11 October 2024.
By Neptune
Five films this week – it’s the autumn rentrée. Run to the good ones!
THE WILD ROBOT ****
A lost robot, a newly hatched baby goose and a naughty fox make the most wonderful threesome you’ve seen in a long time. This animated film about a robot who is stranded on an island with various animals and keeps trying to connect with them and work out their problems (for which she is programmed), is an absolute delight.
Produced by Dreamworks and directed by Chris Sanders, this adventurous tale of acceptance and friendship is the ultimate family film that will have everyone entranced, maybe even teary-eyed, but left with a full heart. Its goodness feels like a Pixar production.
We need beautiful films like this in our very troubled world. Run to it!
SUPERMAN – The Christopher Reeve Story ****
There was a security guard present at the press screening for this film. A young, eager fellow excited to be there, as he later told me he’d loved the Superman films as a kid. Security is usually present for blockbuster films, but this one only had a blockbuster title, as it was actually a documentary on Reeve’s life and the consequences of his terrible accident. Well, let me tell you, I could hear that security guard crying, sniffling at the end of this heartbreaking yet hopeful story. So take some tissues when you go.
Beyond that little anecdote, this excellent documentary examines in detail the life of Christopher Reeve – his parents, his childhood and his early years as an aspiring actor in New York when he became life-long friends with his roommate, Robbin Williams. Then came his breakthrough when he was picked to be Superman in the 1970s and became an icon to millions of fans.
Through interviews with family members, the women in his life, his incredibly loving wife, and fellow actors such as Williams, Susan Sarandon, Glenn Close and Whoopi Goldberg, we get a rounded view of Reeve’s character. And then tragedy strikes. A horse riding accident in 1995 almost kills him, leaving him paralysed from the neck down, a quadriplegic.
At this point the documentary becomes an account of true heroism – that of his wife, himself and his children – beyond his Superman years. For he begins to realise that his survival must have a deeper goal, that of an advocate for the handicapped, and specifically for wider research on spinal cord injuries.
This is a gripping tribute to a real-life hero, not only a Hollywood Superman. It is a film to see, to be informed, lifted up in spirit and deeply moved. Again, another tale of goodness in this ailing world of ours.
L’HISTOIRE DE SOULEYMANE *** (vo French)
This is not a film for a fun night out.
Souleymane, a young Guinean, has left the misery of his fatherless home in Conakry to find the money to pay for medicine for his sick mother. After a horrendous journey across north Africa
to Europe (described but not seen) he pitches up in Paris where he works as a bicycle delivery boy, sleeping where he can find shelter and eating from soup kitchens and handouts. He finds friendship, amongst his own kind in situations like his own. He finds cruelty, also amongst his own kind, in those who would cheat and exploit him. The film covers the couple of days leading up to the interview with the authorities which will decide if Souleymane can stay, or if he has to go home. He is unprepared, and he is scared.
This film, professionally produced and acted, shows an accurate and realistic portrayal of what people like Souleymane suffer. It doesn’t ask you to feel sorry for him. It just presents his ‘histoire’. It is in French, with some subtitled Guinean language, but the images are as strong as the words.
Recommended for those of us who aren’t aware of how some people have to scratch and cope to manage their lives. Recommended also for those who are aware but who approach the issue of refugees, as many of us do, with little sympathy. To learn from. Not fun as I say but definitely worth watching.
(by BJ)
(The film, directed by Boris Lojkine, with Abou Sangare as Souleymane, received the Prix de Jury, plus Best Actor award for Sangare in the Certain Regard section of Cannes 2024, and is somewhat based on Sangare’s own life.)
(Showing only at the Grütli)
LEE **1/2
I had never heard of Lee Miller. Now I know much more about her – she was a striking American fashion model, moved to France in her 20s, was a dabbler in free love and the arts, friend to such luminaries as Picasso, surrealist photographer Man Ray, and poet Paul Éluard. She finally found her true calling when she became a war photographer during WWII for Vogue magazine. Born in 1907, she led a rich life as an early feminist, following her instincts without fear. Actually much of this I learned through her Wikipedia column, after this film triggered my curiosity about her.
Her photographic coverage of the war is the main interest in this somewhat too contrived biopic starring Kate Winslet as Miller. She was an exceptional character – adventurer, sometime wife, passionate about revealing the sufferings she witnessed during the war years through her photography.
Biopics can be an artistic trap – for they don’t always represent the full person they are concerned with. Not easy, for they should be revealing of their subject, gripping in their style, but above all, true to their artist. Examples of successful biopics seem often to be about musical artists – “Rocketman”, “Ray”, “Elvis”, “Walk the Line”, or serious dramas as “Imitation Game”, “Twelve Years a Slave” and “A Beautiful Mind”. Some of the worst are by the Chilean director Pablo Larrain who has made biopics such as “Jackie”, “Neruda” or “Spencer”, utterly distorting his unfortunate subjects. And the one below – “Niki”.
This one meanders from Miller’s flighty sexuality on the Côte d’Azur to her serious intent in her final career as a photographer, using an interview in her older years with a young journalist as offshoot for her memories. The strange, final twist at the end of the film does not help. But the film is worth seeing, for its subject is captivating.
NIKI * (vo French, English)
Niki de Saint Phalle was a fascinating character. Born in Paris but raised in the U.S., she was an artistic rebel of a woman who was a painter, experimented with ‘shooting’ collages and created playful, enormous sculptures of women, called Nanas. Inspired by Gaudi, she built a two hectare park in Tuscany called the Tarot Garden, filled with her huge female forms and fantastical structures. She also illustrated children’s books and was a filmmaker. Her first, co-directed with Peter Whitehead in 1973 and entitled “Daddy”, was a mixture of autobiography and imagination about her difficult childhood with her sexually abusive father.
Born in 1930, this beautiful woman lived a full, bohemian life with some of the top artists of the 20th century, and ended up married to the famous Swiss sculptor of gigantic kinetic machines, Jean Tinguely. They both shared a love of experimentation in the arts, taking risks and having fun in their creations, remaining friends and collaborators even after their divorce.
Her works are in the top museums in America and around the world, including our Olympic museum in Lausanne.
However, much of her amazing life and work is missing from this pale biopic “Niki”, made by actress Céline Sallette in her directing debut. Sallette has wiped out all of Saint Phalle’s brilliance and concentrates mainly on her troubled first marriage, when she was trying to be a housewife while raising her two children and going in and out of psychiatric wards because of the tortured memories of her father. When she is shown painting or creating, it’s terribly frustrating for the audience to see only the backs of her art, never the art itself. And forget about the Nanas and her magical garden, not a mention.
This is not a film, this is a distortion of a rich life. Sallette, a novice filmmaker has cheated Saint Phalle’s exceptional talent and her vibrant character. She would have done better to portray Saint Phalle herself, as there is an uncanny resemblance between the two women, and should have left the script and direction to someone with a wider vision.
Try to find instead Niki’s own documentary, “Daddy”.
Superb **** Very Good *** Good ** Mediocre * Miserable – no stars
By Neptune
Neptune Ravar Ingwersen reviews film extensively for publications in Switzerland. She views 4 to 8 films a week and her aim is to sort the wheat from the chaff for readers.
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