Weekly round-up

Adolescent angst, unconscious eroticism
and middle-aged romance

by MALCOLM FRASER and
CHRISTOPHER SYKES

Water Lilies
This first feature from 27-year-old director Céline Sciamma takes place in a nameless French suburb, where three very different 15-year-old girls experience the travails of coming of age. Marie (Pauline Acquart) is a small, awkward and quiet type who’s both fascinated and repulsed by the sexual powers of alpha female Floriane (Adèle Haenel), while Marie’s friend Anne (Louise Blachère) is an overweight misfit who’s extroverted, but socially clueless. The minimal plot finds them all navigating the complex sexual and social politics of the hormonal snake pit that is adolescence.

The film has a number of similarities with Lola Doillon’s Et toi t’est sur qui from last year: both deal with the hypocrisies of teenage sexual morality (with girls essentially damned if they do and damned if they don’t), both take place in an almost Lord of the Flies-like environment where parents are conspicuously absent, and they share a naturalistic, local approach, full of quintessentially French social customs and slang-laden dialogue.

Sciamma has a confident touch—the shooting and editing, and the choreography of the characters’ movements, are all pulled off with an innate grasp of cinematic rhythm. Her characters are complex and subtle, managing to evoke sympathy even as they plot Machiavellian schemes against each other. Blachère is a bit underdeveloped, relegated to a subplot while the other girls take centre stage, but Acquart and Haenel are riveting presences—hopefully, we’ll be seeing much more from them and their talented young director. (MF)

House of the Sleeping Beauties
Until realizing the film in question was an adaptation of Nobel prize winner Yasunari Kawabata’s novel, I half-expected House of the Sleeping Beauties to be found in the curtained partition of my local video store. Perhaps it’s not the cover I should be careful about judging, but the title.

Veteran actor/director Vadim Glowna (who directed festival fave Desperado City and starred in Sam Peckinpah’s Cross of Iron) successfully adapts Kawabata’s tale of mourning, eroticism and death to his native Germany. Depressed since the loss of his wife and daughter in a car accident 15 years prior, wealthy businessman Edmond (Glowna) ostensibly awaits his own death.

Attempting to ease his loneliness, longtime friend Kogi (fellow Cross of Iron star Maximillian Schell) advises him of a mysterious house in Berlin for older men. Inside the establishment, it’s possible to spend the night with a beautiful, naked girl who’s been drugged and is impossible to wake.

Upon visiting, Edmond is coyly assured by the house’s Madame (Angela Winkler) that the young girls have no way of remembering anything and are “experienced” in every situation. What exactly this entails is left opaque and Edmond is forced to ponder his morality while finding the solace he’s been lacking.

Superb acting carries this restrained gem from start to finish and Glowna succeeds in attaining a melancholy sterility in what could easily have been exploitative nude scenes. Beauties thankfully has far more to say about memory and existentialism than it does about the old bump and grind. (CS)

Nights in Rodanthe
Richard Gere plays Dr. Paul Flanner, a pompous surgeon sued by a Floridian yokel after Mrs. Yokel dies of anaesthetic-related complications. Hoping the bereaved family will drop the malpractice suit after hearing his side of the story, Gere hops in his sports car and drives down the Florida Keys to a quaint beachfront bed and breakfast where he will plan the attack. Managing the B&B is Adrienne Willis (Diane Lane), a recently separated fortysomething who’s far too busy bringing up two tweens to concentrate on her own needs.

It should be taken for granted things change when a hurricane sweeps in and the two are trapped inside the manor. Each manage to awaken in the other long-dormant sentiments of vulnerability and self-betterment. As they’re professing their love from afar while Paul reconnects with his estranged son, the two are separated and Adrienne is forced to come to terms with losing “the one” after spending mere days together.

Even for a literary adaptation, Rodanthe takes its time starting up. So much so that it was touch and go whether I’d manage to remain lucid. But when it gets going, there’s quite a lot to like about Gere and Lane’s presentations of middle-aged lovers trying to restart their lives.

Nobody can play an overblown, portentous twat quite like Gere. And through all the sappiness, I’m forced to acknowledge that if there’s one woman in Hollywood who could save Gere from himself, it’s Diane Lane. Fans of the chick flick will certainly walk away sniffly-nosed and puffy-eyed. (CS)

ALL FILMS OPEN THIS
FRIDAY, SEPT. 26

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