Policeman: Interview with Nadav Lapid Part 1

Song of the Hua Mei

Filmed in De Salvio Park, 
Little Italy, New York
September 11, 2004. 
Photo copyright Liza Béar.    

Song of the Hua Mei

Mocking Bird in Manhattan

Mocking Bird in Manhattan

WHERE SHEEP MAY SAFELY GRAZE A Short Short

May 10, 2014

WHERE SHEEP MAY SAFELY GRAZE
by Liza Béar

After watching mines explode and lovers find, lose, find each other in Lumiere d’Eté, one of Jean Gremillon’s great Occupation films, on the 17 inch Trinitron, I head to the Lodge Gallery, 131 Chrystie, which is deserted save for the French-speaking gallery manager, tres sympa. On the wall red dots punctuate the works by Peter Fend and Kiki Smith.

I pedal over to the Essex Market’s Cuchifritos
Gallery, deserted, except for the So. Korean
volunteer, also tres sympa. No one is preaching from
the Free Speech soapbox in the corner.

I shoot some frames of Julie Harrison’s Guatemala photo
installation and of Robert Rauschenberg’s handwritten letter
in support of the Loft Law, courtesy Becky Howland; I watch some
of Ann Messner and Laurie Arbeiter’s compilation tape of
food vendors on the side of a regulation food vendor truck.

As I am about to retrieve my bike and target Norfolk
Street, thunder roars and clouds break in torrential
rain, so I stay put and sample the rosemary and olive ice cream 

at a stand by the door, take a seat at a metal table and 

start to read an article on neighborly disagreements over affordable housing.

By the second paragraph, I realize that my camera 
and I have parted company.

I make a beeline for security.

Me: I think I left my camera upstairs.
Male security guard: Go ahead and look.
Me: (after climbing the stairs and looking).
Not there. Did anyone turn it in?
Male security guard: Nope. But there’s another security guard,

a female. She’s around here somewhere.

A trudge around the Essex Market yields no results, so
I return to the security desk. The male security guard
has vanished. Across the aisle, a fruit vendor is approachable.

Me: Would you mind perhaps please paging the lady security
guard ?
Fruit Vendor: (shaking her head) No, I can’t do that.
Me: But I didn’t find that lady!
Fruit vendor: (shrugs her shoulders)

I go  to the Security Desk  and lean over the counter.
An 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of white paper inscribed with widely spaced
handwritten words graces the shelf underneath.

“Camera found in ladies’ room at 3pm.”

I wave the paper at the fruit vendor triumphantly.

Fruit Vendor: (smiling) You see!

Returning the paper to where I found it, I crane my neck and peer
a little further down the shelf to where sheep may safely graze and
my camera is snugly resting.

The rain has stopped, but I can’t stop recounting
the anecdote to the kerbside man who watches me unlock my bike.

When I reach the gallery on Norfolk Street, the person
I was going to see is elsewhere: at the Frieze Art Fair on Roosevelt Island .
But an art world persona I recognize from Rauschenberg’s parties
on Lafayette Street in the 70s is emerging from a limousine.

Her assistant slams the door shut and guides her gently.

“What a gorgeous space, “ she says, high-stepping into the high-ceilinged gallery.

I happily agree with her.

To be continued.
(c) copyright Liza Béar 2014

Interview with François Ozon on Young and Beautiful by Liza Béar

Interview
François Ozon on his new film Young and Beautiful, which opens in theatres today

Provocateur and satirist of the French bourgeoisie, 

François Ozon talks about décor, decorum, 

and some of the highly charged issues raised by 

his work.

Liza Béar's previous interviews with Ozon, in 2000 and 

2003, are reprinted in Beyond the Frame, Dialogues with 

World Filmmakers (Praeger, 2007). See previous post 

on this blog for her text about Ozon's 

2012 In the House.

"The Singular Smell of a Middle Class Woman" : film review

“The Singular Smell of a Middle Class Woman”: 
François Ozon’s In The House

By Liza Béar

Over the course of a dozen features such as Criminal Lovers, Sitcom, Under the Sand, Swimming Pool, Potiche, and several shorts, auteur François Ozon , 45, has forged his own style, urbane and sophisticated, treating provocative psychosexual subject matter with a deft touch. In 2012's In the House, Ozon shows his chops as a master director in handling complex material with humor and dexterity.

Loosely based on the Spanish play, The Boy in the Last Row by Juan Mayorga, Ozon’s adaptation is a devilishly witty satire about a teacher whose efforts at mentoring a bright student run amok. Picking up threads from his 2003 Swimming Pool, starring Charlotte Rampling, that deals with a mystery novelist’s writer’s block, in the new film the central student-teacher relationship , in which the learning goes both ways, anchors the drama and enables Ozon to further explore his own creative process, reality and fiction, and crossing the line. In a way, the film might be seen as Ozon’s dialogue with his younger self.

Set in a small provincial town outside Paris, the story opens at the Lycée Gustave Flaubert during the first faculty meeting of the academic year with the introduction of school uniforms, not the norm in France. Social class and income differentials may be neutralized sartorially, but not so the imagination. And the imagination at work is what Germain (Fabrice Luchini) a literature teacher in his mid-fifties, is quick to respond to while grading 16-year-old Claude’s homework assignment on How I spent My Week-end. (His classmates have turned in a few barely literate sentences about eating pizza and watching TV). Germain reads the whole essay out loud to his wife Jeanne (Kristin Scott- Thomas, in top form), the director of a supposedly avant- garde art gallery, which elicits some acerbic commentary. (Analytical note: By having Germain read out loud, Ozon clearly establishes the function of writing within the film. Later, he uses Claude’s voice-over narration to distinguish between reality and his essays, and ultimately Ozon eliminates the narration.)

Wondering what the life of a “normal” family is like, the resourceful Claude (first-timer Ernst Umhauer) , whose father is paralysed , unemployed, and mother absent, offers to tutor his sportif classmate Rapha (Bastien Ughetto) in trigonometry at home. He thus gets to observe the nuclear family at close quarters. Certain phrases in Claude’s first essay, such as noticing “the smell of a middle class woman” on entering the Artole house, and describing Rapha’s mother Esther (Emmanuelle Seigner, aka Mrs Roman Polanski) as having eyes the color of the sofa, pique Germain’s curiosity. After class, he’s motivated to give the boy extra tutorials on the basics of dramatic writing, including stick figure diagrams on the blackboard--there’s self-referential irony for Ozon here--plies him with tomes of literature, including Flaubert’s A Simple Heart, and becomes engrossed in the weekly installments that Claude turns in, which always end with the words “To Be Continued”; he’s prepared to cross the line to make sure that Claude’s visits to the house as a math tutor continue.

Germain is himself a little-known romance novelist, which adds touch of poignancy to his role and enriches it. Now he exercises his creative impulses vicariously through his student.

As the narrative develops, both Germain and Claude take risks, become co-conspirators in what has in effect become a joint endeavour. When Rapha Sr, (Denis Menochet) and Rapha Jr, are at a basketball game, Claude seduces Esther, “the world’s most bored housewife “ who thumbs through home decoration magazines; after all, didn’t Germain tell him a writer should “love his characters”? Meanwhile, to make sure Rapha gets a good grade in the pending math test, Germain steals a copy of the test from the faculty room and gives it to Claude.

Gradually, reality merges with fiction, and neither Germain, Jeanne, nor the film’s viewers can be quite sure which of the events Claude describes have really happened, whether he has made them happen in order to write about them ( a common ploy among writers) or whether they are figments of his imagination. In any case, Ozon’s adroit mise-en-scene, and especially his skill at orchestrating scene transitions, makes for suspenseful, highly entertaining cinema.

Ozon’s earlier adaptations, all without any trace of staginess, include “Water Drops on Burning Rocks”, an unproduced play by 19-year-old Fassbinder and one of my favorites; Jean- Pierre Gredy and Pierre Barillet’s “8 Women”, and Robert Thomas’s “Potiche” (Trophy Wife), starring Catherine Deneuve, in which Fabrice Luchini plays the testy boss of an umbrella factory. In “In the House” Luchini is thoroughly in his element as the affable, inspired literature teacher; Ernst Umhauer as a sly, manipulative Claude and the rest of the cast are first-rate. 

© Copyright 2013 Liza Béar. All rights reserved.

OZON's latest film "Jeune et Jolie", starring Marina Vacth, was nominated for a Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2013. It's currently playing at IFC Center, Film Society and BAM as part of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema and will open theatrically at IFC on April 25th 2014.

Poem by René Ricard RIP 1946-2014

René died yesterday February 1 in New York. Here's Tide from his 1979-1980 poetry collection, a slim but delectable volume with a turquoise cover published by Dia.

TIDE

Being with you is stepping out of a limousine
You on my arm is a gold watch
When I'm seen with you my stock goes up
Prices rise. The gas company, Con Ed
You are the most expensive utility
The annual income of an Arab nation
All the clothes in the September GQ
In my closet. You are dry cleaning.
You are shoe polish.Cowboy boots.
Ivory soap. Tide. You're so clean.
Why should I pay my rent, get a phone,
Laundromat or take a bath? You look
And the lint gets brushed off my shoulders.

(c) copyright 1979 René Ricard