| VIENNALE 2008 capsules (6/7) : archive films, including 'The King of Roses' (1986) [8/10] |
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 The Flower of Pain. Elliptical fragments relate the story of three characters - impoverished, disaffected, over-articulate bohemian intellectuals in an unspecified American city near the start of the Reagan era. Coffee and cigarettes are consumed; a book on Antonin Artaud is consulted (at least one or two of the protagonists are actors); the nature of relationships is talked over and over, to a destructive degree: this is, essentially, the anatomy of a very painful breakup, conducted under the shadow of inescapable mortality. Anticipating the 'Mumblecore' genre by a good 20 years, Gianvito's earnest, semi-experimental debut feels like an acutely personal act of self-expression. Occasionally guilty of groping a little too strenuously towards symbol-heavy profundity, but fruitfully challenging on a formal level and still of more than mere time-capsule interest. The King of Roses. Gloriously berserk example of the unapologetic, floridly symbolic, too-much-is-not-enough Art Film which rarely gets funded any more - one whose opulent grandeur quickly transcends what initially looks like unbearable pretentiousness. What plot there is involves one 'Anna Rahma' (Magdalena Montezuma) a tormented, mentally-unstable, imperious grande dame - spiritual cousin of Norma Desmond and Veronika Voss, perhaps - who moves to a rambling mansion on the Portuguese coast to grow roses with her adult son. But this is mere pretext for a series of intense, operatic reveries - most of them ostentatiously sensual, many of them dangerously skirting the mistreatment of animals without, thankfully, ever crossing the line into actual cruelty. Not for everyone, by any means, but yields multiple, unexpected rewards for the patiently indulgent. Rise and Fall of a Little Film Company, from a novel by James Hadley Chase. Godard's contribution to TV crime-show Serie Noire is a characteristically subversive/nihilistic mashup that deconstructs everything it touches: television and cinema (which are presented as mutually exclusive and antithetical), acting, casting, storytelling and, most specifically, the folly of "adapting" a work from one medium to another. Elusive shards of quasi-plot involve a two-bit movie-company's doomed attempts to film James Hadley Chase's potboiler The Soft Center - in French, Chantons en choeur, which translates as "Let's sing in the choir." Godard, however,is most emphatically a lone voice - and his 'song' may not always exactly be musical, but his wilfully discordant form of take-no-prisoners, scattershot intellectual slapstick is often surprisingly hilarious - and occasionally penetrating... when it actually comes close to hitting its myriad targets, that is. Touch of Evil. Larkish/sombre adaptation of Whit Masterson's novel Badge of Evil sees writer/director Welles' revisit The Third Man territory. In a film that's all about crossing 'frontiers' of all kinds, the US/Mexican frontier replaces quadripartite Vienna, with Welles again the Machiavellian, amoral Mr Big who miasmically dominates proceedings whether or not he's on screen. This time he's an obese, corrupt old-school cop, "investigating" a murder attempt on a crusading Mexican politican (an off-puttingly "browned-up" Charlton Heston) shortly after the latter's marriage to a feisty, ever-so-blonde American (Janet Leigh). Inventive Carol-Reed-ish camera-angles and lighting-effects abound in a monochrome, eccentric fever-dream of a movie which isn't anywhere near as disturbing or provocative as it initially appears, but showcases Marlene Dietrich (two-scene cameo as a seen-it-all madam-cum-fortune-teller) to sensational effect. Neil Young 9th November, 2008  THE FLOWER OF PAIN : [6/10] : USA 1983 : John GIANVITO : 75m M, 27.10THE KING OF ROSES : [8/10] : Der Rosenkönig : W.Germany (WG/Por) 1986 : Werner SCHROETER : 106m M, 26.10 RISE AND FALL OF A LITTLE FILM COMPANY... : [7/10] : Grandeur et decadence d'un petit commerce de cinema... (and is also known under various other titles) : France (Fr/Swi) 1986 TV : Jean-Luc GODARD : 90m U, 28/10 TOUCH OF EVIL : [8?/10] : USA 1958 : Orson WELLES : 111m, 29.10 VIENNALE 2008 index-page |
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