Locke: a thriller about responsibility. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
ON TV
Fred MacMurray and Kim Novak in PUSHOVER
On March 31, TCM plays Pushover, one of my Overlooked Noir. Tracking a notorious criminal, the cop (Fred MacMurray) follows – and then dates – the gangster’s girlfriend (“Introducing Kim Novak”). It starts out as part of the job, but then he falls for her himself. He decides that, if he can double cross BOTH the cops and the criminal, he can wind up with the loot AND Kim Novak. (This is a film noir, so we know he’s not destined for a tropical beach with an umbrella drink.)
Photo caption: Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel in THE TASTE OF THINGS. Courtesy of IFC Films.
The French romantic drama The Taste of Things is the story of a man consumed by two passions – an obsession with gastronomy and a profound love for a woman. It’s also one of the mouthwatering movies in the history of cinema.
The man is Dodin (Benoit Magimel), a famous gourmand in 1884 France, a key moment in the history of the culinary arts, when the master French chef Escoffier was still in his 30s. The woman adored by Dodin is Eugenie (Juliette Binoche), not coincidentally his live-in cook.
The Taste of Things begins with a long scene (15+ minutes) as Eugenie leads a team in producing an elaborate garden to table meal, with every ingredient prepared old school, the long and hard way. Fish quenelles are formed by hand, shrimp shells are boiled into a stock, and the quenelles are pached in the shrimp stock. It takes hours for a rack of veal turned into an OMG marvel. It turns out that this is a multi-course feast prepared for Dodin and his chatty four buddies. The guys all fall SILENT when the consommé appears, and then, as the courses pile up, don’t say anything more that isn’t about the meal itself or the history of gastronomy.
The fruit of Eugenie’s labor, exquisitely photographed, are the height of food porn. One highlight is a spectacular vol-au-vent. When Eugenue shows up with a giant croissant-like thing (a giant bioche?) that she and the four buddies dig into with their hands, there were audible gasps from the audience at the screening.
There’s even a scene with a culinary Holy Grail, now illegal in the US, fabled ortolans devoured as per tradition, with the diners’ heads under their napkins. Of course gastronomy, as any human endeavor, can be taken to silly extremes, which is illustrated by a dinner for Dodin and his friends, hosted by a prince under the mistaken impression that more is always better.
Eugenie prepares masterpiece after masterpiece for Dodin until her health falters, giving him the opportunity to express his love by preparing and serving her an even more formidable dinner.
The Taste of Things is a film by writer-director Anh Hung Tran, who certainly knows his way around movie passion and movie foods (The Scent of Green Papaya).
Benoit Magimel and Juliette Binoche in THE TASTE OF THINGS. Courtesy of IFC Films.
It’s always a pleasure to watch the radiant Juliette Binoche, especially when she’s playing an endearing character like Eugenie, who keeps resisting Dodin’s offers of marriage even as she values his culinary partnership and welcomes him into her bed. Their relationship is perfectly summed up in the epilogue when Eugenie asks Dodin a question and receives his answer with bliss. She feels loved – and on her terms.
The Wife liked The Taste of Things less than I did, in part because she was less entertained by the long scenes of meal preparation, which captivated me. (I am The Movie Gourmet, after all.)
We both, however, thoroughly enjoyed the character of the culinary child prodigy Pauline (Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire), especially her reaction to her first Baked Alaska and her growing into a peer of Dodin’s.
The Taste of Things was France’s submission to the Academy Awards. It’s going on my list of Best Foodie Movies. It’s now available to stream from Amazon and AppleTV..
Photo caption: Stefan Kurt and Esther Gemsch in GOLDEN YEARS. Courtesy of Music Box Films.
The Swiss dramedy Golden Years begins as Peter (Stefan Kurt) turns 65 and retires. His wife Alice (Esther Gemsch) has been eagerly awaiting this day, which she sees as an opportunity for travel and to rekindle intimacy with Peter. In contrast, Peter doesn’t seem to have been thinking about it at all, but he begins to be consumed with his physical health and suddenly transforms himself into a mountain biking, vegan workout king. Alice wants to downsize, but he wants to stay in their house. Travel doesn’t interest Peter, but he feels trapped into joining Alice on a Mediterranean cruise that their adult children have gifted them.
Esther’s best friend unexpectedly dies, and Peter impulsively invites her heartbroken husband to join them on the cruise, which appalls Esther, who wants Peter to herself on the cruise. Esther has read her late friend’s hidden cache of letters and has stumbled on an explosive secret. Esther’s annoyance from Peter’s inattention simmers until it boils over into she staggers Peter by embarking on her own adventure.
Esther Gemsch, Ueli Jaggi and Stefan Kurt in GOLDEN YEARS. Courtesy of Music Box Films.
At this point, Golden Years departs from a comedy of manners into an exploration of dual self-discoveries. Indeed, there are Men-are-from-Mars moments when Peter is a clueless dunderhead about Esther’s expectations. But Peter’s needs have evolved, too, and Esther has also mistakenly assumed that he will want to do want she wants to do.
We all know couples who drift totally apart after decades of marriage, and there must be some couples who age with identical interests. Many couple have different, but complementary aspirations, or can build a new life together around some core commonality. The question that Alice and Peter face is, where are they on this continuum?
Will Alice and Peter compromise? Will they be able to accommodate each others’ needs? Will they live separate lives? Is there a Win Win?
Screenwriter Petra Volpe (The Divine Order) probes these questions in a consistently funny and engaging movie with a minimum of senior citizen tropes or cheap geezer cheap jokes. (It is very funny, though, when Peter’s Gen X co-worker brightly tells him that his old office will become a server room.)
Esther Gemsch in GOLDEN YEARS. Courtesy of Music Box Films.
Director Barbara Kulcsar keeps the story sprightly paced and maintains just the right balance between comedy and the more serious issues. Alice is the primary focus of the story, and the performance of actress Esther Gemsch is especially strong.
Golden Years can now be streamed from Amazon, Vudu and YouTube.
M. Emmet Walsh was one of cinema’s most stories, prolific (233 screen credits) and welcome character actors. Walsh was unforgettable as the murderous private detective Loren Visser in Blood Simple, a scary (and funny) concoction of amorality, sleaze and tenacity. He also elevated Midnight Cowboy, Little Big Man, What’s Up Doc?, Serpico, Blade Runner, Ordinary People, Slap Shot, Straight Time, Reds, Cavalry and Knives Out. There was only one T in Emmet, and the M stood for Michael.
Photo caption: Katy O’Brian and Kristen Stewart in LOVE LIES BLEEDING. Courtesy of A24.
Love Lies Bleeding is a title that legendary film noir director Sam Fuller would have loved, and this highly original neo-noir is a knockout. Kristen Stewart plays Lou, the reluctant manager of a downscale fitness gym in a hardscrabble New Mexico town that is flat, arid and devoid of culture. Love Lies Bleeding may be set in and shot in New Mexico, but this town is not anybody’s Land of Enchantment.
Lou is wallowing through the drudgery of her job, when she eyes Jackie (Katy O’Brian), an aspiring bodybuilder who has just drifted into town. This moment evokes the one in which John Garfield first sees Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice. The two plunge into a passionate affair, and Jackie, who has snagged a job on her first day in town but is still homeless, moves in with Lou.
But soon, the two find out that Jackie has already become entangled with two folks who are important in Lou’s life – and not in a good way. There’s an impetuous homicide and a “perfect crime” cover-up. Unfortunately, an inconvenient witness, a steroid binge, and more impulsiveness threaten to unravel their lives. Love Lies Bleeding hurtles down an alley filled with robust sex, sudden violence and witty observation.
I will not spoil the ending except to say that, just as I was thinking, “this could go one of three ways”, it went in a totally unexpected direction. And, as I was thinking that writer-director Rose Glass was pivoting completely away from noir conventions, she ends the film with one of the most noirish lightings of a cigarette ever. This is only Glass’s second feature, co-written with Weronika Tofiska. Glass’ 2019 debut feature, St. Maud, earned some buzz.
Like many noirs, this is a tale of obsessions, and it’s a character-driven one, contrasting Lou and Jackie. Lous is measured and intentional, and we learn that her prioritization of loyalty has kept her in this place. Loyalty, and pretty much everything else, is situational for Jackie, whose unfocused wanderlust is another symptom of her captivity to her impulses. Lou is obsessed with Jackie. Jackie is obsessed with reinventing her life, through bodybuilding, through sex, through the next shiny thing.
Kristen Stewart is just so watchable, as she was when I first saw the 17-year-old Stewart in as Tracy in 2007’s Into the Wild. Stewart then bit her lower lip through the Twilight franchise, and, now about to turn 34, is at the top of her game. Stewart is fearless in her choice of scripts and likes to bet on interesting directors. She’s just perfect as Lou in Love Lies Bleeding.
This is the first time I’ve seen Katy O’Brian, and there’s just no getting around that she doesn’t look like most other movie actresses. She’s a martial arts instructor who doesn’t rely on her physicality alone, but uses it to great advantage. O’Brian captures Jackie’s supreme confidence (except when her family rejection bubbles to the surface, and how she is capable of one of the epic steroidal rages. She’s already amassed 27 IMDb credits, including a recurring role on The Mandalorian.
If you’re casting a villain with steely and contained determination, who better than four-time Oscar nominee Ed Harris? Harris comes through as expected, and Glass wittily puts him in a bald-on-top stringy wig that evokes Riff Raff in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. She also gives the character a disgusting interest in bugs.
The rest of the cast is very good, too, including Dave Franco, Jena Malone and Anna Barishnikov, who must be pretty intelligent to play such a profoundly dumb character with such intricacy.
Their obsessions drive Lou and Jackie together in Love Lies Bleeding, and it’s a volatile mix with a wowzer ending.
Photo caption: Tim Blake Nelson in THE INVISIBLES. Courtesy of Cinequest.
Cinequest’s live, in-person film festival ended this week, but you now you can stream some of the program through Cinequest’s virtual platform, Cinejoyfrom March 21-31.
The offerings include the two Must See films in my Best of Cinequest:
EDEN, world premiere at Cinequest. Courtesy of Cinequest.
The live and in-person Cinequest winds up today. Here are the films in the program that I hadn’t posted about yet:
Dead Man’s Switch: In this atmospheric Spanish film, a woman’s husband disappears into thin air, and she goes searching for him. Exceptional black and white cinematography accentuates the crescendo of dread we feel for her as she strides alone down dark streets, into uncaring bureaucracies and into the bowels of the subway (she is a subway driver). Will she find out what has happened to him – and will it be even worse for her if she finds out? Not sure that the payoff is worth the 107 minutes of unrelenting gloom. World premiere.
Fanti: A young woman is obsessed with building her social media presence and feels entitled to a movie acting career; she hasn’t actually done anything to prepare for any career other than being famous for being famous – despite having a mother who has actually worked as a screen actor. When she catches a break and starts climbing into the world of an ingenue, it seems that someone is stalking her on-line. The strength of Fanti is the insider peek into the Vietnamese movie industry. Its weakness is that it’s hard to care about the main character. Winner of Best First Feature Film at the 2023 Vietnam Film Festival. US premiere at Cinequest.
Three Brothers: The best two things about this Argentine drama are that it brings us to an unfamiliar place – the rugged mountains of Patagonia – and photographs it exquisitely, The titular thirty-something brothers have inherited a saw mill on a large tract of land, and they face the global warming consequences of wildfires and flooding. But Three Brothers is really about their unresolved childhood issues and the challenges each faces to his sense of manhood (and one’s challenge to his anatomical manhood). None of them can communicate with the others about feelings, and they all have a fairly bestial view of women (except their sainted mother). There’s a spectacular flood scene at the climax, but, by then, the audience is tired of these unpleasant and unrelatable guys.
Eden: This documentary introduces us to a couple who has worked tirelessly for forty years to build a failed winery into a renowned producer of fine wines (Mount Eden Vineyards in Saratoga). It’s time for them to retire, but one adult kid may not have the aptitude to take over and the other may not have the interest. It’s a visually beautiful and dreamy film, romantic about winemaking. I personally thought it was 20-30 minutes too long for the content, and too reverential about the family. World premiere.
Selected films from the program move to Cinequest’s virtual platform, Cinejoyfrom March 21-31.
Locke: a thriller about responsibility. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
ON TV
Richard Conte, Brian Donleavy and Cornel Wilde in THE BIG COMBO.
On March 18, Turner Classic Movies presents the classic film noir The Big Combo for its ruthless villain, his henchmen, plenty of dramatic shadows and some sly naughtiness by the filmmakers. In his most flamboyant performance, Richard Conte plays mob boss Mr. Brown. Cornel Wilde (also the film’s producer) plays Lieutenant Diamond, a cop with two obsessions, to bring down the crime lord and to take his woman, Susan (Wilde’s real-life wife Jean Wallace). Mr. Brown is supremely confident, with good reason, and so arrogant that he only addresses Diamond, standing two feet away, through Brown’s own lackey. Brown and his henchmen ((Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman)) are also cruelly ruthless, carrying out the usual beatings and murders, and also torture by hearing aid and by boozeboarding.
Director Joseph Lewis and his collaborators did successfully slip some things past the censors. Conte’s Mr. Brown reminds Susan of how he pleases her. And the henchmen are a couple, as Holliman confirmed decades later to Eddie Muller.
Lewis and the great cinematographer John Alton delivered one of the most iconic final shots in noir.
Killers of the Flower Moon: Whiskey just keeps showing up, from King (Robert De Niro) greeting Ernest (Leonardo DiCaprio) with a glass to Mollie (Lily Gladstone) bringing out the good stuff to entertain Ernest.
The Holdovers: In The Holdovers, Paul is a bourbonaholic, who usually drinks Jim Beam, and he buys a pint in the Boston liquor store. (I’m a fan of The Holdovers, but not Jim Beam).
Past Lives: The film is bookended a scene in a New York City bar with the three main characters; Arthut (John Maguro) is drinking an Old Fashioned.
Oppenheimer: The flask keeps showing up – and in the 1940s US, it’s gotta contain whiskey.
Pasta:
Anatomy of a Fall: Defense attorney Vincent fixes spaghetti when first visiting Sandra (Sandra Huller) after her husband falls to his death. It’s a simple, light colored pasta like cacio a pepe or alla Gricia, and that’s what I’ll be preparing.
Past Lives: Given the choice of any cuisine available in New York City, Hae Sung requests pasta, so Nora and Arthur take him to an Italian restaurant where there have pasta with a red sauce.
American Fiction: Monk (Jeffrey Wright) and Coraline (Erika Alexander) are preparing a pasta dinner at her place, when their relationship takes a turn.
To go salad in a deli clamshell from American Fiction: Monk is at a hotel conference center to serve on a panel judging books for a literary prize. At the lunch break, he grabs a clamshell salad instead of a wrapped sandwich, which just perfectly fits the character.
Toast and milk from Barbie: Barbie (Margot Robbie) holds a piece of toast and a cup of milk (but doesn’t actually CONSUME them because she’s made of plastic, after all).
Chinese takeout from Maestro: Lenny (Bradley Cooper) and Felicia (Carey Mulligan) enjoy this Manhattan staple in their Upper West Side apartment with their artsy, intellectual friends.
Pasteis de nata from Poor Things: Belle (Emma Stone) gets addicted to these delectable Portuguese egg custards as she matures into having really good taste. The best pasteis de nata in the Western Hemisphere are from Adega in San Jose, but we had to make our own poor substitute.
German pastry from Zone of Interest: This is from the scene when Hedwig (Sandra Huller) is impressing her mother with the lifestyle perks of Hedwig’s marriage to the big boss.
Tim Blake Nelson and Gretchen Mol in THE INVISIBLES. Courtesy of Cinequest.
In the engrossing dramatic parable The Invisibles, Charlie (Tim Blake Nelson) has become so disengaged from his job and his marriage that he becomes invisible – at first metaphorically and then literally – to those around him. Charlie is finding this disturbing enough, but then he happens on an entire community of invisible people like him in a parallel dimension. Can they return to the world of the visible? And do they want to?
The invisibles hang out together in a decrepit bowling alley, led by Carl the affable bartender (Bruce Greenwood). Charlie learns that the invisibles have each experienced a loss, a disappointment or a betrayal so devastating that they have each given up on life in some way. But there’s no more emotional pain in the invisible world, and the bowling alley is a hub of merrymaking.
Charlie and his wife Hannah (Gretchen Mol) have suffered a grievous loss; Hannah has been working hard to recover, but the grief has paralyzed Charlie into a toxic mire of denial, avoidance and apathy.
As Charlie finds himself torn between his love for his wife and the comfort of the invisible world, The Invisibles explores the how people react to the pain of loss and the painful process of getting beyond it. The ingenious metaphor of the parallel universes is the creation of writer-director Andrew Currie. He wrote and directed Fido, one of my Zombie Movies for People Who Don’t Like Zombie Movies.
Tim Blake Nelson is an acting treasure, and he’s at the top of his game here. Mol and Greenwood are excellent, too, as is Nathan Alexis as one of the invisibles.
Cinequest hosted the world premiere of The Invisibles today and will present a second screening tomorrow, March 11. The Invisibles is highlighted as one of two Must See films in my Best of Cinequest.
Tim Blake Nelson and Gretchen Mol in THE INVISIBLES. Courtesy of Cinequest.
