Authors — Vadim Rizov
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6,500 Kilometers in 29 Shooting Days: Jérôme Reybaud on 4 Days in France
I wrote a little bit about 4 Days in France yesterday; a few hours after publishing, I went to meet writer/director Jérôme Reybaud to follow up on some particular points of interest. Some basic plot points about this recommended quasi-romance/road trip narrative: a great deal of the film follows two men driving cross-country across France (one in pursuit of his just-left partner until their routes converge) to an extensive collection of classical recordings, stopping at locations including the top of the very cold Alps, a used bookstore, a theater, and an encounter with a notably aggrieved lady who chews out one character […]
by Vadim Rizov on Aug 4, 2017 -
4 Days in France and This Time Tomorrow: Limited Release Friday x 2
There’s a critical cliche often lobbed at limited-screen-time players who make big impressions: that they seem to “have their own lives that go on before and after the movie.” Generally speaking, this doesn’t mean anything more than that characters have been written and performed in such a way that they don’t come off as crude ciphers merely delivering exposition or enabling plot pivots, but this really does apply in a meaningful way to Jerome Reybaud’s 4 Days in France. The title is literal: one morning, Pierre (Pascal Cervo) wakes up and, for no apparent reason, leaves the apartment he shares with […]
by Vadim Rizov on Aug 3, 2017 -
Storytelling, Memory and Alternate Worlds: Michael Almereyda on Marjorie Prime and Escapes
Michael Almereyda has two films this year, the curiously rhyming duo of Marjorie Prime and Escapes. The former, as I wrote from Sundance, is “a heavily modified adaptation of Jordan Harrison’s play, customized to fit the ever-adventurous Almereyda’s tastes and frames of reference. The premise is both simple and tricky: in the future, your deceased loved ones can be brought back as holograms for company. Marjorie (Lois Smith), aging and losing her memory, has her late husband Walter (Jon Hamm), eternally in his 40s, for company, a development which makes her daughter Tess (Geena Davis) a little nervous. From this low-key sci-fi […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jul 26, 2017 -
Twin Peaks, Parts 7-8: Re VFX and Almost Nothing More
I’ve got zip (that I want) to say (at this time) about Twin Peaks parts seven and eight in terms of The Bigger Picture, but I do want to delve into episode eight’s widely-presumed anomalous status — that it marked an unprecedented event not just in TV (true, I’m pretty sure) but in larger visual culture. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how many recappers, while clearly over their heads, are baseline sympathetic to finding themselves routinely unmoored, even if that means repeating over and over that this is closer to “avant-garde art” than normal TV to meet the word count. My feed […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jun 26, 2017 -
My Journey Through French Cinema: Personal Canon-Building with Bertrand Tavernier
Names you won’t hear in Bertrand Tavernier’s personal history of French cinema: Abel Gance, Marcel Pagnol, Sacha Guitry, Alain Resnais, Philippe Garrel. Don’t expect to hear about any directors who got started after the ’60s either: Tavernier begins with a solid overview of the glories of Jacques Becker, the first director to make an impression on him (“At age six, I could have chosen worse”) and ends with an equally lengthy tribute to Claude Sautet — along with Jean-Pierre Melville, one of his two professional fairy godmother gateways to the production side of French cinema. There is, to be sure, plenty of […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jun 20, 2017 -
Twin Peaks, Episodes 5 & 6: Five Notes (The Number Means Nothing)
Having watched episodes 1-4 in one marathon session, what I expected is true: the new Twin Peaks is considerably less satisfying taken in one distanced hour at a time. This needs sustained duration to really breathe. I’m not fool enough to try to parse What It All Means at this time, but five stray notes: I seriously doubt David Lynch has spent more than, at most, five seconds in his life wondering if he’s doing something too “difficult” or inaccessible for a hypothetical viewer. It’s been both unsurprising and mildly annoying to read umpteen TV recappers who — unable to go about their […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jun 15, 2017 -
Twin Peaks, Season 3, Episodes 1-4: Sculpting in Time
(Spoilers follow.) It’s not surprising that David Lynch has a lot to get out of his artistic system after, effectively, 11 years of dormancy on the moving-image front. In interviews, Lynch has said that he thinks of this new “season” as an 18-hour movie “shown not in a big theater, but it’s shown as cinema on television.” Having slammed through four episodes in one night, I’d take him at his word: the tonal transition he accomplishes in that time is amplified when absorbed as one unit, and I suspect the final unveiled product will benefit from being viewed in as close to one […]
by Vadim Rizov on May 24, 2017 -
Trailer Watch: Ricky D’Ambrose’s Notes on an Appearance
To date, Ricky D’Ambrose has completed five short films — he wrote for us about the making of Six Cents in the Pocket, which premiered at NYFF 2015 — and is now raising funds for his debut feature, Notes on an Appearance. A young man’s disappearance is at the center of a spare, tidy feature-length narrative film, set inside New York City apartments, subway stations, bookstores, and cafes as the supporters of an elusive political theorist embark on a covert program of indiscriminate violence and censure. But Todd and Madeleine, who search for the missing David, soon enter the company of strangers […]
by Vadim Rizov on May 2, 2017 -
“If You Can Cut the Boring Scenes Out, That Saves Time”: Juho Kuosmanen on The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki
Juho Kuosmanen’s first feature, The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki, is a modest-seeming film that hits all of its marks with unusual precision, following featherweight boxer Mäki (Jarkko Lahti) in the two weeks leading up to a big fight against American champ Davey Moore. Mäki is nervous and evasive, slacking on his training and running away to the distraction of his maybe-fiance. Throughout the film, he’s trailed by a documentary crew (a detail based on reality) that repeatedly stages faux-verite scenes of Mäki in training, meeting financiers, et al. — in a sly way, Kuosmanen is almost congratulating himself on the high […]
by Vadim Rizov on Apr 24, 2017 -
“The Language is Being Destroyed”: Terence Davies on A Quiet Passion
A Quiet Passion is a film of many firsts for Terence Davies: his first biopic, his first all-digital-feature, and — unexpectedly — his first work which, for a time, could pass for a comedy. Davies introduces Emily Dickinson as a young girl, spends the metaphorical first reel establishing her complicated personality — devout but doubting, jealously proud of her poetry yet scared to be recognized for it. In a startling sequence, he dollies in on Emily and her family members as they have their photos taken: during the track in, a very subtle dissolve ages them all into adults. The grown […]
by Vadim Rizov on Apr 13, 2017
