Sorry Angel (Plaire, aimer et courir vite)

Director Christophe Honoré

Honoré on the set with actors Pierre Deladonchamps (left) and Vincent Lacoste

Honoré (left) and actor Vincent Lacoste

Honoré flanked by Vincent Lacoste (left) and Pierre Deladonchamps

Actors Pierre Deladonchamps (left) and Vincent Lacoste

SORRY ANGEL (Plaire, aimer et courir vite)                       B+      

France  (132 mi)  2018 d:  Christophe Honoré

At four in the morning in summer,

The sleep of love still lingers,

Under the arbors dawn evaporates

            The scent of the festive night

―Rimbaud, Bonne Pensée du Matin (A Pleasant Thought in the Morning), May 1872

A return to form for Honoré after the disaster that was Métamorphoses (2014), a rare misfire for this director who has always made intelligent films with a keen eye for deeply probing character studies, always conveying a literary spirit, which emphasizes this director’s strong point, as this is like watching pages of a novel unfold.  Described by Honoré as the grim and terrifying days of his youth, this is his most overtly autobiographical film, following the career path of Rimbaud and others who came from the provinces to seek their fame and fortune in Paris, in this case following the path of a gay student from Rennes, the capital city of Brittany, with a burning desire to become a filmmaker.  Played by Vincent Lacoste, Arthur in his early 20’s studies philosophy and likes to read, still in a relationship with a girl, though he’s about to be swept off his feet in his first gay relationship, yet he is not the focal point of the film.  That would be Pierre Deladonchamps, from Alain Guiraudie’s Stranger By the Lake (L'inconnu du lac)  (2013), playing Jacques, a sophisticated writer and playwright who’s nearing 40, irresistibly charming, erudite, and overtly gay, though recently diagnosed with the HIV virus, set in 1993 when this was paramount to a death sentence, as available medicine of the time might extend the death sentence for a year or two, but it was inevitable.  Death hovers over many of the central characters who have learned to deal with it as an everyday occurrence.  Purely by chance, this is the same time period as Robin Campillo’s 2017 Top Ten List #8 BPM (Beats Per Minute (120 battements par minute), though this film is not political, but amorous, revealing matters of the heart, navigating the fears and anxieties of a budding romance, largely seen through the point of view of Jacques, a curiously self-centered character who intentionally limits his options by being more distant and cautious, perhaps even growing more introspective, yet still refuses to shy away from having grand love affairs.  Told out of time in a non-linear fashion, Jacques is in Rennes for a production of his latest play, while Arthur is a local college student, meeting in a movie theater watching Jane Campion’s The Piano (1993) where they catch each other’s eyes, with Jacques changing seats to sit next to him, flirtatiously wondering, “I resent how cute your generation is,” suggesting they meet later in front of the theater.  In a humorous diversion, a chatty woman (presumably the lead in his play) grabs ahold of Jacques, talking incessantly, joking about his frequent interchangeable lovers, but also blurts out that he has AIDS, with Arthur overhearing (this doesn’t seem to faze him), trailing close by afterwards, hiding behind trees and lampposts, following like a shadow in the night.  

Honoré was himself a boy from Brittany and would have been the same age as Arthur back in 1993, having begun his writing career at Cahiers du Cinéma in Paris in 1995 before going on to write novels and plays before discovering a true love for cinema.  On an early trek to Paris we see Arthur and a cadre of friends making a pilgrimage to the gravesite of François Truffaut at the Montmartre cemetery, where they break out a little alcohol and dance, like a celebratory college ritual to the musique du jour, M.A.R.R.S. - Pump Up The Volume YouTube (7:04).  Earlier we see that Arthur was a summer camp director, visited by his former girlfriend Nadine (Adèle Wismes), still a bit incredulous that he’s attracted to guys, secretly meeting up with them in late night hookups during their relationship, inquiring, “How could you be with someone like me and still sleep with them?”  Arthur responds that he always thought he preferred the company of girls, acknowledging the discovery was only recent, plunging headfirst into the fray, still questioning and exploring his queer identity.  One of the things Honoré does so well is introduce both characters individually on their own before they meet, adding texture and gravitas to their interior worlds, which makes their initial tryst that much more explosive, as viewers can already identify with each of them.  Arthur is eager and openhearted, terribly excited to explore a new world, while Jacques is hesitant, more reserved and world weary, yet hyper-articulate, peppering him with clever conversation steering him directly into his inner soul, while at the same time resigned to the idea that he will never again experience that initial thrill of excitement with somebody new, as the man knows his time on earth is limited, with zero hour fast approaching.  In Paris, Jacques lives with his young son Loulou (Tristan Farge), sharing joint custody with the boy’s mother, Isabelle (Sophie Letourneur), who is something of a delight, reminiscent of Bernadette Lafont from Chabrol’s Les Bonnes Femmes (1960), while also neighbors with an old friend, Mathieu (Denis Podalydès), who works as a journalist.  In one of the more intriguing scenes, Jacques invites a former lover to his home, Marco (Thomas Gonzalez), who is weak and at the end stage of the disease, joining him in the bathtub for a moment of shared tenderness, an image that is repeated later on purely in his imagination, as it happens after Marco’s funeral.  On the wall is a Fassbinder QUERELLE (1982) poster signed by Andy Warhol, while on another wall is a Léos Carax poster for Boy Meets Girl (1984).  The film does not shy away from nudity or male copulation, where sex continues to be a major part of their lives even as their bodies break down and weaken, often the only sign left that they’re still alive. 

After their first fling, Arthur sends plenty of postcards to Jacques in Paris afterwards, but hears nothing back, losing hope that he’ll respond, so when he does it comes as a most unexpected surprise, receiving a phone call just as he’s about to have hot sex with a hitchhiker he picks up along the highway, described as a young “blond with a cute ass,” with Jacques on the other end wanting to hear all about it, offering a detailed description of the various gay types (which has Arthur taking notes on the other end), including the Maxim’s type embodying youth and illusion, or the Walt Whitman type known for sleeping around, the Vondelpark, an impassive Nordic that shows little emotion, or the Wrong Blond, not exactly who you expected, but he’ll do.  Among the more hilarious sequences in the film, it has the effect of elevating gay imagery to an iconic status, which adds to the underlying lore of a film like this, which is curiously a romance where the lovers are rarely in the same city together, where they are basically alone, building tension by the degree to which they are separated, existing for the most part in a long distance relationship.  By the time Arthur decides to come to Paris for a visit, Jacques has begun serious medical treatment and is in a hospital room, with Arthur audaciously stripping naked to lay down next to him.  It’s there in the hospital lobby that he meets Loulou and Isabelle, with Loulou quoting Rimbaud, reciting to Arthur a poem where The sleep of love still lingers.  Honoré uses period music to great effect, including a love scene set to the quiet hush of Cowboy Junkies - I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry - YouTube (5:25), but also an extended sequence of lush operatic music by Handel that features a gorgeous soprano castrato aria, Ariodante: Aria: Scherza infida - YouTube (8:40), adding layers of depth to this beautifully textured film where all the actors are simply outstanding, continually elevating this material into a different stratosphere.  By the time Arthur decides to move to Paris, filled with youthful ideas about the world of possibilities, Jacques is too gravely ill to meet him.  However, when he does happen upon him in a lingering moment, the sparks quickly rekindle, exploring the Parisian streets until dawn, romantically sleeping by the side of the Seine, where a new day awaits them.  Arthur is drunk and high on life, in stark contrast to the fading gleam in Jacques’ eye, yet his hilarious dance sequence with the old fogies, Jacques and Mathieu, brings a moment of sheer delusion into their otherwise restrained lives, almost believing they are young again, even hopping into bed together as a threesome, but this is immediately rectified as overly ambitious, just a momentary loss of reason before reality sets in.  The film is wildly ambitious and may not hit the director’s previous high notes, but it plumbs the depths of a literary work onscreen, with the epic sweep of Magnolia (1999), remaining deeply moving and profound.

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Golden Years (Nos années folles)

GOLDEN YEARS (Nos années folles)                     C-                                           

France (103 mi) 2017  d:  André Téchiné      

           

Unfortunately, a lifeless period piece that never rises to the occasion, with few insights or revelations, and no emotional connection whatsoever, that never hints at the underlying psychology to explain how events like this actually occurred, supposedly based on real-life experiences, yet the audience remains distanced and far removed from any of the characters, where the story plays out more as utter fiction than reality.  Téchiné has always been a brilliant director of actors, working with some of the best throughout his career, and while that’s not the problem here, the story makes little sense, never remotely becoming believable.  Essentially a story about Paul Grappe, Pierre Deladonchamps from Stranger By the Lake (L'inconnu du lac) (2013), a deserter from the French army during WWI, who goes to extreme lengths to avoid detection, dressing up as a woman, changing his/her identity, which continues even after the war is over, becoming much more intriguing as a woman than he ever was as a man, reinventing himself as Suzanne, a cabaret performer, famous for indulging herself in brothels, where you’d think he’d be immediately exposed as a man, but the film never addresses this issue and pretends like he doesn’t have a penis.  You’d think that would be pretty easy to spot when having sex, not just once in a while, but all the time, where the bordello he frequents is famous for orgies in Paris during the Roaring Twenties, yet no one utters a word.  While the story may be brave for tackling the subject, adapted from a 2011 book by two historians, La Garconne et L’assassin (The Boyish Woman and the Assassin) by Fabrice Virgili and Daniele Voldman, at least as presented in the movie, none of it appears credible, especially during the madness and hysteria surrounding WWI.  Let’s not forget, had Suzanne been outed as an army deserter, he would have been shot by a firing squad for treason, as depicted in the Terence Davies film 2016 Top Ten List #7 Sunset Song or Kubrick’s masterpiece PATHS OF GLORY (1957).       

Moving back and forth in time, using frequent flashbacks, the movie becomes a story within a story that is ostensibly being told as part of a cabaret show directed by Samuel (Michel Fau), a flamboyant theater owner who supposedly discovered Suzanne, with Paul playing the part of himself, while a much younger actress plays his wife Louise.  At least initially they are a young couple who is madly in love, with Louise, Céline Sallette from Bertrand Bonello’s House of Tolerance (L’Apollonide – souvenirs de la maison close) (2011), a dedicated and hardworking seamstress in town, working in a factory with other women, seen sneaking around avoiding her parent’s detection to find moments alone with Paul, though none of it escapes the watchful eye of her adoring grandmother (Virginie Pradal), almost always seen in the corner smoking a pipe.  Eventually the couple marries, but war breaks out, and almost immediately Paul is ordered to the frontlines.  Surrounded by nothing but inhumanity and death in the trenches, Paul blows his index finger off in order to be sent home, but is ordered back to the frontlines again, which is something he simply can’t face.  With the help of a hidden cellar in Louise’s grandmother’s house, Paul hides out in secrecy to avoid detection as the war drags on for years.  Growing bored with himself, Louise, always a pragmatist, comes up with the idea of dressing him up as a woman, which allows him the freedom to finally go outside.  Plucking his eyebrows while providing garters and a dress, applying makeup on his face and a wig on his head, she is amused at her latest creation, immediately having sex afterwards, telling him, “It’s not so bad being a woman.  At least we don’t wage war.”  With that, Paul transforms into Suzanne, curiously strolling through the Bois de Boulogne district, famous for sexual escapades, and walking inside, adopting a new persona, supposedly purging himself of the brutality of war.       

Suzanne embraces this new bisexual lifestyle, charging for her services, becoming ever more comfortable with the nightlife, drinking champagne, dressing in the finest gowns, and constantly being pampered, like she’s at the center of a new universe, suddenly important and significant.  While this causes some degree of marital distress, Louise is the picture of a woman who would do anything to save her marriage.  Occasionally bringing Louise along to these elegant soirée’s, she shies away from the attention, not really comfortable with the orgiastic sex or this liberated version of her husband.  Inexplicably, a shy young war hero, Count Charles de Lauzin, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet from Christophe Honoré’s LOVE SONGS (2007), falls madly in love with her and wants to swoop her off her feet in extravagant luxury and wealth, but she remains a devoted wife, claiming she loves her husband the way he is, and ducks away.  By this time, however, viewers are hardly sympathetic to Suzanne, who is the picture of indulgence and narcissism, thinking of no one else but herself, and certainly blind to the consequences of being discovered, where, as if to emphasize the couple’s downward spiral, Téchiné introduces (slightly before its time) the Depression era music of Bessie Smith, Bessie Smith (Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out, 1929 ... YouTube (3:04).  When the war is over, Louise and the other working girls are euphoric, greeting the returning soldiers with dances and kisses on their cheeks.  Suzanne continues to live the same way, not wanting to lose all the attention, forcing his wife to lie about the whereabouts of her husband, as if his absence is a lingering mystery, perhaps killed in the war.  Likely overcompensating, she becomes devoutly patriotic, taking a hard line on deserters, where she’s forced to put on an act while her husband is screwing anyone and everyone in the Bois de Boulogne, coming home drunk nearly every night.  It’s only when amnesty is offered to deserters that Paul finally comes clean, acknowledging his little charade, but in retreating back to a man’s life he becomes bitter and hateful, literally a contemptible person, treating Louise horribly.  So when cabaret impresario Samuel offers to make a theatrical extravaganza based upon his life, Paul jumps at the opportunity to return to his life as Suzanne, indulging once more in the same old habits.  The deterioration of their doomed marriage is a dramatic descent, yet this film couldn’t be more unengaging, one of the major disappointments in Téchiné’s career, arguably his worst effort ever, where in the end, the best thing about the picture is its use of French songs, including the final credit sequence.