Lost and Found Film Reviews: Love Crime, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, and Weekend

This is the latest in a continuing series of film reviews that have disappeared from the internet. 

 

I reviewed Love Crime for The Stranger and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (R.I.P., Louise Lasser) and Weekend for Amazon. Slightly revised from the original text.

 LOVE CRIME / Crime d'Amour

(Alain Corneau, France, 2010, 106 minutes)

Two formidable actresses square off against each other in the late filmmaker Alain Corneau's clever corporate twist on Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve. In this case, instead of actresses, a mousy executive becomes her manipulative mentor's biggest foe both at the office and in the bedroom. 

Drawing on her work with Claude Chabrol and François Ozon, Ludivine Sagnier plays dedicated executive Isabelle, who reports to powerful president Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas). Together, their chemistry teeters between the sexual and the convivial. Sometimes, as  when Christine offers the younger woman fashion tips, they even seem like mother and daughter 

At the office, the mousy Isa comes up with ideas for which her superior takes credit, saying to her in private, "You have real talent," but Isa tells her assistant, Daniel (Guillaume Marquet), that she doesn't mind. Then, on a trip to Cairo, she has a fling with Christine's lover, Philippe (Patrick Mille). 

 

When they return to Paris, Christine threatens to go public with his firm's creative bookkeeping, while Daniel encourages her to collaborate with him on a secret project. When Isa finally garners the recognition she deserves, Christine turns to humiliation, so Isa finds a devious way to get even. 

If anything, she seems to be setting herself up for a fall, but things are not quite what they seem, and the mouse will transform herself into a lion. 

 

MARY HARTMAN, MARY HARTMAN
(Joan Darling, Jim Drake, USA, 1976, 564 minutes) 

Long before David Lynch introduced the world to Twin Peaks, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman turned the soap opera inside out. Produced by All in the Family's Norman Lear, the syndicated serial centers around gingham-clad housewife Mary Hartman (Louise Lasser, a one-time Woody Allen mainstay). 

The saga begins with Mary agonizing over her floor's waxy yellow buildup when her neighbor, Loretta Haggers (Emmy Award winner Mary Kay Place), bursts in to announce that a mass murderer is on the loose in Fernwood. 

That might be enough to fuel any drama, except it isn't Mary's only problem. The magic has gone out of her marriage to Tom (Greg Mullavey) and her grandfather is revealed as the Fernwood Flasher. And that's just the pilot.

At first glance, Mary Hartman Mary Hartman resembles a daytime soap with five-night-a-week airings, frame-filling close-ups, and syrupy score, but everything is off-kilter. When Mary isn't looking at other characters as if they're speaking in tongues, she appears to be on the verge of laughter or tears--maybe both at once. She's the ultimate desperate housewife.

Aside from Grandpa Larkin (Victor Kilian), regulars include Mary's preteen daughter Heather (Claudia Lamb), younger sister Cathy (Debralee Scott), and parents, Martha (Dody Goodman) and George Shumway (Philip Bruns). 

In addition, there's Sgt. Foley (Bruce Solomon), who has the hots for our sexually unsatisfied heroine, and Loretta's hapless husband, Charlie (Graham Jarvis), who works with Tom and George at the plant. Mrs. Haggers, an aspiring country singer with voluminous hair, loves her Baby Boy "more than a hundred billion frozen Milky Ways."

The first set of this groundbreaking series features 25 episodes. Between 1976-1978, a whopping 325 were produced, some as Forever Fernwood when Lasser left in 1977, reportedly due to exhaustion. That year, the series spun off the Alan Thicke-produced talk show satire Fernwood 2Nite with Martin Mull and Fred Willard, which would develop a cult following of its own.

WEEKEND

(Andrew Haigh, 2011, UK, 97 minutes) 

Most everyone has had the experience of meeting someone new and feeling an instant connection. Transferring that phenomenon to the screen, however, tends to fall flat when the cast or screenplay aren't up to task. Much as in Richard Linklater's thematically similar Before Sunrise, however, filmmaker Andrew Haigh, in his sophomore feature, has no such problem.

Russell (Tom Cullen), a Nottingham lifeguard, spots Glen (Chris New) at a bar, and the attraction is immediate, but what might have been a one-night stand soon turns serious. Though Russell is out to his straight friends, he prefers not to draw attention to his sexual orientation in public, while Glen, an art gallery worker, has no such qualms, but while one believes in gay marriage, the other views it as a heterosexual construct. Philosophical differences aside, they enjoy each other's company and share a similar sense of humor--Russell thanks Glen for rescuing him from the "hobbit" at the bar. 

As they spend the next day talking, texting, smoking, and drinking, Russell confides that he thought he was "out of his league," but Glen assures him that was hardly the case. As Saturday becomes Sunday, they get to know each other on a more intimate level (there's nudity, but nothing explicit). 

Then, Glen announces that he's leaving on Monday to study abroad. It would be easy for Haigh to amp things up at this point, but the dilemma plays out in a believable manner, which is all the more touching for feeling so true.

Love Crime and Weekend are on Kanopy. Images: the IMDb (Kristin Scott Thomas / Photo by Pascal Chantier © SBS,  Scott Thomas with Ludivine Sagnier, and Mary Kay Place), Sportskeeda (Louise Lasser, Greg Mullavey, and Claudia Lamb), and The Guardian (Tom Cullen and Chris New).