• _The Mad Kings_; _Mona_

    From septimus_millenicom@q.com@21:1/5 to All on Sat Jun 30 10:22:14 2018
    _The Mad Kings_ may not be a great film but it is certainly powerful.
    The opening -- muscle car driving over an animal's carcass on a road
    to nowhere -- plays like David Lynch on steroids, and it only gathers
    more speed, dead bodies, and primal fury from there. It succeeds in
    being operatic without resorting to supernatural or Freudian cliches,
    unlike in much of Lynch.

    Writer-director Laurent Laffargue and co-writer Frederique Moreau
    apparently adapted the story from Sonia Millot's play _Castlejaloux_.
    Both Millot and Laffargue grew up in that sleepy commune close to
    Bordeaux, where buying your own butcher shop is a crowning achievement.
    Jacky Chichinet (ex-soccer star Eric Cantona) is doing just that, and
    wants to marry the towny beauty Chantal (Celine Sallette) into the
    bargain. The passionate Chantal toils as a cashier by day and teaches Tartuffe and Moliere to young wannabe actors on the side. With her
    miniskirts and Shakespeare poster in the kitchen, she is clearly too
    glamorous for him, for Castlejaloux, and for all the communes miles from
    there. The Romy Schneider-winning actress is a French Carmen Maura;
    she effortlessly conveys a world weariness beyond her years. Life's disappointments can be held at bay if you wearing adoring gazes.

    The idyll, such as it is, lies shattered when her old flame Jeannot (Sergei Lopez) rides into town. He is a hard-drinking ex-con, romantic, charming,
    but prone to shocking violence. While scheming to win back Chantal, he falls in with his buddy-in-crime. His sister (I think?) sends him job interviews
    and tries to steer him out of trouble. Roman Bohringer has played her
    share of crazy, wildly romantic younths (_Total Eclipse_, _Savage Nights_); here she is almost unrecognizable as the gaunt, prim, religious single mother trying to hold the center. Her troubled son is in Chantal's class. He could have been Jeannot's boy; he is charismatic and theatrical, and shares a girl with his sidekick buddy.

    There is obvious parallel between the two love-triangles and the generations. Will the son sublimate his passion into art, redeems himself and Castlejaloux, or turn violent like Jeannot, who ends up renacting a passion play right out
    of _The Iliad_? Playwright Millot is a local theater actress, puppeteer, and part-time teacher, and the stark choices and dilemmas facing these characters stuck in backwater towns feels fiercely person, even if she is not listed in the film credits.

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    The Latvian film _Mona_ is rumored to have taken 7 years to complete due to funding issues. It is set in another backwater town with slaughter-house
    as the sole employer. It also features a too-glamorous woman and the men
    vying for her. A businessman from Riga inherits a chateau and falls in love with the housekeeper (Kristine Belicka), who is tired of washing cow guts.
    This sets up inevitable conflicts with her hard-drinking boyfriend. Director Inara Kolmane imaginatively plays with and indicts the male gaze with frequent fantasy sequences in the businessman's head. Perhaps one can't blame him
    100%; the inscrutible Mona (clearly named after the da Vinci portrait in the Lourve) is played by one of the most photogenic and stunnng actresses in
    cinema (apologies for sexism here). Kolmane was famous for her documentaries; this is her first dramatic feature, and the pacing and storytelling are are amazingly assured. Cinematically it is glorious and visionary as well. Sequences shot in the flooded chateau and chase scenes with the beast-like boyfriend stalking Mona in the slaughter house brim with artistry and ambition. It is a far greater film than even _The Mad Kings_, which is not half bad itself. A must see. We should all keep an eye on director Kolmane, actress Belicka, and their future work.


    (for A.)

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