What to watch
Dreamy, dark and sensitive
Three more classics from our movie buff as another weekend in lockdown closes in
ARTHOUSE ESSENTIAL:
Chocolat — Mubi.com
Not to be confused with the saccharine 2000 romantic drama featuring Juliet Binoche’s chocolatier and Johnny Depp’s gypsy bohemian; this is the 1988 debut feature of modern French master Claire Denis.
Set and filmed in Cameroon, it’s a coolly examined tale of unrequited erotic attraction and forbidden desire that makes some uncomfortable but undeniably astute observations about the relationship between colonial masters and their subjects.
A young French woman — unfortunately but aptly named France — is visiting Cameroon on holiday, decades after living there as the child of French colonial parents. Travelling on a road in the now independent nation she is overwhelmed by a flood of memories from her childhood and we are taken into her past to witness a series of events that she is now able to see with a clarity she didn’t have as a child.
It’s anchored by a stellar performance from the great Isaach De Bankolé in the role of the family’s servant Protée, who is also the object of the tragically forbidden desire of France’s mother Aimée (Giulia Boschi), and a perfectly executed soundtrack by SA jazz maestro Abdullah Ibrahim.
Beautifully shot and guided by Denis’s assured direction through some difficult emotional and political territory, it’s a film that still stands as one of the more thoughtful examinations of colonial power relations.
STONE COLD CLASSIC:
The Big Combo — YouTube
As a genre, film noir still remains one of the most influential and endlessly entertaining; darkly-lit, smoke-filled shadowy post-war potboilers filled with callous gangsters, disillusioned cops, gumshoes and the scary, independent-minded women who lay traps for them all at every turn.
Social attitudes may have changed, but the imagery and snappy dialogue that post-war male anxieties created in these films continue to exert their influence into the corners of much of present-day popular culture and iconography.
No-one did film noir with quite the moody, visual dexterity and sharp eye for detail as director Joseph Lewis. This 1955 tale of a morally ambiguous cop, his obsession with notorious underworld kingpin Mr Brown and his lust for Brown’s girlfriend is a standout example of all the best the genre has to offer.
Highlights include a torture scene involving a hearing aid and some unrequested too-loud jazz drumming; one of the first on-screen suggestions of oral sex; and some real zingers: “A woman doesn’t care how a man makes a living, just how he makes love”, and “I’d rather be insane and alive than sane and dead”.
Lewis thought it not quite as good as his 1949 classic, Gun Crazy (not available on YouTube, unfortunately), but time has been kinder than he was to what is undoubtedly one of the more vicious and nightmarish visions of one hell of a dark night.
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DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH
Beirut Oh Beirut — Netflix
The film world was shocked in 1993 when it learnt of the death of Lebanese director Maroun Baghdadi, who fell down an elevator shaft in his beloved city of Beirut aged 43.
In a brief but prolific career, Baghdadi chronicled the tumultuous life and times of Lebanon in a series of films that quickly established him as one of the best Arabic filmmakers of the 20th century.
His debut in 1975 was this prescient, multi-character examination of the hardships of life in Beirut in the aftermath of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war that many believe foresaw the civil war in Lebanon — which broke out as the film was being finished.
Despite the vicissitudes of the civil war that ravaged the country for most of the remainder of his lifetime, Baghdadi continued to make films and emerged as one of the most significant members of the Lebanese new wave.
Previously near impossible to see outside Lebanon, it’s now available on Netflix and offers solid early evidence of Baghdadi as a political filmmaker with the distinct ability to tackle potentially incendiary themes through sensitive careful, human centred storytelling.
If it’s visibly a little rougher around the edges than his later work that’s because it was made as his graduation film. Still, lays the firm foundations for Baghdadi’s subsequent career as a filmmaker who was deeply committed to peace and cried out as best he knew against the futility of war.