Two of queerdom's most interesting foreign film writer-directors—France's Francois Ozon and Thailand's Apichatpong Weerasethakul—are at last seeing their latest movies open in Chicago this week. Cinema aesthetes will surely rejoice at Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives—winner of the prestigious Palm d'Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival (where he also won the directing prize). Potiche, the Ozon movie—a sunny women's lib comedy set in 1977 that stars Catherine Deneuve—acts as the perfect mental palate cleanser to Weerasethakul's mystical, visual poem.
Deep in the jungles of Thailand, Uncle Boonmee is dying of kidney failure. His sister-in-law and nephew arrive to tend to him and help him oversee his beekeeping enterprise. During their first evening, as the trio sit outdoors listening to the crickets chirp, Uncle Boonmee's late wife suddenly appears at the table—followed by the son they thought lost in the jungle years ago. However, the son of his own choice has morphed into a ghost monkey—a Bigfoot-type creature with glowing red eyes who calmly reveals the circumstances surrounding his disappearance as the others listen with rapt attention. Soon, the dead wife and the ghost monkey are flipping through Uncle Boonmee's photo albums and are reminiscing with their family with no one, except Uncle Boonmee's medical aide, Jai, an immigrant from Laos, even slightly surprised by the appearance of these spectral visitors.
By the time the audience arrives at this scene, we aren't either. For in the languorous, dreamy and slightly ominous world that Weerasethakul sets up, this startling scene makes perfect sense. As director Terrence Malick (Badlands, The Thin Red Line) slows down time to a sultry crawl so, too, does Weerasethakul. The two share an almost unique ability to take the ordinary in nature—trees, fields of grass, blowing breezes, chirping insects, grazing animals—and imbue them with mystery and awe, creating a powerful spell over audiences as they do so.
Using a cast of amateurs Weerasethakul relies on the natural ability of his non-actors to emphasize the otherworldliness of his elliptical, barely-there plot lines. This simple yet dazzlingly complex movie moves at a crawl but if the mood catches you at the outset it will hold tight to the final frame, and both the mundane and the fantastic take on equal power.
There are a lot of visual and storytelling metaphors at work here (the film can be broken down into multiple segments, each with different visual styles)—most of them tied to mourning of some kind. Clearly, Weerasethakul's movie won't be for everyone (and it must have been really tough to finance—I counted more than 10 producers from nearly as many countries). Yet the resultis a sublime cinematic experience for those eager to be challenged by a movie outside the traditional boundaries.
Closer to the traditional—of the light-as-a-feather French farces it parodies, that is—is writer-director Francois Ozon's comedy Potiche (the French word for "trophy wife"). Ozon's reliable star, French film legend Catherine Deneuve, gamely plays Suzanne, the put-upon bourgeois wife of a cruel husband who runs the umbrella factory that was actually started by her father. In a red track suit or blue patterned apron, singing along to a naughty, jaunty song on the radio as she putters about her lemon yellow kitchen, Suzanne is the essence of the empty-headed but happy housewife familiar to audiences in 1977, the year the action is set.
However, revolutions—small and big ones—are afoot as the husband suffers a medical setback and Suzanne is by default, placed in charge of the factory. In his stead, she institutes a series of reforms that, plot wise, are mighty close to another 1970s-era comedy—Nine to Five—but this being French farce, of course, there are many more political complications and amours to be tossed into Ozon's lovely pot au feu before the characters (which include a comely gay son) find their true places at the table of life.
Potiche is much lighter in tone—closer to Ozon's delightful pastiche 8 Women—than to his more famous mystery dramas such as Under the Stand, Time to Leave and Swimming Pool, and doesn't leave much of an impression beyond the opening sequence with its pop-art colors and Deneuve's momentary daffiness (a characteristic one has rarely seen this French diva display). It doesn't have much depth, isn't uproariously funny and doesn't leave one feeling much for its characters or situations; however, dedicated Francophiles will find a lot to their liking here (including several backhanded homages to Jacques Demy) and won't give a "zut" about any of these potential "découverts."
Film notes:
—Arias with a Twist: the Docufantasy is the 2010 documentary from filmmaker Bobby Sheehan that chronicles the 2008 collaboration of drag-master supreme Joey Arias and the intensely creative puppeteer Basil Twist that resulted in Arias' critically hailed one-man show. The film is getting its Chicago premiere on Thursday, April 14, at 9 p.m. at Berlin, 954 W. Belmont, as part of the Third Annual Chicago International Movies & Music Festival (April 14-17). www.cimmfest.org
—The Onion's Joe Pickett and Nick Pruhler (from Late Night with David Letterman) return to Chicago to host the fifth edition of the Found Footage Festival, which "showcases VHS oddities from the world's garage sales, thrift stores warehouses and dumpsters." This year's line-up promises the usual assortment of future YouTube sensations including a compilation of exercise videos featuring Cher and the American Gladiators; a series of "how to" videos on ventriloquism; and a lot more campy flotsam and jetsam. Friday, April 15, at 10 p.m. at the Music Box, 3733 N. Southport; www.musicboxtheatre.com
Check out my archived reviews at www.windycitymediagroup.com or www.knightatthemovies.com . Readers can leave feedback at the latter website.
