threepines

I don't think it's exactly a ten star picture, it's a modest film, despite the wide-screen, but I'm giving it ten because I think it is being undervalued here for failing to be what it's not trying to be. For example, the opening sequence is pretty strange action, I guess. No blood. A bit unrealistic in a way. But then suddenly, there it is. Real blood, real pain, real horror, out of nowhere. My feeling is that the "unreal" prior action exists to make the contrast hit home hard, creating a spiritual (to call it that) turning point out of butchery as usual. It's making a point.

But then I like Tavernier a lot, and I've learned to accept his way of coming at a story. Like his laid-back, almost lethargic version of Jim Thompson's brutal Pop. 1280, Coup de Torchon. The first time I saw it was frustrating; I thought he'd missed the book. Seeing it again, I just watched what was on the screen, and had a real good time.

Queen Margot, this film's more romantic twin, is one of my favourite movies because it pulses with so much colour and movement and life. The Princess of Montpensier is pulsing with something else. Pulsing with limitation? I don't know. The characters are all so trapped -- in the situation, in the era, in themselves. It's more sad than full blown tragic, and in that respect perhaps truer to life as it's lived and later understood, rather than dreamed. More like a Rossellini history film, say, than a contemporary, high production values epic.

Beautiful to look at and lovely to listen to though, no doubt about it. And yet, at the same time, dry (the way that wine can be) and philosophical, in the sense of resigned. A song of experience, and quietly sustained anger, that tugs at your mind rather than your heart strings. Which appealed to me. In the right mood, allowed to do it's own thing at it's own pace, it's really good. I didn't even want to return it to the library, I kept putting it off until I started getting emails.

AndTheRoo basically said what needed to be said back in their 2007 post. I'm just adding my voice to his/hers because Sola deserves way more than a single review, however positive.

This was a beautiful and unexpectedly imaginative little series. Thirteen episodes was just right. It begins slowly enough as a kind of domestic, slightly supernatural teen drama, but even then I was captivated. Towards the end it gets weirder, but in a real good way.

The art is solid, not outrageous, but the plot and characterisation are at a very high level. It's genuinely moving. And, yeah, the music's great. In Japan, Sola went on to win Best Anime Series of 2007. Deservedly so.

If you're wondering whether to bother watching it or not: watch it. Totally recommended.

It's a stupid propaganda flick. The characters are absurd and disappointingly cartoonish. They skulk, they glower, they orate, they stare off into the far distance with madly lit faces in heroic or sinister half-profile, they faint -- an amazing amount -- or just collapse in a heap, or fling themselves around the room, and generally overact in a forced and completely unbelievable way at all times. It doesn't help that the subtitles are continually drawing your eye down to the bottom of the screen (only to find yourself reading script lines even more retarded than the acting and the pacing and the bizarre settings). It is in fact a ridiculous, contemptible film & almost unbearable to watch, except in a so-bad-its-good kind of a way. You have to sneer, scoff, make up your own sappy dialogue, etc. But you keep watching.

By the end of part two (which is even stranger, what with Ivan's beard and the demented, totally gay colour sequence) it is clear that the only thing left to do is to watch the whole thing again from the beginning, which is a weird response. This time around though, everything has changed -- or else you have -- because it is now spellbinding, moving, way better than good. It is in fact one of the most remarkably satisfying movies ever made, even without Part III, and pretty much everything that was crap about it turns out to have been your fault, a result of your own blinkered inability to see what was in front of you all the time.

I don't get it, but wow . . . not half impressive. And as a bonus, the extras on the Criterion DVD (especially the second disc) will even help you start to understand what the hell just happened.