My 10 best moviewatching experiences of 2005

Since I so rarely see "new" movies, I did this last year in lieu of a "best of" list, and I thought I'd continue the tradition. Below is a list of my ten most enjoyable filmwatching experiences of the past year, regardless of format. The only condition is that they had to all be films I'd never previously seen.

1. Les Enfants du Paradis (Marcel Carne, 1945)
   
   Yet another classic I'd never seen... Weirdo that I am, I have a tendency to put off seeing highly-regarded films such as this, just so I have something to look forward too in coming years. I was not disappointed. This is, I suppose, the French Gone With the Wind, in the sense that it's huge, grand, epic, and magnificent. There's tremendous subtlety and pathos as well.



2. Masculin, féminin: 15 faits précis (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966)
   
   I say this with some reserve, but this is possibly the quintessential 60s film. Godard makes a big statement here, about youth culture, consumerism, and the naivete of radical politics, but he makes it entertaining as well.



3. Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, 1964)
   
   Take a trite plot, make a musical of it overlay a beautiful set and possibly the best score Michel Legrand ever composed, and top it off with Catherine Deneuve.



4. Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson, 1970)
   
   Nicholson's best ever performance, and probably the best attempt by an American to capture the style of Ingmar Bergman. This film captures America, c. 1970 better than any other I've seen.



5. Rois et Reine (Arnaud Desplechin, 2004)
   
   Desplechin's masterpiece. It''l rip your guts out. I've given up trying to explain how or why this film is so great, so instead I just tell everyone to see it. Now.



6. Histoire(s) du Cinema (Jean-Luc Godard, 1989-1998)
   
   Forget what I wrote above. THIS is Godard's big statement, about damn near everything - art, literature, war, fascism, sex, and yes, even film.



7. Keane (Lodge Kerrigan, 2004)
   
   Maybe the best film by an American director made so far this decade. It's a shame it never gets screened anywhere.



8. Serenity (Joss Whedon, 2005)
   I'm an obsessive Whedon-phile, so this was a no-brainer. I actually saw it twice on the same day. As das put it, proof that entertainment doesn't have to be stupid. (I think that's what he said).



9. La Maison des bois (Maurice Pialat, 1971)
   
   A miniseries made for French TV, I caught it over two consecutive at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Yet more evidence that, in the hands of a great filmmaker, the miniseries format can be the most rewarding for the viewer.



10. Star Wars Episode 3: The Revenge of the Sith (George Lucas, 2005)
    
    Don't get me wrong - the movie sucked ass, but I was at least content in the knowledge I'd never have to sit through another shitty Star Wars movie for the rest of my life...

Une Femme de Ménage (Claude Berri, 2002)

OK, so I'm watching this movie I recorded off Sundance a couple of weeks ago - Une Femme de Ménage, directed by Claude Berri (Jean de Florette, Manon of the Spring). I have several problems, both with the movie and also with myself.

The film is about a middle-aged man, recently divorced, who finds himself in need of someone to pick up after him. He hires a young woman named Laura as a housekeeper, and a relationship begins to develop between them. Things proceed in a fairly mundane and predictable way. To describe the plot in detail would assume you haven't already figured it out by now, with probably accurate results. So, I start to wonder to myself, why am I watching this? It's not particularly fascinating or compelling, it's obviously unoriginal and hopelessly mainstream in every way. Is it because it's in French? Am I that shallow? Then I notice that he housekeeper is played by Émilie Dequenne, who became known to me with her Cannes award winning performance as the titular Rosetta. Then I realize that she's significantly more alluring and provocatively clad in this movie than she was in Rosetta. I'd never really noticed her breasts before... Naturally I'm not the only one who notices them, and soon she has moved in with Jacques, the man for whom she cleans.

Now, I need to point out a couple of things. First, Jacques is a pretty sympathetic character. He's shown to have talent (he works as a sound engineer), taste, manners, and a decent sense of decorum. In no way does he chase Laura or attempt to seduce her. She initiates everything. We never really know why - it could be opportunism, a curious fondness for older men, whatever. Jacques motives seem clear, but even so he's remarkably clear-headed about inviting this lovely young woman into his bed. He knows she's never going to stay, and he's still too on the rebound to attempt anything serious yet. Second, the story is told in a flat, emotionless tone. Berri's technique is to withdraw himself from the film, letting the actors do the work with little interference.

It's likely the best aspect of Une Femme de Ménage is that it doesn't pretend to give us motives for the characters' actions. In many cases they're obviouis, and in the rest it just doesn't seem necessary. We can extrapolate what we need, leaving the movie open to varied interpretations. To me this is refreshing. Yet, somehow I'm not really satisfied at the end. It's possible I'm trying too hard here, but I kept expecting the it to turn into a Claude Chabrol film (nobody gets murdered), but it kept teetering into Claude Lelouch territory instead (but it never fell there completely). Eventually, I got neither. There was nothing profoundly metaphysical, like if Jacques Rivette had directed it, just a flatness, as if to imply that the incidents from the film would ultimately play a very minor role in the main characters' life stories. It was odd to watch something so unambitious.

I'd fathom that thousands of films have been made about middle-aged men sating their midlife crises' with nubile young women. That I physically (balding and paunchy) and emotionally (reticent and taciturn) resemble the male lead (although he's a dozen years older than me) didn't attract me or repel me, and, while I enjoyed looking at Dequenne wear short skirts and tank tops, that alone wouldn't have held my interest for more than a half-hour. In other words, this is a very strange example of a male wish-fulfillment fantasy. I can't even say that it works on that level at all, even though that's how it looks to be initially. So, you know how, in the beginning, I said you could guess the plot straightaway? Well, even if you do, that misses the point of the film completely. Ultimately I think that's what makes it worth watching, if not worth loving.

DoubleTake Twenty-Five, Summer 2001

A Conversation with Wim Wenders by Michael Coles

Michael Coles: You seem to evoke Edward Hopper in some of your films. How has Hopper influenced your work?

Wim Wenders: I encountered Hopper on my first trip to America, in 1972. I was in New York and spent quite some time at the Whitney Museum. And I had known Hopper a little before, but he hadn't made much of an impact on me until I actually saw the paintings. He became very popular all over the world during the 1970s, with calendars and books and postcards everywhere. But at the time I saw him in the Whitney, he wasn't yet the postcard artist of the twentieth century. The first film of mine that was influenced by Edward Hopper's paintings was The American Friend, which I shot in 1976. More than anything else I liked his sense of framing. It was very cinematic and reminded me a lot of classic American movies, of Anthony Mann or John Ford. I especially liked the city paintings and his hotel windows. Hopper's influence showed most in The Million Dollar Hotel (2000). The entire film was shot in a brownstone building that could have served as Hopper's studio. Of course, later I learned how much Hopper himself had been influenced by movies, and how often he had gone to see them whenever he suffered from "painter's block."

Here's the trailer for Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, featuring, of all things, New Order's "Age of Consent":

This looks to suck, proving that Lost in Translation wasn't a fluke.