‘XX/XY’
Romantic drama. Starring Mark Ruffalo, Maya Stange and Kathleen Robertson. Directed by Austin Chick. (R. 91 minutes. At Bay Area theaters)
The main difference between French and American cinema is that Americans generally agree with Humphrey Bogart in “Casablanca,” that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans, while the French think there’s nothing more important. “XX/XY,” though made by Americans, is a romance very much in the French style, something that writer-director Austin Chick acknowledges with a soundtrack of French songs and a screenplay rife with sensitive, soul-searching conversations.
It’s a refreshing change. Americans usually don’t make romances unless they’re comedies, as though love were too trivial to take seriously, or too embarrassing not to mock. But in “XX/XY” Chick presents the complicated nuances of a love affair, with events spanning 10 years, and he does so without apologizing.
The movie begins in 1992, around the New York campus of Sarah Lawrence University. Mark Ruffalo plays Coles, a would-be artist who meets a young woman named Sam (Maya Stange) at a wild party. In true collegiate spirit, she suggests a menage a trois with her friend Thea (Kathleen Robertson). So right away everybody’s happy: Coles, Sam, Thea and the audience.
“XX/XY” shows us the glories and fault lines of Coles and Sam’s relationship, then jumps 10 years to show the principal characters living different and sedate lives. Chick has clearly worked with the actors to suggest the differences between being in one’s 20s and one’s 30s. Stange goes from awkwardness to grace (and seems to have lost the 10 pounds that students gain in their freshman year). Coles goes from being a poetic wannabe to genuinely kind, and Thea goes from being wild and reckless to being fun-loving but considerate.
Though the title suggests something emblematic in this story of Coles and the three women in his life — the third is a live-in girlfriend (well played by Petra Wright) — the movie is really a sexy, emotionally true portrait of a handful of people wrestling with their impulses and trying to find their way to happiness. It’s a little story, but big enough for those of us who don’t agree with Humphrey Bogart.
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This movie contains nudity and harsh language.
– Mick LaSalle
‘LE CERCLE ROUGE’
Crime thriller. Starring Alain Delon, Yves Montand, Andre Bourvil and Gian Maria Volonte. Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. (Not rated. 140 minutes. At the Castro.)
It’s extraordinary that “Le Cercle Rouge” has taken 33 years to get a decent theatrical release in this country. Seen today, this crime thriller, from the French master Jean-Pierre Melville (”Bob le Flambeur”), is clearly a minor classic, mainly for reasons besides its crime story plot — namely, the urbane fatalism of its cast and the overall mood of inevitability that hangs over every scene.
It’s subtitled, but the film speaks the language of cinema more than anything, so non-French speakers can get the soul of “Le Cercle Rouge” just by keeping two eyes open.
In the decades since, students of Melville, such as John Woo and Quentin Tarantino, have amplified and sensationalized the director’s work, but its soul and special feeling have eluded them.
Today, what sets Melville apart — aside from his meticulous compositions and inspired pacing — is that, for all his wit and wry self-knowledge, his existentialism was no pose. He was absolutely alive to the philosophical implications of “Le Cercle Rouge.” Notions of fate, doom and honor were more important to him than the style aspect of guys in suits and hats carrying guns.
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Two men’s paths cross, and they accept it as their destiny to ride together. Corey (Alain Delon) is released from prison on the same day that another man, Vogel (Gian Maria Volonte), escapes from police custody, and they help each other. Corey is wanted by the mob, and Vogel by the cops. At one point Corey hides Vogel in the trunk of his car, and Vogel does something that’s astounding by modern standards, even by modern French standards. He gets into the trunk with a lit cigarette.
Yves Montand plays a corrupt cop and a drunk who is recovering from the DTs when the fellows recruit him to be a marksman on their jewel heist (a wordless, methodical sequence that calls to mind Dassin’s “Rififi”). It says something about the viewpoint and the psychological penetration of the film that the heist is his curative, and almost his redemption — giving him purpose, meaning and not least of all, fellowship.
This film contains nudity and violence.
– Mick LaSalle
‘FELLINI: I’M A BORN LIAR’
Documentary. Directed by Damian Pettigrew. (Not rated. 110 minutes. At the Opera Plaza.)
Lovers of Federico Fellini’s films will probably appreciate the approach taken by director Damian Pettigrew in his documentary “Fellini: I’m a Born Liar.” He’s made a quasi-Fellini movie about Fellini, elliptical, poetic and unstructured, interspersing interviews with the maestro with some of the more dreamlike images from his films.
The movie doesn’t try to make a case for Fellini, it assumes that the case has been made. Nor does it attempt to introduce audiences to Fellini’s life and work. I respect that strategy but found myself disappointed by it. As someone physically incapable of staying awake for an entire Fellini movie, I was hoping for some kind of elucidation. I wanted to be taken through it and be made to understand what it is that other people genuinely seem to love.
Maybe they love Fellini himself, and that would certainly be understandable. In his interviews, shot the year before his death in 1993, Fellini is everything anyone could want in a foreign director. He’s romantic, impish and amusing — and behind his smile there’s just the suggestion of a dark streak, someone who could be a real tyrant on the set. This is confirmed by Donald Sutherland, who says Fellini was awful to actors, a “dreadful” martinet.
The documentary is best when it deals in specifics. Terence Stamp and Roberto Benigni tell funny stories of working with the director, and Stamp’s imitation of Fellini is the film’s highlight. But many of Fellini’s own comments about his work are enthusiastic but vague and tell us little except that this was a man with a lifelong passion for putting his fantasies on celluloid.
Like Fellini’s own films, “Fellini: I’m a Born Liar” is occasionally brilliant, profiting from Fellini’s distinct and unmistakable way of looking and seeing. But it goes in circles and wears out its welcome, except for the most hard-core enthusiasts.
This film contains nudity and harsh language.
– Mick LaSalle
‘ONMYOJI’
Costume drama. Starring Mansai Nomura, Hideaki Ito and Hiroyuki Sanada. Directed by Yojiro Takita. Written by Yasushi Fukuda, Baku Yumemakura and Itaru Era. (In Japanese with subtitles. Not rated. 116 minutes. At the AMC Kabuki 8.)
In 2001, “Onmyoji” was the second-highest-grossing film in Japan after the Academy Award-winning “Spirited Away.” So bringing “Onmyoji” over here was worth a try.
But it seems unlikely that this long, complicated dungeons and dragons story will capture much of an American audience. Certainly there are dueling wizards, torchlight swordfights and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” effects. But the moments of action are interspersed with lengthy plot developments that are hard to follow.
It took a moment to realize what was so familiar about the pacing, but it makes perfect sense once you make the connection. This has the feel of one of those old cliff-hanger serials. And, it turns out, that’s exactly what it is.
“Onmyoji” is based on a famous set of Japanese serial novels. The concept is so popular that a sequel is already filming, comic book adaptations have been written and a TV series of the same name airs in Japan.
What you get are all the staples of the genre — villains who laugh maniacally, demonic transformations and lots of sword-swinging and blood. The costumes, which the filmmakers took great pains to make authentic for A.D. 1000, are gorgeous, although the extremely tall, pointed hats make the characters look a little like Smurfs.
The word onmyoji refers to the sorcerers who work powerful magic to protect the emperor. They are also known as “The Yin-Yang Masters,” and although the film is also called “The Yin-Yang Master,” the distributor specifically requested that the Japanese title be used.
– C.W. Nevius
