(Lisa Immordino Vreeland, USA, 2024, 94 minutes)
"I am unquestionably the most obscure and the most celebrated of poets."--Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)
British actor Josh O'Connor, who has an especially appealing voice–slightly husky with a certain underlying vulnerability–narrates Lisa Immordino Vreeland's portrait of Jean Cocteau. (At this year's SIFF, O'Connor also stars in Max Walker-Silverman's Rebuilding.)
By reading from his writings, including the letters--believed to be between 900 and 1,000--he wrote to his widowed mother, Eugénie, O'Connor essentially becomes the French artist, poet, playwright, and filmmaker, so it's odd that the Paris-born Vreeland didn't hire a French narrator, but she lives and works in the States, and it's consistent with her profiles of other art/design-oriented subjects, including Cecil Beaton, Peggy Guggenheim, and Vogue editor Diana Vreeland (to whom she's related by marriage).
That said, Vreeland's impressionistic profile, which drifts from project to project, includes archival interviews in French, wordless excerpts from productions of Cocteau's plays and ballets, and present-day images of the places he lived, like an especially enchanting villa in the South of France--fittingly shot by DP Shane Sigler with a Bolex. Cocteau had a lyrical style as an illustrator, and the walls are covered with his distinctive imagery.
Beyond Cocteau's considerable talents, the ease with which he befriended so many extraordinary artists certainly elevated his own work. Chanel, for instance, designed costumes for his stage productions and even produced a revival of his 1917 ballet Parade. I'm not certain why Breton targeted him, but his sexual orientation appears to have been a factor. Vreeland also details the controversies that swirled around his sexually fluid and politically ambiguous work at times when the right wing was ascendant in France.
Because Cocteau didn't initially have ambitions to direct, I find it remarkable that he made such a smooth transition to filmmaking, and I'm especially fond of 1946's La Belle et La Bête, aka Beauty and the Beast, starring his lover and muse Jean Marais, who would appear in four other films. It's the only version of the fairy tale I'll ever need with all its fantastical flights of fancy–all done in camera–unlike the more recent animated, musical, and CGI-saturated versions. (I'm not certain why Vreeland called on O'Connor as narrator, but it may be because he has often played queer characters.)
All told, Vreeland covers most every aspect of Cocteau's life and work, including the Roberto Rossellini and Pedro Almodóvar adaptations of his 1930 play La Voix Humaine. Unless I missed it, though, she overlooks his script work, like his adaptation of his 1929 novel, Les Enfants Terribles, for Jean-Pierre Melville's fine 1950 film.
Vreeland also covers the friends and lovers Cocteau lost to illness and war, though he didn't fear death, which may be why his passing, in the context of her film, doesn't feel especially tragic, not least because he abhorred aging.
A mutual has described this profile as too ordinary to suit the director's extraordinary subject. I take her point, but found it quite lovely, and less conventional than that description suggests. Anyone looking for a chronological account may find its drifting quality frustrating, but that felt right to me. Vreeland covers La Belle et la Bête, for instance, before 1932's The Blood of a Poet, since she prioritizes themes or moods over years.
If Cocteau remains a little enigmatic, I think it's what he would've wanted.
I would also recommend Constance Tsang's Blue Sun Palace, particularly for admirers of Taiwanese master Tsai Ming-liang. As with Jean Cocteau, it has a certain drifting quality as Tsang focuses first on one Taiwanese migrant in Queens before shifting to two associates, one played by magnetic actor/director Lee Kang-sheng, who has appeared in all 11 of Tsai's features.
Jean Cocteau plays SIFF Cinema Uptown on May 20 at 3pm. Producer/editor/co-writer John Northrup scheduled to attend. Available online May 26 - June 1. Blue Sun Palace plays Pacific Place on May 24 at 11am, and Rebuilding plays the Uptown on May 24 at 8:30pm and May 25 at 6:30pm.
Images from Gagosian Quarterly (Jean Cocteau, 1929 / Photo © Estate Germaine Krull, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany), DailyArt Magazine (Photograph of Jean Cocteau and Sergei Diaghilev / Operaplus), and The Cinessential (Jean Marais and Josette Day in La Belle et La Bête).
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