Romancefest 2014: Chungking Express

All right. Enough of France for now – let’s go to China for Wong Kar-wai’s 1995 film CHUNGKING EXPRESS.

This is a flick I was always on the verge of renting in the mid-90s because in the States it was distributed through Quentin Tarantino’s personal wing of Miramax, Rolling Thunder. At the time I rented everything with any connection to Tarantino, but somehow I never got around to this one.

The film is actually divided into two stories that are only superficially connected within the narrative, though they both share some of the same themes and echo a few moments from each other.

The first is about a lonely cop (Takeshi Kaneshiro) who has been recently dumped. He gives himself a month before moving on, hoping his lover will come back. Meanwhile, a mysterious woman (Brigitte Lin) attempts to orchestrate a drug deal. The two characters’ paths cross on the last night of the cop’s 30 days.

The second story is also about a lonely cop (Tony Leung), also recently dumped, who catches the eye of a girl who works in a snack shop (Faye Wong) who intercepts his apartment key and takes it upon herself to secretly invade and disrupt his life in cute, basically harmless ways.

The charm of the movie comes from the interesting characters – we hear their inner monologues, and they’re offbeat, quirky, cute and very human. If you’re looking for a satisfying plot, I’d steer clear of this flick, but the plot is not the point. The point is how these people interact and how they see their little corner of the world. They very messiness of the loose end filled story is what makes the movie compelling.

I imagine this is one reason Tarantino was drawn to it, since his films often confound narrative convention and go one way when you expect them to go the other, transforming fractured narratives into satisfying experiences.

Wong Kar-wai does the same here: CHUNGKING EXPRESS is not about one big overall message, it’s about the little moments, and often times those moments are the ones that make romance memorable.

Romancefest 2014: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Continuing with our French streak, here's Jacques Demy's 1964 musical THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG.

Nino Castelnuovo and Chaterine Deneuve star as a young couple, hopelessly in love. He's a 20-year-old mechanic and she's a 17-year-old who works in a shop (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) with her mother (Anne Vernon). 

The couple's ready to get married, but Deneuve's mom thinks she's too young for that kind of commitment. The shop is also hurting for money and might have found a savior in a rich dude who shows up with the hots for Deneuve (Marc Michel). 

Castelnuovo, on the other hand, lives with his sickly aunt (Mireille Perrey) and her lovely young caretaker (Ellen Farmer). He's also on the verge of being drafted and shipped off to Algeria.

The first thing you notice about this movie is how beautiful it is to look at. The colors pop out of every shot, costume and set, as vibrant as if you were there. Actually, even more vibrant than that. At the center of all of this beauty is Deneuve herself, who is improbably perfect for her role. The film was restored in the 90s and looks as if it was shot yesterday.

The next thing you notice is the singing. This isn't just a musical -- every line of dialogue is sung. This could be annoying (see LES MISERABLES for an example) but somehow it isn't here. I don't know if it's because they're singing in French or if it's just that the movie is put together so well, but you don't even notice after a while. It seems totally natural.

The cool thing about this movie is that while it looks and sounds about as deep as cotton candy (which is to say, shallow), it actually has a pretty mature and sobering message. Without giving too much away, let's just say young love doesn't necessarily work out and that's not exactly a tragedy. The final scene of this movie is so bittersweet and perfect that it would have made this one a classic even if the rest hadn't already been good.

Romancefest 2014: L'Atalante

Let's stick with French flicks for 1934's L'ATALANTE from director Jean Vigo. This one's been on my list to watch for a long time because you often see it pop up in "greatest of all time" lists, including Ebert's.

Jean Daste stars as a barge captain who marries a girl from a small village (Dita Parlo). She comes to live with him on his barge (L'Atalante) with his first mate (Michel Simon) and cabin boy (Louis Lefebvre). Parlo has never left her village and is excited that the barge will be making stops in big cities, like Paris. But she's less excited to learn of the bro-tastic bachelor lifestyle of the barge crew. The boat's infested with dirty laundry and stray cats, and although Daste loves Parlo, neither of them know what it's like to live together, especially under these conditions.

When things don't go as planned in Paris -- the first mate gets wasted and the barge has to depart early, before Parlo can have a night on the town -- Parlo ditches the boat and strikes out on her own. Embittered and heart broken, Daste leaves without her. Will they get back together? Is it Romancefest?

This whole thing basically sounds like a sitcom plot. That's because it is. But, the movie is so firmly rooted in the world of its characters that the material is elevated. We really get to know these characters and really get to understand what it's like to live on the boat and on the river. The movie uses its hackneyed plot as nothing more than an excuse to explore quirky characters and settings to their fullest.

The most fascinating character in the film is Simon as the first mate. He's big, dirty, loud and drunk. He's been all around the world, picks up junk at every port to store in his cabin, and doesn't know quite what to do with the newlyweds on board. He's the emotional core of the movie, and the greatest performance in it, and he gets to be the decisive one when it comes time to finally sort out this romantic mess. This might have been the beginning of the romantic comedy tradition of scene stealing sidekicks.

Romancefest 2014: Un Chant D'Amour

One thing that's always kind of annoying about Romancefest, as compared to Horrorfest, is that romantic movies are always so damn long. I mean, sure, there are plenty of 90 minute romantic comedies, but then there are the epic romances with war and death and disease and all that stuff, and those ones -- sheesh. The saying goes no bad movie is short enough and no good movie is long enough, but when you're trying to watch 28 in 28 days, you start to notice things like running times.

So, it was a rare surprise for me to realize Jean Genet's UN CHANT D'AMOUR (A Song of Love) is only 25 minutes long! And, as a bonus, it features lots of male frontal nudity. Finally, the two things Romancefest has been missing, in one movie: brevity and cock shots.

But seriously, folks, this silent, black and white art film from 1950 isn't really what most would call a "romance." It does deal with unrequited passion and desire, sexual frustration, voyeurism, repression and oppression, though, so it's close.

What we've got here isn't a narrative in the traditional sense so much as a series of evocative, metaphorical shots. We start with a prison guard walking his beat, then descend into a couple of prison cells adjoined by a wall where two male prisoners, one on either side, are desperately trying to connect. They pace their rooms, pound on the wall, dance in agitation and clutch at themselves. Occasionally the wall is penetrated by a straw through which the prisoners share some cigarette smoke. Also occasionally, the prison guard peeks in the cells' peep holes to see what's up, before eventually entering to engage in some sadism of his own.

This is eventually intercut with idyllic shots of our prisoners enjoying a nice day out in nature, though Genet never lets us enjoy this long before cutting back to prison to remind us this freedom is only in our characters' minds and that their reality is much more grim.

As a movie about the repression and oppression of gay love and lust, UN CHANT D'AMOUR is way, way, way ahead of its time, even more frank in some of its images of male on male sexuality than any mainstream gay romance made since.

The final result is a brief but effective film that gets its message across clearly. You can feel what these people are feeling. It's a shame Genet never made another film, he clearly took to the medium naturally, with flair and edge and something to say that no one else was saying.

Romancefest 2014: Holiday

This George Cukor screwball comedy starring Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn is one of those movies I can’t believe I hadn’t seen yet.

The always likable and charming Grant stars as a self-made man from a modest background who becomes engaged to marry a woman (Doris Nolan) who turns out to be from a rich family. Grant doesn’t mind, of course, but he plans to scrape together enough money to retire early and really think about what he wants to do with his life. His future wife, on the other hand, plans for him to go straight to work making big bucks to add to the family fortune.

Hepburn stars as the self-described black sheep of the family who is instantly charmed by Grant and sympathetic towards his goals in life.

HOLIDAY features a lot of what you might expect from a movie of this kind, and that’s another way of saying it’s great – it has all the fast-talking interplay you’d expect from this genre, delivered by a perfect cast.

Romancefest 2014: Waterloo Bridge

This Mervyn LeRoy film stars Robert Taylor and Vivian Leigh as star-crossed lovers torn apart by WWI. They meet on Waterloo Bridge, in London, during an air raid, and engage in a passionate whirl wind love affair before being separated – Taylor’s a Captain in the army and must go to the front and Leigh is a ballet dancer ready to leave her career to marry him.

The opening romance is beautiful, especially the scene in which Leigh and Taylor share a dance as candles lit around them are put out for the night. It’s a nice, quiet little scene that creates a tenderness between the characters that is all the more tragic since we already know from the opening featuring an older Taylor reminiscing that things are probably not going to turn out all right.

Spoiler alert: Leigh is mistakenly informed that Taylor has been killed in action, and unable to make ends meet, she turns to prostitution in order to survive. Of course Taylor turns back up and is thrilled to find Leigh, who feels like she needs to keep her secret for fear of losing Taylor.

This is where the movie runs into some potential issues. If you view it a certain way it becomes a morality tale in which fate punishes Leigh for her transgressions. But, if you just view it matter of factly as a story of two individual characters, you can understand their motivations, especially for the early 20^th century setting.

This was Leigh’s first movie after GONE WITH THE WIND and her performance here, although not as remembered, is just as great as her more famous turn as Scarlett. Taylor is also great, in what I’ve read was his favorite role, able to do something a little more complex than his usual matinee idol turns.

Romancefest 2014: Wild at Heart

Time for another Romancefest, where I try to watch 28 romantic movies I've never seen in 28 days in honor of the month of Valentine’s Day, February. I failed last year. Here’s hoping I get it done this year. Let’s start with:

WILD AT HEART

David Lynch’s lusty crime tale of two young lovers on the run was a little too tongue in cheek for my taste. We’ve got an Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern as the passionate couple, running from Dern’s mother (Diane Ladd) who’s intent on keeping them apart. There are reasons for this that become more and more clear through flashbacks, but ultimately it doesn’t add up to much.

Why not? Well, I guess because I just didn’t buy any of it. Like a lot of David Lynch’s stuff, WILD AT HEART is over the top to the point of being a cartoon. We’re faced with frank depictions of violence and sexuality, but it’s all perpetrayed on and by characters we’re not given much chance to take seriously.

That’s not to say there aren’t funny moments, mostly thanks to Cage’s great comic timing as a young hood who’s obsessed with Elvis.

The movie is not lacking in style, that’s for sure, and it was clearly influential on a lot of what was to come in the rest of the 90s (Tarantino). To be fair. if I had seen it when I was told to see it by my buddy Brocker when I was 15, I probably would have liked it. But now that I’m an old man, I dunno.

The movie’s greatest strength is the cast, all of whom deliver great performances better than the movie itself. Aside from the perfectly cast Cage, Dern and Ladd we’ve also got Harry Dean Stanton, Willem Dafoe, Isabella Rossellini and Crispin Glover.