JCVD (2008, Mebrouk El Mechri)

"JCVD" had me at its opening scene. A wildly over-the-top action scene with much typical Van Damme ass-kicking (and accompanied by a Curtis Mayfield tune) is followed by Jean-Claude walking off the set, heading straight for the director, a young, talentless hack, to complain about the filming. The director says to his interpreter in Chinese: "Just because he brought John Woo to Hollywood doesn't mean he can rub my dick with sandpaper", and the interpreter gives a nonsense excuse about how not having a gun preserves the character's integrity. It's funnier than anything in Ben Stiller's industry spoof "Tropic Thunder", and certainly far closer to reality.

Thankfully, the rest of the film does not disappoint. The film's conceit is clever: Van Damme's dislike of the films he works on is clear, he's got an awful, typically Hollywood agent (at one point Van Damme asks what he's working on next, to which his agent replies "Feel No Injury, it's about a Vietnam vet who...", Van Damme assures his agent that they shot that film several months ago and his agent responds by looking through his papers and offering a corrected response, "Feel No Injury II, it's about a gulf war vet..."), has basically become a joke and knows it, and is fighting for custody of his daughter. The next step after these establishing scenes is, naturally, to put the 'real' Van Damme in a situation right out of a movie he might have starred in- he gets stuck in the midst of a hostage situation at a bank, while attempting to make a withdrawal to pay his lawyer. The twist? Everyone outside the bank, including the police and a huge crowd of fans, believe he is the one taking the hostages, and in this scenario Van Damme is powerless, unable to just kick and punch his way out of it.

Going into the film I had expected an entertaining, slightly angsty meta-narrative about Van Damme in a hostage situation. What I got was something far funnier, far more thrilling and involving, and certainly far more genuinely emotional than the film probably had any right to be. The in-jokes are fun ("if it wasn't for you he'd still be shooting pigeons in Hong Kong", "... well, at least he made 'Face/Off'"), several scenes are genuinely suspenseful, but most surprising of all is that the film features one of the greatest scenes in years: just past the hour mark Van Damme faces the camera and delivers a lengthy soliloquy on why he made the movie, why he decided to take up karate, and expresses his feelings on celebrity, his own image, women, drugs, and Hollywood. It's bordering on ridiculous, but how can anyone laugh when Jean-Claude Van Damme is baring his soul on camera and actually crying? The scene either proves that Van Damme is not as limited an actor as most think he is, or that there was no real acting involved.

The cinematography, specifically the lighting, will bother some people but I thought it was quite good, and El Mechri is a fine director, who juggles the comedic and dramatic aspects of the film as well as the thriller side of it successfully. Van Damme's performance is, for my money, the best of the year, challenged only by Clint Eastwood's potential acting farewell in "Gran Torino" and Sean Penn's surprisingly effective turn in "Milk". While I don't expect much agreement, "JCVD" is my second favorite film of 2008, just after "My Winnipeg", and one of the most enjoyable viewing experiences I've had in quite some time.

Coeurs (2006, Alain Resnais)

There are several reasons why I chose "Coeurs" as the first Alain Resnais film I would see, chief among them that it seemed interesting and was one of his more acclaimed recent films (and I didn't want to start with films of his that were probably influenced very heavily by the 'Nouveau Roman' writers he worked with, including obviously Alain Robbe-Grillet on "Last Year at Marienbad" and Marguerite Duras on "Hiroshima mon amour"). Also, I find myself very interested in the works of artists who have lived longer than most of us will but are still working, as there is frequently a sort of experience and wisdom there which fascinates me. Also, it was pointed out to me by more than one person that a screenplay I had written with a friend (before either of us had seen or even heard of "Coeurs") was conceptually similar and, according to the one person who had read it, had some plot similarities too. Naturally I wanted to see it for myself.

Ultimately, aside from the format which is quite similar in its moving frequently between different groups of characters for relatively short scenes, there was only one striking similarity which I could detect: in both screenplays two characters go on a blind date using fake names. Other than that, my approach and thought process was almost entirely dissimilar to Resnais', and naturally, although I'd love to say otherwise, it is his which is more interesting. I call it Resnais' approach, but the film is based on an English play and translated/adapted by Jean-Michel Ribes, so due credit to them as well obviously. Still, I was impressed, after hearing from more than one person about Resnais being a generally unintellectual, commercial film-maker, with not only the film's formally dazzling structure, look, and editing, but with the impressive restraint shown at every step. There's no showboating here, and Resnais does absolutely nothing with the film that is not important somehow to the story and characters. His constant use of partitions, the emphasized staginess of the film (though not the acting), as well as the dissolves linking each scene to the next are all crucial to the thematic content of the film.

I initially met the film with some resistance. Some of the humor was too cute, and it felt like light fluff to me initially. However, much like numerous other films, "Coeurs" eventually came together, making the whole experience worthwhile. Ultimately the only things which truly bothered me were some intrusive clichés, all of which were linked directly to the character Charlotte, who really singlehandedly keeps the film from reaching true greatness. Any scenes with her feel like a waste compared to the dazzling scenes with the other characters. Well, to be fair, not every scene: the stuff with Lionel is quite strong (but certainly not the nonsense with his father, which isn't funny nor dramatically strong). When you have a mosaic-like structure of this sort, it's natural that some parts will be less interesting (and it's up to the individual which parts are less interesting), but my personal reaction to Charlotte and her relationship with Thierry was not even mild amusement, but a severe disinterest. The film is oddly distant, surely to emphasize the loneliness of these characters, but it's also wonderfully warm most of the time, and most of the characters are extremely well-drawn. Then you have a caricature who is never truly explored to significantly lessen the quality of the film. It's just plain disappointing.

A very interesting film, certainly a technically excellent and formally interesting one, but I was disappointed in the lesser sections of it. Still, it gets a strong recommendation from me, due to Resnais' direction, thanks to the truly superb acting, and, obviously, the parts of the film (which is the majority of it) which didn't get on my nerves. It's just frustrating that it falls just short of greatness.