Friday, October 20
Les rendez-vous de Paris: Eric Rohmer returns to 16-millimeter for three sketches about “false appearances and the paradox of truth–true falsehood and false truth,” working with a cast of unknowns in Paris locations. (Fine Arts, 5:15)
Les miserables: Not an adaptation of Victor Hugo’s book, but a 20th-century story, nearly three hours long, “inspired” by this literary touchstone. The corny and flamboyant Claude Lelouch (A Man and a Woman) is the writer-director, and Jean-Paul Belmondo plays the replacement for Hugo’s Jean Valjean–an illiterate fellow named Henri Fortin who befriends a Jewish family fleeing Nazi persecution. The family reads the Hugo novel aloud to him while they travel together, and apparently they all come to realize how much their lives are like great literature. With Annie Girardot, Philippe Leotard, and Clementine Celarie. (JR) (Fine Arts, 8:00)
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Moon Shadow: First-time director Alberto Simone’s heart may be in the right place, but his camera seldom is. A scientist obsessed with black holes returns home to sell off his ancestral digs, and in the process uproots a tree that has taken over the interior. The repair work proceeds at its own odd rhythm in the hands of an old man and his strange helpers, denizens of a nearby center for the mentally ill. We’re in familiar, if thuddingly symbolic, movie-of-the-week territory here, The script doesn’t miss an oppositional cliche. Ya got your science versus emotion, your north versus south (a biggie in Italian cinema), your city versus country all rendered with flawless pedestrian earnestness (even the tree manages to look like an overzealous houseplant). Mental illness is treated with a measure of intelligence and compassion, probably due to Simone’s past experience in psychiatry. Yet the moment any real tension, ambiguity, or emotion is allowed to enter the film, it’s absorbed into a “therapeutic” framework. Thus the scientist’s sexual attraction to a young female patient who comes on to him, bare-breasted in the moonlight, winds up as a perfect opportunity for him to help her practice for a piano recital! (RS) (Fine Arts, 9:30)
Closed Eyes: A competent if rather bland film from Italy, written and directed by Francesca Archibugi, and coproduced by Martin Scorsese. The young son of a wealthy landowner falls in love with the daughter of a local farmer. When their attempt to keep the courtship a secret from the boy’s tyrannical and abusive father falls, the girl is banished from the town and winds up in a nearby city, where she becomes a prostitute. Years later the two are reunited and resume their relationship. The man still tries to keep it a secret from his father, and the woman tries to keep her profession a secret from the man. This isn’t a bad film by any means, but it’s not particularly inspired either–much of the material seems tired, and its occasional descent into melodramatic histrionics doesn’t help. There are vague intimations of a feminist ideology present, but not enough to turn it into something really interesting. Incidentally, Closed Eyes must hold the record for the most animals castrated, crushed, beheaded, or otherwise mutilated in one film! (RP) (Fine Arts, 1:00)
enough to keep the story from becoming maudlin. The characters are enjoyable, though some seem more like caricatures dropped in, unsuccessfully, for comedic effect. Still, if you’re not expecting much, you might be entertained. There’s also a swell sound track by guitarist Roy Bookbinder. (RP) (Fine Arts, 3:30)
