Day: September 2, 2023

A Fine, Lanthimosian Madness

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I can’t pound out a ten-paragraph review of Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Poor Things as it’s nearly 11 pm and I’m really whipped (I only slept about four hours last night) but it’s totally fucking wild, this thing — it’s too sprawling to describe in a single sentence but I could start by calling it an imaginatively nutso, no-holds-barred sexual Frankenstein saga.

The production design and visual style are basically pervy Lathimos meets Terry Gilliam meets Jean Pierre Juenet…really crazy and wackazoid and fairly perfect in that regard.

Set in a make-believe 19th Century realm that includes fanciful versions of London, Paris and Lisbon, Poor Things is at least partly The Bride of Frankenstein by way of a long-haul feminist parable about a underdog woman eventually finding strength and wisdom and coming into her own.

It swan-dives into all kinds of surreal humor with boundless nudity and I-forget-how-many sex scenes in which Emma Stone, giving her bravest and craziest-ever performance, totally goes to town in this regard save for the last, oh, 20 or 25. The film runs 141 minutes.

Poor Things is easily Lanthimos’ finest film, and all hail Stone For having gone totally over the waterfall without a flotation device…giving her boldest, most totally-out-there performance as she rides the mighty steed, so to speak, while repeatedly behaving in a “big”, herky-jerky fashion as Tony McNamara’s screenplay, based on Alasdair Gray‘s same-titled novel, whips up the perversity and tests the boundaries of what used to be known as softcore sex scenes.

The costars include Mark Ruffalo (giving a totally enraged, broadly comic performance as a middle-aged libertine), Willem “Scarface” Dafoe as Dr. Godwin Baxter, Ramy Youssef as Dafoe’s assistant and Christopher Abbott as as an upper-class London slimeball, plus four stand-out cameos by Margaret Qualley, Kathryn Hunter, Suzy Bemba and 79-year-old Hanna Schygulla.

I’ll add to this tomorrow morning but this is one serious boundary-pusher…wow.

No Hard-Humping Today

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Several weeks ago a dismissive Cannes review of Aki Kaurismaki ‘s Fallen Leaves lowered my want-to-see. But at the urging of SBIFF kingpin Roger Durling I caught it yesterday afternoon, and was glad that I did. It’s a simple but pleasing romantic fable — bare bones, wholly believable, well acted and genuinely touching.

Nobody’s urging me to see Rustin, which screens at the Palm at 4:15. The reviews have been tepid. Trusted critic friend: “It does exactly what you expect it to do,” I’ll be attending but I won’t use one of my early-entry passes. It’s not worth it. If I don’t get in, fine. Pretty Things is at 7:30 pm.

Buffet Lived Well…Right?

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Serious respect for the late Jimmy Buffet, who lived large and luxuriously off an enduring music career that stretches back to the ‘70s. Laid-back beach vibes, Caribbean atmospheres + rum and crushed ice in the blender, shots of tequila and “that frozen concoction that helps me hang on.”

I never related all that strongly to the Buffet legend or sensibility or whatever, which was basically about cynicism and resignation. But he did come to represent a “fuck it”, sandal-wearing, Hawaiian-shirt-wearing attitude toward the tensions and stresses of modern life, and you can’t say it didn’t resonate.

“Fall”, Fast Footwork, “Poor Things”

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Smarthouse audiences will derive satisfaction from Justine Triet‘s Anatomy of a Fall, which is a longish investigative procedural-slash-courtoom “thriller”. Not to say it’s especially thrilling — it isn’t — but you can’t say it’s not thorough.

It’s about a renowned, middle-aged writer named Sandra (Sandra Huller) facing official suspicion over the possibly accidental (or not) death of her husband Samuel (Samuel Theis), also a writer but a less successful, more financially struggling one.

Theirs has been a turbulent relationship involving casual infidelities on her part, and the authorities suspect that Sandra may have pushed Samuel from the third floor of their A-framed Grenoble chalet.

The main takeaway is that Huller, best known for Toni Erdmann and currently also costarring in Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, is a major Best Actress contender.

Huller and Triet spoke prior to yesterday’s 1 pm screening at the Pierre.

I found Anatomy of a Fall fairly gripping (i.e., not spellbinding but fully deserving of my attention) but my knees were absolutely killing me in the tiny Pierre theatre, which affords no leg room.

I’m not so sure that Joe and Jane Popcorn will like it as much. It’s almost entirely set in the A-frame and in a courtoom, and it goes on for two and half hours.

It’s now 8:05 am with my first screening happening 55 minutes hence, and I have to be there no later than 8:30 am.

Two festival days gone, three more to go. Today’s lineup is The Taste of Things at 9 (and those who frown on my re-seeing a sublime Cannes film can go fuck themselves), possibly Janet Planet at 1 pm, Rustin (groan) at 4:15 pm and then Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Poor Things at 7 pm (Herzog).