A Zed and Two Noughts

Ah, yes, Michael Nyman… I wasn’t really a big fan of his.

These shots are really well staged, but…

… but it’s all a bit jejune, innit?

The impetus for (re)watching all of these 80s arthouse movies was because I wondered why almost all the 80s arthouse directors are excluded from lists like this. It’s like everybody’s decided that the 70s had great movies, and the 90s had, but prefer to skip over the 80s.

And… I’m starting to think that’s for a very good reason?

But perhaps I’m jumping to conclusions.

For the first two thirds of this movie, I was sitting here with crossed arms and thinking “this is such sophomoric bullshit”. But then I was totally gripped by the last third, despite myself. It’s really quite something…

I wondered whether this movie got any votes at all at the S&S poll, and nope. But Greenaway did — if I count correctly (not very likely) and Google shows all results (not very likely), The Cook, The Thief, The Etc and the Etc got four votes, and The Pillow Book got two votes. So it’s not that the votes were split over a large number of Greenaway movies, either…

Anyway, I ended up respecting this movie, albeit grudgingly.

A Zed and Two Noughts. Peter Greenaway. 1985. ⚄

Chan is Missing

I’ve heard the name of this movie like forever, so I think it made a splash on the scene back then? But I’ve never seen it.

It’s like a hyper-active version of Jim Jarmusch? Or perhaps… a hand-held Robert Altman? It’s very appealing, in any case.

I’m guessing the dialogue is partially improvised? And none of these are professional actors…

It’s a kind of mystery movie — they’re trying to find out what happened to Chan.

I think this is what they’d call “promising”? That is, I think the premise is really interesting, and the approach is fun, but then it sort of peters out and loses interest as it goes along.

Chan is Missing. Wayne Wang. 1982. ⚃

Boy Meets Girl

I’m continuing my 80s Arthouse Film Festival with this movie — which I haven’t seen before (or indeed any Leos Carax movies, I think). But I got a Carax box set because Denis Lavant is in this, and Claire Denis cast him in Beau Travail because of these movies, so I wanted to have a look.

Hey! That’s very solution orientated.

She’s a woman of culture.

Um… I dunno. This is the sort of film that seems like something I’d really like, but I’m not really feeling it. The performances are super stilted and stylised — but not in a Robert Bresson way, but more like in a fumbley way?

And the plot (FSVO plot) isn’t exactly gripping either.

The film wants to say something about movie history and reality, I think? There’s a lot of people observing other people and stuff. But it seems kinda half baked to me.

Ah:

It is the debut feature by Leos Carax, a film he directed when he was only 24 years old. Like most of the other films in the cinéma du look movement, in which Carax was a key member, it’s not very story-driven and instead favours strange plot tangents and a cool distance from its characters.

Cinéma du look? Nice.