In the works: Doillon at FIAF.

by Ryland Walker Knight


Last Tuesday marked the beginning of the current Jacques Doillon retrospective at French Institute-Alliance Française with a screening of 1985's La Vie de famille, which Dan Salitt says is lovely. I missed it, and I'm bummed. However, I can say that tonight's film, Le petit criminel, is well worth seeing if you happen to live in New York City. I hope to have some words formed about it, and next week's Ponette, for your reading pleasure at The Auteurs' Notebook soon. I'll keep you updated. What's most striking, so far, looking at Doillon's cinema in the order of its programmed appearance at the FIAF, is the focus on children—and their complete "naturalness" in front of the camera. The close-up effaces, or makes transparent, any masks they (wish or hope to) wear. Set mostly in a two-door almost-truck, Le petit criminel is meager, and subtle, a restricted (head) space prone to jammed signals, to cluttered thoughts. The endgame may appear "open" to some but, as the cop says earlier in the picture, there should be no doubt as to where the story winds up; how the angles converge and how the camera pushes into that space (as well as away) define its characteristic (to say, stubborn) resilience. I can only guess how this plays out fuller in La vie de famille, as this trailer below hints at a film teeming with a lot of things I love, like Juliette Binoche, words, language, direct-address, diegetic video use, family problems despite good intentions, life's inherent corruption (and corruptibility), Sami Frey all man-like some 20-plus years after Godard had him dancing all boy-like, and so on; my attraction should become readily apparent as you click play.

Since I'm following the screening schedule, kinda, this puts my viewing of Doillon's films of the 1970s back a bit in my personal queue. This is fine by me, of course, as I've subscribed to a certain curriculum, if you will, but it makes it a little harder to gauge at this point how much similarity his work bears to those of his post-vague filmmaking brethren (the press release mentions Eustache and Garrel to get nerds like me excited) over against a larger tradition of gallic cinema. So far, it seems like he's got more to say to Truffaut and Pialat than those other dudes. More soon. —Oh, and a quick thanks to all the ideas and thoughts thrown my way in that last (now enormous) thread at Girish's joint. [x-posted at VINYL IS HEAVY.]

Film Blog of Note #1: The House Next Door

by Ryland Walker Knight

[Here begins a short series on the blogs we've chosen to add to the "Blogs of Note" section of the Art+Culture Film Magazine landing page, a pageflakes-like assemblage of RSS feeds, which we are continuing to tweak in this beta phase. We should note, in addition, that we are open to suggestions!]

While I understand that there is a certain conflict of interest in promoting another outlet I write for (on occasion), I feel this is a necessary nod as Matt Zoller Seitz and Keith Uhlich are largely responsible for my first exposure to the broader blogosphere. VINYL IS HEAVY attracted a few stragglers when it began, but it wasn't until I began writing (and sporadically at that) for The House that anybody really paid attention to what weird words I wrote. So this first spotlight is a thank you. Also, Matt's baby, which has matured in three years into Keith's angsty teen (dog years? mixed metaphors?), is kind of a big deal now'a'daze so this link is possibly redundant. Then again, all in this series probably will be since this little thing I've started is going to be read by very few people as we build up our base.

In any event, The House Next Door has blossomed into one of the premiere online film blogs, acting as host to a wide stable of young writers (and some not-so-young writers) eager to share their particular perspectives and passions. What began as a platform to sing praises about Terrence Malick's The New World, now affords space to television and music and, even, last fall, some political intrigue on top of the continued interest in cinema. And it continues to morph and build into something new, like any home, as it welcomes more and more readers and writers. Visit the lively comments sections for often funny and definitely irreverent opines and rants, arguments and shouts, all kinds of ideas. If only we could get Keith to write more often and get Matt back into writing at all, we would be in even better shape as fans and curious readers and friends alike. Finally, a bit of self-promo to top it off: To mark the anniversary of the site this new year, Keith and I composed a pean, of sorts, to the site and to that Malick film, and how both have shaped our trajectories, which you can read by clicking this link right here.