263. Desperately Seeking Susan

Song - Susie Q  (Creedence Clearwater Revival)

Movie: Desperately Seeking Susan (Susan Seidelman, 1985)

Remember Barbara Loden? After making Wanda, a very good film exposing all her potential vulnerabilities and weaknesses, she never got another opportunity to direct. Such examples should probably inform a bit more (the correct) criticisms of Beyonce's butchering of Jolene. Purely as a piece of music, I actually like Beyonce's version more than Dolly Parton's. but rewriting that song to present yourself as a badass queen who will wreck Jolene is rather pathetic and does indeed highlight that Beyonce is more interestend in being her own brand manager than in being an interesting artist. I have never cared much for her, but it is worth asking whether she would have been as big if she didn't present herself so forcefully as a strong powerful woman. Probably not, but Dolly Parton's (who is of course white) career is no slouch despite openly fearing Jolene's competition. 

Anyhow, I've never much cared for Madonna for similar reasons. By the time I got into pop culture, she was already an institution, who seemed mostly interested in highlighting how much of an institution she was. Desperately Seeking Susan, in which she plays Susan, does make you understand how she could have become the biggest star in the world - it is not by projecting indestructible power. Madonna plays a cocky confident woman with a great sense of style, who knows her way around men and always comes and most charismatic and assertive person in the room. She is however also poor and on the run from criminals with guns. The police are not her friends and neither are the rich businessmen with expensive home decoration. Her people are her charming aimleslly drifting boyfriend Jim (Robert Joy), movie projectionist Dez (Aidan Quinn) who lives in a half-empty loft above the cinema he works in, desperate housewife Roberta (Rosanna Arquette, the film's actual lead), and Crystal (Anna Thomson), who is not even able to keep a job as a magician's assistant in a dingy magic club. In other words, Madonna is placed among the vagabonds and misfits of New York and presented as one of them,, always one stroke of bad luck away from the gutter. That makes her coolness and bravado come through more than any context in which she is presented as the effortlessly all-conquering queen of the world. I have mostly registered her songs as background noise, but her appeal here inspired a YoiuTube Madonna session. It appears Vogue, Material Girl (decidedly not a song presenting Madonna as an underdog) and Into the Groove are rather great!

Desperately Seeking Susan is a mistaken identity film in which various colorful New Yorkers, led by Roberta, desperately search the city streets without ever having the full or the correct information to find what they are looking for. Shenanigans and misunderstandings ensue, and because the audience is always one step ahead of the characters, all of this is often very funny, This the kind of film that I will always like, but for it to be truly great, it needs to either take its surreal absurdity up a notch or have a screenplay that is tight as a rock. As it is, Desperately Seeking Susan finds itself in the unenviable position of being the perfect companion piece to After Hours, without ever being able to measure up to it. It does have though absolutely exceptional costume and set design. One reason its screenplay is not as sharp as it could have been is because it features a lot of scenes which exist mostly to geek at Madonna and her outfits. Madonna released Like A Virgin during filming, and although the film was rewritten to cash in on her success, these scenes do have a purpose beyond just that. The film's fun  comes from putting New Yorkers with different attitudes and of different walks of life together, and Seidelman is clearly interested in how the aesthetics of these attitudes and walks of life clash and contrast. You may not be surprised to find whose aesthethics are presented as the way of the future, but you may reflect on how long it's been since a mainstream film/tv show presented such a progressive, loving and colorful view of life on the New York streets.

262. Wanda

Song - I Would Stay (Krezip)

Movie: Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1970)

When done right, there are few things in American cinema better than a romanticised outlaws-on-the-run movie. However, folks who can express themselves colorfully, who can present themselves as cool and attractively distinct individuals, and who are crafty enough to be able to conjure a vision of a better life, and to subvert authority in ingeniously nifty ways, aren't the kind of folks that need to become outlaws on the run in the first place. That's more likely to be the fate of people like Wanda (Barbara Loden), who lasts only two days at the sewing factory. She is too slow, according to her boss. We haven't seen her at the job, but the film never even tries to give the impression that he could have been wrong. Wanda is slow, both mentally and physically, and it's no surprise that when she ends up, almost by accident, in cahoots with a petty criminal she goes along for the ride. She lacks the (financial and intellectual) capacity/imagination to make active choices about her life. 

I had been under the impression that this is a film about a woman who, tired of being a submissive housewife, abandons her family for an adventurous life on the road where she can assert her independence. Barbara Loden was married to Elia Kazan, who was by some accounts, patronizing, lealous and dismissive of her ambitions. Despite that. Loden became one of the few women to direct, write and star in an American movie; having read that the film had some autobiographic elements, I expected it to be a reflection of her attitude and intelligence. Moreover, the film is considered a landmark of American feminist cinema, and contemporary American feminist cinema, with some exeptions, doesn't have much room for portrayals of women who are not primarily strong and independent. 

Barbara Loden is quite merciless in depicting how men abuse Wanda. Almost every man we meet uses her for sexual and/or material gain and the film is quite clear-eyed about the societal structures that make such exploitation possible. However, Loden is equally merciless in depicting the intrinsic negative qualities of Wanda, leaving little doubt that independently from whichever patriarchal structures exist, Wanda would be incapable of building a better life for herself. Those two ideas rarley live side by side in (American) movies these days - movies that present themselves as feminist are mostly about celebrating the great succeses of specific women who have overcome the hurdles on their way, but rarely question/depict what happens if you are simply incapable of doing that. Too many people refuse to acknowledge that individuals can fail for their own personal reasons regardless of whether existing societal structures are advantaging or disadvantaging them. 

It's an understatement to say that Loden doesn't depict its society as advantageous. Most of the film takes place in crumbling rural areas, crummy hotelrooms with barely anything beyond a bed, and on lonely highways. Everything looks so drab, grey and plainly unispiring that it almost feels too pessimistic to call it naturalistic. But the faces on display indicate that what we are seeing is indeed as depressing as it seems. Almost everyone in the film looks as broken down, defeated and disheveled as possible. Still, even within this context Loden manages to find moments of humanity, levity and dark self-deprecating humor - if the film was paced a bit faster it could have been a crime comedy. It's ultimately about two people who fumble crimes because they don't realise they are way in over their heads. I quite liked it and it does indeed feel as an indictment of American cinema that this is the only thing Loden got to direct.  

261. My Fair Lady

Song - Geef Mij Je Angst (Andre Hazes)

Movie: My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964)

This is the first Audrey Hepburn film I've seen and it's easy to see why she was so beloved. She essentially plays four different iterations of her character here - a coarse flower girl, a sincere pupil grappling with proper language and etiquette, an aristocrat, and an educated, confident working class woman. She is always effortlessly charming and likable, which is in this case more important than being effortlessly convincing. Eliza Doolittle's supposedly unadorned working class accent at the beginning is, even within the theatrical needs of the film, so over the top that it comes off as more affected than the posh speech of Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison), a linguistics professor who has bet his 'friend' Colonel Pickering (Wilfrid Hide-Whyte) that in just a couple of weeks he can pass off common Eliza as a duchess of wealth and sophistication.

Hepburn's performance is further challenged by the studio's demands, against her wishes, to dub most of the songs. As the camera is pointed straight at Eliza (often in close-up) during many of her songs, Hepburn's lyp sincing is extremely obvious and distracting. The dubbing however works in the film's favor during its greatest sequence at the Ascot race course, where the highest of Brtish high society meets to observe each other, solidify their place in the hierarchy and occasionally watch a horse race, This crowd is introduced in a series of still shots that are made to look like Impressionist paintings. All people are dressed in similar, yet distinctly different costumes in various shades of grey, black and white. The interplay of various colors and shapes creates some of the most impressive compositions I've ever seen in a film, and things only get better when Cukor introduces movement to these shots. The movement is however deliberately stiff and mechanical, as if we are watching diorama theatre, or one of those museum experiments where they take a classical painting and use the latest technology to stimulate/re-imagine the movements of the work's subjects. 

The sequence is not only a technical and stylistic wonder, it also completely re-arranges how we are supposed to see this film. Up until then Henry Higgins is presented as an obviously intelligent person who is comfortable with his position at the center of the London upper class. There are some jabs at his arrogance and chauvinism, but the film mostly doesn't seem to doubt the idea that it is just and right that this man is supposed to teach Eliza the ways of the world and that she will be obviously better off if she listens to him. In the process, it reproduces some, generously called, old-fashioned (even for 1964) ideas about class and gneder. In combination with the comfortably traditional musical theatre songs, it's easy to get the impression that beyond Audrey Hepburn, the movie doesn't have a lot going for it, especially if you are not a fan of populist American musical theatre. However, even before we get to Ascot, there is a fantasy sequence where Eliza dreams of the King murdering Henry, and an unexpected aside in which the house staff bursts into song demanding better working conditions. By the time Henry Higgins shows up at the horse races wearing a discordant brown suit, and is almost shunned by his mother for his lack of manners, you have to admit the movie is actually doing stuff.

What the movie is doing, among other things, is show how language, class and appearance are being used to hide more uncomfortable truths about both individuals and society as a whole. It is succesful in part thanks to the great performance of Rex Harrison who allows you to interpret Henry Higgins' posh, self-centered intellectualism as the defence mechanism of either a ragingly insecure charlatan mysoginist or a deeply closeted homosexual, without ever tipping his hand as to what interpretation should be correct (he is helped by the brilliantly ambigous song "Why Can't A Woman Be More Like A Man?"). It's worth noting too that even if you ignore the satirical subtext, Higgins succesfully passing off Eliza as a duchess is in itself quite a pointed criticicsm of the Britisch class system.  Unfortunately, as this was a major, highly expensive, studio film it can't end on the note it's been building up to and tacks on an entirely unfitting happy ending. It's as if The Social Network would have included a final frame showing that Zuckerberg's friend request is accepted.  

260. Basic Instinct

Song - She's Always A Woman (Billy Joel)

Movie: Basic Instinct (Paul Verhoeven, 1992)

In 1993 George Sluizer directed The Vanishing, a remake of his own 1988 Dutch movie Spoorloos. Such projects tend to be derivative anyway (I haven't seen The Vanishing, but its awful reviews make a lot of sense), but at its best, Basic Instinct already feels like the greatest possible Hollywood remake of Spoorloos. The two don't share the same plot, but are about the same obsession. Both films are about men who are trying to understand the exact nature of a mysterious death/disappearance, where the main question is much less who did it, but how they did it. As a result both men are willing to knowingly put themselves in the exact same life-threatening position as the victim was in before the fatal blow. Now, in Spoorloos that leads Gene Bervoets to one of the most horrifiyngly nightmarish situations imaginable, while in Basic Instinct it leads Michael Douglas to "the fuck of the century."  I don't know how conscious Paul Verhoeven was of the connections between the two films, but Spoorloos is based on a famous Dutch book written by Tim Krabbe, the brother of Jeroen Krabbe (who's had multiple major roles in Verhoeven's Dutch films, and is probably the most recognisable Dutch actor outside of Rutger Hauer). 

It's not much of a spoiler to reveal that Basic Instinct ends with Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone in bed, with the camera panning to show an ice pick underneath it. The film opens with a blonde woman killing her sexual partner in bed with an ice pick, and although her quick movements and concealing hair make it hard to identify her, once we get a few good looks of Sharon Stone, it becomes fairly evident that she is the killer. As a result Basic Instinct is least succesfull when it pretends to be a investigative thriller. It produces a lot of repetitive scenes that logically always lead to the same conclusion, while we are asked to believe that they potentially don't. Equally frustrating is Verhoeven's need to always be signifying. A cigar is not just a cigar and a blonde woman is not just a blonde woman, but also a reference to film history (especially to Hitchcock), and more importantly a symbol of how American society is supposedly much darker and perverse than we notice on the surface. This would be more effective if Verhoeven was capable of integrating his symbolism much more organically within his story, but many of his choices keep stopping the film in his tracks. That's much less a problem here though than in Turkish Delight, Elle and espcially Starship Troopers (it's amazing that people still misinterpret that movie, but that doesn't make it good. I think it is the most boringly obvious satire I've seen).

Still, most of his films are good, smart and entertaining, and Basic Instinct is much more interesting and provocative than even its reputation suggests. Yeah, there is not a moment when Sharon Stone is on screen, when she isn't doing something sexily, and her chemistry with Michael Douglas is great. It's a film that fully earns the right to call itself an 'erotic' thriller, but Verhoeven connects the eroticism directly to danger and death. Douglas' atrraction to Stone is not in spite of her murderous criminality, but heightened by it. The most sexy and erotic scenes in the film are also the ones which are the most violent, or have the most potential for violence (The 'fuck of the century' described my Douglas is shot and cut to explicitly resemble the opening scene) All of this is highlighted in the interrogation scene, where, even before Stone's famous crossover, the cops in the room are fully helpless, They are not just attracted to her beauty, but to the way she combines that with her viciousness and her complete disregard for laws and rules. That gives more than just a sexual connotation to Michael Douglas' obsession and also puts the ice pick at the end of the film in a different context. What if we are not supposed to see that as a clue to solving the mystery of the murder, but as a clue to why Douglas despite his better judgement still chooses to be with Stone? 

259. Edge of the City

Song - (Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay (Otis Redding)

Movie: Edge of the City (Martin Ritt, 1957)

I saw In the Heat of the Night a long time ago and liked it, but aside from Sidney Poitier slapping Rod Steiger, I don't recall any of it. Having now seen Paris Blues and Edge of the City, it may be time for a revisit, as it appears I've been having a rather wrong impression of Poitier. Most of what I know about him and his cultural imprint comes from peripheral sources, such as Denzel Washington's reverence for him and writings about black actors and movies shaped by him, and about the Civil Right Movement's influence on American culture. Through all of this, I somehow absorbed that Poitier was a gravely serious actor of solemn dignity. In Edge of the City, that couldn't be further from the truth. He is so effortlessly cool here that he manages to give a distinct personality to a terribly underwritten role that basically turns him into John Cassavetes' personal Jiminy Cricket. 

Cassavetes and Poitier play Axel Nordmann and Tommy Tyler, two dockworkers in New York. Axel is the kind of guy that was almost invented by American movies of the 50's: a lost young man alienated by the values of the old generation and without a clue how to shape his own. He is now running away from a troubled past and an equally troubled relationship with his parents (living in a comfortable house in smalltown Indiana), unable to settle down and keep a job anywhere because of the chip on his shoulder. His first instinct is to always mistrust his fellow man and to start every conversation as if he is on the brink of a fight. Tommy befriends him and patiently guids him through life, comforting him, and providing him with a job and a potential romantic partner, without ever putting his own needs first. Tommy's easily palatable nobility is countered by Poitier who plays him with an irreverent zest that makes the friendship feel realistic. Axel's anti-authoritarian attitude matches perfectly with Tommy's restless energy, his penchant for sarcasm and irony, and the excitement he gets out of a dirty joke, a cool tune, or a flirt with his wife (Ruby Dee, also giving a really good performance). Poitier creates the impression that Tommy's selfless protectiveness is simply an accidental byproduct of his spontaneous and expressive personality, rather than a blunt screenwriting device.  

The film's ending is quite interesting too. Just looking at it narratively, it further complicates its comforting view of race. However, Ritt's visual choices in the final scene, in combination with the score (which is overbearing for most of the movie anyway, and completely misguided during its conclusion) communicate that we are now to see Axel as an iconic working class hero, which doesn't fit and whitewashes the character a bit too much. Moreover, this finale is tonally completely off. It feels tacked on to add dramatic heft to a movie that doesn't need it - its lighthearted looseness is its greatest quality. As in Paris Blues, Ritt is at his best when he is just filming two friends and their lovers infectiously hanging out together in a lively lovely city.   

258. Beau Travail

Song - Denis (Blondie)

Movie: Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1999)

In my write up of Leos Carax' Mauvais Sang, a long time ago now, I compared Denis Lavant to Robert De Niro. I probably just found him immensely cool, because I don't really see where that comparison came from otherwise. Lavant is one of those completely singular actors, but even if you insist on looking for his American 70's counterpart, Jack Nicholson and his great explorations of male (not just sexual) impotence and anger, would be more apt. However, Beau Travail does often feel like a feature length adaptation of the famous shot in Taxi Driver where the camera moves away from De Niro's sad phone call towards the empty hallway. Like Taxi Driver, it is one of the great films about loneliness. Unlike Taxi Driver, it is also one of the ultimate 'dudes rock' movies. I don't like using 'too cool for school' internet speak, but there is really no better way to characterise Beau Travail, in part because it's central conflict arises from Galoup's (Denis Lavant) inability to rock with the dudes, for both professional and psychological reasons. 

I also don't much like reading critics who are too in love with using the phrase 'bodies moving in space'. I do increasingly though like the kind of movies to which that phrase is applied. People watching can be more fun than plot, and despite not yet having seen many Claire Denis films, it is evident that she is one of the best people watchers out there. This is a great film that consists of little else, which is probably for the best, as the scant narrative that does exist suffers from flat and too literal-minded plotting. Denis follows a squad of the French Foreign Legion as they are doing training exercises in Djibouti, led by their commanding officer Galoup. As France is not at war, these exercises mainly serve as male bonding activities, allowing a group of rootless youths to create a connection through shows of strength, athleticism, honor and masculinity.  While there is a compettitive element to all they do, the collective experience and performance of these actions is the ultimate goal. As their commanding officer, Galoup can't be one of the boys, even when he is around them, and he can't quite assert his authority as he feels his leadership is inadequate and threatened by Gilles Sentain (the most charismatic of his soldiers). Additionally, Galoup greatly looks up to his own higher-in-command, Bruno Forestier (Michel Subor) and you never get the sense that he feels that he has the capacity to be promoted. As a result he is stuck between two worlds he can't enter. 

The soldiers engage in running drills, stretching exercises, weapon trainings, road reparations and other military activities, thoough we also see them ironing their clothes, cook dinner and go out dancing. Througjhout all this Denis highlights how aware the soliders are of both their own actiions and of the actions of the others, and how they adjust their behavior to exert themselves more as individuals or to become part of the group.. What stands out is the concentration and commitment they dedicate to all these activities, making it evident that they place great value on being part of this experience. This is only further emphasised by Denis whenever she sets the soldiers' activities to extracts from the opera adaptation of Billy Budd, giving their experience an almost mythical, religious dimension. Especially during these 'Billy Budd sequences' the soldiers are often barechested and Denis fully objectifies their bodies, often letting them pose as if they are classical marble statues that have come to life. If you see this as an expression of Galoup's point of view, the great ending scene becomes even better, a furious expression of how it feels to be excluded of an experience you see as holy.

It is interesting that beyond spending time with the soldiers, Denis also makes some digressions to showcase life of ordinary Djiboutians. She presents them as people who simply go on with their lives next to the French military camp. Though they are not rich, they are also not dependent on French goodwill or protection for their livelihood. The Djiboutians treat the presence of the soldiers neither as a threat nor as a blessing, but simply as an ordinary, unremarkable occurence. The soldiers are just some people who have a job and uwind by dancing to Tarkan just like the locals, contrasting the soldiers' self-absorption and self-glorification. Through this depiction of Djibouti, Denis makes national and cultural identities and differences a non-factor, largely in line with 1999's hopeful visions of globalisation. I wish those visions were more prevalent these days. but Claire Denis' newest film Stars at Noon, which I actually like more than Beau Travail, shows we are far away from that. 

Stars at Noon finds Margaret Qualley and Joe Alwyn lost in Nicaragua. They are the kind of western middle-class young professionals who have shaped their career based on the unspoken promise that if they get a graduate degree and parrott vaguely liberal ideals about freedom, democracy ans equality they can the have the lives of their dreams. Trish and Daniel have reached the point where they can  theoretically start those lives, but running into COVID; corrupition, local hostility and the CIA, they find that their qualifications, attittudes and knowledge are only useful for seducing each other, which leads to a sexy and melancholic romance. Between Stars at Noon and Beau Travail I am fully on board with Claire Denis after a rocky start. I thought Bastards was a terrible film that boringly obfuscates what is completely obvious, while Let the Sunshine In is good, but also completely insular in its depiction of the problems of rich elitist Parisians. 

257. A Short Film About Love

Song - Need Your Love So Bad (Fleetwood Mac)

Movie: A Short Film About Love - Krótki film o milosci (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1988)

There is nothing wrong per se with ostentatiously presenting love as an unattainable and incomprehensible thing whose pursuit leads to anguished obsessions and sexual humiliation, but such visions are in certain European films as much driven by marketing as they are by conviction. It allows these films to sell themselves as non-American, non-prudish, and enlightened and courageous enough to present the real unvarnished truth of romance. For a long while, A Short Film About Love seems like a superior version of one of these films. However that changes when towards the end Kieslowski repeats in context the film's mysterious opening shot. You would not necessarily compare A Short Film About Love to The Sixth Sense or The Usual Suspects, but Kieslowski's decision to present that particular shot as the key shot, the one that makes this a film 'about love', does completely change the tone of the film and makes us reconsider what (and who!) it has been about. What was up until then a cynical and ironic film, becomes a sincere, hopeful and even somewhat corny one. Its corniness however is undercut by its self-reflexive criticism. Kieslowski is aware of the mode he is working in, and his final scenes force you to reflect on why his depiction of obsession and humiliation could be perceived as being about love, rather than about obsession and humiliation. 

The obsessed one is Tomek (Olaf Lubaszenko), a naive and (emotionally and sexually) inexperienced 19-year old who lives with the mother of his best friend. We never see his best friend, but we learn that before going on a UN peace mission in Syria, he and Tomek were spying on Magda (Grazyna Szapolowska), who lives in the apartment building across the street and sleeps a lot with different men. We get the impression that this started out as a playful prank between two teens, but has grown for the lonely Tomek into an obsession he doesn't know how to control and is ashamed about. It's a great performance by Lubaszenko, who treats his telescope (stolen from a wearhouse to replace the insufficient binoclars of his friend) with the seriousness of a professional photographer and minutely prepares his watching sessions. Throughout he remains in a state of fearful confusion, knowing only that he doesn't know what to do with his feelings (he has by now even stopped masturbating), or what to do if he is discovered by either Magda or his caretaker.

We see a lot of Magda through Tomek's point of view. The camera follows her in long scenes as she walks around in her apartment, giving us a great understanding of why these nightly rituals are so exciting for Thomas. Beyond Magda's beauty, the design of her apartment adds a mystery to her actions. Its main windows are divided by a sizable brick wall which makes her often disappear from Tomek's (and our) view for a few (or more) tantalising seconds. Her bedroom is also not perfectly located for Tomek to get the most ideal view of her actions there, only further contributing to his sweatiness. One day it all becomes too much, and when they meet on the street (an encounter contrived by Tomek), he comes clean to her. She is both repulsed and flattered, forcing him to put his money where his mouth is. Naturally, he is incapable of that, leading to some of the most uncomfortable scenes of 'romantic' and sexual embarassment I've seen in movies. That Kieslowski makes the transition from these scenes to the eventual warmth of the film's end feel so natural and simple is a great testament to his skills as both a director and a screenwriter.