I was going to talk about The Hurt Locker, but I didn’t really have anything funny to say, so I am going to rant about a French movie I saw last night: Pierrot le Fou. The film was made in 1965 by director Jean-Luc Godard, which as you may know makes [...]]]>

I was going to talk about The Hurt Locker, but I didn’t really have anything funny to say, so I am going to rant about a French movie I saw last night: Pierrot le Fou. The film was made in 1965 by director Jean-Luc Godard, which as you may know makes it part of the French New Wave of cinema. I don’t know very much about the film movement, but according to Wikipedia: French New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of classical cinematic form and their spirit of youthful iconoclasm and their films are an example of European art cinema, whatever that means. Basically, they were a bunch of French proto-hipsters who were incredibly influential for future filmmakers. Most directly, their film style led to a rejuvenation of Hollywood film-making in the late 60’s and 70’s, ending the Golden Age of Hollywood and ushering in the Hollywood Renaissance. You see, I love 70’s Hollywood cinema, so I thought this would directly translate to a love of French New Wave, but I don’t know about this movie.

To give you an idea of my initial expectations: about a month ago I went to see the new Roman Polanski movie The Ghost, which stars Ewan McGregor, and Pierce Brosnan. The movie is classic suspense made by a master of the genre, and it got me interested in watching old-school thrillers. Just like romantic comedies, thrillers these days are never really good. They rely too heavily on contrived and wacky plot twists or body horror, and after a while they just get boring to watch. Back in the day, close attention was paid to the composition of each shot to build up tension subtly, and instead of assaulting you with some grotesque images, the same emotional response came indirectly through a combination of the reaction of the actors on screen, the cinematography, and the score and it would work dammit! So, I’m on a fix. I rented this movie because it was made in 60’s by a reputable director, it was available on blu-ray, and from the brief imdb description it was about a couple of criminals on the run. This was basically all I was going on, because I didn’t want to ruin the film by reading too much about it. Anyway, I got home, and popped the movie into the PS3 expecting to be on the edge of me couch for an hour and a half. It took me twenty minutes to realize that what I was watching was a nonsense art film with absolutely zero suspense, and instead a bunch of scenes featuring monologues or dialogues between goofy French people talking about God knows what. The brief description of the film above is pretty much all you need, but my impression of the film is that it’s supposed to be the daydream of the male protagonist, who is bored with his upper class French bohemian lifestyle (so basically he’s an asshole), and imagines this adventure with his friend’s niece where they are criminal lovers who have reunited after 5 years apart. Unfortunately, it turns out the guy is no Clyde Barrow, and is content with living poor in a cottage writing a super pretentious journal, and the girl get’s bored and wants to commit more crimes. If you actually want to get an idea of the film, try to imagine any movie that has a scene that makes fun of old, obtuse French cinema, and you basically have Pierrot le Fou. It makes no sense! It embodies every stereotype of bad French cinema.

First of all, they are the crappiest pair of criminals in the history of film. At one point, they capture a pair of thugs by throwing a comically large net over their car. That wouldn’t work! I fell for this before when I rented Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai, which I fully expected to be a 60’s version of Leon: the Professional, but was more like a spy movie where the dashing spy is replaced with a wussy history major who takes himself too seriously. In that film’s defence, it was one of the first of its kind before audiences started calling bull on any spy technology that they didn’t like and it the film was pretty stylish.

Another thing I really didn’t like about Pierrot le Fou was its incredibly heavy handed anti-American sentiment. At one point the two protaganists choose to raise money by putting on a street performance for American tourists, which features the guy as a John Wayne type military officer who wants to shoot everything and count his money, and the girl as a yellow faced (literally) snarling Vietnamese women holding a grenade. Real subtle Jean-Luc Gicard (It’s a really bad pun, but at least I can link to this) .) I understand that you wanted to satirize the American perception of the Vietnamese, but this is a racist Asian stereotype that reaches the level of Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. You know I think the French criticizing America’s involvement in Vietnam is interesting considering they had colonial rule of Vietnam until 1954. Maybe some of the French were getting a little tired of the surrender jokes from the rest of Europe in 1965 and picked on an easy target. Whatever the case, I’m just generally bothered by condescending social commentary.

Also, why is there still so much Asian racism in films? I mean, you can find racist east Asian stereotypes in American films as recently as Long Duk Don in Sixteen Candles. And someone please name me one Asian-American actor who has starred in their own high-budget Hollywood movie that wasn’t cast as a foreigner or a martial artist. This whole argument is a complete tangent, but by this point in the movie I was so disinterested in the plot that I was checking facebook every 5 minutes.

So in conclusion, Pierre le Fou is an important film in film history, and it’s avant-garde style is well respected by many fans of art house cinema, and has been influential to many directors in the past and present, but as a film that is accessible to an average viewer, and that has a cohesive narrative that is possible to follow, it’s total crap! Also, when trying to find a decent film to talk about, don’t leave it for the last minute.

If you really want to get some entertainment, I suggest watching the extended trailer for the 80’s action movie Deadly Prey , which soars to new heights of hilariousness.

You know what pisses me off? The fact that I have no life. And you know what reminds me that I have no life? The fact that I waste my evenings on the internet, paying attention to unprofessional critics’ jackass opinions about movies. Don’t get me wrong, the internet is great; blogs podcasts [...]]]>

You know what pisses me off? The fact that I have no life. And you know what reminds me that I have no life? The fact that I waste my evenings on the internet, paying attention to unprofessional critics’ jackass opinions about movies. Don’t get me wrong, the internet is great; blogs podcasts and flash video have allowed for anyone to become an internet celebrity, and there is some stuff that I can’t get enough of, which wouldn’t get a proper chance through other more expensive mediums. But there is also a lot of self-important dudes on the web who obnoxiously sermonize there opinions as if everyone gives a fat shit. I think what bugs me is that they’re really long, which marks how pointless they are. The trick is to keep it concise, get all the good jokes out and leave people wanting more; less than ten minutes for a video, 30 minutes for a podcast, and 2000 words for an article. With that said here’s my opinion on some films. Is it pretentious and pointless? You be the judge!

Let’s start with something you would not expect me to like. ‘Me’ being your classic internet movie nerd whose biased opinion requires a film be inherently misogynistic and cartoonishly violent (thank you Paul Verhoven!) The recent Pedro Almodovar film Broken Embraces plays like a classic mystery with the pieces of a story slowly coming together to reveal a romantic tragedy. It’s about a film auteur name Mateo Blanco (Lluis Homar) who lost his vision in an accident and goes by the alias Harry Caine. The mystery begins to reveal itself when a man from Harry’s past named Ray X wants to write a screenplay about events surrounding his accident. The whole first act of the movie is a little dull actually. The movie doesn’t really pick until Penelope Cruz comes in. She shows up in flashback as Harry’s muse, and her presence really gets the movie going. It’s the music, and the cinematography; she is stunning in every shot, even when she say’s she isn’t.  This is why I love Pedro Almodovar movies. I haven’t seen many of his films but amongst the ones I have Almodovar really makes you feel something deeply for his female characters and for women in general. Talk to Her was about how the love men can have for women can be entirely incomprehensible, and the lengths men would go to be with the women they loved. The film didn’t ask you to consider the morality of actions, but tries to make you understand how profound a man’s obsession can be. All about My Mother is also about women, but as the title implies the emotions are less romantic and more maternal.  But, you know, those two feeling aren’t necessarily unrelated. Anyway, I couldn’t help watching these films without high pitch, uncontrollable weeping, and Almodovar and Penelope Cruz did it again with Broken Embraces. Surprisingly this didn’t make the girl I was with that uncomfortable!
I really like Penelope Cruz now. In this film she get’s worked up and starts yelling, she gets morose and emotional, she gets cold and hurtful, all done sincerely and strong. She steals this film. You’ll get a sense of this during the beginning credits. The credits are overlaid on top of the perspective of a camera fixed on a stand in. The stand in looks plain without make up and the shot is out of focus and poorly lit, then she is replaced by Penelope Cruz and the shot looks perfect.
Right after I watched Broken Embraces I rented one of Almodovar’s earlier films Matador. It was released in the mid-eighties and I think it was before Almodovar became famous in North America with Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. It’s about a devoutly catholic man played by Antonio Banderas, who confesses to being a serial murderer after feeling guilt over a sin that he committed. The narrative soon focuses on the actual killers, and their association of sex with killing. The film didn’t really do it for me because it didn’t have any women characters that made the other movies appealing and it got a little nutty with its mixed themes of religion and passion. I would still recommend it though, because the plot was totally original and provocative, and it was interesting to see a pre-Desperado Antonio Banderas.