Double French Dip

The Wild Child, 1970
Dir: Francois Truffaut

This is like nothing Truffaut had done before. Well, not really. There are elements in this about alienation in youth, but here it is for completely different reasons. The Wild Child is about a boy (Jean-Pierre Cargol) found in the French wilderness in 1798 who is taken in by a doctor (Truffaut himself) in an attempt to civilize him. Truffaut, I think, thrust himself into the film because he saw so may autobiographical elements in it. The boy is thought by the doctors at the beginning to be a bastard left in the forest for dead by unwanting parents (like Truffaut himself, well, the illegitimate part anyway). It's presented at a very leisurely pace, almost pseudo-documentary style, with a focus on Victor's (the boy responds well to "o" sounds) lessons and his troubles. But what really got me about the film was the quiet, cinematic moments that popped up: Victor staring at a candle late at night, demanding to pushed around in a wheelbarrow after feeling the exhilaration of it the first time, hiding way up a tree. The great black and white visuals by Nestor Almendros (Days of Heaven (1978), so a prettty fuckin awesome DP) only enhance a great little film.

4/5


My Night At Muad's, 1969
Dir: Eric Rohmer

The recent death of Eric Rohmer has been well documented, and I thought, in my own way, I might try to pay my respects to someone that many people think is a great director, and check out a film that I have never seen before. I can't lose right? Okay, I tried but this features basically nothing I look for in cinema. Rohmer is so self-conscious of his audience that it's nauseating. The fact that he's making his film as dry, unemotional, and pretentious as possible must mean he knows that he's appealing to a group of upper-class snobs who try to be intellectual. When he decides to have someone blabber on about stupid religious issues, it's no different than Tarantino deciding to have a guy with sunglasses shoot a bunch of people. I'll admit, the movie starts out pretty cool. Little to no dialogue (the dialogue between Trintignant and his colleagues is actually somewhat realistic!) and I'd say there were some pretty impressive shots but that's all the film has going for it. That, and Françoise Fabian as Maud is a stone fox. Basically every line in the movie is pondering about (completely uninteresting) philosophical garbage. Rohmer's characters don't even come close to resembling humans, they're pawns just executing his own ideas. Good for him, but I don't give a shit (sry yr ded tho).

P.S. Another reason why this fucking blows: it's a unanimous choice for a great "wine party" film on many "great wine party" lists. Hey Alex, can you make that best of decade list? Plz?!

1.5/5

This book is so good, let's talk about it forever...hey back there, how good is your book? I bet it's not even close to as good as this masterpiece. Sorry, I'm trying to connect on some level. I'm just a really deep thinker...