for this week’s ‘Tribune’ : LE QUATTRO VOLTE [7/10], HEARTBEATS [6/10]

Published on: May 26th, 2011

Heartbeats
Director: Xavier Dolan

Le Quattro volte
Director: Michelangelo Frammartino

The latest Cannes Film Festival has just ended, but anyone tantalised by reading about features premiering down on the Croisette should bear in mind that it often takes months – or even a year – for such movies to find their way into commercial British distribution, especially if they were screened in sections outside the main Competition. Two cases in point are Heartbeats, by the French-Canadian prodigy Xavier Dolan, and Le Quattro volte from Italian experimentalist Michelangelo Frammartino – which attracted considerable Cannes attention last May when showing in the ‘Un Certain Regard’ and ‘Directors’ Fortnight’ sections respectively, and which finally reach our shoes this week. (Better late than never, of course – neither of the first films from Dolan, I Killed My Mother, or Frammartino, The Gift, were picked up by a British distributor despite considerable festival-circuit acclaim and several prizes.)

Un Certain Regard is traditionally seen as the most adventurous of Cannes’ “sidebars”, and the 2010 edition (comprising 19 selections) managed the surely unprecedented feat of incorporating two directors separated by eight decades of age: 101-year-old Portuguese super-veteran Manoel de Oliveira (with The Strange Case of Angelica), and 20-year-old Dolan – withHeartbeats (Les Amours imaginaires) This wasn’t even Dolan’s first time in Cannes’ official selection – he was a teenager when present at the 2009 festival with I Killed My Mother.

With Dolan – a former child-actor from Montreal – the fascination isn’t so much that he’s an outstanding film-maker, but that at a time when most folk his age are struggling through university, he’s already established himself as an internationally-recognised director. And he doesn’t just direct: Dolan wrote, edited and co-produced Heartbeats (original French-Canadian title Les Amours imaginaires) as well as supervising the art-direction and costume-design, and playing one of the three principle roles. He’s Francis, a hip urban Québécois who spends most of his days hanging out with best-friend Marie (Monia Chokri); their cosy little universe is shaken up when drop-dead gorgeous Nicolas (Niels Schneider) arrives in town, and both Xavier and Marie vie for the affections of a lad who seems a little uncertain about his sexuality.

There isn’t that much story-wise here, though there is a certain charm in watching such self-obsessed, immaculately turned-out twentysomethings (their retro fashions and hairdos keeping one immaculately-shod foot firmly in the past) engage in their roundelay of affection and dissatisfaction – without bothering themselves about such mundane considerations as work, money or engagement with the wider world.

Dolan pads out his slim narrative with documentary-style interviews in which the protagonists’ peers discuss how they deal with emotional and relationship issues in the 21st century. Strip these out, and Heartbeats would be little more than a over-stretched short, saved from exasperatingly precious pretentiousness by a streak of beguiling, self-deprecating humour – with the older cast-members (including Anne Dorval as Francis’s mother, and Patricia Tulasne as a hairdresser) especially good value.

It’s ironic, meanwhile, that the key behind-the-scenes task which Dolan doesn’t perform – the cinematography, handled by a relative veteran in 34-year-old Stéphanie Anne Weber Biron – is the most consistently impressive, as the camerawork (including several judicious and mood-enhancing, Wong Kar-Wai-influenced sequences of slow motion) convincingly creates and explores the characters’ interlocking, solipsistic universes.

Dolan, of course, orchestrates the whole show, and his rough-diamond talent is beyond doubt. On this evidence, however his skills in the vital area of scriptwriting currently lag some way behind his other abilities: because while we may be dazzled by his characters’ articulacy, stylishness and pop-culture savvy, we never particular care about their romantic travails, and who eventually ends up in bed – or not – with whom.

Then again, in cinema practice often makes perfect – as witnessed by the quantum leap taken by Frammartino between his infuriatingly tedious 2003 debut The Gift and Le Quattro volte. Both films operate with an absolute bare-minimum of dialogue, unfolding in remote villages in the Italian countryside where old traditions and old ways persist. But whereas The Gift felt stilted and artificial – its characters forced to communicate by meaningful looks – this follow-up proceeds in a steady, organic fashion, structured as a series of enigmas that are revealed as inter-connected aspects of a grand, perhaps even cosmic design. Indeed, it’s possible to read all manner of metaphorical and allegorical interpretations into the events that unfold – part of the reason, no doubt, why Le quattro volte has won prizes at virtually every festival at which it’s been shown.

The title – interestingly, not translated into English by the UK distributor New Wave Films – is taken from a text by the mathematician/philosopher Pythagoras, who is believed to have lived in the Calabria region of modern-day Italy where Frammartino’s picture was made: “Each of us has four lives inside us which fit into one another. Man is mineral because his skeleton is made of salt; man is also vegetable because his blood flows like sap; he is animal in as much he is endowed with motility and knowledge of the outside world. Finally, man is human because he has the gifts of will and reason. Thus we must know ourselves four times.”

Frammartino illustrates this thesis – obliquely – by a narrative that is loosely structured into four sections. The first part concentrates on the human: an ailing goat-farmer (Giuseppe Fuda) who stirs dust from the village church into a glass of water each night as a remedy against his various maladies. This, the longest sequence, features scene-stealing contributions from the farmer’s dog Igor (played by ‘Vuk’), including in an extended single-take coup de cinema involving an Easter-Day procession which showcases Frammartino’s deadpan humour and precision timing.

Section two (animal) follows one of the farmer’s charges, a kid goat who we see being born and suffering life’s rough vicissitudes – again, this includes a “how on earth did they do that?” passage even more of a head-scratcher than part one’s canine choreography. The first two sequences rely for much of their charm and effect on the skittish agility and absorbingly watchable antics of goats – inquisitive, playful critters who, either alone in a group, seem incapable of the inexpressive dullness one associates with other farm-animals.

The final two sequences, dealing with the vegetable and mineral by means of a particular tree (used in an elaborate religious ritual that’s also a joyous community event) and via the activities of charcoal-burners, are shorter and less impactful, but nonetheless slot into Frammartino’s overall approach of showing the interconnectedness of rural life. His approach often has a documentary detachment, and at times his background in installation art is evident – but this is very much narrative, fictional cinema (what looks like a single village is in fact three different settlements), albeit of an unorthodox and original kind. By its nature demanding, but cumulatively rewarding (especially on a second viewing when one can fully appreciate Frammartino’s build-up/pay-off techniques), Le quattro volte ranks among the year’s most admirably audacious and distinctive releases. Here’s hoping it connects with the audience it deserves.

Neil Young
17th May, 2011
(written for the 26th May edition of Tribune magazine)