On Paul Verhoeven's Deviously Twisted Elle

 

This review originally appeared in Bob Ham's Portland film screenings newsletter Daily Projections in December 23, 2016.

ELLE

(Paul Verhoeven, 2016, France, rated R, 130 minutes)

Philippe Djian, the French-Algerian author behind the novel that inspired Paul Verhoeven's deviously twisted Elle, also wrote 1985's Betty Blue. 

In Jean-Jacques Beineix's 1986 film, Béatrice Dalle's unstable 19-year-old segues from one increasingly unfortunate scenario to another. She just can't get her shit together. 

By contrast, Isabelle Huppert's Michèle always seems to be in control, except the stability of that façade provides the open question that powers Verhoeven's psycho-sexual thriller, Elle (Freeway Killer writer David Birke adapted the script from Djian's 2012 novel, "Oh…"). 

Dutch-born Verhoeven, who returned to European filmmaking with 2006's WWII psycho-sexual actioner Black Book, wastes no time on establishing details, and plunges straight into the middle of the muck. Before revealing any details about his protagonist, other than that she lives in a well-appointed manor, he depicts her brutal rape by a masked assailant. 

While Michèle's beautiful grey cat watches impassively (an inspired touch), she tries to fight back, but the masked marauder overpowers her, does the deed, and disappears in a flash. After pulling herself together, Michèle doesn't call the police, her best friend (Anne Consigny), or even her ex-husband (Charles Berling). Other than a trip to the hospital for an STD screening, she returns to her routine as if nothing had happened.

 

 

Despite her veneer of control, Verhoeven makes it clear that Michèle might know the rapist, which means that he could strike again, even after she changes the locks. The possibilities include two of the employees at the video game company she oversees--one can't stand her and the other worships her--the awkward neighbor (Laurent Lafitte) with the deeply devout wife, or maybe even someone with a connection to her son's pregnant girlfriend (Alice Isaaz), a bad-tempered manipulator who has the weak-willed Vincent (Jonas Bloquet) wrapped around her finger. 

These characters would be more than enough to keep the narrative machinery humming, but then Verhoeven throws a spanner into the works: Michèle isn't merely a victim of a violent act. As a child, she witnessed a horrific crime--and it's possible that she even participated in it. 

Once Verhoeven peels back that layer, he suggests that the risks she takes, involving the men in her life, may not simply serve as an attempt to catch the rapist, but that she's having a sick kind of fun. Maybe she feels like she deserved to be attacked; maybe she plans to torture the attacker. 

 

 

 

One way or the other, Michèle provides an ideal role for the incomparable actress, a sister of a kind to the unpredictable instructor she played in Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher, because there isn't another who could play this character with the same degree of intense ambiguity. 

As for Verhoeven, Elle marks the culmination of his lifelong sex + power project, but with a subtlety and sophistication that contrasts with the blunt-force provocations of his American erotic thrillers, particularly Showgirls, in which Elizabeth Berkeley's dancer was mostly good, or Basic Instinct, in which Sharon Stone's novelist was all bad. Michèle is neither and both. 

 

With the passing of Claude Chabrol, who directed Huppert in a series of psycho-sexual thrillers in the 1990s, like La Cérémonie and Merci pour le Chocolat, Verhoeven is the master of this domain. Long may he reign.

 

Elle is available on Blu-ray and DVD through Sony Pictures Classics and to stream through a variety of pay operators. Images from the IMDb, The Independent, and Senses of Cinema. 

Rick Springfield's An Affair of the Heart: Flattering, Yet Strangely Compelling

This is a revived version of a Line Out post about Sylvia Caminer's 2012 documentary, An Affair of the Heart (these posts were purged from the internet after The Stranger pulled the plug on their music blog).

Film/TV Jun 5, 2013 at 10:22 am

Rick Springfield's Affair of the Heart: Flattering, Yet Strangely Compelling

Kathy Fennessy

• Breaking Glass Pictures

AN AFFAIR OF THE HEART
(Sylvia Caminer, 2012, USA, 93 mins)

I wouldn't have thought I'd get the chance to tag a post using Rick Springfield's name, but then this DVD showed up in my mailbox. I was never a Springfield fan, but I wasn't a detractor either. I'm old enough to remember his 1980s heyday, and although I never bought any of his records, I did go through a brief General Hospital phase, coinciding with his first run as Dr. Noah Drake (he would return to the show in 2005). 

This was back when Demi Moore ("Jackie Templeton") was also part of the cast. If anything, I would've predicted Springfield as the breakout movie star, rather than Moore, but he decided to make music his primary focus.

Sylvia Caminer's flattering, yet strangely compelling documentary, An Affair of the Heart, doesn't present a conventional portrait of a celebrity. Instead, it's more like Stephen Kessler's 2011 Still Alive, which caught up with 1970s singer-songwriter Paul Williams. If 63-year-old Springfield, who looks at least 20 years younger, enjoyed his biggest hits, like "Jessie's Girl" and "Don't Talk to Strangers," in the 1980s, his fans have sustained his career since then, and Caminer profiles several of his most dedicated followers.

           Mike Nipper first posted this video in 2010. That's Rick on guitar.

After a break of almost a decade, Springfield returned to live performance in the 1990s, and fans travel thousands of miles just to see him play. Famous friends, like Mark Goodman, Linda Blair, and Corey Feldman, speak to his past. To Goodman, Springfield was a "dick" and a "lightweight," who's only gotten better and more humble with age. As with the super-fans who've congregated around the Grateful Dead and Phish over the years, his shows have spawned deep friendships and even ardent romances.

Suburban stay-at-home moms JoAnn and Sue welcome the chance to leave their troubles behind for a regular "Rick fix," as they put it. In their case, that means attending up to 10 shows a year, including Springfield's annual cruise to the Bahamas (and since Goodman participates in that venture, I think it's fair to take anything he says with a grain of salt). 
 

Fourteen-year-old guitar player Dustin has been a fan since he was a toddler, a bond he shares with his single dad, Jeff—who looks a little like Springfield—while Steve proposed to his wife, Jill, on stage at a concert.

             

Other fans talk about the comfort they took in Springfield songs while recovering from sexual assault, heart surgery, and other traumatic events (Laurie says her "pity party" over her cardiac woes lasted for 24 years). 

There's a darker side, too, since Rick addiction has put a strain on Sue's marriage. Oddly, her cardiologist husband, Mike, started out as a New Jersey thrasher,* and he's never understood his wife's pop-idol obsession.

If there isn't much here about his personal life, Springfield has written a bestselling memoir, Late, Late at Night, that discusses his battles with infidelity, depression, and other more personal matters (amazingly, he's still married to his wife, Barbara, who also appears in the film). Watching Caminer's documentary didn't lead me to any startling revelations about his music, but I found his relationships with his fans genuinely touching.

*Mike Devita played guitar in Sacred Denial (1982-88), which had a brief run on Atlantic.

My favorite quote: "We touched his butt last time he was here."

Breaking Glass releases An Affair of the Heart on Blu-ray and DVD July 16.

A.K.A. Doc Pomus: A Documentary About a Writer, a Raconteur, and a Humanitarian

This is a revived version of a Line Out post about Will Hechter and Peter Miller's 2012 documentary, A.K.A. Doc Pomus (these posts were purged from the internet after The Stranger pulled the plug on their music blog). 

Film/TV Nov 3, 2013 at 6:34 pm

Doc Pomus: Writer, Raconteur, Humanitarian

Kathy Fennessy

• Clear Lake Productions
• Doc Pomus performing at the Pied Piper in 1947

A.K.A. DOC POMUS
(Will Hechter and Peter Miller, 2012, USA/Canada, 98 mins)

If you don't know Jerome Felder, aka Doc Pomus (1925-1991), you know his songs, and if you don't know his songs, it's worth catching up, because he wrote some classic material. I grew up with his handiwork, and if you were to ask people my parents' age, they'd tell you the same.

A short list includes Ray Charles's "Lonely Avenue," the Drifters' "This Magic Moment," and Andy Williams's "Can't Get Used to Losing You."* They're among the American songbook's most heartrending entries, but they're not without hope, which also summarizes the tumultuous life of their creator.

Co-directors Will Hechter and Peter Miller build A.K.A. Doc Pomus around interviews with Pomus, so he appears to narrate his own story alongside family, associates, and music writers, like Elvis scholar Peter Guralnick.

 

*Sonic Boom does a fine version of "Lonely Avenue" on his first, post-Spacemen 3 album as Spectrum. Most people my age are probably more familiar with the English Beat's cover of "Can't Get Used to Losing You," but I'm just old enough to remember watching The Andy Williams Show on TV. Doc Pomus gave the sweater-wearing smoothie his biggest hit.

Afflicted by polio at the age of six, Pomus would spend the rest of his days on crutches, with braces, or in a wheelchair. He grew up in Brooklyn, son of a small, angry man who failed at everything he tried, so music became his solace. Naturally, he embraced the blues, both as a singer and a songwriter, and he did well on the local circuit, but wider fame would elude him. 

Everything changed when he bonded with his hero, Big Joe Turner, for whom he wrote several songs. Pomus: "He started my career and, I would say, my life." (In Turner's time of need, Pomus would return the favor.)

Hechter and Miller proceed through Doc's marriage to Wilma Burke, a musical theater performer, and his partnership with co-writer Mort Shuman, with whom he moved in more of a pop direction—though they called it "rock & roll" then—but not without losing his blues roots (Latin rhythms also became a Pomus-Shuman signature). They set up shop in NYC's famed Brill Building, alongside Gerry Goffin, Carole King, Neil Diamond, and countless other soon-to-be-famous names.

From there, the filmmakers explore individual songs and their backstories. I won't give anything away, but if the real-life incident behind "Save the Last Dance for Me" doesn't break your heart, I don't know what will.

   

• Doc Pomus with Mort Shuman: partners in music and tweed
• Clear Lake Productions

Throughout the 1960s, there would be more heartbreak due to a combination of bad luck and bad decisions, but the 1970s and '80s brought new relationships with like-minded musicians Dr. John and Willy DeVille, and a second chapter began. As one speaker puts it, "He was cool again."

I didn't need to watch this film in order for Hechter and Miller to convince me that Pomus was a tremendous talent. That's evident by his songs, but his non-judgmental attitude becomes a story in and of itself. Pomus worked with a lot of troubled individuals—Dr. John and DeVille were heroin addicts—but he put his faith in them when other music business associates wouldn't.

In light of Lou Reed's passing last week, it's particularly sad to see him on screen (his relaxed readings from Pomus's clear-eyed journals form part of the narration), but it's heartening to see him sharing a laugh with Jimmy Scott, one of several under-appreciated singers that Pomus championed.

Pomus, like fellow New Yorker Reed, didn't judge those who looked or felt like outsiders. He celebrated them. He spoke for them. He was one of them.

A.K.A. Doc Pomus, which opened on Fri, plays The Grand Illusion through Nov 7. Pomus's daughter, Sharyn Felder, will be in attendance Sun and Mon.

Spencer Wolff Interrogates the NYPD's "Stop and Frisk" Program in 2014 Documentary Stop

STOP

(Spencer Wolff, 2014, USA, not rated, 87 minutes)

To the New York Police Department, "stop and frisk" was designed to keep the city's citizens safe. To critics, however, the proactive policing technique operated as a form of racial bias that targeted Black men. 

Director Spencer Wolff, a human rights attorney who spent a year working in South Africa, presents a convincing argument that it's a form of American apartheid. He constructs his documentary around the case of Floyd v. City of New York, filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights in 2008 to prove that "stop, question and frisk," the policy's full name, is unconstitutional. 

Darius Charney, the organization's senior staff attorney, notes that the policy resulted in a 500% increase in stops over the course of four years. Under Mayor Rudy Giuliani (1994-2001), more aggressive policing famously led to the death of 23-year-old Amadou Diallo. While reaching for his wallet, officers shot the Guinean immigrant 41 times. All four were acquitted. 

Wolff focuses on 20-year-old David Ourlicht, one of four defendants in the lawsuit. He also interviews members of Ourlicht's family, including his grandfather, Boris, a man of Russian-Jewish descent who fell in love with and married a woman of color in the 1940s (Michal Goldman profiled the couple in his 2008 documentary At Home in Utopia). 

For David, a biracial law student who lives on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, stops had become routine. At 17, officers even strip-searched and held him overnight in the course of their search for a 27-year-old robbery suspect. 

Wolff also speaks with Frantz Jerome, a Black South Bronx art educator who recounts the many times cops have stopped him over the years. Officer Adhyl Polanco, who bravely testified against stop and frisk, tells Wolff that he felt pressure to meet quotas, particularly once Mike Bloomberg, "a numbers man," became mayor. Bloomberg needed to justify New York's outsized police force, so he promoted a method to make officers more productive than ever--at the expense of the city's Black population. 

Wolff speaks to a few dissenting voices, as well, like former chief Stephen McAllister of the New York City Transit Police and Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute who dispute his findings. If anything, Mac Donald argues, Black citizens are "under-stopped" relative to the number of crimes committed by people of color. The judge in the case disagrees, ruling that the NYPD carried out stop and frisk in a racially discriminatory manner. Her ruling doesn't stop the policy, but rather imposes a series of reforms, which Bloomberg proceeds to resist through appeals and other processes. 

If stop and frisk decreased under Bloomberg's successor, Bill de Blasio (2014-2021), the killing of unarmed Black men, like Eric Garner, continued. Though there's no doubt the case made a difference, there's also no doubt that the struggle for police accountability continues--in NYC and beyond. 

Though made eight years ago, Stop remains uncomfortably relevant.  

Stop is available on DVD from Kino Lorber, on streaming through the usual pay operators, or for free through Vudu. Images from the Kickstarter page and Wikipedia / The Dallas Weekly News (Amadou Diallo, 1992).

This is a revived version of a Line Out post about Doug Hawes-Davis's 2013 Gourds documentary, All the Labor (these posts were purged from the internet after The Stranger pulled the plug on their music blog).

Film/TV Dec 19, 2013 at 12:57 pm

The Gourds and All the Labor: A Film, a Song, and a Few Thoughts

Kathy Fennessy

• Photo by MVD Entertainment Group

I recently watched All the Labor, a documentary about Austin quintet the Gourds, and now I can't get "Dying of the Pines" out of my head (it appears on their 1997 debut, Dem's Good Beeble).

I've always liked the song, which I recognize from KEXP airplay, but I'd never given it much thought before. There's something about hearing a song in context, though—live in concert or on a soundtrack—that can turn like into love, and that's what happened in my case.

I think it's also because I'm leaving Seattle for a few days, so I was struck by the lyrics, which touch on air travel. That said, "If you see me on an airplane," you don't need to "get out of my way." Well, not unless you're allergic to cats as I'm taking mine on her first plane trip (I don't think she'll enjoy it as much as catnip).

• Sugarhill Records

In Doug Hawes-Davis's film, which he made with Fugazi's Brendan Canty—a music documentary veteran—the band performs the song live, but guitarist Kevin Russell, who shares songwriting duties with bassist Jimmy Smith, also performs an acoustic version in one of the extra features (among 109 minutes of additional material). I think I prefer his solo rendition, and if I ever get the chance to see the Gourds live, I doubt I'll be able to resist singing along with the "hey, hey" part.

Other things I learned from the documentary: multi-instrumentalist Max Johnston played with several other bands, including Freakwater and Wilco, before making a home with the Gourds. He's the son of Austin musician "Dollar" Bill Johnston, but viewers are more likely to be familiar with his older sister, Michelle Shocked (in light of recent events, it's probably to their benefit that she uses a stage name).

I've never been much of an alt-country/roots rock/Americana fan, but every once in a while, I hear something that I like. A lot. And "Dying of the Pines" definitely fits that bill. I guess it helps that the Gourds are harder to classify than many of their peers, since they work garage rock, Tex Mex, and other musical styles into their sound.

In the film, which alternates between their early days and more recent years, they travel to the late Levon Helm's Woodstock studio, The Barn, to record their 2011 album, Old Mad Joy, with former Dylan sideman Larry Campbell. It wasn't until that point that I realized just how much they recall Helm's former outfit, the Band. In my mind's ear, as it were, I can even hear Helm covering "Dying of the Pines." And I wish he had.

All the Labor is out now on High Plains Films. Though 2014 marks the band's 20th anniversary, the Gourds are on a hiatus of an indeterminate length.