Author: Christian Sauvé

  • Viridiana (1961)

    Viridiana (1961)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Kanopy Streaming, October 2018) I’m not saying that there isn’t some potential in a movie taking on religion and rich people as satirical targets. But I’m saying that Viridiana isn’t it—not with its muddled message, punching down to the homeless as objects of scorn, fuzzy dramatic arc and few overriding commitment of cohesion. But then again—it’s from writer/director Luis Bunuel, meaning that consistency may not be the point. The plot, as loosely as it can be called as such, has to do with a noviciate visiting her wealthy uncle, avoiding his seduction, staying at the mansion following his death and the arrival of her half-cousin, trying to morally uplift some vagrants who then trash the mansion, avoiding another sexual assault and then settling into a ménage-a-trois with her half-cousin and a servant. Or something along these lines—I wasn’t exactly paying rapt attention to the film by then. There is some supposedly comic material here (usually mixing piety and vulgarity, such as when the homeless re-create The Last Supper) but it usually feels haughty and forced. I strongly suspect that the different social context matters: The Vatican designated the film as blasphemous, whereas there’s little here that modern audiences would find particularly shocking. (The film itself is still a bit off-putting, what with its multiple instances of sexual assault.) It doesn’t amount to much—Viridiana may have some potential, but it feels obvious and mean today, much of the satirical intention has been stripped away by the decades.

  • La passion de Jeanne d’Arc [The Passion of Joan of Arc] (1928)

    La passion de Jeanne d’Arc [The Passion of Joan of Arc] (1928)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Kanopy Streaming, October 2018) If you encounter a list of the best silent movies, chances are good that you’ll see La passion de Jeanne d’Arc somewhere on it—Despite overwhelming odds against its survival (the film’s master copy burned down twice!), the film is now widely acclaimed for still-striking cinematic techniques and an awe-inspiring central performance. Writer/director Carl Theodor Dreyer, asked to produce a film about Joan of Arc, chose to focus on the documented portions of her life, most specifically her trial and execution. Working from transcripts (giving to the film an exceptional historical accuracy that still eludes modern filmmakers), he focused much of the film on closeups of lead actress Renée Jeanne Falconetti (in her second and last screen role) as she undergoes Jeanne d’Arc’s trial. It’s an unflinching depiction of a naked performance which came with a price—Dreyer was reportedly abusive on-set. On cinematic history marks, La passion de Jeanne d’Arc is practically a must see for serious film students. Alas, when it comes to enjoyment… I’m certainly showing my own background when I say that to a post-Révolution tranquille French-Canadian, La passion de Jeanne d’Arc stinks of the kind of parochial Catholicism that my parents’ generation jettisoned almost completely. To be fair, it was the intention of the filmmakers to make the film hard to watch from a contemporary perspective, portraying Jeanne d’Arc as a martyr of the Church’s persecutions. But the gloriously French myth making is something that hasn’t travelled well ninety years later, especially considering the ocean’s worth of differences between the French and French-Canadians. Other audiences’ kilometrage will vary.

  • Le violon rouge [The Red Violin] (1998)

    Le violon rouge [The Red Violin] (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2018) As someone who like cinematic form experimentation, there’s no way I wasn’t going to be interested in Le Violon Rouge, a Canadian film tacking not a single character, but a single object through centuries. Here, the story begins in the late seventeenth century, as a grieving violin-maker coats a new violin with a substance of particular meaning. From that dramatic starting point, we follow the violin through Vienna (1793), Oxford (1890s), Shanghai (1960s) and Montréal (1997) as the violin changes hands, creates passions and undergoes surprising changes in fate. As a concept, it’s quite lovely—there are a lot of novels of the sort (or close to it—see the bibliography of James A. Michener and Edward Rutherfurd) but for obvious reasons it’s a much harder form to do as a film—juggling several time periods is a nightmare in itself, not to mention the added production costs. As a result, I can’t help but compare the potential of Le violon rouge with its execution and being slightly disappointed—more time periods, stronger dramatic ironies, perhaps a longer running time in the form of a miniseries could have done the best justice to the idea. Still, what we do have with the finished film in 131 minutes isn’t negligible—the editing hopping back and forth between 1997 Montréal and earlier time period is admirable enough, but writer/director François Girard’s juggling of a large cast of character and five separate languages is an amazing feat in itself. Samuel L. Jackson, Colm Feore, Sandra Oh, French-Canadian cinema fixture Remy Girard and none other than Canadian director Don McKellar (who also co-wrote the film) are only some of the names in the ensemble cast. While Le violon rouge does have flaws, it’s also quite an interesting experiment in cinema itself and does warrant a look if that’s the kind of thing that interests you.

  • Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980)

    Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2018) Even considering that I’m not a country music fan, it took me far longer than I care to admit to realize that Coal Miner’s Daughter wasn’t just a musical drama, but a biopic about major country music star Loretta Lynn. (To be fair, I did start to suspect something once Pasty Cline started playing a role in the film.) So, speaking about a perspective as ignorant as it’s possible to be, I must say that the film works well. It spends a lot of time detailing Lynn’s upbringing in a desperately poor Kentucky community, the first few years of her marriage (including a bit of domestic abuse too quickly glossed over) and only then her ascension to the top of the country charts. The struggles of an up-and-coming musical are convincingly rendered, and so are the other kinds of challenges that come with success and fame. The inclusion of a tragic subplot featuring Cline does add a bit of complications not usually found in most music biopics. Sissy Spacek is compelling in the title role as she transforms herself from a poor teenage bride to a country music superstar; Tommy Lee Jones has an early (and not entirely glorious) role as her husband. While I’m not a natural audience for that kind of film and even if the musical biopic subgenre has a history of repeating itself, Coal Miner’s Daughter remains a well-executed example of the form, with its 1980s patina further enhancing its look at 1960s country music.

  • Blame it on Rio (1984)

    Blame it on Rio (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, October 2018) Oh, Michael Caine, how could you? I suppose that every long and distinguished career has its duds, but it’s still rare to associate such a great performer with a project as ill-advised from premise to polish as Blame it on Rio. It’s bad enough that the film has a fortysomething man having an affair with his friend’s 18-year-old daughter—the script does no one any favour as treating it as a sort of life-affirming comic experience for everyone involved. (Conveniently enough, the protagonist’s wife is later revealed to have had an affair with his friend … and the film thinks that explains and forgives everything.) For once, you can’t blame 2018-era viewers for revulsion as something that was de rigueur back in 1984—contemporary reviews of the film were just as horrified by the premise and nonplussed by its execution. Taking the form of a farce, Blame it on Rio compounds the wrongness of its premise by treating it as a source of wacky hijinks. How droll that the friend talks about killing his daughter’s unknown lover right in front of the protagonist! Even worse is the obvious approach of the film, which seems designed to cater to fortysomething fantasies rather than a realistic (or, heck, an empathetic) examination of the situation. No—in this film, the teenagers are merely fantasy figures actively looking for middle-aged lovers. (Try not to retch when the film makes a point of highlighting that the protagonist has known his teenager lover since she was a baby.) There is a remarkable disconnect between what the film assures us is normal, even light-hearted behaviour and what we suspect would happen if that scenario played in real-life. The whole thing feels dirty, and not the good kind of dirty—the kind where I can’t even bring myself to mention the name of the actress playing the teenager for fear of perpetuating the film’s voyeuristic exploitation of her nudity. To be fair, Rio is beautiful, there’s some material here that is mildly funny, and Caine gives it all he’s got—but the jokes fall flat considering the context, and we feel sorrier for Caine-the-actor than the character he’s playing. As a final indignity, the soundtrack is also too terrible for words. I thought last week that OSS 117: Rio ne répond plus was the worst film I’ve seen about Rio (and that came soon after Moonraker), but that title didn’t last long. Don’t blame Rio. Oh, Michael Caine, how could you?

  • Octopussy (1983)

    Octopussy (1983)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Third viewing, On Blu-ray, October 2018) This is probably my third viewing of Octopussy, first after seeing it as a kid when it first played broadcast TV, and then again later as a re-run as a teenager where I found it far more interesting given the film’s higher-than-usual-for-Bond sex-appeal. As a middle-aged man, I’m a bit cooler on the film, but not by much—Octopussy is a slightly better than average Bond, with a strong heroine and one of the finest sustained suspense sequences of the series. Moore can’t help but let some of his characteristic silliness contaminate the film (It would be significantly better with about ten seconds’ worth of cuts to take out the dumbest moments and sound effects) but he also manages one or two of his finest acting moments as he realizes the nature of a nuclear-driven plot to destabilize Europe. Fully playing into Cold War dynamics does lend a bit of authenticity to this instalment, even though the film seems determined to undermine this seriousness with sillier moments ranging from a chase through an Indian city where all the clichés are used in rapid succession, to a dumbfounding Tarzan yell. While I wasn’t particularly fond of Maud Adams in The Man with the Golden Gun, her character and appearance here are far more mature than most of the Bond Girls—she’s an older woman with significant power, and the film does toy with the idea of Bond finding something of an equal. Alas, Octopussy does mess it up with a seduction scene that is less than enthusiastically consensual, and then again when it transforms this capable character into a damsel in distress. It’s really too bad that a handful of sequences can significantly damage an otherwise enjoyable film. The stunts are rather good, some of the narrative twists are interesting, and then there’s that breathless chase sequence in Germany that pushes Bond to his limits and maintains the suspense for a surprisingly long time. Octopussy evens out to an OK film, with a few frustrating issues but not as bad as many of the films in the series—or even just in Moore’s run.

  • Jigsaw (2017)

    Jigsaw (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2018) I’m not generally a fan of torture horror and extreme gore, but I do have a softer spot for the Saw series for a few very specific reasons: I do like the rhythm of its films, especially when the soundtrack goes crazy in an attempt to distract us from weaker plot points. While the series has constantly been a let-down in the way it doesn’t fulfill its own moralistic objectives, it is special in how it constantly plays with structure to indulge in temporal misdirection and surprising revelations. The obvious weakness of such complex shenanigans constantly digging in the same material for twists, acolytes and time loops is that the series feels incredibly convoluted after eight instalments. That’s why I would have much rather preferred Jigsaw to have been a series reboot than yet another increasingly untenable instalment seven years later. But it only took the opening score to put me back into the series’ twisted aesthetics and the curious comfort of a film still going for broke in its direction, set design and plot twists. Jigsaw is pretty much exactly what we’d expect from another entry in the series. Convoluted traps, bloody gore, half-hearted morality plays, death-punctuated narrative and final revelations that don’t make sense the moment you think about them. Everything is incredibly convoluted, but that is part of the charm—don’t use real-world logic and you’ll be fine. This late instalment switches the rusty industrial visual atmosphere of the series to a more rural one, and it’s not much of an improvement … or a change. The Spierig Brothers handle direction duties, bringing their usual flair to the series’ established style without much of a clash. (I’d rather see the Spierigs do more original material, but if Jigsaw keeps them commercially viable, then I won’t complain too much while awaiting their next film.) Jigsaw’s adherence to the codes of the series means that experienced viewers will spot when the film pawns a few cards—whenever a death occurs with an unusual lack of gore, for instance, it’s easy to recognize it as A Clue to later revelations. Jigsaw, in other words, is no more and no less than another instalment perpetuating more of the same. Fans and haters will react accordingly.

  • Metropolis (1927)

    Metropolis (1927)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Kanopy Streaming, October 2018) There’s a good case to be made that Metropolis was one of the first (if not the first) attempt to cohesively portray a future and, as such, earns the crown of being the first feature-length science-fiction film of note. Yes, I know about Méliès’s Un Voyage Dans la Lune—but it’s a short, and it’s strictly focused on one specific idea, whereas Metropolis shows us an entire future, restrained to a town but filled with texture and details. The vision shown here by Fritz Lang is ambitious and expansive—you see some of these shots and can almost hear Lang pining for CGI. It’s a film that tackles a thicket of issues from mechanization of labour to human/robot romance, adding to the sense that we’re watching something more than just a simple adventure story set in the future. For modern viewers, it’s impossible to deny the frisson of concern given by some of the film’s sequences, knowing what we know about where 1927 Germany was headed a decade later. (Of particular note here is the all-Caucasian vision of the elites in the film. Try not to squirm when you see the role played by the film’s darker-skinned actors.) Still, Metropolis itself remains a masterpiece even ninety years later: Imaginative, influential, and still a yardstick for good science fiction.

  • Shichinin no samurai [Seven Samurai] (1954)

    Shichinin no samurai [Seven Samurai] (1954)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Kanopy Streaming, October 2018) A band of men get together to protect a village from bandits: If Seven Samurai feels familiar, it’s because it’s been very, very influential since its release. You can trace successors both direct (The Magnificent Seven, original and remake versions) and indirect (the entire ensemble-cast of heroes action movie genre) to what it solidified. Akira Kurosawa left behind two templates (in between this and Yojinbo) for the action movie and other filmmakers haven’t been shy in reusing it. The draw here is as much the story as the performances of the actors, especially Toshiro Mifune as the wild card of the group, skilled but not sane. Seven Samurai is long, but there are a lot of rewards along the way, and a very immersive sense of being in a feudal-Japan-era village as the action unfolds. This may be an older black-and-white film, but it’s certainly not boring.

  • The Caine Mutiny (1954)

    The Caine Mutiny (1954)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2018) The history of mutinies in the US Navy is a very short one, making The Caine Mutiny an even more interesting depiction of sailors rebelling against their captain. Adapted from the Herman Wouk novel, this film steadily cranks up the pressure as crewmembers of the Cain grow increasingly concerned with the mental stability of their commanding officer. (He’s played by none other than Humphrey Bogart, in a somewhat atypical role as a weak and cowering character.) It culminates in mutiny … but the film has quite a bit longer to go before being over, and it’s that third act that proves perhaps the most interesting portion of the film. Because after the mutiny comes the reckoning, as our rebellious protagonists face martial court for their actions. That’s when a lawyer (ably played by Miguel Ferrer) takes care of the mutineers, long enough to get them a fair or suspended sentence but also to deliver a terrific post-judgment speech explaining in detail how much he loathes them for what they’ve done. The Caine Mutiny also manages a terrific overturning of familiar expectations by making a semi-villain (or at least a weakling) out of its novelist character. Fictional writers being written by real writers usually means that most writers in any kind of novel/movie are usually semi-virtuous canny observers. Not here, as Wouk avatar Fred MacMurray turns out to be a coward and pointed out as such. Such overturning of expectations makes the film as good as it is, pointing out that mutinies aren’t necessarily admirable or glorious even when there’s a reasonable doubt of their necessity. The Caine Mutiny is not a short film, but it does put us on the bridge during a very tense situation, and then plays out the consequences.

  • Det sjunde inseglet [The Seventh Seal] (1957)

    Det sjunde inseglet [The Seventh Seal] (1957)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Kanopy Streaming, October 2018) Considering that Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh’s Seal is often cited (not always favourably) as being the quintessential European art-house film, I approached the film with some caution. I don’t particularly like the kind of film that The Seventh Seal is said to typify, and was expecting the worst and the dullest. Considering these expectations, I was pleasantly surprised … but not much. Nor by much. But the film is rather more amusing than expected—absurd, profound, visually inventive at times but especially funnier in a dark fashion. Needless to say, “better than expected” isn’t much of a recommendation—I still found it long, meandering, atonal and trying, but it wasn’t quite as bad as I feared. This doesn’t quite translate into a recommendation, but no matter—The Seventh Seal’s reputation in history is secure, and I’m not going to make much of a dent in it … nor will I add much more to this review.

  • L’armée des ombres [Army of Shadows] (1969)

    L’armée des ombres [Army of Shadows] (1969)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2018) The popular depiction of the WW2 French Resistance is usually heroic, portraying them as virtuous stalwart fighters against the occupying Nazi regime. But the reality wasn’t so rosy nor clear-cut, and writer/director Jean-Pierre Melville knew better than most, having witnessed it firsthand. So when he tackled the topic in L’armée des ombres, he did so with a complete lack of romanticism. The French Resistance here is made of anti-heroes, cruel and doomed at the same time. It’s a rough business, and death is seldom clean. Their activities are sordid, set against ugly backdrops and the constant threats of betrayal from fellow Frenchmen. There are a few heroics, but they almost come across as accidents with terrible consequences. A sombre and anti-glamorous cinematography further reinforces the intended realism of the film. L’armée des ombres is certainly not a pleasant viewing experience, but it does offer a different view of the Resistance, something that usually remains an unexamined plot device in other, lesser movies.

  • 12 Strong (2018)

    12 Strong (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2018) Despite Hollywood’s supposedly left-leaning tendencies, it can be counted upon to deliver, year after year, a reliable stream of pro-war statements wrapped in the American flag, family values and unquestioned imperialism. The latest entry in the subgenre is 12 Strong, which heads back to the woolly post-9/11 days when the United States boldly invaded Afghanistan half a world away. Such initial force projection isn’t easy, and so the first boots on the ground belong to Special Forces, leading the charge that more conventional military troops would later follow. Afghanistan is not an easy country to invade, and much of 12 Strong portrays the adaptations of the American soldiers as the CIA sets up factions against each other. Our protagonists eventually take up horses as the only workable transportation in the country, leading to a somewhat surreal scene featuring a 21st-century cavalry charge. Surprisingly enough, 12 Strong ends with everyone making it back home against overwhelming odds, marking a rather pleasant change of pace given the number of movies focusing on recent American military disasters with few survivors. This is not a particularly deep film—there is practically not introspection here about the wisdom of invading other countries, nor about the looming quagmire that would sweep up American (and Canadian!) troops over there for almost two decades. The dramatic arcs of the film play on familiar threads: family, safety, and bonds between men under combat. Only the cavalry aspect of the film distinguishes it from so many other similar efforts. Still, the film is a decently entertaining watch under Nicolai Fuglsig’s direction. It does help that it features terrific actors: in between Chris Hemsworth, Michael Shannon, Michael Pena and William Fichtner, the cast is a bit too good for the limited material, but they do give it a dramatic heft. It’s too long for its own good, and even then doesn’t quite manage to flesh out its characterization. But it does come alive in battle scenes, and documents an underappreciated facet of the Afghan invasion. At times, 12 Strong feels like a throwback to the war-is-an-adventure school of filmmaking, but that’s a nice change of pace from the overly ponderous war movies of late.

  • Körkarlen [The Phantom Carriage] (1921)

    Körkarlen [The Phantom Carriage] (1921)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2018) Like many silent films, director Victor Sjöström’s Körkarlen (The Phantom Carriage) is not an easy watch. It feels overlong, overacted, melodramatic and yet decidedly played in low-key compared to later efforts. Its distance from modern viewers is further lengthened by the fact it’s coming from Sweden, with entirely different codes and assumptions. Still, it does have something interesting to say, and its depiction of horror elements being used in the service of a drama-driven story. The plot is not linear (to the point of being a bit of a challenge to follow if you’re expecting the typical silent-movie narrative structure) and the special effects are effective. Further adding to the historical importance is the oft-cited influence of the film on that other significant Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend The Phantom Carriage to just anyone – budding film historians, especially with a specialty in horror cinema, will best appreciate the result.

  • Any Which Way You Can (1980)

    Any Which Way You Can (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, October 2018) The sequel to 1978’s Any Which Way but Loose once again features Clint Eastwood as a brawler looking for love (Sondra Locke, obviously) alongside his pet chimpanzee. As with its prequel, Any Which Way You Can also proves that Eastwood’s talent for comedy is … limited. Once again, the film is a comedy largely because it’s not a drama—it plays with incongruous elements, features Eastwood in a role when he can be cheered for punching people in the face and fighting Nazi bikers. Perhaps what’s most remarkable about this sequel is that it ends up giving to its protagonist what the original denied: The girl and the fighting victory. Whether this is a reflection of giving fans what they wanted or ushering the nicer, kinder, more entertainment-driven 1980s is a matter of debate, but it does make the sequel more conventional, more satisfying and somehow less distinctive. Any Which Way You Can is worth seeing if you’ve seen the first film or are an unconditional Eastwood (or Locke) fan, otherwise it’s not particularly memorable.