The Sleepy Time Gal

 

Writer/director Christopher Münch

Münch with Maximilian Schell and Jacqueline Bisset in Munich

THE SLEEPY TIME GAL         A                                                                                         USA  (108 mi)  2002  d: Christopher Münch

What a discovery!  Christopher Münch, who is the writer, director, editor, and producer of the film, does a brilliant job of poetically weaving together multiple story lines of crisscrossing characters that haven’t seen and don’t know about one another, confronting incredibly powerful moments in their lives, where it’s not always the accomplishments we look back upon, but the biggest regrets and disappointments that we tend to remember.  There’s some terrific writing here, with a unique editing design, while there’s also extraordinary acting by all involved. Jacqueline Bisset?  It might be hard to believe, as Charlotte Rampling has re-invented herself in recent roles, but she never had a part as well written or as fully realized as this one.  Add to this Martha Plimpton and Nick Stahl, who both worked beautifully together before in Tim Blake Nelson’s first film THE EYE OF GOD (1997), which was one of the best American films seen in recent years.  Seymour Cassel, of all people, from the Cassavetes films (who the director met briefly before he died), reappears here along with Frankie R. Faison, where even the secondary roles have a profound impact.  All are simply fabulous.  This is highly personalized and amazingly human, a contemplative experience that is as intense and emotionally compelling as anything seen this year, a small gem of a film that has rarely been seen since its initial limited release.  Taking three years to make, with jazz and classical musical selections playing a prominent role in this rich under the surface atmosphere, the film premiered at Sundance, where most of the director’s features have played, distinguished by never having found a distributor, appearing on The Village Voice list of Best Undistributed Films of 2001, eventually released on the director’s own production company, Antarctic Pictures, shown on television by the Sundance Channel, which led to a brief American theatrical release, followed by a DVD from Sundance Home Channel Entertainment that is now out of print, never released on Blu Ray, making this an overlooked and very difficult find, though it has streamed on the Criterion Channel.  According to Film Comment editor Gavin Smith (FILM; Adventures of an Indie Gem on Its Way to the Screen), the film takes “incredible risks with material that’s been handled in really banal ways in the past.”  From the director of Letters From the Big Man (2011), Münch is a self-taught filmmaker from Southern California, the recipient of a Guggenheim fellow, while his first film, THE HOURS AND TIMES (1992), an inquiry into the Beatles’ psychosexual dynamics based on the friendship of Brian Epstein and John Lennon, won the Wolfgang Staudte Prize at Berlin for the best first or second feature.  He’s not a well-known artist, the son of astrophysicist Guido Münch and writer Louise Fernandez, and few have likely seen any of his works, but this particular film is a revelation, and well worth seeking out.

At the center of this film is Frances, played by Jaqueline Bisset, star of Peter Yates’ Bullitt (1968), François Truffaut’s DAY FOR NIGHT (1973), and John Huston’s UNDER THE VOLCANO (1984), who regards this as the finest performance of her career, where much of the character is based on the director’s own mother, a remarkable free-spirited woman in her fifties who has led a full life, with a keen intellect and love for the arts, married twice with two sons, one from each husband, though one lives abroad and is heard only by telephone and never seen.  Working as a freelance writer, social activist, and radio personality, also something of a history buff, she has an enlightened effect on the many people she has met, yet also interwoven into the storyline is Rebecca (Martha Plimpton), a high-powered corporate attorney, as we discover parallels between a younger version of Frances and Rebecca’s own life, where initially viewers have no idea how it all fits together.  Feeling more like a subconscious memory exploration, featuring a series of spatial shifts moving back and forth in time, a patchwork of random incidents, beginning with Frances in New York City in the summer of 1982, moving to Frances in San Francisco six months later, then discovering Rebecca in New York, jumping forward another year to Frances in San Francisco, switching back to Rebecca in Boston before boarding a plane for Daytona Beach, Florida.  Yet there are also some extraordinary 1930’s shots of New York City, supposedly shot by the director’s grandfather, a Mexican newsreel cameraman who had spent time in New York.  The autobiographical elements are simply an underside of this film, where things don’t necessarily have to make sense, as this is more of a story about human relationships, yet the stream of images are a potent reminder of how we come to understand the complexity of our lives.  What we see from Frances’ past is shown in poetic flashbacks of black-and-white photographs and home movies, which may be real or imagined, given a very literary feel.  Frances has a young gay son living in San Francisco, Morgan (Nick Stahl, a stand-in for the director), trying to establish himself as a photographer, working a minimum wage job in a photo copy shop, where they are close, but often butt heads in disagreements, leading completely different lives, where most of the backstory is never filled in.  Instead, Frances has to come to terms with rapidly spreading cancer, where part of confronting her own mortality is revisiting the source of her biggest regret, as she was forced by her own mother, Anna (Carmen Zapata), to give up a baby girl born out of wedlock to adoption.  Illegitimacy was once a real concern in 1950’s America, carrying a heavy weight, something few would comprehend today.  Rebecca, as it turns out, is that missing daughter, who also reflects on her birth mother as she gets older, pondering all the missing and unanswered questions, revealing the profound influence parents have on their children, oftentimes in ways that are only understood when reflecting on them later in life.  It’s an unusual technique of developing two separate storylines on parallel tracks throughout the picture that somehow merge emotionally and psychologically, as they never come face to face, but meet only in their minds and imaginations, which adds greatly to the emotional weight of the film.  This is an extremely original cinematic vision, taking us to unexpected places, surprising us every step of the way, showcasing different locations, styles of architecture, and enticing landscapes, as it probes an underside of something that never fully surfaces into the light, but has a pregnant life force of its own, with the director reeling viewers into their anxiously unsettled mindsets, where it’s clear just how much this exploration means to them, becoming a rarely seen existential essay on pursuing one’s own identity, where this unforgettable film is essentially that journey. 

Frances goes through the chemotherapy sessions, surrounded by caring doctors and hospital staff, with encouraging therapists, then she got better, and was in remission, hoping it’s just a setback, that she can get her life back on track, revisiting an old flame, Bob (Seymour Cassel), who happens to be Rebecca’s father, currently living with his wife of thirty years, Betty (Peggy Gormley), on a farm in the Amish country of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  While they still have a serious connection, perhaps more interesting is the relationship between the women, who have always known about the other, as it was never a secret, but Betty never knew about the child, only that Bob could just as easily have been married to Frances, where she is writing a book that fictionalizes a love story she imagines, which turns out to be fairly close to the truth about the affair between Bob and Frances.  Coming face to face, finally, opens up a part of their lives that each has never experienced, where there are so many emotions hidden beneath the surface.  Bob, of course, wants to pick up where they left off, even going on a hot-air balloon ride together, causing Frances to grow uncomfortable and leave without any word, as she just disappears like a thief in the night.  Seeking to make amends with some of the combative relationships she has experienced, always feeling strangely unfulfilled, Frances has a strained relationship with her mother, a small-minded Puerto Rican woman who is openly racist, still something of a culture shock and open wound in her life, something that apparently will never heal.  Rebecca, meanwhile, is sent to a Daytona Beach radio station for a corporate takeover, where she runs into one of the disc jockeys there, Jimmy (Frankie Faison), a black radio station manager who had free reign to play whatever he liked on what was commonly known as a “race station,” but he understands how the business works and has no hard feelings, thankful for the time he had there, where the station’s reputation was established by late night programming from a woman who described herself as the “Sleepy Time Gal,” with a photo of her hanging in the studio, someone Jimmy was drawn to as well, but Rebecca has no idea this is her mother.  As Rebecca attempts to gather court sealed information about her mother, it’s an eye-opening process, with Frances leaving behind messages for the daughter she never knew, searching for missed opportunities, where the dramatic combustion is nothing less than compelling, treading on very rare territory, using kaleidoscopic, stream of conscious imagery that can feel abstract and emotionally jarring, where we can never be sure whether we’re watching the fantasies of one character or the memories of another, yet it’s all in pursuit of a better understanding of ourselves.  There’s even a French girl (Clara Bellar) gathering mushrooms near San Francisco Bay that Frances encounters, where these ambiguous side excursions just add to the complexity of the experience.  As Frances’ condition deteriorates, she makes peace with life and death without an ounce of sentimentality, attended by a sympathetic hospice nurse, Maggie (Amy Madigan), and visited by her son, where it’s as close to being in the same room with someone dying as you’re ever likely to see onscreen, with Bisset miraculously displaying an unsparing depth of range we’ve never seen from her, providing touching moments that are simply unforgettable, most without uttering a word, requiring the full attention of viewers.  Tenderly observant, falling outside of traditional boundaries, ultimately this is a probing exploration of what it means to face death, avoiding melodrama, forgoing typically comforting clichés in favor of multifaceted ambiguity, offering something far more truthful and uncompromisingly open-ended.

La Cérémonie

LA CÉRÉMONIE                   A     
France  Germany  (112 mi)  1995  d:  Claude Chabrol 

LA CÉRÉMONIE (1995) is among Chabrol’s most critically acclaimed films and greeted with such unbridled enthusiasm that Les Cahiers du Cinéma suggested Chabrol may be France’s greatest filmmaker, an extremely ironic observation coming on the heels of Chabrol, at least in America, being the most neglected filmmaker of the French New Wave, where Rivette, Rohmer, Godard, and Truffaut have all been anointed to the head of the class at some point in their careers, but never Chabrol.  This assessment is largely based on a lack of innovation in the world or cinema, where Chabrol, often seen in the Hitchcock thriller mold, may be viewed as the most commercial of the bunch.  Perhaps as significant, while they all wrote regularly for the film magazine, Chabrol less memorably, as his critical comments were less strident and opinionated, never going as far out on a limb as the others.  Chabrol, along with Godard, who has seemingly retreated into the video milieu, have been the most prolific directors, where this is the 46th film of 54 features.  Adapted from British suspense writer Ruth Rendel’s 1977 novel A Judgement in Stone, one of the fascinating elements is the title change, which suggests the celebration of a wedding or an awards banquet, but instead it refers to a French nickname for the guillotine, their historical version of the electric chair, as it is the ritual device used to execute prisoners.  And true to its title, this is a sharply written comic satire on class divisions and the principles of social order, a domestic thriller standing somewhere between comedy and horror, where it’s impossible not to recall Jean Genet’s One Act play The Maids, loosely based upon the infamous Papin sisters, though both Genet and Chabrol depart from historical realism, where Chabrol resorts to a meticulous recreation of the banal habits and routines of everyday bourgeois life, shown in minimalist detail.  

The unique power of this film is the fascinating relationship that develops between two of the finest and most eccentric actresses in French history, the pairing of Isabelle Huppert, nothing short of sensational as Jeanne, a volatile and acid-tongued postal clerk, and the equally enthralling Sandrine Bonnaire as Sophie, the reserved and tight-lipped maid of the upscale Lelièvre family living in an immense chateau in Brittany where Catherine (Jacqueline Bisset), a former model turned trophy wife, gives the orders.  She dotes on her authoritative, Mozart loving husband (Jean-Pierre Cassel), owner of the family business, while running her own art gallery.  The spoiled children are twenty-year old Melinda (Virginie Ledoyen) and teenage Gilles (Valentin Merlet), all basically wrapped up in their own lives, a typically aloof and condescending bourgeois household.  When the kids try to get closer to Sophie, claiming their mom treats her like a robot ordering her around, she quickly rebuffs them, showing no social interest, retreating to her room where she prefers watching mindless television shows.  Nonetheless, Sophie keeps the house spotless, which puts Catherine at ease, but the rest of the family remain skeptical at her utter indifference, showing no outside interests or social skills.  She does hear about Jeanne from the outraged father who believes she is opening their mail and resealing it before delivery, an act that just galls him, as he refuses to allow anyone else to undermine his authority. Sophie fulfills her chores perfectly, but grows ghastly pale when she receives written shopping instructions, deathly afraid the family will find out her closest held secret, the fact that she is illiterate.  When she runs across Jeanne for the first time in the supermarket, her verbal reticence is matched by Jeanne’s nonstop chatter, where she is quickly baled out of the jam while Jeanne gives her all kinds of shopping tips.  The two lower class women become instant friends, growing even closer when both share dark secrets, as Jeanne may have accidentally killed her own baby, while Sophie implies she might have murdered her own father in an arson incident.  In both cases there as insufficient evidence to prosecute. 

Once they become friends, they’re inseparable, like long lost sisters, where Jeanne spews cruel gossip with regularity, showing nothing but contempt and disdain for the upper classes, literally mocking Catherine for asking Sophie to work on an off day for a birthday party for Melinda, expecting the hired help to be available at a moment’s notice, even though Sophie informed her ahead of time that she was doing volunteer work at the church with Jeanne.  Sophie helps set up the appetizers before leaving for church, to Catherine’s dismay, finding her attitude troubling.  At the church, women pick through the donated clothes, separating the usable from the worn out, where Jeanne can’t believe what junk rich people donate, using the church as a garbage disposal, as most of what they find is unusable.  Their rude mockery grows so excessive and out of control that eventually the priest has to ask them to leave, as they’re humiliating the donors.  To Sophie and Jeanne, they’re just being honest, saying what must be said, where Sophie’s friendship seems to empower Jeanne to be even more wild and outspoken, which in turn opens up Sophie as well, where isolated, they feel powerless and alone, but together they’re an unstoppable force, perfectly expressed when they’re watching television together like sorority sisters, arms around each other, where ironically they’re watching Michel Piccoli and Stéphane Audran in Chabrol’s earlier film WEDDING IN BLOOD (1973).  The Lelièvre family finds Sophie’s behavior so alarming they give her a week’s notice, which only further infuriorates Jeanne who bristles with anger, sick of the rich always having their way, always telling others what to do.  When they return to the estate to pick up Sophie’s things, the Lelièvre’s are sitting calmly on the sofa recording a televised production of Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, where a notorious liar and seducer of women is sent to Hell and damnation.  Actually the Mozart opera of choice where the lower class servants sarcastically make fun of the idyll rich is The Marriage of Figaro, literally leading them around like puppets on a string.  Nonetheless, Chabrol uses this setting to bring it all to a head, leaving nothing to the imagination, where this strange pair of women exacts justice, a strange word that has a different connotation in the larger cosmos, as the universe exacts its own, seen at work over the end credits, where the ultimate finale doesn’t occur until the final credit has run.            

There is a creepy and seductive nature to this strange pair of women, with erotic lesbian undertones to their developing intimacy, where Jeanne gleefully offers plentiful kisses all over Sophie’s cheeks, where implied sex is intertwined with their growing anarchistic liberation, where they defy all moral boundaries.  While it begins innocently enough giggling and tickling one another on the bed, it’s telling that it takes both of them together to rise to the level of class revolt, becoming a lethal pair, while individually they are harmless, as neither would have the strength to carry out their fateful rebellion.  After the deed is done, Jeanne proudly comments to Sophie, “On a bien fait (We have done well),” as if they’ve finally risen to the occasion and stood up to the higher classes, like some kind of Mother Courage Marxist spectacle.  Their friendship, however, is toxic, like a time bomb waiting to go off, where the results can only be disastrous.  Together they represent an ultimate horror, driven by Jeanne’s calamitous sense of danger, unease and restlessness, becoming a collective madness. 

It was chilling to see this film about this classic murderous pair on the day following the Boston terrorist fiasco, where the Tsarnaev brothers, 26-year old Tamerlan and his 19-year old brother Dzhokhar, seem more like Jeanne and Sophie and the Columbine killers than al Qaida.  A pair of brothers is a classic dyad scenario, like Bonnie and Clyde, Leopold and Loeb, and the Washington D.C. snipers, a twisted relationship that plays out very differently than a lone gunman.  Mass killers are mostly *not* loners or outcasts, and the Columbine killers were neither.  Killer dyads are more consistent with a dominant, charismatic leader and a submissive follower, where the leader is often a sadistic psychopath.  Dyads usually contain contrasting personalities, as often there is a significant age difference, where a psychopathic killer generally does not hook up with another psychopath, nor do depressive pairs work well together.  Columbine was a perfect illustration of a classic dyad, where a psychopath like Eric Harris craved excitement and had difficulty sustaining it, but needed Dylan Klebold following his every move with adulation.  Who knew this film would recall the Columbine massacre and the Boston Marathon bombings?