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Reviews
Les rivières pourpres (2000)
The good, the bad, and the ugly
This film is a cliche, empty of content, leaving you with a sense of profound disappointment. The disappointment is all the more acute, since the first 40 mins or so do not show it in this light. The first scenes showing the dead body, accompanied by interesting soundtrack, are really promising. (It's not a rotten body, as some might think, but a body starting to rot, which happens immediately after death---hence its relevance to the film.) Then Jean Reno appears, although already then---where, for example, he is looking for lighter---you can detect the moves you've seen numerous times in other films. Nevertheless, the film is off to a good start. The grisly scenes are shocking, but not tasteless at all. The second line of the plot, with the detective Cassel, is a smart move. You can always admire two investigators coming from different angles to the same thing. But their characters are under-developed, to put it mildly. They are smart, know to fight, and humane. Wonderful. But when they get together, it's boring. Their relationship is one big cliche borrowed from 1001 American films of the past 25-30 years, starting perhaps with 'Dirty Harry', or earlier.
This is where the film gets bad. But it gets ugly when you realize what the fuss was about. Sure 'X-files' looks more realistic than that! This is not because the racial selection was never tried, but because in order to make it convincing you've got to spend a nice effort and more time, than this film does. It's not enough just to read out from a doctoral thesis for two or three minutes. The film, however, gets even uglier in the last 15-20 mins, where everything is rushed in such a hurry, that you wonder whether there was a huge budget cut. The ending in the mountains is truly dumb, and it delivers a mortal blow to the film.
There are many more chestnuts in the film, like the Reno/Fares relationship, the description of the college (strikes me as a common misguided perception of Oxford or Cambridge, rather than a European university), and the fight with the skinheads. Rating: 5.0.
101 Reykjavík (2000)
dubious and not funny
There are no new horizons in this film. Yes, there are quite a few perhaps talented young fellows who have a difficulty to adapt to mature life, to get a job, to get a stable relationship, financial independence. Haven't you known that already? But there is a novelty: a middle-aged mum comes out of the closet and declares her lesbian preference. Hang on, though: could you imagine a dad coming out of the closet? Probably yes, but then the emphasis of the film would have been very different. I mean, I'm somewhat suspicious about this lesbian line: isn't it just another sexy (literally and figuratively speaking), saucy attraction added to the film, for its own sake? Hardly anyone, presumably, would be curious to watch middle-aged or old men engaged in gay sex. Not so with women. Likewise, I've never been to Reykjavik, but I'm stunned to discover the apparently large number of lesbian or bi-sexual girls in its pubs. The asymmetry with homosexual men is obvious. So I have my doubts about this film's realism, or more exactly, its cynical exploitation of basic instincts. The film pretends to be a comedy. But it fails. As far as I'm concerned, there's just one genuinely funny moment---the scene with the parking inspector. All the rest are only *supposed* to be funny. A positive moment, however, is that they are not tasteless still. If it's a failed comedy, does it deliver a message? Hardly. Except possibly one: Hlynur eventually finds the job. That could be a serious message, if Hlynur were described as a rebel at the beginning. Which he isn't. Hence the film doesn't aspire to be anything but a comedy, and in that department it fails, I believe.
Now, you might think that such a mediocre film should have poor acting. You are wrong! Oddly enough, the acting is of very good quality. Guonason is perfect, entirely natural, and other leading actors are quite decent. I'm no great fan of Victoria Abril, but she does a good job too. To sum up: watch this film after a busy day and go to bed. Rating: 6.5.
Alphaville: Une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965)
when the lack of creativity is decorated with absurd ideas
I can't judge how this film was perceived in 1965. maybe it was great. in 2001, anyway, there is virtually nothing on offer here. A tough guy Lemmy Caution comes to a no-where place, an anti-utopian town, where the machine controls the lives of people. we don't know what his business is. In the mean time, while he stays in a hotel, the bourgeois morality is attacked: some whores try to lure our hero to bed. Not too original, i'm afraid, but all this is made with a ludicrous air of profound discovery and self-importance. What next? It turns out that Lemmy Caution has got to kill the chief engineer in charge with the ruling machine. But he falls in love with the engineer's daughter. So his love is contrasted with the mechanistic existence the people of Alphaville lead. Ok, maybe technology kills some traits of humanity, but you must show it *how* this happens. Instead M. Godard satisfies himself with declarations of faith. This is no doubt much easier than to explore in minute details, or in a parable, how technology affects humanity. And even then, technology doesn't kill all humanity. Caution travels in a car--is he less human because of that? Another thing: the absurd attack on logic. What is it? You may claim that logical reasoning is no substitute for poetry, for example, or that poetry sometimes doesn't obey logic, but does it mean that logic should be abolished? Perhaps Godard wanted also to show the reality of oppression, of totalitarianism. But totalitarianism does not require technology, even if it is more effective with it. If totalitarianism was the target, the film missed it.
In sum, the film is not creative, not convincing, packed with far-fetched ideas, and generally annoying. Rating: 4.0