François Ozon is back with DOUBLE LOVER, a box of yummy poison candy for Valentine's Day

When, at the end of his career, the work of French filmmaker François Ozon, gets a going-over by movie buffs, I suspect there will be some gnashing of teeth regarding exactly what kind of films for which he was most noted. Were these the campy comedies (Sitcom, 8 Women) or the oddball/otherworldly (Ricky)? The dark and ugly (See the Sea, Criminal Lovers) or the period pieces (Angel, Potiche and Frantz), each as hugely different from the other two as possible? One thing nearly all his films have in common to one degree or other is Ozon's peculiar sense of camp, which infuses even his most serious pieces.

Ozon's kind of camp (the filmmaker is pictured at left), TrustMovies feels, transcends the merely gay and over-the-top stuff we're so used to seeing.

There is a sense of playfulness and fun to even his darkest work that keeps reminding us that, yes, this is just a movie, but still, movies can tell us special things and in a manner than almost nothing else can.

This makes for an odd combination, to say the least, keeping us often off-balance. But when Ozon makes it work, as in his best films -- In the House, Time to Leave and Under the Sand  -- it opens our eyes, mind and heart in a way that can only be described as Ozonian.

In his latest endeavor, DOUBLE LOVER, the filmmaker has adapted a novel by Joyce Carol Oates, Lives of the Twins, and made yet another movie about the effects of the convergence of psychology, trauma and sexuality on a human being. Similar in some ways to another of his recent films, The New Girlfriend, the movie is not among his best, but, as usual with Ozon, it is so much fun to view visually as it bumps along, you will not, I think, be at all bored. It helps, too, that he is using three very attractive and charismatic actors as his leads: Jérémie Renier and Marine Vacth (above, left and right), along with a still-gorgeous Jacqueline Bisset (below, left).

To talk at all about the plot here will mean that I am "lying" to you because viewers cannot always be sure that what they're seeing and hearing is even true. So let's just leave it that we're dealing with a quite beautiful young woman (Ms Vacth), who has some stomach problems that appear to be psychosomatic and so her physician recommends she consult a psychiatrist (M. Renier) to help solve them.

It is such a pleasure to view these two very attractive performers, whom we see here looking their absolute best, whether clothed or naked (imagine a therapy session like the one below!), that the increasingly convoluted plot -- with enough holes to remind you of a very large chunk of swiss cheese -- keeps threatening to spin completely out of control.

Yes, twins are involved here, which means we get a double dose of the glorious Ms. Renier, and if you're a cat lover, you'll get a couple of beautiful examples of this species, too. There's a nosy neighbor (Miriam Boyer), a gynecologist (Dominique Reymond) who seems oddly familiar later on in this movie, and finally Ms Bisset, who helps bring all the various puzzle pieces together.

Yeah, you'll probably find it a bunch of hooey, overall, but so cleverly put together is it, and so very beautiful is the lovely Ms Vacth from first scene to last (yes, Chekhov's gun makes its appearance, with the usual rule played out) that I suspect you'll have had a good enough time to make a viewing of Double Lover worthwhile.

The movie seems especially appropriate for Valentine's Day, given Ozon's sense of humor and his delight in offering us what one might see as a poisoned bon-bon wrapped up initially like a lovely dream that unfortunately proceeds into nightmare.

From Cohen Media Group, in French with English subtitles and running 107 minutes, Double Lover opens tomorrow, Wednesday, February 14, in New York City (at the Quad Cinema and AMC Empire 25), Los Angeles (at Laemmle's Playhouse 7 and Royal), San Francisco (at the Landmark Opera Plaza Cinema) and Philadelphia (at the Landmark Ritz East). Elsewhere? I would hope that the film will play in other venues around the country over the weeks/months to come, but I could find no link to any list of playdates.

Hoarding and its discontents: Antonio Tibaldi and Alex Lora's sad doc, THY FATHER'S CHAIR

Orthodox Jewish twins, maybe identical, though it's difficult to tell under their very bushy beards and hair that seems not to have been cut in perhaps a year, Abraham and Shraga live in the Brooklyn home they've inherited from their now deceased parents. Over time, they've found it difficult to part with just about everything that most of us would consider trash -- old food to clothes, books, papers, appliances that no longer work to broken furniture. Hence the movie's title -- THY FATHER'S CHAIR -- which is brought up at one point and then promptly let go.

As directed by Alex Lora (shown at left) and Antonio Tibaldi (below) in a cinéma vérité style by which we learn nothing about the background of anything here -- except via the bits of conversation along the way between the twins and the men who come, as an intervention, to clean the apartment and who have, by film's end, pretty much emptied it out.

The head cleaning man, in fact, also turns out to be something more than mere "cleaner," as he bonds with the twins, trying his best to help them understand what is going on here and why

they need to rid themselves of so much that they've hoarded over the recent past.

As the movie's brief 74-minute running time unspools, we manage to learn quite a bit about the emotional state of the twins, shown below, one of whom is an alcoholic -- if not so much about their history. Instead, we meet their upstairs neighbor, who complains -- no doubt rightly -- about the stench coming from the apartment. And we see the several stray cats the pair has brought in to share their space. (These cats groom and keep themselves clean as cats will do -- unlike their hosts -- despite the gross conditions that surround them.)

The documentary is divided into seven chapters (and-on-the-seventh-day-god-rested, maybe?) plus an epilogue that sort of brings us up to date. But don't expect to get much more information here than the movie itself presents via its you-are-there narrative.

The interaction between the twins and their "celeaners" makes up much of the film, and it is oddly sad and even haunting to see how hard the head man tries to makes the problem clear so that our boys understand what's going on and why.

And yes, hazmat suits are worn and indeed appear quite necessary, as bedbugs are among the apartment's unwanted dwellers. One scene shows in passing the arm of one twin, utterly bitten up and scabbing over.

Slowly the apartment begins to look livable again, and just as slowly the twins appear to be maybe learning how to exist with a bit more clarity and purpose. We can hope.

After playing numerous festivals nationally and internationally, Thy Father's Chair opens this Friday, October 13, in New York City at the Village East Cinema, and in Los Angeles on October 20 at Laemmle's Music Hall 3. Click here and scroll down to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities, and theaters across the country.

A must-see for Toni Servillo/Italian cinema fans: Roberto Andò's VIVA LA LIBERTA

Apologies for posting this review so very tardily, as the movie in question opened this past Friday and is one of the year's best so far: VIVA LA LIBERTA, a funny, moving, sad and thoughtful look at politics today -- in Italy, of course, but really just about everywhere in the western world -- about which compromise and money, narcissism and vanity, promises and personality trump all else. The writer/director, Roberto Andò, takes a age-old tale, that of the unknown twin, and via a supremely elegant visual style, whip-smart scenario and breathtaking lead performance(s), turns it into a modern-day fable non-pareil.

Signore Andò, shown above, is known to me via ony one other film, Secret Journey (Viaggio Segreto), which I saw some years back at the FSLC's Open Roads. (My earlier review of that film for Greencine is here.) It has remained in my memory as a keeper, and now this new film of his joins it to make an even more memorable duo. While Secret Journey was gorgeous, florid, melodramatic and riveting, Viva la libertà is elegant, restrained, subtle and smooth as silk. While I love both films, if identity had been kept from me, I doubt I would ever have guessed the same man made these two movies.

This new film has an additional weapon that tends to crush all in its path. That would be the consummate actor Toni Servillo (above and below, center), who, playing the identical twins, gives us a double dose of great acting. He endows both men with such terrific and pointed details -- these both differentiate the two and entertain us immeasurably, that once the plot get into motion, we're hooked for the entire fast-paced running time.

Andò has also conspired to make this movie about politics and movie-making, and he has done it in a plausible, easy-going way that makes perfect sense plot-wise, as one of our two heroes does a disappearing act in order to visit an important ex-girlfriend (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, below) who is now married to a film director and is in the middle of working on a film shoot in France, on which our politician finds himself also working. This makes for some charming but pointed references to reality, creativity, imagination, politics, the workplace and more.

At its heart, the movie is dissecting Italian politics, the people's need for a hero and guide, and how truth, spoken plainly, can produce the right kind of shock and awe. So much happens in the course of the film, and yet so little changes, too. That, unfortunately, is another of the film's points.

Especially fine in the film's supporting cast is Valerio Mastandrea, above, as our politician's right-hand man, who starts the ball rolling by using the other twin, and then cannot stop  -- and maybe wouldn't want to -- the ensuing progress.

Made last year, Viva la libertà was eclipsed by The Great Beauty, also starring Servillo, which Italy submitted for, and which then won, Best Foreign Language Film. The Great Beauty was very good, but Viva la libertà is even better. Stick it on your must-see list now.

The movie, from Distrib Films and running a sleek 94 minutes, opened in New York at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and Quad Cinema last Friday, November 7. It will hit Los Angeles (at Laemmle's Royal, Playhouse 7 and Town Center 5). In between those dates and after, the film will open throughout the USA. You can see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters by clicking here, then scrolling down just a bit to click again on THEATERS, then scrolling down some more.

Blood & honey: EVERYBODY HAS A PLAN offers a double-dose of Viggo Mortensen in Ana Piterbarg's Argentine film noir

 Film noir is generally set in a city, no? Most noir that I recall is what I'd refer to as "metro-noir," although I think there have been a few set in "suburbia." But what about noir that takes place a long way from civilization (think of this as "sticks noir")? Not so many. The new Argentine movie EVERYBODY HAS A PLAN (Todos tenemos un plan) is one such sticks noir (you might even call it a Styx noir, as in that mythical river), and although part of it does take place in an Argentine city, most of the film is set on an island inhabited by few people. Yet the movie, I maintain, is noir through and through.

Co-written (with Ana Cohan) and directed by Ana Piterbarg, shown at right, who has worked mainly in Latin American television, the movie stars Viggo Mortensen, an actor with some roots in Argentina and who appears to speak Spanish quite well. (He always acts well, too, and this movie proves no exception.) It's an odd story concerning, of all things, twins -- which gives a welcome double-dose of Mr. Mortensen. One twin inhabits that island (on the Tigre Delta) and is part-time beekeeper, part-time criminal; the other lives in the big city, where he has a practice as a popular pediatrician and lives with (or is maybe married to) an attractive and successful woman. But is either twin really happy? It appears not.

If we never learn the "source" of this unhappiness, fairly late in the film we do trace it to, of course, childhood. Given how generally clueless these twins, shown above and below, are to their most important needs and desires, we accept fairly easily this lack of self-knowledge (in them) and our own lack of understanding about what, exactly, went wrong in their lives.

Once the twosome gets together, below, their lives entwine in a most unusual manner. To go into further plot development will simply spoil that plot and the occasional surprise that Ms Piterbarg offers along the way. Suffice it to say that murder, most cold-blooded and foul, occurs, along with another that, by comparison, is nearly benign.

Betrayals of several kinds take place, love blooms, the country mouse visits the city and vice versa,  we meet a particularly evil man with an unholy regard for using Scripture to justify his shitty deeds, and those bees (whom we have been involved with since nearly scene one) get their new queen and start making some decent honey. (That last bit would qualify as the "happy" part of these proceedings.)

In the supporting cast are a number of excellent actors, led by Daniel Fanego (above, left) as that nasty, creepy killer; 

Soledad Villamil (above, right) as the city twin's significant other;

and Sofía Gala Castiglione (above, left) as the young woman who helps with the bee-keeping and grows fond of one of the twins.

Mr. Mortensen does a quiet, subtle job of twin differentiation and especially of engulfing us fully with a sense of sorrow and decay that presages what is to come. If there is little that is actually new here, Ms Piterbarg certainly know her deck, shuffles the cards well and then deals a hand that viewers will recognize slowly and sadly, even if the characters we're rooting for (or against) do not. Everyone has a plan, indeed, but those plans, unfortunately, are at loggerheads.

A sad movie about the waste of humanity, Everyone Has a Plan (from Fox International and running just under two hours) opens this Friday, March 22, in New York City at the Angelika Film Center and the AMC Empire 25. Elsewhere, too, I am guessing, but I can find no information on cities or theaters. But, as with most Fox International films, I would expect a DVD release eventually. So, if you're a noir nut, or you simply appreciate a good solid melodrama, add this one to your Netflix queue....

Marc Smolowitz's THE POWER OF TWO tracks twins struggling with cystic fibrosis

Doesn't that headline sounds like heaven? I am being ironic, but documentary-lovers should give THE POWER OF TWO a chance, for filmmaker Marc Smolowitz, the twins who are his subject, their lives and that of their community that he explores rather well all combine to make the movie a more uplifting experience than the downer you might have expected. Not that Smolowitz prettifies things over much: We get a look into the lives of those suffering with cystic fibrosis (from this point, I'll refer to it as CF), which comes off as one of the more ugly, debilitating and -- unless a lung transplant can be found -- eventually fatal diseases in the lexicon.

Smolowitz, shown at right, begins with his twins underwater, below, swimming their hearts (and maybe their lungs) out. When we meet them and learn their story -- starting from babyhood (see the photo further below) right through to recent times -- what most impresses is their twin-ship: how this has made their ability to deal with CF since childhood a somehow easier task, for they were never alone. Born of a Japanese mother and a Caucasian father, Anabel and Isabel, though growing up in America, were nonetheless instilled with the culture of Japan and its "perseverance," along with an unusual understanding of how things really are. As one of the twins tells us during her younger days, "I hope to someday go to college. If I can last that long."

We learn about the disease and how it is caused; we visit a CF support group for people who need -- and some who have already had -- transplants; and we go to CF "camp," a place that Isabel tells us, changed her life. One of the most wrenching experiences -- and I do wish we had seen and heard more about this -- occurs when Isabel meets and falls in love with Andrew Byrnes (the young man who married her and went on to become producer of this film). It was not easy, Anabel tells us, to have to separate from her sister after a life of being always together. (Love comes to Anabel, too, but it's quite a distance down the road.)

When the girls publish a book about their life experience and are asked to go to Japan, Smolowitz takes us along, and we learn of the Japanese bias against organ donation. ("We'd be heroes in America," notes one Japanese donor, "but we are not valued in Japan.") Probably the most startling scene comes when the young women -- in their own Lyndon B. Johnson moment -- show us their scars. Initially shocking, this scene is also relevatory, and takes us full circle to the beginning of the movie, when the girls first told us about wishing that people might see past the scarred outside of a person to the beauty within. Mr. Smolowitz and his young ladies help us do just that. And it's our privilege to see them so fully.

No less a personage than actor Jack Black has raved about this film, calling it "An inspiring triumph.... over unfathomable adversity. A brutal and beautiful tale of shared survival." The Power of Two will be available beginning this Tuesday, June 5, from GoDigital -- on all major digital platforms. Click the GoDigital link above to see which platforms these might be....

The photos above are from the film itself, except the one immediately above, which comes courtesy of the IDA, and shows, left to right, producer and husband Andrew Byrnes, Isabel, Anabel, 

director Smolowitz and Trent Wallace (Anabel's husband).