The New Girlfriend (Une nouvelle amie)

THE NEW GIRLFRIEND (Une nouvelle amie)                   B                    

France  (108 mi)  2014  d:  François Ozon                 Official site [Japan]

Continuing in the same vein as Young & Beautiful (Jeune & Jolie) (2013), Ozon reiterates his views that the conventional middle class lifestyle is empty and meaningless, flooding the screen with a well-edited opening montage that tells the story of two best friend girlfriends, Isild Le Besco as blonde-haired Laura and Anaïs Demoustier as freckle-faced Claire, who follow the traditional path to happiness and success through marital bliss, but something is decidedly missing from their lives.  In typical Ozon fashion, he provides a subversive alternative, opening with a clever scene where a women is being groomed for her wedding to the sounds of wedding music, only to see how he’s switched the mood and she’s really being dressed for her funeral, where the lid of the coffin closes to seal her fate as the film title appears, obviously showing the fate of the old girlfriend, clearing the way for what follows.  While this film is wildly uneven, the Ozon of today seems much more interested in maintaining his enfant terrible status by being an agent provocateur, never afraid of tackling taboo subjects and broadsiding the public, provoking the masses with satiric stabs at whatever is PC (politically correct) for the moment instead of just making a great film.  In one sense, the gay experience is “the new girlfriend,” as it has suddenly blossomed onto the American (and French) landscape by making same sex marriages legal, overcoming all legal challenges, where it is finally the law of the land, though Hollywood and television have been promoting gay characters for decades.  Ozon is the new mainstream, suddenly elevated to a new respectability as a longstanding gay filmmaker who has been unashamedly bold in challenging stereotypical views on gay and straight relationships, offering subversive alternatives for decades.  As the writer of most of his own films, he’s displayed an inventive playfulness often expressed in overly bright daytime colors, where exaggeration and misdirection are often presented as high comedy.  Despite the nature of the subject, where the surviving husband resorts to wearing make up and wigs while dressing up in his deceased wife’s clothes to minimize and maternalize the baby’s fears and anxiety from missing her mother, becoming an increasingly prominent focus of his new life, for the most part this is played straight, with the idea that trying something totally different often produces unexpected results.  While this in no way matches the depth and dramatic power of Xavier Dolan’s ode to the transsexual experience in 2013 Top Ten List #2 Laurence Anyways, this is a more casual presentation, spoofing the outlandish nature of a surviving husband literally transforming himself after the death of his wife into “the new girlfriend.” 

While some have gone feverish with delight over the film’s bizarre central premise, it’s a fairly restrained approach to a difficult subject, and one can’t say Romain Duris is entirely successful in the role, as his slightly embarrassed, overly pronounced smile while dressed in a blonde wig is difficult to gauge, while he couldn’t be more believable as Jacques Audiard’s piano playing hit man in The Beat That My Heart Skipped (De battre mon coeur s'est arête) (2005).  Instead, like many Ozon films, the film is presented almost as wish-fulfillment fantasy, making effective use of Claire’s dream sequences, where for a good part of the film the audience can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s being imagined, which is the most intriguing quality in nearly all Ozon films.   Adapted from a 15-page short story by Ruth Rendell where the outcome is decidedly different, as instead of becoming the best friend, he/she is murdered instead at the first declaration of love.  Ozon read the story nearly twenty years ago, writing an adaptation for a short film, but never obtained the financing.  Unlike other crossdressing classics where musicians disguise themselves as women to avoid detection while on the run from the mob in SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959), or an unemployed actor becomes an actress to find a job in TOOTSIE (1982) and again in VICTOR/VICTORIA (1982), in Ozon’s story, the husband has a preexisting desire to crossdress even while married, so it is more of an outgrowth of his own distinct personality.  After the death of her best friend, having vowed to look after her surviving husband and daughter, Claire decides to pay a visit to David (Romain Duris), walking in unexpectedly after no one answered the door, only to find David dressed as a women as he cares for his infant daughter, running back out the door in a state of confused anger.  Rather than be honest about it, she lies to her own husband Gilles (Raphaël Personnaz), pretending she was with a girlfriend named Virginia, which is the excuse she uses each time she revisits David, becoming more supportive of the idea as she can feel the sense of gratification David gets by transforming himself into Virginia, eventually helping him find the right clothes and make-up, going out on shopping sprees together, having lunch, and doing the things girlfriends do together.  Easily the centerpiece of the film is an excruciatingly intimate glimpse of gay acceptance in a drag nightclub act performing an ultra-dramatic, anthem-like song about “becoming” a woman, Nicole Croisille’s “Une Femme avec Toi,”Une nouvelle amie - Une femme avec toi (hymne LGBT ... YouTube (4:01), which extends into the evening cocktail hour where they end up on the dance floor at an “anything goes” discotheque. 

All seems right wth the world as Dennis is realizing his dream as Virginia.  The confusion comes when he tries to take it to the next step by proclaiming his love for Claire, unleashing dormant, pent-up emotions, which is a rush of exhilaration for Virginia, while something of a curiosity for Claire, which leads to a moment of truth when a panicked Claire rejects Dennis, claiming “You’re a man!” once again rushing out the door in a state of confusion.  This could go any number of directions, where the best film to ever delve into the dire consequences is Fassbinder’s In a Year of 13 Moons (In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden) (1978), arguably his most personal film, where just such a rejection leads a man to undergo a sex change operation for love, only to be rejected and laughed at, later beaten and humiliated by men on the street.  Ozon doesn’t explore the depths, but instead creates an inversion of the original story, where the woman is so repulsed at discovering a man’s body that she murders him.  Instead, this rejection opens a path for Claire, who suddenly discovers her own femininity, wearing make-up and more colorful dresses, where she’s more in touch with her own sense of beauty.  In clear Sirkian mode, the film is not so much about the life of a transvestite, but explores the prejudices and preconceived notions associated with different forms of sexual expression, especially as seen in such a Catholic society as France, where middle class views express open tolerance so long as anything considered objectionable is hidden from view.  It’s here that Ozon mixes dream fantasies with reality, where the Buñuelian merging of the surreal becomes associated with accepting the peculiarities of others.  In this sense, as a kind of idealized dream, the film is a journey of expression, begun at the outset in an extreme close-up with the application of lipstick and make-up, as both best friends eventually discover the woman inside of Claire and Virginia that was lost in the beginning when her real best friend Laura died.  The biggest problem with the film is just how exasperatingly boring all the middle class characters actually are, regardless of their sexual expression, straightjacketed by their economic conformity that defines them in so many other ways.  Work, or any concept of work is completely absent in their lives, where they are completely free to redefine themselves any way they choose.  This is simply not the standard for most people’s lives, who are more centrally connected to their economic circumstances.  Nonetheless, this is another fever dream from François Ozon, a variation on a famous quote from Simone de Beauvoir, Becoming A Woman: Simone de Beauvoir on Female ..., where “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” 

Seventeen Times Cécile Cassard (Dix-sept fois Cécile Cassard)

 

SEVENTEEN TIMES CÉCILE CASSARD (Dix-sept fois Cécile Cassard)   A 

France  (105 mi)  2002  d:  Christophe Honoré

An exquisitely directed, well-written, beautifully edited film where Béatrice Dalle literally carries this film, as she is utterly fabulous, rivaling even the great Isabelle Huppert's THE PIANO TEACHER (2001) performance this year, and while saying little, this is one of the more strangely sensuous performances seen in years, arguably better than Samantha Morton's performance in expressing the exact same kind of morbid introspection from Lynne Ramsay’s MORVERN CALLAR (2002), another film about grief and loss that veers into an eccentric road movie.  Well so does this one, intensely expressed through a kind of experimental, non-narrative journey, where there are no mind-altering hallucinogenics, instead it's all based on a collapsing interior world, where the common theme seems to be disassociation, displacement, disorientation, someone who has lost touch with the world.

Reminiscent of several terrific films, Fassbinder's QUERELLE (1982) first and foremost comes to mind, as a kind of rampant homoerotic underbelly seems to thrive in this small seaside town, yet there is a woman in the middle of it, very much in the vein of Jeanne Moreau's role, and this film has one of the most elegant, sensual scenes of the year, starting with some unusually dark and exotic music, every move is slow, calculated, and perfectly choreographed, where Dalle is slow dancing with one shirtless man (Romain Duris) while another man smoking silently looks on, then the other man very sensuously cuts in and the two men dance together, 17 fois Cécile Cassard - Christophe Honoré Bande ... - YouTube (2:14), while she, in her red dress, can be seen in the mirror looking on.  Thematically, the film resembles Kieslowski’s THREE COLORS:  BLUE (1993), especially the extent of one’s withdrawal from the world after the death of a spouse, where rather than living in solitude, as she intends, people begin to intrude in her life, also Antonioni’s RED DESERT (1964), where modern technology leads to a kind of shock to the nervous system, where humans are completely alienated from one another, even during sex, trapped in an interior psychological wasteland.

This is a carefully crafted look at a more mature women who is looking to find her way back, not gracefully, as she is utterly fearless in making choices that, in some sense, none among us has ever contemplated, where the originality factor is the uniqueness of the experience.  Unable to function after the death of her husband in a car crash, Honoré offers an astonishing portrait of unending despair strewn out over just 17 fragmented scenes, where the mood is dead serious, pensive, yet odd, and always emotionally challenging, revealing a rarely expressed depth of emotion, initially someone on the edge of suicidal contemplation, then becoming lost in a kind of fevered sensuality, stuck in an aftermath state of oblivion that somehow leads to personal renewal, where she’s forced to literally rediscover herself.  Beautifully expressed through the offbeat photography by Remy Chevrin, a tone poem where every image is a work of art, complimented by original music written by Alex Beaupain, the heavy metal rock interludes come out of nowhere and are emotionally bone jarring, and yes, they absolutely rock us from any sense of calm or complacency and add to the continuously disorienting mood in what is otherwise a wordlessly quiet and spacious film.

The Beat That My Heart Skipped (De battre mon coeur s'est arête)

THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED 

(De battre mon coeur s'est arête)         B+                  

France  (108 mi)  2005  d:  Jacques Audiard

There’s a monkey on my back

A French update on James Toback’s 1978 debut film FINGERS, a film considered by Jonathan Rosenbaum as little more than “macho braggadocio,” however, the hyper-kinetic style alone in this updated version rocks, mixing the in-your-face, cinéma vérité, hand-held camera work of Stéphane Fontaine with the immediacy of French New Wave quick cut editing, where the attention span is a mere few seconds, creating a nervous tension in the way the film is presented that matches the mood of the lead character, Romain Duris, who could be the poster child for the word angst, a sensitive thug who plays techno-rock on his headset, thumping away with his fingers to the beat, including the wrenching sounds of The Kills “Monkey 23” The Kills - Monkey 23 - YouTube (3:02).  He’s the son of a deceased classical pianist and an overweight, over-indulgent slumlord father, Niels Arestup, who could be a stand-in for Toback, whose mannerisms resemble late Brando.  He takes care of the dirty family business for Dad, retrieving, by any means necessary, the hard to collect overdue rent, usually through an improvisational violent assault that includes a near death experience. He collaborates with a couple other dirtbags-in-suits who specialize in get rich quick real estate schemes, also including a mix of Mafioso-style legalese and plenty of muscle, stopping to have an affair with the alluring wife (Aure Atika) of one of his best friends, who he usually sees when he brings his friend home drunk, making sure the Toback influenced sex and violence explode off the screen. 

Duris, however, has another interest on the side—his continued interest in being a classical pianist, which leads him to an audition later in the month, which requires intensive training.  He hires a recent émigré from China (Linh Dan Pham) who speaks Chinese, Vietnamese, and a little English, but no French.  Perfect.  Their scenes together are among the best in the entire film, as he has an explosive temper that he has to keep under wraps, and achieving an emotionally controlled pianistic perfection is no easy feat.  Their communication together, each speaking their own language or watching their body language or hearing their quiet silences, is a revelation in this film that features the recurring universe and behavior of thugs.  The contradiction here is too apparent, as he uses his hands to bash people’s skulls in, yet they’re also required to obtain a musical state of grace.  It was impossible not to think of what happened to Fast Eddie Felson in THE HUSTLER (1961).  Duris, however, pulls this off, seemingly a bit of a psychotic, nearly always with a slight grin on his face, who shows us on more than one occasion how quickly he can think on his feet, so the internal wheels are always churning, but he also quietly and respectfully has a cup of tea with his piano teacher, revealing a calmness after the storm.  The story is always a bit implausible, but the realization of a man torn between two distinctly polar opposite worlds is both internally and externally raw, edgy and well-conceived.