Turning Tables (Klandestin)

 

Writer/director Angelina Maccarone

TURNING TABLES (Klandestin)                B                                                                      Germany  (124 mi)  2024  d: Angelina Maccarone

Reminiscent of the gripping, multi-layered political thrillers of Alan J. Pakula’s The Parallax View (1974), Michael Haneke’s Caché (Hidden) (2005), Fatih Akin’s 2017 Top Ten List #9 In the Fade (Aus dem Nichts) or his earlier THE EDGE OF HEAVEN (2007), which stars Fassbinder actress Hanna Schygulla, while this one stars Fassbinder actress Barbara Sukowa, who was Mieze in BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ (1980) and the lead in LOLA (1981), both providing magnificent performances, where this is a different side of Sukowa that we haven’t seen before.  The film has that sleek, stylistic flourish of American director Michael Mann that was so prevalent in the 80’s and 90’s, like Thief (1981) or HEAT (1995), chic and sophisticated, with eye-popping visuals and powerfully-lit nighttime scenes.  Making her first film in 13 years, Angelina Maccarone started out as a writer of song lyrics for Udo Lindenberg and other artists, graduating from the University of Hamburg before she got her Master’s degree in literature, and has been a film professor at Babelsberg Film University since 2014, winning the German Film Award (Lola) for Best Unfilmed Script in 2017, which provided the blueprint, so this film has been in the works for a while.  Coming with great expectations, featuring an international cast centered around four lead characters, skillfully interweaving the same story from four different points of view, the film examines the conflict between personal freedom and political constraints, adding political intrigue with personal conflict.  Shot by Florian Foest, who with a few exceptions has worked almost exclusively in television, yet the look of the film is broodingly dark and complex, suggesting truth lies deeply hidden underneath an artificial façade.  Opening with a panoramic view of the Frankfurt skyline in the evening, as the lights come on in the skyscrapers, while rush hour traffic snakes its way through the streets, only to be disturbed by the sound of an explosion, as a bomb rocks through the stillness of the night, setting off a chain of reactions, as the entire city is on edge, with the film exploring the effect this has on the various protagonists, moving back and forth in time through non-linear storytelling as it carefully unravels a little bit more about each one of them.

Told in chapter headings devoted to each new character, where only gradually are their secrets revealed, Richard (Lambert Wilson) is a successfully wealthy gay British painter living a bohemian freestyle life in Tangier, where he’s fallen in love with a boyish-looking younger man named Malik (Habib Adda), whose dream is to get to Europe by any means possible, willing to take any risk, which includes being smuggled in Richard’s van as he transports his paintings to Frankfurt for an exhibition.  Yet Malik’s presence is a precarious one, as the city is ramping up its security following the suspected terrorist blast and police are everywhere making a slew of arrests, where anyone of Arab descent becomes a suspect, so Richard is adamant about him staying indoors, instructing him to never leave the apartment while he goes out to help arrange the gallery opening.  Initially that is not a problem, but things get dicey when Richard has to return to England on business, as Malik grows restless being stuck inside, having no outside contact, so he breaks the rules, thinking nothing will come of it, but the suspense is palpable in his wanderings, as ominous signs are everywhere, yet he’s ridiculously naïve and clueless about the implications.  We subsequently learn they are staying in the home of Mathilda (Barbara Sukowa), Richard’s best friend since childhood, who has transformed herself into a cold, hard-nosed, conservative politician who is campaigning on taking a tough stance against illegal immigration, where both men have put her career in jeopardy by harboring the very thing she stands so vociferously against.  The tenderness of Richard’s relationship with Mathilda, however, stands out, as they are extremely close, like brother and sister, sharing many things in common, like music and a cynical take on conventional bourgeois attitudes, remaining in each other’s trust and confidence despite their stark political and ideological differences.  Adding to the mix is her new assistant, Amina (Banafshe Hourmazdi), described as a “cultural mediator,” who is something of a specialist on new EU immigration laws.      

A staunch advocate of stricter EU border controls, Mathilda is a roundly disliked right-wing hardliner who wants to limit migrant populations, whose blatant hypocrisy requires that Malik stay out of sight, suddenly facing a moral dilemma that calls into question her own basic convictions.  The film beautifully examines both her public and private side, where we discover she’s nothing at all like the chilly veneer of her public perception, which is strictly a façade projecting strength and power, where viewers are allowed to see a quieter, more reflective humanist side.  Certainly part of what’s so effective is how the coolness of the distinct style of film matches her public persona, bathed in a veneer of artificiality and practiced techniques, appearing raw and gritty, yet underneath remains the heart of a woman.  While she and Richard are privileged and well-educated, supposedly cut from the same cloth, Amina has more in common with Malik.  Though she may have a similar education, equally well-spoken and a consummate professional, dressed conventionally in her business suit, her path to success has been decidedly different, where that side of her mirrors the concealment of Malik, as it remains hidden and out of sight, not for public consumption.  This multidimensional aspect of their character is not what we expect, as we rarely see an inner side to these more-often neglected characters, so it adds an element of human intrigue.  Coming from an Italian father and a German mother, the director understands more than most about intercultural complexities, exposing the inhumane consequences of xenophobic policies.  The entangled forces that Maccarone weaves together are simply fascinating (though the world has changed greatly since it was written, much darker and less hopeful, especially after the outbreak of war in Ukraine and Gaza), concluding with a sequence that brings everything together, as terrorism is a hot topic of the day, as is the political overreaction, cynically taking advantage of people’s anxieties and fears, projecting strength through ideological rhetoric that only stirs up that pot and actually foments more violence, where it’s easy to blame an unseen enemy which has no face.  This film, as the title suggests, particularly the German title of “clandestine,” challenges that perception, projecting a human face that is so often associated with the enemy, where they are guilty until proven innocent, as the legal standards in this globalized world are simply not equivalent.   

Les Bonnes Femmes

Bernadette Lafont  Obituary by Ronald Bergan from The Guardian 

I don't usually get into posting obituary notices, something of a morbid habit, and certainly a reminder of our own impending demise, but this is one of my all time favorite actresses.

I never thought of her as one of the first New Wave actresses, just generally thinking of Jeanne Moreau in Jules and Jim, and perhaps Bardot in ...And God Created Woman, but she was a driving force behind Jean Eustache's The Mother and the Whore (La Maman et la Putain) (1972), where one of the key scenes was seeing Bernadette Lafont drown her sorrows by repeatedly listening to Edith Piaf sing her 1948 recording “Les Amants de Paris” seen here: (YouTube - La maman et la putain on YouTube 3:05), which remains one of the essential works of cinema.

My favorite Chabrol film remains Les Bonnes Femmes (1960), a completely unpretentious film about bored Parisian working class girls who spend all day waiting to clock out of their dreary jobs so they can go out at night.  While utterly realistic, it remains as captivating today as when it was made, largely due to the naturalistic performance of Bernadette Lafont.

I still think of  her as that young and vibrant force driving French films, not quite the screen presence as Anna Karina, but she was probably the working class version, which is why I always felt I could relate to her.  There was no distance separating her from the audience, as she felt like one of us, which is something you just don't experience anymore. 

LES BONNES FEMMES       A 
France  Italy  (100 mi)  1960  d:  Claude Chabrol

Before Chabrol started mocking the complacency of the bourgeoisie with artificially stylized whodunits, he made at least two stabs at a social realist film, BEAU SERGE (1958), a naturalistic rural drama, and this deceptively complex work that on the surface appears to be a free wheeling, light-hearted drama about the social patterns of young Parisian girls, shot in a near documentary style following events as they occur over the course of several days.  Balancing their time at work in an appliance store with no customers to speak of, where the highlight of the day is a hopeful visit from a delivery man, the film examines the lives of four young girls who work there, each more bored than the next where their low-end wages offer little hope for a better future.  While they tease one another at work all day and continue socializing at night, it is clear they exhibit an artificial cheerfulness to hide their otherwise empty lives, very much in the manner of John Cassavetes, particularly in FACES (1968).  In fact outside of Cassavetes, this is one of the best films to capture the emotional authenticity of young women and the difficulty they face enduring men who are exaggerated caricatures of themselves, all promising to be more than they are.  While the men are uncomfortably obnoxious, this is all part of the mating ritual where the social art of persuasion is a double-edged sword, where if you allow yourself to get lured in, you may suffer the consequences.  On the other hand, if you take no chances at all, you’re back where you started from, which is a neverending routine of endless monotony.  Chabrol, with help from cinematographer Henri Decaë, does an excellent job finding the rhythms of the streets of Paris which exude a wonderful sense of energy and hopeful possibilities while the oddly dissonant score by Pierre Jansen and Paul Misraki may give some the creeps. 

Bernadette Lafont plays Jane, perhaps the most liberated and sexually audacious of the group, who through acts of exuberant spontaneity hopes to find happiness, while Stéphane Audran, soon to be the director’s wife, working in dozens of films together for some twenty years, plays her roommate Ginette, living a secret life as a singer in a variety revue.  Lucile Saint-Simon plays Rita, an attractive blond who is incessantly schooled by her fiancé how to please his snooty, overbearing parents, demanding that she change to become the girl of his dreams, while newcomer Clothilde Joano plays Jacqueline, a recent hire late on her first day on the job, a shy, quiet girl lost in her thoughts about a young motorcyclist (Mario David) who shows up regularly without so much as a word, staring at her through the storefront window, following her on his bike, always keeping his eye on her.  From an early sequence where a couple of the girls are followed by two guys in a white Cadillac, the audience has an idea what’s in store for them and can see these men are little more than goons, but the girls have a zest for living that typifies the sudden influx of boldly energized New Wave films.  What follows is a wild strip club sequence with a bon vivant Bridgitte Bardot look-alike that gets the guys pinching and grabbing, followed by an extended party sequence that plays out like New Years, where it’s all Jane can do to fend them off, which she does brilliantly until a night of champagne finally wears down her defenses.  Jane can be seen in the same clothes spraying perfume under her arms the next morning as she joins her roommate for another day at work, interrupted by a frantic run to the zoo at lunchtime where they interact with the caged monkeys, rare birds, and a stalking leopard before returning back to work where Jane ends up asleep.  One by one each of the girls is called into the boss’s office to be fondled and pinched, a day where time literally stops, counting the minutes until the work day is done. 

Interesting that the guys surrounding these girls are typically crude, boorish and ill-mannered, more interested in dominating any female desire to express themselves, like hunters caging wild animals or rare birds (“They don’t look rare to me.”), while the girls themselves couldn’t be more vividly gorgeous and appealing in their feminine charm, spending their days in dead end jobs filled with hopes and dreams that someday it might all be different.  There’s a strange swimming pool sequence where the original louts that picked up Jane decide to bully the girls, thinking it’s fun to throw them in the water and continually dunk them, like rude water polo, until they are rescued by the motorcycle guy who runs off the imbeciles.  In perhaps the strangest scene in the film, the motorcyclist takes Jacqueline for a ride into the country, where they walk deeper and deeper into the woods.  It is clear Jacqueline has never been happier, that she is finally, at this moment, herself, in a scene highly reminiscent of similar scenes with the happy and dreamy-eyed Giulietta Masina on her wedding day in Fellini’s NIGHTS OF CABIRIA (1957), a walk in the woods sequence borrowed again by Fassbinder in BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ (1980) featuring Barbara Sukowa as Mieze in the beautifully choreographed Part XII “The Serpent in the Soul of the Serpent.”  These are scenes of utter heartbreak and despair, shown without a hint of excess, probably the turning point in each film.  The ramifications are beyond description, the audience is in a state of disbelief, as this was thought to be a dizzyingly absurd New Wave comedy of sorts, was it not?  The final sequence is just as exasperating, as the tone has completely shifted to a stunned audience that can’t quite comprehend what just happened.  This brilliant change of gears offers a completely new appraisal of the film, adding a profound layer of depth to these girl’s lives, where Chabrol expresses a surprising level of sympathy for their stark vulnerability in such a harsh world that barely notices they exist.