Souvenir (2016) ['Memory'] itself remembers - far better than The Artist (2011) - a bygone style and feel of film (stalled / unfinished review)

This is an appreciation of Souvenir (2016), as seen at Saffron Screen

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
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28 August

This is a (stalled / unfinished) appreciation of Souvenir (2016), as seen at Saffron Screen on Monday 28 August at 8.00 p.m.

Of course, the release-date of a film – in this case, 2016 – is just as much a different matter from when, in the UK (say), it has distribution and one gets to see it as from when Isabelle Huppert would have signed up to the film, the dates of the shoot [IMDb (@IMDb) does not give any, but such as The Hollywood Reporter might], and the period of editing and other post-production work before one gets anywhere near ‘a theatrical release'.

All that aside, though, Huppert shows – in this film and in Elle (2016), released in the same year – such a different side to her acting that the contrast is palpable and endearing : the humour, the awkwardness, the pulls of desire are assuredly there in Elle, but the overall affect of Paul Verhoeven’s film is quite another, on account alone of Michèle’s (Huppert's) parents and her feelings towards them both !

Now at @SaffronScreen for Souvenir (2016), largely on the back of Isabelle Huppert in Elle (2016) : apparently, a comedy (missed that take).

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 28, 2017

Nonetheless, Elle - and Huppert's effective performances in Michael Haneke's films, from The Piano Teacher (2001) and Time of the Wolf (Le temps du loup) (2013) to Amour* (2012) - was a good enough reason to want to watch Souvenir...

[...]

Not @camfilmfest's Tony Jones, but Souvenir (2016) - wondrous Isabelle Huppert, in a film tons better than The Artist - has one of its own.

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 28, 2017

Very pleased, once more, for the assurance of trusting @SaffronScreen 'blind' for Isabelle Huppert in Souvenir (2016) - rivalling KST now !

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 28, 2017

[Something would have appeared here...]


Film-references :

* Bright Days Ahead (Les beaux jours) (2013)

* Edward Scissorhands (1990) - fable / Thurber

* Indecent Proposal (1993)

* Magic in the Moonlight (2014)

* Romantics Anonymous (Les émotifs anonymes) (2010)

* The Artist (2011)

On Souvenir (2016) :

It is sharply edited, and refreshingly uses story-telling by implication - so that not everything has to be spelt out. pic.twitter.com/0pIb5CMio8

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 10, 2017

Thx for the feedback on #souvenir @THEAGENTAPSLEY

— Yves Verbraeken (@YvesVerbraeken) September 1, 2017

End-notes :

* Somewhat coolly playing Eva, the daughter of Emmanuelle Riva (Anne) and Jean-Louis Trintignant (Georges).


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

The Future or How do you choose a satisying film? (Part 3)

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

26 January

A contact in the film world and I are agreed about Peter Bradshaw (we both experienced the so-called Tartan Error, I mean Terror, event at last year's Festival - http://www.cambridgefilmfestival.org.uk/films/2011/the-tartan-terror-hamish-mcalpine-in-conversation/ - and both walked out): Bradshaw has, perhaps not single handedly, talked up The Artist into a frenzy of screenings to cope with the demand.

Rule of thumb, then:

Bradshaw commends, run the other way! - fast: since you can run, but you can't hide, etc.


Not that it was at all excessive to say that he couldn't wait until he could see it again, but it adds a certain punch to the poster - and, in whomever's eyes, though it's only January (unless the person or organ meant December), it's 'film of the year'. A huge debate could ensue about whether critics 'talk things up', and, if so, why, but it won't...

I may already have said so, but - and admittedly out of context, as pure music, as which (for me) it failed (the Birdy album, which I revisited last night, did not) - I heard a number from The Artist, played on Radio 3 last week, and was not just a little (probably, 'take it or leave it' territory), but deeply unimpressed: I should check, as I didn't register at the details, who wrote the score**.


The inverse of the law (Bradshaw despises, sell your home to get a ticket) doesn't follow, but Physics tells us that it is unlikely to, quite apart from Logic and its famous 'excluded middle'***.


For those who can bear more, there is now more at Part 4 (and the promise that Part 5 will be the end of it!)...


End-notes

* I have since revisited the Growing Up album, and other numbers from when Gabriel's were PG1 to PG4 (although PG1, despite the infectious Solsbury Hill, is not one that I want to have as a CD), via the DVD of the Growing Up tour, and will have more to say...

** Courtesy of that noble (if not infallible) resource IMDb, I can report that it was one Ludovic Bourse (more at http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0099753/), whose credentials, somehow, don't - on the basis of past film-work - compellingly strike me****.

*** Kelly Brook®, allegedly, has things to share about how to exclude that pesky middle, but, if so, she can start her own blog! (Having said that, if she were to drop me a line about Bird's use of the diminished seventh (or, even the Dorian mode), I'd make time to read it.)

**** Some, probably redundantly, would have finished that phrase with 'as impressive'...


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