Jane Eyre meets noir in the confusingly titled
Lady Macbeth. Which is just gol-dern great. The direction and dialog is austere, but the performances are anything but. This doesn't actually have anything to do with Shakespeare, its actually based on a classic 1800's Russian novel, but it easily transposes into the mid-1800's British setting it occupies, in fact that it was written for anything else seems strange. The power dynamics of its time and place are particularly key to how the story progresses, making it a rare period piece with a contemporary attitude. But mostly its a brilliantly performed piece of acrid history.
Artsy lowbrow comes to life in the genuinely delightful and sweet
Lost in Paris, in which the late middle-aged husband and wife duo of directors/writers/stars go on an adventure in well, Paris that involves lots of madcap sorts of shenanigans. The 89-year-old Emmanuel Riva (yes, from Amour) plays the third wheel/catalyst/macguffin in the film, and for a very elderly person its a surprisingly physical performance. Its slight, but pleasurable, like a better feature length version of Mr. Bean than Rowan Atkinson actually made.
Most art isn't about the impermanence of itself. Hell, many artists are shooting for some sort of immortality to begin with. But the charm of the subject of
The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography, is in how little of a crap she gives about posterity, which is a funny stance for a photographier to take. Its an Errol Morris documentary, but he breaks from his usual form, the interviews with his subject aren't conducted through his
'interrotron' but in what appears to be Dorfman's archival room. She talks vividly of the past that her life work evokes, but its not necessarily a wistful film. We get to spend some time in the company of an idiosyncratic artist as she details her life's story and her process, and Morris himself seems to be enamored with her as she is with her large scale photography. I got to be too.
ps
spoiler (click to show/hide)
there's some purely accidental similarities to the recent Kiyoshi Kurosawa joint Daguerreotype, what with the photography mechanics and the driven artist. Its like the non-sinister version of that.
