Petite Solange

 

 

Writer/director Axelle Ropert

Director on the set with Jade Springer

PETITE SOLANGE               B                                                                                             France  (86 mi)  2021  d: Axelle Ropert

A heartbreaking tale of divorce, subjectively told from the point of view of a 13-year old daughter whose world is upended for reasons she cannot fathom, literally pulling the rug out from underneath her, leaving her emotionally devastated.  Most films about divorce are told from the adult point of view, like Ingmar Bergman’s epic Scenes from a Marriage (Scener ur ett äktenskap) (1973), Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation (Jodaeiye Nader az Simin) (2011), Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After the Storm (Umi yori mo mada fukaku) (2016), Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s 2017 Top Ten List #1 Happy Hour (Happî Awâ) (2015), or Noah Baumbach’s 2019 Top Ten List #3 Marriage Story, though a few notables accentuate how damaging this can be to children, like Michael Curtiz’s Mildred Pierce (1945), Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale (2005), or Xavier Legrand’s 2017 Top Ten List #7 Custody (Jusqu'à la garde), which also starred Léa Drucker, yet the uncompromising attitude of the 13-year old protagonist is the female counterpart to Jean-Pierre Léaud in François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups) (1959), with the film similarly ending on a final freeze frame.  Starting out writing film criticism for the short-lived La Lettre du cinéma magazine, where she was editor-in-chief, an approach that is common for male directors, but very uncommon for female directors, Ropert has crafted a small, intimate, and delicate film with a cathartic power, a French family drama elevated by the performance of young star Jade Springer in her first feature, playing teen schoolgirl Solange, who is intelligent and acutely sensitive, yet also introverted, living with her moody older brother Romain (Grégoire Montana-Haroche), her artistically inclined mother Aurélia (Léa Drucker), who is a successful actress,, and her father Antoine (Philippe Katerine) who runs a music store.  Drawing on Charlotte Gainsbourg’s emotionally scarred performance in Claude Miller’s AN IMPUDENT GIRL (1985), yet also Natalie Wood in Elia Kazan’s SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS (1961), both of which accentuate the exposure of human frailties, everything seems to be going well at the outset, as Solange’s parents are celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary, and while there are occasional awkward moments, there is no sign of any particular problem, but soon there are cracks in the façade of happiness, with the husband sleeping on the couch, and arguments extending long into the night, as this carefully calibrated film follows a young girl experiencing the pain of having to accept her parents as people with faults.  Exuding a naturalness in her performance through an economy of means, as if gleaned from the films of Éric Rohmer, there are no heightened, melodramatic moments, nothing that feels pretentious, instead this is filled with a quietly astute observational eye, where ordinary moments comprise most of what we see.

Set in Nantes, a city associated with Jacques Demy, opening to the dramatic music of Benjamin Esdraffo, his third collaboration with this director, the film is shot on 16mm by Sébastien Buchmann, who assisted Éric Gautier on Léos Carax’s POLA X (1999), much of it handheld, made to resemble the verité stylishness of 1970’s films, featuring bright pastel colors that eventually fade in the latter stages of the film, bathing the film with familial warmth, as this appears to be a close-knit family, where the mother loves to bring her children to her live performances, like part of an extended family.  Generated by what the director describes as the “simplicity principle,” the film uses an interesting device, showing Solange being asked to read a Paul Verlaine poem in front of the class, yet she quickly hesitates and sits down, unable to continue, offering no apparent explanation, with the film backtracking in time through flashbacks, only to return to that same moment later in the film, this time getting deeper into the dramatic ramifications, as she’s overwhelmed by the emotional fallout from her family troubles, causing her an extreme degree of mental stress.  Parents never want to cause their children pain, but divorce is a tricky subject, often hidden from the rest of the world, where there are little daily explosions that everyone has to navigate, and there are no real guidelines of how to get through it.  Solange is a seemingly happy kid, developing an interest in a slightly older piano-playing classmate (Léo Ferreira), but he doesn’t seem to be particularly interested in her.  She is best friends with a tomboyish classmate Lili (Marthe Léon), with both doing a class presentation together on Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, who is an inspiration to her generation for standing up for what she believes, a teenager challenging world leaders, failing to comprehend why so little is being done to reduce carbon emissions, credited for raising public awareness, especially among young people, becoming the youngest-ever Time magazine person of the year in 2019 at the age of 16, where they clearly share the same concerns for saving the planet, showing a wild enthusiasm for her principled advocacy.  Horrified that her parents appear to be drifting apart, as there appears to be no reconciliation for their problems, things really spiral out of control when she visits Gina (Chloé Astor), her father’s younger assistant at the music store, who is inexplicably wearing her father’s sweater, causing an outraged Solange to run out of the store in anger, shocked at what she sees. 

The knock on the film is that it grows very fragmented towards the end, not really following any recognizable timeline, where storywise it may not make sense, feeling more like a freefall of disturbing events.  The film’s greatest strength, on the other hand, is its probing tenderness and sensitivity in the inquisitive character of Solange, who is largely alone, separated from the other members of her family, as her brother runs off to Spain to study abroad, missing him terribly, while both parents are otherwise preoccupied, leaving her without the support of the adults around her.  In what is essentially a coming-of-age story, our expectations are tempered by the illusions of youth, who envision a better and more hopeful world, yet reality comes crashing in where you least expect it, as the most devastating moments in Solange’s life remain offscreen, forced to navigate her way through an unchartered wilderness.  A glaring hint lies in a movie poster on the wall of her school classroom, Luigi Comencini’s MISUNDERSTOOD (1966), a tale of childhood innocence suddenly having to come to terms with a death in the family.  Divorce is a comparable feeling, as you lose something in each parent, a loving trust that is no longer there, uprooted from that safety net, where there’s no more normal everyday life, suddenly forced to contend on your own, realizing something her father describes as “children and adults live in different worlds.”  The pain and helplessness she feels is written all over her face, where words can’t really express it, yet it’s communicated with poetic delicacy and cinematic modesty, with an undertone of operatic refrains from Italian singers.  Taking refuge from her parent’s incessant arguing, Solange spends a long time sitting alone in a café, because she simply doesn’t know where else to go, eyed suspiciously by the server, yet she’s stuck in a no man’s land without a clue what happens next.  Lost in despair, she begins wandering the streets alone, deluged by an absence of love, overwhelmed by a profound sadness, falling into the river one night under suspicious circumstances, where all we see is her blue scarf floating on the surface of the water, fleeting details that describe the enormity of her world falling apart, veering into unchartered territory.  After months in therapy for depression, she emerges with a new understanding, forced to contend with a new reality, but it doesn’t hide the profound melancholy and darker implications she feels when her parents decide to divorce and sell the house where she grew up, without anyone having told her, where the last family meal celebrating her 14th birthday takes place in the back garden of the house, a place she can no longer call her own, finding herself adrift on the winds of change, where the brutal loss of innocence becomes a harsh reality that fervently pierces the heart. 

Mistress Dispeller

 

Director Elizabeth Lo

The director on the set

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MISTRESS DISPELLER            C+                                                                                           China  USA  (94 mi)  2024  d: Elizabeth Lo

Everyone agreed to participate both at the beginning and end of production, as their understanding of the film and mistress dispeller’s role evolved over time.                                    —opening title card 

Teacher Wang taught me a lot.  About love, and other things.  She said, “Look, you are going through this, this difficulty, and we should film it, so more women, more people, can face their families and learn how to handle a situation like this…”  I want more people to know that love doesn’t come easy, especially for people at our age.  Don’t give up so easily.                              —Mrs. Li

While the premise of this documentary is interesting, where the latest Chinese phenomena is hiring someone to officially drive philandering husbands away from their mistresses and back to the fold of the family, yet this one-note subject matter quickly grows tiring, as little is actually learned in this rather light-hearted exposé.  Easily what works best are the operatic inclusions of Puccini musical excerpts, Gianni Schicchi: O, mio babbino caro YouTube (2:22) and Madame Butterfly: Humming Chorus YouTube (3:05), which are emotionally powerful, but most of the film falls flat, despite some rather absurd stabs at humor, as nothing is ever explored in-depth, remaining superficially on the surface for the entire film, so not much is actually learned, though the absence of emotional outbursts or angry confrontations does make the detached, cinéma vérité style more plausible.  One character (Mrs. Li) even acknowledges at one point that she might have acted differently if the camera had not been there.  While the psychological intent makes more sense in theory, attempting to steer the various parties in certain directions, the reality is never satisfying, as we see no evidence of what is proposed.  This is a very ambiguous film, leaving viewers a bit perplexed, shining little light on this unusual profession.  While the culture on display is Chinese, filmed with actual participants in China, the approach feels more American, arising out of the Sundance Institute Producer’s Program, so it’s a bit of a mixed bag.  While a few scenes feel scripted, like bringing in the film crew on camera during a particularly pertinent moment, the fact that this is a straightforward documentary with so little dramatic impact just makes it harder to take seriously, where a differently edited or fictionalized version of tonal shifts might have been more compelling, throwing in scenarios that were simply missing from what we see onscreen, where the quiet lyricism of filmmaker Hong Sang-soo comes to mind.  For instance, we learn next to nothing about the marital relationship or their family, which seems to exist in a vacuum, so viewers gain little insight as to why this relationship needs to be saved, though separation is not an option due to the wealth the husband brings.  The marriage is not close, exhibiting little intimacy, where instead of any romantic connection, love is bound up with sacrifice, duty, and what’s left unspoken, so there’s no reason to suspect that will change in the future, despite the intervention, so in the end they seem no better off. 

Born and raised in Hong Kong, the director graduated from the NYU Tisch School of the Arts, with a Masters in Fine Arts from Stanford University, having been exposed as a youth to pop culture and movie ideals of romance, which drastically differs from the world of China portrayed in this film.  Up until now she has primarily been a director of shorts, making one earlier feature, STRAY (2020), an uncompromising social realist film that offers a dog’s-eye view of Istanbul, inviting viewers into their immersive world, continually providing the spatial point of view of stray dogs on the street.  This, on the other hand, is all about a philosophical concept, a social theory, which the filmmaker attempts to bring to life, with varying degrees of success.  Filmed over the course of two years, where Lo is not just the director, but also the cinematographer and co-editor on the film, the actual subjects feel authentic enough, where the problem is we just never learn very much about them, feeling more like strangers both in the beginning and at the end of the picture.  As we drop into their lives, there’s no real examination of cheating husbands, or this unconventional profession, so we’re left with what we see onscreen, which shows people going through the mundane aspects of their lives, more often bored with their routines, as what they’ve grown accustomed to is the emptiness of their existence, where the promise of middle class comforts has not brought any of them happiness.  Shifting our sympathies between the husband, wife, and mistress, often using a static camera position, the film uses a crisis of infidelity to explore the ways emotion, pragmatism, and cultural norms collide to shape romantic relationships in contemporary China, often involving secrecy and shame, though a more interesting and largely untold aspect is exploring how women navigate Chinese society.  At the center of the story is Teacher Wang (Wang Zhenxi), whose undercover presence attempts to influence the various participants, the middle aged marital couple, Mr. and Mrs. Li, along with the younger mistress Fei Fei, who is attractive, though more economically challenged, yet she confidently expects Mr. Li will choose her in the end, and may have even thought she was the central figure of the shooting, openly expressing a deep longing for love and commitment.  When Mrs. Li suspects her husband’s inexplicable absences are not just due to extended business meetings, she hires the dispeller to save her marriage, as in her grown-up child’s eyes they have the “perfect” family. 

Presumably documenting all sides of the love triangle, neither Mr. Li nor his mistress exhibit any signs of guilt or regret, finding nothing morally wrong with their behavior, while Mrs. Li is simply angry and indignant, yet neither she nor her husband have the capacity to speak about this issue with each other, so it simply festers over time, revealing episodic glimpses of a disintegrating marriage, including tense bickering at the dinner table, or paranoia surrounding cellphone usage, where they are not at all averse to intercepting texts and messages.  While this may be a sociographic reflection of a society undergoing cultural shifts from rigid social norms, it’s hard to get past the element of romantic resignation, the examination of a love story without any signs of love, though Mrs. Li claims that they were once the envy of their friends (who we never see).  Viewers may be a bit skeptical about this so-called profession, where many may be inclined to believe it exists along the same wavelength as psychic readings, where there is little scientific evidence to offer credibility.  Apparently this extramarital industry has only blossomed in the last ten years in China, largely due to rising rates of adultery, along with a growing economy, creating rapidly expanding middle and upper classes and a rising divorce rate, leaving people with options that never existed before, where technology and shifting values play a huge role in reshaping modern ideas on love and marriage.  By holding shots on faces for unconventionally long durations, one can gauge the levels of loneliness and regret that lie under the surface, as people struggle with their shortcomings, yet it’s hard to believe Mr. Li would confess his infidelity to a complete stranger, “With my wife it’s real life, with Fei Fei it’s like being in the sun,” or allow this dispeller, disguised as a distant friend of the family, into his inner sanctum, where that absurdity reaches comic heights by the end.  But it all feels more like people gossiping endlessly about their frustrations in life, as the marital problems are never approached directly, feeling more like a manipulative con job, where professional credentials are produced to take money from wealthy families, presuming they’ll be happy about the outcome.  By the end, however, there is simply no evidence that anyone is happy except the dispeller, who does not come cheap, paid in the tens of thousands for her services, who is the only one who has profited from the experience.  Inexplicably, despite the shortcomings, this film won the Best Documentary at the Chicago Film Festival 2024, Festival Award Winners - Cinema Chicago.