In the mood for a gorgeous visual nightmare? Try Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani's THE STRANGE COLOR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS

Should fabulously imaginative, if rather dark, visuals be your thing, rush right out to see THE STRANGE COLOR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS. While watching this very odd movie, which is unlike most else that I've seen, I was put in mind of another film I'd viewed a few years back, neither the name of which nor the particular filmmaker I could remember. But the very off-kilter visuals, the "darkness" of the themes, the barely concealed sexuality, and the uneasy/queasy combination of sex and violence -- all of this kept bringing to mind that earlier movie.

Sure enough, when I finished watching and went to the IMDB to look up the filmmaker(s) -- Hélène Cattet and  Bruno Forzani (shown above) -- there they were. And there it was, too:  that earlier movie -- Amer -- that this new one called to mind. Turns out this talented, if unusual, pair had made both films.

The plot of their latest, such as it is, does not particularly lend itself to description. Best to think of it as a kind of unending nightmare: one of those that goes from seemingly normal and routine to suddenly way off-base -- a man (Klaus Tange, above) returns from a business trip to find his wife missing (we suspect we have just seen her murdered, but we don't know for certain that the woman is his wife) -- and then into the utterly bizarre and fragmented, lunatic and perverse.

Involved in all this are stories within stories that include the man's neighbors (one of whom is above), that missing wife and/or maybe another woman (below), a seemingly useless detective (further below), and other assorted characters -- who may or may not even exist.

All this could be taking place within the mind of our not-quite hero, rather than in any kind of "real" world -- which, in any case, this movie never begins to approach.

But, ah, the colors and patterns and designs and cinematography (Manuel Dacosse) and editing (Bernard Beets). These are very nearly hypnotic (sometimes a little too much so) and often so beautiful, if always threaten-ing and dark, that you really do not want to take your eyes off the screen.

The movie is also highly sexual/violent (Amer, as I recall, was seen from a woman's viewpoint; this one is certainly more from a man's) with everything from male and female full-frontal on display to more subtle ramifications of sexuality.

So what's really going on here? By film's end, I think we know, but I am not sure if the movie-makers would consider my talking about it as a spoiler. So maybe, should you plan to see this film, better skip the following paragraph.

What we may have here (I say "may" because I can't be absolutely sure) is another nod to childhood sexuality and how it can frame sex for us for the remainder of our lives.  The visuals used to offer this up are as stunning as are all the rest in the film, yet the idea itself may by now be a bit overused.

Still, I swear you're not going to want to look away for even one second, so enticing (and then unsettling) is what Cattet and Forzani have on offer.

From Strand Releasing and running a just-slightly overlong 102 minutes, The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears (hard to resist a title like that!) opens theatrically this Friday, August 29, in New York City at the IFC Center and in Los Angeles at the Arena Cinema.

WWII 4 U

In this month's "Sunday Corner," Lee Liberman 

covers eight wartime film and TV selections.

During the hundred-year anniversary of the First World War (1914), WWII stories continue to bubble up. We're not done pondering the awesome size and ugliness of 1940's German extermination policies and aggression. How could a modern civilized society tumble into such a moral wasteland? Although Germans have begun to look inward, no true understandings have reached the screen yet, while film after film offers material about the evil of the Third Reich and war itself.

CONSPIRACY (joint BBC/HBO, 2001) is as pure as it gets, the true story of the winter of '42 Wannsee conference in which 15 top-ranking Nazi's meet in secret at a conspiciously gracious, formerly Jewish-owned country estate, to sign off on the Jewish solution -- an Emmy and Golden Globe winning production. There can't be many more tension-fraught films beside this one that play out entirely around a dining room table, although to absorb its devastating impact one must follow the dialogue and interactions closely as the arguments unfold. Kenneth Branagh as the icy 'blond beast' Reinhard Heydrich (soon to become 'butcher of Prague'), Stanley Tucci as Adolf Eichmann, and Colin Firth as Wilhelm Stuckert, the lawyer who crafted the anti-Semitic Nuremberg laws, are stellar leads of a fine cast (including Brendan Coyle, aka Downton Abbey's Mr. Bates, as Heinrich Muller, Gestapo chief).

These Nazi elite assembled from near and distant posts (ironically just as the German army had stalled out in Russian winter and America had joined the fight) to engage in the mind-bending exercise of accelerating the extermination of millions. It was only a 2-hour business meeting, but Heydrich deftly manipulated the suppression of objections enabling the meeting to conclude with aye's to the final solution from every attendee -- it being obvious that gas chambers and ovens will solve the "Jewish problem" with greater efficiency and less visibility than guns and bullets. (Heydrich did not survive wounds of a Czech assassination attempt, hence Eichmann became the face of the extermination policy.) One wonders that the meticulous attention to secrecy did not warn the instigators of the depth of evil to which they had fallen.

A more familiar theme has been the portrayal of the plight of Jews (and other minorities) in occupied European cities -- stories of camps, escapes, journeys, underground resistance, and of non-Jews such as Perlasca and Schindler who took risks to save Jewish lives. Two very fine action thrillers (once but no longer streaming on Netflix), are CHARLOTTE GRAY (2001, with Cate Blanchett and Billy Crudup), who work for the French Underground, and Paul Verhoeven's Dutch made (2006) BLACK BOOK, with Carice van Houten (in a much meatier role than her Melisandra in 'Game of Thrones') as a Jewish singer turned Dutch Resistance spy and eventual killer, who seduces and comes to love a German commander. These and others have no other goal than vivid story-telling that conveys the nature of Nazi aggression and the horrors endured by its victims.

But times are changing -- the Germans are looking inward and others are delving into the hazards of eye-for-eye revenge. The taut Danish thriller FLAME AND CITRON (2008, with Thure Lindhardt and Mads Mikkelsen) accompanies two Danish resistance hit men on their dehumanizing journey of murder of Nazi sympathizers and Nazi occupiers. The film documents the self-annihilating aspects of pure revenge and that the Nazi's spawned mirror images of themselves in which their civilized victims become assassins.

Also made in 2008 is A WOMAN IN BERLIN -- a compelling story based on the diary of an East German woman who endured the horrific rape practices of the Red Army occupiers of Berlin. Fine film-making -- tough to watch.

More recent films show German filmmakers beginning to sort out their own national experience. Stories are exploring the lives of ordinary Germans -- examinations of self and nation to be processed, and even one film that dares to be comedic. In 2011 came the almost light and quite novel, MY BEST ENEMY -- even its oxymoronic title (and score) has lightness. It's great adventure for viewers but critics were rather sour, offering vague objections such as the filmmakers couldn't settle on a tone.

Likely the grudging analysis stems from the ambivalent receipt of a "caper" in which Nazi's are stooges who can be outwitted -- it's not older generations' version of the Holocaust. Rather it's a sure-footed art-heist crime caper, and for that it has produced both enjoyment and objection. It's the story of two lifelong friends, Viktor, the enterprising son of a wealthy Jewish art dealer, and Rudi, the gentile son of the family maid -- raised together near to brothers. In Viktor's eyes, Rudi had all the benefits of a rich and loving household. Rudi, the riches around him out of grasp, felt more like the servant of patronizing masters.

Rudi gets to live out his fantasy of lording it over his benefactors when he returns home as a German SS officer, offering to help the family if they cooperate with Gestapo demands. At stake is a 400-year-old sketch of Moses by Michelangelo, a former possession of the Vatican, which Viktor's father had managed to buy and secrete for family asset preservation and which the Nazi's now covet so Hitler can woo Mussolini by restoring it to Italian hands. The caper unfolds with fast-twisting combat of wits and luck that concludes not with a little schadenfreude by Viktor (and us) over the hapless Rudi and some dimwitted Nazi officers. To Nazi victims still living who feel betrayed by the tone, I am sympathetic, but can't say this film doesn't offer a fine bit of Karmic justice and satisfaction.

In another story filmed from the point of view of German citizens, LORE, 2012, is a bleak, visually beautiful, and highly-praised work directed by Australian Cate Shortland. It tells of a family fed the myths of German god-like superiority and Führer, facing a post-war time filled with dislocation, shock, and loss. Lore, 14, must protect her 4 young siblings after their Nazi parents are imprisoned by occupying Allies and travel with them to grandmother's farm. They navigate 500 miles of town and forest mostly on foot, during which Lore picks up bits of information revealing truths about the myths they grew up with and the meaning of their officer father's connection to a concentration camp.

They meet up with a young man whose face is not exactly the person pictured in the Jewish papers he carries but who guides and protects the little group. Lore is torn between new sexual feelings, need of his aid, and her disdain -- after all, he is nothing -- a dirty Jew. He separates from them close to their destination. (Was he a German army deserter who stole Jewish papers off of a corpse? We never know.) Grandmother is welcoming if stern, but reaching safety is a new stage for Lore, who has just reached her own plateau of adolescent rage at her world and unhappiness.

A recent Netflix offering is GENERATION WAR, from 2013, a huge hit on German television and with a disconcerting point of view to non-Germans -- the story of 5 giddy, blase young people caught up in national patriotism who, like Lore, endure the suffering born of their own parts, witting and unwitting, in their national trauma.

Despite absurd coincidences and outsized melodrama (think 'Titanic' or 'Pearl Harbor'), "Generation War" at 4 1/2 hours absorbs you early and keeps its hold until the bitter end when the survivors whom we follow from early days to war's end are reunited. They are now vacant, traumatized adults, the innocence, excitement, and good will of youth drained out of them. (See James' original TrustMovies review here for photos and more framing of the story.)

The header on David Denby's review of "Generation War" in the "New Yorker", is ORDINARY PEOPLE. Similarly, A.O. Scott's "New York Times" review interprets the filmmakers' point of view as follows: "ordinary Germans were not so different from anyone else and deserve the empathy and understanding of their grandchildren." Scott continues, "In effect, it is a plea on behalf of Germans born in the early 1920's for inclusion in a global Greatest Generation....."

Scott's implied disapproval lies in the factual difference between acting in behalf of the perpetrators vs being among the persecuted. Heart-wrenching coming-of-age stories of young Germans don't outweigh the tragedy wrought by their government. However, as viewer, you walk in the shoes of patriotic youth who had no Jon Stewart Daily Show to tell them what's what -- they simply supported their country, mostly ignorant of the extent of its evil which its leadership made every effort to conceal. They weren't all bad at all, and perhaps this aspect engaged today's German public. In other fervent criticism of the film, the Poles took much exception to the portrayal of Polish resistance fighters as viciously anti-Semitic. No doubt there is evidence for good Poles and bad Poles.

All told, however, criticism of this saga does not spoil the experience of coming to care for the characters or hoping they survive. As James emphasizes, "Generation War" is above all a well-made entertainment integrating personal stories, documentary war footage and convincingly-staged combat. One hopes Germans filmmakers will dig deeper into the German psyche to increase our knowledge and understanding of extreme authoritarianism and extreme rule.

The bleak if not tragic endings to Lore and Generation War suggest the lack of resolution that Germans have yet concerning their war horror.

My own thinking is that human beings all have innate authoritarian capacity and it is the organizing forces in our lives (family, religion, government, culture and media) that suppress our self and-mutually-destructive traits. Our own extreme Right Wing is visibly more authoritarian and self-driven than we like, requiring we vote and otherwise act to prevent them from ascending further. In other words, we'd better make sure it doesn't happen to us.

Availability and Lee's ratings: 

Conspiracy -- streams on HBO, Amazon: 4.5 stars 

Charlotte Gray -- Amazon: 3.5 stars

Black Book -- Amazon: 4 stars 

Flame and Citron -- streams on Netflix: 3 stars 

A Woman in Berlin -- streams on Netflix: 3 stars 

My Best Enemy -- streams on Netflix: 3.5 stars 

Lore -- streams on Netflix: 4 stars 

Generation War -- streams on Netflix: 4 stars

Pablo D'Stair's back with a new brain-teaser/ twister, DOCTOR LAWYER INDIAN CHIEF

Pablo D'Stair has returned. Yes: That mystery man (is the photo below even him? I can't be absolutely sure) whose movie, A Public Ransom, we covered a few months back has made a new film -- DOCTOR LAWYER INDIAN CHIEF -- that we agreed to watch and that, like his earlier movie, drove us right up the fucking wall.

Now, a few days after viewing it, I'm still remembering it and sort of brooding over it but wondering why. Really, it's not very good (I'll explain the reasons I feel this way, below). And yet...

What happens in the film -- betrayal, jealousy, murder, or maybe none of the above -- ought to be major. But the would-be realistic but actually tiresomely unbelievable dialog, the hugely repetitive filmic style (a stationery camera that is periodically moved to capture different angles), and especially the characters, who seem to have but a nodding acquaintance with any kind of reality and/or sensible interaction with the other folk we see in the film -- all of this makes the movie utterly minor and very difficult to sit through.

Has Mr. D'Stair somehow hypnotized me into giving him and his movie more credit than they deserve? Ought I to just give up this whole "reviewing" thing and disappear into the night? Hmmm... Enough brooding. What you can expect if and when you sit down to watch this film -- which can be streamed on Vimeo for free, I believe (I did, and didn't even have to use he password I was given) -- is a tale of a middle-aged schlub of a man (Carlyle Edwards from A Public Ransom) who tells his wife (or maybe she's just a girlfriend) that he has been accosted by a fellow at his work who has told him that he was married to her at one time.

"Don't know anything about this," the woman claims, and we're off on a binge of lies and infidelity and all kinds of bizarre stuff -- all communicated to us via conversations between Mr. Edwards and the rest of the cast. As either written or improvised (maybe a combo), these scenes, which are always led by Edwards' brand of stop-and-start awkwardness and inability to say something straight out via a speech pattern that is singular, to say the least, could drive one to distraction.

Whether this is all the actor is able to manage or it is what the filmmaker wants, I haven't a clue. Perhaps it is a combination of both. In any case, due to Edwards' huffing and puffing and his inability to move the dialog along speedily, the purpose here would seem to be to give us scenes that, in the real world, might add up to all of 15 minutes, but here must be stretched out to an hour's length. This is not fun; instead it acts as a kind of filmic torture.

I wonder what D'Stair imagines that he is giving us. It is certainly not art, but neither is it "life" as anyone in my world, at least, would recognize it. At one point in the proceedings, one person says to another. "You're right. It doesn't matter." And this could stand for the whole shebang.  It is difficult to know what matters in the world of Pablo D'Stair.

And yet. (God, I have all these "and yets"...) The cinematography (by Paul Vanbrocklin, who also did A Public Ransom) is often exquisite in its grainy, weirdly-lighted way. These two movies do not look like anyone else's. Oh, yes -- and everybody smokes.

The two leading supporting actors -- Helen Bonaparte and Goodloe Byron, both from A Public Ransom -- are not bad. And the minor supporting players are OK, too. But everything takes too long to unfold -- including the title card that reads "Three Weeks Later" and which seems to stay on-screen for approximately that length of time. Really, Pablo: These are three short words. How long do you imagine it will take us to read them? (Again, this adds to my suspicions that D'Stair is simply trying to lengthen his movie by adding excess time to everything.)

Yet, in his way, D'Stair does tackle relationships and honesty, betrayal and retribution. By asking him to be a more conventional filmmaker, might I be castrating his creativity. Don't know. But he's working on a third film now. We shall see. (If, that is, we can stand all the repetition and attenuation. But maybe the guy will alter his style a bit.)

Oh, yes -- and the end-title song, Don't Fuck With Love, proves pretty damn catchy. You can view Doctor Lawyer Indian Chief now by clicking on  this Vimeo Link. Good luck!

Streaming surprise: Jeremy Leven's international frolic (spoken in English), GIRL ON A BICYCLE

Some movies start out so silly, stretching an already slight premise far past the breaking point, that you doubt you'll be able to continue watching for long. Such is GIRL ON A BICYCLE, only the second film to be directed by Jeremy Levin. (Don Juan DeMarco was his first, and he also helped adapt one of my least favorite movies ever, The Notebook, from its original novel.) But then a particularly good scene helps perk things up, and you stick with it a bit longer. Then comes another good one, and another, and pretty soon you're hooked.

Mr. Leven, shown at left, has both written and directed this German/American co-production, and he has cast it so internationally that the quartet of leading players features an Italian, a German, a Britisher and a French woman. The setting is Paris (it's gorgeous, as usual), and many of the supporting players are French, as well. Interestingly, most of the dialog is spoken in English, which is truly now the international language, so audiences who hate readings subtitles will not have to worry. (The very varied accents on display, however, may give your ears a real workout, initially at least.)

Girl on a Bicycle may be the rom-com to end all rom-coms, so initially ridiculous does it seem. An Italian tour-bus driver and lecturer named Paolo (Vincenzo Amato, above), about to propose to the girl of his dreams, does so and is married. One day soon after he catches a glimpse of an attractive young girl on her bicycle, and -- whoosh! -- he's off the romantic races once again.

Initially we feel little sympathy for the guy, and Amato's over-energetic and mostly charm-free performance doesn't help a lot. Yet eventually, against all odds, the oddball goings-on keep pulling us back in.

Many of the other characters are pretty charming, especially Paolo's bride, Greta (the lovely Nora Tschirner, above, holding newspapers, in a scene with a recalcitrant passenger that may be the film's comic highlight).

Greta is an airline stewardess, for whom one of the pilots (Stéphane Debac, above, left) has an unending lech. Then there's Paolo's best friend, Derek (Paddy Considine, below), forever full of advice about women and love and such.

Finally, we have that titular girl on the bike, Cécile (played dizzily by the lovely Louise Monot, below), and her two delightfully needy children (shown in the penultimate photo), who've been waiting years, it seems, for their father to come home.

Cécile is a model, and one of the film's funnier scenes involves a bathtub shoot and a slippery bar of soap.

All these characters are finally like pieces in a Rube Goldberg contraption, which, when set off, will cause one problem after another before finally bringing the movie to a satisfying finish. Well, love is crazy, after all. Why shouldn't it mimic one of those Goldberg machines?

Fortunately, most of the actors are good enough and enjoyable enough to bring their characters to life so that we go along for the ride. And the ride does grow better and funnier as it moves ahead. By the finale, I suspect you'll have tossed all caution to the winds and whole-heartedly embraced this silliness. We certainly did. (And, yes, there's always that forever-beautiful city of Paris.)

Girl on a Bicycle can be streamed now via Netflix and elsewhere. You can also view it on DVD.

Streaming treat: Aleksander Nordaas' THALE proves near-perfect little sci-fi/fantasy scare-fest

Netflix streaming has a reputation for offering thousands of movies of which most Americans have never heard. While this is indeed true, that doesn't mean that plenty of these films aren't worth watching. They absolutely are, and one such in the small Norwegian movie that has recently appeared on the streaming facility entitled THALE.  The title character is evidently a creature of Norwegian myth: a beautiful but mute young woman who, among other things, sports a tail.

Writer/director Aleksander Nordaas, shown at left, has managed within a mere 76 minutes to offer up a sleek, mini-budget sci-fi/fantasy/thriller/horror film that does just about everything right. The filmmaker doles out his information in exactly the right amount and at exactly the right time so that we move quickly ahead, piecing together the information we have, while arriving at the right conclusion almost pre-cisely when the movie itself does. We're never far behind nor ahead, and so the suspense, along with the ever-present question of what's going on and why, is immediate and enormous.

The fact that our heroes, Elvis (Erlend Nervold, above), and Leo (John Signe Skard, below), are working as crime-scene cleaner-uppers adds immensely to the movie's quirky, off-kilter charm and ick-factor,

while the casting of the beautiful and talented Silje Reinåmo (below) as the title creature is a real coup. Ms Reinåmo is quite a find as she creates a full-bodied being that is equal parts frightening and provocative. We never quite know where she stands (or sits or crawls), and that is all for the best.

Basically -- and acting-wise -- the movie is a three-hander, though via some backstory, we get glimpses of Thale's "mentor," as well as some of the government guys who are (surprise!) up to no good. And while all this is woven into the tight screenplay quite cleverly, it never detracts from the matters at hand: Who is this girl/thing, and what should be done with and about her?

How Nordaas brings all of this to fruition is a mini marvel: fast, sometimes funny, even quite moving at a couple of junctures. The special effects are small and sparse, but they work beautifully to capture the strangeness inherent in the movie.

Thale is everything you want a film like this to be but rarely find.
Miss it at your peril.

You can stream it now via Netflix and elsewhere, but I don't think it's available yet -- or maybe ever -- on our-region DVD.

Owen Wilson/Zach Galifianakis/ARE YOU HERE: Matthew Weiner's first film is a sneaky winner

I don't know much about Matthew Weiner, pictured below, but I do know that his Mad Men is hands-down the best American television series I have ever seen. This of course had me a little worried about his debut as a filmmaker: So much to live up to, after all. I am happy to report that his entry into movie-making, ARE YOU HERE, which he wrote and directed, is a lovely piece of work: fresh, funny, moving and real. You can think of it in a number of different ways, one of these being a modern-day screwball comedy (with pot standing in for alcohol). It is also a kind of back-and-forth road trip (for the automobile and the soul). Best of all, it a movie in which characters actually learn and grow and change. Believably.

If Mr. Weiner does pack a lot into his just-under-two-hour film, and then ties things up rather nicely, this will go counter to expectations, since Mad Men ties nothing up. Everything simply keeps expanding outward while its characters go with the flow and often seem to have learned very little (we do, however). But that is one of the wonders of what a great TV series can offer. A two-hour film is a different kettle of fish, from which audiences demand both more and less. And Weiner gives it to them. If you pay attention, you'll come out of Are You Here refreshed and feeling good. But you'll also have had to wrestle with certain notions: that being an "outsider" (the character played  by Zach Galifianakis) has as many bad as good points, that anti-depressant drugs can be useful, that the lifestyle of a successful "player" (Owen Wilson's character), along with the easy money and sex, is so much fun that you might not want to give it up, and finally that compromise can actually result in something better than what recently preceded it.

From what we see on Mad Men and now in this film, I would guess that Weiner has a wonderfully all-embracing belief system that is able to take in opposing ideas easily and thoughtfully, play with them a bit, then send them snapping back at us. He has given us a story of two old friends, Steve (Wilson, above, left) and Ben (Galifianakis, above, right), enablers both, who care for each other in their own special way. When death and an inheritance take the men back to their childhood town, a lot begins to happen.  (Weiner's take on friendship is a particularly succulent one.)

This brings Ben's uptight and angry sister (Amy Poehler, above, right) into the mix, as well as Ben's father's widow (Laura Ramsey, below), a young woman who leavens the movie with some real surprise. The script is peppered with smart and often funny one-liners -- "Honestly, I don't know why the farmer and the cowhand can't be friends," will have some of us Oklahoma! fans chuckling -- while other bits of dialog ("Just to be clear: If I'm sober, you're interested?") are sure to bring us, as well as certain characters, up short.

Are You Here offers so much about the way we live now-- from the real estate ladies' seminar to the need for natural foods as well as for major supermarkets -- that both the fun and the substance of the film are in constant array.

And that cast! Wilson has rarely been better. He brings a complicated character into full bloom (his chicken scene, above, is something else), while Galifiianakis moves from crazy delight to a deepened, richer (literally and symbolically) man who can at last appreciate the need for behavior-adjusting drugs.

Poehler is harsh, but she never allows the character's humanity to entirely depart, and Ramsey makes what could be a too-good-to-be-true woman into a steely but fragile young lady trying her best to live up to her own high standards.

I suspect that some of my compatriots will misinterpret this movie as a "failed comedy" or some sort of "feel-good rom-com." It's much more than that. Give it a shot -- and find yourself in Matthew Weiner's complicated and very interesting universe.

Are You Here -- from Millennium Entertainment and running 113 minutes -- opens theatrically this Friday, August 22. In New York City, catch it at the AMC Empire 25; in L.A. at the Sundance Sunset Cinemas or the Laemmle Noho 7. To see all currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters, click here and then click on TICKETS at the top of the screen.