Film Movement Movie Review: Final Set (2021)

Opens Virtually & in NYC on 8/27

“If you'd won quicker, you'd suffer less.”

 
Watching her son, thirty-something professional tennis player Thomas Edison (Alex Lutz) apply an ice pack to his knee during dinner, Judith (Kristin Scott Thomas) can't help but ask, “why lose the first set?”

 
Having helped propel Thomas to early greatness as a young prodigy, Judith struggles to remove her coaching hat to support her son the way that a typical mother would. Coming from a place of not only criticism but also love – because to care for Thomas and the knee he'd had operated on multiple times in the past is to question why he still feels the need to try to compete against the top players of the world at his age – to say that their relationship is complicated would be an understatement. But understating it is precisely what makes their dynamic and everything else in French writer-director Quentin Reynaud's “Final Set” so real and compelling.

 
Minimal and precise, the dialogue between not only Thomas and Judith but also Thomas and his loving, supportive, but equally conflicted wife Eve (Ana Girardot) is spare throughout the work which boasts a quasi-documentary feel. Yet, delivered by this exceptional group of actors who can say so much with a look or tone, we feel the weight of one’s meaning even though the English subtitled lines are spoken in French. In fact, generating a great deal of conflict and depth from these micro-moments, it's a film where those inquisitive looks over dinner or cautious actions – even the way one character packs or carries a tennis bag – speak louder than words.

From the Australian Open in January to the ATP finals for the highest-ranked male players in November, tennis, more than most sports, is essentially played for eleven months out of the year. Unfortunately, with a ranking of 245, which is a far cry from the great hope he was supposed to be twenty years earlier when he choked during a grand slam, Thomas' respectable but still low stats keep him out of most major tournaments, which cater only to the top players in the sport. 

And while he would prefer to enter every competition he can, his wife – a former player herself who now handles the behind-the-scenes business decisions – has to gently remind her husband that when you subtract the travel, food, and lodging costs, far too often, the actual winnings from some of these events don't justify the expense. Supplementing the income he barely receives from matches he's allowed to enter by working as a children's coach at his mother's tennis club, while everyone around him is waiting for him to hang up his racket or join the over thirty-five tour, Thomas decides to make one last stand at Roland Garros.

 
Otherwise known as the French Open, at Roland Garros, tennis is played on courts of famous red clay where the surface of the terrain not only sticks to a player's shoes, socks, legs, clothes, and arms if they take a nasty fall, but as legends like Andre Agassi and Roger Federer are first to admit, it's also sheer hell on the knees. And if it's hard on those joints at any age, you know it's destined to be agony for Thomas whose prominent knee surgery scars, arthritis, ligament lesions, and osteoarthritis are shown and discussed within the first five minutes of Reynaud's movie.

Nonetheless, knowing he doesn't have a lot of time left but not quite ready to follow in his wife's footsteps and train for another career because – despite being a husband and father – a life outside of tennis isn't something he's ever considered, Thomas decides to make a run at the Open by playing several brutal rounds as a qualifier. Facing other players not lucky enough to get in via wild card or ranked highly enough, even though his wife Eve tells him to “have fun” before he leaves for a match, we know that for the serious Thomas, fun doesn't really enter the equation. No, in this quixotic, underdog run, it's just about determination, desperation, and the work.

Drawing a parallel throughout to a cocky, young, but exceptionally gifted seventeen-year-old phenom on the rise (played by real pro player Jürgen Briand), who even Eve admits reminds her of her husband, obviously, you know that eventually, the two men will have to square off at some point to achieve the dramatic potential of Thomas “playing himself” in “Final Set.” Still, it's in the authenticity of the film's battle to that battle – and particularly the amount of regret, guilt, excitement, frustration, and pain of both the past and present that flood our main ensemble from start to finish – that makes this film feel like something beyond just your typical inspirational sports drama.

 
Furthermore, the time that Reynaud takes off the court and how much trust he puts into this excellent trio of actors (with once again, Scott Thomas doing some of her best work both later in life and in French) makes his bold decision to spend the film's final twenty-five minutes on the court so incredibly effective. Set during a showdown between the two pros at different points in their life, Reynaud goes right for the greatest hits of dramatic tennis. 

Zeroing in on a five-set grand slam match between a David and a Goliath, which features a never-ending deuce, racket smashes, cramps, long rallies, and more, the film achieves something so thrillingly intense that for a long time, I actually forgot for a while that I was watching a movie instead of championship play. More than that, as someone whose TV is often left on The Tennis Channel, it was only after the movie ended when I was reading the film's production notes that I realized that the final match went on for nearly the length of a traditional “act” of a Syd Field screenplay.

 
Yet, similar to the way that I love a good football movie even if it isn't a sport I actually watch, this isn't to say that one needs to be an avid tennis fan or even know much about the sport to enjoy “Final Set.” Filmed at Roland Garros and using that tried and true blueprint of “Rocky,” which similarly spends a good chunk of the film's last half right in that boxing ring as we watch events unfold in what I'd call “hyper-real time,” Reynaud's film is wildly ambitious in its scope. Refreshingly, though, it's as invested in the human story as it is in its tennis, which comes through in the film's fully earned last shot. A superbly executed ensemble effort that plays out against a backdrop that's the stuff of modern myth-making, as we watch Alex Lutz's Thomas fight against time and his own body's wear-and-tear, we're right there with him, eager to battle it out to the very end.

Text ©2021, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Movie Review: A Call to Spy (2019)

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Tasked with recruiting female agents for Winston Churchill's secret army – the SOE or Special Operations Executive – during World War II, Vera Atkins (Stana Katic) is told to seek out women who'd lived in France, know the language inside and out, and are passionate about stopping Hitler. The last piece of criteria? “Make sure they're pretty,” she's advised.

Overwhelmed in the fight against the Nazis, both on the overt military front and the covert one where at least half of all spies that SOE leader Maurice Buckmaster (Linus Roache) sends out as part of Britain's “new ministry of ungentlemanly warfare” are caught and killed, it seems that attractive and accomplished women are the country's last resort. Deemed far less conspicuous to sexist Nazis who wouldn't think twice about a “French” beauty walking down the cobblestone streets of Paris, Vera Atkins casts her net out wide to locate two ladies who are even more likely to go undetected than your typical Frenchwoman.

An educated, intelligent American with movie star good looks, Virginia Hall (Sarah Megan Thomas) had dreams of becoming a diplomat. But after a hunting accident left her with gangrene and a leg amputated below the knee, she finds herself denied for the position just as Vera tracks her down. Finding another fascinating recruit in the fastest wireless operator they have on their side – the pacifist, half-American, half-Indian princess Noor Inayat Khan (Radhika Apte) – Vera tells the two that she would like them to try out for “a club unlike any other.”

Drawing upon actual files regarding the women's work as spies from SOE, OSS, and CIA records, actress, producer, and screenwriter Sarah Megan Thomas (who plays Virginia Hall) does an admirable job of bringing their heroism to life. Fortified by terrific performances across the board, unfortunately, once Noor (played by the film's scene-stealer Apte) lands in France, she isn't given nearly enough of an arc to pay off on just how much “Spy” endeared her to us in the first half of the movie. Worthy of an elegant John Le Carre style miniseries to track the true scope of their work as spies since the film feels rushed and the last act suffers in its attempt to resolve everything at once, “A Call to Spy” is eye-opening all the same. 

A solid – if workmanlike – effort, that perhaps feels more like a made-for-PBS movie than first-time solo filmmaker Lydia Dean Pilcher was hoping it would, “A Call to Spy” cleverly uses the greater Philadelphia area to double for a bulk of the UK and France set period film, as well as Budapest. Shot by Miles Goodall and “Midway” cinematographer Robby Baumgartner and nicely scored by Lillie Rebecca McDonough, it's a handsomely crafted but ultimately average production. 

Nonetheless, a rousing ode to resistance in the face of tyranny that plays especially well in this era of rising authoritarianism in the United States, even though the film doesn't make enough of an impression to stay with you very long after you've seen it, what does remain is the film's message. Thus, while Thomas and Pilcher struggle to cram everything they wanted to convey into its 123 running time, the movie works as an earnest tribute to these unsung, amazingly heroic, and yes, beautiful Baker Street Irregular female spies, that I for one, am now eager to learn much more about.

Text ©2020, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Movie Review: The Truth (2019)

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We are creatures of habit. From relitigating past wrongs to repeating the same mistakes, we fall back on old patterns like grooves on a record, destined to play the song we know so well until we take it upon ourselves to move the needle, flip the damn thing over, and start again. And nobody makes us spin around and around quite like family, whether it's in the joy of playing an old hit or the anguish of trying to avoid the inevitable scratches and hisses in the vinyl that we know are coming but can't escape.

Raised in the shadows of the limelight surrounding her famous French movie star mother Fabienne Dangeville – played with icy precision by Catherine Deneuve – whose demands always come first, it's no wonder that Lumir (Juliette Binoche) traded Paris for New York and married the most American man she could find (a TV star played by Ethan Hawke).

Having become a screenwriter, undoubtedly to give herself a greater sense of control by making the characters she invents say precisely what it is that she wants for a change, at the start of Hirokazu Kore-eda's “The Truth,” Lumir finds herself challenged once again by her mother, this time on a personal as well as professional front.

Returning to France with her husband Hank (Hawke) and their imaginative daughter Charlotte (Clémentine Grenier) in tow to celebrate the publication of Fabienne's memoirs, as Lumir begins reading the words that her mother had promised and failed to run by her first and finds it more fiction than fact, that sense of literary and familial control begins to vanish fast. Soon she confronts Fabienne about not only the glaring inconsistencies she has in her memory to her mother's sunshiny version of events but also her decision to completely ignore her relationship with and betrayal of a late contemporary of hers.

A woman whom Lumir idolized and looked to like the mother she always wished she'd had, as the film continues, we begin to see just how much their view of the past differs. Though it begins as a polite but firm objection, their standoff culminates in one particularly tense argument at dinner that finds Lumir snapping at her well-meaning husband to stay out of it since – to misquote Tom Hagen in “The Godfather Part II” – it's between mother and daughter, Hank.

Using an embedded narrative to add another layer to their relationship that lets them relive the past in the present, writer-director Kore-eda plants a film within his film. In “The Truth,” Fabienne stars in a science fiction movie called “Memories of My Mother” along with a younger up-and-coming actress who looks like and reminds Lumir of the late star, and as the mother-daughter drama shoots, they're forced to see each other's perspective a little clearer.

An ambitious if not wholly successful experiment, which finds the Japanese master filmmaker of “Shoplifters” and my own personal favorite “Like Father Like Son,” making a movie in both French and English, even though he only speaks Japanese, “The Truth” is a well-intentioned yet underwhelmingly slight endeavor. The passion project of Juliette Binoche who'd journeyed to Japan in 2011 to see her friend and suggest that they do something together in the future, the film, which is based upon a play he'd started to work on in 2003, illustrates the universality of the family dynamics that flood his oeuvre.

Laced with a touch of magical realism in Charlotte's relationship with her grandmother who she believes lives in a castle and might be a witch – that in itself ties into a fairy tale her mother used to love as a girl that she's reading her at bedtime – Kore-eda fills his movie with symbolism and metaphor both overt and subtle. From setting the movie in the fall as the events take place in the autumn of Fabienne's life to referencing the fact that behind her estate is a prison multiple times early on in the movie, it's clear that the imaginative Kore-eda has no shortage of ideas. Unfortunately, as clever as the film is, it's hard to empathize with the characters, as “The Truth” seems more focused on the meaning of and behind everything we see on the screen rather than on who they are as people.

Less gripping than other experimental Binoche led works from the last decade including Abbas Kiarostami's “Certified Copy” and Olivier Assayas' “Clouds of Sils Maria” that toy with narratives, nesting stories, and allusions, while the performers are tremendous and Kore-eda's thesis on family rings true, its success is more academic than involving.

Admittedly, it's worth the investment for cinephiles, if only for devotees of Kore-eda and our leading ladies, who have somehow never starred in a movie together before. Yet while the frustrated Lumir is the easiest character to understand, it's hard to watch scenes centering on the untimely death of a young actress without imagining how emotional they would've been for Deneuve who lost her own sister – actress Françoise Dorléac – at such a young age.

Relegating Hawke's intriguing if underwritten Hank to the sidelines, while Kore-eda's work is enticing in any language, sadly, it doesn't take long for “The Truth” to get stuck in the same scratchy groove – spinning around and around – in desperate need for the record to be flipped.

Text ©2020, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray Review: A Little Romance (1979)

If Disney had hired François Truffaut to make a Hayley Mills movie in Europe and given him full creative control, the end result might've looked something like A Little Romance.

Playing like an Americanized take on the French New Wave, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid director George Roy Hill's sprightly 1979 picture blends together a Huckleberry Finn sense of adventure with the sugary rush of first love. Based upon the novel E=mc2 Mon Amour by Claude Klotz (writing as Patrick Cauvin) and adapted by The Mary Tyler Moore Show creator Allan Burns —who received an Academy Award nomination for his work — A Little Romance is as mischievous as it is fun.

When a precocious young French film buff (Thelonious Bernard) meets a brainy American girl (Diane Lane) in Paris who reads Heidegger for fun, she tells him her name is Lauren, and Daniel knows deep down that he's the Bogie to her Bacall. Concocting a scheme to trade the streets of Paris for Venetian canals, the teens journey to Italy once they hear that if you kiss your beloved under the Bridge of Sighs at sunset, you'll love one another forever.

Enlisting the help of a charming but shifty old man (a fabulous Laurence Olivier) to play the part of their guardian in order for the two thirteen-year-olds to cross the border, after their alibis fall through and they're believed to have been kidnapped, soon parents and authorities are hot on their trail.

Dismissed as "cute" by a number of critics in its day who seemed to view the film as though it were saccharine enough to cause an upset stomach or tooth decay, Romance has grown in esteem as a minor forgotten classic, thanks to home video, word-of-mouth, and frequent replays on TCM.

The feature film debut of actress Diane Lane, while there's no mistaking Burns and Hill's admittedly protracted fairy tale of teens — who bet on horses, discuss metaphysics, and dissect porn as having nothing to do with love — for anything resembling reality, it's hard not to get caught up in the jubilant spirit of it all.

Unafraid to mix the bitterly sour with the syrupy sweet in both Olivier's morally enigmatic character as well as Lauren's bored, flirtatious mother (Sally Kellerman) who's on her third marriage but still hunting for love, the film is so filled with intriguing characters that at times, it falters when it returns back to the leads. Losing some of our affection for the formerly tender, thoughtful Daniel as he turns uncharacteristically snappish in the film's last act, despite a few stumbles, our belief in the screenwriter and director's sincerity doesn't waver throughout.

The type of film that you could imagine being a big source of inspiration on Moonrise Kingdom, Rushmore, and other Wes Anderson works where the wise, earnest, lovelorn teens are the smartest ones in any room, A Little Romance would also make an ideal double feature with Small Change, which Truffaut made in 1976 as an ode to the infallible spirit of the young.

Given a sumptuous transfer to Blu-ray, from the sunlight of Paris to a bewitching sunset at the Bridge of Sighs, Hill's film pulls you in with the sights captured by Small Change cinematographer Pierre-William Glenn as well as the sounds of legendary composer Georges Delerue's Oscar winning score. An utterly delightful way to spend two hours, although it's missing the interview with Diane Lane that's listed on the back of the Blu-ray box, there's still a lot about this light, frothy, Ameri-French confection to love.

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Text ©2020, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

"Loves Music, Loves to Dance. Husband Included." - Movie Review Essay: Deep Water (1981)

Loves Music, Loves to Dance. Husband Included.

By Jen Johans

Melanie (Isabelle Huppert) dances with her lover while her husband Vic (Jean-Louis Trintignant) plays chess. Vic eyes the moves she makes as he makes his own five feet away, playing visual chicken with her dance partner who's turned on as hell but doesn't know quite what to do when her husband's in the room. Where should he put his hands? His mouth? He tries using both at once and Vic doesn't flinch.

Vic knows his wife; he's the reason they're dancing, after all. Seeing her restless — sometimes going to change a record, or join another lover at the piano, or follow a third into the woods as if the handsome clarinetist were the Pied Piper — Vic knows he can't begin to keep up with the men, let alone compete with them sexually.

Sex isn't something Vic seems terribly interested in overall in Michel Deville's Deep Water . . . except when it comes to the Delilah to his Samson as Melanie's sexuality seems to fill him with as much disgust as the men hoping to bed his wife right before his eyes. Her naked body — even the sight of one breast exposed when her dress strap breaks — seems to incite obsessive repulsion as does the fact that she refuses to cover up to spite him. For Vic, it isn't misogyny but Melanie. He makes a tentative pass at the sweet wife of one of Melanie's lovers but does so halfheartedly. Facing internal defeat, Vic tells her that she's the type of woman he wants to love but it's no more than a passing thought. The man can't control his nature and love her or hate her (or more likely both), that nature is Melanie.

Raising his young daughter alongside Melanie in a French seaside town, their unusual marital arrangement to stave off divorce is a sudsy open secret. Yet while his wife flourishes in the company of so many adoring men — some of whom their young daughter likes better than others because they come bearing gifts — Trintignant's perfumer prefers to spend what little time he has away from his family with the pet snails that he keeps on their secluded property instead.

Vic observes the little creatures that most would turn into escargot with as much interest as he has watching Melanie and her men dance. Although initially we assume the attraction is because he feels like a sexually humiliated snail of a man, as the film continues, we wonder if his hobby has a different impetus altogether. Perhaps he admires the snails because — like the men who sneak off at parties to change into a bathing suit with his wife or drag their lips slowly down Melanie's neck even if he's nearby — Vic knows he could end their life at any time. In fact, he might have done so already, and not only to the snails. And that's the main thesis that initially piques out interest in Deville's 1981 slow burn psychosexual thriller, which was released in France as Eaux profondes.

Toying with one lover's nerves at a party by taking credit for an unsolved murder after the man thanks Vic for being cool with him dating his wife, we watch as Vic's chess skills spring to life and fear that (more?) violence will follow.

A stellar adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's 1957 eponymous novel from the country that seems to understand how to bring her tales of sexual obsession to life best, Trintignant's restrained yet dynamic portrayal of Vic is magnetic after the very first scene, and we watch him with Vic-like intensity.

Just like French filmmaker Jacques Demy's Model Shop plays particularly well with Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Deep Water feels like it would make a thrilling double feature with Stanley Kubrick's thematically similar tale of marital temptation and warfare, Eyes Wide Shut. Additionally, if you can find it, it's a great one to visit now before Fatal Attraction director Adrian Lyne releases his own adaptation of Highsmith's novel in 2020.

Bringing multilayered complexity to a role that, on paper, reads like a mere strumpet, the way that Isabelle Huppert uses silence and her eyes, combined with the length of time she takes to give someone her verbal or visual attention foreshadows the outstanding work she would do in this (and every) genre in the years to come. A tremendously talented actress perhaps best suited to the many shades of noir, if ever there was a woman born for Highsmith, it's Isabelle Huppert.

Testing the patience of some twenty-first century film fans, Deep Water waits quite awhile to let us in on the first plot twist and longer still before it eventually reveals its whole hand. And while I found myself wishing that Deville would've used even more of the running time to — in taking a cue from Huppert's performance — play up the duality of the proceedings, the '81 feature still works considerably well, nonetheless.

A largely forgotten French neo-noir with a potent antihero turn by Jean-Louis Trintignant, while the film belongs in the great pantheon of unhappily-ever-after movies, its tense, nasty, twisted little plot helps set it apart from the rest, even in scenes where it misses the mark. In the latter respect, it features a fascinating yet unfortunately largely unexplored angle wherein Melanie and Vic's daddy adoring daughter is not only not bothered by rumors that her father might be a killer but is actually proud of it . . . which thrilled and chilled this fan of the genre.

Yet despite a few stumbles, it's safe to say that you'll be easily seduced into dancing along with the film. Just be careful not to stand too close to the edge — or another man's wife — while he watches you squirm and plays chess.

(Availability Note: I recently caught this film on MUBI, where it played for thirty days before disappearing. If you'd like to check out MUBI so you can catch more films like Deep Water, click here to get 30 days free on me.)

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: My Son (2017)

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Original French Title: Mon garçon

You don't want to mess with Guillaume Canet.

Wrapping a lamp cord around the man he suspects might be responsible for abducting his seven-year-old son from sleepaway camp, when Canet's Julien doesn't get the answers he's looking for, he drives the bound man over to the police station himself for further questioning.

Unfortunately, while these sort of dad-on-a-mission tactics work well for Charles Bronson or Liam Neeson, they just don't elicit the same response in polite French society, which Julien soon finds out when the officers on duty slap their cuffs not on the man he delivered to them all tied up as if in a bow, but the quick thinking, lamp cord wielding Julien instead.

When the desperate father is released, Julien fine-tunes his approach to keep a lower profile. With his head down, he goes back to work, undeterred in his quest, and even more determined than he was before because the clock is running out and, with every minute he wastes, his son might just as well be getting further and further away.

A gripping tale of suspense about a parent's worst nightmare, brought believably to life by the strong, fiery performance by Guillaume Canet at its center, director Christian Carion went to the greatest of lengths to ensure that Canet's plight was nothing if not one hundred percent authentic.

Keeping his Joyeux Noel star in the dark in this, their third pairing together, after an extensive rehearsal period was completed with the rest of the film's cast using a stand-in for Canet, Carion dropped the actor into filming and let him go on instinct and intuition, without showing him a single page of the script.

Shooting the film in chronological order in quick succession over six emotionally draining days, My Son is improvised to mostly stellar effect, which is apparent very early into Carion's film as Julien gets into a fight with his ex-wife Marie (well played by Melanie Laurent) in a standout sequence of domestic strife.

Guilt ridden by the absenteeism in his son's life that he's created by putting his globe-trotting career ahead of everything else, Julien's pain borders on an anguish he knows he cannot fully stop and face if he has any chance of finding his son.

Eyes widening and foot on the gas, in Son, Julien proves that he's willing to do whatever it takes to bring the boy home, whether that means yanking out a lamp cord to use as a restraint or, when the investigation turns on him, buying a prepaid phone and sim card to go off the grid. And the way that Canet's head is on a constant swivel here — adrenaline maxed and ready to take in anything that might be a clue — you get the feeling that the Tell No One filmmaker would make one hell of a good detective, if he ever tired of cinematic storytelling.

While the film is in ardent need of at least one more twist to strengthen its sagging arc as Carion's experimental approach creates sections where the narrative feels meanderingly unfocused, the eighty-five minute film is wise to hold fast to Julien's primal mission.

Drawing us into the gripping narrative alongside Laurent and Canet as we chase down leads, the film asks us to check our own personal biases in the process. Picking up momentum as it speeds toward its conclusion and arrives at a snowy, desolate potential crime scene, My Son reaches a final showdown so unbearably tense that I caught myself actually holding my breath as if I could help Canet keep quiet.

Letting you into the unorthodox filming process, the film, which was recently given a brilliant transfer to Blu-ray from Cohen Media Group, arrives on disc complete with a making of documentary and behind-the-scenes featurette, . . . lamp cord not included.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: Quartet (1981)

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When we hear the phrase "Merchant Ivory Productions," most of us picture handsomely photographed period costume dramas featuring ensemble casts of award-winning British actors. One thing we don't think of, however, is sex. But as director James Ivory explains in a fascinating interview included on the Blu-ray release of the newly restored 1981 feature film Quartet, adultery is a recurring obsession of Merchant Ivory's catalog, showing up as a major theme in at least seven different movies . . . and Quartet is no exception.

Embracing not only adultery but polyamory in the film's overt depiction of the seesaw like power dynamics that play out in a ménage à trois at the heart of its storyline, Quartet, based upon Jean Rhys' autobiographical novel, is set during the Golden Age of Paris in 1927.

With her Polish art dealer husband Stephan (Anthony Higgins) arrested for something that might relate as much to stolen artwork as to his tendency to talk about the Bolshevik Revolution — which made Parisian authorities nervous — the native "West Indian" Marya (played by Isabelle Adjani) is left penniless for a year, and with very few resources she can use to fend for herself.

"A decorative little person" used to being the subject of speculation wherever she goes, Marya makes the acquaintance of the wealthy, well-liked H.J. Heidler (Alan Bates) and his painter wife Lois (Maggie Smith) who offer Marya a place to stay in their home. A particular habit of theirs, unbeknownst to Marya when she accepts, it seems as though H.J. has an extensive history of seducing the young women or "crushed petals" whom he lets stay in his spare room.

Letting him indulge himself and sow his wild sexual oats, out of fear that otherwise the bored man might leave her, Lois puts on a good front to the world at the cafes and bars that she and her husband frequent with the young woman. In private, however, the passive aggressive artist sublimates her rage by playing mind games with Marya. And though the trio evolves into a quartet after Stephan's release, which —  coupled with feelings of love —  makes the dynamic even more complex, James Ivoy's film suffers by making the "open" relationship so closed off that the audience is never able to penetrate it.

Distant and icy, the film might take place during a hedonistic time where people sought to find themselves by ironically losing themselves in drugs, drink, or sex, but the unmistakably beautiful Quartet —shot by gifted cinematographer Pierre Lhomme — feels like a virtual museum piece, roped off and hung up in a temperature controlled room on a wall behind a thick pane of glass.

Bravely accepting what Ivory acknowledges is the undesirable role (of the wife who looks the other way but speaks her mind) that many actresses turned down, Maggie Smith is one of the film's saving graces, alongside Isabelle Adjani, who won the award for Best Actress for this film as well as Possession at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival where it premiered.

Championed by its strong performances that keep you watching when you might otherwise want to tune it out, Quartet is worth a look for Merchant Ivory completists but there's a good reason why Ruth Prawer Jhabvala knew instinctively that she didn't want to adapt the Rhys novel she had been reading when Ivory suggested the film.

Trying to make the characters much more dramatic than they were —  just drinking and sitting around — on the page, Prawer Jhabvala did her best to elevate what she felt was rather "downbeat" material. But even with the film's intriguing motif of mirrors, which beg the characters to take a real, hard look at themselves, in the words of 1920s Paris contemporary Gertrude Stein, "there is no there there."

A below average Merchant Ivory movie, although it resembles any one of their other productions on the surface, regrettably, just like Lois fears that her husband might get bored and leave, you're probably better off if you leave the dull Quartet behind. Then, after grabbing one of their other films that you prefer instead (like The Remains of the Day), you can pay homage to the production team's favorite theme, and — leaving Quartet aside to play something else  — go ahead and cheat.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Film Movement Movie Review: The Sower (2017)

Now Available 

After a man claims he's so hungry that he feels like he hasn't eaten in three days, Violette (Pauline Burlet) waits a mere moment to respond.

"It's the altitude," she tells him and the unexpected response just hangs in the air, as if to imply that that's the reason why the occupants of the small French farming community in director Marine Francen's The Sower are so ravenous.

Discovering in a startling opening sequence that time and circumstance has also played an overwhelming role, with the men of the village rounded up and arrested after Napoleon dissolves the republic in December of 1851, the women and children are left behind to fend for themselves.

Watching as some of Violette's devastated neighbors retreat to their beds and her best friend burns her wedding dress in mourning for the event she fears will never come, gradually with time, the women come together in order to carry on, tending to the land in a way that gives them both purpose and a place to work out their pain.

Intriguingly, although they still miss men in a variety of ways from their help with the harvest to unbridled lust, the men's absence inspires the now more independently minded younger women to talk openly about sex and — perhaps heady from the altitude — grow increasingly amorous in the process. Yearning to not only make love but get pregnant and start a family, they decide to make a pact.

Viewing themselves as separate from the older women with children to raise and comfort, The Sower's younger set vows that if a man ever crosses their path and wants one of the women, he would get the rest as well in the hopes of bringing more babies into the world.

Not bothering to consider practical issues including the man or woman's feelings about all this or what would happen if the men of the village ever came back, knowing that their "daughters are talking nonsense," the older women stay quiet and let them have their fantasy regardless.

Their ardent desire somewhat abated by the fairy tale they've concocted, things go back to normal for the women until one day when — backlit by the colors of an altitude-enhanced clear blue sky — a handsome blacksmith (Alban Lenoir) wanders into the village and is instantly drawn to the virginal Violette.

The only literate female in the community at the time, although their relationship begins tentatively as she opens a home to the visitor, works with him in the fields, and brings him dinner every night, once the two bond over their love of literature, their relationship blossoms into a tender romance.

Based upon Violette Ailhaud's opus L'homme semence or The Seed Man which was written in 1919 and published in 2006, fittingly, given its themes, the thirty-eight page story that gave birth to The Sower was created explicitly for and willed to the author’s future female descendants.

Treating the source material less like a source of erotic titillation and more as a feminist minded work written ahead of its time, director Marine Francen (along with her co-writers Jacqueline Surchat and Jacques Fieschi) opt for a naturally romantic yet undeniably dramatic approach as Violette is pressured to hold up her end of the women's sexual bargain.

With minimal artificial light evident in its contrast between days spent in blindingly bright fields and the film's intimate, dusky nights, the gorgeously rendered visuals — reminiscent of paintings from the Napoleonic era — are brought exquisitely to life by cinematographer Alain Duplantier.

On the surface, a straightforward tale simply told, given the complexity of its female-centric themes and sensual nature, The Sower begs to be compared and contrasted with Like Water for Chocolate, Belle Epoque, and Raise the Red Lantern. Likewise, the allegorical references to the harvest and the double meaning therein strongly recalls the fellow female directed award-winner, Antonia's Line and the 1995 film from Marleen Gorris would make for a potent double feature with Francen's debut work.

Yet although The Sower doesn't have nearly as much character development as the other movies mentioned (particularly with regard to the supporting players), Francen feeds the ravenous film by sprinkling seeds of beauty, independence, feminism, and romance throughout.

Seduced by its sumptuous, sun-drenched beauty, the end result is an artful film that — like its intoxicating altitude — is sure to attract.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

DVD Review: The Last Diamond (2014)

Now Available 

Pitting Yvan Attal’s thieving con artist opposite Bérénice Bejo's sophisticated mark, The Last Diamond spins together a classy yet convoluted yarn of caper movie cat-and-mouse that begins with Attal fresh out of jail and hot on the trail of the legendary (and long-rumored to be cursed) Florentine diamond he hopes will be his final score.

From exotic international locales to assumed identities, not to mention the obligatory third act complication of love vs. money when Attal falls for Bejo, while he isn't always successful, Last Diamond co-writer and director Éric Barbier tries to inject some new French twists into the tried and true tropes of one of his country's favorite genres.

Relying on not only plot twists but pace and top-notch editing to try and disguise the fact that together its two undeniably talented and attractive leads generate very little onscreen heat, Diamond is proof that a filmmaker can fake nearly everything except sexual chemistry.

Moving so quickly at times that it fails to take full advantage of some truly inventive character-based complications (including a classic "locked room" mystery that puts everything in motion), while we find ourselves wanting to know more about our two endlessly fascinating yet underwritten leads, Barbier assures us again and again that he has no shortage of ideas.

Making the most of charismatic Yvan Attal's versatility as an actor running multiple cons as multiple characters in a film that reteamed the gifted actor (and filmmaker in his own right) with his Serpent director, Attal steals focus throughout Diamond in the film's sharpest role as the would-be jewel thief.

Largely overshadowed by the machinations of Diamond's serpentine plot, in her under-utilized role, Bejo is unable to let loose or let us in until her character is subsequently given the same opportunity (far too) late into the film.

Hoping to bring everything together in a confusing and overcrowded final act, The Last Diamond leads viewers through a veritable maze of twists and turns which, despite their entertainment value, are so overwrought that it'd be an impressive feat if you could explain let alone recall even half of everything that happened a week later.

And although it aims for buoyant Ocean's Eleven style charm by way of a fun bookend scene that finds Attal plying his trade as a drunken naked hotel guest, after so much ping-ponging back-and-forth in tone from comedy to Noir, we find ourselves unconvinced of its success overall on either front.

Alternating from disappointingly average to amusingly inspired, Diamond is ideal entertainment for a lazy evening of armchair travel at home.

Yet with so much French caper talent to spare, it’s both hard not to imagine what might have been and easy to believe that both heist subgenres might've worked better if only the writers and editors had chosen precisely which yarn they wanted to spin back when they were still deciding just who would be the cat and who would be the mark.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.