At the same time I've been able to squeeze in a few movies, so here comes a mega post.
Jeanne Dielman was incredible, to put it lightly. Coming from the iPod/Netflix generation where basically everything pushed on us is meant to reflect our supposedly non-existent attention span, Chantal Akerman's movie was a smack in the face. If fast-paced action films filled with explosions are at one end of the attention span-spectrum, 3 hours of a woman doing household chores with no music and practically no dialogue as at the far end of the other. While there is this slightly feminist aspect of the film, this revealing of how tedious and borderline imprisoning the life of a housewife can be, what I respected so much about Jeanne Dielman is how difficult it must've been to make. Cooking food, making coffee, making the bed, etc. seem like basic functions but because Akerman films each of them completely, the detail put into place must've been extreme. Just think of Delphine Seyrig, showing up to work and having to tenderize pieces of meat, but exactly as Akerman instructs her to, for hours a day. It's finely choreographed domesticity. And because the film is 3 hours long, who knows how much film was left to deal with before the editing process. Jeanne Dielman was an experience and nothing less. It tested my boundaries and proved that I could love something I was completely unaccustomed to. Brilliant.
As much as I love watching French films from the 60s and 70s, I'm pretty awful when it comes to its more contemporary cinema. Nevertheless, I had to watch Arnaud Desplechin's Rois et Reine for my cinema class and really enjoyed it. Mathieu Amalric, whom I'd never heard of prior to, is really fantastic, particularly at bringing humor into an otherwise dire film...sort of. It's difficult for me to pin a genre onto the film (drama, maybe) because of its nature. You never really know what's reality and what isn't, but in a very subtle manner. It's not the typical drama, by any means, and I really enjoyed myself. Desplechin is better known in the States (I think) for a more recent film, Un conte de Noël , which I've never seen, but is said to have some of the same characteristics. We'll put it on my checklist, considering Rois et Reine was so good.
With the Pierre Clémenti retrospective rapidly approaching, I've done more research on him, picking out which films I'm planning to become broke for during the week of the 11th, but also which films of his I should watch that aren't being screened. This somehow led me to Porcile, an odd little number by odd little director Pier Paolo Pasolini. It's a strange film, to say the least, the story concerning Jean-Pierre Léaud is easier to follow than the sparse story of Clémenti's cannibal, but as a fan of his, it's at least worth a peek for its visuals. It's beautifully shot, and Pasolini films Clémenti like a prince. The fact that he never rested on his good looks to accept typical film roles is one of the reasons I admire him so much, but they certainly don't hurt either. In the simple words of my professor, when Clémenti was brought up in class yesterday, "Il est beau, non ?"
Note: While I wasn't enraptured by Porcile, its transfer (Water Bearer Films?) is fucking atrocious. If you're looking to watch the film, try to track down one from another distributor.
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