Jean-Louis Trintignant tries to find his place in the world in Bernardo Bertolucci’s lush masterpiece, THE CONFORMIST
THE CONFORMIST (IL CONFORMISTA) (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Friday, December 7, and Saturday, December 8
Series runs December 7-20
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
Based on the novel by Alberto Moravia, Bernardo Bertolucci’s gorgeous masterpiece, The Conformist, is a political thriller about paranoia, pedophilia, and trying to find one’s place in a changing world. Jean-Louis Trintignant stars as Marcello Clerici, a troubled man who suffered childhood traumas and is now attempting to join the fascist secret police. To prove his dedication to the movement, he is ordered to assassinate one of his former professors, the radical Luca Quadri (Enzo Tarascio), who is living in France. He falls for Quadri’s much younger wife, Anna (Dominique Sanda), who takes an intriguing liking to Clerici’s wife, Giulia (Stefania Sandrelli), while Manganiello (Gastone Moschin) keeps a close watch on him, making sure he will carry out his assignment. The Conformist, made just after The Spider’s Stratagem and followed by Last Tango in Paris, captures one man’s desperate need to belong, to become a part of Mussolini’s fascist society and feel normal at the expense of his real inner feelings and beliefs. An atheist, he goes to church to confess because Giulia demands it. A bureaucrat, he is not a cold-blooded killer, but he will murder a part of his past in order to be accepted by the fascists (as well as Bertolucci’s own past, as he makes a sly reference to his former mentor, Jean-Luc Godard, by using the French auteur’s phone number and address for Quadri’s). Production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro bathe the film in lush Art Deco colors as Bertolucci moves the story, told in flashbacks, through a series of set pieces that include an erotic dance by Anna and Giulia, a Kafkaesque visit to a government ministry, and a stunning use of black and white and light and shadow as Marcello and Giulia discuss their impending marriage. The Conformist is a multilayered psychological examination of a complex figure living in complex times, as much about the 1930s as the 1970s, as the youth of the Western world sought personal, political, and sexual freedom. The Conformist kicks off Film Forum’s two-week tribute to Trintignant, which also includes such double features as Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors: Red and François Truffaut’s Confidentially Yours, Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman and Eric Rohmer’s My Night at Maud’s, and Jacques Deray’s The Outside Man and René Clement’s And Hope to Die in addition to Dino Risi’s Il Sorpasso, Sergio Corbucci’s The Great Silence, Costa-Gavras’s Z, and others, leading up to the theatrical release of Trintignant’s latest, Michael Haneke’s remarkable Palme d’Or winner Amour, which once again displays the actor’s unique range and sensitivity in an unforgettable performance that is likely to finally make him much better known in the United States, at the tender age of eighty-two.
Back in 1993, writer-director Wong Kar Wai’s Ashes of Time was released, a thinking man’s martial arts epic inspired by Jin Yong’s The Eagle-Shooting Heroes novels. With numerous versions in circulation and the original negatives in disrepair, Wong (Chungking Express, In the Mood for Love) decided to painstakingly reedit and restore the film fifteen years later, renaming it Ashes of Time Redux. The plot – which is still as confusing as ever — revolves around Ouyang Feng (Leslie Cheung), a loner who lives in the desert, where people come to him when they need someone taken care of. Every year he is visited by Huang Yaoshi (Tony Leung Ka Fai), who keeps him informed of the world outside jianghu — especially about his lost love (Maggie Cheung). Meanwhile, Murong Yang (Brigitte Lin) has demanded that Ouyang kill Huang for having jilted his sister, Murong Yin (also played by Lin), who in turn hires Ouyang to kill Yang. There’s also a blind swordsman (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), a peasant girl with a basket of eggs (Charlie Young), a poor, rogue swordsman (Jacky Cheung), and a bottle of magic wine that can erase memories. Or something like that. But what’s most impressive about Ashes of Time Redux is Christopher Doyle’s thrilling, swirling cinematography, which sweeps the audience into the film, and Wu Tong’s rearranged score, based on the original music by Frankie Chan and Roel A. Garcia and featuring soaring cello solos by Yo-Yo Ma. The film is screening December 7 as part of the Asia Society series “Goddess: Chinese Women on Screen,” which concludes December 8 with Stanley Kwan’s Center Stage, also starring Cheung.
Culinary documentarian Paul Lacoste details the handing over of a world-renowned restaurant business from father to son in the appetizing if not wholly satiating Step Up to the Plate. In 1999, Lacoste kicked off his “Inventing Cuisine” series with an inside look at gourmet chef Michel Bras, followed by episodes focusing on Pierre Gagnaire, Gérald Passédat, Michel Troisgros, Olivier Roellinger, Michel Guérard, Pascal Barbot, Alain Passard, and Nadia Santini. Ten years later, when he learned that Michel was retiring and his son, Sébastien, would be taking over, Lacoste asked if he could document the transition, resulting in the Bras family welcoming the director into their restaurants and homes, although the results are sometimes surprisingly distant and empty rather than intimate and revealing. Over the course of four seasons, Lacoste follows Michel and his wife, Ginette, and Sébastien and his wife, Véronique, and their two kids from their franchise three-Michelin-star restaurant in the Aubrac region in the south of France to the glorious, stunning Michel Bras Toya Japon situated atop a mountain in Japan. Much of the film focuses on Sébastien creating a new dish, a special request from the director; the deeply intent chef stares at the plate, knowing something is missing but not sure what it is, the camera lingering, a bit too long, on his consternation. When he ultimately brings the dish to his demanding father, Sébastien declares, “Stop looking, taste it! Food is for eating,” to which Michel responds, “But you look at it first, you know.” It is fascinating to watch just how central a role food as both reality and concept plays in this close family’s life, especially as they entertain thoughts of a fourth generation someday grabbing the reins. But while Step Up to the Plate will leave you hungry to eat at their restaurants, it will also leave you hungry for more from the film itself. Step Up to the Plate was originally scheduled to close out FIAF’s “Films for Foodies!” series on October 30 but was canceled because of Hurricane Sandy; it will now be shown December 6 at 7:00, with producer Jaime Mateus-Tique on hand to discuss the film.
