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'THE GIRL FROM MONACO'
INFATUATION WITH THE WEATHER GIRL
By Sean Chavel
At first glance, the girl in the French film The Girl from Monaco just has to be a femme fatale. Her name is Audrey (Louise Bourgoin), and she's the weather girl for a Monaco TV station that seemly doesn't care if it predicts an accurate forecast. Audrey is on television because she has great natural assets. She has a seductive power over men. She is also seemingly indiscriminate. The film's hero Bertrand Beauvois (Fabrice Luchini), a 57-year old Parisian defense attorney who has arrived in Monaco to tackle a murder case, has never been overwhelmed by women despite his subpar looks, yet he's instantly gaga by this bubbly and sexy weather girl. They meet by chance, perhaps, but then keep running into each other.
Here's this highly respected attorney who has never acted out irrationally before and this weather girl who starts flirting with him, toying with him. What's her agenda? A femme fatale always has an agenda whether it's reaping money or gunning for some kind of career boost. Audrey mentions that she doesn't want to be a weather girl for too much longer, that she deserves a bigger TV gig. She doesn't keep it as a secret for too long, nor does she hold onto other big secrets. An experienced femme fatale knows how to a fair degree remain mysterious, this way she makes the guy "chase" her so at least the guy feels he is responsible for his pursuit. The femme fatale has to know that the guy is willing to concede to make an investment of interest of some kind.
Easily Audrey makes it very easy for a klutz like Bertrand. Before he knows it, Audrey is showing up every night at his hotel, sweeping Bertrand away to a club or a beach party, and at the end of the night getting naked (expect brief but discreet nudity). But this relationship goes beyond the carnal. Audrey has a sincere interest in Bertrand; she gives him full emotional support and even goes beyond the call of duty: She loves pampering him, stroking his head like a puppy dog. Is it somehow possible that Audrey genuinely really likes Bertrand, this fuddy duddy? Maybe, just maybe, Audrey finds his vulnerability underneath that professionally tactile veneer attractive for her own reasons.
I have failed to mention yet the third essential character in this story. When Bertrand arrived in Monaco he was issued a full-time bodyguard for his protection hired by his client. Bertrand finds this silly, he has never had a bodyguard in all the years he has defended clients suspected of murder. His millionaire client Edith Lasalle (Stephane Audran) is accused of killing someone who belonged to the Russian mafia. So there is a certain possibility that the Russian mafia could target Bertrand. So silly, he thinks. The bodyguard's name is Zem (Christophe Abadi), who remains under occupational conduct 24/7, doing surveys of the perimeter anytime when Bertrand enters a new room and always remaining 6 meters within distance of Bertrand at all times.
Betrand requests Zem to stand down and remain casual, and over a course of time the two of them establish a mutual rapport. Bertrand is amazed with Zem's touch with women after having observed that Zem is a natural player (Zem seduces Bertrand's former flame within five minutes at his hotel room, oddly, it was part of Bertrand's command for him to do so). Bertrand is amazed with Zem's vigor and composure, and wants to know the secret of life from him. In a subdued way, Bertrand sees Zem as a mentor.
As Bertrand gets more involved with Audrey, however, he doesn't really need advice anymore from his bodyguard. In fact, Zem makes vocal warnings to Bertrand for him to not get too close to Audrey, that she's trouble. Is Zem jealous of Bertrand's romantic success with this Perfect 10 or is there really something legitimately imperative in his warnings? The screenplay has little self-observation, but you can't help from chewing on with anticipation whether Audrey really is a gold digging femme fatale, or if Audrey is a mole working for the Russian mafia, or if Audrey is just using Bertrand to be part of her newsmagazine spotlight to help her move out of weather reporting, or gee, if Audrey (wow, really?) has fallen for Bertrand for pure reasons.
Amidst all this racy tango, let's not forget that Bertrand is supposed to be involved in a murder trial, one that he attends unprepared for because he's up at night partying with Audrey. The murder trial, it must be said, is not all that interesting and has been patched into the storyline with marginal effort by writer-director Anne Fontaine. Yet the movie doesn't spend a lot of time in court anyway, Fontaine seems to be smitten by the sex comedy situations and in by the dichotomy of the character relationships. The bare details of the murder trial is pedestrian, even naïve, but Fontaine keeps us guessing on what will happen between her three characters. One of the film's most curious late surprises is seeing Zem losing his composure over Audrey, with seething disparagement he calls her a slut.
"The Girl from Monaco," with its slack murder story and laid back pacing, can be correctly labeled as mild entertainment - it's certainly has nevertheless a few snappy surprises and an unforeseen ending. Yet the film has to be deemed noteworthy because it announces a major talent in Louise Bourgoin as cinema's next great sex bomb. If Bourgoin were around 50 years ago she could have given Marilyn Monroe a run for her money. Is this the beginning of a major international film star? I dunno if Bourgoin is as fluent in English as she is in French, but if she's multi-lingual then there's no stopping her in turning up in a major Hollywood production in a juicy role within a year or two.
'THE STONING OF SORAYA M.'
CRIME AGAINST THE INNOCENT
By Sean Chavel
It would be a better world if a movie like The Stoning of Soraya M. didn't have to exist, but since execution of women does exist in Middle Eastern countries in the present day, then such a social protest drama must be served. Here's a story that takes place in a small Iranian village where a mother refuses to grant her husband immediate divorce because he will skimp on supporting her children, and so through a series of circumstance, pays with her life.
The film opens with a French reporter (played by Jim Caviezel, "The Passion of the Christ.") stranded in the village after his car breaks down. While he awaits a mechanic to fix his car, he is detained by the town's "crazy" woman, whom in truth is the aptly heroic Zahra (Shohreh Aghdashloo, "House of Sand and Fog"). Zahra's sister was Soraya, the mother who was "legally" executed by a male pig-headed mob the previous day. Soraya tells her story into the journalist's tape recorder as the film flashbacks to days previous.
Soraya's boorish husband Ali (Navid Negahban) wants rid of the marriage immediately so he can run off with a teenage girl. Soraya is then propositioned by the town's Mullah in exchange for financial support, but she refuses. Soraya's inflexibility soon frustrates the men in the township. She is then offered a job to work for a recently widowed man and his handicapped son. It is a completely platonic relationship between Soraya and her employer. Ali sees it though as an opportunity to build a false case against his own wife for adultery where the punishment is met by death.
Coming to her sole defense is her sister Zahra, a strong-willed woman but… she's still a woman in a culture clearly biased towards men. "This is a man's world!" Ali exclaims proudly to his son. Prejudice is heavier than sympathy, and even the woman of the township gossip in Soraya's disservice. The crux of the film is the hours surrounding the accusation, the informal trial and verdict decided upon men while Soraya and other women are absent, and the arrangement of the execution that is carried out in Mel Gibson-style graphic violence (some people might have a problem with the over-emphatic visual shutter speed in capturing this scene).
Some dialogue is overstated in order to distribute its message about violence against women. Aghdashloo's performance works best within the film, it is the most natural and effortless of any of the performers. Certainly her Zahra is a courageous character, one willing to speak out fervently against injustice when most contemporary women within the culture are too easily hushed. Caviezel only appears at the film's bookends (was his appearance made to invite comparison to "The Passion of the Christ?"), but drop any preconceptions of why he'd take such a minimal role. His work is honorable.
Director Cyrus Nowrasteh's work is honorable, too, even if his film lacks subtlety. Subject matter has been translated to screen without compromise, you get a political science idea of why decency is misplaced in this town, and therefore, the film succeeds at leaving you shaken. The most chilling aspect is how the town celebrates in the evening following the stoning, which makes you ponder if these people would ever have the capacity to celebrate over something joyful or affirming. Ali and his above the law accomplices seem prone to living by horrendous traditions. The film is based on the 1994 published international bestseller of the same name written by Freidoune Sahebjam, Caviezel's character. This is a downer per se, but one with a purpose to spread awareness of global politics.
Culinary High School Students in a "Pressure Cooker"
By Gerry Furth-Sides
The dim high school rooms inside match the dingy Pittsburgh neighborhood outside, where students know they are destined for the most menial of jobs or none at all in the film, "Pressure Cooker," which documents how one culinary program can give them a future. It could be a school almost anywhere in Los Angeles, which has held similar programs since 1985.
Fighting to overcome the challenges of broken homes, abusive pasts, and financial burdens, "Pressure Cooker" follows three inner-city seniors at Philadelphia's Frankford High School for a year. The star is their tough-love mentor, instructor Wilma Stephenson, as she leads her class to prepare for a citywide cooking competition for scholarships to several of the country's top culinary arts institutions. Stephenson does not need to remind anyone about her track record of helping students earn a quarter-million dollars in scholarships since the program started, but she does as needed, and in the beginning it is often.
A legend in the school system for helping students for 38 years, the attractive Mrs. Stephenson is loud and fierce. Her intense focus is contagious; when it is not, she kicks students out of her class. But she is also caring enough to allow her students to attend cheerleading practices and competitions, football games, and encourages even them to enjoy the big school dance at the end of the year-help one girl buy a prom dress - and the year culminates with a pool party at her house.
The background of this story is the national C-CAP program (Careers in Culinary Arts Program) started by Richard Grausman in Manhattan. It shows how when used to its fullest, one teacher can spark a national life-changing difference by giving students an opportunity for a full-time, well paying and in-demand occupation.
Drill-sergeant Stephenson, who looks like a brash attractive best-friend-to the-heroine- actress you've seen in a thousand sitcoms (think Eve Arden in Our Miss Brooks) runs this no-nonsense culinary arts classes at Frankford High School in Northeast Philadelphia.
As presented in this documentary, directed by Jennifer Grausman (daughter of the C-CAP founder) and Mark Becker, Frankford is an all-black high school, so tough that the students must pass through a metal detector each morning. A car ride with an official through city streets shows without emotion the state of the rundown neighborhood, once a thriving industrial center.
"Pressure Cooker" hones in on three likable junior chefs who blossom under Mrs. Stephenson's guidance, starting with Erica Gaither, victim of a broken home and a loving, surrogate mother to her blind, disabled younger sister. Erica is also a competitor on the school's award-winning cheerleading team - and Mrs. Stephenson cheered the loudest at one filmed competition.
Tyree Dudley, an all-state football player, struggles to balance athletics and academics. Recent immigrant from Mali, Fatoumata Dembele, values Frankford High as paradise. It has running water and she does not have to walk miles to and from it daily as she did with her former rural African school.
So the stage is set. The film tracks their progress with classic culinary techniques through the year in class - including the sessions that begin at 6AM during winter vacation- and offers a general view of their home life without drama. It is a realistic view but because of the unsophisticated filming technique the dialogue is often difficult to understand and the viewer must pay close attention to follow each student.
Unfortunately, "Pressure Cooker" never explains the culinary arts curriculum or kitchen set up, so we never learn how things fit together, such as how the repetitive cutting of vegetables into certain shapes fits into the larger scheme of things. We are also not given a full picture of the competition, something most audiences are used to from the current reality shows.
The documentary ends with the excitement of the C-CAP (Careers Through Culinary Arts Program) competition and the awards breakfast afterward where the scholarships are announced. And, as usual, Ms. Stephenson's pupils are big winners.
Directed By Jennifer Grausman (the C-CAP founder's daughter) and Mark Becker, "Pressure Cooker" was produced by Grausman, along with Executive Producers: Jeff Skoll, Diane Weyermann. The Editor was Mark Becker, and the music was scored by Prince Paul, Donald Newkirk
As luck would have it, inner city and minority students were given the opportunity to view the film when it was first distributed in 2008. And teens would be the target audience to be encouraged by the hard-won but unwavering support of Stephenson, who dared her students to reach for opportunities they never could have otherwise imagined.
However, this year, when LAUSD cut back the city-side agreement to have the C-CAP program in high schools, it is truly a time when every student, parent and voter should see the film.
The film is being shown on weekends at Laemmle Theatres.
'PUBLIC ENEMIES'
DILLINGER ACCORDING TO THE MANN
By Sean Chavel
Michael Mann's ambitious Public Enemies is infused with luster, glam, flair, firepower, egomania, ball-busting and bravado. This is one of those rare movies that is larger than life. In the means that our everyday lives pale in comparison. The movie sees recklessness and exhilaration as two of the same. At its center, John Dillinger is a bold and brash personality who dared to turn his criminal persona into something cool, the movie suggests, saying he was a bad guy but he was a bad guy that had a certain class and style about him. He had criminal chic - he even charmed the newspapers when he was caught. Johnny Depp, in a disarming performance, nails the John Dillinger of 1933.
The movie opens by letting us know that the Great Depression was the golden age of bank robbery. There are several bank robberies throughout the film (enough of them that afterwards you play them back in your head and select your favorite), and most were successful, while some of them eventually caught up to the arrest of Dillinger. Yet you couldn't hold him back, Dillinger was a specialist at prison break and this movie makes prison break look like some kind of a sport.
On the trail of Dillinger and his gang is FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) and his top agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale). Crudup plays Hoover as an impersonal but arrogant blowhard, who is all about enhancing his own reputation. Bale plays Purvis as a joyless but consummate professional (Bale literally appears to be having no fun with his performance, yet somehow he's perversely intriguing). Their job is never-ending seriousness when it comes to tracking Dillinger and his associates. After a few failures, a specialized expanded department to hunt down Dillinger is created. They chase Dillinger all over the country, but when all else fails they always presume that he will return to Chicago to pick up his "bye-bye blackbird" love Billie Freschette (Marion Cotillard) whom inevitably and regrettably he has left behind.
The courtship is dramatized in the movie earlier. By the way, how many audiences prior to seeing this new that Dillinger was entangled in such an engrossing love story? A simple coat check girl, Billie is immediately swept by Dillinger's brazen and strident personality. When she says that she knows nothing about him, he gives her a rundown of his childhood and concludes, "I like fancy clothes, I like fast cars and I like you." That's all you need to know, is Dillinger's attitude. Depp's snappy and assertive delivery, without ever misplacing his swagger-hip veneer, will erupt audiences in applause everywhere. The future with Dillinger, an on-the-fly improviser, is always in the present.
The action in the movie, often photographed on the shoulder of Depp, is stupendous (only the opening scene is cut too choppy, yet it has an exuberant adrenaline), but it's always just as important as the production décor which is sublime. The movie expands your imagination of what the 1930's looked and felt like - the movie has a tangible texture that ekes through your memory vividly after it's all over.
Never overtly, but underlined, the movie insinuates that Dillinger was a criminal ahead of his time. Depp plays him like a man who knew how to exploit on the naïveté of the 1930's peoples. When he abducted people, he made attempts to turn their transitory abduction into merriment. His adventures are such a carnival-esque ride to him, even in the episodes of grim circumstance. He wasn't out to intentionally hurt people (at least not in his mind), although cohorts like Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham) wreaked unnecessary violence on innocent people. Dillinger, who is handy with his tommy gun, didn't blast people away mindlessly, although cops to him are a merciless target.
This rousing docudrama and action epic is undoubtedly the work of Michael Mann whose film "Heat" with Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino happens to be one of my 100 favorite movies of all-time. Yet Mann admittedly disappointed me with his last three films. The dispassionate "Ali" and "Miami Vice" were diffused of personality and "Collateral" had contrived jeopardy staging. "Public Enemies" has a much sturdier agenda and artistic statement, and contains a provocative multi-layered ideology on how one man like Dillinger goes about in owning an era - everybody lives according to Dillinger's reality. Dillinger is the center and everybody gravitates towards him. Mann's latest film, devoid of any faulty detours, is certainly that larger than life sprawling epic done the way Michael Mann does it best. And Dillinger is that larger than life character that is worthy of Michael Mann's talents.
'BRUNO'
BRAVE NEW SACHA
By Sean Chavel
Actor and avant-garde performer Sacha Baron Cohen catapults his title creation Bruno to a new heightened standard of offensiveness, that somehow will make the film a landmark in cinematic daring. Shock comedy has become the key essential formula in the last decade, but the shock comedies that have struck box office gold are part puerile with no underlying satire or sociological insight. Leave it to Baron Cohen's genius to pry the shock humor technique open and find within it some revelation.
Obviously the surface joke is that Baron Cohen's character is a flaming homosexual that invades the space of unsuspecting Americans, but that hardly gives one an idea to how off-the-grid the movie travels to in terms of tastelessness, lewdness and dirty-mindedness. After being ousted from the European fashion industry, Bruno flies to America with the obstinate plan to become a movie star with gay Lutz (Gustaf Hammarsten) as his assistant. He wants more than anything to become the biggest Austrian superstar since Adolph Hitler. Even if he has to become “straight.”
There were times I covered my eyes in outrage, covered my eyes in terror, and covered my eyes in shame. How is one supposed to react when the gay hero adopts a baby and names christens him with the "traditional" African-American name O.J., then goes on the "Richard Bey Show" to a crowd of shocked spectators who willingly walk out before the end of the taping. And how is one to not cringe in dread at the sight of the gay hero interviewing the head of an Islamic terrorist group (for real) and insulting his haircut and lack of fashion before getting righteously political. And how is one not to cover up in shame while anti-gay activist Paul Cameron insists to our gay hero Bruno that he should accept that women are boring and that in conversation they go off in disconnected tangents, but it is all God's plan to mate with them.
I correct myself with the assertion Bruno is not a hero: he's obscene, uncivilized and ignorant. But I would like to think Sacha Baron Cohen is a hero. For anybody that has seen "Borat" knows that Baron Cohen assumes himself into live situations on unsuspecting people, with the legend that his collaborator, director Larry Charles, gets people to sign off on a waiver for the right to be filmed. What concedes are raw moments with a sanctimonious pastor trying to deprogram Bruno's homosexuality, moments with Arkansas hunters as fuming bigots, moments with superficial Hollywood agents and publicists, and moments of hypocrisy where he prances flamboyantly into a down south "God Hates Fags" demonstration. There's also a desperate moment with former presidential candidate Ron Paul who is so hesitant and tactless to escape now! that you have to wonder how he could have possibly navigated a country when he can't even see an unwanted gay come-on when it's coming his way.
Audience fascination is indisputably boosted by this parlor game of guessing whether that's real or if that's staged, which is all wrapped inside Baron Cohen's quasi-documentary method. In the majority time "Borat" was unrehearsed and spontaneous but you can tell here and there what parts were scripted. "Bruno" is far more invisible in its guerilla practice, in fact, most the social interaction scenes are authentic encounters. It's less quasi-documentary this time than borderline documentary with Bruno as the fixed constant. By the time we get to the Swingers Party scene, I had believed for at least a minute that it was one of the film's few pre-fabricated scenes until with dumbfound realization that what was happening on screen was really happening with real people. Spoiler Note: the genuinely smutty and debauched sequence gets a tacked on fake conclusion. The crew certainly went back to Hollywood, built a set that looked like the house they were at, had one actress in on the joke, to create a scene where the she-dominatrix lashes Bruno.
Built-in the very loose script is a love-hate relationship between Bruno and his partner Lutz, so erratic is their affair that they eventually end up in an Arkansas wrestling cage that starts as straight man-warrior fighting then turns gay (the barb-wire must have been an actor's defense from fundamentalist Christian spectators). There has been criticism by the way by other journalists that the script and story are very flimsy and undernourished. Like who cares! From an erotic escapade that's far too scatological to pantomime oral sex, from dildo swatting to babies dressed up as Nazis, "Bruno" pushes the envelope. The story "outcome" is second fiddle to Baron Cohen's provocateuring in every scene.
You could argue that "Borat" is funnier with way more laughs, but "Bruno" has got to be the greater movie. You'll laugh, you'll wince, you'll find some of it intolerable, you'll find some of it impossible to resist. Eruption of laughter met with cold silence met with outrage met with hysterical shivers. What makes "Bruno" a pinnacle comedy of its time is that it covers all of our prejudice and intolerant moral bases in society and then impels us to ask how much we can really take? It's a litmus test as well as entertainment. Depraved and influential for better or worst, "Bruno" is going to be the defining shockfest of our time. Avant-garde goes mainstream; for sure, it's a shockfest landmark.