Fat Girl (Catherine Breillat, 2001)

Anaïs Reboux and Roxane Mesquida in Fat Girl

Cast: Anaïs Reboux, Roxane Mesquida, Libero De Rienzo, Arsinée Khanjian, Romain Goupil, Laura Betti, Albert Goldberg. Screenplay: Catherine Breillat. Cinematography: Giorgos Arvanitis. Production design: François-Renaud Labarthe. Film editing: Pascale Chavance.

Human beings develop sexually, both in capability and desire, long before their societies typically allow them to demonstrate the capability and fulfill the desire. Which is the source of much comedy and much drama. As it happens, last night I watched a drama, Catherine Breillat's Fat Girl, and a comedy, the TV series Sex Education, both of which center on the conundrum of adolescent sexuality. I preferred the comedy, in large part because the series created by Laurie Nunn takes what seems to me a more balanced and humane and nuanced view of the subject than the film, which is so provocative and shocking that it verges on nihilism. It's about two sisters, Anaïs (Anaïs Reboux) and Elena (Roxane Mesquida). Elena is 15 and beautiful; Anaïs is 12 and has a weight problem. But the two are close and spend a lot of their time together talking about sex until one day, while on a vacation with the family, Elena is seduced by Fernando (Libero De Rienzo), a law student. The sisters share a room, and on the first night that Fernando sneaks into the room, she lies in her bed pretending to be asleep while Fernando tries to persuade Elena into having sex with him and eventually penetrates her anally. Several nights later, he returns and consummates their relationship, while Anaïs, her back to the couple, silently weeps. When the girls' mother (Arsinée Khanjian) learns of the relationship of Fernando and Elena, she gathers them into the car and begins a harrowing freeway journey, dodging huge trucks, back to their home near Paris. Exhausted by driving, she pulls into a rest stop to sleep. Elena dozes off, too, but Anaïs stays awake until suddenly a man smashes the windshield and kills Elena and the mother. Anaïs flees into a nearby wooded area where the man rapes her. But when the police arrive at the scene, Anaïs claims that she wasn't raped and the film ends. Interpretations abound of this disturbing film, ranging from the extreme feminist view that all penetrative sex is rape to a more conventional view that it's our culture that views sex and violence as equivalents. But my own view is that Fat Girl (the original French title is À ma soeur! -- "for my sister") fails because the violent ending doesn't follow the first part of the film with any dramatic logic, but instead feels driven by a desire to provoke and shock. It' s an effective film in that regard, but one that shows its creator's hand more than it serves our understanding of the characters Breillat has so effectively created and developed. 

The Smart Set (Jack Conway, 1928)

William Haines in The Smart Set

Cast: William Haines, Jack Holt, Alice Day, Hobart Bosworth, Coy Watson, Constance Howard, Paul Nicholson, Julia Swayne Gordon. Screenplay: Byron Morgan, Ann Price; titles: Robert E. Hopkins. Cinematography: Oliver T. Marsh. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons, Merrill Pye. Film editing: Sam Zimbalist.

Given that we now know what everyone in Hollywood knew at the time, namely that William Haines was one of the few openly gay leading men of the 1920s and '30s, it's fascinating to watch how he camps up the role of Tommy Van Buren in The Smart Set. Haines mugs, poses, and generally upstages everyone in the film -- and gets away with it, considering that his performance is almost the only entertaining thing about this silly romantic comedy. Tommy is a conceited champion polo player, and the plot, such as it is, deals with his self-centered sabotage of the United States polo team in a match against the British, and his developing relationship with the pretty Polly Durant (Alice Day), the daughter of a wealthy owner of polo ponies. Does Tommy come to his senses and save the day at the film's end, winning the game and Polly, too? What do you think?

River's Edge (Tim Hunter, 1986)

Cast: Crispin Glover, Keanu Reeves, Ione Skye, Daniel Roebuck, Dennis Hopper, Joshua John Miller, Roxana Zal, Josh Richman, Phillip Brock, Tom Bower, Constance Forsland, Leo Rossi, Jim Metzler. Screenplay: Neal Jimenez. Cinematography: Frederick Elmes. Production design: John Muto. Film editing: Howard E. Smith, Sonya Sones. Music: Jürgen Knieper.

I'm a faithful watcher of credits, even though today they're sometimes as long as the movie itself. I think if those people devoted their time to making the movie, they deserve a little of my time watching their names scroll by. Not really. The actual reason for watching the credits is that sometimes they reveal tidbits of fascinating information, such as this one for River's Edge: "trainer: Mr. Glover." I have to wonder what Crispin Glover's trainer did: It's not a particularly challenging role physically, so I have to assume it had something to do with keeping the actor from going further over the top than he does in his mannered and eccentric performance as Layne, an adolescent pothead who gets caught up in the aftermath of the murder of a teenage girl. River's Edge was something of a shocker in its day, variously interpreted as an indictment of American society's failure to provide a clear direction for bored and alienated youth, or as a critique of parenting or the school system, or just as a horror story masked as a true crime movie. The screenplay by Neal Jimenez has its roots in two news stories about teenagers in different parts of California who knew about the murder of one of their schoolmates but covered it up. It's not just the teens who get their share of blame: The adults include negligent parents, a half-crazed loner, an ineffective teacher, bullying cops, and the usual gaggle of reporters. That the half-crazed loner is played by Dennis Hopper links River's Edge with another and more celebrated movie of 1986: David Lynch's Blue Velvet. There are moments in Tim Hunter's film, especially when Hopper's character is clinging to his beloved inflatable sex doll, that rival Lynch's. Lynch, however, would probably not have been so tender as Jimenez and Hunter are to the lovers played by Keanu Reeves and Ione Skye, who lend a romantic John Hughes note to the film that dulls its edge.

The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch, 2009)

Cast: Isaach De Bankolé, Alex Descas, Jean-François Stévenin, Óscar Jaenada, Luis Tosar, Paz de la Huerta, Tilda Swinton, Yûki Kudô, John Hurt, Gael García Bernal, Hiam Abbass, Bill Murray. Screenplay: Jim Jarmusch. Cinematography: Christopher Doyle. Production design: Eugenio Caballero. Film editing: Jay Rabinowitz.

The Limits of Control displays the limits of Jim Jarmusch's quirky minimalism. It's a story about an assassin (Isaach De Bankolé) who moves from place to place as he receives coded messages from various agents, zeroing in on his target (Bill Murray). The places are picturesque and nicely filmed by Christopher Doyle, and the agents are played in cameos by the likes of Tilda Swinton, John Hurt, and Gael García Bernal, which provides some interest to an otherwise rather plodding and repetitious movie.

Toy Story 4 (Josh Cooley, 2019)

Cast: voices of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Annie Potts, Tony Hale, Keegan-Michael Key, Madeleine McGraw, Christina Hendricks, Jordan Peele, Keanu Reeves, Ally Maki, Jay Hernandez, Lori Alan, Joan Cusack, Bonnie Hunt, Kristen Schaal, Emily Davis. Screenplay: Andrew Stanton, Stephany Folsom, Josh Cooley. Cinematography: Jean-Claude Kalache, Patrick Lin. Production design: Bob Pauley. Film editing: Axel Geddes. Music: Randy Newman.

Wouldn't you know it: On the night that the Oscars get interesting, I decide not to watch them. Instead, I watched Toy Story 4, which at least won for best animated feature while I was watching it. That was, of course, one of the more predictable wins of the night, along with the four acting awards. The fourth Toy Story movie is on a par with the other three: a solid representative of the Pixar formula mix of laughs, thrills, and tears. I did have the feeling that by now its world of toys has become overpopulated, and that the movie might have been better if the old familiars from Andy's (now Bonnie's) toy box -- Rex, Hamm, Slinky, the Potato Heads, etc. -- had been jettisoned so that the adventures of the newcomers could have been given a sharper focus. But I did like the attempt at closure in the film's ending, when Woody goes off to start a new life with Bo Peep and the other lost toys. I just hope Pixar can resist the temptation to make Toy Story 5 or to start a new series of Lost Toys that will go to infinity and beyond.

Delicatessen (Marc Caro, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1991)

Marie-Laure Dougnac and Dominique Pinon in Delicatessen

Cast: Dominique Pinon, Marie-Laure Dougnac, Jean-Claude Dreyfus, Karin Viard, Ticky Holgado, Edith Ker, Rufus, Jacques Mathou, Howard Vernon, Marc Caro. Screenplay: Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Marc Caro, Gilles Adrien. Cinematography: Darius Khondji. Production design: Marc Caro. Film editing: Hervé Schneid. Music: Carlos D'Alessio.

Lovers of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amélie (2001) should be warned that while Delicatessen has some of the affecting whimsy of that earlier film, it also revels in the grotesque to a sometimes queasy extent. It's a post-apocalyptic tale about a decaying apartment house in a bombed-out city, in which the ground floor is occupied by the titular establishment, run by a butcher who carves up the occasional employee (lured there by a Help Wanted ad) and serves him to his tenants. The grotesquerie of Delicatessen has caused it to be likened to the works of Terry Gilliam (who endorsed its American release) and David Lynch, but it's somewhat more anarchic than their films, borrowing its tropes equally as much from horror movies. It has its moments, but I found my interest flagging as its eccentricities piled up.

Hero (Zhang Yimou, 2002)

Cast: Jet Li, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, Zhang Ziyi, Chen Daoming, Donnie Yen, Zhongyuan Liu, Tianyong Zheng, Yan Qin, Chang Xiao Yang. Screenplay: Feng Li, Zhang Yimou, Bin Wang. Cinematography: Christopher Doyle. Production design: Tingxiao Huo, Zhenzhou Yi. Film editing: Angie Lam, Vincent Lee. Costume design: Emi Wada. Music: Tan Dun.

Visually, one of the most beautiful films ever made, Hero is a ravishing blend of color, texture, pattern, and movement, with spectacular locations that range from desert to mountain, from forest to lake. If it had as much to please the mind as it does the eye -- and ear, counting Tan Dun's score -- it might have been one of the great films. It's a fable about the emergence of China as a nation under its first emperor, using a Rashomon-like narrative structure in which we get various versions of the story of how a swordsman known as Nameless (Jet Li) vanquished three assassins -- Sky (Donnie Yen), Broken Sword (Tony Leung), and Flying Snow (Maggie Cheung) -- to earn the right to come within ten paces of the king of Qin (Chen Daoming), in other words, to come within killing distance of the ruler. Nameless first tells his story, and then the king responds with his own theory about what really happened. A true version, in which Nameless is revealed as the real assassin, finally emerges. The result is to give us flashbacks to a variety of fight sequences, involving some astonishing wire work in several breathtaking settings, the most memorable of which may be the duel in the yellow leaves of an autumnal forest between Flying Snow and Moon (Zhang Ziyi), Broken Sword's apprentice and rival with Snow for his love. In the end, however, the film seems to have no real point to make other than the need for strong and powerful leadership, which is not exactly a positive statement in these days.

Rango (Gore Verbinski, 2011)

Cast: voices of Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin, Ned Beatty, Alfred Molina, Bill Nighy, Stephen Root, Harry Dean Stanton, Timothy Olyphant, Ray Winstone. Screenplay: John Logan, Gore Verbinski, James Ward Byrkit. Cinematography: Roger Deakins. Production design: Mark "Crash" McCreery. Film editing: Craig Wood. Music: Hans Zimmer.

Rango's Oscar win for best animated feature is anomalous: The award typically goes to a product of the Disney/Pixar factory. And unlike the usual winners, the characters aren't the usual cuddly figures destined for the toy shelves, but a gnarly selection of lizards and rodents and other desert creatures, centered on Rango himself, a bulbous-eyed chameleon voiced brilliantly by Johnny Depp. Visually, then, Rango is aimed more at adult audiences than at the kiddies. On the other hand, its story is the usual excuse for harmless mayhem that is the stuff of most animated features. There is a good deal of wit in the film, much of it aimed at Western-movie clichés, but I found that on the whole it left me a little cold. There's something to be said for cuddliness after all.

The Firemen's Ball (Milos Forman, 1967)

Cast: Jan Vostrcil, Josef Sebánek, Josef Valnoha, Frantisek Debelka, Josef Kolb, Jan Stöckl. Screenplay: Milos Forman, Jaroslav Papousek, Ivan Passer, Václav Sasek. Cinematography: Miroslav Ondrícek. Production design: Karel Cerný. Film editing: Miroslav Hájek. Music: Karel Mares.

Milos Forman's raucous comedy about the screwups of a small town fire department as it attempts to celebrate its retired fire chief and raise money with a raffle got the director into deep trouble in Czechoslovakia when the regime realized that the film was actually a satire on communist bureaucracy. And the truth is, The Firemen's Ball teeters between slapstick comedy and mordant satire so much that it winds up a little too dark for laughter, a little too silly for pointed criticism. Which is not to say that it isn't sometimes very funny or that its criticism didn't have an effect: Forman went into exile and wound up a major Hollywood director. The mostly non-professional actors in its cast throw themselves into their roles and the pacing of the film is appropriately hectic. Somehow, despite the frowns of officialdom, The Firemen's Ball wound up as the Czech entry for the best foreign language film at the Oscars, which led to another irony: The winner in that category was the Soviet Union's entry, Sergey Bondarchuk's War and Peace. 

Kansas City Confidential (Phil Karlson, 1952)

John Payne and Lee Van Cleef in Kansas City Confidential

Cast: John Payne, Coleen Gray, Preston Foster, Neville Brand, Lee Van Cleef, Jack Elam, Dona Drake, Mario Siletti, Howard Negley, Carleton Young, Don Orlando, Ted Ryan. Screenplay: George Bruce, Harry Essex, Harold Greene, Rowland Brown. Cinematography: George E. Diskant. Art direction: Edward L. Ilou. Film editing: Buddy Small. Music: Paul Sawtell.

This intricately plotted film noir benefits more from its supporting cast of heavies -- Neville Brand, Lee Van Cleef, and Jack Elam -- than it does from its nominal leads, John Payne and Coleen Gray. Payne's Joe Rolfe gets framed for a big heist, but there's not enough evidence to convict him, so he sets out to track down the hoodlums who set him up. The first twist is that none of the actual thieves know who any of the others are -- they were all sent on their mission in masks, supplied by the mastermind, known to them as "Mr. Big." And he turns out to be a retired police captain (Preston Foster) who was forced out of his job by politics. And he isn't interested in the loot itself but in staging a capture of the thieves and a recovery of the money so he can get the reward and maybe even be reinstated in his old job. As if this twist isn't enough, he's also the father of the young woman (Gray) whom Rolfe falls in love with after he sleuths his way to the Mexican resort town where the plot leads everybody else. Fortunately, Phil Karlson's no-nonsense direction keeps the movie from getting snared in its own twists and turns.