Too Cool For School

Year: 2009

Director: Lone Scherfig

Cast: Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Alfred Molina

Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Guess who has tildes on his keyboard and hasn't seen nearly enough Best Picture nominees? ~This guy~ Luckily, this guy also has a Sergio around to make sure he receives culture beyond the mildewy smear of 80's fashion that the slasher genre provides. Our most recent adventure into the fields of high(er) art is 2009's An Education, which has proven to be a pretty good stepping stone, what with its zero dismemberments and thoroughly unambitious visual schema.

It's a little bit comforting to learn that award-winning films can have aesthetics just as fundamentally bare bones as some upper-grade slashers. Although the content is certainly more flashy and artistic, An Education has no ambition to challenge the preset notions of what cinema is and can be aside from being generally pretty.

It is rarely actively bad, although there is some editing that strains to keep characters isolated from one another, distracting me immensely from the drama at hand. Also there's some awful YA garbage voiceover that just doesn't belong in a film like this. But that's about it.

In other news, Carey Mulligan will be young forever.

An Education regales us with the story of Jenny Mellor (Carey Mulligan), an idealistic (read: irritating hipster) British schoolgirl in Twickenham in 1961. As the town's name might suggest, it's not the sort of place you want to spend your entire life, especially if you're the creative type. Jenny is pushed by her overbearing and hyper-conservative father (Alfred Molina who has basically never played a non-puppy-crushing character in his entire career) toward cello recitals and applying to Oxford. But when she meets a charming and debonair older man named David (Peter Sarsgaard), he whisks her away into a life of high culture and pretentious bons mots.

As the story develops, it is revealed that David might not be exactly who he seems to be. This should be good news, considering that he seems to be a lecherous predator inappropriately lusting after a minor, but unfortunately things get even worse. It wouldn't be An Education if there wasn't an ironically terrible life lesson to be learned.

Like DON'T GET INTO STRANGERS' CARS! Also you're getting in on the wrong side. Damn Brits.

The plot is genuinely quite engaging, so the simple aesthetic isn't necessarily a negative, just a missed opportunity. Although the context of the time period is only used sparingly, there is a strong undercurrent of just how limited the options for young women in the 60's tended to be. When faced with either becoming a secretary, a schoolmarm, or a wife to a rich husband, it's easier to be fooled by someone who is the first person to insist you have taste and show you a glimpse of a life outside your parents' home.

Jenny is drawn to this image of a better life, but she has been so sheltered from the world that she doesn't understand that everything has drawbacks. Every young dreamer wants to go to Paris and watch movies and eat bread and dole out a couple forced showers, but they just can't understand all the bad in the world and Jenny is oh, so stupid.

The drama is tense and exciting at times, but my biggest qualm with the film is that it takes Jenny's side far too freely and willingly. For a great bulk of An Education, a man preying on a juvenile girl is treated with sumptuous respect as a grand love story for the ages. I can appreciate that as a decent try at expressionism, but it's far too off-putting and disagreeable to really become a solid spine for the film.

How romantic! They're running in the rain! I bet his intentions are pure and wholesome!

For what it's worth, the performances at the center of An Education are terrific, especially Carey Mulligan in her breakout starring role, bringing a youthful vibrance and authentic innocence that magnetizes viewers in spite of the character's insipidity. Second best in show would have to be Rosamund Pike in a pre-Gone Girl supporting role, who effortlessly embodies the spirit of Nick Hornby's dry wit.

Overall, thanks to its writing and performers, An Education is a light treat for fans of Oscarbait who want to engage with a story rather than being visually challenged. So basically, it's a great film for people who are tired of the pretention of the whole ceremony, and I'm not about to complain about that. It's just a little too loopy about its subject matter for me to wholeheartedly praise it as a solid unit.

TL;DR: An Education is an engaging tale built upon a strangely atonal foundation with a minimum of aesthetic ambition.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 805

Sweet And Sour

Year: 2000

Director: Lasse Hallström

Cast: Juliette Binoche, Judi Dench, Alfred Molina

Run Time: 2 hours 1 minute

MPAA Rating: PG-13

If you're a fan of my non-horror reviews, you're lucky I have myself a Sergio. If he wasn't around making me watch whimsical and/or hard-hitting dramas, I certainly wouldn't be watching them on my own, making me quite the one-sided film historian. 

Today's entry in the "movies you're surprised to see on this blog" front is Chocolat, a 2000 quasi-romance film and nominee for that year's Best Picture award. There's no doubt why it lost. Gladiator, that year's winner, certainly appeals more to the Academy's sensibilities than this delicate fable, but it's certainly a light and enjoyable viewing experience.

Perhaps best known for being mentioned and overly pronounced in that scene in I Love You, Man, Chocolat is in fact the kind of movie that Paul Rudd would have secretly enjoyed but felt embarrassed about after the fact. It's tender, heartfelt, faux-French flavor makes it a good snuggle movie. Even if it does evaporate from the tongue soon after it's finished, it's a sweet treat.

Juliette Binoche - pictured 14 years before being devoured by Godzilla.

Chocolat spins the tale of Vianne Rocher (Juliette Binoche) and her daughter Anouk (Victoire Thivisol), who arrive one day in a picturesque French village to open up a chocolate shop on the first day of Lent. They are met with disparagement and derision from the hyper-religious mayor of the town, Comte de Reynaud (Alfred Molina), who is perfectly content living life as his forefathers did, rigidly regimented and devoid of temptation or (what he perceives as) sin.

The stick up his ass is enormous, but not quite large enough to reach the entire town, some of whom make fast friends with the warm-hearted Vianne in spite of their leader's protestations. Among their number are Armande Voizin (Judi Dench), the estranged mother of the mayor's secretary, Josephine Muscat (Lena Olin), a mousy woman trapped in an abusive relationship with the local barkeep Serge (Peter Stormare), and Roux (Johnny Depp), a member of a tribe of river dwellers who travel from town to town but meet the scorn of the villagers.

As she befriends the town's outcasts (if this were a Ryan Murphy movie, they'd already be touring the continent singing cover songs), the villagers slowly learn to trust this easygoing visitor. But Serge and Le Comte are prepared to make life very difficult for her and her daughter, intent on preserving the sanctity of their town (and Serge's woebegone marriage).

Hold on, maybe Ryan Murphy DID get his sticky little fingers on this.

Perhaps Chocolat's most striking design element is its use of color. It's unsubtle and hits with the force of the chorus to "Wrecking Ball," but lo and behold is it ever appealing to my tastes. The villagers dress in muted grey and brown tones until one by one their lives are altered by this woman bedecked in red. As her warmth reaches them, their costuming begins to brighten and color enters their lives once more.

It's obvious but effective, and honestly who needs all these films tiptoeing their way around their thematic material, daintily sidestepping their narrative purpose? There's certainly a place for that, especially in the corners of cinema that act as High Art. But I say if you're making a statement, there's no harm in being bold and going for broke, waving your banner high.

In this film, this fable filled with broad characters and timeless themes about indulgence, love, and temptation, a bombastic color scheme can certainly find a home. I'd argue that this American-British co-production could have fared slightly better if it were actually a French film, unafraid to truly push the boundaries. But I admire a work of cinema that - not to mince words - indulges itself.

It's like a rainbow stomped on a Dracula movie.

Chocolat is a bit twee and about twenty minutes too long. And Johnny Depp is oversold in a brief appearance as the least interesting counterpart to Binoche. But the film knows how to wallop and takes on an intriguing, kinetic darkness in some of the more dramatic scenes, especially those between Josephine and her violent hubby.

All in all I enjoyed the experience and for those in the mood for some lighter fare this chilly Halloween season, maybe you should dig through the back catalogs and enjoy some hot Chocolat.

TL;DR: Chocolat is a light fable with bold use of color.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 754

Aging Out

Year: 2014

Director: Ira Sachs

Cast: John Lithgow, Alfred Molina, Marisa Tomei
Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Queer cinema tends to be a rather bleak affair. Because of the dearth of LGBTQ-related stories, filmmakers tend to think that since they're already pushing the envelope, they may as well make a dreary message picture about AIDS or hate crimes or coming out. Films about gay individuals rarely explore their humanity, instead turning them into martyrs for some cause or another.

Love is Strange is not one of those films, and for that we must thank it. In and of itself, it's not a particularly terrific film, but for there to be a vibrant and varied tapestry of films regarding these topics, there have got to be some duds, just for spice.

Speaking of duds, check out these slick getups.

Love Is Strange tells the story of two longtime lovers, Ben (John Lithgow) - a painter - and George (Alfred Molina) - a musician, detailing how their eventual marriage ruptures their lives from the outside. When George is fired from his position as the conductor for a Catholic school choir due to his wedding being perceived as a political statement, they can no longer afford their rent.

Against their wishes, the newlyweds are separated until they can find a new place. Ben is sent to live with his nephew Elliot (Darren E. Burrows), his wife Kate (Marisa Tomei), and their son Joey (Charlie Tahan). Their family dysfunction is not caused, but is certainly exacerbated by Joey being forced to share a bunk bed with his ancient relative as he blathers on endlessly while dripping memories from his head like a sieve. George shacks up with a relation of his own - young cop Roberto (Manny Perez) and his similarly be-copped boyfriend Ted (Cheyenne Jackson).

The film does everything it can with angles and composition to emphasize space - the tightness of living in a New York apartment with other people, especially uninvited houseguests, being key to the entire narrative. It accomplishes this clearly and with grace, but despite a functional visual style supporting the theme, mere cinematography can't be the Atlas carrying the world of a story on its shoulders.

Much like Joey, cinematography could barely carry a grocery bag without breaking into a sweat.

Thankfully, Love Is Strange has four solid anchors. The two leads are uniformly terrific, displaying the craft they've honed for decades, and Marisa Tomei shines as the resolutely imperfect, arrogant housewife who struggles to fit her internal issues with her external perception of herself. Cheyenne Jackson likewise magnetizes the viewer, albeit in a much smaller, thankless role. But his easy performance brings a sense of naturalism to what could easily have become a stilted, overdone premise, especially considering that the dysfunctional family isn't exactly a shunned topic in the annals of indie cinema.

But in spite of all of this solid work, Love Is Strange is an unutterably messy narrative. Weeks slip by unnoticed between scenes and the central conflict of the second act of the film is so ludicrously inane that I was halfway convinced I was watching a heavily-veiled satire - SPOILERS [There are countless family meetings, arguments, and accusations about all the time Joey spends with his new, slightly older friend Vlad (Eric Tabach) alone in his room. Like any reasonable parents, Kate and Elliot are concerned that Joey and Vlad are... stealing library books. I'm really shocked the MPAA let this kind of scandalous material run by them unchecked.]

What begins as a sprawling dysfunctional family narrative quickly pares itself down to just the essential people and moments, yet most of the thematic, core material about love and perhaps strangeness occurs offscreen. Lithgow and Molina are by far the most seasoned and committed performers onscreen, but they are kept apart for far too long. Deprived of a dramatic foil, each character slowly dilutes until there's nothing left but a thin smear of color. An alarmingly ill-advised scene in the climax relies on an emotional intimacy with these characters that hasn't been present for a good thirty minutes, feeling for all the world like a high school production of Les Misérables - it's emotional and resonant in theory simply by displaying the thing that it displays, but any emotion evoked is absolutely not earned by qualities present in the work itself.

Unless those emotions are related to pretty men in cop uniforms.

And don't even get me started on the ending, by far the worst scene in the entire film, placing the entire crux of the narrative on the uneven shoulders of the clunkiest performer and quickly disintegrating any remaining goodwill with vapid, generic independent film imagery.

But Love Is Strange isn't exactly the scourge of the Earth despite its flaws. The performances are largely on point, there is some sparkle of wit in the humor, and it is perhaps the most effortlessly diverse film of 2014. It's always nice for a film to depict interracial relationships, especially in a New York setting considering that the city is a larger melting pot than the one at the Hershey factory.

But we've finally reached the point where multiple, varied, layered ethnic characters can be integrated into a storyline by the American media without the flop sweat of tokenism present in earlier decades, especially on TV shows like Friends and movies like all of them. In combination with the intelligent queer narrative that comes into play, it's like a diversity variety hour, and a pretty terrific example for what films should strive to look like in the future.

I'll be happy if I never see Love Is Strange again, but it's nice to see a movie prove that the world can be depicted as it really is - messy, diverse, angry, loving, loud, exciting, and even strange.

TL;DR: Love Is Strange is a massively sloppy narrative but remains reasonably enjoyable throughout.
Rating: 6/10

Should I Spend Money On This? I wouldn't. It'll end up on HBO Go sometimes probably. Click through it if you're binging, but don't set a date and bust out the popcorn.

Word Count: 1017