Quote:
Rare is a film like Eugène Green’s Le Monde Vivant (The Living World), one of such humor, wit, whimsy, and spirit told in a mode so strict, formal, and minimal. It is a fable, or a fairy tale, or a certain way of looking at reality if you like, but it is impossible not to suggest a child-friendly and cheerful homage to Robert Bresson’s Lancelot du Lac. The Bresson comparison is inevitable, what with Green’s frank simplicity in framing, his deliberating speaking and minimally performing actors (resembling Bresson’s “models”), and most importantly his respect not just for each individual shot, movement, and line of dialog, but in the accumulation of these things. There is, for example, in Le Monde Vivant one of the most magical sequences I have seen in a film, where with single, unmoving shots a knight finds a damsel being held captive in a chapel and he leaps up to her tower window to save her. This is told by: a shot of a hand and arm reaching outside a window (at first a horrible image, like something from Dreyer’s Vampyr), a shot of feet going tiptoe and leaving the ground slowly, a shot of the two hands holding lightly, as if shaking, and then releasing, a shot of the knight halfway inside the window, and finally a shot of the feet landing on the wooden chapel floor. Taiwanese martial-arts master King Hu meets Bresson in a fairy tale?

1.14GB | 1m 14s | 656×574 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/503F3E82E6B0748/Eugene_Green_-_(2003)_The_Living_World.mkv

Language:French
Subtitles:English

The post Eugène Green – Le monde vivant AKA The Living World (2003) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
At age 50, Eugene Green — who left the U.S. in 1969 to settle in France — proves himself to be the mutant offspring of Robert Bresson and Manoel De Oliveira. First-time scripter-helmer’s exquisite oddity, “Every Night,” shows complete mastery of the austere, formal tradition perfected by his elders, but he makes it his own with bursts of satire and an insistence on crispy anachronistic diction that solemnly honors every last consonant. Pic has been holding its own at the oldest functioning arthouse in Paris since its publicity-free March 28 release, which was announced only via give-away postcards.

The indie effort threw local crix for an ecstatic out-of-left-field loop. Fest programmers should give this odd duck a gander, but Yanks may have to pull teeth to get the director to accompany his pic: Green goes out of his way in interviews to bad mouth his native America as a hopeless cultural backwater.

Updated from a Gustave Flaubert novella posthumously published in 1912, Green’s pic covers 12 years in the lives of its three protagonists, starting in 1967. At 17, two provincial buddies part: Henri (Alexis Loret) is sent to Paris to study for exams; Jules (Adrien Michaux) stays behind to write a play in verse.

Emilie (Christelle Prot), the wife of Henri’s tutor, runs off to the U.S. with Henri. They miss France’s student revolution of May ’68, eventually return to France and go their separate ways. As the years pass, the two men write letters to each other, and Jules and Emilie exchange ardent epistles without ever meeting.

Pic’s incredible over-stylization could have been risible, with lengthy voiceovers, deliberately framed shots of feet and doorways and a sense of visual economy. Though deeply literary, it is at all times completely cinematic and quietly gripping.
Although the two young men barely crack a smile, they do seem to crack the nut of existence. The older Emilie dabbles in so-true-it’s-funny radical feminism en route to finding both herself and inner peace. Deadpan humor about the pitfalls of romance feels a bit like early Hal Hartley — if Hartley made every line of dialogue sound like a phonics lesson.

The cumulative effect of so much stiff ritualistic behavior and strictly pronounced speech — a closing credit thanks the cast “for respecting the French language” — is packed with emotional resonance for those who can accept the venture’s unyielding construct.

Two lead lads are dreamily handsome in their carnal and ethereal pursuits, with Loret a no-nonsense man of action and Michaux more reflective. As the woman, Prot is always fascinating to watch. In addition to beautifully lit and carefully composed interiors, lensing in Paris and Avignon celebrates nature as surely as the script worships the recitative ebb and flow of language.

1.75GB | 1h 54m | 656×572 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/7BFBC1EEA262BE7/Eugene_Green_-_(2001)_Every_Night.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/10710B55ADA3BC4/Eugene_Green_-_(2001)_Every_Night.srt

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English

The post Eugène Green – Toutes les nuits AKA Every Night (2001) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
In the rarefied stratosphere of Eugene Green’s film “Le Pont des Arts,” music, literature, philosophy and aesthetics, and the characters’ engagement with them, are literally matters of life and death. Here and in his other films, Mr. Green, the American-born French filmmaker who founded the Theatre de la Sapience, a group dedicated to revitalizing 17th-century Baroque theater in modern productions, has invented a cinematic vocabulary that radically juxtaposes classical and contemporary themes and characters. … In “Le Pont des Arts,” Mr. Green’s propensity for throwing in academically heavyweight references and concepts may seem intimidating, but it is more than an exercise in name-dropping. The movie is an audacious, mythically slanted inquiry into the place of high art in today’s chaotic culture and an assertion of its primacy. … — NYTimes

https://nitro.download/view/DF0E87A0B80278E/Eugene_Green_-_(2004)_The_Bridge_of_Art.mkv

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English

The post Eugène Green – Le pont des Arts AKA The Bridge of Art (2004) first appeared on Cinema of the World.