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Category: Cinéma - Movies
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Published: Friday, 03 January 2020 00:23
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Written by Gilbert Seah
IL PLEUVAIT DES OISEAUX (AND THE BIRDS RAINED DOWN) (Canada 2019) ***1/2
Directed by Louise Archambault
Director Louise Archambault's elegiac and charming AND THE BIRDS RAINED DOWN based on the award winning novel by Jocelyne Saucier is a tale of lonely old people with a slow pace to match. The film runs a little over two hours and requires some patience to watch though it comes wth a few rewards. The film is shot in Quebec showcasing some magnificent landscapes and in French, thus its French title. The film has been selected Canada’s Top 10 by the Toronto International Film Festival poll.
It takes a death to bring all the film’s characters together. In fact two deaths, though it is a bit confusing at the start as it appears that the two deaths were the same person. One death brings in the local hotelier Stephen (Éric Robidoux) with his aunt Gertrude (Andrée Lachapelle).
The other death is Ted, one of three hermits living in cabins in the Quebec countryside, miles from civilization. The hermits are Tom (Rémy Girard), Charlie (Gilbert Sicotte), and Ted (Kenneth Welsh) all of whom fled society years ago. They grow pot and sell it to the closest locals with help from Stephen.
All four come together resulting in several interactions, one of these being a senior romance between Gertrude and Charlie. Warning: There are sex scenes that includes old people nudity. To the director’s credit, these are taken slowly and executed in good taste.
The film is so called because of fires that often rage through the forested area. One previous huge fire affected many of the characters including Tom who survived the fire but witnessed his entire family dying from it. The heat and fumes were too much for the birds that just rained down, dropping on those below.
This is a lifestyle that is increasingly endangered by nature, infirmity, and age. Into the picture arrives photographer/ researcher Ange-Aimee (Eve Landry). She threatens to disrupt their lives when she starts looking for survivors of this catastrophic blaze.
One thing noticeable about the film is the way more and more stories creep into the plot. The final one involves yet another fire that once again threatens the existence of the hermits. Cops arrive, clearing people from danger.
Each character has his or her own story, or baggage as better described. Tom is the local guitarist/singer who appears stuck there perfuming his tunes, one of which belongs to Tom Waits’ famous collection - “Time” and another of which is Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on a Wire”. Apparently, these two songs were performed live by Girard. Charlie had been ill, near death but survived. Gertrude had been institutionalized and had never found love, though have had no shortage of sex inner younger days. All these stories make intriguing fodder, though they take their time to unfold.
As director Archambault’s film comes to a close, it becomes apparent that it is not the stories of the lives of the characters that make the movie but the surprises that these stories of life brings that makes the film worth watching.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kj_Wq8FfI8
- Details
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Category: Cinéma - Movies
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Published: Tuesday, 26 November 2019 21:29
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Written by Gilbert Seah
VARDA PAR AGNES (France 2019) ****
Directed by Agnes Varda
Agnes Varda talks about film and about her films to an audience in a grand cinema auditorium. This is the documentary - a doc about film, life and inspirations.
Agnes Varda mentions the three words that are all-important to filming: inspiration, creation, and sharing. Without inspiration, there is no film. Varda, obviously gives examples from her past work, mentioning how she immediately wants to film her uncle Varda the second she met him. She started visualizing colours, camera angles, shots and all. The film the shows segments of that encounter. Varda also mentions the difficult part of creation, getting the finance needed to make a film. She confesses that she often had to work with small budgets. She came up with her film CLEO IN THE AFTERNOON filmed in real time of 90 minutes, to cut cost. CLEO turns out to be one of her most successful ones. The third element of sharing, she is currently doing, communicating to her audience in the auditorium.
Directors have their niche. Some directors make action films, some comedies and some documentaries. It is the latter category for Agnes Varda. In her film, JANE B. PAR AGNES V., there is one exquisite scene she captures while Birkin is walking with her son on the beach. A woman is lying flat on the beach with a Bible on her chest while two men stoop each by her side. The boy questions the mother for the reason, and she replies that she does not know. The film does not indicate any reason for the image either. Varda sees images like these, captivating and occasionally without reason, but to Varda, this image needed to be captured. It is these little intricacies that make Varda the artist that she is, as well as give this doc its great pleasures. Varda’s segment on her potato exhibition is nothing short of extraordinary.
Though at the age of 90 at the time of filming this doc, Varda still emanates her characteristic vibrant energy. She offers a wide-ranging journey through her world: her filming process, her feminism, her fine-art photography, her long-time relationship with director Jacques Demy. There are signature flourishes of animation, and formal detours into the dreams that form the integral basis of her reality.
Varda died only a month after Varda by Agnès premiered at Berlin, and with this in mind, it's hard not to see it as a eulogy. Yet, like all of Varda's work, it brims with life. And its takeaway is not a past-tense legacy, but a sense of how Varda lived through her films, of what she brought to the art form, and — the greatest gift — of finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. "Nothing is banal if you film people with empathy and love," Varda once said. This is the inspiration she has left us with. Many of her best films are on display here, from CLEO DE 5 A 7, SANS TOIT NI LOIT (English title VAGABOND), THE GLEANERS to VISAGES, VILLAGES, her last and BEST film in 2017. Sandrine Bonnaire from SANS TOIT NI LOIT appears as a guest talking to Varda.
For those who grew up with Varda and her husband Jacques Demy, VARDA PAR AGNES is a pleasure.
AGNES PAR VARDA is a true film on how life imitates art (in this case, film) and how art imitates life. Varda passed away with this doc marking this film her swan song. There are too many pleasures in the film to be mentioned, so best to see this film for oneself.
Trailer: http://www.filmswelike.com/films/varda-by-agnes
