Michèle Morgan and Jean Gabin star in Jean Grémillon’s 1941 melodrama REMORQUES
French Institute Alliance Française
Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesdays in June from June 7-28, $10
212-355-6160
www.fiaf.org
Born in Normandy in 1901, French auteur Jean Grémillon got his start in the world of film by playing violin accompaniment to silent films, then making documentaries, silent pictures, and, ultimately, feature-length narratives. Ranging from melodramas to social realism, his films were popular in his native country, especially during a particularly fruitful period around WWII, but he has not retained the international notoriety associated with such contemporaries as Marcel Carné and Jean Renoir. But institutions such as the Harvard Film Archive and now the French Institute Alliance Française are reexaming the career of the man who once said, “Who could fail to sense the greatness of this art, in which the visible is the sign of the invisible?” For its “CinémaTuesdays: The Magic of Jean Grémillon” series, FIAF will be screening four of Grémillon’s films on Tuesdays in June, beginning tonight with what is considered his masterpiece, Lumière d’été, followed by Daïnah la métisse on June 14, Little Lise on June 21, and Remorques (Stormy Waters), starring the great Jean Gabin, on June 28. [Ed. note: The June 7 screenings of Lumière d’été were canceled because of delays in shipping the print to FIAF; there has been one screening rescheduled for June 17 at 7:30, and admission is free.]
Next up in Subway Cinema’s free “Hidden Gems of Indie Cinema” series at Tribeca Cinemas is Lim Woo-seong’s creepy debut, Vegetarian, which caused quite a stir at the Pusan and Sundance Film Festivals last year. Based on a short story by Han Gang, the psychological drama stars Chae Min-seo as Yeong-hye, a young woman whose dreams lead her to suddenly become a fierce vegetarian, alienating her from her husband, Gil Soo (Kim Young-jae), and her family; a scene in which her father, during his birthday party, tries to force meat into her mouth is particularly unnerving. As Yeong-hye teeters on the edge of sanity, she stirs something deep within her brother-in-law, Cho Min-ho (Kim Hyun-sung), an artist mired in a creative funk. The film slips a bit as it gets more luridly disturbing before returning to the more interesting relationship between Yeong-hye and her older sister, Ji-hye (Kim Yeo-jin), who is desperately trying to save her from permanently losing her mind. Evoking both Todd Haynes’s Safe (1995) and Peter Greenaway’s The Pillow Book (1996), writer-director Lim sustains a tense mood with the help of cinematographer Kang Chang-bae and composer Jeong Yong-jin, exploring just how far obsession can go. Vegetarian might not be a diatribe about vegetarianism, but it still is likely to put you off your lunch, so eat carefully either before or afterward. The series concludes June 21 with Jeong Seong-il’s awesome epic, Café Noir.
In 1961, Barry Mann and Gerry Goffin wrote, “I’d like to thank the guy / who wrote the song / that made my baby / fall in love with me.” The title of that be-bop song, “Who Put the Bomp,” inspired one of music’s first fanzines and later the punk record label Bomp! Records. In their 1999 song “Deceptacon,” the riot grrrl group Le Tigre flipped that question around, asking, “Who took the bomp from the bompalompalomp? / Who took the ram from the ramalamadingdong?” In the song they also dare, “Let me hear you depoliticise my rhyme.” Formed in 1998 by former Bikini Kill leader Kathleen Hanna, zine writer Johanna Fateman, and visual artist Sadie Benning, who was replaced in 2000 by DJ and projectionist JD Samson, Le Tigre challenged the male-dominated world of rock and punk, championing individuality and sexual freedom while redefining gender roles. In 2004, Hanna, Fateman, and Samson set out on a world tour in support of their third and final album, This Island, and asked their lighting designer, Carmine Covelli, to capture it all on film. The result is the engaging Who Took the Bomp? Le Tigre on Tour, in which Covelli and director Kerthy Fix go onstage, backstage, and behind the scenes as the influential trio heads across four continents and ten countries, playing exciting live shows, meeting the media, taking pictures with Slipknot, revealing what they pack in their luggage, exercising in the gym, and talking about facial hair. They also discuss more serious issues such as gender identity, lesbianism, and their DIY mentality, which flew in the face of the music industry. The seventy-two-minute film, which features live multimedia performances of such songs as “Hot Topic,” “Keep on Livin’,” “Viz,” and “Deceptacon,” is screening on June 7 at 7:30 as part of the Maysles Institute’s monthly “Under the Influence of” series and will be followed by a Q&A with Fix, Hanna, and Fateman.