After forty years of marriage, Andre and Jamie divorce in ultimate shouts and completely cease being seen. Still tempting, André endeavours to believe that it found the one second youth, through his desire for Julia, his new partner 25 years old. But whereas it spins the perfect love, an accident of health leads it to the hospital. It is there that, by chance, it crosses its ex-wife, elegant and dynamic sexagenarian, which caps from now on the patients. Upset, André then takes suddenly conscience of what it lost and tries by all the means of reconquering it... ADDITIONAL INFORMATION fires of the glamour By exploring the relations in love and the desire at the third age, a topic still little approached by the fiction, Olivier Lorelle carries an at the same time tender glance all and without concession on these growing old, but quite alive heroes. Because they know their counted time, André and Jamie, each one with their manner, are environed present. An urgency felt all the more extremely by Andre that Emile, his elder of a few years enclosed of rheumatisms, returns a cruel effect of mirror to him, and does not finish of them a genre on its last conquests. In this countdown, the damaged bodies are shown without false modesty, from where moving the sensuality which emanates from it. On a tragic-comic mode, flirtant sometimes with the light comedy, film ingénue also to follow the sentimental meanders of this couple to the long course, between complicities and incomprehension which perdurent. Of paso doble in track races, the reconquest takes the form of one. "In love, in fact the first fifty years are difficult", André releases, to convince his ex-wife that the best remainder to come. Andrzej Seweryn, actor fetish of Andrzej Wajda, incarnates with plume this pooch which enforce valiantly its bicycle to make the seat of its beautiful. A first film with the new tone on last fires of the glamour, by the joint author of Natives, rewarded this year with Rachid Bouchareb by César for the scenario.
Reviews
10 Reviews
Conspiracy Theory
(1997)
wake up, it´s a comedy
14 October 2003
and if you never seriously or with tongue in cheek considered the beautiful byzantine intricacy of conspiracy theories, man, have you missed out on one nice head trip...%:P... so I give it a straight eight, since it delivered, we all had a fun evening, one of my buddies saw it the sixth time, he teaches at the Leiden University and this Friday he will be off to Manilla for 10 days to do lectures and workshops on the impact of mobile phones (SMS in particular) on culture in developing countries...which doesn´t classify him as a pinhead, no sir.
Cyclomania
(2001)
soft spot for those crazy Finns
22 September 2003
Warning: Spoilers
and this movie adds another proof on my list that the people from Finland really are a special kind. If you think only the inhabitants of Akiland communicate "in that certain manner", think again. Someone praised The Outfit (with R. Duvall) for its plainspokenness. Clearly they never watched a movie from Sibelius country, nor met and spoken to, pardon me, tried to speak to a real Finnish person. The clarity! Even today, as I phoned with Platta for news about the Scandinavian Music Group, I really had to switch tracks in me head and force me tongue to try to speak crystal, but not telegraph. With this comes a simple acknowledgement of life as it is, which is also displayed by this story of Cyclomania. Be it love or death or just trying to fulfil one goal, the Finns know what it means "to give it their best shot" (hey, I come from a country where grown men worshipped a Finn, called Jari Litmanen...)
In the Netherlands we would never be able to pull this off -(watch it, possible spoiler ahead)-, anyone working so hard that even a fatal warning is put aside, most directors/actors would choke on it here, in my land where the "maaiveld" and "poldermodel" rule.
One last thing: Elena Leeve is of an exceptional beauty for Suomalainen standards...
Seen: Monday 22nd September 2003 At: ZDF As: Fahrradfieber (subtitled though)
In the Netherlands we would never be able to pull this off -(watch it, possible spoiler ahead)-, anyone working so hard that even a fatal warning is put aside, most directors/actors would choke on it here, in my land where the "maaiveld" and "poldermodel" rule.
One last thing: Elena Leeve is of an exceptional beauty for Suomalainen standards...
Seen: Monday 22nd September 2003 At: ZDF As: Fahrradfieber (subtitled though)
Sabrina
(1995)
well-written one-liners and rallies
29 June 2003
Hi, I just watched this on BBC1 with 888 on, so as a Dutch person I can also fully read everything thats being said. Ignorant of this being a remake from an original that starred two legends, I did not set out to view it in comparison to the 1954-version. Instead, I just loved the household staff right away, especially her father (the Remains of the Day scene! the Marry me for my money scene!). And of course I recognized Ms Marchand from The Sopranos. But what I wanted to say is this: I just really enjoyed the dialogues, also becaused I expected some kind of comedy, but this turned out to have more depth to it. In fact, I thought the Paris scenes were a bit superficial, except for the last scene, where Miss Ormond explains why "La Vie en Rose" is her song. Who would have thought of Long Island as being profound, after all? Tip of the hat goes to Dana Ivey as the somewhat robotic secretary and mister Kinnear as the archetype of a playboy with a heart. And to be quite frank: I thought mister Ford was the father, and he sure looked too old to be of any interest to a young woman like Sabrina, so for me the end of the movie was a bit of an anticlimax.
La devinière
(2000)
kept me fascinated
20 January 2003
If you are looking for raw material on madness for your film or project, this is a very good documentary to start with. If you are looking for institutionalized forms of madness, look somewhere else, because La Devinière is a good place to be. I have worked in a psychiatric hospital in the beginning of the nineties and though circumstances have improved since the seventies (when my uncle worked there), rarely have I experienced the freedom and simple happiness that I witnessed in this documentary by Benoit Derivaux, as seen last night on Arte. The so-called dangers, as defined by the bourgeousie, are also present: Jean-Claude shows wit, strength, worries, compassion, all bundled behind his enormous beard. I believe that he loves what deserves to be loved, but that he would also be able to hurt whatever deserves to be hurt. Electricity and nudity are two other points of small-minded concern we can see in this work.
Journeys with George
(2002)
entertaining the masses by playing the courting jesters
22 November 2002
IDFA 2002
Vrijdag 22 november 2002, 23:30 - 00:49 City Journeys with George (shot in 2000)
in fact, what we saw, was another very fine example of the entwinement of Hollywood & Politix: a long home-video by a comic sidekick of the future president of the US
key image was, of course, the half-circle shot, taken slowly enough to be more than just an image, of the (beheaded?) jester, looking very sorry for himself
the real tragedy could be, of course again, that the jester´s head is not so much referring to Alexandra, but to George W. himself, since there isn´t really a textbook on how to be the single most important man in the world, one might as well be a stage-act
on the other hand, would I have liked to see a bunch of pseudo-, back-stabbing intellectuals in the Gore press- pack? it´s somehow reassuring enough that Bush´s press- pack could turn into a pack-o´-wolves at the snap of some twenty lines of an old and unnoticed interview, not afraid of biting the hand that fed them
suffice to say that Alexandra Pelosi was insightful enough to realize that her enthusiasm was on a more humane level, not of the hard-boiled professionalism, or, as she called it, "cannibalism"
maybe she should have listened to her mother anyhow
Vrijdag 22 november 2002, 23:30 - 00:49 City Journeys with George (shot in 2000)
in fact, what we saw, was another very fine example of the entwinement of Hollywood & Politix: a long home-video by a comic sidekick of the future president of the US
key image was, of course, the half-circle shot, taken slowly enough to be more than just an image, of the (beheaded?) jester, looking very sorry for himself
the real tragedy could be, of course again, that the jester´s head is not so much referring to Alexandra, but to George W. himself, since there isn´t really a textbook on how to be the single most important man in the world, one might as well be a stage-act
on the other hand, would I have liked to see a bunch of pseudo-, back-stabbing intellectuals in the Gore press- pack? it´s somehow reassuring enough that Bush´s press- pack could turn into a pack-o´-wolves at the snap of some twenty lines of an old and unnoticed interview, not afraid of biting the hand that fed them
suffice to say that Alexandra Pelosi was insightful enough to realize that her enthusiasm was on a more humane level, not of the hard-boiled professionalism, or, as she called it, "cannibalism"
maybe she should have listened to her mother anyhow
Ronin
(1998)
terrible soundscore
29 October 2002
and that´s not the only thing, it´s really just another movie saved by De Niro´s performance and admittedly, some nice moments with the Norwegian actor, but overall, this movie belonged in the sixties or even fifties to be thrilling AND the way the story was handled had to be revised, I mean, there were buildups which didn´t get any followups, but instead went flat on their face (and personally I did not particularly like the way the title was explained, I mean, this should have been more pronounced, ronin Sam who turned out to have a "mystical" master to serve after all and ronin Vincent who has to commit sepuku? come on!)
Lune froide
(1991)
The Dead
21 October 2002
no pun intended, the atmosphere reminded me of 1987´s The Dead by John Huston, which I saw for a second time shortly before Lune Froide debuted at our local "filmhuis Para" in Breda, you should try to watch both these movies, it´s a good combo, I remember pondering afterwards
Paradise
(1986)
what´s there to laugh about
19 September 2002
If you have seen Männer (1985), you might wonder which side Doris is exploring here. Compared to, e.g. Something Wild and Blue Velvet (both 1986), I think she wasn´t the only one who tried to come to terms with (self)destructive passion on film. But the scene I definitively like best, is the one where Lotte and Angie really hate eachother, when (near the end of the movie) Angelika visits Lotte, just escaped from the hospital, in her room, the room where Viktor is driving himself insane (because he cannot decide, choose, nor see clear why he got himself in this situation). Here, Katharina Thalbach is at her best, reminiscant of her performance in Der Blechtrommel (1979, I was about 12 then, and was quite shocked by her luscious presence). Unfortunately, I must say, this film just doesn´t deserve a 7, a 6 at most. The characters just refuse to come to life and their choices seem too random to express any real passion. Maybe because I travelled a road not too far from the picture drawn, or at least think I have a right to judge (with about 1500 movies in the back of my head). A good picture of Doris her development, but other moviemakers also deserve your attention (e.g. Pia Frankenberg, Brennende Betten - 1988).
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