Jean-Luc Godard's Film Socialisme: Quo Vadis Europa

Godard is one of those artists who have the ability of always finding another card in their sleeves when we think that their game is already finished.

Whoever said that he was spent as a film maker was wrong.

Film Socialisme is the proof.

This is a film like no other I have seen. It is a film of ideas that, for once, befits such a genre. A film which is in constant movement.

To embark in Film Socialisme is not only to embark in a cruise along the Mediterranean, as it is to embark in an intellectual and cinematographic cruise through a landscape of ideas and powerful images on a sea of “things” that defines Europe.

A film that questions Europe like no other, hence the second part is titled:

QUO VADIS           EUROPA.

Translated as

Our Europe.

A film which could only have been shot by an European.

“To be or not to be”.

A Godard film.

A riotous visual, textual, auditive and intellectual tapestry of inventiveness and boundaries redrawing. Whilst Hollywood studios dabble with technological advancements such as 3D, Godard stretches the medium of cinema itself.

DES CHOSES COMME ÇA

A luxury cruise ships sails from Algiers for a journey along the Mediterranean coast. On board, revellers embark in a series of conversations inspired by the ports that the ship docks in her travel: Racism, blacks, Jews (“The invention of cinema, the invention of Hollywood, is due to them”), French collaboration with the Nazis during the occupation in WW2, the stolen Spanish gold, Palestine (“Access Denied”). We have Alain Badiou, a French philosopher, an American singer, Patti Smith, a photographer, and a young girl with her thoughts, her brother, her father, on board

The ship is constantly moving, we see the sea at all times as it scurries along, the white crests filling our vision, meandering, the sound of the breaking waves filling our ears, her passengers wandering and wondering aboard; the ship being an enclosed world by itself, where conversations are entwined with the kitsch of such cruises, the passengers being like spectators of a vastly moving world passing though its ports as the cruiser docks along the coast in its voyage: Egypt, Haifa, Odessa, Hellas, Napoli, Barcelona. The sea is constantly there, in the background, in the foreground as the waves gently break under our eyes, yet it is also not only a human sea that populates it, a sea of breaking waves as they come out of a mass celebrated on board or on the disco floor, and, most importantly, a sea of “things” (“Des Choses”) that Film Socialisme travels through. The wind, the metaphorical and the actual wind always whistling in the background, as the sound of the sea is, or the sound of traffic (a sea of cars), a reminder of the forces that shape our destiny?

“La vida es bella...”

Which takes us to the donkey and the llama tied to a pump in a petrol station against the backdrop of an idyllic sky located somewhere in the South (le Midi) of France, the Balzac reading girl, the red car of a female journalist and her camerawoman, and, yes, the constant sound of traffic never leaving us, the vision of a sea of cars always flowing in the background.

QUO VADIS           EUROPA

“Ideas divide, dreams bring us closer”.

A dialogue between the girl and her younger brother (there is a fascinating scene where the boy is drinking from a cup with a straw, as if he were playing the saxophone, while we hear a saxo solo in the background) and the parents on the values over which French society was built after the 1789 Revolution: Egalité, Fraternité, Liberté. A dialogue that produces responses such as “Shit!” when his father starts talking about Equality. We are in the Martin family domain. The boy is as much interested in knowing if his sister is wearing a string as in such a concept as Egalité, or wondering if the kids should stand for the election instead of mum and dad (hence the interest of the journalist and her camerawoman).

“No longer thirsty the mouth closes”.

The film finalizes with a return to the Mediterranean cruise, exploring the lands where our humanity,

HUMANITÉ

was generated, the lands of myths, true or false, this theme of a dialogue between the elders and the youngsters constantly present as we accompany Godard and his camera people to places such as the Odessa steps where Eiseinsten filmed the famous scene in “Battleship Potemkin”, or we delve into the prize paid by Napoli (“Freedom doesn't come cheap”) as was liberated by the American GIs during WW2, or we witness by viewing archive footage the savagery of the Spanish civil war. The skilful use of archive imagery, written text and the dissonant soundtrack keeping Film Socialisme without a closure.

NO COMMENT

Godard says.

Visually striking and complex, Film Socialisme imagery moves from the hyper realism of the waves to the shadowy backdrops of the dialogue and non linear broken discourses that defines it with the interpolation of text in big CAPITAL letters and fragmented pieces of soundtracks and imagery such as archive footage of Egypt, Napoli, Barcelona, and clips from Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin in the chapter on Odessa, while the kitsch (or luxurious atmosphere as the travel agents would say in their marketing literature) of such an environment finds depicted by the use of heavily edited video footage, giving Film Socialisme the feeling of a constantly broken cinema reel, yet in constant flux. Godard's view is that of an Europe (“What is Europe? A German musician, an Italian singer, A French writer”) which is in constant movement, broken, where its apparent present calm and tranquillity betrays not only the heavy price paid for it (“Freedom doesn't come cheap”), but also the inner fractures underlying it, as we see not only on the conversation about the Spanish gold stolen by Stalin during the civil war and references to the tragedy of war (“Democracy and tragedy were born in Athens”), but a constant dialogue between the inquisitive young (“Egalité? Merde!”) and the elders. The film has a completely dissonant and radical structure, as far away as it would be possible from mainstream and Hollywood movies: definitely Film Socialisme is not a “movie”, is something uniquely different, almost impossible to grasp in just one viewing, not even if we were such polyglots able to deal with this multilingual, complex and striking work of cinematic art.

Film Socialisme certainly is not the cinematic equivalent of fast food. It cannot be consumed, it needs to be tasted and properly digested. Slowly.

We do not necessarily have to agree with Godard's vision of Europe (“Corrupted by suffering, humiliated by liberty”) to take Film Socialisme in. We may only be able to say

NO COMMENT

Read the English translation of the dialogue.

Film Socialisme will be released in the UK on Friday 8th July, 2011

Film Socialisme
a film by Jean-Luc Godard

A symphony in three movements

THINGS SUCH AS:

A Mediterranean cruise. Numerous conversations, in numerous languages, between the passengers, almost all of whom are on holiday...

OUR EUROPE

At night, a sister and her younger brother have summoned their parents to appear before the court of their childhood. The children demand serious explanations of the themes of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

OUR HUMANITIES

Visits to six sites of true or false myths: Egypt, Palestine, Odessa, Hellas, Naples and Barcelona.

Official Selection UN CERTAIN REGARD, CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2010

Switzerland/France 2010 - 102 mins – HD - Certificate: tbc

Produced by Ruth Waldburger and Alain Sarde

Cast: Catherine Tanvier, Christian Sinniger, Jean-Marc Stehlé, Patti Smith, Alain Badiou, Robert Maloubier, Nadège Beausson-Diagne, Élisabeth Vitali, Eye Haidara, Quentin Grosset, Olga Riazanova

Read an article on Film Socialisme by Andrea Picard in Cinema Scope

Read an article by Amy Taubin in Film Comment

View Q&A in Arte: 2010, l'année Godard

Translated interview with Godard in Les Inrockuptibles published during the Cannes Film Festival

Read Lucian Robinson's blog entry on the recent furore over Godard's Oscar award.

Film Socialisme is distributed by New Wave Films.

Rabbit Hole, empty as the rabbit is never there

This is the story of a couple, bottled in sadness and intense pain disappearing in the emptiness of a rabbit hole, empty because the rabbit is never there, just the hole, staring on their faces...

Both Nicole Kidman as Becka, and Aaron Eckhard as Howie, are superb as the couple tethering on the edge of the rabbit hole, sometimes dangerously close to the edge, yet never falling down it... the shadow of a child killed in a freak road accident always there, still expected to jump from behind a corner but does not, as Aaron tells to a couple interested in buying their house, or his finger marks on door jambs as Becka shouts at Aaron in an argument when she accidentally deleted a video from his iphone (?), the video itself being another trace of the child's short presence in the world, or in the toys still scattered in his room, or in the dog that eventually returns to the house after having been exiled by Becka. Under the unbearable weight of their pain, recriminations inevitably flare up; yet kids follow dogs, dogs chase squirrels, squirrels do not look on both sides of the road when crossing, and, yes, the garden gate was left open, but... 

Whilst both Becka and Howie seek solace and relief from a therapy group, this results short lived, as soon we learn that this group constitutes another hole, and not the promised beacon to guide them away from their loss, another trap engulfing its participants year after year in masturbatory emotional games, in a sharp insightful into suburbia mythology. There is a key scene when a couple who were going on and on how they lost their child too, how God took the child because God needed another angel, forced Becka to brusquely retort: “Why God just didn't make another angel, just like that. God is God after all.” 

This is also a story of a couple exploring their way away from this emotional emptiness, this pit,  Becka and Aaron are that close to fall into one in spite of their apparently calm relationship they sustain after the child's death, yet bitterness to the unfairness of life is always there, just under the surface. Becka befriends Jason (Miles Teller), the unfortunate kid who was behind the steering wheel of that car on that day; whilst Howie attempts to engage in an affair with Gaby (Sandra Oh), a fellow participant of their therapy group, yet he cannot walk beyond her garden path.

Becka's mother, Nat (an admirably nuanced performance by Dianne Wiest) encapsulates the trauma of carrying the sadness and pain of the loss of a child for the rest of their lives, when she says to her the feelings she had when she lost her son (Becka's brother) due to a heroin overdose, when she tells her that pain is at first unbearable, but after a while it becomes like a brick in your pocket, sometimes we forget is in there, until we get the need to take it out and feel it again... until the last days of our lives.

Rabbit Hole is the title of a comic book that Jason is drawing, being the entrance to another world, a parallel universe, where people get lost for never to return, a metaphor for emotional pits with no exit, leading to the disintegration of relationships, perhaps to those same relationships being renewed, like moving on onto another world.

If you missed Rabbit Hole when it was exhibited in the cinemas, get or rent the DVD/Blu-ray disc, which is due to go on sale in Britain on the 20th of June, 2011.

Nominated for a Golden Globe and an Academy Award, RABBIT HOLE is a searingly powerful emotional tour de force, featuring a career-defining performance by Nicole Kidman.

Love Like Poison (Un Poison Violent)

I was absolutely captivated by the sensibility, beauty and sharpness of focus of Love Like Poison (Un Poison Violent), a very assured first feature film by Katell Quillévéré, although she has done three short films. Judging from it, I will impatiently wait for her next one.

At home for the holidays, Anna finds out that her father (Thierry Neuvic) had left, leaving behind her mother, Jeanne (Lio), a very embittered and depressed woman who seeks solace on Father François (Stefano Cassetti), the local “9 to 5” attitude priest, also a childhood friend.

Clara Augarde is astounding as Anna Falguères, a 14 year old girl rapidly growing in a rural French village (the film was shot at Brasparts, Finistère, near the West coast), learning how to cope with being the object of desire for the young, Pierre (Youen Leboulanger-Gourvil) - a choir boy who does not care much about God, and the old, her beloved grandfather (François Bernard) – a young at heart man who brightens her days and still having an eye for the ladies: knowing he is going to die soon, he asks her to see the place where he came from, “Your village?” she asks, “No” he replies. One late night, just before his death, she quietly complies with his wish before slipping away to her own bed, and, ultimately, to the boarding school she had been sent to save her from the continuous arguments and fights between her mother, a devote Catholic, and her father, a non-believer.

Even her mother, no longer the “pretty young thing” she once was – a point reiterated several times in the film, sees Anna as, to some extent, an object of desire too, perhaps a desire to recapture her rapidly vanishing youth as Anna's womanhood grows on a parallel track, as hinted in a key scene where she is confronted by Anna, naked but by her panties, provoking her jealousy for Anna's young and burgeoning beauty in full display, jealousy exacerbated by the girl's closeness to her father.

However, Anna soon learns the ways of the grown-ups, when her dream of going to live with her father , a dream that perhaps he unwittingly led her on to get a smile on her face, is dashed in a late night phone conversation ending with her slapping the receiver down. Her own relationship with her mother changes dramatically from taking her as her confident, when at home, as we know very little from her life at the boarding school apart from one scene where we see the girls waking up in the common dormitory, to open hostility, fuelled by her desire to live with her father. The opening scene of Un Poison Violent sets the tone of the film, where we see Anna's roving eyes as the adults chat about hers and Jeanne's prospects at a meal after Paul, her father, had left; eyes pondering, eyes delving behind the adults' façades.

She is also learning how to cope with her own objects of desire, with her own developing sexuality, comparing her breasts with those of her mother, with those of her mother when she was her own age, coping with her awkward feelings towards Pierre, towards God, towards the conflict between her religious mother and her atheist father, between carnal desire and religion, a theme delved in a conversation between her and Father François. That conflict reaches a crescendo at her confirmation ceremony, where she collapses in front of the bishop, overwhelmed not only by her own feelings and the fight within her heart, but also by the macabre nature of Catholic religious imagery.

Anna's awkward consciousness and insecurity of her own body, of her own sexuality, a target not only for the predatory male gaze, but also of furtive female eyes, reaches a crescendo in an encounter with the choirboy, Pierre, a target of her own desire, when she lies down on a stone where the earth can be heard rotating, as her grandfather taught her. The development of her sexuality undergoes a key transformative moment when she reads a poem for the funeral of her grandfather, inspired by his attitude and enjoyment of the sensuality of life, a poem where she openly acknowledges her own body, her femaleness, in front of an audience, hardly lifting her eyes from the poem, broken voice, tears flowing down her face, quivering lips... but she did it, no longer a child but then a young woman, not totally sure on her feet, but already walking as such.

The closing scene, after a feeble and rather comical attempt to whistle at Pierre's window to get him to come out to take a walk with her, a request he accedes as if he were conceding a favour to her, swaggering like a peacock, constitutes a hint of not only her assertion of her femaleness, but also of the shape of things to come, the predatory male, the not-so-compliant female, of the crosses she will have to carry as she enters into that mysterious and, sometimes, frightening world of adulthood, her roving eyes saying as much on that opening sequence.

Un Poison Violent is a very accomplished coming of age film, a genre on which French film makers excel. The cinematography is not that of the France of holiday postcards, but the greyness and wetness of everyday life, a somewhat melancholic palette.

I tweeted as soon as I left the cinema, I said that I came home with a smile on my face, the smile that surges from within when I just see life in front of my eyes, when I see a child first steps into this world of ours...

Trailer


Director's interview

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec

Luc Besson's The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec is one of the silliest films I have seen for a long time, it is also one of those films which I enjoyed every second of it, not in spite, but because of its absolute silliness.

A completely absurd story, crafted with Besson's usual panache and visual flair, set in the Paris of 1911, with the background of can-can, Egyptian mummies taking a stroll in the streets of the city at night, a prehistoric pterodactyl chick groomed as a pet befriending the President's dog, and intrepid young woman reporter, the Adèle Blanc-Sec of the title, a kind of female Indiana Jones character.

The film can be read not only as straight entertainment, but also as a parody of Hollywood studio movies, as the above mentioned Indiana Jones; and a satire of the French establishment.

There is no point describing it any more, it is a very visual film, as many of Luc Besson's works are.

HANNA missed the heart

“I missed the heart.”

A cake that did not come out as promised, when you consider the quality of the ingredients. Its armature, the script, failed to shape all the disparate elements of this film into a coherent whole. Running the risk of retelling the plot of Hanna once more, Focus Features did publicise it ad nauseam at least on Twitter and Facebook, it tells the story of a 15 year old girl, Hanna (Saoirse Ronan), who has been raised by her father, Erik (Eric Bana), as a killing machine in a remote forest in Finland, who is released in the wide world to settle some old scores with the CIA, particularly with one of its agents, Marissa (Cate Blanchett).

An ingénue, she marvels at the gadgets of the modern world that we take as part of “nature” now, such as electricity. There are some bright sparks of humour on seeing her running in fear of an electric kettle, or tackling to the ground a Spanish boy who attempts to kiss her in a date! However, she has not much time to indulge in her explorations of this world as, after having been taken prisoner by the military, she ends escaping from a secret and heavily fortified American military base in, of all places, Morocco! Of course, she is being persecuted by a bunch of heavies under the command of Marissa, in what seems to be a clandestine CIA operation through Morocco, Spain and Germany, where she is supposed to have a rendezvous with Erik. There are some lame action shots as she travels through Europe with a family who has given her a lift. Frankly, I could have stayed at home watching the proverbial paint drying.

Neither its director, Joe Wright, who tries to give Hanna some excitement by visual trickery, nor Saoirse Ronan, are able to lift this film from being a mediocre work with some touches of genius. Saoirse Ronan, a brilliant young actress, is shackled by the meanness of the story. She is supposed to be both a kind of super killing machine, but also a Kaspar Hauser like figure, her character ends by being none of those. Those touches of humour highlighting her encounters with modernity feel tokenistic. Not even her penetrating blue eyes are fully made use of.

Hanna the film fails as it attempts to be an action film, an exploration of the world by a young girl who grew up outside it, a road story, and a political thriller. It does not succeed on none of those genres, in spite of Joe Wright brilliance, the visual trickeries, and the laid back but powerful acting strength that Saoirse Ronan possesses. I learned about her athletic and fighting skills, I saw very little of her acting. When she did, her strength came through. The characterization and portrayal of the family she travels with felt cliched, the hippy like family discovering themselves in Morocco... Baddies were better painted in the James Bond films. Hanna has been compared with Kickass, Leon, Nikita, a very weak comparison indeed, although a brave attempt. I may mention in passing here that I was no fan of Kickass, or Nikita. While there are excellent scenes in it, nevertheless, as a whole it does not work. The script felt like it was written by a committee.

As Hanna the character said, this film “missed the heart”.  Disappointed.



Joe Wright


Saoirse Ronan


Saoirse Ronan


I just love her accent and her sharp diction!

Still and trailer © Focus Features.