by Dean | Sep 12, 2013 | General
Hal Ashby’s Shampoo (1975) is the one about George (Warren Beatty, co-writer and producer of the film), a self-absorbed hairdresser who fornicates with a lot of women, including the wife, the daughter and the mistress of an unsuspecting millionaire (Jack Warden)!
A seriocomic, less than credible loser is what this is, since, for one thing, who knows why the women acted by Julie Christie, Lee Grant and Goldie Hawn are so gaga over handsome but dull George? For another, the film has a political dimension, but Beatty and Ashby understand nothing about . . . well, politics. Here, sexual hedonists, especially prosperous ones, allowed Richard Nixon to gain the White House in 1968, or saw to it that he did. That is, they were less concerned about the country than about their own pleasure and satisfaction and material privilege.
A fatuous message.
Cover of Shampoo
by Dean | Sep 10, 2013 | General
No doubt about it: South Korea’s Chunhyang wins the award for Best Depiction of Connubial Love in 2000 and even preceding years. Adoration, sexual play, and sexual lovemaking between husband and wife—Chunhyang and Mongryong—are all over the first hour, as is a Korean singer’s partial narration of the film’s tale in song (and it’s sung before a modern-day audience shown in the movie).
Figures of the 18th century, Chunhyang is a courtesan’s daughter and Mongryong a governor’s son, and they marry anyway. The narrative is not that interesting, although it isn’t boring either. The life of the film is in the visuals, in Im Kwon Taek’s directorial choices. For instance, when the married pair have to part for a long while, Mongryong, ready to leave, gazes in a closeup at his cherished wife. But instead of getting the expected closeup of Chunhyang, the camera simply cuts to a medium shot with the cherished wife still in the background, and she shows Mongryong the skirt, or whatever it’s called, on which he once wrote a pledge of fidelity. A smart move, this.
The exquisite Chunhyang also offers such shots as that of a single pink rose in a pond of sparse lily pads and that of Chunhyang swinging back and forth among forest trees in a scene Watteau would have envied. Moreover, there is a honeymoon sequence with Mongryong removing layers of timid Chunhyang’s clothes in what plays like a calisthenics of nigh amusing sensuality. And the nudity isn’t gratuitous. The first Korean film I saw, Im Kwon Taek’s achievement is one of the few cinematic gems of 2000.
(In Korean with English subtitles.)
Chunhyang (2000 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Sep 8, 2013 | General
I think it’s only a matter of time before Fatal Attraction (1987) starts aging poorly in a way an entertainment movie such as Hitchcock’s Psycho has not. Psycho, after all, is better written than FA. Director Adrian Lyne had better material with his remakes of Lolita and the Chabrol picture The Unfaithful Wife.
Alex Forrest (Glenn Close) is an arrantly insane career woman whose evil is sometimes baffling. All the same, her shenanigans are filmed by Lyne in some strikingly well-done suspense scenes, such as the one with the rabbit. The directing is nearly as impressive as Close’s penetrating performance. Fatal Attraction is entertaining without being truly good.
Cover via Amazon
by Dean | Sep 5, 2013 | General
Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria (1957) provides us with various levels of content. First, it is the story of a dissatisfied, certainly unloved prostitute (Giulietta Masina, masterly). Second, it is an unprofound but appealing portrait of life in 1950s Italy. Third, it presents Fellini inching toward what is to me religious or transcendent truth, albeit it is inconclusive about it.
Truth to tell, however, any religious theme in Cabiria is not quite as interesting as the prostitute’s being victimized by the diverse appetites, not always sexual, of men. But there is a remarkable contrast between these self-seeking men and the peregrine gent who helps destitute individuals living in caves (life in 1950s Italy?) That is, not all the men in the film are scoundrels.
Cabiria on the streets. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Sep 3, 2013 | General
One Woody Allen movie after another displeases me, but not the latest one: Blue Jasmine (2013) is a triumph. A minor, imperfect triumph, but a triumph nonetheless.
Its power lies in its tragic elements, its dolorous drama. Here, to lose one’s money and a spouse’s fidelity, as Cate Blanchett’s Jasmine does, is to lose emotional stability. Happiness is fragile; this is owing not only to the follies of others but to Jasmine’s folly as well. Yet the mildly bright cinematography of Javier Aguirresarobe—there are dollops of humor in the film too—suggests that life is not all bad or distressing.
The film revolves around “what Mr. Allen imagines to be the American class-divide,” as critic James Bowman put it. Those are my italics: some of what Allen exhibits is merely his imagination, nothing more. Blue Jasmine, even so, is dramatically sobering and Allen has gotten better at penning dialogue. Blanchett is brilliant at showing us a woman who is fighting for her sanity, sometimes repellent but clinging to her dignity. Andrew Dice Clay and Bobby Cannavale purvey the most lived-in elan, while Sally Hawkins is fascinatingly animated and cute as Jasmine’s sister.
English: Actress Cate Blanchett at the 2011 Sydney Film Festival. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
