Year-End Cramming, #6 (Patreon)

Happy New Year, friends! Let's make it a good one without any tears, etc. I fell a bit behind on write-ups, so these may be a bit shorter than usual. No, really. I mean it.

The Crime is Mine (François Ozon, 2023)

It's quite the sweetheart deal that Ozon has with Music Box Films, an intermittent distributor of art films that releases everything Ozon does. It's an odd commitment, seeing as the man is easily one of the most inconsistent major directors in France. It's not just that his work is stylistically all over the place. (I think a long time ago I called him the Winterbottom of France.) Ozon is also pretty erratic when it comes to quality. The Crime is Mine is mostly a frothy success, and that's because the director has (for now) stopped trying to be the new Fassbinder and given in to his flair for candy-colored camp. This is the third adaptation of the play Mon Crime by Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil, and Ozon amps up the distance, treating the material like an above average Hollywood farce. The pacing performances all hark back to the prim but goofy tone of the Carole Lombard original, but with Ozon's usual sly winking. The starlet-cum-murderess Madeleine (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) discovers that her popularity soars after being acquitted, and the fact that she didn't actually kill the man in question is a niggling detail. Isabelle Huppert hams it up as Odette, the real killer who is a bitter, a washed-up Nora Desmond type, but it's Rebecca Marder who goes furthest in providing Ozon's postmodern quotation marks. Her brassy lawyer makes the subtext of the Marilyn Monroe / Jane Russell dynamic overt, as she allows her Sapphic desire (for Madeleine and Odette) to flicker ever so slightly across her face. Is Ozon discovering subtlety?

Rocky aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaana (Karan Johar, 2023)

I compared this film with Khabi Khushi Khabie Gham (jokingly calling it Khabi Khushi Khabie Rham-Kham) before I checked and discovered -- duh -- Karan Johar is the auteur responsible for  both films. The reason this film works is because it has the courage of its convictions. Americans can natter on about the conservatism of Indian film culture, but almost anyone in Hollywood would approach a project like this with smug irony, needing to signal to the viewer that the audience and the film itself are somehow above this cheesy sincerity. But Bollywood doesn't believe in cringe, and so Rocky aur Rani is an openhearted mass appeal picture that invites us to laugh along with it.

I have no doubt that I am missing some of the cultural context here, as much is made of the incompatibility of Punjabi Rocky (Raveer Singh, charismatic despite his bravado) and Bengali Rani (Alia Bhatt). But Johar articulates this clash in purely cinematic terms, a collision between the razzle dazzle of Bollywood and the seriousness of the Satyajit Ray tradition. And even though Rocky is more obviously buffoonish, with his English malapropisms and garish Gucci suits, Johar convincingly shows us that both families -- Rocky's clan of rich corporate sharks and Rani's intellectual parents -- have some growing to do. Rocky aur Rani's ultimate message may be simple -- traditions bind us, and we must adapt them to changing times -- but I doubt any Hollywood screenwriter could pull this off.

Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2023)

An imperfect film, certainly, but what a blessing, in the year of our lord 2023, to encounter a film so rich with ideas and unwilling to painstakingly explicate them for the viewer. Poor Things is unavoidably allegorical, but its broader meanings evolve over the course of the film. At first, the game seems pretty obvious ("what if Frankenstein's monster was hot and DTF"), but Lanthimos and Emma Stone give the lie to this base notion. Bella's sexuality is but one facet of her rapidly developing personality, and as we watch her journey of discovery, we're asked to consider much bigger questions: nature vs. nurture, social determinism vs. free will, and perhaps most starkly, whether the human animal is inherently altruistic or selfish. In many respects, Poor Things represents a refinement of some of the fundamental concepts Lanthimos explored in Dogtooth, but instead of framing them as the results of abuse, he expands them to the entire human race. 

And as we see, it brings out the best in Bella when she deals with people who actually respect her. For example, when Bella meets Harry (Jerrod Carmichael) on the ship, he is thrown by Bella's lack of cynicism, and takes the opportunity to disabuse her of her naivety. But like a good teacher, he recognizes when he's gone too far, and Bella shows him what it's like when someone doesn't take cruelty for granted. Of course, Bella grows up and becomes a bit more callous. The final act of Poor Things, with Bella's old husband (Christopher Abbott) showing up and embodying the viciousness of the patriarchy, is pretty broadly drawn compared with the rest of the film (yes, including Ruffalo's performance). But it permits a final turn in Bella's evolution. While she is almost certain to be more humane than God (Willem Dafoe), who was in turn more humane than his father was to him, Bella's encounter with Alfie has awakened in her a potential for cruelty and revenge. Although likening this fantastical neo-Gothic tale to our real world is a dicey proposition, the ending of Poor Things does suggest that all of us, but women especially, may need to find ways to confront tyranny head on.

As for Ruffalo: yes, his portrayal of Duncan is that of a cartoon fop, and that is the part as written. But Ruffalo manages to convey an undertone of sadness and desperation, as if he is working overtime to convince himself of his own braggadocio. Duncan was weird, but never not fascinating.