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Notre Musique - Review

Jean-Luc Godard's new film is a work of great refinement and serenity about the least refined or serene of human phenomena - war. Godard works from Dante's template, and splits his vision into three panels. "Hell" is a brilliantly colored and paced video montage of images of warfare, some documentary and some fictional, in which the evidence of our collective fascination with carnage and destruction becomes overwhelming.

"Purgatory" is set in the becalmed environment of post-war Sarajevo, during a cultural conference in which Godard plays himself, grappling with the unbridgeable divide between conqueror and conquered. "Paradise" is a pastoral vision of the afterlife: a woman who has martyred herself in an effort to end the Palestinian/Israeli conflict walks in the sunlight by a river, improbably guarded by U.S. servicemen. Godard, now the very definition of an "old master," has made some exquisite films in the past, but he may never have made one as graceful, as lucid, or as moving as this. 80 min. Switzerland/France, 2004 A Wellspring Release.

In the Battlefields

Lebanon in the early Eighties. Bombs are going off on the edges of Lina's middle-class Beirut neighborhood, but they're nothing like the fireworks exploding behind the closed doors of the area's well-appointed apartments. Danielle Arbid's impressive first feature follows 12-year-old Lina as she painfully discovers the contradictions and hypocrisies of adult life.

Largely ignored by her parents, her only solace is her monstrous Aunt Yvonne's domestic, Siham, a poor girl with whom Lina forms a warm, caring relationship - but that friendship, too, will be sorely tested. Arbid is known for several highly acclaimed documentaries about her native Lebanon. Here, the amorous and financial intrigues that so consume the everyday lives of her characters form a counterpoint to the political and military turmoil happening just offscreen. 88 min. Lebanon/France, 2004 3D Sun. Oct. 3, 9:30 pm; 4A Mon. Oct. 4, 6:00 pm

Or (My Treasure)

Winner of this year's Camera d'or at Cannes for best first feature, Keren Yedaya's riveting psychological study focuses on an aging Tel Aviv prostitute and her eighteen-year-old daughter, Or, who fights to keep her mother off the streets, even to the point of locking her indoors. Immensely winning if perhaps overly confident, Or is convinced that she has all the right answers and that she can redirect this helpless woman into a new occupation. The girl is not without her own sexual desires, which complicates her role as puritanical overseer. Grounded in a rich specificity of detail about daily life in working-class Tel Aviv, favoring moral doubt over pat judgments, Or avoids clichés, evades political speechmaking, and unfolds with a simple, direct visual style unerringly suited to its material. This remarkably self-assured debut offers us glimpses of a substratum of Israeli society rarely seen onscreen. 100 min. Israel, 2004.

Tarnation

To say that Jonathan Caouette has had a challenging life is to put it mildly. His father abandoned the family when he was a child, and his mother, a diagnosed schizophrenic, has been in and out of institutions for much of her adult life. Jonathan was largely raised by his grandparents, who had problems of their own. Now in his thirties, the director has been documenting his life since he was eleven. With Tarnation he has created a devastating, often shocking, but finally deeply moving portrait of family life. Combining snapshots, home movies, video diaries, old answering machine messages, and snippets of pop culture, Caouette has created a bracingly direct meditation on coming to terms with oneself and one's responsibilities. At Tarnation's emotional core is the story of Caouette's relationship with his mother, a complex, tragic woman who is one of the most remarkable real-life characters you'll see on screen. 88 min. USA, 2004 A Wellspring Release.

Kings and Queen - Review

Arnaud Desplechin's new film is not one but two stories of the converging lives of Ismael (Mathieu Amalric) and Nora (Emmanuelle Devos). Ismael's is a nightmarishly comic vaudeville turn, in which he is whisked away to a mental hospital where he matches wits with the administrator (a brilliantly cast Catherine Deneuve), raids the in-house pharmacy with his bug-eyed lawyer, and pitches woo to a delicate young suicide survivor. Nora's story is a more somber affair - she's survived her lover's suicide and now has to contend alone with the prolonged dying of her father (magnificently acted by Maurice Garrel). She eventually goes looking for Ismael, her former husband, in an effort to convince him to adopt her son. As he did with the wonderful My Sex Life (NYFF 1996), Desplechin explores the uncharted territory between comedy and tragedy, exhilaration and despair, belief and godlessness. Kings and Queen is one of the richest, most rollicking movies you're likely to see this year. 150 min. France, 2004.