Number One Fan (orig. Elle L'Adore) [2014]

MPAA (UR would be PG-13)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
Allocine.fr listing*

LaCroix.fr (C. Renou-Nativel) review*
LExpress.fr (C. Sautet) review*
LeMonde.fr (N. Luciani) review*
Liberation.fr (G. Renault) review*
LaPresse.ca (M. Cloutier) review*

EyeForFilm.co.uk (R. Mowe) review
The Hollywood Reporter (J. Mintzer) review


Number One Fan (orig. Elle L'Adore) [2014] [IMDb] [AC.fr]* (directed and screenplay cowritten by Jeanne Herry [IMDb] [AC.fr]* along with Gaëlle Macé [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) is a  rather _disconcerting_ (to an American / Anglo-Saxon sensibility) crime, stalker / celebrity "comedy" that played recently at the 2015 Chicago French Film Festival (July 31 - Aug 6, 2015.

Muriel Bayan (played by Sandrine Kiberlain [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) is a humble beautician in some town somewhere in the center of France.  She has two kids but has arguably lost custody of them for reasons not entirely clear.  What is clear is that she's been a BIG FAN of a fictionalized French pop singer named Vincent Lacroix (played by Laurent Lafitte [IMDb] [AC.fr]*).  Indeed, after losing her kids ... she ... goes a concert of his.

Now Vincent Lacroix is introduced to us as a rather typical contemporary celebrity.  He's does enjoy the fame of his public persona (likes signing autographs after his show), he's learned to be careful of overly obsessive fans (we learn later that he had a something of a French equivalent of a "restraining order" apparently put on Muriel some time in the past), and he's tried to build a private life away from the stage with his current "significant other" Julie (played by Lou Lesage [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) and other personal friends.

Yet it's an unstable mix and so, after what had been a "quiet night" at home with friends, Vincent and Julie get into a fight.  As the argument progresses, she actually slaps him first but he responds by pushing her against a book case ... and a fairly large / heavy object (arguably an award ...) falls on her head, badly, and kills her.

OMG ... what now?  "Fortunately" the friends are gone and he's alone there in the house with his now dead wife with the object that killed her lying at her side.  If he calls the police, will they believe it was an accident?  In anycase, the tabloids will have a field day with this.

SOO ... he decides that he's going to try to cover it up.

Enter Muriel, the somewhat simple-minded "fan" who Vincent had some time back placed a restraining order against.  He pulls out one of Muriel's past obsessive fan letters (with her address on it ... she lived somewhere in the same town).  He then wraps the body of his dead significant other in a thick blanket, puts in his his car, and drives in the middle of the night to Muriel's apartment building and rings her door bell.

"Hi this is Vincent Lacroix, I need to talk to you."  Yes, it's the middle of the night, yes, it's VERY ODD that Vincent Lacroix was at her door BUT ... "OMG, VINCENT LACROIX's at MY DOOR!"

Vincent Lacroix asks her then: "Would you do something for me?"  "OMG, yes!"  "I want you to drive your car, tonight, to my sister's in Switzerland.  There will be something in your trunk.  I don't want you to see it.  You have no need to see it.  Just take your car to my sister's ... in Switzerland.  I have everything explained for her in this (sealed) letter.  She'll take your car and come back with it about a half an hour later (Vincent's sister and her husband ran a pet crematorium.  Muriel has no idea of that, but the viewers know).  And then you can go home.  Would you do this for me?" 

Somewhat confused but, starstruck, "OMG after all these years, restraining order and all, here's Vincent LaCroix IN MY APARTMENT," Muriel says yes.

Much ensues ...

What ensues would certainly be disconcerting for a fair number of Anglo viewers: MILD SPOILER here: Fortunately Muriel isn't a total idiot/doormat but she proves no saint or martyr either.  Then of course there's the "great Vincent Lacroix" who clearly turns out to be quite an SOB (that's clear from what I described above).  Add then the two police investigators put on the case (played by Pascal Demolon [IMDb] [AC.fr]* and Olivia Côte [IMDb] [AC.fr]*).  After all, Vincent Lacroix's partner had "gone missing" and it becomes rapidly clear that _something_ had to have happened to her (a sudden stop in her cell phone and credit card activity).  While clearly not incompetent, it becomes clear that they have "other" often random / stupid distractions that compete for their attention as they work on her case.  And finally there's the police investigators' supervisor who seems to be above all concerned that her department "come-in under budget" for the year, RATHER THAN SOLVE CASES.

It all comes to feel very disconcerting.  Here a person has died.  We see how she died, and yes, it was _largely_ as a result of an accident.  BUT the people around, both near (Vincent Lacroix) and progressively far (Muriel), the two police investigators and finally their supervisor, don't seem to care.  All seem to be preoccupied with their own agendas, and well Julie was dead already anyway ...

Even though the film played very much like something of a modern "screwball comedy" ... it really didn't feel like "all that funny" at all ...

So it makes for a rather disturbing film by the end ...


* Reasonably good (sense) translations of non-English webpages can be found by viewing them through Google's Chrome browser. 

<< NOTE - Do you like what you've been reading here?  If you do then consider giving a small donation to this Blog (sugg. $6 _non-recurring_) _every so often_ to continue/further its operation.  To donate just CLICK HERE.  Thank you! :-) >>

Handmade with Love in France (orig. Le Temps Suspendu) [2014]

MPAA (UR would be PG-13)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
Allocine.fr listing*
Official website

604Now.com (M. Renaud) review
The Hollywood Reporter (J. DeFore) review
TheMacGuffin (A. Blair) review

All About Work (F. McQuarrie) review
Concrete Playground (S. Trengrove) review
Style.com (S. Adelman) review


Handmade with Love in France (orig. Le Temps Suspendu) [2014] (written and directed by Julie Georgia Bernard [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) is actually a quite fascinating documentary that played recently at the 2015 Chicago French Film Festival (July 31 - Aug 6, 2015) about the often very specialized artisans of Paris who've made / kept the city the center of haute couture (high fashion) in Europe for centuries.

And when I say "highly specialized artisans," I'm not kidding.  Among the artisans featured was Gérard Lognon whose Atelier Gérard Lognon [2]* was Paris' premiere "Pleating House" prior to his selling of his business to Chanel's Paraffection, S.A. a subsidiary created by Chanel with precisely the purpose of buying out these businesses before their owners / chief artisans die and their skills are thus lost forever.

Now what the heck is a PLEATING House??   The Atelier Gérard Lognon specialized in CREASING 3D patterns into previously 2D fabrics, which the fashion houses like Chanel or Christian Dior would then use to give often striking appearance and certainly novel texture to their subsequently unforgettable high-end dresses.  The value of this work becomes OBVIOUS when one sees it on the dresses paraded in the various high end fashion shows shown in the film, but honestly before seeing this documentary "I NEVER EVER would have known." ;-)

Then there's Lorenzo Re, whose atelier does nothing else than sculpt wooden forms for ... hats.  And there's Bruno Legeron whose 4th generation business is one of three remaining Paris shops devoted to _handmaking_ artificial flowers and feathers for dresses.  He tells the film-maker that "before the War" there were HUNDREDS, NOT DOZENS, BUT HUNDREDS of such shops devoted to nothing but making artificial flowers in Paris (and he has the directories to prove it).  And now there are three.

It's all fascinating to think about the next time one goes to Michael's (a "craft store" chain in the United States ;-) ).  But precisely a crafter would appreciate the skills of these people portrayed.

Well, what's happened, what's happening and what's the future?  A lot of these shops, often "kept in the family" for generations, have died for lack of interest / more options on the part of the youngest generation. Then, these shops often require very specialized skills / training that "doesn't come overnight." So "not just anybody" can do their kind of work.  Finally as mentioned above, Chanel has in recent years made it a priority to start buying these businesses out so that some of their people could be trained in the skills of these artisans before they are lost.  Yet, of course, these artisans have been used to "working on their own" / "being their own bosses."  Being subsumed by a subsidiary like Paraffection, S.A. of a "conglomerate" like Chanel is inevitably "an adjustment."  And a number of the artisans expressed concerns about what will be lost as a result of "industrialization" of their work.

A once again quite thought-provoking film about time, skills and change and "progress."


* Reasonably good (sense) translations of non-English webpages can be found by viewing them through Google's Chrome browser. 

<< NOTE - Do you like what you've been reading here?  If you do then consider giving a small donation to this Blog (sugg. $6 _non-recurring_) _every so often_ to continue/further its operation.  To donate just CLICK HERE.  Thank you! :-) >>

Tokyo Fiancee [2014]

MPAA (UR would be R)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
Allocine.fr listing*
CineNews.be listing*

AgendaMagazine.be (L. Joris) review*
aVoir-aLire.fr (A. Champilou) review*
France Télévisions (J. Bornet) review*
Rossiyskaya Gazeta (V. Kichin) review*
Variety (A. Simon) review

Tokyo Fiancee [2014] [IMDb] [AC.fr]* (screenplay and directed by Stefan Liberski [IMDb] [AC.fr]* adapted from the novel "Ni d'Ève ni d'Adam" [GR-Fr] / "Tokyo Fiancee" [GR-Eng] [WCat-Fr] [WCat-Eng] [Amzn-Fr] [Amzn-Eng] by Japan-born (to Belgian parents) Amélie Nothomb [en.wikip] [fr.wikip] [GR-Eng] [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) is a generally quite fun Tokyo-set French/English/Japanese language Rom-Com  that played recently at the 2015 Chicago French Film Festival (July 31 - Aug 6, 2015) held here at the Music Box Theater.  It tells the story of the author's somewhat fictionalized alter ego Amélie (played in the film by Pauline Etienne [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) returning to Tokyo as a 20 year old (after having left it for Belgium at five) in hopes of filling the void that her family's departure had made in her life.

During her time in Tokyo where she's simultaneously brushing-up on her Japanese while tutoring French to students, she has a romance with 20-something Rinri (played by Taichi Inoue [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) one of said students.

Young American viewers thus get a "two-for-one experience" in reading the book / viewing the movie.  First one gets to enter the world of a young Belgian 20-something and then experience what she sees of / in Japan while she's there.

I'm almost certain that a young American visiting Japan even for an extended time would probably experience Japan somewhat differently than she (coming from a proud if famously small European country).

Indeed, a inevitable part of her description of her life in Japan involved describing, often quite amusingly, her relationships with the other women from francophone countries that she meets: There's 30 something year old Christine (played by Julie LeBreton [IMDb] [AC.fr]*), a Quebequoise, who worked at the Canadian Embassy and who served as something of a mentoring figure for Amélie during her stay.  Amélie came to her with all sorts of questions that a young 20-something women striking out on her own (especially in a foreign country) would have.  And then there was Yasmine (played by Alice de Lencquesaing [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) an early 20-something year old French woman, portrayed in the way that one could imagine a young 20-something Belgian woman would portray her: as "naturally" somewhat more confident (or more "arrogant") than she, and of course, smilingly "clueless" about coming across that way. ;-)

Rinri, of course, is portrayed as one would imagine a young Japanese man to be: Somewhat more shy / reserved than a Caucasian and then making some often quite amusing mistakes in his French: He keeps Amélie his maîtresse (instructor) which actually translates more commonly to mistress ;-).

Anyway, much often quite gentle ensues...

ONE THING I'D LIKE TO WARN (AMERICAN) PARENTS (of high school aged teens) ABOUT is the quite surprising (to me) AMOUNT OF NUDITY IN THE FILM (especially in the 2nd half of it).  Yes,  inevitabley, Amélie and Rinri do hit it off.  However, in an American RomCom, the trajectory of the romance would be portrayed, even the bed scenes, without (repeatedly) showing the actress playing Amélie topless and even fully nude.  I do know that Europeans tend to have a different view of nudity than Americans do and I suspect that even the Japanese may be more comfortable with nudity than we do.  However, I don't think that showing Amélie topless _so often_ in the second half of the film really added anything substantial to the story.  It even made their sexual relationship feel, after a while, almost boring, as if to ask: "What now?"

However, NOTING THE ABOVE, I still think that the film would be interesting to most American young adults and they would be able to experience, at least for a little bit, what it's like to be both a Belgian (from Western Europe) and what it'd be like to live (at least for a while) in Japan.

So, honestly, a very interesting, and often entertaining film ;-)


* Reasonably good (sense) translations of non-English webpages can be found by viewing them through Google's Chrome browser. 

<< NOTE - Do you like what you've been reading here?  If you do then consider giving a small donation to this Blog (sugg. $6 _non-recurring_) _every so often_ to continue/further its operation.  To donate just CLICK HERE.  Thank you! :-) >>

Black Venus (orig. Vénus noire) [2010]

MPAA (UR would be R)  Fr. Dennis (4+ Stars)

IMDb listing
Allocine.fr listing*

La Croix (A. Schwartz) review*
Le Monde (T. Sotinel) review*
Le Figaro (M.N. Tranchant) review*
L'Humanité (D. Widemann) review*

aVoir-aLire.fr (R. Le Vern) review*
Slant Magazine (A. Cutler) review
Village Voice (M. Anderson) review

Black Venus (orig. Vénus noire) [2010] [IMDb] [AC.fr]* (directed and screenplay cowritten by Abdellatif Kechiche [IMDb] [AC.fr]* along with Ghalia Lacroix [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) is a film that (repeatedly) was very hard to watch.  A historical drama that played recently at the 2015 Chicago French Film Festival (July 31 - Aug 6, 2015) held here at the Music Box Theater, it tells the shockingly sad but tragically _true_ story of Saartjie (Sarah) Baartman.

Born around 1790, Saartjie (Sarah) Baartman (played in the film by Yahima Torres [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) was a native South African of the Khoi people.  A servant (but she insisted never a slave, though perhaps a distinction without much difference except perhaps _to her_ ...) to white Afrikaner settlers, she was taken around 1810 by one of them, Hendrick Ceazar (played by André Jacobs [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) to Europe - to LONDON then to PARIS - to perform as AS A FREAK-SHOW CIRCUS ACT.

To some extent one has to understand that most Europeans, especially common ones, had NO IDEA WHO Africans were or WHAT they looked like.  So seeing a fairly large dark-skinned woman with a large dexterior was wildly outside their day-to-day experience.  The problem, of course, was that Hendrick's Ceazar's show PLAYED (indeed PREDATED) ON Saartijie's quite normal South African physique (and European ignorance) as well as on Europeans' sense of manifest superiority -- it could have well been that English and later French "customers" had friends / relatives similarly proportioned BUT Saartijie (or the "Hottentot Venus" as she was called) was dark complected and hence seemed both _exotic_ and _backward_.

Indeed, throughout the story there were various people, both English and French, who _tried_ at least _in part_ to defend her humanity including a group of English abolitionists who brought a court case up on her behalf. 

But MOST could not but see her as _above all_ an exotic _specimen_:  A group from the French Academy of Natural Sciences WANTED TO STUDY HER and were willing to pay Ceazar (and Saartjie) a handsome fee to do so.  And in part they were _clinical_ about their study of her (taking sketches, making measurements of her, etc, etc).  But when she refused to let them _study_ (or "study") her privates, their "deal" fell through.

It was at this point that Ceazar's interest in Saartjie also collapsed, and her life proceeded then in a downward spiral where she ended up inevitably working as a prostitute.

The final indignity came after her death in 1815: The men of the French Academy of Natural Science came back and "bought" her body from her former circus associate Réaux (played by Olivier Gourmet [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) who along with his common-law wife/partner (played by Elina Löwensohn [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) served as her "managers" (and basically pimps/partners in prostitution) in her later years.   After her death then, the men then of the French Academy of Natural Science got their chance to "examine" her genitals which they _cut out_ of her and _displayed_ along with cast model of her body and her skeleton at the Museum of Man in Paris until 1974.

The poignant postscript to her life is shown as the film's final credits run:  After the fall of Apartheid in South Africa, in 1994 President Nelson Mendela FORMALLY PETITIONED the French Government to return Saartjie (Sarah) Baartman's remains to be buried in her homeland.  Nearly 10 years of wrangling followed.  Finally, on August 9, 2002 she was buried near the town of Hankey in the Gamtoos Valley where she was born.

Hers was an absolutely awful story, and yet the film did show that she _always_ kept a dignity about her.  FOR ONE, SHE CAME TO SPEAK FOUR LANGUAGES: her native Khoi, Afrikans, English and finally French.  She actually defended herself in the English trial about her status declaring that she was NOT a slave and that she freely acted (how free was she?) her part in her / Ceazar's show, for which she said she was _paid_ (how much?).    She also REFUSED to show her genitals for the "good men" of the French Academy of Natural Sciences, causing her to lose her "partnership" with Ceazar as a result.  Even so, she refused to bend.  She did eventually fall into prostitution, but even there she maintained _some_ control over her destiny.  Her story was then, both awful, and also _not completely awful_.  And certainly, her trials (if tragically only in retrospect) _thoroughly shamed_ her contemporaries.

One powerful film, very difficult to watch but worth its pain / shame to all of us.



* Reasonably good (sense) translations of non-English webpages can be found by viewing them through Google's Chrome browser. 

<< NOTE - Do you like what you've been reading here?  If you do then consider giving a small donation to this Blog (sugg. $6 _non-recurring_) _every so often_ to continue/further its operation.  To donate just CLICK HERE.  Thank you! :-) >>

Breathe (orig. Respire) [2014]

MPAA (UR would be R)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
Allocine.fr listing*

Elle.fr (A. Ditakine) review*
Femme Actuelle (C. Bernheim) review*
LaCroix.fr (M. Soyeux) review*
LeMonde.fr (F. Nouchi) review*
Libération (G. Renault) review*

APUM.com (C. Mosequi) review*
aVoir-aLire.fr (G. Crespo) review*
Camera Obscura (T. Grégoire) review*
Sound On Sight (G. Cwik) review


Breathe (orig. Respire) [2014] [IMDb] [AC.fr]* (directed and screenplay cowritten by Mélanie Laurent [IMDb] [AC.fr]*, along with Julien Lambroschini [IMDb] [AC.fr]* based on the French lang. orig. (available in Eng. trans.) YA novel [GR-Eng] [GR-Fr]*[WCat-Eng] [WCat-Fr]*[Amzn-Eng] [Amzn-Fr-US]*[Amzn-Fr]* by Anne-Sophie Brasme [GR] [fr.wikip]* [Amzn-Eng] [Amzn.fr]*[IMDb] [AC.fr]*).  The film played recently at the 2015 Chicago French Film Festival (July 31 - Aug 6, 2015) held at the Music Box Theater here in Chicago.

While the story does turn into a late-teenage psychological thriller (quite interesting/compelling in its own right, worthy perhaps of Stephen King [wikip] [GR] [IMDb] without ever resorting to King's supernatural flourishes) the _biggest take-away_ for American viewers, particularly of late-teen / early 20-something age, could simply be the glimpse that it offers into the lives of quite average _French_ teenagers (as opposed to American ones).  And things are both "the same" and "different" for therm.

The story centers on 17 going-on 18 year-old Charlie (Charléne) (played by Joséphine Japy [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) a thoroughly average French teenager from some random suburban-like subdivision at the edge of some random provincial town presumably somewhere in the south (warmer part) of France.
Of a generally unassuming disposition, she does reasonably well in school (it's basically her "senior year").  While never "the life of the party," she begins the story with no enemies and one definite BFF, Victoire (played by Roxane Duran [IMDb] [AC.fr]*), who lives "down the street" and who know each other basically forever.  At home, well, there are some problems.  Her parents (played by Isabelle Carré [IMDb] [AC.fr]* and Radivoje Bukvic [IMDb] [AC.fr]* respectively) fight / break-up, then make-up, then fight again ... and this has gone on for the whole of Charlie's life without much resolution.  Apparently, they were quite young when they had Charlie and never married (or were married though somewhat "unconvincingly" / "under the gun", then got divorced, then tried to get back together again, then broke-up again, then ... the Reader should get the picture ...).  So there's _nothing_ particularly "special" about Charlie.  Basically, she's a thoroughly average French teenager, _not_ "from the boonies" but basically "from the Provinces."

Into her quite unassuming / unspectacular world then enters Sarah (played by Lou de Laâge [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) also in her last year in high school.  She introduces herself to Charlie and her school friends as having recently returned to France from Africa, her parents having (also) split up, and her mother still working for some NGO.  Since her ma' was still out there in Nigeria or someplace, Sarah tells them that she's living with her aunt.  Wow.  Hers had to be the most exciting/dramatic story to be heard in this quite "boring" town (or suburban section of town) in a long, long time, and she exudes a "worldly-ish" confidence that, again, is not exactly common in "small town" / "provincial" France.

Somewhat randomly, Sarah latches on to Charlie.  Moving people around to accommodate the new student, a random teacher in a random class places Sarah next to Charlie and from there they kind of hit it off.  Well, Sarah's talkative, full of stories of various adventures of various kinds (again, they're late-teenagers about to "turn legal" / "become adults" in all sorts of ways), and Charlie's, well, nice.

Perhaps the first sign of trouble was that Sarah, again a transplant with no knowledge of the friendships and social hierarchies in the school, makes short shrift of Charlie's life-long BFF Victoire.  She, of course, didn't know Victoire at all, and she needed a friend like Charlie.  So Sarah just insinuated herself quite forcefully between Victoire and Charlie.  And since Victoire (or Charlie for that matter) had _no_ experience with anybody like Sarah, soon ... yes "eye-rolling" but dazed (as in "what did just happen?" dazed...) Sarah made herself Charlie's best friend, and Victoire was ... out.

While Charlie didn't necessarily understand "what just happened with Victoire" -- no Victoire wasn't killed or anything, just "Sorry Victoire we don't time.  Oh, I  (Sarah) forgot to call you.  Dear God, can't you (Victoire) take a hint, Charlie doesn't like you anymore" socially removed from the picture -- Charlie's attention is definitely raised when, on "late autumn break" (around "All Saint's Day" that is Nov 1st, or around Halloween in the United States) Sarah basically steals a guy that Charlie had been previously kinda interested in.  What's going on?  What kind of a "friend" is this Sarah?

Well, not completely a doormat, Charlie does some investigating of her own, and discovers that Sarah does have a secret that could explain some of her odd / socially aggressive behavior.  But when Charlie tries to talk to / confront Sarah with her discovery and even trying to say "it's okay (but start now to behave with respect like the rest of us ...)," Sarah instead responds with basically "total (social) war."   And truth be told, while the two had been sort-of friends, Charlie had perhaps shared more with Sarah than she probably should have.
 
So ... the second half of the film goes quite dark.  The genius of the story is that it never steps a la Stephen King's Carrie into the realm of out-right unbelievable / crazy.   Instead, the story that plays out feels all too possible.

An excellent Y/A film!


* Reasonably good (sense) translations of non-English webpages can be found by viewing them through Google's Chrome browser. 

<< NOTE - Do you like what you've been reading here?  If you do then consider giving a small donation to this Blog (sugg. $6 _non-recurring_) _every so often_ to continue/further its operation.  To donate just CLICK HERE.  Thank you! :-) >>

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl [2014]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  ChicagoTribune (3 Stars)  RogerEbert.com (1 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (C+)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RogerEbert.com (S. O'Malley) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review


Me and Earl and the Dying Girl [2014] (directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, screenplay by Jesse Andrews [IMDb] [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] based on his novel (2012) by the same name [GR] [WCat] [Amzn]) is a fun teen oriented film/story about senior year in high school that (look at the title) pretty much has to end up sad.  As such, though interestingly a number of the younger film critics links to whose reviews I list above _hated_ the film (for it's, eye roll, cliches) my guess is that a lot of less "film-schooled" teens / young adults will / have enjoy(ed) this film.

The film is about a tall, somewhat lumbering, amiable (to hide his awkwardness) geek named Greg, the "me" in the story (played by Thomas Mann) who's successfully figured out the lingo/customs (fist bumps, high fives, peace signs ...) of all his school's cliques just so that he could avoid them all ;-).  To do so (avoid them), he eats lunch away from the cafeteria in some out of the way book stack laden office with his quite cool, goatie mustached / heavily tattooed history teacher Mr. McCarthy (played wonderfully by Jon Bernthal) and several other misfit refugees.  Together they honestly make up a clique of their own (and quite elitist at that) but don't have the awareness (here) to see themselves as that.  High school ;-).

But to be a clique would probably require that these refugees congregating in this out-of-the way hide-out during lunch watching "Criterion Collection Great Movies" under the direction of above mentioned cool and goatied / tattooed history teacher admit that they were friends, something that apparently seemed too "simplistic" / "petty bourgeoisie" for them them to do.  Indeed, throughout the film Greg _insists_ on calling fellow Mr. McCarthy refugee, Earl (played by RJ Cyler) to _everyone_ outside of Greg's internally quite-active but thoroughly detached-to-feel-safe mind HIS BEST FRIEND SINCE CHILDOOD, his "coworker" and Earl doesn't mind (!) ... Apparently "friendship" is just a "label" describing a relational state that "coworker" largely expresses without commitment-carrying "baggage."

But why "coworker"?  What are they "coworking in"?  Well over the course of the last 2-3 years (since they've been congregating with Mr McCarthy's other misfits, watching said "Criterion Collection" movies) they've made some 40 or so "spoofs" of said movies.  And they are amusing:  "Tulip Box Now" (instead of Apocalypse Now [1979]) -- featuring the two, Earl dressed in combat fatigues, dropping oragami paper tulips of various colors to a box, with Richard Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries [wikip] playing in the background, begging one or the other say the famous line from the original: "I love the smell of [...] in the morning."  Another features Earl, now dressed in a cowboy hat, strolling down some busy Pittsburgh boulevard in "2:48 PM Cowboy" (instead of Midnight Cowboy [1979]) with Harry Nillson's Everybody's Talkin' [wikip] from the original's soundtrack playing in the background. A third involves white sock puppets playing out their rendition of Clockwork Orange [1971], their spoof named ... guess ;-).   The spoofs are brilliant / funny.  But typical of the two -- and here in fairness, typical of high school students in general -- they DON'T show these spoofs to anybody but themselves.

Enter then "the dying girl" Rachel (played IMHO quite well / realistically by Olivia Cooke).  The daughter of Greg's mother's best friend (the two mothers, Greg's and Rachel's played by Connie Britton and Molly Shannon respectively) Rachel attended the same school as Greg, but prior to her illness the two didn't interact much, Rachel belonging to her own small clique of friends and Greg, belonging to none.  Well Greg's mom guilts Greg to visit Rachel.  Shiela O'Malley of RogerEbert.com (perhaps significantly _the only woman_ among the reviewers that I list above above) found Rachel's acceptance of Greg into her life at this point unrealistic.  Perhaps, but I do think that given the friendship of the two mothers that Rachel could have well reacted in the manner that portrayed in the film -- with appropriate initial skepticism but not outright rejection (and Greg too wasn't particularly thrilled by the prospect of interacting with someone outside his previously very small "safe zone"). 

What Rachel does is do (for Greg) is _force_ Greg to "open up" and not in some cliched sense but really _open-up_ to a world that previously he had cocooned himself from.  In the course of their emerging friendship, she comes across his / Earl's videos and ... likes them.  Then Rachel's BFF Madison (played wonderfully with both _kindness_ and, with respect to Greg/Earl, unattainable aloofness - "in your dreams" ;-) - by Catherine C. Hughes), who hasn't seen Greg/Earl's films but has heard of them from Rachel, guilts the two into making a movie for Rachel.  Again, she hasn't seen their films and doesn't really have an idea of how much work / soul would go into them, BUT she thinks it'd be a _really nice thing_ for the two of them to make a film for Rachel.  How honestly wonderful!

This then sets up the rest of the movie, as, needless to say, making a film like that was not going to be easy ...

The question of why (some) people _die young_ is of course one that someone in my line of work (as a Catholic priest) inevitably (and with some regularity) has to confront.  The existence of suffering in this world is of course a mystery.  But this film does offer perhaps some matter for reflection on the matter (and here readers note that Rachel and her mother were Jewish):

It does seem that ONE EFFECT of Rachel's certainly _undeserved_ suffering was to force the others around her to "become better people" than they previously were.  If not for Rachel, Greg would have almost certainly slept through (lost) his senior year and possibly a good part of the rest of his life.  Faced with Rachel's suffering, he was forced to "wake up" and respond with kindness. 

Wonderful, what did Rachel get out of it?  One could say that she given her "stage 4 cancer" she would have _died anyway_ (no matter what anyone, including herself, did).  But she did leave the world BETTER (by making both Greg and Earl better people) tham it would have been if she had done nothing with her suffering. 

It makes for an interesting point of departure for reflection (and again remember Dear Readers that I come from a faith tradition, Catholicism, that certainly believes that suffering _can_ be redemptive.

Anyway, a very kind film that could give teens both male and female much to think about.


<< NOTE - Do you like what you've been reading here?  If you do then consider giving a small donation to this Blog (sugg. $6 _non-recurring_) _every so often_ to continue/further its operation.  To donate just CLICK HERE.  Thank you! :-) >> 
 

The Stanford Prison Experiment [2015]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB ()  ChicagoTribune (3 Stars)  RogerEbert.com (1 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (B+)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB () review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RogerEbert.com (O. Henderson) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review  

The Stanford Prison Experiment [2015] (directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez, screenplay by Tim Talbott) dramatizes the story of the infamous 1971 experiment conducted by social psychologist Phillip Zimbardo (played in the film by Billy Crudup).  In the experiment, he and his team of graduate students randomly divided a group of Stanford University students (paid $15/day for their participation) into prisoners and guards to populate a make-shift prison they created for the 2 week study in a random corridor in lecture hall on campus that summer.

While the story of this quite infamous (if also _revelatory_) experiment has been told and retold in various forms in decades since -- pretty much every college student in the United States taking an "Intro to Psych" class will come across a paragraph or two about it, the dramatization here will once again make it and its results -- that pretty much anybody given authority with poorly defined / poorly enforced bounds could be turned into an animal by it -- unforgettable.

And that's probably a good thing given the crisis of confidence that the country has undergone during the past several years with regards to members of law enforcement finding themselves (or being caught...) resorting to deadly force far faster than most of us in larger society are comfortable with.  I think that most of us appreciate the work that the police do (and the _dangers_ that they face) to keep law and order and the public safe, but most of us also don't necessarily understand why a routine stop should end-up with the person being stopped / arrested severely roughed-up or dead.  When this starts happening with some frequency, it does require a revisit of procedures (as in fact has been happening) in these past few years, because nobody particularly likes taking human life.

And let's not forget the 2004-2006 post-Iraq War scandal at Abu Ghraib that played out, FOR REAL, over 18 months in almost the exactly same way as this 6 day 1971 experiment played out before a first mesmerized but increasingly aghast Dr. Zimbrano himself had enough:  At Abu Ghraib, a not particularly well motivated / not particularly well well watched of U.S. military reservists (not exactly "the tip of the spear ...") largely out of boredom, but also because they themselves weren't particularly well-watched or given particularly clear rules of engagement ... ended up routinely humiliating and even psychologically torturing _hundreds_ of Iraqi prisoners in their charge, causing  _enormous_ subsequent damage to the United States' reputation abroad after the story inevitably leaked out.

So, as a Community member of mine said at the breakfast table as I was talking about this movie, this is a story with immediate resonance today. 

And I would say that as I watched the film, I wondered if part of the story was really: "This is NOT the way to run a prison (and with the exception of perhaps 'setting up a baseline' this is almost certainly NOT the way to setup an experiment about running a prison)." 

 The guards were given instructions: (1) to "keep order," (2) (for some reason) to DEHUMANIZE the prisoners (by giving the prisoners, male, prison uniforms that were essentially dresses barely covering their genitalia, and calling them ONLY BY NUMBER), and (3) were given the freedom to use any means to do so, SO LONG AS THEY DID NOT HIT THE PRISONER.

So there was, nominally, a "red line" (at resorting to hitting the prisoners).  Yet, the guards were given
night-sticks to at least threaten the prisoners with, and as the trailer to the film already reveals (though perhaps not how quickly things deteriorated to that point) the guards soon found themselves using said night-sticks to keep order, and worse. 

The story, following the trajectory of the actual experiment, unfolds (deteriorates) from there.  Prisoners revolt, prisoners try to escape, prisoners (may) actually get sick (through panic attacks).  And six days into the experiment, the professor himself pulled the plug on the developing Lord of the Flies [wikip] [GR] [Amzn] situation.

Now one could ask actually, how much "acting" was required to tell this story?  Yet, a survey of the actors in the film [IMDb] playing both prisoners and guards reveals that they were all legitimate actors and a fair (even surprising) number of them played in the recent teen-oriented drama The Perks of Being a Wall Flower [2012].  And they certainly played their roles both believably and quite well.

In any case, the story gives viewers much to think about, especially perhaps the importance of setting-up clear rules / procedures with regards to the exercise of authority as well as the need for vigilant oversight NOT necessarily to punish guards / police officials but to quickly / effectively respond to problems with procedures.  A prison that becomes a war-zone is clearly a failed prison.  A traffic stop that ends with the death of the person who was stopped is always, at least at some level, a failure. 


<< NOTE - Do you like what you've been reading here?  If you do then consider giving a small donation to this Blog (sugg. $6 _non-recurring_) _every so often_ to continue/further its operation.  To donate just CLICK HERE.  Thank you! :-) >>