䉴
TWINS, from p.26
really with the other. Ozon uses the film’s doubling framework to examine how and why people lead double or secret lives. Louis is smart enough to know that Chloé is involved with Paul. And Paul catches Chloé in more than one lie when she claims to be seeing another therapist though in fact she is seeing Louis. These moments fail, however, to create much dramatic tension. Even when Chloé wants to break things off with Louis, the few suspenseful scenes that follow have little impact. As Ozon shifts into thriller mode, “Double Lover” feels silly, even campy, especially since the bulk of the film has more of a magical realist tone with its dream and fantasy sequences. The film certainly is atmospheric and full of symbols. Scenes set in
䉴
1968, from p.26
Luc Godard made in the ‘70s. Salles clearly knows a great deal about the May ’68 revolts and he takes us through a history of their beginnings as student protests, Daniel Cohn-Bendit’s reluctant emergence as a spokesperson, their increasing vehemence, the students’ inability to fully connect with workers who had serious grievances and used this period of radicalization to express them, and General Charles de Gaulle’s use of TV appearances to crush the rebellion. The closing credits of “In the Intense Now” include a bibliography on May ’68, as well as a long list of films from which he took images. If they have been romanticized, especially in France, Salles is out to demystify them. He says that his favorite film about May ’68 is Romain Goupil’s documentary “Dead at Thirty,” and he interpolates a long stretch of it describing the eventual deaths
䉴
24 FRAMES, from p.32
Obviously, this was the end for Kiarostami, too, as a person and artist. It’s the final scene of his final film. Several of his films, such as “The Traveler,” “Through the Olive Trees,” and “Taste of Cherry,” are structured around quests that remain unfulfilled or whose endings are ambiguous. That’s the real-life tale of “24 GayCityNews.nyc | February 1 – 14, 2018
the museum where Chloé is a security guard (she observes people, a twinning of a psychiatrist’s job) are formally composed. The museum’s flesh and blood works of art — large, amorphous blobs or an enormous tangle resembling limbs — are metaphors for Chloé’s thoughts and emotions at given moments. Likewise, the use of mirrors and windows throughout the film reflect and repeat images of the characters to clever effect. Chloé is doubled in multiple mirrors as she enters Louis’ offices, suggesting multiple identities. Paul’s naked body is reflected in a bathroom mirror as well as upside-down in a shaving mirror as he’s showering, suggesting he has nothing to hide. Windows are used to reflect images of the characters, and at times the glass breaks to indicate a split or
schism within one’s identity. Ozon’s imagery may be obvious, but it is extremely rigorous and deliberate — as is his presentation of the doubling motif in the film. An early graphic shot of Chloé’s gynecological exam is mirrored with a shot of her eye. This idea is repeated with her mouth and her orgasm later in the film. A scene of Chloé walking up a spiral staircase to an appointment with Paul is mirrored with a reverse shot of her on the staircase seen from above. Throughout the film, Ozon employs split-screens. There are several characters playing multiple parts. (It would spoil that gimmick to discuss it further). A cat has a rare genetic makeup that is exclusive to twins. Even when Paul and Louis “swap” places or appear together, it is more delightful than confusing. To Ozon’s credit, it’s always clear
which twin is which, except when it isn’t — and isn’t supposed to be. Renier seems to relish playing Paul and Louis, making each twin distinct, while also making each attractive and seductive. Vacth has the trickier role as the woman in love with them both. She plays Chloé with considerable aplomb, making her sympathetic even when the story takes some hairpin turns that feel unearned. Alas, despite all of the filmmaker’s skilled effects, Ozon fails to generate real emotion. Too much of “Double Lover” is skin deep. As much as Chloé must puzzle out the truth — of her emotions, of what is real or true — it all ends up feeling artificial and inauthentic. The film folds in on itself before it selfdestructs. For all the pleasures of “Double Lover,” twice only yields half as much.
of student radicals at a relatively young age. An iconic slogan of that era is “Sous le pavés, la plage,” which translates roughly to “Under the pavements, the beach.” Any fan of “Mad Men” might see this coming, but Salles claims the phrase was invented by two ad agency employees trying to find a way to share their ideals with their colleagues. To twist the knife even further, one of them killed himself in the ‘70s. But if it went on to inspire genuine radicals (“In the Intense Now” shows it sprayed on Parisian walls), does it matter whose imagination it originated in? “In the Intense Now” gets more than halfway into its 125 minutes before it heads to Prague, and Salles clearly doesn’t have access to the same amount of footage he had of Paris. All the images he has from China were shot by his mother on a 1966 trip there, and his perceptions of the country and the chang-
es it was then going through are filtered by his nostalgic memories of her. To put it mildly, this makes for weird politics: by omission, “In the Intense Now” winds up suggesting that May ’68 led to more deaths than the Cultural Revolution, although Mao killed off more of his own people than Hitler or Stalin. But all that seems to matter to Salles is that his mother found China a refreshing place to visit. It would’ve been an instant death sentence for any Chinese citizen to shoot even the kind of home movies he found directed anonymously in 1968 Prague, so he is dependent on her for that portion of the film while he can draw on a dozen professionally made documentaries about May ’68. The comparisons “In the Intense Now” has received to the late French director Chris Marker (whose great four-hour history of the ‘60s left, “A Grin Without a Cat,” gets excerpted) are wildly overstated. Salles
would have been better off making an 80-minute film about May ’68, whose history he seems to have down pat. The section on Prague feels like an afterthought, while the depiction of China brings back unpleasant memories of the way ‘60s leftists romanticized Mao (while Salles doesn’t exactly do that, he doesn’t criticize him either). The filmmaker also introduces an autobiographical element never fully developed. If the film seems haunted by suicide, perhaps Salles should not have left off-screen the fact that his mother killed herself in 1988, which lingers as subtext over her home movies if one knows about it. In this documentary’s last third, there’s a sense that he’s using politics as a pretext to speak about a personal tragedy or, at best, suggesting that her fate stood in for a generation’s. The material for a much better film existed here, but it called for a lot more editing and a different perspective.
Frames.” Kiarostami made more than 40 shorts for possible incorporation into this feature, and on his deathbed, he narrowed them down to 30 contenders. his son selected the final 24 after Abbas’ death. Auteurists will have to interpret this film with the knowledge that some of the key creative decisions about it were made after its director died, obviously outside his control.
I’m not one, but I’m very touched by its suggestion of a new direction Kiarostami could have followed. At the same time, “24 Frames” never would have received theatrical distribution in America if it weren’t made by a very well known and revered director of narrative films. For most directors, ending their lives and careers by singing the praises of love would be a rather ba-
nal touch. Given the sense of emotional repression hovering around the edges of Kiarostami’s work, the 24th frame achieves something moving and new in his work. It’s the moment in “24 Frames” where the entire film’s meaning comes together. And that’s the last word, with a diva singing the audience out as the credits roll over the image of the TV set.
39