By David Elliott
Flix Nosh is a personal movie menu, fresh
each Friday.
APPETIZER: Reviews of Book
Club and The Guardians
Book Club
Book Club stars, in order of seniority: Jane Fonda, 80; Diane
Keaton, 72; Candice Bergen, 72, and perky puppy Mary Steenburgen, 65. They play
L.A. chums who meet monthly to discuss their chosen book, yet barely analyze
it. Consuming Fifty Shades of Grey, they
find one shade: it’s naughty. Which induces
quaint palpitations of sex panic.
The women are bathed in flattering light. In posh
homes and restaurants, immaculate décor is also enhancing as the friends exchange sitcom dialog. Perhaps they
recall the immortal words of Milton Berle to Eleanor Parker in The Oscar: “You have many good minutes
left.” Sadly, the movie has few. There are no actual characters, just the
stars who, with creaky pep and waxy twinkle, are enjoying a gilded cruise to
the ruins of their talent. Bill Holderman directed, as if re-floating The Love Boat, and we miss all those who
didn’t last to make this voyage: Cesar Romero, Soupy Sales, Kitty Carlisle, Shelley
Winters, Phyllis Diller, Abe Vigoda, Dick Van Patten …
Bergen, a judge, has an ex-spouse (Ed Begley Jr., 68)
who has a trophy bimbo. Steenburgen’s grumpy hubby (Craig T. Nelson, 74) is preoccupied
with his vintage motorcycle, but gets to be the victim of an extended Viagra joke. Hotel owner Fonda
both lures and shrugs the advances of millionaire Don Johnson, 68, whose fabled
Miami vice has withered to a goaty goatee. Widow Keaton acts like a frantic
retro-virgin as gentle seducer Andy Garcia, 62, purrs endearments and gives her
a fine aerial tour of Monument Valley. Adding cameo flavors, like extra dollops of senior
pudding, are Richard Dreyfuss, 70, and Wallace Shawn, 74.
Being a senior, I feel for senior actors and their hunger to work, but extruding this plastic fantasy is make-work piffle. As they putter along, barely tapping their skills, the viewing mind drifts into tiny corners.
Gee, that’s a nice repro of Gerald Murphy’s great painting “Watch” on the wall … did
Fonda, who now seems a shrunken replica of herself (but still has her voice and
timing), begin to miss Lily Tomlin from their show Grace and Frankie? … and isn’t Dreyfuss starting to look like Mickey
Rooney in his final, rotund phase? Forty-five years ago Dreyfuss was Curt in American Graffiti, genial teen grad. A
smart guy. Too smart for Book Club.
The Guardians
November
11 marks the 100th anniversary of the end of “the war to end all wars.”
It didn’t, but left over 30 million dead and turned Hitler into a fanatic. By
now there should be few aspects of World War I left to film. Surprise: Les Gardiennes (The Guardians), about women left to make the farms work in the deeply
rural zones known as La France profonde.
This earnest, touching movie from Xavier Beauvois (Of Gods and Men) is no Rosie the Riveter rouser. It centers upon an
old farm with thick stone buildings, and on the tested bond of two strong
women.
Rural matriarch Hortense is a capstone for Nathalie
Baye, after over 100 film credits. Hortense is aging but fiercely dedicated, a
real draft horse for work (her sweet, older husband tags along).Three sons are
in the army, each day tenses from anxiety about them, but there is so much work
with the crops and animals and firewood and cooking that pain is stoically
repressed. Hortense’s new hired hand is Francine, a red-haired orphan who looks
built to last, played with stoical power by Iris Bry. There is a new kind of
females-in-charge pride, yet without slogans. The farm prospers, sons come home
on leave before returning to the gory trenches, the priest recites the names of
new dead, and tall, impudent American soldiers arrive. Francine quickens with
love for the youngest son, Georges (Cyril Descours), who wants sexual comfort before
returning to battle. He has some presumptive male attitudes.
Often solemnly shot – has a Michel Legrand score ever
been so demurely used? – The Guardians
has some bucolic, homespun poetry. At church, the camera observes war-worn
faces as an organ builds its fugue. Other images echo great paintings by
Millet, Courbet, Chardin and, when Francine fills her round bath tub, Degas. But the meditative,
almost Bresson-like tone cracks when Beauvois shows a nightmare of George,
killing Germans, to trigger his coming choices with obvious psychology. This
brings much plot, fateful misunderstandings, prejudicial choices. But the land,
the animals and the labor give us a powerful sense of the nation that so cruelly suffered
World War I. The torn solidarity of Hortense and Francine, deeply felt by each,
keeps the film from ever becoming a soapbox or a memorial statue.
SALAD: A List
Remarkable Movies Involving Books:
Fahrenheit 451 (1966), Providence
(1977), Educating Rita (1983), Dreamchild (1985), 84 Charing Cross Road (1987), Misery
(1990), Prospero's Books (1991), You’ve Got Mail (1998), The Ninth Gate (1999), Wonder Boys (2000), Adaptation (2002), Capote
(2005), Joe Gould’s Secret (2005), The Ghost Writer (2010), Genius (2016).
WINE (Vin Orsonaire de Chateau Welles)
“Orson
had been talking when I entered (and) held the floor for pretty much the
remainder of the evening, with little more time allotted to the rest of us than
he needed to catch his breath, swig some drink, or drag on a Havana the size of
a baseball bat… The others didn’t mind. They were there to be amused and Orson
was more than eager to oblige with a veritable raconteurial cornucopia. My
entrance had interrupted an anecdote about the king of Moroco (and) he went on
to another and another. Stories about movies, plays, parties, intrigues, famous
people, scandalous affairs. It lasted through coffee, cognac, two servings of
rum-soaked crepes (three for Orson) … At one point he was going on about dining
on camel steaks in Egypt.” (The Orsonian Experience, as richly staged in Theodore
Roszak’s movie-mad, noir-spirited novel Flicker).
ENTRÉE (Starlight Rising)
For
Pam Grier, the department store changing room scene in Jackie Brown “resonated personally. Her memoir Foxy recalls young Pam shopping in segregated Denver, where stores
sent black buyers home to try on clothing rather than share dressing spaces
with white women (any not purchased had to be returned spotless). But later at
a store in L.A.’s Century City, a white employee showed her the changing room.
She was stunned ‘covering my amazement as best I could. I had to catch my
breath. My mother would never believe it, neither would my friends back home.’
She was ‘holding back tears’.” (From the Pam Grier/Jackie Brown chapter of my 2016 book Starlight Rising: Acting Up in Movies, available via Amazon, Nook
and Kindle.)
DESSERT (An Image)
A great movie image is more than a still,
it’s a distillation.
With
cig or not, Pam Grier’s Jackie is urban cool personified in Jackie Brown (Miramax Films, 1997;
director Quentin Tarantino, cinematographer Guillermo Navarro).
For
previous Noshes, scroll below.
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