With sad,sweet,funny swan song LIFE OF RILEY we wave good-bye to a French new-waver

Watching Alain Resnais' newest -- and final -- film, LIFE OF RILEY can't help but be a sad experience for those of us who loved the guy's work, even if, for me at least, it took some decades to fully appreciate that work. Memory is one of this fabled French filmmaker's major themes, and I don't think that memory -- for young people, anyway -- has quite the major place in one's life that it occupies in later years. Resnais was also an experimental filmmaker right up until the end. Yet his experiments were always coupled to narrative in a way that, with some extra work, of course, one could begin to fathom meaning, while appreciating the style.

The filmmaker, shown at right, died earlier this year, and it is difficult to watch Life of Riley (Aimer, boire et chanter is the original French title) -- based, as several of his films have been, on the the work of British playwright Alan Ayckbourn -- without imagining that Resnais knew quite well during the filming how little time he had left. I suspect his widow, Sabine Azéma, (pictured below, right), who is also one of the stars of the movie, would know for certain. The rest of us will just have to watch and wonder and enjoy. That last action, for Resnais fans, at least, will not be difficult, for he has given the movie a wonderfully "fake" look that combines gorgeous shots of the countryside and expensive estates with very obvious stage sets, and then occasionally places his actors in close-up against hand-drawn backgrounds that bring to mind comic book art.

Even if you've seen the rest of Resnais' work, you won't have experienced anything quite like this. The story itself is a hoot and a half about death and dying. The title character George Riley has been told by his doctor and friend (Hippolyte Girardot, below, left) that he has little time left to live.

Not only the doctor's wife (Ms Azema) but her best friend (the standout performer, Caroline Sihol, at left, two photos above and just below; with Michel Vuillermoz) are both former flames of Riley and of course are bereft by this news.

As is Riley's most recent love (Sandrine Kiberlain, below, left) who has recently split from George into the arms of a nearby French farmer (André Dussollier, below, right). The women are beside themselves, each desperately needing to see herself as George's one true love, while their men are at sea due to their women's sudden surge of independence and possible infidelity. Oh, and did I mention that some of these characters are simultaneously rehearsing a play which is due to be performed very soon.

Now, this is utter artifice -- on one level as silly as can be -- and I suspect that the original.Ayckbourn play was much funnier that what we see here. Yet out of it, Resnais manages to show up humanity's lack and hypocrisy in a way that is more sad than funny. And the film's final scene, in which we at last see a character other than our ever-present sextet, is most unusual. In it, the daughter of one of the couples, played by Alba Gaïa Kraghede Bellugi, makes an appearance and somehow takes the movie into a deeper, darker contemplation of death's inevitability and finality.

If Life of Riley is nowhere near as interesting or layered a film as Resnai' most recent endeavors, Wild Grass and You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet, it is still a film to be seen and savored -- for its performances, style and the fact that, having to work on what seems to have been less and less of a budget, the filmmaker nonetheless found a way to make his film so affordably and stylishly.

M. Resnais' final work -- from Kino Lorber and running 108 minutes -- opens in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema tomorrow, Friday, October 24. Elsewhere? Shocking as this may seem, no Los Angeles showing is yet scheduled. But the film will play at the Cinema St. Louis as part of the St. Louis International Film Festival on November 20 and 22, and then on December 5, it will play at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (unless, of course, Scott Walker wins his race for Governor once again and closes the school down).

BREATHLESS at 50: Restored print of the Godard classic opens at Film Forum

OK.  TrustMovies has got to say it. He just doesn't "get" Godard. In fact, he thinks the guy is probably the most over-rated movie-maker of our time. 

Whoosh!  That's the sound of half an audience disappearing all at once.   (Or maybe not.  For whatever reason this blog attracts younger readers, too, and I wonder what they will make of this much-heralded revival.  They at least may not bring to the viewing of it quite the obeisance of the older set.)  I do get that the guy was ground-breaking in his day.  Godard, below, has long been good at creating, perhaps straddling, the cutting edge:  Witness Weekend, even if the movie eventually feels like a nail in the noodle, and Le Petit Soldat remains, I think, my favorite of his work.

Yet I was actually looking forward to seeing BREATHLESS again after nearly half a century (I hadn't been much taken with it first-time-around).  And still, it severely disappoints.  What seemed "hip" then now curdles. Belmondo's attitude approaches the smarmy and reflects, I believe, Godard's casual misogynism.  Though new at the time, the idea of characters that break from "real life" to look at and speak into the camera has, in the interim, been done to death.  More important, what the Belmondo character (I use that word loosely, as he is but a bundle of cutesy, sexy tics: the director's wish-fulfillment) has to say is nothing major: mostly cheap-jack philosophizing, again a mouthpiece for the movie-maker. When, between the sheets, after knowing nothing about any authors our heroine has brought up to him, Michel suddenly refers to Franco-American rapprochement.  As though this two-bit hood would understand the meaning of that phrase, let alone be able to use it cleverly. Again, the director can't resist an opportunity.

Speaking of the irresistible: Godard cannot resist constant referencing, as well.  While I picked up a number of these, the film's press kit contains four full pages of listed reference -- to cinema, literature, art, fashion and more.  This sort of thing has always appealed to the cognoscenti -- "Aren't we in the know! -- and our own Quentin Tarantino has clearly taken it to heart.

Though the movie's pace in its day seemed jazzy, near-frenetic, seen now, it makes for some longueurs.  The saving graces are its cinematography (by the great Raul Coutard) and its stars: Jean-Paul Belmondo, whose smug, mug face burst across the screen like nothing we'd ever seen (they had in France; he'd made a number of films prior to this one).  His body, too -- he's topless for much of the movie -- is near-perfect, in itself a work of art. His co-star, Jean Seberg, has a face to die for -- open, sweet, welcoming --  even if Godard's consigning her to dizzy femme fatale smacks further of misogynism. Yet you can't fault the performers; they're as real as the movie permits. But that finale, which flirted with sentimentality fifty years ago, now appears downright mushy. 

Breathless was a slap in the kisser to what the surfers on the New Wave thought of "conventional" French cinema.  And for that it deserves regard. Godard, like Andy Warhol, would excel at nouvelle.  These "artists" -- provocateurs, more like -- forced us to look at things differently.  Bravo. But this is not the same thing as creating an actual work of art.

As for the new print of Breathless, it looks good, all right -- except for one thing. If you don't understand French, prepare to be hugely annoyed. Why on earth would anyone take such trouble to restore a film, including having new subtitles commissioned (from Rialto regular Lenny Borger) and then leave them in the same old-time style of crappy, often unreadable bleached-white? These "new" subtitles look just as subtitles did in the days before anyone thought to make them yellow, or border their white with an outline of black so that the words could easily be read against, say, white sheets -- around, in and between which this movie spends a good deal of time.  Whatever the reason, we who must read are left floundering. The saving grace, of course, is that the dialog isn't that great to begin with.

Breathless, which, if you haven't seen it, you probably should (you want to join us cognoscenti, right?), and if you have, you'll probably feel you must revisit, arrives via the restoration royalty at Rialto Pictures -- Bruce Goldstein and Adrienne Halpern -- and opens at Film Forum on Friday, May 28, for a two-week run.  Further appearances -- cities, dates and links to theaters -- can be found here.

Laurent/De Baecque's TWO IN THE WAVE tracks the Truffaut/Godard relationship

If you're a film buff of a certain age (say, 50 and up), there's not a chance you won't want to see the new French docu-
mentary TWO IN THE WAVE. Produced and directed by Emmanuel Laurent (below, left) and written and narrated by Antoine De Baecque (below, right), the film tells of the very close relationship between two icons of the French New Wave -- Francois Truffaut (on the poster, at right) and Jean-Luc Godard (poster, left), which went south as the two men grew older.

For those of us who pretty much cut our serious movie-going teeth by nibbling on the New Wave (The 400 Blows was released in the US at the end of 1959; Breathless made its American debut at the beginning of 1961) and have continued with our passion since then, this film will be, I suspect, both provocative and disappointing -- the former because of our interest in and fascination with both figures, the latter because, for all the information provided here, not much of it strikes me as all that new or revealing -- not, at least, if you have kept up with things over the passing years.

Still, the history we see and hear via old newsreels, and the clips we watch from many of the films of the two men (and others: Rouch, Bergman, Demy, Varda) will not fail to fascinate and may interest you in seeing some of these works again (younger viewers for the first time). I have no idea which of the two filmmakers our documentarians prefer (or even if they have a preference), but it seemed to me that the warmth of Truffaut and the iciness of Godard come through quite well here. Or maybe it's just that the latter is so... "aloof."

In any case, the bitter falling-out that occurred after the students protests of  May '68 (and was already fomenting, according to Laurent and De Baecque), was never to be healed, at least not in Truffaut's lifetime. The documentary does not really give much meaning to this rift, other than these two seminal film-makers did not care for each other's later work.  After collaborating quite successfully on Breathless (for which Truffaut is rarely given much credit: he gave the original story to Godard), the two filmmakers seemed bent on going their own cinematic way, with much more popular success coming to Truffaut.

The most interesting part of the film deals with actor Jean-Pierre Leaud (above): Truffaut's Antonie Doinel and Godard's leading man in several movies.  Leaud, now in his mid-60s, clearly felt buffeted by the directors' dispute and seems a bit lost without one of his mentors.

Probably the silliest and certainly the most unnecessary aspect of the documentary is the use of that fine actress Isild Le Besco.  I'm such a fan of her work that I could easily be pleased by her reading the proverbial phone book.  Here she is given the visual equivalent of that: Without uttering a word, she simply looks through the pages of books, magazine articles and newspaper clippings of what appears to be the very history that we are being treated to. Do the filmmakers want us to see ourselves in Ms Le Besco?  Or is she some sort of stand-in for the research work that they have done.  Yes or no, so what?   Her presence adds some feminine appeal to the film, which, besides the quick snips of the twosome's leading ladies, has almost none (it's all the guys, guys, guys), but still, this is a screwy way to provide it.

Yet as a walk down film-buff memory lane, the movie delivers, taking us back to a time when so much seemed possible -- from film, from politics, from the world.  Seems to me that film, thanks to these two and so many others, has more than held up its part of the bargain.

Two in the Wave, a Lorber Films release, opens this Wednesday, May 19, for a two-week run at New York City's Film Forum.  You can check performance times and dates here.