07

Nov

Ounie Lecomte’s “A Brand New Life” about a stubbornly loving orphan

Minnesota Film Arts presents “A Brand New Life” (which is “Yeo-haeng-ja” in Korean), from 2009, and French-South Korean film-maker, Ounie Lecomte, as a part of the In Search of Asia series at the St. Anthony Main cinema.

After an adorable elementary school-age girl, Jinhee [Sae Ron Kim], who clings to her dad, is left at orphanage by him, she must find a way to deal with it, but cannot.  This, even after being treated well and finding friends.

How would you feel or respond if, at around age 10, your dad broke your heart by lying to you…because he had to?

What if he bought you a new ensemble and said that you two were bound for a trip, but deposited you with an orphanage?  According to imdb, Ms. Lecompte’s own story inspired this film.

Jinhee’s dad deposits her at an orphanage, a way station for children whose lives might be lifted if middle-class families claimed them.

She has to deal with A Brand New Life in an orphanage.

From the moment that Jinhee – her beguiling grin that is – appears onscreen, she’s just a sweetie pie.  Her effervescence hobbles your objectivity and skepticism.  That story would be enough, but wait – there’s more.   She just can’t get over the fact that her father won’t return – that this could lead to a more stable life for her.

While 10-years old may be old enough for a child to roll with that sock to the chin, Jinhee isn’t that child.  She adores her father, so she refuses to accept her lot, and is doggedly stubborn about not rolling with punches that life has knocked into her.  Jinhee’s story is partly one of her emotional arrest in the face of an unenviable situation.  She might be Korea’s version of Shirley Temple, or an elementary-age Dakota Fanning if you like.

Jinhee and friend Sookhee chill out over pilfered cake

A key scene happens when the orphans attend church, where Jinhee sees a man whose resemblance to her father hits home.  A beat after that, the pastor’s lesson about Jesus asking his father, “why hast thou forsaken me?” tells us just what agony is festering within Jinhee.  It’s not that she likens herself to a martyr or as Messiah, but she is still struggling to reconcile her dad’s nasty, loving lie with her reality.

Either you sympathize with her refusal to roll with these punches, or you can find her as her soon-to-be good friend, Sookhee, [Do Yeon Park] will: “a wench,” who needs to stop being a baby!  Children do not comprehend or consider their situations as adults do (or as we would like or expect adults to).  They’re used to either being good or being punished.  She’s being as good as she can muster, but she must still suffer.

Jinhee content with her father (who hasn't a head?)

If a screen title didn’t tell us that this is fiction, taking place in 1975, then the semi-documentary style might nearly have fooled me.  But some of the shots are rarely found in documentaries.  Otherwise we should compare this to a PBS film from its Point of View series, “Wo Ai Ni, Mommy,” a Chinese documentary on trans”racial” international adoption; there is a lengthy scene where the girl is smack dab in the middle of change.  That scene is unsettling, with angst and agony.  That’s a hint at why the pastor’s lesson registers with our aggrieved young protagonist.

This story is one that, as with Thomas McCarthy’s “The Station Agent,” from 2003, or other small, personal films, demands that you are patient – frankly, mature – enough to allow it to defy American expectations for pacing.  That forecasts a niche audience who will have to seek out the opportunities to watch this.   “A Brand New Life” isn’t slow, but is deliberate.  It’s charming and quiet.  Are you patient enough to let this child’s story unfold before you, or will you shift in your seat wishing that something, something cool would happen?  The story defies American cinema’s banal conventions.  But it was made by a French-South Korean film-maker.

If we were to rate this: 4 out of 5.

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criticism/Film/foreign

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26

Aug

“Mademoiselle Chambon” at Minnesota Film Arts

On August 27th, Mademoiselle Chambon, will open at Minnesota Film Arts’ St. Anthony Main Theater. It’s a French film, by Stéphane Brizé, and adapted from a novel by Eric Holder. An elementary school teacher, Ms. Veronique Chambon (Sandrine Kiberlain) clicks with a work-a-day dad, Jean, (Vincent Lindon) whose son she teaches.  They click all the way into a tryst.

Mlle Chambon, the teacher, is enrapt with Jean's job talk

The trouble starts after she asks him to talk to her class about his work, construction.  He agrees, with a shrug.  He comes.  He talks.  He answers the students’ questions.  He has a good time.  Ms. Chambon likes Jean.

Love.

Lust.

Mid-life questions.

Wanderlust.

These are at Mademoiselle Chambon’s foundation.

This slowly becomes an affair. Jean and his wife, Anne-Marie, follow a predictable, seemingly content life with their son. They   are manual laborers.  One in construction, the other in a factory. And then Jean and we meet Mademoiselle Chambon. The predictability and contentment begin to crumble. The film starts in a deceptively daring way: it’s slow and tests our patience, and our typical conspicuous desire for action and fast-paced cutting. From the first POV shot where Jean glances at Ms. Chambon, from behind her as she sits atop a student’s desk, you know what will follow.

This meeting is supposed to be between parents and teacher. He has her undivided attention because his wife has fallen ill at the factory, and is on bed rest at home. The question to be answered: how deftly will, the director, Ms. Brizé execute their tryst? A fundamental and slippery rule of storytelling is to be predictable, but make sure that we’re surprised how it’s delivered. The tranquil and gentle tone and pace could lull us. But the way in which Jean and Veronique’s flirting grows from their lingering, even coy conversations, into something subtly disturbing is refreshing.

Jean and Ms. Chambon

The key scenes are cloaked in the guises of window repair, music appreciation, and where Veronique plays music at Jean’s home, during his father’s birthday.  Somehow that scene strikes notes that are sweet, and creepy, at once. These subtle scenes played so that each might go either in the impulsive and lustful path, or the sensible and responsible one.  We see what the film and its maker are doing when the duo’s conversations creep into a kind of small talk, which only happens when you can’t yet dare yourself to say what you need to. Jean and Veronique’s relationship is told more through silence, and coy body language than any explicit sentiments, as opposed to a North American movies’ typically forthright sensibilities.

Mademoiselle Chambon awaits destiny or..?

Neither of them is any more “at fault” for their attractions than the other; Jean pursues Ms. Chambon with as much interest as she does him. Ultimately Jean decides how and where their infatuation will go. That decision harkens to Richard Linklater’s mature 20-something romance, Before Sunrise, from 1991, where the défacto duo seriously asks each other whether they want to make love. Shall we do this when we’ll probably want more, and we have no idea if we’ll see each other after?

One more (ok, a few) open question: Each wants the other; each has found something that they lack in that other.  Why is this story Mademoiselle Chambon’s; Why is it named for her?  Won’t their wanderlust reap or wreak the most upon Jean and his family?

If we’re scoring this, 3.5 to 4, out of 5.

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criticism/Film/foreign/French

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14

Jul

A “blackfaced” French film, “The Other Dumas,” seen through American eyes

Bastille Day celebrates fraternity, among other values, but only some… paler… citizens feel that love, even in the 21st-Century.  Bias remains a pillar of French culture, at least through American eyes.  The suburban immigrant uprisings in 2005 told or reminded us of that.

Painting of the taking of the Bastille (in French, La Prise de Bastille)

As we look at this anniversary of the French revolution let’s pose a difficult, sensitive question: what about the brown, black, or beige French people?  Let’s consider a recent French film that has shoved this topic, and the more awkward questions of black face.

Let’s consider that the filmmaker, Safy Nebbou, cast a title character of a French film, about an ethnically mixed, French literary icon, Alexandre Dumas, with a white, French acting icon, Gerard Depardieu.

That makes you raise your eye brows and ask, “hunh?!”  Mr. Dumas wrote “The Count of Monte Cristo,” and “The Three Musketeers,” and other seminal literary works.  His grandfather was black.

This film The Other Dumas, entered theaters five months ago, in February.  The film  which is « L’Autre Dumas » in French, considers Dumas’ principal collaborator, Auguste Maquet.  It’s not a conventional biographic film.  It raises questions about whether we should Dumas and Maquet as an iconic literary duo instead of leaving Mr. Dumas’ legacy to hold the lot of it.

Gerard Depardieu as Alexandre Dumas, an ethnically mixed, French literary icon

Both French and North American peoples consider and respond to questions about diversity in very different, even disparate, ways: in the U.S., we track a near myriad of statistics in regards to color, and rarely and barely have conversations that lead us to shrink the stark social boundaries that divide us.  The French handle it very differently.  Their government keeps no official statistical records about ethnic or “racial” groups.  They are convinced that that defies the objective of liberté, égalité, and fraternité, their ideal, without regard to your color.  Most Americans probably find this bizarre, awkward, and even ghastly.

This will tell you a lot about the respective characters and outlooks of France’s and the U.S.’ cultures; France trusts (and expects) citizens to know right and act right.  The United States has little of such trust or expectation.

La Fête de la Fédération (Bastille Day) is an instructive hour to pose awkward questions about the realities of that haven, which many non-French people expect to find in France.

A likeness of Mr. Dumas himself

Mr. Depardieu, who has no African ancestry, and didn’t wear burnt cork, the black face material, but reportedly he did “blacken up.”

One English writer’s conservative point of view proposes a rational approach instead of an emotional one.  In writing for the “London Telegraph,” Patrick West, a free-lance writer he said, “Sometimes ‘blacking up’ can have no racist intent, even if people are determined to detect it.”  In “Why ‘blacking up’ white actors isn’t necessarily racist,” he elaborated that, as long as the “portrayals didn’t aim to perpetuate ethnic stereotypes,” we should not take offense.

Marcia Dawkins, a media scholar with California State University – Fullerton, has been considering the Dumas question also.  She has been writing about a recent trend in film casting: passing for mixed. In response to Mr. West’s stance, Prof. Dawkins said, by-phone, that Mr. West isn’t completely off, “but it ignores the complex history…  We need to be more sensitive to how” these subtle and very sensitive questions are dealt with.

When people see that Depardieu used a contemporary version of black face, rancor easily follows.  The word mistrel pops to mind.  Prof. Dawkins understood this easily: “I definitely think it is to some degree.  It’s not the same as minstrelsy.   It’s like a first or second cousin of it.”  Just because you can take a cool, rational approach to this, “…that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s cool..,” Dawkins said

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1039 days ago Short URL 1 Comment

Film/foreign/media criticism

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