BEFORE: Julie Delpy carries over from "Before Midnight", and I sort of stumbled on this film while looking for a way to connect the blocks, the 3-film block with Julie Delpy and the 2-film block with Chris Rock. If some films are bricks and others are mortar, I'm definitely using this one as mortar - it's one of those neat little bits of connective tissue that make the chains possible. It's a sinew, connecting muscle to bone, or something like that. But this is what I have to do to devote an entire month (longer, even) to romance films. I can't drop a music biopic with Ethan Hawke in here, or a sci-fi or sports film, just to make the connection, then I'd feel like I was losing my focus.
Speaking of things without focus, here's the schedule for tomorrow, Wednesday, Feb. 6 on TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" line-up. The themes, plural, are "Fantasy", "WWII: Best Turning Point Film" and "Won Best Picture, but No Acting Nominations". Umm, right, because I often hear people discussing what was the best film about the turning point in World War II that also got nominated for an Oscar.
4:30 am "Gulliver's Travels" (1939)
6:00 am "Lost Horizon" (1937)
8:15 am "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T" (1953)
10:00 am "The Thief of Bagdad" (1940)
12:00 pm "Brigadoon" (1954)
2:00 pm "Tom Thumb" (1958)
4:00 pm "7 Faces of Dr. Lao" (1964)
8:00 pm "The Longest Day" (1962)
11:15 pm "Tora! Tora! Tora!" (1971)
2:00 am "An American In Paris" (1951)
4:15 am "Gigi" (1958)
Once again, I've only seen the latter part of this line-up, the last three films. Another 3 out of 12 puts me at 30 out of 69, taking me down to 43%.
THE PLOT: Manhattan couple Marion and Mingus, who each have children from prior relationships, find their comfortably family dynamic jostled by a visit from Marion's relatives.
AFTER: Well, TCM is showing "Mon Oncle" today, and "An American in Paris" tomorrow, but I'm watching French people in New York instead, so we're kind of programming at cross-purposes.
You can tell this was written and directed by one of the actors (actress, in this case) because there's very little focus, everything added as a little detail seems to be there because she said, "Hmm, I wonder what my character's reaction would be to THAT?" with no overall plan for what to do with all these random introduced elements. So as a result the film seems to be firing in a dozen different directions at once, and things are introduced, go nowhere and then are never followed up with again. A real director would have found a way to make some of those introduced elements important somehow, and if there was no way to do that, would then get rid of them.
The guy on the news who's protest-sitting in a tree in Central Park? That goes nowhere. The Russian repairman who eventually comes to fix the broken apartment buzzer? Well, he comes and fixes the buzzer - so what? This seems relatively unimportant at first, but that's only because it is, it goes nowhere. The daughter's fascination with serial killers? Goes nowhere. The father keying a limo that he walks by seems like it might be about to go somewhere, but then it never does either. A hundred little things come up and have absolutely nothing to do with each other, and all end up being meaningless. Is this a French thing, like Godard or something discussing the banality of life? Or just lazy, lazy storytelling or an inability to tie everything, or anything, together?
Chris Rock sort of does the best he can here, given what he was to work with, but he's drowning in a sea of nonsense. He talks to a cardboard cut-out of Barack Obama, and even though it's a one-sided conversation, it's one of the most interesting exchanges in the whole film.
Well, apart from one, anyway, because if you ask me, the real story here (and you really, really have to dig if you want to find it) is that the lead character is a photographer/artist with a gallery show taking place on Halloween, and she's offered to (symbolically, at least) sell her soul, auctioning it off to the highest bidder as a publicity stunt. Naturally she doesn't believe in the concept of a soul, because if she did, she just wouldn't do this, but then when she gets a real offer, she suddenly does an about-face and tries to get it back. I've got about a dozen NITPICK POINTS about how this played out, one of which is that the buyer made his bid anonymously, and then she demanded to know who it was, so that wasn't anonymous at all, was it? Then her trying to get it back by force - it's just not a very well-thought-out business deal, and neither is it a well-thought-out part of the plot.
I'm not going to mention here who bought it or what she does to try to get it back, but I just want to highlight that she (as either the screenwriter, director or character, I'm not sure) seemed to be confusing the contract, the physical piece of paper, with the intangible soul, the thing being purchased. OK, maybe she wants to get the contract back to tear it up, but that doesn't automatically void the sale. What if he made a photocopy? Plus it was notarized - look, if I lose the deed to my house, or the title to a car, I still own the item, right? So even if she could sell her soul, taking back the piece of paper that the contract was written on just wouldn't negate the deal.
But what changed her mind about not believing in her own soul? I finally found something in this film worth exploring, something I wanted to know more about, and the film just let it lie there. Worse, the action regarding the stand-off took place mostly off-camera, so it became just another story for someone to recount. Did Julie Delpy learn this bad habit from Richard Linklater? Again, it's supposed to be SHOW, don't tell.
Everything else in the film is very simple or stupid - French people like croissants, cheese and wine, family members argue with each other and get under each other's skin, French people aren't ashamed of their bodies, it's all a bunch of very simple stereotypes. Then there's the confusion when some people speak only French and others speak only English, and there's no attempt by anyone to learn words in the other language. Jeez, they have translation guides for exactly this sort of thing, or do you prefer people making jokes about you that you can't understand, right to your face?
And what is it, can someone please tell me, about small children that turns senior citizens into babbling idiots? I just don't get it. I mean, a parent I can understand because they've convinced themselves that their kid is adorable (probably not) or special (doubt it) or gifted (I'll believe it when I see it). But why does a person in their 60s or 70s, French or American, just start doing baby talk gibberish? Even if that's your grandchild, for God's sake, just talk to them in a normal voice, or they're never going to mature. How are they going to learn to deal with rational adults if they're not surrounded by any?
NITPICK POINT: Who would ever schedule a non-Halloween themed gallery exhibition on Halloween? That's the worst planning I've ever heard of - people with kids all want to get home early to go trick-or-treating with them, and people without kids all either want to go to an adult party or the Halloween parade, or perhaps a horror movie. She should fire her agent, or whoever set this up at the gallery.
Also starring Chris Rock (last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), Albert Delpy (last seen in "Before Sunset"), Alexia Landeau (last seen in "Moonlight Mile"), Alexandre Nahon, Malinda Williams (last seen in "Idlewild"), Arthur French (last seen in "The Book of Henry"), Kate Burton (last seen in "Anne of the Thousand Days"), Dylan Baker (last seen in "Ishtar"), Talen Ruth Riley, Owen Shipman, Emily Wagner, Petronia Paley, Carmen Lopez, Alex Manette (last seen in "Jane Got a Gun"), Marcus Ho, Gregory Korostishevsky, Bhavesh Patel, Seth Barrish (last seen in "Adult Beginners") with cameos from Daniel Bruhl (last seen in "Rush"), Vincent Gallo and the voice of Erin Darke.
RATING: 3 out of 10 confiscated cheeses
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