Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 09/13/24

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

Friday, September 13, 2024

French Wedding, Caribbean Style (Julius-Amédée Laou, 2002)

Nicole Dogué in French Wedding, Caribbean Style

Cast: Dieudonné, Loulou Boislaville, Nicole Dogué, Daniel Njo Lobé, Lucien Thérésin, Emile Abossolo M'bo, Ériq Ebouaney, Emilie Benoît. Screenplay: Julius-Amédée Laou.

You can't count on much help from the internet if you want to know more after watching Julius-Amédée Laou's French Wedding, Caribbean Style. There's precious little about the film on the usual sources like IMDb and Letterboxd. But it's a refreshing, noisy, chaotic treat that takes on all sorts of subjects: racism, colonialism, sexism, and any number of cultural conflicts in an amusing but bittersweet, insightful, provocative way. The setup is simple: a young white Frenchman and a young woman whose grandparents immigrated to France from Martinique in the 1930s arrive at the reception after their wedding, which is being held at the home of her parents. The event is being recorded by her younger brother on a video camera, and we see everything through that lens. There are the usual family tensions on display -- get any large family, no matter the ethnicity, together and you'll witness them. The groom's parents, an uptight couple, are not terribly happy with the marriage, but even among the bride's relatives there's some conflict. Still, everything proceeds noisily as the young videographer pokes his camera's nose into what's going on. But midway through the film, an uninvited guest arrives: the bride's old boyfriend, who throws a bombshell into the occasion. His "wedding gift" is another videotape, and a shocking one. At this point, as the reception turns into an uproar, the camera falls into the hands of the bride's younger sister, who has an entirely different attitude toward what's going on. That shift in point of view opens up a new perspective on the proceedings. I have to say that I found the ending of the movie a little more didactic and conventional than I'm entirely happy with, but I still admire the huge ensemble cast and the energy and artistry with which Laou has put together this boisterous film. If you subscribe to the Criterion Channel (and you should), you owe it to yourself to check it out.