Ooooh, sppoooky. Yep. Paranormal Activity makes it to our shores this week to attempt to scare us into praise. We chat about Alec Baldwin’s pledge to quit, found footage movies with aliens and the plot for Battleship, the latter including a lament on the power of Hasbro and some enthusiasm for a Buckaroo movie. We chat a little about the Dardennes brothers, the pointless Paper Heart and the inspired Thick of It, concluding with a ‘celebration’ of the worst movies of the year and 2009’s biggest disappointments.

Download The Movie Overdose Episode 44

Email us, folks. That, along with Twitter, Facebook etc. is on the side of the page. Right there. See it? Do it.

Ooooh, sppoooky. Yep. Paranormal Activity makes it to our shores this week to attempt to scare us into praise. We chat about Alec Baldwin’s pledge to quit, found footage movies with aliens and the plot for Battleship, the latter including a lament on the power of Hasbro and some enthusiasm for a Buckaroo movie. We chat a little about the Dardennes brothers, the pointless Paper Heart and the inspired Thick of It, concluding with a ‘celebration’ of the worst movies of the year and 2009’s biggest disappointments.

Download The Movie Overdose Episode 44

Email us, folks. That, along with Twitter, Facebook etc. is on the side of the page. Right there. See it? Do it.

Photo by obo-bobolina via flickr

I was riding home on the blue line and chatting with the person sitting behind me, but he got up to leave at L’Enfant. The guy who got on at that stop and sat down behind me immediately reached up and groped the back of my neck – dragged his fingertips and palms across my skin. I turned around and said the first thing that came to my mind: “No, none of that, you!” He smirked and sat back, but didn’t do anything else. I watched his reflection in the windows across from me to be sure, but I didn’t want to get up and admit that he’d spooked me. When I got off at my station a few stops later, he was hunched down with his headphones on and the brim of his Redskins hat pulled over his eyes. I was hoping he’d at least glare at me or something as I left, but it meant so little to him that he didn’t even notice as I left. Goddamnit, that’s frustrating. I just came home and scrubbed my neck.

Submitted by Anonymous on 11/17/2009

Location: Between L’Enfant and Federal Center SW

Do you have a personal experience with gender-based public sexual harassment you would like to submit? Just click here and fill out the online submission form. All submissions are posted anonymously unless you specify.

Enfant, L’ (2005)
★★★ / ★★★★

I believe “L’enfant” is another one of those movies where audiences will be quick to judge and label it as the kind of movie where “nothing happened.” Written and directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne, the film told the story of a couple (Jérémie Renier and Déborah François) who recently had baby. However, both of them were very young and the first few scenes of the picture established them as parents who were far from ready to raise a child. What’s even worse is that the father actively doesn’t want to get a job. He would rather steal from people and sell the objects he stole for a quick buck. Faced with the responsibility of raising a child, he saw the child as another means of making money. There’s a certain sadness about this picture that fascinated and angered me at the same time. I was very angry with the characters’ decisions, especially the father’s, but I could not help but wonder how the consequences of their actions would change (or not change) them in the long run. While the movie did not have a lot of dialogue, the silent moments and body movements were enough to let the audiences feel the gravity of certain situations and the desperation of the two leads. I also enjoyed the brilliant symbolism regarding the father and his way of constantly selling things. I thought it was very fitting considering that he was the kind of person who did not want to get attached in fear of finally being responsible for something. Lastly, the use of bright colors for a somewhat grim story provided a nice contrast. This is a small movie but I found it to be quite powerful because it had a certain insight without really judging its characters. It simply shows what is and sometimes that’s enough to make us question ourselves how we would have done things differently if placed in similar situations. Strangely enough, even though I did not agree with more than half of the characters’ choices, I still felt for them and ultimately wanted them to succeed or maybe even lead a better life, especially for the newborn. If one is up for an honest experience via a cinematic medium, one should consider to watch this movie.

Debido a los devastadores efectos que el jet-lag y la fiebre resultado de la gripe ¿A? están ejerciendo en mi, llevo toda la noche sin poder dormir. La banda sonora de Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog retumba en mi cabeza y, por mucho que me guste como canta la pista 5 (A man’s gotta do) Neil Patrick Harris, el estribillo me empieza a rechinar. Producto de mi hiperactividad cerebral se me están ocurriendo algunos posts, así que he encendido el ordenador por séptima octava vez esta noche, me he envuelto en la manta que mangué del avión (convenientemente llena de víruses) y me he puesto a teclear. En los altavoces suena Taylor Swift, You belong to me. Llamadme mariquita que me da igual.

Lo primero que ha salido de mi prolífica mente enferma ha sido una carta-protesta a los de WD por la putada que me han hecho con el disco duro. La he pegado al final del post que escribí el sábado. Lo siguiente es esta pequeña reflexión/comparativa sobre Washington DC, una ciudad en la que he vivido bastante y que siempre me deja con sensaciones mixtas.

Lo primero que hay que decir sobre el DC es que es una ciudad bastante pequeña. Tiene forma de rombo con tres lados rectos y el cuarto delineado por el curso del río Potomac. Está incrustado en el estado de Maryland y colinda al SO con el estado de Virginia.

Fuente: Wikipedia

El DC no es ni siquiera uno de los 50 Estados que componen el Imperio. Por tanto no tiene representación en el Congreso, más allá de un observador sin voto, y ni Harry en el Senado. Los residentes de Washington DC no pudieron votar en las generales hasta 1961, cuando se enmendó la Constitución para solucionar este agravio. El tema de la no-representación trae de cabeza a los residentes del DC, que en el eslógan de sus matrículas (cada Estado tiene uno diferente) llevan escrito “Taxation without representation”, es decir, “Impuestos sin representación”. Este eslógan es herencia directa de la época colonial, cuando los británicos denegaban a los colonos un diputado en el Palacio de Westminster.

La broma les salió cara a los "british"

Aparte de estos pormenores administrativos Washington DC es una ciudad bastante bulliciosa. Además de albergar al hombre más poderoso del mundo en sus calles se cuentan nada menos que 174 embajadas (más o menos), varias sedes de los organismos internacionales más importantes del mundo, dos de las mejores universidades del país y algunos de los museos y monumentos más bellos del orbe. La ciudad entera está planificada como un magnifico monumento horizontal. La culpa de esta estupenda planificación urbana la tiene el arquitecto francoamericano Pierre L’Enfant, que visualizó la ciudad como un entramado de amplias avenidas y edificios bajos que no colapsaran la panorámica. Al contrario de lo que se suele pensar, no hay ninguna ley que limite la altura de los edificios a la del monumento a Washington (popularmente: El Obelisco); si hay no obstante, una limitación de altura equivalente a la mayor de las anchuras de las calles adyacentes más veinte pies (unos 7 metros). Con todo, el obelisco sigue siendo la estructura más alta del DC y por tanto se puede decir que es una ciudad muy poco agobiante, sobre todo si la comparamos con otras como New York.

Esta la hice yo (©)

En Washington vive poca gente. Menos de seiscientas mil personas según el último censo. La mayoría de la población son de raza negra, y el resto suelen ser estudiantes o gente con pocos recursos. Practicamente nadie que tenga pasta vive “en” Washington DC. Excepto Obama y el vice el resto prefieren huir a los suburbios de los estados colindantes, principalmente el Montgomery County en Maryland, que está a escasos 10 minutos del centro de la ciudad.

El alto porcentaje de ciudadanos de raza negra tienen un alto impacto en la criminalidad. No es que yo sea racista, pero ahí están los datos para respaldarme. Aunque pueda parecer que el DC es una ciudad blindada debido a la cantidad de dignatarios, políticos y empresarios que allí se concentran, nada más lejos de la realidad. Hasta hace poco Washington DC era la capital del crimen y aún hoy quedan zonas (principalmente el NE) en las que no se puede entrar sin una tanqueta y un batallón de policías. A pesar de todo, si uno sabe por dónde moverse Washington es una ciudad bastante segura en la que se puede pasear tranquilamente por la noche con un mínimo de precaución.

La lástima es que uno no tenga muchas oportunidades de pasearse por la noche. En el DC hay, reconozcámoslo, poca vida nocturna. Hay que recordar que se trata de una ciudad ocupada principalmente por políticos y diplomáticos (por experiencia personal puedo garantizar que estos dos colectivos son poco proclives a ir de bares), pero sorprende que el colectivo de estudiantes no esté más movilizado. La mayoría de los bares cierran a las 3 y en toda la ciudad no hay ni un sólo garito como Dios manda.

Esto hace de Washington DC una ciudad bastante tranquila. Tiene multitud de espacios verdes en los que despatarrarse a gusto, siempre que el tiempo lo permita. En el DC sólo se está bien en primavera y al principio del otoño. El resto del año hace un calor asfixiante y húmedo o un frío que mata maricones acompañado de una buena ventisca. Las lluvias son uniformes durante todo el año y nunca se puede salir de casa sin asegurar que no hará falta el paraguas.

En Washington DC se puede comer bastante bien. Hay multitud de restaurantes de todo tipo y, como todo en Estados Unidos, la comida es bastante barata. Esto, unido a un excelente servicio, hace que siempre sea mejor reservar cuando se tiene pensado salir a comer. En la ciudad hay un par de restaurantes españoles; Jaleo, del chef José Andrés, en donde se puede degustar gazpacho, tortilla de patatas o paella de encargo y La Taberna del Alabardero, un poco más tradicional con sus buenos guisos y platos castellanos.

Los turistas en DC tienen suerte, es una ciudad que se puede ver en un fin de semana sin necesidad de levantarse a las 7. La planificación urbanística ha concentrado todos los monumentos y museos en el centro de la ciudad, y sólo hace falta desplazarse en coche para ver el Pentágono (que por otra parte está fuera del término municipal del DC) y el cementerio de Arlington. En Washington DC, no obstante, no escasean las joyas artísticas. Podemos contemplar el original de la Declaración de Independencia o de la Constitución en los Archivos Nacionales, escrutar pinceladas de Miguel Ángel en la Nationall Gallery o rebuscar en las estanterías de la Biblioteca del Congreso en busca de originales de Robert Frost. Para animar la cosa (y muy recomendable si uno va con niños pequeños) también se puede explorar la historia de la aviación americana desde los inicios  con el monoplano de los hermanos Wright hasta la carrera espacial en el Museo Nacional del Aire y el Espacio, en el que podemos ver multitud de aviones, misiles y hasta el módulo lunar del Apollo XI o el auténtico Spirit of Saint Louis.

La cola es para el McDonalds (©)

Si uno se aburre durante la visita, lo cual es poco probable, siempre cabe la posibilidad de darse una vuelta por el Capitolio y asistir a alguna sesión en curso en cualquiera de las cámaras. Esto garantiza al menos una hora de entretenimiento gratuito cortesía de los representantes electos del pueblo americano, que no desperdician ninguna oportunidad para tirarse los trastos a la cabeza.

Si uno no es un turista y va a vivir en Washington lo más recomendable (aparte del 1600 de Pennsylvania Av) es dejarse caer por Georgetown, barrio estudiante con ínfulas de SoHo neoyorquino que destaca por sus preciosas casas de dos pisos con fachada de ladrillo rojo, sus tiendas de moda y sus precios estratosféricos. Hay que recordar que las universidades que hay en Washington DC no son para ciudadanos de a pie. No en vano la Universidad George Washington es la más cara de los Estados Unidos. No obstante si uno quiere vivir en el DC y puede permitírselo, Georgetown es la mejor opción. La alta concentración de rubias adolescentes por metro cuadrado también ayuda.

Suena Embers de Just Jack en mi iTunes y poco más me queda que escribir. Este post es más largo que mis habituales pero más corto que el que le dedicaría a París, por ejemplo, ciudad de la cual podría estar escribiendo eones y no contaría nada. Sin duda ayuda que Washington sea una ciudad pequeña y corriente. No tiene el encanto de Nueva York ni la majestuosidad de Roma, pero no podemos dejar de olvidar que el destino del mundo se decide en ese pequeño rombo de la costa este americana.

The University of Quebec Press has just published a collection of essays by Corboz in its Urban Inheritance (History) series. It was brought to the attention of Historic Urban Plans when the publishers requested a digital image from our collection of the 1799 plan of Bath, England to reproduce in the book. This image was used in chapter 11, titled A network of irregularities and fragments: genesis of a new urban structure in the 18th century. In this chapter, Corboz discusses urban planning as it was transformed from the formal and militaristic to the irregular yet planned city, “networked” for the good of its inhabitants and to promote trade and social stability. His primary examples are Paris and Rome, both ancient, complex cities, resistant to the symmetry of Renaissance town planning. Bath, while also an ancient city, was enlarged by the visionary architect John Wood the Elder, who used large-scale Roman structures as his model for buildings, squares and crescents; uniform but not rigid. Planners, engineers and architects of the 18th century began to view cities physiologically, parts of a whole that needed to function together dynamically. Corboz’s essay is interesting and well illustrated with several plans, including Nolli’s Rome (1748), Patte’s Paris (1772) and L’Enfant’s Washington (1792). This essay is written in English, most of the book is in French. 315 pages.

No one is making better films out of Europe these days than the Belgian Dardenne Brothers (Jean-Pierre and Luc), who for more than a decade have been churning out stunning, humane, punch-in-the-gut films about working class contemporary Europe. If you haven’t checked out their films The Promise (1996), Rosetta (1999), The Son (2002), and The Child (2005), I urge you drop everything and watch them.

Lorna’s Silence, the Dardennes’ latest film (and winner of the best screenplay prize at Cannes in 2008), is yet another masterpiece—if not their best work then at least their most emotionally complex. It’s a film that left me incapacitated and breathless in my seat as the credits rolled.

I hesitate to say too much about this film because I’d rather you just see it for yourself and let it unfold before you. I went in to it purposefully oblivious to any plot details, knowing only that it was a Dardenne Bros film. If you want to do the same, perhaps you should stop reading here.

Lorna’s Silence centers around Lorna (Arta Dobroshi), a working class Albanian woman who wants to open a restaurant in Belgium with her boyfriend. To gain Belgian citizenship (and to get a little extra money), she allows herself to be part of a mobster-conceived scheme in which she marries a druggie (Dardenne regular Jérémie Renier), divorces him, and then weds a Russian immigrant who also wants to gain Belgian citizenship. Whatever her motivation for getting involved in such a sordid plot, however, it quickly becomes clear that she is merely a means to an end for much more corrupt and dangerous gangsters. Her dreams or desires are the least of anyone’s priorities, and she is a woman alone in the company of some really bad men. She lets herself be used and abused by them with scarcely a word of protest, which is (presumably) where the film gets its title.

The film—as all Dardenne Bros films do—begins in medias res with only the slightest effort to catch the audience up on who these people are or why they are doing what they are doing. But gradually we come to know what we need to know, if only in the faintest of relief. But it’s okay. This film is not about the plot details as much as the plight of humanity at the center. Shot in the trademark visual style (handheld, spare, bleak, cold, with no effects or nondiegetic sound) that the Dardennes did first and better than all the many imitators, Lorna’s Silence puts us right in the middle of a horrifying, desperate urban world full of struggle and depravity and yet nevertheless haunted by hope and beauty. It’s all set against the backdrop of post-EU street-level Europe as it might be imagined through the dire eyes of Cormac McCarthy. It’s a bleak, godless place in which things like marriage and pregnancy are merely economic transactions and nurses at government run hospitals might provide the only unconditional affection in someone’s life.

But Lorna’s Silence isn’t primarily a commentary on contemporary working class Europe (though this is certainly an important part of it). It’s mostly about the journey of Lorna and the desperate situation she finds herself in—a situation at once out of her hands and completely within them. It’s a film about a woman and the tragic loneliness she endures. Who, if anyone, is in Lorna’s corner? As the film goes on, the question becomes increasingly depressing.

Lorna is a woman aching to make a better life for herself—to love and be loved back. She’s like everyone in that way. But unfortunately the hand she’s been dealt has mostly been hardship. She’s an immigrant from a poor background (she wears the same red jeans in nearly every scene and works long hours as a dry cleaner), has no family in sight, and associates with all the wrong people. But she can’t blame circumstances on everything. She can help who she does business with and she could have said no from the beginning. But she didn’t, and so she suffers the consequences.

Still, as much as we know that Lorna has made bad decisions, it’s hard not to empathize with her and feel the existential desperation that cascades out of her eyes in almost every scene. She’s resilient and brave and only cries once or twice, but we see it in her countenance at every turn: Lorna is a very sad person. For most of the movie, she keeps it dangerously bottled up. But by the end of the film (the last ten minutes are breathtaking), Lorna finds a new strength and a new love to live for. She begins to truly speak.

Among the Dardenne Brothers other strengths, they tend to structure their films in such a way that tension and bleakness build up only to be released in a tiny but potent catharsis at the very last moment. Here, like in their stunning finale to The Child (L’Enfant), the Dardennes surprise us with where they end the film. When it cuts to black, in medias res as in the beginning, we feel the weight of an uncertain but hopeful resolution. As in life, we don’t know what exactly will happen, but to know would be to tragically and too-quickly move beyond the hardship and struggle we’ve just gone through. It’s better to just think about where we are and where we’ve come from, to mull over the journey thus far. However harrowing the future may be, it’s enough to just worry about the now.

Very few directors make successful films about poverty, or about the people whose lives are spun out in its shadow. It’s not only that Hollywood producers have little interest in the subject, the blame also rests with us, the audience. It’s rare that we feel inclined to watch truth in all its hopeless chaotic injustice.

Perhaps this vacuum exists because the stories behind contemporary poverty seem too familiar, too inevitable. Because we know there are no simple solutions and therefore happy endings are unlikely.

In 19th century England, many outrages were brought to light through parliamentary lobbying, popular fiction or local campaigners. In Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies we meet Tom, a child chimney sweep, who

cried half his time, and laughed the other half. He cried when he had to climb the dark flues, rubbing his poor knees and elbows raw; and when the soot got into his eyes, which it did every day in the week; and when his master beat him, which he did every day in the week..”

The book proved a partial catalyst in the passing of the 1864 Act for the Regulation of Chimney Sweepers. Dickens’ Oliver Twist helped usher in reform of the workhouses.

Perhaps these past social wrongs – child chimney sweeps, malnourished orphans – were in some sense easier than ours: easier to identify, to condemn, to regulate. The abuses we are left with seem truly obstinate. If you watch Lukas Moodysson’s heartrending film, Lilya 4-Ever, about sex trafficking – one of the worst scourges of our society – you will be left feeling not only traumatised but also powerless: there are already laws against it, there are whole police divisions working on it, and yet still women are being trafficked for sex.

All of this is partly why the Dardenne brothers are cultural heroes of our time: they make films that star the poorest and most marginalised of our society. The other reason is that they are simply outstanding film-makers.

Their latest film, Lorna’s Silence, is about an Albanian immigrant in Belgium, who wants to open a snackbar with her boyfriend. In order to do this, she must become a citizen. So she marries a heroin addict, on the proviso that after some time, they will divorce. The problem is, the heroin addict starts to get better. And her underworld handler, who arranged the marriage, has another scheme: Lorna is to marry a Russian mafia member who also needs citizenship, and if necessary, kill her addict husband. Talk about moral dilemmas.

Exploring the limited options of impoverished people in tight corners is a Dardenne speciality. Their 2005 film, L’Enfant, which won the Palme d’Or, is shocking because it shows with brutal honesty what happens when a ‘child’ – someone who, though adult, has been given no moral or ethical guidance – conceives their own child. It is a film that, like Moodysson’s Lilya, is difficult to watch, yet it manages to be compelling, and more extraordinarily, to make us care deeply for its damaged protagonists.

These are filmmakers on the outskirts of the industry, and their films are only ever given limited release; they do not promise escapism. But still we should be grateful they exist at all.

by Matthew Groves

In extreme circumstances, what choices should one make?  How can you survive in desperate times and still keep some sort of morality?  These are central, universal questions that drive the narrative in the new film, Lorna’s Silence, by Belgian brother auteurs, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.

This is not unfamiliar territory for the Dardennes, as their last four films have all dealt with these central questions, delving into how characters at the lower rungs of society make the right decision, even in the face of almost insurmountable challenges dealing with crime, poverty, and illegal immigration.  Lorna’s Silence specifically deals with immigration, just like their earlier film, La Promesse.  This film, however, is set not in their hometown, Seraing, like four previous films, but in the bigger city of Liege.  And instead of a young male protagonist, the story revolves around a female protagonist, calling back their film, Rosetta. Aside from those key references, the film is entirely original.

Lorna (Arta Dobroshi) a twenty-something illegal Albanian immigrant, has entered a paper marriage with a haggard junkie, Claudy Moreau (Jeremie Renier, a thrice collaborator with the brothers) in order to gain citizenship and live out her dreams of owning a snack shop with her boyfriend, Sokol (Alban Ukai).  Claudy is more of an inconvenience than anything else to Lorna, with his loud music, constant annoyance, and empty promises to finally quit drugs and go clean.  Unexpectedly though, Lorna is thrown into a moral tailspin, when Fabio (Fabrizio Rongione), the local mobster who secured her trip and citizenship, wants to murder Claudy so that Lorna can enter a paper marriage with a new illegal immigrant, a Russian cigarette smuggler, Andrei (Anton Yakovlev).  Then she must desperately decide how to save Claudy and how to survive long enough to live out her dream.

Lorna (Dobroshi) presents a proposition Claudy (Renier) after a recent drug-related trip to the hospital.

Much like their former critically-acclaimed, award-winning features, this film was done in the same handheld cinema verite style that has become rather popular in recent years, yet this film contains more static and framed shots.  Although their propensity towards handheld has more to do with their long history in nonfiction filmmaking, then following a trend or gimmick that manufactures something that is inherently inauthentic.  Much like their former work, rather than provide distraction, the Dardennes draw the viewer in so well dramatically, that you start to ignore the artifice and almost believe this is reality.  This along with razor-sharp performances (especially by Dobroshi and Renier) that engage the viewer, this interesting, tumultuous tale takes you places dramatically you would not expect even with knowledge of the brothers’ former films.

Fabio (Fabrizio Rongione) questions Lorna, checking to see if she is still loyal to the mob, who brought her from Albania.

Now more than ever, I think it is important to engage the Dardennes’ work.  In our time of global economic crisis, their complex morality tales about the other side of our worldwide marketplace should be visited and revisited as we figure out where to go from here.  Like the masters they are, Jean-Pierre and Luc throw the audience in a situation.  A situation that is usually based on actual events, like this film here, and without judging and pigeonholing, they show flesh and blood humans act and the consequences of those actions, both positive and negative.  In their own odd ways these films are also redemption stories, not of the hand-fisted or brow-beating variety, but of genuine people trying to find some kind of transcendence in harsh life on the edges of society.

Sadly, the Dardennes seemed to stack the deck of conflict in the final act to a point that it was almost too much to believe.  This was brief, however, and did setup one of the most stirring, beautiful, and uncertain conclusions they have ever produced.  Even with some plot issues, the film is highly deserving of Best Screenplay in last year’s Cannes Film Festival, but the film is mid-level in their canon and still does not surpass their former and best executed work, L’Enfant.  Yet do not be deceived, The Dardenne brothers have made one of the most challenging, engrossing, and rewarding films of the year so far.  This is definitely amongst the best this year has to offer.

From left to right: Fabio and Lorna meet with Kostia, Andrei's interpreter (Grigori Manukov) and Russian cigarette smuggler, Andrei (Anton Yakovlev).

Photo Sources:

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2993063936/tt1186369

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1775145984/tt1186369

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1758368768/tt1186369

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1842254848/tt1186369

Here are also some great reviews and a feature to check out:

http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/movies/31lorna.html?ref=movies

http://www.avclub.com/articles/lornas-silence,31088/

http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/reviews/cl-et-capsules31-2009jul31,0,6258234.story

http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-07-22/film/jean-pierre-and-luc-dardenne-at-it-again-for-lorna-s-silence

L’Enfant (PC rating: 3/5) wants to say something profound about selfishness and love, guilt and redemption, but it does not flesh out its characters enough to pull it off. It tells the story of Bruno, a small-time thief in the Belgian city of Seraing, who sells his firstborn for a hefty purse. The act seems to arrive ex nihilo, as do Bruno’s attempts to make amends, giving the film’s gripping premise and gritty realism feeble legs on which to stand.

Calling the films of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne “minimalist” is only the half-truth of their aesthetic sensibility. What gives the appearance of formal disinterestedness and coolness in “Le fils” (2002) and “L’Enfant” (2005), for instance, is really a desire to get close, to visually assimilate a wide range of complex emotions and feelings inside the movie frame. Both films, screened this month as part of the Film Society’s ongoing Dardenne Brothers retrospective, are exemplary in proving that silences still matter in the cinema, for certain, but their achievements are more vibrant and palpable than minimalism alone could potentially offer.

In “Le fils,” Olivier (Olivier Gourmet), a doleful, expressionless middle-aged carpentry instructor living alone in rural Liège, meets the once-incarcerated 16 year-old, Francis (Morgan Marinne). The boy is eager to learn Olivier’s trade, although Olivier is more eager to trace his past, which he soon learns played a significant role in the death of his son. “L’Enfant” is a film similarly concerned about traces – sometimes visible, sometimes hidden or ignored – as the young Sonia (Déborah François) struggles to mother a newborn child while Bruno (Jérémie Renier), the dismissive and reluctant father, pockets money pawning and thieving in the perpetually overcast Belgian town of Seraing.

Sharp and sensuous, both of these films resist cool-headed, altogether pernicious treatments of human situations. The situations, however, are the key; they give the Dardennes an opportunity to explore, to pay attention to foregrounds without neglecting the scales and intensities of more complicated experiences lying below. Hand-held cameras follow the characters of “Le fils” and “L’Enfant” with patience, moving close, wandering between hands and faces, looking for moments that shatter the surface before it freezes over. And yet, patience is often sacrificed for restlessness, for bursts spontaneity and expressiveness (as when Olivier chases the young Francis at the end of “Le fils,” or Bruno and Sonia roughhouse in “L’Enfant”). The surface shatters, to be sure, and from below come those moments of warmth and luminosity that make the Dardenne Brothers masterful observers and that prevent their silences from turning into white noise.

- Ricky D’Ambrose

I was prepared to fully enjoy L’Enfant considering it won the coveted Cannes Palme d’Or in 2005.  Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t hate it, but it was just so typically European (which is not saying anything against our brothers and sisters across the pond).  I just can’t get past the extreme use of silence in European cinema . . . and L’Enfant uses so much silence that it’s unnerving (which would be good if this was a thriller, but it’s not).  I simply couldn’t put away the thought that the massive use of silence was a compensation for a thin script.  In my opinion, this would have been a better short film than a full length feature.

Okay, I’ve been hanging out in DC now for about 10 years and it’s the only city that I cannot master. I know Toronto & New York like the back of my hand but DC is still a mystery.
Everyone has got a “I got lost in DC story” – thanks to our senile grandfather L’Enfant, a French man who took opium (the drug of choice back in the day) and decided to take pen to paper and Spiral Graph the nation’s capital.
Of course, just in case his lawyers are still alive, this is untrue but it sure feels like it. As soon as you tell people that you want to get to know DC, they pull out a pen and paper, draw a bicycle wheel and try to explain the spokes. Spitting out tips like “It’s made out of quadrants”, ” NE, NW, SE, SW”. and the Street names are in alphabetical order by States or by syllables or something like that.
Here’s a few tips of my own.
1) DC is in the shape of diamond or square – how about a grid instead of this spokey way of organizing things.
2) How about putting street signs up? Perhaps you all wouldn’t get so mad with your visitors if you put a few signs or two up.
But even with all the insanity, I’m going to take on this challenge and master DC!

Le meurtre de Vénus, tel est le nom de leur tout premier opus sorti en Avril 2008.

Ces cinq garçons ont débarqué dans le paysage rock français en 2007. Avec un premier album teinté de pop et de rock, ils commencent à s’imposer sur la nouvelle scène française. Sans pour autant connaître le succès de groupes, tels que les BB Brunes ou les Second Sex, ils sont quand même en studio pour enregistrer un second disque, qui, espérons, connaîtra un plus large succès que le premier. Même si leur label indépendant, Tricatel, leur permet une large gamme de possibilités musicales, leur deuxième opus promet de rester dans la lignée du premier avec peut-être un peu plus de moyens.

Le meurtre de Vénus est un mélange de pop, rock aux influences reggae. Tous les textes sont signés par le chanteur du groupe, qui travaille en étroite collaboration avec Bertrand Burgalat. Ils ont par ailleurs déjà écrit un titre pour Christophe Willem. Malgré un album très homogène, ils se différencient des groupes actuels par un son plus indépendant et des textes plus poignants sans réelle cohérence. Les titres à retenir pourraient être: Vénus, L’enfant prodige, Orage mécanique et Au crépuscule. Cet album correctement produit méritait peut-être plus de succès que l’album des Second Sex, c’est la conséquence d’être signé sur un label indépendant.

Note : 7/ 10

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Tower of Babel, 1563.

We humans never seem to tire of imagining and constructing the next city, searching for an ideal home. For millennia we have conjured up cities of intent – urban places that we have designed to represent certain purposes. These intended cities fall into one of at least three categories.

First there have been cities imagined to serve religious purposes: a Buelah land, a new Eden, a sheltering enclave. Babel, on a plain in the land of Shinar, was such a place. As was 18th century Ephrata in Pennsylvania, or 19th century Nauvoo, Joseph Smith’s city on the banks of the Mississippi in Illinois.

Nauvoo, Illinois, a Mormon city.

At other times we have imagined next cities to serve social aims. Some examples might include George Pullman’s oppressive company town of Pullman, now a part of Chicago, Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City, imagined as a counterweight to the increasingly brutish 19th century cities of Britain, or perhaps even Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti outside of Phoenix.

Pullman, Illinois.

A third category might include cities intended to serve political purposes. L’Enfant’s plan for Washington, D.C. is a good example, as capital to a newborn democracy. And here we could include Niemeyer’s Brasilia, Walter Burley Griffin’s Canberra in Australia, Lutyen’s Imperialist New Delhi, Corbusier’s Chandigarh in India, or Louis Kahn’s work in Bangladesh.

Lutyen’s New Delhi, from 20,000 feet. 

The lists of cities and towns in each of these three categories is very, very long. I have kept my copy of John Reps’ indispensable “Town Planning in Frontier America” by my side these last several days, and I have read of an endless number of North American cities that have their origins in a desire to create a perfect new community in a new and ’untamed’ landscape.

It’s interesting that so many of these places have actually turned out to be failures. Babel had The Lord as it’s principal critic, and terminator. Pullman had his riots. Nauvoo was attacked by suspicious neighbors, and abandoned overnight, literally. The work of imagining and constructing a durable new city turns out, not surprisingly, to be pretty difficult. 

All sorts of places have made a claim to being ideal next places: Amana, East Aurora in upstate New York, Beijing, St. Petersburg, Teotihuacan, Levittown, Seaside. Whether commune, capital, or cottage colony, each is a powerful narrative of what concerns us most, what we value, “what matters (most) to us,” as philosopher Alain de Botton has said. We may not like what some of these places say, but their messages are crisp and clear.

And many of these cities and towns were imagined as antidotes, or as I have said, counterweights, to the perceived or real tyrannies of their moments. Perhaps the best example of this is The White City, the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, created by Daniel Burnham et. al. as an antidote to the utter chaos of late 19th century wild west American urbanism, in no-holds-barred Chicago.

Chaotic Chicago, just after the Fair, and just before Burnham’s Plan, 1909.

The White City, Chicago, 1893.

And now? Now we face a new set of challenges as we dream of the next city. Scarcity, shortages, shifting climate and soaring populations are new and urgent urban determinants. These are the purposes to which we must now bend the city.

Some of the cities I have mentioned, and many I have not mentioned, failed because their environments collapsed. (Take a look at Jared Diamond’s extraordinary book, “Collapse,” a review of cities and societies that failed because of fundamental misunderstandings of their environments). But almost none of these places was designed based on the facts of finite and shrinking resources, or too many citizens.

As an architect, historian, and urbanist, I doubt that we can reshape our cities quickly enough to meet these new challenges. I am decidedly not an evironmental scientist, but I can easily sense that our society’s awareness of what lies ahead, and our willingness to act, is insufficient to the fate that is hurtling at us at a meteoric rate.

Our library here is filled with books by distinguished scholars, scientists, economists, and urbanists who try to exhort us to change our patterns of urban living. Some of these authors avow optimism about our ability to do what needs to be done to construct a sustainable and durable urban future. It all sounds like whistling in the dark to me.

We have been Letting Us Build Us a City for eons, never suspecting that finally time would run out on our ability to build in ignorance of consequences for a wider world. How quickly can we untangle a mess so long in the making? A decade? Two decades?

We live in a neighborhood here in Washington that is teeming with tiny children. We often wonder about the city these kids will leave their grandchildren, 3 generations on. Maybe some of them will discover the antidote to the last dozen generations of dead-end urbanism.

For the boys and girls who’d rather die alone than sit through The Notebook or You’ve Got Mail this Valentine’s Day, I’ve got your back. Here are a few suggestions for alternative and anti-Valentine’s viewing fare, that you’re still likely to find at your video store/on the web.

And depending on what kind of weird or messed-up relationship you’re stuck in, a lot of these will probably still get you laid.

So, in no particular order:

1. The Mother and The Whore (France, 1973) – Jean Eustache’s rather autobiographical depiction of a thoroughly dysfunctional love triangle,  set in post-’68 Paris. A memorably depressing New Wave opus that runs over 3.5 hrs. The film’s co-star, Françoise Lebrun, just so happens to also be the very woman upon which the film was based.

2. Tony Takitani (Japan, 2004) – Based on the Haruki Murakami story of the same name. The film elegantly evokes the original story’s pervading lonliness. Tersely somber and beautifully shot.

3. All That Heaven Allows (USA, 1955) – Douglas Sirk’s melodrama-cum-social-critique stars Jane Wyman as a widow whose unexpected romance with the younger, non-conformist Rock Hudson is met with sweeping disdain by her children and country club peers.

4. The Man Without a Past (Finland, 2002) – An extremely deadpan comedy about an amnesiac forced to start anew within a meager and altogether strange community. After moving into a storage container, he befriends the homeless and romantically pursues a Salvation Army worker.

5. Repulsion (UK, 1965) – Roman Polanski’s first English-language film. It stars Catherine Deneuve as a repressed, mentally unstable young lady left to her own paranoia and psychosis, after her live-in sister leaves on holiday. This one is all the more appropriate if you’re planning to have rabbit as Valentine’s dinner.

6. Amores perros (Mexico, 2000) – Sometimes translated as “Love’s a Bitch,” the film’s three intertwining stories (all linked by a single car crash) are each marked by the presence of dogs and an overarching theme of familial betrayal and dysfunctional romance. Features a breakthrough performance by a 21-year-old Gael García Bernal.

7. Diary of a Lost Girl (Germany, 1929) – Louise Brooks’ second and final collaboration with the renowned G.W. Pabst involves a stark reversal of Brooks’ confident heartbreaker Lulu (from Pandora’s Box, filmed only months earlier). Here, Brooks’ Thymian is innocent but utterly powerless amidst societal conditions of the German bourgeoisie.

8. Audition (Japan, 1999) – Among my favorite of Miike’s expansive filmography, due in part to his uncharacteristic restraint throughout most of the film. This one slowly and eerily builds to an unforgettably disturbing climax; an instant J-Horror classic. Watch this one and you may end up never again lying to get a date!

9. Control (UK/US, 2007) – A biopic centering on Ian Curtis’ short and troubled life, specifically as front-man for the legendary post-punk quartet Joy Division. Based on the book by Curtis’ oft-neglected widow, the film features Sam Riley as a dead-ringer for Curtis. His conjuring of Curtis’ stage persona is particularly uncanny. Martin Ruhe’s black & white cinematography is also incredibly transfixing.

10. L’Enfant [The Child] (Belgium, 2005) – Shot in a Naturalist style and rather Neorealist in spirit, the Dardenne brothers’ Palme d’Or winner is definitely one of the biggest downers on the list, due in large part to the sad universality of its simple story. Two young lovers survive on welfare when Sonia becomes pregnant. Despondent and hopeless, Bruno sells the baby on the black market, unbeknownst to Sonia. The first time I watched this film, I found myself feeling deeply guilty about all manner of distress I put my parents through as a teenager. Which is exactly why you shouldn’t watch this one under the influence of alcohol.

11. Happy Together (Hong Kong, 1997) – Chinese superstars Tony Leung and the late Leslie Cheung play homosexual lovers bound in a volatile on-again/off-again relationship. The two travel from Hong Kong to Argentina where their sad, abusive cycle continues. Also includes some of Christopher Doyle’s most beautiful photography, for a Wong Kar Wai film or otherwise.

12. Mutual Appreciation (US, 2005) – Now for something a bit light, charming and self-consciously dorky. Andrew Bujalski’s film unmistakably belongs to the no-budget movement known as Mumblecore, and as such uses moments of situational awkwardness for repeated comic effect. Justin Rice of the band Bishop Allen stars, and when he’s not performing their songs in the film, he’s basically channeling a marginally cooler, indie version of Dustin Hoffman from The Graduate.

13. Blue Velvet (US, 1986) – Though you can always trace auteurial elements to his earliest of work, Blue Velvet arguably remains the archetypal Lynch film. The Reagan-era noir is peppered with all the director’s nightmarish and phantasmagoric ingredients, slowly revealed to his abecedarian protagonist (played so memorably by Kyle MacLachlan). And if a foppish Dean Stockwell’s lip-sync serenade to Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” doesn’t say Valentine’s Day to you, I don’t know what possibly could.

14. Braindead [Dead Alive] (New Zealand, 1992) – A classic tale of your well-to-do young man, torn between a first love and his overbearing mother. Throw a Sumatran Rat-Monkey, zombie sex scene (and resulting baby), a kung fu priest and lawnmower qua weapon into the mix, and you’ll undoubtedly be left wondering where this movie’s been all your life. So much fake blood. So, so much.

Other recommendations: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Raging Bull (1980), Dead Ringers (1988), Punch-Drunk Love (2002), Mister Lonely (2007) , Perfect Blue (1998), Dancer in the Dark (2000), Live Flesh (1997), Myster Train (1989), My Own Private Idaho (1991), Fatal Attraction (1987), And God Created Woman (1956)…and, perhaps even Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1975)

Under the baton of Pierre Boulez, the Cleveland Orchestra takes on Ravel’s surreal one-act opera ‘L’Enfant et Les Sortilèges’, as part of a programme celebrating impressionist composers. The opera has a bratty child torment his mother and then get his come-uppance when he’s assaulted by the furniture and even the maths book he’d refused to open to do his homework. From there it turns really weird as he ventures outside and gets similar treatment in the garden, until redeeming himself in the eyes of the animal kingdom by rescuing a squirrel. The programme also features Ravel’s ‘La Pavane pour une infante défunte’ and three works by Debussy.

L’Enfant is another minimalist foreign drama that, amongst other minimalist dramas, has captured my heart. This is quickly turning into my absolute favorite style of cinema. I’m a huge fan of raw, transparent cinematography and unbelievably realistic acting. The soundtrack exists as nothing but the background noise of the rather depressed-looking city in which the film takes place.

Bruno, the main character, doesn’t really fit into any kind of character archetype except “human.” We’d call him an antagonist, but he’s too naive to really be one. We’d call him a protagonist, but his intentions are definitely not there. In the end we see Bruno, harshly shaken from the preceding events, and his almost apathetic but equally emotional girlfriend Sonia. This sequence creates somewhat of a gut-wrenching moment for us, as we sum everything up and realize that they aren’t any better off than they were at the beginning. This is the epitome of a tear-jerker.

Donnerstag, 08.01.09 | 00.15 – 01.50 | SF1 | F/BEL 2005 | Regie: Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne

Der Kleinkriminelle Bruno (Jérémie Renier, der bereits im Debütfilm der Dardenne Brüder “La promesse” die Hauptrolle innehatte) hält sich mit Gelegenheitsdiebstählen über Wasser bis ihn seine Freundin mit ihrem neugeborenen Sohn überrascht. Heimlich verkauft er das Baby, um schließlich das Ausmaß seiner Tat zu erkennen und verzweifelt versucht das Kind zurückzuholen. Minimalistisches Sozialdrama, das durch seine dokumentarischen Mittel eine Nähe zu den Figuren erzeugt, die keine strikte Trennung in Gut und Böse zulässt. Zurecht mit der Goldenen Palme in Cannes ausgezeichnet.

Trailer:

On NPR’s Morning Edition this morning I heard this story about California’s ascendence in the national government.

It’s been happening for a while, and deservedly. Disclosure: I lived in California (Los Angeles) for five years, immediately before moving here (DC).

While I will sound like a DC hater (because I genuinely don’t like the place) I think the country would be better with the Capitol moved to a different city. A Western city. Which would you pick?

I have been flabbergasted by the European-ness of Washington DC and environs. I have lived on the East Coast previously, but this place seems un-American.

Partly because of architecture and place names, but you can’t discuss Washington DC without discussing it’s existence not as a state, but as a Federal District. What does that mean? Apparently, until the decade of the 1970s DC didn’t have a city government. At all. To this day, DC does not have a Senator or US Representative. I contend that crime would go down and the place would be happier if the citizens had representation like every other American citizen.

But back to my original point: I perceive Washington DC, the Capitol of the Free World, seat of government for the United States of America, is un-American. From watching television, watching movies, reading books, looking at magazines, listening to songs, tunes, orchestral works – Washington DC is, in my experince, nothing like the America I know and have learned about.

Accuse me of being a victim of the propaganda of Western-style movies, a victim of Hollywood, a victim of indoctrination in Los Angeles – I lived in Texas for two years too! — I grew up in South Florida! — I think the country would be better served if our Capitol was other than where it is now. Better ideas, a better vibe, more American.

My favorite anecdote to tell as a pejorative about Washington DC is

The physical layout of the city was designed by a Frenchman, Pierre L’Enfant. DC people seem to enjoy telling the apocryphal story of why there is no ‘J’ Street [East-West streets downtown are sequentially lettered except for J]: L’Enfant hated a guy whose name started with the letter J, so he refuse to allow a street lettered ‘J’. While most locals know the story to be nothing more than a joke to feed tourists, it gets retold continuously, not merely by tour guides. The psychic baggage of jealousy, and pettiness lives in the city, and soaks into our government. The story perfectly describes how politicians get things undone. I like to add the punchline that the city was designed by “Pierre, the big French Baby”.

[I don't wanna explain, since if I have to explain the joke I shouldn't tell it, but I want to call your attention to my cleverness with the entedre of Enfant=baby and baby=the pettiness and childishness of destroying a sequence for mere petulance.]

I’m going to apply to the DC Chamber of Commerce to be the city spokesperson and historian. I’ll be a shoo-in.

: P

]]> http://cosmiccowcomics.com/2008/12/14/cleveland-orchestra-lenfant-et-les-sortilges/ Sun, 14 Dec 2008 02:02:09 +0000 pakgliding http://cosmiccowcomics.com/2008/12/14/cleveland-orchestra-lenfant-et-les-sortilges/

Under the baton of Pierre Boulez, the Cleveland Orchestra takes on Ravel’s surreal one-act opera ‘L’Enfant et Les Sortilèges’, as part of a programme celebrating impressionist composers. The opera has a bratty child torment his mother and then get his come-uppance when he’s assaulted by the furniture and even the maths book he’d refused to open to do his homework. From there it turns really weird as he ventures outside and gets similar treatment in the garden, until redeeming himself in the eyes of the animal kingdom by rescuing a squirrel. The programme also features Ravel’s ‘La Pavane pour une infante défunte’ and three works by Debussy.

http://alaninbelfast.blogspot.com/2006/04/lenfant-child-very-french-film.html

The writer of this blog starts by telling the story of this movie. “L’enfant” tells the story of Bruno and Sonia who are young and just had a baby boy called Jimmy. Sonia is rather disappointed because Bruno didn’t visit her and his son in the hospital, meanwhile he did some stupid stuff and wasted a lot of their money. Their relationship is shown more physical than emotional. What the hell does she sees in him is the question on the authors mind. I can’t agree more, but the fact is that in real life such relationships exist. While taking the baby for a walk, Bruno decides to sell him to adoption dealers for 5000 euros without taking about it with Sonia. When he finally has to explain to Sonia what he has done, she passes out. The rest of the movie follows Bruno as he attempts to recover from his loosing position. However he is a lot more cut up about loosing Sonia than Jimmy. The movie ends with Bruno heading in to adulthood, he was “‘l’enfant”. He accepts the consequences of his actions and gives himself up to the police.

The author of this blog felt unsatisfied having paid money to see the movie. The ending in particular was unsatisfying. But that’s not all, the author of this blog had a lot more negative things to say about this movie. He thinks that there was to little music in the movie and to much street noise. The baby Jimmy was mostly covered up and when he wasn’t, you could see different faces. They used about 21 babies to play it’s role. And last but not least the author thinks there isn’t one happy moment in the entire movie. ‘So don’t expect to smile once’, he says. I must agree that I myself wasn’t a big fan of the ending myself, it was strange and I couldn’t find myself to like it. I also must agree that the movie lacked a bit of music instead of all the bus and car noises on the background. I personally didn’t notice that the baby wasn’t always the same, but personally I don’t mind such details. The movie is quite hard and the fact that Bruno sells is baby is unthinkable, but I think there was at least one moment in the movie where you can smile. I must conclude that I don’t agree completely with what this author has written, but I can understand most of his statements.