A trip to Milan and Switzerland, in the midst of a man-killing
heat wave, yielded a grand total of zero DVD. At least I got
to watch Eugene Green's _Son of Joseph_ on the plane. It is
an extraordinary film, a complete breath of fresh air.
Stylistically it could be a modern-day fusion of Bresson and
Ozu. Philosophically this film, and _La Sapienza_ before it,
are repudiation of the anti-Western tradition, identity-politics
ideology so deeply entrenched in the academia. The elegance
and simplicity of these films are stunning. I like _Son of
Joseph_ even more than _La Sapienza_. (The latter was partly
shot in the Ticino/Lugano area where I visited, but it was
really too hot to walk around.)

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

_White God_ (2014), Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczo's
live action canine revenge film, is as extraordinary as it is
different from each of his two previous features I've managed
to see (_Johanna_ and _Delta_). The teenage Lili is shoved
off by her mother to her divorced father. He doesn't like
dogs and in a fit of rage abandons her close companion
Hagen on the road. Hagen is shunned by the roaming pack
of stray dogs in the street; captured, tortured, and trained
by the dog-fighting underworld; and finally taken into the
dog pound. Before the authorities can kill him, he leads
a hundred inmates in a revenge-filled, murderous breakout.

Using and subverting an existing genre (it could be a Disney
talking-dog cartoon, but with rage and plenty of bloodshed),
Mundruczo paints a scathing portrait of our supposedly
"civilized" society and its relentless cruelty towards the
underprivileged. (It is telling that one main villain is
a rigid, autocratic youth-symphony director who throws the
dog and Lili out of a rehearsal.) The two canine actors
playing Hagen are extraordinary, somehow managing to convey
its journey from innocent victim to avenging Spartacus.
His cute-as-a-button sidekick is great too. The choreography
and action scenes are unbelievable (there is little or no
CGI used), and Lili's maturation process through all this
is also touchingly depicted. Unlike _Delta_ and _Johanna_,
_White God_ ends on a semi-hopeful note; if the canine rebel
army will inevitably soon be slaughtered, they at least come
face to face with their tormentors, and end the film,
momentarily, in a peaceful standoff.

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

That is a more hopeful ending than Mundruczo's previous
films I've seen, also about society's cruelty towards
outsiders. _White God_ sends me back to _Johanna_, the
director's very idiosyncratic rock opera about a
junkie rescued from death. She becomes a nurse and
an angel of mercy, sacrificing herself to cure patients
by having intercourse with them (!). Like _White God_ and
_Delta_, this is an extremely disturbing take on fairy
tales. The "curing sessions" take place right in front
of children, in rooms with wall papers ironically depicting
fairy tale themes. (There is no indication of how the
titular Johanna cures children.) Orsolya Toth, the
director's one-time muse, is a stunning presence despite
her waif-like stature. The set seems to be entirely
located underground, making the hospital look like a
war-zone. Bela Tarr co-produced this feature. Mundruczo,
who is also very active in the theater, has a talent for
offending the sensibilities of film festival circuit
critics. They hated his _Tender Son: The Frankenstein
Project_. Since these same critics are largely responsible
for the stultifying film culture in today's art-house
cinema, I'd say Mundruczo has exactly the right idea.

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

Michel Leclerc 's _The Name of Love_ also features a
saint-whore (Sara Forestier) making love to her political
enemies (religious bigots of all stripes) to concert them
to her liberal values. This is actually an incredibly
well-written, funny film, squaring off the irrepressible
Forestier, ever trying to forge ties back to her Algerian
past, and the buttoned-up Jacques Gamblin, doing the best
to ignore his Jewish heritage. The personal and the
political are thus delicately intertwined in the love
affair between the two mixed-race descendants of France's
colonial heritage. The amazing Sara Forestier won a
Cesar for this role, but anyone who has seen _Games of
Love and Chance_ can guess that she will win a Cesar
sooner rather than later.

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

I also saw Pascal Bonitzer's _Small Cuts_ and Anne Fontaine's
_My father and I_ on DVD. Both are anti-bourgeoisie tales
with the antihero going on a journey of self-discovery
or enduring a visit by a charming scoundrel from his past.
Didn't someone (Tolstoy?) once say these are the only
two stories in the universe? Within the familiar premises
both offer layered, surprising narratives. It is almost
a shock to remember a time when French cinema was actually
good, before it became synonymous with Olivier Assayas,
his wife Mia Hansen-Love, and their inexplicably celebrated
hipster-chic output (see the "Indiewire" "best French
films" poll, the Cannes film festival, et al.) Assayas
is a mediocre filmmaker who makes mediocre films about
mediocre people. Unfortunately, that's what today's film
critics can't have enough of.

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