Monday, November 12, 2007
Love on the Coast of France
Jacques Demy's cinema of southern France contains some of the best love letters ever committed to film. Nantes or Cherbourg play as important a role in his films as any of the human actors.
Lola is Anouk Aimee. She is a single mom portrayed with a kind of frankness that American film could not touch in the early sixties. She works in this club that seems to explode with a kind of early sixties kinetic bossa cool rave every time sailors walk in the door. In her tender scenes with a grade school sweetheart or the sailor doppleganger American who fathered her son, she reminds me of Marilyn Monroe in her best performance, but with more Madonna self-realization. Elina Labourdette as Madame Desnoyers also has a strong parallel role, another single mother with a adolescent daughter at the gateways of adulthood.
The film features about six characters somewhat interconnecting with each other as love and fate play a part along the coastline. The men are not nearly as interesting as the women here. Demy's judicious use of French New Wave techniques like jump-cutting (not to distraction, like Godard, but more like seasoning) and his trademark inventiveness in music, both in Michel Legrand, who will forever be linked with Demy for Umbrellas) and Beethoven's Seventh. These are important components in the cinema of Demy, but my favorite element in his visual elixir is the use of strong coastal light coming from windows, sometimes for backlight or sometimes providing striking contrast for characters whose hearts and intention of heart don't match up with the conditions of life they find themselves in.
posted by well-executed buffet at 10:55 PM
Comments:
Post a Comment