Two Shorts by François Ozon: A Summer Dress (1996) and X2000 (1998)

19 Wednesday Nov 2014

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Ants, Bruno Slagmulder, Casual sex, Drama, François Ozon, Frédéric Mangenot, Gay couple, Holiday, Lucia Sanchez, New Year's Eve, Review, Short films, Une robe d'été, Y2K

François Ozon is one of the most interesting writer/directors working currently in movies. He makes socially astute, emotionally complex features, and infuses them with wit and style. He writes great roles for women – Charlotte Rampling, Swimming Pool (2003); Romola Garai, Angel (2007); Catherine Deneuve, Potiche (2010) – and isn’t afraid to tackle themes surrounding sexuality and sexual identity. Early in his career Ozon made a number of short movies, and unusually, they’re all intriguing for one reason or another. The two movies reviewed here show a marked difference in style and tone, but taken as examples of a writer/director who’s discovering just what he can do, they make for beguiling viewing.

A Summer Dress (1996)

Original title: Une robe d’été

D: François Ozon / 15m

Cast: Frédéric Mangenot, Lucia Sanchez, Sébastien Charles

Luc (Mangenot) and Lucien (Charles) are young, gay and on holiday together. Lucien is the more extroverted of the two and likes dancing along to Sheila’s version of Bang Bang. Luc, on the other hand, wants to enjoy the peace and quiet and concentrate on getting a tan. When Lucien refuses to stop enjoying himself, Luc heads off to the beach where he strips off and goes for a swim before settling back down to sunbathe. There he meets a young girl, Lucia (Sanchez), who asks him if he wants to go into the nearby woods and make love. Luc agrees and they find a spot in the woods and have sex. When they return to the beach, Luc’s clothes are gone. Lucia lends him her dress so that he can get home without having to travel naked. When he gets back to Lucien, the sight of Luc in a dress arouses him and they have sex as well. The next day, Luc returns the dress to Lucia.

If that all sounds too slight, even for a fifteen minute movie, then in some ways you’d be right, but then it’s also the point. A Summer Dress is interested in capturing a small series of moments in a twenty-four hour period, but moments that aren’t necessarily profound or destined to have a prolonged effect on its main characters. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a summer fling, a fleeting holiday romance that happens on its own terms and comes without any emotional baggage. As such, the movie is a treat to watch, its young protagonists experiencing life on their own terms and without the judgement of others (a lifestyle we might all like to have). There’s an openness and honesty in their approach to sex that is both carefree and naïve, but so redolent of youth that it’s refreshing to be reminded of it (if you’re well clear of your teens). A Summer Dress is an ode to the time in our lives when there are endless possibilities and life is bright and beautiful and full of promise.

Rating: 8/10 – a simple yet elegantly filmed tale of sexual liberation, A Summer Dress is Ozon at his most playful; with winning performances and the lightest of touches, this is a movie that provides a perfect capsule of time and place and incident.

X2000 (1998)

D: François Ozon / 8m

Cast: Denise Schropfer-Aron, Bruno Slagmulder, Lucia Sanchez, Flavien Coupeau, Lionel Le Guevellou, Olivier Le Guevellou

Waking up in his apartment the morning after the New Year’s Eve celebrations for the year 2000, a man (Slagmulder) goes into his kitchen and makes himself a glass of water with two Alka Seltzers in it. Then he’s puzzled to find twins in a sleeping bag in his lounge. When he looks out of the window he sees a couple making love in the apartment opposite. Meanwhile, his wife (Schropfer-Aron) also wakes up and decides to take a bath. The man falls from his perch at the window and breaks the glass with the Alka Seltzer in it. When he puts the broken glass in the bin he finds ants crawling over and around something underneath the bin. He then goes into the bathroom where he tells his wife that the ants are attacking.

Where A Summer Dress sees Ozon taking a somewhat lighthearted approach to the material, X2000 sees him in a more formal, meditative mood, using heavily stylised, static shots to represent notions of time and space and distance and perception. The man is continually surprised and/or bemused by what he sees, either within the flat or without. It’s as if he’s learning about everything from scratch, his reactions more childlike than that of an experienced adult (when he sees the couple making love he climbs up onto a unit in order to get a better view). His wife, meanwhile, keeps her head under the water, retreating from the world, prolonging the silence in the flat, even when her husband breaks all the glass. It’s a very clinical piece, dialogue-free until the very end, and shows Ozon working with limited resources to great effect. The elliptical nature of the storyline – such as it is – is clearly meant to be left to the viewer to interpret, but that doesn’t stop X2000 from being compelling in its own way.

Rating: 8/10 – with so much going on under the surface, X2000 is open to so many interpretations it’s almost confounding, but this makes it all the more rewarding; the brief running time merely reinforces the quality of Ozon’s perspective on the material and the cleverness of its construction.

Blended (2014)

03 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Adam Sandler, Africa, Comedy, Divorcee, Drew Barrymore, Frank Coraci, Holiday, Review, Romance, Widower

D: Frank Coraci / 117m

Cast: Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore, Kevin Nealon, Terry Crews, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Emma Fuhrmann, Bella Thorne, Braxton Beckham, Alyvia Alyn Lind, Joel McHale, Abdoulaye NGom, Kyle Red Silverstein, Zak Henri, Jessica Lowe

Widower Jim (Sandler) and divorcee Lauren (Barrymore) meet on a blind date that goes from bad to worse to disaster and leaves both of them never wanting to see each other again. The holidays are coming up and both of them are looking to take their kids – Jim has three daughters: teenager Hilary (Thorne), Espn (Fuhrmann), and Lou (Lind), Lauren has two boys: Brendan (Beckham) and Tyler (Silverstein) – away, but neither set of children is looking forward to where they’re going. When Jim and Lauren bump into each other at the store, their credit cards get mixed up. Jim realises first and goes to Lauren’s house where Lauren’s friend Jen (McLendon-Covey) is freaking out because her boyfriend, Dick, wanted her to meet his children on a planned trip to Africa. Having broken up with Dick because of this, the holiday is now available. Lauren asks Jen if she can go in Jen’s place and take her boys, while Jim discovers Dick is his boss, and he asks Dick to sell the holiday to him.

When they all arrive at the resort in Africa, Jim and Lauren find they’re on a “blended familymoon”, and are surrounded by couples where one of the partners is a step-parent and the idea is to develop stronger ties with their step-children. They meet Eddy (Nealon) and Ginger (Lowe), and Eddy’s teenage son, Jake (Henri). Hilary has an instant crush on Jake, but because she looks like a boy she doesn’t think he’ll notice her. The two families take part in the arranged activities and the children all learn to get on while Jim and Lauren continue to spar and bicker (even though they are clearly starting to like each other). Lauren arranges for Hilary to have a makeover, and now Jake really does notice her. With the holiday coming to an end, and with both Jim and Lauren having bonded with each other’s kids, Jim takes Lauren out for a romantic dinner but when they go to kiss, he backs off, unable to commit.

They all return home, and Jim begins to realise his mistake in not kissing Lauren. He goes to see her but Lauren’s ex-husband, Mark (McHale), answers the door and makes it sound as if he and Lauren are getting back together. Disheartened, Jim leaves, while Mark tries to persuade Lauren to have him back. She won’t, but she tells him if he wants to make a good impression with his kids he should turn up for Tyler’s Little League baseball game at the weekend. But on the day, it’s not Mark who turns up…

Going by the assumption, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, Blended is the obvious follow-on from Just Go With It (2011), swapping Hawaii for Africa, and Jennifer Aniston’s dental assistant for Drew Barrymore’s divorced closet organiser, but without the added (and unexpected) star power of Nicole Kidman. It’s a safe move, and an even safer movie, with Sandler injecting just enough of his loud man-child persona, as well as the standard amount of risqué gags, to ensure Blended is a few steps away from the kind of bland family fare that Disney pumps out with frightening regularity. It almost feels like a movie made by committee, comfortably ticking off the boxes on its way to the expected happy ending: couple who initially detest each other – check; kids with various problems that will be addressed and dealt with by the end – check; supporting characters who provide most of the goofy humour – check; family values firmly reinforced in time-honoured Brady Bunch fashion – check; and so on.

Love him or loathe him, Sandler has a loyal fan base, and his movies regularly make their money back at the box office – just don’t mention the dreadful That’s My Boy (2012) which couldn’t recoup its $70 million budget even with international sales – so he must be doing something right. As here, he appears to make little effort in terms of acting, and he’s becoming less and less of a physical performer, but he generally makes good choices in terms of the movies he makes, as well as the people he surrounds himself with. But it’s with movies like Blended that it really springs to mind he’s just coasting until the next, more interesting project (and 2015’s Pixels may just be that project).

With its predictable plotting, tiresome running gags, and by-the-numbers characterisations, Blended could almost be the cure for insomnia, but it does have some good one-liners – “I naturally assumed your husband shot himself” – and the South African locations are suitably impressive, but the direction is too pedestrian for the movie to take off as effectively as Barrymore does in the parascending scene, and the script takes no chances with the material, leaving the audience amused for the most part but with little that’s truly memorable to take away with them. It’s also a movie with a good deal of padding, its near two-hour running time stretched out largely because of the unnecessary third act set back in the US.

On the performance side, the various child actors are all appropriately adorable, cute, winsome etc., while the adults, Sandler and Barrymore aside, all blend in with the scenery and make little impression. Unusually, there aren’t the expected cameos from some of Sandler’s off-screen pals, which may have provided a much-needed distraction, but all in all the performances are perfunctory enough and match the spirit of the script and the direction.

Rating: 5/10 – lacklustre and only sporadically entertaining, Blended is Sandler and co. ably treading on water but to no discernible effect; something to pass the time if you need to, otherwise there are other, better Adam Sandler movies you could be watching.

Magic Magic (2013)

30 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Arthouse thriller, Chile, Emily Browning, Holiday, Hypnosis, Insomnia, Juno Temple, Michael Cera, Review, Sebastián Silva

D: Sebastián Silva / 97m

Cast: Juno Temple, Michael Cera, Emily Browning, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Agustín Silva

Shot entirely in Chile, Magic Magic is a slow-burn thriller that begins with Alicia (Temple) travelling outside the US for the first time to stay with her friend Sara (Browning). Alicia is a little shy and unsure of herself, and looks to Sara for support when she fails to impress Sara’s boyfriend Agustín (Silva), and his two friends Barbara (Moreno) and Brink (Cera). Leaving Santiago for a cabin in the countryside, they get so far when Sara receives a call saying she has to go back to resit one of her exams. Against Alicia’s wishes, Sara travels back alone, promising to be back the next day.

At the cabin, Alicia repeatedly tries to contact Sara but there’s no signal. She becomes increasingly restless and that night has trouble sleeping. The next day, Alicia, Agustín and Brink go hunting with a rifle; Brink shoots a parrot, leaving Alicia disturbed by his cruelty. Later, Alicia manages to contact Sara, who tells her she now won’t be back until the next day. Alicia has another bad night, and in the morning is offered pills by Barbara to help her sleep. Sara arrives and the group (minus Barbara) take a boat to a nearby place called The Rock where there is an outcrop that can be jumped off into the water. Alicia freezes and, although she is reassured by the others, her behaviour begins to cause them serious concern. Alicia, maybe through lack of sleep, is erratic, and prone to emotional outbursts; she also has fugue moments.

That night she is hypnotised by Agustín and responds directly to suggestions, even when Brink tells her to put her hand in the fire. Later, Alicia sleepwalks and causes a disturbance before being found. The next day there is an altercation between her and Brink which later leads to the discovery that Alicia is taking a lot of medication. And then that evening, Alicia disappears…

From the start, Magic Magic takes pains to show us the emotional fragility that Alicia suffers from. But while we see this time after time (until it becomes annoying – we get it, okay?), there’s no clear explanation for her behaviour, nor if the things that are happening are largely in her head because of some psychological issue, or the side effects of her medication, or even a mixture of both. The lack of consistency in her behaviour, and in her attitude towards the rest of the group, doesn’t help either, and there are too many occasions when she behaves weirdly, it’s briefly commented on, then it’s on to the next weird moment. And it doesn’t help that the culmination of all these events makes for a final ten minutes that shoves the movie into a whole different territory.

With the main character acting so strangely – and with little or no explanation to guide the viewer – Magic Magic suffers mightily from being a combination of arthouse and thriller that panders more to arthouse conventions than thriller ones. In the hands of a more skilled writer/director, this might not have been a problem, but Silva overplays Alicia’s reticence and odd behaviour rather than developing the mystery of what’s happening and why. Fortunately, the director has a strong ally in Temple, who despite the limitations of her character, puts in a brave, instinctive performance that helps the movie immeasurably. There’s a moment when she’s walking through a field and encounters a couple of horses. The moment is infused with a low-key tension – why though, is again left unanswered – but Alicia’s sense of uneasiness is portrayed credibly despite the lack of reasoning behind it. It’s Temple’s ability to elevate the material in this way that saves the movie from being too diffident and removed.

Cera is the other main draw here, and fares reasonably well as Brink, but again the script has him behave in such a bullying, cowardly manner that his continual taunts and digs at Alicia become more annoying than anything else. It’s good to see him play such an awful person – aside from his brilliant turn in This Is the End (2013) – but there’s little depth here and it’s hard to see why Agustín and Barbara would put up with him. Browning fares badly, with the underwritten role of best friend whose return trip to Santiago turns out to be for other reasons but when they are revealed, prove to have no relation or effect on what’s going on with Alicia. Moreno has little to do except moan about Alicia throughout, while Silva is almost a bystander with little to do except continually apologise for Brink’s bad behaviour.

With so much going on that is left unexplained and/or undeveloped, Magic Magic is a frustrating experience, and the title doesn’t provide any clues either (though it does relate to the movie’s denouement). It also ends abruptly, leaving the audience even more in the dark than they were at the beginning. The cast do the best they can under the circumstances and there’s some pleasure to be had from the beautiful Chilean locations, but as an evening’s entertainment you’d be hard pressed to find something less enervating.

Rating: 5/10 – with its writer/director denying his audience a way in to what’s happening, Magic Magic fails to engage or provide a character to sympathise with; good performances aside, this is a disappointing movie that seems happy to be obscure for its own sake.