I skipped the theatrical release of Bruno Dumont's
_France_, having just seen the broad satire _Slack Bay_
and not overly impressed. Finally catching up with
it on DVD I am left a bit speechless.

First, the easy part. Lea Seydoux has never been better,
which is saying something. She expresses so much while
saying absolutely nothing, just like in _Farewell, My
Queen_. She is icy, approachable, drop-dead glamourous,
plain and without make-up, vulgar, composed, going to
pieces, sophisticated, cynical, sincere. Dumont likes
to highlight her cold blue eyes. Later on blue is the
color of death, as a luxury car tumbles through the sky
into the deep blue sea.

The film is harder to classify or decipher, but it is
almost as many things as Seydoux's superstar journalist
France de Meur is. France holds court in studio with
talking heads, she exchanges high-power repartees with
the French president, she goes to war zones and jumps
on refugees' boats, always with camera crew in tow,
ready for her close-up. Except that she is both
director and star; she is the center of the story at
all times. Indeed her news show is plastered with
her images, and she is recognized and loved by all.
(There must be at least 20 people of all ages and
ethnicities seeking selfies with her.) That is the
goal of journalists and journalism in the age of
social media -- although in the US you would want
to foster hatred too.

France keeps the focus on herself by crossing all
the red lines that Holly Hunter's producer character
famously tries to uphold in _Broadcast News_. She
cries on screen, stages every shot like a movie, often
reshooting a scene to get a close-up followed by a
reaction shot. She claims this allows the audience
a more intimate way into the news story. The irony
is that she isn't faking the danger she is in (unlike
Brian Willaims of NBC who got fired by exaggerating
peril) -- if anything her antics put her and her crew
under more duress. Her monologue at the end of the
film suggests she has become aware this is a betrayal
of idealism, but she feels that's the way things are
now. The film becomes episodic and almost disjointed
towards the end, deliberately refusing to tie up
loose ends.

I am not sure Dumont meant to make her despicable, as
some reviewers have written. He has no problem making
her sycophantic, cynical producer (Blanche Gardin)
thoroughly unlikable, but that is not his game for
France. I am not even sure _France_ the film is even
a satire. It is almost a reprise of _Humanite_, about
a child-like, idiosyncratic protagonist -- except that
Seydoux has a perfect face instead of warts and boils,
is Paris' center of attention, not a riff-raff on the
country's fringes. (I assume no one considers _Humanite_
s satire.) In many ways France is a holy fool/innocent,
like the pop star in _Beyond the Lights_, or more
pertinently, the insecure hosts of late-night talk
shows. Armond White wrote of Dumont's film: "His
heroine is an icon of the zeitgeist." That is a great
summation, in a way that both empathizes with her
and indicts our society.

I don't want to go full on Armond-White in criticing
the US media, but France can easily be a CNN or PBS
News star-host like Anderson Cooper or Christiane
Amanpour, whose celebrity status is milked for maximum
profit. CNN is such a tabloid now; it probably helped
Trump got elected last with its carpet coverage and
is doing that all over again. Reading mostly the
wishful-thinking coverage of CNN I thought Brexit
was a close vote; turned out it was a landslide.
BBC positively tries to out-woke every other main
media outlet. New York Times is more objective,
but it can do without its most attention-seeking
radical columnists or the "best of late night"
coverage. Comics are the most insecure, needy,
"France"-like people desperate to conform to tribal
instincts. Glorifying them as the conscience of
society is so completely misguided. But I still
check in with CNN first thing in the morning to
see if a nuclear war has started. At least
you don't expect CNN to lie about that, while I
wouldn't even be sure about that with Fox News.

(My hero among the mainstream news outlets was Ted
Koppel, formerly of "Nightline," who rose to fame
for his cool competence during the Iran hostage
crisis and was paramount covering the Tiananmen
Square months. The British-born Koppel once said
in an interview he would rather die than claim to
be "the best" in anything, the way we are expected
to act in the U.S.; clearly not someone looking for
the audience's misguided love. Watch the youtube
video where he scolded Sean Hannity for attracting
people who thinks ideology is more important than
facts.)

----------------------------------------------------

Aaron Sorkin's _The Trial of the Chicago Seven_ turns
out to be extremely entertaining. It is also like
shooting fish in a barrel; the trial judge is so
clearly demented, racist, and biased there is little
substantive afterglow after the short-term laughs and
outrage. Sorkin exonerates the seven of the charge of
inciting violence, chalking it up to bad phrasing.
It is odd that he doesn't draw a comparison with
the January 6th riot, incited by willful deceit on
the part of Trump, Fox News, and others. The
sanctimony of the film doesn't seem to fit the
showboating of those on trial, and the last scene
is unnecessarily triumphant, but a little idealism
is better than none ...

... because the alternative might be "House of Cards,"
a show dripping with nihilism! I am not sure why
anyone could stomach it. (I watched it for Francie
Swift, who guest-starred in two of the best "Law and
Order" episodes.) David Fincher directed the first
two episodes. Just when I thought my opinion of him
could not sink lower.

And finally, there is _DNA_, another of Maiwenn's
formless, documentary-like, kitchen sink family drama.
She is probably the only French actress-turned-director
capable of less visual elegance than Mia Hansen-Love.
Yet her films (including the similarly middling
_Polisse_) get a bucketful of awards, and her new
work starring Johnny Depp opens this year's Cannes
Film Festival. With such poor taste in leading man,
you do hope the critics will start to come to their
senses about her critics' darling status.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

It is very touching that France de Meurs tries to change her life after
a near-nervous breakdown. She goes to a Swiss retreat, where her
rest-cure is sidetracked by an undercover reporter stalking her. She
goes to work in a soup kitchen and people all but bitterly spit in her
face. We increasingly live in our own bubble today, unable to function
outside of it. (I found this out the hard way when I moonlighted as
an NGOer myself.) At the end she admits her failure and go back to
exploiting her fame even as she is a prisoner of it.

But this failure is also director Dumont's. Others have used their
fame and celebrity to do good. Whatever you have against Lady
Diana Spencer, the "People's Princess" played an instrumental role
in the global ban on land mines, among other good deeds. Our own
Countess Jessica (Chastain) went to Ukraine to visit children's
hospitals and publicized the plight of Iranian women. Many others
have done good work, even actors that I don't care for. Dumont is
limited by his own cynicism; he should learn from the great humanists
of the 90s.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)