Fifi Martingale (Jacques Rozier, 2001)

Jean Lefebvre and Lydia Feld in Fifi Martingale

Cast: Jean Lefebvre, Lydia Feld, Mike Marshall, Yves Afonso, François Chattot, Jacques Petitjean, Luis Rego, Roger Trapp, Jacques François, Alexandra Stewart. Screenplay: Lydia Feld, Jacques Rozier. Cinematography: Jean Clavé, Stéphane Patti, Matthieu Poirot-Delpech, Jacques Rozier, Ramón F. Suárez, Bernard Tiphine. Production design: Nicole Karen, Jacques Rozier. Film editing: Laure Meynet, Jeanne Moutard, Jacques Rozier, Anne-Cécile Vergnaud. Music: Reinhardt Wagner. 

Jacques Rozier's last film, Fifi Martingale, was never theatrically released, and it's easy to see why: It's a mess. That it's often an amusing mess doesn't excuse the fact that it looks like a bunch of talented people got together and decided to make a movie poking fun at theatrical types without more in mind than that. The premise is that the writer of a hit play has decided to rewrite the play in mid-run, and when one of his performers is injured, he signs as a replacement an actor who has a photographic memory. But on the night that the play is to resume its run, the actor suddenly loses his ability to remember his lines. That in itself would be enough to sustain a farcical satire, which is what Fifi Martingale seems to want to be. But Rozier and co-writer Lydia Feld have so many other things in mind that the film keeps rambling off of the central premise, and does so for two hours -- Rozier was never one who believed that less is more. If you're someone who wants a movie to make sense, avoid this one. But if you're less demanding, there are enough moments to justify your time. At least I learned that a martingale is a betting strategy that involves doubling your wager each time, whether you win or lose. Rosier's movie wins some but loses more.   

Golden Balls (Bigas Luna, 1993)

Maribel Verdú, Maria de Medeiros, and Javier Bardem in Golden Balls

Cast: Javier Bardem, Maria de Medeiros, Maribel Verdú, Elisa Tovati, Raquel Bianca, Alessandro Gassmann, Benicio Del Toro, Francesco Maria Dominedò, Albert Vidal, Ángel de Andrés López. Screenplay: Cuca Canals, Bigas Luna. Cinematography: José Luis Alcaine. Production design: Irene Montcada. Film editing: Carmen Frias. Music: Nicola Piovani. 

Maybe it's just my Trump Derangement Syndrome asserting itself, but I can't help noticing the resemblance of Benito González (Javier Bardem), Bigas Luna's protagonist in Golden Balls, to our current president. There's the swaggering machismo, the obsession with glitz ("Two Rolexes!"), and the dodgily financed real estate development designed for self-aggrandizement. The chief difference is that Benito gets to suffer at the end, which hasn't yet come for his real-life counterpart, and when it does I doubt that we'll see him sobbing as he rips a bidet from its moorings at Mar-a-Lago. Luna's film is a satiric tragicomedy about the rise and fall of Benito, whom Bardem plays with great flair, just enough to see why people might fall for his bullshit, and with just enough vulnerability that we can feel a slight twinge of sympathy when he falls victim to his own connivings. If it's not an entirely satisfactory movie, it's because Luna has too many ideas that he wants to jam into the film, including some touches of surrealism borrowed from Salvador Dalí that astonish more than they illuminate. But as a modern moral fable, one with continuing relevance, it succeeds. 

The Mouth Agape (Maurice Pialat, 1974)

Nathalie Baye, Monique Mélinand, and Philippe Léotard in The Mouth Agape

Cast: Nathalie Baye, Philippe Léotard, Hubert Deschamps, Monique Mélinand. Screenplay: Maurice Pialat. Cinematography: Néstor Almendros. Production design: Michel de Broin. Film editing: Bernard Dubois, Arlette Langmann. 

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's familiar list of the five stages of grief -- Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance -- omits one that's featured in Maurice Pialat's The Mouth Agape: Impatience. Granted, it's antecedent to the others, and is usually present mainly when the person takes a long time dying. But it's a very real stage in Pialat's film, voiced primarily by the dying woman's husband and then only with guilt and embarrassment, made more poignant by the fact that he has cheated on her throughout their life together. There's nothing particularly admirable about the family of the dying woman (Monique Mélinand). Her husband (Hubert Deschamps), who continually has a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, feels up a pretty young girl who comes in to buy a T-shirt from his shop while his wife is dying in a nearby room. Their son (Philippe Léotard) is also unfaithful to his wife (Nathalie Baye), who goes off on vacation while he's watching after his mother. And yet, although The Mouth Agape takes a cold-hearted look at dying, treating it almost as an imposition on the living, the film somehow becomes more moving than the ones that sentimentalize the vigil at the bedside. The grief that the husband feels after her death is genuine, made more apparent by the way Pialat ends the film: first with a long tracking shot from the car carrying the son and daughter-in-law to Paris, where their lives will continue. We see the door that the father has just closed and then the streets of the village and finally the road to the city, receding as if the couple is escaping the trauma of death. And then we cut to an interior shot of the father turning out the light, enveloping him in darkness and loneliness. 

Dutchman (Anthony Harvey, 1966)

Shirley Knight and Al Freeman Jr. in Dutchman

Cast: Shirley Knight, Al Freeman Jr. Screenplay: Amiri Baraka, based on his play. Cinematography: Gerry Turpin. Art direction: Herbert Smith. Film editing: Anthony Harvey. Music: John Barry. 

Dutchman, Amiri Baraka's parable about race and sex, made it from stage to screen in admirable fashion. without the usual strained attempts to "open it up" with extraneous scenes. Granted, it comes in at just under an hour, too long for a short film and too short for a feature, but it's so tightly staged and so intensely acted that it doesn't need to be condensed or expanded. Shirley Knight's flamboyant performance in the role of Lula, the minidressed woman who comes on to an initially reserved Black man on the subway, her a best actress award at the Venice Film Festival, though some think she's overacting -- that her performance would have worked on the stage but is pitched too high for the camera. I see the point, but the role is a necessary foil to Al Freeman Jr.'s contained and wary Clay, who has to wait for her to pull the trigger that makes him explode, which he does superbly. It's the type of play and film that from title to denouement demands exegesis, but I leave that to others.   

Ma Mère (Christophe Honoré, 2004)

Isabelle Huppert and Louis Garrel in Ma Mère

Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Louis Garrel, Emma de Caunes, Joana Preiss, Jean-Baptiste Montagut, Dominique Reymond, Olivier Rabourdin, Philippe Duclos. Screenplay: Christophe Honoré, based on a novel by Georges Bataille. Cinematography: Hélène Louvart. Production design: Laurent Allaire. Film editing: Chantal Hymans. 

Sex without taboos is like tennis without a net. That seems to be one message of Christophe Honoré's Ma Mêre, which is so drenched in depictions of sexual activity that it earned an NC-17 rating in the U.S. Unfortunately, it's also boring. Featuring everything from public copulation to incest, with actors of the first order, it trudges from one shocking moment to another without ever engaging the audience's sympathy or interest. Isabelle Huppert plays the mother, who confesses to her son (Louis Garrel) after his father's death that she's a slut -- her word, or the French equivalent for it. He volunteers to be tutored by her in sexual freedom, though he's still manifesting elements of his Catholic schooling, a detail that feels like it's meant to make some symbolic point but doesn't. To aid in his education she enlists her friend and lover Réa (Joana Preiss) and a young woman, Hansi (Emma de Caunes). Sure enough, everything gets out of hand and la petite mort is succeeded by actual death. If these were characters we might potentially feel some sympathy for, the film could have made an impact, but my only reaction was relief when it was over. 

Moving (Shinji Somai, 1993)

Tomoko Tabata in Moving

Cast: Tomoko Tabata, Junko Sakarada, Kiichi Nakai, Mariko Sudo, Taro Tanaka, Ippei Shigeyama, Nagiko Tono. Screenplay: Satoshi Okonogi, Satoko Okudera, based on a novel by Hiko Tanaka. Cinematography: Toyomichi Kurita. Art direction: Shigenori Shimoishizaka. Film editing: Yoshiyuki Okuhara. Music: Shigeaki Saegusa. 

The engine that drives Shinji Somai's Moving is the voracious ego of a child. When we first meet Renko (Tomoko Tabata), she is sitting at the appropriately wedge-shaped dining table in the home of her parents, Kenichi (Kiichii Nakai) and Nazuna (Junko Sakarada). Everyone at the table is pretending that it's a perfectly normal meal, except that it is the last one that Kenichi will be having there. He's moving out, having joined with Nazuna in a decision that their marriage is virtually over. Renko is feigning a maturity and understanding that we will soon see is beyond the capacity of her 12-year-old self. Soon, under the pressure from schoolmates and her mother's attempt to impose a new order on their lives, she will begin acting out in a variety of ways. Somai's portrait of the effect of divorce on Renko is an acute and sensitive one, hindered as a drama by the fact that there are only two ways the story can go: reconciliation or acceptance. After the explosion of several attempts at reconciliation, that ceases to be an option. Somai chooses to dramatize Renko's process of acceptance with an extended sequence that's part real, part dream. It takes place at a festival at which Renko has arranged for both of her parents to be present, but when she's unable to effect a reunion, she runs away and spends the night alone, wandering the woods on the fringe of the festival and having a vision that somehow brings her to understand her inability to manipulate her parents' lives. It's a heartfelt movie with superb performances, though it seems to me to cheat a little with its shift into fantasy as a correlative for the psychological healing that takes place in Renko. 

Redline (Takeshi Koike, 2009)

Cast: Voices of Takuya Kimura, Yu Aoi, Takeshi Aono, Kosei Hirota, Unsho Ishizuka, Kente Miyaka, Koji Ishi, Cho, Ken'yu Horiuchi, Shunichiro Miki, Ikki Todoroki, Akane Sakai, Daisuke Gori, Shin'ichiro Ota. Screenplay: Katsuhito Ishi, Yoji Inokido, Yoshiki Sakurai. Cinematography: Ryu Takizawa. Production design: Katsuhito Ishii. Film editing: Naoki Kawanishi, Satoshi Terauchi. Music: James Shimoji. 

Though Redline took seven years to create, even its most ardent admirers admit that it's lacking in originality when it comes to story: It's the old auto-race tale with a romance thrown in. But almost everyone admits that it really doesn't matter: Takeshi Koike's film is a slam-bang, non-stop, eye-challenging demonstration that when it comes to animation, there's life in hand-drawn images that computer-created ones still don't possess. I'm no great fan of anime, but Redline kept me amused even when my attention was divided between the images and the subtitles. (I refuse to watch dubbed movies.) The truth is, you hardly need the subtitles to get what's happening, since it's mostly action anyway, especially when you get the setup of a futuristic auto race taking place illicitly on a planet that doesn't want it to happen and is willing to take any means to prevent it. The central character, JP, is an amalgam of Elvis Presley, Marlon Brando in The Wild One (László Benedek, 1953), and the outlaw bikers of Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969). To win the race, he teams up with his chief rival, Sonoshee McLaren, who hates her nickname, Cherry Boy Hunter, but demonstrates her feminine wiles whenever they're useful. (She has a gratuitous topless scene.) In short, it's the ultimate in kinetic cinema, though you may nurse a hangover headache afterward.  

The Hungry Ghosts (Michael Imperioli, 2009)

Steve Schirripa in The Hungry Ghosts

Cast: Steve Schirripa, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Nick Sandow, Sharon Angela, Emory Cohen, Zohra Lampert, Stefan Schaefer, Paul Calderón, Joe Caniano, Jim Hendricks, Sondra James, Jerry Grayson, Bess Rous. Screenplay: Michael Imperioli. Cinematography: Dan Hersey. Art direction: Illya Radysh. Film editing: Erin Greenwell. Music: Elijah Amitin.

The Hungry Ghosts, Michael Imperioli's debut feature, feels a bit like it came out of an assignment in Screenwriting 101: Write a screenplay about a group of seriously flawed people who carom off one another in surprising ways, but don't worry about plot. In short, it has all the earmarks of an independent film, including no stars but a cast of slightly familiar faces. In this case, many of them are former cast members of The Sopranos, in which Imperioli came to prominence. The principal figures in the film are Frank (Steve Schirripa), who hosts a late-night talk show on radio and has a serious alcohol and cocaine problem; Nadia (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), who moves out of her apartment because she's behind on her rent but can't seem to find a place to crash; and Gus (Nick Sandow), Nadia's former lover who is just getting out of rehab and can't wait to pick up the habit again. Nick has a teenage son, Matthew (Emory Cohen), with whom he has trouble communicating, and a wife, Angela (Sharon Angela), with whom he is at odds, not least because of his relationship with Matthew. Nadia, who has been going to a yoga and meditation class run by Ruth (Zohra Lampert) while dodging Gus's phone calls, decides it's time to get out of the city, which connects her with Frank, who is on the same train, and eventually, though belatedly, unites them with Gus. Imperioli struggles with making these connections, but the skill of his performers almost succeeds in making sense out of them. The consensus of reviewers was that The Hungry Ghosts was warmed-over Cassavetes (a director Imperioli admires), and for once, the consensus was just.  

Psycho Beach Party (Robert Lee King, 2000)

Lauren Ambrose, Charles Busch, and Thomas Gibson in Psycho Beach Party

Cast: Lauren Ambrose, Thomas Gibson, Nicholas Brendon, Kimberley Davies, Matt Keeslar, Charles Busch, Beth Broderick, Dani Wheeler, Nick Cornish, Andrew Levitas, Amy Adams, Kathleen Robertson, Nathan Bexton, Buddy Quaid. Screenplay: Charles Busch, based on his play. Cinematography: Arturo Smith. Production design: Franco-Giacomo Carbone. Film editing: Suzanne Hines. Music: Ben Vaughn. 

Psycho Beach Party, Charles Busch's theatrical mashup of surfer movies and slasher flicks, should have been a natural for turning into a movie, since that was the original target of the parody. Busch especially spoofs Gidget (Paul Wendkos, 1959), whose title character, played by Sandra Dee, becomes Chicklet (Lauren Ambrose). Others are similarly lampooned: Cliff Robertson's Kahuna becomes Thomas Gibson's Kanaka, James Darren's Moondoggie becomes Nicholas Brendon's Starcat, and so on. Like Gidget and other surfer-teen movies, Psycho Beach Party is full of process shots of the stars riding surfboards against a projected background, and the homoerotic subtext of the horseplay of the surfer dudes in the original is revealed for what it really is. But Busch adds murder to the mix, when characters with physical disabilities start getting bumped off -- as if they don't fit into the tanned and fit world of surf culture. Unfortunately, Psycho Beach Party falls apart on the screen because its director, Robert Lee King, fails to get his ensemble working on the same level. On the stage, Busch played Chicklet, but he knew his performance wouldn't work on the pseudo-realistic screen, so he created a role of a detective investigating the murders for himself, and the lead role went to Ambrose, who is quite good at switching from the wide-eyed teenager to the possibly schizophrenic serial killer. Brendon, who learned how to play with tongue in cheek on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, strikes the right note as Starcat, but Gibson wipes out as Kanaka, looking like he doesn't get the joke. At best, Psycho Beach Party gets a few laughs, but time has made the targets of its humor ridiculous enough that today they don't need parodying.

Soleil Ô (Med Hondo, 1970)

Robert Liensol in Soleil Ô

Cast: Robert Liensol, Théo Légitimus, Gabriel Glissand, Bernard Fresson, Yane Barry, Greg Germain, Armand Meffre, Med Hondo (voice). Screenplay: Med Hondo. Cinematography: François Catonné, Jean-Claude Rahaga. Production design: Med Hondo. Film editing: Michèle Catonné, Clément Menuet. Music: George Anderson. 

Because it caused our civil war and continues to blight our public discourse and public policy, we Americans tend to think of racism as a problem somehow peculiar to us. Of course it isn't, and Med Hondo's Soleil Ô is a scathing, satiric demonstration of that painful fact. It depicts the experiences of a young African man (Robert Liensol) as he immigrates to France, where he encounters racism in a variety of forms, from discrimination in employment to sexual humiliation when he fails to live up to the myth of Black male potency. Creating a collage with various techniques, including animation, sometimes taking a neorealist approach and sometimes resorting to surrealism, Hondo indicts colonialism as well as racism almost to the point of exhausting the viewer. But then sometimes we viewers need to be exhausted for our own good.