Dogs Bark

Recife For Disaster - - Neighboring Sounds [O Som Ao Redor] (2012, Brazil) - - 23 October 2013

Recommended.  Serenaded all day by leaf blowers, I was well prepared for an evening viewing of Kleber Mendonça Filho’s (Recife Frio) interesting film, Neighboring Sounds. Despite this, Julie Newmar is probably a better representative of the upscale gnashing of teeth that characterizes this film. The plot moves inexorably towards a confrontation between the wealth and scrabbling poverty that irritates, even as it’s paid to serve. Mendonça - - a sound man in his own right - - and uncredited editor Pablo Lamar (score by DJ Dolores) create more than atmosphere . . . maybe the stifling air preceding a hurricane. When the storm finally breaks, we’re actually well down the street; however, no one is really safe in this unsustainable world. The actors are all solid, particularly novelist W.J. Solha as the godfatherly Francisco and newcomer Maeve Jinkings as a sleep-deprived housewife. Neighboring Sounds was submitted this month as Brazil’s entry in the 86^th Oscars. Good choice.

Few Easy Pieces - - De Rouille Et D'Os [Rust And Bone](2012) - - 7 July 2013

Strongly recommended. Rust And Bone reminds me of the best Hollywood movies of the 70’s, in which morally questionable characters, Nicholson or Hackman, negotiated ethically tectonic terrain through grave danger to an ambiguously safe haven. The irony is that these movies were re-imaginations of French New Wave films based upon American 50’s noir. So am I admiring here a French Newer Wave? Writer (with Thomas Bidegain)/director Jacques Audiard has the pedigree and the props (A Prophet, The Beat That My Heart Skipped) to be major part of the tsunami. He elicits immensely satisfying performances from two ethereal actors, Marion Cotillard (Inception), as a legless, former trainer of show orcas and Matthias Schoenaerts (Bullhead) as her bare knuckle lover. Cotillard delivers a nuanced, never sentimental, portrayal of whole-person rehabilitation; while Schoenaerts’s quiet authenticity reduces most Hollywood action stars to total posers. Rust And Bone is one of last year’s best films. 

 

The Dude Dries Out - - Crazy Heart (2009) - - 13 February 2010

Recommended.  It’s not fair for me to review this very nice little movie, being, as I am, a man of age and taste so like its subject and possessing, as I do, such an understanding of his foibles. Might ask Jacques Cousteau, if still sitting in it, to review the ocean. Or attempt to explain to a tender barmaid a Tom Waits lyric, simultaneously attempting to strike a match with one hand, lighting a cigarette, half-smoked and stained with yesterday’s beer, glancing sub-rosa into her velvety, brown eyes and strawberry hair, pondering over any last chance a dissolute man gets to hold a generous woman’s heart in his battered hands . . . on Valentine's Day. For if there’s a message in Crazy Heart, it floats upon the grace and pity of the Fates, to sigh and say again, the Duke shall abide for a little while longer . . . such a very little while longer.