I’ve Loved You So Long (2008)

Tags

Drama, French, I've Loved You So Long, Kristin Scott Thomas, Movie

well this is certainly exciting...

This movie is in French, with English subtitles.

PG-13

Kristin Scott Thomas, Elsa Zylberstein

Juliette: In prison, I’d put books by my pillow.  Their presence reassured me.  A sort of rampart…against the world.  A world without me.  It got along fine without me…

Juliette (Thomas) has been in prison for 15 years, convicted of murder.  When she is released, only her younger sister Lea (Zylberstein), whom she barely knows, is there for her.  Lea invites Juliette to come live with her family until she can get settled back into a normal life.

The “Absent One”.  That’s what we learn Juliette was called in prison by her fellow inmates due to her daily pacing around a courtyard, never saying a word.  She essentially removed herself from the world due to her sadness and guilt over what she had done.

Naturally, integrating back into a world you’ve removed yourself from can be difficult.  Juliette must learn to live with family she’s never met, keep a steady job while also relating to coworkers, and deal with romantic interests.  Kristin Scott Thomas does a good job of subtly (for the most part) conveying Juliette’s feelings of discomfort and awkwardness.  Only near the end does some over-acting creep its way into the movie.

Her story is interesting, but the movie plods along with a lot of seemingly extraneous scenes thrown in.  I think some of the other story lines are meant to show other prisons that people must deal with: depression, senility, being mute, etc.  The problem is, all of those sequences cause the main story about Juliette to lose steam.

The other big issue I had with the film is that the end is way too “feel good”.  I won’t give away much about it, but it seems like something that would get tacked onto a Hollywood movie after test audiences didn’t like the original ending.

Despite its interesting set up and touching moments, the movie was just too dull and scattered overall.  The performance from Thomas is worth checking out, but you might want to be ready to pause it half way through and take a nap.

It can be hard to land a job when people find out during the interview that you’re a murderer.

10 – 1.1 for being dull at times – 1.4 for too many scattered story lines – 1 for the pat ending = 6.5

La Moustache (2005)

Tags

Drama, French, La Moustache, Movie

I like your new invisible mustache...

This movie is in French, with English subtitles.

PG-13?

Vincent Lindon, Emmanuelle Devos

Agnes: We did everything right today.  We bought you a jacket.  You hate it, I don’t.  You’ll never wear it.  That’s what couples do.

Marc (Lindon) decides to shave off the mustache he’s sported for about the last 15 years.  Not only does his wife Agnes (Devos) not notice it missing, she even denies he ever had a mustache once he’s pointed out the fact that he shaved it.  After his friends say the same thing, Marc starts to question his own sanity.

I like odd movies that create a sense of mystery out of something simple, but I also like for those movies to have at least some semblance of resolution.  La Moustache has a good set up, interesting performances, and a real sense of confusion and mystery.  What it doesn’t have is a satisfactory conclusion.  I don’t need everything spelled out for me in big letters, but it would be nice to have a starting point from which to form an opinion on what I just watched.

I wanted to hypothesize that everybody was just playing a hoax on Marc, but certain facts and events don’t seem to support that.  Then I wanted to assume that he was just going crazy without realizing it, but that didn’t seem to be supported either.  All we’re left with is the possibility that he has entered the Twilight Zone.

The build-up of the mystery is fun, as we try to piece together clues and form guesses at what is happening, but then in the end it doesn’t seem to matter what we’ve guessed.  We just have to go right on guessing after the credits roll.

Even though the movie doesn’t seem to support the possibility that Marc is simply going crazy, it’s interesting to view it from that angle.  As John Locke said on the show Lost, “Crazy people don’t know they’re going crazy.  They think they’re getting saner.”  Marc is the only one aware of the reality that obviously seems like the true one.  Of course he’s always had a mustache!  He even has pictures to prove it.  Or does he?  I’ll give the movie credit in that regard.  It made me put myself in the position of someone who suddenly finds his perception of reality being called into question.  Could I just accept something as fact that I *knew* in my heart wasn’t true, just because everybody else told me it was?

There’s probably some other symbolism and analogies about relationships going on here, but I guess they’re lost on me for the most part.  In fact, I’d welcome any thoughts or explanations if you’d care to offer them up in the comments section.

Mustaches seem like too much work to maintain.

10 – 2.2 for the overly ambiguous final 1/4th of the movie – 1.3 for a few other slow parts – .4 for some unlikely character behavior = 6.1

Summer Hours (2009)

Tags

Charles Berling, Drama, French, Jeremie Renier, Juliette Binoche, Movie, Summer Hours

a bird!

This movie is in French, with English subtitles.

I’d say PG-13 probably

Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling, Jeremie Renier

Eloise: He said to choose anything. l couldn’t take advantage. l took something ordinary. What would l do with something valuable?

Three middle-aged siblings must decide what to do with their mother’s estate and possessions after her death.

This got high ratings on rottentomatoes.com, but I found it a bit tedious to sit through.  It wasn’t bad, it was just meandering and wasn’t made in any real interesting way.

I found the topic – whether you want to, or can, burden yourself with your family heirlooms and possessions – to be an interesting one.  I just thought they went about it all in too slowly paced a way.  There wasn’t a lot of emotional buildup or pay off.  Also, conversation-heavy movies can be hard to deal with when you’re having to read subtitles.

The actors did a good job…I think.  Again, hard to tell when it’s not in English.

Overall, it does make you think about family heirlooms and where the real value in them lies.  Do they have more value in a museum on display for the world to see or in your living room, holding flowers, and reminding you of days of your youth?

10 – 4 because it was tedious to sit through + .3 for making me think about the subject matter after it was over = 6.3