All posts by Gregory J. Smalley (366weirdmovies)

Gregory J. Smalley founded 366 Weird Movies in 2008 and has served as editor-in-chief since that time. He is a member of the Online Film Critics Society, and his film writing has appeared online in Pop Matters and The Spool.
Capsules

CAPSULE: NOBODY ELSE BUT YOU [POUPOUPIDOU] (2011)

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DIRECTED BY: Gérald Hustache-Mathieu

FEATURING: Jean-Paul Rouve, Sophie Quinton, Guillaume Gouix

PLOT: In a snowbound French town, a crime novelist investigates the death of a local celebrity who believed herself to be the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe.

Still from Nobody Else but You [Poupoupidou] (2011)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Nobody Else but You flirts with weirdness, especially through some nods to “Twin Peaks,” but it only nudges the needle on the old Weirdometer a little past a reading of “offbeat.”

COMMENTS: Nobody Else but You may appeal most Marilyn Monroe-philes and fans of “Twin Peaks.” Hustache-Mathieu’s obsession with these bits of Americana, along with other pop cultural touchstones like crime novelist James Ellroy, isn’t likely to endear him to his countrymen, but it makes his style translate easily on these shores (this is a great French movie to show people who assume they hate French movies). Even the soundtrack is a retread, with chilly modern renditions of Sixties hits like “I Put a Spell on You” and “California Dreaming” (in English). With such flavorful inspirations, the movie never entirely becomes its own thing; but that’s not a huge problem, since Hustache-Mathieu borrows with taste, and the novelty occurs in the mixture of iconic inspirations. The Marilyn Monroe references are easy to pick up on—maybe too easy—but the “Twin Peaks” nods are a little subtler. There’s the general tone of quirky menace, the setting of an isolated country town full of strange characters, and the theme of an outsider investigating the death of a wholesome blonde local celebrity who turns out to have terrible secrets. The director adds a few more specific references, like secret tapes held by a psychiatrist, a flickering-lights-in-the-morgue scene, and the shrouded headshot of the beautiful corpse dusted with powder. This movie doesn’t go deliriously over-the-top with Lynch‘s mix of melodrama, comedy and surrealism, however; and the dour crime novelist replacing “Peaks”‘ gung-ho G-man along with the general hostility of the villagers to the outsider mark other significant differences from the TV scenario. Prematurely craggy Jean-Paul Rouve is intense and obsessed enough to serve as the audience’s conduit into the mystery. He gets a little help from the one sympathetic cop in town, though there’s no payoff to the awkward homoerotic chemistry that develops between the two. Like Michelle Williams in 2011’s more famous My Week with Marilyn, Sophie Quinton isn’t exactly a dead ringer for Norma Jean Mortenson, but she captures the essentially quality of Marilynishness: that potent mix of raw sex and delicious tragedy. Real-time narration by the corpse, the sexiest cheese ad you’ve ever seen, and a photo shoot with nude firemen score significant quirk points and keep the interest from flagging. It may not be the weirdest movie out there, but it’s different enough to engage the adventurous viewer. If you’re a Marilyn Monroe fanatic, or if you’re just in the mood for a light and mild French variation on a David Lynch/Coen Brothers thriller, you could do a lot worse.

When watching this movie, look out for the number “5.” You could even make a drinking game out of spotting the numeral, if you were inclined to get really hammered.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a subversive and strange little film noir…”–Boyd van Hoeij, Variety (contemporaenous)

List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: CHICKEN WITH PLUMS [POULET AUX PRUNES] (2011)

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Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi

FEATURING: , , , ,

PLOT: A master musician loses the will to live after his prized violin is destroyed, and retires to his deathbed where his story is told through flashbacks mingled with fantasy sequences.

Still from Chicken with Plums [Poulet aux Prunes] (2011)
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: It’s a movie made up mostly of deathbed hallucinations that includes visits with Socrates, the Angel of Death, and a giant version of Sophia Loren; that’s enough to get it on the weird map. The fact that it’s visually spectacular and delightfully artificial hurts not a bit.

COMMENTS: In the 1950s all doomed, elegant heroes and heroines in the movies smoked, and smoke is a key visual element of Chicken with Plums. Early in the film, master violinist Nasser-Ali reluctantly smokes opium at the insistence of an antiques dealer; later, his dead mother’s soul is so thick that it’s visible as a cloud of smoke hovering over her grave. Stylistically, the film is itself like smoke, wispy and constantly changing. Dream sequences, flashbacks and flash-forwards explore an expansive visual palette, ranging from figures isolated in Expressionist shadows to popup storybook animations. Everything is deliberately stagebound so that even in the “realistic” scenes, the skies are a hand-painted pink and lavender. The most jarring experiment is a moment where the movie suddenly turns into an American-style sitcom, complete with a laugh track; if you can handle that side trip, you’ll be in for the whole ride. Death-seeking Nasser-Ali, played with frowny melancholia by mustachioed Mathieu Amalric, is a selfish character, to be sure, but the more we learn about his backstory the more forgiving we become. We’re never able to absolve him entirely of his decision to abandon life (and his wife and children), but we do feel the weight he bears through his life, and can appreciate his decision as tragedy. Our hearts break the moment his does. Nasser-Ali’s apparently shrewish wife Faringuisse (de Medeiros) stars in an equally tragic subplot, and one of their two children is given an epilogue that generates further despair. It’s all very romantic, but the old, sentimental “love is worth dying for” theme plays believably only in the unreal movie past the film evokes: the formal world of yesteryear where gentlemen always wear ties, ladies wear hats, and everyone blows smoke directly at the camera. Chicken with Plums‘ 1930s-1950s time frame conjures up a comforting antique nostalgia, and the Iranian setting adds exotic spice. Delightfully strange moments include when the hallucinating musician is smothered in giant cleavage, a visitation from a ragged gravesite prophet, and the chilling appearance of the Angel of Death, who drops by not to claim Nasser-Ali’s soul but just to chat a bit and to tell a morbidly ironic story-within-the-story. Like a solo adagio played on an antique instrument, Nasser-Ali’s tale is beautiful and sad. Unabashedly artificial, unashamed to moon over lost loves, and a little aware of the absurdity of its own romanticism, Chicken with Plums hits a unique note: despondent whimsy.

Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi’s first film collaboration was the award-winning animated Persepolis (2007), adapted by Satrapi from her own autobiographical graphic novel. Chicken with Plums is also from a Satrapi comic, and supposedly tells the (obviously embellished) story of a relative of hers. On an unrelated note, this movie reunites and , last seen together in the Certified Weird The Saddest Music in the World.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The many surreal flourishes, like the film’s giant breasts and petals floating through a pink-tinged sky, are supposed to be absolved of cringing obviousness because they’re, you know, poetic and exotic.”–Farran Smith Nehme, The New York Post (contemporaneous)

Miscellanea

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 11/16/2012

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Our weekly look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs, and on more distant horizons…

Trailers of new release movies are generally available on the official site links.

IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):

Generation P (2011): A Russian poet turned adman takes a cocktail of hallucinogenic drugs; later, he meets the ghost of Che Guevara and a conspiracy involving a cult worshiping the ancient goddess Ishtar.  Definitely a weird one; sounds a little bit like a Thomas Pynchon screenplay (it’s from a Russian cult novel). We just assumed this weird satire about the Americanization of Russia would never appear in theaters in North America, but congrats to New World Distribution for proving us wrong. Opening this week in New York and Los Angeles with more dates to follow. Generation P US Distributor Site.

NEW ON DVD:

Prairie Love (2011): Sundance programmers described this Dakota-set story of a man who sneaks into the place of guy going to meet his prison-bound paramour for the first time as “wonderfully bizarre” and “brazenly idiosyncratic.” Of course, that equates to no theatrical distribution and belated debut on DVD, but at least we’re happy to see it. Buy Prairie Love.

“Trilogy of Life”: The Decameron (1971), The Canterbury Tales (1972), Arabian Nights (1974): Before going totally over the edge with Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom, Pier Paolo Pasolini made these three bawdy (then x-rated) fantasy adaptations of classic literary tales. The Canterbury Tales features a very unique look at Hell you won’t want to miss. Buy “Trilogy of Life” (The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, Arabian Nights) (Criterion Collection).

Weekend (1967): A weekend trip to the country turns into a surreal nightmare as a French couple find themselves stuck in an apocalyptic traffic jam. This has patiently been waiting its turn in our reader-suggested review queue. Buy Weekend (Criterion Collection).

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

“The Otto Preminger Collection”: If for some reason you’re embarrassed to be seen buying a copy of the Certified Weird Skidoo (1968), you could always purchase that square acid musical as part of this three movie pack. The co-features are Hurry Sundown (1967), a “steamy” melodrama with racial overtones, and Such Good Friends (1971), a marital infidelity comedy set in a hospital. None of these movies are currently available on Blu-ray separately. Buy “The Otto Preminger Collection” [Blu-ray].

“Trilogy of Life”: The Decameron (1971), The Canterbury Tales (1972), Arabian Nights (1974): See description in DVD above. Buy “Trilogy of Life” (The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, Arabian Nights) (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray].

Watchmen Collector’s Edition (2009): Read our capsule review. Only three years old and already released in multiple editions, this one packages together a Blu-ray of the long-running “Ultimate Cut” together with a copy of Alan Moore’s original graphic novel. Buy Watchmen Collector’s Edition: Ultimate Cut + Graphic Novel [Blu-ray].

Weekend (1967): See description in DVD above. Buy Weekend (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray].

What are you looking forward to? If you have any weird movie leads that I have overlooked, feel free to leave them in the COMMENTS section.

Canonically Weird (The List)

129. LOVE EXPOSURE (2008)

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Ai no Mukidashi

“Nothing is more important than love.”–Shion Sono on the theme of Love Exposure

Must See

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Takahiro Nishijima, , Sakura Andô, , Makiko Watanabe

PLOT: Yu Honda, the son of a Catholic priest, falls in with a gang of upskirt photographers in an attempt to generate sins he can confess to his father. One day, while dressed in drag after losing a bet, he falls in love with Yoko, a man-hating schoolgirl who believes him to be a woman. He strives to woo her despite the mistaken identity, but a mysterious girl named Koike and a brainwashing cult seem intent on preventing Yu from ever winning Yoko’s heart.

Still from Love Exposure (2008)

BACKGROUND:

  • Sono’s original cut of the film was six hours long. At the request of producers he cut it down to two hours but felt the result was incoherent; the current four-hour run time is a compromise.
  • Sono reportedly wrote the part of upskirt photography guru “Master Lloyd” with Lloyd Kaufman in mind.
  • “Miss Scorpion” was a recurring character from a 1970s Japanese women-in-prison film series.
  • Despite winning awards at multiple Asian film festivals as well as a FIRPESCI international film critics awards, Love Exposure‘s long running time made it anathema to theatrical distributors. The movie finally saw a very limited run in U.S. and Canadian theaters in 2011.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Some will doubtlessly be impressed by the bloody castration scene, but a less shocking image marks the centerpiece of Love Exposure: “the miracle,” the moment when the wind blows up Yoko’s skirt and reveals her alabaster underthings, giving Yu the first erection of his life. White panties—a symbol of sex masked in the color of purity—are the most important recurring image in Love Exposure, even more so than crosses and hard-ons. As Master Lloyd explains while pointing to a bronze relief image of a spreadeagled woman with a swatch of white silk covering her nether portions, “Anything you seek can be found here, in the groin.”

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Although there is some crazy stylization—slo-mo bullets following a schoolgirl through Tokyo and a dysfunctional family posing with a giant cross in the desert—what makes Love Exposure‘s mad heart tick is the plot that piles crazy on top of crazy. Any story that incorporates Catholic guilt, ninja panty-peeking photographers, kung fu and samurai sequences, mistaken identity subplots, and teenage cult kingpins, plays it all as a romantic comedy, and has to run for twice the length of an average movie just to fit in everything the director wants to say, is bound to be a little weird.


Trailer for Love Exposure

COMMENTS:  For four hours Love Exposure bounces back and forth between poles of purity and perversion, suggesting both the fetishistic Continue reading 129. LOVE EXPOSURE (2008) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: HER MASTER’S VOICE (2012)

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DIRECTED BY: Nina Conti

FEATURING: Nina Conti

PLOT: Ventriloquist Nina Conti takes the dummies of her recently deceased mentor Ken Campbell to donate them to Vent Haven, a museum in Kentucky she conceives of as a “graveyard for puppets of dead ventriloquists.”

Still from Her Master's Voice (2012)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: This elegy-cum-confessional disguised as a kooky documentary about ventriloquism was just unique and offbeat enough to make it onto our radar screen, but not quite bewildering enough to challenge for a spot on a list of the weirdest movies of all time.

COMMENTS: Ventriloquist’s dummies have always been a bit creepy: Nina Conti (speaking, as she so often does, through the fuzzy mouth of her main puppet Monkey) describes a freckled, arch-eyebrowed doll, one of the six dummies she inherits from her deceased mentor, as “the archetypal cliché of a horror movie ventriloquist’s mannequin.” Her Master’s Voice suggests that the people sticking their hands inside these uncanny puppets might be a bit creepy, too. After all, they’re entertainers who deliberately court schizophrenia, seeking to bring alternate personalities to life through inanimate objects. Many of the ridiculously talented puppeteers Conti interviews at the World Ventriloquist ConVENTion (groan) admit to being shy children who took to speaking through dummies in order to make antisocial, hostile or naughty observations while distancing themselves from outrageous statements. In Her Master’s Voice Conti takes that notion a step further: she speaks through the dummies Ken Campbell bequeathed her to express her grief over the loss of her mentor, and to work through her own flagging enthusiasm for the dying art form of ventriloquism (at one point, as they lie in bed together, Monkey asks her, “talking in an empty room in the middle of the night in Kentucky to an imaginary monkey—you don’t like it anymore?”) She turns on the camera and psychoanalyzes herself via Campbell’s old mannequins—a dimwitted owl, a horny bulldog, a kindly granny and a bushy eyed puppet of Ken himself—who both interrogate her and say the things that she’s too shy to say in her own voice. One night, when she’s had too much to drink, she turns on the camera and sits down with that archetypal horror movie dummy, who accuses her of conducting “psychic necrophilia” with Campbell’s memory and attacks her for turning “a purported tribute into a tart’s holiday!” With a disturbed frown, she flings the doll away. Via her psychotic conversation with the puppets, Conti makes some shocking confessions about herself and her relationship with Campbell. She seems legitimately surprised and saddened by the admissions the dummies elicit from her. This confessional technique makes for a melancholy movie, and the personal nature of the revelations give it a raw and uncomfortably voyeuristic edge, but the documentary is interspersed with silly comic performances that lighten the mood: we see Conti onstage performing her act, and she even stages the death of Monkey just to see how she would feel living without him (the results aren’t pretty). The resulting patchwork of a home movie is an odd egg, both formally and tonally, but it’s ultimately a successful experiment. It serves as a fine eulogy for her dead master, but it’s more interesting when Conti’s brutal honesty gives us a peek at the troubled artist behind the cute puppet. Given what the film tells us about Campbell’s talent for nurturing others talents, we suspect he would consider the fact that his protégé steals the spotlight from him in his eulogy film to be the best tribute he could ask for.

Her Master’s Voice was executive produced by mockumentary specialist Christopher Guest. “I don’t know if this story I want to tell you is factual because by its very nature it demands a certain addition to reality,” says Conti at the beginning of the film, but she adds “there are no lies, it all happened.” The DVD includes extended scenes that did not make it into the 64 minute film and a commentary by Conti (helped out by Monkey, naturally).

“…a personal, funny and strange doc…”–Christopher Campbell, The Documentary Channel (contemporaneous)