From the archive : Dry white, best served lightly chilled

This is a Festival review of Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec (2010)

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

This is a Festival review of Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec (2010), written 16/17 September 2010 - in the days when one submitted one's response to Cambridge Film Festival's web-site in its style, and hoped that it would appear...

AVENTURES

This is a spirited and very funny romp, variously parodying and paying tribute to, amongst other things, everything from Spielberg to the phenomenon that is TOMB-RAIDER and the INDIANA JONES and JURASSIC PARK films, and it was a really brilliantly enjoyable choice for the start of the festival this year.

The title and the write-up in the festival booklet would lead one to expect no less, not least with the resonance that the French word ‘aventures’ has (I think that it is lacking in our similar English word), and that incongruously added to the heroine’s double-barrelled surname, which flagged up (if one translated it, even if one knew nothing (as I did) of Jacques Tardi) that we were to be prepared for the incredible passing calmly as the plausible (which some find convenient to call ‘magical realism’).

Besson brought his own kind of magic aplenty (which, for me, was already in the air – and very welcome – with the recent screening here of the delightful animation THE ILLUSIONIST), together with a mix that included a slightly gauche (but nevertheless engaging and helpful) nuclear physicist from the pre-Christian era, and an enjoyment of SFX that was only occasionally marred by what were (possibly quite deliberate) slight defects in the execution.

(For example, the heroine mounted a creature (not just a camel) bareback in a (successful) attempt to bring it to heel, and the seemingly unintended blurring that accompanied her return to earth with it subdued (and in harmony with her) could have been a way of undercutting our temptation ‘to believe’ too deeply in what was, essentially, a fable, charmingly distilled from the whole project’s origins in and indebtedness to the world of the illustrated page (and maybe to such films as DRAGONHEART and the trilogy of LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy). I have no doubt that some of the elements and themes were also more closely linked to that pictorial world than I, without other knowledge of it, could identify or fully appreciate, but such is the stuff of taking something from one medium to another (as with the Tati homage).

The film’s quirkiness and Egyptian theme were nicely set by the opening title-sequence, which turned out to be projected onto and panning across an obelisk that, when the edge was reached, at once brought us into focus on a familiar scene and set us in Paris. The Paris of 1911, as the initial and familiar technique of voiceover announced some important characters to be introduced to us in succession. And so their lives interacted (or, in the case of one who was asleep, failed to at that time), and brought us, via the (sometimes) hesitant character of Andrej to the start proper, with the artefact-exploring activities of the person to whom reviews traditionally like to refer as the eponymous female lead.

In the stereotyping of the villains who enter the tomb, one might be able to escape imputing the French-speaking racism towards its African empire to anything other than the plot and its time. (They come complete with an evil eye and other deformities to signal their standing, and with a brazen greed that one knew could not be leading them to their good, much as one knows that all sorts of grasping in Bond plots will (albeit with his hand to assist in it) work against their ultimate aim – and there was a delightfully typical Bond-type moment at the end of this sequence).

However, one could just as easily see a likely reference back to the cultural politics of the time of when Harrison Ford first had adventures as Jones on the screen. In that regard, but still in the spirit of parody, it could have been a deliberate unsettling of our (would-be?) more modern mores regarding (at least talking openly about) the supposed features, attitudes or beliefs that we (want to) believe link with cultural origin.

The pace of the film was, to my mind, perfect, and the little jokes of repetition with the prison scenes, the way that the action moved from place to place and character to character, and the (apparent) rootedness of the piece in its era (at least until the clock’s hands go momentarily awry) all served to echo this concept of time with which we tend to engage as a timepiece that we consult from day to day, but which Besson’s vision prompts us to approach more closely and in a different way. For that reason, I found the allusions to other forays in this field as different as BACK TO THE FUTURE, GROUNDHOG DAY and Scorsese’s (maybe overlooked) AFTER HOURS) to be undisguised and telling.

On another level, the film even embodied a challenging form of extreme (if unplanned) piercing that I had thought only to be the stuff of my very recent imagination until I saw it here: that was some surprise for me, as was the way in which it was introduced brought about a slight misdirection as to that person’s ‘life-status’ was (if I may call it that, since it has a bearing on the whole). In showing us how that had arisen, in a semi-tragic flashback (on account of the implausibility factor, which is one that is familiar from the other films already mentioned), there was a telescoped mockery of the development of lawn tennis that I was by no means alone in finding quite hilarious at the same time that I knew that it led to someone’s being maimed.

There is much more to say, and I know that ADVENTURES would repay my early viewing, but don’t think that I can make the re-run. As usual, those who left at the titles missed something, an amusing scene from the subplot that eventually (and briefly) brought Andrej and Adele together, and a flashback to a part of the film that we knew we were being taken away from, despite its being partly unresolved. It showed a possible ending to an unwilling alliance (on one side at least) that was not without its precedents, but which, for some reason, most put me in mind of the closing scenes of ‘Whinfrey’s Last Case’ in Michael Palin and Terry Jones’ series RIPPING YARNS.

What that extra snippet didn’t do was in any way to undermine the demise of one pair of highly linked characters, and their fate stood, in juxtaposition to the ‘happy ending’ of Adele being reunited with her sister. That being said, Adele was soon faced with a scheming peril that may (or may not – I am a little hesitant, unlike some heard leaving the screening, to detect scope for a sequel here) serve to end her affirmative approach to life (or, at least, until some time as her own mortal residue might be recovered.) In her case, we probably trusted to her resourcefulness to overcome, and, in the case of the inter-title peril awaiting the killer, maybe did not much care.

Life, death and our attitudes to both have been familiar parts of Besson’s work as far back as SUBWAY, with its choice of tone in ending that led (for those not wanting something else, and who would, for that reason, be deeply unhappy with where BRAZIL leaves us) to a quiet acceptance of what has gone before as life that was lived and worth living whilst it was (and as long as it could be) lived. It is not a heavy note, but it could set one thinking, if one looked beyond the jokes, whilst at the same time, relishing them greatly.

Some of those jokes themselves are not without an import or filmic referent (e.g. pairing the Jurassic period with the Isle of Jura (not, though, really known for anything other than its deer, whisky and George Orwell’s inhabitation), claiming a different historical specialism acts as an excuse not to help and to avoid being detected, and a chain of command that delegates down and down with an ever-diminishing deadline). Others humorous elements are more free in their inventiveness, and, although I am unsure whether there was a definite nod to another recent feature, the spontaneous laughter brought about by seeing the policeman, reluctantly teamed with a hired killer and in costume of the latter’s specification, suddenly viewed from behind was full and infectious.

Yet, for me, it is this theme of mortality and what it is to try to catch at life (for oneself or for others) that I will take away. It also engages nicely in theme with a radio adaptation of Faust that I hope to catch at the weekend (as well as with the revival of The Makropoulos Case in London at English National Opera). The newly resurrected, going off to explore and enjoy France’s capital, have a connection with that ready acceptance of mortality, and enjoying what one has whilst one has it, that struck chords with the South American tradition of enjoyment of bones and skulls, and, maybe, with what we miss in Hallowe’en (itself a key moment in Goethe’s great two-part play).


AJD


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

Venus in Fur - or Martin Clunes naked ?

This is a review of Venus in Fur (La Vénus à la fourrure¹) (2013)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

5 June

This is a review of Venus in Fur (La Vénus à la fourrure¹) (2013)

So, Venus in Fur (2013) almost reunites Emmanuelle Seignerand Mathieu Amalric(from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) (2007), but not...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 1, 2014

Once one has seen Mathieu Amalric look amazed – with boggle eyes – a few times, it ceases to be nearly as amazing. Just as his looking as perky to please as a spaniel, or a couple of other states evoked by the face, does not really effect a transition in what is a dramatically flat situation, of switching between a handful of modes. And, regrettably, Emmanuelle Seigner has to do much the same - a bit as if the full schema of Eric Berne’s Games People Play had been limited to toppling over between a few mood-states (not the whole gamut implied by the principles of transactional analysis) :

Though, for those who praise Locke (2013), the lack of anything going on is a virtue, and here, except for a fairly predictable game, nothing is (actually) of a game-changing nature. (If it were, Martin Clunes, say, would be out of a job in a film such as Staggered (1994) – for many a best man’s prank is many times more elaborate than what happens here.)

If a film adaptation seems to lack cinematic qualities, why do we need it, rather than watching (or reading) the stage-play, Venus in Fur ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 1, 2014

Yet what is of great relevance here is that what Polanski has directed feels little like a film, but a film of a play (as with August : Osage County, which (throughout) struggles a little more not just to be a series of interiors). We could even cut out David Ives altogether, as middleman (qua author of the play), and go to this seminal novel – if one did not suspect that its claims to importance are as overrated as those who say that Cleland’s Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure is a towering work of world literature… (Although one scarcely insists that a middling text cannot be transformed to make a dazzling screenplay, of course.)

For an adaptation of a play, @LittleTheatreUK, not a patch on Polanski's own, of Ariel Dorfman's work, in Death and The Maiden (1994) ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 6, 2014

By contrast with what, from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, is called variously a novel and a novella (of uncertain length), what about the enterprise Stanley Kubrick embarked on (with Frederic Raphael) in what proved to be his play film – broadly adapting Arthur Schnitzler (Traumnovelle) in Eyes Wide Shut (1999) ? Given what Polanski has given us, even what IMDb tells us about Venus in Furs (1969), in all truth, sounds as though it has more ‘going for it’ (currently rated 5.8, versus 7.2 for Polanski), if one forgets that the first and second sentences, together, seem confusing ! :

A musician finds the corpse of a beautiful woman on the beach. The woman returns from the dead to take revenge on the group of wealthy sadists responsible for her death.

Maybe Polanski thought that it a very good idea to adapt David Ives' stage-play in Venus in Fur (2013) : Maybe MeretOppenheim said more ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 31, 2014

This is Méret Oppenheim’s classic, provocative piece, Object (1936), (which is owned by MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, New York)

The very opening of the film, with the boulevard, the trees, the train, wanted to be promising, but even the conceit that followed straight after, as we veer right, was much more akin to Mary Poppins (1964) than anything to which we would ever give our heart or soul** – or maybe we would give it willingly to what might present as a patent French confection, such as Amélie (2001), but has actual depths.


Ultimately, one judges for oneself (by going to a screening, maybe staying to the end, although more wildly tempted than either of the characters, perhaps, just to leave), but the triangle of forces of Polanski, Amalric and Seigner have been brought to bear on the Ives text in such a way that even saying Putain de merde ! seems not quaint, but outlandish. And it is not that Vanda's (Seigner's) oscillation between ditzy initial presentation and divinity is not done with some force, some panache, but that is half the problem :

For Polanski too ostentatiously relies on Alexandre Desplat’s rather nasty score to add something that just is not there in the script, with the result that any attempt at dramatic irony (which, in any case, is rarely best employed as a sustained gambit ?) more closely resembles a strong sense of predictability – and also merges with one's not caring what happens.

As mentioned², the plot requires Thomas (Amalric) to be alone when Vanda arrives, but there is no sense at all that anyone else has ever been there, let alone a string of unpromising auditioners – and these two, by the direction in which one moves at the other’s direction, do not even know their stage left (as seen from the stage, facing front) from their audience left (as seen from the auditorium, facing front). Are they film actors, pretending to be actors, pretending to be, respectively, writer-turned-director³ and actor… ?


Or something more archetypal, more primal, though that notion vanishes as soon as one tries to rely on it too much, let alone when we have had thrust in the face of our credulity all the outfits and other tat that are suddenly brought into this place… ?

As already suggested, people drifting in and out of roles, and the resultant power-play, seems so stale, especially if it is Carnage (2011) again, but light on the (would-be) levity ?


End-notes

¹ Note that definite article – in French, one cannot just say Vénus à la fourrure, any more than, in Italian, one can have Grande Bellezza on its own (The Great Beauty (2013)).

² That film ends in reverse of its beginning, and so does this one – a well-worn way of symbolizing that the spell cast by The Prologue at the start of Henry V, or by Prospero, has been broken by or at the end.

But, one has to ask, to what effect use this device, and was it not, in all likelihood, just to tweak the play’s opening by being in Vanda's view-point as she enters, rather than her coming in and surprising Thomas, already there ?


³ Though, as Thomas labours the point, he has adapted, not written, the text for the play, so that we can sense – as if we do not abundantly – his pliant nature, poorly masked by inflexibility as a strategy…


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