French film buff heaven: Huppert & Depardieu ground Guillaume Nicloux's VALLEY OF LOVE

An ex-Californian like me does not tend to think of "love" when he ponders Death Valley, located in the eastern part of the state near the Nevada border and considered by many to be the hottest place on earth. Yet that must have been the primary thing on the mind of French director Guillaume Nicloux when he titled his new film, which takes place there, VALLEY OF LOVE. What a strange and commanding -- the latter adjective thanks in large part to its two stars, Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu -- movie this is!

M. Nicloux, shown at left, has been making odd movies for nearly three decades now, very few of which I've seen (it's more the mainstream/arthouse foreign films that find their way into distribution over here). One of my favorites of his is the very dark and disturbing Hanging Offense (Cette femme-là), which I caught at one of the FSLC's Rendezvous-With French Cinemas more than a decade ago. In his new film, which he both wrote and directed (this filmmaker usually writes -- or at least co-writes or adapts -- all his work), a character named Isabelle and another named Gérard meet in Death Valley because their recently deceased son (he was a suicide) has written them each a letter asking them to come to this sunken, sweltering place, where he promises, if they arrive, he will, too.

Right: How would grieving parents -- even if, as it seems, they were not very good parents -- be able not to follow these instructions?  The actors appear to be playing some version of themselves here, and many of us will know that M. Depardieu lost his eldest son, Guillaume, to an untimely death from pneumonia at aged 37. Ms Huppert, so far as I know (TrustMovies tends not to much follow the personal lives of actors), has not lost a child, but she played a woman who is in the process of doing just that in the 2012 film, Dormant Beauty). Further, because these two French icons first worked together on Going Places (1974) and then again in Loulou (1980), the stage would seem set for something strangely personal, if nothing else.

The characters, Isabelle (above) and Gérard (below), do meet near the beginning of Valley of Love, and for the next 90 minutes, they spar and bond and break to spar again. The chemistry between these two is just about perfect. It's nothing hugely charismatic or showy, however, but rather the chemistry found in something closer to people who have known each other -- and very well -- over a long period of time. The behavior here is spot-on in terms of how former spouses act/react off each other.

That behavior mostly carries the movie, once Nicloux's slender plot is unveiled. What happens can be interpreted, I think, in various ways. The most obvious is that, yes, something otherworldly has taken place. But one might also say that these two highly vulnerable people have been somehow high-jacked -- self-brainwashed -- into belief.

Either way (or via some other theory), the movie works, thanks to the simplicity and truth in the actor's performances. If the death of a child is the worst thing that can happen to a parent (I think it is), when that death is by suicide, this takes the situation into a realm beyond measure.

Yet that valley of the title seems somehow correct by film's end. Was that what the couple's son was attempting to provide the two? However you choose to view what happens here, the actors and M. Nicloux take us on the kind of metaphysical/mystical/geographical trip that you very rarely encounter, and for this alone, the film is worth seeing.

The vistas, as you might expect, and often breathtaking, and the movie offers up a palpable sense of transporting heat. The small supporting cast is fine, too, but the film belong to its iconic stars.

Valley of Love, from Strand Releasing, opens this Friday, March 25, in New York City at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal. In the weeks to come, it will hit another ten cities and theaters. (Click here and then click on Screenings to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.) In any case, Strand usually and eventually offers DVD and streaming opportunities, so hang on, those of you who do not live near any of these dozen cities.

Chile, Pinochet, Allende and the sea: Patricio Guzmán's placid, lovely THE PEARL BUTTON

Those of us who have followed the career of writer/director Patricio Guzmán have seen this documentary filmmaker grow and change from a young(er) man covering the dreadful fall and murder of the democratically-elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende -- thanks to the nefarious and illegal efforts of our own nation and its sleazy right-wing leaders -- to an older, seasoned and increa-singly mystical man who must continue covering the horrible events that happen-ed to his country.

With his latest effort, THE PEARL BUTTON, we see the filmmaker (Guzmán is shown at right) moving from the angst and anger of his youth into even more of the quiet, calm acceptance of what has been -- together with the kind of mystical, encompassing understanding that seems to come to some of us with age --  that was such a part of this filmmaker's last documentary, Nostalgia for the Light. While Nostalgia/Light looked up and outward into the skies and to the universe to find solace in the understanding that both the stars out there and the bones of the Chilean dead (and living) are made of calcium, The Pearl Button considers the great sea that partially encompasses Chile and how it, too, has served as solace, provider and graveyard for its people.

This is not to say that, by accepting the past, Guzman is in any way condoning it. Hardly. This man appears to have lived and worked to do as much as he can to keep Chile's awful past current in the minds of his countrymen. It's just that he is now doing it in a more thoughtful, philosophical, even poetic manner -- and the result is a movie that moves us via its beauty, as well as its unearthing of not-so-ancient horrors.

In fact, the Allende regime, together with its disgusting replacement by Pinochet and his minions, does not even come up until past the film's halfway point (the documentary lasts but 79 minutes). Prior to this, we get a strange and amazing history of the indigenous tribes of Patagonia (above), in Chile's southern extreme: how they lived via the sea, how they devoted their bodies (below) to providing a canvas for their art and myths, and how they were at last wiped out almost completely in a genocide that pre-dated by maybe a century or more Pinochet's attempt to wipe out Chile's "socialist" population.

Visually The Pearl Button offers some gorgeous location shots of Chile's ocean venues, its glacial areas, as well as its more verdant locations. We see rain and ice and the original native population -- what's left of them, anyway. We meet poets and scientists and those natives themselves, and finally a few of the folk involved in and with the many "disappeared" who were tortured and murdered during the Pinochet regime.

This is a constant in Guzman's films, though here it is used in a manner much more quiet and subdued than ever before. In fact, there are really only two major disappeared people who are important to the film. One is a young schoolmate of Patricio's who drowns and is never found (the first "disappeared," the filmmaker call him); the other is Marta Ugarte, a woman whom we know mostly by the extraordinary and extraordinarily awful manner in which she died. This is told to us quietly, as is all else in the film, but Ms Ugarte stands in remarkably well for the rest of the "disappeared." As for the impunity offered to so many of the torturers and murderers, "This is," notes Guzmán, "like killing the dead twice."

The movie is, by turns, pantheistic, mystical, challenging, thoughtful, poetic, and sad. We see geography as destiny, and history as horror that only repeats itself. If Guzmán gives this genocide to us filtered through a kind of mysticism, given a subject this awful -- this difficult to comprehend and tolerate -- I am beginning to wonder how else it can be done? I'm stymied. If you have a suggestion, please feel free to offer it up.

Meanwhile, The Pearl Button, from Kino Lorber -- the title of which harks back to those aboriginal natives and one of their number, dubbed Jemmy Button, who (just as does the main character in Malick's classic, The New World) travels to England to discover "civilization" and is paid for his trouble with that titular button -- opens this Friday, October 23, in New York City at the IFC Center and Lincoln Plaza Cinema. In the weeks to follow, it will open in seven more cities. You can click here (then scroll down) to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.