Chico & Rita: Grade B

B

Chico & Rita (2010)

Limara Meneses, Eman Xor Oña; Directors Fernando Trueba, Javier Mariscal, Tono Errando. (Spanish; subtitled).

This low-budget animation is the story of a Cuban pianist in 1948 who plays jazz in clubs and dreams of making it big. He meets Rita, a club singer with an extraordinary voice and convinces her to join the band. It works for a while, but Chico cannot commit and Rita becomes jealous and finally a fancy rich guy “discovers” Rita and whisks her off to New York and the fast lane. Chico pursues her but by this time she is a star and living large. The decades roll on. The structure of the story is reminiscent of “Remains of the Day.”

The characters are not well developed emotionally, so the romantic story is only sweet and affecting. The animation is old-fashioned, hand-drawn, simple and colorful, with lots of flat panels of saturated color, no textures or rounding, making it look like an artsy graphic novel (comic book). The sets and scenery are drawn in loving detail, especially those of prerevolutionary Havana.

The music is good, but not what I expected. I was waiting for hard latin jazz, maybe meringue, salsa, Tito Puente, Miami-style blaring trumpets, etc., but instead it was mostly ballads with hardly a pulse, pleasant enough but disappointing.

Oddly, the end-credits reveal that there were at least a dozen animation companies, from all over the world, involved in the production of this feature. I can’t imagine why that would be, but it does explain why the animation is so variable. For example, the main characters’ skin color kept changing . In the beginning, Rita is lightly tanned, while Chico is chocolate, but later, the reverse is true. Maybe that was on purpose, but I doubt it. On the upside, there is one brief dream sequence, maybe three minutes long, that is truly spectacular and mind-blowingly creative, unlike anything else in the movie. I have to wonder why that team was not given more input; it would have made an astonishing movie. Instead, this animated story is more charming than spectacular, and for that, worth seeing.

Elegy: Grade B

B
Elegy (2008)
Penelope Cruz, Ben Kingsley, Patricia Clarkson, Peter Sarsgaard, Dennis Hopper. Director Isabel Coixet.

How could a sensitive relationship movie with these stars be boring? You wouldn’t think it possible, but that’s what is achieved. A sixty year old college professor (Kingsley) is sexually attracted to a thirty year old former student (Cruz). That is believable, men being the animals that we are, but it is less clear why a gorgeous young woman would be attracted to a crusty old guy with a big nose. Her psyche is not revealed. There is a suggestion that the professor is motivated not simply by lust by also by an irrational, only partially conscious attempt to deny death by possessing a young woman. As the movie progresses, there is a hint that he really cares for her, maybe, so some character development is vaguely suggested. Cruz remains a cipher until the last act when she returns to him for solace. But since we never knew why she was with him before, it seems arbitrary that she would come back, so neither character adds up psychologically. There is no plot, so without characters, there is nothing, and that's a tragedy, because the themes of ageing, sexuality, and intimacy are rich veins of gold.

What makes this movie worth watching however is brilliant acting, especially by Kingsley and Cruz, but also by Clarkson. These are master players and you can’t take your eyes off them. Every moment of every scene is compelling, even if nothing is going on. Cruz shows her breasts, which was surprising. A case could be made that it was to demonstrate the old guy’s view of her as a body rather than a person, although with better writing that would not have been necessary. Photography is stunning. There are a lot of tight, intimate shots of conversations, with strong lighting and interesting camera angles. It’s a beautiful-looking picture. You could enjoy it with the sound off. Technical triumph in acting, directing, and cinematography cannot overcome lack of narrative content, but almost does in this film.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona: Grade B

B
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Patricia Clarkson. Writer-Director Woody Allen.

This is classic Woody Allen. When the four main characters are walking and talking on a Barcelona street and one objects to another’s “facile categorical imperative,” it could have been Annie Hall or Manhattan. Woody Allen is an acquired taste, but I have acquired.

Single girls Hall and Johansson (Vicky and Cristina) vacation in Spain for a couple of summer months at the home of a friend (Clarkson). They are picked up in a bar by a handsome stranger (Bardem). Vicky is offended by his proposition to go away for the weekend, but Cristina is game. They both end up going but only one of them succumbs. A narration moves the story along in great leaps until we find Cristina living with the man, who is an abstract painter. (He paints only in orange and brown tones to keep with the pallette of the movie). Vicky’s fiancé joins her from New York. But then the painter’s crazy ex-wife returns (Cruz) and all the relationships take new directions.

As in other Woody Allen movies of this genre, it is an illumination of the human condition, in this case, why love is so hard to find and hard to keep. Vicki has opted for the Manhattan businessman and looks forward to a suburban house with Persian carpets, while Cristina rejects conformity and searches for, as she says, “something more.” But as ever, the heart has its reasons that reason does not know.

The characters are not well-developed people, just placeholders for Allen’s storytelling. Hall even has to do the stuttering Woody Allen shtick through most of the film, which is either Allen being egocentric or reveals a dearth of character ideas. Also true to form, all the characters are immensely wealthy, well-educated and idle, all neurotic about relationships. What holds the movie together are the beautiful faces, beautiful scenery and photography, excellent lighting, directing, editing and music. It is perfection in the craft of movie-making, even though it has no point and even though the characters are only two dimensional. Woody Allen is so good he doesn’t need no stinking plot or characters!

Rebecca Hall, does a wonderful acting job but it's odd that she looks so much like Scarlett. However, Hall can take a close camera full in the face. Scarlett never looks comfortable when the camera is stealing her soul. Hall can stare right into its evil eye. Bardem gave a wonderfully sensitive performance, especially compared to No Place for Old Men, but Cruz is the one who pops off the screen. Even disheveled and with no makeup, and speaking only Spanish or Catalan, she is riveting, for reasons I cannot fathom. Patricia Clarkson proves again what an underrated actor she is. So everything about this movie is excellent except there is no plot and no characters and the story is lame. Only Woody Allen can pull that off.

Wall-E: Grade B

B
Wall-E
Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin; Co-writer and director: Andrew Stanton. (Animated).

Wall-E is a beat-up, post-apocalyptic robot trash compactor on a desolate earth. The apocalypse was not the customary sci-fi nuclear holocaust or biological plague, but an environmental tragedy: the planet overwhelmed by trash. In Wall-E’s world there are piles of trash as high as skyscrapers (most of it seems to be scrap metal), no living things except a solitary cockroach, and a desolate desert landscape plagued by fierce duststorms. However, electricity is still plentiful, advertisements play from loudspeakers and illuminated billboards offer fast food. Hey, it’s a kid’s movie.

All the humans took spaceships to a distant mother ship, Axiom, where they have lived in spotless luxury and hi-tech comfort for 700 years. Of course they have all turned into shapeless whales gliding on hovercraft chairs as they slurp their 32 ounce sodas. They are surrounded by fast food advertising of a generic nature, but which is colored yellow and red to give the unmistakable impression of McDonald’s.

The mother ship sends out a robotic probe to Earth. The probe is a sleek, white, jet- and laser- powered, egg-shape named Eva. Eva was obviously designed by the people who did the iPod, whereas Wall-E was designed way back in the 21st century by a tractor company. Inevitably, the two robots develop a romance, and that is the heart of the story. Wall-E stows away on the shuttlecraft when Eva returns to Axiom, and Star-Trekian onboard adventures ensue as the humans are awakened to their senses and motivated to return to Earth.

The animation is out of this world, as we have come to expect from Pixar. They have no peer for technical skill or animation creativity. I was amazed at how a wide range of simple yet effective emotions were projected from a couple of robots with minimal human features. They have no eyebrows, not even noses or mouths, and hardly any language, and yet somehow, the two robots are anthropomorphically alive. It’s brilliant.

The Romeo and Juliet emotional caricatures and the heavy-handed eco-message are too simple minded for most adults. But there is a layer of inventiveness, humor, and allusion that will keep you engaged. There is also another thematic layer to consider. Wall-E and Eva, despite being robots, are clearly the characters we identify with, whereas the blimped-out humans are robotic. There is a satirical concern about our technologically-driven society, nostalgic longing for a fanciful agrarian past, and anxiety about the future of humanity.

Disney distributes Pixar, so it is noteworthy that the usual invidious gender stereotypes are largely missing from this movie. Wall-E and Eva have no sexual characteristics (other than their names) and do not behave in stereotypically gendered ways. That is a very large step forward for a children’s movie and I applaud it.

Paris, Je T’Aime: Grade A

A
Paris, Je T’Aime (2006). Mostly French (subtitled).

A plethora of actors, known and unknown, including Steve Buscemi, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe, Nick Nolte, Bob Hoskins, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Emily Mortimer, Gena Rowlands, Ben Gazzara , Natalie Portman, Gerard Depardieu. Directors include Sylvain Chomet, Joel and Ethan Cohen, Gerard Depardieu, Wes Craven, and many others.

Twenty-one short stories five to eight minutes long, each portray a romantic relationship unfolding somewhere in Paris. I was boggled by the scope of creativity. Each piece is a jewel; not a lump of coal in the bunch, but the range of ideas, cinematic styles, themes, settings, and music, is just stunning. Some stories are direct: boy and girl fall in love in Paris, the end. Those depend on fine acting and moviemaking for their punch. Several are subtle and surprising and you have to pause the video and think about them for a minute. A couple are wildly surrealistic, making little sense other than to indulge a riot of images and sounds. Some are sentimental and affecting. Others are obvious but witty or creative, such as the romance between two vampires. My least favorite was the wordless romance between two mimes. All segments are of exceptionally good quality, and with fine acting. The one with Ben Gazzara and Gena Rowlands was a little off, because the skeletal Gazzarra had slurred speech and looked like he was recovering from a near-fatal illness. It’s nice to see that he is still alive, but his was the only performance that detracted. Rowlands held him up though. This is a wonderful movie, something for everybody, and everything for the person who loves cinema.