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Aimee
& Jaguar Dateline 08.25.00: Those of you who know film, may know that the new Juliette Binoche import started in San Francisco today, Alice and Martin. Those of you who know me, may know that I saw the first showing today at the Embarcadero. Sometimes I just look at Mlle. Binoche and marvel at her beauty. I mean really marvel. What is truly amazing is that she is the most beautiful actress EVER. What is also truly amazing is that she is the GREATEST actress EVER. So, what is doubly amazing is that she is the most beautiful and best actress OF ALL TIME. You know what else? And no offense to you, but she is also, I think, the most beautiful WOMAN, of all time -- ever! Alice and Martin, like most French films I see, and like most Juliette Binoche films I see, comes highly recommended. As an added bonus it is slightly OVER two hours -- that much more Mlle. Binoche gazing time! Film synopsis section. Boy is sent to live with his father and his father's family. The father sucks. The boy is living with his father's family, who was still his family when the father had an affair with the boy's mother and she had the boy out of wedlock. The boy has three older half brothers. Anyway. The boy is slightly unbalanced and freaks out when the father falls to his death down the stairs, the boy is now about 22. The boy, Martin, lives like a homeless freak for a while, then moves to Paris to live with his gay half-brother, Benjamin, played by the great French actor Mathieu Amalric (Late August, Early September). Benjamin lives with his dear friend... Juliette! Juliette is rather pessimistic about life. Juliette and Martin, or Alice and Martin (hence the title), fall in love. Various love stuff happens, issues with the relationships with the half-brother, work stuff, pain and passion stuff, Martin may freak out again. Why? What happens? See it! Last week I saw the Five Senses, which is nothing like The Sixth Sense. Another movie where the lives of 8 or so people intertwine. Canadian film. One man thinks he can smell if someone's in love with him; a woman bakes cakes; one woman is a masseuse; one guy is going deaf -- he's an eye doctor; etc. Their lives intermingle. It's good. A quiet study. Mary-Louise Parker stars. Saw Steal This Movie, the longest movie I've seen in years. So boring. Vincent D'Onofrio plays Abbie Hoffman, and it's all about his life. Pursuit by the evil suit-wearing Feds, marching, protesting, wife, kid, new girlfriend, going underground, manic depression, medication, beard, no beard, beard again, fighting the courts in the 80s. Janeane Garofalo gives a pretentious and dull performance as Hoffman's beleaguered wife, Anita. Filled with left-wing gusto, us-against-them, everybody's-a-fascist-but-us mentality. Do not see. At the Castro I saw Aimee & Jaguar, an exciting lesbian love-story set during Nazi Germany. This woman is a lesbian, and a Jew, and she has some other lesbian friends she hangs out with. She meets "Aimee", whose husband is fighting at the front. Aimee has three or four kids, and claims she can smell out a Jew (like so many good Nazis of the time). Jaguar does not tell Aimee she is a Jew. They fall in love. Things happen, including one of the most affecting love scenes I've ever seen. Maybe someone dies. Maybe no one dies. The film is told in flashbacks via two old lady survivors and participants. Aimee and Jaguar are code names the women used for each other in letters they wrote. I rode down to the Stanford Theatre today (08.27.00) to see a 1937 film called Topper. University Ave was closed to traffic today, for some sort of carnival. Stands were set up all over selling things like beer, cowboy hats, Philly cheesesteaks, yarn, Native American beads, other crap. I paid $6 for my ticket. It is for two movies, but I had no intention of staying to see Top Hat. While it is likely the best of the Astaire-Rogers musicals, I certainly don't need to see it again. The Stanford has a hard-on for Astaire-Rogers. I saw Topper many years ago. It was Cary Grant's breakthrough year, 1937. After playing second fiddle, foil, or other for the likes of Mae West, Marlene Dietrich and even Edward Arnold from 1932-1936, Cary made Topper and the masterpiece screwball comedy The Awful Truth. Then Cary went on to become the greatest actor of all time, but that's a long story. Back to Topper. George and Marion Kerby (Grant and Constance Bennett) are a youngish, beautiful, rich married couple living high and wild in upstate New York. Several fits of drinking and driving follow, late nights at swank clubs, drunken singing with Hoagy Carmichael on piano, etc. Car wreck. The Kerby's are dead. But, they're in purgatory, and decide that they have to do a good deed before the getting into Heaven. Topper (the great character actor Roland Young) is a hen-pecked husband, who was also the bank president at the bank where Kerby was the majority stockholder. He's bored and tired of living the dull life that his wife (Billie Burke -- the good witch in The Wizard of Oz) has sketched out for him to lead. The Kerby's have found their good deed to be done. They will make Topper the man he wants to be. Screwball comedy ensues. The George and Marion, for plot ease, can be seen when they want to, and be invisible when they want to be. While some of the political incorrectness is cringe-worthy, much of it is refreshing. There is one scene that I remember in particular. Topper goes out to talk with a car repairman and they're really outside, somewhere near Hollywood, I presume. But it's not a backlot at the studio. And Roland Young is squinting a little (because real sun is shining brightly in his eyes), and smoking a cigaret. He inhales and then exhales and an LA breeze dissipates the smoke. And it was such a moment in time, caught on a film, over 60 years ago. This man, long dead now, smoking a cigaret and the smoke just disappearing, you're watching it. He's looking at a guy and an old car. You see trees and lawn and you wonder where all that stuff is now -- the other man, the car, the trees. Topper's outstanding supporting cast includes: Alan Mowbray, Eugene Pallette, Ward Bond, Hedda Hopper, Doodles Weaver, Si Jenks and Irving Bacon.
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