Family affairs

Pre-Opening Day M5

What makes the perfect M? Well, it's best when the weather is really nice--when I'm able to repeat my motto, "It's far too nice a day to be outside." It's good if I get in to Grand Central with enough time to walk downtown, so that in fact I do absorb some fresh air, and better yet if the itinerary includes multiple venues at some distance, ideally including one long east-west trek. A rare bonus is getting to five films yet getting back to New Haven shortly after midnight, so that I'm not a complete zombie the next day. And, of course, all the films should ones I'm happy in retrospect to have included.

And this last M trip before baseball season--which is to say probably the last before Thanksgiving--was perfect.

Barbe bleue (Bluebeard)

IFC

Yeah, it's based on a fable about a guy who serially murders his wives, but in many ways this is an uncharacteristically gentle film from Catherine Breillat. For one thing, there's a parallel/frame story--one little girl reads the fable to her older but less precocious sister--that, regardless of where you stand on cute little girls (I generally favor standing on the forehead, myself), cannot but be described as enchanting: little Catherine (coincidental name? I think not) charms you whether you like it or not.

For another, the fable itself is nuanced à la another fable, "Beauty and the Beast": Bluebeard (Dominique Thomas) is a wistful loner, and his love for Marie-Catherine (Lola Créton; and if you see the film, you're going to wonder what I wondered, so I'll just go ahead and tell you: according to IMDb, she turned 16 late last year; yikes!) is undeniably genuine, his willingness to postpone consummation of the marriage poignant (touching in its untouchingness, as it were). And she, though a little more complicated, seems also to love him to the extent that her girlishness allows.

Which suggests that the previous brides she finds dripping blood from meathooks behind the forbidden door also genuinely loved a man who genuinely loved them. But things (or one particular thing--though in a serial scenario like this, you have to wonder what fatal thing the first wife did) happened. Which makes it a lot meatier, if you will, than the bare-bones fable.

Pranzo di Ferragosto (Mid-August lunch)

FF

Oy! Talk about irresistible! This Italia-indy, directed and co-written by Gianni Di Gregorio, one of the cowriters of the brutal Gomorra, no less, sets up a farcical situation ripe for a Hollywood remake--because Gianni (the director) can't both pay his bills and take care of his elderly mother, he gets roped into tending three other elderly women so their caretakers can take a holiday from Rome. Wackiness ensues, but delightfully and comfortingly human wackiness, among nonactors whose performances are as perfectly weathered as their faces. Nothing really happens--call it Codgercore--and that's all that needs to happen. Beautiful!

Breaking Upwards

IFC

What better praise can I give this lower-than-a-year's-rent-in-Williamsburg-budget gem than to say that its breakup moved me as much as any breakup since my own most recent one?

Director Daryl Wein and costar Zoe Lister Jones based their screenplay on life, so it remains to be seen whether they can score with full-bore fiction (and with a real budget), but what starts here as "cute" ends up heartbreakingly real. Andrea Martin does her best work since SCTV as Zoe's mother, and the vaguely familiar-looking veteran Peter Friedman (his 2nd credit on IMDb is for voicing in several Muppet Show episodes) is nearly as good as Daryl's father.

L'Épine dans le coeur (The thorn in the heart)

CV

Reviews have been lukewarm at best, which I suspect reflects critics' refusal to let Michel Gondry not be wildly creative, even for a moment. I'm not sure why anyone would have any objection to spending an hour and a half with Gondry's Aunt Suzette and her titular son Jean-Yves or revisiting the places where she used to teach and some of her former pupils. It is an intensely personal story--maybe that's it; maybe there's discomfort in being invited in on this contentious family story.

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

FF (1927)

Golly! How and why have I not seen this before? Wait, that's a boring question; here's a better one: is there any genre, or any aspect of life, that F. W. Murnau leaves out? What begins as a noir story of infidelity and murder takes turns through screwball comedy, romance, redemption tale, and the mellowest of melodrama, yet it never loses its way, or loses its grip on us. An impossibly youthful Janet Gaynor (probably 20, if IMDb is to be trusted) plays the virtuous-without-being-simpy wife (rather, Wife, that being the character's name), George O'Brien the unvirtuous but salvageable Husband, Margaret Livingston the dangerously slutty Woman from the City.

Subtlety is not a hallmark of the time, but Murnau manages nonetheless to avoid being simplistic. The film is also a model of title cards minimizing--just as silent films are about to be pushed aside.

Trailers

• Surviving Desire--Revival of a 1991 Hal Hartley film; looks possible, but the likelihood that I'll have a non-Netflix shot at it seems slim.
• Mercy--Scott Caan writes about love without having experienced it; steps must be taken. Dad is played by Dad.
• Handsome Harry--Road/atonement picture; good cast includes Campbell Scott, Steve Buscemi, John Savage.
• Kasi az gorbehaye irani khabar nadareh (No one knows about Persian cats)--Who needs sex and drugs--give us some Iranian rock & roll!
• Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo--Documentary about the Japanese insect trade. Oh, yes.
• Alle Anderen (Everyone else)--Sexy German thriller?