Capone's Art-House Round-Up with SAINT LAURENT, WHEN MARNIE WAS THERE, SUNSHINE SUPERMAN, THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE III, and THE CHAMBERMAID!!!

Hey, folks. Capone in Chicago here, with a few films that are making their way into art houses or coming out in limited release around America this week (maybe even taking up one whole screen at a multiplex near you). Do your part to support these films, or at least the good ones…


SAINT LAURENT
A year after its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, the quite excellent biopic on the life of Yves Saint Laurent from director and co-writer Bertrand Bonello (THE PORNOGRAPHER) is finally being released stateside. The second and far superior version of the fashion designer's story in as many years, SAINT LAURENT is an epic, sprawling tale that jumps from the subject's influential early years in the late 1960s through the mid-'70s, featuring Gaspard Ulliel (HANNIBAL RISING), to him as an elderly recluse, with a fried brain likely the result of too many drugs and no one to ever tell him to slow down. By beginning with Saint Laurent already rich and famous, that gives Bonello the chance to dive headfirst into the constant partying, sex, and drug ingestion, as well as the maestro's creative spirit and energy. It's an endlessly fascinating and winding path of chaos.

What's even more interesting is that SAINT LAURENT illustrates the destructive powers of sex with the wrong people and too many drugs; these forces actually stunt the designer's talents and creativity, and he seems to work best when he's sober and surrounded by his muses, including models Betty Catroux (Aymeline Valade) and Loulou (Lea Seydoux). Fueled significantly by his love life, Saint Laurent's world and work seem to flourish when he is focused on his longtime partner Pierre Berge (Jérémie Renier) and tend to crumble when he allows his attentions to be swayed by male model Jacques de Bauscher (Louis Garrel).

Every detail—from the costumes to the set decoration to the period music—are exceptionally chosen and add to the experience and authenticity of the story. I loved that the film chooses to focus on both the creative and business aspects (run quite astutely by Berge) of the fashion icon's name, which for a time, he didn't solely own. While Yves Saint Laurent is painted as a man who drifted where the wind and drugs pushed him, Ulliel injects his character with enough finesse and spark for us to understand the artist inside the hedonist. The scenes of Saint Laurent as an elderly man (played by Helmut Berger) are a little more tedious, but they still reveal an aspect to the man's life that is sad yet predictable, perhaps even inevitable. 



SAINT LAURENT pulls no punches in its portrayal of this man, but nor does it judge him. Those who got close to him did so knowingly and with full awareness of the man fickle man they were befriending. The film is a portrait of a man who was both easy and impossible to love, and I think the same can be said of this film. Embrace the contradictions of the man and the movie.


WHEN MARNIE WAS THERE
In what ends up being the final film from the great Japanese animation workshop, Studio Ghibli, WHEN MARNIE WAS THERE is suitably melancholy, a little more mature than many of the more kid-friendly offerings the studio is known for producing, but it still gives us hope for better things to come. Being shown in most markets in both the dubbed and subtitled versions (take your pick), the film tells us the story of Anna (voiced in the English-language version by Hailee Steinfeld), a 12-year-old orphan, living in the city with her foster mother and having a tough time adjusting to her life and school. Her depressive state (and frequent asthma attacks) force her doctor to recommend she take several months to move out to the country for fresh air and a less hectic environment.

Staying with family friends, and not really making any new friends, Anna goes on long walks to relax. On one of these, she discovers an abandoned mansion along the local waterfront where she meets another young girl named Marnie (Kiernan Shipka of "Mad Men"), and the two become fast friends, even though Marnie can't really leave the grounds of the estate, which should be your first clue what she really is. The two begin to share the darkest corners of their lives—Anna talks about the death of her parents, while Marnie talks about how her parents leave her for weeks at a time under the care of nasty servants. With his second feature after the more fantastical THE SECRET WORLD OF ARRIETTY, director Hiromasa Yonebayashi does a magnificent job walking the line between Marnie's dreamlike world and Anna's harsher life, blurring their worlds at several points. The more Anna allows herself to get caught up in Marnie's life, the more likely it is she'll leave the real world behind.

The idea that Marnie is a ghost doesn't quite cut it. It's more like she and the world she reveals to Anna are powerful memories that somehow bind the two girls in ways we aren't aware of until late in the film. As you would expect, the detailed animation style is second to none, and the plot is sophisticated enough that most ages of children and adults can fully embrace it. Anna is a character with some emotional troubles (she lashes out more than once), and portions of WHEN MARNIE WAS THERE are quite somber, but the overall impact is quite graceful, moving and features wonderful lessons about growing up with dignity and not clinging to old woulds. Seek this one out; it may be the last of its kind, at least for a while.


SUNSHINE SUPERMAN
I have a vague recollection tucked away in the corner of my brain of seeing footage of BASE jumper Carl Boenish making his successful record-breaking leap off the Norwegian Troll Wall mountain range in 1984, but beyond that I had no idea who the man was until watching the revealing and often thrilling SUNSHINE SUPERMAN, a chronicle of both Boenish's life and the history of the extreme practice of BASE jumping, which basically is parachuting off of a manmade or natural structure, like a building or mountain. It's an offshoot of skydiving, but I suppose BASE jumpers are people who think skydiving takes too long and isn't dangerous enough. Established in the 1970s and spearheaded by Boenish, the "sport" went from outlaw behavior to sanctioned practice in a surprisingly short timespan. BASE jumping was looked at by Boenish as nature's law winning out over man's law (the only real rules he was breaking revolved around trespassing when his team broke into construction sites of under-construction buildings to jump off of them).

The real bonus of SUNSHINE SUPERMAN is that Boenish filmed every one of his jumps, usually from multiple angles, and a great deal of this documentary consists of that spectacular and terrifying 16mm footage. Through archival interview footage with Boenish, as well as more recent talks with his wife Jean and many of his acquaintances, the film attempts to piece together the portrait of a man who never seemed content unless he was trying something that made his heart race and put his life on the line. I'm not sure the film quite gets to the heart of Beonish as a danger junkie, but as a pure document of the time and the creation of BASE jumping, it's tough to beat.

From first-time feature director Marah Strauch (working with executive producer Alex Gibney), SUNSHINE SUPERMAN takes its time going through Carl's final jump, made just days after his record-breaking feat. It's done using a fair amount of re-created moments and actual news footage made at the time, and the way the sequence is edited really brings out the drama (although, honestly, very little enhancement is needed with this sport) and the questionable behavior by Boenish on that day. His attention to safety and detail seems to have vanished in the afterglow of earning that record. Jean's attitude and chosen method to honor her husband's chosen profession is quite touching and wholly appropriate, and the film honors them both beautifully.

There may be some that see this film and shake their head at the stupidity of what they're seeing, but I'm guessing if you're inclined to feel that way, you won't make it past the box office. Regardless of your opinion of BASE jumping, SUNSHINE SUPERMAN is a solid human story as well.


THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE III (FINAL SEQUENCE)
You know what, I'm not even going to try to convince you to see this film. Odds are, you made up your mind a while ago about your level of interest in writer-director Tom Six's closing chapter in the HUMAN CENTIPEDE trilogy. To his credit, Six did something almost no horror films ever do across multiple films—he made a completely different style of horror film with each movie. For decades, people have complained about sequels that simply ape the best bits from the previous film and fill in the rest of the story with garbage and new characters to replace the actors who wouldn't return. But Six began his trilogy with a cold, clinical medical horror story, and he moved on to a grimy, black-and-white Gothic horror take on the troll-like, mute loner creation who is inspired by the first film. Unfortunately, Six has decided with part three to take on my least favorite type of horror film—the comedy. Yes, of course there are films that have gotten it right over the years, but THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE III is not one of them.

Featuring a great deal of angry, repulsive yelling from returning Part 1 star Dieter Laser and even more sweating from Part 2 star Laurence R. Harvey, the film's humor never clicks, relying instead on stereotypes, broad physical comedy, and insane behavior that goes all but ignored for comic effect. You can attack the film for its vulgar attitudes toward Americans, women, race, the prison system, and good taste in general, but its biggest offense is that it's not funny, and a great deal of the running time is trying very hard to get us to laugh.

The film works only slightly better when it goes for the full gross-out. A particularly inspired moment involves Laser's warden character having a dream that one of his inmates pins him down, cuts a hole in his side, and has sex with it. But the entire film leads up to what the press notes claim is a 500-prisoner Human Centipede, while Laurence's character has envisioned as the ultimate crime deterrent. Prisoners can be added and taken out of the centipede when their sentence is up, with only mild scarring to their mouth and anus. But the odds of them committing another crime that would get them sent back would be minimal. They predict this will be the newest wave in prison reform. Death row inmates get something a little more special called the Human Caterpillar, which I won't explain; I have to leave some things a surprise.

Outright bizarre supporting roles from the likes of Eric Roberts (as the governor), Robert LaSardo, Tiny Lester, porn star Bree Olson, and even Six playing himself only add to the forced quirky atmosphere of HUMAN CENTIPEDE III. As I said, I'm not here to convince or dissuade you from seeing this film. I don't think it's as strong an effort as the first two parts, and I say that as someone who genuinely enjoyed the first film and found qualities to admire in the second. The violence (beyond the actual centipede surgery) has been upped in this chapter, which is fine, but that doesn't help take away the long periods of yelling followed by no laughing.

The actual creation of the final centipede has always been the focus of Six's films, but here, it's not, and I think that's his greatest tactical error with this outing. But like I said at the outset, you know already what your midnight plans are this weekend; don't pretend you don't. You can either go to the film that made the expression "Eat shit and die" a reality, or you won't. Either way, you can all rest easy that our long global nightmare has come to an end.


THE CHAMBERMAID
Paced more like a work of mystery and erotic intrigue, the German feature THE CHAMBERMAID (original title: THE CHAMBERMAID LYNN) allows us to peek into the world of Lynn (Vicky Krieps, perhaps known by some from her work in Hanna and A Most Wanted Man), a mousy cleaning woman at a hotel who seems most comfortable when she is sticking to her schedules and patterns, both at work and in her spotless home. She's so obsessed with cleanliness that she even cleans the hotel's empty rooms because she feels they might still have gotten dusty from disuse. Lynn begins to take an interest in the lives of those staying in the hotel, and before long, she graduates from trying on the occasional pretty dress to slipping under the customers' beds to hear how they live their lives, no matter how shocking or mundane that might be.

One guest brings a dominatrix named Chiara (Lena Lauzemis) to his room, and after a quick bit of spanking (that we hear, but never see, much like Lynn), Chiara leaves, but only after piquing Lynn's curiosity. Lynn contacts Chiara, and the two have a couple of heated encounters that turns into a friendship that largely involves Chiara drawing Lynn out of her comfort zones and sexual shell. It's should come as no surprise that Lynn falls hard for this stunning, outgoing woman, and that changes the nature of their relationship immensely.

Directed by Ingo Haeb (NEANDERTAL), THE CHAMBERMAID isn't about a zesty S&M session bringing Lynn to life. Their encounters are far more intimate and caring than that, although Lynn is curious about the allure of the more violent aspects of Chiara's work. Even as Lynn becomes a more well-rounded, less socially awkward human being, the film maintains a soothing tone and keeps a slight distance from its subjects that makes us all the more eager to be pulled into these largely loving emotions. Naturally, Lynn falling this hard makes her all the more vulnerable to heartbreak, but we get a sense that even if the relationship fails, Lynn will be a better person from this experience.

Krieps gives a even-keeled, sometimes difficult to read performance that is completely what is called for in playing a woman who isn't quite sure where her mind and body are going to take her. Lauzemis is a powerhouse of confidence, with a stylish, short-cropped mop of blonde hair and a mildly androgynous look that make the men and women around her a bit lusty for her. Adapted by the director from Markus Orths' novel “The Chambermaid,” Haeb takes the time to lets us explore both women's minds as well as their bodies (the film isn't especially graphic, but it scores points in the erotic category), and that allows us to care about what happens to both of them—either together or apart—when our time with them is done. THE CHAMBERMAID is an intense and moving work thanks to a patient director at the helm and two smart performances at its core.

-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
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