everwhere, i see chiendent...
i went to the cinema today and had quite the experience: i watched quite possibly the worst film i've ever sat entirely through at the cinemas, ensemble, c'est tout. (an adaptation from the book of the same title. and boy does it feel like it. the book was 573 pages long, which is pretty hefty. so you would imagine that the person responsible for the script was someone truly in love with the book. but claude berri clearly isn't at all.) the film have a totally pointless english title hunting and gathering. what does this have to do with the film? how could this possibly be seen to fit in with the domestic moeurs that are on display? the french title actually makes sense, because it literally is a film about togetherness, with everyone learning to just get on. as the english tag line goes 'love might be closer than you think'. it's probably the only thing in the film that does make sense...
but it is quite strange that i feel so compelled to sit through any film whatsoever at the cinema, even if i haven't paid for it. today's adventure was the result of a free ticket. and thank you sincerely very much to that person who gave it to me! i was fully prepared for to see a very average film, but berri out did himself. the film is actually so crap that its crappiness became a redeeming quality. in the end, the conversation that resulted from this film was probably even more interesting and funny then a solidly 'average' film, even one that borders on 'good'. as though we had just watched a comedy, we recounted to each other, laughing all the while, the many story lines and their mini-story lines that continued to bud (dans le rhizome il y a le meilleur et le pire: c'est le chiendent, nous avertit m. d.) and how none of them went anywhere. for example, we wonder why we're show the meetings between camille and her mother. there is no story line developed here. the scenes only serve to show us that mother and daughter don't get on. and to add a couple more quips about how camille should put on weight. but even this isn't meant as a running joke. you're a skeleton you need to put on weight kind of thing. it's a simple superfluous statement.
one of the funniest bits, for me, since i could see it happening and turned to my neighbour to whisper my prediction, was when a car appears in one scene out of nowhere, and i wonder 'wow franck has a car, even though he's a dirt poor cook living with an aristocrat in an huge dirty old inner city parisian apartment. he mustn't be too bad off after all'. but in the middle of a conversation with his grandmother franck cuts short the chit-chat and declares to the others, and us, that he's just going to duck out and take the rental car back. it was particularly funny because it was an extremely rare point of clarity in the film. the rest of it remains opaque and impervious, like a tangled mass of floating seaweed of a story line invading new virginal territories.
but it is here that lies the surprising interest to be found in the film. it is unintentionally very comical and its opacity renders it rather difficult to make real sense of according to any sort of traditional narrative framework. in this respect the film is quite reminiscent of a robbe-grillet film because it is both funny (robbe-grillet we might assume is purposefully humorous, if his personal character is anything to judge by), and also works with the bare bones of a story that appears to be in constant grasp of the viewer, but it is never attained. and if it ever is actually attained, the viewer quickly drops it as another incongruous element of the story is revealed which brings the rest into contradiction, or in this film's case, renders it irrelevant. moreover, like robbe-grillet, we note that there is a surplus of detail at work that adds another layer of difficulty to the story: surplus story lines, characters, character conversations, scenes and clarifications (ah, the wonderful rental car!). and this surplus might even be taken to be the result of major cuts in the story, because it actually appears to produce gapping holes. in other words, hunting and gathering, as with robbe-grillet, is attempting to work within an established tradition (here it appears to be a sort of light drama, or even a lite bourgeois french film: it is tagged on the flyer as 'romantic fable'...) and unwittingly, and quite perversely it must be said for a film which is sold as a safe, comfortable bourgeois film, undoes its ultimate goal of gentle emotional heart-tugging. all of this results in something of an odd experience where the film's characters talk to each other on a purely surface level without really interacting, so that the film verges on being an inadvertant abstract wonder.
p.s for the record, the only film i've actually walked out on is cut, that terrible horror movie with a pointless bit part by kylie minogue.
but it is quite strange that i feel so compelled to sit through any film whatsoever at the cinema, even if i haven't paid for it. today's adventure was the result of a free ticket. and thank you sincerely very much to that person who gave it to me! i was fully prepared for to see a very average film, but berri out did himself. the film is actually so crap that its crappiness became a redeeming quality. in the end, the conversation that resulted from this film was probably even more interesting and funny then a solidly 'average' film, even one that borders on 'good'. as though we had just watched a comedy, we recounted to each other, laughing all the while, the many story lines and their mini-story lines that continued to bud (dans le rhizome il y a le meilleur et le pire: c'est le chiendent, nous avertit m. d.) and how none of them went anywhere. for example, we wonder why we're show the meetings between camille and her mother. there is no story line developed here. the scenes only serve to show us that mother and daughter don't get on. and to add a couple more quips about how camille should put on weight. but even this isn't meant as a running joke. you're a skeleton you need to put on weight kind of thing. it's a simple superfluous statement.
one of the funniest bits, for me, since i could see it happening and turned to my neighbour to whisper my prediction, was when a car appears in one scene out of nowhere, and i wonder 'wow franck has a car, even though he's a dirt poor cook living with an aristocrat in an huge dirty old inner city parisian apartment. he mustn't be too bad off after all'. but in the middle of a conversation with his grandmother franck cuts short the chit-chat and declares to the others, and us, that he's just going to duck out and take the rental car back. it was particularly funny because it was an extremely rare point of clarity in the film. the rest of it remains opaque and impervious, like a tangled mass of floating seaweed of a story line invading new virginal territories.
but it is here that lies the surprising interest to be found in the film. it is unintentionally very comical and its opacity renders it rather difficult to make real sense of according to any sort of traditional narrative framework. in this respect the film is quite reminiscent of a robbe-grillet film because it is both funny (robbe-grillet we might assume is purposefully humorous, if his personal character is anything to judge by), and also works with the bare bones of a story that appears to be in constant grasp of the viewer, but it is never attained. and if it ever is actually attained, the viewer quickly drops it as another incongruous element of the story is revealed which brings the rest into contradiction, or in this film's case, renders it irrelevant. moreover, like robbe-grillet, we note that there is a surplus of detail at work that adds another layer of difficulty to the story: surplus story lines, characters, character conversations, scenes and clarifications (ah, the wonderful rental car!). and this surplus might even be taken to be the result of major cuts in the story, because it actually appears to produce gapping holes. in other words, hunting and gathering, as with robbe-grillet, is attempting to work within an established tradition (here it appears to be a sort of light drama, or even a lite bourgeois french film: it is tagged on the flyer as 'romantic fable'...) and unwittingly, and quite perversely it must be said for a film which is sold as a safe, comfortable bourgeois film, undoes its ultimate goal of gentle emotional heart-tugging. all of this results in something of an odd experience where the film's characters talk to each other on a purely surface level without really interacting, so that the film verges on being an inadvertant abstract wonder.
p.s for the record, the only film i've actually walked out on is cut, that terrible horror movie with a pointless bit part by kylie minogue.
posted by goguenard at
6:09 AM
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