Movies – The Eight Mountains

Alessandro Borghi and Luca Marinelli in “The Eight Mountains.” credit: Sideshow/Janus Films

Film history is rife with character studies of boys growing into young men, their subsequent passage through inevitably-conflicted middle-age and their uneasy settlement into sadder-but-wiser dotage. Singular characters like Charles Foster Kane, Jay Gatsby, Jett Rink, Biff Loman and Michael Corleone become who and what they are primarily through the filters of their family experiences, healthy, toxic or in-between. Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Robert Benton, Paul Thomas Anderson and/or Martin McDonagh are capable of populating small worlds with characters like this, in impressively innovative fashion. They are unique people while being elementally recognizable as well.

 I need more than ten fingers to assess how many inferior films are well-structured narratively, featuring terrific performances and lovely camerawork, but are wholly about people I shouldn’t, or flat-out don’t, care about. Every middling writer/director wants to be the John Bradshaw of American film, exposing the bitter, crisis-driven irony of poor schlubs who are victims of, or victors over, dysfunctional, co-dependent, ignorant, projecting, shaming or indignantly showboating families.

I’m a bit more cynical about these films than the usual crowd, who are just fine with the likes of Call Me By Your Name, Toni Erdmann, King Richard or Raising Arizona. As an instructive remedy to these cleverly hidden middle-brow soap operas, may I recommend Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s The Eight Mountains (Le Otto Montagne) (Italy/Belgium, 2022)? Sometimes shitty parents inspire their kids to overcome and transcend them. Sometimes the smartest and most sensitive parents still raise screwed-up kids. Or end up with great kids through no fault or particular effort of their own. The characters created by novelist Paolo Cognetti veer unpredictably between duty and instinct, kindness and self-interest, purpose and indulgence, neglect and resilience. The smart and detailed adaptation that van Groeningen and Vandermeersch fashion from the novel takes its time with the characters, admirably, as they grow through adolescence and create their own life paths.     

Young Pietro’s mother, Francesca (Elena Lietti) rents a small summertime vacation flat in Valle d’Aosta, Italy, deep within the Italian Alps, so she and Pietro can spend a leisurely picturesque summer while Pietro’s father, Giovanni (Filippo Timi), continues working at his sizeable engineering firm in Turin. Their neighbors, the Guglielminas, are a modest family raising  a few cows and steer for dairy farming. Their son, Bruno (Cristiano Sassella), is the only other kid in the small village, and he and Pietro (Lupo Barbiero) become fast friends. Bruno’s rarely-seen father takes itinerant bricklaying jobs throughout Italy, leaving Pietro and his aunt Sonia (Chiara Jorrioz) to tend the small herd at home. Whomever used to be Bruno’s mother is long gone, and Bruno’s not chatty about it.

A few summers along, Giovanni decides he’ll spend a bit of time in Valle d’Aosta as well, even for just a week or two. In theory, it’s nice to have Dad around, since he wants to do other stuff Pietro doesn’t normally do, and his enthusiasm for hiking the mountains is contagious. But he brings his urban gruffness and competitive condescension, things Pietro clearly didn’t miss. Dad teaches Pietro and Bruno a lot during their mountain hiking expeditions, and, slowly, Giovanni warms to Bruno almost as a surrogate son. Pietro is good just sitting in the living room reading quietly in Mom’s company, but his awkwardness on hikes and climbs is a bit mortifying, and he feels unfairly pressured from Dad. After chatting with Aunt Sonia, Giovanni and Francesca decide they’ll bring Bruno back to Turin with the three of them to get a better education. Pietro is furious – he finds it presumptuous that they assume Bruno’s existence here in Grana is beneath what they feel would be better for him. But it turns out to be a moot point; Bruno’s Dad gets wind of their wishes, doesn’t want Bruno in Turin, and takes Bruno away for the next fifteen summers. Pietro blames his parents, and may never forgive them.

Now grown, Pietro (Luca Marinelli) encounters Bruno (Alessandro Borghi) in a local tavern, back from wherever. But they still don’t actually converse again until Giovanni, Pietro’s father, dies a few years later. Pietro arrives back in Grana; after the funeral in Turin, and discovers that Bruno already has a fire lit in the small apartment stove, and comes to visit not long after Pietro has settled in. Eventually, Bruno convinces Pietro to help him rebuild an abandoned, wrecked stone cottage fairly high into the mountains – a pretty lengthy motorcycle ride, followed by a long uphill hike. But Giovanni loved the idea of rebuilding that stone cottage, and Bruno promised him he’d do it. After all of this time, the two come together to create a permanent monument to their divergent past, with Pietro declaring that he and Bruno will now meet back there every summer, like childhood.

Alessandro Borghi and Luca Marinelli in “The Eight Mountains.” credit: Sideshow/Janus Films

Bruno ends up with a wife (Elisabetta Mazzullo), daughter and nanny – Francesca, Pietro’s mother – while Pietro travels to Nepal, where he discovers the “eight mountains,” and an important lesson about them. Nonetheless, how Bruno and Pietro navigate their lives in what’s left of their time, alone or together, makes up the later episodes of the film.

van Groeningen and Vandermeersch craft a complex but surveyable narrative, eschewing the usual “epic” trappings of crisis-to-ordeal-to-redemption in favor of a slow but ever shifting series of events and transitions that that hold you rapt and curious until that particular series of events reach a logical conclusion. The two collaborators are very good at matching their eccentric but purposeful visual rendering of events to Ruben Impens’ flawless object choices and compositions in his masterful cinematography. Like John Ford, Impens seems to feel that relegating the Italian Alps to the status of “another character” would be unforgivably reductive. I found Daniel Norgren’s musical inserts a bit intrusive and grating, but I understand the styles that his choices draw from. If you’ve got a chunk of time where you can give yourself over to this deliberate but rewarding story and can swim around in its gorgeous imagery for 2-1/2 hours, then I highly recommend it.

“The Eight Mountains” continues at the Gene Siskel Film Center in early June and should be streaming soon.

Movies – Afire

Thomas Schubert, Paula Beer, Langston Uibel and Enno Trebs in “Afire.” credit: Schramm Film

Christian Petzold’s new film, Afire (Roter Himmel) (Germany, 2023) is yet another artful and well-written film about displaced Europeans struggling with new, unpleasant circumstances with as much integrity and humor as they can muster (Barbara, Phoenix, Transit, Undine). Here, a pair of creative acquaintances, Leon (Thomas Schubert), a writer finishing a manuscript for a novel, and Felix (Langston Uibel), a photographer building a portfolio for submittal, take advantage of Felix’s mother’s isolated cabin in the woods to concentrate, uninterrupted, on their work. Parts of the giant forest are, in fact, on fire, but the cabin is just off Germany’s northern Baltic seashore, and the incoming wind keeps the fire from advancing towards them. One wrinkle that develops unexpectedly is a third person already in the cabin, Nadja (Paula Beer); “whoops!” says Felix’s Mom on the phone, blithely explaining that she thinks there’s room enough, nonetheless. Nadja is a niece of her friend’s, apparently, and she gets the big bedroom, which she enthusiastically uses for just about what you’d figure it would be used for.

Nadja turns out to be quite friendly and forthright, and the three settle in to, among other things, agreed-upon no-longer-noisy overnight hook-ups. She works most days, so they’ll have the place to themselves. At dinner, Nadja invites along Devid (Enno Trebs), her new friend from the previous night, and the sardonic Leon has a bit of derisive fun with the fact that Devid’s the seashore lifeguard. Over the subsequent days, Leon’s workaholic aspirations are self-thwarted by cynicism and insecurities, while, inspired by the sea, Felix is shooting and putting together some nice work. Nonetheless, Leon prepares for the arrival of his literary agent, who will get his first full look at the finished manuscript.

Petzold, as a writer, is adept at throwing narrative curveballs both amusing and upsetting. He puts Leon in the center of the story, yet always seems to be asking us if he deserves to be there. All of the performers are exceptionally good here, though, even when asked to fill ever more divergent functions. Hans Fromm has been Petzold’s cinematographer of choice for a while now, and his photography always seems to have a contrast-y crispness regardless of locale. It’s another poignant yet engaging examination of German identity and sensibilities. I suspect we won’t have to wait a good deal longer for a regular theatrical run.

“Afire” screened at the Chicago Film Critics Festival at the Music Box Theater.

Movies – Everything Went Fine

Sophie Marceau and André Dussollier in “Everything Went Fine.” credit: Cohen Media Group

Like other prolific filmmakers like Michael Winterbottom or Steven Soderbergh, François Ozon is not self-conscious about the occasional disappointment or failed good idea – he just cranks out his next film, undaunted. The three of them are all in their mid-fifties, and all are closing in on directing 48 films. Of the three, Ozon seems to be the most inclined to write his films as well as direct them. He has written or co-written 39 of his 46 films, and his newest film, adapted from Emmanuèle Bernheim’s autobiographical novel of the same name, is convincingly well done. Everything Went Fine (Tout S’est Bien Passé) (France, 2021) starts abruptly with Emmanuèle (Sophie Marceau) being informed in a phone call from her sister, Pascale (Geraldine Pailhas), that her father has just suffered a stroke. They meet at the hospital and agree to alternate watch on him.  André Bernheim (André Dussollier) is brilliant and pig-headed, loving and derisive, thoughtful and selfish; and there are plenty of efficiently presented flashbacks to justify the daughters,’ and his wife Claude’s (Charlotte Rampling), resignation, apathy, or even enmity. But the girls rise to the occasion devotedly, nonetheless. They share a great friendship as well as siblinghood, and they trust, and cover for each other, unconditionally. Pascale is married with two kids; Emmanuèle is a writer, married as well but with no kids. They’ll have no money issues – Dad did well with owning a company, Claude is a very well-known sculptor, and the daughters’ families are modest but comfortable. They all seem to surround themselves with culture, as work and as leisure – paintings (André collects), sculpture, museums, classical music, etc. But André is clearly diminished, with his drooping mouth, forgetfulness and loss of mobility. One particular day, after the nurse informs Emmanuèle that her father is slowly improving, André declares that Emmanuèle needs to help him end his life. He refuses to carry on like this: “This isn’t me anymore.”

Naturally, Emmanuèle hopes he’ll change his mind over time, and his nurse feels that may be likely. But he asks about it regularly, and the more she demurs, the more angrily he responds to her reticence. Pascale’s not a great deal of help; he has asked Emmanuèle, and she knows they should defer to his wish. Emmanuèle’s husband brings up the same point: “He loves pitting us against each other,” she explains. “Is that love or is that perversity?” asks Serge (Éric Caravaca). “It’s both,” she sighs. Earlier in the film she admits “We can’t refuse our father anything.” Upon commencing the necessary homework, Emmanuèle meets a lovely older woman from Switzerland (an adorable and businesslike Hanna Schygulla), who informs her he doesn’t qualify for assisted ‘suicide’ in France and will need to be transported discreetly out of France to Bonn.

Géraldine Pailhas, Hanna Schygulla and Sophie Marceau in “Everything Went Fine.” credit: Cohen Media Group

At this point one might suspect this is going to get a bit morose and creepy, but it never does. The first reason is that the sisters are so connected, so dedicated and so undistractedly and admirably loving towards their parents, despite their parents’ mean-spirited eccentricities. Reason two, dubiously, is the flat-out joy that André takes in Emmanuèle’s success in accelerating his demise – there’s a streak of black humor here that Ozon unerringly calibrates. The trip to Bonn is a cool adventure for a man in his 80s, with an interesting spanner thrown into the works that just might derail the whole effort. And three, no one questions André’s decision. He’s a full-grown human being and he gets to choose that. He knows he loves and is loved. He’s happy with the life he’s led and the kids he’s fathered. He even has a past love stalking him at the hospitals to which he’s being regularly transferred – Gérard (Grégory Gadebois), who gave André agreeable options concerning bisexuality years ago, and no doubt made Claude feel acute betrayal.

Ozon’s writing here (collaborating with Philippe Piazzo) is wonderful, creating a cohesive narrative without spelling each and every thing out for you. Emmanuèle and Serge’s few scenes are just enough. We don’t even meet Pascale’s husband, though we get a glimpse or two of the kids. We know what we need to know to relate to them. Ozon gives the actors exactly what they need and then gets out of their way. Each character is proportionately scaled to interact efficiently with the others around them. Blocking, camera movement and composition are all of the things Ozon can create almost instinctively by now – that’s where that 48 films worth of experience lands him. He gets great support from the Belgian cinematographer Hichame Alaouie, who also shot Ozon’s previous film, Summer Of 85. You’ll probably find this streaming in a few weeks – it’s masterfully performed, beautifully shot, and created by a director who genuinely respects his audience. What more could we want?