Paul Schrader

  • Cat People (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second Viewing, Criterion Streaming, December 2022) If you’re about to watch the 1982 version of Cat People hoping for a repeat of the subtle dread of the 1942 original, then stop and reassess your expectations right away, because this is from an entirely different era and the result is an entirely different film. While it starts from roughly the same place (people who can transform into killer panthers), this 1982 film comes from the era of trashy slashers and copious nudity, so it’s not that much of a surprise to see plenty of gore, naked women, salacious elements and mounting casualties. The only thing I remember from a first mid-1990s viewing was the gore, and it’s still over-the-top. Writer-director Paul Schrader is far, far away from Val Lewton’s subtle touch—his take is about bloody graphic dismemberment, incestuous siblings, torn-apart prostitutes and more associations between big cats and female eroticism than you’d believe are possible. It sort-of-works, though—clearly not in the same register, but as a far more respectable early-1980s horror film than the slashers that were popular at the time. The New Orleans setting is used well, and if the film runs into some serious pacing problems in its third quarter, the early bits of the film do a solid job at establishing the characters and their environment. It’s not meant to make you comfortable, though—the ending is disturbing on a number of levels, and that’s well after some material that doesn’t play nicely. Considering the film’s emphasis on sexuality, I would probably respond better to it if I found Nastassja Kinski more attractive—but that’s my problem, not the film’s problem. (I much preferred Annette O’Toole in her supporting role, but she would not have been a good pick for the demands of the female lead role.)  Elsewhere in the film, both Malcolm McDowell and John Heard have two good roles here, and Ruby Dee pops up briefly. There’s plenty of thematic material to dig in if you want, but the film (mostly) works on the surface level if you’re willing to grant it some indulgences. I don’t quite like the 1982 version of Cat People as much as the moodier 1942 version, but it’s not a bad movie in its own right.

  • First Reformed (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) While Oscar-nominated First Reformed was a critical darling throughout 2018 all the way to the early-2019 Academy Awards season, I somehow missed it. Of course, my life was tumultuous at the time, and delving into Oscar-bait wasn’t high on my list of priorities. Still, a few years later—why not have a look? As it turns out, this is a film best appreciated away from the hype, as a good-faith effort to make sense of global issues in an intimate context. Featuring Ethan Hawke as a minister of a small congregation in the American North-East, the film goes well beyond its rural setting: writer-director Paul Schrader has nothing less than the world in mind when the pastoral meets the global. Trying to deal with a young man in full environmental collapse panic has the minister rethink his priorities, and having to deal with the aftermath of an ill-advised affair doesn’t help either. There’s no denying that First Reformed is a slow burn—the kind of film that I enjoy more as background material than active watching. Its dialogue-driven nature certainly helps it remain viable under divided-attention circumstances. Frankly, I enjoyed it more under those circumstances that if I had tried to give it my undivided attention. Visually, the film isn’t much either: it takes advantage of its rural setting but doesn’t go beyond it, and the slow pacing doesn’t require constant attention either. I don’t necessarily endorse the film’s barely-repressed pessimism, but I admire its willingness to tackle big issues in a small setting, the space left for the actors to deliver dramatic performances, and the meticulous approach to its intimate material. (This is all the more interesting considering Shrader’s filmography as a tough-guy movie screenwriter.)  I’m not saying that First Reformed would have been among my choices in that year’s Oscar derby… but it’s more interesting than I expected, especially when watched under specific circumstances.

  • American Gigolo (1980)

    American Gigolo (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, February 2020) What I find interesting about American Gigolo is not only the multiple layers of interpretation that critics have assigned to the film over the years, but that I can almost see what they’re talking about. While it can be summarized in a deceptively simple fashion (a character study of a good-looking but an emotionally stunted man earning his living as a gigolo and framed for murder), you can read a lot into the depths of the film. Maybe it’s about sexual anxiety; maybe it’s about repressed homosexuality; maybe it’s about American capitalism reducing all relationships to a transaction; maybe it’s about the harsh reckoning of the post-hedonistic 1970s; maybe it’s about the loneliness of people without strong social ties; maybe it’s about Southern Californian post-scarcity malaise. Writer-director Paul Schrader has often been a leading obfuscator of his own work, encouraging various profound interpretations facilitated by scripts that leave a lot unstated. Since American Gigolo doesn’t move particularly quickly nor has a lot of moment-to-moment fun to offer, critics are free to let their thoughts wander trying to make sense of it all. Or, maybe, it’s just what it feels like: a dour, self-flagellating, sad meditation with a bit of pulp melodrama to make it all more interesting than just a superficial look at a man having sex with rich women and living a high-end lifestyle. Richard Gere became a superstar on the strength of his full-frontal performance here, so that’s one meaningful legacy for the film. So: jot down American Gigolo as being rich in alternate meanings for your next contentious movie podcast—you can see a whole lot of different things in it, and who’s to say that you’re wrong?

  • The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

    The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, December 2019) I’m old enough to remember the furor accompanying the release of The Last Temptation of Christ—the controversy, the editorials, the protests. Of course, with some distance, it’s yet another demonstration of why you can’t trust conservatives when they create their own moral panic—the film ends up being a powerful examination of the subtleties of faith by presenting a compellingly human portrait of Jesus Christ. Written by Paul Schrader and directed by Martin Scorsese (both devout Christians, as further demonstrated by their later films), the film dares to take a non-mythological look at the character of Jesus Christ, balancing his own human desires with the fate that awaits him as God’s emissary/sacrifice. It’s a surprisingly realistic take on a familiar story, bringing a considerable amount of dramatic tension to something that’s often glossed about in religious teachings. It’s a film that makes the essential point that faith is hard—it’s not supposed to be easy, it’s meant to clash against human desires and it requires sacrifice. As someone raised Catholic before turning to atheism, I found considerable power and depth to what The Last Temptation of Christ attempts to do—and in daring to consider a tainted portrait of Jesus, the film ends up being approachable to a wider variety of audiences than the ready-made audience for religious-themed films. I have no trouble watching The Last Temptation of Christ next to Jesus Christ, Superstar and then The Greatest Story Ever Told—all of those have something to say.

  • Bringing Out the Dead (1999)

    Bringing Out the Dead (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, on Cable TV, July 2016) As an entry in Martin Scorsese’s filmography, Bringing Out the Dead is often forgotten alongside his classic movies. Which is weird, considering that it’s a drama featuring Nicolas Cage as a paramedic at the height of the New York City crime epidemic of the early nineties. Directed with some of Scorsese’s flamboyance, it portrays NYC nights as barely repressed war zones in which paramedics are helpless to help their dying charges. Crime, drugs, heart attacks and accidents kill scores of victims, while Cage’s character goes crazy knowing that he hasn’t saved anyone in ages. As a Cage performance, it’s a rare blend between his Oscar-winning dramatic intensity and his borderline-insane grandiosity. The overall nightmarish atmosphere of the film seems just as unhinged as its lead actor, with the film taking place nearly entirely at night, in-between a hospital where everybody’s is shouting and bleeding, and the streets where the only people they meet are doing badly. Cage’s paramedic colleagues (the pretty good trio of John Goodman, Ving Rhames and Tom Sizemore) are even more screwed up than he is and what’s more, he can’t quit even when he asks. Stripped of its showy hallucinatory sequences (including a flipping ambulance that should have been held in reserve for later during the film) Bringing Out the Dead isn’t much more than the story of a protagonist undergoing a nervous breakdown and picking himself up thanks to romance and a few ironic epiphanies. Set to Scorsese’s own rhythm, it’s a bit more than that, even though the pacing of the story severely slows down at times. It’s worth noting that the film was written by Paul Schrader, and fits squarely in the rest of his filmography as well. Scorsese’s affection for his city is obvious even when he’s portraying it as its lowest (and who doesn’t have a soft spot for the hellish NYC of the 1970s?), and it’s that kind of pairing (alongside Scorsese/Cage and Cage-the-actor/Cage-the-scenery-chomper) that makes Bringing Out the Dead interesting to watch even fifteen years later, perhaps as a time capsule yet unseen by many.

  • Dying of the Light (2014)

    Dying of the Light (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, February 2015) While forgettable, largely unseen film Dying of the Light does have a thing or two going for it.  The first is right up there on the poster: a visibly older Nicolas Cage, graying temples and facial features highlighting his advancing age.  This, after all, is a story about old people trying to come to grips with long-running trauma.  If Dying of the Light had stuck to this theme, it may have been successful.  Heck, had it ended ten minutes earlier, right after a meeting between two antagonists in which both measure the futility of revenge, the film would have been provocative and meditative.  Instead, it keeps going, allows some out-of-place gory violence to stain the plot and ends on an intensely familiar note.  Too bad, because for most of its duration, Dying of the Light is a meditative take on the modern espionage thriller, measuring the cost of the War on Terrorism and showing the toll that it takes on its combatants.  The film isn’t particularly interesting as it moves through Europe and then Africa, but the film doesn’t try to be anything else but a quiet low-budget thriller.  Cage, as a veteran CIA agent with a terminal illness, moves slower and with deliberation, while having two or three opportunities to indulge in his signature rants.  If it hadn’t been for that dumb violent conventional ending, Dying of the Light could have been underperforming but interesting; with it, it just becomes a hum-drum spy thriller the likes of which we see too often.  Veteran writer/director Paul Schrader is on record as being disappointed in the final result (apparently completed without his input), but I’m not sure that post-production could have fixed the script’s basic issues.