Another Year (2010)*****

Mike Leigh is back, and squarely in his comfort zone with Another Year. The modestly simple story of a middle-aged couple (Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen), Another Year brims with the type of low key, observational realism that Leigh does better than just about anybody. He manages to find the exhilarant and the heartbreaking hidden within the most banal ingredients, and this film features many head shaking moments of deep resonance. Lesley Manville is terrific as a family friend who just can’t quite get it together, while David Bradley nearly steals the film as Broadbent’s laconic brother. While its narrative contains a mix of amusing and chilling insights, Another Year is primarily a film about the awareness of mortality, and the slow, inexorable ticking of life’s clock. 

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Copacabana (2010)***1/2

Copacabana is yet another of those mediocre scripts that Isabelle Huppert manages to make watchable - even entertaining - apparently through sheer force of will. She plays a free-spirited woman who decides to stop being an embarrassment to her uptight, bourgeois daughter (Lolita Chammah) and ply her street smarts in the unlikely profession of timeshare sales. Huppert discovers she has a gift for moving vacation condos on Belgium’s freezing coast, and her hustle impresses the boss (Aure Atika) while earning her the resentment of her whining coworkers. It gets a bit silly and chick-flicky toward the close, but there’s no denying Huppert’s charisma and workmanlike conviction to material that doesn’t deserve her. Sometimes, art is more perspiration than inspiration, but Isabelle always gives her fans their money’s worth.

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Investigation (2006)****

Investigation is a police drama from Bulgaria that succeeds on the strength of its dense atmospherics and pervasive sense of gloom. Written and directed by Iglika Triffnova, you will feel the slick, icy streets of Sofia and the damp chill of its crumbling stone buildings. Svetla Yancheva is remarkable as Alexandra, a newly promoted detective who tries to control freak her career while her personal life slowly falls to shambles. More a procedural than a mystery, the case revolves around trying to cajole a confession out of the miscreant (Kassimir Dokov), a task that eluded Alexandra’s predecessor. The ending is slightly disappointing and feels a little contrived, but Investigation manages to evoke rewarding grittiness along the way, and is well worth the viewing. Think Prime Suspect crossed with Police, Adjective.

Another Year (2010)*****

Mike Leigh is back, and squarely in his comfort zone with Another Year. The modestly simple story of a middle-aged couple (Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen), Another Year brims with the type of low key, observational realism that Leigh does better than just about anybody. He manages to find the exhilarant and the heartbreaking hidden within the most banal ingredients, and this film features many head shaking moments of deep resonance. Lesley Manville is terrific as a family friend who just can’t quite get it together, while David Bradley nearly steals the film as Broadbent’s laconic brother. While its narrative contains a mix of amusing and chilling insights, Another Year is primarily a film about the awareness of mortality, and the slow, inexorable ticking of life’s clock. 

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Copacabana (2010)***1/2

Copacabana is yet another of those mediocre scripts that Isabelle Huppert manages to make watchable - even entertaining - apparently through sheer force of will. She plays a free-spirited woman who decides to stop being an embarrassment to her uptight, bourgeois daughter (Lolita Chammah) and ply her street smarts in the unlikely profession of timeshare sales. Huppert discovers she has a gift for moving vacation condos on Belgium’s freezing coast, and her hustle impresses the boss (Aure Atika) while earning her the resentment of her whining coworkers. It gets a bit silly and chick-flicky toward the close, but there’s no denying Huppert’s charisma and workmanlike conviction to material that doesn’t deserve her. Sometimes, art is more perspiration than inspiration, but Isabelle always gives her fans their money’s worth.

---

Investigation (2006)****

Investigation is a police drama from Bulgaria that succeeds on the strength of its dense atmospherics and pervasive sense of gloom. Written and directed by Iglika Triffnova, you will feel the slick, icy streets of Sofia and the damp chill of its crumbling stone buildings. Svetla Yancheva is remarkable as Alexandra, a newly promoted detective who tries to control freak her career while her personal life slowly falls to shambles. More a procedural than a mystery, the case revolves around trying to cajole a confession out of the miscreant (Kassimir Dokov), a task that eluded Alexandra’s predecessor. The ending is slightly disappointing and feels a little contrived, but Investigation manages to evoke rewarding grittiness along the way, and is well worth the viewing. Think Prime Suspect crossed with Police, Adjective.

Loulou (1980)

If you were a young adult in the late 1970s this film will likely strike a chord with you, as it captures a time when romantic notions of love were replaced by a raw, aggressive sexuality. Isabelle Huppert and Gerard Depardieu are, not surprisingly, quite amazing as an earthy Parisian couple who have nothing in common off of their mattress, but their athletic escapades provide sufficient common ground for them to stay together. While the Netflix plot summary describes Huppert as in flight from an abusive husband (Guy Marchand), we can’t really surmise that from the film, as director Pialat is quite stingy with the couple’s backstory. The straight-laced Marchand becomes violent and mean once he discovers he’s being cuckolded, and his fits of temper seem perfectly logical in context.


Huppert appears to be escaping nothing but middle-class boredom, and the thuggish ex-con Depardieu provides her with the spark of dangerous excitement she seeks. The couple thrives in their free love fantasyland for a while, but eventually remnants of their past lives, and a careless pregnancy, signal incoming trouble in paradise. Maurice Pialat does some very good work here, presenting this liberated but confused era with an almost tactile immediacy. While the filmmaking style could be considered verite, there is still a subtle subjectivity that sneakily leads us into making stern value judgments about these characters without abandoning our interest in them.


Particularly impressive is Huppert, who is one of the few actors ever to share a film with young Depardieu and not be gobbled up in the process. Their chemistry on screen is quite believable and, through her instinctive technique, she allows Depardieu to become a much deeper and more appealing character than the physicality of his role would suggest. In all, “LouLou” manifests a time, a place and a mindset that’s a lot more enjoyable to watch than it was to live through.


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Loulou (1980)

If you were a young adult in the late 1970s this film will likely strike a chord with you, as it captures a time when romantic notions of love were replaced by a raw, aggressive sexuality. Isabelle Huppert and Gerard Depardieu are, not surprisingly, quite amazing as an earthy Parisian couple who have nothing in common off of their mattress, but their athletic escapades provide sufficient common ground for them to stay together. While the Netflix plot summary describes Huppert as in flight from an abusive husband (Guy Marchand), we can’t really surmise that from the film, as director Pialat is quite stingy with the couple’s backstory. The straight-laced Marchand becomes violent and mean once he discovers he’s being cuckolded, and his fits of temper seem perfectly logical in context.


Huppert appears to be escaping nothing but middle-class boredom, and the thuggish ex-con Depardieu provides her with the spark of dangerous excitement she seeks. The couple thrives in their free love fantasyland for a while, but eventually remnants of their past lives, and a careless pregnancy, signal incoming trouble in paradise. Maurice Pialat does some very good work here, presenting this liberated but confused era with an almost tactile immediacy. While the filmmaking style could be considered verite, there is still a subtle subjectivity that sneakily leads us into making stern value judgments about these characters without abandoning our interest in them.


Particularly impressive is Huppert, who is one of the few actors ever to share a film with young Depardieu and not be gobbled up in the process. Their chemistry on screen is quite believable and, through her instinctive technique, she allows Depardieu to become a much deeper and more appealing character than the physicality of his role would suggest. In all, “LouLou” manifests a time, a place and a mindset that’s a lot more enjoyable to watch than it was to live through.


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Private Property (2006)

Oh what a tangled web. The Reniers are terrific as twin brothers suffering from a horrendous case of arrested development. They portray 20 somethings who still live at home, roughhouse like school children and, shockingly, still take baths together. They clearly have no intention of ever growing up and going out into the world.



Their behavior is indulged by their divorced parents, who have coddled them for years out of guilt. The boys' idyllic existence is threatened when mom (Isabelle Huppert) decides to sell their rambling farmhouse and use the proceeds to pursue her lifelong dream. The twins' selfish reaction, while disgusting, does have legal merit and indeed that is the conundrum of this film.



As much as you want to kick the young men in the arse, you realize that they are not entirely responsible for their brattishness. In fact, all the characters here are well intentioned, but good intentions are not enough to prevent, and may even aid, the near destruction of this family.



The divergence of opinions about this movie is surprising but understandable. The characters and situations presented in this film are so human, so true to life that you will likely be either repulsed or totally absorbed. Or in this reviewer's case, both.
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Private Property (2006)

Oh what a tangled web. The Reniers are terrific as twin brothers suffering from a horrendous case of arrested development. They portray 20 somethings who still live at home, roughhouse like school children and, shockingly, still take baths together. They clearly have no intention of ever growing up and going out into the world.



Their behavior is indulged by their divorced parents, who have coddled them for years out of guilt. The boys' idyllic existence is threatened when mom (Isabelle Huppert) decides to sell their rambling farmhouse and use the proceeds to pursue her lifelong dream. The twins' selfish reaction, while disgusting, does have legal merit and indeed that is the conundrum of this film.



As much as you want to kick the young men in the arse, you realize that they are not entirely responsible for their brattishness. In fact, all the characters here are well intentioned, but good intentions are not enough to prevent, and may even aid, the near destruction of this family.



The divergence of opinions about this movie is surprising but understandable. The characters and situations presented in this film are so human, so true to life that you will likely be either repulsed or totally absorbed. Or in this reviewer's case, both.
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Merci Pour Le Chocolat (2000)

Claude Chabrol's drawing room thrillers are difficult to categorize as they don't fit neatly into any sort of standard genre. Many people seem to be disappointed with them because they're neither as suspenseful as Hitchcock, nor as tightly plotted as a typical murder mystery. This is not so much the fault of Chabrol as a filmmaker, but rather the people charged with marketing the films, who strive for a short-hand comparative description. Yet the Chabrol canon is extraordinarily consistent in terms of style and subject matter. You either like it and buy into it or you don't. Here we have a typical Chabrol upper class family which at first glance is nearly perfect, but over the course of the film we discover deep flaws and unsavory aspects that secretly haunt the lead characters. Isabel Huppert and Jacques Dutronc are completely believable as the couple whose happiness is a micro-thin, easily chipped, veneer. A veneer that Huppert is willing to protect at any, and I do mean any, cost. With Chabrol nothing should be taken at face value, and as the secrets of this family are peeled away, we learn that even the most cold blooded among us occasionally utter cries for help. It’s been said that directors like Chabrol and Eric Rohmer make the same film over and over. As a fan of Chabrol’s style, I say thank goodness.

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Merci Pour Le Chocolat (2000)

Claude Chabrol's drawing room thrillers are difficult to categorize as they don't fit neatly into any sort of standard genre. Many people seem to be disappointed with them because they're neither as suspenseful as Hitchcock, nor as tightly plotted as a typical murder mystery. This is not so much the fault of Chabrol as a filmmaker, but rather the people charged with marketing the films, who strive for a short-hand comparative description. Yet the Chabrol canon is extraordinarily consistent in terms of style and subject matter. You either like it and buy into it or you don't. Here we have a typical Chabrol upper class family which at first glance is nearly perfect, but over the course of the film we discover deep flaws and unsavory aspects that secretly haunt the lead characters. Isabel Huppert and Jacques Dutronc are completely believable as the couple whose happiness is a micro-thin, easily chipped, veneer. A veneer that Huppert is willing to protect at any, and I do mean any, cost. With Chabrol nothing should be taken at face value, and as the secrets of this family are peeled away, we learn that even the most cold blooded among us occasionally utter cries for help. It’s been said that directors like Chabrol and Eric Rohmer make the same film over and over. As a fan of Chabrol’s style, I say thank goodness.

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