Change Your Image
bradleyelfman
Reviews
Clean (2004)
a story of friendship, forgiveness, and redemption, with awesome editing, cinematography, acting, and music
Dude, what happened to the director of Irma Vep and Demonlover who complained that film-making in France had become dull & redundant? That he, Olivier Assayas, would lead some kind of French film-making revolution, beginning with Demonlover.
Clean, lacking any kind of realistic grit or edge, is an over-directed, redundantly-hyperkinetic, yet one more restless camera, 24 shots/minute French version of the AFI guidebook on "how to make an emotionally moving film, with some atmospheric cinematic bonbons tossed in to provide artistic validity" to what is a business as usual, disappointingly mundane and repeatedly derivative, story,& script, punctuated with shameless exposition (the audience is not really that stupid) of the stories of two junkies who live in a world most junkies only see on TV and in tabloids.
Assayas made continually poor directorial choices after the wow! opening shot and the early moody shots when Emily shoots up in her car. He didn't trust Maggie to carry the burden of her character's anguish without his constantly nagging and obtrusive direction.
In spite of, not because of, Assayas' uninteresting direction and pandering script, Maggie Cheung's powerfully understated, complex, and soulful portrayal of a junkie trying to recover some semblance of a normal life is really touching and worthy of the award she won at Cannes.
The script which provides too few shades of gray for the actors, and the over-controlling,overly visible direction cheated Maggie out of a role that could have established her Emily as a classic portrayal of the recovering addict. The character of Emily lacks the complexities of Maggie's Qiao Li in Comrades: Almost a Love Story (Tian mi mi).
On the good side, Luc Barnier's incredible editing!! is by itself worth the price of admission, as is Eric Gautier's cinematography. Luc and Eric could have made the same movie with no characters or story, and it would have been worth seeing, esp. with William Fleming's and François-Renaud Labarthe's strong production design.
The music by Brian Eno, David Roback, and Tricky, esp. all the Brian Eno tracks is hot; but unfortunately the Eno tracks played at a point that made no sense, and was way better than the scenes of the kid it played behind. They should have just skipped the kid crap, and just let us hear Brian Eno's Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy. & added value to the cost of my senior admission: Maggie's breathy and soulful vocals. I liked that Maggie's low-key singing and the David Roback songs she sang went so well with Emily's angst. There's some great club vocals that I am still trying to identify, unfortunately shot in the trite and redundant contemporary loud and frenetic club setting we've seen in way too many films, and 95% of every French movie in the last ten years. Where's Jonathan Demme when you need him?
Meanwhile, Franck-Pascal Alquinet, Debra Johnson, & Thi-Loan Nguyen and their hair stylists should spend more time in the real world and less time in the studio and whatever other classy places they hang out. It gets really tiresome seeing so many film characters who, in extreme close-ups (which once again dominate the look and feel of the film) look like they just came out of makeup with their faux "Hh look how grizzly and gritty I look" coiffures and "Hey look I haven't shaved this month (year?)" perfectly trimmed stubble.
All! the young actors (not counting the kid) nail their characters before they even open their mouths and make you realize just how many good actors are out there, and how the new school of supporting actors create real people, unlike the great, but stereotypical character actors of classic Hollywood cinema and the trite character actors of current Hollywood cinema.
Beatrice Dalle, Jeanne Balibar, Don McKellar, James Johnston, Remi Marton, and Laetitia Spigarelli all create characters who are real people struggling with their own lives and situations, without creating stereotypical "characters", and do it in such a natural way that for me they were the real characters in the story; and I am going to find other movies that these actors are in that I haven't seen or should see again.
The "kid", typically cute and angry at all the right moments, was just that and certainly didn't look like his dad or his mom: was he really Eurasian? If you want to see a really incredible & credible performance by a young actor, watch nine-year old Sarala in Deepa Mehta's Water.
Martha Henry's grandmother is the old school predictable "grandmother"; you could just see her reading her lines as if she was on an Ontario stage in 1965,
...and ditto for Nick Nolte, whose grizzled grandpop came right out of the hair and make-up room, making a visible effort to read his lines with feeling and emotion. Yet, as the film gods have smiled down on Nick & us, it turns out, Nick dug deep, really deep, this time and wrung real heart and soul!! - real believability! - from the most complex character in the film: torn between the dutiful husband, the caring and concerned grandfather, the grieving father, and a man who "believes in forgiveness"; so that in end, this film becomes a moving story of two people whose lives intersect in their shared grief and their love for a child; raising the level of this film as a story of friendship, forgiveness, and redemption, with incredible editing & cinematography,lots of really good music, lots of really strong acting, and one more reason to continue to see Maggie Cheung's films.
Xiao cai feng (2002)
a beautiful movie about friendship and how experiences change people
I was really moved by the portrayal of the friendship of the Little Seamstress, Ma, and Luo, and how their lives were changed by their experience in the mountains in this brief span of time. The mountains were beautiful, the re-educators were not presented as monsters, and the acting, esp Xun Zho as Little Seamstress and Ye Liu as Ma was really good. Xun Zho reminded me of the young Gong Li in Red Sorghum. Most importantly, I rediscovered how lucky I am to be able to read and watch what I want when I want, and how I am almost obligated to take advantage of my freedom to read and watch movies.
For me, the filming was never as strong as the better Asian movies but once the movie got going the filming became stronger as did the movie.
The character of the harshness of the cultural revolution in China in the 60's was shown thru a politically soft-focus lens, but I did not mind this as there are more than enough Chinese movies that have leaned in the other direction, and for me, this was a movie about friendship and love in a political and cultural setting, not the other way around which matches my own personal preferences.