the Year #1 The Tree of Life, exploring the immensity of the natural world around us with the tiny, claustrophobic space we actually inhabit.  As if inspired by a different era, the film recalls David Gordon Green’s lyrical George Washington (2000) or early Lynne Ramsay shorts like Small Deaths (Lynne Ramsay, 1996) - YouTube (11:13) or GASMAN (1998), Gasman Lynne Ramsay 1997 YouTube (14:30), where we almost never see the completeness of any scene, yet the intimacy on display is stunning, with the title referring to the practice of eating clay dirt, a common practice among poor blacks who live in rural areas of the American South, with suggestions that in the most remote corners of the earth, in the backroads, there are a multitude of tears that go unseen by the rest of the world, yet ultimately this deeply introspective film is about connection.  Premiering at Sundance in 2023, this is the second A24 film produced by noted director Barry Jenkins following the success of 2023 Top Ten List #7 Aftersun (2022), as the National Board of Review lists it among their Top 10 Independent Films of the year, with a visual design inspired by a 2017 book of photography (William Ferris: The South In Color) in rural Warren County and throughout Mississippi that features 100 color photographs from the 1960’s and 70’s, including the Rose Hill Church that is featured in the film.  Shot along the tributaries of the Yazoo River, the 35mm cinematography by Jomo Fray is nothing less than stunning, creating a bold, impressionistic mosaic that follows a young black girl’s life in rural Mississippi through various stages in her life, using three different actresses to play her, told in a non-narrative, stream-of-consciousness style that accentuates a lingering internalized expression of life itself, embracing joy and pain, heartbreak and grief, exploring shared moments in a life that connects the surrounding natural world to an existing black culture, creating an intersection between cinema and photography in a quietly reflective tapestry of interwoven, interior realms, themes in common with Savanah Leaf’s Earth Mama (2023).  There’s something very unique in Southern communities that’s specific to the region, whether it’s the soil, the people, the culture, or the conditions, and art has a lot to do with it. 

The unconventional nature of this decades-spanning film is startling, intentionally breaking conventions, told in a very unorthodox manner, much like poetry where you experiment and play around with form, as this is basically a series of kaleidoscopic vignettes all strung together, jumping back and forth in time with no narrative link, feeling more random, leaving viewers in a freefall of associative imagery surrounding a single character, Mack (Kaylee Nicole Johnson), short for Mackenzie, a little girl in pigtails seen in the opening learning to fish in the river with her father Isaiah (Chris Chalk), where she’s just as interested in stirring the mud in the dirty water, establishing an early link with the world around her, while we also hear the sounds of birds chirping and cicadas buzzing in the forest setting.  Bringing their catch home, they have enough for a fish fry, with her mother Evelyn (Sheila Atim) showing her the proper way to use a knife to skin it while her father scales the fish, where these parental instructions have been passed down through the ages.  We cut to scenes of joy and innocence, with Mack riding her bike through town, racing her childhood friend Wood (Preston McDowell), or joined by her younger sister Josie (Jayah Henry, with an imprinted birthmark on her eyelid), seen practicing kissing on the back of their hands before jumping ahead into a different time period, as her mother teaches her how to put lipstick on, with Mack changing to Charlene McClure in high school, Josie to Moses Ingram, and Wood becoming Reginald Helms Jr.  Using as little dialogue as possible, Jackson exposes flashes of memory, which allows these recurring images to linger in your imagination before moving on to another incident, like witnessing a tragic fire to the Mack family home, where a frantic feeling of pain and helplessness registers, showing how easily a home can be stripped away, as systematic displacement was a prominent theme for blacks in the 1970’s.  Edited by Lee Chatametikool, a frequent collaborator with Apichatpong Weerasethakul, you get different versions of these same characters at different stages in their lives, as it’s an experimental coming-of-age yet also cycle-of-life film, with carefully chosen moments from a single person’s life, showing how our relationship changes with the world around us as we grow, yet something intrinsically familiar remains, which are the traditions passed on by each successive generation.  Very little happens on the surface, with Jackson instead channeling what’s going on underneath the surface, challenging the audience to trust their emotions, where there’s even a companion book accompanying the film release, Stories From a Place Where All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt.  Mostly expressed in long takes, where hands, in particular, seem to have been singled out to symbolize loving affection, they are the connecting tissue between disparate moments, creating a state of grace, like an homage to French filmmaker Robert Bresson.

The critique of the film is how much patience is required and how difficult it is to establish an emotional connection with what might feel like an incoherent experimental narrative, as this is a style over substance film, where the use of music is sparingly used, but an early standout scene shows Mack’s parents slow-dancing to Gladys Knight & The Pips "If I Were Your Woman" on The Ed ... YouTube (2:36) and Roberta Flack’s Roberta Flack "Hey That's No Way To Say Goodbye".wmv YouTube (4:20), a foreshadowing moment where the romantic mood from the evocative 1970’s lyric immediately transitions to the sudden death of her mother, with the funeral taking place at the Rose Hill Church (returning later for a gorgeously realized wedding scene), captured in a picturesque verdant setting sitting atop a hill.  We float from one sequence to the next, like a reverie, as past and future spill into the present, sweeping us through various stages of time, as Mack and Wood lament the life they never had together in a long-held embrace, where their once promising romance faded away when she was unwilling to leave with him to pursue a better life, yet they have unmistakable chemistry between them.  Rather than spelling out plot points, Jackson evokes Mack’s inner life through the sights, sounds, textures, and emotions that have stuck with her over decades, infusing the timeless poetry of water, dirt, wind, and rain, with repeated shots of rivers and thunderstorms, and the muddied soil, as the timeline is marked by subtle changes in Mack’s braided hairstyles, where heritage and history are an ongoing ritual that continually restages the past, transforming what we see into something sacred and precious.  When Mack becomes a mother of her own, with an infant baby pressed warmly to her chest, she is reminded of her own mother, where one of the more striking scenes shows Evelyn holding Mack as an infant, rocking her in her arms, demonstrating how traditions are carried from one generation to the next, evoking a special bond between mothers and their daughters.  In another scene, a pregnant Mack lies in her bathtub, and in the next, we see Evelyn bathing Mack as a toddler in the very same tub, yet her discernible fear of motherhood drives Mack to reluctantly give her child to Josie to raise, a conspicuous moment expressed mostly through glances across a kitchen table.  Zainab Jah is a somewhat older Mack, seen lost in her own reflections by the river, where a stream of hypnotic imagery offers context for the memories she is processing, which may in fact be the film we are watching.  There is no beginning and no end, Mack says to her young daughter Lily (Robin Crudrup) as she talks about the water from the rain, instead “it just changes form.”  Inspired by black family albums that are kept oversized, preserving relatives behind hard plastic, they act as portraits of recorded American history without the stifling racial exclusions from prejudice and bigotry, a true narrative of America, where the walls of the home also include framed portraits of John Kennedy and Martin Luther King, staples in black households during the 70’s.  The sound design by Miguel Calvo is astonishing in its detail, as Jackson sculpts a captivating portrait of black heritage and identity through languorous tones, abstract textures, and a female perspective grounded in place and community.