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| Sandra Hüller and Swann Arlaud in Anatomy of a Fall |
Cast: Sandra Hüller, Swann Arlaud, Milo Machado-Graner, Antoine Reinartz, Samuel Theis, Jehnny Beth, Saadia Benthaïb, Camille Rutherford, Anne Rotger, Sophie Fillières, Messi. Screenplay: Justine Triet, Arthur Harari. Cinematography: Simon Beaufils. Production design: Emmanuelle Duplay. Film editing: Laurent Sénéchal.
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| Fong Fei-fei and Kenny Be in Cute Girl |
Cast: Kenny Be, Fong Fei-fei, Anthony Chan, Chang Ping-yu, Chi Kai-ching, Chien Lu, Chou Wan-sheng, Chang Hui-fen. Screenplay: Hou Hsiao-hsien. Cinematography: Chen Kun-hou. Film editing: Liao Cheng-sung. Music: Huang Mou-shan.
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| Nelly Frijda, Edda Barends, and Henriëtte Toll in A Question of Silence |
Cast: Edda Barends, Nelly Frijda, Henriëtte Toll, Cox Habbema, Eddie Brugman, Hans Croiset, Erik Plooyer. Screenplay: Marleen Gorris. Cinematography: Frans Bromet. Art direction: Harry Ammerlaan. Film editing: Hans van Dongen. Music: Lodewijk de Boer, Martijn Hasebos.
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| Masayuki Mori in Love Letter |
Cast: Masayuki Mori, Juzo Dosan, Yoshiko Kuga, Jukichi Uno, Kyoko Kagawa, Shizue Natsukawa, Kinuyo Tanaka, Chieko Seki, Ranko Hanai, Chieko Nakakita, Keisuke Kinoshita. Screenplay: Keisuke Kinoshita, based on a novel by Fumio Niwa. Cinematography: Hiroshi Suzuki. Art direction: Seigo Shindo. Film editing: Toshio Goto. Music: Ichiro Saito.
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| Marcus Carl Franklin, Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Ben Whishaw, Heath Ledger, and Richard Gere in I'm Not There |
Cast: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Ben Whishaw, Heath Ledger, Richard Gere, Kris Kristofferson (voice), Charlotte Gainsbourg, Bruce Greenwood, Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams. Screenplay: Todd Haynes, Oren Moverman. Cinematography: Edward Lachman. Production design: Judy Becker. Film editing: Jay Rabinowitz. Music: Bob Dylan.
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| Emma Stone in Poor Things |
Cast: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Christopher Abbott, Suzy Bemba, Jerrod Carmichael, Kathryn Hunter, Vicki Pepperdine, Margaret Qualley, Hanna Schygulla. Screenplay: Tony McNamara, based on a novel by Alasdair Gray. Cinematography: Robbie Ryan. Production design: Shona Heath, James Price. Film editing: Yorgos Mavropsaridis. Music: Jerskin Fendrix.
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| Jane Russell in The Revolt of Mamie Stover |
Cast: Jane Russell, Richard Egan, Joan Leslie, Agnes Moorehead, Jorja Curtright, Michael Pate, Richard Coogan, Alan Reed. Screenplay: Sydney Boehm, based on a novel by William Bradford Huie. Cinematography: Leo Tover. Art direction: Mark-Lee Kirk, Lyle R. Wheeler. Film editing: Louis R. Loeffler. Music: Hugo Friedhofer.
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| Sabine Azéma and Louis Ducreux in A Sunday in the Country |
Cast: Louis Ducreux, Michel Aumont, Sabine Azéma, Geneviève Mnich, Monique Chaumette, Thomas Duval, Quentin Ogier, Katia Wostrikoff, Claude Winter. Screenplay: Bertrand Tavernier, Colo Tavernier, based on a novel by Pierre Bost. Cinematography: Bruno de Keyzer. Production design: Patrice Mercier. Film editing: Armand Psenny.
Bertrand Tavernier's autumnal A Sunday in the Country appropriately evokes several famous paintings, including Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party and Seurat's La Grande Jatte. The film's central character is a painter, M. Ladmiral (Louis Ducreux), an elderly survivor of the era in which those masterpieces were created, and some of the film's wistful tone is set by his acknowledgement that he never rose to their heights. It is a Sunday in the late summer of 1912 at his country home near Paris, and he welcomes the arrival by train of his son, Gonzague (Michel Aumont), and daughter-in-law (Geneviève Mnich) and their three children, the boisterous Emile (Thomas Duval) and Lucien (Quentin Ogier) and the somewhat petted Mireille (Katia Wostrikoff). But his daughter, Irène (Sabine Azéma), also shows up, driving her own car, and her free-spirited manner contrasts with the stuffiness of Gonzague and his wife. There are a couple of crises: Mireille somehow gets stuck up a tree, and Irène receives an upsetting phone call from her lover, whom she has been trying to reach throughout the afternoon. But mostly the film is a study of family dynamics in an era that's about to be blown away by World War I. Tavernier and his cast give the otherwise uneventful narrative a lovely, delicate tension.
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| Christopher Plummer and Elliott Gould in The Silent Partner |
Cast: Elliott Gould, Christopher Plummer, Susannah York, Céline Lomez, Michael Kirby, Sean Sullivan, Ken Pogue, John Candy. Screenplay: Curtis Hanson, based on a novel by Anders Bodelsen. Cinematography: Billy Williams. Production design: Trevor Williams. Film editing: George Appleby. Music: Oscar Peterson.
Solid, entertaining thriller with a good turn by Christopher Plummer as the heavy. Your enjoyment of it may depend on how much you can accept Elliott Gould's transformation from nerdy bank teller to romantic lead. I'm still struggling with it. Director Daryl Duke's conflicts with the producers led to screenwriter Curtis Hanson being called in to finish the film, which he had wanted to direct all along.
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| Stanislas Merhar and Sylvie Testud in La Captive |
Cast: Stanislas Merhar, Sylvie Testud, Olivia Bonamy, Liliane Rovère, Françoise Bertin, Aurore Clément, Vanessa Larré, Samuel Tasinaje, Jean Borodine, Anna Mouglalis, Bérénice Bejo. Screenplay: Chantal Akerman, Eric De Kuyper, based on a novel by Marcel Proust. Cinematography: Sabine Lancelin. Production design: Christian Marti. Film editing: Claire Atherton.
Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time is notoriously unfilmable, but that doesn't stop filmmakers from attempting their own versions of at least parts of it. Chantal Akerman is honest in the credits to La Captive in saying that it was "inspired by" the fifth volume of Proust's work, La Prisonnière. What apparently inspired her about the book is the stalemated relationship between the narrator of the book, called Simon (Stanislas Merhar) in the film, and the woman who obsesses him, Albertine, renamed Ariane (Sylvie Testud) in the film. As Simon's desire to possess Ariane deepens, she grows ever more passive, responding to his every proposition with "If you like." As fascinating as Proust makes the narrator's obsession in the novel, it doesn't translate well to film. The intricate backstory of the narrator and Albertine provided by the novel in its preceding volumes is untranslated to the story of Simon and Ariane, leaving us to surmise what brings these two enigmatic people together -- and keeps them apart. Much has been made of the queerness that pervades the film, a lesbian filmmaker's vision of a gay writer's work, but for most viewers that's a subtext that doesn't fully inform the narrative. Akerman's choice to end the film with the possible death of Ariane -- in the novel Albertine escapes her curious imprisonment and lives to continue to tantalize the narrator -- feels melodramatic rather than thematically integral.