PARAGUAY REMEMBERED: Dominique Dubosc's poetic, moving memory piece about South American politics, love, art, torture and death

A moviemaker (Dominique Dubosc, shown above) returns, after 40 years, to the Paraguayan city -- Asunción -- in which he spent what turns out to be a most important and formative time, and the result is PARAGUAY REMEMBERED (Memoria desmemoriada) one of the more beautiful, poetic, sad and moving chronicles to time past, love lost and history's most enduring struggle. That struggle is first seen early on, as our filmmaker visits an art show in the city, MalaVision, in which he views a group of haunted/haunting photographs and notices, as he tells us, "a naive painting meant to represent the guerilla that the rich see everywhere -- like they did Communism." What volumes that small sentence speaks to the unending battle here in the USA, in South America, everywhere, between progressive forces and entrenched wealth/power.

M. Dubosc's lovely, moving and quietly angry documentary is getting a very necessary run at New York's Anthology Film Archives this week (co-presented by Cinema Tropical), beginning Friday, February 24 -- click here to view screening dates times -- along with other of his work. Seeing this 89 minute documentary makes me wonder why the filmmaker is not better known. Forty years ago General Alfredo Stroessner was in power in Paraguay, and the little country was experiencing similar horrors to those we may know more about that occurred under military dictatorships in Argentina and Chile. Dubosc managed to emerge from Paraguay with life and limb intact, but, clearly, what happened there to him, his friends, co-workers and in particular a paramour, have left an indelible mark on the man.

Written with exquisite attention to detail, meaning and even cadence, the movie's narration is poetic and beautiful, and spoken in French, which is certainly among if not the world's most beautiful language. When, midway, the movie 's narration changes to Spanish via another voice, the result seems jarring. Featuring mostly black-and-white cinematography which is often breath-taking in its composition, as well as its lights, darks and glorious greys, the movie is a visual treat. (The oddly inserted and only very occasional color photography simply underscores how much better is that elegant black and white.)

We hear about Stroessner and see one of the airplanes used to toss into the sea the sleeping bodies of literally thousands between the years of 1976 and 1983 -- carried out, as Dubosc tells us, "in the name of Western, Christian, neo-liberal civilization." We meet and view his friend, Hernan, below, and learn via a charming anecdote how the man became a successful sculptor.

So have things gotten better in present-day Paraguay? This looks questionable, as we see a more recent and quite violent expulsion of landless peasants.  All this is a very personal look at everything from Paraguay's politics and history to anecdotal evidence, along with archival photos coupled to present-day narration and cinematography.

When Dubosc first came to this country, it was to make a film about a typical peasant/farmer family and its experiences. Finally, toward the end of Paraguay Remembered, we watch that family now as they and their offspring view that old documentary, and smile, sometimes laugh at what they see. We see parts of that film, too, even as we also learn that the current family of General Stroessner is pushing to have the man's ashes returned to the country for a commemoration complete with political speeches. Hmmm...

We also learn that a certain U.S. President, Lord of the Drones, met with Paraguay's then-President, and all was well. Hmmm, again. Finally, we get a tiny history of the relationship between Dubosc and the woman he loved and cared about while in Paraguay, and whom he betrayed, at least emotionally, if not perhaps in other ways. This is a memorable, intriguing, unsettling documentary: part memory piece, part guilt trip, part poetry -- all of it unusual and special. Click here for further information on AFA and all screening dates and times. (The filmmaker himself will appear in person on Friday, February 24, for the film's AFA premiere.)

Ursula Meier's SISTER: This updated 400 Blows is set, end of season, at a Swiss ski resort

With Home, and now her latest movie, SISTER, French filmmaker Ursula Meier has given us two very different but equally worthwhile films that deal with fractured families -- the first an odd but involving saga of location, the second a more standard yet affecting tale of class and need. In it a young-approaching-teenage brother and his adult sister fend for themselves, the latter doing odd jobs and usually getting fired, the former stealing possessions of wealthier families that frequent the nearby ski resort.

Ms Meier, shown at right, is a fine story-teller, wrapping us in the details of the lives of her charac-ters so well that we follow along gladly, even though the details are much stranger than usual (in Home) and sadder, as in Sister. That title itself takes on additional mean-ing as the movie progresses and we learn more about our siblings. The film-maker also has the ability to show us characters whose faults are many and great, yet so fully does she understand and elucidate these people that we come to feel for them all -- right down to the subsidiary folk in her films.

Though that superior young French actress Léa Seydoux (above right) plays the sister (and very well), the film belongs to the young boy, Simon, essayed by Kacey Mottet Klein (above, left and below, right) of Home and Gainsbourg), who is so consistently real and needy, while alternately strong and vulnerable, that he becomes as memorable, I believe, as was Antoine Doinel of Truffaut's landmark film.

How Simon interacts with his everyone -- from his sister to his "marks," from the kids and the adults to whom he sells his purloined goods, and especially his relationship with a kindly mother (Gillian Anderson, above, left) who takes a liking to the boy -- creates a marvelously multi-faceted character who, by film's end, does not easily let go of heart nor mind.

Meier draws fine performances from all her actors,  those mentioned above and Martin Compston (above, right) who plays a restaurant worker who tries to befriend our boy. Ms Meier understands wells how our motives are always mixed between our own needs and those of others, and she continually makes this clear throughout the film -- which leaves us, as well as her characters, duly chastened and somehow appreciative by film's end.

You can see this excellent movie, running 97 minutes, now on Netflix streaming, via Amazon Instant Video or on DVD.

Straight-to-DVD: Gaël Morel's bizarre but full-frontal gay melodrama, OUR PARADISE

TrustMovies has been a fan of the work of actor/writer/
director Gaël Morel since Full Speed and Three Dancing Slaves (aka Le Clan). What he has enjoyed most is the off-center quality Morel brings to his films, along with the ability to capture reality his way and make it work, tantali-zing us to bring it all together in our own minds. With his new film OUR PARADISE (Notre paradis), Morel has written and directed perhaps his most accessible movie so far in terms of a straight-on plot line that leaves few dots unconnected and little that one's own imagination might have to fill in. And, yes, this does have its drawbacks.

Surely M. Morel, shown at right, has more on his mind than this movie lets on? Perhaps. Or maybe not. What we see before us is a kind of love story between two men, one in his late 30s or early 40s, the other barely out of his teens. They connect in a manner in which the older must help the younger, so that gratitude, leavened with lust, leads to desire and eventually something approaching love. That the older man, Vassili, is played by Stéphane Rideau (below, left, and further below, right) -- a veteran of Morel's earlier work (as well as other films: Come Undone, Ozon's Sitcom, and his 1994 screen debut in Téchiné's Wild Reeds) now nearly 20 years older and still a good actor, highly attractive and sexually alluring -- makes for an easy watch.

The young man, who decides to call himself Angelo, is played by newcomer Dimitri Durdaine (above, right, and below, left), and he makes a great foil -- from  looks to acting chops -- for M. Rideau. When, in one love scene, the older man remarks on the younger's soft skin, I swear you'll imagine that you can feel that peau douce. The two make a lovely pair -- except for one thing: Vassili is a psychopath, who kills the older men with whom he has sex (sometimes without even giving these poor guys a good time).

I'm not dropping much of a spoiler here, as we see this going on from the very first scene. Angelo does not learn of Vassili's modus operandi for a little while, and when he finds out, yes, it does trouble him. He makes his amour promise not to really hurt the fellows with whom they then have threesomes, but, heck, Vassili just can't help himself (one of the results can be seen below).

M. Morel generally does not rub our noses in the blood and guts, but he lets us know pretty clearly what has happened. He also gives up plenty of sex scenes, full-frontal, in twosomes, threesomes (below and further below), and a near foursome.

So the film is indeed a turn-on, and since the performances are, to a man (and woman) quite good, this will not be a case of your watching Our Paradise simply for the sexy bits.

So, then, what's the problem? It is not with Rideau's performance, for the actor creates a character who is welcoming, warm, sexy and caring, so far as Angelo is concerned. Otherwise he's a full-blown narcissist whom you know will turn on anyone he thinks has betrayed him. Unfortunately, betrayal, in his eyes, seems mostly a matter of disagreement.

When an unusual circumstance arises -- in the form of a john who managed to survive Vassili's attack -- the lovers must get out of town. They return to a childhood haunt of the older man, where they meet up with an former friend, played by the ever-effervescent Béatrice Dalle (above and below, and as beautiful and transgressive, if a bit quieter now, as when she played Betty Blue). She lives with her mom and a young son, who takes quite a fancy to his new friends (and they to him).

A visit to Vassili's old (in fact, his first) john, with the little boy in tow and later the kid's mom, brings the movie to its not unexpected close. As I say, most everything here is straight-ahead and on-course. What's missing is both the quirky surprise and full-bodied personality that more complete characterization might provide. We may see all of their outside (and in the case, of young Durdaine, it's quite ample) but of their insides, their mindsets, their histories, we get very little.

While some of the satellites that circle around our twosome are energized and show potential, Vassili and Angelo themselves -- for all the skill of the actors and despite the bizarre, pathological situation at the movie's center -- are not explored nearly fully enough by the screenplay and so remain two-dimensional.

Our Paradise (unrated, in French with English subtitles, and running 100 minutes), from Breaking Glass Pictures' QC Cinema collection, hits the street this Tuesday, February 19, for sale or rental.  I would imagine that streaming and VOD possibilities might transpire at some point soon.

Bruno Dumont's latest, HORS SATAN, gets ten days at NYC's Anthology Film Archives

Bruno Dumont is back. He of Hadewijch, Flanders, Twentynine Palms, Humanité and The Life of Jesus has now returned with HORS SATAN (which translates to something like Outside Satan). Here we go again with the "spare" dialog: "I can't take anyone," says she. "There is only one way," notes he. Oh, yeah? One way to what? Skin a cat? No, actually: to get rid, as is going on below, of an unpleasant father (or maybe he's a step-father). Who knows? Who cares? Certainly not the moviegoer who sits through yet another pile of ordure from the pretentious shit-king of cinema, M. Dumont.

The fellow with the rifle, above, is yet another of this filmmaker's very odd "heroes," a man, as usual, of mystery. Is he saint or sinner, healer or killer, chocolate or vanilla? I'll have a scoop of both, thanks. Because, as usual, things are so loosey/goosey, whatever-you-want-to-make-of-them in this Dumont film that you (and he) can have that cake and eat it, too -- along with the accompanying ice cream.

In his new movie, the filmmaker (shown at right) proves he has as little understanding of how a police investigation works as he did of a religious order (Hadewijch), wartime (Flanders) or the operation of an ice cream stand (Twentynine Palms). In the universe of this writer/director, everything and anything happens solely because M. Dumont wants it to.  'Nuff said. My big question in all of his films (since the better Humanité) is this: When have you ever seen people, living in anything approaching a recognizable society, act like this? The answer is never, and that, I suppose, is the appeal of Bruno's work. You want something different? (And don't bother me with questions of logic.) Here it is.

Symbolism, metaphor, and what have you are all fine. But if you are going to present something with a veneer of the real -- like the lovely French countryside, shot so vibrantly by Yves Cape -- it might help to people it with some reality, too.

Here we get that taciturn hero, played on one note by David Dewaele, given to praying, slaying and maybe some healing (though that last one's kind of iffy). This poor guy is constantly being offered a little sex by our insistent heroine (played with a bit more life by newcomer Alexandra Lemâtre) -- whose dad he has already rubbed out and whose would-be boyfriend, a little-too-pushy older guy, he also takes care of in nasty, bloody fashion.

After several tries at seducing our sinner/saint, and repeatedly being put off by him (I guess you could call him "the loner sans boner"), our girl remains frustrated, and our guy plods on gloomily. At this point in the film --- about 75-80 minutes into it -- the DVD I was sent ceased to function. I tried everything I knew to get it to continue to play, including ejecting it, inserting it and starting all over again (you can image how happy that made me). But still, when the disc reached the same point, it simply shut down again.

Now, I realize that M. Dumont seems to think of himself as a movie-maker who deals with religion.  Or spirituality. Or something. So perhaps he will take this as god's punishment on TrustMovies for my profane attitude. I, of course, see it as something else: a kind of reprieve for which I can only mutter, Merci, mon dieu.

Hors Satan, from New Yorker Films and running 109 minutes opens this Friday, January 18, and will play through Sunday, January 27, at New York City's Anthology Film Archives -- with screenings at 6:45 & 9:15 nightly with additional showings on Saturday & Sunday at 4:30. Click here for tickets, and here for directions.

Claude Sautet retro at the FSLC ends with the rarely-seen MAX ET LES FERREILLEURS

I used to jump at the chance to see any new film from Claude Sautet (1924-2000), a filmmaker who made excellent use of some of the finest actors from two generations of French film -- Yves Montand, Romy Schneider, Michel Piccoli, Lino Ventura and later Emmanuelle Béart, Daniel Auteuil, Sandrine Bonnaire, Vincent Lindon -- and whose movies almost always seemed to capture life as it is, generally messy, and from angles/characters/situations we rarely saw elsewhere.

Sautet, shown at top and at right, also always made me think of his homophone (I believe I am using this term correctly), sauté -- that form of cooking in which all the ingredients are pan-fried together quickly, and moved rapidly around the pan to keep them tasty and never overcooked. You could easily apply this to Sautet's movies, often fast-moving ensemble pieces that catch their characters on the run, as it were, living (and sometimes dying) as best they can. There is a melodramatic element to his work that puts some people off, but which, since I enjoy a good melodrama, never much bothered me. Despite this, Sautet remained a subtle filmmaker (little in his work is overcooked) who always drew wonderful performances from his casts.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center's tribute to the movie-maker is currently in full swing, but there is still time to see a number of the films included. (You can discover the entire program here.) If you have never seen it, I would recommend above all the rest, Sautet's first "real" film (he made an earlier one as a director "for hire"), Classe tous risques (1960), which was shown this past Thursday (but the wonderful Criterion transfer of which can be rented from Netflix). This amazing movie -- part noir, thriller, family film, chase movie and soap-opera rolled into one wonderful mix -- features Lino Ventura (above, with gun) and Jean-Paul Belmondo (below, with Sandra Milo, in his first role after Breathless), and both men give sensationally good performances.

For those who especially want to learn more about this filmmaker, don't miss the documentary to be shown tomorrow, Sunday, August 5, at noon titled Claude Sautet or the Invisible Magic, in which, months before the filmmaker's death from cancer in July 2000, Positif film critic N.T. Binh and his collaborator Dominique Rabourdin had extensive audio interviews, in which the dying director discussed his body of work in sometimes candid detail. The conversations were then illustrated with film clips and combined with additional interviews with Sautet’s friends, collaborators and admirers to form this unusual portrait.

TrustMovies is sorry that he could not get this post up earlier, but he only yesterday saw the supposed jewel of this retrospective -- Max et les ferrailleurs (from 1971 and which translates roughly to Max and the Scrap-Metal Guys) which closes the Sautet program with a one-week theatrical showing -- the first it has ever received here in the USA. Unfortunately, it is not a very good film and is one of Sautet's weaker efforts, so I can better understand why it has not been seen here until now.

I don't mean to imply that there are not some very good things about the movie, starting with the fine performance of its leading lady Romy Schneider, above, who has one of her best roles here as Lily, the prostitute girlfriend of the poor pawn of a petty criminal, Abel (Bernard Fresson, below, right), who has the bad luck to cross the path of the film's non-hero, a nut-case policeman (the titular Max), played in his usual close-to-the-vest style by Michel Piccoli.

Basically the movie is about "entrapment," though the word is never used. Perhaps it was unknown to the French back in 1971, but here in the USA is was certainly known to us gays, who were forever being entrapped by our own police. In this story, no one is gay (or at least no one is "out"), but Max -- who has just arrived on the scene after a bank job has been pulled, with the robbers having escaped -- is determined to catch some gang, any gang, red-handed. Because he cannot get to the real bad guys, he creates a group of news ones who will be caught in the act and thus teach the actual criminals a lesson. Huh? Yes, and to that end he goes about tempting and finally inducing Abel to plan and execute a heist via the relationship Max has established with Lily by posing as a rich banker who fancies this very attractive young lady. Don't ask. (Thank goodness our cop comes from, and is estranged from, a wealthy family of vintners, so he can afford to live the double life he now leads.)

Max's entire plan does not even involve the gang of bank robbers whom the police know pulled that most recent bank job, yet Max is certain that simply seeing another gang of robbers caught in the act will dissuade the rest of the bad guys from their planned heists. Sure. And if the French police believe this nonsense (a few eye-brows are raised but everyone finally goes along with this plan), I have a certain tower in the middle of Paris I'd like to sell them. The premise, in fact, is borderline ridiculous. Even as Sautet and his co-writers unfold their tale, it begins early on to seem manufactured. Well, as I mentioned, this filmmaker tends to deal in melodrama.

Along the way the movie is full of stupidity holes: Why would the police assume that Lily, having been told by Max of the date that the bank will be rolling in money, would immediately run and tell the entire gang -- including, of course, the police informer (every gang here seems to have one), rather than simply telling Abel in private? In a sense, the biggest problem with the movie is Max himself -- despite Mr. Piccoli's fine work -- who is a character so thoroughly manufactured, back story and all, that when he and his plan go into action, the movie's plot falls into place like a line of recently-standing dominoes.

The wild card here, as it so often proves, is love. How you react to the film's finale will depend on how much you believe in the Max/Lily connection. For me, and again, despite the simply tremendous performance from Ms Schneider, this was just some more "manufacture."  Max et les ferrailleurs, newly restored and with new subtitles from Rialto Pictures, opens this coming Friday, August 10 for a week's run at the Elinor Bunin Muroe Film Center.

Niki Caro's THE VINTNER'S LUCK -- now called A Heavenly Vintage -- may have gone straight to DVD, but consider it a must-see

Note: This film is currently (as of March 2019) 

available to stream via Amazon Prime

Every so often -- but not nearly often enough -- a film comes along that is so different and, in its way amazing; so rich and odd and emotionally resonant and yet, really rather simple; that deals with subjects dear to your heart: love and sex (both hetero and homo), history, work, family and... wine! that you think to yourself when the film is finished, "This is why they invented movies." Now, you could also have said, "This is why they invented novels" because THE VINTNER'S LUCK (currently being distributed under the less good title of A Heavenly Vintage), the new film from New Zealand director Niki Caro, is adapted by Ms Caro and Joan Scheckel from a novel by Elizabeth Knox, which is said to be (as are almost all novels made into movies) better than the resulting film. Fine. TrustMovies will accept that, while noting that the resulting film is also damn good in its own right.

Ms Caro (shown at left) has had an interesting, if lopsided, career. Heavily praised for her second full-length feature, the simple-minded, so-so Whale Rider (2002), that film still proved an international success. She went on to make a better American movie North Country (2005), with Charlize Theron, that did little business. Now comes Vintner/
Vintage, first seen under its original title at the Toronto International Film Festival way back in 2009 but only last month becoming available here in the USA via DVD. (And in a not very sterling transfer. A film this beautiful absolutely deserves a Blu-ray release!)

If Whale Rider put Ms Caro (and its star, Keisha Castle-Hughes) on the map, it's this film (also starring Ms Castle-Hughes, above) that will, over time, most burnish her reputation. While Whale Rider offered little content in a too-lengthy running time (granted, what there was probably seemed quite exotic to international audiences), this wine-and-love story is filled with content -- and character, history, mystery and... an angel. The manner in which Ms Caro handles this "other-worldly" creature is exemplary: We first see but a suggestion of the winged figure. And then, he is simply there -- bright as something white in the night -- and absolutely real. That he is played by the fine French actor Gaspard Ulliel, below, who makes at once the hunkiest and most beautiful (and intelligent!) angel ever (eat your heart out John Phillip Law) almost immediately takes the movie to new territory.

The time is the early 1800s and our hero, the vintner Sobran, played by another fine French actor, Jérémie Renier (below, who will soon have his day in the America sun when his hit film Cloclo -- about the performer/songwriter who wrote the original of the famous Sinatra hit My Way -- opens across the U.S. this summer), after a drunken night, falls into a stupor and wakes up, three photos below, in the arms of this angel. Man and myth bond warily, eventually warmly -- both have an great interest in wine and wine-making, and the angel has an interest in something else.

Into this mix comes a Baroness, set to inherit the vast estate and its vineyards upon which our vintner lives and works. As played by the wonderful Vera Farmiga, below, in one of her best roles (yes, she's has a lot of these), the character is reticent and proud, deep and genuine, and adds as much as do our two males to the richly evolving story.

Why, you may ask (as did I), is the angel even in this tale? Is he a metaphor? What does he represent? Well, in some ways, he is at the heart of things, and so beautifully is he acted by Ulliel that I would not have wanted to lose him. He may represent the other half of Sobran -- aren't we often, as Jacob did Biblically, wrestling with angels of our better (or worse) nature? Because the film is also about life, in all its complexity -- work, love, sex, creation -- this fellow also offers wisdom and help, as well as some other things. He's mysterious, sexual and loving, certainly beyond easy explanation and -- thank god -- beyond the ridiculous tenents of our worldly religions. And this is all for the best.

The movie is gorgeously photographed, and its sets and costumes seems both original and on the mark. And Ms Caro has either guided her actors well (the film is so perfectly cast that perhaps she needed only to trust their talent and intelligence) or let them have their lead in order to run with it. In her screenplay, she and her co-writer have allowed events and character to unfold gradually and graciously so that nothing seems forced.

The filmmaker does not over-explain but rather leaves it to us to do the moderately heavy-lifting it takes to satisfy our need for explanation, theory, closure. (The movie does have a nice arc -- with the beginning, in which we know almost nothing, coming home full circle by the finale.) We learn a lot in and from this movie -- and still leave it pondering. Which is, I think, as it should be.

The Vintner' Luck/A Heavenly Vintage is an original. It doesn't compare to anything else I've seen, and I am grateful for that, and it. (For its in-flight sex scene alone -- and I am not speaking of the usual carnality in an airplane rest room -- I'd call it a must-see.) Dividing audiences and critics, from its debut in Toronto, through its run in its home country of New Zealand, to its current appearance and member reviews on Netflix -- love it or hate it, the movie demands a viewing. So weigh in, and then scream at me, if you must. The film is available now on DVD, for sale or rental, from the usual suspects.