The Count Of Monte Cristo

Dantès Pique

The Count Of Monte Cristo
aka Le Comte de Monte-Cristo
France/Belgium 2024
Directed by Alexandre de La Patellière
& Matthieu Delaporte
Pathe Blu Ray Zone B

After the recent reworkings of The Three Musketeers (reviewed by me here and here), the French have turned their attention to adapting Alexandre Dumas’ classic tale of revenge, The Count Of Monte Cristo and, it has to be said, I suspect whether you will enjoy this or not would depend on your familiarity with the original work and any of the numerous movie and TV adaptations over the last century or more.

For myself, I quite liked the film (to a point) because I’m one of those few people left alive who still hasn’t got around to reading the original novel but, my dad has always been quite hard on what previous media incarnations have been like in terms of their faithless attempts to bring the story to moving image. Judging by the alternative, constant tuts and his yellings at the screen throughout the almost three hour running time of this version, I can testify that this latest attempt has played hard and fast with the original story, adding stuff and demolishing other important stuff to make it a quite frustrating experience for the familiar onlooker.

It was the most expensive production in France for the end of last year and similarly it was one of the official selections to be sent for Oscar consideration, so one wonders if anyone in production had even ever read the original work. And every now and then, my father would interject the main narrative with cries of, “well there goes another three chapters full they’ve completely cut out.”. So yeah, if you are into Dumas then, maybe don’t look at this version.

For myself, with my brazen unfamiliarity with the original text, I found it quite watchable and even quite gripping... there were some challenges inherent in the production for me too, though.

The film stars Pierre Niney as Edmund Dantès, the titular count, who after being torn from the arms of his lover Mercedes (played by Anaïs Demoustier, who was so good in Daaaaaali!, reviewed here) at their wedding, he’s falsely accused and condemned to stay at the famous French prison fortress, the Château d'If. However, he escapes after 14 years and, with the Knights Templar treasure falling into his hands, he goes on to research, train and extract a slow vengeance on the people who placed him in that situation... 20 years after his original incarceration.

The acting in this is all good but there are definitely some issues with the way things have been portrayed. In the original, Dantès didn’t really have to disguise himself much because the 14 years hard time and 6 years additional preparation for his revenge had aged him, making him look quite different if you are not expecting to see him (or, indeed, believed him perished). In this version, however (and quite strangely), none of the actors seemed to have aged in any significant way in that 20 year gap. They all look more or less exactly the same, for some reason. So what the writers do here, somewhat bizarrely, is give his character ‘realistic masks’ which change his face somehow completely and are the low tech equivalent of the ones used by Tom Cruise and his pals in the Mission: Impossible franchise of movies. The fact that the high tech ones would never, in real life, be able to successfully work, let alone with the technology used when this film is set... well... it’s where the film jumps into the ‘totally preposterous’ zone, I would say.

The film looks really good though. To paraphrase a very good friend of mine (thanks, Madame K), the film ‘looks like an extended perfume advert’ devoted to the warm rich, colourful cinematography devoted to a doomed love (or, you know, an overly expensive perfume... which they all are because perfume should only cost a fiver tops. Right? Bloody Chanel.). So, yeah, really nice to look at but, somehow giving an air of shallow, retro pop culture at the same time. It’s also has a really brilliant score by Jérôme Rebotier which, sadly and mind bogglingly, is not available on a proper CD at time of writing (digital downloads be damned to the hell in which they were invented).  

The film is not exactly an action epic either (like the previous versions of the Musketeer movies). It’s very light on action at all, it has to be said but the story, what remains of it, is quite gripping and I enjoyed some of the cross cutting between rehearsal and execution of ‘the sting’ of various components of Dantès’ revenge, I have to say. So there it is... a new adaptation of The Count Of Monte Cristo but especially for ‘Dumas virgins’ I would say. Great as an intriguing drama but, at the cost of leaving the corpse of Dumas spinning eerily in his grave like a whirlygig, it has to be said.

Daaaaaali!

 

 Dali-rama!

Daaaaaali!
Directed by Quentin Dupieux
France Kinology 2023
London Film Festival screening, 14th October 2023

I’ve only seen two other films by Quentin Dupieux, the man who surely should be considered one of France’s great, living surrealists... but both of them, Rubber (reviewed by me here) and Deerskin (reviewed by me here) have been absolutely brilliant. His new film, Daaaaaali! struck me in much the same way. Is it a great movie? Certainly. Is it a genuine masterpiece? Quite possibly, actually.

There’s no spoiler warning at the top here because, in terms of story, it’s kinda hard to spoil a premise which basically is just a starting block on which to pin the movie on... especially when that starting block gets pulled away by the end of the film and comes into question itself. I will, however, be revealing little details of the structure and absurdist spirit of the film so, yeah, if you don’t want to know anything before seeing it then please avoid reading this review.

Okay, so it may be easier to start off telling you what it isn’t. Much like Dali’s own autobiography, The Secret Life Of Salvador Dali, this film is not trying to be a factual portrait of the man. More so, I would say, than even Dali’s often fictionalised account of his life because, this film really doesn’t go down the documentary route at all. In fact, the only real stab at imparting an actual fact in this movie comes, it seems to me, when Gala points out to Dali that the work he is painting is anachronistic to the film... as it was painted in 1972 in real life, as opposed to whenever the film is actually set (and I’m not quite sure when that is, to be honest, which I’m guessing is the intent of Dupieux).

What it is, or purports to be from its earliest moments, is an account of a reporter played by Anaïs Demoustier, who is trying to secure an interview with Dali and every time she gets to meet him, something happens to ensure that interview doesn’t quite happen. Now, here’s the thing... Dali himself is played by several actors... among them Edouard Baer and Jonathan Cohen... and the actors keep switching out in the roles, mostly focusing on a specific three actors which it keeps substituting at different points in the... well... let’s call it ‘narrative’, for want of a more accurate word. And they’re all brilliant in their own way, being comical caricatures of Dali and eschewing the specifics of his life and instead focusing on the spirit of Dali, rather than trying to pin down and capture him with the dry data behind the man. So, it's a homage, if you will.

And yes, the way the film is shot and various incidents which happen, means this comical journey of a movie shares some DNA, at the very least, with the creative mind of Dali himself. But, of course, there’s also a lot more of Dupieux in the film too... so it’s not just a Daliesque piece in and of itself. And, bearing in mind the title character is constantly switching out with other actors, it seems to me an almost conscious reference to one of Dali’s early partners in crime, Luis Buñuel. At least in terms of the films Buñuel was making much later in his career.

Now Dupieux does something magical with the film in terms of the way it is structured, in scenarios which constantly fold back into themselves like a series of Russian Matryoshka dolls. He changes the way time works for the audience by chopping it into bits and forcing the minds of the audience to experience the film at a much slower rate than what it actually is. The film is only an hour and a quarter, after all but... it feels like three hours have elapsed by the time the film is done with you. And in this case, this isn’t a bad thing... the film is never dull and nothing less than entertaining. Indeed, the audience I saw it with were in absolute stitches as soon as they realised this or that thing was happening.

Dali’s first entrance in the movie, for example... and I’m trying to phrase this in a way that doesn’t give away the joke... plays with both time and physical space and it crept up on the audience gradually, until they realised what was happening and then, every time Dupieux cut back to a specific kind of shot, the audience started laughing... a lot. Another moment of strong humour came from the realisation that two actors playing Dali in what must be different times, found themselves... much to each other’s surprise... sharing the same physical location at the same time. Not to mention the fits of laughter everytime a certain cowboy turns up in a shot. And even the composer (who shall remain nameless due to the IMDBs failure to include it in their full cast and crew list), helps the stretching out of time in various places, with its constant repetition used almost as a comic trigger to inform the audience... here we go again.

And I think that’s me just about done with this one. Quentin Dupieux’s Daaaaaali! is an absolutely astonishing film and, judging from the audience I saw it with, a laugh out loud piece of comic writing and timing. All I am saying is that I hope the film finds UK distribution soon because I want to get my hands on the Blu Ray edition of this one as soon as possible, so I can show it to people. So well done the writer/director and, now I guess I have to go back and watch some of the other movies by him that I missed when they first came out. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Elles

Elles A’ Poppin’

Elles
France/Poland/Germany 2011
Directed by Malgorzata Szumowska
Artificial Eye Blu Ray Zone B

Elles is another movie I acquired as a blind buy because a) it was very cheap on Blu Ray in Fopp and b) it had a striking image of Juliette Binoche on the front cover. Binoche is an actress whose cinematic presence I first became acquainted with on an “after college trip” to the ODEON cinema in Shaftsbury Avenue, London, back in 1988 to see Philip Kaufman’s marvellous adaptation of Milan Kundera’s great novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It was in that screening that I fell in love with both the young Binoche and her female co-star in the movie, Lena Olin. I’ve been following her work, casually, on and off over the intervening years but, for me, she is one of the all-time great French actresses and so a quick read of the back cover convinced me to pick this one up off the shelf and bring it back home with me.

In the film, Juliette plays Anne, a working wife and mother, who is writing an article for ELLE magazine on the subject of student prostitution. She is aided in this by a series of interviews with two specific, young prostitutes - Charlotte, played by Anaïs Demoustier and Alicja, played by Joanna Kulig - and the movie is a collection of scenes from a regular day or two of Anna coping with juggling work, a dinner party for her husband’s boss and her problematic relationship with her two sons, while at the same time interspersing the incidents that make up her days with both extracts from the interviews with the two girls in various locations and, more so, flashbacks to the actual encounters and lives the girls lead... all presented cross cut in a, slightly, non-linear fashion, although all the three types of footage being cross cut are sliced into segments which run linearly in their own chronology, if that makes sense. So you have five different timelines - Anna, Anna interviewing Charlotte, Charlotte’s life as a working girl, Alicja and Alicja’s life as a working girl - all crosscut with each other but still running in order in terms of their footage in relation to themselves.

It must have been an absolute nightmare to edit but... at no time are you ever really confused in the ‘narrative structure’ (and I use that term very loosely) of the piece and it all makes sense and fits together beautifully well. Which is amazing considering that the way in which various shots are taken are also quite different. For instance, a well staged shot following a smooth and fluid pan will be pitched straight against a more naturalistic, hand held style of camera work within the same segment. Furthermore... some of those long, smooth camera shots will get to a point in a scene, to reach a particularly beautiful composition, and then suddenly there will then be camera movement on a small reaction to something a character has done, like Anna taking a pace or two backward within a master shot and the camera will just be rearranged slightly to bring her back into the centre of the frame. Which is marvellous and, I would have thought, incredibly difficult to make work with all the different styles of shot being sewn together in the editing to make something so completely understandable... but it does it so well.

Scenes are quite confidently mixed and matched: flashbacks to Binoche and her subjects in the past while simultaneously seeing the story line of each of the girls as it progresses on a parallel to Binoche and independent of her, creating an ambience of mood which, again despite the shuffling around, doesn’t lose the emotional veracity of the piece or dilute its rendition due to the bouncing back and forth between shot content. The director magnificently coaxes the audience into accepting the overall flow of the piece, independent to the format of the content, without imposing any judgement on, or desire for, a more linear narrative flow.

Another thing the director seems to be doing quite often in this, and it’s quite possibly not a conscious thing but just an accidental occurrence, is to contrast scenes comprising of long shots with others in extreme close up... it’s quite refreshing that the director is not afraid to get right in the face of her actresses and actors in this film. Again, despite the two very different levels of intimacy achieved by the distance of the camera to her subjects, she seems to make it all work pretty well.

In terms of content, I’m pleased to say that the writer and director of this presents the two prostitutes as intelligent and emotional beings. It doesn’t make any judgement on their chosen profession and this is a good thing. As the narrative goes on it becomes clear that Anna’s original, cynical stance on the pitfalls and rewards of the girl’s chosen routes becomes more accepting and she begins to see them as friends and feels something of a void in her own life in comparison... at least that’s the way I saw things and, like many films, it’s open and resilient enough to handle a certain amount of interpretation. The two girl’s lifestyles are seen as not without danger but certainly as something which entails more freedom and ownership than Anna’s current home situation... which is a good view to take. It also has some telling details of the truth of the working practicalities of the girl’s lives. For instance, having two phones - one for clients and one for personal calls. I used to know a sex worker... not a prostitute actually but, in most ways, she did a job that certainly qualifies as sex work... and she apparently used the same kind of arrangement with her phones... so that struck me as a nice truism.

While the film is showing both the pros and cons of being a pro, and not making any real judgements from the audience in terms of pitching the content of the girls at any rate (the trajectory of Juliet Binoche’s character is, as I mentioned earlier, a little different in emotional tone) it doesn’t shy away from showing the graphic sexual content one might associate with the chosen profession of Charlotte and Alicja... which can only be a good thing and is a gutsy move on part of the writer and director not to veer away from what might be, to some, fairly challenging imagery in certain sequences. I was a little bemused at one point because the film, fairly early on in the narrative, shows one of the girls receiving a golden shower... and that’s something I believe is deemed uncertifiable by the BBFC in UK releases of movies, be it at the cinema or on home viewing. However, it’s definitely in here and so I’m wondering how this release got away with it, frankly. Certainly not complaining, but wondering how on earth Artificial Eye were allowed to include that content in their release with no intervention by our horrible censors. A neat trick, no doubt.

And so we have a film where the boldness of the content is not let down by either the acting - everybody, including Binoche of course, is absolutely awesome - and nor does the mise en scene and the editing let it down either. In fact, it gets quite dazzling on both fronts.

At one point, for instance, there’s a brilliant sequence where the director upends our perceptions of what we are seeing by the way the tone of two scenes involving one character’s interactions are presented in the edit. We think one of the girls is with her regular boyfriend, because the relationship between the two is so respectful and loving... and later we find that he is just another paying customer. In contrast, we are immediately given a scene of her with her 'real' boyfriend, which is the less easy going of the two relationships by far. It soon becomes clear that he doesn't know how she earns her money... which strikes me as another truism for a certain portion of sex workers, I suspect.

Another great piece of cinematic revelation comes in the form of a transformation scene around a dining table near the end of the movie and the culmination of both the dinner party Anna has had to prepare for and the current fragility of her emotional state. Here, the slow pan round of the camera circling the table allows the director to progressively and surreptitiously replace the people at the table with the actors who played the various girl's clients. Also, as we refamiliarise ourselves with the faces of the actors once they have transformed back to the real guests, it becomes clear that one of the guests is, indeed, one of the girl’s real life clients. Juliette Binoche, in her mind, is joining in with the music provided by one of the “clients” nakedly strumming a guitar and singing, until a cut takes us back into a view of Binoche as she really is... looking ghastly deadpan and without any of the joy of what has been going in her head showing externally. It’s a brilliant scene and a striking piece of performance from Binoche... but, of course, I’ve come to expect nothing less from this remarkable actress. The scene makes an obvious metaphor, perhaps, by using the art of the reveal to bring home the basic truths to an audience about the commonality of both the clientele and the girls they go to see, by holding up a mirror and showing us that neither is out of the ordinary and it could be any one of us or our close circle of friends in a similar situation. Again, though, it’s done without any form of judgmental tone from behind the camera... here the conclusions of the revelation are judged only by Anna herself and her reaction to her lapsed state of reality at this point. Which is just as it should be.

Elles is, I have to say, one of my better blind buys. If you can’t tell by the above coverage, I really enjoyed this one and am looking forward to revisiting it again at some point in the future, not to mention seeking out other movies directed by Malgorzata Szumowska somewhere down the line. A truly remarkable experience in modern cinema and something no cinephile should miss out on. I fully recommend this one to anyone into the beauty of the art... don’t let this one get away from you.