Poison Friends and Family

June 18

Is the Art House film almost like film noir, with certain stylistic conventions that cross over from one genre to the other? Of course not, but on a purely superficial level, you can't help but group them. After all... it's the same kind of people that are going to see those films. Isn't that a strong enough convention? My definition would be thus. Art House = pseudo intellectual cinema watered down for middle-class urban audiences. These two films are perfect illustrations of what makes or breaks this kind of cinema.

Maybe only the English can elevate writing to a matter of life and death the way French do. So when I saw a French 'literary thriller' on the SIFF menu, I couldn't resist taking a bite.

Unfortunately the film in question - 'Poison Friends' (dir. Emmanuel Bourdiau)- turned out to be more like French cuisine than Balzac; a lot of dressing and no meat.

The concept is fascinating. A bunch of literature students studying in Sorbonne fall under the influence of a brilliant fellow called Andre (Thibault Vincon, in a magnetic performance), who rubs everyone under his thumb by ridiculing their writing aspirations. 'Why do people write?' he quotes I can't remember which quotable writer - 'Because they're too weak not to'. Now anyone who has a healthy suspicion of their creative ego can't possibly not shake in terror at this "profound" assessment. People like Eloi (Malik Zidi in what appears to be sleepwalking rather than performance) and Alexandre (Alexandre Steiger). They soon become Andre's adoring groupies, hanging to his every word, letting him direct the course of their lives. What's more is that Andre takes almost an erotic pleasure in controlling the silly buggers. The power play between the group depends not only on the inflation of one's ego, but the deflation of the other's. It is immediately obvious to us that Andre's attempts at preventing his friends from writing has less to do with his nihilistic philosophy but much more with his deep insecurity as a writer himself. He is a man of ideas who is never able to consolidate more than hot air in the drab Parisian weather.

OK, the question is posed. To write or not write? It's a question that is asked not only by the characters; it is distinctly aimed at us - the audience. And Bourdieu takes it very seriously. Which is where he makes a fatal mistake. The question is superfluous because it views writing as some kind of an autonomous media that is separate from any other field of creativity. To me, the question is much larger - why create? Isn't writing and by that I mean literature, simply one form of self-expression? Is it any more important than music, painting, architecture or... well... film? It's not an accident that the Greeks sent out the muses together. They were a group - interdependent, interconnected and always performing essentially the same function - inspiration.

At one point Andre 'forgives' Alexandre (who wanted to be playwright) because he has decided to become an actor. "That's different" he states. Why? Is it much less of an intellectual pursuit hence less threatening or simply because Alexandre is not a literary threat anymore? The film never aspires to make its position clear on this point. And even if we disregard these obvious lapses of logic, the filmmakers still don't rise up to the challenge of providing a satisfactory solution to the initial issue they've raised. I must turn to Bergman again for some guidance. In one of his watershed films ('Through a Glass Darkly), Bergman showed a writer as unmerciful and cruel as they come. A man outwardly caring and gentle, but who is driven to exploit his sick daughter and naive son for the sake of his pen. Bergman was unsparing in his assessment of the creative ego - it is all consuming and in many ways above humanity. To him, art is as terrifying as a faun-splaying Apollo, but that's what constitutes its greatness, period. Granted, Bourdieu's aim is different. He's not so much concerned about what takes to write but more about what it costs not to write. A wonderful example of this dilemma is Hal Hartley's 'Henry Fool' - a remarkably similar film in many ways, which at least has the courage to argue for a place under the sun for its brilliant 'con artist' (for isn't being 'brilliant' an art in itself?).

But it's this film's nastiness is exactly what puts me off. It's just about the calibre of a mosquito bite. Irritating. At one point Andre deletes his librarian girlfriend's (Natacha Regnier in a wasted role) short story from her computer. "It was crap" Andre states. And you know what? It probably was, but Bourdieu doesn't let us enjoy this moment of delicious malice. The short story must be rescued at all costs, because God forbid that this hot little librarian should be prevented from expressing her point of view. Have even the French gone PC? What is the world coming down to?

Alas, Bourdieu's formula is as bogged down in mechanics as any previous screenplay about the nature of writing - success is the best revenge. Maybe so, but here it's not even sweet. The supremely passive Eloi overcomes his fear of literary 'exposure' only because his mother (a famous writer) rescues his manuscript from the rubbish bin and gives it to her publisher (nepotism goes a long way, but the director fails to even milk this ironic faux-pas). His half-hearted reaction to his success is as suspicious as everything else in the film. It's like "Oh... you mean I'm brilliant and all I had to do is write about myself?" Indeed, the only character who seems passionate enough about the art of letters is Andre. Perhaps he knows too much about it to be able to make a go at it himself. When your standards are up there with Dostoevsky, naive confidence is perhaps the best medicine the doctor can prescribe. But 'Poison Friends' is ultimately like its protagonist - confused and lost, unable to harvest the irony or the tragedy from a very classic set-up (where art-thou Chabrol?). In the end, the whole thing feels like an overpriced dessert made of lettuce: a bland concoction that is pretentious enough to fool some into thinking that they just ate a Kirsch Soufflé.

On the other hand there's 'Wolfsbergen'. Even the title, with its frightening challenge to pronounce itself, spells out a certain foreboding - it is NOT going to be a Woody Allen film. It's not even (gasp) French! I can already see the crowd thinning out... Which is a pity.

Nanouk Leopold's film is what soap operas are made of: a large middle-class family in crisis. And indeed, almost every screw in this story has been screwed before, after all, there aren't that many ways you can destroy a patriarchal unit in two hours. But the originality comes in the packaging, the presentation of this well worn material.

A father sends out letters to his daughter and two grandchildren, telling them that he doesn't want to continue living after the death of his wife. The women, each suffering from their own pent-up problems refuse to take the matter seriously, one of them doesn't even get the letter. The daughter is having trouble communicating with her husband on any level, her eldest daughter is in turn trying to hard to do the right thing while completely disregarding the fact that her love-affair and constant clashes with her husband are psychologically hurting her two children. And the youngest granddaughter has a strange affliction (she cries constantly without any reason) which renders her anti-social and lonely.

Taking her cues from Chekhov, Leopold makes these seemingly banal relationships twist and turn in quietly fascinating ways, relying on perfect doses of understatement and dead-pan, sometimes ink-black, humour to elevate a dime-a-dozen story into something utterly compelling and moving.

Yes, at times it is pretentious... Some of the characters are crafted with not much more than blank looks and long stretches of silence (silence being cheap and all), as if the refusal of communication automatically constitutes profound depth. But the film is any many ways about silence - moments that can describe a situation equally as well as words (awkwardness, hesitation, shock, grief) and that is why I like this film so much - it wears its pretentiousness (in the form of ambiguity) on its sleeve. As with Antonioni, the cinematic gesture and posturing become a mode of communication in itself. And you learn to read it as you go along, thanks in large part to the director's consistency and commitment to her vision.

It is all composed of static mid shots, not a single camera move in sight; exquisitely arranged compositions framed by doorways, corridors and windows, superbly chosen colour scheme and almost mathematical precision of rhythm, timing and editing. The whole film feels like a Vermeer re-imagined by Mondrian and crafted by Bauhaus: a majestic style that is all about balance, harmony and cerebral introspection. You'd know it's Dutch even if the film was silent.

Leopold succeeds in a faultless combination of form and content - a tough task to pull off in any director's hand - and with three films under her belt, she's already a bonna-fide auteur.

The ending of the film, with its reassuring calm and quiet (yet wrenching) power reaches almost philosophic heights. It is a benign meditation on life and death that is surprising and reassuring in its all-encompassing sense of normality. Translated into American, you'd probably get a double episode of the Jerry Springer show.