Four Films

A few weeks ago I happened to see The Dreamlife of Angels which follows two girls in a small town in France. Both girls are drifters in different ways. Ill-paid jobs at a clothing factory bring them together and soon they are living temporarily in the house of a girl in a coma. One of the girls, Marie, has a mother who is a victim of domestic violence and is rather fearful and closed in nature. Inevitably her barriers fall and she falls in love with an unsuitable man which results in her descent into paranoia and the break-up of the friendship. The other, Isa, discovers the diary of the coma girl and begins to visit her and read to her from her diaries. In the interlude before all this, the girls also flirt and establish a friendship with the bouncers at a club who are sweet on them. Things escalate, Marie dies and Isa returns home. The ending of the film is in yet another factory as Isa starts a new job and the last lingering shots are of each of the women around Isa working (if one observes a pattern in my random posts it may be that many touch on women working at what are seen to be menial or tedious jobs!). The movie’s exploration of young working class women is very effective and it has generally good performances. But at least part of the movie’s success rests on Elodie Bouchez’s gamine Isa, her performance is very tender and warm-hearted. As an aside, doing the inevitable google search, I found the inevitable way out article :-) This one is on Gregoire Colin, who plays the cad. More than Mr. Colin, I am in total agreement with her views on Mr. Pitt!

The reason I saw Dreamlife was because I had seen Bouchez in a movie that is probably my favourite coming of age film, Andre Techine’s Wild Reeds. Techine’s film, set during the Algerian War, has four young actors who sort of represent different aspects of the country. Standing in for Techine himself (the film feels autobiographical) is Francois who is sensitive and well-read and just coming to terms with his homosexuality. Bouchez, plays Maite, young and earnest and a girl who has absorbed her mother’s communist principles and is a little in love with Francois and later with Henri. Serge is the rustic who has his way with Francois and would like his way with Marie and also has a brother who is killed in the war. Lastly, Henri is the new boy and a pied-noir, full of resentment at being forced to return to France and at the abandonment of French-Algerians. Techine’s film essentially follows the usual coming of age set-up i.e. the experiences of the group over a summer and how they are changed by it. But unlike many other films it also grounds its characters in an adult world and explores the different ways in which they themselves move towards adulthood. Plus it is subtle, warm and rich with details. Bouchez is the only woman and all three boys are a little in love with her or admire her. And she is entirely admirable in the role bringing both strength and vulnerability to her character. Trailer here.

As it happened, last week SBS also saw it fit to screen two movies that dealt with colonialism in Africa. The Wedding Song is set in Tunisia but it is not particularly about Europeans in Africa. Instead it explores the friendship between a Tunisian Jew and a Muslim and the strains put on their friendship in the wake of the French capitulation to the Nazis. It is distinctly feminist in tone; in fact it creates a luxuriating and intimate feminine world - with more than a tinge of lesbianism - which is under strain from masculine influences. Unsurprisingly it is directed by a woman and like many other movies directed by women, it is lensed in a rather sensual and tactile manner. I don’t think it quite gets where it wants to but it was still an interesting piece of cinema. The Murmuring Coast, also directed by a woman, is set in Mozambique and deals directly with the effects of colonialism on both parties. At it’s centre is a Portuguese woman who comes out to Mozambique to marry and is repelled both by the change in her husband and the brutality and indifference of her fellow countrymen. It too draws a distinction between the feminine and masculine worlds of the colonisers, but it is also more political in tone dealing as it does with the last years of the Portuguese colonial experience (the movie is set in the 60s and of course Portugal was in India too until that decade). This movie too is beautifully lensed and evokes the period with its mix of idealism and despair very well. Plus it is one of those films that have a pervasive sense of atmospheric melancholy and decay.