Monsieur Chat and La Belle Noiseuse
One of the benefits of living in Cambridge are two gems of cinema, the Harvard Film Archive and the Brattle Theatre. I recently had a chance to catch a couple marvelous, quirky films at each location.
The Brattle had a cute little documentary called “Mr. Cat,” following the trend in Paris to make graffiti tags that look like an anime feline. I’d seen these things in a few places around the city, mostly along RER embankments. However, the filmmaker finds many more, and as he follows their appearance over time he reflects on all that has happened in the past several years: the attacks of September 11, the mass protests against the occupation of Iraq, and the subsequent occupation of the country anyway. It managed to make me laugh harder than I have in a while, and feel deep sorrow, quite an accomplishment for a film about a cartoon cat.
At the Harvard Film Archive my wife and I caught Jacques Rivette’s classic film, “La belle noiseuse.” It’s a charmingly referential film: an aging director (Rivette) attempts to film a masterpiece by telling the story of an aging artist who wants to finally finish painting his masterpiece. To do that, he pressures the young lover of a young photographer to pose nude for him. This causes all kinds of jealousy (the 4 hour film has plenty of time for interpersonal relationships to sort themselves out). The bulk of the film, however, simply shows the artist painting his muse, and the clash of wills between them. One enjoyable aspect of the film is how female nudity, which usually in cinema is just a prelude to a sex scene, ceases to be about titillation but becomes instead simply about beauty. At the end of the film the artist realizes his masterpiece, which is a beautiful but not psychologically flattering portrait of the girl, deeply offending her. There’s also a tantalizing hint that the story itself has been told by the model, who went on to become a writer. A subtle, weighty movie that reminds me of Tolstoy’s novels: it moves slow, but by the end you realize every little piece has a purpose.
The Brattle had a cute little documentary called “Mr. Cat,” following the trend in Paris to make graffiti tags that look like an anime feline. I’d seen these things in a few places around the city, mostly along RER embankments. However, the filmmaker finds many more, and as he follows their appearance over time he reflects on all that has happened in the past several years: the attacks of September 11, the mass protests against the occupation of Iraq, and the subsequent occupation of the country anyway. It managed to make me laugh harder than I have in a while, and feel deep sorrow, quite an accomplishment for a film about a cartoon cat.
At the Harvard Film Archive my wife and I caught Jacques Rivette’s classic film, “La belle noiseuse.” It’s a charmingly referential film: an aging director (Rivette) attempts to film a masterpiece by telling the story of an aging artist who wants to finally finish painting his masterpiece. To do that, he pressures the young lover of a young photographer to pose nude for him. This causes all kinds of jealousy (the 4 hour film has plenty of time for interpersonal relationships to sort themselves out). The bulk of the film, however, simply shows the artist painting his muse, and the clash of wills between them. One enjoyable aspect of the film is how female nudity, which usually in cinema is just a prelude to a sex scene, ceases to be about titillation but becomes instead simply about beauty. At the end of the film the artist realizes his masterpiece, which is a beautiful but not psychologically flattering portrait of the girl, deeply offending her. There’s also a tantalizing hint that the story itself has been told by the model, who went on to become a writer. A subtle, weighty movie that reminds me of Tolstoy’s novels: it moves slow, but by the end you realize every little piece has a purpose.
