Silver Lining Playbook had a certain charm, it was a very professional production, but it was extremely predictable and hackneyed, which probably accounts for its popularity
A friend who likes Jennifer Lawrence suggests watching
_The Silver Lining Playbook_ -- and even she was
underwhelmed with both the film and the Oscar winning
performance by the actress. I have misgivings from the
start, since Lawrence won that popularity contest over
the far more technically brilliant Jessica Chastain
(for _Zero Dark Thirty_). It is easy to understand
why she won the oscar; this is the kind of attention-
catching plucky heroine role that gets awards, although
Lawrence seems to have done little more than being
herself. It is harder to understand why the film
is so popular. It is about a tribe (or several tribes?)
of obsessive-compulsive, bipolar, and otherwise very
crazy people living in Philadelphia. Their obsession
about the Philadelphia Eagles is admittedly interesting
(football fans are notoriously superstitious, especially
those who bet on the sport I assume). But does everyone
has to be so loud all the time? It gets really tiresome
soon. By far the most interesting character is Chris
Tucker, playing an unusually subdued role of a mental
institution patient who slips in and out of the hospital.
In these kind of films, having a calm center really
helps anchor the craziness and loudness. Alas, Tucker
is on screen too little of the time.
Lee Chang-Dong's _Oasis_ is about the romance of *really*
mentally challeneged people. They are a shifty 30-year-old
man-child who just gets out of prison for vehicular
manslaughter, and the epilyptic and severely mentally
handicapped daughter of the man he accidentally killed.
She is left alone by her siblings to fend for herself,
he visits their apartment to apologize and takes an interest
in her. The first encounter is very close to attempted
rape, but eventually she warms up to him and achieves
moments of lucidity and great tenderness. I don't quite
know what to think of this film yet. I had a completely
different notion of it before I saw it. Somehow I thought
they are living in a rural area, all by themselves; that
impression cannot be more wrong, as the are buffetted by
their relatives with their own agendas. The writing
is better than the filming, as in Lee's _Secret Sunshine_,
but there is a tour-de-force long take about the once
and future prisoner climbing on a tree trying to reach
his sweetheart's apartment. Tough to like in its own
way, but a breath of fresh air after the suffocating
_Silving Lining Playbook_.
There isn't any craziness or loudmouth people in _A View
of Love_ directed by Nicole Garcia. It is the quintessential
French film about romance and unrequited love: subtle,
subdued, well-acted, tasteful in every way. But this film
is unusually well-written too, with multiple mistaken
or assumed identities, the lingering romantic fantasies
of youth by both man and woman; it is about France's
retreat from Algeria, about houses, and about memories
that play tricks on us. Jean Dujardin is a solid family
man and real-estate heir-in-law who runs into his childhood
sweetheart in Oran after many years. His family has fled
Oran prior to the 1962 massacre, so the film is probably
set in the 1980s -- sure enough, there are no cell phones
to be seen. The grown woman, played by a blond Marie-Josee
Croze, is trying to buy a luxurious mansion from his firm,
owned by the father of his wife (Sandrine Kiberlain). Croze's
character isn't quite what we think she is, and soon both
she and Dujardin's character have stark moral choices to
make.
Kiberlain is just brilliant in a small handful of short
scenes, most of them wordless; she only needs to tilt her
head 45 degrees to the camera and emotions inundate the
scene. Croze is the female lead, chosen presumbly because
she is a tougher, more inscrutible, and has already played
morally shady roles in films like _Munich_. Still, one wonders
what would have happened if the two actresses were switched.
Dujardin isn't that impressive but it should be time I get around
to seeing him in _The Artist_. The cinematography here
is great as well, unhurried and elegant, as only appropriate
for seaside towns in south of France. The screenplay by Garcia,
Jacques Fieschi, Natalie Carter, and Frédéric Bélier-Garcia
is surprisingly layered, deep. A terrific film that never
got a real stateside release; I highly, highly recommend this.
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