THREE FRENCH FILMMAKERS TO WATCH
by Eric Allen Hatch

CLAIRE DENIS |BRUNO DUMONT | LEOS CARAX

Buy Denis films NOW!

Filmmaker Claire Denis has emerged as one of the strongest directors in the last ten years of world cinema, and one of a handful of French filmmakers able to leave a modern imprint on their work without falling back on references to the New Wave filmmakers of the 1960s. Furthermore, although her work rarely focuses on what conventional wisdom might term "women's issues," and it is quite common for audiences to view her films without realizing the work is that of a female auteur, more careful readings reveal a common cerebral thread that is at once visionary, radical, and feminine.

Reared by French parents in West Africa, Denis then began her work in film as assistant and second unit directors for some of the most revered films of the last few decades - Makavejev's Sweet Movie, Jarmusch's Down by Law, and Wenders' Wings of Desire. Given the diversity of these titles, it is little wonder that Denis has proven herself capable of putting her stamp on a variety of subject matters, genres, and cultural milieus.

Her feature debut remains arguably her most autobiographical. 1988's Chocolat (not to be confused with last year's Lasse Hallstrom fluff piece of the same name) is told in flashback, detailing the experiences of a young French girl in the waning years of African colonialism. The story eventually centers upon the flirtations and possible infidelities of the girl's mother, some of which involve a handsome black servant. It balances a meandering narrative with a perfectly exacted perspective (here, that of a precocious child's curiousity about the adult world into which she's been thrust), a promising tonal blueprint for Denis' subsequent works.
1994's I Can't Sleep, this author's favorite Denis film, is the moodiest, most intuitive thriller since Roeg's Don't Look Now. A mixed-race gay couple may or may not be implicated in the murders of a string of elderly Parisian women. One of the gay men's brother struggles with the lifestyle of his sibling, himself reacting by leading a life of extreme rectitude. These characters' lives begin to intersect in tangents with that of Daiga, a dynamic Lithuanian girl hoping to find a place for herself in the hip, fast-paced Paris of the mid-'90s. An effective but lesser film is 1996's Nenette and Boni, which boasts a small but memorable role from Vincent Gallo and warm treatments of incest, teen pregnancy, sexual obsession, and gang violence.

Two final Denis films, No Fear No Die (1990) and the upcoming Beau Travail (1999) reside clearly in masculine worlds, but through the absence of dominant female characters force the audience to view testosterone-tinged landscapes from a woman's eyes. The first of these looks at two black immigrants who make their money as trainers in France's illegal cock fighting underworld; it's one of many Denis films to explore xenophobia and its consequences for "natives" and immigrants alike. The latter film is Denis' updating of Melville's Billy Budd. Deniro-esque dynamo Denis Lavant, star of Leos Carax's first three features, plays a military man who represses feelings of love and hate for a new recruit, with ultimately tragic consequences. The film unrelentingly focuses upon military ritual - living arrangements, interminable training exercises, and barely repressed homoerotic interactions - until its very final scene, an ecstatic dancehall juxtaposition reminiscent of Bunuel's Simon of the Desert that forces the audience to rethink every image Denis has given us thus far.

These films are only a portion of Denis' feature film work thus far, but are the entirety of her work available in the U.S. on home video. That said, they are enough to assure us of the mastery of Denis' body of work. Each film creates a palpable mood that will linger long after the lights go up. She coaxes amazing performances from stellar casts, works in close, fertile collaboration with up-and-coming cinematographer Agnes Godard, and exacts perfect placement of music ranging from classical to hip-hop. Claire Denis' films may make the audience work at ordering the circuitous narrative threads, but this engrossing travail only makes us feel more strongly the real human emotions and eminently believable settings that drive her body of work. (Eric Allen Hatch)

CLAIRE DENIS | BRUNO DUMONT | LEOS CARAX

Buy Dumont films NOW!

His name is largely unknown in the U.S., but abroad Bruno Dumont is considered one of the most provocative names in all cinema, an enfant terrible as loved and loathed as our own Harmony Korine. Dumont has only two features under his belt, both of which startle viewers with their blunt sexuality, hypnotically lackadaisical pacing, and remarkably deft non-professional casts.

A brilliant study of mischanneled rage, 1996's Life of Jesus stars David Douche as Freddy, a 20 year-old epileptic who is out of work and still lives with his mother in a small rural town. He and his nihilistic buddies roam the countryside on their mopeds, with no mind for employment or their futures. Freddy's occasional fits cause him to bury intense feelings of self-hatred and paranoia, feelings which weigh heavily upon his girlfriend, Marie. When Kader, a young Arab comes to town, Freddy and his gang's inability to deal with their emotions pour out in explosions of intense racism. A powerful sense of boredom, dread, and hopelessness hangs over the entire film. There's little action - little movement, really - but in its emotional detail it dwarfs anything Hollywood has to offer.

1999's Humanite was marketed as a thriller, and indeed what plot there is here must be termed a detective story. But this is not your father's whodunit. A young girl found raped and murdered in the French countryside catalyzes an inept, aimless investigation by a local police officer (think Inspector Clouseau minus the slapstick). This officer spends most of his time hanging out with his neighboring friend and his girlfriend, occasionally spying on them in bed, resulting in some of the most graphic, non-glamorous sex scenes in recent memory. Two hours later, we are left with a solved mystery, but unresolved feelings of being left adrift in a godless universe. It also left many American critics and distributors baffled, but not so the jury at Cannes, which awarded the film its highest honor (as well as best actor and actress awards), nor American auteur John Waters, who included the film on his top ten list of 1999 .
In a stilted but illuminating interview on the Humanite DVD, Dumont characterizes himself as a former film lover who now spends all his time living and making films, and none of it watching film. While some might see in both that statement and his work contempt for the contemporary film community, it must also be acknowledged that his work exists with little precedent, films that plow terrifying new territory and leave us to dizzily ponder their existential implications. (Eric Allen Hatch)

CLAIRE DENIS |BRUNO DUMONT | LEOS CARAX

Buy Carax films NOW!

A stubborn and brilliant talent beginning to receive his due among critics stateside, Leos Carax has created some of the most poignantly romantic films of the last two decades, recalling Vigo, prime Chaplin and early Godard and Truffaut. That said, his work remains tough and idiosyncratic, free of the cliches that mar most modern romantic pictures. His characters are outsiders - punks, freaks, artists, and street people - who learn that memories of lost loves are easier to sustain than love itself. His characters are unfit for mainstream society because they emote too intensely - their love is a jealous, painful conflagration that might fatally engulf both partners at any moment.

All three of his features star the acrobatic, virtuosic Denis Lavant (of Claire Denis' soon-to-be-issued Beau Travail) as characters named Alex - a young punk in Boy Meets Girl, a card shark in Mauvais Sang, and a homeless firebreather in Lovers on the Bridge. The first film, at moments prescient in look and tone of Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise, is a very controlled black and white study of a young adult burying his memories of teenaged love in a colder adult world. Here characters rarely speak, but when they do it's to try to say everything - long, passionate monologues that spend all, bare all.

In Mauvais Sang (aka Bad Blood, aka the Night Is Young - 1986, Carax's most Godardian work, another Alex is hired to steal an antidote for a deadly, AIDS-like disease that is spread by caresses between young lovers. Juliette Binoche (then Carax's lover), Michel Piccoli and a young Julie Delpy co-star in this note-perfect, fatalistic tale of youthful yearnings and amorous absolutes.

Finally, in Lovers on the Bridge, a third Alex falls in love with the newly homeless Juliette Binoche, an artist at odds with the world due to a degenerative eyesight condition. Alex finds himself so obsessed that he schemes to keep his lover within his squalid circle rather than allow her to rejoin society at large. The most audacious and spectacular of Carax's movies, Lovers on the Bridge features one of the most memorable scenes in all of film history, a fireworks display on Bastille day that Lavant and Binoche's characters impetuously join, first firing bullets and explosives in the air in reckless abandon, then stealing a motorboat and racing along the Seine, the sky aflame with every color imaginable.

Lovers on the Bridge was also the most expensive French film to date, and a box office disaster that sent Carax's career into retreat. After years of inactivity, he rebounded in 1999 with Pola X, a very different film that has left fans of his previous work piqued but puzzled. Here a handsome, aristocratic young man (Guillaume Depardieu, son of Gerard), who has anonymously published an extremely popular first novel, finds his life sidetracked by the appearance of a possible half-sister, a mysterious, animal like woman who speaks in an inhuman cadence and dresses in rags. The two begin to live as lovers in a warehouse in which an experimental orchestra rehearses, and their interactions with the rest of humanity become more scarce and ill-fated as time goes on. Co-stars the still-luminous Catherine Deneuve in a strange maternal role.

Carax's films are all beautifully shot, often quite subversive in the rhythm of their editing, and punctuated by narrative moments of abrupt visual ecstasy. His characters are universal, yet will hold special appeal for today's youth - male and female Holden Caulfields that listen to Pubic Enemy, Serge Gainsbourg, and the Dead Kennedys. While his reputation as a cinematic great already seems assured, he also seems at a watershed moment, willing to reinvent himself and his worldview twenty years into his filmmaking career. While Pola X does not negate his previous work, it does burn some bridges between itself and Carax's past, setting his career on a striking, uncharted new trajectory. (Eric Allen Hatch)