Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #223: A Monster in Paris (2011).

 

It's 1910. Emile (Sebastien Desjours) is a shy film projectionist who loves cinema and especially his stunning colleague Maud (Ludivine Sagnier). He works with Raoul (Gad Elmaleh), a delivery driver and inventor on bad terms with Lucille (Vanessa Paradis), his childhood friend and now a cabaret singer whose aunt Carlotta (Julie Ferrier) wishes to marry off to local police commissioner and mayoral candidate Victor Maynott (Francois Cluzot). One evening Ralph brings Emile to the Paris Botanic Gardens to deliver something but in the process they stumble upon a closed greenhouse where Raoul accidentally awakens a peculiar monster and once it inevitably escapes, they elect to track it down. Now, once Lucille also becomes entangled in this fiasco, they realise the monster might be more harmless than it appears and so now they have to set out to retrieve it before it falls into the corrupt Maynott's hands.

This effort by French animator and director Bibo Bergeron, based loosely on Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera, is quite narratively thin, but what it lacks in plot originality it compensates for in energy, fun and visual beauty. It's appropriately loaded with action and visual effects and it's also willing to affectionately poke fun at our rather bumbling, impulsive heroes. The animation itself has an unusual quasi-stop-motion, quasi-CGI vibe which is nonetheless cohesive and it's populated with characters who are all voiced with charisma and collective chemistry. 

Again the narrative is sometimes cliched, and I would've liked a more prominent score, but while A Monster in Paris isn't an animation gem, it's nonetheless an enjoyable way to relax for 90 minutes.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #222: April and the Extraordinary World (2015).

 

The year is 1941, but you'd never suspect that because here, France is trapped in an alternate nineteenth century. In 1870, Emperor Napoleon III oversaw a scientific and military experiment to create an army of super-soldiers to wage war, but he then dies in an explosion staged to destroy the disappointing results. His successor then struck a deal to avert war with Prussia, securing the throne for the House of Bonaparte. Then, over the next six decades, many renowned scientists vanished and France's environment went to hell. During one ill-fated experiment then, young April barely escapes with her talking pet cat Darwin (the voice of Phillipe Katerine) after her parents are seemingly killed. Eleven more years after that, a now-adult April (the voice of Marion Cotillard) herself has become a scientist and with the help of Darwin and sympathetic criminal Julius (the voice of Marc-Andre Grondin), she sets out to finally discover her parents' fate.

April and the Extraordinary World is what a threesome between steampunk, a Marie Curie biopic and The Adventures of Tintin would create. As bizarre as that combination sounds, the result is absolutely beguiling. Directors Christian Desmares and Franck Enkinci, with co-writer Benjamin Legrand, seem to have had a fully in-sync meeting of the minds while concocting this most imaginatively original narrative, and Desmares and Enkinci (with their animators' help) unfold that narrative very enthusiastically while very lucidly working the technical aspects around it for a genuinely absorbing whole. The result is not particularly emotional but nor is it meant to be; this story is really more of a mystery than a drama, which nonetheless increases the film's uniqueness. However, its familial themes are still wisely kept at the forefront even while we're encouraged to follow the breadcrumbs April's fact-finding missing leaves for her and us.

Additionally, the visuals are dazzlingly detailed and rendered, Valentin Hadjadj provides a richly classical French score, it's crisply edited and the voice cast all evidently enjoyed themselves. April and the Extraordinary World took me along with its protagonist into that Extraordinary World.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #221: Look at Me (2018).

 

Lotfi (Nidhal Saadi) is a forty-something Tunisian immigrant in France, carving a living out as a small-time thug. He has a home appliance store and a stunning French girlfriend, but he can't run from his past when he learns his wife (Sawssen Maalej) has had a stroke back home. Now he reluctantly returns to Tunisia where he's forced to look after his severely autistic nine-year-old son Youssef (Idyrss Kharroubi), a non-verbally and occasionally violent child Lotfi abandoned when he was two. As Lotfi's wife slowly recovers and continues juggling his professional matters. Lotfi now has to strike a bond with the son he couldn't handle before.

This family drama, a Tunisian-French-Qatari co-production, truly shook me to the core, yet simultaneously enchanted me aesthetically. So much so, in fact, that it gave me an insight into how challenging I must have been for my parents as an ASD child (although I can objectively say I was much higher functioning than Youssef is) and as an extension of that insight, it even evoked specific memories of them (particularly my dad, obviously) reading to me and whatnot as a boy. I was legitimately that moved and mentally stimulated as I watched this film. Writer-director Nejib Belkadhi fleshes this potentially very manipulative narrative out with admirable patience and restraint, and I commend him for daring to depict autism and its effect on familial relationships in such a brutally frank but empathetic and objective manner.

And what great help he has from his cast in doing that, particularly the two leads. Saadi shrewdly peels the layers gradually off his initially easygoing but selfish character to reveal Lotfi's haunted and guilty interior, helping us to then understand why he abandoned his post seven years earlier; Youssef's meltdowns and eccentricities were simply too much for him and he still struggles to get around them. Saadi expresses all this love buried under deep confusion and frustration with enormous grace and confidence. And Youssef is as demanding a role as they come for child actors, but Kharroubi (who to my knowledge is neurotypical) matches him scene for scene, presenting a misunderstood child who clearly longs to express and defend himself verbally but can only do so physically. Together, they're dynamite.

Look at Me is occasionally a challenging watch, and obviously not a barrel of laughs. But it's unquestionably one of the best family dramas, and autism movies, I've ever seen. It will drain you, but I promise in a completely eye-opening, cathartic way.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #220: Little Monsters (2019).

Dave (Alexander England) is a washed-up musician who's had to move in with his sister Tess (Kat Stewart) and her son Felix (Diesel La Torraca) after a break-up. While taking Felix to school, Dave meets Felix's teacher Miss Caroline (Lupita Nyong'o) and is instantly attracted to her. Then after learning one of the parents has withdrawn from the upcoming class trip to a farm, Dave eagerly agrees to chaperone the kids there (exclusively, of course, to hang out with Caroline). But when that day arrives, Dave is frustrated to find competition for her attention in the form of Teddy McGiggle (Josh Gad), a world-famous children's entertainer who's filming an episode of his TV show there.  It then emerges that Caroline is already engaged to somebody else, but never mind this complicated romantic triangle: danger arrives for all three of them, and the kids, when the farm becomes the scene of a massive zombie outbreak. Now these three have to band together and bury their conflicts to save the day. 

After his terrific 2016 effort Down Under, Abe Forsythe (who was originally an actor on the Aussie TV show Always Greener) proves that wasn't a fluke with this thoroughly entertaining and sharply plotted zom-com; yes, not a rom-com but a zom-com. An Australian/US/UK co-production, Little Monsters (whose title itself is deliberately both metaphorical and literal) works so well because it defies expectations the entire way and without quite seeming like it was trying to do that (although it clearly was). There's no shortage of gratuitous violence here and as a horror comedy devotee I always relish that, but what's truly stuck with me most about this entry to the genre is the lucid focus, amidst all that, on the central trio's intertwined arcs because that element especially takes a very unusual turn here from what I've come to expect with horror comedy characters. We come to learn about Caroline's background and Teddy's true colours but I'll hold my tongue on both those plot points for spoiler reasons; however I should say Nyong'o and Gad both clearly had a ball bringing their characters to life here. Not to be outdone either, England brings just the right laidback but gradually alarmed touch to Dave.

Furthermore, Forsythe's pacing is seamless throughout and Jim May's and Drew Thompson's editing compliments that appropriately. Oh, and did I mention there's a repeated and very unexpected but oddly fitting use of Taylor Swift's Shake It Off  (the rights to which I'm surprised the filmmakers managed to acquire on such a small budget) thrown in? Litte Monsters is really a little gem.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #219: The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019).

 

Zak (Zack Gottsagen) is a 22-year-old with Down syndrome who resides in a care facility in Richmond, Virginia. Unhappy there and dreaming of becoming a professional wrestler, Zak escapes one night with the help of his elderly housemate Carl (Bruce Dern) and stows away on a fishing boat, where the next day Tyler (Shia LaBeouf) encounters him. Tyler's a fisherman and criminal on the run who obviously has the same idea of escaping in the boat and now, of course, his and Zak's paths have crossed so they must join forces and connect. Once they do connect, Tyler takes Zak under his wing and agrees to help Zak on his road trip to meet his hero, wrestler the Salt Water Redneck (Thomas Haden Church), who runs a wrestling school. All the while, Zak's support worker Eleanor (Dakota Johnson) has hit the road to find him.

I was very keen to see The Peanut Butter Falcon, dealing as it does with disability and a coming-of-age narrative, but I must say I was quite disappointed once I finally did. Debutant writer-directors Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz here tell a story that is thoroughly sympathetic but, to my mind, predictable and deeply sycophantic. Also, while it avoids stereotypes in its portrayal of Down syndrome, I couldn't say as much for its bildungsroman narrative; I was reminded just slightly too much of wild-youth tales like Lord of the Flies and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, classics though both of those indisputably are, instead of a genuinely original narrative. There is also one scene with an African-American woodsman whose depiction felt questionable at best (and at worst, borderline racist) for me.

Gottsagen, LaBeouf and Johnson all give enjoyable, natural turns and have strong chemistry together but unfortunately, for me the peanut butter in this falcon wasn't crunchy enough for me.

My reaction to the US election fallout.

So as of today, Joe Biden's just six electoral votes away from the White House. This poll hanging on a knife-edge was widely predicted. But in his true ungracious, power-crazed style, that hasn't kept Donald Trump from conceding (impending) defeat or even acknowledging the result's authenticity. It seems he will take that to the Supreme Court (and indeed I doubt he knows the Supreme Court from a supreme pizza); the results from each individual state, no less. Then if the SC comply with that action, which I doubt they will as they should already know just how legal the vote already is, that'll be one hell of a marathon process given there's fifty American states. 

On Thursday as I was driving, I heard on the radio news that among the reasons Trump is citing for this proposed action of his is so-called "corruption" on the Biden campaign's part; my immediate thought on that was "Look who's fucking talking there!" I mean, briefly ignoring the crimes he's already committed in office, here he is trying to deny and legally challenge an election result his opponent is clearly winning. And I am certain he's doing so not for America's and the free world's benefit but for simply his own. He's also said on the campaign trail that losing is hard for him; well maybe it is but it was clearly hard in 2016 for Hillary Clinton, as she actually expressed then in her concession speech, but if she could accept that result then (and she is very far from perfect), why can't he accept this one now? Oh, yes: because he's a raging tyrant.

This proposal Trump's made has inevitably drawn comparisons in the media to the SC's forced involvement in the Bush v. Gore decision from 2000 with the Florida ballot recount. That was the first US election I recall hearing about hitherto, probably thanks to that deadlock. But what's the difference? That came down to late-arriving postal votes rather than one of the candidates denying the outcome (neither of them even claimed victory then, for that matter, until it was conclusively decided).

Come to think of it, this time Trump was prepared to claim victory while surely knowing the vote-counting, in both the popular and electoral categories, yet had quite some way to go; Biden, who for the record wouldn't have been my first choice for the Democratic nomination (Elizabeth Warren would've been), on Tuesday made neither a victory nor a concession speech. That was the honest and realistic thing then to do.

Anyway, in conclusion, if this vote does go to the Supreme Court, I very much hope they will not bow to Trump's threats and manipulation, and instead very swiftly repudiate him and his administration. Just like the American people evidently have.