Serious Pleasures: Season\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Sweet Spots<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nI’ve given up on the movies.\u00c2\u00a0 But like Loudon Wainwright III says on his new album, movies are a mother to me.\u00c2\u00a0 They entice me, they soothe me, they open my horizons so I see the real world differently, with experienced eyes.<\/p>\n
But that song was cut in the seventies.\u00c2\u00a0 When we were addicted to movies.\u00c2\u00a0 And rock and roll.<\/p>\n
Both existed in the sixties.\u00c2\u00a0 Some believe music took a turn for the worse in the new decade, but films positively flourished.\u00c2\u00a0 I once saw four flicks in a day.\u00c2\u00a0 Two was not unusual, three frequently.\u00c2\u00a0 And I even went to see Marcel Ophuls’ epic documentary "The Memory Of Justice", which required me to bring lunch in order to endure its 278 minute length.<\/p>\n
I did not bring lunch to the Landmark today.\u00c2\u00a0 I had a Hebrew National hot dog in the lobby before the film began.\u00c2\u00a0 But this film, which was not brief, did not allow hunger pangs, any outside stimuli to intrude.\u00c2\u00a0 I was riveted by "Tell No One" from its very first frame.<\/p>\n
Which was of an outdoor dinner in the French countryside.\u00c2\u00a0 Akin to Woody Allen’s depiction of the Catskills in "A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy", but with a lot more wine, and even more soul.\u00c2\u00a0 Because the French are about living.<\/p>\n
But not long into the movie someone dies.<\/p>\n
The protagonist and his wife go for a late night swim.\u00c2\u00a0 In an unprotected pond where you fear people are going to drown.\u00c2\u00a0 But no one drowned.\u00c2\u00a0 And then it was eight years later.<\/p>\n
Alex is now a doctor.\u00c2\u00a0 Is this a French comedy?<\/p>\n
No, this is a thriller, with enough plot twists to be eager for the flick to end, so you can turn to your partner and ask…WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?<\/p>\n
My mother told me she couldn’t figure half of it out, but I chalked that up to age…\u00c2\u00a0 Until.<\/p>\n
That’s what got me to go.\u00c2\u00a0 The article in the "New York Times" caused me to bring the film up to my mother, who let out an exclamation when I mentioned the title that had me knowing it was a winner.\u00c2\u00a0 And at dinner, Daniel Glass’ eyes bugged out recounting his experience of seeing the movie earlier in the summer.\u00c2\u00a0 Can you imagine, he had to go to a gig right thereafter!<\/p>\n
But we didn’t go to see "Tell No One" right away.\u00c2\u00a0 We sent to see "Frozen River" first.<\/p>\n
On my birthday I went to see "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and "21".\u00c2\u00a0 The former wasn’t funny and the latter was a remake of too many pictures I’d already seen.\u00c2\u00a0 If this passes for Hollywood filmed entertainment, I’m out.\u00c2\u00a0 But I thought the indies still had soul.\u00c2\u00a0 Until I was disappointed by "Frozen River".\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, the performances were great, but there was the script of about half a movie.\u00c2\u00a0 Makes me crazy.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t want my money back, but my time. Even more, I still want to believe there are artists, who are shooting for excellence.<\/p>\n
That’s what’s lacking not only in film, but music, excellence.\u00c2\u00a0 If only the records everybody e-mailed me about were that good.\u00c2\u00a0 You know greatness. You’re drawn in immediately.\u00c2\u00a0 You want to play the record again and again, you don’t want the film to end.<\/p>\n
I was fearful "Tell No One" would end with no resolution.\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, that’s one of the few problems, the complete explication in the final minutes.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re about to get angry, feeling this is another French art film with no resolution.\u00c2\u00a0 But you don’t get the right to make that complaint.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, it’s hard to put the flick in an American genre.<\/p>\n
The characters are three dimensional.\u00c2\u00a0 The life depicted feels real.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s tedium and suspense.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, not much tedium, but it’s not constantly whiz bang, like in American flicks.<\/p>\n
But there are American film elements.\u00c2\u00a0 Like the chase scene.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t see that coming.\u00c2\u00a0 In the middle of a French thriller that appeared to be more of a psychological drama?\u00c2\u00a0 The king is "Bullitt".\u00c2\u00a0 Runner-up is "To Live And Die In L.A.", wherein they drive against traffic on the freeway.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s a freeway element in "Tell No One", but it’s harrowing in a way no prior film chase is.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re not sure what the lead is thinking.\u00c2\u00a0 You expect one thing to happen, but it doesn’t, then it does…<\/p>\n
We live in a dumbed-down society.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re supposed to lower our expectations.\u00c2\u00a0 Say something is good because it makes a lot of money, or the audience it appeals to has never been exposed to the classics.\u00c2\u00a0 At some point you feel you’re just too old, you’ve seen it all.\u00c2\u00a0 You won’t fall for the machinations of the Hollywood apparatus and you seem to be saying no more than yes.<\/p>\n
But you’ll say yes to "Tell No One".<\/p>\n
The paper said it was only playing for one more week.\u00c2\u00a0 So we schlepped to the Landmark, where we sat on a couch and experienced a pristine image better than the one on Felice’s Samsung, which is rare.\u00c2\u00a0 The sound system was loud enough without making you feel like you were reliving July 4th. And the musical choices…\u00c2\u00a0 Jeff Buckley’s "Lilac Wine" never sounded that good…<\/p>\n
I lost myself on a cool damp night<\/span><\/p>\nActually, it was a typically warm, sunny L.A. day.\u00c2\u00a0 But with the lights down in the theatre, you could feel the French air.<\/p>\n
I gave myself in that misty light<\/span><\/p>\nThe darkness was pregnant with possibilities.\u00c2\u00a0 Who was the murderer?\u00c2\u00a0 And why?<\/p>\n
Was hypnotized by a strange delight<\/span><\/p>\nAt some point in the future, they’re going to remake "Tell No One" with American stars.\u00c2\u00a0 People you’ve heard of, who you know intimately from the gossip pages.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe George Clooney or Brad Pitt.\u00c2\u00a0 The chase scene will be so over the top as to be completely unrealistic.\u00c2\u00a0 The gangster will look like a runway model.\u00c2\u00a0 And the villain will be so one dimensional, so evil, so bad, that he’ll be more of a cartoon than a real person.\u00c2\u00a0 Grosses could be good, but probably won’t be, despite the hundred million dollar cost.\u00c2\u00a0 Because it takes an auteur, creating something for the very first time, unrestricted, bending and integrating genres, to come up with something truly new and riveting.\u00c2\u00a0 Go off by just a couple of degrees and you’ve got crap.\u00c2\u00a0 Get it right and the audience has a eureka moment, can’t stop talking about the film, needs to tell everybody about it.<\/p>\n
Like me.\u00c2\u00a0 Please go see this movie.\u00c2\u00a0 If you don’t like it, then I don’t like you.<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
But I’m telling you. The "New York Times" did an article on the summer’s best movies.\u00c2\u00a0 Not the biggest, the ones hyped by the talking heads and magazines that live off their heroes and heroines’ exploits, but the best…the sleepers, the secret pleasures. Serious Pleasures: Season\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Sweet Spots I’ve given up on the movies.\u00c2\u00a0 But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-media"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-m2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}