Júlia Murat's PENDULAR explores creativity and sex in a Brazilian warehouse loft

When Júlia Murat's Brazilian movie, Found Memories, opened in New York back in 2012, TrustMovies was extremely impressed -- with its enormous beauty, its quietude, and the unobtrusive formality of its mise en scène. That film took place in a lovely and quaint old country town. Ms Murat's new film, PENDULAR, is set in the midst of a major city, in a somewhat abandoned warehouse that has been converted into a loft by and for a couple of artists -- she's a dancer, he's a sculptor -- that they now use as both work space and living quarters. One must assume the two are somewhat successful, since the furnishings and accoutrements with which they've surrounded themselves are rather impressive (they've got a particularly beautiful kitchen and bath).

Ms Murat, shown at left, lets us see some of their respective work (more of hers than his) and it looks interesting enough, if nothing all that original or special.

As to their character, the filmmaker keeps that pretty much at bay. They are both mostly fixated on their work, except when they're having sex, which is somewhat frequently throughout this 108-minute movie.

The sex is hot and heavy, and while neither actor -- Raquel Karro (shown above and below, who's both a dancer and actress) and Rodrigo Bolzan (below and further below) -- is drop-dead gorgeous, both performers are certainly attractive enough of face and figure that watching them either clothed or nude proves no problem.

We meet their friends and co-workers, briefly, off-and-on, and we're privy to snatches of this twosome's conversation -- though not all that much. Even then, most of it deals in some respect with their art. He needs more work space for his (maybe) massive sculptures; she gives in, if somewhat grudgingly. When they fight, each uses the other's art as his or her weapon.

Once again. Ms Murat's visual sense and formal composition is a consistent pleasure to view (the cinematographer is Soledad Rodríguez). Whether her heroine is trying to track the path of a odd cable wire that ends within the warehouse (but where does it begin?) or dancing or even fucking, the design is just fine.

Eventually, though, you may want more. I know I did. Late in the film, the man expresses a major personal need (I'll let you discover what this is), and conveniently (or inconveniently, depending on your viewpoint), the woman suddenly finds herself able to provide this  That leads to the movie's major drama and climax.

This might be enough, if only we knew more fully just who these characters are. Despite decent performances, using what little Murat and her co-writer Matias Mariani provide, the two actors are unable to manage this, and we have to content ourselves with some minor ruminations on work and art, watching Ms Karro in action, and the viewing of a good deal of pleasurable sex. Hey, that may be more than enough for a lot of you out there.

From Big World Pictures, Pendular -- which could as easily refer to some of our heroine's dance moves as to our hero's heavy-hung sexual equipment -- opens this Friday, November 30, in Chicago at the Facets Cinematheque. In December it will also play the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Time and Space, Ltd. in Hudson, New York. Click here (and scroll down) to keep abreast of all currently scheduled (and possibly more upcoming) playdates, cities and venues. 

STAYING VERTICAL: Alain Guiraudie is back once more -- with yet another jaw-dropper

People do the strangest things in the films of Frenchman, Alain Guiraudie, but damned if the guy doesn't make those things somehow work. After The King of Escape and to herald the debut of Stranger by the Lake, the FSLC in 2014 hosted a retrospective of Guiraudie's work which was in itself quite eye-opening. Now comes his latest movie, STAYING VERTICAL (Rester vertical) and it is every bit as bizarre, riveting and entertaining as the rest of his oeuvre. And definitely not for the mainstream crowd.

M. Guiraudie, pictured at right, looks to my eyes remarkably like an older version of his leading man in this new film (played by Damien Bonnard, shown below and further below). The fact that M. Bonnard plays a filmmaker who's having some trouble creating his latest work, simply adds to this connection. The plot of Staying Vertical ricochets all over the place, introducing characters who interact with each, often sexually, in ways that might seem crazy in a film by anyone else. But for Guiraudie pansexuality and polysexuality seem the norm, as does sexuality between folk of all ages, young adult to grandpappy.

And, yes, not only are sex organs on full display here (as is often the case with Guiraudie), you can expect to see the male ones engorged. (M. Bonnard, unless a prosthetic was used, is very well endowed.) And yet there is no trace of the snickering, shocked or shameful here. Sex, as usual with this filmmaker, is to be enjoyed, if often at a cost, especially when all the rest of the equation -- need, desire, jealousy, and the lot -- come into play.

The sex here, bizarre as it sometimes may look, is also more grounded and vital than in the other Guiraudie films I've seen. For instance, the first time we see the leading lady's sex, in voluptuous close-up, she is about to be pleasured orally by Bonnard's character. We soon after see a similar shot, but then -- suddenly -- a newborn emerges from that orifice. (India Hair, above, with rifle, plays this woman, and she she brings a very unusual combination of need, anger and strength to the role.)

There's a new wrinkle here, however: the introduction into Guiraudie's work of a baby and what this infant means to its father, mother, and the world at large. What this poor kid goes through may surprise and shock you -- wolf bait, anyone? -- but his appearance and importance to the film adds immeasurably to the humanity that holds this odd and careening movie together.

Unusual sexual couplings (even one of the medical sort, above), the difficulty of commitment, sheep and wolves, and anal sex as an aid to euthanasia -- all this and more are offered up in the filmmaker's look at what may seem to many viewers, TrustMovies included, as some kind of alternate universe. But it is one that we might gainfully learn from. And, oh, did I mention that this film is sometimes very funny, too? (The headline that appears on a newspaper toward the film's finale is as good as anything the National Enquirer has ever given us.)

All of Guiraudie's movies, I think, are political -- remember: he also gave us, back in 2001, that marvelous The Old Dream That Moves (Ce vieux rêve qui bouge) -- and this one is, too. Yet, if you try to pin it down to some single idea or another, it seems to half evaporate. Morality, creativity, religion, autonomy, the self vs the other: the connections are all here, but what they might mean dances deliciously in front of you and remains just out of reach. Yet the movie's hold on you does not let go.

I would not have missed this film for anything. And I'll want to see it again, down the road. But recommending it? Only if you're willing to drop, at least temporarily, your preconceptions and go with Guiraudie's flow. The rewards are spectacular. But they'll probably come to you piecemeal, and over some time, post-viewing.

From Strand Releasing and running 100 minutes, Staying Vertical opens this Friday, January 20, in New York City at the FSLC's Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, and at the IFC Center. In Los Angeles, you can see it beginning this Friday at Laemmle's Royal, and (at morning screenings only on Saturday and Sunday: think of it as going to temple or church) at the Playhouse 7 in Pasadena. Eventually, it will arrive on DVD and digital, so if you're not on either coast, hold on.

YOUNG & BEAUTIFUL: Ozon's newest tracks a teenage prostitute & creates a stunning new star

"Ohhhh... she's beautiful!" my spouse whispered as the camera lingered over the gorgeous and leggy new actress (whom we'll bet becomes an overnight star), Marine Vacth, who plays and quite well, the lead in François Ozon's new movie YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL (Jeune & jolie). M. Ozon handed me my favorite film of 2013, In the House, so I suppose one cannot expect a filmmaker as prolific as he to come up with something that good every time. (He's made 17 full-length films in as many years, plus myriad short movies.) Though it will not be my favorite film for 2014, still, this one is plenty good enough: thoughtful, stylish, intelligent, well-acted by all concerned and with a theme -- teenage prostitution -- that should certainly corral a portion of the arthouse crowd.

Ozon, shown at right, is up to his usual tricks here by not insisting on what point is being made. He lays it all out, very well, very intelligently and artfully, and lets us make of it what we will. This does not mean that he is fudging or waffling, however. He's just not a filmmaker who likes to drive his points home. His movie bears more than passing resemblance to a film made for French TV and known over here as Student Services (Mes chères études), by Emmanuelle Bercot, about a college student who hooks on the side to help pay her bills. In Young & Beautiful, however, our heroine is getting paid for sex not out of necessity but more, perhaps, for the sense of power, control and occupation the trade allows her. She is also exploring what sex is and means, for both her and her partners, whilst separating it rather thoroughly from any emotional content.

It's that latter point that will, down the road, present the most trouble for Isabelle (the character played by Ms Vacth, above), who begins the film while on a family vacation by getting involved with a slightly older German student (Lucas Prisor) and losing her virginity with barely so much as a goodbye. She evidently felt nothing pleasurable or otherwise -- as I suspect lots of young girls these days experience with their first time (and maybe always have). With the young, everything is rushed.

Yet Isabelle knows that this sex thing is marketable with men, and soon she is surfing the web, posting availability and finding partners who will pay (though not always as much as was promised). We see her engaged in various couplings with men quite different in type and age. Her favorite partner, in fact, is the older man, Georges, played by Johan Leysen (above); the rest are all just johns.

What happens in the film is both expected (in the ways society handles this sort of thing) and not (in the manner that Ozon handles his characterization of Isabelle). Thanks to his quietly probing but never insistent viewpoint and to Ms Vacth's very believable characterization -- not exactly confused but certainly exploring: Isabelle is only 17, remember -- we end up with an unusual film that offers a hot-button topic done coolly and credibly.

As is often the case with Ozon, there are bonuses aplenty, starting with the appearance, late in the film, of Charlotte Rampling, in a small but wonderful role that the actress fills to the brim. There is also a lovely, sad chapter around mid-way that explores Isabelle' relationship and love/sex life with a boy her own age (Laurent Delbecque, above). The difference in maturity between the genders, along with the characterization of the girl's inner life against the boy's outer has rarely been shown so clearly and pointedly.

Isabelle's family, too, is shown in all its ravaged glory. Mom (Géraldine Pailhas, above, left) is divorced, but step-dad (the ever-present and always fine Frédéric Pierrot) is a decent guy, while (Fantin Ravat) is everything you'd want and expect in a kid brother -- and twice as adorable. Yes, this family has its problems, but because it is made up of relatively decent people, you can't look to it for anything approaching a full explanation of Isabelle's unusual behavior.

In fact, considering some of Ozon's visuals of Paris (such as the one above), you might more helpfully look at society, media and culture for explanation. In any case, Young & Beautiful -- from Sundance Selects/IFC Films and running 95 minutes -- opens here in the USA this Friday, April 25, in New York City at the IFC Center. I can't find it playing anywhere in the Los Angeles area -- that's surprising -- but as it will appear on VOD simultaneous with its theatrical release, you should be able to view it in practically all major markets across the USA.

Joe Swanberg's back with AUTOEROTIC -- at IFC Center & its Midnight series on VOD--and a co-director, Adam Wingard

Is Joe Swanberg ever far away? I mean, come on: This guy, one of the daddies of mumblecore, since 2005 has made a film or two each year (three already this year!), acting as (off and on) director, writer, producer, cinematographer, editor, and actor. (Can you "act as actor"? Sure you can!) He's fertile, give him that, even if his films are generally disposable entities that do not exactly hit profundity's G-Spot. And yet, as a filmmaker, Swanberg is likely to stick in your mind, as much for the positive things (energy, consistency, and a kind of weird formalism within the m'core genre) as the negative (repetitiveness, telling us stuff we already know, and the general inability to put a bunch of loose scenes into a thoughtful whole).

His best work so far has been 2009s Alexander the Last, in which, using a first-class actress for a change (Jess Weixler) and a story that actually went somewhere, he rose above, for the first time, the typical mumblecore longueurs. With AUTOEROTIC (not his newest work -- that would be Uncle Kent -- but the latest to be released), Swanberg (shown at right) is firmly, as per usual, into sexual territory, exploring, as previously, the continuing estrangement of men and women via video, the internet, inanimate objects--and the need to watch & compare rather than to be & do.

Apologies to Adam Wingard, shown at left, whom I completely left out of my original post, as both co-director and co-writer, as well as editor of this film. He also looks a lot like the fellow who plays the lead in the film's final story (see below), but as he is not listed in the cast, I may very well be mistaken.

Several sets of partners inhabit Autoerotic, and as you might expect from the title, their sexual habits trend toward the solo and masturbatory. Even when there's a twosome, you can bet one that one party of the pair is nearly unaware of the other -- and her needs. The first of these is a video spanking session, above, that makes voyeurs of both its participants and us viewers.

After the next coupling, above, the guy buries himself under a pillow, as his significant other tries to coax him out of himself. No good: The poor guy suffers from that terrible male bugaboo, I-think-my-dick's-too-small syndrome. Whether it is or not, the filmmaker and his actor give us no chance to judge, but when the girlfriend finally tells the guy, "You're a fucking asshole," few viewers will disagree. Then, entering unusual (for Swanberg) fantasy territory, the tale gets an odd and not-too-believable twist, resulting in the first of several autoerotic endeavors.

Another story lets us watch a horny young girl (above) who can't seem to stop masturbating until a friend suggests she might be a "gasper" -- one who auto-eroticizes via asphyxiation. She does try this at home to dismal affect until her boyfriend (played by the director) hits upon a way in which they can both enjoy the game.

The best of the tales spins around a couple (she's pregnant, unable to orgasm; he's helpless/hopeless, in bed and out) who invite over a girl who promises to help with that orgasm. In the film's funniest scene, his threesome fantasy goes unrequited. In the role of the wife, an actually pregnant Kris Swanberg (above, top, and the director's wife, I am assuming) proves the sexiest maternity mama I've yet seen: fun, funny and sensual as hell. Eat your heart out, Demi Moore.

The final segment offers a dolt (above, left -- and I am pretty sure that is Mr. Wingard in the  role), who likes to make videos of his own couplings. He is paid a visit by a former partner about to marry and who now wants him to delete all their video love-play. What transpires proves, as Swanberg loves to do again and again, that men are exceedingly dumb boys, and that their women, unfortunately, deserve them. The visual/verbal punchline to this segment enables the movie to end with a good joke.

Swanberg continues his penchant for formality in odd places, connections and disconnections, and his struggle to prove that, where sex is concerned,  "I caint get no satisfaction!" The fellow surely makes his point, yet he can't do much with it or go anywhere beyond it. As a result, the 72-minute movie entertains, off and on, but breaks little new ground.

Autoerotic, from IFC Films, opens theatrically this Friday, July 22, in New York City at the IFC Center (late-night only), and has been playing on VOD via the IFC Midnight series since June 29, and continuing through September 29.  Your move... 

Gainsbourg fest continues at FIAF with LOVER; only three more movies left!

The French Institute/Alliance Francaise (FIAF) tribute to and retrospective of the work of British/French film star Charlotte Gainsbourg, shown at right, continues apace. Earlier this week TrustMovies caught one of her more interesting and highly sexual outtings,  Lover (Amoreuse).  Many of her films feature cutting edge sexuality, whether represented visually (along with ultra-violence, as in the current AntiChrist) or philosophically and visually, as in Amoreuse.

Directed by Jacques Doillon (shown below), Amoreuse follows the "adventures" of a young woman, attracted to two different men, who tries to be morally consistent and genuine but manages only to fail pretty miserably.  The men fare no better, though the wiser of the two (played by Yvan Attal, Ms Gainsbrough's main squeeze over the past decade) I think retains his sanity and perhaps his self-respect. The other fellow, the lithe and lovely Thomas Langmann, offers such a case of the jealous jitters throughout that you fear for his (and the relationship's) future.

Gainsbourg is her usual, pert, boyish and delightful self.  I can think of few actresses who are not raging beauties who mange to offer the camera as much charisma as does Charlotte.  In thinking about her many movies, it's as though she is but one single character in them all (except maybe the fine verison of Jane Eyre she did with William Hurt).  But that single character grows and learns and changes, while expressing so much variation that she never begins to bore us (not even in the travesty that is AntiChrist).

Early in Amoreuse, when her lover returns from a trip, so delighted is she that she simply lifts him off the ground and carries him across the room (Langmann is slim enough that she can do this), and what a few memorably charming moments this makes.  In time her character begins to look like a kind of femme fatale.  "I can't fuck you after he's been inside you," the Langmann character notes of the Attal character's recent incursion. "Your womb is poisoned."  You don't get this sort of  dialog in American-made drama, comedy or sex movies -- a template for all of which is found in Amoreuse.

In the next two weeks you'll have the chance to see the following three Gainsbourg films.  I'd advise a visit.  Maybe several.

L’Effrontée

February 16 at 4pm

Directed by Claude Miller, 1985. Color. 96 min.

With Charlotte Gainsbourg, Clothilde Baudon, Bernadette Laffont, Jean-Claude Brialy

Note: No English subtitles

Winner of the Prix Louis-Delluc, L’Effrontée earned Gainsbourg the “Most Promising Actress” César for this, her first starring role. As a teenager in rural France, Charlotte (Gainsbourg) is frustrated and bored with home life. But a young pianist upends her world with talk of opportunity elsewhere, far from her family.  (Lovely, smart early work from both Ms Gainsbourg and director Claude Miller, who last year gave a us A Secret.  A must.: TM)

Charlotte for Ever

February 16 at 12:30 & 7:30pm

Directed by Serge Gainsbourg, 1986. Color. 94 min.

With Charlotte Gainsbourg, Serge Gainsbourg, Roland Bertin, Roland Dubillard

Note: This film contains R-rated material

A rare, not-to-be-missed screening of this notorious and misunderstood film. Serge Gainsbourg wrote, directed, and starred in this dark and fascinating tale of a screenwriter grieving over his wife’s unexpected death. Suicidal, he turns for affection to the only remaining link to his wife—his daughter.  (This is another that TM hopes to see -- and cover.)

Kung-fu master!

February 23 at 12:30, 4 & 7:30pm

Agnès Varda, 1988. Color. 80 min.

With Jane Birkin, Mathieu Demy, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Lou Doillon

Mary-Jane (Birkin), a divorced mother of two, grows close to a teenage boy she met at her daughter’s party. Through conversations, vacations, and video games, the pair’s relationship evolves in a way that confuses their families and even themselves. Varda’s empathetic direction anchors this delicate, but often powerful story.  (This film is another that TM intends to view and cover.)

About FIAF

FIAF, a not-for-profit organization created in 1898 by American Francophiles, is one of the largest and most respected centers of French-American activities in the United States, widely known as the home of New York’s foremost French language school, the leading all-French library in the country, and New York’s only performing arts center dedicated to French and Francophone culture. FIAF is dedicated to encouraging interaction and better understanding between French-speaking and American communities by creating programs in the arts and education that promote and enhance knowledge of French and Francophone culture.

CinémaTuesdays is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State agency, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Special thanks to MK2.

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LISTING SUMMARY

What:	FIAF presents CinémaTuesdays: Charlotte Forever
When:	Times and titles detailed above.
Where:	FIAF - Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th Street (between Park and Madison Avenues)
Admission:	$10; $7 students; Free for FIAF Members
Tickets:	fiaf.org | 212 307 4100
Information:	fiaf.org | 212 355 6160
Transportation:	Subway - 4, 5, 6, N, R and W to 59th Street & Lexington Avenue;
	F to 63rd Street & Lexington Avenue; E to 53rd Street & 5th Avenue
	Bus - M1, M2, M3, M4, Q31 to 59th Street; M5 to 58th Street

Photo of Ms Gainsbourg courtesy of smokeye.wordpress.com

Photo of Jacques Doillon by Jeff Vespa, courtesy of WireImage.com