NYFF ’17: Ismael’s Ghosts, Director’s Cut

It is like Day for Night mixed with a little le Carré, but it is all very Arnaud Desplechin. Ismaël Vuillard (the protag of Desplechin’s Kings & Queen, again portrayed by Mathieu Amalric) is supposed to make a movie about notorious diplomat and possible spy Ivan Dedalus, who certainly sounds related to Paul Dedalus, a recurring character in three other Desplechin films, also played by Amalric. Everything is related and possibly everyone is Desplechin in Ismaël’s Ghosts (trailer here), which screens as a Main Slate selection of the 55^th New York Film Festival.

This is not the version of Ghosts that garnered Cannes jeers. Instead, we get a “director’s cut” that is twenty-minutes longer. Frankly, the long version is still pretty confused, but it must be even harder to follow with pieces carved out. Vulliard is supposed to be telling the story of Ivan Dedalus, a notorious diplomat and spy from a working-class background, who ironically was often attached to missions precisely because he was suspected of dealing with the Russians.

However, Vulliard’s personal drama keeps getting in the way. Depending on what point Desplechin flashes back to, the surrogate character is either romancing Sylvia, the shy astrophysicist, preparing his mentor-father-in-law Henri Bloom for a retrospective tribute in Israel, or dealing poorly with the sudden reappearance of his long presumed dead wife Carlotta Bloom. Eventually, the stress gets to be too much for Vulliard, forcing his long-suffering friend and line producer Zwy to track him down.

Even if Desplechin added an additional hour, Ghosts would probably still be a jumbled, herky-jerky affair. The constant flashing forwards and backwards can leave your head spinning, but the whole point is how everything is supposed to be mixed up in Vulliard’s head, so you just have to roll with it.

In fact, there is a lot of good stuff in here. Louis Garrel is almost unrecognizable as the intriguing Ivan Dedalus, so much so, we wouldn’t mind seeing Desplechin return to his character. Amalric and Charlotte Gainsbourg’s Sylvia also have some appealingly fresh and mature chemistry together. Hippolyte Girardot also shows a flair for physical comedy as the poor, put-upon Zwy. Surprisingly, it is Marion Cotillard’s sequences as Carlotta Bloom (dig the Vertigo reference) that mostly muddy up the film.

It hardly matters if viewers have not seen Kings and Queen, because the significant events of that film are barely referenced in Ghosts. Anyone who can write up a cogent, detailed five-page synopsis of it has our respect. Yet, one could argue the old joke about the weather also applies to this film. If you are not enjoying it, just wait five minutes and it will change. Frankly, Ghosts is more briskly paced than the equally Proustian My Golden Days, but it has none of the whiny teen angst. Better than reported, Ismaël’s Ghosts, Director’s Cut is recommended for patrons who enjoy unpacking films when it screens tomorrow (10/13) and Saturday (10/14) during this year’s New York Film Festival.

Desplechin’s My Golden Years

With that name of his, you would expect Paul Dédalus, he must be a Joycian figure. He most certainly had a difficult childhood and if you have seen his first appearance in My Sex Life, or . . . How I Got Into an Argument, you know he definitely appreciates women. Dédalus takes stock of his life as well as the great love of his life in Arnaud Desplechin’s My Golden Days (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Dédalus is about to transfer from his diplomatic post in Tajikistan to a cushy job back home in the French Foreign Ministry. Unfortunately, he will have to leave a perfectly good lover. It will not be his first affair to have a bittersweet ending, but it still has him feeling sentimental. As Dédalus returns to a more conventional life, he revisits memories of his formative years. His trip down memory lane very intentionally evokes the vibe of Truffaut’s Antione Doinel films, but Dédalus’s extremes were even more extreme.

Young Dédalus and his siblings grew up terrorized by their mentally ill mother Jeanne and neglected by their emotionally distant father, Abel. Dédalus was the one of always stood up to the unbalanced woman, but one day he reached his breaking point and ran off to live with his beloved great aunt and her understanding lesbian lover. As a teen, Dédalus is still a protective figure to his siblings, but he also develops an interest in politics and girls. By far, the best sequences in the film chronicle Dédalus’s school trip to Minsk, where he has secretly arranged to smuggle money and supplies to Jewish Refuseniks. However, the rather noble episode will have unexpected consequences years later, as the audience shall learn in due time.

The preponderance of the film in some way addresses his complicated relationship with Esther, beginning in their school days and continuing rather awkwardly into his early professional adulthood years. She was pretty in high school and she knew it, but somehow Dédalus managed to charm her with his combination chutzpah and self-deprecating humor. For a while, they seem truly happy together. However, it slowly starts to unravel when his advanced studies force them into a long-distance relationship in the pre-skype era. Yet, it is Esther who becomes the needy, desperately clingy one, compulsively writing Dédalus at least one letter each day.

It all seems sadly inevitable, but Dédalus will have the final word on the matter when he chances into an old acquaintance in the film’s brilliant capstone scene that just might become emblematic of the careers of Desplechin and his frequent leading man, Mathieu Almaric.

Indeed, Golden Days is a film rife with telling exchanges, but its inconsistency makes it more of a masterwork than the masterpiece some have suggested. Frankly, there is more teen angst than you will find in an entire season of the CW television network. Yet, amidst all the high school stuff, Desplechin springs quietly powerful moments on viewers, as when Abel Dédalus suddenly decides to act like a father and tries to console his insecure daughter.

Despite returning to a familiar role, Mathieu Almaric is wonderfully unpredictable as the world-weary Dédalus. He can be cavalier one minute and burst into an eruption of nervous energy seconds later. However, the sad-eyed Quentin Dolmaire and the pouty Lou Roy-Lecollinet carry the dramatic load, developing relatively convincing chemistry as the young and naïve Dédalus and Esther, respectively. It seems like every French film released this year features André Dussolier, but that is not such a bad policy. True to form, he is rather elegantly sinister in his brief appearance as an intelligence service interrogator.

In terms of form, Golden Days is a Proustian memory play, but aesthetically, it is a big, rangy film that practically throws in the proverbial kitchen sink. It has its excesses and its pacing issues, but when it works, it devastates. Overall, it is a potently nostalgic film that amply rewards viewers who wrestle with it. Recommended for patrons of French cinema, My Golden Days opens this Friday (3/18) in New York, at the IFC Center downtown and the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center uptown.

Jimmy P: Head-Shrinking on the Plains

Georges Devereux credited his time in the field with Native Americans for turning back towards Freudian analysis, because they convinced him of the power of dreams. Fittingly, his “Dora” would also be a Native American patient, whom Devereux treats at the behest of the VA in Arnaud Desplechin’s Jimmy P. (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

James Picard saw just enough action in the waning days of WWII to have his skill fracturing.  Suffering from debilitating headaches and dizziness, Picard checks into the Topeka VA hospital, from where he is soon transferred to the nearby Menninger Institute. There is nothing physically wrong with Picard, but the good Dr. Menninger never doubts his pain. Trying a different tact, Menninger calls in the controversial Dr. Devereux for a one time referral, hoping his anthropological expertise will facilitate a psychiatric diagnosis.

Like anyone, Picard made plenty of mistakes in life, which may weigh on his psyche. Devereux will do his best to untangle them for the sake of Picard’s well being and his own checkered career. Representing the best of Jimmy P, Desplechin’s scenes of their analysis sessions are written and performed with intelligence and unusual sensitivity. However, there is a great deal sluggish connective tissue, wherein Desplechin establishes and compulsively re-establishes the dry and sleepy late 1940’s Kansas setting.

Still, there is something to be said for the restraint exhibited by Desplechin and lead actor Benicio Del Toro, who draws us into Picard’s interior torment, rather than howling at the moon and bugging out his eyes, like a Blackfoot Meryl Streep. Wisely, Desplechin allows Picard to maintain his dignity instead of using him as an easy figure of victimhood.

In fact, Desplechin and co-writers Kent Jones and Julie Peyr maintain an ambiguous stance regarding Devereux’s ethical sensibilities, allowing space for viewers to interpret him as either exploiter or altruist, which is usually how life works. Clearly, the film is deeply informed by revisionist criticism of manifest destiny, but it never hyperventilates with outrage. Frankly, aside from an orderly calling Picard “Chief,” the VA is largely depicted in positive terms.

As Picard and Devereux, Del Toro and Mathieu Almaric play off and complement each other quite other quite well. Almaric brings an especially welcome roguish energy as the Austro-Hungarian born French-American psychoanalyst (who happened to be Edward Teller’s cousin). While Del Toro’s lack of histrionics is a blessed relief, his extreme reserve sometimes has a lulling effect.  In support, Larry Pine does right by American psychiatry, conveying Menninger’s authority and compassion (anyone who has not yet seen him in Vanya on 42^nd Street should catch up with Louis Malle’s ultra-New York take on Chekhov at their earliest convenience), while Misty Upham adds a note of graceful tragedy as Jane, Picard’s great flashback love.

Desplechin’s pace is a tad on the leisurely side and Howard Shore’s score would better serve an unabashedly weepy melodrama. Nevertheless, the small ensemble shoulders through, making it all work at the end. It is a quality period production, but it never overwhelms viewers’ emotions or senses. Not quite at the level of David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, but considerably superior to the recent French import Augustine, Jimmy P is recommended for fans of head-shrinking cinema when it opens this Friday (2/14) in New York at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.

A French Christmas Tale

It’s time to get your Bah Humbug on, en Français. It might be the Christmas season, but there is little comfort and joy when the Vuillards get together. Instead it is family dysfunction of the highest order that comes to the fore in Arnaud Desplechin’s A Christmas Tale (trailer here), opening today in New York.

The Vuillards have issues. Ever since the oldest child Joseph died of cancer at age seven, the family dynamics have been out of kilter. Now the children are physically grown, but remain emotionally stunted. Holidays are an ordeal for everyone, but they have been spared the presence of the middle son Henri. After nearly bringing financial ruin on the Vuillards, his younger sister Elizabeth made good on his debts, but at the price of banishment from the family. Henri does not understand how he inspired such resentment, aside from nearly bankrupting the family and just being a complete louse in general.

However, Henri might hold a trump card. His mother Junon has been stricken by the same disease which killed his brother, and so far no family members have proved compatible bone marrow donors. With Faunia, his amused Jewish girlfriend in tow, Henri joins the family for a miserable Vuillard family Christmas and some blood tests at the local hospital.

Tale’s trailer is somewhat misleading. While there is dark comedy, most of the lines in the preview which sound like jokes are said in deadly earnest. This is a largely loveless family of hopelessly incompatible people. Junon the matriarch was too vain and disinterested to love her children. The cold-blooded Elizabeth is incapable of forgetting her grievances. Her son Paul seems to have inherited the recessive underachieving genes which surfaced his black sheep uncle. For his part, Henri takes perverse pleasure in mismanaging his life, while Faunia finds the spectacle of it all amusing. Only their sensitive patriarch Abel shows any kind of capacity for familial love. We know he is a man of substance and depth from the music he studies and enjoys, including jazz compositions by Charles Mingus and Cecil Taylor.

Desplechin’s domestic train wreck is all too believable, particularly because it resists explaining every little behavioral quirk. People hold grudges and blow each other off for reasons that remain obscure. That’s life. Catherine Deneuve is perfectly cast as Junon, the Mother of the Year. As Henri, Mathieu Almaric deftly portrays a multi-faceted character who is simultaneously charming, boorish, self-destructive, and passive aggressive. Not exactly comic relief, as Faunia, Emmanuelle Devos effectively provides an ironic vantage point on Vuillard family reunion.

Tale is a smart drama, but it is about as much a Christmas film as Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. The holiday is an obligation for the Vuillards, not a celebration. While Tale might sound depressing, Desplechin strings together one fascinating scene after another, making it’s nearly two and a half hour running seem much quicker. It opens today in the City, at the IFC Film Center and the Lincoln Plaza.