Head-On (Gegen Die Wand) 2004

 

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)

 

Downfall (Der Untergang) 2004

 

Crash (2004) ****

 

Collateral (2004)

 

A Very Long Engagement (Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles) (2004) ***

This visually stunning 2004 French film from director Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a beautiful and touching testament to all that is good about French cinema.  Only in le cinéma Français could you depict the horror of World War I and its trench warfare with a wryly comedic touch, while at the same time tell both a love story and a revenge story without engaging in oversentimentality or malice. The acting, particularly that of the females, is nuanced and stellar. However, it is Bruno Delbonnel’s extraordinary (and Academy Award nominated) cinematography that makes this such a striking piece of art.

The always beautiful and spunky Audrey Tautou plays Mathilde, a polio-crippled woman who refuses to believe that her fiancee Manech (Gaspard Ulliel) was killed alongside five other men at the ridiculously named Bingo Crepuscule trench.  All five men had been convicted of self-mutilation and thrown out into No Man’s Land between the French and German trenches to bring an end to a stalemate.  Conflicting stories as to whether any of the five men survived sends Mathilde all over France looking for answers. Along her journey she meets a unique and colorful assortment of men and women who fill in the missing parts of the story. What’s great about these characters is that none of them are useless—they all have an important role to play in moving the story along.  However, it can be difficult to keep everyone straight, so a second viewing might be necessary, especially if you watch the film subtitled.  Still, I think the pacing of the story is told in such a way that most non-French speakers can keep up with the unfolding stories.

What I like about Tautou’s Mathilde is that she is a woman not above using her disability to get what she wants.  I know that sounds politically incorrect here in America, but in France it’s quite comical to let a perceived weak person use their plight to get what they want.  In France, the weak are to be revered, so when Mathilde uses this to her advantage it’s just funny.  What makes this flawed character trait even more wickedly amusing is that she is the strongest character in the entire film.  Whether she’s dealing with doubtful family members and quirky questionable people,  or making small deals with herself (such as: if the dog comes in the room before dinner she will continue to look for Manech), Mathilde is someone for whom you feel compelled to root.  The scene that stands out most for me is when she attempts to beat Manech’s car to the bend in the road—another deal which would ensure that he makes it home alive.  Watching her constricted body attempt this feat is heart-pounding and uplifting. The body control that Tautou had to exhibit here is mind-blowing.  It’s just something you have to behold for yourself to fully appreciate how powerful a performance she delivers throughout.

It is a given that Tautou is the star of the show, but both Jodie Foster and especially Marion Cotillard give standout performances here. Foster plays Eloide Gordes,  the wife of one of the men believed killed alongside Manech.  She and her husband Benjamin (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) have five children (none of which he fathered) and if they have a sixth he would be discharged.  So he asks her to sleep with his best friend Bastoche (Jerome Kircher).  What ensues is a story of jealousy and heartbreak—and the eventual self-mutilation of both men and then Bingo Crepuscule. You wouldn’t know that French wasn’t Foster’s mother tongue, as she speaks it with ease.  Here she delivers a haunting performance of a woman who lost both her husband and lover to the cruelty of warfare. 

I wouldn’t be doing service to this film without commenting on how riveting Marion Cotillard is as Tina Lombardi.  She obviously channeled Jean Moreau’s performance in The Bride Wore Black (1968) as she played a prostitute hell bent on meting out punishment to the men she believes killed her Corsican lover Angel (Dominique Bettenfeld)—another of the five men at Bingo Crepuscule. Tina is a stone-cold ninja in how she executes a handful of French officers.  Her outfits alone are marvelous (what French woman wouldn’t come dressed for the occasion!), but the way she uses them to kill is even better. My particular favorite execution is when she kills the man who lazily neglects to pass along a pardon for the five men.  After tying the man to the bed and allowing him to think something kinky is about to happen she proceeds to shoot the mirror above the bed and shards of glass fall down on his naked body.  How ingenious can you be!  Cotillard won a César for Best Supporting Actress for this role and she deserved it. Now, if she would only return to France and stop making American films that don’t exhibit her talents to the fullest (an aside, she was the best thing, other than the visuals, about Inception)!

Finally, what makes this film so beautiful is the expert cinematography of Bruno Delbonnel.  His lens poignantly captures the horrific grimness of the battle scenes at Bingo Crepuscule. Stark and appropriately captured in gray and brown tones, these scenes are powerfully displayed and are spectacular to watch.  Besides his expertly depicted battle scenes, he presents the Brittany countryside in wide, lush, sweeping shots that make you want to go there on your next vacation.  My two favorite sequences come at the Picardy war cemetery and the military archives.  The cemetery shot just overwhelms you with the angle positioning of the camera and the broadness of the shot—all those white crosses with Mathilde in the middle of it—notice how small she truly looks.  The military archives sequence uses complex shots, with above-head perspective and low-angle shots the look upward toward the immensity of the situation and place. It is Delbonnel’s camerawork that makes this such an enjoyable film to watch.

 

 

3-Iron (Bin-Jip) 2004, **

This strange, but watchable Korean film from director Kim Ki-duk is in a category all its own. Short on dialogue and long on psychological motivations, it truly is a cerebral film. While the film is only 90 minutes long, it seems much longer—not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but its overall pacing is something that might deter some viewers.

Lee Hyun-Kyoon (AKA Jae Hee) gives an extremely subdued performance as Tae-suk, an over-accommodating uninvited house watcher.  Confused? I was at first, too.  Tae-suk has a strange racket: he tapes take-out menus over the keyholes of prospective houses he might want to “watch”.  He returns days later to see if any of his menus are still in place. When he finds one he breaks into the house and makes himself at home. Yet, instead of robbing these places he does the owner’s unwashed laundry, waters and prunes plants, and fixes broken things. Mind you, all of this is done in silence, with intermittent music by Sivian and an occasional TV or answering machine voice.  The premise is so bizarre that it takes awhile before you truly grasp what’s happening.

Since this isn’t a performance art film, something has to happen to move the story along, and that’s where Sun-hwa (Lee Seung-yeon) comes into play. Unbeknownst to Tae-suk he breaks into a house where battered housewife Sun-hwa silently watches him in her home.  He is there for quite some time before he even notices she is there.  Not one for human companionship, Tae-suk leaves the home but then decides to teach the abusive husband (Kwon Hyuk-ho) a lesson. Hence, the title of this film: 3-Iron (Bin-Jip). After getting the husband’s attention by practicing golf in his yard, Tae-suk proceeds to hit the man with golf balls when he comes outside to complain. Perhaps it isn’t a naval officer coming to your factory and sweeping you off your feet romantic, but it works for Sun-hwa and she leaves with Tae-suk. Mind you, they have not spoken one word to one another--Really. And, so we now have two strange “house watchers.”

The couple eventually run into some trouble when they discover an elderly dead man in one of the houses.  As if taking care of the plants wasn’t enough, the couple clean the man up and prepare him for burial.  When relatives arrive at the apartment and find the couple they assume Sun-hwa and Tae-suk are murderers and the couple finds themselves in jail. Things aren’t easily cleared up when the suspects take remaining silent to a whole new level, but eventually they are cleared of any crime.

In some strange twist, the abusive husband bribes a police officer to allow him to hit Tae-suk with golf balls. This leads to Tae-suk choking the officer and being taken off to jail while Sun-hwa has to go home with her bastard husband. While in jail, Tae-suk engages in his usual strange behavior: he hits imaginary golf balls with imaginary clubs and plays a game of hide-and-seek inside his cell with the prison guards. This “where is Tae-suk” game is quite interesting to watch…especially when he hides so well that we see him following a guard around the cell. This leads, once he is released from jail, to the even stranger ending of the film.  Having perfected this technique, Tae-suk can rejoin Sun-hwa in her own home without her husband even knowing it—really. It is a film you have to see to understand, and even then, you might find yourself questioning what really has taken place.

Both Lee Seung-yeon and Lee Hyun-Kyoon are really good at conveying their character’s emotions without the use of words. Restrained, nuanced performances are rare in cinema today, but that is how I would describe the work of these two actors. 

Not a film for everyone, 3-Iron is still an innovative film that most viewers will enjoy. However, if you are a dialogue-driven film watcher, this might not be the film for you.