Deception (Tromperie)

 

Director Arnaud Desplechin

Desplechin with Denis Podalydès

Desplechin on the set with Léa Seydoux

DECEPTION (Tromperie)                  B+                                                                               France (105 mi)  2021 ‘Scope  d: Arnaud Desplechin

All I can tell you with certainty is that I, for one, have no self, and that I am unwilling or unable to perpetrate upon myself the joke of a self. […]  What I have instead is a variety of impersonations I can do, and not only of myself – a troupe of players that I have internalized, a permanent company of actors […] that forms my repertoire.  But I certainly have no self independent of my imposturing, artistic efforts to have one.  Nor would I want one.  I am a theater and nothing more than a theater.

—Philip Roth, The Counterlife, 1986

Desplechin has always been a literary filmmaker, making a living on fast-paced, yet natural sounding dialogue, where this film is no exception, cleverly adapted from Philip Roth’s 1990 autobiographical novel, his first use of “Philip Roth” as a fictional character, coming during the decade of the Reagan/Bush years defined by the fall of the Berlin Wall, ushering in the era of the Clintons and the Internet.  Written entirely in the form of conversations, eschewing any narrative for the theatricality of straight dialogue, like a stream-of-conscious stage play, Desplechin and his recent cowriter Julie Peyr have collaborated before on 2015 Top Ten Films #7 My Golden Days (Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse), which won a César award and Lumières award for Best Director, and the less successful psychoanalysis drama Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian (2013).  In this film, set in London in 1987, it’s never hard to distinguish who’s speaking, dominated by the central character Philip Roth (Denis Podalydès), a middle-age American writer living in exile, describing himself as “a talk fetishist,” who is always gathering material for his next novel, gleaning information from his unhappily married female lover (Léa Seydoux), known only as the English Lover (perhaps a reference to Roth’s wife, British actress Claire Bloom), or several former flames, like Jana (Madalina Constantin), a Czech writer caught up in the insidious drama of the Cold War, Rosalie (Emmanuelle Devos), an American woman stricken with cancer (likely based on American novelist Janet Hobhouse, who died at the age of 42 from cancer), a former student from his teaching days at a university (Rebecca Marder), and his long suffering wife (Anouk Grinberg), as the studio that serves as his refuge where he writes is also the site of his affairs, mixing carnal pleasure into his profession, treasuring every word he hears, where astute listening leads to a private notebook of collected notes.  Told with chapter headings, the conversations occur before, during, and after sex, or in a restaurant, or bar, including flashbacks and advancing time lapses, and even includes an imaginary sequence where he is placed on trial by an all-female court for his overt hatred towards women, with prosecutorial suggestions that the women in his works are all vicious stereotypes.  What this attempts to unearth are the “rude truths” of daily existence, including the worldwide onslaught of anti-Semitism and his lifelong struggle of being an unapologetic Jew, with Roth becoming obsessed with observing the smallest details in his lover’s life, attuned to their most intimate thoughts, the moments of hesitation, or regret, the avalanche of painful revelations, while also maintaining an erotic fascination in the present which seems to keep the home fires burning.  All the characters seem to be in a state of flux except the writer, who has found his place, but at a price, as he feels lonely, exiled from the outside world, so he hungers for the stories these women tell and transcribes their words.  Desplechin used this Roth text in a DVD bonus of KINGS & QUEEN (2004), acting the final scene with Emmanuelle Devos, which was actually seen by the author, who encouraged him to do a cinematic adaptation of the book.    

Such an improvement on Roth’s other screen adaptations, Ewan McGregor’s American Pastoral (2016) or Robert Benton’s THE HUMAN STAIN (2003), but Isabel Coixet’s ELEGY (2008) about a 62-year-old literature professor having an affair with a 24-year-old student certainly hits the mark, becoming a fascinating mix of cultures, getting a feminine perspective from the Spanish duo of Penélope Cruz and Coixet.  Shot during the onset of the pandemic in France, with the slimmest of budgets, where the lockdown mirrors the seclusion of the writer, this film is succinctly fluid, a marvel of kinetic energy, rarely more than two people onscreen at any time, racing through the scenes like a director in the thrall of quick film shoots.  While the subject is middle age, it never grows maudlin or sentimental, exploring their lives in minute detail with a rigorous intellectual curiosity and explosive emotionality, as if eavesdropping into private realms, where both are equally fascinated by this psychological dissection, confessing the lies they tell others, or themselves, revealing the concerns they have about being perceived as weak or too strong, what they’ll tolerate or won’t, as they vent about the multiplicity of flaws in their partners, yet refuse to leave, as the English Lover declares, “The more trivial the defect the more anger it inspires.”  Gorgeously shot by Yorick Le Saux, who has previously worked with Olivier Assayas on 2014 Top Ten List #3 Clouds of Sils Maria, Personal Shopper (2016), and Non-Fiction (Doubles Vies) (2018), Claire Denis on High Life (2018), and Greta Gerwig on Little Women (2019), the lighting is especially impressive, creating a luminous private domain, which only frames and accentuates the rapidity of thought that we experience, where it has the feel of a theatrical stage play, quickly moving between scenes, where the common denominator is emotional authenticity and a lack of pretension, shot through a prism of desire, where Seydoux in particular truly excels in this regard, showing an ease of emotional restraint while expanding her astonishing range.  While she’s always had a sensuous onscreen presence, her probing self-reflective qualities are what stand out, exhibited by an intellectual curiosity balanced against her vulnerability, which are a perfect match for this writer, often seen matching wits, which is what makes her such an alluring muse, as he never tires of being with her.  While they banter about divorced friends, ruined children, and her husband who’s carrying on an extramarital liaison of his own, with a “tootsie” no less, one of the interesting aspects of exposing these personal revelations is viewers can only imagine what these women’s lives are like offscreen, as we never see any of them on their own, living in separate worlds, where they may be figments of the imagination, for all we know, only appearing in brief vignettes, like apparitions, always making reference to their actual lives, where artistic license is literally excavating the essence of who they are and what they have to say, as nothing is off limits in the creative world of fiction, which becomes a kind of utopia, where the author imagines himself, outside his novel, having a love affair with a character inside his novel.

While Philip Roth as the womanizing central protagonist is anything but a philandering hero, the film becomes an exposé on the deception of masculinity and the privilege it brings, as men have the capriciousness to have affairs, commit adultery, and otherwise stray from their empty and disappointing marriages as if it’s a God-given right, with society at large turning a blind eye and never holding them accountable, while women are held to a different standard, with Madame Bovary (originally attacked for obscenity) being the moral handbook on how society condemns women more ruthlessly than men, often turning them into something they’re not, degrading their position and stature, having committed moral sins that are overlooked in men.  This film explores that shadow existence of men, that deceitful web of desire that may as well be invisible, as these sins have been ignored throughout history and never recorded alongside the many accomplishments.  Where does this entitlement come from?  In the surreal court proceeding with the author on trial, the judge mockingly asks, “Can you explain to the court why you hate women?”  It carries with it the absurdist rendering of Kafka, whose portrait hangs on the wall of the office by Philip’s desk, where the protagonist finds himself in foreign territory, an alternate imaginary universe where he is judged accordingly on this day of reckoning, guilty of sexism, misogyny, woman abuse, slander of women, denigration of women, defamation of women, and ruthless seduction, crimes he squeamishly denies, each carrying the most severe penalties.  Pleading artistic license, that a writer uses his imagination to portray real events, just like Shakespeare, something that has been part of the human condition since the invention of language, he is guilty nonetheless, having intentionally published books that cause women suffering.  Just like politicians, artists through the years have learned to become more and more manipulative, where the underlying motive at the heart of a novel is deceit, as the writer intends to deceive the reader into believing things that may have never happened.  That is the nature of their craft.  Having affairs with the wives of his friends, carefully concealed behind a web of lies and deceit, what gall must he have to think anyone out there would be interested, yet he gets away with it due to the fierce honesty and tenderness of what he writes, seducing readers just as he seduces women.  How can that not be infuriating?  And of course it is, as that’s part of the nature of the beast.  Is this really about Philip, the women in his life, or the art of creating, as they are one and the same, blended together into a stream-of-conscious mix of cinematic imagination, where actors help to provide the clarity the story needs.  Reveling in its intimacy, this film has an unusual appeal and is a joy to watch, where Desplechin seems to have been born to film it, with ideas on how to make it gestating in his mind for over thirty years.

Sweet Dreams (Fai bei sogni)

 

SWEET DREAMS (Fai bei sogni)        C+                  

Italy  France (134 mi)  2016  ‘Scope  d:  Marco Bellocchio  

Far more important than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know.

—Eric Hoffer, introductory remarks to the book

On New Year’s eve, like every year, I called on my godmother to take her to see Mum.

My godmother is a piece of antique furniture in a very good state of conservation. She lives on her own in a house filled with sunlight, where she spends her time reading detective novels and chatting to the framed photographs of her husband. Occasionally she changes shelf and talks to the photograph of Mum, mostly about me.

I imagine she omits the more unwelcome news. Such as the fact I’ve had two wives – though not, it’s true, at the same time.

And that I never did become a lawyer.

While I was helping her into her coat, she brought up the subject of the novel I had given her for Christmas.

“I finished it last night.”

“Did you enjoy it? It’s not a detective novel.”

“Of course I did: you wrote it.”

“And the passages about Mum?”

“That’s the part I wanted to talk to you about.”

“It’s the only part which is autobiographical. I put a bit of the story of my own life into those pages.”

“Are you sure it’s your story?”

“And why wouldn’t it be?”

“It wasn’t exactly like that... I want to give you something, dear.”

I watched her fumble with dwarf-sized keys at the drawers of the bureau. Her lovely, gnarled old hands drew out a brown envelope. She handed it to me with a quivering voice: “After forty years, it’s time that someone told you the truth.”

—Sweet Dreams, Little One, opening excerpt, written by Massimo Gramellini, 2012  

From a director who has made films from radical Marxism, teenage rebellion, religious institutions, to political subversion, now he explores the mother complex, as this is a fairly conventional story told in an unconventional manner, moving back and forth from various places and times, reflecting how a man remains haunted by the mysterious death of his mother well into middle age, even though it occurred in an early period in his life.  Shamelessly sentimental and narratively slight throughout, yet with a few startling moments of humor and unrestrained energy, in a film where these few exquisite moments are all too rare, though nearly every one is associated with music, shot by Daniele Ciprì, where it curiously has a gloomy, sepia-toned look of washed-out color that immediately offers a somber tone that takes the joy right out of this picture.  Adapted from the 2012 novel Sweet Dreams, Little One by Massimo Gramellini, current deputy editor at La Stampa, an Italian daily newspaper published in Turin, one of the oldest newspapers in Italy where he runs a daily front page column, the film is told in non-chronological order through flashbacks recalling various lifelong memories, like a memoir, where each is given a larger-than-life recreation, though it has a bit of an embellished, fairy tale feel throughout.  Whether by Paolo Sorrentino or now Bellocchio, the central figure in these Italian movies tends to be a successful though emotionally damaged and largely unfulfilled male protagonist who fits the template of Marcello Mastroianni in Fellini’s LA DOLCE VITA (1960), who was a highly popular journalist writing for gossip magazines.  In this film, Massimo (Valerio Mastrandrea) is a popular and highly successful sports journalist who also covers the war in Sarajevo, yet he’s scarred by the childhood loss of his mother at the age of nine.  Quickly flashing back to childhood in 1969, with little Massimo played by Nicolò Cabras and his mother Barbara Ronchi, he has an idyllic childhood that he recalls in his own perfect way, singing a love song to him, Fai Bei Sogni - Scena: Resta Cu'mme YouTube (1:17), until his mother unexpectedly dies from a reported heart attack, yet he refuses to believe she is dead, expecting her to return at any given moment, where in his mind she is simply irreplaceable, linking the music of his childhood past to his present, where David Richard Mindel’s Twist Night evolves into The Trashmen’s Surfin’ Bird, Fai Bei Sogni Clip1 - YouTube (1:03). 

The film title comes from the last words his mother spoke to him as she tucked him into bed that night, only to be vaguely informed what happened afterwards by his father (Guido Caprino), who lacks the warm affection and maternal charm of his mother, leaving Massimo in a state of delusion and emotional repression afterwards.  From the innocent pleasure of playing hide and seek with his mother and sharing a love for watching late-night horror movies, including clips of the wildly popular 1965 French miniseries Belphégor, where he’d hold onto her for protection and cuddle close together under the blanket, not to mention the dizzying television appearances of Raffaella Carrà, the first female television personality to show her belly button on camera, 1971 - Canzonissima Chissà se va - Video Dailymotion (3:00), yet it was also an era of rowdy soccer crowds, where his father was a rabid fan of the Torino FC which played near their home.  But Italy unraveled in the 1970’s, an era of political extremism and the Red Brigades, a paramilitary organization involved with robberies, kidnappings and assassinations.  As a young teen, Massimo continues to lie about his mother, claiming she lives in New York, despite the intervention of a priest who informs him he must acknowledge the truth.  He develops a friendship with an extremely wealthy fellow student, Enrico (Dylan Ferrarrio), inviting him home to his immense mansion, the kind only seen in the movies, where Massimo can’t take his eyes off his nurturing yet indulgently overprotective mother, Emmanuelle Devos.  As a young man, he gets a job as a sports journalist, but remains in a state or arrested development, aloof and distant from others, never sustaining relationships, catching a break by being on the site of a major breaking news story.  He’s sent to Sarajevo as a war correspondent, but shows a callous disregard for the people he’s covering, blatantly embellishing the photographs of victims and cynically staging them to make a name for himself.  When his father dies, he returns to his childhood home and combs through his parent’s belongings, with past memories flooding his head, along with a sense of grief that continues to torment him. 

In Turin, his editor asks Massimo to write a response to a letter from a reader who literally hates his domineering mother, as the regular columnist quits after suggesting to his coworkers that he simply put a gun to his head, refusing to spend any more time on it, as the man is hopeless.  Of course Massimo rises to the occasion, plumbing the depths of his soul, and prints out a column that catches the attention of the entire nation, receiving tons of letters in response, where special machinery is used to transport it all from the Post Office, becoming a rock star of columnists, where he is rewarded with his own daily column.  This kind of universal acknowledgment is rare, and honestly, Massimo isn’t sure he deserves it.  The turning point of the film is an unexpected panic attack, where Massimo feels he’s about to die from a heart attack, perhaps mirroring what happened to his mother, where he calls the hospital emergency room for assistance, speaking to Dr. Elisa (Bérénice Bejo), a young French doctor working in Italy, a calmly assured voice that walks him through his anxiety, miraculously calming him down.  He introduces himself at the hospital the next day, showing appreciation for her expertise, where she exudes the same kind of genuine warmth and affection as his mother, where her eyes are alert and alive, a light in an otherwise darkened crowd, where he can’t get enough of her.  Neither can the audience, as it’s as if she’s from another film, a positive delight in an otherwise overly grim view of a man that continually feels sorry for himself, still demoralized and emotionally scarred from childhood events that he simply can’t come to terms with, where he confesses to her the power of an invisible companion that’s never left his side since childhood, the dark presence of Belphégor, who was like a heavy burden on his back, always weighing him down, a force that feeds on “my doubts and fears:  mistrust, rejection, abandonment.”  As if she has the power to reach into his damaged soul, Elisa’s kind-heartedness works miracles, inviting him to a family anniversary party where after initial refusals, he’s a hit on the dance floor in a showy scene that people will talk about afterwards, for it’s as if his very last breath has been resuscitated.  After writing his first book, there’s an intriguing scene at the end, beautifully acted by his godmother (Arianna Scommegna), who tells him, “After forty years, it’s time that someone told you the truth.”  No longer protected by the innocence of youth, or invisible demons, or various turns in his life where fantasy and reality get mixed up in the confusion, the story of his mother’s death is different than what he had been told, but only now is he in a position to accept it.