Still, kind of great, although there was a fair chunk of the audience that didn't enjoy it as much as I did and was going in and out.
The next night was one of the last Climax was playing anywhere in the area and it was kind of an uncharacteristically good time, easy enough to just get right off the train and drop into the Somerville at 6:30pm. Only a couple of us there, and I don't know if the other fellow was having the same sort of "really fun until it kind of becomes too much in the exact way you might expect. I might have thought different with a loud crowd, but I don't know if you're going to get that crowd for a Gaspar Noé film in general release. I think the biggest crowd I've ever seen for one was Irreversible at the Harvard Film Archive on Super Bowl Sunday, and that had a bunch of walk-outs from the folks who were looking to enjoy the new edgy French movie but didn't expect quite so much. It makes you wonder, sometimes, just exactly what target he's looking to hit.
Jiang hu er nü (Ash Is Purest White)
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 26 March 2019 in AMC Boston Common #11 (first-run, DCP)
Someone in my screening of Ash Is Purest White was repeating "oh my gawwwwwd" through the end credits and beyond, and while it was probably from the exact note the filmmaker opted to end on, it's not entirely unreasonable to presume that he was just that taken with the film as a whole. It is kind of terrific, the sort of prestige import that may wind up surprising people with just how playful it can sometimes be.
It opens in 2001, with So Qiao (Zhao Tao) working in a mah-jongg hall in Datong City. She's dated manager Bin Luo (Liao Fan) for three years or so and they're doing well enough to support her father in the mining town where she grew up, and maybe the villas Bin's boss is building are a sign that Datong is ready to expand. Or maybe not; the "jianghu underworld" that Bin describes himself as part of doesn't seem to be the most organized of organized crime scenes. Even the bloody violence is often sloppy and apparently misdirected, landing the pair in prison. When Qiao is released five years later, she goes to Chaozhou to find Bin, who has already been out for some time.
The story that filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke tells is intimate; even the supporting characters who send things bouncing off in another direction don't seem particularly important, and other people in Qiao's life pop up and disappear without being given actual names. There are no children or business entanglements to force this pair's relationship down a certain path or create external pressure, and that allows Jia to make this a sort of pure examination of what this relationship means to these people. They can walk away, and if there's some transformative moment in their love's origins, the audience doesn't see it. Even the moments of great personal sacrifice are made without a whole lot of fuss - Qiao makes a decision she know will likely put her in jail because she wants to do it for Bin, and makes other decisions later because she values him, not because she has no other choice.
Despite this all happening over a span of years and a long-ish running time, Ash doesn't exactly become an epic. It feels grand because despite there being plenty of moments where it could run down or just sort of functionally get from point A to point B, there's not really a single bit of it that is not, in some way, well above average. It's full of shots that make you want to sit back and look for a while, but with plenty of intent in the sometimes small motions happening up front. It establishes early on that Qiao is the smart, observant one of the central pair, but with little things that don't show up her lover, and reinforces certain aspects of their relationship with things like how he slouches in every way possible while she does not. There are detours of a few minutes that could easily be dropped but which almost always give the film a bit of melancholy whimsy, or are in some ways revealing.
They add a bit to the heft of the film as well. Ash spans almost 17 years with a fascinating specificity - it makes sure one knows the exact dates that the story begins and ends, emphasizing one can measure what Qiao and Bin have given to each other - and finds an elegant satisfying way to come full circle while also making the point that "full circle" is nice structure but isn't necessarily worth that much. It makes all the little ways the film slightly detours from such a path even more interesting in retrospect, and they were always able to pique curiosity before. They work with excellent transitions to make this somewhat long, predictable path easy and engrossing, and a score that goes from restrained to playfully melodramatic without batting an eye..
Oh, and we had better be talking about Zhao Tao when awards time comes eight or ten months from now. She is genuinely amazing, especially since the hair/makeup/costume crew don't go out of their way to emphasize Qiao aging. She and Jia let the character's experience dictate her body language and allow her feel like her own woman despite her great weakness of a love for a man that doesn't always deserve her. Liao Fan, as mentioned, is a great complement to her as Bin, not overplaying his better qualities in the early going but capturing how a man can have less depth without being a paper-thin prop.
They do this well enough to get that stunned reaction at the end, although I'd be remiss to note that one reaction and not the occasional fidgeting and walk-out. It' not for everyone, especially those inclined to be disappointed upon getting a simmering romance after being drawn in by the image of a gangster teaching his girl to shoot. It winds up simmering with the best of them, and doesn't need to boil over to be a delight.
(Formerly at EFC)
Climax
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 27 March 2019 in Somerville Theatre #5 (first-run, DCP)
Gaspar Noé just can't resist pushing it too far, can he? He's just got to looking for the edge of a movie being sexy and thrilling and dangerous and horrific to the point where some failsafe in the brain kicks in and the viewer disengages, so the thing that should have been seared into the viewer's brain is set aside as bad-boy posturing. Ah, well, Climax is a heck of a thing until that happens.
Noé dumps a lot on the audience at first, introducing it to a couple dozen characters via videotaped testimonials. They're a dance troupe, about to go on a tour of France and America, and as the scene jumps to a party, they've certainly got the moves. They've also got just as much drama going on as you might expect, horny as only a group of people in their twenties with the bodies of top athletes who have spent every waking hour the past few months demonstrating their physicality and artistic ambitions to each other can be. That's before it becomes clear that someone has dosed the sangria with LSD and the drive to discover who did it (focusing on the two who haven't been drinking and/or hitting the harder stuff all night) only adds to the rest of their emotions going into overdrive.
There are two or three extended sequence that are just this group dancing as their DJ Daddy (Kiddy Smile) lays down some beats and you could pull a lot of people into this movie under false pretenses by cutting a trailer that mostly draws from that. They're energetic stretches where Noé is playful, such as when he has cinematographer Benoît Debie shoot one entirely from above, highlighting the extended limbs and whipping hair of one dancer surrounded by a scrum rather than the precise synchronization of the Busby Berkeley numbers that shot is usually associated with. The opener is a long take that not only shows everyone off but eventually is kind of intriguing for being a long shot and for the way it presents the dancers, with moments where someone will hit the ground and the viewer can't be quite sure whether that's choreography or the cast being really good at recovery and Noé just accepting that as the price of not cutting.
In a different movie built around this sort of setting, it might be the start of a look at perfection versus spontaneity in art, but Noé doesn't really focus on dance or even life in the arts in general outside of those moments, other than instructor Emmanuelle (Claude Gajan Maull) talking a bit about how her pregnancy redirected her. Instead Noé breaks things up into a lot of one-on-one conversations, often about lusting after some third party or bragging about their sexual prowess, and the form of it is interesting - a hard swing to static head-on two-shots sandwiched between the inventive and entirely visual bits - but it often highlights how thin some of these characters and their storylines are, or how there are just too many of them. The ones that show signs of becoming interesting will be sidelined for just long enough for the viewer to notice that it's been a while since the film has circled back in that direction, even after the drugs start kicking in and Noé starts to push the gang back together and start confronting each other.
Of course, you don't always need that much to make a memorable character. It's worth noting that even in a movie where the whole cast is sexy French folks whose dance training means every move commands attention, not just her, Sofia Boutella stands out; her Selva is magnetic and commanding from the start but becomes more fascinating as her self-control is taken away, panicked and infuriated and unable to stop spiraling until she's raging and incoherent, tearing up the scenery. It's a captivating performance even if it sometimes seems the least connected to an actual story, demonstrating (as is true with many of the characters) that you don't necessarily need to know everything that has happened to a person to know who they are. There's not a weak link to be found anywhere, although the sheer size of the cast means that few get the opportunity to make such an impression and even fewer can grab it to such an extent.
Despite all the talent on display, viewers might very well find themselves burned out and disengaged by the end. Noé has spent much of his career as a provocateur and flouting rules, but there's a weird familiarity and desperation to it here. Oh, he's starting by running the end credits backwards again, like he did in Irreversible (though I guess you could argue he's subverting his own habitual subversion by not making this a backward-moving flashback story like that or Love); he's throwing quotations up on the screen in big neon letters, maybe upside down to make them more difficult to read. You'd better believe that as the scene devolves into chaos, the lighting turns all red and the camera swoops around, often upside down to show just how crazy things have become. And the ultimate cynicism of the film's message - even pretty, talented people can be shockingly selfish and awful once some of the inhibitions are taken off - is not exactly surprising in this day and age, and just showing it doesn't accomplish much. There's no story around the incident or thoughts on causes and counters offered, so what's the point?
What does the provocateur want to provoke here becomes the question, and does he have any new ways to shock people who have seen as Gaspar Noé film before? Climax is often striking and exciting to watch, but Noé's tendency to overindulge can sometimes be too much, especially here when a viewer can easily be worn out before the anticlimactic ending.
(Formerly at EFC)
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