FILM COMMENT SELECTS: THE DUCHESS OF LANGEAIS and THE EDGE OF HEAVEN reviews

So apparently my defintion of tomorrow is actually the day after tomorrow and hence my reviews of THE DUCHESS OF LANGEAIS and THE EDGE OF HEAVEN are only being posted today. FILM COMMENT SELECTS runs from now until February 28th at the Walter Reade theater (70 Lincoln Center Plaza). For a full overview, click here.

THE DUCHESS OF LANGEAIS (2007) Dir: Jacques Rivette

Veteran director Jacques Rivette’s adaptation of Balzac’s THE DUCHESS OF LANGEAIS may be the hardest film to snuggle up to at FCS and that’s saying a lot considering its standing shoulder-to-shoulder with grotesques like Julien Mauray and Alexandra Bustillo’s INSIDE and BEFORE I FORGET, Jacque Nulot’s provocative look at gay sex and old age. LANGEAIS features a languid panoramic visual style that instantly recommends it as a visually striking and memorable foray into the world of France’s snarky answer to Jane Austen but its frustratingly inventive narrative style may be too much for many to take. Rivette abruptly shifts between pivotal scenes with abrupt cuts to intertitles that hold the story’s segments together and moves them along at the speed of light. The combination of brooding, high falutin sentiments and interjections of “24 hours later” seems like Rivette’s making an unnecessary and rushed dash to the finish line but everything about his laboriously thoughtful attention to mise en scene completely frustrates that reading.

LANGEAIS centers on the tentative courtship of the fickle, calculating Duchess (the delightfully coquettish Jeanne Balibar) and the Byronic Armand de Montriveau, (Guillaume Depardieu, Gerard’s aspiring and accomplished son) an army officer whose desert exploits have marked him as damaged goods. While Montriveau’s passion for the Duchess is unquestionable, she prefers to toy with him and refuses to let him close enough in the name of social decorum, religion and any other excuse she can come up with the on the fly, including sudden cases of illness and flights of fancy. Montriveau despises the fact that he has no control in their relationship and must forever wait on the Duchess’ hand-and-foot for acknowledgment however slight. When it comes time for Montriveau to take matters into his own hands, his actions seem like petty stunts that employ brutish emotional ploys that eventually send the Duchess into crisis.

The span of time in-between encounters is crucial for the story’s sake and while its often hard to stomach the whiplash-inducing pace Rivette sets for the story, it’s part of the sly, self-mocking nature of the narrative to mix tragic romance with barbed humor. While Montriveau waits on tenterhooks for a rendezvous that will never happen, his moronic buddies guffaw at the stupidity of literary semantics and hyperbole. The material seems more likely the source of contention that Rivette’s skill as all of his skill behind the camera and with his performers makes it clear that Balzac probably isn’t the easiest writer to adapt. Nevertheless, anyone hankering for a costume drama that makes the romantic antics of Elizabeth Bennett seem positively naïve should run to see Rivette pull out all the stops and make the period piece genuine again.

Fatih Akin’s THE EDGE OF HEAVEN seems modest in comparison to his refreshingly modern romance HEAD-ON thanks to the inevitable comparisons its criss-crossing narrative invites to the films of Alejandro González Iñárritu. Like BABEL, HEAVEN employs a fractured narrative to focus on the lives of several strangers as they come together to highlight unconventional romance and the debts children and parents owe each other. While Akin’s film has a comparatively stripped-down aesthetic and message to match, it’s impossible to say that either of the two inter-related stories would amount to much without the seemingly gimmicky premise of bifurcating the story into halves. Each half respectively centers on the death of one of the film’s six principle protagonists, promising a tragic conclusion that will bring the remaining characters closer together. Thankfully, that’s not necessarily the case. The bonds the four survivors form are all established indirectly, through books and phone calls. The world may be small but it certainly isn’t cozy enough to feel that way.

The film begins when Ali (Tuncel Kurtiz) meets Yeter (Nursel Köse) at her place of business in the red light district. As in HEAD-ON, being a Turk in Germany fosters an instant bond between the two and Ali contracts her to be his live-in wife. In the second half of the film, Ali’s son Nejat (Baki Davrak) searches for Ayten (Nurgül Yesilçay) while she falls in love with Charlotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska) and out of favor with Charlotte’s mother Susanne (Hanna Schygulla). Akin makes no apologies for the defiant political statements that come attached with romance in his films. Each of the two central relationships in HEAVEN is an illustration of the necessity for progressive attitudes if contemporary relationships are to be portrayed realistically. Love is an act of defiance against the backward and intolerant cultural agents of the status quo associated with whichever country the protagonsits’ consider their homes. Estrangement for Yeter doesn’t manifest itself in the belligerent native Germans she’s surrounded by but rather in a pair of Turkish men that think she should be ashamed that she isn’t a meek, humble Turkish woman. Likewise, Charlotte’s biggest critic is her mother, one whose objections seem more a product of confusion and ill-ease than actual disdain for her daughter’s lesbian lover.

The seemingly freak nature of two deaths within such a short amount of time begs the question of what the film really means. The beauty of the film is that the answers are there but are ultimately up to interpretation. While the deaths are essential to bring the characters together, they’re hardly the focus of their stories but rather the journey that takes them to the places where they bump into each other, if only momentarily. Yes, I realize how cliché that sounded but it works for once and that alone makes it worthwhile. Akin blunts his scalpel-like attention to detail for the sake of a more sentimental tone than he ever allowed HEAD-ON’s ill-fated lovers. While it may pale in comparison, it remains refreshing for how it takes two otherwise unremarkable stories and makes them seem new again.

Come back some time this weekend for reviews of Olivier Assayas' BOARDING GATE and Alex Cox's SEARCHERS 2.0.