YouTube threw me a curveball t’other night: La femme aux bottes rouges (1974) by none other than… JUAN Luis Bunuel. I performed a comical double take, thence aimed a sidelong glance at Google…. That’s not THE Luis Bunuel, it’s his SON. I did several Bunuels a couple of years ago and thoroughly enjoyed them. They were dry and arch, distancing in effect, but also, in their way, warm and enveloping. You don’t fall in love with them, and you don’t get inspired by their ideas, per se, you simply appreciate them and find stimulation in their provocations and witticisms. And the endless visual gags, the smirking parade of mockery, the droll compendium of humanity’s mediocrity and narcissism.

The son is no different. If I hadn’t caught the “Juan” in front of “Luis Bunuel,” I would easily have thrown this into his father’s oeuvre as an entertaining minor work. For one thing, it stars Catherine Deneuve and Fernando Rey, both of whom appeared in Bunuel Pere’s major works. For another, it displays his father’s sensibilities in every aspect: the surrealism, the decadence, the gags, etc. I’ve heard that Cronenberg and King both have sons who duplicated their respective fathers’ careers, keep meaning to check them out. Not so much to see if they’re any good, I’m sure they’re fine, but to see how they fare in the shadows of their legendary fathers. This Bunuel fella did fairly alright by his old man, methinks: he certainly didn’t outshine him, not by a longshot, but he didn’t make a howler, either—I really enjoyed it.

I found myself sinking into this film even though it was in French without subtitles. I was recently thinking how I’d like to learn French so I can enjoy all these New Wave films I’ve been marinating in with rather more direct engagement, so as an exercise in French immersion, I decided to simply watch this thing and not worry about understanding the words. As it turned out, the words were mostly ancillary to what I was seeing. I got the gist of it, shall we say.

Deneuve plays a character whom I think might be the author of the story we’re watching. She has supernatural abilities: she can fool people with illusions. For example, she makes Rey drop a 100-year old bottle of wine by making him think it’s a skull. Or brings another character to his knees by binding him in heavy chains. My favorite was making Rey chew on his pillow. He then carries it in his teeth like a retriever, unable to release it until the maid grips it with HER teeth and tears it in half in a tug-of-war.

Our Lady’s power renders her sociopathic: we see a flashback in which her childhood self murders her nanny by duping her (via her illusory magic) into diving out the window. This seems to have represented her moment of coming into being, realizing the extent of her mastery over human creatures. Maybe it’s a metaphor for the power of a woman’s beauty (Deneuve being one of the all-time examples), how it ensnares the gaze of others and deludes their faculties. A little shaky there, however, considering she exercises the power on women as well as men. So maybe the power of an artist to alter one’s perception of the world?

She’s a writer, after all, shown typing away—we even get to see Fernando Rey shooting her manuscript with a shotgun!—and I feel like what she’s writing may be what we’re seeing in the film, but I could certainly be mistaken, since I couldn’t understand most of the dialogue. Possibly the whole movie is a simple entertainment for herself. She and her lover exit the film by walking into his painting, so you could interpret that as the portal between art and reality. Impossible to say, really, which of those the painting is meant to represent!

Strangely, YouTube served up no ads whatsoever: I was able to watch uninterrupted from start to finish. I just don’t understand how the platform decides! If I watch a shitty 10-minute political video, they’ll serve up ads at the beginning, the middle, and maybe even at the end for good measure… but here I watch an entire 90-minute movie, not a single ad.

Ah, one more thing to remember about this film: Catherine Deneuve looks fucking incredible. Just a few years after Belle de jour (1967), and she looks even finer here, to my eyes. Sporting jeans and a sweater like no one’s business. (And red boots, of course.)

Une femme est une femme (1961) appears to be the film in which Godard solves the equation for Anna Karina. Holy shit! He didn’t know what to do with her in Le petit soldat (1961), had her hanging out in front of mirrors, brushing her hair a hundred strokes at a time while Michel Subor mouthed off passionate platitudes in frenzied pacings-about the room. She’d light a cigarette in silence and just sort of hang out in his drifting, hectic mist of mansplaining. She had no idea what to do with herself, her hands, her body, and Godard wasn’t giving her any suggestions… but she sure was trés fucking belle! We got THAT loud and clear, anyway!

In THIS film, however, they seem to have gotten their mutual act together. She does actual things with her hands and body, not just being pretty. Of course, she does plenty of THAT, undeniably, but she also does a lot of acting, incredibly graceful and centered Classic acting. Movie star acting. This is the style of acting in which you channel your own charismatic resources into every character you play, bringing them to life in a consistent personality that has already charmed the audience before they’ve even seen the film. That’s why movie stars used to be bankable: the audience knew exactly what to expect from the performance, and so if enough of them loved you, they’d show up for your movies. When actors are playing different types in every film, people get confused, and so maybe they’ll show up for you, maybe they won’t.

Having seen Une femme est une femme, I now understand how Godard was able to catapult himself to his cult, legendary status with a series of wacked out art films that would normally have just pissed people off: Anna Karina. I haven’t seen all of their collaborations yet, but she is absolutely the supreme vessel for his creative energies. She’s so GAME, she does exactly what she’s told with such a light and generous spirit, but she also brings this ineffable movie star magic to her performance, which is what I saw in possibly its most perfect form in Vivre sa vie. Her living essence just THRUMS vibrantly and consistently right on the surface where we can see it: the ideal film actor. She becomes this constantly shifting and fascinating field of movements, gestures, and facial tics, holding nothing back: she’s all there, and captivating for it. You can’t look away (and Godard doesn’t, he’s just as captivated as we are). Which explains how an audience can be content to endure Godard’s increasingly difficult and artsy techniques: they’ve been seduced by Anna. What a team! I can’t wait to see the rest of their stuff together!

I’m also intrigued by Godard’s situating himself and his art within the context of his personal friendships and “Nouvelle Vague” group identity. Fortunately, I watched several other French New Wave films recently, and so I was able to recognize at least some of the references to his buddies that are so liberally strewn about in this film. My antennae immediately sprang to attention when Angela, Karina’s character, works at a burlesque theater and rejects an offer to travel to Marseilles (home, apparently, to the burlesque Big Time), because that is one of the major plot points in Jacque Demy’s Lola (which I touch on briefly here) … and what do you know, halfway through the film, Angela and a friend explicitly mention their friend “Lola” who went to Marseilles! We have several Truffaut references: Jeanne Moreau shows up in a bar, and Jean-Paul Belmondo says Hi and inquires how the production of Jules et Jim is going, to which she shrugs and says Fine. Ha ha! There’s an exchange somewhere about what a great film Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player is, and then Jean-Paul Belmondo puts Charles Aznavour (who starred in that movie) on the jukebox at the cafe. (I’m guessing there must be other references to his fellow New Wavers whose loop I wasn’t in.) Irreverent stuff, it gives the film a carefree and charming lightness… and also gives the audience a sense of being “in on the joke,” active participants in the film-making, honorary members themselves of the New Wave.

Most of the film takes place in the couple’s apartment, a smaller domicile than the one in Contempt, to be sure, but the dynamics of the blocking and camera movement is essentially the same, the way the couple moves about interdependently within the space of the apartment and the camera tracks back and forth to whomever happens to be currently holding the reins in the emotional exchange. It’s a very in-the-moment technique, immersing you in the psychic energy crackling between them in the space of the household, the sensorium of their relationship.

I haven’t even mentioned the plot, there basically isn’t one. She wants to have a baby, and he doesn’t, so he cynically suggests she knock herself up with his best friend and even calls that friend over to make the proposal. Fairly ridiculous, just a pretense for conflict and exchange among the characters, and Godard skillfully squeezes every such possibility he can out of this premise… like when they silently hurl insults and ripostes at each other by holding up artfully obscured book covers. And the final pun of the film, which seems to be completely lost in the subtitles; you’d think the translator would’ve at least hinted at it. The boyfriend says “Tu es infâme,” and she says, with an exaggerated wink to the camera, “Non, je suis—une—femme.” (I don’t get most of the French, but I get that, anyway.) Godard LOVES puns; they seem to be the reason he was put on this earth.

Wow, I guess I’d say more, but I’m running out of steam. I was going to write about Le petit soldat, I guess, but what is there to say that I didn’t say up there in that earlier paragraph? It’s enjoyable enough, certainly, and the torture scenes are definitely fascinating. The torturers don’t even seem like terrible people. They hang out and laugh with each other personably, and when they get down to business for the torture sessions, it’s not out of malice but what they view as necessity: they’re trying to get information. Amazingly, it appears that Michel Subor was actually tortured for this film. These aren’t simulations. He’s even waterboarded! Right in front of us.

Oh, and lest we forget! Le petit soldat is the source of the famous Godard quote: “Photography is truth, and Cinema is truth 24 times per second.”

Ok, steam officially gone. I’m amazed I’m still writing these things.… I thought this practice would peter out by now, but there is something nice about writing up a film I’ve just seen; it cements the films into my consciousness to some degree, increases its psychical value. Maybe they won’t slip out of my memory so easily. It really IS like a dream journal, isn’t it?

This film will certainly reward further viewings. It was shot in 3D; unfortunately, I can’t watch it in that format, but the 2D version is rather spectacular on its own, so possibly the other dimension won’t be missed? Well, missed a little… Godard specializes in fucking with rules and standards (Breathless, anyone?), so I’m sure the 3D would have been a blast, but I don’t even know what the “standards” are for 3D. The only one I even took seriously was Avatar, which was fine for what it was, an introduction to the format, and I could appreciate there was a genuine attempt at creating a new way of seeing the cinema by cramming “depth” into the picture… but the few 3D movies I saw after that were “bloody awful gimmicks” I guess would be the technical term?… so I never bothered with subsequent 3D releases, and I think the format may even be dead at this point. Do they still put out 3D films these days?

In any case, Goodbye to Language (2014) is not a story so much as a kitchen drawer jumbled with ideas, images, words, emotions, frustrations, fart jokes, and an assortment of quotations from intellectuals, painters, writers, philosophers, you name ’em. And the central figure of the film, by my estimation, is none other than… drum roll… Roxy Miéville, Godard’s dog. I say that mainly because, of the various characters, I sympathized primarily with Roxy, especially when she was being washed away down the river as Godard stood in place filming her, an experience I presume she survived with aplomb, just as she survived every other incident with aplomb, since, as Godard notes (through one of those numerous quotations I won’t possibly here be able to attribute, so solly), a dog is never naked because a dog is always naked, and additionally, according to another sagacious phantom of ancient wisdom, a dog is the only creature to love YOU more than it loves ITSELF.

We learn emphatically in this film that beauty = color. Godard hypersaturates many of the images, especially in Nature, to the degree that you almost have to squint. And it certainly increases the potency of these images. Some are so colorful they seem to pop out into 3D even without the glasses. At one point, Godard has some fun toggling between a natural color scheme and full saturation, but not in a colorful scene; it’s a dark scene, a medium to close shot of black-furred Roxy, in which your main signal that something’s going on is that her red collar switches back and forth between muddy and bright tones (“collar” is wordplay with “color,” it occurs to me, and Godard is known for his multilingual puns, so it’s most likely on purpose).

Gee, I wonder what he’s getting at by hypersaturating Nature scenes while going so far as to undersaturate the interior scenes depicting human relationships. The bodies are often nude—and humans, unlike dogs, are VERY MUCH naked when the clothes are off—but the flesh is pallid, almost gray, and the characters express… diminished vitality, you might say. I’m sure potential future viewings may better illuminate the details of these relationships, which are opaque to me now, but this first encounter instilled me mostly with a sense of weaponized sexuality and desensitized desires. For example, the male partner shits on a toilet while informing the female, who stands directly before him, that poop is the great equalizer… even while he’s clearly exercising some kind of power trip there on his “throne”: performing an intimate animal function unashamedly in front of someone else automatically diminishes their social status below yours. (Just ask anyone who hung out in LBJ’s Oval Office.)

Several couples are depicted in this film, and I really couldn’t make out what their various conflicts were about, but Roxy seems to unify them. She cowers under the table when they fight, absorbing their bad spirits the way laundry absorbs and concentrates odors, then she carries that filthy wash out into the natural world and rinses it in the vivid colors of Godard’s overcranked saturation knob. That’s my initial impression, anyway, of the emotional dynamics…. It’s all so cryptically presented, however, I could be completely off….

Doesn’t bother me in the least! If I watch this film a second or third time and revise my opinions, even years from now, I won’t hesitate to come back and update the post. These writings aren’t intended for anybody else’s gratification, edification, education, or emulation: they’re aimed squarely at my own future self, the one who remembers having watched a particular movie but doesn’t remember either the plot or what he thought of it. Future Yarrow, here is what you thought of Goodbye to Language! And that’s it.

Ah, ok, I’ve just been to Wikipedia; it seems there are INDEED some crazy 3D effects in this film. Among other effects, he literally separates the left and right eye at times, gives them completely divergent images to process simultaneously. Sounds incredible, utterly subversive of what 3D is even supposed to be, and kudos to Godard for that particular middle finger, but I don’t need to witness it personally, methinks. The idea alone is enough to satisfy my curiosity.

[ AS ALWAYS, SPOILERS ABOUND ]

Ingmar Bergman sure loves him a Summer theme! Where To Joy and Summer Interlude depict tragedy, Summer with Monika (1953) gives us folly. Folly of youth, perhaps, but I think Monika’s folly transcends her age: it’s in her character, not her stage of life. For Harry, yes, it’s a stage: he grows up in the end. But Monika, she’s just stuck where she is.

A brief summary. Young couple (Harry and Monika, both around 18) consorts freely and gaily until, you guessed it, Nature hits the buzzer and a child floats up from the primordial soup. Monika, who would rather be a “Dream Girl” (the name of her favorite American movie, one that simply bores Harry) neglects to bond with the child, shrugs off the shackles of family life, and flies away, leaving Harry to raise the child. Of course, that’s where the movie ends, but surely not the story. She’ll be back! I guarantee it! She’ll hop in and out of Harry and the child’s life at her whim for years…. Maybe I’m identifying too closely with some of these films, but DAMN.

Of course, the point of the film is to highlight the Edenic happiness Harry and Monika experience when they escape from the peonage of Civilization and make their way by boat to the summer paradise of an island off the coast of Sweden. There’s a wonderful, long montage sequence of their expedition out through a labyrinth of artificial waterways confined and bounded by a seemingly infinite tangle of bridges and structures; it all gives way to gorgeous vistas of open water and the natural splendor of the island they land on. The relief is palpable when you get to the island, and these children frolic without a single care or worry. Incredible. At this stage of my life, I can’t imagine feeling this way. You’d simply have to be rich, and I guess they are rich: rich with Nature. Summer is the easy season, after all, and they take full advantage. When they return to the city, we are given another lengthy and effective sequence of nature giving way to oppressive (and majestic) urban architecture. Tarkovsky does a similar thing in Solaris (1972)—on roads instead of water—and I can’t help but wonder whether he was quoting this film.

We are treated to some lovely black and white nudity (hers, of course), and we don’t have to feel like voyeurs because it’s Harry who’s looking at her, you see. We’re just seeing what Harry sees. If his loving eyeballs weren’t present on the scene taking in all her feminine glories along with us, then those same exact shots of Monika’s naked body would be “pornography.” Isn’t it amazing, the power of a little narrative context? Of course, this was 1953, when that was still possible. I think what these early films showcasing human sensual experience couldn’t have anticipated was home video. These fleeting glimpses of youthful bodies within the embrace of a complex story and fleshed out characters are perfectly “tasteful,” but home video is able to strip all that context away at the whim of whatever “preevert” happens to be in control of the remote. He can just pause it there, and Monika is transformed into nothing more than an image to summon ejaculation. Indeed, now with digital video, that preevert can take it to the next level and simply extract the “highlights” for online distribution to others who may not even know what film the images come from! Thus, “tasteful,” non-pornographic film imagery is no longer possible, and Summer with Monika itself may be seen as a kind of Filmic Eden to which return is forbidden now that we have eaten of the fruit of Knowledge of Digital Video.

I don’t know if Bergman has any politics, per se, but you could certainly view this film as an anti-Capitalist screed, the way the young fools are ridiculously exploited, mistreated, and dehumanized by their bosses and co-workers, all of whom collaborate to constantly crack the economic whips and keep each other in line. The bleak world created by this system is on full display in the grim montage of industrial cityscape that opens the film. Contrast that with the section in Paradise: we spend a full third of the runtime hanging out in the loveliest summer landscapes and seashores, wallowing nude and disporting playfully in every pose and posture available to the human form… only to be compelled by pregnancy and poverty to return to the mean confinement of the market-driven world, where Harry not only has to devote the bulk of his time and energy to filling up some rich asshole’s treasure trunk, but also has to invest his remaining personal resources in night classes if he wishes to sustain any hope of advancing his economic condition beyond meek subsistence. You can’t blame Monika for wanting to escape all that, I guess! On the other hand… you can.

I have to take note of a moment in which Monika breaks the fourth wall. It’s not even that common nowadays, but back then, it must have been a real shocker! (Certainly was to me.) She’s partying hard with her fella (not Harry), and leans back plucking tobacco off her tongue… then, whammo, turns her gaze suddenly into the camera, the lighting shifts dramatically (you can see Bergman’s theater background here), her eyes darken and her expression hollows out, her smug hedonism softens into a moment of self-awareness, an acknowledgement of the emptiness of her desires, the futility of her “ambitions,” such as they are, to infinite pleasure and escapism…. It’s her Confession, I think. She confesses to us, the audience, because she can’t even confess it to herself. Without a camera to look into, where would she look? A mirror? Ha! A mirror only shows beauty, not truth, everyone knows that! You need an audience for truth, and you yourself can’t be that audience. But that’s probably a discussion for another movie….

Speaking of mirrors, one is employed to great effect in the final shot, demonstrating precisely the point I just made. Harry, holding the baby for whom he’s now solely responsible, peers into a mirror and sees a montage of memories (because Bergman knows that consciousness collapses time) of Monika cavorting naked in their Eden, looking as fresh and sexy as a young woman can, and he smiles wistfully and wanders off into the cold night; regardless of the hell Monika has put him through, he can’t help but romanticize their relationship. Which is to say, he sees beauty, not truth. Is that what love is? Well, this IS where the credits roll… so I guess fucking so!

Somehow, I got into writing about films recently, which is all fine and good, but it was sinking the purpose of this site, which is NOT to be a film review site. I certainly ain’t THAT guy. Not that I have anything against THAT guy, he’s pretty cool, I just ain’t him, is all.

So before it got out of hand, I have figured out how to corral the film comments over in their own section, which is accessible via the Menu up top: the Film Ghetto. It’s a mini-blog just for films… but really, it’s the Ghetto, so watch yourself is all I’m saying. You never know what you’re going to find—who you’re going to run into—where you’re going to end up—in the Ghetto.

So that’s where these pieces (and any future ones) will reside from now on, and this main blog will continue to serve the purpose it always has, which is to annotate my writing career, such as it is. Air quotes around that? Well, I’ll leave those to the reader’s imagination…. Just raise your fingers in the air, and do the thing.

Additionally, I have finally traipsed (gently) through the Link Heap. All links SHOULD be FULLY OPERATIONAL now, just need to find a planet of hapless liberals to unleash my imperial fury on. Some of the dead links were simply missing an s on the http; apparently, “security” has become a “thing” since the time when I copy-pasted those particular links. You would think that an http address would simply forward to its corresponding https, but maybe that would defy some nerdy creed, and we couldn’t have that. So, yeah, those are fixed, anyway. And I removed some other links that were simply not fluffing my boner, as Marie Kondo would say. Can’t say I have any new links for it, sadly, me being completely out of the loops ’n’ all.

[8-21-22]

Just popping in to mention I’ve added an index of the films I’ve written about, and I will update it for all future writings. The film index page is accessible only from the site menu up top.