CRUCIAL VIEWING
Philippe Grandrieux x 3
Film Studies Center (Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St., University of Chicago) [Free Admission]
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Philippe Grandrieux's UN LAC and WHITE EPILEPSY (French Revivals)
Friday, 7pm (LAC) and Saturday, 2pm (EPILEPSY)
"[Philippe Grandrieux's films] constitute the most advanced point of cinematic research, representing for today what the films of Jean Epstein were for the 1920s and '30s or what Philippe Garrel's were for the '70s and '80s," wrote Nicole Brenez in 2003, going on to say that the French director's work adopts "a radical position, a dynamic that seeks to return to the most profound and obscure sources of representational desire." In spite of such praise--not to mention festival screenings of his films all over the world--Grandrieux remains little-known in this country. This weekend, however, Chicagoans will have a chance to catch up with Grandrieux's cinema when the Film Studies Center presents local premieres of three of his features; the director will be in attendance at all of them, and taking part in post-show discussion with French critic Raymond Bellour after the Friday show. First on the docket is UN LAC (2008, 85 min, 35mm), a tantalizing work that straddles the line between narrative and experimental filmmaking. The slim plot concerns a family that lives in the middle of a wooded area; the adolescent son, involved a quasi-incestuous relationship with his sister, is an epileptic whose greatest pleasure seems to derive from cutting down trees. Grandrieux channels the young man's fragmented worldview, breaking the film into short, texturally vivid sequences that immerse viewers in the natural environment or bouts of intense physical activity. The action, set in the dead of winter, is shot largely in extreme close-up, and the sound design is highly specific and purposely harsh; one responds to UN LAC on a visceral level before understanding what exactly is going on. What register most profoundly are feelings of agitation, wonder, and longing for serenity--experienced in a dark theater, the film should be hypnotic. WHITE EPILEPSY (2012, 67 min, DCP Digital) is even more opaque and dreamlike than UN LAC, suggesting the fragmentary images that drift through one's subconscious. For most of the film, Grandrieux presents two naked bodies, one male and one female, engaged in obscure movements in the dark. It's difficult to make the out the people's faces or their entire limbs; nonetheless, the film communicates a palpable sense of anguished desire. The ambient soundtrack--no less evocative than that of UN LAC--goes a long way in establishing the mood, the natural-world noises conjuring up environments (and states of being) at once familiar and mysterious. BS
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Philippe Grandrieux's MALGRÉ LA NUIT (New French)
Saturday, 6pm
At first blush, Philippe Grandrieux's MALGRÉ LA NUIT concerns a group of impossibly beautiful Parisians living footloose and fancy-free in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. The alliterative bunch--Lenz, Louis, Lena--get stoned, cavort around Paris, and lust after one another in stretches that hum along with music video pacing. Youthful innocence quickly gives way to a shadowy back-story involving Lenz and his quest to find his enigmatic ex, Madeleine. The group's sexual encounters grow increasingly disturbing and the stakes elevated as the love triangle first morphs into a love rectangle and then to some other unknowable polygon. With each passing flashback and dream sequence the characters become more possessed in a truly ?u?awskian sense by their vices and driven toward self-destruction. The prevalence of writhing bodies pitched against void-like backdrops and personal-space-annihilating close-ups is a continuation of Grandrieux's signature chiaroscuro style, established in works such as LA VIE NOUVELLE (2002), UN LAC (2008), and WHITE EPILEPSY (2012). These sustained close-ups provide an intense level of intimacy but also function to muddy characters' identities and further disorient the viewer as the violent nightmare deepens. Grandrieux's MALGRÉ LA NUIT is la petite mort in slow motion. A volatile mix of agony and ecstasy that threatens to render both actors and audience unconscious by its final act. Grandrieux in person. (2015, 150 min, DCP Digital) JS
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Additionally, on Sunday from 2-5pm, there will be a live White Epilepsy Solo Performance by Callahan McGovern at the Bartlett Arts Rehearsal Space (5640 S. University Ave.). Details on this are few, but it is apparently a live performative version of a section of Grandrieux's film WHITE EPILEPSY, by Boston conservatory student McGovern.
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More info at filmstudiescenter.uchicago.edu.
Ben Wheatley's HIGH-RISE (Contemporary British)
Music Box Theatre - Check Venue website for showtimes
If David Cronenberg's interpretation of J.G. Ballard's Crash was a communion with Ballard's clinical, gimlet-eyed aspect, then director Ben Wheatley and screenwriter Amy Jump's adaptation of High-Rise might profitably be thought of as Ballard seen through the eyes of a Crass-besotted teenager who would never quite grow past that first encounter and frisson of transgression. This is not a pejorative statement, depending on your tolerance for Wheatley's fourth-wall-breaking, cheekily presentational style. The movie's a punk riff on Ballard, by turns angular and weirdly elegant, right down to the Can-Fall tracks clashing with Clint Mansell's orchestral dissonances; it's as if the bespoke suit of Tom Hiddleston's Dr. Laing, which progressively becomes stinking and paint-spattered, came to life as a movie. (The not-so-good doctor's name is no less funny for being a blunt reference, just as Jump's use of voiceover lifted from the novel is on-the-nose, but repurposed to make Laing a self-mythomaniac, driven insane by the infernal building he moved into to escape personal tragedy.) As in the novel, the film begins at 10 on the depravity scale and busts through to infinity within minutes. The visualization of the high-rise, with its gyms, squash courts, supermarket, and rooftop garden and bestiary is magnificent; at one point Hiddleston embraces an ornamental concrete beam, literally fondles it as if it were a person, sentient, which is kind of Ballard's point. The edifice, both physical and social, goes to hell quickly, though, first fed to us in small doses--mysterious holes in walls, dog shit on shag carpets--and eventually becomes a horrorshow of fritzy electrical service, clogged garbage chutes, murder, assault, and implied bestiality. Ballard is all about the death wish, and the movie's got a bit of death wish about it, too. Wheatley plays with it like a kid in mud; he digs the screwing and the smoking and scrips written in crayon--the fraying of every damn thing, in Seventies drag. (One character says of another's environmentalism, "She cares. That's her thing." Wheatley cares about the Seventies: that's his thing.) He may dig it a bit too much. The last 45 half hour wanders some, and leans too heavily on Jump's gift for absurd invective, but it's still a good show, and perhaps as far as you can take Ballard on these days and still get widely exhibited--a pity, that. Two things that demand special attention are: Jump's ferociously funny and cruel script as well as her remarkable partnership with the director (her editing, done in concert with the director, is sterling; not for nothing does she share a lead title card with the director); and Hiddleston's superior film acting, his marvelous play of face, and his Bogarde-like ambition--his mixing up of Marvel factory films with his eagerness to work with directors such as Wheatley, Jarmusch, and Joanna Hogg is laudatory. It seems at this point that when all's said and done he'll have had a career to be proud of. Starring a fine Sienna Miller and Jeremy Irons, Elisabeth Moss (luminous despite the circumstances,) Luke Evans as a cocaine hit-pig, rugby-thuggish documentarian, and an extended cameo by a poster for Karel Reisz's MORGAN: A SUITABLE CASE FOR TREATMENT. (2015, 119 min, DCP Digital) JG
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Yasujir? Ozu's EARLY SPRING (Japanese Revival) and Agnès Varda's LE BONHEUR (French Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Wednesday, 6:45 and 9:30pm (SPRING) and Gene Siskel Film Center
Note: spoilers! What do Yasujir? Ozu's EARLY SPRING (1956, 144 min, 35mm) and Agnès Varda's LE BONHEUR ("HAPPINESS") (1965, 80 min, DCP Digital; New Restoration) have in common? Both are about marital infidelity, and both use it as a motif with which to examine broader social themes, even though their plots are diametrically opposed. EARLY SPRING is about a disaffected salaryman who starts an affair with another worker after becoming increasingly estranged from his wife, while LE BONHEUR is about a happily married man who begins cheating for seemingly no reason other than simple attraction. Ozu's longest film, EARLY SPRING represents a thematic shift from his previous work into what many consider the most fruitful period of his career. The magnificent and similarly paced TOKYO STORY, which he made three years prior, focuses on the older generation, while EARLY SPRING and many of his other films from this later period focus solely on the young--reportedly at the urging of the Shochiku Company from a desire to appeal to this emerging culture. Ozu uses the infidelity to explore the salaryman's postwar malaise and existential discontent as a middling white-collar employee; his identity as a worker and former soldier seems to eclipse his role as a husband and even a grieving father. If TOKYO STORY merges themes of tradition and modernity, EARLY SPRING begins to separate them, revealing a national anxiety that's further agitated by the tectonic plates of change. Perhaps another similarity between the two directors' films is that Varda's was perceived as much of a departure as Ozu's; what's arguably her best film is certainly her most divisive. The wife dies of an apparent suicide after discovering her husband's affair, and he lives happily ever after with their kids--and his mistress. It's unclear whether Varda intended this as a commentary on hypocrisy or a depiction of reality. In one interview, she says, "I sometimes think that...these people with their illusions are much happier in fact than other people who know and can't face it," hinting at it being a subversive deconstruction of social mores. (She also says in another interview, "Women have become upset and asked, 'How could you replace a woman with another woman?' That's what life is about. A man is replaced by another man in war. A woman is replaced by another woman in life," again hinting that there's a logic to the professedly uncharacteristic work.) But in yet another interview on the subject, she says, "It is true that I can now see my own films with a new vision because of things which I have read, because I did a kind of self-education of feminism, which we all do now, because we have opportunities to do so. Things are clear now. But they weren't so clear ten years ago when I made LE BONHEUR...," suggesting that it came from a place of misguided earnestness rather than artful irony. Adding to the confusion is its vibrant cinematography, the beauty and superficiality of which is perhaps the most intentional--and disconcerting--aspect of the film. In many ways, its effect is similar to that of Ozu's signature style, which favors an aesthetic harmony that complements his attenuated subversion. Both are deceptively simple in their depiction of human nature and its myriad of complexities; the happiness of Chicago's rather late spring will seem all the more poignant after watching them. KS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu and www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Seijun Suzuki's THE CALL OF BLOOD (Japanese Revival)
Film Studies Center (Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St., University of Chicago) - Thursday, 7pm [Free Admission]
This rarely revived Seijun Suzuki feature comes from the director's most fruitful period, a run of roughly a dozen films that begins with YOUTH OF THE BEAST (1963) and ends with BRANDED TO KILL (1967). It's about two grown brothers who set out to avenge the death of their father, a Yakuza who was killed years before. According to the UCLA Film and Television Archive website, "the film features a bold use of color; an absurdist concluding gunfight; and, in one memorable scene, an impressively illogical use of rear projection, as the brothers argue in a car while ocean waves rage around them." Tom Vick, the author of Time and Place Are Nonsense: The Films of Seijun Suzuki, will introduce the screening, "highlighting how [Suzuki's] reception by Japanese cinephiles affected the director's reception globally." If the Siskel Center's Suzuki retrospective from earlier this year left you hungry for more, you shouldn't miss this screening--not only is CALL OF BLOOD unavailable on region 1 DVD, but Vick (whose book on Suzuki is well worth reading) should have plenty of illuminating things to say about it. (1964, 97 min, 35mm) BS
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More info at http://filmstudiescenter.uchicago.edu.
ALSO RECOMMENDED
Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci's APRIL AND THE EXTRAORDINARY WORLD (New French Animation)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Check Venue website for showtimes
In 2008, WALL-E premiered to the delight of eco-friendly and anti-industrialists across the globe. The viewpoint was that humanity would one day pay for its indulgent pillaging of Earth's natural resources. APRIL AND THE EXTRAORDINARY WORLD centers itself on similar ecological themes. Set during an alternate timeline in 1940's militaristic France, where the steam engine is the last technological energy advancement, a reliance on coal and (once that inevitably ran dry) charcoal has found the world locked in imperialistic strife over natural resources. It may be the first film to suggest invading Canada for its trees would be a good idea. Modern energy consumption finds itself barreling towards an analogous situation, and that's were the film finds its resonate poignancy. The ever-present threat of soot and smog in the air draws comparison to air quality issues currently faced by China and other major metropolitan cities. Aesthetically, APRIL finds inspiration in the steampunk works of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. The mechanization of services typically reserved for electricity against a Napoleonic Parisian backdrop is quite pleasing to the eye. The story fits in nicely with neoclassic Disney fodder of the 1990's. It is both witty and insightful with a penchant for comedic timing. APRIL AND THE EXTRAORDINARY WORLD's creativity and originality promises it a spot as an animation classic and sets a benchmark for contemporary cautionary tales about mankind's treatment of the very earth itself. (2015, 106 min, DCP Digital) KC
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Alex Garland's EX MACHINA (Contemporary American)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Saturday, 7 and 10pm and Sunday, 3:45pm
Men and women and sex and machines. As semi-virtual citizens of the 21st century (remember, you're reading this blurb in the audiovideointernetsmartphone realm of the here, there, everywhere, nowhere) does a day a go by when we aren't up to our eyeballs in this stuff? Well, Alex Garland's movie rubs our noses in it. Elongating 25 minutes worth of story with the help of some heavy robo-petting and Oscar Isaac's technologist speechifying, he takes some old Twilight Zone tropes for a spin. But that déjà vu is precisely the point. Like Steve Jobs channeling Rod Serling, that familiarity is why EX MACHINA gets under our skin. And skin is the key word here, for the world onscreen is one of surfaces and facades. The aesthetic is just like an Apple commercial: sleek and clean and reflective. We've been there. We are there. Garland appropriates elements of what Laurie Anderson has termed "the Puppet Motel," a virtual landscape that exists beyond the physical world. In daydreams, websites, advertising, apps. When Ava finally makes her way out into the real world, the irony is that it's just as artificial as where she grew up. The 7pm screening on Saturday will be followed by a discussion with four University of Chicago professors specializing in the fields of neurobiology, computational neuroscience, machine learning, and medical ethics. (2015, 108 min, DCP Digital) RC
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More info at docfilms.uchicago.edu and scienceonthescreen.uchicago.edu/page/ex-machina.
Abbas Kiarostami's CERTIFIED COPY (International Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Monday, 7pm
CERTIFIED COPY is Abbas Kiarostami's first shot-on-celluloid narrative after a decade of video experiments and it's also his first feature shot in Europe. These facts alone would deem the film a major work, but it's a milestone for Kiarostami regardless. The premise is teasingly simple, in the grand tradition of THE TRAVELLER and TASTE OF CHERRY: A British art historian (William Shimell) has written a book on the history of forgery. In it, he posits that it's irrelevant whether great art is authentic or merely copied because it's the impact of the work that determines its legacy. After giving a lecture in Tuscany, he meets a beautiful antiques dealer (Juliette Binoche) who likes the book but disagrees with its argument. They hit it off anyway and then decide to spend the afternoon together, visiting historic sites and bickering about art. This promises, and essentially delivers, a genteel conversation piece in the Eric Rohmer mold; but in its particulars, the film is every bit as weird as Kiarostami's prior masterpieces. Much of the dialogue feels improvised or tossed-off, though the characters are often filmed in a manner that suggests cosmic significance: They're isolated in symmetrical, icon-making close-ups; reverently followed in tracking shots that emphasize the fragility of any moment in the course of time; and (Kiarostami's calling card) made into specks in landscape shots that identify them only by the car they're riding in. At different points of their afternoon, this man and woman behave like strangers, a long-married couple, and smitten kids on a first date. Which of these interactions is real? Does it matter? Nearly every scene of CERTIFIED COPY touches on some profound aspect of human experience--falling in love, realizing one's place in the universe, et cetera--and in each of their incarnations, the characters are so fully realized by the leads that they never seem ciphers for bigger themes. (Binoche won the Best Actress prize at Cannes for her performance, which contains some of her most attenuated and unpredictable work; Shimmel, an opera singer in his major first film role, is a more limited actor by comparison, but he makes a fine Cary Grant to her Katherine Hepburn.) Their entire experience, in short, has been recast by their passion for art: Everything is mysterious and full of promise. Some critics writing about the film have invoked Henry James in describing this tale about the enticements of the Continent, but the results have less in common with, say, The Ambassadors than with James' inexplicable freak-out The Sacred Fount. Who would have expected this great artist of open spaces to take after the most psychoanalytical of writers? Only the film's aftertaste is truly shocking: Kiarostami has arrived at these Jamesian conclusions through entirely his own means. The film applies to psychology the same coy, unassuming perspective that Kiarostami directed at landscapes and faces, respectively, in FIVE (2005) and SHIRIN (2008). Remarkably, the project remains the same: to regard the subject as if it's never been contemplated before. That CERTIFIED COPY maintains such a light surface tone while pursuing such meaningful questions makes most other recent filmmaking seem trivial or overwrought. (2010, 106 min, 35mm) BS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 (Italian Revival)
Music Box Theatre - Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am
For many, the greatest film about filmmaking and Federico Fellini's finest hour. 8 1/2 is a work of such grandeur that it demands to be seen on a big screen--if nothing else but for the Chagall-esque final images, a celebration of the "carnival of life" as dreamt by a passionate artist on a massive oceanside set for a film that will never be made. It's also a film that demands to be heard in a theater, as the music of Nino Rota (Fellini's frequent collaborator) is rarely less than ravishing. "Fellini's camera is endlessly delighting. His actors often seem to be dancing rather than simply walking... [and Rota's] music brought a lift and subtle rhythm to their movements," wrote Roger Ebert in his "Great Movies" review, a deft formal analysis of a director often accused of groundless style. But if there's a movie defensible for groundless style, it's 8 1/2, a portrait of a film director's vibrant inner life as a mosaic of memories, dreams, sex fantasies, and ever-surprising images. Marcello Mastroianni, at the height of his star power, managed to make an iconic performance by standing in for Fellini, but the whole cast is ultimately dwarfed by the scope of Fellini's imagination. To again quote Ebert's review: "Few directors make better use of space. One of his favorite techniques is to focus on a moving group in the background and track with them past foreground faces that slide in and out of frame. He also likes to establish a scene with a master shot, which then becomes a close-up when a character stands up into frame to greet us. Another technique is to follow his characters as they walk, photographing them in three-quarter profile, as they turn back toward the camera. And he likes to begin dance sequences with one partner smiling invitingly toward the camera before the other partner joins in the dance. All of these moves are brought together in his characteristic parades. Inspired by a childhood love of the circus, Fellini used parades in all his films--not structured parades but informal ones, people moving together toward a common goal or to the same music, some in the foreground, some farther away... I have seen 8 1/2 over and over again, and my appreciation only deepens. It does what is almost impossible: Fellini is a magician who discusses, reveals, explains and deconstructs his tricks, while still fooling us with them." (1963, 138 min, 35mm) BS
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Álex de la Iglesia's MY BIG NIGHT (New Spanish)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Check Venue website for showtimes
With MY BIG NIGHT, Alex de la Iglesia makes a grand return to the bravura, twist-a-minute comic filmmaking of DAY OF THE BEAST (1995) and EL CRIMEN FERPECTO (2004)--fans of the Spanish director are sure to love it. It takes place on and around the set of an unbelievably, hilariously doomed New Year's Eve TV special--a song-and-dance spectacular that's gone weeks behind schedule and from which a record 500 people have been fired. The script (written with frequent partner Jorge Guerricaechevarria) moves frantically between several sets of characters, all of them lovable grotesques: the married hosts of the spectacle, whose escalating hatred of each other inspires some of the best gags; a teen pop star caught in a blackmail plot; an sadistic, aging diva and the crazed fan who wants to assassinate him on television; and a group of horny extras, one of whom lives under a curse that brings violent misfortune upon every man she likes. NIGHT moves breathlessly from the first shot, with Iglesia deploying elaborate dolly shots, crane shots, and rapid-fire dialogue; the plot twists are spun out so quickly and wildly that one marvels at the very speed and wildness of them. Iglesia's direction--at once flashy and goofy--often recalls 70s Brian De Palma (PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE in particular), but Roman Polanski remains a crucial influence as well. Balancing out the humor and baroque stylization is a strongly defined sense of dread. One quickly comes to expect the worst will happen at any given time, and the violence, when it arrives, seems painful, not cathartic. (2015, 98 min, DCP digital) (2015, 98 min, DCP Digital) BS
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Abbas Kiarostami's SHIRIN (Contemporary Iranian)
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) - Thursday, 6pm [Free Admission]
The project seems simple enough: a series of 112 close-ups of Iranian women (and Juliette Binoche) as they watch a film unfold offscreen. The film in question, though based on an actual poem (a 12th century Persian epic titled The Story of Khosrow and Shirin), is in fact entirely fictional, existing solely as an elaborate soundtrack prepared by Kiarostami. By recording this soundtrack after shooting the close-ups, Kiarostami creates a provocation/game in the vein of the "conversations" in TASTE OF CHERRY and THE WIND WILL CARRY US that were shot one character at a time. As in all his work, the mystery of the present moment takes precedence over cause and resolution. Writing about the film for Variety in 2008, Ronnie Schieb interpreted it this way: "All the Sturm und Drang of the offscreen pageantry functions as mere pretext for the richness of emotions that flit across their watching faces. Kiarostami fabricates a fascinating tension between film narrative and film imagery, the spectators' closeups simultaneously reading as a ghostly reflection of theatrical artifice and as the story itself... SHIRIN [also] comes across as inescapably feminist, suggesting Kiarostami's personal stake in employing Iranian actresses whose talents he has never before tapped. The film also tips toward feminism in that the younger, prettier faces are not necessarily the ones that capture the eye." (2008, 92 min, Digital Projection - Unconfirmed Format) BS
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More info at www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu.
Christopher Morris' FOUR LIONS (British Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Thursday, 10pm
When was the last time you saw a comedy and found yourself wondering, "Should I really be laughing at this?" The famous tagline from the movie poster for THE LOVED ONE is apt: "The motion picture with someone to offend everyone!" But if you're going to make a full-barreled satire centering on a terror cell made up of hypocritical dolts, how could it not be offensive? "This film understands jihadists as human beings and understands human beings as innately ridiculous," director Christopher Morris said in an interview. "Within that context, terrorism is about ideology, but it's also about imbeciles." An acrid companion to IN THE LOOP, Morris' film uses a fly-on-the-wall aesthetic which makes for comedy that's unusually disquieting; the characters are broadly drawn, to be sure, but Morris ups the ante by including vividly rendered violence and destruction in the story. Witness the scene where an unwitting Good Samaritan gives the Heimlich maneuver to one of the terrorists, who has wired himself up as a suicide bomber. The film's ultimate point, that amateurish idiots with bombs are just as dangerous as expert idiots with bombs, is why every laugh sticks in your throat. Guaranteed to trigger heated post-movie conversations, exceedingly rare for comedies of any era, it makes BORAT look like MY LITTLE PONY: THE MOVIE. (2010, 101 min, 35mm) RC
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Agnès Varda's CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7 (French Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Sunday, 4:45pm and Monday, 6pm
Cléo, a stupid and prodigiously influenced rising pop singer, believes she is dying of stomach cancer, a fear that overwhelms her for the majority of the film's real-time running time and which functions as the movie's primary organizing device. The opening scene features Cléo at a tarot reading (the only scene in color), setting up a kind of aesthetic thesis statement on Varda's part: all of existence, in this work, is intimately orchestrated, choreographed, and meaningful, but, crucially, only for this one moment. The fortune-teller is no mere character but a marker for a structural division that cleaves the entirety of the film. The first two-thirds of it are intensely kinetic--mirrors everywhere, setting up bizarre pseudo-split screens, jump cuts unmotivated by plot or psychological concerns, self-reflexive insertions within the narrative (a song performance, a silent film)--and an effect of this is to make the film's constructed nature unmistakable. As Cléo leaves the tarot reader's apartment, for instance, her footsteps are in perfect synchrony with the nondiegetic music we hear, and in a remarkable move Varda repeats the same shot of her descending stairs multiple times in a row, drawing her film into the orbits of such hyper-controlled avant-garde artworks as Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase and Murphy and Léger's 1924 film BALLET MÉCHANIQUE. But after a puzzling encounter with a friend who works as a nude model for sculpture students, Cléo enters a wooded park for the first time and meets a soldier on leave about to return to Algeria. Up until now, the film has been a city-bound labyrinth, filled with confusing and grotesque people, buildings, and images. But in the park and in the company of Antoine (the two share an almost instant connection) the film veers into romance. In a series of lyrical long takes and graceful, unobtrusive stagings, Antoine accompanies her to the hospital where test results await her, findings that she knows may well condemn her to death. And here Varda pulls her most brilliant structural play, for just as Cléo begins to contemplate what the doctor's words mean to her future, the film ends, half an hour early. CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7 thus turns its protagonist's melodramas into the stuff of deepest power, for the ending is not conclusion but a demand that each of us in the audience supply the missing minutes of Cléo's life. Indeed, the final five minutes reveal the formal virtuosity of the preceding scenes to have actually been ruminations on the roles of fate, love, and death, and turn Cléo's silly up-and-coming singer into a chanteuse of modernist melancholy. The ideal screening of this masterpiece would keep the lights low and theatre doors shut two quarter hours after the projectors were silenced, forcing the viewers to dwell in the same tenuous uncertainties that Cléo, freed now from her celluloid prison, no longer needs concern herself with. (1961, 89 min, DCP Digital; New Restoration) KB
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Murnau's SUNRISE: A SONG OF TWO HUMANS (Silent American Revival)
Music Box Theatre - Wednesday, 7:30pm
One of the most imaginative films ever made and probably the greatest ever made about love--but that makes it sound like homework. Murnau's SUNRISE is as much a discovery now as it was in 1927, if not a greater one, as it's no longer common for serious films to believe in universal experience. (As Lucy Fischer noted in her excellent BFI Classics book, the film's subtitle implies that the feelings of men and women--or homosexuals and heterosexuals, for that matter--are essentially the same.) Murnau's compassion for the central couple seems ever-expanding: their every emotion seems to trigger some new stylistic innovation. The movie's first major passage--depicting the Woman from the City's attempt to seduce the farmer (George O'Brien) away from his wife (Janet Gaynor, adequately filling the role of the Eternal Feminine)--mixes naturalism and expressionism to bring the characters' inner lives vibrantly to life. Murnau famously instructed O'Brien to put lead weights in his shoes during these scenes; there is no mistaking the man's guilt. This section climaxes with a collage of superimposed images--several of them intentionally distended--that illustrates the woman's lure of "Come to... THE CITY!" It is a thrilling effect, principally because it requires the viewer's imagination to complete it: as one's eyes dart around the frame, trying to take it all in, the scene appears luxurious or terrifying depending on where they fall. (Directors of special-effects movies still have a lot to learn from Murnau.) The orchestration of detail is one of the film's many allusions to symphonic music, the most obvious being its three-movement structure, wherein key motifs of the first section (the farm-on-the-lake setting, the theme of love in peril) are contradicted in the second and brought to resolution in the last. The second movement, which could bring any viewer to swoon, may be the film's crowning achievement. It takes place in one of the most dream-like cities in cinema, a setting brought into being by the couple's re-avowal of their love. Here, Murnau's effects (which include a funny freeze-frame at a portrait studio and some great suspense involving a runaway piglet) invite the viewer to share in the characters' joy, reflecting their spontaneity and their astonishment. For all the marvels of the filmmaking, though, the film's transcendental power never seems to be for its own sake. It is Murnau's response to the universal capacity for feeling (and not just romance--but generosity and loyalty and courage) that drove him to create a monumental new art form using the greatest attributes of all the others. Live organ accompaniment by Dennis Scott. (1927, 94 min, DCP Digital) BS
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Aleksandr Sokurov's FRANCOFONIA (New Russian)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Check Venue website for showtimes
To say FRANCOFONIA is about the Louvre is like saying F FOR FAKE is about an artist, or MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA is about ... well. Aleksandr Sokurov (RUSSIAN ARK, FAUST) narrates his latest feature, which tackles at once Paris' crown jewel, the price of peace in Vichy France, and mankind's impulse first to create and then to collect. Like the Louvre itself where artifacts from across millennia--many of them facsimiles of still longer lost items--coexist under one roof, FRANCOFONIA is a formal mix of the old, new, and the deliberately difficult to define. Genuine archival footage mingles with digitally processed re-enactments that flicker and alter aspect ratio moment-to-moment, evincing the uncanny feeling of getting lost in a museum. While at its heart FRANCOFONIA is an unrepentant history lesson and Sokurov seems content to teach, the work has moments that cut across eras and reveal the true cost of art. (2015, 88 min, DCP Digital) JS
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Frank Tashlin's ARTISTS AND MODELS (American Revival)
The Park Ridge Classic Film Series at the Park Ridge Public Library (20 S. Prospect Ave., Park Ridge) - Thursday, 7pm [Free Admission]
Three ARTISTS (Frank Tashlin, Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin) and countless MODELS of what 20th (and 21st) century art could be. Controlled and spastic, intelligent and popular--we'd call it a "synthesis" if it didn't predate the elements it combines so fluidly; ARTISTS AND MODELS is the original, Pop before Pop, more avant-garde than the avant-garde, a masterpiece of modernism, post-modernism, and everything that comes after it, as durable as Shakespeare and just as silly and rich with ideas. Advertising colors and wild noises, suave Martin running amok and idiot Lewis charming the ladies. Martin is the talentless painter and Lewis is his hapless roommate, who describes fantastic adventure plots in his sleep. Their upstairs neighbors are a pair of pretty girls who also happen to make superhero stories for a living. A brash, complicated, bizarre, loud, intellectually rigorous, totally brainless movie about art and commerce, friendship, sexual inadequacy, and everything in between, with comic books, cartoon Communists, Rivettian codes, REAR WINDOW parodies, singing, dancing, and Shirley MacLaine. Or, to put it simply: the pinnacle of human expression, a movie against which all other movies should be measured. (1955, 109 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) IV
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More info at parkridgeclassicfilm.com.
Jacques Demy's BAY OF ANGELS (French Revival)
Alliance Française (54 W. Chicago Ave.) - Wednesday, 6:30pm
BAY OF ANGELS is one of the most underrated and uncharacteristic films of Jacques Demy's oeuvre. It might look like his first feature, LOLA (1961), but the black-and-white 'Scope of that "musical without music" is replaced in BAY OF ANGELS with a grittier cinematography that reflects the unusual straightforwardness of Demy's rather cynical narrative. Much of Demy's work falls under the umbrella of fairy tale, or fable; most obviously so are his later films, DONKEY SKIN (1970) and THE PIED PIPER (1972), while THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (1964), THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT (1967), THE SLIGHTLY PREGNANT MAN (1973), LADY OSCAR (1979) and PARKING (1982) are more allusive in nature. BAY OF ANGELS is nothing like a fairy tale, and even though gambling addiction has certain moral implications, the film is far from being a fable in its ambiguous approach to examining obsessive behavior. In the film, a bored bank clerk is lured from his provincial upbringing to the more enticing, but ultimately more dangerous life of luxury gambling resorts. He is lured by luck--and a lady. Jeanne Moreau, as Jackie, is a rather campy bleach blonde who's abandoned true luxury as a wealthy housewife to indulge her addiction, in the process losing custody of her son. Many of Demy's films are about long-lasting desire, while the gambling in BAY OF ANGELS represents a source of immediate gratification not typically dealt with by a director whose patience rivals that of his characters. More so than desire is Demy's fascination with fate, a concept that is both embraced and rejected by the banker and the bleach blonde. Their obsession is one distinctly rooted in the moment, left to chance, something Demy has no use for in his other films. But there's a certain element of fate in the 'chance' meeting between two compulsive gamblers addicted to the thrill of looking destiny in the face before putting a price on it. The film also features one of longtime Demy collaborator Michel Legrand's best scores, which perfectly complements the emotional volatility of Demy's foray into reckless compromise. Introduced by novelist Sara Paretsky. (1963, 79 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) KS
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More info at www.af-chicago.org.
Jason Bateman's THE FAMILY FANG (New American)
Music Box Theatre - Check Venue website for showtimes
Jason Bateman's second directorial feature finds the filmmaker delving into the melodramatic, a far different approach than the one taken for the rebellious BAD WORDS. Growing up, Annie (Nicole Kidman) and Baxter (Jason Bateman) are cast in a series of performance pieces by their parents in which they seek to record shocking moments (a child robbing a bank with a gun for all its lollipops is one such example) and film the unknowing bystanders' reactions. Jumping to modern times, Annie is now a struggling actress striving for relevancy and Baxter is an uninspired writer. After a freak accident involving a potato gun, the siblings are reunited with their exhibitionist parents, who go missing shortly after. The film questions the nature of art in all its forms and the evolutions it's gone through over the years. In this era of YouTube and social media, anyone can record a piece of video but does that make it art? The definitions vary from character to character in this film; however, their thought processes remain the same. Art should be created in a way that allows people to view the world from a different perspective. Narratively speaking, FANG is fairly standard but its take on family units and their effect on creative output truly stand out. Is it a form of creative expression to include children as a part of the performance or is it exploitation? The answer lies on either side the generational gap present between the two elder Fang's and their kids. Ultimately, THE FAMILY FANG finds Bateman honing his focus on building more developed characters and reveals his abilities to tell a compelling story. (2015, 105 min, DCP Digital) KC
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Jeremy Saulnier's GREEN ROOM (New American)
Music Box Theatre - Check Venue website for showtimes
Director Jeremy Saulnier's follow up to 2013's BLUE RUIN is an audacious new thriller that draws inspiration from SID AND NANCY and AMERICAN HISTORY X. A struggling punk band books a show at a backwoods bar after which they witness a murder and fight to survive against a group of Neo-Nazis. Patrick Stewart's Darcy, the bar/concert venue owner, is ruthless and methodical, akin to Brian Cranston's Heisenberg in BREAKING BAD. Saulnier's mise en scene is gritty, dirty, and claustrophobic. Characters hang along the peripheries of the frame, constantly looking for a way to escape their "nightmare" situation. Saulnier's narrative plays out like a scuba diving expedition: escape attempt excursions that end unsuccessfully, forcing a return to the haven of the green room for 'air'. The film is self-aware and never succumbs to its baser undertones as a horror movie. Instead, it eases some of the razor-thin tension with tongue in cheek dialogue punctuated by punk rock jargon and music references. The prevalent extreme violence is showcased in a way that only Alex DeLarge in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE could approve of. GREEN ROOM doesn't pretend to any profound statements; rather it embarks on a thrilling ride that's entertaining and taut throughout. (2016, 94 min, DCP Digital) KC
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
Face, Body, and Image in Cinema, a conference hosted by the Center for Global Culture and Communication (CGCC) at Northwestern University, takes place on Thursday and Friday, May 19-20. Conference schedule at www.communication.northwestern.edu/global_communication.
Also at Block Cinema (Northwestern University) this week: Howard Weinberg's 2016 work-in-progress documentary NAM JUNE PAIK & TV LAB: LICENSE TO CREATE (approx. 95 min, Digital Projection) is on Friday at 7pm, with Weinberg in person. The film repeats at Filmfront (1740 W. 18th St.) on Saturday at 7pm, also with Weinberg in person.
The Museum of Contemporary Photography (600 S. Michigan Ave., Columbia College) presents Video Playlist: In the here and the there (2004-2015, approx. 45 min, Digital Projection) on Wednesday at 6pm. Curated by artist Soheila Azadi, the program includes work by Anahita Razmi, Shirirn Mohamad, Shirin Sabahi, Reza Haeri, and Anahid Ghorbani.
Roots & Culture (1034 N. Milwaukee Ave.) presents Video Data Bank's 2016 Oberhausen Program on Sunday at 7pm. Screening are: Cecelia Condit's PULLING UP ROOTS (2015), Ben Russell's YOLO (2015), Dani Leventhal and Jared Buckhiester's HARD AS OPAL (2015), John Smith's STEVE HATES FISH (2015), Sara Mageheimer's SLOW ZOOM LONG PAUSE (2015), and Videofreex's PORTAPAK CONVERSATION (1973).
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago presents Black Radical Imagination on Tuesday at 6pm. Screening are: THE GOLDEN CHAIN (Ezra Claytan Daniels and Adebukola Bodunrin, 2015, 13 min), ALL THAT IS LEFT UNSAID (Michele Pearson Clarke, 2014, 2 min), FLORIDA WATER (Numa Perrier, 2014, 6 min), and VOW OF SILENCE (Be Steadwell, 2014, 28 min). Free with museum admission.
TCC Chicago (2547 W. North Ave.) presents r4w.E????.b1t5!, an evening of new media works by a lengthy list of artists, on Saturday at 7pm. Full list at www.facebook.com/events/630675330429069.
Little House (1851 S. Allport, in the back) screens a 16mm print of an unannounced feature film on Friday at 7pm in a mini "Cinema of Humanist Anarchy" series. Free admission.
The Art Institute of Chicago (Price Auditorium) screens James Crump's 2015 documentary TROUBLEMAKERS: THE STORY OF LAND ART (72 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) on Saturday at 2pm. Free with museum admission.
Comfort Film at Comfort Station Logan Square (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.) presents WRETCHED WOMAN // Pig or Poet? -- Short Video Works by Emily Esperanzax (2014-2016, approx 98 min, Digital and VHS Projection) on Wednesday at 8pm. Screening are DAY/NIGHT (with Abby Young), GLORY/INFERNO, NECESSITY/LUXARY, SEVERANCE, and SPIDER & FLY. Free admission.
Beauty Bar (1444 W. Chicago Ave.) and The Wretched Nobles present episodes 1-9 of Nic Collins' webseries Year of the Snake on Sunday at 9:30pm. Plus live music from Evasive Backflip. Doors open at 8:30pm.
The Nightingale (1084 N. Milwaukee Ave.) presents 4my_broken_hard_drive: New Video Works by SAIC Students on Sunday at 7pm. Free admission.
Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.) presents May Shorts on Saturday at 8pm (7pm social hour) as part of the monthly Dyke Delicious series. The program repeats at Columbia College (Hokin Hall, 623 S. Wabash Ave.) on Tuesday at 6:30pm (no social hour).
Black Cinema House (7200 S. Kimbark Ave.) presents Quartiers Lointains: French-African Films on Friday at 7pm. Program introduced by French-Burkinabe cinema journalist and curator Claire Diao, with Senegalese-French director Alice Diop and actor Patrick Zinguilé in person. Screening are: THE RETURN (Yohann Kouam, 2013, 22 min), THE SENSE OF TOUCH (Jean-Charles Mbotti Mololo, 2014, 15 min), DESTINO (Zangro, 2014, 26 min), and TO TENDERNESS (Alice Diop, 2015, 40 min). Unconfirmed Formats; on Saturday at 4pm at the Stony Island Arts Bank (6760 S. Stony Island Ave.) is Mass Matriarchy: Film + Conversation with Numa Perrier, with Perrier in person. Screening are: JUDI (2005, 8 min), LA PETITE MORT (2009, 5 min), and scenes from the web series BECOMING NIA. Followed by a conversation with Perrier, Black Radical Imagination co-curator Amir George, and U of C professor Jacqueline Stewart; and on Sunday at 4pm, at BCH, is Stealing the Show: Book Talk with Miriam Petty. Northwestern University professor Petty will discuss her new book Stealing the Show: African American Performers and Audiences in 1930s Hollywood. Free admission for all.
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: the SAIC Film, Video, New Media, Animation, and Sound Festival continues on Friday with two different programs of student work at 5:30pm and 8:15pm (Free Admission); Melody Gilbert's 2016 documentary THE SUMMER HELP (68 min, DCP Digital) is on Saturday at 7:45pm, with Gilbert in person. Preceded by Igor Myakotin's 2014 Bulgarian short LIFE THROUGH THE LENS (7 min); and Jon Nealon and Jenny Raskin's 2015 documentary HERE COME THE VIDEOFREEX (79 min, DCP Digital) is on Tuesday and Thursday at 8pm. The Thursday screening is followed by a Q&A with Video Data Bank Executive Director Abina Manning (the VDB houses the Videofreex archive), VDB Archive and Collection Manager Tom Colley, and Media Burn Independent Video Archive founder Tom Weinberg.
Also at Doc Films (University of Chicago) this week: Marc Webb's 2009 film (500) DAYS OF SUMMER (95 min, 35mm) is on Friday at 7 and 9pm and Sunday at 1:30pm; Between the Ticks of the Watch Shorts Program (approx. 66 min total, Digital Projection; Free admission) is on Saturday at 2pm. Screening are Phil Collins' MARXISM TODAY (PROLOGUE) (2010), Deimantas Narkevicus' THE ROLE OF A LIFETIME (2003), and Miranda July's THE AMATEURIST (1998); George Stevens' 1956 film GIANT (201 min, 35mm) is on Sunday at 6:30pm; Ismael Rodriguez's 1948 Mexican film WE, THE POOR (128 min, DVD Projection) is on Tuesday at 7pm; and Xavier Dolan's 2014 film MOMMY (139 min, DCP Digital) is on Thursday at 7pm.
Also at the Music Box Theatre this week: James Wan's 2013 film THE CONJURING (112 min) screens on Friday at 9:30pm. Free admission - first come; Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's 2016 documentary NORMAN LEAR: JUST ANOTHER VERSION OF YOU (Unconfirmed Running Time) is on Monday at 7pm, with the directors and Lear in person; Michael Arias and Takashi Nakamura's 2015 Japanese animated film HARMONY (119 min; Subtitled Version) is on Tuesday at 7pm; Tommy Wiseau's 2003 film THE ROOM (99 min, 35mm) is on Friday at Midnight; and Jim Sharman's 1975 film THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (100 min, 35mm) is on Saturday at Midnight.
Facets Cinémathèque plays Maya Vitkova's 2014 Bulgarian/Romanian film VIKTORIA (155 min, Unconfirmed Format) for a week-long run; and
Chicagoland Shorts Vol. 2 runs daily Saturday-Thursday. Screening are EDISON (Daniel Davison), PARIETAL GUIDANCE (Lonnie Edwards), ZALSPAR'S PLACE (Aren Zolninger), VIOLETS (Jim Vendiola), MARQUEE (Brian Zahm), THE FEVER (Eunhye Hong Kim), AYINDE'S VIDEO GAME (Shiri Burson), BOUND (Monica Thomas), RUN OF PRESS (Mina Fitzpatrick), and GIRLS LOVE HORSES (Jennifer Reeder). Select filmmakers, producers, and curators in person at various shots.
The Park Ridge Classic Film Series at the Pickwick Theatre (5 S. Prospect Ave., Park Ridge) screens Michael Curtiz's 1935 film CAPTAIN BLOOD (119 min, Digital Projection - Unconfirmed Format) on Tuesday at 7:30pm. With Rory Flynn, daughter of actor Errol Flynn, and Taryn Power, daughter of actor Tyrone Power, in person. http://parkridgeclassicfilm.com
The Northbrook Public Library (1201 Cedar Lane, Northbrook) screens Joel and Ethan Coen's 2016 film HAIL, CAESAR! (106 min, DCP Digital) on Saturday at 2 and 7:30pm; Maryam Henein and George Langworthy's 2009 documentary VANISHING OF THE BEES (60 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) on Monday at 7pm, followed by a discussion; and Joel and Ethan Coen's 2001 film THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE (116 min, DCP Digital) on Wednesday at 1 and 7:30pm. Free admission for all. www.northbrook.info/events/film
ONGOING FILM/VIDEO INSTALLATIONS
The Arts Club of Chicago (201 East Ontario St.) presents the exhibition Sharon Lockhart Rudzienko though August 13. The show includes Lockhart's newest film RUDZIENKO (2016, two channel video installation), along with related photographic work.
Scottish artist Luke Fowler has an exhibition of work at the University of Chicago's Neubauer Collegium (5701 S. Woodlawn Ave.). The show runs through July 1. Included are Fowler's 2016 film FOR CHRISTIAN and his 2009 film series TENEMENT FILMS.
The Art Institute of Chicago presents Dennis Oppenheim: Projections through May 30. On view are three slide-projection works: 2000' SHADOW PROJECTION (1972), GROUND GEL #2 (1972), and POLARITIES (1972).
