DVDebut: Obssesion has its day in Sophie Laloy's 2009 endeavor, YOU WILL BE MINE

According to the IMDB, French film worker Sophie Laloy (shown below) has labored mostly in cinema sound and has directed and co-written but a single full-length film. If and when you view that movie -- YOU WILL BE MINE -- you may understand just why. Ms Laloy's original title in French, Je te mangerais, translates as "I would eat you," and this pretty much describes the obsessive and utterly possessive feelings of one of our protagonists for the other. God knows, obsession has been the theme of a number of excellent movies, from Visconti's early work to Vertigo. But thanks to the nitwit behavior on view, together with some ridiculous plot twists, this film comes nowhere close to joining those ranks.

Fortunately, the film offers some pleasant distractions that just might make it worth your time. Chief among these is Isild Le Besco, (shown above and below), that actress of exotic blond beauty who tends to add interest to anything in which she appears. Here she plays the villainess role to that of co-star Judith Davis' turn as would-be heroine, though neither character is completely what she may initially seem.

This good/evil combination may be the filmmaker's point -- along with the difficulties of accepting one's own lesbian tendencies, given society's majority-rule, continuing stigma of same sex love. If so, Ms Laloy did not find a way to bring all this to remotely believable life, given the over-the-top behavior.

The film was made in 2008 and first released in France in 2009. While attitudes have changed some over the past decade, human behavior remains fairly consistent, and what we see in this movie doesn't pass muster. When the worst possible decision are made, over and over again, the viewer's suspension of disbelief goes into overdrive and finally collapses.

The plot offers up Ms Davis, above and below, as a talented student of classical piano who has the chance to study at a major academy. Due to her family's finances, she must move into the apartment of the daughter of  family friend, a medical student played by Ms Le Besco.

Possessiveness and libido come to the fore almost immediately and grow ever stronger as the movie progresses, turning itself, along with its characters, inside out in the process. Supporting performers includes Edith Scob as a helpful teacher at the academy and Johan Libérau (below, right) as Davis' would-be boyfriend. M. Libérau's copious endowment is given its own impressive full-frontal scene.

For those so inclined, that may be the highlight of the movie. Otherwise, it's a long slough through passion resisted and embraced, love and hate, and nonsensical actions on the road to ruin. Which young woman comes out ahead, and why, may surprise you. Or not.

From Film Movement (though at this time it can be found nowhere on this distributor's web site) and running 100 minutes, the movie finally hits DVD and digital this coming Tuesday, July 24 -- for purchase or rental. If you want to view this one, your best bet is probably via Amazon Prime.

Amazon streaming: MOZART IN THE JUNGLE -- a loose, lovable and very smart little series

For several years now Netflix has been hailed as the new "content provider" that -- in addition to offering its usual DVD and Blu-ray discs for rental, as well as tons of movies and TV series to stream -- is creating its own first-rate series such as House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, and the recent and brilliant Daredevil. Lately, however, Amazon,  the behemoth we all love to hate, is making its own inroads into original content, with the award-winning Transparent and a bunch of other new, how-did-these-get-here-so-fast? series, among which MOZART IN THE JUNGLE is most definitely worth your time. (A recent issue of New York magazine profiled Amazon's sudden explosion into original series with an excellent article you might want to read -- if you haven't already.)

Having found Transparent a wonderfully rich example of original, unusual dramedy, TrustMovies moved on recently to this newer series and was very quickly hooked. Mozart in the Jungle seems to me an almost perfect example of what Amazon Studios (the "content" arm of the behemoth) seems intent on providing: original content that, while nowhere near close to blockbuster/ mainstream level, will give a certain smaller segment of sophisticated television viewers exactly the kind of thing for which they're always searching.

Mozart... offers up a smart plot situated in a venue that neither TV, movies nor practically any source from which we get our "drama" has cared to go -- that of the big-city symphony orchestra: that "jungle" of the title. The brain-child of a most creative threesome: Roman Coppola, (above, left), Jason Schwartzman (above, right) and Alex Timbers (shown at right) (based on the book by Blair Tindall, Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs and Classical Music), the series should be a shoo-in for anyone who's ever been involved in the classical music scene.

Yours truly worked at New York City's Philharmonic Hall -- now Avery Fisher Hall -- for several years back in the 1960s. But even if you have never been involved with symphonies and the like, the series is well-executed enough to pull you in. Watching it made me realize, among many other things, that despite how much has changed in the intervening decades, much remains the same.

Prime amongst those things that never seem to change is the necessity of fundraising -- above almost everything else. Wait: forget "almost." Fundraising is all. The person responsible for this on Mozart... is Gloria Windsor, played by Broadway veteran Bernadette Peters (above, left), who -- as do literally all the actors on the show -- turns her character into a multifaceted surprise and delight.

Mozart's creators understand quite well how conducting, performing in and running a symphony orchestra is full of compromise, no matter how dedicated to "art" are the people involved. These would include especially the symphony's new conductor, Rodrigo, a role just about perfect for the charismatic Mexican actor Gabriel García Bernal, who here gives maybe his best performance yet, as the bizarre-but-fully-dedicated enfant terrible who wants to take this orchestra to a new plateau.

Rodrigo's relationship to the conductor he is replacing (a marvelous turn by Malcolm McDowell, above) is a complicated one, and as the series progresses, this becomes more focused, specific, funny and moving.

The orchestra itself is composed of a raft of smart and talented actors -- from Mark Blum and Deborah Monk to Saffron Burrows (at right) as the crack violist and Lola Kirke (below) as a young oboist hoping to break into the ranks of the anointed. How the latter achieves this -- and then doesn't -- provides some of the surprise and believa-bility, coupled to the kind of charm and entertainment that makes for the series' great success. As befits a show brought to life by the likes of Mr. Schwartzman, Mozart... is above all loose and lively, never underscor-ing its points nor pushing too hard.

Mozart in the Jungle treats its characters -- virtually all of them -- as living, breathing, complicated human beings, whose needs and desires often conflict with those of their nearest and dearest -- not to mention with what they themselves sometimes want.

The series also addresses class and economics, and while it comes down firmly on the side of the underdogs and "art" over the wealthy and corporate, it never handles this in the usual obvious and stupidly facile fashon. Mozart's creators understand the complications of living in the real world and what this means to the idea of creation and compromise.

Victory, as is only sometimes (and not often enough) the case, goes to those who can best roll with the punches -- a scenario beautifully demonstrated by the final episode in this first season.

The show is also unafraid to introduce an oddball new character for a one-time appearance -- Wallace Shawn (above) is one example -- or offer up a memorable supporting turn from another who appears only now and again, such as the beautiful and charismatic Nora Arnezeder (below: remember Paris 36?).

Shows like Mozart... don't set the world afire. That's not their job. Rather they appeal to to those of us who want something different but of high quality in both its artistic ambitions and entertainment quotient. This series delivers on both levels. It's streamable now, only via Amazon, where Prime members can watch it free.

Josh Aronson's doc ORCHESTRA OF EXILES blends music, WWII, heroics and Holocaust

Chalk up another -- and new to me -- hero in the fight against the Nazis in the years leading up to World War II, one whose weapon was music, as made by some of the world's greatest musicians: Bronislaw Huberman (1882-1947). Huberman, evidently one of the world's great violin-ists, was a child pro-digy, who, as he grew, took Europe and then much of the western world by storm, selling out concerts wherever he played.

According to this documentary, ORCHESTRA OF EXILES, written and directed by Josh Aronson, an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker for his 2000 documentary Sound and Fury, Huberman was much more than a great violinist. He was a patriot of the yet-to-be-created state of Israel and an anti-Nazi who rescued up to a thousand Jews (who probably would not have survivied the coming Holocaust), as he planned and then created the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra. (Mr. Aronson is shown above with a young actor from one of the many recreated segments of his movie.)

Unfortunately, it is these recreated dramatizations that turn Aronson's film, which is from time to time quite interesting, into a sorry mish-mash of style and content. Utterly unnecessary, these "scenes" (one of which is shown below), shot in hi-def and color that jolts the viewers out of of the black-and-white ambience of the 1930s time period (shown above), simply raise a red flag that screams "fake!" every time they appear -- which is way too often throughout.

Clearly these are actors who (especially the one chosen to represent Huberman), look little like their historical counterparts, and so simply call further attention to the bad mix. Dramatically, these small sections also suck. They feel like padding (they most likely are) to make the movie into something full-length, and when set against the history told us and the generally excellent archival photos shown us, they seem silly and intrusive. In the most ridiculous of these scenes, we're told the story of a young musician saved by the music academy's janitor from the clutches of a group of Nazi youth by being locked in a bathroom. To accompany this tale, we get visuals -- again in high-def color -- of a line of bathroom stalls and a door handle turning momentously. Yikes!

Yet the story of Huberman (above) is a worthy one, and the talking heads assembled -- ranging from Zubin Mehta to Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman and Joshua Bell -- are impressive. Bell's particular connection to Huberman is especially tantalizing (though not as interesting as the Wikipedia entry on this same subject).

One of the things the movie manages to remind us of is that the Jews of 1930s Germany and elsewhere in Europe should not be blamed for not knowing, or being able to figure out, their future. They assumed that, as bad as things might get, these Nazis were not a permanent fixture (they were right about that) and that somehow they would, as ever, survive these bad times, just as they had so many others. Most of them did not. But would we middle-aged and beyond citizens act much differently, if we found ourselves in similar circumstances today? I doubt it. Look now at how we behave as, little by little, our rights disappear under the current umbrella of the wealthy/corporate/government collusion.

TrustMovies is happy to have seen this documentary --  he learned something from it -- but he certainly wishes it were better con-ceived and executed. Orchestra of Exiles, from First Run Features and running 85 minutes, opens this Friday, October 26, in New York City at the Quad Cinema, with a limited nationwide run to follow.

Note: The release of ORCHESTRA OF EXILES comes as, in October 2012, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra travels to the United States to perform in New York, Palm Desert, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Presented by American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, benefits at Carnegie Hall in New York City (October 25) and at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles (October 30) highlight the Israel Philharmonic's 28th tour of the United States. (Click here for more information.)

The Adlons' MAHLER ON THE COUCH opens -- cute comeback for Bagdad Cafe director

First seen as the 2011 NYJFF's opening night (opening afternoon, too) selection, MAHLER ON THE COUCH, from the father/son film-making team of Percy and Felix O. Adlon, is admirable for a number of reasons. Primarily it will -- due to its cinematic smarts, humor and energy -- help rid us film buffs of memories of that ridiculous, 2001 attempt, Bride of the Wind, to provide a movie about Alma and Gustav Mahler. Interestingly enough, what the two films have most in common is one important actor -- Johannes Silberschneider -- who, in Bride, played the role of Alma's earlier love, her piano tea-cher Alexander von Zemlinsky, whom Alma gave up to be with Gustav. In Couch, Herr Silberschneider (shown below, right) gradu-ates to the great man himself. And a damn good Mahler he makes.

The Adlons (shown at right, with Felix on the left) begin their movie with a charmingly imagined meeting between Mahler and Sigmund Freud (according to Freud's journals, a meeting actually took place), in which the composer, who has already cancelled two earlier meetings, now tries -- after Freud asks him his first personal question -- to wiggle out of this one, too. The daddy of all shrinks, however (played quite well by Karl Markovics, below, right) won't let him off so easily. The proverbial -- and titular -- couch is not used initially. Instead the two men walk around the grounds and then into town, as Mahler relaxes into reminiscing. Whereupon flashbacks appear, and keep appearing throughout, coupled to direct addresses to the camera by a number of subsidiary characters from Alma's mom and dad to Gustav's sister and others, as they fill us in on everything from history to gossip.

All this handled with a surprisingly light touch and enough humor and wit, particularly in the scenes between Mahler and Freud, to keep us amused and entertained, as we slowly enter the not-so-happy lives of this fabled pair. The filmmakers keep their cameras moving, ever alert for details of the active life, especially in the scene of Alma's and her mother's first visit backstage at the opera house. Later we watch a musicale, below, in attendance at which are the most prominent exes of both Gustav and Alma. Again, there is boundless energy and life on display.

As to the veracity of much of what we see, "Are you making this up?" Freud asks Mahler at one point in a flashback sequence, and so the Adlons very cleverly hedge their bets. For if the master questions the story, we don't have to. As the flashbacks grow longer, the time spent with Freud grows less. Initially, we miss this; finally, as we're pulled ever farther into the lives of Alma and Gustav, we don't.

As good as is Silberschneider as Mahler, newcomer Barbara Romaner (at left) is ever better as Alma. Romaner brings all the complications of a real woman to the role: She's needy, smart, sexual, selfish, ambitious, loving and wild. We see her initially as the lover of Walter Gropius (played by Friedrich Mücke, below). This is the affair that appears to bring on Mahler's need for therapy, but it is Mahler's letter to Alma, early on in the relationship, that acts as the catalyst for her change and growth. In it, he tells her that it is his work that counts; hers is paltry. He needs a wife. The movie is feminist simply by virtue of being true to its time.

We've also seen, in so many earlier films, the artist in the doldrums of composition, the pangs of composition, as the composer is surrounded by reams of blank or wrong-headed pages. But here, given to us in the midst of all else -- sexual passion, therapy, death, music and more -- it works anew. Perhaps the most moving scene is Alma's simple declaration of herself as being in, a part of, Mahler's music. By the finale, you'll realize that, above all, the film is a kind of love story. And a good one. It's a good bio-pic, too.

Mahler on the Couch, opens today in New York City at the FSLC, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.  Click here for showtimes. I hope the movie will make its way around the country to a few other major cities. If not, perhaps a DVD or streaming option is in the works....

Michèle Hozer & Peter Raymont's GENIUS WITHIN: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould

TrustMovies came to live in New York City in the fall of 1962 -- in time to miss attending the earlier spring concert by pianist Glenn Gould of Brahms First Piano Concerto, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Not too long after this singular event -- immediately before which Mr. Bernstein disavowed Gould's interpretation of the concerto, and soon after which the New York Times critic Harold Schonberg lit into both Gould and Bernstein -- the rest of the world became similarly deprived, as the musician, considered by many to be the world's greatest living classical pianist, elected to stop performing live and would henceforth allow his piano-playing to reach its audience only via recording. All this (and a whole lot more) is documented in the new work from Michèle Hozer and Peter Raymont, two filmmakers that have done a superlative job of putting together the story of the late Mr. Gould -- his history, talent/gift, family, friends, lovers, craziness and music -- that should send its viewers right back to the musician's famed recordings.

 

Hozer (above, left) and Raymont (above, right) have broken no particularly new ground (a la Todd Haynes' invented and inventive look at Bob Dylan in I'm Not There), but they have given us a wonderfully encompassing view of a man who, in the minds of many, is to classical music (especially Bach) something akin to what Guttenberg was to The Bible. And they have done this in a manner that should entertain and create new converts to Gould (myself, for instance), as well as, I think, those who are already familiar (and in love) with the man's brand of music.  They might also send some of us back to François Girard's odd work, 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould, a movie I roundly despised upon first viewing it some 17 years ago.  Now that I have learned much more about Gould from this film, I suspect I might better appreciate Girard's work.

"A totally unknown person who seemed to come out of nowhere," remarks someone early in the movie regarding Gould and his debut recording. We soon find out about this "nowhere," which includes the fact that the Canadian musician could read music before he ever learned to read words.  An untidy man, he was one of those who still managed to always find what he was looking for, and whose technique and the clarity that goes with it came from a fellow named Guerrero, who tapped on the fingers of his students to help individuate the digits.

Regarding romance, we hear from old girlfriend, Fran Barrault ("He was romantic," yes, but probably "too difficult to live with"), as well as from later love Cornelia Foss (wife of pianist, composer and friend Lukas Foss), who tells us about the first time she heard Gould's recording of the Goldberg Variations, and how it seemed to her that the pianist had taken apart the piece and put it back together in his own way.  For all the time spent on exploring Gould's "love" life, the movie manages to seem less like gossip and more like a legitimate exploration of who this musician fully was. After a time you can begin to understand -- and empathize with -- Gould, not simply for cancelling entire tours, but eventually refusing to give live concerts at all. (The character played by Albert Dupontel in Avenue Montaigne may remind you of the Gould we see here.)

A hypochondriac who didn't like shaking hands with anyone, Gould is perceived, inside and out, by the filmmakers better than have been many other individuals explored by documentarians. The musician's understanding of the importance of marketing comes through well, though he also says that he detests audiences -- not as individuals but as a "mass." Was he a control freak?  Absolutely -- and often for good reason.  "Eccentricities overshadowed his personality," notes Cornelia Foss, and during the time we spend with the Foss family, all of them indicate a genuine fondness for Gould, even if the children were finally happy to be back with their father, once Cornelia brought the affair to its end.

A later love (and collaborator) offers a surprising anecdote about how the popular TV Show Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman figured into the musician's life, and even Petula Clark, a performer Gould very much admired, makes an entrance here. What comes through most strongly, however, is how forward thinking (and acting) was the musician regarding the technology of recordings. Of the funeral ceremony (Gould had reached only the age of 50) someone remarks, "It was as though the King had died."  This documentary will probably leave you feeling very much in tune with that sentiment -- even though the King certainly had his problems.

Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould (106 minutes) opens today, Friday, September 10, at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and the Quad Cinema.  Further playdates around the country -- with cities and theaters -- can be found here (click and then scroll down).