Swimming Pool (2003)

François Ozon channels Alfred Hitchcock in his psychological thriller Swimming Pool.  Where Hitchcock only hinted Ozon marches fearlessly ahead in this surprisingly effective, sexually dynamic mystery that is more conventional then it ought to be.  Actors Charlotte Rampling and Ludivine Sagnier as a would-be mother / daughter team break through the convention with fascinating performances, bringing out the rich nuance in Ozon’s macabre screenplay.

Rampling plays Sarah Morton, acclaimed author of the Inspector Dorwell series.  Sarah retreats to her publisher’s summer home in France to find inspiration for a new, watershed project.  When at first she begins writing the next in her Dorwell series, her tranquil visit is interrupted by Julie, her publisher / lover’s daughter.  Julie is a punk: brash, keeps odd hours, and is inconsiderate of the reserved English author’s peace of mind.  Julie brings different men home and has loud sexual trysts which agitate and seemingly arouse and fascinate Sarah.  The film doesn’t become a murder mystery until ¾ into it, and that section of the film is its weakest, but the set-up to the fatal accident gives us two very opposing rivals, one sexually liberated and one who, in Julie’s words, only writes about dirty things and never does them.  The dirtiest of things, the act which soils most, is done by the less likely of the women.

Ozon is unafraid to show Ludivine Sagnier’s beautiful body.  It’s hard to accept this is the same girl who played the impish Catherine in Ozon’s 8 Women.  I admit I didn’t want to see her naked having adored her in Love Songs.  I’ve associated a certain innocence with her.  Here her breasts are everywhere, and she touches herself more explicitly than a lot of actresses would on screen.  Some of her boy toys’ rear ends are seen, too, and these guys are not really the kind you might want to see naked.  This is something that bothered me about Julie.  She is so beautiful and sexy that you’d think she could attract hotter guys, at least guys her age.  And she probably could, but as we slowly learn this girl must be starving for attention, more so than we might thing even at the film’s climax.  The only nudity that embarrassed me was Rampling’s full frontal shots.  I felt that, while what the character was doing was interesting, it did not grow organically from the script and that Ozon was abusing his actress.  Then I realized that Rampling starred in Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter in 1974, and then I understood that she is a fearless performer.

Her relationship with Sagnier’s Julie is really interesting.  Sarah, we sense, is an empty woman.  Her life is lived in her writing.  The only man at home is her invalid father; her lover—her publisher, Julie’s father—keeps big secrets from her, and she doesn’t have children.  I never sensed that Sarah wanted kids, but the twists she takes in her relationship with Julie really allow them to bond as mother and daughter.  I don’t want to give it away, but trust me, they do bond.  It could be that Sarah’s interest in Julie is solely as subject matter for a new book seemingly inspired by the writer’s experiences with the young girl.  In that case Sarah gets too intimately involved in the messes of her characters, but then again it is often said a writer’s characters become like their children.  Sarah’s efforts to protect Julie can be seen as motherly.

I can’t say, though, that I understood the ending.  To be honest, I guessed—and it will be fairly obvious to those familiar with the devices of thriller plots—the twist ending well before the finale, but the way the story unfolds is both unexpected and predictable.  So what does that ending do to Sarah and Julie’s relationship?  I honestly don’t know.  I can make assumptions, or at least explain it to myself, but my explanations alter or destroy the great material of the film, the relationship between Julie and Sarah.  But a twist ending in a thriller is often a letdown.  If the material is excellent, the bad ending can be overlooked, at least by me.  While the ending is not bad, it leaves a lot of questions at too late a point in the experience.  But I didn’t mind, just like I didn’t mind the some of the convention in the later part of the picture.  It is old-fashioned fun but with a sexually explicit twist to murder mysteries.

I’m really starting to like François Ozon’s work.  I’ve seen 4 films, and the first, Under the Sand, was very boring.  It also starred Charlotte Rampling, but it’s the kind of arty flick where the subtly was so subtle that any subtext was altogether lacking.  The other three have been terrific.  Swimming Pool isn’t unique or original, but I was not bored.  There were a few moments where I was nervously inching towards the screen, and if a thriller can do that, it’s won.

Swimming Pool (2003)

Director: Francois Ozon

Writers: Francois Ozon and Emmanuele Bernheim

Stars: Charlotte Rampling, Charles Dance and Ludivine Sagnier

France / UK

In English and French

Runtime: 102 minutes

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0324133/

Potiche (2010)

She is the queen of kitchen appliances.  She is Catherine Deneuve in François Ozon’s new Potiche.  Deneuve plays Suzanne, the spoiled wife of Robert, the CEO of her dead father’s umbrella factory.  She has a beautiful house, gorgeous clothes, servants, two beautiful kids, and she gives to Robert something which justifies her existence: status.  She is a trophy wife.

Potiche is set in 1977, a fact Ozon revels in.  The fashion, the cars, the color palette all point to satire, but the look is so thick and wonderful that we may as well be watching a documentary.  The umbrella factory is threatened by strike, and the stress gives poor, unsympathetic Robert a near heart attack.  With a pacifist, anti-capitalist son, Laurent, and an inexperienced daughter, Nadège, it is decided that Suzanne takes over negotiations with the workers.  Thus this trophy wife takes her first step into the modern 70s.

The film is a feminist love song.  I am a feminist.  But Potiche is very superficial about politics.  The film gives women the opportunity to work outside the home, and though Suzanne proves to be brilliant in her position we are never shown any of her savvy.  The company is turned around in a cut!  This is the feel of the film; it supports the energy Ozon infuses.  Potiche is a kind of French fairytale.  Suzanne is granted things and they are taken away.  It is French because, while the politics are fluffy, the film has great insight into its characters.  Suzanne, unbeknownst to everybody, has in the past had numerous discreet affairs, just like her husband.  The only difference is that Robert is out in the world and his sex is already free.  Suzanne knows a housewife’s place and knows how to play the game and win.  After her husband and daughter coldly take back the umbrella factory, Suzanne is dissatisfied with her life again and decides to run for MP, a political office.  Here she is allowed to be active in her liberation, but like her handling of the factory Ozon goes little in depth on her campaigning.  She visits local shops for photo ops and that’s just about it.  Suzanne triumphs and never breaks a sweat.

In a way Potiche is immune to criticism.  It is perfect style, high energy, it’s very funny and has the right side of the argument, or at least a liberated side—I can only speak for my politics.  What else can I say?  I enjoyed myself.  There, that’s it, except for a trend I’ve noticed with its leading lady.

Catherine Deneuve has nothing to prove.  She has made herself an icon with a terrific body of work spanning 60 years.  However, I’ve noticed a kind of lull in her recent work going back 10 or 15 years.  It’s similar to the first period of her career.  At the beginning her onscreen persona lacked dramatic weight, held back possibly by her delicacy and beauty.  It wasn’t until her defining work with Buñuel, and to a lesser extent Polanski, that Deneuve showed her range.  Truffaut brought her to the brink.  In the 90s and 2000s she’s been very productive but stuck in a similar mood as her earliest performances.  Perhaps she is too big an icon, a legend, for the directors who work with her, and her roles, not her acting, lack depth or resonance.  She is always perfect, but in a way the material doesn’t seem up to her.  Her most diverse role in recent memory was in Gaël Morel’s Apers lui, which was itself an average film.  François Ozon has used Deneuve before, and both of their films together play more like stylized film tributes than serious works of cinema.  In Potiche, I don’t think the homage of having Deneuve running an umbrella factory is lost on the director.  Though the film is a further opportunity for Deneuve to play satire, Suzanne’s depth is all on the surface.  She fits in perfectly in this charming, fun film, but I hope before too long a director, even Ozon, will take advantage of the Deneuve we’ve seen in The Last Metro.

I guess what I’m talking about is serious drama.  I should confess a bias against comedies, though more and more I’m finding ones that actually work.  I just need to avoid Judd Apatow.  But it seems that satire has become the new dramatic oomph, and I need to accept it.  But there is one story arc in Potiche that I found fascinating.

Laurent, Suzanne’s son, goes through a subtle change.  I may be the only one who’s caught it because it might only exist in my mind, but his story adds a subtext speaking more generally to the lack of liberty for parents.  The first we hear of Laurent, Suzanne tells her husband that their son is bringing home a girlfriend, the baker’s daughter.  Robert is unhappy.  At first he admits to snobbery until Suzanne presses him.  He confesses the girl may very well be his own illegitimate child—Laurent may be dating his sister!  Laurent is devoted to his mom and she loves him dearly.  She hires him as an umbrella designer and here I noticed a shift in his look.  He looked incredibly, stereotypically gay, right down to the pink ascot.  When Suzanne runs for MP, we learn that Laurent has left his girlfriend to stick by the most important woman in his life—Suzanne.  Suspicious enough.  They both then note a handsome blonde kid handing out flyers for Suzanne’s campaign.  He is the son of one of Suzanne’s ex-lovers.  Suzanne (figuratively) thinks he could be her own son considering the timing of her relations with his dad.  I think Laurent has come out, and the blonde kid is his boyfriend.  Laurent gives him very intimate looks but nothing is said.  The trap that this lays for parents is that it offers little leeway in discretion.  By the acts of both his parents, Laurent might, in either relationship, be dating his sibling.  It’s something funny for me to note, though insubstantial to the film itself.

I hope this doesn’t read like a mixed review.  I enjoyed this film—I carried a smile all the way through.  Though it may feel lite, it is fun and the actors are terrific.  I haven’t even mentioned the great Gerard Depardieu as the Mayor.  He has an interesting relationship to Suzanne and to Laurent, and just to see Deneuve and Depardieu on screen together again is worth it.

Potiche (2010)

Director: Francois Ozon

Writers: Pierre Barillet (play), Jean-Pierre Gredy (play) and Francois Ozon

Stars: Catherine Deneuve, Gerard Depardieu, Fabrice Luchini and Jeremie Renier

France

In French

Runtime: 103 minutes

Potiche is currently playing in select cities across the US.  Check it out if it comes to your region.  It is currently available on Blu-ray and DVD in Europe via Amazon (France):

http://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/B004FQC0B2/ref=s9_simh_gw_p74_d4_i1?pf_rd_m=A1X6FK5RDHNB96&pf_rd_s=center-3&pf_rd_r=02V RJPT6CAA7BD2CY7BB&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=463375573&pf_rd_i=405320

(beware that the Blu-ray is region 'B' locked and does not feature English subtitles)

http://www.amazon.fr/Potiche-2-DVD-Catherine-Deneuve/dp/B004FQC09O/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1303709485&sr=1-1

(also without English subtitles)

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1521848/

8 Women (2002, 8 femmes)

Catherine Deneuve is a film icon.  She has worked with some of the best filmmakers of all time, past and present, and to see her alongside other great French actresses in 8 Women is a pleasure unto itself.  That the film is fun is an added bonus.

8 women are stranded at a snowed in mansion with a dead body in an upstairs bedroom.  The victim is Marcel, who we never see, Deneuve’s Gaby’s husband.  Their oldest daughter Suzon arrives home from college the day her father’s corpse is discovered.  She tries to piece together the last few hours of these very catty, very different women to solve the horrible murder of her father.  That the murderer might be someone she loves is a consolation of sorts.

There’s Mamy, her elderly grandma, played by Danielle Darrieux, an icon of French cinema going back to the 1930s (did I mention 8 Women was made in 2002?).  Mamy is wheelchair bound, and out of charity Marcel and Gaby had taken in her and Augustine, her unmarried, frumpish daughter, Gaby’s jealous sister.  Another French icon—Isabelle Huppert, muse to Claude Chabrol.  The sexy new maid, Louise, may have something to hide.  Emmanuelle Béart plays her.  Most innocent are Madame Chanel, the long time family cook and nanny to Suzon, and Catherine, Suzon’s kid sister.  Catherine is into mystery novels, something her Aunt Augustine doesn’t approve of.  She’s played by Ludiving Sagnier, a gifted young actress whose talents have been employed by Chabrol and Christophe Honoré.  This is an accomplished cast.

But wait—that’s only 7 women.  Marcel’s estranged sister Pierrette arrives looking for the brother she knows is dead.  Pierrette is played by the last of François Truffaut’s famous leading lady lovers, Fanny Ardant.  Perhaps because of Truffaut’s untimely death in 1984, Ardant never got the attention she deserved as an actress, but in Confidentially Yours, Truffaut’s final film, her work in that genre comedy stands up to Jeanne Moreau’s or Catherine Deneuve’s.  Deneuve was Truffaut’s lover in the late 70s, early 80s, and it is suggested that Truffaut had a breakdown when the actress left him.  Ardant was the one who restored his spirits, or so legend goes.  This gossip isn’t really relevant, but it’s in the spirit of 8 Women.  Director François Ozon must have understood the history he was bringing together by uniting Deneuve and Ardant on screen, especially in a dishy cat-fight of a picture.  This back story doesn’t interfere with the film.  But looking at the amazing cast that spans the whole history of French cinema—from poetic realism in the 30s to the 50s films of Max Ophuls, the New Wave and post-New Wave and beyond; 90’s cinema and today—I couldn’t help thinking of these facts.  8 Women is a fun film with style, brave, campy performances by its stars, and a great traditional mystery.  Getting lost in its actors is a complement.  A bad film with all these women would feel more gimmicky.

Gaby had kept her husband and his sister apart, or so she thought.  Nothing is what it seems in Ozon’s mystery musical.  That’s right, the film is a musical.  It’s kind of off-putting at first.  The opening shot, a wide pan along the grounds of the family mansion, looks intentionally phony.  The whole film looks like a 60s parody, down to the wigs and eye-popping color.  When Ludiving Sagnier sings the first number, in both her look and the choreography she reminded so much of Hayley Mills in The Parent Trap.  That must have been intentional.  The song, “Daddy, Daddy” You Ain’t with It”, sounds exactly like a song we would’ve got from a live action Disney film of the time.  What’s odd about the music is how Ozon stages it in context to the film.  There are 8 songs, and each one is a solo by the actresses.  They come off more as monologues; they don’t advance the story at all.  One could make the case that they hold up the picture, but not I.  The songs give us information into the respective character.  For example, when Isabelle Huppert sings, we learn her neurotic tendencies that often hurt her sister are in part to spare Gaby’s feelings.  Deneuve’s own song is very odd, and it leads to her and Ardant making out on the floor of the grand hall.  I never expected to see something like this in a movie.  What can I say?  It’s fun to look at.

The mystery in the film is old-fashioned fun.  There’s nothing original.  You have the self-appointed Poirot character, the nosy detective who forgets to cast a light into her own mysterious comings and goings, a wife who stands to gain an inheritance, jealous relatives and a sexy, dangerous sibling.  The hired help has run of the house so they’re suspect too.  The isolated mansion, guard dogs that don’t bark, a key to a locked door that is stolen, transference of guilt—everything that makes a great mystery work.  The musical is a bit odd in this context, but as a movie that loves movies, a movie lover with eat this up.  The style, the cast, the music, the genre mishmash, and the cinematic history and tribute that becomes 8 Women guarantees its admiration from people like me.  I will remain light on the story development.  In this kind of picture every twist is more fun to discover while watching.

In her office, Gaby has a portrait of herself from when she was young.  The painting is a breathtaking likeness of Deneuve.  Looking at those sharp cheekbones I was reminded of images of her from Belle de jour, the era where Deneuve was exceptionally beautiful.  I thought momentarily of the sadness of aging.  Deneuve has done so gracefully, and when she’s on the floor with Ardant, there is a moment when she looks EXACTLY like her younger self.

8 Women is Ozon’s most successful picture.  I’ve never thought too highly of him as a director, maybe because he is better known in the US than Honoré, my contemporary favorite.  His films are always either too stylized or boring.  I think the genre, the grandiosity of the material, and the cast allows Ozon to revel in his indulgences.  I saw the preview of his newest film, Potiche, also starring Catherine Deneuve.  I’m seeing it next week, but already I am pleased to see this same pictorial style at play in his newest film.

8 Women (2002)

(a.k.a. 8 femmes)

Director: Francois Ozon

Writers: Robert Thomas (play), Francois Ozon and Marina de Van

Stars: Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Beart, Fanny Ardant, Virginie Ledoyen, Ludivine Sagnier and Firmine Richard

France

In French

Runtime: 111 minutes

To purchase 8 Women, visit Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/8-Women-Fanny-Ardant/dp/B00007J5VT/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1303015572&sr=1-1

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0283832/