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Home , Alex Descas, Claire Denis

Under the Skin: The Films of

Beau travail, March 25, April 1 Chocolat, March 4 Photo courtesy New Yorker Films

nowhere, where he’s been for a number of years. ). Denis doesn’t flinch in depicting The work of Claire Denis begins with what Friday March 4 Travis tentatively reunites with his young son, brutality, toward either the cocks or their keepers. she calls “tactile intuition.” Her films feel 7:00 Hunter, and together they hit the road in search of “Men, cocks: same thing,” says Dah; for both, life is their way through charged situations and Claire Denis (France, 2009) the boy’s mother; the dream of making the family a fight that can end only one way.—Juliet Clark complex relationships—cultural, familial, whole again finds its nightmare edge when Mom • Written by Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau. Photographed by Denis’s latest film returns to the West African set- sexual—by attending to the textures and (Nastassja Kinski) is found working in a peep show. Agnès Godard. With Isaach de Bankolé, , Solveig ting of her first, Chocolat, but replaces the restraint Still, Travis persists, reaching her on her own terms: Dommartin, Christopher Buchholz. (91 mins, In French with rhythms of the physical world and to the of that period piece with an apocalyptic vision of the through glass. Robby Müller’s cinematography pur- English subtitles, Color, 35mm, From Pathé) ways that people move through it. This is postcolonial present. Isabelle Huppert brings char- sues a fantasy of the American West in capturing a corporeal cinema: Denis once asserted, acteristic clenched ferocity to the role of Maria Vial, its more bizarre reality, much as Travis and Hunter Friday March 25 “capturing bodies on film is the only thing the proprietor of a coffee plantation in an unnamed pursue a fantasy of the American family amid the 7:00 Nénette and Boni that interests me.” country that is collapsing into civil war. Delusionally choked violence of the one they have.—Judy Bloch resolute in her attachment to her African home, Claire Denis (France, 1996) Born in Paris in 1948, Denis spent her child- • Written by Sam Shepard. Adapted by L. M. Kit Carson. Maria refuses to join other white residents who (Nénette et Boni). Abandoned by their father and hood in various African nations where her Photographed by Robby Müller. With Harry Dean Stanton, are fleeing to France. “Dirty whites . . . they don’t Nastassja Kinski, Dean Stockwell, Aurore Clement. (145 bereft of their mother who recently died, nineteen- father was a French colonial functionary. deserve this beautiful land,” she says; but who mins, Color, 35mm, From Janus Films/Criterion Collection) year-old Boni (Grégoire Colin) and his younger Several of her most acclaimed films, from does deserve it? The child soldiers swarming around sister Nénette (Alice Houri) are barely on speaking her debut feature Chocolat to the rebel known as the Boxer (Isaach de Bankolé)? Sunday March 6 terms, with life or with each other. Boni, a pizza- and the recent White Material, are set in Or Maria’s own son, who awakens from privileged maker in his better moments, has turned his moth- 3:00 I Can’t Sleep Africa, and a concern with colonialism and lassitude into a delirious racial fury? Shuffling anx- er’s Marseilles apartment into a space for sexual Claire Denis (France/Switzerland, 1994) its aftereffects runs through much of her iously beautiful images into a fragmented flashback fantasy—in fine French film form, he lusts after the work. But her approach to this and other structure, Denis suggests a vivid but unstable real- (J’ai pas sommeil). Denis’s dispassionate approach baker’s wife, buns and all, a woman whose good- ity, as though in Maria’s ruptured world, not only subjects is less political or even psychologi- to a Parisian murder-noir makes Claude Chabrol natured sensuality is the polar opposite of his own. times but time itself had changed.—Juliet Clark look like an emotional wreck. Daïga (Katerina When Nénette runs away from boarding school, cal than emotional and experiential; expo- • Written by Denis, Marie N’Diaye. Photographed by Yves Golubeva), having arrived from Lithuania with seven months pregnant, the siblings circle around sition is pared away, leaving impressions Cape. With Isabelle Huppert, , Isaach de minimal French and had her hopes for a theatrical each other like wary strays. As James Quandt put whose full meaning emerges only with the Bankolé, William Nadylam. (102 mins, In French with English career quickly dashed, works as a chambermaid in it, “Les enfants terribles [are] faced with the ter- subtitles, Color, 35mm, From IFC Films) passage of time. a small hotel near Sacré Coeur. Camille (Richard rifying prospect of becoming les parents terribles.” Courcet), a black transvestite, carries on his affairs Nénette and Boni Beau travail Denis served a long apprenticeship before 9:00 Chocolat anticipates in its pal- under the mothering eye of the hotel owner, while ette of blinding white sunlight and striking blues. It directing her own films, beginning as an Claire Denis (France/W. Germany, 1988) elsewhere in the quartier, Camille’s brother Théo may be the Mediterranean, but as the song says, assistant on Dušan Makavejev’s Sweet BAM/PFA Student Committee Pick (Alex Descas), a jazz musician, has given up on “tiny tears make up an ocean.”—Judy Bloch Movie (1974) and later working as an Paris and threatens to return to Martinique with assistant director to and Wim For her first film, Denis re-created two lost worlds: • Written by Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau. Photographed by colonial in the 1950s, and the familiar his child. With a thriving gay underground and a Agnès Godard. With Grégoire Colin, Alice Houri, Valeria Bruni- Wenders. This retrospective includes her Tedeschi, . (103 mins, In French with English yet foreign territory of childhood. Framed as the rec- burgeoning immigrant population, the eighteenth films with those two directors, as well as subtitles, Color, 35mm, From Strand Releasing) ollections of a grown woman, Chocolat draws on the arrondissement is also home to many old ladies the fruits of her long collaborations with cin- who have lived there for ages. Everyone wonders director’s own early years, and it has all the sensory 9:00 ematographer Agnès Godard, writer Jean- who is killing and robbing them as they come home Beau travail acuity and strangeness of memory. The point-of-view Claire Denis (France, 1999) Pol Fargeau, and actor Alex Descas (whom character, pointedly named France, is the daughter with their groceries—everyone but Camille and his Good Work she has described as her “muse”). Here is of a colonial officer at a remote outpost; her clos- lover. Based on the “Granny Killer” case of 1987, ( ). A story of French Legionnaires isolat- a chance to experience a body of work that est companion is Protée (Isaach de Bankolé), the Denis’s film opens up more riddles than it solves, ed in a blisteringly beautiful African setting (Djibouti Beau travail both exerts and rewards alert observation. household’s black “boy,” who serves not only as mysteries of intention and desire.—Judy Bloch and surrounds), evokes Camus’s The Stranger Billy helper and protector but also as a vector for the • Written by Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau. Photographed by Agnès as much as it does Melville’s Juliet Clark Godard. With Katerina Golubeva, Richard Courcet, Vincent Budd white characters’ various desires and delusions. The , on which it is abstractly based. This is the c o n t r i b u t i n g f i l m n o t e s w r i t e r Dupont, Alex Descas. (110 mins, In French and Russian Legion of the 1990s, superfluous to anything but film’s quiet beauty, in thrall to the landscape, could with English subtitles, Color, 35mm, permission Pyramide suggest a current of nostalgia, but Denis carefully International) its almost spiritual rituals of loyalty and rigor. The complicates matters. The ending executes a grace- rigor is played out in dancelike exercises and in ful shift in perspective, reminding us that France is simple activities like the pressing of a uniform into Sunday March 20 elegant creases. But loyalty, as in Melville, is a Series curated by Susan Oxtoby. PFA wishes to not the center of the universe.—Juliet Clark 3:00 No Fear, No Die complex of suppressed eroticism and violence, as thank the following individuals and institutions • Written by Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau. Photographed by Agnès Godard. With Isaach de Bankolé, Giulia Boschi, François Claire Denis (France, 1990) Sgt. Galoup () indulges a paranoid, for their assistance with this retrospective: Harris irrational hatred for a beautiful young recruit, Cluzet, Jean-Claude Adelin. (105 mins, In French with English (S’en fout la mort). “All human beings, of whatever Dew, IFC Center, New York City; CulturesFrance, subtitles, Color, 35mm, From The Film Desk) Sentain (Grégoire Colin), who he imagines will kill race or nationality or religious belief or ideology, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Paris; Delphine the commanding officer, Forester (). In will do anything and everything.” An epigraph from Selles, French Cultural Service, San Francisco; this film Denis effectively hypnotizes us, transform- Saturday March 5 Chester Himes sounds an appropriate note of pulp ing what is, after all, a detachment of unemployed Jonathan Howell, New Yorker Films; Sarah Finklea philosophy for this underworld allegory, a stark and 7:15 Paris, Texas boys who have fled France for a colonial nether- and Brian Belovarac, Janus Films; Jake Perlin, gritty follow-up to the stately Chocolat. Dah (Isaach de (Claire Denis, assistant director, world—a dream long since awakened from—into a The Film Desk; Brandon Peters, Strand Releasing; Bankolé) and Jocelyn (Alex Descas) are black immi- W. Germany/France, 1984) dance of beauty, passion, and sadness. Nice work, Andrew Tracy, TIFF Cinematheque; and Paul Richer, grants in France hired by a white nightclub owner, Paris, Texas if you can get it.—Judy Bloch Pyramide International. , aptly titled, evokes something foreign Ardennes (Jean-Claude Brialy), to train roosters for in the American experience. The film is inspired by illegal cockfights. Cooped up with the characters in Beau travail is repeated on Friday, April 1. Motel Chronicles Sam Shepard’s —in particular, “the dingy subterranean spaces, the camera captures • Written by Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau, inspired by the novella image of somebody leaving the freeway and walk- the rituals of tenderness and balletic aggression Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville. Photographed by Agnès Godard. With Denis Lavant, Michel Subor, Grégoire Colin, ing straight into the desert,” according to director that make up the birds’ conditioning, along with the Wenders. That somebody is Harry Dean Stanton’s Richard Courcet. (90 mins, In French with English subtitles, equally edgy dance among Jocelyn, Ardennes, and Color, 35mm, permission Europe Images International) Travis, who staggers into the film on returning from Ardennes’s beautiful wife (Solveig Dommartin, of

6 FILM NOTES march/april 2011 clockwise from top-left Nénette and Boni, March 25 The Intruder, April 8, 9 I Can’t Sleep, March 6 , April 16

9:00 U.S. Go Home 8:50 Vers Mathilde Saturday March 26 Saturday April 2 Claire Denis/Cédric Kahn (France, 1994) Claire Denis (France, 2005) 8:30 Down by Law 8:30 Wings of Desire “The great unseen Claire Denis film” (Harvard Film Vers Mathilde documents Denis’s encounter Jim Jarmusch (Claire Denis, assistant director, Wim Wenders (Claire Denis, assistant director, Archive), U.S. Go Home is Denis’s entry in the series with Mathilde Monnier, the head of the Centre U.S., 1986) W. Germany, 1988) Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge, for which Chorégraphique National de Montpellier and DJ Zack (Tom Waits) and pimp Jack (John Lurie) (Der Himmel über Berlin). Wings of Desire, writ- nine directors were invited to explore their recollec- France’s foremost contemporary choreographer. have the hep con blues. Framed for crimes they ten in collaboration with Peter Handke and based tions of French adolescence. Featuring music by Eric This largely unseen dance documentary is clas- would be too slack to commit, they land in a on Wenders’s reading of Rilke, posits two sad Burdon and the Animals, the Yardbirds, and other sic Denis, but a freer, more spontaneous Denis, shared cell in Orleans Parish Prison. Then Roberto and sober trench coat–clad angels whose beat is icons of Denis’s midsixties youth, the film is centered making it a must for both dance fans and cine- comes along. This inexplicable, irrepressible naïf Berlin. Played by Bruno Ganz, at his most intensely on a dance party near a U.S. military base on the out- philes. . . . Vers Mathilde is a portrait of Monnier (Roberto Benigni, then little known in the United human, and Otto Sander, these seraphim receive skirts of Paris, where teens play out their ambivalence in action, working on an experimental dance piece. States), an Italian magpie of American idioms, the thoughts of the humans among whom they min- about American culture and about the opposite sex. But more than that, the film captures a sensuous transports Jarmusch’s self-described “neo-Beat gle. Unseen, but not entirely unnoticed, and with a • Written by Denis, . Photographed by Agnès pas-de-deux between Denis and Monnier, two virtu- noir comedy” into the realm of fractured fairy tale. tender gravity, they cradle, comfort, bear witness, Godard. With Alice Houri, Jessica Tharaud, Grégoire Colin, osic artists whose strong affinities for one another Soon Jack, Zack, and Bob are off on a picaresque relish absurdity, cherish thoughts. The soundtrack Martine Gautier. (58 mins, In French with English subtitles, produce a tremulous tension that hovers beneath Color, Beta SP, permission Arte) jailbreak journey, drifting in circles through the is abuzz with the collective stream-of-conscious- the film’s grainy surface. . . . As Denis advances bayou toward a happy ending “like in a book for ness of a city, while Henri Alékan’s camera glides Followed by: vers Mathilde, a charming, unscripted, inspired, children” . . . kind of. Lensed in gorgeous black through the ether separating heaven and earth. Claire Denis: The Wanderer and sexy film emerges, with a number of astonish- and white by Robby Müller, the film was shot on Among the mortals the angels encounter are an Sébastien Lifshitz (France, 1996) ing images to add to the filmmaker’s coveted col- location around New Orleans, but as Luc Sante aging writer absorbed in memories of a devastated lection. Featuring music by PJ Harvey. (Claire Denis: La vagabonde). In an arrestingly wrote, “the actual setting is no more Louisiana Germany; an actor (Peter Falk) on location shoot- —Cinematheque Ontario than the setting of Macao is Macao. Down by Law ing a film about the Nazi era; and a lovely, lonely filmed interview (with the questions omitted), Denis offers a spirited and insightful discussion • Photographed by Agnès Godard, Hélène Louvant. (84 mins, takes place in the land of the imagination, in the trapeze artist (Solveig Dommartin) for whom Ganz’s In French with English subtitles, Color, DVD) province of the movies.”—Juliet Clark angel finally falls. Heaven can wait.—Judy Bloch of her films and career. Exploring her first few films in illuminating detail, she also explains her Preceded by short: • Written by Jarmusch. Photographed by Robby Müller. With Wings of Desire is repeated on April 20 as part of the Film Pour Ushari Ahmed Mahmoud! (Claire Denis, France, Tom Waits, John Lurie, Roberto Benigni, Ellen Barkin. (107 fascinating ideas about filmmaking itself—lighting, 50: History of Cinema series. 1991). Made for Amnesty International and dedicat- mins, B&W, 35mm, From Janus Films/Criterion Collection) sound, editing—and about such other filmmakers • Written by Wenders, Peter Handke. Photographed by Henri as Renoir and Ozu.—Harvard Film Archive ed to a Sudanese political prisoner, the film con- Alékan. With Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartin, Otto Sander, templates themes of repression and exile through Curt Bois. (130 mins, In English and German with English • (50 mins, In French with English subtitles, Color, Beta SP, Friday April 1 a song by Alain Souchon. (4 mins, B&W, Beta SP) subtitles, B&W/Color, 35mm, From Janus Films/Criterion From CulturesFrance) Collection) • (Total running time: 88 mins, From CulturesFrance) 7:00 Beau travail • (Total running time: 108 mins) Claire Denis (France, 1999) Please see Friday, March 25. Friday April 8 Saturday April 9 Saturday April 16 6:30 The Intruder 8:40 35 Shots of Rum 8:50 Trouble Every Day 8:30 The Intruder Claire Denis (France/S. Korea, 2004) Claire Denis (France, 2008) Claire Denis (France, 2001) Claire Denis (France/Korea, 2004) (L’intrus). Inspired by philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy’s (35 rhums). This deeply emotional yet light-of-touch A portrait of devouring passion, Trouble Every Please see Friday, April 8. short autobiographical reflection on his heart trans- conte evokes nothing so much as Eric Rohmer in Day is Denis’s most troubling work—two audi- plant and building around the eloquently brooding his “seasons” quartet as it follows a small circle ence members reportedly fainted at its Cannes Friday April 15 presence of Michel Subor, Denis doesn’t so much of black Parisians and their friends in a roundelay premiere—but its potency derives less from its tell the story of Subor’s Louis as she feels and 7:00 Friday Night of relationships that touches on almost every explicit images than from the sincerity with which hacks her way around its contours and tunnels into Claire Denis (France, 2002) kind of love there is. Lionel (Alex Descas), a train it pursues its carnal conceit. Léo (Alex Descas), its core. This is a film about longing on the deepest engineer, shares an apartment with his daughter a doctor, is both caregiver and captor to his wife (). Nightfall in Paris: Laure (Valérie level imaginable—for a son on the other side of Jo (), a university student. In the same Coré (Béatrice Dalle, aptly nicknamed La Grande Lemercier) finishes packing and gets in her car. the world and for a life that is always elsewhere. As building live a taxi driver (Nicole Dogué) and a Bouche), who suffers from a strange and deadly Tomorrow she’ll move in with her boyfriend; tonight Denis follows Louis from the French Alps to Geneva young man who comes and goes (Grégoire Colin). sexual affliction. Meanwhile, in a Parisian honey- she’ll have dinner with friends. Or . . . Denis’s to Pusan to Polynesia in search of the child who has Together, they are a kind of family. We figure out moon suite, American scientist Shane (Vincent graceful and seductive tale of a one-night affair is grown up without him, she maintains an extremely their roles and relationships only gradually as Gallo) keeps his virginal bride (Tricia Vessey) at an ode to possibility, imagining what can happen delicate if not precarious balance between presence Denis leaves crumbs for us to follow on a narra- bay as he attempts to manage his own dangerous when an ordinary woman is granted an unexpected and absence: the sheer presence of the physical tive path, and that is one of the pleasures of this appetites. Connections between the two couples moment of erotic opportunity. What might have world, of mountains, lakes, forests, beaches, and extraordinarily pleasurable film made up of small slowly emerge, pointing back in time toward an been a flimsy romantic fantasy is enriched by oceans; and the absence of completeness, the feel- moments, of looks and silences, of physicality unspeakable experiment in a jungle in Guyana. Denis’s sensitive observation of small details, and ing that for Louis, wholeness will always be a conti- and pensiveness. Agnès Godard’s cinematography Denis filters the tropes of vampire films and mad by moments when those details seem to flicker nent away.—Kent Jones, SFIFF 2005 richly limns an interior architecture in which objects science through her own oblique and ultimately between external reality and Laure’s interior per- take on an Ozu-like delicacy and immediacy, and romantic point of view in what she stubbornly The Intruder is repeated on Saturday, April 9. ceptions. Friday Night was adapted from a novel uses train tracks to propel the story into the out- called “a naive and innocent film.”—Juliet Clark • Written by Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau. Photographed by Agnès by Emmanuèle Bernheim; Denis’s characterization of-doors and, eventually, the future, as father and Godard. With Michel Subor, Grégoire Colin, Katia Golubeva, of the book applies equally to the adaptation: “A • Written by Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau. Photographed by Agnès Bambou. (130 mins, In French with English subtitles, Color, daughter face the inevitable: her independence. Godard. With Vincent Gallo, Tricia Vessey, Béatrice Dalle, manner so precise, so meticulous, which contains 35mm, From Pyramide International) —Judy Bloch Alex Descas. (101 mins, In English and French with English in the same phrase both the conscious and the subtitles, Color, 35mm, From Wild Bunch) unconscious . . . that which is experienced and • Written by Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau. Photographed by Agnès that which is desired.”—Juliet Clark Godard. With Alex Descas, Mati Diop, Grégoire Colin, Nicole Dogué. (100 mins, In French with English subtitles, Color, • Written by Denis, Emmanuèle Bernheim, from the novel 35mm, From Cinema Guild) by Bernheim. Photographed by Agnès Godard. With Valérie Lemercier, Vincent Lindon, Hélène de Saint-Pere, Grégoire Colin. (90 mins, In French with English subtitles, Color, 35mm, From Pathé)

FILM NOTES march/april 2011 7