THE PARIS LETTER: Claire's Best Films of 2011

So, Saturday night Matt and I were invited to a French movie premiere – pretty good first date out after baby, right? Though really, what I should say is that Matt and I were invited and then FAILED TO ATTEND a French movie premiere, which is probably a more typical first date out after baby.

But I don’t want you to think this was from lack of trying. Even though I toyed with the thought of having our date be “sleeping in our bed while Matt’s parents look after Sophia”, which sounded like the best date ever to me, Matt vetoed my impulse to be a homebody and I actually put on contacts and makeup and we left the house. I was feeling pretty good about myself – so what if I still apparently look pregnant enough for men to offer me their seats on the metro?

Anyway, so the movie we were invited to was another one produced by my friend Eugenie’s husband Michael, a real rising star in the world of French cinema. Last year he produced Julie Delpy’s latest film LE SKYLAB, which I went to the premiere of in September, and now following on the heels of that, he’s got this high profile film called L’AMOUR DURE TROIS ANS, or Love Lasts Three Years, based on a book by Frederic Beigbeder. Never heard of him? Don’t worry, neither had I – though he is a HUGE deal here in France, kind of a literary bad boy along the lines of Jay McInerney, but with real writing chops. Plus, he DIRECTED this adaptation of his book himself, making the whole thing even more highly anticipated.

Now, I have been to many premieres in the US as part of my job, and they’re usually decently organized – you’ve got a red carpet/ press line area for the important people – the actors, the people who worked on the film, etc – and then another line for the industry peons like me, where we can quietly get into the theater and get checked on the RSVP list by some bored PR flak without being in the way.

Not so, apparently, at this French premiere – More on this, plus my top films of 2011, after the jump.

Jeong-Hie Yun in POETRY

Even though Matt and I had invitations, by the time we got to the theater there was a crush of well-dressed French people being held back from the door, all waving invites and yelling at the people they knew who worked on the film – “Alain, Alain, I’m right here, let me in!” – there was no line, no list of RSVPs, no organization, and then one of the bouncers behind the barricades came out to tell us there were no more seats for people with invitations. This caused several French people to throw angry fits and one French reporter to have a panic attack from the crush of people. He started yelling “Let me out, I can’t breath, let me out!” 

At this point I was so irritated by the whole thing that I didn’t even want to go to the movie, not that we really could have unless we really got sneaky or pushy at that moment. My friend Geoff the Agent could probably have gotten in, but Matt and I walked away – so I will not be able to tell you about all the famous French people who were at the premiere, even though I probably wouldn’t have recognized them anyway! Sheesh, I gotta get better at this whole French film scene thing.

So Matt and I wandered around a bit and tried to see MI4: GHOST PROTOCOL, which my friend Dan the Movie Critic at least has said was awesome, but generally we failed and came home early and watched SENNA, a documentary about Formula One racing that Matt loved and I didn’t totally understand because I don’t understand cars. But I did get to feed my daughter before my boobs exploded and leaked all over my nice premiere clothing, so that was a plus.

Kevin Spacey in MARGIN CALL

This got me thinking about my favorite films of 2011, and since this blog is about not just pregnancy, food, and parenting but also about film (look! It says so right in the title!), I thought I would use this post to give my top 10.

Let me start by saying that I did not see enough movies this year. I haven’t seen: MELANCHOLIA, THE DESCENDANTS, J.EDGAR, A DANGEROUS METHOD, SHAME, the aforementioned MI4: GHOST PROTOCOL, YOUNG ADULT, THE HELP, TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO remake, THE ARTIST and probably a lot of others that I should have seen but I missed either because they haven’t come out in France yet or because I just had a baby or both. That said, here are my picks of the films I did manage to see.

1. A SEPARATION, dir. Asghar Farhadi
2. OF GODS AND MEN, dir. Xavier Beauvois
3. POETRY, dir Lee Chan Dong
4. BRIDESMAIDS, dir Paul Feig
5. MARGIN CALL, dir. JC Chandor
6. 127 HOURS, dir Danny Boyle
7. TROLLHUNTER, dir Andre Ovredal
8. CONTAGION, dir Stephen Soderbergh

The Iranian film A SEPARATION, which won the Berlin Film Festival’s top prize last year, and which I saw in the dirty basement cinema of Les Halles one day this fall, is a great Ibsen-like family drama about the subtleties of class in modern day Iran. A bourgeois Tehran couple separate because the wife wants to leave the country to raise their teenage daughter, but the husband wants to stay to care for his aging father, who has Alzheimer’s. When his wife moves out, the husband must hire a caregiver for his father, and he hires a very religious lower middle class woman whose husband is out of work – she’s apprehensive about working alone in a man’s house, but the family needs the money. When the woman has a miscarriage on the job, questions of fault and compensation crop up between the two families in harrowing ways that have more to do with their economic and religious differences than the actual facts. This is a suspenseful movie about everyday problems that shows an Iran very much like the United States in its tension between economic classes, and religious beliefs. I literally had to talk myself into seeing this because I was seven months pregnant and didn’t think I had the energy to see a movie in Farsi with French subtitles, but it became my favorite film of the year and is a well made, muscular piece of writing and acting that I only wish we saw more of in English language movies. I think it just opened  in the US and I highly recommend it.

OF GODS AND MEN, by the French director Xavier Beauvois, is something I saw at Cannes last year, but I mention in this year’s list because this is the year it made it to the US. Based on the true story of a group of French monks living in Algeria who find themselves in the midst of a conflict between the locals and Islamist militants, this film deals with big questions of honor, faith, and community with grace and intelligence. Another combination of depth, great filmmaking, and great acting. Incidentally, this film was so popular in France that it's STILL showing in some theaters here more than a year after it opened.

POETRY, by Lee Chang Dong, is a quiet, beautifully filmed movie about what it’s like to be an older woman in a still very chauvinistic South Korea. This was also at Cannes in 2010, but didn’t have its release until 2011. It’s a tour de force for the lead actress, Jeong-Hie Yun, well known in her native South Korea but of course not someone I’d ever seen before. The movie is about Mija, a woman in her 60s who’s raising her grandson, a surly teenager, by working as a maid and medical assistant. She is diagnosed as being in the early stages of Alzheimers at the same time as her grandson is accused of raping a girl at his school, along with a group of other boys. The fathers of the boys invite her into their circle as they try to raise the money to pay off the girl’s family, which Mija is quite conflicted about but has never had to articulate this conflict. This film is about her finding her voice, still quietly, haltingly, and maybe not wholly successfully, but finding it.

BRIDESMAIDS – you’ve heard about it, maybe you’ve even seen it – if you haven’t, run don’t walk for Melissa McCarthy’s performance alone. This is pure American fun, a well made, well written comedy – And yes, it’s FEMALE DRIVEN, which to me shouldn’t be such a big deal…but it still is, for Hollywood. Hopefully the success of this movie will let the studios know that there is actually a female audience out there who wants to see more interesting stuff about women than THE NOTEBOOK or SEX AND THE CITY.

 MARGIN CALL- Though sometimes it’s hard to sympathize with the characters in this Wall Street film – it’s populated by the high level employees at a Lehmann Brothers-esque investment bank in the 24 hours before its collapse –  this was for me a purely pleasurable watching experience. It’s well made, looks great, is filled with all sorts of great actors (Kevin Spacey! Stanley Tucci! Jeremy Irons!) and manages to put a human face on what could be a terribly dull topic, making the inner workings of investment risk management suspenseful and interesting. Basically, it does for math and statistics what MONEYBALL tried to do and failed. It’s a political film that plays like a thriller.

127 HOURS – This is technically 2010 I guess for US folks, but didn’t come out in France until 2011, and I think I saw it in February. Now, here’s the thing – if you haven’t seen this film, you may have the same apprehension I did – why do I want spend two hours watching a guy cut off his arm? You may have heard all the stories of people throwing up or fleeing the theater, all disseminated by PR flaks for shock value, and thought “Ewwww, no way!” But this film is well worth your time! In part because it is so spare – just one actor, James Franco, in a gorgeously filmed Southwestern desert landscape –  this film was freaking cathartic in its immediacy. I left feeling simultaneously amped up and worn out with the adrenaline rush, like I had been through a life changing event. And NOT only because he has to cut off his arm, but because you are right there with him in the decision making process the whole time, and it MAKES SENSE to you – you know you’d do the same thing, if you were courageous enough to pull it off. An experience.

TROLLHUNTER – Easily the most ridiculous film I saw this year. The kind of movie to watch late on a Saturday night with friends and either a joint or a bottle of wine (do people still smoke joints? I’m old.) First of all, it’s a Norwegian horror mockumentary, a la THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, but with trolls. Second, it features a comedian known as “Norway’s Bill Murray” as the Troll Hunter. Third, the trolls both look like giant Jim Henson muppets and are also genuinely scary – paradoxical, but true! Finally, its available on Netflix streaming. What are you waiting for?

CONTAGION – Matt, my scientist husband, LOVED this film and, what's more, thought it was a pretty scientifically accurate portrayal of what would happen if a new highly contagious flu came online today. The spread of the disease plays right into Soderbergh's strengths as a filmmaker, as he deftly hops around the globe showing us the growing pandemic, weaving multiple storylines together and giving us just enough information to both understand the complexity of the pandemic and care about at least one character (Matt Damon, playing the necessary Everyman). Chilling and fascinating - again, another dense topic rendered as a thriller.

Oh wait, that's only 8 films. Oh well. I can't really get it up for the final two - I really enjoyed CRAZY STUPID LOVE, another well made Hollywood comedy, and this one featuring 2011's clear rising star, Ryan Gosling. But in the end, the machinery of the storytelling overwhelmed some of the humor for me - a few too many coincidences, everything tied up a little too prettily at the end - still, satisfying moviegoing, but it didn't feel super fresh to me. DRIVE was a fun exercise in style and I thought Ryan Gosling AGAIN was great, this time carrying a film while only speaking about 50 words - and props to his crazy white satin jacket - however, this sort of became a generic gore-fest, and because the script was SO spare, it was hard to go with some of the violence. I liked MONEYBALL fine - or maybe I just liked Jonah Hill in MONEYBALL - but it seemed like an exercise in subverting our expectations for a sports movie at times, and I have to say, I had the admittedly obvious response of "wait, the team DOESN"T win the championship, after all that?" All those stats and no big win made me feel a little bummed, though I'm probably just shallow.

But I know you’re asking yourself – Claire, what did you think of Terence Malick’s TREE OF LIFE, his magnum opus, Palme D'Or winning epic meditation on the meaning of life, God, and the nature of being, featuring a floating mother figure, a whispering flame, and some compassionate dinosaurs?  This film was kind of bananas, but ultimately possibly meaningless. Someone said (maybe my friend Dan the Movie Critic) that watching this film is like having a really attractive person tell you a really boring story, and that seems about accurate. Some of the filmmaking is absolutely beautiful, but at the end of the day, I didn't feel transported or uplifted. I felt a little like I'd seen a great show at the planetarium. So hey, there's that.

Compassionate Dinosaurs from TREE OF LIFE

What films did you like this year? What have I missed? And what are you looking forward to?