Reviews

Cinemas are closing here tomorrow for more than a month, due to the pandemic, and I wanted to go one last time. This was showing in my favourite cinema. Last but not least, what healthy female of the species wouldn't want to see anything with George Clooney, if only to find out whether he can match Sean Connery in aging well? The post-apocalyptic angle interested me; there are books that have done that stupendously (e.g. A Children's Bible) but it wasn't the reason I went.

Turns out the movie is about something else entirely. The post-apocalypse part is a dead loss - we have no fertile Planet B to escape to. Still, the end had me howling, for all the predictable and sometimes heavy-handed drama. At the heart of it, this story asks the question: can an absent parent be a good parent? Or even just a good-enough one? While I'm skeptical about the technological lengths Midnight Sky goes to to give its reply, I tend to agree with its conclusion. Then again, wouldn't this be exactly the type of script an absentee parent would write afterwards in self-justification, true or not? Or, for that matter, a neglected child?

Our parents are who they are. We cannot change them. We can, however, try to see the good in them. It's not always as easy as when George Clooney plays the parent, but if you feel like mulling over that kind of thing and don't mind a few wrecks, deaths and spaceships along the way, by all means go for it.

A previous reviewer found the film boring but was willing to suspend judgment because he's a young man. Alas: I'm a middle-aged woman, and I found it boring too. Binoche is as splendid as ever, Stewart would be splendid too if her mouth wasn't hanging adenoidally open most of the time. And Sils is one of my favourite places in all the world. So? The film was tantalising at first. Later, it just seemed pretentious and repetitive. Aspiring to a profundity it took pains to spell out at great length in some places, and to leave hinted at in too many others. We all get older, right? Indeed. Perspectives shift along the way? Quite. Two people can tell two different versions of the same story? You said it. And those loose ends and contradictions! ***Possible spoilers***: Why show Rosa burning manuscripts, if that's not put to good use later? Why tell us about additional scenes that show the play in a new light, if you're not going to enlighten the audience? Why have the young actress praise the older woman as the epitome of style, only to show her running around in the same whorish plateau-soled stilettos and gleaming suits the kid is so partial to, just minutes later? (At least nobody mentioned Nietzsche. That's something to be grateful for. Though perhaps the "uber-famous" Chris is an uncharacteristically oblique reference.) Last but not least: much of the film felt like a commercial. For sleek cars, for Swiss five-star hotels or for Alpine scenery. All of which I'm a sucker for, but the bits of film recognisably shot in Sils felt like postcards inserted as an afterthought. Except for the snake sequence, which would've been hard to get wrong.

Based on a whodunit by Swiss novelist Friedrich Glauser, this film tells the book's meandering story in a more straightforward manner. Still, the suspense is there until just before the end. And the author's signature remains visible. Glauser spent several years in mental asylums due to his opium addiction. It didn't keep him from leaving his name to the most prestigious German-language crime writing award. Decades after his death, his books are slowly starting to become available in English.

In "Matto's Realm", Inspector Studer is investigating the death of the director of a psychiatric clinic in Randlingen. (The name translates, roughly, into Edgeville; sadly, the earthy Swiss dialect expressions are lost in translation, as is Glauser's love of word-play.) A challenging task indeed. On his arrival, all his Swiss solidity doesn't keep the detective from being mistaken for a patient. The brief scene is hilarious but telling: inside the asylum, we never know what to believe. Is the visionary poet inmate a reliable witness or just seeing things when he goes on about Matto, the spirit of madness who lives in the tower above the archives? Is the medical vice-director genuinely trying to help his patients with new-fangled methods like hypnosis, or is he a monster who planted the idea of murdering his choleric boss in a sick mind? Is the orderly's kind heart blinding him to his duties as a jailer of potentially dangerous lunatics? Is the porter's kind heart making him lie to protect his old friend the orderly? Is the pretty nurse telling the truth about a mysteriously closeted young patient's "bronchitis"? Is the young patient mad at all, or did his overbearing father choose to have the black sheep of the family shut away? A father who leaves us with the impression that Matto rules not only the asylum but all the world... POSSIBLE SPOILER: Leopold Lindtberg said that "the only healthy, strong and even-tempered character" (in his film) "is the murderer".

Glauser must have seen many odd stories and asked himself many questions about sanity, questions still worth asking today. The uncanny, shifting atmosphere of the place rings true. Yes, things move a little slowly, but so does life in the loony bin! No, the ideas in this film are not new - but then again, neither is the film, and its arguments remain true and timeless. Are the black sheep of powerful families treated so much better today than in the 1930s? Is normalcy perhaps a form of slight feeble-mindedness, as suggested by Karl Jaspers, a psychiatrist and philosopher? "Matto regiert" is an excellent piece of work, beautifully shot, well acted and dryly funny. As a bonus, it provides the interested viewer with an early exploration of madness, sanity and psychiatry.

Wait a minute. Did Les Amants really get into the trouble it did because of the love scene in the last half-hour? The scene in itself is nothing. However, here we have a married woman in the 1950s, committing adultery not once but twice, and without remorse. If Vivant and Malle had told their tale the accepted way, the situation would have led to bloody murder, and given the grim coldness between Jeanne and her husband, that's exactly what the audience expects. But - SPOILER: the authors opted for a happy ending. So of course they were seen as condoning adultery. Violence, it seems, would have been no big deal by comparison...

Happy ending? Well, not quite. Les Amants is odd in another respect: while it is all about the transforming potential of falling in love, it idealizes the process far less than most so-called romantic comedies do. As the blissful couple purr out of the picture in Bernard's 2CV, we hear a sage voice-over comment on the uncertainty of their future. This echoes the background of the opening credits, a fictitious map of the land of love, depicting (as far as my memory serves me) a river named Affection, passing through many little hills such as Respect, Dedication etc., far from the Lake of Indifference, and flowing to a Dangerous Sea and to Terra Incognita. In this sense, there's more to the story than "beautiful socialite meets handsome young guy". This is no fairy-tale. It's about stuff like living in the moment, openness, and courage - and about the archetypal meeting of animus and anima. Or should I say projection? Fuhgeddabahdit! Apart from all the crap I'm giving you here, Malle plus Moreau equals gorgeous movies. Go see for yourself.