With apologies for the delay…
A world away from the pop-art outrages and wacky satires in which he participated as an actor/composer through the ‘60s, ‘Je T’aime..’ feels closer to the aesthetic of the ‘New German Cinema’ of the ‘70s - specifically, the romantic/minimalist style which Wim Wenders would introduce to America in the ‘80s, and the emotionally wrought, outré subject matter of Fassbinder - as Gainsbourg painstakingly delineates a self-contained, somewhat unreal desert world which is not quite France, but never quite the American West either, in which taciturn, musclebound queer characters bestride heaps of mouldering garbage, their minds seemingly attuned to higher things than the brutish squalor which surrounds them.
With Serge at the controls though, story-telling remains direct and concise, and the film never veers into pretention, its somewhat meditative tone interwoven with fart jokes, overweight strippers, slabs of bloody horse meat, a mountain of abandoned toilets and a central narrative concern with the best way to undertake anal sex without upsetting neighbours/co-habitants, exhibiting a mixture of earnest, doomed romanticism and grotesque vulgarity which is frankly exactly what we’d hope for from a Gainsbourg joint.
As our leads in this strange and tragic love story, Jane Birkin and Joe Dallesandro are… well, I don’t know if there’s a way to put the effect of their screen presence into words without resorting to cliché, but both are simply stunning, let’s leave it at that; every moment they’re together on screen feels charged with an enervating, dangerous power.
It’s certainly by far the best, least wooden work I’ve ever seen from Dallesandro, whilst Hugues Quester (best known around these parts as the uncooperative male lead in Jean Rollin’s ‘La Rose de Fer’) also makes a strong impression as his cuckolded partner. Star of the show though is definitely Birkin, who - again, a million miles away from her usual, glamourous public persona - delivers one of those performances for which critics tend to use “fully committed” as a euphemism for frequently naked, cold, brutalised and involved in intensely awkward/uncomfortable situations, all whilst remaining fully in control of her character, and of the almost Zulawski-level intensity she manages to dish out to co-stars and audience alike. An incredible portrayal of a kind of lonely, displaced feminine anger which has never quite been given a name.
In its matter-of-fact portrayal of the relationship between a straight woman and a gay man, the film’s fluid and non-judgemental approach to sexuality feels startlingly ahead of its time. Unfairly overlooked and dogged by censorship upon its release, I think it’s fair to assume that ‘Je T’aime..’ would probably have swept the board at every festival across the globe had it been made in the 2020s, and justifiably so.
Certainly, viewed today, as the famous title song finally rises on the soundtrack during the pivotal scene in which an act of sodomy in the back of a garbage truck becomes a transcendent moment of divine love, it feels like the apotheosis of everything Gainsbourg was trying to communicate through his art across the decades; the sacred and profane singing in filthy unison.
Of course there’s very little I can find to say about it which has not been better expressed elsewhere, but, given the frequency with which I champion an ideal of “pop(ular) cinema” on this blog, it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge such an exhaustively epic expression of that ideal, existing on a plain which feels much closer to the exuberant, two-fisted spectacles of 60s/70s global genre movies than to the cynical, middle-brow self-awareness which suffocates most contemporary Hollywood product.
Naturally there are a few oddities here which feel rather uncomfortable when encountered in a mainstream/blockbuster context (such as the 20+ minute public torture sequence, and the excessive outburst of literal flag-waving nationalism at the end), but these are the kind of things I’ve learned to roll with during my limited forays into the realm of vintage Indian cinema, so they didn’t put me off unduly.
In fact, despite it being a long-time bugbear of mine re: Hollywood output, I even found myself coping ok with the super-human level of historically questionable individual exceptionalism around which much of the film’s action resolves, simply because, well… I dunno - N.T. Rama Rao and Ram Charan are just so darn loveable, I’ll allow those guys a bit of individual exceptionalism. I mean, talk about ‘star power’, jeez. Just the smiles on their faces in that big dance sequence, I can’t even…
ANYWAY. A few other quick notes;
1. Given that I’m the kind of viewer who tends to spit and leave the room when presented with a CG car chase, and finds all that Marvel crap unwatchable, how was I able to both embrace and enjoy the ludicrous, gravity-defying digitally rendered mayhem which comprises at least 50% of ‘RRR’s 3+ hour run-time, you ask?
The answer is - I really don’t know, but I can only assume that, when watching both this film and director S.S. Rajamouli’s previous works, I can latch on to the excitement of a filmmaker totally abandoning any pretence of ‘realism’ and just going hog-wild with the insane new possibilities of his multi-billion rupee digital playpen.
Since time immemorial for instance, filmmakers have clearly needed to be careful and considerate in their use of animals on-screen. But NO MORE, a film like ‘RRR’ tells us. Here in India in the 2020s, we can launch antelopes through the air, we can punch tigers in the face, fire them out of catapults or swing elephants around by their goddamn trunks, and no one in the audience is going to be stupid enough to believe that a real animal was anywhere near the film set, let alone being mistreated. Such freedom! [NB: I don't think any elephants were actually swung around by their trunks in ‘RRR’, I just put that in because I thought it would be funny.]
It’s the same kind of spirit you can see in the ‘70s/’80s Indonesian and Taiwanese fantasy films I love so much, in which imaginative ambitio proudly tramples any thought of realistic execution, yanked forward four decades and ripped through vast quantities of investment and processing power.
2. Doing for the enforcers of British colonial rule what ‘Raider of the Lost Ark’ did for Nazis? Yes please! Speaking as a suitably contrite British person, I’ve got to say, I was down with that, and that it’s about bloody time. An effective and long overdue bit of script-flipping for those of us who were somehow still allowed to grow up spending our Sunday afternoons watching heroic pith-helmeted Victorians strut around foreign climes in one televisual context or another, and props to the late Ray Stevenson for stepping up to portray one of the best moustache-twirling villains since Tod Slaughter trod the boards.
I went into this one cold (no pun intended), having never really encountered much enthusiasm for it amongst old school Hong Kong film fans/commentators, but, I needn’t have worried. Rather than the over-blown, headache-inducing farrago I was half expecting, ‘Iceman..’ is a blast in the best possible way, easily crashing straight into my hypothetical top five ‘80s HK action movies.
As per the template laid down by Meyer’s film, the psychotic Wah takes to the chaotic, over-stimulated environment of the modern day metropolis like a duck to water, installing himself as the machine gun-toting supremo of a violent criminal syndicate and wreaking shocking, Category III-worthy sadism upon anyone who crosses his path, whilst the chivalrous Biao meanwhile bumbles around in a state of fish-out-of-water confusion, eventually finding himself ‘adopted’ as a live-in man-servant / human curio by high end sex worker Maggie Cheung.
It would probably be an exaggeration to claim that ‘hilarity ensues’, but, this is still one of those rare HK action-comedies in which the comedic elements do frequently hit the right notes for me - largely thanks to the fact that all three leads are so relentlessly, almost preternaturally, charismatic.
Cheung in particular is a veritable human dynamo here, giving every impression of having a whale of a time with character whose wardrobe and behaviour seems cvlosely modelled on Madonna circa ‘Desperately Seeking Susan’, whilst the details of her perilous and hap-hazard lifestyle as a prostitute/hustler are depicted in an interesting and unconventional fashion, even before the complication of a defrosted medieval swordsman gets thrown into the mix.
Meanwhile, those who recall Yuen Wah for his scene-stealing bad guy roles in films like ‘Eastern Condors’ and ‘Dragons Forever’ will be fully aware of how much ass this guy can kick, and in ‘Iceman..’ he turns it up to 11, transforming himself into one of the most gleefully terrifying villains in movie history - a lithe, hyper-athletic engine of omni-directional destruction who still somehow manages to look like the coolest motherfucker in SE Asia, resembling some kind of insane, Shaolin master version of Warren Oates in ‘..Alfredo Garcia’.
And, completing the central trio, good ol’ Yeun Biao just kind of does what he always does, which is to say - being absolutely fucking brilliant.
Amidst all the carnage, ‘Iceman..’ is also a beautifully directed film, shot with a rich, dark colour palette, slickly edited and betraying none of the ad-hoc choppiness which sometimes afflicts HK movies. One of the things I loved most about it though is the way director Clarence Fok manages to maintain a frantic, light-hearted action/comedy tone without downplaying the darker elements of the movie’s subject matter.
Although Maggie’s antics in the worlds of crime and prostitution are on one level presented as being pretty, uh... kooky?, her character is still constantly faced with threats of violence or abuse, maintaining a rough edge of realism and danger, especially when, inevitably, she crosses paths with Wah - who, as mentioned above, reinforces his full spectrum evilness by indulging in some jaw-dropping excesses of perverse brutality.
By rights, this should all feel completely out of place in a movie that’s liable to have you chuckling over some screwball shenanigans five minutes later… yet somehow, with typically mad HK movie magic, it all comes together just so.
Which is all well and good, but what about the action, right? Well, ok, I mean… oh man, it is so good. A central chase/fight set piece here involving a horse, a jeep and a shipping container swinging perilously from a dockside crane is absolutely one of the most astounding / unbelievable stunt sequences in HK cinema (which is saying something), and the extended final showdown between Biao and Wah - involving swords, gunplay, blasts of hair-frazzling electricity and (of course) a ‘power powder’-suffused hand-to-hand throw down of nigh-on superhuman agility - is as intense and imaginative as any fight fan could hope for.
In one moment during the climax, we see a long shot of Biao and Wah facing off in profile, ‘Street Fighter’-style, on a rooftop, as immediately behind them, a jumbo jet glides in to land at Hong Kong’s notoriously perilous urban airport… at which point, I felt like pausing the movie, falling to my knees, and simply giving thanks to the gods for the particular time and place in culture which brought us insane masterpieces like this one -- just a few decades behind us, one day’s flight away, but somehow feeling like an outburst of joyful mania from a completely different universe.
Unfortunately for the newly inseparable couple however, that Hare Krishna guy ended up defying medical science by inexplicably dying of shock following the finger-bending incident, meaning that grizzled and toothless homicide detective Hoke Mosely (Fred Ward) is now on Junior’s trail, instigating a ramshackle cat-and-mouse between the two men which can’t possibly end well, least of all for Suzi.
Attempting to make a whimsical film noir takes some balls, but that’s exactly what Armitage and producer Jonathan Demme seem to have been going for here, and against the odds, they succeeded brilliantly, creating a world in which toe-curling brutality, systemic corruption and random, meaningless death exist side-by-side with impromptu pork chop dinners, misplaced dentures and recipes for ‘vinegar pie’ (whatever that is).
It helps that Armitage proves adept in staging long, intense inter-character scenes which seem capable of turning on a dime between good-natured bonhomie and psychotic violence, and Willeford’s complex and morally ambivalent characters are lent an additional spark by career-best level performances from Baldwin, Leigh and Ward.
As with ‘The Iceman Cometh’ discussed above, this is one of these films in which all three leads are basically right up in our face, all the time - but it doesn’t matter, because they’re all such captivating, horribly loveable human disaster areas, we could happily watch their antics for weeks, and still never really know what’s coming next.
Meanwhile, DP Tak Fujimoto coolly resists the temptation to riff on the visual style of a certain other Miami-based ‘80s crime franchise, instead turning the city into a candy-coloured pastel wonderland which actually looks like it might be quite a nice place to live, aside from all the blood.
Inspired use is made of Norman Greenbaum’s ‘Spirit in the Sky’ during the opening and closing credits (a perfect musical shrug-of-the-shoulders to sign off a nihilistic crime movie, now that I think about it, and you’ve got to love the irony of “..gonna go to the place that’s the best” playing over an aerial shot of the smog-choked city), and the always welcome appearance of faces like Charles Napier and Martine Beswick in the supporting cast feels like a thinly veiled high five to the cult film fans who have followed Armitage and Demme from their days on the grindhouse/exploitation circuit.
I confess, I’m not familiar with Willeford’s series of Hoke Mosely novels, but on the expectation that they might nail something akin to the uniquely schizophrenic tone of this wonderful movie, I’m clearing space on my bookshelves as we speak.
At the time of its release, ‘Light Sleeper’ often seems to have been dismissed as a middle-aged rehash of ‘Taxi Driver’, and on one level it is easy to see why. But, if you can manage to approach it without reference to the structure and plot beats it shares with its more famous predecessor, this tale of former addict John LeTour (William Defoe) attempting to break out of his emotionally neutered existence as a bagman/delivery boy for high class coke dealer Ann (Susan Sarandon) carries a singular power which transcends its time, place and subject matter.
Shot very much as it would have been a few years earlier, at the very apex of high gloss, ‘80s cinematic style, Defoe’s slow glide through the reflecting, desaturated surfaces of nocturnal Manhattan conveys an icy, uncanny emptiness which barely even needs to be elaborated upon by Schrader’s script. For all the surface level composure required by his trade though, LeTour’s faltering attempts to rekindle his relationship with ex-girlfriend Dana Delaney emerge just as desperate and cack-handed as Travis Bickle’s attempts to make human contact, in spite of two whole extra decades of hard-won life experience.
Denied permission to use the Bob Dylan songs he had written the script around, Schrader - in a brilliant example of makin’ lemonade - hired Christian rock singer Michael Been to record original music for ‘Light Sleeper’ instead, and, whilst the moody vistas of overwrought, sub-Springsteenian pomp which resulted might well have been unbearable on record, in the context of the film, the songs work superbly, their tides of smouldering passion effectively acting as LeTour’s inner voice, providing a soaring, white-hot emotional contrast to the cold, clean surroundings and transactional relationships of his material existence.
Schrader is on record as saying that he regrets turning the latter half of the film into a thriller, complete with an all-too-familiar violent bloodbath at the finale. Presumably he sees this as a concession to commercialism which detracted from the more existential core themes he was trying to address here. For my own purposes though, the plunge into genre proved very welcome, adding a vicious (neo)noir hook to the guts of a story which might otherwise have floundered into aimless introspection, reeling us in via a spiral of loss and collapse which could only reasonably conclude with an explosion of violent self-definition / self-immolation.
More than anything, I love the pace of this film - the slow glide, almost menacing simply in its constancy. Even when the characters are static, the camera prowls, like time creeping away at a consistent, doom metal tempo, taking us on a journey which has got to end somewhere, irrespective of the director’s more nebulous Sartre-via-Antonioni type intentions. And, when it does finally arrive at its destination - fragmented, hand-held footage documenting the blood-splattered walls of a modern art-bedecked penthouse hotel suite - the film achieves a moment of transcendence whose weird, spiritual power speaks to the religious angst and search for grace at the core of all of Schrader’s work more effectively than anything he’s ever managed to get across on paper.
As I say, it’s difficult for me to explain why ‘Light Sleeper’ had such an impact on me. I suppose that, like LeTour, I’m mid-way through my adult life at this point, dealing with the choices I’ve made. But - thankfully - the similarities end there, so there’s very little direct character identification going on here.
Could it be that, in the final analysis, this is simply an excellent movie, and that, by their very nature, the best movies become more than the sum of their parts - more than their creators intended or understood, even? And, they do not always give up their secrets so easily.
