The Swindle [1997]

 The Swindle, despite being a seemingly lighter work in Chabrol’s filmography – relatively speaking, that is –, grabs one’s attention with its amoral protagonists, slippery motivations, sly asides, and a narrative laced with ambiguous identities and deception. However, what made it particularly enticing, were its two central performances. Isabelle Huppert – in a more playful collab with Chabrol, coming in between her more diabolical turns in La Cérémonie and Merci pour le Chocolat – was enchanting as Betty, a woman assured of her powers as a seductress, while Michel Serrault mellowed his character Viktor’s underlying cunning with endearing self-effacement. Together they’re professional con-artists, who expertly plan and coolly execute their jobs while avoiding suspicions, and pursue opportunities in a manner that caution and prudence always take precedence over reckless greed and immediate returns. We’re never sure of their individual and shared backstories, nor do we get a clarity on their relationship – father-daughter, platonic lovers or purely “business partners” – which added layers of ambivalence to the proceedings. The film began by jumping straight into action, as we see the pair smoothly pulling off their latest job at a business conference in a Swiss hotel, with Betty first seducing a hapless man into her sultry charms, and Viktor then robbing him just enough to avoid scrutiny. Their decision to remain under the radar, however, is undone when Viktor gets drawn by Betty – despite his reservations – into a high-stakes scheme involving a shady courier (François Cluzet) working for a dangerous money-launderer. Though the film lost some of its fun and sauciness towards the last third, the wry equation between the two leads and deadpan celebration of their unscrupulous chicanery made it amusing, mischievous and entertaining.

Director: Claude Chabrol

Genre: Thriller/Crime Comedy/Heist Film

Language: French

Country: France

Merci pour le Chocolat (Nightcap) [2000]

 Liszt’s rapturous classical composition ‘Funerailles’ attained edgy and sinister undertones in Chabrol’s Merci pour le Chocolat. Music, therefore, was simultaneously ravishing and unsettling, with extended passages devoted to it as a means for both organically progressing the narrative and marvellously shaping the mood, and thereby playing a sensuous role in defining the film’s tone and atmosphere. Isabelle Huppert, in her penultimate collaboration with Chabrol, made it even more enticing and delicious with a stunningly slippery performance laced with just the right mix of sweetness, sharpness, straight-faced sinfulness and impish layers of delightful perversity of a well-made Swiss chocolate. This being a quintessential French noir, it was draped in sunshine and laced with understated elegance; and, being a quintessential Chabrol, it savoured the slow unravelling of the fractured underbelly of an upper-class bourgeois family. The film begins with the rebound marriage between Mika (Huppert), the well-off owner of a chocolate company, and André (Jacques Dutronc), a virtuoso pianist. They were married 18 years back – André’s second wife, with whom he’s had a son, died under mysterious circumstances – and they live in Mika’s stately mansion in Lausanne. When Jeanne (Anna Mouglalis), a talented young pianist who might be André’s daughter, makes an impulse visit to their place and forms a deep bond with him, Mika’s underlying sociopathic tendencies get ruffled, despite receiving Jeanne with outward effusiveness. Huppert’s striking turn as a treacherous person – the kind that she’s made her own over her illustrious career – was meticulously synchronized with the film’s musical crescendo and complemented the sardonic themes of control, obsession and dysfunction. The interplay between music and menace, incidentally, was re-invoked the following year by Huppert in Haneke’s The Piano Teacher.

Director: Claude Chabrol

Genre: Thriller/Crime Drama/Psychological Thriller/Marital Drama/Post-Noir

Language: French

Country: France

The Birds, the Bees and the Italians [1966]

 The ingeniously named The Birds, the Bees and the Italians (the direct translation of its Italian title, interestingly, was simply “Ladies and Gentlemen”) – the concluding chapter in Pietro Germi’s “commedia all'italiana” classic ‘Honour Trilogy’ – distinctively stood out vis-à-vis both its precursors, viz. Divorce Italian Style and Seduced and Abandoned.  For one, this was an episodic film with hyperlinked stories wherein the POV shifted between the same group of men; for another, it was set in the north-eastern region of Veneto, as opposed to the southern Sicilian towns in the preceding films. Germi’s preoccupations with moral codes seeped in provincial expressions of marriage, family, machismo, sexuality and infidelity, using satiric and farcical brushstrokes, were nevertheless there throughout. In the hilarious first story, a garrulous doctor (Gigi Ballista) can’t control his mirth and tongue upon being confided by a womanizer friend of his impotency; this lowering of guard was exactly what his buddy needed to seduce the doctor’s ravishing wife (Beba Lončar). In the middle segment, a morose bank employee (Gastone Moschin), who’s living through hellish marital life on account of his nagging wife, falls for a beautiful cashier (Virna Lisi) at the café frequented by him and his gregarious friends; the trouble starts when, instead of having an affair on the side, which would’ve been more socially acceptable, he decides to elope with his girlfriend. In the final episode, the lecherous men seduce a young girl from the country; upon realizing the legal implications as she’s still a minor, they must jointly suppress the matter. An alcohol-fuelled private party in the first tale, with the camera dizzyingly roving across multiple characters, was this ironic and irreverent film’s most bravura sequence.

Director: Pietro Germi

Genre: Comedy/Black Comedy/Social Satire/Omnibus Film/Ensemble Film

Language: Italian

Country: Italy

Seduced and Abandoned [1964]

 Seduced and Abandoned, the uproarious middle chapter in Pietro Germi’s subversive ‘Honour Trilogy’ – sandwiched between his rollicking masterpiece Divorce Italian Style, and the amusing The Birds, the Bees and the Italians – was a work of manic brilliance. The satire here was so pungent and acidic that a bout of heartburn is unavoidable, even while laughing uncontrollably – and uncomfortably – at its madcap, farcical and outré humour aimed at medieval mindsets and ways of life. The film was intimately linked to the delicious preceding film, which itself was scalding and grotesque, in that this too was centred on the primitive social mores of “custom”, “tradition” and “honour” in a Sicilian town seeped in patriarchy, machismo, gossip-mongering and shallow veneer; just that, it was nastier, crazier and even more baroque, and Germi wildly cut loose in his narrative design. When her family gets to know that the young and nubile Agnese (Stefania Sandrelli) has been seduced by, and in the process lost her precious virginity to, Peppini (Aldo Puglisi), her elder sister’s shifty and lecherous fiancé, all hell breaks loose. Her father Don Vincenzo (Saro Urzì) tries every trick in the book to “save” his family’s honour and image – from deceit, browbeating and emotional blackmailing, to kidnapping, shotgun wedding and attempted murder. The film was made even zanier by noteworthy turns led by a stellar Urzi; string of oddball characters – a suicidal and penurious aristocrat, a cop who wishes Sicily’s erasure from Italy’s map, etc. –; idiosyncratic score with a mix of sardonic dirges and sassy jazz; and gorgeous B/W cinematography that alternated between wide-angled framing and the kind of oblique close-ups of gleefully sweaty and sleazy faces straight out of Buñuel.

Director: Pietro Germi

Genre: Comedy/Black Comedy/Social Satire

Language: Italian

Country: Italy

Section Spéciale (Special Section) [1975]

 Cost-Gavras’ Section Spéciale bore the attributes that powerfully resonated in his stunning trilogy that preceded it and had made him among the most thrilling political filmmakers in the world – his pulsating masterpiece Z, the intensely unsettling The Confession, and the smashing gem State of Siege – in that it too portrayed a dystopian historical chapter from the 20^th century, did that using a progressive Marxist gaze that considered acts of abuse anywhere and against anyone as a personal affront, and on an ambitious narrative canvas smartly enmeshed with agit-prop elements. Made with the objective of uncovering the rotten core of “Vichy France” – the collaborationist regime that was formed under German Occupation during WW2 – it chronicled a sham trial that was held by it to appease its Nazi masters, and thereby underscored the power of corruption and the corruption of power. When a Nazi officer is assassinated by the Resistance in Paris, the Minister of Justice Joseph Barthélémy (Louis Seigner) – with active complicity of the government – quickly drafts a draconian legislation, sets up a kangaroo court, and retrospectively tries Communists, socialists and Jews – who’ve already been sentenced for petty offenses – in order to execute them, and thereby avert retaliations. Though lacking the visceral power and gripping dynamism of the said trilogy, and missing the charismatic presence of Yves Montand, it nevertheless categorically conveyed the state-sponsored abomination of foundational legal principles. A sequence near the beginning, where a peaceful protest is violently broken up by the cops, highlighted Costa-Gavras’ ability to create exciting outdoor set-pieces. Its depiction of the Vichy regime’s use of the guillotine as a brutal political device, incidentally, would have a companion piece in Chabrol’s damning Story of Women.

Director: Costa-Gavras

Genre: Thriller/Political Thriller/Historical Thriller

Language: French

Country: France

Three Brothers [1981]

 Rosi’s melancholic film Three Brothers is a tale of grief, familial convergence and attempted reconciliations, as well as one of anger, disillusionment and resignation. These made it a quietly meditative exercise that’s alternately brooding and lyrical, and punctuated with flashes of riveting political commentary – through allusions, arguments and anecdotal footage – that contextualized the interlocking personal stories. This was, therefore, closer to his majestic preceding film Christ Stopped at Eboli rather than his blazing prior works, in that politics inherently shaped the elegiac proceedings without foregrounding them. The titular brothers are Raffaele (Philippe Noiret), a well-known, prosaic, middle-aged judge in Rome who’s considering presiding over a high-profile trial involving the Red Brigade that could invite danger for him; Rocco (Vittorio Mezzogiorno), a religious and reticent man who works at a correctional facility for troubled youth in Naples; and Nicola (Michele Placido), a shopfloor worker at an auto factory in Turin actively engaged in labour union actions, and facing marital breakdown. Upon their mother’s demise, their father – the elderly Donato (Charles Vanel), who resides in a farm in Southern Italy – summons them for the funeral. While that gives a rare chance for them to revisit a place and reconnect with its inhabitants who they’d left behind long back, it also engenders simmering undercurrents – particularly between Raffaele and Nicola – on account of their diametrically different backgrounds. The opposing forces evoked by their homecoming were alternated with startling flashforward sequences, poignant ruminations by Donato who’s increasingly lost in his memories, and Nicola’s young daughter captivated by the bucolic rhythms of this rustic milieu. Filled with gorgeously framed images, the film served predominantly as an observational portraiture, despite the underlying zeitgeist, politics and violence.

Director: Francesco Rosi

Genre: Drama/Family Drama

Language: Italian

Country: Italy

Christ Stopped at Eboli [1979]

 Christ Stopped at Eboli, Francesco Rosi’s sublime adaptation of Carlo Levi’s celebrated memoir, was composed as much as elegiac memories of enforced exile, as it was crafted as probing field notes on people existing in the margins. Through these parallel routes – informed by Levi’s personal impressions, political consciousness, and ethnographic meditations borne out of curiosity and empathy, and that unfolded through a series of loosely strung vignettes and anecdotes – it emerged as a document both specific in its context and timeless in its eloquence. Levi, a qualified doctor, left-wing intellectual and anti-fascist activist based in Turin, used his passion for painting as a front for his political resistance against Mussolini. Upon being arrested for his dissidence, he was banished to a remote town in remote southern Italy. While residing there from 1935 to 1936 – his exile was cut short upon the country’s successful invasion of Ethiopia – he witnessed impoverishment, disenfranchisement, diseases, superstitions and ancient customs. Despite the arid, desolate and alienating environs – poetically captured in washed-out colours – he got enmeshed into the community, participated in discussions, renewed his long-severed tryst with medicine, captured the place through his paintings, and even developed a sensuous relationship with a promiscuous cleaning woman (Irene Papas), leading to a rich understanding of the irreconcilable North-South divide. Rosi’s observational style provided the perfect counterfoil to Gian Maria Volontè’s immersive turn as the soft-spoken yet fiercely perceptive Levi, in this eloquent, essayistic study. The opening sequence, languidly cataloguing Levi’s gigantic journey via multiple transportation modes, during which he befriends an abandoned dog, was particularly memorable. The locale, premise and overarching theme, incidentally, heavily reminded me of Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us, their tonal departures notwithstanding.

Director: Francesco Levi

Genre: Drama/Historical Drama/Biopic

Language: Italian

Country: Italy

Land and Freedom [1995]

 Loach’s deeply underrated gem Land and Freedom remains a singular work in his oeuvre, for his rare foray into historical epic – thus presaging the excellent The Wind that Shakes the Barley – and into a setting far removed from his preferred milieu of working-class Britain. Yet, it was also profoundly linked to the political inquiries, meditations and dissents that he’s pursued throughout his career. This rousing ode to the collective spirit of resistance – albeit, one tampered with bleak setbacks and heartbreaking defeats – opens with the death of the aged Liverpudlian Dave Carne, upon which his granddaughter (Suzanne Maddock) delves into his mementoes at his flat – newspaper cuttings, letters, photographs, and earth wrapped in a red cloth, the immensely moving significance of which will emerge later – and thereby pieces together an extraordinarily eventful chapter from his younger days. Unfolding in 1936 over flashbacks, David (Ian Hart), an unemployed Communist, travels to Spain to enlist with the International Brigade and fight with the Republicans against Franco. However, he ends up joining the Marxist Revolutionary and unwaveringly anti-fascist group POUM. There he experiences the thrill of fighting fascists, seeing a freed village opting for collectivization, befriending comrades, and having a tender romance with a fiery Catalan fighter (Rosana Pastor), as well as facing terrible losses, witnessing the appropriation of the left by Stalinists, and most devastatingly, the collapse of shared dreams. Marvellously shot on location that lent it both poetic and gritty textures, this electrifying collaboration between Loach and playwright Jim Allen recalled Homage to Catalonia, Orwell’s unforgettable memoir from his days of walking with POUM revolutionaries during the Spanish Civil War, and ended on a stirring display of solidarity during David’s funeral.

Director: Ken Loach

Genre: Drama/Historical Epic/War

Language: English/Catalan

Country: UK

The Wind That Shakes the Barley [2006]

 The Wind that Shakes the Barley was equal parts poetic and political, as evidenced by its deeply elegiac title that referenced a revolutionary Irish folk ballad written by Robert Dwyer Joyce. A rare foray by Ken Loach into a complex, sprawling and historical canvas – that, and its fearless dive into a bloody civil war from which no one comes out either physically or morally unscathed made it a splendid companion piece to his magnificent Spanish Civil War saga Land and Freedom – it focused first on the Irish War of Independence and then the Irish Civil War over a turbulent couple of years, viz. 1920-22. Beginning on a tranquil note, we see a group of young guys playing “hurling” against an enchanting background. The game, unfortunately, becomes a tipping point, as they’re rounded up by the vicious “Black and Tans” – British soldiers stationed in Ireland to crush the IRA’s rebellion – and a youngster is executed for refusing to speak in English. Damien (Cillian Murphy), a studious, soft-spoken and pacifist doctor, does a radical volte face upon witnessing this and another act of mindless thuggery, and joins the IRA outfit led by his elder brother Teddy (Pádraic Delaney). Structured roughly into two halves, we first see them fighting as comrades-in-arms against British imperialism; but, upon formation of “Irish Free State”, they become profoundly opposed as Teddy decides to forcibly support the compromise struck with Britain while Damien continues his struggle for complete independence and socialist state. Beautifully shot in sombre palettes, filled with murky moral intransigencies that bloody conflicts invariably elicit, and led by riveting turns, this film was at once furious, bleak and melancholic… just like a revolutionary folk ballad.

Director: Ken Loach

Genre: War/Historical Epic

Language: English

Country: Ireland/UK