FILM REVIEW: BICYCLING WITH MOLIERE

Serge (Fabrice Luchini) in Bicycling with Moliere. 

Circling the stage

By John Esther

A somewhat witty, certainly revealing, tale of clashing egos, the latest film by Philippe Le Guay – whose previous film was the lackluster The Woman on the 6^th Floor – two French actors get together to see it they can collaborate on Moliere’s The Misanthrope.

Gauthier (Lambert Wilson) is a successful actor with a wildly popular TV show about a surgeon who saves lives regardless of circumstances. Give the good doctor a plastic knife and he can save a young girl dying in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Already popular, rich and handsome Gauthier still wants a little more out of life. He wants something he can really sink his teeth into, like The Misanthrope, considered Moliere’s most demanding play for actors.

If he is going to pull it off, he will need the help of a fellow actor, Serge (Fabrice Luchini). For three years, Serge has led a hermetic life on the Ile de Ré, a posh area on France’s Atlantic Coast.

An expert on Moliere and a misanthrope in his own right, Serge would seem to be the perfect actor for the play’s protagonist, Alceste. But Gauthier wants to play Alceste, with Serge playing his Alceste's friend, Philinte, which is a smaller part.

Since Serge wants to play Alecste, too, the two of them agree to alternate rehearsing different roles. They may even do this for the play itself with the two alternating roles each week.

As the two rehearse over the next few days many conflicts arrive. Cellphones, bicycle accidents, a lover interest and bad plumbing interfere with the creative process. But what threatens any future production the most is the role of the egos of the actors. Every time progress is made, another setback comes along. On with the play, I say.

Certainly worth a view, Bicycling with Moliere has many charming warm moments about friendship, camaraderie and artistic and literary integrity in a world not to fond of that kind of thing; although France, in general, is significantly appreciative of great theater than the United States. You can bet far more French people, per capita, know a Moliere play more than Americans know one by Tennessee Williams or any American playwright for that matter. 

But the real strength of the play comes from watching the two experiencing the joys of working through a great piece of drama. How does one interpret a role, especially one from the 17^th century? How does one follow Moliere’s rhythm and still make it sound relevant to modern audiences...and other artistic/acting questions? While these can be great challenges to any actor, especially the more narcissistic ones, there are great joys to be found while playing with the play. Indeed, Bicycling with Moliere should not be missed by actors. 

THEATER REVIEW: THE ROYAL FAMILY

A scene from The Royal Family.

Wise-eyed Geer

 

By Ed Rampell

 

George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber’s 1927 The Royal Family is a love letter to the act of acting, and, in particular, to the actors and actresses who trod the boards and appear onscreen. Modeled after the Barrymore clan, The Royal Family'sCavendishes are the first family of America’s thespians. Greasepaint coursing through their blood they are theatrical in every sense of the term, as well as free spirits similar to the Sycamores in the anarchistic screwball comedy You Can’t Take It With You, which Kaufman co-wrote with Moss Hart for the stage in 1936 and with Robert Riskin for the screen in 1938 (co-starring a certain Lionel Barrymore, BTW).

 

Who better to incarnate this dynasty of performers than members of the House -- or, rather, amphitheater -- of Geer, a real life line of stage of screen artistes, descended from legendary, lanky Will Geer (1954’s The Salt of the Earth, 1972’s Jeremiah Johnson, and ultimately as America’s beloved über-grandpa from 1972-1978 on TV’s The Waltons)? Ellen Geer, the venerable Artistic Director of theWill Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum, plays Fanny, the aging, ailing, grand dame of the thee-a-tuh and matriarch of the Cavendishes. Ellen’s sister, Melora Marshall -- a shape shifting actress known, among other things, for her gender bending roles (she portrays the male character Grumio in The Taming of the Shrew, one of the other plays this troupe is presenting in repertory this summer) -- here plays Fanny’s daughter, actress Julie Cavendish. Willow Geer -- who, offstage, is Ellen’s actual daughter and Marshall’s niece -- portrays ingénue Gwen Cavendish, the onstage child of Julie at the beginning of her acting career.

 

The Geers’ in-law, Abby Craden, depicts Kitty Dean, who is dissed and disdained by the Cavendishes for committing the unforgivable, heinous crime of being a lousy actress. This presents an artistic challenge for Craden -- who has portrayed Cleopatra and Queen Elizabeth in Theatricum Shakespearean productions and also appeared in numerous plays presented by the A Noise Within company -- because Craden actually is quite a good player.

 

The Royal Family's action takes place entirely in the Cavendishes’ sprawling home. Comebacks, romances, premieres and more things than are dreamt of in your philosophy are hatched on the premises in this madcap comedy and merry meditation on the nature of celebrity. The Cavendishes are fiendishly funny, hammy, scenery-chewing, attention seeking troupers, for whom the play’s the thing (along with the moolah, adulation, and gratification applause brings). If Fanny is patterned after Ethel Barrymore (who threatened to sue the playwrights and after Royal’sBroadway premiere “only nodded coolly to Kaufman when the two met at parties,” according to Howard Teichmann’s biography of the writer), then Tony Cavendish is clearly inspired by that matinee idol, John Barrymore.

 

The estimable Aaron Hendry’s two-fisted Tony steals ever single scene he’s in, like Winona Ryder let loose in Saks Fifth Avenue. Hendry, who also plays Petruchio this season in the Theatricum’s Taming of the Shrew, portrays his swashbuckling character with great panache, and is heaps of fun to watch in every scene he steals, dashing from brawls, paparazzi and lovers seeking to serve him legal papers for “breach of promise” lawsuits. Both playwrights knew Drew’s forebears, the Barrymores, but there is scant if any mention by Kaufman and Ferber of the carousing John Barrymore’s legendary, prodigious drinking. Their farce focuses on the foibles of actors by trade, and in particular on the few who attain stardom and are firmly fixed in the public eye.

 

The stage and screen credits of Kaufman, of course, include the Marx Brothers’ The Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers, A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races, as well as Dinner at Eight (with Ferber), Nothing Sacred, The Man Who Came to Dinner and other classics. Ferber, who likewise was a mid-Westerner with a German-Jewish and newspaper background, was also a novelist who wrote the books Show Boat, Giant and Cimarron, which were adapted for the screen. A film version of their The Royal Family was directed by George Cukor in 1930 and in 1977 there was a TV movie version. Given today’s snaparazzi and the TMZ, tabloid press with TMI about celebs, it would be a hoot to update this 86-year-old play.

 

In any case, Susan Angelo ably directs what is now a period piece, with a cast that includes Theatricum alum Alan Blumenfeld as Oscar Wolfe, a commercial theatrical producer who yet dreams of producing at least one play with redeeming artistic value. Tim Halligan drolly depicts the over-the-hill Herbert Dean who dreams of returning to the limelight. Andy Stokan and Bill Gunther both play the long suffering suitors of, respectively, Gwen and Julie, who have the impossible task of competing for their affections with the smell of the greasepaint and the roar of the crowd.

  

The Royal Family is delicious fun with the Geers in fine form and moving in high Geer. This is a rollicking, royal romp full of Bohemian bonhomie, an ode to those who have been bitten by the acting bug -- and to those of us who enjoy watching them prance about on- and offstage in their not-so-private lives.

 

 

The Royal Family runs through Sept. 28 at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum: 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga, California, 90290. For repertory schedule and other information call: 310-455-3723 or see: www.Theatricum.com.

 

FILM REVIEW: AUGUSTINE

Augustine (Soko) in Augustine.

Let us play master & servant

By Don Simpson

Augustine (Soko) is working as a kitchen servant when she has a convulsive fit that sends her to Paris’ Salpêtrière psychiatric hospital with one eye stuck shut and half of her body paralyzed. Determined to get out of the hospital as soon as possible, Augustine attracts the attention of the chief neurologist -- Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot (Vincent Lindon) -- when she has her next seizure. Charcot almost immediately identifies Augustine as his best chance to convince the Academy to provide him with more funding for Salpêtrière. After diagnosing Augustine with ovarian hysteria -- a catch-all diagnosis in 19th century France for women -- Charcot's best guess is that Augustine's hysteria is rooted in her brain. Augustine quickly becomes Charcot's pet patient because of her susceptibility to hypnosis. While hypnotized, Augustine's seizures can easily be triggered by Charcot...almost too easily. The theatricality of Charcot's presentations draws comparisons to Sarah Bernhardt's performances and evokes questions about the legitimacy of his research.

Strategically avoiding expository dialogue, writer-director Alice Winocour opts to let the audience contemplate the authenticity of Charcot's research and come to their own conclusions. We never know when the performance begins and when it ends, but skeptics of hypnotism will surmise fairly early on that Augustine is merely performing. Augustine is given plenty of motivations to do so. (Freud might suggest that Augustine is unconsciously trying to escape her job.) She is rewarded handsomely for her role as Charcot's prized subject with beautiful new dresses and a private room. Augustine knows that Charcot needs her for the continuance of his career; it is also obvious that Charcot craves Augustine sexually. Charcot is clearly trying to keep Augustine confined in Salpêtrière for as long as possible, and Augustine plays along with the charade for her own benefit. Although Augustine wants to be cured, that would most likely mean returning to a servant's position. It is in Augustine's best interest -- despite the tortuous Cronenbergian medical devices used on her -- to remain at Salpêtrière for as long as possible, but she also needs to maintain Charcot's undivided attention. The possibility that Charcot might discover another star patient is Augustine's greatest fear.

Augustine is able to make the best out of a horrible situation; she does so by identifying key ways to manipulate Charcot and turn the doctor-patient and male-female power dynamics upside-down. Augustine goes from being a servant to being served -- from  puppet to puppeteer; a repressed and tortured woman to becoming a person of power and influence. Most importantly, Augustine does this in 19th century France, when women are either wives or servants. The 19th century was an time when wealthy, old, white men made important decisions about women's health issues behind closed doors -- this is something that would never, ever happen in the 21st century... Right, America?

DVD REVIEW: BEDWAYS

 Hans (Matthias Faust) and Marie (Lana Cooper) in Bedways.

Here we come

By Don Simpson

In a dilapidated and sparsely furnished Berlin apartment, an aspiring director named Nina (Miriam Mayet) and her two thespians -- Marie (Lana Cooper) and Hans (Matthias Faust) -- screen test for a yet-to-be-scripted film. The video project is is based upon a simple premise: Nina intends to capture authentic feelings, authentic love and authentic sex.

Nina attempts to maintain full directorial control by maniacally manipulating her actors as if they are puppets and she is pulling their strings. The borders between fiction and reality are promptly blurred as Marie and Hans try to decipher what their director really wants from them. According to Nina, Marie and Hans should not play themselves or anyone else -- but what does that mean?

The sexual histories between Nina and both of her subjects further complicates the on- and off-camera scenario. The project quickly evolves into a warped seduction in which Nina pushes everyone’s emotions, including her own, to the limit. Nina, Marie and Hans experience a titillating tilt-a-whirl of emotions and desires, a disorienting ride that thrives off of jealousy, grief and anger.

Can cinematic authenticity be faked? Do Marie and Hans really need to fall in love with each other in order for Nina’s film to succeed? Can two people fall in love in front of the unblinking kino eye and an authoritative voyeur?

Nina is not the only voyeur in the equation as German filmmaker RP Kahl often positions the camera statically at distance in order to form a voyeuristic perspective for the audience. The camera does occasionally venture in for a closer view of the sexual encounters as if to verify for the audience that the penetration is authentic -- like Nina, his onscreen avatar, Kahl is incredibly fascinated by cinematic realism.

By utilizing the film-within-a-film narrative format, Kahl creates a world in which it is practically impossible to decipher when the actors are acting for Nina and when we are witnessing the actors’ reality. In doing so, Kahl discusses how cinema blurs the identities of its actors and contemplates the relationship between their on- and off-screen persona.

Bedways is an experimental chamber piece that concentrates on three actors encased for the most part in one location. This incredibly intimate narrative technique is cleverly juxtaposed with the mental and spacial distancing of intimacy and sex. One of the more telling scenes -- that purposefully bookends Bedways -- is when we witness Hans and Nina masturbating in separate rooms while observing each other via monitors; eventually they reach their limits of torture, the separation becomes too much, and Nina commands for Hans to come to her.

A worthy attempt to merge the worlds of art house and erotic cinema (a la Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience; Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs; Atom Egoyan’s Exotica and Chloe; the films of Joe Swanberg; etc.), Bedways aptly blurs the definition of erotic cinema by giving us a well-crafted and incredibly dramatic film with some penetrating sex thrown in.

EXCULSIVE INTERVIEW: MATT PORTERFIELD

Putty Hill writer-director Matt Porterfield.

In his hands

By Don Simpson

I am a real sucker for cinematic realism, so writer-director Matt Porterfield’s Putty Hill is right up my proverbial alley. The setting is a poor, working-class suburb of Baltimore where descriptive adjectives such as decrepit, depressing and boring seem to fit best. There is nothing of merit or worth here. It seems as though no one works -- with the exception of drug dealers. This is a community of tattoos, dreadlocks, torn clothes, skaters and BMXers, graffiti, paintball, video games and drugs. Nonetheless, a place in Porterfield’s sympathetic hands.

JEsther Entertainment met up with Porterfield at Putty Hill’s U.S. premiere at SXSW 2010 to chat about the collaborative nature of his sophomore effort and his unique brand of cinematic realism.

JEsther Entertainment: Something that really intrigues me about Putty Hill is the high level of realism. Did you set any specific standards for yourself, the cast and the crew to achieve this?

Matt Porterfield: When I made my first feature film, Hamilton -- which is also an attempt at cinematic realism -- I did set strict rules for myself to follow, like [Robert] Bresson’s model. No score, only diegetic sound of an onscreen source. The approach to the aesthetic, as well, was really pared back -- a kind of an economy to the aesthetic. This time going in -- because the circumstances were so different -- the only devise in place was the interviews with the cast. That served to make all of us aware that we were attempting, self-consciously, this exercise in realism. All of us were aware of the mechanism and aware of the fictive and truer elements of the film and how they kept intersecting, and that's the experience that the audience has as well. I didn’t give the actors too much back story. I told them about the fictive character Cory who ties all of their worlds together. I told them that I would be off-camera interviewing them and if I asked questions that they could answer truthfully from within their own life than I encouraged them to do so. I have an aesthetic sensibility that favors long masters and I use non-professionals principally. Working that way allows every scene to have its own internal breath and potentially a little bit of magic; and those things contrast well with the more traditional documentary style interviews throughout, so its like this dialectic at play.

JE: The documentary format works especially well because so many of the characters seemed so naturally introverted, so the only way these characters would speak -- especially to reveal personal information -- would be if a third party intervened.

MP: At the time we were shooting there was a question on all of our minds regarding how this would play out and work together. I didn’t really see it until we started cutting. I like that the questions aren’t too probing, that they maintain a respectful distance from the characters. I could have dug deeper but it just didn’t feel right. On some level it’s just appropriate.

JE: A lot of the actors were carryovers from Metal Gods. How did you approach them initially for Metal Gods and then how did you bring them over to Putty Hill?

MP:  Metal Gods is about young people, so we held auditions at area high schools. I was inspired by the stories I heard from the casting of Paranoid Park -- how the casting agents in Portland, whom Gus Van Zant was working with, used MySpace and also advertised public auditions. So I kind of followed that model. We set up a MySpace page just for casting the movie and then used that as an Internet reference point. I had some friends helping me, so, in addition to seeing people on the street, we would find people via the Internet. We just did a lot of digging around. We printed postcards, so we would flyer the street or hand them out at malls. We had these more formal auditions at high schools that I was able to set up -- focusing on the high schools with performing arts programs -- and then we tried to use every means that we could to publicize the public auditions around town. We had about six of those altogether. I saw upwards around 500 to 600 people probably. Along the way I met some kids that I really wanted to work with but I wasn’t certain how well they’d fit or how they would handle the Metal Gods material. So when our hand was forced and we switched gears, it was really liberating then to create a scenario just using the people that I wanted to see on screen as a sort of thread or inspiration. I took a casting credit on Putty Hill.

JE: And you mentioned that you didn’t really coach the actors, but so many of the performances are so consistently quiet and toned down – so that just came naturally with the actors that you chose?

MP: There’s a certain way in which I feel like I’m learning more -- and I’ve definitely learned a lot between Hamilton and Putty Hill -- ways of working with actors. One of the most important things is that I’ve honed a way to communicate with actors that conveys the kind of energy on set that translates on screen. It’s a balance. You have to give a nonprofessional actor enough information to feel safe and secure. Some will ask you very directly for specific things that they need, but then also don’t give them too much information. You could very easily crowd their heads with directions. So I try just to focus on the reality of the action. If we’re shooting a wide master, then it’s really about getting them comfortable with a few key actions that they can then focus on. The scene where the mom is playing the guitar in the kitchen is an example of something that really just came about organically. I knew I wanted to shoot in the kitchen. I knew Cody was going to come in. I planned to have his girlfriend and his baby there. But mom happened to be there that morning playing guitar, so I decided to keep her in the scene -- pretty much where she had been. And it was just a matter of giving Cody specific movements to get him from point A to point B. Then, in running through it together we came up with lines. It wasn’t so important to me what they said as long as they were comfortable with the dialogue and it felt natural.

JE: Let’s discuss your use of sound. In some scenes you use noises that almost blur out the audio -- there’s the scene in the tattoo shop during which you wound up having to use subtitles because the sound was so obscured.

MP: Traditionally we would have shot that scene without the tattoo gun turned on and then just added that in post, to get the dialogue, but you can’t do that when you’re working the way we were.

JE: And it added another level of realism.

MP: Exactly. The whole film is an exercise in the perception of objective and subjective cinematic reality -- if there is such a thing -- and just playing with the audience’s awareness of that relationship. I was selective. There is dialogue in scenes that we chose not to bring up because it wasn’t important. Sometimes we keep the relationship between camera and subject realistic and other times we don’t. There are scenes [when] we broke our own rules, like the scene where they take that long walk and we can hear the dialogue all the way. But then there is that scene in the woods, where you can’t hear anything the girls are saying. It was just a matter of scene by scene what felt right -- what we wanted to highlight. And then, in post, it was just trying to create just the right balance. Bring down some of the treble on the tattoo gun so it’s not too annoying for an audience but maintains its integrity, and we chose to subtitle really because I was thinking about my mom in the theater -- she wouldn’t pick up anything if she watched that scene. For me, it’s an example of what is important. What’s important is what they are saying as well as everything else, so it needs to be intelligible. In this case, subtitles were the answer. And then of course being the second scene of the film adds that sort of extra “is there a documentary feeling?” Subtitles again reinforce this idea that we’re blending the lines between fiction and non-fiction.

JE: Did you intend any specific economic or political message with Putty Hill?

MP: That’s always on my mind. I am very aware -- having grown up in Baltimore and lived there as an adult for almost ten years -- that it’s a very stratified city, like so many American cities, along the lines of race and class. Despite the fact that in the city proper there’s diversity -- in that we all live on top of one another. Those lines of communication are severed. There was a purpose -- and it’s maybe the reason that I stay working in Baltimore -- I would like to portray the diversity of experience onscreen of a very particular place that I know and love. As artists working in America it is important to show other visions of America; and a city like Baltimore can be a tool to bridge gaps and open lines of communication. It’s about a place that I know very well, so anything about the particular economy of that world is just part of the realism that we were attempting.

JE: There is also the degradation of the family element in Putty Hill. Though most of the family lives close to each other, they just don’t communicate. Nobody really spoke to Cory. Nobody really knew him…

MP: And the guy that was most connected with Cory in the film is Dustin. It is crazy to think that they had to be in prison together to really connect at that level. It’s true that a lot of the characters in Cory’s family don’t have much to say. I think that’s just true. I was meditating a lot on the idea of loss and what a family would go through if they lost someone.