I meant to post this a month ago, on St. Valentine's Day to be exact,
but I was held up with other things.
It's effectively a list of my favourite "romantic" films,
loosely assembled; just general comments on a handful of movies that centre on
the emotion of love, in all of its various guises. As ever, the following notes aren't in any
conceivable way 'reviews'; they're just observations on a theme, intended to
give a very vague justification for the inclusion of a particular title and why
I found it so compelling. No doubt the
selection of each title and my own analysis of it says more about me as a
viewer than it does about any of the films in question, but again, the list is not definitive; just a selection of
films that came to mind when I first thought about the subject. Unfortunately, several key films are probably
missing from this selection, but I may make an effort to write about them at a
later date.
Also: I regret that I now post a lot of these list related things, but I'm not really up to doing the
longer essays anymore. Ideally, that is
what I'd like to do, but it's hard work and never really feels worth the
effort. Hopefully any potential
blog-visitor won't mind these trite diversions.
Boring content is better than no content, right?
L'Atalante [Jean Vigo, 1934]:
The concerns and insecurities of a newly married couple are expressed in
poetic-realist style in Vigo's final film. Thematically, the story on paper is pure
melodrama; the struggle of this couple against the harsh realities of a
situation, full of hardship and adversity, has been done and done again. However, it is the direction of the film that
sets it apart from many other works of the same period. The stylisation of Vigo's approach, which
throughout combines the gritty actuality of 1930s Paris - perfectly evoking the
atmosphere of its cluttered streets and foggy canals - with a stylised lyricism
that turns the entire film into an external expression of the character's
innermost thoughts and fears. Small
moments, like Juliette's dance on the deck, seem expressive of her own restless
need to articulate the beauty and the freedom of youth, as her new life on this
barge becomes both suffocating and unbearable in its solitude and routine.
The dance suggests the dissatisfaction that this character must feel
within the cold embrace of her husband. A
young woman, who in her provincial way, only wants to experience the thrill of
the city and the excitement of its classy stores and vibrant culture, but in
her heart and mind is still drawn to this simple man, who can only love her with
trepidation. As ever with these films,
the man must eventually prove his love to the women; plunging himself into the
cold waters of the canal to be stirred by the image of her love and to be reborn
as the man she wants him to be. The
final scene, which hints towards a potential future - unwritten, full of
sadness and joy - is perhaps the most beautiful reconciliation in all of
cinema.
Les amants du Pont-Neuf [Leos Carax, 1991]:
The film builds on the foundation of a scene in Carax's earlier
feature, the excellent Mauvais Sang (1986), in which the protagonist, Alex,
unable to express in words his love for the beautiful Anna, does so through
physical expression; erupting into a mad, acrobatic dance through the late
night streets of a quiet Parisian suburb to the sounds of Modern Love. For a brief moment, the entire film seems
charged, as if by some unseen electrical current, through the passion of this central
character. The editing, cinematography
and soundtrack all intervene on behalf of the protagonist to help communicate the
transformative effect that his unfulfilled romantic desire has had. In Les amants du Pont-Neuf, the entire film
has this same feel of an outward, physical expression. When these characters are no longer able to communicate
in words or even gestures, the film intercedes, disrupting the natural flow of
the narrative, a scene or even a shot, to express a thought or feeling, aurally
and/or visually.
For instance, the above image of Michèle's printed face as it
withers within the flames might serve
a greater purpose to the development of the film and its plot, but it also
suggests, on a purely figurative level, the volatile powers of jealousy and obsession. The flames of passion, literally, destroying
the individual identity, to be replaced by the shared indentify of this couple,
this symbol of the new French cinema.
The entire film is like an ode to the madness of love, elusive and
allegorical, where the vast spectacle of the Bastille Day celebration becomes a
cinematic representation of the burst of emotion, excitement, violence and
confusion that we associate with the feeling of love.
Buffalo '66 [Vincent Gallo, 1998]:
The only
American romantic comedy, post-Annie Hall (1977), that might actually be worth
a damn? Gallo's obnoxious protagonist
kidnaps Christina Ricci's placid teenage tap-dancer and has her play-act the
role of his new wife in a harebrained attempt to impress his equally obnoxious parents,
who couldn't give a shit either way. In
doing so, Gallo skewers the artist/muse relationship that dominates most western
art, in which the sensitive 'artiste' projects his own desires onto the blank
canvas of a woman, validating her existence with the Midas-like stroke of his
genius. Like Pygmalion in reverse,
Gallo's character attempts to transform Ricci into the woman he wants her to
be, coercing (if not actively bullying) a performance out of her in an
on-screen deconstruction of the relationship between actress and director, but
in the end, the force of her personality is too strong.
Ultimately,
it is Ricci herself that ends up transforming Gallo, validating his existence by countering the
bitterness of his confrontational despair with a calming sympathy and an
attempt to understand, without judgement or critique, the sadness of his
life. As deplorable as Gallo's character
is, the mentality of Billy Brown is that of a person that has never experienced
"real love", and as such cannot decipher how to react when finally
embraced by a character capable of loving him,
unconditionally, in return. As with the
director's next film, the modern masterpiece The Brown Bunny (2003), the
vulnerability of this character, in his honest and unguarded disgrace, is both
candid and overwhelming.
Faithful Heart [Jean Epstein, 1923]:
Two lone
misfits find love in a loveless place, only to be pulled apart by the manipulations
of a cruel and heartless society, more concerned with unburdening
responsibility than with the happiness of the individual. As with L'Atalante (1931), the story, on paper, is
nothing unusual. It is the direction of
the film and the intensity of its performances that elevates it above the
majority of other more conventional melodramas of the silent-age. Epstein's direction of the film recalls
Vertov in its street-level observations, its energy and its atmosphere. The noise and the grime and the chaos of the
streets and tenements is palpable. The
waterside, where the characters steal moments in the arms of each another
becomes an oasis, where the image of the city across the waves is like the
promise of a bright future.
The park, with its fairground attractions, feels almost abstract, as if
we're looking at reality as a reflection in a funhouse mirror; a cinematic
expression of the disorientation of the characters' emotions when challenged by
the endless hardships of a perilous misfortune.
Throughout the film, the sense of drama comes from the endured suffering
of these characters, who only wish to be together, but are denied any semblance
of happiness by a world that resents both the purity of their spirit and their
dedication to one another, which must struggle, against all odds.
In the Mood for Love [Wong Kar Wai, 2000]:
Like Brief
Encounter (1947) or The End of the Affair (1999) - both possible contenders for
a list of this nature - In the Mood for Love is a film burning with repressed
emotion. The initial inability of the
couple to commit or to express their love as anything more than a subtle glance
or a tentative caress, makes every interaction fraught with a devastating conflict;
an inner sadness that destroys the characters from the inside out. There is a loneliness to the film; a sense of
repetition that jars against the short moments of intimacy and freedom that
these characters eventually find in their own brief encounters; their attempts
to steal away moments of time shared and spent.
The filmmaking approach communicates this feeling visually, presenting
the narrative in fragments; significant moments that emphasise the emotions of
the characters, their desires but also those feelings of guilt and shame.
The
inter-cutting of slow-motion shots suggest the slowing down of time - the way
time stands still when this couple are in the presence of one another, making
the most of every hour, minute, second - while the distance of the camera, the
way it imprisons these characters behind various objects, framing them through
doorways or windows, not only shows the figurative imprisonment of these protagonists
by the social conventions of the time but also suggests the presence of the
audience, as observer; as much an intrusion into the lives of these characters
as their own friends and neighbours. All
of this repressed emotion and solitude leads towards the beautiful expression
of the final scene, with its ruined temple and its whispered declaration. A secret ode, from one character to the
other, that stands as possibly the most moving depiction of unrequited love
ever committed to film.
A Matter of Life and Death [Michael Powell & Emeric
Pressburger, 1946]:
Most films
present the idea of love as a thing worth dying for. In A Matter of Life and Death, it's presented
as a reason to live. Perhaps the only reason; reason enough to snatch
life from the jaws of death; to argue a case for existence in the celestial
court when all other explanations have failed.
If The Village (2004) by M. Night Shyamalan suggested the hypothesis,
"the world moves for love; it kneels before it in awe", then Powell
and Pressburger's film could be seen to suggest that even in the afterlife such
emotions, such commitments, are worthy
of a similar acclaim. Of course, much of
the film's fantasy can be read as metaphorical, as the wounded protagonist
finds himself teetering on the brink of death, his mind inventing an imagined
reverie, as if willing himself back to life.
However, such practicalities do not rob the film of its feeling of pure
romanticism, nor the honesty of its emotions.
To die for
love might be fine for the existentialists, but in the cruelty of war and its
endless devastation, there is no greater cause than survival. Without fully anticipating the hollow 'hippy'
mantra of an aphorism like "make love, not war", the film, in its
vision of the afterlife as an officious, black and white bureaucracy, against
the vibrant Technicolor of the everyday, seems to be championing a commitment
to the beauty of existence or the feeling of love - its spirit of emotion - as
reason enough to endure, to persevere.
Ondine [Neil Jordan, 2009]:
The pairing
of the characters represents a collision between fantasy and reality, which, as
usual for Jordan, is one of the main themes of the film. The central character, an alcoholic fisherman
with a disabled daughter, casts his net into the deepest blue sea and pulls from
it a beautiful young woman, desperate and afraid. The woman is thought to be a Selkie (a
mermaid like creature popular in Nordic myth), but darker secrets lurk beneath
the sadness of her eyes. As ever with
Jordan, myths and meta-fiction entwine with the faint traces of film-noir, as
the love story develops into a sinister mystery that imbues the more leisurely
or lighter sequences of adventure, or family bonding, with the threat of a very
real, very brutal violence and retribution.
Despite this pervasive darkness, or the jarring ruptures of the narrative
- intended to suggest the 'voice' of each narrator, inventing the story as it
unfolds - the film, as a work, as a story of love, is entirely moving.
The
soundtrack by Kjartan Sveinsson, which incorporates both the piano melody and
the vocal refrain of the song All Alright by Sigur Rós - which throughout the
film becomes a siren's call to the fisherman, alone and in pain - blends
beautifully with the sunken and submerged look of Christopher Doyle's shadowy cinematography,
which turns the naturally rugged and verdant vistas of the Irish coast into a
mythical kingdom, both dangerous and enchanting. Though the love affair is intended to
dramatise, in an abstract sense, the personification of the two forms
(social-realism and bedtime fable), the weight of feeling created by the film -
its sense of lyricism and the grand, passionate gestures of its characters and
scenes - is illustrative of a writer/director attuned to a particular kind of
romantic sensibility; one poetic and unashamed.
Prénom Carmen [Jean-Luc Godard, 1983]:
They meet,
these characters, against a whirlwind of violence. 'He', a guard at a Swiss bank, 'she' a bank
robber, and member of a terrorist group.
The violence of the heist - choreographed like a musical number, or like
a scene from a film by Jerry Lewis - mirrors the violence of their emotions,
intense, confusing; the chaos of the scene reflecting that inner chaos of the
heart; the mayhem, the irrationality of two people suddenly in love. The film, from the outset, is a story of love,
but is also a story about the madness of love; the magic venom that transforms
the soul. Like the earlier, no less
remarkable masterpiece Pierrot le Fou (1965), Godard once again places the
audience in the presence of a young man willing to follow a beautiful nuisance
to the end of the earth, even if his passion, jealousy and obsession for this
woman will inevitably lead to destruction.
While 'Pierrot' was undoubtedly striking, the full force of its emotional
tragedy was guarded by post-modern abstraction.
This later work more readily (and more recklessly) embraces its central
theme of beauty as the beginning of an endurable terror; indulging the emotions
of its characters; presenting them through a jarring contrast of slapstick
comedy and an anxious, mournful spirit that infuses every expression, every
scene, with a wanton desperation.
In very
loosely adapting the narrative of Bizet's opera, Godard turns the character of
Carmen into a Circe type figure; a seductress, effortlessly bewitching the
various men of the film and transforming them into swine. A figurative acknowledgement of their own willingness
to debase themselves and their beliefs for the love of this ferocious woman. While such an adaptation of the character might
have pushed misogyny, it is ultimately the emotional weakness of the men - the
protagonist in particular - that leads these characters into peril. While Carmen is undoubtedly unbound by social
conventions, existing almost as a force of nature - as wild and as spirited as
the crashing waves that Godard uses to invoke Woolf and to suggest the
tempestuous nature of the relationship - it is the male necessity to possess - the need to control - that
ultimately spells disaster. In Godard's
film, the madness of love is effectively a madman's 'story' of love; a
confession, from the depths of his despair.
Roselyne and the Lions [Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1989]:
Throughout the
film, Beineix uses the spectacle of lion taming as a metaphor for the often
destructive impulses that drive the majority of relationships, where anger,
jealousy, passion and pain threaten to obliterate the bond that exists between
two people, driven close to insanity by their obsessions and insecurities. The spectacle of the film, where the 'tamer'
and 'trainer' attempt to control these monsters that stalk and prowl the barred
perimeter of the cage, works as a visual representation of their love for one
another; all-powerful and all-consuming; dangerous and destructive; volatile
enough to spill out into violence or blossom, flower-like, into something
beautiful; a display of pure emotion, which, in its graceful theatricality,
becomes art. The art of living or the art
of ardour.
By
countering the often volatile relationship of these characters with the visceral
scenes of lion taming, Beineix could have risked sexism (if not genuine
misogyny); turning the woman into nothing more than a "wild beast"
there to be tamed by the lash and command of the domineering male. Instead, he presents the character of Roselyne
as both strong and independent. It is
her power and her passion for the lions that ultimately tames the jealousy of
the headstrong Thierry, making it clear that their relationship, like all relationships, is a collaboration,
full of compromise and accord.
Solaris [Steven Soderbergh, 2002]:
The planet throbs like a beating
heart. Dual strands of energy pulsate
across the face of its lilac globe, mimicking the same gesture of the
protagonists when their hands first met, momentarily, during an earlier embrace. The film - which plays like a powerful encounter
between two people trapped in the cycle of a relationship doomed to repeat
itself, endlessly, like an echo through the depths of space - brings to mind
the haunted expressions of a film like Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) or Muriel
(1963), where its fragments of narrative, and the sense of time and space as
something oppressive or tyrannical, turn the experience into a breathless
reunion between the wounded and the dead.
This feeling of a memory made real, turned frightful by the bitterness
and isolation of these characters lost in space, is further suggested by Soderbergh's
cold, formalist approach; where the framing of actors as immaterial objects
against a labyrinth of buildings or planetary structures, or the play of
lights, which evoke the inner emotions of characters unable to express, is more
suggestive of a feeling of sadness and regret than any conventional line of
dialogue.
In the metaphysical manifestations of this
planet, 'Solaris', the astronaut Chris Kelvin is able to relive the lost love
that haunts the very fabric of his being, but only if he's also willing to
relive every moment of pain and self-hatred that led to her untimely
demise. The entire film, in this
acknowledgement of the often selfishness of grief and the pain of letting go, becomes,
like the planet itself, a mirror to the characters' despair.
Trouble Every Day [Claire Denis, 2001]:
The title
song by Tindersticks captures the wounded tone.
A feeling of late night loneliness, passion and obsession, reflected in
the combination of staccato drum, mournful piano, shimmering strings and the
voice of Stuart A. Staples, anguished and in pain. Each sound, in collaboration with the other,
fills the empty spaces of Denis' film; the lonely streets and the soulless
roads that evoke the loss of life, or the black cloak of the river, which communicates
the idea of separation; the two sides of each relationship, unable to reunite. In Trouble Every Day, the primal, "animalistic"
nature of relationships - the desires and the insecurities, the commitment and
its demands - is dramatised in such a way that it becomes akin to a horror movie,
both violent and intuitive. It is a film
about love, in the sense that it
focuses on two couples, both in-love,
but at the same time the victims of love - caught in destructive situations that
are devastating, emotionally as well as physically - but it's also a film about
responsibility, about the other side of these relationships, the lengths that
two people will go to protect their partners from the influence of the outside
world.
The
intensity of the film, its performances and the invasive, observational focus
of the direction, is overwhelming. The
characters, in their crazed states, become like vampires; stalking the lonesome
highways or the endless corridors of a hotel looking for a partner, a victim, a
mate... Their desire becoming more like
an addiction as they're effectively consumed by love, insatiable in their
appetite for sexual gratification, pleasure and release.
The Village [M. Night Shyamalan, 2004]:
Though more
powerful as a political allegory (this film about deception, which deceives the
audience, but only to make a point), Shyamalan's multi-layered masterpiece is
also a beautiful love story. A vivid declaration
of love, not just in the longed-for courtship of its central characters, Ivy Walker
and Lucius Hunt, but in the unrequited relationship of their respective
parents, Edward and Alice, forced to sacrifice any possibility of love as a consequence
of their strict, archaic beliefs. It is
Shyamalan's sensitivity to his characters that makes him a master; the way he
evokes the relationships between people - and the pain of these relationships -
through subtle gestures, body language and the space between words. The influence of the Brontë sisters is
palpable, not just in the air of mystery, or in the "mad woman in the
attic" reveal, but in the atmosphere of the film, its colour and its mood.
The
nocturnal encounters between characters, cloaked in the light of a nearby
lantern, or enshrouded within the thin veil of encroaching fog, suggests the clandestine
nature of their relationship (a secret within a secret), before a dramatic turn
of events forces at least one of these young lovers to risk life and limb; to
atone for the sins of the village. These
characters are prisoners of love in the literal sense, and their relationship,
no matter how pure and true, is there to be exploited, as a symbol, as a
possibility, by the governors of this community.
