Oh, right.

That’s what I want my house to look like!

Nice.

Anyway, after I watched the other Carax movies (one was good, one wasn’t), I watched a couple of the documentaries that were included on the discs, and… well, they made me less excited about watching more Carax movies?

Oh, this is the one where Levant plays that he’s portraying a Bulgarian beggar in Paris…

Or, er, non.

That’s a very pretty factory. The French even has pretty factories!

So this movie is gonna be a series of tableaux where Levant performs a role for a couple of minutes and then it’s on to the next thing? Is that like a comment on film-making?

There’s no doubt that Carax is able to get a lot of talented people on board to do this thing. Like this scene — it lasts for ten seconds, but must have been so much work to put together.

And is this biting satire? Or just kinda… eh?

BITING SATIRE

(As I’m fond of saying: “Satire” is another way of spelling “not actually funny”.)

This movie looks great, but it really feels like the impetus for making this is to see just how far he could push Denis Levant. In the previous scene, you had this gorgeous pietà scene, but with Levant in the Christ role sporting a very rigorous erection for quite a long time (I can’t show you a snap of that here, since this is a family oriented blog)… It really reads as if Carax just wants to fuck around with Levant, making him suffer?

That’s probably way off the mark, but that’s what this feels like.

It’s like the movie is saying something deep like “in life, we’re all playing roles”.

Yeah, it the sets and stuff look great, but the actual images look kinda meh:

Carax was able to sway potential investors concerned with the film’s budget by switching to digital photography, a process of which he strongly disapproves.

Digital.

I kinda wish I liked this movie, because it’s… I wants to be fun? But instead it’s kinda cringe?

I know! I’m so insightful. But it’s like the concept could work, and many of the scenes are quite interesting, but it just doesn’t work.

Holy Motors. Leos Carax. 2012. ⚁

Eeep!

Anyway, I’m done with my 80s arthouse movie binge, so I was wondering — what’s next? Well, after the 80s, there’s *shiver* the 90s, and the most 90s director there is is Todd Solondz, so I bought all his movies.

And I’ve seen them all before — back then. All I remember is like… they’re all Three Pillow Movies? That is, that’s how many pillows you have to hide behind to not just die from sheer cringe.

OK, I’ve got pillows here, so let’s go.

Hey, wasn’t Solondz’s last movie called Wiener-Dog?

Hey, it that that guy…?

It is!

Yeah, I needed those pillows — this is hard to watch.

But on the other hand, man: Those kids are amazing. I kinda feel like you couldn’t put child actors through something like this these days? And that’s probably good! But, wow, Heather Matarazzo is unbelievable, but it’s not just her — Solondz is just amazing at directing kids.

The movie is kinda genius? I remember it being good, but it’s fantastic.

Welcome to the Dollhouse. Todd Solondz. 1995. ⚅

This is sort of a coda to my 80s art house blog series — I sort of think of Atom Egoyan as belonging to that cohort, but he really had his breakthrough a bit later, in the 90s.

So he’s like a transitional figure, I guess? Because I’m gonna continue on with the very, very different 90s art house people next.

There was a thing in the 80s where you have to have a scene set at a strip show, because that er shower that er you weren’t uptight or something? But this movie seems to be set there? And is very sinister!

I don’t think I’ve seen this movie before?

When watching movies from before like 2005 I’m finding myself going “ooooh awesome” even at shots like this — because this just look casually great. As opposed to the beigeness of all movies after they started with digital cameras and colour grading everything to whatever colour they wanted in post.

But you don’t end up with results like this using that process.

Or this.

It’s just like movies were casually visually interesting in a way that post-grading films aren’t.

I mean, look at this! It’s awesome.

Hey, it’s that guy…

Man, this movie is kinda hypnotic. I have no idea where any of this is going.

OK, not all these lighting choices are totally successful.

Oh, I’ve been wondering where I recognise this guy from:

I think this is like their outback? Where their spirits are?

Wow. I wasn’t at all sure about how I felt about this movie until the last second, really. The strip joint setting seemed so… *rolls eyes* but turns out to be integral to what’s going on. And then the heart-wrenching final ten minutes…

It’s some kind of masterpiece, isn’t it? It’s a hard sell for sure, because it’s just so odd — it isn’t about anything you think it’s about, and then it snaps into focus and it’s devastating.

Exotica. Atom Egoyan. 1994. ⚅