galexandre

This being said, the odds were against me since it is virtually impossible to see this film, which was not released theatrically. I have managed to get a copy of the videotape, and although I had been waiting to see this film for a long time, I barely could watch it through. How to describe this clueless mess ? First it was shot in lavish 16 mm, atrociously under-lit and with absolutely no sense of frame. Second terrible thing : no direct sound seems to have been recorded during the filming, so all sounds have been overdubbed in studio, and the result is just awful. Chee, one of the two main actors, overdoes his (pathetic) act, and Foley artists seem to have only had their hands to reproduce all the needed sounds... But this would be nothing if the film was actually a film. Instead, it is vaguely a series of scenes hardly attached to each other, depicting the misbehaving of two unemployed youngsters, small (very small)-time crooks who think they're hitting it big when they put a hand on a camera and decide to direct a feature film. No need to go further into this... plot, the main interest of this film, for french viewers at least, being the appearance, for their first roles, of now stars Didier Bourdon and Smaïn. Didier Bourdon actually knew how to act, he is almost OK in his character, a young baron attracted by the sunlights a movie could cast over him. As for Smaïn, he only has one scene, where he plays another unemployed young crook. This being said, the film has a political and somewhat sociological background, since it begins with the Champs-Elysées parade that followed the Mitterrand 1981 election. With the invasion of the aristocratic world by André and Lucien and the evocation of the rise of new free radio stations, the director takes a look at the renewal of young energies such as they were being felt in 1981. Thus Les chômeurs en folie is not a reactionary film (what it could have been), but more a "fashionable" desperate try to make a film about contemporary society phenomenons. No need to say that 25 years later, it is so dated that it could almost be used by sociologists to study the french youth of 1981. Of course, the film fails all along the way to provoke even the smallest smirk, and this despite every running gag, every mini skirt and every nude breast Georges Cachoux conscientiously compiled.

One of these existential thrillers as they were made in the 70's, Léa l'hiver first strikes by its strenuous construction, with the ad nauseum use of flash-backs which makes the film very hard to understand : it starts with the discovery of a woman corpse, then gradually reveals the past of this woman as well as the police investigation which follows the discovery, and goes back and forth between seasons and places without any apparent logic.

Devoid of charm and warmth, Karen Blanguernon and Gilles Segal lead the pack of this cold-hearted movie, paradoxically set under the bright sun of Ibiza. This leads to what strikes me as the strong point of the film : the depiction of the spanish island at a turning point of its history. It is quite interesting on a sociological point of view : the early 70's mark the beginning of a new touristic era for balearic islands, and the film particularly depicts those changes, the way a very isolated and poor island gradually changes to become one of the main touristic sites of the Mediterranean basin. Hideous and soulless touristic resorts being built across gorgeous landscapes, developing marketing and selling processes to the masses... All this only underlines the main plot, but gives an identity to a film that wouldn't be half watchable without it.

It comes as no surprise that the new PT Anderson movie is more than awaited... and well, it shall not disappoint anyone who has a taste in cinema! With a sharp knowledge of the human soul, and with more than an outstanding talent for direction and for the use of every little detail that makes of an apparently trivial movie a unexpected classic, P.T. Anderson has directed an outstanding work-of-art. The story revolves around Barry Egan, a business company otner (or is he really?) who, almost at once, finds a lost harmonium on the sidewalk, meets a girl he would never had ever dreamt of, and gets chased by a bunch of crooks who own a phone-sex company in Utah. With these three ingredients delightfully entertwined, Punch-Drunk Love is in the same time an over-the-top romantic love-story, a paranoid thriller and a surrealistic trip through a man's mind. Without forgetting this uncomparable dreamlike edge, as if the film was seen through a haze. Characterization is excellent, with Adam Sandler putting aside his moronic attitudes and concentrating on a very unexpected role. Barry, who could be seen, at first, as a somewhat lighter Forrest Gump, bullied by his atrocious sisters who always considered him as the top loser of the family, once carried away by the power of love eventually discovers his strength and his long lost humanity. I know, put that way, it may sound corny, but hell this film isn't. P.T. Anderson isn't the kind of man to be bothered by cliches: he just slaloms between them, sprinkling the scenes with drops of surrealistic acid (like the car accident at the beginning), and joyously using cinematographic references (the frantic chase, with Barry running amongst warehouses, chased by shadows as in an expressionist movie, or the kiss, staged as in a shadow show). This without even mentionning the delirious music by Jon Brion, which takes the images to an even higher ground. Almost always on, the score adds to the inner turmoil of Barry, sometimes almost covering the dialogues : the effect is striking, emotions like pleasure or discomfort being multiplied by ten. This film is really an experience, a rollercoaster ride through emotions, as much as it is one for Barry's soul throughout his adventure. Please don't be bothered by the apparent strangeness of Punch-Drunk Love, for it is the warmest, most dreamlike film you will probably encounter for a long, long while.