criterionforum.org

david hare wrote: Sun May 13, 2007 9:40 pm A surreptitious leak elswhere informs us that Demy's wondeful American picture Model Shop which was recently restored is being prepped for DVD in Region1 by Sony!!

Break out the champagne![/b]

oh man that's terrific news! =D>

Have you seen this? Is it really that great?

The more bleak Piper is also crying to be seen according to my sources.

davidhare wrote:Model Shop is very much in the mood of the sublime Baie des Anges and Lola. And his first color picture.

My memory is usually shocking, but considering it's viewed 6-10 times a year, Umbrellas can claim to have a hint of colour here and there! Seriously, Model Shop is THE holy grail. To think the 37 year wait may be finally coming to an end. Serious thought now turns what delicate tipple will work best for the eventful occasion.

Pink gin, of course. Next to Donen and Minnelli, has anyone come close to Demy in capturing the essence of that particular hue on screen? Denuvue's ravishing first outfit in Umbrellas - pink coat on pink dress ('careful, it's still full of pins!'') and Castelnuovo's pink shirts, always worn when 'up' in spirits, play on in the memory, as does Gene Kelly's wear in Rochefort. I can only guess and dream that Demy continued on with this in Model Shop with Lockwood and Aimee, and with the 'Model Shops' themselves.

This is wonderful news indeed! Never thought I'd see Model Shop on DVD before any of his other ones. Good move, Sony!

BTW, Lady Oscar is available on DVD in Spain, with the english dub. I've been eyeing that one for ages but is it any good? From the scenes on the Varda docu, it looks great at least.

Knappen wrote:Have you seen this? Is it really that great?

The more bleak Piper is also crying to be seen according to my sources.

I'll concur with davidhare and others--Model Shop is wonderful. It's the last film where Demy tried to work out his "rêve balzacien", by which he meant making a bunch of films where characters from one film would reappear in other films. To my mind, some of the attempts in Model Shop to weave together Baie des Anges and Lola are a bit clumsy, but never mind that--the rest of the film is stunning. Lockwood gives a very sweet and beautiful performance. The music couldn't be more different than his earlier (and later) films; it's by the band Spirit, and it's surprisingly apt. The opening tracking shot, with Spirit's music, is a stunner. By the way, the soundtrack has been available for a couple of years or so and is worth checking out.

Lilo also wonders about Lady Oscar. I've got an nth generation VHS copy that someone sent me years ago, and that is barely watchable. Even so, I found it very compelling. It's like a lot of later Demy: and interesting and noble failed experiment. I'm a little surprised that, with all the manga fans out there, this film hasn't been more available, even in bootleg form. I certainly hope that Ciné Tamaris continue with their restoration work, because there's much more Demy that needs to be made available.

I'd love to have Piper on DVD, saw it a couple months ago theatrically and fell in love with it. There's something about fairytales, a dark edge, that rarely gets treatment on film and Demy really got it with Piper. And I love Pleasence, one of my fave performances of his.

A user on IMDB described the film like this:

Imagine Lola going to L.A. in the late 1960's and having experiences there that are shot something like the way George Lucas shot "American Graffiti."

Well, I can imagine that in my mind's eye and it looks amazing. But even aside from that comparison, this seems like a wonderful film (and I'm on a Demy kick right now).



I kinda like the tagline...

starring the woman from "A Man and a Woman" and the man from "2001"

"Songs Composed and Performed by Spirit." What is their soundtrack like?

I hope Sony announces the DVD soon!

There's a Demy retrospective starting later this week at the BFI/NFT-includes a couple of showings of Model Shop-one of which I am very looking forward to going to as it sounds great !

DC dwellers can also catch a complete Demy retrospective via the French Embassy/National Gallery of Art sometime in 2008..... or so I'm told.

On a Demy-related note, the complete soundtrack for UNE CHAMBRE EN VILLE is being released later this month in a limited edition of 1200 copies by a European label. It's up for order at most of the soundtrack specialty sites.

J Wilson wrote:On a Demy-related note, the complete soundtrack for UNE CHAMBRE EN VILLE is being released later this month in a limited edition of 1200 copies by a European label. It's up for order at most of the soundtrack specialty sites.

How is this later (1982) Demy and its music (composed by Michel Colombier)?

filmyfan wrote:There's a Demy retrospective starting later this week at the BFI/NFT-includes a couple of showings of Model Shop-one of which I am very looking forward to going to as it sounds great !

Note that a couple of films have had to be pulled due to rights complications - Une Chambre en ville and Parking.

That may be the worst Arrow cover I’ve ever seen

On a side note, the building that was used for the front exterior of the Model Shop itself was still recognizable up until a couple of years ago on the north side of Selma Ave. just east of Wilcox St. in Hollywood CA. But the Dream hotel went up next door and the model shop building, which was next to it, was totally changed into Tao Restaurant. 6421 Selma is the address. https://www.google.com/maps/place/TAO/@ ... 18.3303853

Demy has always towed the line between how much magic he uses against the reality he’s clearly aware of, and how and where he wants to go about dishing it out. The musicals are the clearest in their acknowledgement of authentic problems and human truths with the artificial elements affording a provision of skills that can lift the characters into a state of sublime expression, but even the other works like Lola or Bay of Angels have a kind of magical essence to their moods, as if moving into melodramatic conventions with a clear exit plan in escapism. Characters in these seem halfway out the door, opening themselves up with some trepidation and fear about commitment, losing themselves in obsession (love, gambling) but only part of themselves; like a day trip to the extremities of experience, unable to fully dive in because why would these more anchored and fearful parts of the person allow the romantic ones to put their psyches at risk of such total vulnerability?

Model Shop feels like the most gritty and naked example of this idea, by placing a lost and empty vessel of a man with a gaping spiritual hole on the most banal of existentialist quests to escape from or meet his own fate. He desperately wants to shape his life himself with a will, but lacks the beliefs or skills to access an identity that would yield this possibility to become an actuality. Draft notices, overdue bills, ultimatums or even just talk about the future ignite a fear that reminds this man of his mortality, of that claustrophobic trapping that every Demy character has an exit plan against. Here, in maybe Demy’s most extreme example, signifiers of death trigger the man’s own realization that his self has not yet been born, which only exacerbates the drive to suppression through displacing his attention elsewhere. However, Demy decides to drain the world of distractions for him (and us), limiting color, flashy set designs, interesting people, etc. Even the walls inside spaces are bland and empty. Some may declare Gary Lockwood’s performance to be bad, and I’d argue that this is very much the point. He can’t even believe his own words, separate from himself, a fragmented human being by design.

Our protagonist therefore scrambles to find escape in driving around until he sees one color that’s sticks out amongst the fog, a woman upon whom he places the totality of his obsession (or as much as that part that of him not near the exit door will allow) and follows this idea to distract himself from his life while part of him may hope that he’ll find his answers in this projected mirage of meaning and safety. Our protagonist is so directionless that he cannot distill the ambiguity in what he is seeking from his obsession: escape and denial, or answers and acceptance. When he speaks of love, we see through the facade, and when he speaks of death we sense an authentic development of self before he exhibits a further defense mechanism of intellectualizing his experience and moves further away from any revelation. The film has a mature rawness in its stark ennui and a quiet patience in allowing for a meditating presentation of a figure navigating through physical space without necessarily moving anywhere conceptually, reminiscent of Antonioni in spirit though not in style. This was great, and a surprisingly bleak illustration that belongs in the same thematic wheelhouse as Demy’s other works, but stripped down to the bone of the darkest corners of our pathos, and in turn perhaps the most relatable human bond between viewer and subject. Not even close to my favorite of his films, but in some ways his most interesting as an arrestingly arousing piece specifically because of its refusal to arouse through the expected channels of cinematic magic as artifice.