fassotguillaume

What is Savior ? First of all, it's an excellent war movie, tough as reality can be, without all the stuff and all the magnificent heroes usually shown by Hollywood movies (We were soldiers, etc.). But, after the movie was finished, I had to watch it again because the story sounded strange... The movie deals with the war in ex-Yougoslavia and illustrates all aspects of it. Serbs, Bosniacs, Croats have victims whatever their belief and their culture, suffering from the madness of war... and the slow progression of the main character, trapped in an insane 'will to kill', from hate to humanity, is truly moving. But, apart the fact some elements are merely commercial (the beginning with N.Kinski, the US nationality of the main character) made to attract US watchers, the movie has a main drawback : the balance is not fair.

• Excepted the old man married to a Serb, the only Croats depicted in the movie are barbarians committing a mass murder (the climax of the movie). - Bosniacs, as Muslims, are the ones who initiate the war process in the movie (bomb attack in Paris) and are shown killing civilian Serbs (mass murder in a village) - Serbs are also acting vs Bosniacs but never a serb is directly shown as a killer : the old woman is, factually, killed by the helo bombing ; the muslim child on the bridge is killed bu a US wardog. Above all, the acts of violence committed by Serbs stem from an honor code (most of time Serb versus a Serb) or are partly justified because the victim is not a real innocent (the raped muslim girl is the daughter of an exploiting man ; the Muslims killed in Paris during the prayer had weapons, etc.). there is a Serb bad guy but he looks like a ordinary student turned mad by war, aimed at protecting his land...

So Savior is an excellent movie about the redemption of a man who, because he was inspired only by hate was out of humanity but perfectly adapted to a world without humanity. It's moving that the most he becomes a man, the most he suffers... But Savior is not the movie that surveys the war in ex-Yougoslavia.

Day dream is a very strange movie... I don't know if it makes part of some Japanese trend but, in my opinion, nothing compares to it in underground European or US cinema. A man, in western suit, and a woman, in traditional costume (with obi) are going to be operated by a dental. While they are getting asleep, the man looks (is he sleeping and dreaming ?) at the dental and the nurse who, as vampires, begin sucking the body of the woman and taking off her clothes. After they escape from the place, begins a kind of quest through the town at night (in buildings, in the streets, in a supermarket, in a lunapark...) to keep the woman safe from the devil dental but the woman behaves as a good willing victim for her prosecutor... The movie looks like a nightmare, with underground violence and explicit sex (few scenes but so explicit that I don't understand why it's not X rated...) and bondage. I don't think a European director could have been able to make this movie. And, above all, I don't think a producer could have provided the director with such support and facilities to make such a movie.

Maybe, censors proved able to be sensitive to its very weird, sometimes chilling, glittering feelings... I think that this movie, as a dream, can have as many interpretation as viewers.

Alain Resnais ranks among the major French director but it is hard to point out a topic in such a large panel of different movies from 'Je t'aime-Je t'aime' to 'On connait la chanson'. It's not so obvious to recognize at first sight the Resnais touch. Maybe, the only possible approach of Resnais cinema is to distinguish in it a kind of deep exploration of relationship between humans. It's obvious in 'Mon oncle d'Amerique' but it seems that Resnais has devoted himself to reveal fundamental basis of relation/communication that can exist between two human beings, as humans being in space and time and their cultural background. And, with its no-narrative structure, Smoking/No smoking is a wonderful playground for analyzer Resnais, showing beyond laugh (Sabine Azema's nervous breakdown in Smoking is one of the funniest moment of cinema I've enjoyed) and tears, silence and words, all the nuances that stem from our human part, regardless of what is due to facts and events.