A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Sunday, July 5, 2020

Rendez-vous (André Téchiné, 1985)

Lambert Wilson and Juliette Binoche in Rendez-vous
Cast: Lambert Wilson, Juliette Binoche, Wadeck Stanczak, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Dominique Lavanant, Jean-Louis Vitrac, Jacques Nolot, Anne Wiazemsky, Olimpia Carlisi, Caroline Faro. Screenplay: André Téchiné, Olivier Assayas. Cinematography: Renato Berta. Production design: Jean-Pierre Kohut-Svelko. Film editing: Martine Giordano. Music: Philippe Sarde.

The volatile, nigh unpredictable behavior of the characters in Rendez-vous keeps the viewer off balance, which is not unexpected from its screenwriters, two major French writer-directors, André Téchiné and Olivier Assayas, who delight in making their characters walk on a moral tightrope. At one point, the story looks like a familiar pattern, a love triangle involving Nina, an aspiring actress (Juliette Binoche); Paulot, a naively infatuated young man (Wadeck Stanczak); and Quentin, a swaggerer who at some moments brandishes a razor (Lambert Wilson). But things keep taking odd turns: Quentin dies in what could be an accident but is possibly a suicide, and then returns as a ghost, or at least a figment of Nina's imagination. Enter, too, Scrutzler, a theater director (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who wants to put on a production of Romeo and Juliet, and casts Nina, who really isn't very good, against the objections of the producers, only to reveal that he had in mind Quentin for Romeo -- for rather perverse reasons. Meanwhile, Paulot, who works as a real estate agent, pursues Nina, only to reject her after finally succeeding in having sex with her -- a bliss in proof and proved, a very woe. It's all very well-acted -- this was Binoche's first major film role -- but there's something unfocused about the story, as if the writers were making it up as they went along instead of having a clear goal in mind.