The Weekly Gravy #89

Lux Æterna (2019*) – ***

*Because Lux Æterna saw theatrical release in its native France in 2020, after premiering at the 2019 Cannes Festival, I’m counting it towards my 2020 awards.

Lux Æterna is, arguably, to French art films what One Cut of the Dead was to Japanese horror; it depicts, in real-time, how an already troubled shoot breaks down completely – or does it go somehow right? There aren’t any clear answers, and it’s not a heartfelt story about scrappy underdogs – if you’re rooting for anyone or anything, it’s for this whole ridiculous enterprise to get shut down so everyone can go home and move on to something more rewarding. But if it doesn’t amount to a whole hell of a lot, it’s rather fascinating to watch – after all, it is a Gaspar Noé film.

Beginning with clips from Häxan and Day of Wrath, Lux Æterna is set during the production of God’s Work, a fictitious film having something to do with burning witches at the stake. Charlotte Gainsbourg, playing more or less herself, is the star of the film, and the director is Beatrice Dalle, also playing herself. (Dalle has never, as far as I can find out, directed a film.) At first, we see Dalle and Gainsbourg hanging out and shooting the breeze, with the vivacious Dalle dominating the conversation by discussing her religious views, the difficulties of doing a nude scene in the presence of 2,000 male extras, and so forth.

But after rather a while of this, it turns out that they’re waiting to shoot a scene of God’s Work – the burning-at-the-stake scene – and we follow the increasingly chaotic preparations as matters begin to spiral out of control. The producer wants Dalle removed from the project (he wants to promote the DP to director) and assigns a PA to follow her with a camera in the hopes of catching her making a mistake. Gainsbourg is harangued by a young man trying to pitch a project, and steps aside to call her daughter’s nanny about a crisis at school. Actress Abbey Lee (playing, you guessed it, herself) is aghast at the revealing costume she’s given to wear. And so on.

Things get even wilder when they attempt to shoot the scene and the background projection goes on the fritz, projecting a multicolored strobing pattern, while the sound system also goes off, emitting a high-pitched noise. Dalle attempts to stop shooting, but the DP ignores her, and the flashing lights and whining sound continue as Gainsbourg, under the DP’s rogue direction, writhes in genuine distress. (Photo-sensitive viewers will sympathize – and should probably avoid this film.)

That’s really it, except for a final quotation – there have been several throughout, quoting directors like Dreyer, Fassbinder, and Godard – from Buñuel: “I’m an atheist, thank God.” And so the credits roll, as the strobing lights continue. This all takes just over 50 minutes.

So Lux Æterna exists in that twilight zone between short films and features – I personally allow features to be as short as 40 minutes, but “featurette” might be a better word for films between 40 and 60 minutes in length – and it probably should’ve fleshed itself out a bit more and reached short-feature length, although it could’ve worked, with some tightening, as a short. In any case, while it’s enjoyable to watch, I’m not sure it’s trying to say, although it seems to have some fun saying it.

It’s fun to watch as well. Dalle is great fun to watch as she reflects on her career or tries to hold her own on the disorganized set. And seeing how hard it is to get even one shot set up, let alone to get it in the can, is a potent reminder of what an arduous industry this really is. (There are also frequent reminders of the misogyny baked into it.) Noé also has some fun with his trademark strobing imagery, and experiments with the split-screen method that would define Vortex; as in that film, sometimes it works, sometimes it’s just distracting. It’s all solid stuff, and I’d have happily watched another half-hour of it.

But 50 minutes or so is all we get, and as such, Lux Æterna falls short of its full potential. It’s a must for Noé’s fans, and if you can take the strobing it’s worth checking out – though maybe not at theater prices – but you’re left wanting more. There are worse things to want from a film, but in this instance, you may feel a touch underfed.

Score: 75

Pleasure (2021) – ***½

CW: sexual abuse, emotional abuse. Spoilers.

Although the story Pleasure tells about the price of stardom is nothing new – even setting it in the world of porn doesn’t change the narrative trajectory much – there are moments of profoundly unsettling insight, at least into the world the film has created for its protagonist (since there’s some argument as to how accurately the film depicts the actual adult-film industry), giving us something more to latch onto than the filmmaking and acting, which are quite solid, if not enough to carry the film without at least a little thematic meat on its bones.

Linnéa (Sofia Kappel) moves from Sweden to Los Angeles to break into the porn industry under the name “Bella Cherry.” She becomes close friends with her roommate Joy (Revika Anne Reustle) but takes as her role model Ava (Evelyn Claire), a client of powerful agent Mark Spiegler (playing himself), who wants his clients to be open to any and all kinds of pornography. Bella struggles with this, trying to build up her stamina by doing rougher scenes, but after a painful experience, fires her original agent for being unsupportive.

She eventually joins Spiegler’s roster and tries to give Joy a leg up, but when they’re paired with a male star who mistreats Joy, she downplays his abuse so as not to make waves and loses her closest friend in a heartbeat. She gets to do a scene with Ava, who refuses to do the originally planned scene, causing a last-second change to one where Bella is the top, and she vents her anger and frustration on Ava, who’s bemused when Bella tries to apologize. Bella realizes that the fame she desires comes at too high of a price, and the (abrupt) ending implies she’ll leave the industry.

It’s not an especially novel story, but two scenes in particular give it some extra weight. The first is the shoot Bella does with two men who verbally and physically assault her (as part of the scene), a process which proves unbearable for her. At first, her co-stars and director are supportive, and encourage her to take a moment before resuming. But gradually their support becomes manipulative, even oppressive, and when she tries to call it quits entirely, their compassion evaporates. She can do what she wants, but everyone will be a lot happier if she toughs it out and gets it over with. It’s a painful scene to watch.

The second is when she and Joy do a scene with Caesar (Lance Hart), whom Joy had previously shoved in a swimming pool for insulting her. Before doing the scene, Bella sees Caesar and Joy in the kitchen; exactly what’s going on isn’t clear, but we can guess it’s bad. The scene requires them to be led around by Caesar on leashes, and he favors Bella while forcing Joy to lick his shoes and endure his insults. Eventually, Joy has enough and accuses him of mistreatment, which he denies. Joy appeals to Bella, who plays off Caesar’s conduct as a bad joke, and Joy storms out, denouncing her as she leaves.

What really strikes me about that scene is how quickly it all happens. A few words, spoken out of a desire not to cause “drama” (which Spiegler doesn’t want), and Bella loses her one real friend in L.A. We know, from the second Joy asks Bella to back her up, that she won’t; it’s the inevitability that makes it sting. After that, we know Bella will never be truly happy in the industry, however high she climbs.

Outside of these scenes, the script, by director Ninja Thyberg, doesn’t dig as deep as it could. For all the finely observed details about the industry, Bella herself remains a bit of an enigma. We get the sense that she doesn’t totally understand what she wants out of life – it becomes clear she left Sweden somewhat on impulse and is ready to go back, on impulse – but why she wants to get into porn, and why she sticks with it as long as she does, is less clear.

Kappel’s performance compensates; she embraces the wide range of emotions, from aspiration to desolation, that Bella’s journey leads her through, her facial acting balancing her professional detachment and personal turmoil effectively. Among the solid supporting cast, Reustle (herself a veteran adult-film performer) brings an open, giddy sweetness to Joy, and Chris Cock (who, as his stage name might suggest, looks and sounds like Chris Rock’s porn-star brother) is cheerfully witty as Bear, who’s maybe been around a little too long but remains game for anything.

Thyberg’s direction, in league with Sophie Winqvist Loggins’s cinematography and the graceful editing, captures and/or creates a world of polished sleaze, with an eye for the little things – the creak of a ceiling fan, the panting of Joy’s pug dog, the blue sky Bella fixes her attention on during a difficult scene – making up for the relative lack of surprises in the story. There’s also some good music courtesy of Karl Frid, especially the song “Una Gioia.” It’s certainly a well-crafted film in every technical sense.

Whether it’s an accurate portrait of the industry is another matter, and some of its members who took part in Pleasure are not happy with the finished product. One would hope the most unpleasant scenes shown here don’t take place in reality – but in the context of the film, they ring true, in particular the shoot which nearly drives Bella out of the industry; the men around her clearly don’t think they’re doing anything wrong or coercive. There’s a distinct difference between what one can endure and what one should endure, and we can only hope that, in the film’s final moments, Bella has chosen not to endure for endurance’s sake any longer.

Score: 78

Jules and Jim/Jules et Jim (1962) – ****

Approaching a classic for the first time can be a strange experience, like visiting a place you’d heard about and seen pictures of; you have to reconcile your preconceptions with your perceptions. In the case of Jules and Jim, the film’s existence was an established fact, I had a glancing knowledge of its premise, and I recognized some of its most famous images, namely the bridge race. But I’d never seen it until last night, and after doing so, I did something I try not to do very often; I read several reviews, including Roger Ebert’s and my cousin Martin’s, to see if I had seen the same film they had, or if I had my own distinct take on a film which has been discussed and dissected at length for 60 years.

Of course, my feelings about the film may well develop with repeated viewings, and I certainly intend to go back to it. At the moment, I fully acknowledge its greatness and influence, but I don’t feel that extra level of affection that would make it one of my favorites. Indeed, I’d argue a certain detachment from the characters is a perfectly valid response to the film, given the tools Truffaut uses to tell the story: the brisk pacing, aggressive editing, and the use of a narrator to tell us as much as we’re shown and draw conclusions for us before we’ve hardly had time to think. It covers some 20 years, multiple countries, and three lives in well under two hours. Is it trying to get us close to Jules, Jim, or Catherine?

I don’t necessarily think so. It’s a key point that Jules and Jim, especially Jim, are writers, and that the film was based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Henri-Pierre Roché; the film, to me, seems to partly be about the struggle to capture the sensations of life in the bottle of art. One can never truly do so, one can only preserve the impression, and either in the composition or the perception, one imposes an understanding of events and the people involved which can never replicate the absolute truth of them. We can be told how close Jules and Jim are and how fascinated they are by Catherine, but we can never truly feel what passes between them, and I don’t think Truffaut intended us to.

By the same token, Jules and Jim cannot contain Catherine within their understanding of her, any more than she can contain the happiest sensations of her life within the present moment; she is averse to regrets, to unhappiness, to routine, to complication, and the result is tragic. Jules and Jim were first drawn to her because she had the same enigmatic smile as an ancient statue. But she is no statue, nor is she predictable, even in her unpredictability; for every moment like her leap into the Seine or her pulling a gun on Jim for daring to marry another woman (poor Gilberte), there are many where she behaves rationally. We cannot contain her any more than the men around her.

What can be contained are the images and sounds which make up the film, and between Raoul Coutard’s cinematography, Georges Delerue’s score, and Claudine Bouché’s editing, those are of a very high standard indeed. Coutard’s compositions are exquisite, and the camera moves in startling ways; one shot, where we move from Catherine and Jim at ground level to Jules observing them from a balcony, is a truly virtuoso example of crane work. Delerue’s score shifts brilliantly from the vivacious excitement of the opening scenes to the romantic melancholy of the closing ones. And Bouché establishes the headlong pace from the get-go, using innovative transitions and the use of stock footage to reinforce Truffaut’s storytelling.

And while the film’s style puts some limitations on its cast, they all do fine work. Jeanne Moreau is perfectly cast as Catherine, with her distinctive beauty and restrained approach bringing the enigmatic character to elusive life. Oskar Werner, whose screen career was all too limited, likewise strikes the right note of rueful devotion throughout as the devoted Jules, while Henri Serre, whose screen career was otherwise unremarkable, is really quite solid as Jim; he has a certain blank awkwardness which suits his fundamental manipulability. And there are some memorable side characters, like Vanna Urbino as poor Gilberte, and Marie Dubois as Thérèse, the “steam engine” who gets to deliver a great breathless monologue in the third act.

At the core of it all is Truffaut’s direction, encompassing the playful spirit of prewar Paris, the uncertainties of the interwar period, the constant tensions presented by love, betrayal, and indecision, and finally the tragedy of the final scenes, with the process of cremation shown in grim detail; those bodies we once saw so full of life and passion are now but charred bones to be ground up. But as they only ever existed on film, resurrecting them is as easy as pressing “play.” And someday, I certainly mean to.

Score: 91

Top Gun: Maverick (2022) – ***½

This will make a bit more sense if you’ve seen the film, but there are two miracles that helped make it work as well as it did for me. That Miles Teller, an actor I’ve never liked very much, doesn’t actively detract from this film is Miracle #1. That Val Kilmer, whose appearance in The Snowman was an embarrassing debacle, could appear here to the poignant effect that he does – and that his scene manages not to cross the line into sappiness – is Miracle #2. The rest is gravy.

And while that gravy doesn’t include much in the way of depth, either in terms of character or theme, it does include exciting action, charismatic screen presences, and a giddy embrace of its own corny absurdity. It’s a film which knows what it wants to do and does it damned well. That it doesn’t want to do more may keep it from rising to the exalted heights of the very best blockbusters, but it works. It most certainly works.

The story isn’t all that much: aging pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is still ruffling his superiors’ feathers, at the start of the film flying an experimental plane to Mach 10, but then accidentally destroying it by trying to go just a bit faster. His commanding officer (Ed Harris) has had enough, but Adm. “Iceman” Kazansky (Val Kilmer) has requested that Maverick train a group of Top Gun graduates for an upcoming mission: destroy an unsanctioned uranium enrichment facility located in a basin surrounded by steep mountains. Even reaching the target, let alone destroying it and leaving the area in one piece, will take all of their skills.

But Maverick is working with the best pilots the Navy has to offer – including Lt. “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the son of Maverick’s late friend Goose, who resents Maverick for pulling his application to the Naval Academy. Maverick had his reasons, and it’s hardly a spoiler to say that he and Rooster will reconcile before the credits roll. There’s also the matter of Maverick’s relationship with bar owner Penny Benjamin (Jennifer Connelly), which might be what the old pilot needs to keep his feet on the ground – metaphorically speaking, that is.

Like I said, it’s a pretty basic story, and most of the characters – really, everyone outside of Maverick – are one-dimensional archetypes, from the resentful Rooster to the old-flame Penny to the braggart Lt. “Hangman” Seresin (Glen Powell) to the nerdy Lt. “Bob” Floyd (Lewis Pullman) to the girl who’s one of the boys, Lt. “Phoenix” Trace (Monica Barbaro) to Maverick’s new hard-ass commanding officer, Vice Adm. “Cyclone” Simpson (Jon Hamm) and CWO4 “Hondo” Coleman (Bashir Salahuddin). They all play their roles well, but they’re all means to an end.

Even reprising the role of Maverick doesn’t ask that much of Cruise, though he delivers at every turn, giving the moments of human vulnerability the same weight as those of weapons-grade cockiness. But in a story about glory, about perfectly honed abilities, about “the pilot in the box” transcending the plane itself, yet also about the planes themselves, perfectly crafted machines capable, in the right hands, of jaw-dropping feats, the characters are just about what the film needs to get in, get the job done, and give us our money’s worth.

And it does, with superb cinematography, editing, and sound, with impressive airborne scenes, moments of light camaraderie (the “Great Balls of Fire!” scene, the beach football scene), moments of friendly tenderness (the scene with Iceman), and moments of sheer ridiculous fantasy, like how the third act resolves each obstacle placed in our heroes’ way. Even the choice to keep the antagonists totally anonymous – we have no idea who’s trying to enrich this uranium or where the facility is – works, because a film like this would crumble under the weight of real-world geopolitics.

Some might say this is a truly great film, and I disagree. It’s as well-polished a product I’ve seen in a long while, but it doesn’t have the vision, the character, the invention to go the extra mile into greatness, at least for me. It kept me fully engaged in the theater, and it’s well worth seeing, assuming you can slip into the right mindset to appreciate what it has to offer. And, while I’ve only seen the original Top Gun once (on an airplane, no less), I won’t argue that this is a better film, one that meets its goals more perfectly. But when it’s over, it doesn’t necessarily leave you wanting more, or itching to return. It’s very satisfying. But for me, there’s more to true greatness than satisfaction.

Score: 84