Alban Lenoir in “The Sower.” credit: allocine.fr/ARP Sélection
Marine Francen’s first feature film, The Sower (Le Semeur) (France, 2017) seems to have been artfully percolating over the last six years. A veteran assistant to other directors like Michael Haneke, Olivier Assayas and Jean-François Richet, Francen worked with four other writers to adapt this autobiographical short story from Violette Ailhaud, written in 1919, describing events of the 1850s, and not available for publishing, by Ailhaud’s own wishes, until 1952, one hundred years after the events described in the story.
Louis-Napoleon was elected to serve as French president after the February Revolution of 1848 and the abdication of Louis-Philippe, but was ineligible to be re-elected in 1852. So, with a fair amount of help, he staged his own coup d’état, declared himself Emperor, and dissolved the previous Republican monarchy. He then purged Paris, and the countryside, of those Republican men he thought might eventually plot against him. In the case of Violette’s tiny rural village, this was all of them. With no men to lead the wheat harvest, the women of the village banded together to bring in the crop and maintain the workings of the village over months and months. But, with the future unsure, an agreement is made; any men who appear at the village will be shared amongst those women who either want children, or who genuinely deserve the companionship – more existential practicality and solidarity than sex-drives, although that can’t help but figure in a bit. And, lo and behold, a man appears one day, a journeyman blacksmith who is happy to help out with the harvest, and Violette is appointed to get him settled in.
The story is well-structured and presented, the art direction is superb and Alain Duplantier’s cinematography is flat-out gorgeous (almost too pretty, too digitally crisp and clean). The narrative overall could use a little more dynamic variation, but the performances are excellent: especially good are Pauline Burlet as Violette, Géraldine Pailhas as Violette’s stern mother and French TV veteran Alban Lenoir as Jean, The Guy. A very smart and engaging feature debut, and a film I recommend.
Olga Boladz and Piotr Polak in “The Man With The Magic Box.” credit: Bartosz Mrozowski
The Man With The Magic Box (Czlowiek Z Magicznym Pudelkiem) (Poland, 2017) – writer/director Bodo Kox’s tricky and engaging time-travel narrative draws influences from so many common-style sources that, after a while, you exhaust yourself citing them in your own head and surrender amiably. The film follows Adam (Piotr Polak), who is mysteriously delivered to Warsaw in the year 2030, put up in (what is now) a very old but still stylish residential building, and assigned a janitorial job at a big corporate office complex, where he meets the fetching Goria (Olga Boladz, really good here), a middle-executive who’s inclined to have some fun with Adam despite his lowly station. The government is just another variation on the corporate-fascist template, complete with its own secret police who just love tracking down loose-ends (i.e., people) and erasing their memories, y’know, just like that other movie…
Adam happens upon an ancient AM/FM console radio, and starts taking in the music; later, a small TV broadcasts early transmission of a professor experimenting with the medium, and Adam starts dreaming of a life, his possible life, as an assistant to the professor’s experiment back then, in the 1950s. So which is he? Has he traveled here from the fifties, but his memory is erased? Or has he always been in 2030 Warsaw, with the radio and TV informing his dreams and distorting his imagination? Either way he’s definitely in love with Goria…
Kox is clearly a science-fiction geek of a high order, and his not-so-Hollywood budget is done immensely proud by the cinematography, costume design and art direction – Wow. Chris Marker via Tarkovsky via Terry Gilliam meshes with Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg, Peter Strickland, Nacho Vigalondo, Wong Kar Wei and the Wachowskis… the list is large, and there’s room for you to add. But the important thing is Kox’s firm creative hand on the whole affair – this feels like his film, in a way that P.T. Anderson’s Resident Evil or Robert Rodriguez’ noirs never really will. He’s not Tarantino-level yet, but what he draws from he makes undeniably his own, and that’s an impressive thing. Add this one to the Must See list – I loved it.
Periscope In The Bathtub 