Movie Review

  • Quai d’Orsay (2013)

    Quai d’Orsay (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2020) As a public servant, I have a professional interest in movies that take a look at the vast bureaucracy that supports politicians, and while the protagonist of Quai d’Orsay isn’t quite a public servant per se (handpicked by the minister, he’d be considered partisan staff), his troubles in trying to write speeches for a smart but mercurial French foreign minister sure feel like universal experience to anyone working in government. Quai D’Orsay takes a comic tone in showing our hero’s apprenticeship of the delicate nature of government work—the endless consultations; the trivial turf wars; the inconsistent directions received from above; the differences between the gilded offices of the minister and the cramped quarters of the support staff; the way crises can derail an entire day; the way the career bureaucrats are the ones resolving situations while the elected officials are screaming about their sharpies; and so on. Writer-director Bertrand Tavernier, working from a satirical bande dessinée, manages both the initial comedy and the gradual shift into more serious relevance, as we realize that Quai d’Orsay is a film à clé of the way French diplomacy reacted to the lead up to the 2003 American invasion of Iraq. Raphaël Personnaz is rather bland by design as the protagonist, leaving the spotlight on Thierry Lhermitte as the breeze-blowing minister, and Niels Arestrup as the quiet but efficient career official handling the real business of the foreign ministry. It is occasionally very, very funny—there’s a recurring gag about paper blowing everywhere as the minister enters a room that makes no coherent sense, but had me smiling every time. Call it a gallic equivalent of In the Loop if you like—it’s an accurate approximation. But it’s also a film that shows, through the cynicism and Sisyphus-like nature of government work, that good people can end up making a difference—in this case, to have France stay out of the American invasion of Iraq and demonstrate the principles of the nation. I liked it quite a bit—to the point of including in my shortlist of essential movies for any public servant.

  • Emperor (2012)

    Emperor (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, November 2020) As has often been observed, winning a war is one thing, but winning the peace is something else. Emperor starts once the WW2 hostilities between the United States and Japan have ended, but you can still feel the lingering tension of the war throughout the entire duration of the film, as the newly-occupying Americans wonder whether the emperor should be tried as a war criminal. The stakes are high—any false move could trigger insurrections and threaten the stability of the American occupation. While Tommy Lee Jones headlines the film as General Douglas MacArthur, the protagonist is played by Matthew Fox, as a younger man with very personal reasons to find the truth. Less of a war movie and more of a strategic whodunit trying to piece together the big decisions of the war after the fact, Emperor is also a story of cultural reconciliation, as the Americans try to manage a situation in a very different country. The suspense is in low keys, but it’s as real as anything else. American jingoism is kept to a minimum, and the result shines a welcome cinematic light on one of the codas of World War II and brings something new to the WW2 corpus.

  • Emma. (2020)

    Emma. (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) At this stage, Jane Austen adaptations are worth watching more for the quirks than the core. The stories are familiar thanks to a dozen previous versions, so every new take is free to play around with the foundation until it has something specific to say. No pressure on delivering a best or faithful adaptation. This 2020 version of Emma, as directed by Autumn De Wilde, is slightly skewed toward the comedic end of the spectrum, making heavy use of background jokes and musical cues to reassure us that this is all lighthearted. The great Bill Nighy aside, it’s a good showcase for the young actors, even though few make any lasting impression. In the end, this Emma is likable without being all that special—which is not necessarily a criticism, considering that I like Austen best as a flurry of costumes, period settings and deliciously arch dialogue. As such, this version is almost exactly what it meant to be, and should make any viewer even hallway sympathetic to Austen adaptations feel completely satisfied.

  • Parallel Minds (2020)

    Parallel Minds (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) There is an intriguing mixture of indigenous spirituality and high-tech futurism at the heart of Parallel Minds that gives it a special status as a Canadian science-fiction film. Unfortunately, there isn’t much more to the film. Going in half a dozen directions without much connective tissue, it’s about runaway artificial intelligence, transhumanism, a dystopian company, and Metis prophecy. It’s triggered by what is either a murder or a suicide, leading a police detective to take up the case. And yet, despite this promising collection of elements and decent production values, Parallel Minds struggles to keep our attention. The script is messy and not in a good way, as it can’t seem to create a single compelling narrative to hold all of that together. It’s alternatively dull, twee, inscrutable and lazy in its use of genre elements. It’s the kind of film where an elliptical, deliberately mysterious style eventually reveals itself to be incompetent rather than keeping mysteries in reserve. Despite rooting for the film for many reasons (it’s Canadian, it’s low-budget, it’s Science Fiction, it’s about Metis issues), it simply can’t make fire out of the cordwood of promising elements at its disposal. I still think it’s worth a casual look—there’s been a few Canadian science-fiction movies bringing in indigenous issues, and this is one of the best of them—but you will have to be very generous in order to like the result.

  • Running Mates (1992)

    Running Mates (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2020) A surprising number of politically themed American films are really romantic comedies in disguise, and Running Mates certainly upholds that tradition. Telling us about the romantic relationship between a children’s book author and a political candidate, it does spend a lot of time detailing how the public glare can make any relationship near-impossible, and how every single past indiscretion can be magnified. Since it’s a romantic fantasy, it also makes sense that the conclusion feels a bit too convenient to be entirely credible (although it’s true that the notion of what constitutes a scandal has taken a beating since 2016). Fortunately, lead actors Ed Harris and Diane Keaton bring a lot to the film, helping keep up interest even through the script’s most obvious moments. As a political film, it’s not that new or interesting… but it’s somewhat more successful as a romantic comedy about characters in special circumstances. The sequence in which one character’s early indiscretions resurface is decently amusing, although it leads to a conclusion that doesn’t quite manage to satisfy. Still, Running Mates is about romance, not political credibility.

  • “Screen One” Hostile Waters (1997)

    “Screen One” Hostile Waters (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2020) It’s rare for a TV movie to take on real-life military history, especially in as rarified a field as submarines. On the other hand, it does seem like a nice fit—If you’re going to go for military intrigue, what cheapest way to do it than with limited sets and a bit of murky CGI to make up the exteriors? Accordingly, BBC production Hostile Waters offers a number of familiar actors in lead roles, starting with Rutger Hauer and Martin Sheen as duelling submarine captains, with supporting roles for Max von Sydow and Colm Feore. Much of the film professes to reflect the truth of the real-life K-219 incident — in which a Soviet submarine suffered a catastrophic malfunction near the eastern seaboard—, based on a book digging into events never formally acknowledged. The result will certainly appeal more to submarine buffs—it does look and feel a lot like other submarine movies (starting with K-19 The Widowmaker), and the limited production values are somewhat offset by good actors and a script that places some emphasis on plausibility. As a submarine film, Hostile Waters is overshadowed by more illustrious theatrically released films, but it holds its own decently enough.

  • Come True (2020)

    Come True (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) It’s never a good sign when I groan audibly as a film’s ending credits start to roll—a great ending is crucial to a film, especially if it’s a low-budget production that relies a lot on its script to create interest without piles of money to throw on-screen. It’s even more infuriating when an ending comes too early or too late for an otherwise successful conclusion. But here we are with Come True, one of the best Canadian Science Fiction movies of the past few years… if it wasn’t for the way it wraps itself up. There were times during the film where I was giddy with excitement at seeing a film do a lot with little means, exploring relatively new territory in style and going for some nicely creepy moments. It begins as a runaway young woman (the innately appealing Julia Sarah Stone) signs up for a sleep study. But as the film’s synth retro-aesthetics suggest, there are many stranger things going on here, and it doesn’t take a long time for the official explanation to be stripped away: it’s not a sleep study as much as a glimpse into the volunteers’ dreams, and they are all simultaneously having the same dream. At that point, I was really invested in the film—writer-director Anthony Scott Burns is able to do much with little, and the visual polish of the film easily rivals much bigger productions. But then… well, the script goes off the rail. Or maybe not off the rail as much as ever farther away from the rails: the story here is never developed conventionally, which is part of the charm, except when the film seemingly gets rid of its plot to come up with even stranger tangents that get away from what could have been a solid narrative core. There’s a long walk through deserted nighttime Edmonton that takes us farther and farther away from the narrative strengths of the middle act, and a final scene that echoes a classic Internet creepypasta—only to stop there, whereas ending five minutes earlier or five later would have been far more satisfying. Hence my groan, made even worse by the fact that Come True is actually really good in its middle portion. I’m still recommending it to SF fans, albeit with a giant billboard-sized caveat about its disintegrating third act and especially its ill-fitting conclusion.

  • Le Dep (2015)

    Le Dep (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2020) I often refer to Montréal-based filmmaking as being “local”… which is ludicrous given that there’s a good two hundred kilometres between here and there. For truly local filmmaking, movies such as Le Dep would be a much better example—after all, it was shot barely forty kilometres away from here, at 903 Route Principale, Val-des-Monts, QC. The unimposing convenience store located there here doubles as Northern Québec establishment, with a young Innu woman keeping the store open during a snowy winter night. There are complications, of course—a white policeman boyfriend, a junkie brother and, especially, a big thick stash of cash in the safe. This ultra-low-budget effort makes the most out of its quasi-theatrical structure, setting quite a bit of drama and suspense in the confines of a small department store. Eve Ringuette is quite good in the lead role, holding her own against the other men who make up the cast. Writer-director Sonia Boileau cleverly stretches the limits of the film’s micro-budget (less than C$250,000) in making the most of its limited location, enhancing the tension of taking place in such close quarters. Le Dep is not a big movie, but it’s nicely made and often engaging in its down-and-dirty earnestness. It’s got social issues and criminal thrills within a low-six-figure budget—what else would you want?

  • Mexican Spitfire (1940)

    Mexican Spitfire (1940)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) Lupe Velez played the character of Carmelita Fuentes in a series of eight films beginning with 1939’s The Girl from Mexico. But there’s a reason why the last six films of the series were all named a variation of “Mexican Spitfire” rather than “the Girl from Mexico” – Mexican Spitfire is a clear case of filmmakers looking at a movie, and essentially remaking it with an emphasis on what works. The humdrum The Girl from Mexico becomes the far more farcical (and Velez-centric) Mexican Spitfire, and the highly formulaic nature of the series is established. There’s not much missed in going directly to this film as an introduction—it begins with the newly married husband-and-wife coming back to New York after their Mexican honeymoon. Complications quickly accumulate, most of them focused on the dual roles played by Leon Errol as a kooky unclean and also a British lord coming to New York for business. Then there’s Lupe Velez, the titular spitfire that makes a scene during every scene, reverting to rapid-fire Spanish during her frequent tirades. It’s a stereotype (one easily imagines Salma Hayek, Sofia Vergara or Penelope Cruz playing the role in exactly the same way), but she plays it well—it’s tough not to smile once she gets going, and much of the film knows that appeal. The various other vaudevillian shenanigans are equally amusing, especially when the identity confusions pile up and everyone runs away to Mexico (obviously!) to patch things up. The male lead is bland to the point of being easily forgotten, but that’s the point—this is Velez’s series, and Errol is there to provide the comic insanity. Short but densely packed, Mexican Spitfire is not a great film—but it does have its charm. The only warning I have, based on seeing this and the later Mexican Spitfire at Sea, would be to space any viewing of the series’ films—they strike very similar notes, to the point of repetitiousness.

  • The Enemy Within (1994)

    The Enemy Within (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, November 2020) Tomorrow is 2020 US election day! As the United States is voting in their most consequential election in recent history and there are hints of trouble in the air, what better way to relax while waiting for the election results than to have a look at a movie in which the US military attempts a coup against a budget-slashing president? If it turns out that The Enemy Within feels familiar, it’s because it’s a made-for HBO remake of 1964’s Seven Days in May, with 1990s colour cinematography, post-cold-war geopolitics, a somewhat streamlined plot and a slightly different ending (but not that much). Forest Whitaker stars as the loyal lower-level military officer who discovers the impending coup, and much of the film has him running from one Washington, D.C. location to another in the hope of warning the president, then preventing the coup. It’s not badly made, although the age of the film now shows through a 4:3 TV ratio, slightly lower production values, and typical 1990s picture softness. As far as TV movies go, it’s better than average—although it doesn’t even come close to the meticulous execution of the original film. Watching The Enemy Within on the eve of a presidential election likely to be contested from within the White House itself offers a weird escape into reassuring fantasy—the plotters of this imaginary coup are well-identified, rational in their actions, emotionally stable and somewhat easily defeated. Things are not so comforting in the real world. Oh well, time to tune in to CNN for the next few days….

  • Body Double (1984)

    Body Double (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, November 2020) Classic Brian de Palma movies could be crazier than anything else at the multiplex, yet Body Double still easily leaps over that high bar for crazy. Obviously designed as an homage to Hitchcock fare such as Rear Window and Vertigo, it’s a film that gets started when an out-of-work actor peeks at another house and is powerless to stop a drill-driven murder. That part is wildly over-the-top, but still understandable: the real fun begins afterward, as our protagonist takes a trip through a fantasyland version of Los Angeles’ porn underworld, gets mixed up with another actress and tries to convince everyone that something weird is going on. Don’t be surprised to realize, maybe two-thirds of the way through, that you don’t know what’s happening any more—Body Double is obviously derived from high concepts rather than developed organically, and there are maybe ten minutes during which you have to wait for further answers to be dropped into your lap before any of this makes sense. But as usual for classic de Palma, the fun here isn’t for the overall plot than the individual set-pieces and shots that illustrate it: The frantic race to prevent a murder, for instance, or the nightmarish climax. It all makes up for wild viewing very much in-line with his best movies. There is a good use of Los Angeles locations (most notably the Chemosphere house), and those with fresh memories of the film’s Hitchcockian inspirations will find even more fun to be seen. Clearly, de Palma’s most outlandish films aren’t for everyone—but if you’re willing to tolerate some weird quirks, there’s still little like Body Double.

  • The Last Voyage (1960)

    The Last Voyage (1960)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) It’s fascinating to dig into movie history and find early precursors of later trends. The disaster movie isn’t new and traces back its roots to silent cinema, but the very specific strain of 1970s disaster movies has a clear predecessor in 1960’s The Last Voyage, in which an aging ocean liner suffers catastrophic damage and starts to sink, trapping one of our protagonists under a steel beam. It’s not a perfect example of the form that Airport would formalize a decade later, but it’s close enough. It doesn’t get completely crazy like The Poseidon Adventure, but the intensity of the disaster steadily grows throughout the film—and the end sequence in which the survivors walk, then waddle through a progressively sinking promenade deck is suitably intense, made even more urgent by the very long duration of the shot. Perhaps the best decision made by writer-director Andrew L. Stone was to rely on an actual ocean liner destined for destruction as backdrop for The Last Voyage—the ship feels old and past its glory, making for an interesting change from most ocean disaster films taking place on maiden voyages, and imparting quite a bit of faded golden-age atmosphere to the aged sets. Robert Stack decently plays a father trying to rescue his beam-trapped wife and keep his daughter calm—it’s a prototypical tough guy’s role, and he gets it. Meanwhile, Dorothy Malone does well in a role that has her stuck on the same set for most of the film, eventually with the complication of rapidly rising water. George Sanders is also remarkable as the ship’s captain, whose bad decisions only make a bad situation even worse. The suspense builds up despite being based on very familiar elements, and the colour cinematography helps in making the film feel closer to its 1970s inheritors. The Last Voyage is still a remarkably effective watch, even more so for being somewhat specific in its thrills, and not seeking to overwhelm viewers with a CGI frenzy of exploding stuff.

  • Höstsonaten [Autumn Sonata] (1978)

    Höstsonaten [Autumn Sonata] (1978)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) The paradox with Ingrid Bergman’s film is that I usually don’t like them very much, but I can usually find in them one or two things worth being impressed about. Autumn Sonata begins on what feels like a high note to me, as a narrator walks into frame and gestures at the protagonist he’s introducing—his wife, as played by the very cute Liv Ullmann in round glasses. But the best is yet to come, as the film takes care to build up the introduction of its other main character—her mother, as played by Ingrid Bergman (making this the only Bergman-Bergman film). She has come to visit to go over some old family tensions, and much of the film can be experienced as a steady ratcheting of tension until the spectacular make-no-prisoners verbal showdown between the two women, as they go over the mom’s neglect of her children, and the daughter’s feelings of inferiority when measured against the world-class renown of her mother. (Our narrator hears it all, but wisely steps away rather than intervene.) There are echoes of other Bergman movies here, as well as a number of his more annoying tendencies, but the film holds up for those moments of pure dramatic intensity between Bergman and Ullmann, with a too-long epilogue to wrap things up. I’m only watching Bergman movies because they keep popping up on best-of lists, but as far as these go, Autumn Sonata is more interesting than many others.

  • The Happy Road (1957)

    The Happy Road (1957)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) Gene Kelly was an outspoken Francophile, and while you don’t have to dig deep in a filmography that includes An American in Paris and Les demoiselles de Rochefort to realize it, there are a few other films lower down his filmography that make an even bigger case for it. How else, for instance, would have Kelly found himself in a film entirely set and shot in France, playing a father on a road trip to find his boy after he ran away from school? Today, The Happy Road ranks as one of Kelly’s least-remembered films—a lighthearted trifle in which Kelly teams up with the mother of another runaway from the same school in a series of adventures from Switzerland to Paris, going through the back roads of small-town France. It’s more lighthearted than funny, often a bit too twee in the way it finds the escapades of the kids funny rather than terrifying for the parents trying to reunite with them. The Happy Road is not a low-budget affair—by the end of the film, we even run in the French army conducting manoeuvres in the field. Kelly is his usual charming self, helped along by co-star Barbara Laage in a role that inevitably turns romantic. The Happy Road can’t be classified as an essential film, or a particularly memorable one. But for Kelly fans, it’s a welcome illustration of one of his most endearing traits, and another occasion to see him set against a French backdrop.

  • The Paper Chase (1973)

    The Paper Chase (1973)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) There’s something almost mythical to the first year of a university degree that, frankly, very few movies seem to get beyond the frat-party surface. For many people, it’s a first year away from home, thrown into the pressure-cooker of a highly competitive environment. The Paper Chase goes for the big leagues in describing the first year of a student at the Harvard Law School, under the tutelage of difficult teachers. Now, the story gets a bit melodramatic once it follows a romantic relationship between the protagonist and a young woman who ends up being a feared teacher’s daughter—while this introduces many dramatic complications, it also distracts from the main strength of The Paper Chase: Students thrown in a sink-or-swim environment, trying to out-think the course material and dealing (not always gracefully) with the stress. The film is at its best when it deals with academic material, with harebrained schemes (such as breaking into a law school archives) that often turn out to be not especially useful—except as a way to realize that there isn’t much of a difference between students and the teachers at their age. Timothy Bottoms makes for a great audience stand-in as the protagonist, even if the characters surrounding him are nearly all more interesting—with that going double for John Houseman’s Oscar-winning performance as the exemplary teacher. (The big irony of the film is that he exerts a terrifying influence over his students… but can’t even recognize them in an elevator at the end of the year.) There are some great set-pieces along the way, including nothing less than a climactic study session in a hotel room. The 1970s setting shows, but much of the material still rungs true today: The Paper Chase is quite an enjoyable film for those of us who still have final-exam nightmares about our first year of university.