BEFORE: Attempts to improve my hearing are just not working - I tried the ear drops that the doctor suggested, only the instructions were to rinse my ears with warm water a few minutes after applying the drops, and I managed to clog my left ear with the water. So now both of my ears are functioning at about half capacity, and everything sort of sounds like it would if I were under water. Which would only be a problem if I watch a movie every night after my wife goes to sleep. Tonight I'm afraid that I'll have to turn up the volume very loud, or else move closer to the TV.
Tomorrow, February 13, on TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", it's nominees and winners in the Best Foreign Film category:
6:00 am "My Night at Maud's" (1969)
8:00 am "Immortal Love" (1961)
10:00 am "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" (1963)
12:00 pm "Kapo" (1959)
2:00 pm "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" (1964)
4:00 pm "Day for Night" (1973)
6:00 pm "Babette's Feast" (1987)
8:00 pm "La Strada" (1954)
10:00 pm "Mon Oncle" (1958)
12:15 am "Antonia's Line" (1995)
2:15 am "Black Orpheus" (1959)
4:15 am "Dersu Uzala" (1975)
A big goose egg tonight, I've seen none of these, but I didn't expect to do well in this category. Another 0 out of 12 brings my total up to 49 out of 142. Down to 34.5%
I was thinking the other day that it was weird that TCM would get to the "Best Director" category before some of the smaller award categories, but now I see the genius behind the plan, with "Black Orpheus" scheduled for tomorrow, since that film is set during Brazil's Carnival, and tomorrow is Mardi Gras, aka the last day of Carnival. Pretty slick - I was thinking along those same lines, and I've got a similar film programmed for Tuesday. But before that, I've got my own "foreign" film to watch tonight, this one's set in France, as evidenced by the title - and Naomi Watts carries over from "I Heart Huckabees".
AFTER: The first half of this film works OK, but then I think I can point to where it goes completely off the rails. I'll explain. We're introduced to a pair of sisters, Isabel and Roxanne, one visiting the other in France, and Isabel's arrival coincides exactly with the Roxanne's husband moving out quite suddenly. It's a little bit convenient for the sake of telling a story, but hold on, you ain't seen nothing yet. It turns out the husband is in love with someone else, and he decided that the best way to handle this situation was to just pack 2 bags and leave, with no explanation, no attempt at reconciliation, and by barely saying, "I'm sorry" to his wife and daughter.
But what we're dealing with tonight is a culture clash, the difference between the way that American and French people approach relationships. The French husband files for "Le Divorce", but his American wife does not consent to one - it seems we Americans are raised in a culture of therapy and couseling, and the stereotype here is that we only favor divorce when there is no other alternative. But since the husband won't talk about the situation, or admit that he's having an affair, the wife doesn't realize that essentially, he's already gone. It's time for paperwork, even if she won't admit it.
Of course, she's got a young daughter and there's a second child on the way, so who can really blame her for wanting things to back to the way they were?
Meanwhile, Isabel finds work helping an author (a friend of Roxanne's, another coincidence) organize her papers before they're donated to a college in the U.S., and she manages to start relationships with both a co-worker at that job AND an older relative of her sister's husband (yet another convenience). She's told that this is the way it works in France, a man can take a young girlfriend and still remain married, it's just part of the culture. Umm, really? Then why didn't Roxanne's husband just do that? And if it's truly not frowned upon, then why do his relatives, and his wife, frown upon the affair later in the film when they find out about it? I guess the screenwriter couldn't really decide if having an affair counts as "acceptable behavior" or not - first it isn't, then it is, then it isn't again.
Much of the plot, however, concerns a painting that hangs in Roxanne's apartment, except it belongs to her family and it's something she brought with her to France, on a whim. OK, a couple of things - the painting is huge, so it's not really something she could have put in a carry-on bag, it HAD to be shipped to France, and that means it was NOT done on a whim. Secondly, her family seems fine with the fact that the painting's not hanging in their house in California, except then it seems like they're NOT fine with it, so which is it? Obviously they're concerned about such a valuable painting being far from home, only it doesn't seem like they KNEW it might be valuable until it went to France - huh? How did shipping it to France bring the true potential value of the painting to their attention? And if they're not sure of the artist, how can they be sure of the value? Again, facts seem to be very elusive in this film.
The attempt, of course, is to tie the value of the painting to the divorce, as if the future ex-husband might have a claim on the value of the painting, thanks to French community property laws. Again, a couple of flaws here - first, it's stated clearly that the painting belongs to Roxanne's FAMILY, not her. So it's doubtful that her ex would have any claim on it at all - so why bring that up at all? Ah, but the courts might decide that since she may inherit it one day, that she is part owner. Yeah, that's not the way that property works AND the husband said he wanted no part of the painting AND the lawyers assessed the painting and deemed that it was not worth much. So why, one hour into the film, are we still talking about the damn painting?
Seriously, the rest of the family even comes over from California, and they have lunch, have dinner, have another lunch with an art expert, and 4 or 5 times over, it's the same damn conversation - what if the painting is worth something? What if the ex-husband files a claim for it? What if the French courts decide it's an original? What are we going to do with the money if we sell it? And at no time is the plot advanced by any of this back-and-forth, it's just a bunch of filler. And the film's called "Le Divorce", not "What Should We Do With This Damn Painting?"
Things get even worse (and this is where it goes off the rails, I think) when Roxanne's husband's girlfriend's husband (yeah, I think that's right) shows up and he wants to get his wife back. For some reason, he blames Roxanne for his marriage's break-up, which makes no sense. Why would she encourage her husband to date Magda, when she doesn't even want to grant him a divorce? How would it benefit her to have her husband sleeping with someone else? (Unless she's looking for an excuse to divorce him, which she isn't...) I can see why this unhinged husband might not want to blame himself, or his wife if he still loves her, but why not blame the man she's sleeping with? It makes no sense to go and bully that man's wife.
But what we have here is another French stereotype about Americans, that we're hotheads, and we easily look to violence and aggression to solve our problems. This leads, in a way, to the biggest "deus ex machina" seen in this film's plot, an event that manages to not only see the cheating people get punished, but it also resolves the issue of the claim on the painting AND "Le Divorce" at the same time. Which is definitely a resolution of sorts, but again, it's one that seems all too convenient, and therefore a little hard to believe.
Also starring Kate Hudson (last seen in "Deepwater Horizon"), Glenn Close (last seen in "Albert Nobbs"), Thierry Lhermitte (last seen in "An American Werewolf in Paris"), Melvil Poupaud (last seen in "By the Sea"), Sam Waterston (last seen in "The Great Gatsby"), Stockard Channing (last seen in "Heartburn"), Matthew Modine (last heard in "The Brainwashing of My Dad"), Thomas Lennon (last heard in "Mr. Peabody & Sherman"), Leslie Caron (last seen in "Father Goose"), Bebe Neuwirth (last seen in "The Faculty"), Marie-Christine Adam (last seen in "French Kiss"), Jean-Marc Barr, Romain Duris, Catherine Samie, Nathalie Richard, Stephen Fry (last seen in "The Man Who Knew Infinity"), Rona Hartner.
RATING: 4 out of 10 Chanel scarves
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