'Censorship' and cinema : Some Tweets

'Censorship' and cinema : Some Tweets

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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10 June

'Censorship' and cinema : Some Tweets

More to come...

I agree with Sasha on this one, people need to be able to make their own decisions. I'm glad to see there are still film critics out there speaking out. We need more critics to speak out. https://t.co/eXrn5Psf7K

— The Film Bee (@the_film_bee) June 10, 2023

Le pornographe (The Pornographer) (2001) won the 2001 International Critics Week award at Cannes.

Ostensibly far more explicit sex-scenes in La vie d'Adèle (Blue Is the Warmest Colour) (2013) were mitigated - so it's said - by using prosthetics, whatever appears represented... ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 10, 2023

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

At least I'm not a sexually confused narcissist !

This contains a review of Appropriate Behavior (2014) (@AppropriateFilm)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
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7 March (25 March, image added)

This is a pretty sketchy account of the highly diverting Q&A that followed a preview screening of Appropriate Behavior (2014) (@AppropriateFilm) at The Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge (@CamPicturehouse), on Thursday 5 March at 6.30 p.m.

And we had a great preview screening, @ICALondon, and buoyant Q&Aat @CamPicturehouse with @AppropriateFilm from @ DesiMakesMovies, too... !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 6, 2015

Jack Toye, marketing manager at The Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge (@CamPicturehouse), kicked off with a couple of questions about the film’s reception and journey to the screen – in answering throughout, Desiree Akhavan (@DesiMakesMovies) was accompanied and assisted by the film’s producer / co-originator, Cecilia Frugiuele, and we gathered that, from the provision of the first draft of Appropriate Behavior (2014) (@AppropriateFilm), there had been a keen desire from the relevant quarters to fund the film and get it made.

As to the script, we learnt that there both is, and is not, a lot of Akhavan in the film – her feelings about relationships and life, but not the ones that she carefully chose to keep private to her, and that the scenarios are, although they are ones with which she can identify, largely not relating her own experiences*.

We learnt that Akhavan is, over and over, asked about being 'the next Lena Dunham' :

Do these people have functioning spectacles, as she is clearly the next Diane Keaton ?

In the audience part of the Q&A, @THEAGENTAPSLEY had felt obliged to dive in with the first question of Akhavan, having invited a ‘corrective’ round of applause to the seeming notion, imputed by Woman’s Hour, that her work might be pretentious [but Akhavan then gave us the precise context, which was more about precocity ?]. The applause sought, which was straightaway forthcoming, was predicated on whether people endorsed the view of Appropriate Behavior that is contained in this Tweet :

Seen at @CamPicturehouse (Appropriate Behavior (2014) *and* Desiree Akhavan) - inventive & thoughtful, funny & moving pic.twitter.com/WmTSjJ4Zqf
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 5, 2015

For, to slip into reviewing the film a little more, it melds moods in a way that feels utterly natural, and shows what is essentially a grieving process for the loss of something dear : we all know what it is like, if we reach back into our painful pasts, when what has made us feel really bad will not stay shut away in our memory, but insists on breaking back in (as Freud – still an enormous favourite in film circles [if not in therapy-rooms ?] – would say, in our dreams, in our speech, in our hang-ups and inhibitions…). So, this is a film that is assuredly more interestingly engaged with sex than the unwatched Fifty Shades (or, for that matter, the unduly contorted, hysterical even, Volume I (and then Volume II besides) of Nymphomaniac (2013)), where a casual Internet date, fuelled by booze and hints of bondage, takes Shirin (Akhavan) away to a pivotal moment of closeness with Maxine (Rebecca Henderson).

No exact parallels here with, say, Diane Keaton dressing, in Annie Hall (1977) – and to devastating effect – in waistcoat and tie to Woody Allen’s more baggy appearance, at times less masculine than rather androgynous, but Akhavan readily acknowledged, at The Agent’s talking of finding echoes with Allen’s work from this period, that Frugiuele and she had been looking at this precedent for a relationship.

Forgetting whether, in Appropriate Behavior, Akhavan also referenced the way that Allen elsewhere shows us T. S. Eliot’s mixing / memory and desire, though never quite, as twenty years later, as sustainedly, disjunctively and disquietingly as in Deconstructing Harry (1997)**, she also accepted the compliment of comparison with Frances Ha (2012), the realization of whose existence in production, she admitted, gave Frugiuele and her momentary pause.

Though, as becomes quite clear, Frances and Shirin are very different, even if superficially similar in some ways, because – the clue is in the title – the latter’s actions are appropriate, appropriate to someone grieving. And 'we go', rather, to somewhere like the sense of loss in Blue is the Warmest Colour (2013) (or even that of C. S. Lewis for Joy Gresham in Shadowlands (1993), a treatment, in part [and before even being a play after his death], of Lewis’ moving account of his changing feelings and thoughts in A Grief Observed ?) : joke though Frances (Greta Gerwig) and Sophie (Mickey Sumner) might about their inseparability, they are friends, never lovers (or a couple), and what separates them is far more about independence, and Frances not being ready to do what Sophie seeks (and tries).

All of which was offered by way of compliment - thanks, @CamPicturehouse @DesiMakesMovies @AppropriateFilm, for a great event / screening !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 5, 2015

Importantly, also, Frances has 'issues' that Shirin patently does not (not to be taken for life [and its 'rules' ?] being as confusing for Shirin as it is for Annie (Keaton) and for Alvy*** (Allen)…). Shirin may, though, be a little immature, and so she chooses and delights in seducing Maxine, when first meeting her (and by using flattery outrageously effectively - as we see her put other learnt moves to use elsewhere), on the basis of a quality that, later, she comes to regret [devalue ? denigrate ?] in her, almost throwing that chat-up line in (her own and) Maxine's face (Maxine, contrariwise, has come to resent that aspect of Shirin that is her quick wit and charm...).


And just finally, although the question of coming out, and when (and to whom)****, is one that obviously pressurizes the relationship, too, in Warmest Colour, might there not also be a little hint here – quite off on a tangent – of Asia Argento, dramatizing her life to us, and to herself, in Scarlet Diva (2000) [as Anna Battista] ? :

Akhavan, though, is too savvy to make the moods of Appropriate Behavior any more than appropriate, a mix of the appropriacy of laughter and tears, and much awkwardness and anxiety – and it is Maxine’s quick and ready confession of social anxiety that, perhaps more than we credit it at the time, underlies forging a relationship with Shirin.


Possibly more on the Q&A, and on a much-needed rewatching, to come…


End-notes

* What was less clear, in Frugiuele’s and her eager desire to give T-shirts to the audience – as happened at various junctures, with a number of different, but largely sexually related questions – was whether Akhavan was telling us that she was comparing notes about having had, and what it was like successfully to have had, a threesome, or just curious : nonetheless, the answer from the representative of Queers in Shorts pleased her, that his partner and he had sought to be mindful of [not his exact words] the third person's needs.

** Excepting, of course, the contemporarily unfairly and unwisely critically reviled Stardust Memories (1980), particularly in the splintered account of the hospitalized Dorrie (Charlotte Rampling).

*** A mimesis in the names, even, though we probably do not actually hear them sounded in the same utterance.

**** On which, Akhavan was candid about herself.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Post-Concussion Syndrome

In the wake of this review of Concussion (2013)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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12 June

* Contains spoilers *

In the wake of this review of Concussion (2013)

One can just imagine it* !

They’ve got on set, they’ve filmed fifteen set-ups, and suddenly realize that – apart from a discussion at the party, with its idle prurience about how one ‘becomes a lesbian’ – they have overlooked something…

At stages such as script-meetings, revisions, read-throughs, etc., it is incredible that no one spotted the panther on the porch, the slug in the sauna – undetected, because noticeable only by not being present** : Concussion (2013) had missed an element.

Or it is later on, after other stages such as rushes, previews, re-edits, focus-groups, that a film almost totally peopled by undressing, de-stressing, caressing, congressing… is seen, despite all this, to have a flaw : who is divorced from all the sybaritic intensity, thereby making this not a State-side Blue is the Warmest Colour (La vie d’Adèle – Chapitres 1 et 2) (2013), but more like Jeune et Jolie (2013) – which no one*** should call Young and Beautiful.

Yet it is, say, Jeune et Jolie meets the world of (the far less successful, but French) Bright Days Ahead (Les Beaux Jours) (2013), for this is more comedic… In fact, it has all the fluffiness of films such as Pretty Woman (1990) – but between women. Whence 'the marketing problem' : No key token man in sight !

For the lecherously nosy guy at the party is just a libidinous cameo (with a plot-purpose to sate our priapic needs about Abby), and Abby’s partner Kate’s (Julie Fain Lawrence’s) divorcing client, desirous of a ‘shitty’ loft (as Justin calls it), barely registers - alongside Lawrence - in their brief scenes. Even with Justin (Johnathan Tchaikovsky), Abby’s (Robin Weigert’s) handy friend with tools, there is nothing about him that compellingly foregrounds him.

Yes, in terms of the plot, he is not inconsequential – though we have to credit that, when he suddenly suggests sleeping with other women for money, it is somehow passed off as natural that he does so now, but without seemingly having referred to such things before. For all that, he has no presence as any sort of ‘arranger’ of Abby’s liaisons, because he is really only an intermediate between the matter-of-fact, but barely mysterious, The Girl (Emily Kinney) and her.


So, the question arises :

Could Justin have been made into a male part, at the last minute, to make this less like an all-female film, as Stranger by the Lake (L’inconnu du lac) (2013) is - and is happy to be - an all-male one… ?

What are the dynamics that makes that role necessarily that of a man (just as it was asked before whether it matters that Abby’s partner is not a man****) ?


End-notes

* Well, at any rate, @THEAGENTAPSLEY did.

** Like the universe’s missing anti-matter ?

*** Since ‘jolie’ means pretty (feminine form), not beautiful (and Marine Vacth, lovely and accomplished though she is, is not (yet) beautiful...

**** Some reviewers assume, because of some comment about Kate’s surname, that Abby and she are married – unlikely, perhaps, since a court only ruled in New Jersey at the end of last year that gay marriage must be allowed.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

L'Étranger ou L'Inconnu ?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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1 March

This is a review of Stranger by the Lake (L’Inconnu du Lac) (2013)

For some who might wish to know, this film contains no female roles and probably as much graphic sex as Blue is the Warmest Colour (2013)

Amongst other things, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin showed that nothing quite evokes the quotidian as showing that, day by day, people choose to do the same thing (in this case, parking in a sandy spot with a few trees), and a shot of that place and a car drawing up can also be used to denote the passing of time – and to disrupt that easy sense of denotation*. That rate at which time passes can, in itself, be used to play counter to the audience’s expectation of how quickly events should happen, what should happen, what we should see :

This film leaves us in no doubt that we see what director Alain Guiraudie wants us to see, but that may not feel a positive experience for us, even if reflection suggests that confronting us with a slow pace, much fairly promiscuous sex, and the absence, otherwise, of much other than sometimes tense conversations might be calculated to unsettle. Hitchcock, it seems, would have done it that way, although perhaps his script would have had filmic goals, in particular an ending, that this one does not.

If our sex-life is not of a nature (the film calls it ‘cruising’) where people could be talking with someone new and then head inland to caress each other within minutes and have penetrative sex, such uninhibited actions present a challenge – not in terms of whether one wants to watch gay sex, as in what anything more significant might mean**. Henri (Patrick d’Assumçao), who says that he has done all this before on holiday and does not seem much interested, values Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps) as a person to talk to, maybe over dinner or a few drinks, a feeling that may be shared equally, although Franck’s deepest desire is to find someone whom he fancies who is not already involved (and, for no apparent reason, dashes off after someone when the two first talk).

Someone gay who also watched this screening said that even knowing about a man what Franck knows about Michel (Christophe Paou) would not have stopped him being attractive and a desirable partner (whether or not the actual Michel is, who seems like a more serious type of Tom Selleck). Given what Franck does know, that seems surprising, in the way that Peter Gabriel (on his album Up) characterizes the audience of his fictitious Barry Williams Show, I love my daughter’s rapist, etc.

What matters, though, is that – of brief origin though it is – Franck feels love for Michel, albeit after the event. We will never know why Michel did what Franck knows about, we will never know what happens at the end of the film, we just see Franck relating to him, knowing that he did it. The film does build tension (though not without a running joke at the expense of the man with his shorts half down and, hand on his penis, likes to watch), and a script and a film-maker can withhold things from us*** – as said, it is made abundantly clear that we are shown what Guiraudie chooses, and that this is not a film that, unlike life, ends tidily.

However, does the end justify the means, just gradually – and effectively – stirring us up about something and leaving us hanging… ? OK, so life is not neat, we do not always know what happened and / or why, and Ingrid Bergman may not always escape the clutches of James Mason into the arms of Cary Grant, but can the point of resisting that resolving temptation just be to involve one in something (unreal) that one could not know anything about otherwise, and then suddenly say that whatever happened next is just unstated. If so, Haneke does that better, many, many times, not least with L'Amour (2012).

Haneke, however, does just not refrain from telling us definitely what is happening only at the end, but throughout – we may come to a conclusion, say, about the character or behaviour of Georges, but it deliberately may be one of several. This is where Stranger by the Lake (and it might be worth considering who we consider ‘the stranger’ of the title to be) leads us on, and then slams the brakes on at the end**** – yes, we know that several things may occur on the given facts, but why is it apt just to leave us with them ? Not that it matters much, but the film feels a little as though it may have broken faith with its audience :

I will show you this, which leads to this, which leads to this, and, when matters have become really critical, down come some pseudo-philosophic shutters, closing off what we might not know definitely in life. Yet one can be sure of two things. One, that, because of what has happened, someone will have to decide, beyond the scope of the film, what then took place and why. Two, that, as this is not life, we were allowed to see and hear things (such as Henri and Franck’s conversations), and have a perspective, which is just denied by this ending, which is therefore arbitrary.

Not so much Reader, I married him, as Reader, I’m not telling you any more after all.


Afterthought

Or maybe it does make for a genuinely suspenseful ending after all - in the sense Nous sommes suspendus...


End-notes

* As when there are no cars when Franck arrives, or when we see him walking down the path to the lake without arriving.

** In Nymphomaniac Volume I (2013), for example, two friends between them have sex with a score of men on a train just in a contest over a bag of Smarties.

*** We know nothing outside this place, and even the representative of authority keeps making visits here, at all sorts of hours, rather than taking a fairly ad hoc and low-key approach.

**** The Woman in the Fifth (2011) does so, but for a different reason that relates to the novel that it adapts.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Young and attractive*

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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1 December

This is a review of Jeune et Jolie (2013), as shown at Bath Film Festival 2013 (@BathFilm)

99 = S : 16 / A : 17 / C : 16 / M : 17 / P : 16 / F : 17

A rating and review of Jeune et Jolie (2013)

S = script

A = acting

C = cinematography

M = music

P = pacing

F = feel

9 = mid-point of scale (all scored out of 17, 17 x 6 = 102)

Jeune et Jolie (2013) soon reviewed on the blog - a delight seeing Charlotte Rampling, and strong work from Marine Vacth / Géraldine Pailhas
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 2, 2013

After the location of the opening section, François Ozon’s film is set in Paris, but more by implication than by depiction (except for showing a fascinating bridge where it seems to be the fashion to leave a padlock on the side mesh) in a film that haunts interiors. For a film that seems to centre on the sexual act, it is impressively unsexy, unlike its distinctively arousing contemporary from Abdellatif Keciche, Blue is the Warmest Colour (2013), and it really hinges on the seasons, starting with the summer, when Isabelle (Marine Vacth) turns 17.

In her head at least (though this is true of the pupils in both Keciche’s film and – another vehicle for Adèle Exarchopoulos – Pieces of Me (2012)), this is high time to lose one’s virginity, which is shown typical gritting-one’s-teeth style as if it is just something that has to be done**. Impossibly, since her German lover (no virgin) is with her and escorts her home, she looks at where it happened as if outside herself, so we know from this, and her lack of desire to see him, that the act has significance beyond our measure.

Keen though she is not to announce what she has done to her friend Claire, she does capitalize on it, and the attention that men give her. Comparisons have been made with classic Buñuel in Belle de Jour (1967), but Isabelle’s motivations – to the extent that we ever understand them – are nothing to do with sadomasochistic fantasy, nor (as in the rather dire Sleeping Beauty (2011), and despite what Isabelle pretends) with lack of funds as a student. If one is reminded of any recent film parallel, not least by how J&J ends, it is the excellent Natalie (2003), for doing something just because one can…

The film neatly sets up expectations that Isabelle’s brother Victor, who spies on her going topless on the beach and with whom she makes – and breaks – an agreement to tell him all about her lovers’ tryst, is going to remain important : what is, though, important is what her first sexual experience with another meant, for that moment of standing outside herself was almost reminiscent of the coping strategy of Samira as a victim of gang-rape in As if I am not There (2010).

This, I believe, rightly remains unclear. It has some bearing on what Isabelle did, but we are too little privy to her therapy sessions to know whether the psychological truth behind it all becomes clear to her. As a pithy description on IMDb says, this is a film in four seasons and four songs, the first of which we hear when she is reflecting on what happened on the beach. As befits songs (and it remains to be established whose words are set), they can exist outside the realm of the person with whom they are visually associated, just as a singer can tell a tale of jealousy without being a jealous person :

Without a teacher’s voice intervening, what is effective is a moment when different members of the class, Isabelle included, recite parts of a poem by Rimbaud, and then are shown, in their seats, interpreting it. Not only is one reminded of the school setting, and relatively impenetrable protagonist, of the previous film (In the House (2012)), but also of the provisionality of what we see and hear, whether in poetry, or in film.

The taboos that are broken share ground (though not content) with films of Haneke’s such as Benny’s Video (1992), Funny Games (1997) or The White Ribbon (2009), with both writer / directors showing that they have insights into the world of adolescence and the excessive liberties that it can lead to. The alliance between brother and sister to keep secrets, and that uneasy interest in each other’s sexuality, is the germ of what happens, the sort of rebellion that Haneke keeps coming back to.

The seasons denote attempts to come to terms with sex and relationships from the first sexual act to thinking oneself invited to perform lesbian acts, and, in between, a searching for identity, warmth, a place to be oneself that ranges from flirting with one’s stepfather (Frédéric Pierrot***) to trying to love a peer. In all of this, the threatened connection between mother and daughter holds firm, but there is the unsettling feeling that what one did / who one is perceived to be will break through.

Ozon’s film is seamlessly constructed, thoughtful, intense, and the performances that he has from Vacth and from Géraldine Pailhas as her mother Sylvie are highly impressive, with solid support from Pierrot, a little more able sometimes as Patrick, even if his way of expressing himself is pounced on to his ill by Sylvie, to see the wood for the trees. Ultimately, Ozon leaves us to ponder, whether or not as parents, what he has brought to us here.


Though there is also a follow-up piece here







End-notes

* The film gives as its English title Young and Beautiful, but any student of French will tell you that jolie does not mean 'beautiful' (which is belle). One of the posters for the rising star Peppy in The Artist (2011) is Young and Pretty, but Peppy does not suit a leading lady, and would fit the dog better.

** Rather implausibly, given what twentieth-century girls lives are like (plus she is described as a tomboy later on), she bleeds, as if her hymen had been intact.

*** A prolific film actor, best known to me from being a foil to KST in Sarah's Key (2010) - a film unfairly slighted by UK critics - and, in a different capacity, in I've Love You So Long (2008).


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

In yer face II

This is a follow-up to a review of Blue is The Warmest Colour (2013)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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28 November

This is a follow-up to a review of Blue is The Warmest Colour (2013)

* Full of spoilers about Blue is the Warmest Colour (2013) - linked from the review here *


* Introduction to Adèle’s family and school life (Pasteur, Lille)

* (We learn that she is ‘a junior’, but her age is hard to place, and the French terminology does not mean very much)

* Her female friends urge her that Thomas is interested in her

* When she meets him on the bus, they talk, and he turns out to be ‘a senior’, reading science

* They have a date, but his advances in the cinema seem to cause her problems

* He confronts her with avoiding him, and they sleep together (not very convincingly, she claims that it was good)

* Alongside all this, she has passed Emma in the street (‘love at first sight’, as one of the teachers twice refers to ?), and then has a confused masturbatory dream in which Emma and others feature, from which she awakes aroused and disturbed

* At this stage, it remains open whether Emma and she had been lovers before, and seeing each other in the street has sparked something off

* Valentin, a male friend, has seemed understanding, and reassured her about her appearance (be behaves as if, contradicted by the family set-up, he might be an older sibling)

* Later, after upset regarding telling Thomas that she is breaking up with him, Valentin takes her out of school, and they end up, that evening, at a gay bar

* Adèle tires of watching same-sex kissing and the dancing, and wanders out, and into another bar

* There, she is the subject of interest of various women, Emma (who is on a balcony) and she see each other, and Emma, calling her Sophie, claims to be her cousin : it is soon apparent that they do not, in fact, know each other

* Again, Adèle ends up leaving, but Emma waits at the school gates, and they go off together

* Valentin indiscreetly (though innocently) reveals where Adèle and he went, and she is then taunted for associating with a ‘dyke’ (Emma) and accused of ‘eating pussy’

* She then meets Emma again and does so – full, intimate, unhesitating sex-acts from someone who has never slept with a woman before

* Unclear where (need not be Lille), but a LGBT march, where Emma and Adèle are prominent marchers and kiss publicly


Significant other events :

* Introduction of Adèle to Emma’s parents (who accept her sexuality) – the parents question the solid nature of Adèle’s intention of doing a master’s course and going into teaching, as against taking more of a risk on the job market

* Seemingly on her return from this visit, a surprise eighteenth-birthday celebration (so we learn her age)

* Likewise with Adèle’s parents (but Emma goes along with saying that she helps Adèle with her philosophy, and even that she has a boyfriend) – her parents stress the precarious nature of being an artist, and Emma claims to be a graphic artist, too, and to get work from it

* Huge jump in time (unless it is teaching practice) to Adèle taking primary classes, and a male teacher urging her so come drinking after work

* Big party for Emma’s art career, where she meets Lise, and Adèle talks to and dances with Joachim, eyeing Emma and Lise suspiciously – pitting Egon Schiele against Gustav Klimt, etc., does not convince as the height of intellectual conversation

* The male teacher drops Adèle off, and Emma, who is watching and sees them kiss passionately, confronts Adèle, who admits sleeping with him when lonely (because Lise was helping Emma with her art, which makes Adèle suspicious)

* Emma calling Adèle ashamed of her and a whore and a slut, given that, later, Emma has a relationship with Lise, makes one wonder whether Adèle’s supicions of Emma were right, and Emma was just covering falling out of love with Adèle (as she had been with a girl for two years when she slept with Adèle)


And so on...


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

In yer face I

This is a review of Blue is The Warmest Colour (2013)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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28 November (updated 30 November)

* May contain spoilers *

This is a review of Blue is The Warmest Colour (2013)

This film does not drag, largely because one urges the development of the story between the two principals, but, at the same time, because the film is only incidentally 'about' them, it also feels somewhat hollow : at 105 minutes in, that seemed OK, and about right (when one knew that a screening that went in at 4.15 p.m. was not due out until around a titanic 7.35 p.m.), but then one was tempted to keep an eye on the time to guess how it would end.

When it ends, not with the flagged-up possibility (at which, even as a misdirection, one cringes), but just with a departing figure and a black-out, the next thing on the screen, in white on the black, is :

La vie d’Adèle

Chapitres 1 et 2

It felt like a mid-air ending, and this credit almost confirms that, as with the 600-page novel La Vie de Marianne (Pierre de Marivaux’s unfinished book) that Thomas tries to read, this could be just part of a long story.

What is that story so far ? Roughly chronologically, it is set out here (for those who wish to see it), but there are various themes that emerge from the film in general :


Adèle makes a habit of walking out of social situations, and we see her at what seems her most relaxed when she is dancing (with men, largely ?), but she does confront her accusers at school in what is a scuffle. A scuffle with seemingly no consequences, although the feelings that others have about her would scarcely evaporate – director Abdellatif Keciche may think it immaterial to do more than show that such attacks exist in life, but treating it as if hostility from Adèle’s circle were a one-off that she would easily live with at school is fantasy. (Maybe we do not need to know, if she could not ride the storm, had to change schools, and her parents found out what it was about.)

Likewise, marching in support of LGBT causes and kissing in public – unless a distance away from Lille – is not going to be without ramifications, and, as mentioned, how long will Adèle’s parents be put off by Emma being ‘a friend’ ? Are these just dream-scenes, including the six or so graphic minutes of continuous sex, divorced from being real-life events ? If they meditate on anything, such as showing how Adèle’s parents shape what is probably an inferiority complex, they just subvert an unremittingly linear narrative and make it seem empty.

What fills it, with Emma’s face less so than with Adèle’s, are the screen-filling close-ups, so large that one is simultaneously torn, if reliant on the subtitles (maybe Keciche did not think of that), between reading them and adjusting one’s vision to the angle subtended by the large image : whereas, with a typical medium shot, specifically deployed as a departure in, amongst other places, the primary school, one can relatively easily switch between the shot and the next caption.

As against the head, or torso shots, at dinner with her parents, these vastly magnified images of Adèle (or Emma) constitute a form of immediacy, but one can hardly be unaware that the pair seems engrossing because there is nothing else to see, however winning Léa Seydoux’s smile (as Emma) may be. It does not hold up the film’s progression, but only a fluent speaker of French could have the full impact of the huge facial depictions and the dialogue.

As the film proceeds, Adèle comes in contact with Emma’s friends, seemingly, for the first time at the party that we see, where she broadly feels inadequate (as she appears to comment when undressing) – has she no way of knowing about herself (and saying to Emma) that parties are not her thing, rather than throwing herself into the catering as if she planned the whole thing ? (Whatever did happen with her one-time school-friends, Adèle does not appear to have asked anyone with whom she socializes, maybe because she does not, and Emma is all in all to her.)

Actually, she may have planned the whole thing as a way of meeting these friends, if Emma has not actually shared them – what we are shown does not give confidence that there is some thinking about the characters (which some call ‘a back story’), but one may come back to that being the point, that the situations are not doing more than drawing attention to their artificiality. (Probably not true, but this is an attempt to be charitable.)

At the end of the film, visiting Emma’s show, it is just more of the same, as if somehow Adèle thought that she would have Emma to herself – false expectations and inevitable disappointments.

A teacher in one of her classes at school had talking about Antigone, about childhood, and about tragedy being unavoidable – are we meant to recall that, and think of Adèle, being hurt and feeling outside life ? The title of the film then means that Emma, the blue-haired girl, was, she realized, all that she ever wanted.

Adèle Exarchopoulos, who plays Adèle, is hardly off the screen, and is larger than life (literally, in character, although actually very reserved and even awkward). Seydoux and she* do a very good job of bearing the weight of this film, but, in particular, the scripting of the party scenes does not persuade that these people are Beaux Arts graduates, the dialogue between the two about ‘fine’ versus ‘ugly’ arts is barely credible, and the camera does well to show little of Emma’s putative artworks, even the sketch of Adèle (which is, she says, both like and not like her).

A film that has a significant element of the art world really ought to know its material better – unless, again, this is a sort of pastiche, maybe Adèle having a nightmare about throwing a party for Emma, and then feeling quite out of place, alienated**. Blue is the Warmest Colour suggests a topsy-turvy distance on and from the world, but one can only speculate so long on what is sloppy, what intentional…


End-notes

* Interestingly, Seydoux is 28 (born 1 July 1985), Exarchopoulos 20 (born 22 November 1993).

** At least three times, we are shown the triangle of Adèle's mouth open as her head lies on the pillow, which seemed to be acknowledging that those in their teens sometimes need more sleep (Adèle tells Emma that she eats everything, except shellfish (a dislike that she conquers), and a lot), but could be suggesting that what seems to be happening is but in dream (what else is cinema ?).

The Marivaux novel, from what can be quickly judged of it, does as the film's subtitle suggests that it should, i.e. to take the central character's (inner) point of view. Forty-eight hours after the screening, thinking about what we see of Adèle's life leads to the possibility that there is some element of Belle de Jour (1967) here, and that what may appear to be straight, linear narration is actually more of a dreamscape, a projection into a future that is yet to be...


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)