The 2009 Mini-List

[swo17]

ELIGIBLE TITLES FOR 2009

VOTE THROUGH NOVEMBER 30

Please post in this thread if you think anything needs to change about the list of eligible titles

[therewillbeblus]

Can you please add

The Happiest Girl in the World (Radu Jude)
The Invention of Lying (Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson)
Twilight Spirit (Jodie Mack)

[swo17]

Done

[Aunt Peg]

Could you add the following. Thank you in advance:

Actresses (Je-yong Lee)
The Hedgehog (Mona Achache)
Mine (Geralyn Pezanoski)
Tomorrow at Dawn (Denis Dercourt)

[swo17]

Added

[yoshimori]

Some add requests:

Yasmin Ahmad, Talentime - able to make the most hardened souls cry. Strongly recommended.
Shinbo Ayuki et al Bakemonogatari - is this kind of thing voteforable?
Apichatpong Weerasethakul, "Phantoms of Nabua"
Matsumoto Hitoshi, Symbol
Alexis dos Santos, Unmade Beds
Morita Yoshimitsu, Watashi dasuwa [It's on Me]

And ... I see E Ji-yong's Actresses is listed as 2009 in the giant snapshot database, but I can't find it in the standalone 2009 list linked above. User error?

Thanks for all your work!

[domino harvey]

Can you please add:

Le vilain
Leaves of Grass
Les Beaux gosses
the Other Woman
Solitary Man
Sorority Row
Why Beauty Matters

[swo17]

All added, except Leaves of Grass, The Other Woman, and Solitary Man which I have as 2010

And ... I see E Ji-yong's Actresses is listed as 2009 in the giant snapshot database, but I can't find it in the standalone 2009 list linked above. User error?

Try refreshing the page

[domino harvey]

Thanks and sounds good, I’ll vote for those next year!

My write up of Le vilain, with some references to other Albert Dupontel films I was watching at that time

Since there's only two films left, I guess I'll watch La vilain and Le créateur just to say I've seen them all. Maybe one of these two will cause me to reevaluate my thoughts on Dupontel's comic sensibilities

I didn't actually believe this would happen when I wrote this, but lo and behold...

[…]

Le vilain (2009) was the last of Dupontel’s six features I watched and it floored me, because for once everything Dupontel tries to do in these comedies actually works. This is a black comedy that shows it’s possible to be daring and macabre and still maintain a light touch— unbelievably, I think I ended up liking it even more than Au revoir là-haut! Catherine Frot in old lady makeup plays Dupontel’s mom, who discovers late in life that her estranged son is a lowlife criminal. Frot reasons that this must be why God has cursed her with a very specific form of bad luck: she cannot be harmed no matter what manner of freak accident she encounters, because God is keeping her alive for a purpose. And with her son’s return, she realizes that God’s plan for her must be rehabilitating her son. The genius conceit of this is that the better a person Dupontel becomes, the nearer to death his mom gets, and since Duponel grows to love his mother, this causes a back and forth struggle in his behaviors and actions that delighted me. The film has jokes as pitch black as those in Bernie, but it’s in how they’re relayed and what the stakes are that allow the viewer to laugh. Oh yeah, I actually laughed during this, a lot, because it’s funny. Will miracles never cease?

Frot’s character is especially notable, because it’s really the only interesting, well-written, and well-performed female character in his entire oeuvre. Rather than make her a doddering fool, Dupontel wisely instead allows her to be smart. Wiser still, he allows himself to be smart. I think one of the reasons this and Le créateur work and Dupontel’s other three comedies don’t is because he’s not playing an idiot in either of these, and thus he’s able to find more amusing notes to ring. He’s good here, but he also gets out of the way of Frot, who is given all of the best moments and ably carries the movie. I don’t know much about the politics of the Cesar awards, but how Frot could be nominated for absolute nothing perfs like in La Tourneuse de pages and yet turn up empty handed for this movie is beyond me. And of course the usual crew of Dupontel’s gang of regular actors also make their expected appearance. The film has all of Dupontel’s typical visual stylishness and intelligence, and I loved this playful example of shot-reverse shot that cuts back and forth within the same composition, only changing who is reflected in each shot— brilliant!





Dupontel seems to have had the foresight to anticipate a potential English audience, as I believe rather unusually all French DVD/Blu-ray releases of his films feature English subs… except the Blu-ray for Le vilain! Merde!

Thoughts on Les beaux gosses and its follow-up from a discussion on Vincent Lacoste

Lacoste's debut Les beaux gosses (2009) is commonly referred to as the French Superbad and while it's probably dirtier (!), it feels more accurate, especially since the two heroes are both true losers, covered in bad skin and poorly thought-out blossoming facial hair and with miserable social skills. But while they're also kind of assholes and gross on any level, they're still oddly endearing as it makes them realistic in a way that most Hollywood teen comedies never allow for. Writer/director Riad Sattouf brought Lacoste and his co-lead along for his followup a few years later, Jacky au royaume des filles (2014), a take off on oppressive misogynist regimes in the middle east that does what a lot of good satires do: make the familiar strange by virtue of switching the dominant genders and giving us an oppressive female-led society. I don't know if Film Twitter's discovered this film, but I think they'd hemorrhage blood in the rush to decry it. I wouldn't call it a great success, and the final scene is a bizarre miscalculation in trying to shock the audience, but I will say that the funniest single moment of the film comes from the sight of Oscar-winning director Michel Hazanavicius

Spoiler

firing an automatic rifle into a crowd of unarmed women while shouting "Democracy!" -- now there's a real un-pulled comic punch and satiric commentary on extremism!

And my write up of Sorority Row, in the context of watching modern remakes of older slashers such as the wretched 2006 Black Christmas

Sorority Row (Stewart Hendler 2009) My first investigation into slasher remakes was pretty dire, but I hit trip' sevens on my second attempt. Again, this too is a remake of a better-than-average slasher (the House on Sorority Row) produced by filmmakers who have changed the intent and function of the basic plot. However, the changes here are marvelous-- it's not only an almost completely different film, it's a better one. To be clear, Sorority Row makes a cohesive and clever feminist statement, ridiculing patriarchal relationship behavior patterns towards women, both endorsing and critiquing concepts of "sisterhood," presenting all of its main female characters with strong traits which sometimes go against male concepts of femininity (a choice which has led many amateur reviewers to label them "bitches"-- the ultimate mark of disrupted gender notions), and providing its female characters a comical distance from the "seriousness" of their predicament. Watching this film in close quarters with so many other slashers shows just how advanced the film's sexual politics are-- this is the most legitimate feminist slasher I've seen yet. To those skeptics I can tempt to watch despite almost no one else liking this film, pay close attention to how the film undermines many of the sex-based conventions of the genre while still functioning within said perimeters. It's easy to make a film chastising or making fun of movies like this, it's harder to make one that critiques from within. Given the ice-cold reception it received from critics and audiences alike, maybe there's an additional message there.

[John Cope]

Please add:

Raging Sun, Raging Sky (Julián Hernández)

[swo17]

Added