I finally got burned by this month's calendar, which listed SOMETHING IN THE AIR as having English subtitles, but a few minutes into the film I realized it didn't. The monthly calendars get printed well before the films arrive, so sometimes the print that shows up isn't what they expect (and Mandarin takes priority). I almost missed out on two Midi Z films months earlier because the calendar said no English subtitles, but I read an online review of the mini-retrospect that said otherwise. I guess from now on I'll have to ask before paying.
 |
| Assayas' SOMETHING IN THE AIR |
I was ready to walk out once I was sure there was no English, but couldn't tear myself away (possibly fatigue from biking all day). I sat through the initial protest scene, which contained little to no dialogue, but then continued to watch, waiting for a point where language would become necessary. My skills in understanding spoken French are about equally as dismal as my ability to read Chinese, but I felt that I was able to pick up enough from how the dialogue was given: context, body language, facial expressions, tones, and what little I could decipher from both languages. I found that with the exception of a few scene, knowing the actual words spoken wasn't all that necessary, and in those exceptions I was making up my own dialogues between the characters (I'd be curious to watch the film again and see how close they parallel what they actually said, if they do at all). Maybe this is a layer of the film I was missing out on, but then it was also an experience to watch a film without focusing on the dialogue, which I tend to put too much emphasis on when reading subtitles versus listening to spoken words. In the past I've enjoyed re-watching films on mute to appreciate the images better without the distraction of sound, language, music, etc.
I had never much cared for Assayas' films, having seen BOARDING GATE, CLEAN, and IRMA VEP, the latter two at the behest of a sort of friend with largely respectable taste. Coincidentally when I was visiting New York City, not long after he had moved to Brooklyn, BAM was hosting a retrospect on Assayas' work (in conjunction with the release of CARLOS, which I had skipped seeing at Telluride, prioritizing other films instead). We met to see COLD WATER (and later HHH), which honestly I didn't know anything about but my friend had been anxious to see it for some time. I adored the film, a wondrous surprise, and finally felt I understood, or saw, what my friend liked so much about Assayas' work: nostalgic but not sentimentalized, long wandering takes on youth's earnest but almost nihilistic blend of ennui and rebellion. Assayas' admiration of Bresson was visible but without forgery.
So having skimmed some initial reviews I was eager to see Assayas do another take on post-'68 malaise. Maybe because my viewing lacked dialogue, I focused too much on how overtly glossy and pristine the images were with the mise en scene often looking like it was flipping through the pages of a J.Crew catalog. Hair was too perfectly disheveled and clothes were more runway than rugged so that the characters looked more like models (and not in the Bressonian way) than wayward youths.
 |
| casual button-up Dream Jean Genie dress, $149 |
About halfway through the film I was reminded of Cameron Crowe's glossy semi-autobiographical film, ALMOST FAMOUS. Much like Crowe's fairy tale account of rock music in the U.S. circa 1973, Assayas' take on French youths trying to carve out their place in 1971 society seemed too idyllic. I'm not saying that I didn't find both films enjoyable (THE DREAMERS they are not), but they felt more like entertaining romps through turbulent youth-centered moments in modern history than works that really questioned or dug into the psyche or inevitable breakdowns of their time (though SOMETHING IN THE AIR at least seemed to be trying to do so). Maybe my expectations were inflated to begin with because somewhere in those opening May riot scenes I was brought back into the opening shots of Garrel's REGULAR LOVERS, of which maybe no other film portraying that time can compare. (And I do realize that the cinematography for that film can be described as equally as lush but its style was more reminiscent of French New Wave than consumable fashion, though maybe even that too can be considered part of consumerism's insatiable ingestion of everything these days.) The characters in SOMETHING IN THE AIR and their relationships felt woefully two-dimensional, paper thin, too sweeping in their coverage of archetypes to be anything more than vague. I kept anticipating something more to come of their perambulations than just their pouting looks. Maybe the film was too subtle to catch, but likely not.
* * *
Update: I watched SUMMER HOURS last night, and though I'm not in the mood to type up a lengthy account of the film, I will say that I found it endearing. Assayas himself described it as a lighter film, a return to the simplicity and the familiar territory of his childhood, but it nevertheless throws the viewer off with its seeming simplicity. Broken into three parts and an epilogue, the film tackles the separation of three different generations through the loss of one, and it really isn't until the epilogue that this becomes surprisingly clear, and magical. Don't get me wrong, its nothing like a twist ending, just a good one to a good film.
