With GUY, French actor/writer/director Alex Lutz has created a marvel of a mockumentary

Before viewing GUY (or Guy Jamet, the full name of the character shown on the poster above), TrustMovies had never heard of Alex Lutz, an award-winning French actor, comedian, writer and director. Post-viewing, however, he will remember this man and his one-of-a-kind work for, well, in perpetuity, he hopes.

Guy Jamet, I must tell you right off the bat, does not exist. Nor does the music he sings, the people he interacts with, nor really anything we see and learn about this aging pop idol. Yet Guy and the entire world around him has been imagined and researched so beautifully and then brought to life so remarkably well in this supposed-to-be-a-documentary movie about him that, even though you know -- from the press materials and too-much-information coverage of the film -- that what you're seeing is "fake," so real, so complete does it seem that you're likely to be amused, delighted and greatly moved by it nonetheless. (That's Mr. Lutz, above, shown pretty much as he is now, and on the poster, top, and below, playing the role of the 72-year-old aging pop star. The performer, by the way, won this year's coveted César Award for Best Actor in this role.)

So, yes, Guy is what is most often called a mockumentary. Yet mockumentaries are supposed to mock. But this one, while almost always witty and sometimes satiric, is so rich, warm, and human, full of emotion and sadness at the passing of time, missing of opportunities and the knowledge of our own inability to head off our worst impulses that it leaves you with more of a sense of reality and worth than do many of the actual documentaries and narrative bio-pics I've seen over the years.

Further, I haven't even gotten into the amazing skills with which, Mr. Lutz manages to create and inhabit the elder self (he also plays the younger version, though it is mostly that 72-year-old with whom we're spending our time). Everything -- from his movements to the superlative aging make-up and/or prosthetics applied -- seems nothing short of perfection. Mr. Lutz is quite something.

And when, along the way, we see, intercut with each other, the younger and older versions of Guy and one of his "loves," (above, with Élodie Bouchez, and below, with French icon Dani), the effect is mesmerising and moving in equal measure. Here, an entire cultural history opens up before us, and while the events and characters, the times and the songs may seem initially rather ordinary, something happens as they wash over you. Eventually it all gather the importance and feel of real life.

About the music: While it seemed to me captured to near perfection, "Isn't this sort of mediocre?" my spouse asked, mid-way along. And, yes, the songs here are absolutely of their time and place. Yet by the point at which the end credits rolled, "Boy, this song has really grown on me," spouse noted. I felt quite the same.

The movie is organized around the idea of a young filmmaker named Gauthier -- Tom Dingler, above -- getting Guy to agree to making this film about him by, among other things, telling him what a huge fan of his was Gauthier's mom. In reality, his late mother has informed Gauthier via letter than Guy is actually the young man's birth father. So the film is fraught with unspoken father/son issues throughout, some of them funny, others more telling. Probably the most emotional-yet-reticent scene of all involves Guy's lunch with the son he knows of and has recognized, shot by Gauthier at a discrete distance so that neither we nor he can hear what is being said by the father and his recognized son, even as the unrecognized one films it all.

While I am certain that many of the movie's more subtle and satiric barbs were lost on this American viewer, what remains was still so special, unconventional, surprising and alternately amusing and moving that Guy takes it place for me as one of this year's best films. It's an original -- and then some. (Above, right, is Nicole Calfan, very good as our hero's publicist; below, right, is Pascale Arbillot, playing his current squeeze.)

Without a theatrical release, all the more thanks is due Icarus Home Video and Distrib Films USA for making this gem available to us. Guy hits the street on DVD (digital will eventually arrive) this Tuesday, June 4 -- for purchase and (I hope) rental. Do find a way to see this one.

Nanouk Leopold's IT'S ALL SO QUIET: small, truthful Dutch "family film" opens at AFA

What a tiny treasure is this film about father and son farmers in an isolated area of The Netherlands. The father, very old and very infirm, is cared for -- grudgingly but decently -- by his middle-aged son. The son, however, is cared for by no one and apparently never has been. (The little we learn of his growing up indicates that his father was unduly harsh with him.) This is the heart of the sad, engrossing movie, IT'S ALL SO QUIET (Boven is het stil) that is full of small details -- of caring for the elderly as well as for farm animals -- that builds into a quietly moving study of loneliness and the inability of some of us to ever be able to reach out to anyone else.

As adapted (from the novel by Gerbrand Bakker) and directed by Nanouk Leopold (shown at left), the movie may be slow-moving but it is never uninteresting due to its expert detailing and how simple and subtle it consistently is. Ms Leopold keeps her camera ever watchful regarding the connection between father and son and between son and farm and the few other people who attempt to bridge what seems an incredible distance between them and this sad and unresponsive farmer.

As played by the late Jeroen Willems (above, left), whose untimely death occurred soon after the film was completed, the son, Helmer, is a figure of enormous empathy by us viewers, even though the character himself barely seems able to empathize with others or understand himself and his own needs.

The scenes of Helmer caring for his father (played by Henri Garcin, above, left) offers a look at the day-to-day drudgery -- cleaning up the shit, showering the old man, and the increasingly difficult chore of simply carrying him up the stairs -- that goes into the care of the very elderly.

We also slowly get a sense of the kind of upbringing Helmer must have had, in which showing affection of any kind was frowned upon. Now, this man is so socially insecure and untutored in anything approaching the social graces that he simply cannot respond in any normal way to other people's overtures. (The milk delivery man, above, clearly would like to pursue a relationship with Helmer, but can draw no response except embarrassment from our man.)

When more help is finally needed -- with the farming and the caregiving -- a young hired hand named Henk is brought aboard (Martijn Lakemeier, above, right), and it seems that a kind of break-through may come for Helmer. Things do happen and change does occur, but in the barest of increments. Possibilities lie unseen and unused, and the movie remains sad but ever-so-slightly hopeful.

The film begins and ends with some lovely shots of nature, and the natural world breaks into the narrative now and then. But what you'll remember most, I think, are the shots of the faces here, especially that of Willems, who gives a remarkable performance, all the deeper and more resonant due to his character's inability to connect.

Its All So Quiet -- from Jonathan Howell's Big World Pictures and running 91 minutes, in Dutch with English subtitles) -- begins a one-week run this Friday, January 9, at Anthology Film Archives in New York City. Click here for tickets and here for directions. Elsewhere? I'm not certain. But, being from Big World, there will most likely be a DVD on offer eventually and/or some digital streaming.

The French come through again: Gilles Legrand's riveting YOU WILL BE MY SON

Leaping genres like crazy -- family drama to father/son face-off to mystery thriller to socio-economic-class treatise to a film about how the powerful manage to maintain that power -- YOU WILL BE MY SON brings each genre to thrilling, pulsating life, while simultaneously giving us one of the best narrative films ever made about grape-growing and wine-making. The movie is a don't-miss for sophisticated audi-ences who appre-ciate surprise and on-the-mark characterization, along with some succulent drama.

As directed and co-written (with Delphine de Vigan and Laure Gasparrotto) by Gilles Legrand, this fine French film offers something else that we rarely encounter. It allows us to see things from the viewpoint of all the major characters. I don't mean that we get Rashomon-like renderings of what happens here. Instead, the filmmakers (I'm including the writers, too) very skillfully incorporate each person's needs, desires, intentions and especially the reasons for all these right into the action of the film. You might ask, But don't most movies do this? Very few, and even then, not nearly in the manner of this one -- which does it so well that we identify with and understand these characters and consequently cannot help but be -- to a surprising extent -- on the side of each of them.

This would include even the main protagonist, Paul de Marseul, played by the exceptional actor Niels Arestrup (above, and seen recently in A Prophet, War Horse and Sarah's Key), who owns and runs an outstanding vineyard in St. Emilion and will be seen by some as the villain here. I admit that this character, who is so curtly unkind to his own son, will have you quickly inflamed, but as the film progresses, you will come to understand even him, for Paul, finally, must do what is best and right for the grapes.

On the estate and vineyard also live Paul's son (Lorànt Deutsch, above right, of The Joy of Singing) and daughter-in-law (Anne Marivin, above, left). The former tries like crazy to please his father, while the latter barely puts up with the old man, yet keeps family matters humming along as best she can.

Also on (or near) the estate resides another family: the Amelots, the gravely-ill father of whom (the fine Patrick Chenais, above, right) manages the vineyard for Paul and happens to have a son (Nicolas Bridet, above, left) who, in the eyes of Paul, is everything his own son, below, is not.

All this is the set-up for angry clashes that cut deep and profoundly, and while we are not surprised to get them, when they arrive we may not feel quite the way we expected regarding their outcome. (The movie begins with a funeral/cremation, then flashes back and slowly wends its way home.)

M. Legrand's direction is all it needs to be, and so is the conception and execution of the screenplay, with dialog that moves proceedings properly onward while remaining intelligent and real. Performances, to a man and woman, are spot-on.

Class, the proletariat, work and its proper reward all come into play here, and are given the same judgment-free viewpoint that our characters receive. This, too, is bracing. You Will Be My Son should be a mainstream-arthouse hit.

The movie, from Cohen Media Group and running 102 minutes, opens this Friday, August 16, at The Paris theater in New York City. Further playdates around the country should be announced on the film's Cohen website soon.

All about Baha'i: Mohsen Makhmalbaf's odd father & son documentary, THE GARDENER

If a new film called THE GARDENER isn't one of the weirder hybrid documentaries in quite awhile, I'll be surprised. Paid for, I'd guess, by the Committee to Make the Baha'i Religion a Household Word, this nearly (and oddly) humor-free mockumen-tary supposedly tracks the adventures of an Iranian father/
son team as it visits Israel and the huge and beautiful garden taken care of by a disciple of the Baha'i religion, who is happy -- as are all the other acolytes rounded up by the filmmakers -- to give us a grounding in this unusual religion, which appears determined to keep itself abreast of modernity in a changing world. Amen to that, as too many religions seem content to continue mimicking the dark ages.

One of the special enjoyments that go along with a blog (and a no-paying job) like this one is the fact that you can move from covering a sleaze-fest such as The Canyons one day to a film about religion and the betterment of the world the next. Where else could your interest move from A to Z so quickly? Unfortunately in this case, neither film is very good. The writer/director of The Gardener is Mohsen Makhmalbaf, shown at left, who earlier gave us Kandahar and The Silence. Here he is trying something quite different: style-wise, you might call it a kind of hybrid documentary in which father and son explore a religion new to them, as it is banned in their home country of Iran.

So, then, we have what the press materials refer to as "a poetic exploration of religion, in particular the Baha’i faith, in today's world, told from two distinct perspectives: that of the director, and of the cinematographer, his son Maysam, as they travel to make a documentary as Iranians in Israel."

This could be quite something -- if we got much of a sense of what the religion actually comprises. But its adherents we meet here are content to give us generalities and breathless praise. It is to be commended that this religion understands how the world, and it, must change: Baha'i is in favor of the emancipation of women, but do we really to see and hear a schlocky "tree" metaphor being taught to children by one of these adherents?  (Later we are told that "Flowers don't fight." Well, no: they're flowers.) Clearly this religion is less power-hungry than most -- which is great, but also probably accounts for its being such a marginal player.

What's worse, that gardener (above) that the film supposedly "follows" is little more than a cipher about whom we learn the basics and that's it (he's a tenth-generation Baha'i from Papua New Guinea). Actually, there are two gardeners shown here, the other a young man of mixed race who also tends the lovely grounds.

Stylistically, it's all pretty much hand-held with occasional use of a stationery camera. But there are two oddities along the way. One is a back-and-forth movement from color to black-and-white, which at first I thought indicated a kind of dream sequence. But as it is used so often, I think not. Why is it used at all? I have no idea.

A better and more unusual surprise comes toward the finale, when someone, that gardener or the director, makes reference, maybe re religion, to images and/or mirrors. Suddenly mirrors are being used all over the place, from garden (above) to seashore (below), and how they make a frame within the frame is quite interesting. The quality of the color even seems to change slightly in the mirror.

Nearly an hour into this 82-minute movie, son (below) grows annoyed with dad, whom he insists is making a movie to promote religion. So off he goes to the local bazaar and then explores the famous church, mosque and wall that serve as major symbols for, respectively, Christians, Muslims and Jews. He wonders aloud why god would have planted these places of worship so close together. "Wasn't there enough space in the world? Didn't he (Editor's note: yup, it's the male gender) know that his believers would not make good neighbors?"

It seems to me that here was an opportunity to really explore religion and belief, or maybe just to explore that amazing garden -- wait till you see the gorgeous pansies on view! -- and find out more about either or both. Instead we get mostly rudimentary babble, and a few generation-gap moments (son wants speed and maybe casting Brad Pitt as the gardener; dad opts for moment-to-moment reality). We do learn a bit about a religion that's probably worth knowing. Otherwise, the film offers what we would have called, back in the day, diddly-squat.

The exclusive Los Angeles engagement of The Gardener begins today Friday, August 2nd at Laemmle's Music Hall 3 in Beverly Hills and on Friday, August 9, in New York City at the Quad Cinema. Any further screenings (you can request one by clicking here), I imagine, will be listed on the film's web site. Eventually, I'd guess, we'll be able to see the movie on DVD, VOD and digital outlets.