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Engaging, genuine, and very, very funny — for the first hour. Then it gets too serious for too long, and the ending didn’t satisfy. I wish it had kept chugging along with its weird charm and sense of humor and perhaps for a shorter running time, but that’s a pretty small complaint. The movie works very well on its own terms. Screencaps
Elegant, thoughtful, lighthearted film that blends character, social commentary and style more satisfyingly than the previous generation’s neorealism. The images are suffused with a sense of romance, indiscriminately applied both to intimate scenes between the fiancees in crisis and to the industrial plant. The film is predominantly from Giovanni’s point of view, as he leaves his sweetheart and entire life for a job opportunity in Sicily, spending his time watching — passively, but alertly — through windows and from the sidelines, rarely engaging in others’ lives but slowly assimilating his observations into his own experience. Toward the end there is an exchange of letters between the lovers, handled more compellingly than I have ever seen it done before. The final scenes are pure magic. Screencaps
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“It would make no difference.”
Utterly brilliant portrait of a psychopath. Chabrol at his best is tremendously subtle and even-handed, and his deft touch is precise and effective here, in a film that tells the true story of a teenage girl who attempts murdering her parents in the name of love. The Nozières live in an impossibly small apartment, every aspect of their lives overlapping. It’s not hard to understand how Violette begins to conflate love, sex, and money. Her mother calls her father “father.” Her father looks at her a little too attentively in the bathroom. She hears her parents making love. Small stashes of money are hidden around the house. Though her mother takes great pains to raise her to be a proper young woman, Violette really only tries to emulate her mother. The roles and relationships in this family are deliciously — but so quietly! — fucked up. Yes, she acts violently to please a lover, but in the end all she wants in the world is her mother’s love and forgiveness. Brilliantly structured, economical, powerful film. This far exceeded my expectations, and two powerhouse performances from Huppert and Audran was almost too wondrous to behold! Screencaps
Disappointing latest Huppert/Chabrol collaboration, which doesn’t go very deeply as an examination of the nature of power or the life of one woman. I am rating it up from the strictly average mark it deserves because at no time was it a boring watch, and very honestly Isabelle has never been lovelier. Despite the bizarre wigs Claude seems to enjoy putting her in now and then. Screencaps
I loved every moment of this overlong, absurd, wonderful thing! Of all the movies I picked up for the weekend, this was entirely on a whim and with no expectation — based on a good review or two and the casting of Catherine Deneuve. And this is the one to instantly endear itself, become completely beloved. There’s just something about its wild swings from tragedy to burlesque that worked for me on every level and I was swept up by every fleeting, bizarrely but thoroughly human emotion. Screencaps
I’m not going to thank Roeg for inspiring a generation of nonsensical stylistic knock-offs, but here… my god… why yes, I’m flabbergasted. Is this not the most perfectly constructed non-linear film ever made? Seriously, to be able to fluently navigate this on first viewing says a lot about his mastery… and what a disaster it would have been otherwise. Intense as hell, great soundtrack, powerful imagery — an amazing film. …Gonna be a while before I can listen to Simon & Garfunkel the same way, though. Screencaps
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about
 Lauren, 25, out-of-work librarian. At the moment, TLC is but a review blog and catalogue of my film-related perversions. I always plan to do more with it — and to one day step outside 30s Hollywood again. Who knows?
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Films: All reviewed | FavoritesActors: Profiles | Favorites Directors: Profiles | Favorites Screencap galleries All films by year 2008 Viewing log
Screening Log
» Appaloosa 2008, Ed Harris
» Belle toujours 2007, Manoel de Oliveira » Duel in the Sun 1946, King Vidor » Dragonwyck 1946, Joseph L Mankiewicz » The Spiral Staircase 1945, Robert Siodmak » The Man Who Knew Too Much 1934, Alfred Hitchcock » Tell No One 2008, Guillaume Canet » Heaven Knows, Mr Allison 1957, John Huston » Vicky Cristina Barcelona 2008, Woody Allen » The Great Lie 1941, Edmund Goulding
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