FIAF's comedy series takes off with the U.S. premiere of Jean-Christophe Meurisse's APNEE

Fascinating, annoying -- even sometimes actually funny -- but always interesting, this first film by French theater director Jean-Christophe Meurisse is determined to knock the socks off its audience. Indeed, we remain barefoot just about throughout. Beginning with a threesome -- two men and a woman -- who arrive at city hall in bridal gowns and insist that they be married to each other, after which the civil servant who tries to reason with them is driven 'round the bend, we then get the movie's opening credits, during which the three ice skate -- and quite professionally, too -- in the nude. (This may be not actually be our three actors, since each is hidden behind a facial mask.)

Yes, these are ground-breaking scenes, of a sort, as is what follows: the three, as shown above, taking a bath in a showroom window. Our little group are clearly troublemakers, transgressors who, more than anything else, simply want to flip our declining civilization the bird. M. Meurisse, shown at left, who both wrote and directed APNEE, is nothing if not determined. And that determination begins to wear one down long before the movie finds its finale. Yet, so different is it in its dead-set dedication from almost any other movie you'll have encountered, that it proves very hard, even for a moment, to avert your gaze.

And so, along the kind of road trip the threesome takes, we tackle everything sacrosanct from religion and family to art and consumerism, marriage and sex (though, as concerns the latter, neither our two guys nor their woman seem all that interested or able to even enjoy sex. Or. come to think of it, much of anything else, save making trouble.

What all this accomplishes is to turn our threesome into something symbolic rather than real or human. They exist to make a point, and damned it they don't make it -- over and over again. The three lead performers -- above, left to right: Céline Fuhrer, Maxence Tual and Thomas Scimeca -- are attractive and sometime funny, but they exist in the vacuum that Meurisse has created, so it's difficult to breathe or grow.

Still, that vacuum is an original, all right, and it's an interesting one. Highlights include a visit to a "typical" empty-nest family, in which the trio questions the elders about their family life, and to a gorgeous village-by-the-sea in which we meet a tubby postman (above, right) who turns into a kind of muse for our boys.

Along the way we meet Jesus, too, and eventually the trio gets its wedding, complete with a bacchanale that features opera and wrestling. Ah, but is our little threesome happy at last? Take a guess.

So far as TrustMovies knows, Apnée has never been seen here in the U.S., which makes this FIAF premiere an especially notable one. The film -- part of the FIAF CinéSalon continuing series, Comedy on Film: What Makes the French Laugh -- will show this coming Tuesday, February 14 (how appropriate: for Valentine's Day!) at 4pm and 7:30pm at Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th Street, New York City.

To learn more information and/or to procure tickets, simply click here.

Dreams, desires, naughty taboos: Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson's THE FORBIDDEN ROOM

Who else but Guy Maddin would hand us a Jesus quote to begin his film then follow this with enough degradation, deprivation and bizarre behavior to send a fundamentalist crazy. And crazy is the operative word for Mr. Maddin's latest lulu, THE FORBIDDEN ROOM, which, beginning with the opening credits -- that use the title backgrounds of several different, old-fashioned movie genres to introduce each new set of names -- proves as funny, fun, probing and as Maddining (to add a much-needed word to your movie lexicon) as his work always is.

Except that this time (the filmmaker is pictured at left), he's aglow with two-strip Technicolor, rather than his ususal black-and-white, and he seems to have abdicated altogether any hint of central theme or story and instead, Scheherazade-like, spun out tale after tale after tale until they seem to wrap around and turn in and on each other like wily, sometime deadly serpents.

This may be the movie-meister's funniest and most appealing work to date. It certainly boasts his starriest cast -- from

Canada's Roy Dupuis (below) to England's Charlotte Rampling to France's Mathieu Amalric and many more. Maddin has also, this time 'round, taken on a co-director, Evan Johnson (shown at right: the pair co-wrote, as well, along with a few others), who appears to have been responsible for the special effects, which are pretty much non-stop, though nothing like what Hollywood consistently gives us. There is not one car chase nor explosion to be seen, though a valcano -- the movie, in its use of silent-film titles and old-fashioned writen narration, uses intentional misspelling now and again -- does errupt a couple of times.

Subjects along the way include everything from bathing and bottoms to lobotomies and flapjacks, and we meet everyone from mad doctors (of course, just about everyone else is nutty, too) to doppelgangers and Janus-like Jekyll & Hydes.

There's the quest, 'natch, this time to save a beautiful young woman from... well, a number of differing fates worse than death, a mustache (worn first by Udo Kier, below) that manages to span three generations, and perhaps the most unusual kind of vampire you will have ever encountered.

There is a lot of fun to be had (my favorites include the aviatrix/lawyer and what particular objects are sacrificed to that valcano) and, as always with Maddin, there is the sensation that we are in the middle of this guy's own special and really bizarre dreams -- sexually, psychologically, emo-tionally and especially family-wise. The filmmaker, like Hitchcock but in such a different manner, is a voyeur who makes willing voyeurs of us all.

How inventive and imaginative can Maddin be? Very. However, can the guy keep all this up for a full two hours and eleven minutes? (The movie is now said to be be two hours flat, but the screener I viewed proved a tad longer.) I think this will depend on just how Maddin-crazy you are. I didn't flag, although I thought the movie occasionally did -- before quickly bouncing back with some new/old oddity and delight.

The Forbidden Room (every one of Maddin's movies is full of the forbidden) is one long fever dream of nostalgia, silliness, buried (as well as overt) sexuality and film references. If you've never seen a Maddin movie, this one should be a fine starting point -- and perhaps ending point if you're not impressed. That's Jacques Nolot, below, who has a ratther meaty role in the festivities.)

From Kino Lorber (and, I expect, unrated), the film opens this Wednesday, October 7, at New York City's Film Forum, and then in the weeks to come in a number of other cities. Click here then scroll way down to see all currently scheduled playdates.

"Be determined: Wear a kimono." Sion Sono's back with WHY DON'T YOU PLAY IN HELL?

What could there possibly be in common among a pair of dueling Yakuza gangs, a popular toothpaste commercial, budding filmmakers (including the new Bruce Lee), young kids in love and a wronged wife now in prison for wiping out nearly the entire membership of one of those gangs? A movie, of course! Two of them, actually: one is the film within the film, which those budding movie-makers desperately want to create; the other is the movie under consideration here: Sion Sono's latest -- the amazing, movie-loving, crazy, riotously funny, looney-tuneish and eventually about as bloody and gory as anything you've encountered in a long while, WHY DON'T YOU PLAY IN HELL?

Sion Sono (being naughty, at left) is the fellow who has given us some really transgressive, weird and shudder-producing movies that go places that no one else's films do: Suicide Club, Cold Fish, Love Exposure, to name but three that are very much worth seeing. Yet here, in this new one, Sono seems to be having such a delightful and delighted time of it that wise-ass humor, coupled to the beyond-anything love of movies, combines to make this one of the most fun films he's ever overseen. And, yes, he still manages to toss in some of the most so-gory-they're-funny special effects (that arise perfectly from the bizarre situations at hand) so that his movie will still raise eyebrows and blood pressure.

From its opening -- which combines that toothpaste commerical sung by a too-cute-for-words little girl to the introduction of our budding filmaker's crew to the adulterous Yakuza (above) and his born-for-action wife -- to the sudden moment when we get... the red floor, you'll know that this, my friends, is like no other floor you've seen in cinema: a keeper, for sure.

Then it's ten years later, but just about everything's the same, except for age. Our little toothpaste tyke is now a va-voomly sexy teenager (above, center), our budding filmmakers are still budding, and the obsession for the toothpaste girl by one of the Yakuza has grown to whopping proportions. This guy (below, right) is rather sweet but not too bright and very easily influenced. (The "determined/kimono" phrase in the headline is all due to his somewhat addled brain.)

The plot strands planted in the beginning all come to wonderful fruition as the story continues, becoming soon enough a one-of-a-kind love letter to the movies. But being from Sono, this love letter also offers severed limbs, spraying blood and flying heads (and oodles of movie references).

The performances are as wonderfuly over-the-top as is the rest of the undertaking. Literally every actor stands out as special, as the plot gyrations become funnier and more bizarre. (When you're having this much fun, it's sort of difficult to be truly transgressive, I think.)

Sono's point must be, among other things, how filmmakers will do fucking anything to get their movie made, which sort of goes with the "artistic" and maybe "commercial" and certainly "juvenile" temperament. (Shades of the recent Midnight Rider situation may come to mind.)

Though the movie seems to start rather slowly (particularly if you're waiting for those heavy-duty Sion transgressions), hold on, because soon enough you'll be so taken with the way the filmmaker brings all his threads together that you won't mind at all.

Why Don't You Play in Hell?, the perfect title for a romp like this, runs a slightly too long 121 minutes (once he gets started, Sono can't resist piling it on) and is being released via Drafthouse Films. It hits theaters this Friday, November 7 -- here in NYC at the IFC Center and in Austin at the Drafthouse South Lamar. (The IFC Center does not appear to be giving it very many showings, however, so do check the schedule before rushing off to see it.) In the weeks to come it will open in another nine cities (but not L.A.? No fair! This one should play at the Arena Cinema). Click here then scroll down to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities & theaters.

Looking for a groundbreakingly transgressive motion picture? Try David Wnendt's WETLANDS

Whew! It's been awhile since we've seen anything quite like this one. From the opening scene -- in which the movie's heroine, Helen, who has terribly trying hemorrhoids, takes us down to an underground bathroom where fetid water and overflowing toilets skeeve us out -- the new movie WETLANDS, directed by David Wnendt, will almost immediately takes pride of place in our list of in-your-face, don't-see-'em-that-often, super-transgressive films. And it is, for much of its 105 minute running time, one hell of a lot of fun.

Mr. Wnendt, who also co-wrote the screenplay with help from Claus Falkenberg and Sabine Pochhammer, adapted from the novel by actress/writer Charlotte Roche, sees to it that we are almost immediately swept up in one of the most bizarrely entrancing scenes ever created of bacteria -- seen so up-close-and-personal that it's like we're in some updated remake of Fantastic Voyage. Then we settle down to really learning who our heroine is, what she wants and how she dreams and schemes and manages to get it.

Helen is played by an actress new to me, Carla Juri (above), but her performance is so indelible that I can't imagine we won't be seeing more of her (though, in terms of nudity and flesh, there's little you won't have seen by the end of this film).

Ms Juri is absolutely beautiful, that's for sure. But if her performance were not so rich and spiky and alternately nasty and lovely, the movie would not work even half as well as it does. Whether she is scratching one of those hemorrhoids (above) or being nicely serviced by a sudden and very attractive new boy-fuck (below), the actress makes her ever-alert and comic/near-tragic character one for the books.

Her parents split up when she was younger, and as do many children of divorce, she wants them back together at any price. Once her too intensive exploration of her nether regions gets her in some major physical trouble, she finds herself hospitalized -- which proves an almost too-perfect place for her various schemes to come to fruition.

Along the way, we meet her sweet best friend, Corinna (Marlen Kruse, above, left) and in the hospital, her ever-present and exceedingly helpful nurse turns out to be a gorgeous hunk named Robin (Christoph Letkowski, below, left). We also meet her mom and dad, both of whom prove as bad and bothersome as we might have expected, giving the grown daughter they've produced and badly raised.

Yet the filmmaker manages to properly share the blame here; even the smarmy adults have a redeeming moment or two -- including Helen's self-satisfied doctor (Edgar Selge, below), who gets a bit of a come-uppance, though in a manner that almost proves fatal to the giver. Wetlands finally wears out its welcome a bit sooner than we'd like. It's maybe 15 minutes too long, and ties up its loose ends too predictably. But boy, does it offer some fine, nasty fun (and hot, skeevy sex) along the way.

The movie, another good one from Strand Releasing, in German with English sub-titles, opens theatrically this Friday, September 5, here in NYC at the Angelika Film Center, and the following Friday, September 12 in Los Angeles at the Landmark NuArt and another six cities. Over the coming weeks it will play in around 25 locations across the country. You can see all of them, and their specific theaters, by clicking here.