Film

24 Frames: C.R.A.Z.Y.

Chris KriofskeLeave a comment

Film festivals are worlds unto themselves. Whether a weekend’s worth of programming at a local cinema or a multi-venue, week(s)-long event in another state or country, they vary substantially in size and commitment. Given time and proximity, anyone can attend a single screening at, say, the New York Film Festival but it takes a particularly devoted cineaste to spend a week-plus at Sundance or Cannes. In addition to transportation and lodging, one’s left with a spectrum of choices: If a festival’s offering 100+ titles to peruse, which ones do you see, and how many each day? Are you there entirely to watch movies or do you make time for other activities? When (and what) do you eat if you’re attending films from morning until Midnight? How will you adjust to this curious, particular mode of being often dubbed “film festival brain”?

I didn’t have a good reason or the funds to attend an out-of-town film festival until, for a few unseasonably wintry days in early November 2003, I ended up at one in Rochester, New York with a few friends from my film group Chlotrudis. The High Falls Film Festival honored and mostly focused on female directors and screenwriters. We made the six-hour trek west of Boston because one of our members lived there. This was in the days before I kept meticulous records of my viewing activity, but I probably saw seven or eight films at High Falls including the Isabel Coixet-directed, Sarah Polley-starring My Life Without Me, a limpid adaptation of the novel Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, the Pilobolus/Maurice Sendak documentary Last Dance and, on closing night, a preview screening of Robert Altman’s penultimate film The Company (at the time, a letdown following Gosford Park though in retrospect, weird and gutsy enough that I keep meaning to revisit it.)

Apart from adhering to a schedule and standing in waitlist lines, High Falls felt a somewhat atypical film festival in retrospect, with lots of downtime to do all the other things a metropolis as grand as Rochester had to offer (well, at least we toured the George Eastman Museum and its film archive.) I’d come closer to experiencing “film festival brain” the following year by attending the Provincetown International Film Festival and volunteering for the Independent Film Festival of Boston. The former, concentrated in the titular coastal resort town provided the desirable closeness between hotel and cinema venues that enhances a festival while the latter lent insight regarding how much of a multi-plate-spinning, three-ring circus such an operation can be.

By 2005, I was ready to tackle the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF for short.) One of the largest and buzziest film fests in the world, TIFF usually runs for eleven days starting on the Thursday after Labor Day. It hosts many North American premieres (at least those not earmarked for Telluride or New York) as well as some world premieres. After bowing at TIFF, the likes of Silver Linings Playbook, If Beale Street Could Talk and The Fabelmans have all instantly become serious awards contenders. Though often feted for its big-ticket gala premieres, TIFF has such a breadth of programming that there’s always something for everyone, whether it’s world cinema by directors as renowned as Werner Herzog or as obscure as Pen-Ek Ratanarung, four-hour-long Frederick Wiseman documentaries and experimental, far-under-the-radar shorts, midnight movies and independent Canadian cinema that rarely makes its way south of the border.

McCaul Street, Toronto, 2005.

My first TIFF (also my first visit to Canada) was a whirlwind of sixteen films over five days and nights. Once again, I was lucky to attend with my Chlotrudis friends, some of whom were TIFF veterans by that point. Without them, navigating the fest, which then sprawled from the prestigious venues along King Street West all the way up to Bloor and over to the University of Toronto might’ve overwhelmed a newbie like me (presently, the festival is concentrated in a six-block radius near the Bell Lightbox cinema.) Actually, my own experience was still perilously close to a sensory overload, particularly concerning ticket buying. With many screenings sold out well in advance, we’d awaken near the crack of dawn every day to wait in line at the Manulife Centre lobby to see what tickets had been released for that day’s showtimes. I often didn’t know what I’d be seeing in advance and had to make snap decisions based on this same-day availability.

For me, TIFF 2005 began uncommonly strong with Wang Xiaoshuai’s coming-of-age Cannes Jury Prize winner Shanghai Dreams (which would never receive North American distribution) and ended with Terry Gilliam’s woefully bizarre Tideland. In between, some of my most-anticipated titles were disappointments: AIDS triptych 3 Needles from The Hanging Garden director Thom Fitzgerald and The Quiet, Jamie Babbit’s leaden follow-up to But I’m A Cheerleader. Other buzzed-about films such as The Squid and The Whale, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Three Times and the documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston fared better. Still, the act of seeing something in a full theater for the first time often enhanced the whole experience more than viewing it at a local cinema (or worse, at home) ever could. I’ll never forget watching Michael Haneke’s Cache at a sold-out 2000+ seat Elgin Theatre and loudly gasping along with everyone else at one particularly shocking moment; I walked down Yonge Street with the two friends I’d seen it with afterwards, all three of us baffled and left near-speechless by its cryptic ending.

Earlier, I mentioned that TIFF is an ideal place to discover Canadian indie films since a good portion of them never get a theatrical release (or more likely these days, streaming distribution) in the US. In 2005, at least one-third of what I watched was Canadian content (i.e. “CanCon”.) Unless you’re a Canadaphile, it’s likely you haven’t seen the delightful Eve and The Fire Horse (a Sundance Special Jury Prize winner!), the aforementioned 3 Needles or the tedious thriller Lucid, not to mention Whole New Thing (a quirky queer Rushmore), These Girls (a trifle starring David Boreanaz and Caroline Dhavernas (Wonderfalls forever!)) or the Douglas Coupland doc Souvenir of Canada (probably as CanCon as it gets.)

You likely haven’t seen C.R.A.Z.Y. either, even though its director, Jean-Marc Vallée, would go on to make Dallas Buyer’s Club, Wild and the HBO miniseries Big Little Lies and Sharp Objects. When I arrived at the festival, the curiously-titled film wasn’t on my radar at all as I was neither familiar with the Quebecois director nor the cast; collective buzz (one of my friends might’ve attended an earlier screening) and intriguing subject matter (gay coming-of-age in 1970s suburban Montreal) eventually netted my attention. On the morning of my second-last day in Toronto, I purchased a ticket for it at the now long-gone Cumberland 4. I walked out of the screening thoroughly entertained and also transformed—I declared it my favorite film of the fest (with Cache in second place and, to be seen later that day, The Squid and The Whale in third.)

The Beaulieu Family, 1967

C.R.A.Z.Y. is about Zac Beaulieu, the fourth child of a middle-class family of five boys. Opening with his birth on Christmas, 1960, the film spans the first twenty-odd years of his life, often jumping ahead in time to arrive at another birthday (and by default, Christmas.) Accidentally dropped on his head as a newborn, Zac is believed by his devout Catholic mother Laurianne (Danielle Proulx) to not be only “special” but also “gifted” an ability to heal the sick and afflicted with his mind. This is dubiously confirmed by the middle-aged psychic she takes him to at age six who is only referred to as “Mrs. What’s-Her-Name” (“The good Lord gave it to him!,” she declares.) At that age, Zac idolizes his dad, Gervais (Michel Côté), a masculine, blue collar semi-hipster who takes him out for french fries, blows smoke rings, listens to Patsy Cline (whose signature tune “Crazy” appears throughout) and sings karaoke along with Charles Azvanour’s “Emmenez-moi” at every family gathering. Cool Dad Gervais also obviously sees Zac as his favorite compared to his older brothers Antoine (a jock), Christian (an egghead) and Raymond (a hoodlum.)

The only problem? Zac is perceived as “different” by all the men in his family. His father gives him a table-top hockey game for his birthday/Christmas but what he really desires is a baby stroller he can use to push dolls around in. After Zac’s caught attending to baby brother Yvan in his mom’s housecoat and pearls, Gervais shouts at Laurianne, “What in heaven’s name did you do to him?” When the film jumps ahead to Christmas 1975, teenaged Zac’s (played by Marc-André Grondin from here on) bedroom is now decked out in Pink Floyd and David Bowie insignia. He intensely, loudly sings along to “Space Oddity” in his room, only to attract a crowd of snickering onlookers outside his window. At the annual extended family Christmas gathering, his cousin Brigitte brings along her handsome boyfriend Paul who catches Zac’s eye as the couple tears up the dancefloor to a Pérez Prado mambo. After the three toke up together in Paul’s car, at Paul’s insistence, the two boys share a “shotgun”—Paul puts the lit joint his mouth backwards and blow’s smoke into Zac’s. The next time we see Zac, his formerly longish hair is restyled and glammed up exactly like Paul’s.

Like many teens of his era (and beyond), Zac’s emerging awareness of his homosexuality is a gradual, gestating process rather than a sudden epiphany. In bed at night, he prays to himself, “Please, anything but that,” not even able to name what “that” is. He tries dating his friend Michelle while rejecting the advances of and then beating up Toto, a male classmate somewhat further along in decoding his own sexuality whom is bullied and regarded by Zac’s peers as a “weirdo”. Later, after Gervais witnesses him and Toto suspiciously exiting a car together, he gets sent to see a therapist. Whenever Zac takes a step forward, he ends up two steps back, telling the therapist, “I’m not a faggot” or abruptly leaving a record store when he sees Paul nonchalantly browsing the bins a few feet away. Even when the film jumps ahead to Zac’s 20th birthday, he’s still half-heartedly dating Michelle while shot-gunning another joint in the car with cousin Brigitte’s latest flame at Christian’s wedding reception.

Christmas, 1975.

Given his conservative, suburban and religious environment, it’s no wonder Zac struggles with this; as a gay man raised Catholic, I found it all too relatable despite being some 15 years younger and from the Upper Midwest instead of Montreal. In popular culture and general perception, Catholicism is synonymous with the concept of guilt, with all the atoning for one’s own sins, impure thoughts and so on. As an adult long since lapsed, however, it’s the preponderance of mystery and superstition that has left a lasting impact on my psyche. One of the things C.R.A.Z.Y. gets exactly right about growing up Catholic and queer is this continual push and pull between fulfilling desire and facing consequences. Just as Zac continually reinvents himself through his clothing, his hair, the music he likes and how he decorates his bedroom, there remain little reminders everywhere that God Is Watching via the excess of prominently-placed crucifixes in the Beaulieu home (not to mention the one often hanging around Zac’s neck) or other religious iconography that suffuses the film (a disapproving Gervais appearing in frame next to a painting of Christ on the wall; the mesmerizing male chorale music sung in Latin that often surfaces on the soundtrack whenever Zac is at his most conflicted.)

And if all of that wasn’t enough, he’s being asked repeatedly from a young age to pray for a sick family member or friend, placing an even heavier burden on him. Multiple times, he’s shown to even have a sort of psychic connection to his mother that’s somehow related to this “gift”: as a young boy, he furiously prays at sleepaway camp that no one discovers he wet his bed while Vallée cuts between this and Laurianne, in bed at home, violently awakening and responding to his cry for help—perhaps the one time C.R.A.Z.Y. oversteps a bit unless his mother’s actions are all in Zac’s mind (a real possibility since he daydreams more than any other movie kid since A Christmas Story’s Ralphie.) When shit gets too real (i.e. seeing Paul at the record store), Zac not only goes into panic mode but relies on the superstition informed by his religious upbringing: attempting to walk all the way home in a blizzard, he rationalizes, “I would be cured if I could simply make it through the storm.” He does arrive at home intact (if close to hypothermic), but still hasn’t entirely accepted the notion that one can’t pray the gay away.

Zac eventually gets to a place of self-acceptance, albeit one that’s not without consequences. In possibly the film’s most brutal and honest exchange, his father point-blank states that his sexuality is not something he’ll ever accept. It’s consistent with his attitude throughout: “This shouldn’t be happening to us; it’s all in his head,” Gervais tells Laurianne earlier and it’s revealing, and in a religious background all too common that what prevents Zac from fully coming out is an importance placed on how it affects others in his life rather than himself. Into my early twenties, I denied my own sexuality, being overly concerned with what my family and friends would think of me if they knew the truth. Like Zac, I conformed to a version of myself that was what I perceived the world expected of me, while also often subconsciously making decisions that brought me closer to my true self without giving the game away (in my case, growing out my hair, getting my ears pierced, covertly flirting with other men I secretly found attractive.)

Christmas, 1980.

Interestingly, Vallée himself identified as straight. He co-wrote the screenplay with François Boulay, who based it in part on his own experience growing up gay. I remember reading at the time that what attracted Vallée and informed his own contributions to the story was its focus on a teenage misfit, a boy whom for any number of reasons simply doesn’t fit into his narrowly defined world. While applying homosexuality to this premise sharpens the conflict and heightens the urgency of Zac’s plight, what’s remarkable about C.R.A.Z.Y. is that, in spite of this, it still eloquently brings to life an ultra-specific world one can identify and comprehend. Look past the music, the clothes and the interior design and revel in such rituals as a full-capacity church at Christmas Midnight Mass or family parties brimming with finger foods and the chaotic overlapping interactions between all the relatives. Marvel at such specifically mid-century Quebecois slices-of-life like the Beaulieu boys’ delight for their mother’s ironed toast. For all of Zac’s struggling, this world as remembered from adulthood is so colorful, vibrant and real one could almost step into the frame and feel what’s it like to be an active part of it.

Regardless, C.R.A.Z.Y. indicates that no matter what fondness or nostalgia one retains for their childhood, the most effective way into adulthood is to strike out on one’s own. After Christian’s wedding, Zac has to escape Montreal and travel all the way to Jerusalem, the Holy Land (a trip that would be at the top of Laurianne’s bucket list) to fully confront and accept his sexuality (he ends up finally sleeping with another man who naturally looks a lot like Jesus!) When he returns home, it’s clear he has changed but Montreal hasn’t. Laurianne asks him to pray for Raymond, now a junkie and near death, in order to “heal” him, but of course it doesn’t work. And while Gervais makes his nonacceptance of Zac clear after he returns, he still tears up and hugs him at Raymond’s funeral. In the final scene, we see a present-day Zac and Gervais getting fries together like they did back in the day; Zac’s voiceover mentions that they still don’t discuss his sexuality but in a decade’s time after the funeral, Gervais became more tolerant of it, even allowing one of Zac’s boyfriends into his home.

I haven’t even gone into entire subplots about Zac’s temperamental relationship with Raymond, or the saga of the broken Patsy Cline record, or his Midnight Mass daydreams (the entire congregation woohoo-ing along to “Sympathy For The Devil”) or how little Yvan’s most identifiable trait is his incessant eating. At just over two hours, the film packs in ample plot and character development but rather than feeling overstuffed, it resembles an invitation full of goodwill, all the way to its clever reveal at the end of what the title’s initials mean (think about it.) Winner of Best Canadian Film at TIFF 2005, it became a massive hit in Quebec, earning $6.2 million there (the equivalent of a film grossing over $300 million in the United States today) and won 10 Genie awards (the Canadian Oscars.) I ended my initial review by noting, “It would be crazy if it never received US distribution,” but that’s exactly what happened, mostly due to music rights (in such a large market, Pink Floyd wasn’t going to give away “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”, one of the film’s most essential needle drops, for a pittance.) It did receive a domestic DVD release in 2007 and is streaming on Max at this writing. I screened it for the first time in nearly 15 years after Vallée suddenly died of heart failure in late 2021; for all his subsequent work and acclaim, it remains his best film perhaps because it’s his most personal. As much of it is a feast for the eyes and ears, one simple exchange between Zac at 15 and Mrs. What’s-Her-Name (of all people) gets at the heart of how beautifully C.R.A.Z.Y. acts as (what Roger Ebert once said of film in general) an “empathy machine”:

Zac: “I want to be like everybody else.”

Mrs. What’s-Her-Name: “Thank God, you never will.”

Essay #17 of 24 Frames.

Go back to #16: Me And You And Everyone We Know.

Go ahead to #18: My Winnipeg

24 Frames: Me And You And Everyone We Know

Chris KriofskeLeave a comment

In your twenties, you tend to find your people, especially if it’s in a place other than where you grew up or came of age. In my twenties, life beyond higher education was inconceivable to me until I had no other choice but to confront it. As my grad school colleagues dispersed to other cities and states, I met people through roommates, co-workers and before long, my first serious boyfriend. Most of these connections, however, proved fleeting, born of circumstance and destined to end once irrelevant. With a few exceptions (I met the boyfriend at a club on a night when I was determined to meet someone), I was drifting, waiting for things to happen rather than actively seeking them out.

Literally days before that boyfriend and I broke up two years later, I had (coincidentally or not) taken a crucial first step towards a new, more satisfying chapter of my life when I inquired about volunteering for the Brattle Theatre, a single-screen (with a balcony!), freshly non-for-profit arthouse and repertory cinema in Harvard Square. My first activity was assisting with the folding, labelling and stamping of their film calendar mailers at Ned and Ivy’s (the organization’s co-directors) apartment on a Saturday afternoon. The sort of tedious but necessary grassroots support work not uncommon to struggling non-profits, it was also a kind of social gathering—a dozen volunteers of various ages casually sprawled out around an open concept living/family room on the second floor of a Cambridge triple decker, cooperating to get the task done while a Miyazaki film or an episode of Fishing With John played on TV.

Soon a regular at this every-other-month activity, I also began volunteering a two-hour shift at the Brattle’s shoebox-sized administrative office Monday evenings after work. I assisted Ned and Ivy with any task they had for me, from stuffing envelopes to data entry of old paper box office reports. Eighteen months later, when I mentioned in passing that I had gotten abruptly laid off from my day job, Ivy notified me of an open Office Manager position at the Coolidge Corner Theatre across town in Brookline. A somewhat larger operation than the Brattle (with three screens at time), the Coolidge was/is the Boston area’s other preeminent arthouse non-profit. I got the Coolidge job but likely would not have without the inside information and encouragement I received via my Brattle volunteering. I ended up working at the Coolidge for over sixteen years until Covid put an abrupt end to that (as it did for so many other things.)

Brattle Theatre

Still, my career in film exhibition is not the only opportunity I have to thank the Brattle for. At that first calendar-folding session, one of the other participants, an enthusiastic man named Michael introduced himself, asking me, “Do you see at least twenty-five indie films a year?” I certainly did, so he handed me a business card for the Chlotrudis Society For Independent Film, a local non-profit (of which he is president and co-founder) that holds an annual awards ceremony—sort of an alternative Oscars, like the Independent Spirit Awards—and also met up for weekly screenings at the Brattle, the Coolidge and other nearby cinemas. I had actually heard of the group: two years earlier when I worked part-time for a local film industry magazine, I spotted the Chlotrudis Awards as I copy-edited event listings, having to carefully scan it multiple times to comprehend/correctly spell such an unusual moniker (it’s a portmanteau of the co-founders’ two cats, Chloe and Gertrudis.) I placed the card in my wallet and promptly forgot about it.

After a full year of Brattle volunteering (and a fair amount of personal healing and growth), I finally signed up for a Chlotrudis membership online: “Why not at least check it out?,” I thought to myself. The first meet-up I attended was Catherine Hardwicke’s intense teens-gone-wild drama Thirteen at the Coolidge, followed by a group cocktail party at a member’s apartment weeks later. Within two months, I went to the High Falls Film Festival in Rochester, New York with Michael and a few other members; before long, I joined the organization’s Board of Directors. Chlotrudis provided opportunities to view with other people the independent and foreign films I more often than not had been seeing on my own; in time, I also had a new circle of friends—not only to see movies with but also engage in sometimes feisty, often engrossing discussions with via the group’s email list. Although cinema was the one thing we all had in common, we naturally discovered other shared interests such as books, music, television etc. In time, thanks to all three of these film-centered organizations, I felt part of a community in ways that I really hadn’t previously, at least not as an adult. Just a few years earlier, I was seriously considering moving back to the Midwest, at the time a place I still knew more comfortably (and which had a lower cost of living to boot.) Now, I felt firmly entrenched in Boston with a real support system I wouldn’t have had if I’d made another move and started all over again.

Along with these social benefits, actively participating in Chlotrudis also exposed me to films I might have never otherwise seen or thought to check out. While the organization honored well-known indie hits of the day such as Lost in Translation, The Station Agent and American Splendor, it would just as likely name Lucas Belvaux’s The Trilogy as Best Picture or award Sarah Polley Best Actress for her work in the little-seen My Life Without Me. While Chlotrudis Awards’ categories generally mirror those of other ceremonies, its signature prize, the Buried Treasure, is their centerpiece: bestowed upon a film with a US gross under $250K that also never played wide (i.e., above 1,000 screens), it was purposely created to make people aware of an excellent movie that might’ve flown under the radar for most. At my first Chlotrudis Awards in 2004, this prize was given to Marion Bridge, an adaptation of a Canadian play starring Molly Parker and featuring a teenaged Elliot Page (a big fan of Canadian cinema, Michael’s championing of it over the years has exposed me to far more of it than most people south of the border ever get to see); the following year, it went to Nosey Parker, a whimsical, micro-budgeted Vermont feature. While I would’ve heard of other concurrent Buried Treasure nominees such as Infernal Affairs (later remade as The Departed) or Abbas Kiarostami’s Ten outside of Chlotrudis, it’s unlikely I would’ve thought to watch the documentary Love & Diane or the charming, low-key Uruguayan film Whiskey.

Chlotrudis Awards = cats on sticks!

Me And You And Everyone We Know is not one of those discovered-through-Chlotrudis obscurities—after premiering at the 2005 Sundance Film and winning the Camera d’Or (best first feature) at Cannes, IFC Films released it in June of that year. With a US gross of $8 million on a budget of $800,000, it was unquestionably an indie hit and a critical darling. Writer/director/star Miranda July was already well-known in performance art circles, but this feature debut reestablished her as a filmmaker first and foremost. Chances are I still would’ve seen it had I never joined the group. However, watching it with my Chlotrudis friends at the Coolidge in their 45-seat screening room was a blast. July’s gently quirky demeanor, the handmade feel of its relatively low-budget aesthetics (especially Michael Andrews’ vintage PBS-inspired electronic score), the sharp yet humane screenplay, the presence of a beloved (if unknown to most American audiences) Canadian character actor like Tracy Wright—all of it cinematic catnip as far as Chlotrudis’ sensibilities were concerned. I don’t remember if everyone in our group loved the film that evening but I can’t deny that we bonded over the shared experience which is at least one thing that fortified (and still enhances) the act of moviegoing for me.

The film is essentially a romantic comedy where one hopes the two leads will get together in the end after their meet-cute. They are Christine Jesperson (July), a video performance artist/July alter-ego whose day job is driving for an elder cab service and Richard Swersey (John Hawkes), a department store shoe salesman and recently divorced father of two. The odd (and unusually specific) surnames provide a peek into July’s trademark whimsy while the ways in which she introduces these characters (Christine in the midst of creating one of her let’s-just-say-unique art pieces, Richard when he lights his hand on fire as a desperate gesture to hold on to his marriage) feel too genuine and fully thought out to come off as just quirky for quirk’s sake. After their initial meeting at Richard’s workplace (where Christine takes a client shopping), she returns by herself to purchase a pair of shoes from him that he had previously recommended to her (“You think you deserve this pain, but you don’t,” he says of her current, inferior footwear.) They end up walking to their parked cars together where one can instantly detect their chemistry but also some hesitation. Christine likens the length of their stroll to an entire relationship (speaking of the distance from the store to the cars, “This is our whole life together”) but pushes it too far when, after they separate, she shows up again at Richard’s car and invites herself in for a ride over to her vehicle. Still sore from his recent divorce, Richard reacts negatively, instantly disintegrating Christine’s impulsively constructed rom-com facade.

While Christine and Richard’s will-they-or-won’t-they trajectory is the film’s key narrative thread, it is far from the only one pushing it forward. Me and You… is more of an ensemble piece, almost a micro-scale version of, say, Magnolia where numerous characters intersect in alternately predictable and unexpected ways. Richard’s somewhat oafish co-worker Andrew (Brad William Henke) develops a playful, if caustic relationship with two 14-year-old girls, Heather (Natasha Slayton) and Rebecca (Najarra Townsend). The girls go to school with Richard’s older son Peter (Miles Thompson) who is often seen taking care of his six-year-old brother Robby (Brandon Ratcliff). Both Peter (and, to a lesser extent Robby) befriend Sylvie (Carlie Westerman), a thoughtful, precocious neighbor girl somewhere in age between the brothers. Also figuring in are Richard’s estranged wife (and Peter and Robby’s mom) Pam (JoNell Kennedy), Christine’s elder-cab client Michael (Hector Elias) and Nancy Herrington (Tracy Wright), a stoic gallery curator whom Christine submits her artwork to.

Your average indie ensemble comedy-drama would emphasize and gather momentum on the strength and timing of its connections (and disconnections); Me and You… instead fixates on more personal, idiosyncratic motifs. Set in an unglamorous-verging-on-seedy Los Angeles residential neighborhood, it takes what could be ordinary, everyday situations and swiftly turns them inside out: a father and his young daughter buy a goldfish in a plastic bag filled with water from a pet store, but he accidentally leaves the bag on top of his car and drives off with only Christine and Michael initially witnessing it. Robby hears a mysterious tapping noise every day outside his mom’s house; she dismisses it as the sound the streetlights make when they turn on, but he remains unconvinced and obsessed. Sylvie plays with neighborhood kids Robby’s age as if she were their mother but takes this tendency to obsessive heights when she shows Peter her secret hope chest, lovingly layered with items she’ll use as a wife and mom one day (“It’s my dowry,” she states matter-of-factly.)

As in Magnolia, nearly every character here is lonely to some degree. While depiction of such an emotional state could lead to inertia (or alternately, desperation), July utilizes loneliness as an impetus for a myriad of activities people of varying ages pursue in order to combat it. Often, the impulse is sexually charged: Heather and Rebecca flirt with Andrew but keep their distance (particularly once their playacting threatens to have real consequences); they also attempt to work out their frustration and curiosity by first tormenting, then fooling around with Peter. When someone is too young to fully understand sex, they seek release in less conventional ways, such as Sylvie’s very-real-to-her fantasy world of monogrammed towel sets and fresh crisp shower curtains—itself  momentarily derailed in her mind when she watches Heather and Rebecca’s rendezvous with Peter through her bedroom window.

Meanwhile, Robby regularly spends time in an online chatroom that Peter showed him how to use; the two of them begin chatting with an anonymous, presumed adult engaging in sex talk. Peter laughs it away but young Robby is intrigued and returns to the chat room on his own, his six-year-old ideas of what sex might be both hilariously off-the-mark and touchingly innocent (and scatological!) Conceived in an era directly before smartphones, the film, with its desktop setup and the clunky chime of messages received back-and-forth (forever!) might now feel tame and nostalgic. As with the girls and Andrew, however, Robby’s playing a potentially dangerous game, one whose implications are still years ahead of him. When he eventually meets in real life the other cast member he’s been chatting with, the reveal is both ridiculous and sublime: lovingly scored to Spiritualized’s slow-building, in due course rousing “Any Way That You Want Me”, it’s poignant and bittersweet rather than embarrassed or full of shame. Credit July’s direction of her ensemble and in particular, her child actors: not everyone could coax such an uncommonly natural and believable performance out of someone as young as Ratcliff.

I get that July’s sensibility is not for everyone—the sudden callback of Christine receiving a phone call where the person on the other end of the line says a single word (“Macaroni”) and hangs up, Robby casually drawing on a piece of art on the wall as Richard and Peter sit on the couch in front of it, numbly ignoring him, Pam’s “self-affirming” nightgown, Nancy’s “I’ve Got Cat-itude!” mug—such quirks will easily delight or repulse a viewer depending on one’s taste (though this letter-perfect Onion article from 2012 gets it.) It may be tempting to regard Me and You… as a stereotypically navel-gazing indie, but one shouldn’t ignore the considerable feeling July suffuses her work with. Watch for how Nancy’s face slowly transforms when she’s watching the video Christine has submitted to her gallery at the moment Christine begins talking directly to her. Look at Richard’s growth throughout the film: “I am prepared for amazing things to happen; I can handle it,” he tells Andrew early on only to show how unprepared he is when Christine gets into his car. Midway through, he realizes that when he lit his hand on fire, “I was trying to save my life and it didn’t work.” By the end, he quietly, willingly gives himself over to chance as July illustrates, via him and Christine tenderly embracing the beauty of being open and receptive to making things up as one goes along.

That goldfish-left-on-top-of-a-car scene from earlier plays no crucial part from a narrative perspective but Me and You…wouldn’t be the same without it. As Christine and Michael drive along the highway, following the car as the goldfish unceremoniously slides off its roof, over its windshield and onto the trunk of another car ahead of it, Michael reassures a distraught Christine, perhaps indirectly evoking the film’s title, “At least we’re all together in this.” That sense of camaraderie and support is really what the film is all about; it’s also what I craved and then experienced once I found my people at the movies—on both sides of the screen.

Essay #16 of 24 Frames.

Go back to #15: Before Sunset.

Go ahead to #17: C.R.A.Z.Y.

24 Frames: Before Sunset

Chris KriofskeLeave a comment

Despite their ubiquity, movies sequels rarely match their predecessors and almost never better them. Critics and fans alike may go to bat for The Godfather, Part II as the superior entry in that trilogy (I finally saw it last year—surely the gold standard for what a sequel should be, but I still prefer The Godfather) and The Empire Strikes Back arguably refines and deepens the universe introduced in Star Wars, as does Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 for its previous entry. Still, most sequels fall short if just by a hair (Austin Powers: The Spy That Shagged Me) or more often, a country mile (City Slickers 2: The Legend of Curly’s Gold, anyone?)

Even arthouse cinema is not immune, though its filmmakers may try dressing up their sequels in other guises. Francois Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel series revisits the same character (played by Jean-Pierre Leaud) five times over two decades though The 400 Blows, which introduces him is so widely revered (deservedly so, since it’s more or less ground zero for the French New Wave) one can imagine only the most contrarian critic wasting the effort to extol Stolen Kisses or Love On The Run in favor of it. The most successful sequels are often stumbled upon for artistic rather than commercial reasons, like Abbas Kiarostami’s Life, and Nothing More… where he dramatizes seeking out the child actors from his earlier film Where Is My Friend’s Home following an earthquake ravaging the remote village where it was shot. Rather than feeling forced, it’s a meta-commentary on how life and art intersect more than a continuation of its story.

After The Godfather Part II won six Academy Awards (three more than The Godfather) and Airport 1975 became the seventh highest grossing film of its year, the floodgates opened: now, multiple sequels to such blockbusters as Jaws and Rocky were not only inevitable but also practically expected. If anything, sequel-itis has spread exponentially in the 21stcentury (see the Marvel Cinematic Universe among other mega-franchises) to the point where it’s hardly worth getting worked up at a multiplex sign where a majority of the films screening have a “2”, “3” or an “X” after their titles. Artful or not, they’re here to stay which is why in 2004, that year of Spider-Man 2, Shrek 2 and the more creatively titled Meet The Fockers (the only creative thing about it, really), I was skeptical when I first heard of Before Sunset, a sequel to Before Sunrise from nine years before reuniting director Richard Linklater with actors Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. In the earlier film, American Jesse (Hawke) and French Celine (Delpy) meet on a train travelling across Austria and impulsively spend 24 hours together walking around Vienna before each of them must return to their native countries. A wistful, short-term romance with the loquaciousness of an Eric Rohmer film (perhaps crossed with one of Billy Wilder’s less satirical efforts), it did what it set out to do fully and enchantingly thanks to its stars’ innate chemistry and Linklater’s characteristic humaneness and nimble, attentive camerawork. With such a perfectly executed film, why try to recapture that seemingly once-in-a-lifetime magic again?

Before Sunrise

What immediately sets Before Sunset apart from other sequels is that it never resembles a cash-grab or a product its creators felt obligated to make, even if Before Sunrise was widely beloved and a modest hit. Linklater, Delpy and Hawke (all of them contributing to the screenplay) began working on a larger-budgeted sequel (with locations in four countries!) shortly after the first film came out but failed to secure funding. They only resumed work on it in 2003 albeit at a much smaller scale. One can easily comprehend the desire to revisit Jesse and Celine a decade (or even a year or two) after their passing meet-cute but to actually make good on that challenge and create something that recaptures the essence and insight of the original is a tall order. Happily, if nearly improbably, Before Sunset not only accomplishes this but ends up one of the rare sequels that arguably improves upon its predecessor, retaining its spirit while also extending its narrative in ways that feel less like a rehash than a reunion gradually revealing itself as a reassessment: what would it be like for Jesse and Celine to meet again and more importantly, what would that mean for them?

As previously noted, Before Sunset picks up nine years after that chance meeting on a train in Austria. The new setting is Paris and Jesse is on the last stop of a European tour for his first novel, This Time, a roman à clef inspired by his whirlwind romance with Celine. During the Q&A portion after his reading at famed English language bookstore Shakespeare and Company, he spots Celine herself standing near the back of the audience. Unlike the earlier film, her presence here is not random; she’s there (in the city where she resides) to purposely see Jesse read from his book about their fling. The moment he and the audience become aware of her presence carries a jolt of recognition which Hawke, often a more subtle actor than he’s given credit for conveys beautifully. As they say hello and embrace, one can detect an instant spark but also the hesitancy one would expect from a situation orchestrated by one participant and unexpected by the other.

Jesse has a plane to catch, leaving him and Celine with barely an hour to spend together. As they did in Before Sunrise’s Vienna, they walk through the streets of Paris, stopping in a café here, a park there, getting caught up and getting to know each other (again) as their dynamic and particular rhythms gradually fall back into place. Celine, however, now has a hometown advantage, directing where the two them will go. As they catch up, they each reveal more about themselves than they might initially mean to. They answer whether either of them made good on their parting pact of showing up at the Vienna train platform six months after their first meeting (Jesse did, Celine didn’t—she was at her grandmother’s funeral.) They also debate on whether they had sex (off camera) in the Vienna park (Jesse argues that they did twice; Celine doesn’t recall it, positing, “Memory is a wonderful thing if you don’t have to deal with the past.”)

All the while, the question “Does anyone change?” lingers in their pauses between conservation; as much as either one would like to deny it, their body language often says otherwise: at different times, one of them tentatively reaches out to touch or comfort the other, only to pull away, sensing the recuperations of such a gesture. They may be recognizable as the Jesse and Celine of the first film, but they’re also noticeably older (especially early on when Linklater silently cuts back to brief shots from the first film) and also perhaps… wiser? Now an environmental activist, Celine’s as impassioned as her younger self, but more caustic, a little angrier and maybe a bit jaded. Jesse, who is married and has a young child is still something of a wanderer/dreamer but he carries with him a newfound pragmatism and stronger sense of maturity compared to his younger self.

Eventually, catching up and small talk gives way to abrupt, messy emotional disclosures. Midway through, Jesse can’t help but moan in resentment and regret at Celine not showing up again in Vienna while she later snaps at him, “I was fine until I read your fucking book!” They each muse on what might have been, realizing that for a small period they both lived in New York City at the same time but never ran into each other (or even sought each other out.) Jesse confesses that his marriage is falling apart (perhaps inspired by Hawke’s then-recent divorce from Uma Thurman) while Celine considers their past, referring to it as “That moment in time that is forever gone.” All the while, tension mounts for the clock is running out—Jesse still has that plane to catch, a fact both of them repeatedly acknowledge, recalculating what diminishing amount of time they have left while also figuring out ways to prolong it. After they hug each other for a presumably final time, Jesse asks his car service to the airport to instead drive him and Celine to her apartment. He then walks her through the building’s vast courtyard to her front door. She invites him inside for a cup of tea; he accepts.

Before Sunset might be one of the most suspenseful romances ever made because it plays out in real time: its eighty minutes covers that exact, unbroken period in the lives of these characters. As much a narrative-driver as the single day was in Before Sunrise, this duration almost feels as if time itself has collapsed since we’re not used to seeing it play out so meticulously. Even more so than the earlier film, this one is composed of long takes as the camera follows and tracks Jesse and Celine’s journey (the late-in-the-day sun-kissed cityscapes add to the overall allure.) Their temporal space, by being fully synced up with our own creates an intense, almost unbearable sense of intimacy, like we’re right there with them accompanying their every move. By the time Jesse and Celine are slowly walking up the stairs to her apartment, the tension is off the charts—it’s exhilarating to watch them take each step wondering how much further they will go together. Actually, how much further can they take this? Jesse still has a plane to catch! (Not to mention a family waiting for him back in America.)

Once inside Celine’s exquisitely bohemian apartment, he asks her to play one tune for him on acoustic guitar (she earlier mentioned that she had been writing songs as a hobby.) She chooses “A Waltz For A Night” which is her side of their story, a three-minute folk/pop song equivalent to Jesse’s novel. Breathily, lovingly, she sings, “I just want another try, I just want another night” before almost coyly adding, “One single night with you, little Jesse / is worth a thousand with anybody,” (the cut to Hawke’s face when she sings “Jesse” is as startled and ebullient as his first view of her at the bookstore.) She makes tea, he puts on a Nina Simone CD. She tells him of when she saw Simone in concert before her death, swaying like her to the music. She says to him, “Baby, you’re going to miss that plane.” He responds, “I know.” No reasonable viewer can wait to see what happens next but wait they must, for the screen fades to black and the end credits roll. When I first saw the film in a theater, the audience let out a reaction that was equal parts relief, bemusement and slight frustration at this ending, but it’s perfection in how it exhibits grace and restraint after all that wish fulfillment tempered by built-up and sustained stimulation and uncertainty. Sure, it could’ve been satisfying to see Jesse and Celine kiss or embrace but here, just the process of their reconnection and how witnessing it playing out in real time makes it feel earned provides what’s needed for their arc to resonate.

I rewatched Before Sunset a year later in a theater as part of a double feature with Before Sunrise but didn’t view it again for another nine years (coincidentally, the same period of time separating the two films.) Now past the age of Celine and Jesse in Before Sunset, the film hit me even harder: that slooow walk up the stairs proved more effective, even when knowing what would happen next. The intimacy established between the two leads was rare in that it seemed to come from a real place rather than a storybook construction. I wanted Jesse and Celine to be together, I saw that they wanted it too but I didn’t know if it would be just for a night or longer than that or even at all. This notion remained true to the spirit of Before Sunrise while enticingly pushing it further—I was offered another mere glimpse into the lives of these two people but this time, the possibilities seemed limitless as the spark was reignited.

Nearly two decades on, as sequels go, Before Sunset remains an anomaly more than a precedent. Some recent film sequels are perfectly respectable: The Incredibles 2, Paddington 2, the John Wick films (haven’t seen any but I suspect many would argue for them.) Once in a blue moon, one will emerge that’s arguably stronger as its predecessor (Cedric Klapisch’s Russian Dolls, which I remember liking more than L’Auberge Espagnole.) However, most sequels still suck or are at the very least an inferior product.

Thus, Linklater, Delpy and Hawke faced a unique challenge when they decided to revisit Jesse and Celine another nine years on in Before Midnight. Without spoiling too much, the film drops in on another specific and brief period of time in the characters’ lives, gradually revealing all that has happened since the ambiguous ending of Before Sunset. It is a thornier film by design, going deep into how time influences perception of self and others and what consequences such familiarity portends. The tone is much different from the first two films without losing sight of who the characters are or obscuring their spirit—there are still lengthy conversations and an exotic setting but also an acknowledgement of early middle-age as a period fully distinct from one’s early thirties or twenties. It also ends on an ambiguous note that could easily serve as an invitation for another sequel or a conclusion.

Although Delpy nixed the idea of a fourth film in 2021 (nine years after the production of Before Midnight), a year later Hawke suggested the potential is still there for the three principals to come together and continue the story. I liked Before Midnight but wouldn’t rate it as highly as Before Sunset—something about the latter’s unexpectedness added so much to its appeal. For a fourth film (maybe After Sunrise?) to work, Linklater, Delpy and Hawke would need to be in sync with an inspired idea that builds on the previous entries, favoring a deepening of the story and not serving as mere fan service. Before Sunset did that brilliantly and as long as sequels aren’t going away, more filmmakers should study it.

Essay #15 of 24 Frames.

Go back to #14: What Time Is It There?

Go ahead to #16: Me And You And Everyone We Know.

We Can Play The Part: Halfway Through 2023

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Below you’ll find many of the usual suspects when it comes to my favorite albums of the year (so far): Jessie Ware’s looser, wilder (and perhaps slapdash by design) follow-up to the best album of 2020, Robert Forster’s song cycle about aging and resilience, Emm Gryner’s triumphant yacht rock-influenced return and Alex Lahey’s long-awaited third full-length. Others I couldn’t have predicted a year ago: Sparks’ most compelling release since 2006’s Hello Young Lovers, Jake Shears back in action with a second solo album that nearly ranks with the best of his former band Scissor Sisters, supergroup Boygenius reemerging with a record that sounds better with each spin and most of all, a reformed Everything But The Girl, 24 years on from Temperamental and it’s like they haven’t missed a day (or a beat.)

New to me is Yves Tumor’s unclassifiable art-pop, their laboriously-titled fifth album stuffed with vivid neo-psychedelia and chewy (if twisted) hooks (see onomatopoeic earworm “Echolalia”.) Nowhere near ready to claim a favorite of these twelve yet, but Christine and the Queens’ ultra-recent triple(!) album is the one I feel has the most room for exploration and growth.

Favorite 2023 Albums So Far (in alphabetical order by artist):

Alex Lahey, The Answer Is Always Yes

Boygenius, The Record

Christine and The Queens, Paranoia, Angels, True Love

Emm Gryner, Business & Pleasure

Everything But The Girl, Fuse

Fever Ray, Radical Romantics

Jake Shears, Last Man Dancing

Jessie Ware, That! Feels Good!

The National, First Two Pages of Frankenstein

Robert Forster, The Candle and The Flame

Sparks, The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte

Yves Tumor, Praise a Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds) 

Rye Lane

So many movies I have yet to see (Asteroid City and Past Lives among them) and a good chunk below are technically 2022 titles that didn’t play Boston or hit streaming until this year (Laura Poitras’ best film to date and Jafar Panahi’s most accomplished in years) or titles I saw at IFF Boston (watch out for Christian Petzold’s amazing Afire.) Perhaps the most obscure title below, Give Me Pity! is the one I’d most encourage people to see, although British rom-com Rye Lane is right there on Hulu and a exquisite way to spend 82 minutes.

Favorite 2023 Films So Far (Alphabetical by title):

Afire

All That Breathes

All The Beauty and the Bloodshed

Give Me Pity!

Godland

Hummingbirds

No Bears

Of An Age

Pacifiction

The Quiet Girl

Return to Seoul

Rye Lane

IFFBoston 2023: 3 Narratives

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Afire

Reviews for the three narrative features I saw at IFFBoston 2023. Go here for reviews of the three documentaries I saw there.

AFIRE

Two young Berliners, Leon (Thomas Schubert), a writer struggling to finish his novel and his friend Felix (Langston Uibel), a photographer, take a trip to a cabin in the woods near the Baltic Sea owned by Felix’s mother. Upon arrival, they discover the cabin’s already been rented to Nadja (Paula Beer), whom they first hear having loud sex in the other bedroom with Devid (Enno Trebs), a hunky lifeguard. As they all get to know each other, Leon’s the only one of the four not having much fun. Easily irritated and often unable to see what’s going on (even when—especially when it’s apparent to everyone else including the viewer), he’s fixated on his book. Meanwhile, persistent wildfires threaten to spread closer to their neck of the woods.

Purportedly the second film in a loose trilogy from writer/director Christian Petzold beginning with 2020’s Undine, this seemingly has little in common with it apart from casting some of the same actors (most notably Beer.) Obviously, this is a “fire” film whereas Undine was a “water” film; however, while the earlier film had some humor threaded throughout its sci-fi/magical realism frame, this one might be Petzold’s most explicitly comedic effort to date. Schubert’s Leon is a bumbling, near-exasperating protagonist, but still a protagonist because he ultimately has a good heart (even if his self-sabotaging behavior often obscures this nature.) His chemistry with Beer is palpable as well, even when it feels like they’re sparring partners. Actually, the whole ensemble is strong, with Uibel and Trebs evolving from second chorus members to the leads in their own story. Matthias Brandt rounds out the cast late in the film as Leon’s older, long-suffering (in multiple senses of the word) editor.

Apart from some ambiguous roughhousing between Leon and Felix, Afire starts off unassumingly, slowly building its relationships and character arcs as the wildfires remain a background threat heard about but only seen via glowing, burnished, distant skies. Like those fires, it’s a slow burn until, all at once, it encompasses everything in its path with dire consequences for some and narrow escapes for others. It’s reminiscent of a Gary Shteyngart novel in that it’s expertly constructed, caustically funny and in the end, tinged with tragedy and the possibility of transformation. Petzold’s built up a noteworthy filmography since 2012’s Barbara and Undine is a dazzling addition to it.

THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS

Pietro and Bruno befriend each other as boys in an isolated region of the Italian Alps. For Pietro and his family, it’s a rustic summer vacation spot, a getaway from Turin; for Bruno, it’s the only home he knows. The boys become close but when Pietro’s family attempts (and fails) to provide Bruno with loftier opportunities, they grow apart. Years later, as adults, they meet again following a death, reconnecting over the construction of a home in the mountains. Over time though, it’s increasingly apparent that the two men are on alternate paths. Their class differences and contrasting approaches to overcoming them inevitably leads towards fractures in their relationship.

This Cannes Jury Prize winner, adapted from a novel and co-directed by the filmmaker of The Broken Circle Breakdown benefits greatly from its natural settings, breathtaking cinematography, evocative sound design and as the adult Pietro, Martin Eden star Luca Marinelli (unrecognizable until he shaves off his beard.) Strip all of this away, however, and you’re left with a standard coming-of-age parable. As the adult Bruno, Alessandro Borghi’s performance is far less dynamic than Marinelli’s and the many bluesy rock songs on its soundtrack by Daniel Norgren blur together before long. Still, some of its set pieces are inspired—the nail-biting mountain hike with the boys and Pietro’s father, the change-of-pace Nepal sequences, the sinister splendor of the Alps in the dead of winter. The Eight Mountains is ostensibly about a friendship but its gradually slanted focus on Pietro’s trajectory rather than Bruno’s is what resonates in the end.

MASTER GARDENER

Paul Schrader has long established a reputation for going there, which is a major component of his sensibility and thus his peculiar appeal. Consequently, his movies work best when centered on a performance that understands how nutso the material is and can bring it across convincingly anyway (definitely Ethan Hawke in First Reformed, not so much Willem Dafoe in Light Sleeper.) As impassioned horticulturist Narval Roth, Australian actor Joel Edgerton is a strong choice because he’s so adept at disappearing into a part. As he did in Loving, he convincingly adopts a specific physical appearance and voice (a plebeian, nearly Noo Yawk accent) that immediately defines his character which makes the eventual reveals about him all the more potent and shocking.

Still, Master Gardener can be more than a little silly and calculated. For a while, after the big reveal occurs, there is a jolt in that it could go in a number of directions. The one it chooses is a redemption-for-an-abhorrent-past narrative, which has been done to death although Edgerton’s commitment to the story and the part does some heavy lifting. Quintessa Swindell is adequate as his young mentee, but as her great-aunt and his employer, Sigourney Weaver is something else: a prickly, wealthy matron out of a classic Hollywood picture that might come off as a caricature without Weaver’s authoritative take on and comfort with the role. Ultimately, it’s her and Edgerton’s presence and ease with being a little nuts keeping Schrader afoot on the tightrope he’s walking (if barely.)

IFFBoston 2023: 3 Documentaries

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Love To Love You, Donna Summer

I saw three documentaries and three narrative features at the 20th(!) Independent Film Festival Boston; here are reviews of the former; check back here in one week for the latter.

LOVE TO LOVE YOU, DONNA SUMMER

She’s rightly remembered as “The Queen of Disco” but even that royal moniker only hints at Donna Summer’s talent and star-power. Blessed with a stellar voice and physical beauty to match, one could assume her success as a singer was also a case of “right time, right place”, adapting to and then defining a dominant musical genre of her era. This documentary, co-directed by her daughter Brooklyn Sudano celebrates Summer but also works diligently to present her as the multifaceted person she was. Most recall her as the woman who orgiastically moaned “Love to Love You Baby” and belted “Last Dance”, but she was also an innovative artist whose contributions to her hit singles and elaborate concept albums far exceeded that primary impression—cue the footage of her vocally coming up with the mechanical electronic rhythm that would define her seminal synth-pop opus “I Feel Love” or the many transformative live performances which she often approached with the meticulousness of a serious actor.

Constructing the film with an extensive assortment of archival footage (both visual and aural), first-time filmmaker Sudano runs the risk of incoherence; at times, the final product does feel a little scattered, stuffing so much content into a feature-length frame. I suspect her co-director, Roger Ross Williams (an Academy Award winner for Life, Animated) provides crucial support in shaping it into a mostly satisfying trajectory. One of their most distinct and effective decisions is to relegate all modern-day interviews to audio only (similar to the recent docuseries 1971: The Year that Music Changed Everything) which keeps the focus laser-sharp on Summer and also preserves the audience firmly in her own time frame (she passed away from lung cancer in 2012.) The only real glimpses of the present are shots of Sudano sifting through all of her mother’s artifacts—less an indulgence than a loose framing device expressing her personal connection to the material.

In the Q&A after this screening, Sudano mentioned that she didn’t want to make a puff piece or a Behind The Music-style overview; the film certainly doesn’t shy away from darker moments of Summer’s life, nor does it gloss over such controversies as her becoming a born-again Christian at the dawn of the 1980s. Also addressed is the backlash she received from the gay community over homophobic song lyrics that spiraled into rumors distressing not only her fanbase but also herself. But that self was alternately (and often simultaneously) a glitzy, commandeering diva, a campy goofball, a devoted but visibly exhausted mother, an introspective wanderer. Similarly, this ambitious, near-exhaustive portrait is a love letter, a critical assessment, a fanciful but also far-reaching collage. Like its subject, it leaves a mark. (Premieres on HBO May 20.)

HUMMINGBIRDS

Best friends Silva and Estefania (nicknamed “Beba”) are two teenagers in Laredo, Texas. They engage in typical activities for their age: hanging out at the convenience store parking lot, sneaking past the gates of vacant or abandoned homes, sitting at the Rio Grande peering across the border to Mexico. Beba, an aspiring musician, is an illegal immigrant, so the view is bittersweet; if she and Silva were to cross the border it would jeopardize her attempts at getting her work papers. The girls’ pro-abortion activism is also poignant once their personal experience regarding it comes into view.

Co-directed by its subjects, Hummingbirds is purposely casual—lackadaisical, even. Sections of it nearly resemble a video diary, yet the subjects rarely break the fourth wall so it’s closer to cinema verité, albeit a self-reflexive take on that non-narrative subgenre. It took me some time to process how substantial this approach actually was (I wasn’t surprised at this screening when two boomers sitting in front of me walked out early on), but I think I get it—anyone can turn a camera on themselves (now more than ever) and call it “art”, but this approach allows one to observe and absorb specifics of community, camaraderie and causes where the personal and political are deeply linked without getting spoon-fed their implications. With considerable candor and charm (and some open-endedness), Silva and Beba could make a sequel in a few years, potentially turning this into their own take on Michael Apted’s Up series if they so desire.

THE ORDER OF THINGS

Watch repair requires a steady hand and infinitesimal patience; this documentary exudes the latter in spades and also requires it from the viewer. Alexandru, a 90-year-old Romanian clock maker, recalls his time as a political prisoner in forced labor camps of that country’s Soviet and Communist regimes. Scenes of him speaking openly about his harrowing past alternate with nearly meditative footage of him at work, a survivor whose old age is positively bucolic compared to what came before. This mostly plays out in lengthy still shots meant to emphasize a sense of place and the value of time being deeply considered rather than glossed over. It’s a beautiful, admirable documentary, but also a challenging one that I had difficulty fully connecting with. It aims for a sense of the sublime but sometimes (such as when it aspires to Jeanne Dielman-like rigidity), it comes off as pretentious.

24 Frames: What Time Is It There?

Chris Kriofske2 Comments

Once streaming video overtook physical media as the primary way to watch movies at home (or (god forbid) on your smartphone), it was no longer unreasonable to think that everything could be available at the touch of a button whether via paid subscription services like Netflix and The Criterion Channel, free-with-ads platforms such as Tubi or FreeVee or not-entirely-legal uploads to YouTube, Vimeo and a horde of other websites. While finally sounding the death knell for movie rental and retail stores, streaming didn’t entirely solve that availability problem. Sure, one no longer had to rely on whether your local Blockbuster had a DVD (or if you’re of a certain age, a VHS tape) of a particular title in stock but easy access is not the same as having access to everything. Twenty-odd years ago, I kept a mental running list of movies to see that either weren’t ever released on home video, out of print, unavailable in the US (i.e. on a format other than NTSC such as PAL) or extremely difficult to find, hoping they would become available to rent and/or buy one day. Off the top of my head, it included John Cassavetes’ final feature Love Streams, Abbas Kiarostami’s Where Is My Friend’s House (and the rest of the Koker Trilogy) and most of Theo Angelopoulos’ work prior to 1989’s Landscapes In The Mist; I still recall the glee and satisfaction with which I purchased my newly-released Criterion Blu-ray of Love Streams in 2014.

A little accessibility breeds expectations for its continuation and advancement. We’ve progressed from an age where you couldn’t own any movies to one where you could rent and/or buy some of them to another teeming with available content. This ability to watch an increasing number of titles whenever you wanted threw into relief the relatively minor amount that you couldn’t. If I could see movie A for free, why not movie B? If I had to pay to see movie B, why wasn’t movie C available at all, even for a price? No matter how far we’ve come in the rough half-century since the invention of the VCR, we are nowhere near this idea of utopian unlimited access even if what we do have presents enough content and choices that most viewers could never possibly run out of stuff to watch.

The casual viewer, on the other hand, may take for granted the current streaming unavailability of titles from Academy Award Best Picture winners (Rebecca) to cult films (Gummo, the original Dawn of the Dead) and even beloved box office hits (Cocoon, for christ’s sake!) In this project, I’ve already tackled titles that I had to access via my own DVD copy (All That Jazz) or on YouTube (To Live). As for What Time Is It There? (2001) by Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang, I’m thankful I held on to the DVD I purchased at a video store’s going-out-of-business sale fifteen years ago since, in addition to currently being unstreamable, the DVD is also long out of print (a better-than-acceptable used copy sells for at least $50 on Amazon), never released on Blu-ray and not uploaded to YouTube (unlike Head or the original version of The Heartbreak Kid, both of which I’ve recently watched on the platform.)

Tsai’s feature debut Rebels Of The Neon God arrived in 1992 but I’d not heard of him (not even in film school) until a decade later. In anticipation of What Time Is It There?, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, then under the expertise of programmer Bo Smith, ran a retrospective of his work. Not knowing too much about Tsai apart from rave reviews of the new film, I chose to start at the beginning. Rebels Of The Neon God concerns a young Taipei man (Lee Kang-sheng, who serves as the protagonist/muse in nearly all the director’s work) who falls in with two juvenile delinquents—a setup straight out of early Godard or a contemporary like Gregg Araki. Unlike those two auteurs, Tsai is far less interested in narrative than texture and atmosphere. Actually, this first feature has relatively more plot than most of his subsequent efforts, although specific themes and motifs one would see throughout his oeuvre are already in place: urban life, loneliness, food, sex and, perhaps more so than any other auteur, water in all of its forms (and sounds.)

Rebels Of The Neon God

I detected similarity but also a great advance between Rebels Of The Neon God and What Time Is It There? and viewed his other three features to date within the next few months: Vive L’Amour (1994), an advance over its predecessor while further eschewing such elements as “plot” or having a score, even; The River (1997) of which What Time Is It There? might be loosely interpreted as a sequel; and The Hole (1998), something of an outlier in that it interrupts Tsai’s usual urban ennui with the occasional colorful and deliberately campy (and overtly lip-synched) musical number. I’ve revisited most of these in the past few years (save The River, also unstreamable/out of print) and can detect a developmental through line of Tsai becoming progressively more minimal and sparser (save the occasional musical, like 2005’s The Wayward Cloud) with each film.

As a caveat, Tsai’s movies are not for everyone. I once likened his unique and deliberate approach to that of silent-era slapstick only slooooowed all the way down as much as possible before turning into complete stasis or a freeze-frame. While one of the chief devotees of what could be called “slow” cinema (along with Andrei Tarkovsky and Bela Tarr), things do happen in his films, often recognizable activities that we partake of offscreen: eating, sleeping, fucking, selling wares, watching movies, sitting in a public space, etc. And yet, most other filmmakers do not give these ordinary actions such raptly held attention or focus. Stray Dogs (2013), for instance contains an infamous shot of one of its characters in close-up meticulously eating a chicken dinner for what seems like infinity—an extreme example in Tsai’s filmography for sure, but not an atypical one (especially in his later work.)

Revisiting What Time Is It There? for the first time in nearly two decades, even I took some time to fully adjust to its unusual rhythms. It begins with a seemingly endless single shot of Lee’s aged father (Miao Tien) in his apartment. He slowly sits down at a kitchen table, lights a cigarette, stands up, calls out “Kang!”, sits back down, gets up again and walks down a hallway to a laundry room at the far rear of the frame. As usual with Tsai, the camera remains entirely static. It feels almost as unassuming as a Warhol screen test or a piece of stock footage nearly resembling Ed Wood’s silent B-reel of Bela Lugosi leaving his house that was inserted into Plan 9 From Outer Space to make good on the notion that the now-deceased actor “starred” in the film.

In the next scene, Lee rides in the backseat of a car with a veiled object sitting upright in his lap. He says, “Dad, we’re going through the tunnel; you have to follow us, okay?”, although we see no other passengers. Those familiar with Buddhist customs will recognize the object as his father’s urn and the other things he’s holding onto as traditional implements of bereavement. For those who are not (like me), the following scene at a mausoleum clarifies his dad’s death. From that moment, What Time Is It There? establishes itself as a film partially about grief and the different ways its characters process it. Lee’s mother expresses it forthright: per her faith, she fervently believes her husband will return in another form such as one of her pet fish housed in aquarium that Tsai often places towards the front of the frame. She’s increasingly superstitious about his return, laying out food at the dinner table for him to consume and later obsessively covering up all the windows and cutting the electricity because “he prefers the dark” (even though, as her son argues with her, the fish will die in their tank without power.)

Lee’s approach to mourning is more difficult to parse. The persona Tsai crafts for him throughout the director’s oeuvre is that of a stone-faced onlooker, like a more passive Buster Keaton (perhaps without the acrobatic comic timing.) Initially, his grief doesn’t seem outwardly apparent at all except through quirky acts of behavior such as repeatedly urinating into a plastic bag or a water bottle in his bedroom rather than using the bathroom (no concrete reason is given for this as far as I can determine.) He makes his living selling wristwatches, often standing on the street with a giant open suitcase of his merchandise, repeatedly and almost robotically banging a single watch against the metal railing behind him to draw attention. After much haggling with a young woman (Chen Shiang-chyi) over his personal wristwatch (which belonged to his father), he agrees to sell her it after she discloses she’s about to take a trip to Paris.

From there, the film alternates scenes of Lee in Taipei with those of Chen in Paris with the watch serving as a psychic connection between the two. Lee seems to believe his father’s spirit partially remains within the watch and obsesses over it and the country Chen has taken it to. He calls Information to ask the film’s titular question (re: Paris) and buys and repeatedly views a bootleg copy of The 400 Blows, Francois Truffaut’s landmark 1959 French New Wave film. Meanwhile, Chen wanders around Paris alone, an outsider in a land where she doesn’t speak the language. At one point, Tsai frames her on a busy moving walkway as the only figure standing still. Later, at a cemetery, she sits down a bench next to a middle-aged man who happens to be Jean Pierre-Leaud (the child star of The 400 Blows), though this fact is lost on her.

Jean-Pierre Leaud and Chen Shiang-chyi

Time itself becomes a motif. In addition to Lee’s profession as a street watch salesperson and the brick-and-mortar clock store that employs him, various timepieces appear throughout the film. In one sequence, he steals a clock right off the wall of a cinema’s hallway, placing it on the seat next to him inside a theater (what the stocky, bespectacled young man silently pursuing Lee does with that clock after he steals it from him leads to one of the film’s funniest sight gags.) In another scene, he sits in what appears to be a mall at a fountain which contains a giant water wheel forever unhurriedly revolving like a clock. Later, he ends up in some sort of room (maybe a security booth?) with a menagerie of clocks both analog and digital and later still, on the balcony of a tall building manually trying to adjust (with long tongs) the hands of the clock below him on its façade.

Tsai often sidesteps Taipei’s more traditional, tourism-friendly urban landscapes for liminal spaces such as that security booth packed with clocks or the backseat of a parked, possibly abandoned car. Chen’s Parisian vacation is full of these as well: endless subway corridors and platforms, a phonebooth where with futility she attempts a conversation as a man in the adjacent booth keeps yelling obscenities into his receiver, a miniscule, red-tiled bathroom where she vomits up her dinner. Tsai renders worlds as they are (unglamorous, run-down, often grime-encased) but does so within artful, meticulously composed frames. His lengthy, static shots begin to feel like living paintings—for those receptive to such stillness, it can be like sitting on a bench or standing next to a wall, simply observing life play out before one’s own eyes no matter how little (or how much) action occurs.

Combined with a heightened sound design which doesn’t have a musical score but emphasizes such ambience as traffic noise and trickling water, What Time Is It There? invites one to extensively take in an environment rather than lose oneself in a story—which is not to say it’s all just visual and aural wallpaper. The film slowly reaches its climax as all three of its principal characters engage in some sort of sexual activity. Chen attempts a one-night stand with a female traveler from Hong Kong who walked in on her vomiting in the red-tiled bathroom; Lee fucks a female prostitute who stumbles by him as he’s camped out in the abandoned car drinking wine and eating some sort of meat on a stick; Lee’s mother, meanwhile, puts on a fancy dress at home and, for lack of a better term, “gets intimate” with the urn full of her husband’s ashes.

None of these encounters have a particularly happy ending (so to speak.) Chen fails to find much of a connection with the Hong Kong woman and leaves the hotel disappointed. The prostitute absconds with Lee’s suitcase of wristwatches, sneaking away before he awakens. When he arrives home, Lee finds his mother in bed holding the urn, unresponsive. She’s obscured by camera to a degree where it’s indeterminable whether she’s dead or just sleeping—Lee just silently climbs into the bed, embraces her and that’s the last we see of either of them. However, the film concludes in Paris. As Chen falls asleep on a lounge chair in a park next to a lagoon, a familiar suitcase last seen escaping an abandoned vehicle floats by her only to be retrieved from the water with an umbrella handle held by a man whom the camera gradually pans up to reveal as Lee’s father. He walks away from the lagoon with the suitcase in hand; standing and facing the camera, Tsai reveals a giant Ferris wheel behind him: it’s another clock-like figure, perhaps the grandest one so far. Lee’s dad turns around and walks beatifically in its direction. The screen turns to black with the director’s dedication, “To my father and Lee Kang-sheng’s father.”

This is a film not just concerned with time as a concept but also as an experience and how it is fleeting and, for us as individuals, finite. Tidy as its recurring, symmetrical imagery is, its rigor, combined with its minimalist, understated, almost meditative demeanor renders What Time Is It There? one of Tsai’s most accomplished, satisfying and original works. So, twenty years on, why is it difficult to see? One can currently stream his follow-up (and arguably far more challenging) feature Goodbye Dragon Inn (2003), along with later efforts such as Stray Dogs and Days (2020). Quality and critical acclaim, however, are rarely decisive factors in regard to availability. Both the theatrical and home video distributors for What Time Is It There? are long defunct and have been acquired by other corporations. It’s unclear who currently holds the rights to the film which is most likely the reason why one can’t stream, rent or even buy it for a reasonable price. Perhaps in another year or five, a reputable distributor such as Criterion will acquire them (as they did with Love Streams) and audiences will rediscover the film. It happened to What Happened Was… (1994), a long-lost indie hit of its time that received a theatrical re-release a few years ago and eventually made its way to streaming platforms despite never having been released on DVD. For now, What Time Is It There? remains but one of many currently “lost” titles that we can only hope will find a new audience when it can be easily seen again.

Essay #14 of 24 Frames.

Go back to #13: The Royal Tenenbaums.

Go ahead to #15: Before Sunset.

Give Me Pity!

Chris KriofskeLeave a comment
Going straight to your heart on demand!

Cheerfully billed as “A Saturday Night Television Special” starring Sissy St. Claire (Sophie von Haselberg), writer/director Amanda Kramer’s film may feel as if it’s beaming in from another planet to those unfamiliar with 1970s/80s variety shows. Devotees of camp classics such as Donny and Marie, The Lynda Carter Special or the finale of Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz will recognize all the genre tropes being lovingly replicated and satirized but even they might feel bewildered (or perhaps transported) by the dark interior spaces an increasingly taxed and frayed Sissy inhabits.

Kramer understands that if you’re going to make a feature-length pastiche, pinpoint accuracy is required. Not only does she shoot on smeary video in the classic 1:33 analog format, stylistically, she replicates everything of the era from the sequined clothing, elaborate wigs, neon colors and piercing lasers to the requisite hanging mirrorball, vintage-looking graphics and Donna Summer-worthy disco anthems including the title track and “Making It” (not a David Naughton cover.) If she left it at that, it would be nothing more than an elaborate tribute to an ultra-specific type of entertainment from a bygone era. However, as with last year’s Please Baby Please, a 1950s-set mashup of West Side Story-style bohemia and genderqueer studies starring Andrea Riseborough (!), this pushes the viewer much further than that.

Not even a few minutes in, Sissy literally faces her demon(s) while the screen glitches and distorts and continues to do so intermittently. Effervescent and hungry for attention, she seems to shrug it off at first, for the show must go on and she’s made it clear she’s giving it her all. As the special moves from one titled set piece to another (“The America Number” answers the question, “What if Laurie Anderson had been given one of these specials circa ‘O Superman’”?), we see the implications and consequences of this. Touches of surrealism such as a literally faceless psychic and an interpretive death-dance with a nurse that climaxes with Sissy declaring, “You will never, never, ever, ever have your own television special, so don’t even DARE to DREAM!” add to the disorientation, burrowing deeper into madness. But you can’t stop ever-resilient Sissy who is dead set on triumphing, even if it means nearly losing what’s left of her sanity while delivering an epic, climactic monologue about a defining, near-traumatic childhood memory and how it made her who she is today.

Whereas Please Baby Please, while fabulous, occasionally muddles its intentions with its many intellectual diversions, this firmly retains its focus (being just 79 minutes helps.) Von Haselberg’s casting is especially inspired—I didn’t even know who her famous mother (someone who might’ve starred in a special like this back in the day) was until afterwards; it’s the type of role that could make her career if it wasn’t such a genuinely strange little film. Regardless, as we get to know Sissy (who appears in nearly every frame) rather intimately, Give Me Pity! gradually transcends its premise, revealing layer after layer of everything that goes into a performance and the toll it can take on the performer’s psyche.

24 Frames: The Royal Tenenbaums

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Pauline Kael rarely saw a movie more than once. Even near the end of her life, long after her tenure as film critic at The New Yorker, she remarked, “I still don’t look at movies twice. It’s funny, I just feel I got it the first time.” While Kael’s quirk is a notorious one, it’s to some extent explicable given that she spent most of her career pre-home video. Apart from theatrical releases or even private screenings, she had limited access to rewatching a title, at least compared to today’s wealth of viewing options. Yet even with them, of the thousands of films I’ve seen over the past three decades, there’s at least half, maybe even two-thirds that I’ll likely never rewatch or want to revisit. After all, if I limited myself to first-time watches, I’d never run out of new things to see.

Still, a world where I never again returned to Mulholland Drive, Beau Travail or Young Frankenstein holds little appeal. I acknowledge that films (and, for that matter, books and episodic television series) require a heftier time commitment than a favorite piece of music. I can prepare for an essay on an album by listening to it four or five times over the course of a day; for one on a film like 2001: A Space Odyssey, however, I’d need to put at least 10-15 hours for an equivalent experience. As a visual medium, movies require closer concentration. Unless you literally know one by heart, you arguably can’t put it on in the background and absorb it while attending to other tasks as you could with any piece of music from Abbey Road to ABBA Gold.

I’ll often rewatch a movie for one of three reasons: it’s playing theatrically, available for streaming or just simply one of my favorite films. Accessibility plays a key role here but so do other factors. Is it something I’d love to see on a cinema’s big screen given the opportunity? Do I revisit it because I haven’t watched it in decades and want to see how well it holds up (or not)? Has the film been in my thoughts for whatever reason (for instance, having read a web article or a social media post about it), or is it something I love to rewatch because it gives me joy, no matter how many times I view it? 

Particularly in the pre-streaming age, this last reason was my most common for wanting to see a film again (and in some cases, again and again.) When my family acquired our first VCR in 1985, we soon accumulated a cabinet overflowing with recorded VHS tapes of favorite movies and TV shows I’d watch repeatedly, from childhood favorites like Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown to movies such as Monty Python and The Holy Grail and dozens of episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I replayed some more than others but the novelty and attraction of having a permanent record of something I loved to watch whenever I wanted (often for the price of a blank tape) was considerable. Even later on, when VHS tapes largely became priced-to-own (instead of priced-to-rent), for comparatively little money one could proudly curate a collection of favorite titles akin to having shelves of CDs or stacks of vinyl.

1999, Left to Right: Cassettes, books, videotapes (and a few records…)

Beyond accessibility or convenience, that “it” factor which draws us repeatedly to a particular work of art is harder to pinpoint. I may as well have watched Trainspotting over a dozen times because I owned it on VHS (and later, DVD) but I didn’t just watch it because it was there. Something in it beckoned me to want to see it again and again because I got something out of it (and in most cases, something different) each time. I’ve revisited films that don’t hold up to subsequent viewings—La La Land is a good recent example. While I appreciated its invention  and audacity the first time through, after rewatching it ten days later with my family, my first thought leaving the cinema was, “Well, I never need to see that again.” In this case, the novelty had worn off, enabling me to see the film’s flaws more clearly. Luckily, most rewatches are worth the time and effort, even if they all can’t be as continuously rewarding as Trainspotting which took me a few run-throughs to fully comprehend the deeper, often ironic implications beneath all the flash and fury of its editing, music and performances.

There’s also comfort in returning to favorite works of art. While as a well-rounded film critic I strive to seek out titles I haven’t seen before (both new and old), I return to specific ones because their familiarity provides solace, often for various reasons. I’ll rewatch some films as a tradition in celebrating a particular season like Christmas or Halloween (for years, the latter wasn’t complete without a viewing of Dario Argento’s Suspiria or the Bela Lugosi Dracula.) Others I’ll put on when I’m in a particular mood: Bringing Up Baby for screwball comedy, Back To The Future for 1980s escapism, Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls for psychedelic, counterculture exploitation. What pleasure I find in these films is, like any work of art, entirely subjective; for instance, Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant together never fail to make me laugh (which is why I also adore Holiday), the Robert Zemeckis film came out when I was 10 and had a formative impact on me at the time and the Russ Meyers-directed, Roger Ebert-scripted film is so gloriously bonkers that watching it is never less than a blast.

Rarer than isolated titles lending themselves to multiple viewings are those entire oeuvres of a particular filmmaker that do so. Naturally, I’ve revisited many works by some of my favorite directors from Robert Altman to Claire Denis. Over time, Wes Anderson has proven something of an ideal in this regard. Most of his films hold up to additional viewings because, so densely are they packed with insane attention-to-detail production design and such complex, shifting tones that I get more out of them each time. I’ve grown accustomed to giving Wes the benefit of the doubt if I’m initially underwhelmed by one of his pictures—The Grand Budapest Hotel, for example, struck me as nothing more than a solid addition to his canon when it came out in 2014 and became his highest-grossing film to date. Revisiting it seven years later, I found it exceptionally moving to a degree I hadn’t previously, marveling at its tenderness for a lost, presumed world rather than just admiring the intricate fantasy world it had presented.

Like most people my age or older, Anderson’s second feature Rushmore was the first one I saw during its early 1999 theatrical run (his first, 1996’s Bottle Rocket got such a limited release that I hadn’t even heard of it.) The first film of his I revisited, however, was his third. Stoked by my love of Rushmore, I prioritized seeing The Royal Tenenbaums like no other new release in December 2001. After that first screening at the AMC Fenway in Boston, I thought it was… fine. I placed it at #7 on my annual top ten list; in my journal, I praised its set design, soundtrack and some of its cast but also thought that “it made little advance” on the “visionary”(!) Rushmore. So, not a failure or outright disappointment but apparently not as impactful as Waking Life (my #1 film of that year at the time), Memento (#2) or In The Mood For Love(#3).

The Young Tenenbaums

Flash forward seven months to a particularly taxing summer. Just about shellshocked by the rough (if necessary) end of a long-term relationship, I sought comfort wherever I could find it. During a week-long “staycation” from work, on a whim, I rented the newly-released Criterion Collection DVD of The Royal Tenenbaums. After this rewatch, I wrote, “I found it more affecting the second time: once you know to expect the sensory overload and stylistic quirks that threaten to turn too brittle or clever, you’re left with a literary jewel of a film that makes the most of Rushmore’s best qualities.” It wasn’t long before I purchased my own copy—while the Criterion Collection was mostly beyond my price-range at that point, Anderson had made a deal with the distributor to issue the film at a lower price point for consumers.

As autumn beckoned, I kept returning to my The Royal Tenenbaums DVD. My 19”, late 1980s-model TV probably didn’t provide as robust a viewing experience as a big cinema screen would have, but in this case, Anderson’s carefully packed mise-en-scène felt reassuring rather than overwhelming. For instance, take the bravura opening sequence. Accompanied by a swelling, then soaring instrumental version of The Beatles’ “Hey Jude” and wistful voiceover narration (from a rarely better Alec Baldwin), it provided succinct but revealing mini-portraits of each member of the Tenenbaum family as it toured 111 Archer Avenue, their enormous, meticulously designed New York brownstone (as much of a character as its inhabitants), informing us of their rise, decline and subsequent fracture, all in the space of a few minutes.

From there, the story picks up twenty-two years later. Banished and broke patriarch Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) longs to “make up for lost time” with the family he neglected, only to discover how much everyone has changed. His estranged wife, archaeologist Etheline (Anjelica Huston) is now engaged to Henry Sherman (Danny Glover), a respectable accountant—he’s “everything Royal is not,” (as Royal himself notes late in the film.) Uptight, eldest son Chas (Ben Stiller) is an entrepreneur traumatized over the recent death of his wife. Overprotective of his two pint-sized-versions-of-himself sons, Ari and Uzi, he moves them back into the Tenenbaum home. Adopted, eternally disaffected middle child Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow), a failed playwright, and shattered youngest son Richie (Luke Wilson), a former tennis pro, also return. Margot is stuck in a loveless marriage to psychologist Raleigh St. Clair (a somewhat dour Bill Murray) and is cheating on him with Richie’s childhood friend, novelist Eli Cash (Owen Wilson), while Richie is secretly in love with her. With the aid of butler/sidekick Pagoda (Kumar Pallana), Royal schemes to return to 111 Archer Avenue and win back everyone he’s alienated.

The film weaves together a tapestry exploring familial relations made relatable by Anderson’s quirky but ultimately compassionate sensibility. Structured like a novel (the opening shot imagines the film as a well-worn book being checked out of the library) and divided into chapters, it’s also bursting at the seams with literary references and allusions. For instance, most of the characters have either written books (from Margot’s plays to Henry’s Accounting For Everything) or, in Richie’s case, have appeared on a magazine cover. The film’s design also suggests a comic strip come to life (it’s no coincidence that the Peanuts standard “Christmas Time Is Here” plays in a scene having nothing to do with that holiday.) Virtually every character is cloaked a requisite costume of sorts that rarely changes throughout: Richie’s tennis shirt and headband, Henry’s blue blazer and bow tie, Chas’ red Adidas track suit and the identical, miniature versions his sons wear. The immaculately storyboarded interior sets with their deep pink walls and insane attention to detail (the childhood drawings on Richie’s bedroom walls (created by Anderson’s brother Eric), the walk-in closet overflowing with board games) are also obviously exaggerated. Many shots even feature someone tightly framed through a window, peering at the outside world.

Royal ponders his future.

Although it had a relatively large budget (twice that of Rushmore), a high-profile ensemble cast (supposedly, Hackman’s and Huston’s parts were written with them in mind) and a far wider, more ambitious scope, it was, at that time, still instantly recognizable as a Wes Anderson film.  Like the previous two, it featured credits entirely done in Futura Bold typeface, a whimsical musical score from former Devo member Mark Mothersbaugh, Anderson stock players such as Pallana, Seymour Cassel (as Dusty, the elevator operator-cum-doctor) and Andrew Wilson (Luke and Owen’s older brother), a cameo from the director himself (as the tennis announcer) and a final, reflective shot that’s filmed in slow-motion. Viewers could also look out for various motifs and in-jokes: the number of Tenenbaums wearing a piece of pale pink clothing at any given moment, the particular instrument on the soundtrack most prominent during Margot’s scenes, the cameo appearance (as a paramedic) by one Brian Tenenbaum, a real-life college friend of Anderson’s.

For all its self-aware cleverness, off-the-wall sight gags, and excessive stylization, The Royal Tenenbaums is really a sweet, rather poignant film that resonates more profoundly with each viewing. Once you’ve absorbed such showy (but dazzling) moments as a detective’s clipped rundown to Raleigh and Richie of Margot’s past loves (furiously edited to The Ramones’ “Judy is a Punk”), you’re left with essentially a kindhearted (if occasionally side-splitting) tale of redemption. Marvel at the brilliant long take where Royal tells Etheline he’s dying and note how Huston’s reaction continually shifts from disgust and surprise to concern, grief and rage without missing a beat. Observe how Anderson often tempers melancholy with hilarity without obscuring either tone (e.g., the Gypsy Cab that appears just in time as Margot walks out on Raleigh.) Pay attention to subtle details like how Royal finally refers to Margot not as “my adopted daughter”, but simply, “my daughter” in the ice cream parlor. Take in the “Sparkplug Minuet” scene late in the film, where the camera tracks from one group of characters to another along the street outside 111 Archer Avenue and notice the obvious affection and care Anderson has for each of them. At one point, poor, yearning, forever-the-outsider Eli gently says, “I always wanted to be a Tenenbaum.” Royal replies (mostly to himself), “Me, too,” and you just want to join him in unison.

I pause to think what life would be like had I emulated Kael and never bothered to give The Royal Tenenbaums (or anything else) a second viewing. I might remember it fondly the way I do, say, In The Bedroom or The Man Who Wasn’t There (to name two other films from that time I’ve never rewatched.) If I hadn’t seen it again, perhaps I wouldn’t have given subsequent Anderson films like the aforementioned The Grand Budapest Hotel or Tenenbaums’ even more ambitious and widely misunderstood follow-up The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004) a second chance. With the exception of his most recent work (2020’s The French Dispatch), I’ve seen all of Anderson’s movies more than once and each rewatch has yielded similar results. Tenenbaums remains my favorite, perhaps due to when I saw it and that process of being able to see deeper into it on additional viewings, but he has other works that come close, like Grand Budapest, 2012’s Moonrise Kingdom and of course Rushmore, forever his breakthrough film.

We revisit works for the pleasure they provide. Occasionally, we also have a sixth sense, an inclination that there’s more to glean from them than we can discern from a single viewing. The best films (and books, and albums etc.) are ones that gradually insert themselves into our lives and by extension, our subconsciousness. Their dialogue, visual design, narratives and richly-drawn characters become part of us whether, in this case, we identify more strongly with well-meaning asshole Royal or guilt-ridden, tortured Richie. Revisit them enough and they become touchstones raising the bar for what we expect and hope from every new (and in some cases, old) movie we watch.

Essay #13 of 24 Frames.

Go back to #12: Mulholland Drive.

Go ahead to #14: What Time Is It There?

Favorite Films of 2022

Chris KriofskeLeave a comment

1. AFTERSUN

A few nights after viewing this, I was still piecing it together—less in terms of logistics than taking in all the shifting perspectives, recurring images, ambiguous tones and sustained feeling of drifting in and out of consciousness. Then again, I like movies that are somewhat unknowable. I retain and reflect on the experience of watching this more than anything else I’ve seen in some time. Charlotte Wells’ debut feature is less a key for a lock than an open door into another way of seeing. Also, Paul Mescal proves that his breakthrough performance in NORMAL PEOPLE was just an inkling of things to come.

2. TÁR

A great film, and writer/director Todd Field and star Cate Blanchett seem to know it; such air would normally be off-putting, but the fluidity and grace with which the whole thing moves (acrobatic sound design and all) reminds me of something like Kenneth Lonergan’s MARGARET but minus that film’s pretensions towards greatness, or perhaps everything comes together so convincingly that it doesn’t matter. A pitch-black comedy in prestige drama clothing, TÁR is sui generis, nearly as entertaining as Paul Thomas Anderson and as enigmatic as Kubrick. 158 minutes have rarely passed by so swiftly.

3. AFTER YANG

I recently wrote something about falling in love with a film over its opening credits, and I think this one is a contender. A tad more accessible and also genre-defying than director Kogonada’s last film COLUMBUS without lessening the qualities that made it unique, it’s science fiction without walls, exploring artifice and memory and what it could look like if the two would ever intersect. Also, I want to feel as passionate about and satiated by something as Colin Farrell’s character (his best work since THE LOBSTER, though see also #11 below) is with regards to tea. 

4. MEMORIA

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s first film outside of Asia (and follow-up to my favorite film of the last decade) is no less experimental than his previous work, thank god. Tilda Swinton’s been an expertly intuitive reactor since her Derek Jarman days, and this might be her most fascinating performance in some time for how she simultaneously commands the screen and also fades into it. I found this fascinating (if equally confounding) after my first viewing; it made somewhat more sense after a second viewing but remained, like everything else the director has done, slow, perplexing, surprising and one-of-a-kind.

5. A LOVE SONG

Her weathered face, Tennessee accent and general moxie has relegated Dale Dickey to smaller, supporting parts (most notably WINTER’S BONE); here, she’s as earthy and tenacious as you’d expect, but this tailor-made leading role allows her to exhibit much more vulnerability and warmth than usual. Furthermore, writer/director Max Walker-Silverman’s gem of a first feature gradually reveals itself as a film about time and loss, the need for connection and the benefit of perseverance and finding strength within. Although Dickey’s character doesn’t stray far from where she’s anchored her trailer, she goes on a considerable journey of the soul.

6. DRIVE MY CAR

Despite all the awards it received last year, I’m counting this as a 2022 film since it didn’t screen or stream here until then. The allure of this bold if leisurely paced Murakami adaptation is that you don’t necessarily know where it’s going, but when it gets there, the impact is staggering without seeming showy or unearned. I first saw it last March and am still looking forward to carving out another three hours to watch it again.

7. THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER

Call it the year of Tilda Swinton, I guess, or call this Joanna Hogg’s THE PARENT TRAP, only Swinton plays mother and daughter instead of twins, the genre’s gothic/psychological horror (set at an equally creepy/charming old British estate/hotel) rather than Disney rom-com, and the dog (Swinton’s own pet!) gets fourth billing. Also the third of a trilogy (which includes THE SOUVENIR, PART II (see below)) and possibly the best of the three.

8. WOMEN TALKING

Mostly meeting my ridiculously high expectations for it, Sarah Polley’s return to filmmaking is both of the moment and seemingly timeless. Though the story occasionally oversteps and the final section drags a bit, those are minor complaints: here, Polley depicts a world contained to the point of being restrictive; with great catharsis and reasoning, the film shows with artful clarity why this is damaging and what future generations can do to avoid succumbing to such a closed-off, incomplete life.

9. BENEDICTION

Terence Davies’ portrait of World War I soldier/poet Siegfried Sassoon is as unique as you’d expect from the director; what I wasn’t expecting was something more akin to his early masterworks like THE LONG DAY CLOSES than anything he’s done since. Along with his other recent poet biopic about Emily Dickinson, Davies is clearly on a late-career high with this, his most deliciously bitchy film to date (and it doesn’t even have Laura Linney in it.) 

10. PETIT MAMAN

Celine Sciamma follows her most acclaimed work (PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE, already placing high in this decade’s Sight and Sound poll) with a deceptively simple fantasy about memory and motherhood that ends up one of her more conceptually ambitious films. As usual, she builds a fully realized world built out of a few essential components, only this time with a playfulness-bordering-on-whimsy that’s difficult to pull off (but rest assured, she does.)

11. THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN

Makes a lasting impact for the striking, evocative landscapes, the performances and the confirmation that an isolated place, no matter how striking or evocative can be heaven for a few days and deadening for an eternity.

12. GIRL PICTURE

An immensely likable Finnish indie dramedy which portrays female teen relationships with a genuineness that’s instantly winning—up there with the likes of OUR SONG and GHOST WORLD (though far sweeter and less acerbic.) 

13. THE DOG WHO WOULDN’T BE QUIET

“You’ll be fine, it will pass, you’ll get used it,” our protagonist is dutifully told in this purposely disorienting but intriguing, unclassifiable reverie from Argentinian director Ana Katz.

14. STRAWBERRY MANSION

Set in a near-future where dreams are taxed by the government, I knew I adored this film about ten minutes in when the title card appeared (let’s just say it involves an ice cream cone.) 

15. ALI & AVA

From the director of THE ARBOR, it has a good beat and you can dance to it (to quote American Bandstand.) Also gratifying to see Adeel Akhtar and Claire Rushbrook cast as unconventional romantic leads.

16. THE CATHEDRAL

A sort of autobiography relayed in carefully chosen fragments, it plays like BOYHOOD condensed to ninety minutes but with four different actors instead of one (because it wasn’t shot over a dozen years.)

17. GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY

Rian Johnson can make as many of these as he likes as long as he keeps assembling dynamite casts and giving Daniel Craig-as-Benoit Blanc phrases to drawl like “Jared Leto’s Hard Kombucha.”

18. THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD

Divided into a very Godard-ian twelve chapters with a prologue and epilogue, Joachim Trier’s latest plays with form and genre; it also verges on precious at times only to always snap back into sharp focus.

19. PETER VON KANT

This is how you remake Fassbinder: cast a boisterous lead (Denis Menochet) who could play him in a biopic and include a glorious running sight gag like poor, dear, silent slave-twink Karl (Stefan Crepon).

20. EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

Unlike SWISS ARMY MAN, this is silliness I can fully abide, thanks to Michelle Yeoh and the rest of its glorious weirdo ensemble. Nearly a BEING JOHN MALKOVICH for the internet age of info-overload.

EO

ALSO RECOMMENDED:

AHED’S KNEE

ANNE AT 13,000 FEET

BROKER

COMPARTMENT NO. 6

DECISION TO LEAVE

DESCENDANT

EO

FIRE OF LOVE

GIRL TALK

GREAT FREEDOM

HIT THE ROAD

LAST FLIGHT HOME

OFFICIAL COMPETITION

PLAYGROUND

THE SOUVENIR, PART II

SR.

ZERO FUCKS GIVEN