LOCOWEED

Les Herbes Folles. First of all -- yes, another fucking masterpiece from Resnais, without a doubt. Line me up more or less with the partisans. Then execute me.

Secondly. It seems to be a sort of wicked "joke" on 3D -- a formalist challenge to make a stereoscopic film without the proper cameronian technology. Sabine's hair; The movement of the (various) grasses; Certain dental jokes. The shots of people in cars that recall rear projection without actually being so. The bloomy diffusion that gives depth to the sound stage world. The multi-planar narrations. The not-quite random violence of the ophulsian paroxysms of the camera, which are perhaps for the sake of exploring the fictional world, rather than merely shoving the narrative forward. The wandering among the crags and the graves.

Thirdly. Allow me to ungallantly and also unfairly point out that when "The Great Resnais" makes a film that approaches the habitual and CASUAL strangeness of the universe of Claude Lelouch, gussied up with primary colors and elegant moves, at likely ten times the cost, such a film is condemned to win awards. Let no one say that the jury at Cannes is immune to property values, even if they are sets!! That is, the film is madly sui generis, but only if you haven't paid any attention to poor (in both senses of the word) Lelouch.

Lastly, the score of autistic & banal cocktail jazz is fantastic.

IN PRAISE OF A HACK

Is there another great filmmaker as often and roughly maligned as Claude Lelouch...?

The Balzac of the cinema. Give it twenty years after he's dead. The truth will out. And that snot-nose Desplechin could learn a few tricks from him.

Yes, he deals in generic nonsense that he makes idiosyncratic; shaves off infinite variations of the same universe. But he is absolutely the author of his films. Every shot is his. Every film has a dangerous balance between casualness -- the improvisation -- and causality.

Frames: for someone often accused of empty, pretty shots -- Lelouch's images are more like slurred snapshots, handheld in advance of steadycam, where everything is sacrificed to an expression of an often obscure emotion. There is never anything "stock" about what happens in his films. You cannot exactly predict the subtle course.

La Bonne Annee: another one of Lelouch's infamous dog's breakfasts -- but mesmerizing -- as usual there are a few amazing "technical" moments...for instance:

The plan sequence (a virtuosic helicopter shot) of the rehearsal of an escape, with laconic voiceover narration by Lino Ventura. This escape is shown in advance of the climax, and its' successful execution will provide the lovely irony of the hero trapped in the exact center of his beautiful criminal scheme, just at the moment where the Woman who lives like a Man realizes that she loves him -- as the cops take him away.

This is not Borzage, but Lelouch.

The way his films are structured is remarkable, extraordinary, as coils of meandering moments that we do not fully understand, but require a sort of active fusion as we circle around them in mind.

The "business" of the film now resolved, the film then shifts again to a drama of re-entry and reconciliation, Ventura's, who wonders who he can trust, who wants to reject, to hate -- and the Woman who lives like a Man, with a hint of terror, suddenly realizes that he won't meet her eye.

The scene plays out.