Tuesday, August 09, 2011
AMERICAN IN PARIS
Today's film was Bernardo Bertolucci's
New world innocence meets old world decadence in this memoir of the 60s.
I did not see it when it came out because I don't think that it stayed out very long.
Too bad as it is a very good movie movie.
Paris convulses in riots led by students while three young people cloister themselves for sexual and psychological reveries. Their focus is on film and this provides a wonderful opportunity for Bertolucci to do some parallel scene making. The three young people use film as guessing games but also to play out fantasies. All three share the experience of never quite participating in real life. They have sat in the front row of the cinematheque so that they are "first to get the pictures as they come off the screen". Smart intellectual introverts.
Did I mention that the two French kids are twins? Incest. Sort of. The American brings the real sex with him and they become the initiates.
There are some fine moments. Jeanne-Pierre Laude acting as a present day rioteer while his newsreel film self does the same thing 30 years ago. A lot of integration of classic film scenes with the scenes in this film we are watching.
The film is drenched in sex. Michael Pitt, Eva Green and Louis Garrel do it all mostly. As the American gets more and more in tune with things his initial innocence gives way to considerable liberation, even beyond the French kids. For example, there is no homo sex because the free French boy demures when the American makes advances.
Finally, the idyll ends with riots in the streets and a well timed brick through the window.
This is a very good film at many levels and I would like to see it again. Fortunately Bertolucci helps us with the film references but some are still a bit obscure. That is OK. It is a film to watch intensely.
I suppose it is time for a Bertolucci fest.
At least a 4 out of Netflix5. Maybe a 5.
Labels: films
