Author: Christian Sauvé

  • Disappearance (2002)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, July 2022) At times, it almost feels as if Disappearance will lead to a modest but sufficiently good little movie. But just wait, because like most things in this film, it’s just an illusion. The premise is classic enough to be promising, as a small ordinary family (mother, father, two boys) decide to go off-road in Nevada and check out a nearby ghost town for photography. But faster than you can say, “I’ve read that Stephen King novel,” things turn sour—strange remains, mechanical problems, and spooky apparitions. The rest of the film unspools in sequences that are either promising or stupid (and sometimes both thanks to made-for-TV production values hampering a script that’s occasionally too ambitious) but ultimately settles for extra-large idiocy by the time the moronic, unexplained shock-value conclusion rolls around. Despite some intriguing moments, Disappearance finally falls flat on its face. Those with long memories and a fondness for L. A. Law’s classic years will have fun noting that the film reunites Susan Dey and Harry Hamlin as the lead married couple. Otherwise, Disappearance is more frustrating than anything else—it shows promise and occasional moments, but can’t make anything cohere by the time its sorry excuse of a conclusion comes through.

  • Verdens verste menneske [The Worst Person in the World] (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2022) I can see how The Worst Person in the World’s character study of an unfocused young woman (who changes jobs, boyfriends and hairstyles several times during the few years covered during the film) would appeal to many—our heroine struggles to become even a thoroughly mediocre white woman and that should spell r-e-l-a-t-a-b-l-e for many viewers. Add to that a conscious decision to undermine, sabotage and dismiss conventions of romantic comedy and you can understand why the film will find its champions. But there’s a limit to how The Worst Person in the World’s refusal to provide a tiny happy ending can grate. I found the film more interesting when it went off course on expressionist tangents than for the rather dreary main plot it’s intent on carrying to an unfocused finishing line. There is no happy ending here—and, in fact, maybe not even an ending, as “Life goes on, romance is dead, maybe the job will sustain you” seems to be the thrust of the film’s final scene. At least it goes for something slightly different from time to time (via chapter titles and narration, the last of which is underused as the film progresses), easing the melancholic strain of it all. This being said, writer-director Joachim Trier does have a powerful weapon in his arsenal: Renate Reinsve, in the lead role, does exceptionally well at incarnating an unremarkable person through the ups and downs of her life, the frankness and the artifice required of her from one scene to another. How people will react to The Worst Person in the World will largely hinge on their tolerance for realism in cinema—despite a few fantastic interludes, this is a film that seeks to ape the aimlessness and regressions of real life. Too bad if you’re looking for stories that uplift or lead somewhere.

  • The Great Debaters (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2022) So many movies are released every year that many good ones pass us by unnoticed. That’s why I make it a habit of periodically checking off new award-winning lists to get pointers for those I should not have missed. My newest list is the NAACP Image Award-winners—I have seen enough of them to gauge that the award goes to good movies, and there are enough unseen films in there to make it worthwhile. The first film I was able to track down was The Great Debaters, and it’s appealing enough to make me wonder how I missed it. Taking us back to mid-1930s Texas, the film focuses on a headstrong teacher as he establishes a debate team at a historically black college, and then follows it to national victory against Harvard. It’s all based on a true story, albeit with composite characters and substituting Harvard University rather than the University of Southern California that was defeated during the real-life events. Denzel Washington not only stars, but also directs the film and does a quiet, efficient job in both roles. A good supporting cast (including Forest Whitaker, Denzel Whitaker [no relation], Nate Parker, Jurnee Smollett and Kimberly Elise) ably anchors the film, but it’s the script and its intentions that shine—in promoting wit, hard work and perseverance. Our characters use words as sport, and it’s that slightly different focus that makes The Great Debaters rise above its formulaic structure to become a compelling watch. Anyone familiar with sports movies or films about racial discrimination will not be surprised by anything here—but the packaging is quite good, the atmosphere of intellectual academia is well rendered and Washington elevates the film every time he’s on-screen (or off-screen for that matter). There’s clearly a personal appeal of the subject matter here but even if The Great Debaters isn’t a great film, it’s a good-enough one that is better than most of what else is out there. I took me a while to get to it, but I’m glad I finally did.

  • Le rayon vert [The Green Ray aka Summer] (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2022) Here’s a weird, weird case of literary adaptation—or maybe appropriation: When I recorded Le rayon vert, I thought I was getting an adaptation of Jules Verne’s novel—a curio in his bibliography, a romantic comedy motivated by a singular optic phenomenon encountered whenever sunsets and bodies of water meet. Having read the breezy novel as a teenager, I remembered a few good bits from it and was looking forward to the highlights of the story (including the rather ironic ending). Alas, maybe, the film is not that: writer-director Éric Rohmer delivers something different that actually mentions and discusses Verne’s novel in a different context. So: as the film begins, we realize that we’re stuck with a young French woman with a pathologic inability to make up her mind. Her summer vacations consist in floating from one thing to another, criss-crossing France in the hope of having a meaningful adventure or, failing that, then something like a relationship to replace the void left by her breakup. It’s on the Atlantic coast that she hears about the green flash that happens when the sun sets on the ocean, and the mythical properties of the moment that were popularized in Verne’s novel. It all leads to a happy ending, but in order to get there you have to get through Rohmer’s largely improvisational approach to filmmaking, with non-actors being captured in dialogue, the protagonist not doing much of anything, and a very, very loose “script” guiding an approach that is often more visual than plot-driven. I still kind-of, sort-of tolerated the results: It was interesting to figure out when the Verne novel connection would come in, and for all of her maddening indecisiveness, the heroine eventually grown upon viewers as a figure of sympathy. I am still, however, waiting for a film adaptation of the Verne novel.

  • Level 16 (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2022) I will forever defend Science Fiction’s ability to literalize the metaphor, to extend philosophical arguments to dramatic extremes and to propose conceptual breakthroughs that make us rethink the nature of reality. But it’s always possible to overuse those strengths to the point of clichés, and clichés are the only things I’m left with after watching Level 16. Writer-director Danishka Esterhazy probably wanted to deliver a statement on the exploitation of girls, rile viewers with the idea of extreme violence and wow mainstream audiences with genre tricks. Unfortunately, if you’re even mildly conversant with SF clichés (and who isn’t at an era where such ideas are not confined to specialist fiction?), it takes mere minutes to predict the entirety of the plot. From the moment the first few minutes introduce an austere, hermetic academy in which girls are taught to be compliant and stupid, the only question is “So, are they being groomed for sex or internal organs?”  The answer will surprise you, but only because it’s the dumbest single possible answer to the question, and it doesn’t change anything to how the film does. Slow-paced, glacially photographed and playing along intensely familiar clichés without an ounce of self-awareness about it, Level 16 painstakingly gets its two lead characters through the obvious process of doubting authority and discovering the truth for themselves. The film’s few better moments shift focus from the students to the teachers when it’s clear that this facility is not doing well at all in servicing its potential clients. But never mind that interesting line of thought—the rest of the film plays straight to expectations and the tritest plot anyone could come up with. Vastly overlong at 102 minutes for what’s essentially a TV episode’s worth of content (and not an overly original episode at that), Level 16 sometimes attempts to distinguish itself through style but generally fails at that too. I’m hardly the first one to note that the problem with people thinking of themselves as Science Fiction writers without any familiarity with the genre is that they end up boldly reinventing clichés and wallowing in them. Level 16 may wow people who have never seen another SF movie in their lives, but does that describe anyone these days? Oh; I know—maybe, in an austere hermetic academy, young girls grow up without watching Science Fiction…

  • Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2022) I started watching Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love knowing that I would be disappointed, and ultimately wasn’t—but not necessarily in the ways I expected. Unlike most of the films titled “Kama Sutra,” this one is not pornographic nor about sex education: it’s a historical romantic drama from noted filmmaker Mira Nair, an Oscar-nominated critical darling whose films never stoop to crass exploitation. Part of my interest in the film (which, broadcast on a serious cable TV channel, just happened to be a DVR “Record” click away) was to see how Nair would approach a subject matter often misrepresented as faux eroticism by lesser filmmakers. The result is… surprising. The slickness of the production is obvious—the colourful cinematography, the deliberate camerawork, the artfully staged sequences and tight editing. The script also starts poking, early on, at familiar notions of romantic drama: much of the best early scenes have to do with older women teaching younger ones about manipulating men, for instance. Much of the rest of the plot falls upon familiar material—two women competing for the same man, one of them contending with an abusive partner, etc. But cinematography is where the film shines. The sex scenes alone are spectacularly shot, and that’s not going into the rest of the film’s historical recreation. While mid-1990s films haven’t aged badly in general, Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love still looks terrific today thanks to sticking with the basics of clear visuals and not going for trendy effects. In the end, the film won me over thanks to its atmosphere, clever directing and luscious cinematography—not quite what I was expected in tackling a film knowing that it wouldn’t be nearly as risqué as its title.

  • The Addams Family 2 (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2022) There was a moment, near where the end of a first act would have been, where I grew immensely weary of The Addams Family 2. It was a point in the vicinity to Niagara Falls when the “one thing after another” nature of the plot became too clear, when I knew that any good intentions I had about the film had evaporated. When the ugly character design would remain until the end, when the basic creative intentions of the film were so radically different from what I wanted to see that the only thing left to do was to resign myself to outlasting the film to its conclusion. I did not, for the record, hate The Addams Family 2—I just felt unsatisfied by its very slight achievements. As someone who holds the two Barry Levinson live action 1990s films in high esteem, both this sequel and the 2019 animated film barely scratch as the potential of its course. I don’t particularly care if they are closer to the Charles Addams characters—they’re not interesting, not likable and not worth spending time with. It certainly doesn’t help that whatever thin plot has to do with questioning whether Wednesday Addams is a true Addams—the notion itself is absurd, and the resolution visible from the moment the question is uttered. Its links to the first animated film are tenuous (which may be a good thing, although I miss Wednesday’s noose-shaped tresses) but the road-trip format seems wasted. Whatever chuckles the film has come as oases in a desert of disinterest. The Addams Family 2 is not bad, dumb or badly made enough to be disliked—but it’s almost entirely redundant, useless and forgettable. And you don’t even have to watch the entire film to realize that.

  • High Tide (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2022) While it’s not a good habit of mine to sometimes delay writing my reviews for a few days/weeks after seeing the film in question, it does help in distinguishing the striking from the dull. So it is that the most vivid image I keep from High Tide is its terrific opening sequence, a framing device that begins with two men stuck under a car on a beach where the tide is slowly but unstoppably rising. Rescue being out of reach, the only thing left to do is to explain how they got there… and flash back to the previous few weeks. The rest of the film is far more standard film noir fare, with a lively but imperfectly dosed mixture of private investigators, organized criminals and newspapermen. Coming from a smaller studio, the film was made quickly and cheaply, with some crucial narrative tissue left underdeveloped—to say nothing of characterization or atmosphere. (The entire film is barely 72 minutes long.)   Lee Tracy’s not bad as a weathered newspaper editor (building on a legacy of newspapermen roles in the early 1930s), while Don Castle offers a bit of a sounding board while both of them wait for the tide to rise. Some of the cinematography and dialogue do work well, though: this is core film noir, and its restoration by the Film Noir Foundation seems particularly appropriate.

  • Lost in America (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2022) Thirty-five years later, Lost in America’s laughs have shifted in ways writer-director-star Albert Brooks couldn’t quite anticipate. The idea of a yuppie couple getting rid of everything in order to wander throughout America in an RV is almost the plot of an Oscar-winning drama hailed for its contemporary sensibilities (Nomadland), and the very concept of yuppie ennui seems quaintly naïve in a real world where pandemics, climate catastrophe and political barbarism have become accepted touch points. Bouts of misogyny, entitlement and dumb plotting don’t help the result, and so Lost in America doesn’t feel like much of a comedy anymore, despite clearly having been created as such. Our plot gets rolling literally, as our lead couple is frustrated by professional setbacks and liquidate their holdings to travel throughout the United States. Except that she unaccountably blows the rest of their savings in Vegas and they find themselves stuck in Arizona, at the lowest rung of the working class. The film clearly aims to be something more than a silly comedy but it’s most effective when compared against something—in this case, 1980s Hollywood’s obsession that Regan-era material success and a nice lifestyle were somehow corrosive and wrong. Fast-forward to 2022, where housing is financially unattainable, going out in public may get you a fatal illness and climate-related extreme weather is destroying housing, and viewers would enjoy slapping the characters of this film for the extravagant privilege of choosing to leave it all behind. But that was the joke even back then—what’s left today, however, is a bitter mixture of humiliation “comedy” (such as the protagonists arguing that a casino should give their lost money back) and what seems like a missing third act when characters decide to do what they could have done at any point of the film and a few title cards tell the rest of the story. Lost in America, fittingly, never finds a destination—it just ambles on until it pulls on the side of the road and calls it quit. There are still a few chuckles (even if Julie Hagerty gets saddled with an inglorious role as the irresponsible one required for the plot to move forward) but they’re substantially more bitter now. Whether this is an improvement (and something that further reinforces Brooks’ intention) is something that viewers will need to decide for themselves.

  • Heartless (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, July 2022) There’s a sloppiness of purpose to Heartless that is considerably worsened by its inconclusive ending—a blend of a few different stories are left unresolved, and a confusion of themes that would have been served by a stricter focus. Jim Sturges stars as a marginalized young man convinced that his life is terrible because of a large heart-shaped birthmark covering half of his face. His Faustian bargain to get rid of the birth mark in exchange for a ritual murder would be one thing (dude: tattoos and makeup are simpler), but then there are demonic creatures running around the streets of London (killing people, such as his mother) to contend with. There’s the shadow of a long-gone father, the appearance of a near-perfect girlfriend, the ghost of an Asian girl, a representative of the devil… and levels of reality designed to confuse. By the end of the film, it all goes up in flames, as we are left to ponder not just the nature of the conclusion, but whether any of the film was either real, supernatural or a fantasy. It’s all very messy, but at least Heartless does have a few effective sequences along the way: Sturges is quite good in brooding mode, and writer-director Philip Ridley is clearly attempting something far more ambitious than a monster-of-the-week kind of horror film. Whether it works or not is highly debatable—The first half is overlong and the third act is jumbled, with the overall focus murkier than it should have been and the entire script in need of at least another rewrite to take advantage of its strengths. On the other hand, viewers without a Cartesian need for clarity and order may not have as many problems with the result. At least there’s a lot more here to discuss than in most other overly simple horror films.

  • Hamlet (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2022) I’m rarely a good audience for Shakespearian movies (especially in English—the French dubs somehow sound better to me) but I’ll always give a look to any adaptation that tries to do something different with the base material. This is certainly the case for writer-director Michael Almereyda’s 2000 of Hamlet. Even twenty years later, it remains (and may forever be) the only Shakespeare adaptation blessed with the sound of a dial-up modem and its “Perchance to Dream” scene set in a VHS video store. Yes, it’s Hamlet brought to 2000 Manhattan, the kingdom reimagined as a corporation, Hamlet as a pretentious video editor, and the action sped up with pistols and fax machines. The dialogue is (as usual for film adaptations) shortened for pacing but remains Shakespearian in origin—none of that modern update when it comes to what the actors are saying… sometimes to the detriment of the result. And what a cast! Retrospectively, the film assembles old and new actors in a bizarre but seldom boring blend, with many, many of them going on to big later careers. In no particular order, feast your eyes on the following list: Bill Murray, Casey Affleck, Ethan Hawke, Jeffrey Wright, Julia Stiles, Kyle MacLachlan, Liev Schreiber, Paul Bartel, Sam Shepard, Steve Zahn and Tim Blake Nelson! Much of the fun in the film is in seeing these faces pop up (sometimes briefly) and seeing familiar material being remixed to a circa-2000 environment. It’s not always successful and the passing of years has definitely put a strong patina of period detail on the result, but it’s far more interesting than a straight historical adaptation would have been. I can’t say I liked it all that much, but if you’re going to watch the quasi-contemporary (and superior) Romeo + Juliet, this is an almost-perfect pairing.

  • The Velvet Vampire (1971)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2022) On the one hand, The Velvet Vampire is a peak-early 1970s film, with several elements that could not have been included at another time. On the other hand, it also carries an eerie timelessness that often makes it feel more modern than it is. Take the opening sequence, for instance, which seems to be setting up a very familiar cliché of a woman in a red dress being stalked in a deserted street at night—except that she is the danger. Interesting stuff, and it predates most of the slasher genre. Then the plot gets going, as a young couple gets invited to an isolated desert resort by a beautiful woman. You’ll quickly guess that nothing is friendly (let alone sexy) in the invitation—she wants to drink their blood, and the male of the pair is considerably more oblivious to the danger of the situation. Much of the film revolves around Celeste Yarnall, as she plays the mysterious woman with a good deal of appeal. (Her sudden introduction driving a buggy over a sand dune seems taken from The Thomas Crown Affair, but likely remains unique in vampire film history.)  Familiar seduction scenes quickly follow, except that she never consummates the deal with the female member of the couple—which seems like the one big difference if the film was remade today. Notable for being directed by a woman, The Velvet Vampire quickly veers in between highs and lows—a slow pacing is enlivened by some provocative dream sequences, and concluded with a high-energy finale on a Latin-dominated city street that makes little sense but harkens back to the first scene. The desert setting still feels relatively fresh, although some of the period material (shot in constant haze) occasionally feels silly. The shift in perspective from the male to the female member of the couple is intriguing (albeit leading to a Final Girl-style trope), but isn’t supported by other, much rougher bits of characterization. The Velvet Vampire is not a great or even a good film, but it still has a hypnotic fascination. I honestly surprised it hasn’t been remade, because for all of the early-1970s material, there’s a core to it that would fit almost perfectly in contemporary cinema.

  • Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, July 2022) Show me a cinephile who’s not at least tempted to watch a film titled Killer Klowns from Outer Space and I will show you someone I just can’t understand. I mean—the repeated Ks alone are fun enough, and adding ”from outer space” to anything just makes it automatically better. The title does at least clarify that this will not be a serious experience: clearly aiming for the comedy/horror segment (especially the way comedy/horror was done in the late 1980s, seldom replicated since), the film joyfully uses whatever pretext it can to deliver a film with scary clowns as antagonists. Never mind the thin pretense of extraterrestrials invading earth—the point of writer-director Stephen Chiodo’s film is to do as many funny variations on clowns and circus paraphernalia as “horror” tools. The scares are incidental, although I suppose that anyone with a latent fear of clown won’t be happy with the result. Tons of practical latex effects give the film a unique look, especially when combined with the colourful palette of clown costuming. But while the distinctive atmosphere of the film combines well with an absurd take on circus motifs used in a horror context, it’s not a given that Killer Klowns from Outer Space is a success: while I can appreciate the high-imagination of the film and its unserious intentions, I found much of the execution to be duller than expected. “Not meant to be horrific” on the comedy/horror scale does not mean “actually funny.” The flourishes of the set design are not matched by rather pedestrian acting, plotting and dialogue, for instance, and those are the elements that ultimately give the edge to other similar comedy/horror films of the same era. Killer Klowns from Outer Space is worth a look, but don’t be sure that you’ll like it even if you’re predisposed to similar films.

  • Kate (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, July 2022) There have been many, many movies about assassins lately and roughly 90% of them revolve around “one last job” uncovering that their mentor/handler/organization is trying to get them killed. Kate doesn’t get any points at all for reusing that specific plotline. It does, however, get a few nods for combining that plotline with a DOA-inspired ticking-clock motivator. But it’s largely a style exercise, as director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan (rebounding from the execrable The Huntsman: Winter’s War) gleefully uses the neon lights of modern urban Japan as a backdrop to John Wick-style stunt work. (The similarities as not accidental, as David Leitch produced both films.)  It’s also a more-than-modest success for Mary Elizabeth Winstead, as she polishes her credentials as a potent action heroine, with the overall brutality of the film heightening her performance. The result is certainly not something that will burst out of the action hitman genre—the borrowing from better influences is all over the place, and the film’s gleefully blood-soaked action (plus inevitable downer ending) is often too sadistic to be entirely fun. But those who are looking for some bone-crunching genre action should be satisfied by Kate—not by much, but at least enough to keep watching despite the very familiar material.

  • La femme d’à côté [The Woman Next Door] (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2022) While writer-director François Truffaut’s penultimate film La femme d’à côté is not usually recognized as a major film in his filmography, it still shows the clean-cut love of cinema that characterized his entire career. Here we have a romantic drama delivered with a mixture of forthrightness and just enough style to keep it interesting. The plot gets going once a happily married man with a wife and kid finds his life suddenly complicated by the reappearance of an old flame right next door. Trying to feign disinterest to his wife doesn’t slow down the inevitable rekindling of his previous affair, and with it all of the unresolved issues that existed between them years earlier. It doesn’t end well, although one hopes that the surviving characters may end up happier without those messy unstable protagonists in their lives. For French cinema fans, the casting here is intriguing—with notable then-ascendant-superstars Gerard Depardieu and Fanny Ardant in the lead roles. A bit of narration (from a much older character with far more perspective) highlights the essentially adolescent nature of the high-drama romance. While not great cinema, La femme d’à côté is watchable enough—and a reminder that Truffaut operating far under his peak could still turn out a film worth the trouble.