35 Shots of Rum

In French director Claire Denis' 35 Shots of Rum, the world becomes, in author Sharon Salzberg's phrase, "transparent and illuminated, as though lit from within". It is a film of infinite tenderness in which the characters lives are delicately interwoven to build a tapestry of interconnectedness that signals life's inevitable passages. Reminiscent of Hou Hsiao-hsien's Café Lumiére with its intimate depiction of city life and the coming and going of trains, 35 Shots of Rum pays homage to Yasujiro Ozu in its story of the relationship between Lionel (Alex Descas), a train conductor of African descent whose striking features convey a sense of stoic dignity and his student daughter Josephine (Mati Diop) who is eager to assert her independence.

Like the relationship of Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara in Ozu's films, the focus is on the mundane occurrences of everyday life, the quiet intimacies in which meaning is revealed only by implication. While the characters are black, their lives are comfortably middle class and the only suggestion of racial issues is a classroom scene where Jo talks about how "the global South" is indebted to the industrial north. Set to a lovely score by the British band "Tindersticks" and gloriously choreographed by cinematographer Agnes Godard, the film opens with a ten minute montage of the crisscrossing of trains of the RER, the system that connects Paris to its suburbs.

Interspersed are close-up shots of Josephine, Lionel, and his co-worker René (Julieth Mars Toussaint) whose immanent retirement signals a depressing change in his life. As the scene shifts to a small Paris apartment, like a married couple, Lionel and Josephine settle into a domestic routine of cooking, cleaning, and showering, their relationship of father and daughter not made clear until we see a photograph of a younger Jo and her German mother. This initial opaqueness seems to pervade a film that relies on the viewer to fill in the blanks. It is clear from the outset, however, that Lionel is dependent on his daughter and fears her eventual departure.

Although he tells her reassuringly, "Don't feel I need to be looked after…Just feel free", he also lets her know her that "We have everything here. Why go looking elsewhere?" His happiness is threatened by upstairs neighbor Noé (Gregoire Colin), a scruffy-looking young man who lives with his cat and does not hide his feelings for Jo even while vowing to move to Gabon for a job. We are also introduced to Gabrielle (Nicole Dogué), a taxi driver who is attached to Lionel and may have been his lover. This unlikely quartet form an extended family and their deep seated feelings for each other are revealed in an illuminating scene in a café after their car breaks down in route to a concert.

Lionel's conflicted feelings about his daughter's growing up become apparent when the intimate dance between father and daughter to the song "Night Shift" by the Commodores is interrupted by Noé who cuts in and immediately ups the romantic ante. Lionel's jealousy is also reflected by Gabrielle shortly afterwards as she watches Lionel dancing with the café's attractive hostess. In an unexpected trip to Germany to visit a friend (or sister) of Jo's late mother's, the inner lives of the characters and the bonds that hold them together are further explored, although little happens on the surface.

To say that 35 Shots of Rum is a film of mystery belies the fact that it is also quite accessible though in a very rich and subtle way. Its achievement lies in its ability to create memorable characters and fully involve us in their lives without relying on extended conflict, outward displays of emotion, or even a coherent narrative, drawing its power from its creation of magic through silences, glances, and a loving warmth that lingers in the memory. It is one of Denis' best films.

I liked everything about this movie. I liked spending time with these characters, and the performances were spot on. I liked the moody aesthetic of the film, the music (I haven't heard "Nightshift" in YEARS!) and the cinematography fit beautifully. I liked how the relationships between the personalities gradually unfolded and revealed themselves. But the operative word here is "like." Although I can't find anything to criticize, I can't find anything that deserves exceptional praise either. It's a thoughtful movie, it's a nice movie... it's a good, solid understated drama. It just wasn't anything more than that. I often wondered if there was some subtext I wasn't picking up on, which is highly possible. For whatever reason, although I enjoyed it, it didn't leave much of an impression.

Claire Denis' 35 Shots of Rum is a poignant piece of cinema about the intimacy of a father and a daughter. They know they should part ways but leaving each other is emotionally challenging for both. On the other side, both have suiters awaiting on the margin, struggling with loneliness and unfulfilled desire.

In the background, we have an alternative view of Paris, a distorted, dirty, and ugly city. Most of the characters are colored, and they were simmering with revolutionary ideas and thwarted hopes.

The film lacks a coherent narrative. It's more like a distant view of family life at a random period. We don't know much about either Lionel, the father, or his daughter Josephine, but we could infer many things from their glances and the way they touch each other. What's connecting about them is their simplicity, charm, and ambiguous charisma, which is why they only find fulfillment in each other. Their lovers - Gabrielle and Noe - seem like outsiders, and they lack the vague aura of father and daughter.

I wouldn't say I liked the movie that much, although I appreciated the masterful camera work, the elegant pace, the implicit emotional tension, and the powerful performance of the actors. It's an excellent film, but something was lacking, which is probably fervor and warmth. Ozu tackled the same issue of father-daughter attachment, yet Ozu's picture has a glow, a depth of feeling and intimacy that transcends the subject.

This movie opens with about ten minutes of watching commuter trains running around the Paris area. We get views from the inside as well as out. You begin to wonder what is going on, is this a film directed by some train obsessed person? But, no, the opening scenes set a mood and briefly introduce us to two of the main characters: Lionel, a train engineer, and Joséphine, his daughter. (Is it just a coincidence that Lionel's name is the same as the model train company's?)

After the opening scenes we see Lional and Joséphine in their small but comfortable apartment in the Paris suburbs. Details of their ordinary domestic life are presented at some length. Lional and Joséphine are so at ease with each other that you assume they are husband and wife, but then you are surprised to learn they are father and daughter. Finally we are introduced to the two other people in the apartment complex whose lives intertwine with Lionel and Josèpine: Gabrielle, a taxi driver who has had more than a casual interest in Lionel for many years, and Noé, a young, peripatetic bohemian who has interest in Joséphine. Following the shifting relationships among these four people is the substance of the movie.

Dramatic tensions are developed with quiet subtly. Those seeking histrionics will not find them here. The pivotal scene has no dialog. While dancing in a café to the Commodores "Nightshift" and Ralph Tamer's "Siboney," the entire emotional tone between the characters turns. What a beautiful scene.

What attracted me to this film was the gradual way we learn about the people and come to care about them. In contrast, however, compressed into the final scenes are surprising revelations.

If you like quiet, character-driven films, then you will probably like this. Otherwise, probably not.

I wish I could pin down Claire Denis' charisma. Watching in a row her 1994 'Je n'ai pas sommeil' and this one, there are some quasi-generic features that help defining what it is about Claire Denis.

All in all I sympathize with the opinion of the viewer who said this is a heartfelt dissection of familial ties. I thought the comment was succinct.

And yet the reviewer who said the new rice boiler was a new start and the funeral at the ending was sufficient occasion for the 35 rhums theory to be 'celebrated' by Lionel, was the one who made me start. I am not at all sure that the new rice boiler stands for new beginnings. And while the end turns around an occasion of mourning, I was under the impression that what is depicted yet never shown was Jo's wedding: her white dress, her mother's necklace, the furtive clad-as-groom appearance of Noe hesitating in front of the two doors, etc, mark for me, although this can be a total mistake, a familiar Denis device: nothing is as it seems, and that means that.

Let me explain a bit my remark. Denis is an economist by formation. What does economy in Denis' film account for, ultimately? And this makes me go back to my preliminary question, that is, What is it about Claire Denis? Oscillating between a somewhat anthropological b-movie, with its clinical, sometimes random like a jotting, drab shots of ordinary time (preparing food, consuming it -note the remarkable scene of three people in a row, in the kitchen, eating standing a silent, quick meal- the repetitive routes of suburban trains etc) and its elated reverse, sudden side with small scale yet condensed and beautiful though emotionally complex rituals (notably the dance in the bar sequence)that seemingly discharges packed-up emotion and pressure from the unexplained portions of raw, elliptical meaning. There may be an overt tone of post-colonial discourse, she may even have detested her studies, it may smell like a b-movie, or, bluntly, like another introvert-and-what-the-fuss-about french film, but I think it demands a very strong hold to tackle with understatement and finesse the issues, the faces, the spaces and the tissues of human economy, rubbing shoulders with the imperceptible and the unsaid.

Aside procedures in the film, and I mean by aside non-cinematic ones, highlight what is going on, more to the spirit of the auteur. Take in the opening credits the way the names of the actors appear: all in three rows, watermarked, and then highlighted, appearing like noon-ghosts; or Tindersticks' score: in the beginning the Messian-like onde mazenot throws a note of otherworldliness, only to be dismissed by a almost naive, post-colonial (sic) subdued, carousel music, that weave together at the end in a defying way, as in general the music slides in and out of the film, casually and perplexedly, not frightfully important yet - yet...

nothing is as it seems, weighs down its cliché. And that is that, the tautologies that are offered in the film, like the father's stubborn silence (what a perfect silence!), cannot, in the end be humanized into clichés. A neighbor who is a lover, or was one, a missing, an absent, a dead parent, or an all too present one, centrifugal urges to leave this way of life, because ghosts overpopulate the seemingly tepid urban scenery, a friend and a colleague who leaves his job and encounters death, the encounter of life-as-promise, ties who are untied or untidy, all this is loose and shiny, even in the autumnal Parisian light, and maybe, narratively, they leak out as everyday clichés, the way one takes the train. Unless they drink 35 rhums.