Steady Diet of Film

Agnes Varda's Le Bonheur

Rating (out of 5): ****

Agnes Varda's third feature film examines the viability of monogamy in the age of free love and the search for happiness in a time of total unrest. Le Bonheur is similar in concept and cynicism to Jean Luc Godard's Pierrot Le Fou (both released in 1965, no less) but contains none of the bitterness of Pierrot. Varda's deep affection for each of her characters even as they make terrible choices that bring them to eventual doom makes a statement about sexual politics and the fleeting nature of human affection that feels modern even watching it forty-three years after it was made.

Francois and Therese are a young, happily married couple with two charming, obedient children (played by real life family Jean-Claude and Claire Drouot and their two children). He works as a craftsman in his uncle's artisan furniture store, she is a dress-maker tailoring to brides to be. As in their work so is their relationship, she is doting and constantly seeking affirmation of his love for her and he, driven by passion. After a chance encounter with Therese (Marie-France Boyer), a younger woman who bears a striking resemblance to his wife, falls in love with her and begins an affair. He rationalizes to both women that the situation is "happiness by addition" pointing out that having a lover on the side makes him a better husband to his wife nor is he a terrible partner to his mistress because she is a modern woman allowed to remain free from the shackles of marital expectations.

Read the rest of my review at Greencine.

Review: Pierrot Le Fou

Rating (out of 5): ***

Jean-Luc Godard's tenth film Pierrot Le Fou, one of the last he made before going full-tilt Marxist, has been restored and reissued in the extraordinary fashion we've all come to know and respect from Criterion. The Technicolor/Cinemascope print has been cleaned up from sad, past versions and a second disc of supplemental materials offers new insights into the film's genesis, production and lasting impact.

After attending a painfully buji party where the men only talk about cars and the women only talk about perfumes, Pierrot (Jean-Paul Belmondo) decides he's had enough of his wife, children and other middle class trappings. He runs off with Marianne (Anna Karina) his children's babysitter, with whom he had an affair years prior. They hit the road, fleeing a group of gangsters her brother had been involved with, take up in abandoned mansions by the riviera, begging for money from tourists and murdering anyone who gets in their way. Eventually romantic idealism gives way to monotonous expectation and obligation and Pierrot and Marianne break up, get back together, declare their love and hate for each other and eventually die.

Read the rest of this review at Greencine.

Top 10 Environmental Documentaries That Don't Rhyme With A Schminconvenient Schmuth.

Yeah yeah yeah, we all love Al Gore and his jaunty powerpoint presentation but Inconvenient Truth is not the only fruit, dear viewers. Here I suggest a few other environmentally-focused documentaries to make you laugh, cry, act - and seethe with anger.

1. Rivers and Tides - My personal favorite of the whole list, Rivers and Tides is a documentary about artist Andy Goldsworthy who creates large-scale sculptures out of ice, wood, creeks, fields and forests. The film is an absorbing look at the ethereal possibilities in art and nature. Goldsworthy's charm and his work's beauty (and occasional absurdity) is keenly documented by German film-maker Thomas Riedelsheimer (Touch the Sound).

2. Radiant City/The Unforeseen - Two docs that examines the clash of economic growth with environmental protection in two very different ways. Radiant City, a Canadian docudrama looks at the psychological toll living in a ceaseless suburban wasteland has on one family intercut with a series of community designers, philosophers, architects and economists to pontificate on the larger macro effects. The Unforeseen chronicles the battle over the development of a piece of land outside Austin, TX that could provide both a quick financial boon to a lagging local economy while ruining one of the area's most pristine natural playlands Barton Springs. Both films find extremely inventive methods to visualize these concepts as well. Radiant City forces its talking head experts to deliver their lectures from the back rows of a city bus, Unforeseen uses extraordinary underwater and aerial photography to illustrate both the immediate human connection and transformative awe of nature.

Read the rest of my list at Greencine.