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Movie Review – A Nos Amours

A Nos Amours (1983)
Written & Directed by Maurice Pialat

People often seem to forget that a vast ocean of thought exists within each person’s mind. Society does its best to halt our exploration of these complex inner worlds, but they remain a part of who we are, always waiting to be uncovered and mapped. You likely have noticed the same disturbing trend I have among mostly white conservative men, an aggressive push against women’s agency over their lives and bodies. They want the population to see women as nothing about vessels for men’s pleasure and laborers to provide men with their every need. But this denies that inner world, the complicated web of desires, needs, emotions, beliefs, and more that exists in women just as much as they do in men. A Nos Amours is a brief peek into that world, a film that also shaped the life of its star.

PopCult Podcast – Full Time/Yellowjackets

It’s tough for ladies out there. Whether its trying to commute to work in the midst of French transit strikes or handling the trauma of being a cannibal in your formative years, women are being asked to balance a lot.

Movie Review – Week End

Week End (1967)
Written & Directed by Jean-Luc Godard

I have never felt as enamored with the French New Wave directors as I thought I should have been. I love the Italian New Wave, the British films of this period, with their social realism, are fascinating, and the later German New Wave is full of movies I adore. But I still struggle to really “get” the French New Wave. No director is a perfect example of this filmmaking movement more than Jean-Luc Godard. He was born to deconstruct and reconstruct cinema as a reaction to World War II and the ripples it continues to make in the West. After a decade of writing film criticism, he kicked off the New Wave with Breathless, examining American mob movie tropes mixed with Godard’s cinematic sensibilities. Week End represents the end of the New Wave period, released at the end of a year when Godard had two other films shown in cinemas.

Movie Review – Beau Travail

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Beau Travail (1999)
Written by Claire Denis & Jean-Pol Fargeau
Directed by Claire Denis

Everything about Beau Travail is felt rather than intellectualized. It’s a movie spilling over with texture & an evocation of the senses. So much of the tension on screen is never acknowledged in words but through visual language. In some ways, it is close to a silent film in how much restraint is used in the dialogue. It is an erotic film in the classical definition of eros as the aspect of love we call desire. The main character wants another so badly, but due to the circumstances of their jobs & where they are, this isn’t going to happen. We know this is a tragedy, but like watching two cars about to collide, there is little you can do but bear witness. It is a movie born out of defiance on the part of the director, a challenge to heteronormative masculinity that never preaches its themes to you. Those emerge organically, and it’s the job of the audience to examine & contemplate them.

Movie Review – M. Butterfly

M. Butterfly (1993)
Written by David Henry Hwang
Directed by David Cronenberg

In 1986, France was caught up in a scandal involving one of their diplomats in China. Bernard Boursicot has been engaged in an affair with Peking opera singer Shi Pei Pu. Shi was a male singer who performed primarily in female roles, and Boursicot insisted that he believed Shi was a woman the whole time. This seems incredulous as both men admitted to having sex together numerous times. Furthermore, Boursicot claimed that Shi could retract his testicles and shape his genitals to resemble female anatomy. However, the French diplomat engaged in same-sex intercourse while in boarding school as a teenager. Only after graduation did Boursicot choose to be with women, as he claimed he thought homosexuality was a rite of passage among the youths at his school.

PopCult Podcast – Close/Saint Omer

Europe is producing some fantastic films these days and today we spotlight two of them. In one film, a young boy finds his friendship with another boy questioned by their peers leading to a fatal outcome. In the other, a writer attends the court trial of a woman accused of infanticide and in turn discovers truths about her own relationship with her mother.

PopCult Podcast – Welcome to the Dollhouse/La Haine

We’re going back to 1995 for April to watch & re-watch some fantastic films. Our first picture is a darkly comic examination of life in the East Coast suburbs. Our second film is a French crime-drama that moves at a breakneck speed and is a perfect piece of cinema.

Movie Review – The Five Devils

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The Five Devils (2023)
Written & Directed by Léa Mysius

The Five Devils opens and concludes with a character looking directly into the camera at the audience. That makes sense because much of the film’s narrative centers on voyeurism. So it is appropriate that we are reminded through bookends that the characters within the film could look back at the audience. That first glimpse is followed by a little girl sitting up in bed, and this cut implies the girl was dreaming this moment, that the gaze was directed at her. As the film progresses, this same little girl becomes the one spying on the adults, trying to piece together the cryptic things they say in her presence to create a more significant meaning. She wants to understand who these grown-ups are and how she came into being. What she discovers is how fragile her existence is in the face of different choices that her parents could have made. And while this movie markets itself and even feels like a horror film through the start, it ends up not being that at all, which left me feeling unsatisfied.

Movie Review – Three Colors: Red

Three Colors: Red (1994)
Written by Krzysztof Kieślowski & Krzysztof Piesiewicz
Directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski

In the excellent documentary short Krzysztof Kieślowski: I’m So-So… (available to view on The Criterion Channel), we get a small glimpse into the mind of this complex filmmaker. Kieślowski defines himself in this way: “I am a pessimist. I always imagine the worst. To me, the future is a black hole.” He further clarifies that he sees this as a good trait. I cannot disagree with him, as many of his thoughts in this short film felt like someone putting into perfect words a lot of what I have felt and have felt more intensely since 2020. (A side note, this comment on his visit to the United States made me feel like I have found yet another kindred soul in cinema: “the pursuit of empty talk combined with a very high degree of self-satisfaction.”) How does this kind of director make a movie centered on the theme of fraternity/brotherhood? He does it by focusing on how people communicate in the late 20th century.

Movie Review – Three Colors: White

Three Colors: White (1994)
Written by Krzysztof Kieślowski & Krzysztof Piesiewicz
Directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski

There are multiple ways to look at the structure & its relation to the themes of the Three Colors trilogy. One of those is, of course, the three ideals of the French Revolution: liberté, égalité, fraternité. However, Krzysztof Kieślowski is intent on subverting our expectations about these concepts. Another is through the lens of a Europe that was in the process of being partially unified. Blue is about Western Europe, White is about Eastern Europe, and Red is set in the “neutral” nation of Switzerland. There are also mood associations with color. Blue tells the story of a woman who has lost her family (she feels “blue”). Red is about passion & love, which that color regularly symbolizes.