The Crying Game

 

On Sunday night, while the rest of the nation where I live was looking at the first football match involving Les Bleus, I realized that Arté was showing Secret and Lies by Mike Leigh. 
I know this movie by heart: Leigh (my readers are well aware of this) is one of my favourite directors of all time and I consider Secrets and lies an absolute masterpiece.
I immediately wrote something on my Facebook page suggesting my French friends who were not interested in the World Cup to watch the movie, but I didn’t expect I would have watched it myself all over again for the 10th time. And I was even more surprised when, looking at my favourite scene, I started to cry… well, it would be more accurate to write I started sobbing.
Is this happening to you too? I mean: am I the only one who is capable of crying over and over again at a certain scene of a certain movie, no matter how many times I watched it?
Some movies touch a particular part of our soul, I guess, and there is nothing we could do about it. Usually people are ashamed to admit they cry in cinemas, but I am not. I proudly confess to weep very often watching a movie, and I decided to publicly confess Zazie's TOP 5 MOST EMOTIONAL MOVIES:

5 - My life without me by Isabel Coixet (2003)
I really love Isabel Coixet’s cinema and I think My life without me is an underestimated great movie of cinema history. Ann, a 23 years old wife and mother living in Vancouver, finds out to have an inoperable cancer. She decides not to tell her husband, her two young daughters and her mother, and she prefers to prepare them to the life “without her”. Of course, the subject would break anybody’s heart, but Coixet never takes advantage of its tearful potential. The film is simple, candid and full of life, and Sarah Polley is amazing in the role of Ann. It it almost impossible, though, not to weep every now and then. 
I personally did it - non stop - for the last 45 minutes of the movie.

4 – Au revoir les Enfants by Louis Malle (1987)
Based on a real story that happened to Louis Malle when he was a young boy under the German occupation, this movie builds up, scene after scene, a degree of emotion difficult to handle. On the last scene, when the Gestapo embarks some students and the priest and you hear him saying: “Au revoir, les enfants!”, I defy any single human being not to burst into tears like a little baby. The most heart-breaking quote of cinema history.


3 - Secrets and Lies by Mike Leigh (1996)
I have cried at every Leigh’s film, but this wins hands down.
I guess I cry so much watching this movie partly because Leigh has a special way of showing people in their most fragile and human conditions, and partly because the actors play so amazingly well that I am shaken by their immense talent. In this scene, one of the most beautiful, compelling and moving of Leigh’s cinema (and of cinema tout court), Brenda Blethyn is able to pass from incredulity to bewilderment, from hilarity to desperation in a way that it’s simply impossible to forget. If you don’t cry watching her, your heart is made of stone, believe me:

2 - Breaking the Waves by Lars Von Trier (1996) 

This film is present in almost all my TOP 5 movies of no matter what category, and I guess you have to get used to it, because it was one of those films having an incredible impact on my life. As I already had the chance to write in this blog: the death of Bess McNeil is one of the saddest moments I have to endure at cinema. Until today, it is just impossible for me not to drop a tear if I hear the first notes of Life on Mars by David Bowie.

1 - Everyone’s Waiting - Final Episode of Six Feet Under by Alan Ball (2005)
I know, this is not a movie I saw in a cinema. This is not even a movie, but I can’t deny that my most epic desperate moment in front of a screen was the final scene of the final episode of Six Feet Under. Friends who watched it before me had warned me about it but nothing could have prepared me for this emotional turmoil. We are talking about a series of almost 10 years ago, so I don’t think it will be a spoiler for anybody if I write that Alan Ball showed us the death of every single character in the story. Not a real surprise, since the main theme of this series actually is death, but after 5 seasons I was so attached to the Fisher family, that I started to cry at the first death and I stopped many hours after the last one. I cried so much that next day, arriving at the office, all my colleagues asked what tragedy had occurred to me.
On the side cover of Six feet Under's box set (having the shape of a grave, ça va sans dire!) you can read these words: Everything. Everyone. Everywhere. Ends.
They were clearly underestimating my tears.

Fight(s) Club

I am not a particularly litigious person.
I don’t usually like that much to quarrel and discuss, but if there is one thing in life I am ready to fight for, it is cinema. Touch a movie I love (or I don't love), and you’ll see.
The reasons why we like or hate a certain film are often mysterious and unpredictable, but I am convinced that this is part of cinema’s charm.
Sometimes we love movies because we consider them perfect and sometimes we are crazy about films plenty of flaws but absolutely irresistible to us, no matter what the most important cinema critics write about them. So, dear readers, here’s my TOP 5 List of movies I have most fight for or against in my whole life: 
1 -  BREAKING THE WAVES by Lars Von Trier (1996) 

A milestone, in my life. The strongest cinema experience I ever had: I saw it 4 times in theatres and every single time it was like a tsunami (easily created by my tears!). I adore this film and I had the most outrageous fights over it. A lot of people (mostly men) don’t like it. After almost 20 years, I could clearly see that the film was striking some very personal chords and my obsession with Bess McNeill at that time says something about it, but I still consider it a masterpiece and I would be ready to fight again and again and again over it. Little Bess For Ever!
2 - FIGHT CLUB by David Fincher (1999) 

Everybody knows it. There is no human being in this world that gets on my nerves like David Fincher. And my hatred for him started with this movie. I could have opened a fight club with all the fights I had over it (most probably with the same men who didn’t like Breaking the Waves...). I didn’t get the “free the animal that is in you/can’t you see we are all losers ‘cause we buy Ikea furniture?” kinda things. Not to mention that ridiculous final scene (you gotta be kidding me, right?). Things didn’t get better between me and David with his further movies. I think he is the most misogynist film-maker of cinema history. What can I say? I prefer directors filming “The man who loved women” to the ones filming “Men who hate women”.
3 - TREE OF LIFE by Terrence Malick (2011)

The problem with this movie, is that it’s almost a sin to declare that you don’t love it. I had a tremendous fight with an unknown person on Facebook, once. This man wrote something like: Who doesn’t like Tree of Life it’s because he/she doesn’t have the cultural supports to understand it!!! I almost killed him. That’s the thing. There is a moral judgement involved here, somewhere, somehow. And I can’t stand it. Even if Tree of Life (or any other movie of cinema history) would be considered the most beautiful movie of all time (and IT IS NOT), I think I would have the right to say that I don’t like it without having somebody telling me that it’s because I’m ignorant. I’m curious to know where all those Malicks fans where at the time of To the wonder, the movie he has done after Tree of Life. It was so awful that nobody had the guts to talk about it. Or maybe it’s because nobody had the cultural supports to understand it??! 

4 - ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA by Sergio Leone (1984)

I don’t give a damn about Sergio Leone and I dislike this movie. 
People almost faint when I declare this kind of things but what can I say? This is how I feel about this film-maker and about the movie which is considered his masterpiece. It was one of the most painful visions of my life and I was terrified by the violence in it. And no, I don’t think Robert De Niro is the most incredible actor of all time. I think he is a very good actor who played in many excellent movies but I also think he has done a lot of crappy films and that he wasn’t that good in them. 
Ok, end of my coming out!

5 -  AMOUR by Michael Haneke (2012)

Together with Fincher, Haneke is my second least favourite film-maker of all time.
He makes me feel sick any time I see one of his movies. This one was particularly painful to watch (not as much as The White Ribbon, I reckon, but I definitely had more discussions over Amour). What I can’s stand about this man, is his lack of empathy, his judgmental, cold and distant attitude. Enough of this. Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva are absolutely amazing in it and they are the only reasons why I watched this massacre until the end. I guess Haneke would do a better job making a movie called Hate. I’m sure he will be great at it!

In the Mood for Vengeance

Sometimes, I get interested in a film-maker through an actor.
It has been the case for Nicolas Winding Refn, who I discovered thanks to my passion for Mads Mikkelsen. Besides the Pusher trilogy, the two made together a very strange film called Valhalla Rising. On paper, Winding Refn doesn’t have much to please me. His cinema is famous for being extremely violent and I’m famous for being extremely irritated by violence on screen. But, as it is often the case in this life, sometimes we like things we are not supposed or we don’t expect to like. 

Nicolas Winding Refn and Mads Mikkelsen on the set of Valhalla Rising

I guess his cinema attracts me because it’s made of opposites: his movies are almost silent or too filled with words, the main characters are real heroes or complete losers and the most romantic scenes can be immediately followed by the most violent ones (Drive's elevator scene docet). Violence in Winding Refn movies is never cold, though. This is why I think it’s bearable. It is always driven by emotions, it’s coming from the evident flaws of human beings, and very often it’s perpetrated on awful kind of people to get justice (well, ok, I admit it: it’s a very primitive kind of justice). 

Also, I have to confess I really enjoy Winding Refn’s interviews: he is always very funny, interesting, confused, and completely crazy. Apparently, he is teetotal, colour blind and dyslexic. As a bonus, his father is the editor of Breaking the Waves by Lars Von Trier.  There are enough elements to become a fan, as far as I’m concerned. 

Nicolas Winding Refn

Winding Refn became a mainstream film-maker just a couple of years ago via the movie Drive, where Ryan Gosling found his consecration as an actor. Having particularly liked to work together, the two decided to team up for another movie, which has been selected for the competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival: Only God Forgives. Since Drive became kind of an iconic movie, many were waiting for their new collaboration. I have the feeling, from what I wrote in many critics these days, that people have been disappointed by it, but I didn’t. 

Nicolas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling on the set of Only God Forgives

In fact, the thing I liked about Only God Forgives, is that it is the absolute anti-Drive. 

So, if you want to see Drive 2, well, forget about it. While the guy played by Gosling in Drive was a powerful one, in this one he’s powerless and sexually impotent (as it was the case for Mikkelsen in Pusher 2). Julian is supposed to run a drug dealing business (the movie is set in Bangkok) but he isn’t tough enough. He is subjugated by his eldest brother and, when this one is massacred for having raped and killed a 16 years old girl, Julian is not able to take care of his vengeance, as his (lovely!) mother asks him to. And last, but not least, he also has an enormous Oedipus complex: the guy is a complete disaster, I assure you. 
The only thing the driver and Julian has in common, is that they are not very talkative kind of guys. I read that Gosling and Winding Refn are dreaming of making a silent movie together, one day, and I hope that day will be soon.

Ryan Gosling as Julian

And while in Drive the music was a super important element of the movie, with a bunch of songs that stayed in the collective imagination, in Only God Forgives the music is obscure, obsessive, and the only hits are the pathetic, melodic Thai songs performed in karaoke restaurants by the real hero of the story: Chang. This man is a retired policeman, a wizard of the sword, a silent guru and a merciless avenger, whose presence (real and unreal) will haunt Julian for the whole movie. 

Vithaya Pansringarm as Chang

The other star of the movie is my favourite character: Crystal, probably the most awful mother on screen ever, played in an exceptional way by a very intelligent actress, Kristin Scott-Thomas. Usually hired to embody sophisticated, ultra-bourgeois, complex women, Winding Refn had the brilliant idea to transform her in a monstrous creature, a modern Medea dressed in Versace (the resemblance with Donatella Versace is actually pretty scary), a real bitch, able to waste his son’s life in the space of a couple of sentences (the dinner scene is absolutely to die for). 

Kristin Scott-Thomas as Crystal

The movie builds up very slowly, obliging the audience to hold back the rhythm, to quit defences, and be ready to enter into the story and into this dark, gloomy, ultra-violent world. You can take it or you can leave it, but if you are patient enough, you'll be rewarded by many unforgettable scenes (oh, the Thai child in the weelchair!).

Filmed in a spectacular way, Winding Refn confirmed his talent for an astonishing mise-en-scène, somewhere between Scorsese and Lynch with a twist (in this Far-East location) of Wong Kar-Wai. 
But if the Hong-Kong film-maker was in the mood for love, it is clear that the Danish one is more in the mood for vengeance. 

Si salvi chi può!

The movie that...

I read many cinema magazines every month and there is a French one which has a very nice last page. 
It is called Le Film qui... (The movie that...), in which an actor/actress or a director talks about a bunch of movies that marked his/her life. I read it always with great pleasure, because I adore knowing the taste of cinema makers. Of course, I dream that this magazine would ask me about my movies, but why should I wait for them since I have a cinema blog???! 
So, Zazie, which is the movie that...

... makes you want to dance?

Les Demoiselles de Rochefort by Jacques Demy (1967)
It is just impossible for me not to start dancing every time I hear a song from this movie. I know all the chansons by heart, I even went on pilgrimage to the city of Rochefort, I'm crazy about Jacques Demy's universe and the music written by Michel Legrand. This is a cure against the ugliness and sadness of the real world. Jumelles Garnier For Ever!!! 


... makes you laugh every time you see it?

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of Desert by Stephan Elliott (1994)
I never laughed so much watching a movie as I did for Priscilla. The plot is amazing, the actors are absolutely astonishing (Terence Stamp deserved an Oscar for his role!), the dialogues are so funny and brilliant you can basically never stop laughing and the scene where they dance on "I will survive" in the middle of the Australian bush... well, that wins hands off. There is no depression that can possibly survive to this:


... makes you cry every time you see it?

Breaking the Waves by Lars Von Trier (1996)
I saw this movie on a cinema screen four times and every single one I cried and sobbed in the most dramatic way. I can't stand to witness what happened to little Bess, that's the thing. This movie would be also part of my personal category of Movies that changed your life. I consider it a masterpiece under every point of view and Emily Watson's performance one of the best in cinema history. 
It is simply unforgettable.


... caused you sleepless nights?

The Sixth Sense by M. Night Shyamalan (1999)
I am a very impressionable person, so I don't usually see scary movie. I'm too scared too easily. When I saw The Sixth Sense, I didn't sleep for six nights (as many as the senses involved). It was the subtle bursting of supernatural elements into realistic situations that made the movie so incredibly dreadful. The idea at the core of the screenplay is really incredible. I don't think I can watch it ever again.

... shocked you?

American film-maker David Fincher

I am shocked by the misogyny of Fincher's movies, a film-maker I can't stand. Apparently, I'm the only one in the world to think that he is The Director Who Hates Women, but I don't care. I trust my guts and the way I feel every time I'm out of one of his movies: filthy, depressed and hopeless. Enough of it. I promised myself I will never see again one of his pictures. Good-bye, Mr. Fincher!

And NO, I'm not going to waste space of my blog to show images taken from his movies. Basta!

... made you fall in love with its actor?

Hunger by Steve McQueen with Michael Fassbender (2008)
It was a Saturday night. I was seated in the Salle n° 1 of the Cinéma des Cinéastes. Just few people in the audience. I guess nobody wants to see, on a Saturday night, the story of a man who starved himself to death for political reasons. After half an hour of a movie that I was already considering amazing, a man appears on screen. He is so thin you can count the bones on his chest, the walls of his jail are covered with shit, he looks pale and fragile. But when he starts talking, with a strong Northern Irish accent, and you hear that voice, and you see that look, you understand how powerful this man can be. 
It was love at first sight.


... makes you want to write a cinema blog?

The Purple Rose of Cairo by Woody Allen (1985)
Love for cinema has never been so well expressed, in my opinion, than in this adorable movie by W. Allen. If somebody said: Madame Bovary, c'est moi!, I could easily say: Cecilia, c'est moi! The main character of this movie is a woman who can endure any misfortune in life provided that she can go to the movies and forget all the rest. In front of the screen, magic can happen, anything can happen, even the miracle of a movie character getting off the screen to meet you and fall in love with you. And if things go wrong, well, you can always go to the movies and crying while Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are dancing cheek to cheek... 
... I can write about this for ever!

The (anti) Social Network

In my life, I fiercely argued with people about two movies.

In one case (Breaking the Waves by Lars Von Trier) I was defending the film, in the other one (Fight Club by David Fincher) I was pulling it to pieces. There is something, in Fincher’s cinema, which gets terribly on my nerves. I am ready to admit that this could be a personal matter, since the guy is definitely able to make movies, but at the same time I think I have the right to say that his cinema doesn’t talk to me AT ALL and that I find it IMMENSELY boring. Yesterday night I made a new effort and, with the best intentions, I went to see The Social Network. And guess what.

Everybody knows Facebook, but maybe less people are aware of the bleak history behind its creation. In 2003, Mark Zuckerberg, a 19 years old geek from Harvard, dumped by his girlfriend and looking for some kind of revenge, creates in just a couple of hours an internal network where all the Harvard guys can choose the “hottest” Harvard girl. Impressed by what he has been able to do, he‘s approached by the twin brothers Winklevoss, who are looking for somebody helping them to develop an idea for a social network to be used at Harvard. Zuckerberg accepts their proposal but, as a matter of fact, creates from that same idea a new kind of social network, The Facebook, which has a striking success not only among Harvard students, but also among students from Columbia, Stanford and other universities in the world. From universities to the rest of the planet, and from few thousands to 500 million “friends”, it is just a question of (short) time. The process is not a smooth one, though. The Winklevoss brothers decided to sue him in court, as well as Eduardo Severin, Zuckerberg’s only friend. A guy who helped him launch the site but who’s been put aside after the arrival of Sean Parker, creator of Napster and smart entrepreneur able to provide Zuckerberg with huge amount of capitals and a bit of social life.

And this is the story of Mark Zuckeberg, youngest billionaire on earth, and possibly most isolated human being on the same planet. The End.

The first scene of the movie, a super fast and super sharp dialogue between Zuckerberg and his girlfriend, let me think for a moment that well, this could be a very interesting movie. The modern epic/greek tragedy all the reviews I have read were telling me about. Quite soon, though, I realized that the first scene was also the best one of the entire movie. No sign whatsoever of the passionate tale I was waiting for, but just the feverish account (feverish because Fincher tries to make it interesting proposing the sequences as well as the dialogues at a fast pace) of a bunch of jerks from Harvard trying desperately to achieve important purposes like entering into exclusive "final clubs" of their exclusive universities (where basically they can get drunk and girls take off their clothes during ridiculous games) or creating a social network, always for their exclusive universities, not particularly to get in contact with other human beings but just to make money or to have sex with some girls or to be considered “cool” by other people.

This is not epic, this is just depressing.

I wasn’t surprised, though, because this is the typical effect of a Fincher movie on me: I don’t like the subjects he chooses for his stories, I don’t like the way he tells the stories, I think that all the characters in his movies are incredibly superficial, I think he is pretentious and boring, and I also believe he is a bit chauvinist. I don’t mind looking at movies without even a single female character, but I do mind when female characters are on the edge of parody. In The Social Network you basically have Zuckerberg’s ex-girlfriend in a couple of scenes plus a lawyer at the end that look normal, otherwise all the others girls are hysterical bitches.

Welcome to his (fight) club, not mine.

The only valuable thing in this movie are some actors performances: Jesse Eisenberg (already seen and appreciated in The squid and the whale by Noah Baumbach) is perfect as the almost autistic Zuckerberg, while Armie Hammer playing both the Winklevoss twins is quite amazing. I wasn't particularly impressed, though, by Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake. I hope they can do better than that in their next movies.

When I think about Fincher, I think about these lyrics by a Smiths song, Panic:

Burn down the disco

Hang the blessed DJ

Because the music that they constantly play

IT SAYS NOTHING TO ME ABOUT MY LIFE

Hang the DJ! Hang the DJ! Hang the DJ!

I just need to replace disco with movie, and DJ with film-maker.

That's all.