Maïwenn’s MON ROI Good Love Gone Bad

Emmanuelle Bercot and Vincent Cassel courtesy Film Movement

Vincent Cassel – Georgio – is stylish, cool, unknowable. You know, he’s Vincent Cassel ! Georgio falls for Emmanuelle Bercot – Tony – a shrewd, slightly nerdy barrister. She can’t believe it, but he sweeps her off her feet. Mon Roi – a ­ harrowing, adult masterpiece – tracks their relationship over the years and raises unanswerable questions. Is Georgio a strong-willed, self-directed dude who does things his way and ignores his wife's priorities? Or is he a charismatic sociopath, a lying narcissist and a gaslighting psycho? Is Tony confused, emotionally abused or too bourgeois and inflexible to handle the love of the man who inspires her deepest emotions? Most unanswerable of all: Are any of these options mutually exclusive?

These questions fuel the most insightful, moving and convincing relationship film since Scenes of A Marriage. But Bergman’s Scandinavian Lutheran rationalism could never embrace the self-contradictory, chthonic truth of sustained relationships: that love and loathing combine and intertwine, daily. And that people operate against their own interests all the time, often for a perverse pleasure they can’t even identify. Writer/director Maïwenn presents that intertwining and perversity as the baseline of any great passion.

In Polisse*, Maïwenn’s second film, you can feel her discovering what will be her greatest strengths in Mon Roi. She loves intercutting between interlocking stories. Her naturalist, almost documentary, camera is a heat-seeking missile. She cuts to close-ups only for greatest impact, and holds the most wrenching scenes in extended medium shots. Her strongest visual influence seems to be French director Olivier Assayas (Something in the Air, Carlos, Irma Vep). But he’s only an influence. Maïwenn’s instinctive and original.

She shares Cimino and Copolla's genius for creating credible, lived-in group dynamics among either blood- or work-families. She inspires astonishing, sustained performances that build and develop complexity. She understands – to a degree matched only by English writer/director Joanna Hogg (Unrelated; Archipelago; Exhibition)** – how intimacy ebbs and flows over years or in a heartbeat. Maïwenn captures fleeting but cataclysmic facial expressions and gestures – tiny domestic moments – on which marriages founder or endure. Maïwenn’s cinematic intelligence is on par with her emotional intelligence. Her emotional intelligence is profound. And fearless.

Maybe Maïwenn’s greatest gift as a writer/director is primality – a direct presentation of gut emotions. Her men and women feel before they think. Tony tries to parse her feelings by thinking. It don’t work. Georgio barely thinks; his feelings run him. Their opposite approaches frustrate and bind them in equal measure.

Director Maïwenn, Patrick Raynal and Vincent Cassel courtesy Film Movement

Maïwenn intercuts between Tony as a resident in a physical therapy center – she blew out her knee skiing – and memories of her years with Georgio. At certain points the intercutting and Tony’s systematic healing work a little too hard. We get it: Tony’s rehabbing her knee as she rehabs herself. She revels in pal-time with some young bros getting PT. Being free of Georgio means being free of desire. That freedom is a blessed relief.

Georgio’s moneyed, heedless, capable of great kindness and opaque. He bluffs and lies like Satan. Tony catches him naked in bed with a young model. Georgio not only denies having sex with her, he denies knowing her. And he’s damn convincing. Equally convincing is his volcanic rage when Tony won’t do what he wants. Georgio seesaws between amour fou and cold-hearted self-indulgence. He demands that his suicidal former lover come to live in the home he and Tony share.

Tony never colludes in Georgio’s shitty treatment of her. She’s not a victim, despite his – possibly unconscious – efforts to make her one. She’s smarter than he is and plenty tough. She stands up for herself throughout, even in the face of his terrifying rages. Problem is, Tony’s too damn sane to cope with Georgio’s mercurial, heartfelt follies. And he knows how to make her feel guilty even for refusing to go along with his most nutcase urges. Tony, like us, can’t tell whether Georgio’s deranged or playing her for all he’s worth. Tony finds no clarity, except in bed.

The atomic power of their sexual connection startles Tony and Georgio every time. Their love scenes are too raw and laden to be sex scenes. They’re too explicit and erotic to be love scenes. They’re fuck scenes: human, hot and credible. Nothing harder (no pun intended) to pull off (ditto) in literature or film. Yet, Maïwenn does. Tony and Georgio’s lust never abates, even when they despise each other. The explicit moments reflect and describe different stages of the relationship. Each scene also shows – without underlining or doubling down with dialogue – Georgio’s electrifying, judgment-frying sexual hold on Tony.

courtesy Film Movement

Those scenes may be graphic, but Tony’s luxurious state-run physical rehab center is the truly pornographic fantasy in Mon Roi. Live-in physical therapy, private rooms with TV, one-on-one PT instructors, pools, classes, generous meals, esoteric rehab gear and, most pornographically, a French babe shrink asking Toni in concerned tones why she thinks she fell while skiing! Can you imagine an American insurance provider funding a shrink to ask why you wrecked your ACL? That’s a proper application of taxpayer money! And a much more powerful lust-inducer than either of the stars for all their hot fucking.

In one amusing moment, Tony freaks out on Georgio for wanting to hang only with his “beautiful people.” Georgio, in some shady way, connects to the fashion world. His high-cheekboned crowd is a magazine shoot come to life. Tony thinks Georgio should spend more time with the real people, like her brother and sister-in-law. Maïwenn’s life in the beauty bubble – she’s a former model of dazzling, feral, charisma – may have warped her view of real people. Tony’s brother, though Maïwenn hides him under a series of moronic baseball caps, is Patrick Raynal, a brooding French Heathcliff. Maïwenn’s real-life sister – the ethereal, heart-stopping Islid Le Besco – plays Tony’s sister-in-law. In the silent era, Le Besco’s northern Renaissance face and angelic detachment would have made her an enormous star. Real people, these ain’t.

What makes Mon Roi extraordinary is Maïwenn’s evocation of both romantic partners as equally rich, complex, self-perplexing and compelling. The other characters are sketches, backdrops to the main event, but Tony and Georgio have the breadth of great literary characters and each carries equal weight. It’s something you seldom see and rewards multiple viewings.

 In the final moments, after all the battles – all the coming together and blowing apart – Tony, despite herself, remains enthralled. Thrilled to be free, enthralled for life.

Maïwenn asks without taking sides: Is this the nature of love?

* Amazon streaming

**All on Netflix

The 14 Best Films of 2015 – Genre Kicks, Artfilm & Agitprop

Kurt Russell brings the humanity

Not much of a year for Big Entertainment or Big Sincerity. Spotlight, Trust and The Martian proved to be nothing more than – in the immortal words of Ice Cube describing Boyz 'n the Hood  –“After-school specials with cussin.’” The Revenant, the film I most looked forward to, turned out to be worse than a snow-covered macho grunt-fest; it’s a boring snow-covered macho grunt-fest. Form without content – that’s ‘decadence, right? And long an issue with Hollywood tentpoles. This year’s disillusion – each year brings its own –stems from decadence-creep crawling from tentpoles to supposedly more personal, if still large-scale, expressions. 2015’s best, save one, aren’t tentpoles. They’re willfully idiosyncratic visions of genre kicks, artfilm, agitprop or all three at once. 

1) BONE TOMAHAWK – How did first-time writer/director S. Craig Zahler enable Kurt Russell’s most human, nuanced performance since…ever? How did he see that Patrick Wilson has layers? Zahler’s wild ideas have no business in a Western but belong here. He vests in genre conventions, demonstrates the depth and worth of those conventions, then transcends them while smashing them into neurons. His screenplay’s witty and self-aware but never self-conscious or precious. Stars and bit players work in balance and each makes clear the necessity of the other. Zahler’s technique seems at first raw and slightly amateurish, but slowly reveals the breadth of his sophistication, which Zahler (kinda) conceals because he might feel full of shit if he didn’t. The film grants increasing pleasure the more you know its references but never makes knowing its references key to enjoyment. The story offers soaring joie de vivre, but mercilessly, pitilessly remembers the brutal mortality beneath. Plus, the invaluable Richard Jenkins, character actor supreme.

Richard Jenkins - nobody does it better

2) VICTORIA – Nicholas Winding Refn’s Pusher trilogy of tight, naturalist, low-budget, mean-spirited street-Noirs are among the smartest, most thrilling thrillers. Clearly influenced by Refn, Sebastian Schipper – writer/director of this tight, naturalist, low-budget, weirdly hopeful street-Noir – had the courage or idiocy to shoot his 134-minute romance/caper in one unbroken take, one unbroken shot that wanders Berlin's demimonde in the wee hours. That unbroken shot proves neither stunt nor gimmick. Schipper’s amphetamine narrative drive and hood-rat street-dialogue make you forget it’s happening. At the same time, that one shot brings the story alive as a signal episode in Victoria’s life – like a cherished memory or dream. Like Refn, Schipper’s a cineaste and tells his story in pure cinema. The performances never falter; the suspense never lets up. Victoria is what a thriller should be: gritty, tough, hilarious, bumbling, romantic and almost escapist. Because, really, who in a street-Noir ever escapes?

Laia Costa wanders the demimonde3) BLACK COAL, THIN ICE  – The homicide cop hero of this quirky, blood-drenched, yearning Neorealist Chinese policier believes he’s the last feeling being in a universe of bureaucratic indifference and small-time corruption. Too bad for him his precious feelings prove a liability in today’s meatgrinder China. The unrequited love he pursues – in his monosyllabic, existentially crushed way – will only ruin him. Director Yi’nan Diao got his Dreiserian portrait of the wreckage of working-class lives past the censors by pretending that social context is background, not the whole point of the exercise. Shot in haunting pastels, Black Coal evokes the Korean policier masterpiece Memories of Murder. Like Memories, it’s an economic critique, a study of ordinary folks chiseling out daily survival and a classic of murky suspense.

4) THE GETT – Why divorce is so expensive? Because it’s worth it!

5) CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA – What an incongruous commercial success: a drama with hardly any apparent drama about sophisticated people splitting hairs over their art. Olivier Assayas’ most watchable pictures – Carlos, Summer Hours – don’t meander. His most heartfelt films do. The intuitive camera, the jarring cutting, the untied narrative threads, the schematic plot and the even more schematic play-within-the-film should push you away. But Assayas’ camera and edits follow states of mind – not action. They nourish narrative purpose and emotional tension. Assayas’ off-kilter compositions illuminate the tiniest, most potent exchanges – every shot, cut, word and gesture bears meaning and the dialogue rewards attention. Assayas draws an extraordinary performance from Juliet Binoche. She emerges from her career-long veil of beauty and testiness to show genuine unease and kindness. Kristen Stewart’s a revelation. So present, true to each moment, charismatic – a shockingly subtle actress and a movie star.

6) EX MACHINA – Any movie bearing this gift belongs in the Top Ten: http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/news/a624000/watch-oscar-isaacs-incredible-ex-machina-dance-scene/

7) MAD MAX FURY ROAD – The year’s best long-form commercial for a video game. Maybe one day someone will acknowledge underground comix master Spain Rodriguez’ early ‘70’s Route Zero as the prime source for so many Mad Max ideas and bitchin’ cars…http://www.lastgasp.com/d/4224/subvert-3

8) MERU – Mountain climbers aren’t necessarily insane; they just do insane things. Then they come home and try to be people. And that can prove harder than bagging a knife-edge 22,000-foot peak in the back of the back of the beyond of Pakistan. The surprisingly touching aspect of this ingenuous, homemade saga derives from the contrast between the climbers’ embrace of their insane urges in the wild and their brief, laden moments of self-preserving rationality at home. The most human, immediate and true climbing movie ever made. Mind-blowingly gorgeous and insane.

9) THE TRIBE – Global capitalism is one harsh toke. The underclass never bonds against oppression and eats its own with gusto. The more desperate the circumstances, the more everyone’s social/human value derives from how the powerful can exploit them. Love offers no redemption; vengeance offers plenty. Newcomer Miroslav Slaboshpitsky presents a fully realized, unwavering fable – deadpan camera, instinctive performances, metronomic cutting, compelling subculture and unspeakable degradation.

10) IT FOLLOWS – Yes, the fantastic aspect proved inconsistent and violated its own rules. But the notion of culpability transferred from person to person by indulging in the slightest human connection, that shit’s all too real.

11) BLACK SEA – As our new Michael Caine, Jude Law proves the truth of Barry Gibbs’ assertion that “You can’t pander insincerely.” Like Caine, Law shifts from blockbuster to low-rent genre without a trace of condescension. Like Caine, he plays far more compelling and unhinged characters when he’s free from having to act classy – as Law proved in Dom Hemingway. Like Caine, Law never mails it in. And, like Caine, Law likes nothing more than to mock himself or go berserk with rage or both. Despite several less-than-credible plot points, Black Sea is a submarine movie – the absolute bestest kind of movie there is. Law makes it shine.

Today's Michael Caine

12) WHITE GOD – Ki engedte ki a kutyákat?

13) SON OF A GUN – Violent, workmanlike, 1970’s-style, unselfconscious Aussie crimesploitation. When Ewan McGregor gives a shit, few match his charisma.

14) THE SALVATION/SLOW WEST – The art-Western returns and not even Tarantino can stop it.

The Hateful 8  – The Most Disappointing Film of 2015 

As Lester Bangs wrote of a certain album, Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful 8 is “stupid with none of the virtues of stupidity.” It’s dispiriting – because I love his movies so – to see him so vest in such a C+  idea.

Pauline Kael said that Godard’s genius did not run to making masterpieces; Tarantino’s seems to. There’s little middle ground in his oeuvre: fucking amazing or self-indulgent crap – that’s his range.

Remember, this is the one filmmaker in America under no limits – absolutely no artistic or financial pressure. Tarantino can make any film he wants any way he wants and find eager backing and distribution. And this puny exercise in what he mistakes for épater la bourgeoisie is the best he can do with that rare, precious license?

 Tarantino’s films – good and bad – delight in surface without a glimmer of narrative, character or visual metaphor. All that breathtaking style and not a molecule of content. Only his exacting stylistic rigor gives Tarantino’s great films depth. Without rigor, what remains are his base urges. Foremost is the urge to always go too far. The Hateful 8 delights in going too far, and goes nowhere at all.

His cramming genre conventions full of steroids – like shooting a so-called Western that’s 90% interiors in 70MM and crowing about it – leaves me as numb as if I sat through Transformers III or Titanic or Pearl Harbor. Tarantino’s last two films left me numb. Everything prior granted me exhilaration. Has Tarantino gone numb himself? Can he feel anything without jacking up the Grand Guignol to 11?

English novelist Margaret Drabble writes about characters who prefer the numbness of depression to the sharp pangs of anxiety. Sound drama always provokes anxiety, especially for the creator. Creating art means not knowing what’s going to happen and living with that uncertainty. If the creator can no longer stand the anxiety of creating, he or she no longer creates drama. All 2015’s best films were profoundly unpredictable – I mean, I figured Charlize Theron would survive Fury Road, but that was about it. When the writer knows before he or she starts writing what every character will do or say, the resulting work is always schematic, forced, Dead On Arrival. It becomes, like The Hateful 8 or The Revenant, a showcase for the director as puppeteer. Characters never speak or act like living beings; they’re only illustrations of the director’s ideas, notions and themes. There is no uncertainty, no drama, no depth. This is why movies today can be impressive and even entertaining, but remain empty and unsatisfying.*

I’ve long considered Tarantino a genius adolescent – an 8^th grader at heart. His glee for obscure film references, transgressive speech, graphic violence and cheesy soundtracks all speak to a stunted consciousness. But now it’s time to regard his work as expressing a fully formed artist, for good or ill. Tarnation’s puerile machismo’s not adolescent – he hasn’t and will never outgrow it.** It’s purely American, a thoughtless shorthand that obviates any profound questions or comedy underlying Tarantino’s joyous bloodletting and woman-lynching. Hateful 8’s gory slapstick is as sophisticated as adult Tarantino gets. There’s something permanently unflowered in the dude – he ain’t gonna mature.

* Thanks Greg Burk of metaljazz.com

** Thanks Sarahjane Blum