The Bakery Girl of Monceau (dir. Eric Rohmer, 1962)

"One represented truth, and the other a mistake, or so I told myself at the time"

- From "The Bakery Girl of Monceau"

Eric Rohmer began his famed Six Moral Tales anthology with The Bakery Girl of Monceau, by far the shortest of the six films at only 23 minutes. Each of the six tales in the collection stand on their own as individual achievements, but collectively they make up one of the richest of all cinematic works dealing with the ineffable attributes of the language of love. Indeed a common thread running through each of the works involve a man inevitably drawn to a woman who is either just out of his grasp or a little too easy. They are often contemplative and dialogue heavy with self reflexive voice-over narrators, but they are never boring, and despite The Bakery Girl of Monceau's brief running time, it remains one of the most biting, potent entries into Rohmer's ambitious and important series.

The story itself is simple enough. An unnamed law student (Barbet Schroeder) hangs out with his buddy at a cafe day after day and admires Sylvia, a beautiful young woman whom he crosses paths with frequently. He desires the courage to speak to her and one day fakes bumping into her to get things rolling. They like each other and make implied plans to arrange a date the next day when they cross paths, however she never shows and sends the student into a state of mental turmoil and obsession. To quell his longing, he begins to frequent a local bakery and indulge in their pastries, and the sweet, doe-eyed, frumpy-yet-still attractive bakery girl begins to make subtle flirtations. He acquiesces to her overtures as something of a game, he admittedly has no interest in her, and is even offended that she would think he might be interested in her, but he nevertheless leads her on out of boredom and as part of some self satisfying revenge on Sylvia, who still weighs heavily on his mind. One day, after making dinner plans with the bakery girl, the student runs into Sylvia in the street and hits it off with her once again, ditching his plans with the bakery girl, forever wondering if she was watching him through the bakery window as he walked down the street with his future wife.

It ranks, to me, as one of the greatest short films of all time. Watching it again today, the thing that stuck out most to me was the gentle jazzy minimalist rhythm that flows throughout, the same style that would be a template for Rohmer's future work, and that here gives the film the reflective poignancy and impact that allows it to stack up against the best stuff of his career. The reason it works so perfectly is that Rohmer, unlike the vast majority of synthetic "romantic" dreck that Hollywood processes these days, has a genuine insight into and fascination with the nuances of relationships and the nature of the sexes. He is wise to the fact that words can sometimes be more effective aphrodisiacs than anything on a physical level, and the verbal cat-and-mouse games that usually develop in his movies are by and large more satisfyingly realistic, complex and unpredictable than any of the American by-the-books romantic procedurals churned out by the dozen. Influencing the likes of Mamet, LaBute and on down the line, The Bakery Girl of Monceau remains a microcosm of the importance Rohmer brought to film, and is a premium example of one not needing a feature length to make a lasting impression.

After Dark, My Sweet (dir. James Foley, 1990)

"I'd like to correct an erroneous impression you seem to have about me. You see, I’m not at all stupid. I may sound like I am, but I’m really not. "

- Kevin Collins, After Dark, My Sweet

He is right, he is not stupid. But you can understand the need to explain himself. He is Kevin Collins (Jason Patric), former boxer and recent escapee from a mental ward. Stumbling down a barren road with no apparent destination, he soon finds himself in a bar, enjoying a beer and making awkward small talk. An attractive woman walk in. Her name is Faye (Rachel Ward). Kevin's brief chat with her no sooner results in an attempt to toss him out of the bar, however Kevin "The Kid" (as he was known during his former glory days) lays out the bartender with a mean right, and soon finds himself back on the road, a wandering mumbling mess. Faye is not through with him however, and chases him down. And from here their lives will take very dark and drastic turns as this absorbing opening sequence sets the stage for James Foley's brooding, stylish noir-thriller.

Faye is a widow and has some housework for Kevin to take care of. Needless to say this isn't all she has in mind, and soon Kevin is introduced to the slimy Uncle Bud (the wonderful Bruce Dern), an acquaintance of Faye and former cop who still has connections on the inside, and who always seems to be wearing a fake smile and grumbling out of the side of his mouth something about a scheme. A romance seems to be on the horizon, however one night Faye tells Kevin to leave for good, hinting at something ominous involving the Dern character, and he follows her wish. There is a side plot involving a caring doctor (Bruce Dickerson) who meets Kevin in a diner and quickly pegs him as mentally unstable. He offers to help out, and may or may not have his own selfish reasons for doing so. He convinces Kevin to stay with him for awhile to keep out of trouble, but Kevin is lonely and in need of companionship on a level the doctor can't provide, and he soon leaves to seek out Faye once more.

For all of this interesting setup, the central plot ends up being fairly transient. Faye and Uncle Bud have a plan to kidnap the son of a wealthy couple and hold him for ransom and they need Kevin to pull it off. After Dark, My Sweet is primarily concerned with atmosphere and characters, particularly these three, who by themselves are simply an alcoholic, a petty schemer and a mental deficient. Collectively, they are in over their heads before they even know it, and it is fascinating to watch, mainly because much care and thought have gone into the wonderful screenplay by Foley and Robert Redlin (based off a Jim Thompson novel) into making these characters complex, layered with nuance, and entirely unpredictable. The actors are more than up for the challenge. The script also provides some of the most deliciously hard-boiled dialogue I've come across. Take this example, said in voice-over by one of the characters during a key scene later in the film:

"We sat there for another half hour or so, and he was talking every minute of it. The words poured out of his mouth, and they didn't mean a thing to me. They were just a lot of noises coming from a sickish-looking face. What other people said had never meant a thing to him, and now it was his turn. Now he was meaningless and what he said was meaningless."

How can you not love that? It's a scene that will knock your socks off.

I want to go back to the performances. They are revelatory. First and foremost, Jason Patric gives probably the performance of his career. Kevin "The Kid" is a fully realized character and the strongest source of intrigue in the film. Simultaneously explaining his actions and desires in 5 year-old minutia ("I am hungry...for food"), while sharply and deliberately putting the screws back to anyone trying to take advantage of him, we ask ourselves, which one is the mask? How much is an act? Is there anything even wrong with Kevin? Is he up to something sinister or is he just a rebel? Perhaps the answer is something much more interesting than that. Patric deftly crafts the intricacies of the character to perfection, and it is a hypnotizing performance. Rachel Ward and Bruce Dern bring equally subtle, thoughtful approaches to their roles. The fact that you actually feel anything remotely resembling sympathy for Uncle Bud at some points is a true testament to the strength of the writing and acting on display.

When all the elements come together as seamlessly as they do here, we are left with a truly engaging experience. Despite its portrait of a bleak world, there is a very redemptive spirit at the core of After Dark, My Sweet. It is a film to be applauded, a near-masterpiece of modern noir with a perfect mixture of hope and despair, of dread and relief, that carries us on the back of its keen visual touch and astute characterizations to the type of richly rewarding viewing experience that makes one fall in love with the movies in the first place.

The Music of Chance (dir. Philip Haas, 1993)

"When I was driving, nothing could hurt me anymore."

"Then you met me."

"And then I met you."

-Jim Nashe and Jack Pozzi in The Music of Chance

As the title suggests, chance in life plays so often like music, having a melody and it's own distinct rhythm. It can be a lush and symphonic presence, with fast, aggressive tempos and overwhelming crescendos. Oftentimes it is slow and monotonous, leaving you to wonder where all the years and opportunities have gone. But it is always there, a constant. Keep your eyes open and your head on straight, The Music of Chance warns us, before chance thrusts you into a situation of unthinkable absurdity, created entirely of your own making and at the same time completely out of your hands.

The film begins as we follow Jim Nashe (Many Patinkin), driving through a scenic stretch of an unnamed state. He passes Jack Pozzi (James Spader) on the side of the road. Pozzi is beaten, bruised, and caked with dry blood. Nashe offers him a ride. Pozzi, a card shark, was in a poker game and cleaning up, before thieves robbed everyone and left him broke. Too bad, he tells Nashe, he had a scheduled poker game in a few days with a couple of clueless, rich businessmen. It was a guranteed major pay day. He needs at least 10 grand to sit down in the game, and after thinking it over, Nashe decides he's going to back Pozzi with the last bit of money he has to his name. It's a compelling start to this seemingly straight story, providing intentional ambiguity in Patinkin's character. Why does he have almost 100,000 miles on his car if he bought it brand new less than a year ago? What does he do exactly? Why is he so anxious to give Pozzi (a less than savory character in both appearance and attitude) his trust and money?

The pair arrive at the mansion of the two businessmen for the game. They are Mr. Flower (Charles During) and Mr. Stone (Joel Grey, appearing as sinister as ever). They hit the lottery years ago and through big business are making more money than they ever dreamed. Pozzi and Nashe take a tour of their opulent estate, and here is where things start getting a little weird. They are introduced to a large scale model occupying a single room, referred to as The City of the World. "Everything in it happens at once" explains Stone. Contained within the model are little figures of Flower and Stone at different points and landscapes in their lives, existing at the same time. The City of the World also has a few other creepy touches, such as a prison where all of the prisoner figures have smiles on their faces and "can't wait to be rehabilitated". They explain a space cleared on the portion of the model representing their current property for a wall they aspire to build, or rather a monument in the shape of a wall. "A wall of 10,000 stones" Stone himself says through a creepy self-referential gaze. It is an eerie scene, and well establishes the mood of unpredictability that will ripple throughout the rest of the story.

And then the poker game begins. "We took lessons" Stone proudly proclaims, and it shows. The pair clean out Pozzi and Nashe for everything they have and more. Before we know it, they are stuck in way over their heads, owing an ammount they can't possibly pay off. Flower refuses to take credit from the pair, and a quick brainstorming session ensues. With no money or possessions, how can they possibly settle the debt? "There's always the wall" says Stone, "Someone has to build it."

To say anything more would be doing a disservice to this film, which has a remarkably refreshing impact stemming from it's wholly unpredictable plot developments and character revelations. It's just not everyday you come across a movie where you truly have no idea what's coming next, and it is out of this quality that The Music of Chance takes on a kind of hectic ebb and flow that, despite (or maybe even because of) the absurdity, gives it the feeling of life itself. And make no mistake about it, the plot is absurd. You could argue perfectly reasonably that there is no one in their right mind who would endure the impossible situation that Nashe and Pozzi find themselves in. And yet the film hits the right note time and again because at its heart it's not really interested in the circumstances. It's interested in its characters and how they handle themselves admist the chaos and ever evolving conditions. In the world of The Music of Chance, there is no destiny, no kismet. Only people and chance occurences. Random roadside meets and the turn of a card. And when it rains, it pours.

Director Philip Haas and his wife adapted their screenplay from a novel by Paul Auster which remains unread by me. The great crime perpetrated against The Music of Chance is that it has, to this day, never received a DVD release in America, and thus until it does so will remain unseen by all except the few who have the means to purchase and watch the UK disc or those lucky enough to catch an ultra-rare once in a blue moon cable broadcast. This is one of the great, unsung films of the 1990's, a work of deranged affirmation that certainly deserves to be seen by many. Cross your fingers that one day this gem will receive a proper release.

The Phantom of Liberty (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1974)

"Madrid was filled with the stench of -pardon my language - food. It was indecent. "

- Le professeur des gendarmes, "The Phantom of Liberty"

A professor and his wife arrive for a gathering at a friends house. We think they are preparing to have a meal. Instead they all drop trow, have a seat on the toilets mounted around the table in place of chairs, and begin to converse and tell stories as they go about their natural business. A few pick up magazines to browse through. A little girl tells her mother she's hungry and the mother scolds her for her bad manners. The professor stands, pulls up his pants and excuses himself from the table, discreetly asking the maid for the location of the dining room. There he finds a chicken dinner, a bottle of wine and complete privacy. This is just one possible example of the horrifying potential of evolving morals and customs, according to the professor in probably the most famous scene from The Phantom of Liberty, the surrealistic masterwork by legendary Spanish filmmaker Luis Bunuel.

"The idea came to us to make a film which would...go from one story to another story, but leaving a story when apparently it becomes interesting". So speaks screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere on an exclusive interview for the Criterion DVD release of Phantom. Indeed this is a concept that consistently flows throughout the movie. We are introduced to a character, follow them for a bit until they are ostensibly drawn into one crazy situation after another, only to abandon that character for another in a flash, right as the action seems to be approaching a crescendo. If it sounds familiar to you, Richard Linklater also employed a similar style in his 1991 cult hit Slacker, a film I admire but have found to wear a little thinner upon each of my three viewings. It is a premise that in lesser hands could have easily felt manipulative and unnecessary, however for the most part The Phantom of Liberty feels throughout the duration of its 105 minute running time both fresh and inspired, in the style of its execution as well as the ideas that pour out of it. This is a movie of an astonishing creative vision that none other than Bunuel himself could have made.

And now I must be completely honest. I was underwhelmed the first time I watched this movie. I saw it one tired night during the peak of a week long Bunuel marathon I recently and proudly endured, and my initial reaction was that while it had moments of genius (which is to be expected from anything with Bunuel's name on it), much of it felt dull and ponderous. A tired journey with no seeming destination or point. As I noted, I was exhausted during this viewing and ended up probably mentally checking out by the midway point. However I was anxious to give it another chance, as parts of it had lodged themselves in my brain and stayed with me. Particularly my absolute favorite sequence in the film, involving Bunuel regular Julien Bertheau (the priest with a green thumb in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie), playing a man who may or may not be a police commissioner, who on the day of the fourth anniversary of his beloved sister's death receives a telephone call in a lonesome bar from someone claiming to be her. The voice on the phone knows intimate details that no one else could possibly know, and Bertheau is compelled to follow directions leading him to his family's vault in the local cemetery. It is a masterfully directed and hauntingly comic sequence, even if the payoff is purposefully enigmatic.

During my second viewing I found myself quickly enveloped by the hypnotic, deliberate pacing of the film. Parts that had initially bored me now seemed rich with subtle detail and surrealist touches, such as the sequence where a little girl apparently becomes missing at her school, prompting her parents to race there in a panic. In fact the girl is in school and in her desk in plain sight like normal, but that doesn't stop her parents and teacher from conducting a full-on police driven investigation, with the adults occasionally shushing the young girl, who pleads with them, not unreasonably, that she is in fact right there and perfectly fine. This situation is typically Bunuelian, and ripe with comedic moments that had been completely lost on me during my initial, hopeless viewing.

Nevertheless there were moments that still did not work for me this second time around. An extended scene, set at an inn which occupies the most time any location is given during the film, between a nephew and his aunt apparently engaged in an incestual relationship is overlong and comes across as a bit gratuitous, bringing the pace of the film to a quick halt. The part where a sniper kills numerous people from the top of a building, is arrested and sentenced to death, only to be met by photographers and people asking for his autograph on his way out of the courtroom still feels overt and way too easy for Bunuel. However these did not deter my enjoyment of the film, rather this time they simply felt like a few minor, off color brushstrokes on an amazing canvas painting.

So after all of this, what does the film mean? Along with the title, the first scene provides a clue: set in 1808, Spanish soldiers arrive to liberate the city of Toledo. When a handful of the inhabitants refuse liberation, they are lined up and executed, shouting "Down with freedom!" before the triggers are pulled. Bunuel seems to be asking us if alongside everything wonderful coming with liberty, do we likewise lose something? It is a difficult question, one that doesn't have an easy or even tangible answer, but an interesting one to ponder nonetheless as we fall under the spell of Bunuel's meticulously woven work of art.

Noroit (une vengeance) (dir. Jacques Rivette, 1976)

"It is the Judas of the hours, wherein.
Honest salvation is betray'd to sin."

- Thomas Middleton, "The Revenger's Tragedy"
as spoken in "Noroit"

See if you can follow this. In the early 1970's, French filmmaker Jacques Rivette conceptualized a four film project to be titled "Scenes de la vie parallele" ("Scenes from A Parallel Life"). Each film was going to revolve around a battle between two goddesses, one of the moon and one of the sun over a special diamond that had the ability to both take away and give mortality. Each of the four movies was to be fashioned after a particular genre, those being a love story, noir, pirate revenge tale and musical. In that order. Because of a nervous breakdown suffered by Rivette, and a subsequent abandonment of the project, only two of them were filmed and released. The first, released in 1976, was Duelle (une quarantaine), the film noir, which was chronologically the second part in the series. The second and only other movie in the project to be produced in it's intended vision was Noroit (une vengeance), the pirate film. Also released in 1976, it was to be the third installment of the doomed-to-be incompleted project.

A quick browse through my top 25 list should reveal the high esteem in which I hold Rivette as a filmmaker, and Duelle is indeed one of his richest accomplishments. An intoxicating, mystical air breathes in every frame of the film, apparently leading up to a promisingly epic battle between the two goddesses which in fact never ends up taking place. Finally getting a copy of Noroit recently, I was obviously excited to watch it. Could it induce in me the same breathless wave of awe Duelle had done as I watched it for the first time, and then once again over a single weekend?

In a word, the answer would be no. At least not upon an initial viewing. That is not to say that the film isn't brimming with magical moments. If anything, Rivette's charmingly bullheaded refusal to play by anything resembling the rules of a traditional narrative structure are at a peak here, and it works in creating many isolated moments of beauty that stand outside of any attempts at moving the "story" along. In fact, Noroit is the most beautifully photographed Rivette work I've seen to date, often punctuated with small, silent moments of the swaying sea against the backdrops of lush green hills while people wait silently in the shadows for mysterious meetings involving secret agendas the viewer is never completely let in on.

The story, to the extent that there is one, involves Morag (Geraldine Chaplin), the victim of a mostly-female pirate gang who apparently inhabit their own colony, and her attempt to exact revenge against them. Specifically, their sinister leader Giula (played by Bernadette Lafont, so wonderful as Sarah in Rivette's towering masterpiece Out 1: Noli me tangere) who is mostly a quiet, sulking presence throughout the film, only displaying at the rarest of moments (mostly involving bloodshed) a wicked and menacing cheer. One or both of these characters may be goddesses and have possession of a certain powerful stone, but unlike Duelle, Noroit is content to play oblique cat and mouse games with identities, only revealing it's true fantasy core in the final act.

I must mention my favorite aspect of the film, which would be the music. Or rather, the way in which Rivette has decided to soundtrack his film. In both Duelle and Noroit, Rivette has chosen the method of having the music scoring any given moment to be played by actual musicians appearing in the scene, always lurking around the periphery of the frame. In Duelle, you would occasionally hear the haunting, jazzy piano improvisation of Jean Weiner, and if you looked hard, sure enough there he would be in the background of the frame, hunched over his piano playing away. In Noroit oftentimes a scene will be playing out to the tune of a trio of stringed instruments and a flute, only to have the camera finally pan to a section of the room where the men will be huddled in a corner or off to the side, either looking away or passively watching the scene unfold just as the viewer is. It is a startling effect at first. One would think this could take you out of the film, or perhaps make it hard to concentrate. Strangely enough it transcends this notion and ends up being a stroke of inspiration, with the troubadors seeming at times to play the role of Greek Chorus, giving the material an almost mythical quality. Their constant yet disconnected presence is one of the films most potent touches.


So all of this is to say that I was visually captivated by Noroit from beginning to end. And yet it missed a beat for me. The rhythm was a bit off. It lacked the playful charm of Rivette's masterpiece Celine & Julie Go Boating, the magnitude of Out 1 and the aesthetic perfection of Duelle. Something felt out of place, and it will almost assuredly take at least another viewing to put my finger on exactly why. Nevertheless it is a worthy companion piece to Duelle and fascinating in it's own right. One can only use their imagination as to how the entire "Scenes de la vie parallele" series would have panned out had it been completed. Luckily using your imagination is something you almost certainly will have no problem with after viewing any single Rivette film.