Munich Film Festival II
Jane Fonda in Five Acts: directed by Susan Lacy, a documentary on guess who. using old and new footage well. Jane Fonda's constant reinventing of herself sometimes eerily goes with the decades in question - 60s: girl next door turns sex symbol, 70s: political activist, 80s: wife of billionaire - and has the kind of happy ending uniting all the previous incarnations (Jane in her eighties having a hit show, Grace and Frankie, while also being back on the barricades against the Orange Menace) which Hollywood loves. This is an affectionate take on its subject, meaning that while there are plenty of anti-Fonda voices heard as well growling "Hanoi Jane" in her general direction (including, hilariously, Richard Nixon's at the very start of the movie, with his own variation of "why must my sex symbol talk politics!"), the Jane-positive voices far outweigh them. The Richard Nixon "whatever happened to Jane Fonda?" outburst caught on tape ends with "I feel sorry for Henry Fonda". Susan Lacy decidedly does not. Having read Peter Fonda's memoirs, I was familiar with the truly Gothic family backstory; Jane's and Peter's mother cut her throat with a razor after repeated stints in an institution, no one ever told the kids who had to find out years later via the media, and Henry in general was great at expression of emotion only with a script and utterly incapable of doing so without one, so Jane in the end literally scripts her venting and their reconciliation via On Golden Pond, and of course he plays it very well. Lacy's film keeps coming back to the family damage, complete with Jane acknwledging she screwed up with her daughter Vanessa as well (who is notably the sole child not interviewed; Jane's son, step-daughter and adopted daughter all are) and hopes Vanessa will forgive her; and yet, there's a lot of humor in it, not least in Jane Fonda's summaries, with a great sense of comic timing in the verbal delivery, of the various men in her life. (Where she makes fun of herself, not them.) Same goes for the filming anecdotes (making the zero g scene for Barbarrella with ample drinking, then, because it had to reshot, the next day with a thundering hangover), and the tale of her slow political awakening (the first time Vadim tells her in the mid-60s that the US will never win in Vietnam, all-American girl Jane thinks "just because you French couldn't..." and does not believe him in the slightest, until her friendship with Simone Signoret starts to clue her in) and her son Troy's description of his trying-to-save-the-world-all-the-freaking-time parents at the height of their activism.
All in all, a charming character portrait also reflecting on the various eras its subject lived through. I doubt it will sway anyone disliking her, but if you like her or know nothing about her and have no emotions one way or the other, it's very enjoyable and occasionally touching.
Razzia, directed by Nabil Ayouch, produced in Morocco and France. This one was an anthology film mostly set in Casablanca, and anthology films - i.e. movies telling the stories of a hunge ensemble of people who are either losely connected or not at all - sometimes work for me and sometimes not so much. This one, trailing five different characters - has some powerful segments - the very first story, for example, the only one not set in Casablanca, about a teacher in a village who in the 80s gets the order to teach solely in Arabic (as opposed to Berber, which is what the children actually speak), which changes his lessons from something the kids participate joyfully in into numb repetition of something they don't comprehend, and it breaks him. Later, in Casablanca, there's also the tale of a Jewish restaurant owner whose joie de vivre always has a touch of sadness in it as well and comes with the awarenes that there aren't many Jews left in the city (his old father fears there won't be enough for a proper burial rite once it's his turn) and he's living on a powder keg, and the musician who so desperately wants to be Freddy Mercury. Frustratingly, the two female characters - a wife feeling trapped and frustrated in her marriage, and a teenager with a teenage identity crisis - are also the two most passive ones, and I often wished we'd have seen more of Yto, the old woman who used to be the teacher's landlady and in love with him in the village and later went to Casablanca with her son, where we reencoutner her in her old age in the trapped wife's plot thread, because every time she did show up, she struck me as far more interesting, plus the actress has great charisma.
There's a boiling rich-poor tension in the city throughout the movie which explodes in the final sequence, but that story felt oddly unfinished to me, as did most of the characters. The movie is richly atmospheric, and has great cinematography, and I don't regret having watched it, but I doubt I'll watch it again.
Ammore e Malavita ("Love and Bullets"), directed by Antonio and Marco Manetti, produced in Italy. This one was a hilarious farce expertedly parodying all the Mafia (well, Camorra, since the whole thing is set in Naples) story clichés and mixing them with (also very funny) songs, the first of which is delivered by the corpse in the opening funeral scene, so that gives you a taste of what the movie is like. I was in stitches throughout. Reccommended if you want to have a blast for two hours.
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1296950.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
All in all, a charming character portrait also reflecting on the various eras its subject lived through. I doubt it will sway anyone disliking her, but if you like her or know nothing about her and have no emotions one way or the other, it's very enjoyable and occasionally touching.
Razzia, directed by Nabil Ayouch, produced in Morocco and France. This one was an anthology film mostly set in Casablanca, and anthology films - i.e. movies telling the stories of a hunge ensemble of people who are either losely connected or not at all - sometimes work for me and sometimes not so much. This one, trailing five different characters - has some powerful segments - the very first story, for example, the only one not set in Casablanca, about a teacher in a village who in the 80s gets the order to teach solely in Arabic (as opposed to Berber, which is what the children actually speak), which changes his lessons from something the kids participate joyfully in into numb repetition of something they don't comprehend, and it breaks him. Later, in Casablanca, there's also the tale of a Jewish restaurant owner whose joie de vivre always has a touch of sadness in it as well and comes with the awarenes that there aren't many Jews left in the city (his old father fears there won't be enough for a proper burial rite once it's his turn) and he's living on a powder keg, and the musician who so desperately wants to be Freddy Mercury. Frustratingly, the two female characters - a wife feeling trapped and frustrated in her marriage, and a teenager with a teenage identity crisis - are also the two most passive ones, and I often wished we'd have seen more of Yto, the old woman who used to be the teacher's landlady and in love with him in the village and later went to Casablanca with her son, where we reencoutner her in her old age in the trapped wife's plot thread, because every time she did show up, she struck me as far more interesting, plus the actress has great charisma.
There's a boiling rich-poor tension in the city throughout the movie which explodes in the final sequence, but that story felt oddly unfinished to me, as did most of the characters. The movie is richly atmospheric, and has great cinematography, and I don't regret having watched it, but I doubt I'll watch it again.
Ammore e Malavita ("Love and Bullets"), directed by Antonio and Marco Manetti, produced in Italy. This one was a hilarious farce expertedly parodying all the Mafia (well, Camorra, since the whole thing is set in Naples) story clichés and mixing them with (also very funny) songs, the first of which is delivered by the corpse in the opening funeral scene, so that gives you a taste of what the movie is like. I was in stitches throughout. Reccommended if you want to have a blast for two hours.
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1296950.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.