Souvenir

Director Bavo Defurne with actress Isabelle Huppert

SOUVENIR               D                    

France  Belgium Luxembourg  (90 mi)  2016  ‘Scope  d:  Bavo Defurne

An utterly forgettable work, a wretched little offbeat romantic comedy that couldn’t be more conventional, so slight that it’s barely worth remembering, that continually defies logic with bad choices, becoming more and more uncomfortable to watch throughout, not because of content, but due to the amateurishness of the production.  This lame effort is a reminder of the kinds of French films that never get exported, that remain in-house fodder for late-night TV viewing, as this cliché-ridden trifle is simply an embarrassment, arguably the worst film ever seen featuring legendary star Isabelle Huppert.  Not sure whether this is meant as comic satire, or comes anywhere close to what was initially envisioned, but this is about as dull and uninspiring as filmmaking gets, so bad that you actually start laughing at just how bad it is.  Like Björk in Lars von Trier’s DANCING IN THE DARK (2000), Huppert as Liliane is inexplicably working in a factory assembly line, wearing a required smock and hairnet, charged with placing the final decorative touches in a paté factory, mindlessly repeating the same task over and over again from morning to night, breaking out the same homemade sandwich for lunch.  Expecting fellow factory workers to break out into song at any moment, altering the stifling mood, sadly, this is not the case.  Instead, catching a bus to and from work, it’s a dreary life, eating meals alone at home watching TV quiz shows, pouring herself a libation to help pass the time.  A new temp worker alters the routine, Jean Leloup (Kévin Azaïs), a 21-year old still living at home, seen training at a gym in his off hours as a boxer, scheduled to fight a Russian for the lightweight championship.  Sitting next to her at lunch, he notices how she resembles “Laura,” a former Eurovision music contest winner for France who lost to Sweden’s ABBA decades ago.  Claiming a case of mistaken identity, she awkwardly dismisses any similarities.  By chance, he views “Laura” again on television, someone no one could recall on one of the quiz shows, which only confirms his suspicions, refusing to take no for an answer, ambushing her after work the next day, telling her “My father thinks you’re great—and that bugs my mother.” The commotion causes her to miss her bus.   No problem, he offers a ride on his motor scooter, where he’s invited in for a drink, quickly becoming fast friends.

Not really wanting to dredge up the past, Jean’s youthful eagerness and naiveté encourage Liliane to open things up for a sexual liaison, despite a forty year age difference between them. As improbable as this sounds, they barely know each other, yet Jean is head over heels in love, suddenly dedicated to resurrecting her career, asking her to sing at a celebratory party for his father.  She agrees, so long as there is no press coverage.  While the performance itself is all schmaltz, pretty much a karaoke act, it does feature Huppert’s own voice and his father does end up dancing with her, which is like a dream come true for him.  Viewed as a complete success, when Jean returns home to his family late the next morning, his mother figures out where he’s been, finding it all pretty preposterous, while his father is duly impressed.  When a camera crew arrives at work, flooding her with questions about her past, Liliane is done with Jean, feeling betrayed, reviving tabloid stories about her manager/husband running off with all her money, while she “sank into oblivion.”  This was not something she needed to be reminded of and may explain why she drinks.  Apologizing profusely, claiming he had nothing to do with the news team interview, nonetheless she’s back in the headlines.  When Jean is knocked silly in his fight, he abandons his career, claiming he’s not cut out for the ring.  Wondering whether he gives up so easily, Jean immediately jump starts a new career as her manager, showing up in nursing homes, country fairs, or veteran groups, her act is just overwhelmingly amateurish, where every move of her hands is carefully choreographed, without an ounce of spontaneity, seemingly going through the motions.  While Jean is impressed, no one else is, seemingly stalled in the unlikely position of yesterday’s news, not really catching any impetus for starting a new career.  Undeterred, Jean suggests she register for the latest Eurovision contest, like a whirlwind blast of nostalgia from yesteryear.  Not really a Sirkean melodrama from the 50’s, as there’s nothing subversive underneath the surface, or a satriric homage, like Peyton Reed’s DOWN WITH LOVE (2003), this feels more like the simpleminded emptiness of those 50’s movies with Doris Day, where a simple kiss leads to instantaneous love, and an entire life and career are planned from that moment onward, with no actual substance anywhere to be found. 

With no character development whatsoever, as neither one has a life, and a storyline for television viewers only, apparently, there is simply nothing here that rises to a level of interest, bogged down in utter artifice and conventionality.   Emboldened by all the attention paid to her by Jean, which makes little sense from such a young guy fighting for a boxing championship, never seen with anyone else his own age, where he seems obsessed by her and oblivious to everything else.  A bit more grounded in reality, and unknown to Jean, Liliane pays a visit to her former flame, Tony Jones (Johan Leysen), still living a life of wealth and luxury, suggesting she’s on a comeback and needs some new songs.  Somewhat impressed in her gumption after all these years, he willingly obliges.  While this should be the centerpiece of the film, a showcase of a rising star, Liliane’s resurgence as “Laura” is fraught with cliché’s, where the insipid lyrics are mindless and laughably suggestive, yet come across as a complete success (with Tony as a judge!), and the audience enchanted, yet this is a dizzying parody on performance, little more than a karaoke show with over-produced music drowning out her voice, where her bizarre hand movements all in synch suggest comic satire, as this kind of kitsch is nearly unwatchable, yet this is done straight, given a sugar-coated glossy coating, dressed up in floodlights.  While she advances to the next round, her success is shared in a little party thrown by Tony backstage that edges Jean out of the picture.  Seeing through the façade, Jean disappears from sight after calling her a traitor and an aging alcoholic.  The bubble has apparently burst.  Steps to retrieve her former manager are all in vain, while her actual voice, heard rehearsing without all the engineering and production, feels amazingly flat, like she can’t carry a tune.  In the finals, Laura is literally on her own, thrown into the spotlight where she lifelessly repeats the exact same song, using the exact same mannerisms, where there isn’t an ounce of authenticity.  Waiting in her dressing room afterwards as other groups perform, she drinks herself into a stupor, only to be called back onstage as the winner for a final rendition, by now completely drunk, unable to walk, falling flat on her face, immediately sent to the hospital for recovery, with Jean, watching intently on the television, racing to meet her there.  Despite the fact Huppert probably took the role due to the ever more unbalanced nature of a screwed-up relationship, presented more like a fractured fairy tale, the repetition of the banal musical themes sound more and more like disco drivel, the kind of stuff you can’t get out of your head, no matter how hard you try.      

Young & Beautiful (Jeune & Jolie)

YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL (Jeune & Jolie)           B-                       

France  (95 mi)  2013  d:  François Ozon          Official site [France]

The French have always been fascinated with prostitution in films, so the subject should come as no surprise.  Godard’s VIVRE SA VIE (1962) is still one of his best efforts, which almost clinically explores the day-to-day life of a woman’s downward descent into prostitution.  Buñuel’s BELLE DE JOUR (1967) was shot in Paris, where an otherwise frigid housewife works as a call girl in her free afternoons, complete with surrealistic fantasies.  Abdellatif Kechiche’s Black Venus (Vénus noire) (2010) is a historical recreation of the life of Sarah Baartman (1789 – 1815), featuring an oversized black African woman with pronounced breasts and buttocks who heads a carnival act of the wild and the grotesque, becoming a freak of nature, openly displayed to the public half naked and exhibited as one of the wonders of the world.  When she refuses to continue to be treated like a whipped slave, she spends the rest of her life as a dying and diseased prostitute.  Bertrand Bonello’s House of Tolerance (L’Apollonide – souvenirs de la maison close) (2011) is seen as cinematic reverie, where the film has a remarkably lush decorative bordello environment, featuring plenty of nudity, but also a documentary style repetition of banal detail showing the ordinary, day-to-day routines that the women follow, while Malgorzata Szumowska’s Elles (2011) is also a quintessential French film, especially as seen through the emptiness of the middle class in yet another film that exploits female nudity while offering a social comment on the status of women in society.  To this we can add Ozon’s film, which can also be seen as a teenage angst movie, as the film follows a single 17-year old girl named Isabelle (Marine Vacth) through four seasons of a year (much like an Éric Rohmer film), from her loss of virginity to a surge in her sexual awareness, developing a sex-oriented website offering adult sexual services in upscale hotels.  Despite the colorful feel of innocent reverie from the opening, Ozon may be targeting the dangers of the Internet on today’s youth, where there are no boundaries that prevent teenagers from exploring and marketing their sexuality.   

Ozon, who is outwardly gay, has always written strong women’s parts, especially UNDER THE SAND (2000), SWIMMING POOL (2003), 5 X 2 (2004), and ANGEL (2007), which feature not only extraordinary performances, but showcase characteristics of women’s inner strength that match their outer beauty, often at odds in the same film between different characters, where he’s expressed amazing insight into the female psyche.  While this may have been his goal here as well, the naïveté and tender age of the lead actress creates unintended obstacles, where the way she breezes through a life of prostitution, seemingly unaffected and without a care in the world suggests a certain separation with reality.  It’s unclear if this fantasized sexual ease is the view of the director or the young character herself, but either way, it’s a bit offputting, evoking a less than sympathetic identification with the character, as she’s simply oblivious to the negative ramifications.  Perhaps this is due to the ease of her bourgeois, upper class lifestyle, where at the outset on holiday in the south of France, we see Isabelle sunbathing topless at an idyllic secluded beach that she apparently has all to herself.  This recurrent beach setting exists throughout Ozon’s works, and may be his identification with queer culture which is otherwise absent in many of his films.  Spied on by her younger brother Victor (Fantin Ravat), who also sees her masturbating in her room, she is already something of an exhibitionist, catching the eye of a German vacationer Felix (Laurent Belbecque) who takes her virginity on the beach one night, and while seen as an out of body experience, as if she’s a separate entity able to escape her body and watch herself, the event seems to have little effect upon her.  Jumping ahead, Isabelle, aka Lea, is already in the habit of meeting older men in upscale hotel rooms, where we see her with Georges (Johan Leysen), who could easily be her grandfather.  This establishes a stream of similar visits in hotel rooms, offering the appearance of luxury and hedonism, where her naïveté becomes more obviously uncomfortable with crudeness and more demanding customers who are used to getting exactly what they ask for. 

Understated and apathetic, it’s never apparent whether Isabelle receives any sexual gratification at all, as she rarely changes facial expressions, or why she chooses prostitution, never even spending the money, simply stashing the money away in a cash purse in her closet afterwards, but what is clear is that she begins to associate sex with power.  Often at odds with her mother, Géraldine Pailhas, who worked with Ozon in 5 X 2 (2004), Isabelle sees this as a way of exerting her own sense of rebellious independence, which parallels her mother’s own behavior, caught by Isabelle flirting openly with another man.  Perhaps only because it’s easier, she begins seeing Georges more often, where all she really has to do to please him is look young and beautiful, resembling Kiarostami’s latest Like Someone in Love (2012), though not nearly as involved, where the viewer here is more attuned to the vacuous repetition of hotel sex, where there’s little interaction or personal satisfaction.  Isabelle’s life undergoes an upheaval when one of her customers is found dead in a hotel room, where security cameras trace her to the room, with the police exposing her secret to the family, who simply can’t come to terms with their somewhat aloof little girl who has lacked nothing during her lifetime turning to a life of prostitution, almost as if it was a lifestyle choice.  Instead of hanging out with students her age, she was receiving compliments from older men by making a career out of granting sexual favors, basically becoming her own Make a Wish foundation.  At seventeen, this is all a bit much, but Isabelle is unscathed by the revelations, showing little if any concern, where her world starts coming apart only afterwards when she no longer has the same control over her life, having to answer once again to her parents, feeling more like a kid—exactly what she was trying to get away from.  Her only recourse is to withhold information and to rebel against their better instincts.  The problem with this film is beauty is only skin deep, and Ozon never penetrates this young girl’s psyche like he has with older women in previous films.  In something of an ode to those glory years, Charlotte Rampling, who is associated with Ozon’s best films, makes an appearance near the end that feels somewhat surreal, but even she can’t provide the depth or emotional heft that’s missing from this film.  The film resembles the sexual objectification of Julia Leigh’s Sleeping Beauty (2011) (hint:  remove the wall to wall nudity from these films and what have you got?), where the subject is oversexualized young women, both mystifyingly strange by their emotional passivity, and both incapable of any real connection in the world, where the unique formalism of the film couldn’t express more human detachment, as the stark nudity on display is stylishly empty.  

The Verdict (Het Vonnis)

THE VERDICT (Het Vonnis)       B+              

Belgium  (112 mi)  2013  d:  Jan Verheyen          Website            Trailer

This is a film that wastes no time and gets the viewer right into the middle of the action, introducing Koen De Bouw as Luc Segers, an ambitious corporate executive that his risen to the top of the corporate ladder and is about to be named as the successor of the retiring CEO at lunch the next day, but not before the company throws a celebratory office party.  On the ride home, with his daughter asleep in the back seat of the car, they stop to fill up for gas while his wife runs across the street for a loaf of bread in a 24-hour automat.  While the floor is strewn with litter, a man with an icepick in his hand appears from behind the shadows, assaulting her instantly, literally beating her to death.  When Segers runs across the street to check what’s taking her so long, the man coldcocks him with a whack across the face, knocking him out cold, while his daughter gets hit by a car running to help her Dad.  Segers survives after a 3-week coma, but the other two perish on the scene.  When he’s well enough to visit the local police station, he finds the man thumbing through mug shots, Kenny De Groot (Hendrik Aerts), a career criminal with a lengthy rap sheet where he’s spent his life in and out of prison, who is immediately arrested, but instantly released on a technicality when the indictment papers are inadvertently left unsigned.  Segers goes ballistics when his own attorney (Johan Leysen) explains the error, as does the public at large, who are outraged first over the brutality of the crime, but then that such a vicious criminal could be released to the street.

The incident is seen through a cross segment of society, from news broadcasts and their legal experts, to talk shows with their opinionated audiences, as well as the bulldog prosecuting attorney (Jappe Claes), and the the publicly elected District Attorney, all of whom find the event disgusting, but the legal analysts argue that the laws of a democracy are not a perfect system, but adherence to the rule of law provides society’s moral compass.  Making matters even worse, Segers is simply not the same after De Groot is released, where he’s listlessly inattentive at work, and his mind seems elsewhere.  As a result, someone else is chosen as the successor CEO, while Segers begins stalking the De Groot garage, eventually following him back to his garage where he empties the chambers of an 8-round automatic pistol into his chest, killing him on the spot.  His arrest creates even more outrage, as he’s a sympathetic public figure, where a near unanimous consensus believes he never would have killed the man had the arrested criminal not been released by a bureaucratic bungling.  Nevertheless, the prosecutor wants a conviction, calling a murder a murder, as he doesn’t want to see the start of vigilante justice where victims, such as rape or assault or kidnap victims, who have been wronged or harmed begin taking the law into their own hands.  However, Segers has other ideas, as he intends to challenge a system that allows an identified murderer to be placed back on the streets again, as that certainly doesn’t represent the larger public interest.   

    

The film uses a cool and detached style showing only what’s essential, becoming a taut thriller, much like American conspiracy thrillers of the 70’s, where the overall production values feel meticulously designed, which give the film a vividly realistic detail.  The ensemble cast feels naturalistic and doesn’t resort to stereotype, where the courtroom scenes are riveting.  All the principles are excellent in presenting the case, where Segers takes a gamble by choosing to use a defense covered under Article 7.1 of the Belgian Constitution, where a traumatic incident can cause a person to instantaneously snap, usually on the spur of the moment, such as a man raping your wife or attacking your child, where any harm caused under these narrowly defined circumstances may be deemed lawful.  The problem here is that it was not spontaneous, but premeditated, as Segers stalked De Groot for several days waiting for his opportunity.  The evidence presented is starkly compelling, but much like Sidney Lumet’s film by the same name, THE VERDICT (1982), it’s the closing arguments that really shine.  Perhaps most interesting is the presence of De Groot’s defense attorney (Veerle Baetens) who is protecting the rights of the deceased, who brilliantly makes the case that legal technicalities are no small errors, providing a narrative of De Groot’s troubled childhood that is quite simply devastating, while the prosecutor argues that similarly harmed victims of sex crimes or drunken drivers or senseless assault don’t have the right to enact revenge on their perpetrators, as this is a matter for the police and the courts, not individuals taking the law into their own hands.  On the other hand Segers’ lawyer suggests that when the system fails to protect its citizens, as they are constitutionally mandated to do, it inflicts further harm on top of trauma that already exists, often forcing people to deal with the impossible.  At nearly two hours, the film feels concise and beautifully edited, moving at a rapid pace, where the director knows how to ratchet up the tension and sustain it throughout in the complex legal exposé.