The Party (2017)

THE PARTY              B+                  

Great Britain  (71 mi)  2017  ‘Scope  d:  Sally Potter             Official Facebook

Director Sally Potter’s commitment to bold experimentation has always been intriguing, to say the least, while not always successful, in her daring to find something uniquely different to offer, as her films aren’t for everyone, and tend to divide filmgoers.  That said, the trailer for this film seems wacky and hilarious, so expectations for a savagely offbeat satire seemed promising.  While her previous film, 2013 Top Ten List # 10 Ginger & Rosa, was set in the early 60’s, an era of budding idealism juxtaposed against end-of-the-world Cold War scenarios, this is firmly set in the anxiety-ridden fluctuating times of today, when Britain as we know it is undergoing some kind of midlife identity crisis, on the verge of disappearing altogether, becoming a scathing satire of the post-Brexit world (though surprisingly shot prior to the Brexit vote).  Reminiscent of Mike Leigh’s ABIGAIL’S PARTY (1977) and Ozon’s take on an unpublished Fassbinder play when he was only 19, WATER DROPS ON BURNING ROCKS (1999), both are scathing indictments of the world we live in today, where indifference and cynicism rule supreme, and while produced in different eras, they still maintain a sarcastic bite of laceratingly dark comedy mixed with a disturbing anguish.  While somewhat uneven and not nearly as successful as those earlier iconic works, they do provide a frame of reference for viewers, one of complete irreverence, becoming something of a parody of a parody, targeting the powerlessness of liberalism, suggesting the end is near, where this could just as easily be called LAST TANGO IN BRITAIN.  Every dysfunctional character seems to personify what Britain stands for today, or what it has become, like a mutant step-child, an embarrassment that is a part of us but we don’t want others to see.  Presumably a celebratory occasion, a group of old friends arrive in the London home of the newest Minister of Health, Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas), ever the idealist, appointed to a prestigious position in the opposition party and certainly a rare accomplishment from this group of educated elite.  Perhaps to set the mood, while Janet is thrilling herself on the phone in the kitchen with sweet talk from a secret lover, her husband Bill (Timothy Small) places himself directly in the center of the living room with a glass of wine, drinking heavily before any of the guests arrive, playing records while stuck in a catatonic stupor, looking disoriented while listening to the unmistakable sounds of Muddy Waters, Muddy Waters - Im a Man (Mannish Boy).mp4 - YouTube (3:55), as one by one the guests arrive.  Before the night is done, however, one of the guests will be lying on the floor like a corpse, a curious allegory for Britain’s gloomy fate, with fingers pointed and various people trying to resuscitate the seemingly lifeless body back to life, with the ultimate outcome shrouded in uncertainty and doubt. 

Promising a good time for all, this party rocks with disillusionment and open suspicion, resembling the downward spiral of Polanski’s Carnage (2011), becoming a free-for-all of resentment and accusations, like a modern day Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), cleverly written by Potter herself, with a first class cast that thrives in the theatrics of performance theater and soon turns upon each other, hurling plenty of hilarious one-liners, where the key is an effortless choreography of a world spinning out of control, perhaps responding thematically to an opening salvo, declaring “Democracy is over.”  First to arrive is her American best friend April, Patricia Clarkson, easily the best thing in the film, never more acerbic, a self-professed cynic and realist getting all the best lines (“I’m proud of you, even though I think democracy is finished!”), and new-age partner Gottfried, Bruno Ganz, an aromatherapist/healer (“Prick an aromatherapist and you’ll find a fascist,” she says), announcing they are splitting up, finding her husband indescribably boring.  Next to arrive is a constantly bickering lesbian couple, Martha (Cherry Jones), an academic professor specializing in domestic labor gender differentiation in American utopianism (perhaps spending too much time in women’s studies, suggests April), and her younger partner Jinny (Emily Mortimer), a TV Masterchef runner-up, who immediately announces she’s pregnant with three boys.  Last but not least is Tom (Cillian Murphy), a nervous financier who announces his wife Marianne, who helped run Janet’s campaign, will be arriving later, offering apologies, immediately locking himself in the bathroom to do lines of coke, a habit he repeats later, sweating profusely throughout, while also carrying a concealed gun, growing ever more nervous about it, eventually throwing it away in a garbage bin.  This weapon works its way throughout the storyline just by its mere possibility, as it takes the incendiary barbs one step further, adding a violent trace of inevitability.  When April pops the cork in the champagne bottle, it immediately shatters a window (“That almost never happens”), an ominous sign of things to come, where sinister comments about lost ideals and keeping up with post-post-feminism just keep coming, “Sisterhood is a very aging concept,” each seemingly disapproving of the other.  Among the biggest surprises is the superlative musical soundtrack heard throughout, ranging from the traditional jazz standards of Sidney Bechet, What Is This Thing Called Love? - Sidney Bechet - YouTube (3:53), to the modernism of Albert Ayler (Albert Ayler - Summertime - YouTube (8:47), including a stunningly downbeat John Coltrane, John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman - My One And Only Love - YouTube (4:58), to the rousing Cuban music of Ibrahim Ferrer, Ay, Candela - Ibrahim Ferrer - YouTube (3:23), all offering differing comments on the changing mood in the room, like a poetic Greek chorus, much as Potter did in her previous film. 

Shot in stark Black and White by Russian cinematographer Aleksei Rodionov, best known for shooting Elem Klimov’s remarkable Come and See (Idi i smotri) (1985), the movie is short but nasty, where each character is caught up in their own problems, immersed to the point of paralysis, or so it seems, everyone feeling betrayed, with little energy to spare for anyone else.  Gone are the younger days of youthful idealism and democracy in action, becoming instead a chamber drama of personal failures and indiscretions, showcasing their hidden secrets and lies, fueled by “chronic insincerity,” which seems to define the mindlessness of campaign rhetoric, led by April’s accusatory tones, laying into everyone with zingers, openly declaring war on anyone complicit with the status quo, who by the end is left to reassess the situation, surprisingly discovering that she and Gottfried are actually the best adjusted couple in the room.  This comes after a visibly distraught Bill rises from his stupor to announce he has a hopelessly terminal medical illness, where he had to go outside the National Health Service to get an appointment, a defiance of everything his wife had steadfastly worked and campaigned for, before dropping an even bigger bombshell, which may explain Tom’s fidgety behavior, announcing he’s leaving Janet, wanting to spend his final time with Tom’s wife, Marianne, confessing a yearlong affair (or perhaps two), suggesting the attention paid to him only emphasizes Janet’s woeful indifference, as he now understands what he’s been missing.  Janet’s initial recourse is to slap him hard in the face, recoiling in disbelief at what she’s done before doing it again, drawing blood.  As Janet bites down on her arm in disgust, wailing “I believe in truth and reconciliation,” an Iago-like April promotes the idea of exacting revenge, actually encouraging her to take matters into her own hands, as he’s got it coming.  Gottfried immediately jumps into the role of life coach and mediator, like some cult guru, supporting Bill while catty forces conspire against him, offering the advice, “You need to protect yourself from so much negative female energy,” becoming an openly defiant battle of the sexes.  In a momentary lull, Janet discovers the gun in the trash bin, raising the stakes, with ominous Hitchcockian implications.  Tom, however, is boiling over with coke residue, more enraged than ever at Bill, and cold cocks the man who’s stealing his wife, leaving him inert on the ground, like a corpse.  Not knowing if he’s dead or alive, he has immediate regrets and concerns, trying to cajole him back to the living, with little success.  Stuck in a neverland between the living and the dead, Bill seems to personify Britain’s current crisis, brought on by a toxic spell of unbridled masculinity.  Trying to find music for the occasion, to help resuscitate Bill’s broken spirits, Tom plays the first record he finds, Purcell- Dido and Aeneas~ 'When I am laid in earth' (Dido's Lament ... (3:50), a funereal song of great dramatic magnitude that may as well be an anthem for the dead.  The irony of these absurdly poor choices is not lost on the audience, as this film hilariously probes the underbelly of insanity that lies at the root of today’s modern conflict.  With Buñuelian wit and precision, and without offering any solutions, this film metaphorically sticks a fork into what’s left of the rotting corpse formerly known as Great Britain. 

Note

Of special interest, the actors and actresses in this film all got paid equally and are using this fact to promote equal pay for women in the film industry. 

Only God Forgives

ONLY GOD FORGIVES                    C+                  

Denmark  France  Thailand  USA  Sweden  (90 mi)  2013  d:  Nicolas Winding Refn    Official site [France]

An overly somber style over substance film, where except for the excessively violent subject matter, one might think this is a Wong Kar-wai film, as the lush visuals combined with the highly eclectic musical soundtrack written by Cliff Martinez add a hypnotic, near surreal color palette.  Stylishly impressive, set in the dreamy underworld of Bangkok, Thailand, but the characters all feel like they’re sleepwalking through their roles, not unlike Gaspar Noé’s ENTER THE VOID (2009), a director singled out in the credits by Refn, stuck in a netherworld purgatory waiting to be judged by a martial arts policeman named Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm), dressed out of uniform in loosely fitting and comfortable clothing, who like a spaghetti western Avenging Angel or God, restores order through brutal punishments, bordering on torture porn, but his judgment comes swift and decisive instead of inflicting prolonged agony.  Afterwards, in perhaps the most surreal moments in the film, Chang sings karaoke while his fellow cops sit around in uniform to listen.  While the surface effects can be near spectacular, as the composition of each shot couldn’t be more remarkable, along with an edgy use of lighting and a dazzling color scheme, shot by cinematographer Larry Smith who worked on three Kubrick films, recreating the spooky element of surprise in the long hallways shots of the Overlook Hotel, but there’s little to no interior involvement, where the viewer is never connected emotionally to anything onscreen.  The dialogue is so campy during some of the most violent showdowns that it borders on the ridiculous, adding an element of the absurd to the already over-the-top visualizations, making this a midnight run cult film at the time of its initial release.  Refn also dedicates this film to Alejandro Jodorowsky, a cult figure whose films depict picturesque horrors and humiliations, where Peter Schjedahl in his New York Times review calls EL TOPO (1970) “a violent surreal fantasy, a work of fabulous but probably deranged imagination.”  Jodorowski himself is quoted as saying, “Everyday life is surrealistic, made of miracles, weird and inexplicable events.  There is no borderline between reality and magic.”  All of which means this was meant to be a head-scratcher, something of a mindfuck of a movie, where the Argento-like atmosphere of menacing doom defines the film.

Ryan Gosling is Julian, who along with his brother Billy (Tom Burke), run a Thai kickboxing club, which we learn later is just a front for a major drug operation.  Julian’s demeanor is so calm and understated that he barely utters more than a sentence or two throughout the entire film, where he doesn’t act so much as sulk, but like Chang, he’s more of a presence than an actual character.  When his brother inexplicably goes berserk, raping and killing an underage prostitute, leaving her lying in a pool of her own blood, the sickening aspect is so acute that the regular cops turn to Chang, something of a specialized expert only called upon in the most hideous crimes, where his unique method renders immediate judgment, with no arrest, no trial, and no imprisonment, as if he’s not really a part of the human condition, but an elevated force to contend with, seemingly drawing upon supernatural powers.  Except for his lightning quick martial arts strikes, he does everything else in a Zen-like calm, in near slow motion, as if he’s hovering over the consciousness of these criminal suspects with their fates in his hands, outraged at hearing their pathetic, self-justifying defenses, demanding that they admit to their crimes, enacting a savagely vicious arm mutilation when they don’t answer swiftly enough.  In this way, the act of justice is decisively rendered and remains permanent, not some idealized concept.  When Chang allows the girl’s father to take his revenge upon Billy, it’s as if the world turns upside down.  Kristin Scott-Thomas arrives on the scene in an outrageously over-the-top performance as the diabolical mother mourning the death of her firstborn, still fuming and in a state of rage that Julian hasn’t exacted revenge for his brother’s murder, re-establishing her iron-like control over the drug operations, and ordering Julian around as if he was still an insolent child.  The scene of the film is a formal dinner sequence between mother and son, where Julian is joined by Mai (Rhatha Phongam), a prostitute pretending to be his steady girlfriend, where the vile flamboyance of the mother turns this into a classic scene and one of the memorable highlights of the year, a uniquely horrific and thoroughly embarrassing moment where Scott Thomas becomes a dragon lady that turns belittling and malicious humiliation of her son and his hooker girlfriend into an artform, initiating an assault of crude language so debasing that she’s a contender for the most evil mother in screen history, something of a parallel to the Albert Brooks character in Refn’s previous film Drive (2011). 

Thematically, a film this very much resembles is Taxi Driver (1976), another avenging angel film where Chang has to literally clean up the scum and garbage on the streets, holding the same contempt for moral rot and decay as Travis Bickle, using many of the same unorthodox methods as well, creating an eternal bloodbath as human salvation.   But Scorsese’s film is deeply rooted in an incendiary, character driven performance, something altogether missing here, as outside of the commanding performance of Scott Thomas, the rest may as well be zombies or the walking dead.  With each successive shot so perfectly rendered, Refn uses the photograph-like composition to advance each scene, where except for the violent action sequences, much of this film is a picture of stillness, an induced calm, like an oasis on the horizon, but something of an illusion covering up the internal turmoil hidden within.  The sins of the world are covered in a kind of toxic moral laziness, while Chang’s job is to root out each rotting soul one by one.  Scott Thomas blames Chang for allowing her son to be murdered, completely overlooking Billy’s own wretched acts, and sets into motion a series of blistering assaults on the police designed to remove Chang from the picture, but it’s as if he’s from a different realm, inscrutable and untouchable, surviving every attempt, until ultimately Chang finds Julian.  In exaggerated spaghetti western fashion, the two head for the ultimate showdown playing out in Julian’s own boxing ring, now nearly deserted except for a few miscellaneous cops, Mai, and  Julian’s mother.  In the emptiness of the room, Julian proves no match, as his opponent is a phantom, a demented godlike figure with a bloodthirsty appetite for inflicting pain, literally pulverizing his victims before walking away unscathed, leaving behind a grim and overly solemn world that resembles a morgue.  The film lacks the energy and entertaining appeal of any Bruce Lee movie, but overwhelms with its superb production design, ultimately feeling like an empty experience that is all surface visuals with little more to offer.  Lacking the well-crafted characterization of Sergio Leone, this feels more like a cartoonish homage to the macho revenge genre, where the Tarantino-ish, overly stylish bloodletting continues, but it all feels so meaningless after awhile, becoming a one note film that only grows more tiresome.

In the House (Dans La Maison)

IN THE HOUSE (Dans La Maison)     B+               
France  (105 mi)  2012  d:  François Ozon 

While more lighthearted than the usual fare, Ozon has nonetheless crafted a smart and cleverly insightful comedy about the boredom and ennui of the middle class, a film that beautifully unravels though serial installments of an apparent neverending high school class writing assignment.  Germain (Fabrice Luchini) is the overly cynical and largely bored and disinterested literature teacher continually under the spell of Flaubert who has grown to hate the illiteracy of his students, coming to work with a giant chip on his shoulder, a pretentious know-it-all that continually degrades his students, where coming to work has become an exercise in futility.  As he’s reading some of his student’s papers to his wife, the engrossed listener is the perfectly respectable but utterly bourgeois Jeanne (Kristin Scott Thomas), who runs an art gallery owned by a pair of twins that have no interest in art and continually threaten to shut the place down.  The impression given is that this is a cultivated and sophisticated household, childless, no doubt, so that they could pursue their professional careers, where by now they have become accustomed to the discreet charms of the bourgeoisie, to coin a Buñuelian phrase.  As he reads examples of atrocious writing, one paper stands out and holds his wife (and the audience) in rapt attention, where a student describes his meticulously detailed plan to get inside the house of another fellow student, Rapha (Bastien Ughetto), offering to help with his math homework while he secretly inspects the premises.  We surmise the writer lives in a tiny claustrophobic dwelling in a congested, overpopulated part of town, while this house, viewable from a park right across the street, represents the dream home in the eyes of the writer, with two loving parents who proudly show affection, even in front of adolescent kids, something rarely seen these days.  What gives this paper a kick is not only that it’s an engrossing story filled with shrewdly discerning observations, but that it concludes “to be continued.” 

Germain immediately pulls this kid aside, Claude (Ernst Umhauer, somewhat in the manner of Michael Cera), and inquires about his motives, as he rather subtly is painting a sarcastic character portrait that gets disturbingly deep into the personal affairs of a fellow student, which could have negative repercussions if asked to read aloud in class.  Claude was only following the class assignment, so he claims, before nonchalantly dropping off the next installment.  Germain waits until he gets home where he and his wife literally devour the story for details and personal insight, becoming a prominent part of their lives, like a movie-of-the-week, discussed right alongside the various pitfalls of their careers.  To be blunt, the story is much more intriguing than anything either one of them has going for themselves, and they eagerly look forward to the next episode. Germain works with the kid after class, critiquing his writing, his motivation, while offering various books to read from his own collection.  In his eyes, at least one student shows promise, and the least he can do as a teacher is encourage him to develop his craft, though we all know the real motive is to read the next continuing chapter, as the kid churns them out like daily editorials, something one can count on and look forward to on a regular basis, becoming the one constant in their lives, even as everything else is falling apart.  Ozon places the audience in the same position as this couple, where we’re deliciously eavesdropping into the intimate affairs of another household.  Germain continually suggests that he use his imagination and take his narrative elsewhere, but Claude insists the only place he’s inspired is inside that house, where his writing style amusingly starts to resemble the teacher’s recommendations, where his original comic satire evolves into personal obsession, perhaps more reflective of the teacher’s state of mind, but it only gets Claude deeper in trouble as he spies on Rapha’s parents having sex, among other things, developing a deep infatuation for the mother, Esther (Emmanuelle Seigner), always seen flipping through various house remodeling magazines, someone he calls “the most bored housewife in the world.”

While Rapha and his Dad (also named Rapha) express themselves only through the limited vocabulary of sports analogies, showing no imagination whatsoever outside of that boy world, Esther is often left out, where Claude sees himself swooping in and rescuing her from the emptiness surrounding her.  As the story evolves, which is little more than a writer’s exercise, Germain stresses fiction while Claude insists upon realism, as only real life provides such vivid details and clarity, where each of the characters is appropriately affected by the changing events as Ozon seamlessly weaves in and out of fiction and reality until eventually one can’t tell the difference.  All of this is really just teasing one’s imagination, where the storyline balances comic absurdity with ever evolving character development, but the longer Claude ventures inside the house, voraciously accumulating pertinent details, the closer he comes to crossing the line into morally objectionable territory, as he’s continually prying into dark corners.  Germain is so reliant upon the next installment, as if his life is utterly dependent upon it, that he also ventures into questionable human behavior in his attempts to do anything in order to keep the stories coming.  Of course, this is all something of a chamber farce, like being stuck inside your head—Buñuel’s THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL (1962) anyone?—where Claude simply can’t leave their house, or who knows what disaster might strike?  The original source material is Spanish playwright Juan Mayorga’s 2006 contemporary play, El Chico de la Última Fila (The Boy in the Last Row), which the director adapts for the screen.  All of the characters are interesting and well-developed, where Emmanuelle Seigner recalls Margaux Hemingway, where there’s an underlying sensuousness, but it’s much more suggested (in our heads!) than real, as she is little more than a bored housewife.  The emptiness of the middle class is constantly made fun of, not only in some of the tasteless art exhibits where Jeanne attempts to drum up interest, but especially in the vacuous world of the adults which offers little of value to the next generation, instead condescendingly cramming culture down their throats like some kind of force-fed regimen, failing to inspire or generate any hint of enthusiasm for the subject matter, where a random school paper incites much more interest than anything happening in their own dreary lives.  More fun than profound, nevertheless this is something of a charming delight, beautifully scored by Philippe Rombi, which has that pulsating underlying energy of Philip Glass.