ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

French

Petite Maman – Childhood magic

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The innocence of childhood may present an opportunity for magic to happen. The openness of a child can allow for things that we might think impossible. If we allow ourselves to be carried along in that openness and innocence, we may find ourselves enchanted by Petite Maman, from Céline Sciamma.

[Note: It is impossible to talk about the film without a key plot point, that could be considered a spoiler. So, if you want to experience that discovery unhindered, you should come back to this review after watching the film.]

We first meet eight year old Nelly as she goes around the nursing home saying a final goodbye to the friends she’s made there. Nelly’s grandmother has died, so Nelly won’t be coming back. She and her parents now must go to her mother’s country home to clean it out. A short way in, the task is too much for her mother’s grief and she leaves during the night, leaving Nelly and her father with the task.

Nelly remembers her mother telling about a hut she built in the woods when she was Nelly’s age. Nelly goes into the woods and discovers another little girl, Monica, the same age as she, building a hut. When Monica invites her to her house, they end up at Nelly’s grandmother’s house, where Nelly finds her grandmother, thirty years younger. Nelly (and we) quickly realizes that in some way she has met her mother as a child. The two girls share their days and have sleep overs at each other’s homes (the same house with different decors).

Monica’s ninth birthday is coming up, but she is scheduled to have surgery to prevent a condition that her mother (Nelly’s grandmother) suffers from. The night before the surgery, Nelly spends the night at Monica’s house, where she confides what she knows about her mother’s life.

The film is not so much about time travel as it is a magical bending of time to allow the two little girls to find a special, mystical bond—a bond that is more like sisters than mother and daughter. We delight in the ways they share their lives in the way that only children can do. They live in neither past nor future, but in the very present moment.

Nelly knew that her mother often seemed melancholy. She feared that her mother was like that because of her. In this setting, Nelly gets to see a very different picture of her mother, and begins to know that the two are bonded by a love that has no real parallel.

Sciamma (Tomboy, Water Lilies) is not new to coming-of-age stories. She enters into the children’s lives to find the innocence and wonder we often lose as adults. The girls find joy in building a hut, going on the lake, making pancakes—the carefree life of childhood. The parents in the story have other things on their minds. Nelly’s mother is grieving and has to deal with the overwhelming work of cleaning out a house. Monica’s mother worries about her daughter’s health as she faces an operation.

Sciamma keeps the story focused through the eyes of the girl. As she shares her days with her “little mama”, she begins to understand a bit more about the mother she has known. And she learns that they are connected in an amazing way.

Of course, I watch the film as an adult—filled with worries about many things. But in the brief (72 minute) time of entering Nelly’s life, I get to remember a little of the magic of that time. And perhaps the adult Monica will get that chance to remember as well.

Based on my viewing of this film at AFI Fest, I included it in my Darrel’s Dozen for last year.

Petite Maman is showing in select theaters.

Photos courtesy of Neon.

I Love America – Love and healing

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“Forgiveness doesn’t heal the wounds of the past; it transforms them.”

Lisa Azuelos’s I Love America is structured as a rom-com, but that is really just the pretty clothing put on to attract us to a story of grief and healing. In a sense it is a story of being lost and not knowing it. So it makes it all the more important to have been found.

Lisa (Sophie Marceau) is a fifty year old film director who has come to L.A. to write a screenplay, although there is much more going on in her life. Her children are grown, and her mother, a famous singer who abandoned her for a career, has just died. But this trip is not just business. When she is asked at immigration what the purpose of her trip is, she replies “I want to start a new life.”

On arrival she connects with her best friend Luka (Djanis Bouzyani), who has thrived in L.A. as the owner of a drag night club. Luka is determined to restart Lisa’s sex life, and sets her up on a dating app.  Luka has his own dating issues and while finding many partners, never finding one who will love him. But soon Lisa finds a great match in John (Colin Woodell). Their relationship grows quickly, but of course in true rom-com fashion, hits a serious roadblock.

But the film also flashes back frequently to Lisa’s childhood and teen years. Each of those flashbacks show us a bit of her sense of abandonment by her mother. Although she speaks of not feeling anything when her mother dies, we see in the flashbacks the great love she had for her mother, even if it wasn’t returned. This has become an important part of who Lisa has become, even if she doesn’t recognize it. A telling line (that isn’t emphasized, but clearly matters) is when she tells a date, “I created my kids to make sure somebody loves me in this world.” Perhaps it’s said in jest, but it is a very real sentiment. It reflects both her love for her mother and the lack her mother’s love.

As the film plays out, it is by embracing the feelings—both love and anger—that Lisa held for her mother that allows her to move on into new relationships that are based in trust and being trusted. She and Luka each learn that there is more to love that just immediate experience and connecting sexually with others. It is more important, they find, to connect emotionally. It is then that love can have a chance to bloom.

I Love America is streaming on Prime Video.

Delicious – Restaurant of the Revolution

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I frequently eat out. Sometimes it’s for convenience; other times it is for something special. The options are endless because restaurants are everywhere. They always have been, right? Well, no. Delicious, from director Éric Bresnard, is the story of the birth of the restaurant, and it was very much a revolutionary idea.

Set just before the French Revolution, we are told that in the 18th century fine cuisine was used by the nobility to “fight boredom and show its grandeur.” This at a time when most people barely had enough to eat. Noblemen would find and train chefs to create outlandish meals to display their wealth. One such chef was Pierre Manceron, who worked for the Duke of Chamford. After one of these elaborate dinners, the Duke brought Manceron into the dining room and let the guests critique the meal. When one dish was disapproved of, the Duke demanded an apology from Manceron, who refused and was dismissed.

Manceron and his son return to the remote post relay station (which served simple meals, such as broths to travelers) to start anew. While there, Louise, a woman who claims to have been a jam maker, shows up and asks to apprentice under Manceron. He thinks there is no point in teaching a woman, especially one he views as unworthy. (At one point he noted that the only women who carried themselves as Louise did were either noblewomen or whores—and if she were a countess she wouldn’t be there.) But she persists and as time goes by ideas start to form that they could make real meals for travelers.

In time, the Duke, who has never found a cook equal to Manceron, is willing to take him back. But it turns out that Louise also has a bone to pick with the Duke, and the plans to serve him a special meal could be deadly. But perhaps there is another way to get even for past injuries.

I doubt the film makes any real claims to historical accuracy, but the modern restaurant did evolve in France around this time. In this film we see various aspects of what we think of as restaurants develop along the way. But we also see how this really does have a revolutionary aspect. The film portrays the development of the restaurant as a democratization of food. Well made food is no longer only for the nobility. Anyone can come and enjoy the meal. And enjoyment is a key, because in this film food is joyful.

Delicious is not going to garner any Michelin stars, but it’s also not a greasy spoon. It may at least make you think when you eat out next about what a revolutionary thing you’re doing among all those other people.

Delicious is in select theaters and available on VOD.

Photos courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films

Thursday at AFIFest 2021

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Welcome to the 2021 edition of AFI Fest. Last year, the festival was all done virtually. This year is a hybrid with some films being available virtually and others only shown in the theaters at the TCL Chinese Theatres in Hollywood. The festival is abbreviated from pre-pandemic years only covering 4+ days instead of the usual 7+. But there are still some exciting films coming here. My first day was a virtual day.

Paris, 13th District (Les Olympiades, Paris 13e) is the latest film from Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust and Bone, and The Sister Brothers). His films are often intense and challenging. Paris, 13th District is a look at the Millennial world of relationship that seem to be a mash up of friendship, lack of commitment, and sex (lots of it).

We open when Camille shows up at Emilie’s apartment to answer an ad for a roommate. Emilie was hoping for a woman, but after some talking, spark begin between them. But when Emilie is more committed to the relationship than Camille, they break it off. Nora, a second year law student is mistaken by friends as an internet porn star. In time Nora works with Camille at a real estate agency, and they connect. Nora also contacts the porn star and they begin an online friendship. There are various turns along the way, but it all ends up with people finding something special.

In Megan Mylan’s documentary Simple as Water, we meet various Syrian refugee families struggling to find a place in the world as they are separated from others. A mother with four children in Athens, hoping to be able to be reunited with her husband in Germany. Another mother in Turkey considering putting her five children in an orphanage because she cannot care for them. A man in the U.S. with a 9th grade brother who lost a leg in a bombing. A woman still in Syria hoping to get word of a son missing in Raqqa. All are in a kind of limbo. They have hope for reunification and a future better than they are living, but nothing is assured for them. Simple as Water will be available on HBOMax on November 16.

And let’s look at some shorts while we’re here.

In the Israeli film Her Dance from Bar Cohen, Aya shows up at her sister’s wedding Sabbath dinner uninvited. She hasn’t been invited because she is estranged from her Orthodox family because she is a trans woman. Her mother is afraid someone will recognize her and the groom’s family will cancel the marriage. Some terrible things are said (especially by Aya’s mother), but there is a touch of grace, even if we are left in an emotional emptiness. (22 minutes)

For H.A.G.S. by Sean Wang, the filmmaker was going through his eighth grade yearbook and decided to contact some of his friends from that time to touch base and see how everyone was coping with adult life. It is a rather phrenetic mix of edited conversations with yearbook pictures of the various speakers. They seem to be in one of those cusp periods of aging—not yet middle age, but no longer young adults. (9 minutes)

A New Civil War? Squid Game

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The country has never seemed more divided. New data suggests that many Americans think it’s “time to split the country.” Are we in for a new Civil War?

In this new episode of the Your Sunday Drive podcast, we use an article by David French, a quote from Andrew Yang, the recent controversy surrounding Facebook, the current congressional fight over Biden’s infrastructure bill and the debt ceiling, and other angles to take a look at this topic. What underlies such division? How is media and social media involved? Would there even be something ultimately “wrong” with an actual split in the country? Most vitally, how should individual Christians and the church navigate the opportunity of our polarized times?

In our second segment, we shift focus to the uber popular Netflix show Squid Game, relating it to another current cultural obsession, the Gabby Petito case. Why are people fascinated by “true crime” stories and violent media such as Squid Game? What are the dangers and what elements of the redemptive can we discover in this human impulse?

Come along for Your Sunday Drive – quick conversation about current events, politics, pop culture and more, from the perspective of a couple of guys trying to follow Jesus.

Hosts: Matt Hill and Nate Polzin. Presented by the Church in Drive of Saginaw, MI, as often as possible. Please visit churchindrive.com and facebook.com/thechurchindrive

Spring Blossom – Young Love

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One of the rites of passage in the teenage years is to fall in love. In Spring Blossom we watch a young woman who doesn’t feel at ease with her peers begin an infatuation with an older man, who has his own issues about fitting in. Together they enter into a relationship that we know is doomed in the long run, but we marvel at the tenderness of it.

Suzanne (Suzanne Lindon, who also wrote and directed the film) is sixteen years old and something of a wallflower. Even when she goes to a teen party (which is rarely) she finds it all boring. School is much the same. One day walking between home and school, she notices a man at the small theatre. Each time she sees him she is a bit more interested, and in time he notices her as well.

Raphaël (Arnaud Valois) is part of a small acting company. He is becoming bored with the repetition of doing the same play night after night. When he notices Suzanne’s attention, it serves as a break in the monotony. At 35 we know he’s much too old for Suzanne, but she feeds something in his ego, and their combined boredom becomes the basis of their relationship.

As the relationship develops, we may expect Raphaël to take advantage of the young naïve girl, but throughout he acts with tenderness. The growing intimacy we see between them is shown through a series of dances. The first is a solo dance by Suzanne that exemplifies the joy of the first flush of young love. Then there are three dances involving the two of them: first sitting at a table at a café and moving in unison to music, then a brief pas de deux, and finally a slow dance in a club. Those dances serve almost as pseudo sex scenes, which tempers our fears about the age difference.

The film’s superb sense of reality is based in the fact that Lindon began writing the screenplay when she was fifteen. (She’s now 21.)  This is a time in life when one often falls in love with the idea of being in love more than actually falling in love.  That is captured very well in this film.

Spring Blossom is playing in select theaters and on virtual cinema.

Photos courtesy of KimStim.

Vas-y Coupe! (Wine Crush) – The People Behind Wine

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What goes into a bottle of Champagne? Easy answer: grapes. But how do they get there? Laura Naylor’s documentary Vas-y Coupe! (English title: Wine Crush) is a very pleasant atmospheric look at the harvest at one of Champagne’s premier vineyards. The film really isn’t so much about wine or agriculture. It is about people.

Much of the film is spent with the harvesters, a group of men who travel to the vineyard each year for the harvest. These are working class men, who have left their families for this bit of work. Two of them have been coming for over 30 years. The workers stay in a sparse dormitory, four in a room. But we may be surprised at the quality of the dinners they are provided each evening. A good part of the film involves the kitchen where women are preparing the daily meals. There is surely a comradery among the harvesters, but that also extends to their relationship with the bosses. There are differences in class, age, and gender, but they all share a common humanity as they each do their labor, whether picking, cooking, or winemaking.

There is very little of an instructive nature in the film. We only hear in passing what kind of grapes these are. We see them being fed into a crusher, and later into barrels. But we are told next to nothing about what goes on in all these steps. Rather, we are immersed in the time and place. Wonderful cinematography shows us great vistas of vineyards, as well as the closeup work being done.

The culmination of all this labor turns out to be one of the worst harvests in recent memory. Many of the grapes rotted on the vines. Yet at the closing dinner, the winemaker celebrates the work that they have all done together. No one person, he tells them, can do everything themselves. We all need each other in various ways.

I find in interesting that the French title (which translates as “Go Cut!”) uses the French familiar you. That, I think, reflects this recognition that each person has a place in this endeavor. The harvesters, of lower economic class, are seen as just as valuable to what is happening as the winemaker and his family. All are in this together, even though some are working for short-term wages and others are invested in a long-term project. They are all related by a common task and a common humanity.

Vas-y Coupe! is currently playing at the virtual Newport Beach Film Festival and will be available on VOD October 8.

Photos courtesy of First Run Features.

New French Shorts 2020

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If you read my festival coverage, you’ll know that I am a proponent for short films. I enjoy the chance to take in a program or two of shorts when I attend film festivals. Shorts are more than just practice for aspiring filmmakers. Shorts get to the point quickly and often very effectively. Usually, the only chance you have to see shorts is by attending a festival. But Kino Lorber is screening a two and a half hour program entitled “New French Shorts 2020” from Young French Cinema, a program of UniFrance and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy. The program is made up of seven shorts varying in length and style.

Ahmed’s Song (30 minutes, directed by Foued Mansour) is the story of an attendant in the public baths who is nearing retirement and a young man on probation who is also sent to work in the baths. It is a chance for each of them to learn and grow—and to find new ways forward in their lives.

The animated film Sheep, Wolf, and a Cup of Tea (12 minutes, directed by Marion Lecourt) is an adventure in magical realism as a child going to sleep invokes a wolf from under the bed. Think of wolves in sheep’s clothing, and vice versa.

In Tuesday from 8 to 6 (26 minutes, directed by Cecilia de Arce) we follow Névine, a middle school monitor through her day as she tries to stand up for a troublesome student. She finds herself in the middle between students, teachers, and administrators.

The Distance between Us and the Sky (9 minutes, directed by Vasilis Kekatos) is the story of two men who meet at a gas station late one night. One is there to fill his tank, the other is trying to get a few euros to get home. It becomes very flirtatious as the two men banter back and forth. This film won the Short Film Palme d’Or and the Queer Palme at Cannes 2019.

The Tears Thing (25 minutes, directed by Clémence Poésy) tells of an actress who must go to a gun range to prepare for an upcoming role. She discovers that her instructor is a former girlfriend who abandoned her. How will that past impinge on the present?

Another LGBTQ+ themed film is Magnetic Harvest (24 minutes, directed by Marine Levéel). Mickael is a pig farmer who’s trying to get his organic certification. Living in a remote area, there’s little opportunity for romantic connections. He has an app on his phone that rarely shows nearby prospects. But through it all a returned neighbor, Paul, is beginning to work his way into Mickael’s life.

The Glorious Acceptance Speech of Nicolas Chauvin (26 minutes, directed by Benjamin Crotty) is marked as a “special bonus short”. It is mostly a time-bending monologue by the Napoleonic soldier who gave his name to super-patriotism. The film relishes anachronism as he tells his boastful story. Of course, he’s also confronted with the idea that he was a literary creation and never really existed. But for a man like Chauvin, what does reality even mean?

As my wife and I watched these shorts, we gave them separated scores (as if at a festival). For us the top film was Ahmed’s Song. It was a touching human story of wisdom that can flow between generations.

“New French Shorts 2020” is available on Kino Lorber’s Virtual Cinema site, KinoMarquee

Portrait of a Lady on Fire: Doomed Love

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I try not to mansplain things. But being a male reviewing Portrait of a Lady on Fire makes me feel as if I’m doing so. That is not to say that the film needs mansplaining. Writer director Céline Sciamma has crafted a wonderful story of women seeking love and fulfilment in a world that treats them as beings of lesser value. Although the film is set in the 18th century, the emotive underpinnings of the story are immortal (as is seen in the way Greek mythology is brought in as well).

Marianne (Noémie Merlant) has been commissioned to paint a wedding portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel). Héloïse’s mother (Valeria Golino) has arranged a favorable marriage of her daughter to a man in her native Milan. Originally it was to be Héloïse’s sister, but after her death (possibly suicide to avoid marriage) Héloïse is brought home from the convent. She, too, is uninterested in this marriage, and has refused to sit for a portrait. So Marianne has been called to be a companion, and surreptitiously paint her.

The two women spend their days together, slowly establishing a bond. After confessing to Héloïse, Marianne destroys the painting, but Héloïse agrees to sit for another. While her mother is away for a week, the two women continue to get to understand each other and their relationship develops into romantic and sexual love. But still, Héloïse’s marriage looms as a given that darkens the possibilities of their happiness. As the romance blossoms, the love the two women share is clearly not acceptable to the world around them. Their love will not be allowed to interfere with the arrangements that have been made for the marriage. But that love is the truest they will ever have.

This is a film with very few scenes that include men. It focuses on the relationship between the women, not only Marianne, Héloïse, and her mother, but also the family’s servant Sophie (Luàna Bajrami). But even though there are no men present, the weight of paternalistic culture bears down on them all in oppressive ways. Each has her own way of being oppressed. For Héloïse it is obviously being forced into marriage. She has had no voice in the matter. When speaking about the advantages of life in a convent, she includes “Equality is a pleasant feeling.” Marianne has a certain freedom because since she will take over her father’s painting business, she is not required to marry. But even then, we learn later, she must submit her paintings under her father’s name to get them accepted. For Sophie, an unwanted pregnancy must be dealt with in unpleasant ways.

The film makes use of the Greek story of Orpheus and Eurydice, a story of lovers separated by death. Orpheus convinces the gods to allow Eurydice to return from Hades, but he fails to comply with the conditions just before they reach the outer world, and he loses his love forever. Héloïse, Marianne, and Sophie discuss this story and offer reasons why Orpheus may have done what he did. Through it all the sense of doomed love is a constant presence.

This is a film of both the big and the small. There are sweeping vistas and strong emotions, but it is the little things that often carry the most weight. In the beginning, there is a sense of great isolation, especially for Marianne when she is dropped off on the island where Héloïse lives with her mother. That isolation is chipped away slowly. There are also little bits of conversation that we discover were of great importance only later in the film. (E.g., a discussion of organ music in the convent compared to the sound of an orchestra will come to mind in the final scene.) It is the kind of film that has viewers thinking back and connecting ideas.

It is through this attention to small things that the film manages to speak volumes about women’s struggles in the world without really speaking about that directly. Instead we are engulfed in these lives that are prevented from fulfilment because the world will not allow such things for women. The world today may have improved in these respects, but is by no means free of such issues.

Photos courtesy of Neon.

By the Grace of God – The Sin of Silence

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“Deep down I knew. We all knew. We did nothing.”

Although it is not limited to the Catholic Church, sexual molestation of minors by clergy is an issue that continues to burden the church. In France, a notable example centered on a priest, Bernard Preynat, and the Archbishop of Lyon, Cardinal Barbarin, who oversaw the coverup. François Ozon’s film By the Grace of God, is a fictionalized version of this affair of how a group of survivors challenged the church and its silence. The film won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.

The film is not so much about the sexual assaults as it is about the way the institutions of the church failed to act to stop them. The first victim we meet is Alexandre (Melvil Poupaud), an ardent Catholic, who discovers that the priest who molested him as a child is still working and has access to children. He writes to Cardinal Barbarin (François Marthouret) to raise his concerns, sure that the Cardinal, who has spoken out against pedophilia, will respond. Alexandre is invited to tell his story to Régine Maire (Martine Erhel), the diocese’s psychologist who dealt with victims. He also asks to meet with the Cardinal, and they begin a correspondence about the process. Alexandre writes to the police who open an investigation, but because the statute of limitations has expired, there is nothing that the police can do with Preynat—unless they find more recent cases.

Such a case is Emmanuel (Swann Arlaud), who has written on the website. He is convinced to go to the police and press charges. Now the archdiocese faces even more attention. Press is following the story now. More and more victims make their stories known. Eventually seventy people will tell of their molestation. During much of this time Fr. Preynat continues to serve in the church.

When Alexandre meets François (Denis Ménochet) another victim of Fr. Preynat, they begin to form a community, using a website to encourage others to tell their stories. This increases pressure on the archdiocese. Alexandre is invited to meet with Preynat, with Régine Maire in attendance. Preynat admits to everything, but claims he has gotten help. He does not, however, ask for forgiveness.

I found it of some interest that the film marks the passing of time (it covers about a two year span), not by a calendar, but via the liturgical year, noting various feasts and holidays as they pass. This creates an atmosphere that reminds us that this is not so much a secular issue as it is a religious one. And although secular issues, such as statutes of limitation, play a role in the film, the story we see deals with spiritual concepts in the lives of the characters.

Chief among those spiritual issues is the question of forgiveness. The question arises frequently about if the victims can or should forgive Prevnat. Forgiveness is a key part of Christian life, but it is often very hard to do. This conflict is evident in the scene in which Alexandre and Preynat, meet. At the end of the meeting, Régine Maire has the three of them join hands to pray the Our Father. When the forgiveness clause comes up, Alexandre is unable to say the words.

Another recurring issue is faith. Two of the three victims we follow continue to be devout. Only François has renounced faith and the church. For Alexandre and Emmanuel, they are clear that they are doing this for the church, not to the church. They see what has happened not just as something that has harmed them, but has harmed and continues to harm the church itself. Their continued faith in the face of betrayal—first by Preynat, and continuing with the institutional lack of response—is a reminder that the church and the Gospel are powerful in people’s lives. But that makes the betrayals all the more treacherous. By the end of the film, the faith of those who have come forward is being tested greatly.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, clergy sexual misconduct is not limited to the Catholic Church, even if they get most of the press about it. This film brings the victims to the foreground. It does not set out to bash the church, but rather to shine a light on the institutional abuses that prevent accountability and by so doing fail to bring healing to victims and to the church itself.

The film has some title cards at the end of the film that give the status of Fr. Preynat and Cardinal Barbarin as of the time the film was completed. However, since that time there have been new developments. An ecclesiastical trial was held that led to the defrocking of Preynat. Cardinal Barbarin continues to hold the title of Archbishop of Lyon, but has been removed from all administrative oversight of the diocese.

Photos courtesy of Music Box Films