Personal Shopper: Assayas Re-Teams with Stewart

For reasons both personal and political, a young American woman in Paris is drawn to the work of Hilma af Klint. Considered the one of the earliest abstract artists, af Klint claimed the geometric shapes she painted were transmitted directly to her hand by the spirit world. Given the recent increase in critical interest, the Moderna Museet probably now regrets turning down the proposed gift of her entire body of work in 1970. Frankly, it might also take a while for audiences and critics to catch up with Olivier Assayas’s latest genre-defying release, which features af Klint’s work prominently. It even stars Kristen Stewart, but it is lightyears more refined than the Twilight franchise. Ghosts are a serious subject, but much about their nature is open to interpretation in Assayas’s Personal Shopper (trailer here), opening this Friday in New York.

Maureen Cartwright lives a solitary existence. She works as a personal shopper for a vain, charity ball-attending celebrity, whom she rarely sees. Most of her instructions come from terse notes left in the jet-setter’s usually un-lived-in Parisian apartment. She is also still mourning the loss of her twin brother Lewis from the genetic heart defect they both shared. At least her soulless celebrity schlepping allows her time to moonlight as a medium.

She also shared with Lewis a "sensitivity" to the spirit world. At one point, they made a pact agreeing the first to die would send back signs to the surviving sibling from wherever. As a result, a freelance assignment to investigate a house associated with Lewis for lingering spirits holds deeply personal implications for Cartwright.

Assayas begins the film with Cartwright arriving to conduct her night-long “séance” and it just might be the most riveting “cold open” you will ever see. He makes it apparent there is some sort of entity hovering just outside Cartwright’s field of vision, but not that of the audience. When things do go bump in the night, it is not clear whether it is her brother attempting to communicate or a malicious spirit trying to deceive her. As a result, Shopper easily boasts some of the most breathlessly tense scenes you will find in a film not intended as a horror movie, per se. The unsettling ambiguity continues when Cartwright starts receiving ominous messages from a mystery texter. Again, it is not clear whether they are coming from a benign or malignant spirit, or perhaps a more terrestrial (and physically dangerous) source.

There are no easy answers in Shopper, which is likely to frustrate Twilight fans, but it will leave smarter genre viewers intrigued to the point of obsession. Assayas deliberately gives us scenes that support multiple conclusions, only to contradict them shortly thereafter. Yet, it never feels like he is deliberately toying with viewers. In fact, every frame of the film feels like it fits logically and organically into the whole.

Arguably, Stewart is not stretching so much from the personal assistant she played (so very well) in Assayas’s masterful Clouds of Sils Maria, but she still deserves credit for such an open and vulnerable portrait of spiritual and social alienation. Just as Assayas never wastes a shot, Stewart uses every second to express the doubts and anxieties plaguing Cartwright.

Technically, Stewart valiantly carries Shopper, appearing in nearly every frame of film, often without the benefit of another actor to play off. Yet, it rarely feels like she is “alone,” thanks to Assayas’s remarkable powers of suggestion. It is a masterful example of how subtle elements can be combined to ratchet up suspense. Without question, it represents some of the best work yet from both Assayas and Stewart, his current diva-of-choice. Very highly recommended for fans of ambitious genre cinema, Personal Shopper opens this Friday (3/10) in New York, at the IFC Center.

Irma Vep at AFA

She was the Catwoman of 1915 Paris. She was the leader of Le Vampires, which had nothing to do with the undead. Instead, they were a band of Parisian Apaches, who were completely unrelated to Native Americans. Credited with single-handedly launching thrillers as a cinematic genre, Louis Feuillade’s character and Musidora, the actress who played her, remain icons a century later. It takes guts to do her jumpsuit, but some have tried. The original Gaumont serial and subsequent films it inspired will screen as part of a mini tribute to Irma Vep and Musidora this week at Anthology Film Archives.

In contrast to the silent film programmed, series curator Michelle Handelman’s own short film Irma Vep, the Last Breath feels very installational. Starring transgender performance artist Zackary Drucker, Handelman literally puts Vep on the couch for a session of psychoanalysis that really holds a mirror up to the audience and our fascination with Vep’s fetish trappings. It should find an appreciative avant-garde audience when it screens this Thursday (10/22) at AFA—and you know who you are.

Not just anyone can slip into the catsuit and become Irma Vep, but Hong Kong action superstar Maggie Cheung is an icon in her own right. Casting her takes liberties with the character’s nationality, but it still makes sense. At least, that is what the past-his-prime auteur of Olivier Assayas’s late 1990s meta-riff thinks and it still makes perfect sense today. Fortunately Assayas was able to get Maggie Cheung to play Maggie Cheung playing Irma Vep in the 1997 Irma Vep (trailer here), which also streams on Fandor.

Thanks to cats like Tarantino, the West has just started embracing the films of John Woo and Johnnie To. Cheung is suddenly getting offers from around the world, including Rene Vidal’s ill-conceived comeback project, a remake of Les Vampires. Since Cheung speaks English, but not French, communication with be difficult. The under-funded production is in such a constant state of bedlam, Cheung has largely been palmed off on Zoe, the stressed out lesbian wardrobe specialist. One look at Cheung in costume and she falls for her hard. It is hard to blame her. In fact, Cheung herself seems to be falling under the influence of her character, or at least she gets a little methody slinking about the corridors and fire escapes of her hotel.

In addition to Les Vampires, Irma Vep openly engages in dialogue with Truffaut’s Day for Night, with Cheung serving as an analogue for Jacqueline Bisset, while also slyly commenting on her own action image of the era. Most fittingly, Jean-Pierre Léaud provides an apostolic link between the films. While he is unexpectedly restrained as the arrogant but anti-social Vidal, this still might be the funniest performance of his storied career.

However, Maggie Cheung is the uncontested star of the film, truly making the legendary role and outfit her own. Even in a secondary language, her presence shines through. She is smart and forceful, but also somewhat shy and hesitant, as one would expect from a famous stranger in a strange hipster land.

Cheung and Assayas would marry in 1998, divorce in 2001, and make the film Clean in 2004, so Irma Vep would clearly be the start of a significant relationship. It is also a heck of a star turn for Cheung. Along with Stanley Kwan’s Center Stage, it helped position Cheung as a serious screen thesp, beyond a mere action star. Although its grungy edges are a bit distracting at times, there is a freshness and vitality to it that still stands up. Recommended for fans of films about films, Irma Vep screens this Friday (10/23) as part of the Vep-Musidora retrospective at Anthology Film Archives.

NYFF ’14: Clouds of Sils Maria

Taking stock of German filmmaker Arnold Fanck is a rather complicated business, considering he was a close associate of Leni Riefenstahl. Still, he remains one of the most accomplished mountaineering filmmakers of the silent era, so it is not outrageous when his documentary short Cloud Phenomenon of Maloja assumes a prominent place in Olivier Assayas’s Clouds of Sils Marria (trailer here), which screens as a Main Slate selection of the 52^nd New York Film Festival.

Fanck’s silent film never ceased to fascinate the soon-to-be-late Fassbinder-ish Wilhelm Melchior, who titled his most famous play The Maloja Snake in reference to the serpentine cloud formation it documents. Maria Enders’ career ignited when she appeared in the film version, also directed by Melchoir, playing a ruthlessly manipulative young woman engaged in a lesbian relationship-slash-power struggle with an older, more sophisticated woman. Although many years have passed, she is reluctant to accept the more mature and tragic role, for a variety of reasons rooted in insecurity and superstition (the actress who starred opposite her died shortly thereafter). However, her personal assistant Val thinks it is a fine idea, because of her respect for the innovative director, Klaus Diesterweg, and her prospective co-star, the Lindsay Lohan-esque Jo-Ann Ellis.

Val and Diesterweg apparently prevail, but Enders constantly threatens to pull out of the production. She is profoundly uncomfortable with the different meanings she finds in the text after her reversal of roles. In fact, it seems to speak directly to her relationship with Val, especially when they rehearse her lines. The tabloid circus following Ellis also spooks the extremely guarded Enders.

If the Weinsteins had picked up Clouds, Juliette Binoche would have been an instant Oscar frontrunner. It is a performance of strange and understated power, befitting the character clearly modeled to some extent on herself. The implied self-referential nature of the film thereby makes her scenes with Kristen Stewart’s Val feel even bolder and revealing.

Unlike the clumsy play-that-becomes-real in Polanski’s wildly over-praised Venus in Fur, Assayas stages the uncomfortably charged rehearsal sequences with such subtle ambiguity, we often lose our narrative bearings within the film, despite being on guard against that very contingency. Of course, everyone has known Binoche is one of the best in the business for some time, but the degree to Stewart matches her intensity is almost revelatory. It is an especially bold performance for her, given the added meta-dimensions, such as Ellis’s affair with a married writer that echoes certain media feeding frenzies Stewart would probably like to forget.

While the film works best as a two-hander, Hanns Zischler is devilishly effective as the older actor with whom Enders once had an ill-advised affair, whereas Chloe Grace Moretz looks the part, but never really adds to our understanding of a hot mess like Ellis. Arguably, the third act is somewhat flat compared to the action that came before, in large measure due to Val’s deliberately mysterious exit. Yet, it is still fascinating to see Binoche’s Enders navigate the world of international celebrity they both know so well. While all signs seem to indicate her time in the spotlight is coming to a close, the Ellises of the world might just be playing Enders’ game after all.

Even with its late pacing issues, Sils Maria is a quite a wry valentine to actresses and the personal assistants who put up with their diva-ness. It is unusual when a film this smart is also so forgiving of human weaknesses. Helmed with considerable sensitivity, it also represents a return to form for Assayas after the messy and somewhat didactic Something in the Air. Recommended for fans of Binoche, Assayas, and Stewart (which really ought to cover just about everyone), Clouds of Sils Maria screens this Wednesday (10/8) and Thursday (10/9) at Alice Tully Hall, as part of this year’s NYFF.

Something in the Air: Nostalgia for What?

Ah yes, to be young and free from consequences.  It is 1971, three years after the 1968 demonstrations.  For a group of young radicals, life is fantasy world of activism and sexual hedonism.  Nobody really worries about who pays the bills in Olivier Assayas’s Something in the Air (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York at the IFC Center.

Gilles and his New Left high school cronies are outraged when special French riot police break-up their riots, so they respond by rioting more.  When a Molotov cocktail seriously injures a campus security guard (who could’ve figured?), the radicals decided to lay low in Italy until things blow over.  They still debate the various merits of Trotskyism vs. anarchism, idling away their summer vacation in the Dolce Vita environment.

Everyone gets deeply worked up about injustice in general, but nobody seems to have many specifics.  Frankly, every teenager should have the opportunities Gilles’ TV producer father can provide.  Yet, Assayas presents these coddled middle class revolutionaries with no sense of irony.  Nor do they have strongly differentiated personalities.  They all just seem to drift through scenes, feeling things deeply.  Lola Créton is the notable exception portraying Gilles’s sometimes girlfriend Christine, as a sad, somewhat tragic figure, because she eventually grows up and tastes some of life’s disappointments.

Aside from Créton’s Christine, Something’s characters are a uniformly dull lot that leave no lasting impression.  However, the period details are great.  Production designer François-Renaud Labarthe’s team earns kudus for tracking down working mimeograph machine.  The soundtrack choices are also great, including songs that are era appropriate but far from overplayed, like Robin Williamson’s “Fare Thee Well, Sweet Mally” and the Incredible String Band’s “Air.”

Almost inadvertently, Something captures the shallow indulgence of the times.  Yet, it lacks both the drive and honesty of Assayas’s thematically related Carlos (which boldly depicts the realities of ideologically motivated terrorism).  The resulting net effect is a rather static viewing experience that just pokes along.  Again, it sounds cool, but never engages on an emotional or intellectual level.  A disappointment from a major filmmaker, Something in the Air opens this Friday (5/3) in New York at the IFC Center.

Assayas' Carlos

Ilich Ramírez Sánchez killed on behalf of just about every violent extremist movement of the twentieth century. Sheltered by the East German Stasi, he was most closely aligned with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). An ardent Marxist and notorious terrorist, Ramírez Sánchez is best known as the infamous “Carlos the Jackal” (though he preferred just plain “Carlos”). French director Olivier Assayas dramatizes his infamous crimes (and there are a lot of them) in his grandly ambitious, thinly fictionalized historical thriller Carlos (trailer here), which screens in its full five and a half hour glory for 38 special "Roadshow Edition" presentations at the IFC Center starting today (with popcorn included).

Soviet educated, the Venezuelan Ramírez Sánchez views the world through a radicalized prism. He is convinced “direct action” (meaning terrorism) is necessary to bring about supposedly progressive change. A promising volunteer for the PFLP terrorist network, Carlos steadily establishes a reputation for ruthlessness with a number of grenade attacks on cafes and the unsuccessful assassination attempt of Edward Sieff, president of Marks & Spencer and a prominent member of the British Jewish community.

Carlos forged alliances with the Japanese Red Army and extremist German Baader Meinhof/RAF splinter groups, acting more or less in concert. While he was not directly involved in the murder of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics or the hijacking of Air France Flight 139 freed by IDF’s famous Entebbe operation, he was personally charged with subsequent reprisal attacks. However, his greatest international infamy probably arose from his attack on the 1975 OPEC meeting, taking the cartel’s delegates hostage.

Ramírez Sánchez is an anti-Semitic mass murderer. His crimes have no justification. Wisely, Assayas does not really go down that road. While his Carlos has a certain animal magnetism and a voracious sexual appetite, the film never makes a martyr of him, unlike the terrorist agit-prop of Uli Edel’s Baader Meinhof Complex. Essentially, Assayas shows Ramírez Sánchez going about his destructive business rather matter-of-factly, only occasionally paying lip service to some leftist cause, such as Allende in Chile. Yet, there are a handful of truly telling scenes, as when a former RAF accomplice remarks to Carlos how sick it is for Germans like himself to be killing Jews.

The five plus hours of Carlos are packed to the gills with violent intrigue. Yet, it is all pretty well grounded in historical fact. Indeed, it is quite in synch with the facts established in Barbet Schroeder’s Terror’s Advocate, a documentary profile of Jacques Vergés, the attorney for Ramírez Sánchez, the PFLP, and just about every other terrorist of the twentieth century (who also briefly appears as a character in Carlos). Frankly, it would make a much better double feature with Assayas’s film than Edel’s love-letter to terror.

Edgar Ramírez is appropriately both charismatic and creepy as Ramírez Sánchez, nicely capturing the ferocity of extremism. There are also scores of effective supporting performances from its large but completely credible ensemble cast. Yet, Carlos is much more a director’s film than an actor’s, seamlessly recreating complicated historical events around the globe and staging gritty action sequences with tick-tock precision.

Originally broadcast on French television and recently on the IFC Channel, Carlos might be divided into three parts, but it truly is one unified film, entirely helmed by Assayas (unlike the three interlocking films of Red Riding). Truthfully, the 319 minutes is a long haul. As fascinating and absorbing as it is, most viewers will be desperately hoping for his capture by the final half hour. For those with short attention spans, a two and half hour cut will also screen at the Lincoln Plaza. However, if you are going to see a big epic film like Carlos, you should do it right and get the full Roadshow experience at the IFC Center starting today (10/15).

NYFF ’10: Carlos

Ilich Ramírez Sánchez killed on behalf of just about every violent extremist movement of the twentieth century. Sheltered by the East German Stasi, he was most closely aligned with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). An ardent Marxist and notorious terrorist, Ramírez Sánchez is best known as the infamous “Carlos the Jackal” (though he preferred just plain “Carlos”). French director Olivier Assayas dramatizes his infamous crimes (and there are a lot of them) in his grandly ambitious five-hour, thinly fictionalized historical thriller Carlos (trailer here), which screens in its entirety during this year’s New York Film Festival.

Soviet educated, the Venezuelan Ramírez Sánchez views the world through a radicalized prism. He is convinced “direct action” (meaning terrorism) is necessary to bring about supposedly progressive change. A promising volunteer for the PFLP terrorist network, Carlos steadily establishes a reputation for ruthlessness with a number of grenade attacks on cafes and the unsuccessful assassination attempt of Edward Sieff, president of Marks & Spencer and a prominent member of the British Jewish community.

Carlos forged alliances with the Japanese Red Army and extremist German Baader Meinhof/RAF splinter groups, acting more or less in concert. While he was not directly involved in the murder of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics or the hijacking of Air France Flight 139 freed by IDF’s famous Entebbe operation, he was personally charged with subsequent reprisal attacks. However, his greatest international infamy probably arose from his attack on the 1975 OPEC meeting, taking the cartel’s delegates hostage.

Ramírez Sánchez is an anti-Semitic mass murderer. His crimes have no justification. Wisely, Assayas does not really go down that road. While his Carlos has a certain animal magnetism and a voracious sexual appetite, the film never makes a martyr of him, unlike the terrorist agit-prop of Uli Edel’s Baader Meinhof Complex. Essentially, Assayas shows Ramírez Sánchez going about his destructive business rather matter-of-factly, only occasionally paying lip service to some leftist cause, such as Allende in Chile. Yet, there are a handful of truly telling scenes, as when a former RAF accomplice remarks to Carlos how sick it is for Germans like himself to be killing Jews.

The five plus hours of Carlos are packed to the gills with violent intrigue. Yet, it is all pretty well grounded in historical fact. Indeed, it is quite in synch with the facts established in Barbet Schroeder’s Terror’s Advocate, a documentary profile of Jacques Vergés, the attorney for Ramírez Sánchez, the PFLP, and just about every other terrorist of the twentieth century (who also briefly appears as a character in Carlos). Frankly, it would make a much better double feature with Assayas’s film than Edel’s love-letter to terror.

Edgar Ramírez is appropriately both charismatic and creepy as Ramírez Sánchez, nicely capturing the ferocity of extremism. There are also scores of effective supporting performances from its large but completely credible ensemble cast. Yet, Carlos is much more a director’s film than an actor’s, seamlessly recreating complicated historical events around the globe and staging gritty action sequences with tick-tock precision.

Originally broadcast on French television, Carlos might be divided into three parts, but it truly is one unified film, entirely helmed by Assayas (unlike the three interlocking films of Red Riding). Truthfully, 319 minutes are a long haul. As fascinating and absorbing as it is, most viewers will be desperately hoping for his capture by the final half hour. For those with short attention spans, a two and half hour cut will eventually screen at the Lincoln Plaza. However, if you are going to see a big epic film like Carlos, you should do it right and get the entire experience. The full unvarnished and uncut Carlos screens this Saturday morning (10/2) during the 2010 NYFF.

Assayas’s Summer Hours

French death taxes are a killer. They force the Berthier family to sell off their country home and the tasteful fine art collection it housed following the death of their beloved mother. Yet, their estate sale has much deeper meaning than the mere liquidation of assets in Olivier Assayas’s Summer Hours (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Hélène Berthier’s far-flung family has reunited for what will be her final birthday. Since the death of her husband, she has dedicated herself to preserving the memory of her uncle Paul, a highly regarded artist, and his valuable art collection, largely acquired from colleagues early in their careers. However, she harbors no illusions about its fate once she passes on. It is the eldest brother Frédéric who has trouble emotionally letting go of the family legacy, particularly two Corot landscapes, despite the harsh financial realities of French estate taxes.

Evidently, his siblings do not seem to share his sentimental attachments. After all, they hardly see the place. Sister Adrienne lives in New York with her younger boyfriend (played by jazz musician Kyle Eastwood, son of director Clint), while brother Jéremié will soon be moving to China to manage a sweatshop. The sale of the Berthier assets exposes the radically different ideals of the siblings. In fact, without their mother and the country house to come home to, their future cohesion as a family is possibly in doubt.

With its atmosphere of elegant fatalism, Sumimer Hours is a quintessentially French film. It is also directly connected to the French artistic tradition it honors. It is one of two feature films that developed out of a proposed series of shorts that would have been produced to celebrate the Musée D’Orsay’s twentieth anniversary. While the original project failed to materialize, the museum supported Summer Hours, supplying works from their collection and allowing Assayas to film throughout their premises. Appropriately, Eric Gauthier’s vibrant cinematography shows the Berthier collection and the surrounding countryside in a bright, sparkling light that emphasizes their beauty.

Summer Hours is wistfully elegiac, but not tragic. This is not King Lear. Family differences are settled as best they can be amongst mature adults who really do care about each other. They clearly have years of history together, which the three central actors do a nice job of evoking. Juliette Binoche is a smart, luminous presence as Adrienne. (Notably, she also co-starred in the previous film to evolve out of the Musée D’Orsay project, Hou Hsiao Hsien’s lovely Flight of the Red Balloon.) Jéremié Renier is also quite credible as the underachieving brother Jéremié. However, frequent Assayas collaborator Charles Berling’s finely nuanced performance supplies the film’s soul as Frédéric, the sentimental intellectual, struggling with an array of disappointments in life.

Assayas’s Summer Hours is an artfully crafted, subtly rewarding film, with many legitimately touching moments. It might sound deceptively small in scope, but themes like the value of family and the permanence of art are pretty deep and universal. It opens in New York on Friday (5/15) at the IFC Film Center.