Dix-sept Fois Cécile Cassard (2002)

The film boldly works with a considered palette of colours, deliberately artful framing of shots and a soundtrack which is, by turns, emotive and ambient, letting Beatrice Dalle's performance carry the dramatic weight. Well worth a look.

Celebrity

So I watched this Woody Allen film for the second time. Loved it even more the second time. Amazed it only got 6.2 on imdb cos for me it's a full 10. Allow me to be a Londonish Truffaut and give you reasons why.

1. The art not the man.

Nobody with any sense can forgive the real Woody for having sex with his adopted daughter (ok, he married her and stuff but it's still a moral crime for most people). However, Woody is a great film maker being unswervingly honest about his beliefs, his passions and therefore his self.

Is the self a false construct of memories and fantasies? Sure, but we need it if we are to live with ourselves in this post-capitalist capitalist universe.

2. Choosing Ken

Ken Branagh, thin-lipped, tousle-haired Englishman, obsessed with Shakespeare and as English as Hamlet himself. An excellent choice to play the 'Woody' character. He does well, being from the Olivier school, though he may have picked up a few tricks from the Cassavetes / Strasberg / Stanislavsky school.

An aside - real acting is not pretending it is feeling. For example, Tom Cruise is usually crap and Steve Buscemi (in reality he was a fireman in 9/11, in medialand he was Mr Pink and Buddy Holly in Tarantinoland, he was Tony's cousin in that great postmodern gangster epic The Sopranos and his first role a musician dying of AIDS - clearly a bit of a top man) is always great.

Another aside - what rescues Enter The Void from being slightly unsatisfying is the performance of Cyril Roy. Noe, clearly a nutter like Kubrick is an excellent film maker but has no time for morality. So he hired a genuinely hip, cool bloke to be the friend of Oscar. When Cyril / Alex walks down the street (such a great scene - we are there) with Oscar and cries and fucks in the film, he is not acting, just being himself. Just my opinion, don't sue.

Also, regarding Ken's Englishness, I notice Woody tips his hat to the political stand the aesthetes make over here by calling movies films. Everyone in this film says film not movie. Just as Godard pointed out in Elogie d'Amor that in English there is no word for what Spanish speakers call Estadounidense. Thus when we say American we kind of insult Brazilians, Mexicans, Canadians, Jamaicans, Columbians...

3. It's a story about the breakdown of a marriage, but there is (refreshingly) no moral message.

When Ken meets Winona, (Leaving Famke, his new bit) the soaring old-school strings can be read by the Right as ironic and by the Left as post-ironic. Something for everyone.

4. It's a story about how religion can get in the way of sexuality.

Woody is Semitic rather than Jewish (I think). I don't know how much he knows about the 'old religion' but we all know he's been in therapy for ages. Whether it's Freudian, Jungian or Californian we don't need to know.

5. It's a story about a 'mid-life crisis'

Symbolised excellently when Ken gets Charlize in his car and then drives (absurdly) straight into a shop window with a big expensive clock in it.

6. There's a Felliniesque element to it

There are moments when the simple beauty of the images and hum of the conversation remind me of 8 1/2. For example, at the house of Joe the family man who seduces Ken's ex.

7. There's a theory that all art is a projection of the self.

Ken faints when a critic critises his work. I would analyse this as Woody saying his work is his life, his gift to the world. Also, more significantly it's the 'in therapy Woody' saying 'don't worry what other people think, do your thing'

8. Woody still does comedy but the US is divided into Right and Left.

A good right-wing joke (laughing at sexual prowess) is the pro choking on the banana.

A good left-wing joke (controversial, absurd) is in the Springeresque green room the Rabbi saying 'did the skinheads eat all the bagels?'

9. Nice circular format.

HELP. Great.

10. Leo.

Leo di Caprio, a girlboy who Scorsese has unconvincingly casted has a hard man here parodies himself, smashing up hotel rooms, having orgies. It's the only way he can show Gretchen he loves her whilst also enjoying his bromances and other lady love.

Yeah, a masterpiece it is. Fuck the movies.

Tirez Sur Le Pianiste (1960)

Not often I watch a film more than once but I watched this again a couple of weeks ago and just wrote a little review for Imdb. 10 stars.

Francois Truffaut was a film critic for the magazine Cahiers du cinéma. He was disenchanted with what he saw as a lack of originality and honesty in contemporary cinema. He developed the theory of the auteur in cinema - an idiosyncratic force such as his hero Hitchcock rather than a 'civil servant of the cinema'. His motivation for entering the cinema was to make films which he, and others like him, wanted to see and which then didn't exist. Cinema with breadth and imagination, which took risks and broke rules. The zest and vitality of his vision is still evident so many years on.

After his impeccable full -length debut, Les Quatre Cents Coups (aka The 400 Blows), which was a slice of life / coming of age tale, Truffaut took a completely different subject matter for this second feature. The source novel is 'Down There', typical US pulp fiction by the little known David Goodis. Its a tale of crime set in seedy locations with a graceless linear plot. Obviously its the way the filmmakers use this source that makes Tirez Sur Le Pianiste the film it is.

Charles Aznavour, a mainstream celebrity in France, is the bizarre but perfect choice for the lead role of Charlie Kohler. His passive, indifferent demeanour makes him an anti-hero of a different kind to Cagney or Brando - one who is ineffective in either solving or preventing crime. This minor cinematic tradition I see as continuing with John Klute in Klute (1971), Marlowe in The Long Goodbye (1973), reaching its comical apex with The Dude in The Big Lebowski (1998).

Not, in fact, that Charlie has to solve any crimes. He is simply out to save his skin - and those of his brothers. His life is in danger throughout the film yet he is more preoccupied with whether or not he should take the arm of the attractive waitress Lena (Marie Dubois) from the dive where he plays the piano, as he walks her home in a scene that is a perfect marriage of its imagery and internal monologue. It is this kind of juxtaposition of themes (threat to life and romantic shyness) which makes this film such compelling and unpredictable viewing.

The film opens with a charming conversation about the secrets of a happy marriage, spoken by a character we never see again who simply runs into Charlie's brother Chico (Albert Rémy) - who is the catalyst for the 'plot'. The throwaway conversations are really more important to the creative spirit of the film than any of the plot's major concerns. This trend continues with the characters of Ernest and Momo, the pursuing heavies. Though evidently dangerous men, they speak tangentially on a range of subjects (mostly women, though) which cannot help but remind a modern audience of Tarantino's hitmen in Pulp Fiction. Indeed much of what I said about Truffaut - how he was compelled to make rule-changing cinema that he and others wanted to see - could of course equally be applied to Tarantino.

The centrepiece of the film goes back to Charlie' past where he was a classical concert pianist. This beautuiful vignette explains to us why Charlie is in the pits now. Nicole Berger as Thérèse Saroyan, Charlie's wife absolutely owns this part of the film. This section also features the celebrated and beautiful sequence where the camera chooses to follow a female violinist from the door of an apartment and out into the courtyard. Why? Just for the sake of artistic freedom, it seems.

As well as Aznavour and Berger, the casting is uniformly perfect. Claude Mansard and Daniel Boulanger as the waffling heavies, Marie Dubois as the sweet, maternal young waitress Léna, Michèle Mercier as a tart with a heart with a body to die for (bringing the total of female 'leads' to three!), Serge Davri and Catherine Lutz as Charlie's antagonistic and ultimately tragic employers. The obscure threesome (the latter two have their only major film roles here) of Albert Rémy, Jean-Jacques Aslanian and the young Richard Kanayan are brilliantly effective as Charlie's brothers, all of whom display varying degrees of the criminal element - the 'curse' of Charlie and his family. Early on in the film there is also a terrifically amusing song (complete with karaoke-style lyrics) performed by Boby Lapointe, a real-life Parisian entertainer.

For all its wealth of ideas, though, this is generally not a pacey movie. Its pace is as laidback as Charlie himself at times. But with patience this will reward the audience with all kinds of unexpected delights.