Monday movies update...

LA PURITAINE (THE PURITAN).
Caught this Monday night at the Brattle. This is also one of Doillon's own films. I can NOT recommend this one to anyone except a very completist fan of Doillon, or perhaps, maybe, possibly, an actor or director in training. The setup of the film is that a famous stage director has received a letter from his one-year-gone estranged daughter saying that she will return to him Sunday night at his theater. Sunday evening comes and the director gets impatient while waiting. He calls all the actresses in his troupe to the theater and has them workshop the father-daughter reunion. The daughter shows up in time to watch this from the theater shadows, and even secretly influences the performances. When she finally reveals herself to her father, the actual reunion is nothing like the rehearsals.

The setup's not bad, really, but the execution is nothing but aggravating, monotonous, and pretentious. It MIGHT have made a much better short film.

At least it counts as one more movie watched in the 'thon. =)

MON ONCLE.
God, this was a super sweet film to watch, and just plain WONDERFUL after THE PURITAN - a perfect cure for it, really. It's a Jacques Tati film, directed by and starring, as his signature character, Monsieur Hulot, a simple kind-hearted every(French)man sporting a trench coat, hat, and pipe. In this film he is the uncle to the son of a successful factory administrator. While Hulot certainly seems quite content with his daily routine, living in a modest apartment, passing the time wandering the streets of his French hometown (is it Paris?), and playing and looking out for his nephew, his sister and brother-in-law believe he needs purpose and focus. To this end, they wangle him a job at the plastic hose factory. On his first day at work, he starts by inadvertently lets a pack of dogs into the building, and finishes by nearly destroying the factory.

There's much more to the movie than just this little bit of plotting. The camera meanders a lot between scenes that actually pertain to this storyline. Hulot leaves his apartment and cycles thru neighborhoods and marketplaces to get to his sister's ultra-modern automated home, and the camera takes its time and lingers in the in-between spaces, following a street-sweeper who doesn't sweep all that much, a grocer whose scale measures everything heavy because his truck is tilted to one side, a gang of little rascals whose greatest joy is to trick passersby into knocking themselves out. Little slices of life that you can't help but smile at.

It's all so damn charming!

It's sort of a strange comparison to describe a film, but visually every scene in this movie looks like it might have come from an elementary school foreign language (probably French =) textbook.

The antics of M. Hulot, and all of the inhabitants of Tati's French town, remind me of Chaplin and Keaton whimsy. Maybe not as physically challenging, though.

Also, there are cute rambunctuous doggies everywhere!

Looking beyond the plain fun of every little thing, the movie definitely looks sourly on modernism, as pictured in the 50s-60s. It frowns on the rigid structure, hailed to be superior and desirable, promised by the mechanized and automated future, at home and in the workplace, portraying it as soulless, dehumanizing, and nonsensical.

Whoa, pretty deepish thinking there for 3.30am. Frack. This is another bit of evening volleyball induced non-somnia. I should wrap this up and turn out the lights and stare at the ceiling until my glow-in-the-dark night sky stickers turn into hallucinated radiating spots before my eyes.

But just before I do - the 'thon list so far...
Note that by the rules of the Watch-A-Thon, non-Brattle films are worth half a screening, so I've got 5 down right now, not 6.

1. HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, 11/11 @Capitol Theater in Arlington.
2. A MAN ESCAPED, 11/12 @Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square.
3. WALLACE AND GROMIT: CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT, 11/13 @Fenway in Boston.
4. PONETTE, 11/13 @Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square.
5. LA PURITAINE, 11/14 @Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square.
6. MON ONCLE, 11/14 @Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square.

Keep on keepin on~