Besides qualms with the musical score, Wetherby has a killer script, intriguing editing, fantastic acting (Vanessa Redgrave is incredible), and a compelling idea driving the film. The echoes of film noir in the intense, high-contrast lighting and the starkness of the violence was perfect, especially when combined with naked silence. It is more than a story about a disturbed young man who shoots himself in front of an aging school teacher, Jean Travers (Redgrave). That comes early in the film. It is about the psychological consequences for Jean in her life and past, violently revealed through that shocking act. Life can never be normal again. Beneath even the most pleasant veneer lurks sadness, secrets, and dark sexuality.
Reviews
4 Reviews
A Title Well Earned
22 March 2005
Amid the entertainment super-stars of the twentieth centuryCarol Channing, Lauren Bacall, Joan Collins, Barbara Walters, and morethe white-bearded, bright-eyed Al Hirschfeld cuts a humorous and humble figure. This visual historian doesn't make the stars beautiful in his drawings; he makes them interesting. ESP-like, the line of Hirschfeld's pen reveals an essential and vital character within each of the performers he draws, capturing the rare exuberance with amazing specificity: the gestures, the movements, the facial expressionsall become playfully recognizable as the spirit manifest. What the documentary does especially well is show Hirschfeld at work, and talking about the work. He was 90 years old when interviewed in the film, but seems almost childlike in his delight for his life-long passion. Hirschfeld emerges as the century's most beloved cartoonist, truly earning him the title of The Line King.
All About Lily Chou-Chou
(2001)
Angels and Monsters
7 March 2005
At first I chalked it up to cultural difference. "Why do I need to watch a film about bad kids in Japan?" I thought. "I was nothing like that; I can't relate to this at all." But I kept watching. The lush colors, the mesmerizing light, the amazing teenage actors all held me in their stories. Then I remembered, yes, this was an awful time
14 years old; insanely alive and confused
I watched the making-of documentary of the internet-novel-turned-film and understood why All About Lily Chou-Chou had won awards from both the 2002 Berlin and Shanghai International Film Festivals.
Youth is so often shot with a Vaseline-coated lens on screen and in memory. We all think we were "good kids." Only in passing do we acknowledge the power of the ages between 13 and 15 for the immense potential for vitality and cruelty. But director and writer Shunji Iwai has created a film that shows children as they have power to be. The story is centered around Yuichi Hasumi, told through his alias, philia, in his BBS-style chat-room "Lilyphilia," devoted to the fictional musician, Lily Chou-Chou. It is the "ether" of her music that enchants himthe life-force or chi that flows through her and into the world by her voice and electronic stylings. Debussy, Satie, the Beatles, and Björk are all said to have a similar ether. Between the subtle electronic score of Takeshi Kobayashi and the classic piano solos of Claude Debussy, I understood ether immediately, and the escapist power of this music within Yuichi's chaotic, bullied life. At the same time, there was no pity for him, or for any other character. All are complexly expressive: not the toothpaste-ad acting we've come to expect from teen actors in America. Frustration and injustice flowed beneath control and rage. Bitterness and unrequited longing linger under the happiest expressions. Strength and courage grow in spite of public humiliation. Admiration and servility cover deep fear and inadequacy. Don DeLillo, in his novel, White Noise, understood this when he wrote, "It is all there, in full force, charges waves of identity and being. There are no amateurs in the world of children." All are swimming in their growing bodies, in their malleable identities, their secrets, intense feelings, betrayals; all in the context of a junior high school. This is not about culture shock. This is not about cultural difference. All About Lily Chou-Chou rewires our memories, makes us see our 14-year-old selves as we were: shifting and spinning between angel and monstrosity.
Youth is so often shot with a Vaseline-coated lens on screen and in memory. We all think we were "good kids." Only in passing do we acknowledge the power of the ages between 13 and 15 for the immense potential for vitality and cruelty. But director and writer Shunji Iwai has created a film that shows children as they have power to be. The story is centered around Yuichi Hasumi, told through his alias, philia, in his BBS-style chat-room "Lilyphilia," devoted to the fictional musician, Lily Chou-Chou. It is the "ether" of her music that enchants himthe life-force or chi that flows through her and into the world by her voice and electronic stylings. Debussy, Satie, the Beatles, and Björk are all said to have a similar ether. Between the subtle electronic score of Takeshi Kobayashi and the classic piano solos of Claude Debussy, I understood ether immediately, and the escapist power of this music within Yuichi's chaotic, bullied life. At the same time, there was no pity for him, or for any other character. All are complexly expressive: not the toothpaste-ad acting we've come to expect from teen actors in America. Frustration and injustice flowed beneath control and rage. Bitterness and unrequited longing linger under the happiest expressions. Strength and courage grow in spite of public humiliation. Admiration and servility cover deep fear and inadequacy. Don DeLillo, in his novel, White Noise, understood this when he wrote, "It is all there, in full force, charges waves of identity and being. There are no amateurs in the world of children." All are swimming in their growing bodies, in their malleable identities, their secrets, intense feelings, betrayals; all in the context of a junior high school. This is not about culture shock. This is not about cultural difference. All About Lily Chou-Chou rewires our memories, makes us see our 14-year-old selves as we were: shifting and spinning between angel and monstrosity.
The Swamp
(2001)
Humid, broken, scarred and sullen
9 February 2005
Lurid colors cover a visual stink that permeates La Cienaga and turns all interaction sinister around the edges. The camera work was queasy and the cuts were brutal--sometimes fatal
I loved it. La Cienaga sticks in the memory like the urban legends the children tell to scare each other. The story is an almost voyeuristic tour of the families of two sisters, Tali and Mecha, one in the city, one in the swamp. We meet Mecha, the rich swamp-dwelling sister, by her filthy swimming pool surrounded by other zombie-esquire party-goers, all half passed out in pool chairs from the combined effect of alcohol and the rainforest heat. All of her bored kids are scarred, beat-up, scratchedone is missing an eye. Armed with hunting rifles, the swamp is their main source of entertainmentexcept for awkward Momi, who spends most of her time clinging to Isabella ("Isa"), the native Argentinean house servant in Mecha's crumbling estate.
Tali's family, living in the city, seems a little more sane, a little more whole, but her kids are smack in the middle of terrifying stages of growing up. Her two hyper-gendered daughters on the verge of puberty wear enough woman's make-up to look like kiddie-porn stars or circus clowns. When they are not being chased by little boys with water balloons, they are taunting their little brother with stories of the African rat-dog.
Some of the only music in the film follows Isa, the native; all else is the constant rumble of thunder, the ice tinkling in the Mecha's drink, and the silence of sullen frustration. Every scene is dangerous in its way, every volatile character was so full of desires gone bad, and all beauty was rotten underneath. Director Lucrecia Martel has created a refreshingly unromantic film in the romantic location of the Argentinean rainforest that leaves you with images as sticky as the heat.
Tali's family, living in the city, seems a little more sane, a little more whole, but her kids are smack in the middle of terrifying stages of growing up. Her two hyper-gendered daughters on the verge of puberty wear enough woman's make-up to look like kiddie-porn stars or circus clowns. When they are not being chased by little boys with water balloons, they are taunting their little brother with stories of the African rat-dog.
Some of the only music in the film follows Isa, the native; all else is the constant rumble of thunder, the ice tinkling in the Mecha's drink, and the silence of sullen frustration. Every scene is dangerous in its way, every volatile character was so full of desires gone bad, and all beauty was rotten underneath. Director Lucrecia Martel has created a refreshingly unromantic film in the romantic location of the Argentinean rainforest that leaves you with images as sticky as the heat.
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