Word: frenched
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...plot itself is marvelously simple--an elegant story about an auto mechanic (brooding Nino Castelnuovo) drafted to fight in the 1950s French-Algerian War and the girl (achingly lovely Catherine Deneuve) back home. It could be a country song, or a classic short story, or a Doctor Zhivago epic. But the film's sense of place--capturing the wetness, char and sadness of provincial Cherbourg--and its compassion for all the characters sets it apart. I would love to say it's the story that gets me. But when I recall the film, that's not what comes back...
...quite imagine how the project got off the ground; who would fund an idiosyncratic collaboration between untested Nouvelle Vague director Jacques Demy and French jazz composer Michel Legrand? Chalk it up to the experimental spirit of the '60s or the audacious spirit of the French New Wave. But what has emerged is unlike any other dated document of the time. It's astonishing how fresh it remains. It's like a fantastic kiss--it never gets old. Even the first time I watched the movie (with a smile of such shocking wideness that my roommates thought I'd gotten married...
...rumor has it that she's been dieting like a madwoman, but she really looks awful (her husband, David Arquette, meanwhile, looks healthy with some extra pudge)... Random diversion: does anybody remember when the dining halls slapped hamburger patties onto croissants and tried to convince us that they were "French Rondelles?"...Okay, I think Christian Bale is a nice person and all, and I sort of see what Mary Harron was trying to do in casting him as the "psycho" in American Psycho, but why cast a Brit in a role that absolutely must be played by an American? Harron...
...Most of the play's scenes happen within the context of Pamela and Dulle Griet's flight through Berlin, punctuated by the comic appearances of Herman and Gunter. The sets bounce wildly between a small theater, the columns of a museum, the streets of riot-torn Berlin, a fancy French hotel and a suburban Berlin hovel; the tone of the play changes just as wildly, such as when Dulle Griet gives a heart-felt monologue about what she imagines her "happy life" will be like, punctuated by Pamela's chirpy "Well, you're certainly the strangest girl I've ever...
...Perry). Amanda Peet too leaves some dubious other film appearances and fills the movie with much needed younger vitality (although the viewer is left too to wonder why the seduced ends up being the much older Bruce Willis). Finally, Rosanna Arquette is masterful in her portrayal of an evil, French-Canadian wife...