Film Review: Madeleine Collins

• Print
• Email

Details

Category: Cinéma - Movies

Published: Monday, 06 June 2022 10:28

Written by Gilbert Seah

MADELEINE COLLINS (France/Belgium/ Switzerland 2020) ***1/2
Directed by Antoine Barraud

The film’s trailer makes the film look like a thriller but the film is more a drama with some suspense.  So, it is easy to be fooled just as the film’s main female protagonist’s men are fooled by her.  The woman goes by two different names, and leads two separate lives juggling both rather well till trouble rears its head in paradise.

The woman (Virginie Efira) leads a double life: two lovers, two sons in France as Judith Fauvet and one daughter in Switzerland as Margot.   In France, she is married to orchestra conductor Melvil Fauvet (Bruno Salomone) while in Switzerland,  her lover is Abdel (Quim Gutierrez).  Entangled in secrets and lies, her lives begin to shatter.

The film begins impressively with a lady (Mona Walraven), well dressed though her hair a bit dishevelled entering the dress department of a departmental store.  She is shown dresses and takes a few to a fitting room, before she faints and knocks her head on the wall.  As she is led out the department by a vendeuse (Anne Depla), she is heard but not seen.  She has evidently fallen.  “There is blood everywhere.  She does not have a pulse.”  These are the words heard on the soundtrack.  What is impressive about this opening, is not what takes place, though still interesting, but the posh way in which the entire segment is done in real-time in one take as the camera moves around the store fluidly.  It must have been a tough scene to be done so masterfully, and must have taken several takes to finalize with the perfect one long final take.

The film will arouse the curiosity of the audience.  What this scene has to do with the rest of the story is only revealed at the end.  The lady at the beginning, played by Walraven, looks a bit like the main protagonist, and one might get confused whether these two are the same person.  And the reason the film is called MADELEINE COLLINS as the two women in the film are called Judith and Margot is revealed finally at the film’s end.

In the film, director Barraud is as manipulative as the lead character.  Madeleine soft talks to her men and knows how to pretend to be angry to distract them.

In the past, it was the men who kept a wife and mistresses on the side.  This film portrays the opposite where the men function as the victims and the female as the aggressor.  Judith/Margot here, juggles two lives, two mens and two sets of children.  It is too convenient to have her as the intelligent one, still loving both men and playing them for fools.  One variation is that one of her men knows about the other but not the second one.  But it is a tale that as predictability goes, one can tell it is  about how the setup has worked in the past, and how it can come crumbling down.  And how the female aggressor will deal with the catastrophe.

MADELEINE is a neat little menage-a-trois, fresh in concept with a strong female slant to the story for a change.  The film has already opened in Quebec in April and opens in Toronto on June the 10th.

Trailer: 

Film Review: Vortex

• Print
• Email

Details

Category: Cinéma - Movies

Published: Saturday, 07 May 2022 10:07

Written by Gilbert Seah

VORTEX (France 2021) ***

Directed by Gasper Noé

Filmmaker Gasper Noe has never failed to astound audiences - though not always in a  good way.  Take his SEUL CONTRE TOUS.  In the film’s last 10 minutes, a warning appears on screen with the image of a clock ticking that if one thinks one cannot stomach what is to come, then leave the cinema within one minute.  When I first viewed this film at TIFF, most of the audience did not leave.  But when the last 10 minutes of film unfolded which involved a father raping his retarded daughter, a quarter of the audience walked out.   His last film CLIMAX which displayed the best of dancing also created quite the stir with the dancers all high on the LSD laced punch.  The best Noé film remains his first short hour feature CARNE with Jean Much Godard-like titles and the film displaying humour and oddity.

VORTEX follows the lives of an elderly couple - the wife (Françoise Lebrun) suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s and growing worse exponentially while the husband (played by Italian gallo master Dario Argento who made SUSPIRA, OPERA, THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE) suffers from heart attacks.   The son (Alex Lutz) has a noisy little boy and is hooked on crack, smoking up quite often in the house.  One thing is for sure - despite the family dysfunctionality , the three have a strong loving relationship for each other.  The elderly husband cares for his wife, the son for his father and so on.  But their circumstances do not help.  VORTEX, shown in split screen, so that director Noé can show two camera angles of one scene, is not an easy film to watch.  VORTEX achieves what it is purposed to do, show the extremely difficult daily routines of the three, but one can hardly say the film is entertaining.  It os a brutal 2 hour and 20 minute watch, beautifully acted and staged while fluid camerawork, nonetheless.

Director Gaspar Noé created the project after suffering a dangerously severe brain hemorrhage which very nearly killed him. When he recovered, he became sober and began filming.  As expected, VORTEX is devoid of humour but filled with human drama.  But there are bouts of tenderness as well.

Director Noé has his fan base, and I am one of them after being mesmerized by CARNE, which was followed by art-house hits like ENTER THE VOID, CLIMAX and IRREVERSIBLE.  He has a new film premiering at Cannes this year.   LUX ÆTERNA is the title of his new film about his own psychic freakout on witches starring Beatrice Dalle and Charlotte Gainsbourg, two famous French stars, a film that should be on everyone’s watch list.

VORTEX arrives and is currently playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.  It arrives without much publicity as the publicist does not wish to send streaming links, insisting that the film best (and rightly so) on the big screen to experience the split screen process.  As said, VORTEX is not an easy watch but a film that delivers more of an experience than anything else.

Trailer: 

Film Review: Lux Aeterna

• Print
• Email

Details

Category: Cinéma - Movies

Published: Monday, 30 May 2022 10:00

Written by Gilbert Seah

LUX AETERNA (France 2019) **

Directed by Gasper Noe

LUX AETERNA arrives in Toronto after VORTEX though it was made and released in France and premiered at Cannes before VORTEX.  For commercial audiences, beware as this is an experimental film, which means that there is no head or tail and this is true for the film.  It is a 2019 French independent experimental art film written and directed by Gaspar Noé, screened out of competition at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. The film makes heavy use of epileptic imagery, split-screen, and 1920s-esque documentary footage involving witchcraft.  Though running at only an hour and 5 minutes, it is a hard watch.

The film’s premise follows two actresses who are to play the part of two out of three witches burnt at the stake in a film about witches.  The third witch is played by Abbey Lee.  The first part of LUX AETEERNA has them, mainly Dalle talking shit - about witches and about other things.  Then the film shoot starts and everything goes wrong.  But according to the director, it is perfect for the film to be shot and he continues shooting, much to the anger of Dalle..  Nothing makes much sense!  The chaos at the film’s end is observed with strobing lights and screeching sounds.  The film occasionally uses split screen, again more utilized in Noe’s VORTEX.

To Noe’s credit, he has enlisted two of France’s most respected actresses , Beatrice Dalle who rose tofu from Jean-Jacques Beineix’s BETTY BLUE.  Dalle has had quite a reputation in real life.  The other is Charlotte Gainsbourg, wife of filmmaker Yvan Attal.  Both play themselves in the film.

LUX AETERNA is an often frustrating experimental film that leads nowhere and comes across as pretentious and confusing. Gaspar Noe fans would be the only ones who would forgive the director for his major excesses as in this film and in the recent CLIMAX.  There is a bit about art in films from Noe.

The film ends after the end credits: “Thank God I’m an atheist.”  Noe has paid respect to great directors like Jean-Luc Godard using his colourful titles in his first film CARNE and now does likewise with the end credits quoted from Luis Bunuel.

Trailer: 

Film Review: The Takedown

• Print
• Email

Details

Category: Cinéma - Movies

Published: Friday, 06 May 2022 01:11

Written by Gilbert Seah

THE TAKEDOWN (France 2022) ***1/2
Directed by Louis Leterrier

English speaking cinema goers have their pro Idris Elba, A Brit starring in both English hits such as THE HARDER THEY FALL, THE SUICIDE SQUAD and CONCRETE COWBOY.  One the European side, French cinema goes have OMAR SY who rose to fame with the French comedy hit UNTOUCHABLE (remade into a Hollywood film), SIMPLY BALCK, POLICE while also crossing the Atlantic starring as Hemall in the Marvel films AVENGERS and THOR as well as the JURASSIC WORLD films.  His test film, on Netflix shows Sy in top form, both in action and comedy, a French outing despite its English title.  Sy is the main one that makes the action comedy work.  THE TAKEDOWN is directed by Louis Leterrier, no stranger to action films THE INCREDIBLE HULK, CLASH OF THE TITANS AND FAST X.  So, expect lots of action and comedy in THE TAKEDOWN.  One would not be disappointed.  As a bonus, the film displays the gorgeous French country from Bordeaux to the French Alps.

The film begins with what appears to be a takedown.  Cop Ousmane (Sy) and his partner break into a FIGHT CLUB type of match in order to arrest a suspect.  The next thing has Ousmanae fighting the star attraction.  The audience is then introduced to another cop, a white cop, Francois (Laurent Lafitte) who has a way with women, but has a problem with his ego.  The two are forced to do A takedown.

Ousmane Diakité (Omar Sy) and François Monge (Laurent Lafitte) are two cops with very different styles, backgrounds and careers. Many years ago they worked together but life took them apart. The unlikely pair is reunited once again for a new investigation that takes them all the way up to the French Alps. What seemed to be a simple drug deal turns out to be a high scale criminal case wrapped in danger and unexpected comedy.

In terms of action comedy, the fights and story (the iteration between two cops with differences) are nothing new.  But there are sufficient surprises that make the film stand out.  For one, the cinematography showing the French countryside is a sight for sore eyes.  The production sets such as the arena in the film’s opening scene are also impressive.  The film is also very funny with director Leterrier taking every opportunity to inject laughs into his feature.  When the police store the arena, they accidentally catch someone at the trash thinking that it is the trash police making sure that he puts the recyclables where they belong.  “I never knew they were so serious,” he comments.  The action set piece with a  youth on a motorbike being shown and his bike going off the bridge with his body splitting into two after hitting high volt wires before crashing down not the train below needs to be seen to be believed.  This leaves the bay in two halves, each for each cop.  Other memorable ones include a chase across the lanes of a  bowling alley, a dodgem (bumper car) chase in the aisles of a supermarket.

THE TAKEDOWN might not be the best film of the year nor will it win choice awards, but it is what it is supposed to be, a fast paced action comedy that is both entertaining and a solid time-waster.  In one scene the cops say “C’es nous, La Loi.”  (It’s Us, the law!).  In the 2019 police classic by Lady Ly LES MISERABLES - the white racist cop similarly tells a suspect: “C’est Moi, la loi!”  (It’s me, the law!)   Ly’s LES MISERABLE was one of the best films of the year, also tackling the problem of criminal youth in the Paris suburbs, aiming for the higher goal of making a social statement.  THE TAKEDOWN does however, quite effectively touch on the racist issue. The film is available for streaming on Netflix.  Filmed fully in French.

Trailer: