Mubi Monday: The Dreamers (2003)

I don’t know how I could have ever forgotten that Bernardo Bertolucci once directed a movie that starred Michael Pitt, Louis Garrel, and Eva Green, but I did. Rummaging around in the depths of my own memory banks, I vaguely remember it being released before I was more aware of Bertolucci’s films (aside from his most notorious title), and it was certainly before I would have been won over by the cast. So it came and it went without making any lasting impression on me.

Set in a turbulent Paris of the 1960s, this is the tale of a young American (Matthew, played by Pitt) who ends up befriending a pair of intriguing, but also potentially dangerous, twin siblings (Isabelle and Theo, played by Green and Garrel). They are safe, and largely sheltered, when spending time indoors sharing a love of cinema, indulging in games that lead to erotic forfeits, or engaging in philosophical discussions, but the outside world cannot be avoided forever.

While I have enjoyed, and loved, some of his work, I have never been as big a fan of Bertolucci as some people. Last Tango In Paris is a cold and clumsy movie that remains notorious for one horrible scene, and it was a mistake to start with that major touchstone when I started broadening my cinematic horizons. But for anyone else who feels the same way, I highly recommend checking out The Sheltering Sky and, his masterpiece, The Last Emperor. And this. Yes, this is an erotically-charged look at human connection and development that works far better than the film that many others view as the standout from his filmography.

Adapted from his own novel into screenplay for my Gilbert Adair, there’s a constant feeling of worlds pressing against one another here, be they worlds of flesh and bone or worlds of political and philosophical division. While one character is shown to be an outsider, it could be argued that all three of our leads remains outsiders for the majority of the runtime, and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing when viewers are reminded of the environments that they are keeping themselves away from.

The direction from Bertolucci is superb, allowing us to move around, and in between, the three leads as they spend their time playing, fighting, and generally intertwining themselves into one big mix of limbs and genitalia.

As for the performances, everyone is impressively fearless when it comes to delivering the material. I couldn’t pick any one over the other, and am happy to say that this remains a highlight in the film careers of all three main players (which is a particular compliment to both Green and Garrel, who have gone on to display their talents in numerous other projects, while Pitt seems to have been intent on scuppering his own progress throughout the past couple of decades). There are also a couple of scenes that allow Anna Chancellor and Robin Renucci to play the parents of our hedonistic twins, and those moments show a nice understanding between different generations, even with the obvious division still there.

With a selection of great songs on the soundtrack, as well as numerous film references and clips interspersed throughout, there is plenty of sugar coated around the bitterness at the heart of it, and I appreciate both Adair and Bertolucci avoiding the many very dark paths this could have taken. It is called The Dreamers, after all, so a sudden nightmare wouldn’t be out of place, but the real horrors are outside the bubble of irresponsibility that our leads reside in. Even if we know that they will have to fully wake up and leave that bubble one day.

8/10

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Shudder Saturday: Nocebo (2022)

Director Lorcan Finnegan has been delivering quality movies full of strangeness for a few years now. I wasn't a big fan of Without Name, but I did like the wild ride that was Vivarium. I also recommend the short film he did just over a decade ago, Foxes. Knowing that he was once again working with long-time collaborator Garret Shanley, who has been his main collaborator as far back as that aforementioned short, and that there was a central role for Eva "I don't really do sane" Green, I was optimistic about this one.

Green plays Christine, a fashion designer who has spent some time suffering from a mysterious illness. It makes her home life difficult, where she lives with her husband, Felix (Mark Strong), and their young daughter, Bobs (Billie Gadsdon). So everyone should be relieved when some home help arrives in the shape of Diana (Chai Fonacier), a Filipino woman that Christine cannot recall actually hiring. Diana seems to be able to help Christine, but Felix suspects that she's up to something. As the story is fleshed out, viewers also start to wonder about her, but it's hard to keep track of what the truth is, especially as Christine suffers from episodes where she cannot trust her own mind.

Standard stuff in many ways, especially when you think of the classic psychological thrillers that are centred on a "hysterical" woman, Nocebo is a solid script by Shanley that is turned into a slippery and twisty fever-dream by Finnegan, making use of nightmare imagery mixed with elements that are shown to be very deliberate choices by the time the grand finale comes around, and what a finale it is. I can understand people being put off by the confusion of the middle section, a lot of ambiguity and subterfuge without any apparent motivation or endgame in sight, but I'd encourage everyone to simply enjoy the oppressive and disorientating atmosphere on the way to a very satisfying payoff.

Green does so well in the kind of role that you'd expect her to do so well in, allowed to occasionally lean hard into the kind of physical acting and raw emotional outbursts that she has shown us a few times already. Strong is a good choice for the husband role, being an anchor trying to keep his wife safe during turbulent times, but also bringing with him the baggage of his filmography. I am always happy to see Strong appear onscreen . . . but trusting him is another matter entirely. Fonacier is excellent, acting overly sweet and delicate for a lot of the runtime, but showing a steely determination and strong will when she has to. As for Gadsdon, she gets better as the film allows her to move from bratty child to understandably perplexed and worried child.

Although I wish that this went further, with both the scares and the thematic layering, there's another part of me that thinks, yes, both Finnegan and Shanley knew exactly what they were doing. That is why they made this movie, and why I am just sitting here writing up my thoughts on it. I still prefer the more extreme strangeness of Vivarium, only slightly, but Nocebo is another excellent film that allows Finnegan to remain someone that film fans should always be valuing for his growing body of thrills and horror. 

7/10

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Noir November: Sin City: A Dame To Kill For (2014)

When Sin City came on the scene almost a decade ago, it was unlike pretty much any other slice of cool that mainstream audiences had ever scene. Hard boiled doesn't even begin to cover it. Those visuals, those archetypes, and that cool dialogue all just clicked together into a great celebration of everything noir.

It's a shame that Sin City: A Dame To Kill For feels tired from almost the first scene. Reprising the same stylistic choices from the first movie - largely black and white, but with splashes of colour popping out here and there - makes it feel like little more than a complete rehash, with less interesting characters for us to hang out with.

The tales to be told this time around had the potential to be just as entertaining as the tales that made up the first movie. Eva Green is the woman of the title, and she's pretty much a perfect choice for such a femme fatale. She gets one tough guy (Josh Brolin) in her grasp, but he in turn enlists help from another tough guy (Mickey Rourke, reprising the role of Marv). The badass girls of the street also return (led, once again, by Rosario Dawson), and Dennis Haysbert takes over the role, Manute, that was previously played by the hulking Michael Clarke Duncan. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a lucky gambler who is out for revenge. And lots of people rub each other up the wrong way.

Archetypes. That's all we have here, yet again, but they're just not as much fun this time around. For every moment of Eva Green being ridiculously sexy and callous, we end up having to endure a scene in which Jessica Alba tries to act drunk and tough and angry (hint = she can't). Gordon-Levitt and Brolin are great additions to the cast, but the film doesn't do well enough by their characters to make their tales as satisfying as they should be.

I'm assuming that most of what's here onscreen is hewn as closely to the source material, by Frank Miller, as it was in the first movie. In fact, Miller gets a co-directing and co-writing credit alongside Robert Rodriguez. Perhaps such slavish devotion to the material only works when it's cinematically strong? Or perhaps it was inevitable that the strongest tales were picked for the first movie, leaving any sequel to feel like second-tier stuff. A disappointing, disjointed air also doesn't help, with the stories never feeling that tightly intertwined, but there are still enough individual moments to make it worth your time. Just.

The visuals are as gorgeous as ever, if you go with the stylistic choices, and there's also plenty of fun to be had in the sprawling support cast, which includes the likes of Bruce Willis, Juno Temple, Ray Liotta, Stacy Keach, Jeremy Piven, Jaime King, Christopher Meloni, and even Lady Gaga.

Liked the first movie? You should find enough to enjoy here. It's just a shame that it never hits the heights of its predecessor.

6/10

http://www.amazon.com/Frank-Millers-Sin-City-Blu-ray/dp/B00N201WPM/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1415057588&sr=1-1&keywords=sin+city+a+dame+to+kill+for