Tag Archives: walter reade theater

ERIC ROHMER’S SIX MORAL TALES: LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON

Chloé (Zouzou) and Frédéric Carrelet (Bernard Verley) develop a unique relationship in Eric Rohmer’s LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON

SIX MORAL TALES: L’AMOUR L’APRÈS-MIDI (LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON) (CHLOÉ IN THE AFTERNOON) (Eric Rohmer, 1972)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
144 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Nightly through September 29, 6:45 & 8:45
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.org

The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s “Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales” concludes with the last work in the series, the 1972 drama Love in the Afternoon, which serves not only as the chronological end but the thematic finale as well. Bernard Verley stars as Frédéric Carrelet, a nearly perfect 1970s French bourgeois character. In his mid-thirties, a partner in a two-lawyer firm, he is about to have his second child with his wife, Hélène, played by his real spouse at the time, Françoise Verley, in her only feature film. While Frédéric seems at ease with his steady suburban life, he daydreams about other women, albeit with no intention of taking action. At lunch he goes to a café, watches all the passersby outside, and thinks (in voice-over narration), “If there’s one thing I’m incapable of now, it’s trying to seduce a girl. I have no idea what to say.” However, he adds, “The prospect of quiet happiness stretching indefinitely before me depresses me.” But he also admits about women, “I feel their seductive power without giving in to it.” But when an old friend from his past, the sexy and freewheeling Chloé (Zouzou), unexpectedly arrives in his office one day and starts an unpredictable yet exciting flirtation with him, Frédéric is forced to look deep inside himself and make some choices about his life that are harder than he anticipated.

chloe-in-the-afternoon

Love in the Afternoon — which should not be confused with Billy Wilder’s 1957 romantic comedy of the same name, starring Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant, but was remade in 2007 by Chris Rock and Louis C.K. as I Think I Love My Wife — is a delightful will-he-or-won’t-he drama in which the man, Frédéric, thinks he has all the power but in fact it rests in the hands of all the women he meets, from a sexy store employee (Irène Skobline) who upsells him a cashmere button-down shirt instead of yet another drab, confining turtleneck to the two secretaries in his office, Fabienne (Malvina Penne) and Martine (Babette Ferrier), who suspect something untoward is going on, to Hélène and Chloé. Made during the women’s liberation movement, the film shows Frédéric at the mercy of all the women in his life, including those he meets on the street. At one point he imagines having a magical device that makes him irresistible to them, using it to conquer a succession of six women played by actresses from three of Rohmer’s previous Moral Tales, each described by Frédéric with one adjective: indifferent (Françoise Fabian from My Night at Maud’s), hurried (Béatrice Romand from Claire’s Knee), hesitant (Marie-Christine Barrault, My Night at Maud’s), busy (La Collectionneuse’s Haydée Politoff), accompanied (Laurence de Monaghan, Claire’s Knee), and alone (Aurora Cornu, Claire’s Knee). Frédéric is a kind of everyman, facing sin and temptation everywhere; he even accidentally catches their lovely English nanny (Suze Randall) in the buff. So he is in a constant struggle with his moral code, and that of society, while wondering if it is possible to truly love and be in love with two women at the same time. Written and directed by Rohmer, who casts no judgments on any of his characters, and photographed with a sly sense of humor by Néstor Almendros, Love in the Afternoon is a fitting end to Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales, bringing everything full circle with an absolutely grand finale. (The film is being shown twice a night through September 29 at the Walter Reade Theater, at 6:45 and 8:45, in a new 35mm restoration.)

ERIC ROHMER’S SIX MORAL TALES: LA COLLECTIONNEUSE / MY NIGHT AT MAUD’S

Néstor Almendros shot the beautiful LA COLLECTIONNEUSE, both his and director Eric Rohmer’s first feature film in color

SIX MORAL TALES: LA COLLECTIONNEUSE (THE COLLECTOR) (Eric Rohmer, 1967)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater, Francesca Beale Theater
144 & 165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
September 16-22; series runs September 16-29
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.org

“Razor blades are words,” art critic Alain Jouffroy tells painter Daniel Pommereulle (Daniel Pommereulle) in one of the prologues at the start of La Collectionneuse, the third film in French master Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales (falling between Suzanne’s Career and My Night at Maud’s). Words might have the ability to cut, but they don’t seem to have much impact on the three people at the center of the film, which offers a sort of alternate take on François Truffaut’s Jules et Jim. Needing a break from his supposedly strenuous life, gallerist Adrien (Patrick Bauchau, who also appeared in La Carrière de Suzanne, Rohmer’s second morality tale) decides to vacation at the isolated St. Tropez summer home of the never-seen Rodolphe. Daniel is also at the house, along with Haydée (Haydée Politoff), a beautiful young woman who spends much of the film in a bikini and being taken out by a different guy nearly every night. Adrien decides that she is a “collector” of men, and the three needle one another as they discuss life and love, sex and morality, beauty and ugliness. Adrien might claim to want to have nothing to do with Haydée, but he keeps spending more and more time with her, even though he never stops criticizing her lifestyle. He even uses her as a pawn when trying to get an art collector named Sam (played by former New York Times film critic Eugene Archer under the pseudonym Seymour Hertzberg) to invest in his gallery. While everybody else in the film pretty much knows what they want, Adrien, who purports to understand life better than all of them, is a sad, lost soul, unable to get past his high-and-mighty attitude. Rohmer crafted the roles of Daniel and Haydée specifically for Pommereulle and Politoff, who improvised much of their dialogue; Bauchau opted not to take that route, making for a fascinating relationship among the three very different people.

Daniel Pommereulle and Patrick Bauchau talk about life and love, sex and morality in LA COLLECTIONNEUSE

La Collectionneuse is beautifully shot in 35mm by Néstor Almendros, the bright colors of the characters’ clothing mixing splendidly with the countryside and ocean while offering a striking visual counterpoint to the constant ennui dripping off the screen. His camera especially loves Politoff, regularly exploring her body inch by inch. The film is both Rohmer’s and Almendros’s first color feature; Almendros would go on to make more films with the director, as well as with Truffaut, even after coming to Hollywood and shooting such films as Days of Heaven, Kramer vs. Kramer, and Sophie’s Choice. Winner of a Silver Bear Extraordinary Jury Prize at the 1967 Berlinale, La Collectionneuse is screening September 16-22 at the Walter Reade Theater and the Francesca Beale Theater, kicking off the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s two-week festival of new restorations of five of Rohmer’s six tales, including My Night at Maud’s, Claire’s Knee, Suzanne’s Career, and Love in the Afternoon (but skipping The Bakery Girl of Monceau) through September 29.

SIX MORAL TALES: MY NIGHT AT MAUD’S (MA NUIT CHEZ MAUD) (Eric Rohmer, 1969)
Saturday, September 17, Walter Reade Theater, 4:30
Sunday, September 18, Francesca Beale Theater, 8:45
Saturday, September 24, Walter Reade Theater, 8:45
Sunday, September 25, Walter Reade Theater, 4:30
www.filmlinc.org

Nominated for the Palme d’Or and a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, My Night at Maud’s, Éric Rohmer’s fourth entry in his Six Moral Tales series (falling between La Collectionneuse and Claire’s Knee) continues the French director’s fascinating exploration of love, marriage, and tangled relationships. Three years removed from playing the romantic racecar driver Jean-Louis in Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman, Jean-Louis Trintignant again stars as a man named Jean-Louis, this time a single thirty-four-year-old Michelin engineer living a relatively solitary life in the French suburb of Clermont. A devout Catholic, he is developing an obsession with a fellow churchgoer, the blonde, beautiful Françoise (Marie-Christine Barrault), about whom he knows practically nothing. After bumping into an old school friend, Vidal (Antoine Vitez), the two men delve into deep discussions of religion, Marxism, Pascal, mathematics, Jansenism, and women. Vidal then invites Jean-Louis to the home of his girlfriend, Maud (Françoise Fabian), a divorced single mother with open thoughts about sexuality, responsibility, and morality that intrigue Jean-Louis, for whom respectability and appearance are so important. The conversation turns to such topics as hypocrisy, grace, infidelity, and principles, but Maud eventually tires of such talk. “Dialectic does nothing for me,” she says shortly after explaining that she always sleeps in the nude. Later, when Jean-Louis and Maud are alone, she tells him, “You’re both a shamefaced Christian and a shamefaced Don Juan.” Soon a clearly conflicted Jean-Louis is involved in several love triangles that are far beyond his understanding, so he again seeks solace in church. My Night at Maud’s is a classic French tale, with characters spouting off philosophically while smoking cigarettes, drinking wine and other cocktails, and getting naked. Shot in black-and-white by Néstor Almendros, the film roams from midnight mass to a single woman’s bed and back to church, as Jean-Louis, played with expert concern by Trintignant, is forced to examine his own deep desires and how they relate to his spirituality. Fabian (Belle de Jour, The Letter) is outstanding as Maud, whose freedom titillates and confuses Jean-Louis. My Night at Maud’s, which is being shown September 17-18 and 24-25 as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Six Moral Tales series, is one of Rohmer’s best, most accomplished works despite its haughty intellectualism.

NEW YORK ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL: WHAT A WONDERFUL FAMILY!

All Tomiko (Kazuko Yoshiyuki) wants for her birthday is a divorce from her husband, Shuzo (Isao Hashizume), in WHAT A WONDERFUL FAMILY!

WHAT A WONDERFUL FAMILY! (家族はつらいよ) (Yoji Yamada, 2016)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Sunday, June 26, 12 noon
Festival runs June 22 – July 9
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.org
www.subwaycinema.com

For her birthday this year, Tomiko Hirata (Kazuko Yoshiyuki) wants something simple from her stubborn, not-very-thoughtful husband of fifty years, Shuzo (Isao Hashizume): a divorce. That shocking wish sends the entire Hirata clan into a frenzy in Yoji Yamada’s charmingly bittersweet What a Wonderful Family! The retired Shuzo doesn’t know what he’ll do without Tomiko, but he is not the kind of man to share his feelings; instead, he prefers to go to a local watering hole and flirt with the cute bartender, play golf, or take the dog, Toto, to the park. Their daughter, Shigeko (Tomoko Nakajima), is mad at her husband, Taizo Kanai (Shozo Hayashiya), for stretching the truth about one of his hobbies. Eldest son Konosuke (Masahiko Nishimura) tends not to get involved, even as his wife, Fumie (Yui Natsukawa), essentially runs the household and their children, Kenichi (Takanosuke Nakamura) and Nobusuke (Ayumu Maruyama), just run around. And youngest son Shota (Satoshi Tsumabuki) has a promising future that just might include his new girlfriend, Noriko Mamiya (Yu Aoi), although all of the divorce talk suddenly has him thinking twice.

The Hirata family face some troubling times in bittersweet Yoji Yamada comedy

Yamada (the long-running Tora-san series, Twilight Samurai), who is now eighty-five years old, cowrote the playfully goofy script with Emiko Hiramatsu, not letting things get too serious or depressing. Except for a few sappy moments, Studio Ghibli veteran Joe Hisaishi’s soundtrack is effective in maintaining the generally lighthearted mood, and cinematographer Masashi Chikamori maintains a sharp, bright look to the film. What a Wonderful Family! evokes the legacy of legendary Japanese auteur Yasujirō Ozu; in fact, at one point Shuzo is watching Ozu’s Tokyo Story on television. In another scene, a writing teacher, Takamura (Katsumi Kiba), describes revered Japanese author Natsume Sōseki’s Kokoro as “a beautiful recounting of sweet, sad, and regretful youthful memories”; you wouldn’t be too far off base saying the same thing about What a Wonderful Family!, which is screening June 26 at 12 noon at the Walter Reade Theater as part of the New York Asian Film Festival, which runs through July 9 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the SVA Theatre and includes more than fifty diverse works from Japan, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FILM FESTIVAL 2016: GROWING UP COY

Timely documentary details one family’s legal and moral fight over child gender identity

GROWING UP COY (Eric Juhola, 2016)
Thursday, June 16, 7:00, IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St., 212-924-7771
Friday, June 17, 6:30, Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway, 212-875-5050
Festival runs June 10-19
ff.hrw.org/new-york
growingupcoy.com

“To me, this is a story about two parents who love their children, who love this particular child who is transgender, and who want the very best things in the world for her,” Michael Silverman of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund says at the beginning of Growing Up Coy, a poignant and timely documentary about one family’s public fight to allow one of their children to legally establish her gender identity. When she was eighteen months old, Coy Mathis, who was born male but was unhappy that way, began displaying distinct female tendencies, exhibiting extreme displeasure when treated as a boy. She began kindergarten in the conservative town of Fountain, Colorado, as male but soon chose to transition, identifying as female. “She started asking us, when are we going to take her to the doctor so that she can be a girl, and when are we going to get the doctors to cut her penis off,” her mother, Kathryn Mathis, says in the film. “That was when it became a problem, and we reassured her that we would do everything we could so that she would be happiest as an adult.” Coy was initially given permission to use the girls bathroom, but in first grade, in late 2012, the school changed its policy and she was denied access. Kathryn, a photographer, and her husband, former Marine and full-time student Jeremy, decided to fight back, engaging in a legal battle that they eventually brought to the press when the school administration refused to acknowledge Coy’s gender choice. Soon the Mathises, who have five children under the age of eight — Dakota, who is is autistic, Auri, and triplets Coy, Max, and Lily, who has cerebral palsy and quadriplegia — are being both celebrated and excoriated on social media, in newspaper columns, and by talking heads on television, but they are determined to do whatever it takes, even if it includes making Coy the poster child in a heated debate over a controversial issue that most people don’t fully understand. “She doesn’t want to have to explain who she is and talk about how she’s different,” Kathryn says. “She just wants to be.”

Director and producer Eric Juhola and his husband, producer and editor Jeremy Stulberg, who previously collaborated on Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa, follow Coy and her family as they meet with child psychologist Tara Eastcott, discuss legal matters with Silverman, and participate in interviews with local and national media, including a high-profile sit-down with Katie Couric. The Mathises, who married when Kathryn was seventeen and Jeremy twenty-one, speak honestly and intelligently about the situation, fully aware of what they are doing and the potential ramifications, even when their relationship becomes strained because of it. They are clearly loving parents who want what’s fair and right for their children and are willing to take personal risks for the future of their family as well as the nation, although they do not consider themselves activists. “We know that once we do this, there’s no going back,” Kathryn says. Growing Up Coy is having its world premiere at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, screening on June 16 at 7:00 at IFC Center and June 17 at 6:30 at the Walter Reade Theater, both followed by a Q&A with Juhola, Silverman, Stulberg, and HRW Bernstein Fellow Ryan Thoresen. The Mathis family has recently sought privacy; although they participated in the making of the film, they are not currently scheduled to make any public appearances in conjunction with it.

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FILM FESTIVAL 2016: ALMOST SUNRISE

Anthony Anderson and Tom Voss go for a long walk to promote military veterans’ health issues in ALMOST SUNRISE

ALMOST SUNRISE (Michael Collins, 2016)
Saturday, June 11, 9:15, Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway, 212-875-5050
Monday, June 13, 6:30, IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St., 212-924-7771
Festival runs June 10-19
ff.hrw.org/new-york
sunrisedocumentary.com

Michael Collins’s emotionally gripping documentary, Almost Sunrise, is built around an absolutely shocking statistic: According to the Department of Veteran Affairs, twenty-two U.S. veterans commit suicide every day. That’s one self-inflicted death every sixty-five minutes. In the film, two young veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom, facing depression and suicidal thoughts themselves, decide to walk from their homes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Los Angeles, California, in order to clear their own heads and raise awareness of this horrifying issue. Tom Voss and Anthony Anderson, a pair of big, bushy-haired men, became media darlings as they continued what became known as Veterans Trek, meeting with local press along the way and occasionally being joined by other veterans and supporters for parts of the 2,700-mile walk. But for much of the time, it’s just them against the elements, wandering across long stretches of deserted highways in the middle of nowhere, photographed beautifully by Clarissa de los Reyes. The two men intimately open up to Collins, who is with them every step of the pilgrimage; they share their thoughts about their families and speak dramatically about “moral injury,” a form of PTSD that the film describes as “a wound to the soul, caused by participation in events that violate one’s deeply held sense of right and wrong.” Similar distress is examined in Sonia Kenneback’s National Bird, in which military personnel working in the U.S. drone program try to deal with how they will never know the results of their classified operations, whether they hit the correct targets or whether they caused so-called collateral damage to innocent civilians.

In Almost Sunrise, Emmett Cullen, a close friend of Voss’s who served alongside him in Iraq, explains, “After you see enough people getting hurt, and see other people get killed, you start to write yourself off in a way. You’re kind of resigned to the fact that you might as well just consider yourself already dead, and if you make it home, you’re lucky. ’Cause that’s the only real mental shift you can make to make it through those kinds of scenarios without kind of freaking out,” adding, “Mentally, you’re processing the situation you’re in, and the dangers, but you’re not feeling it. So that carries over to civilian life when you get out.” Both Voss and Anderson share their struggles with that transition, reaching deep inside themselves. The section near the end in which Voss turns to holistic breathing techniques feels tacked on, almost like an infomercial for that specific healing process, regardless of its success. But the rest of Almost Sunrise, which features a score by Adam Crystal and music by Yuka Honda and Nels Cline, is a sobering look at what soldiers go through in war and some of the profound psychological issues they have to face when they come home. Almost Sunrise is screening twice at the 2016 Human Rights Watch Film Festival, on June 11 at 9:15 at IFC Center and June 13 at 6:30 at the Walter Reade Theater, both followed by a Q&A with Collins, producer Marty Syjuco, Voss, and Anderson, with his wife, Holly.

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FILM FESTIVAL 2016: HOOLIGAN SPARROW

Hooligan Sparrow risks her freedom and her life for protesting for women’s rights in China

HOOLIGAN SPARROW (Nanfu Wang, 2016)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Friday, June 10, 6:30
Series runs June 10-19
212-875-5050
ff.hrw.org/new-york
hooligansparrow.com

The 2016 Human Rights Watch Film Festival kicks off at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater on June 10 with Nanfu Wang’s alarming debut feature documentary, Hooligan Sparrow. Wang won the annual Nestor Almendros Award for courage in filmmaking with this brave, disquieting look at Chinese activist Ye Haiyan, better known as Hooligan Sparrow, an advocate for sex workers’ rights, as she leads protests against a school principal who sexually abused six elementary school girls. “If you film us, we’ll smash your camera,” a man tells Wang at the beginning. Later she’s told she will be beaten if she doesn’t hand over her equipment. But she’s determined to keep telling the story any way she can. Sparrow, who gained notoriety for a project in which she offered free sex to migrant workers, is joined by Shan Lihua, Tang Jitian, Jia Lingmin, Wang Yu, and lawyer Wang Jianfen as she battles law enforcement, the government, and brothel owners, her safety and freedom in constant jeopardy. “If I believe something is right and I’m obliged to do it, they can’t stop me by arresting me or even killing me,” she defiantly says. She and her daughter, Lan Yaxin, keep getting evicted from their homes and banned from numerous provinces, but that doesn’t prevent her from protesting with such signs as “All China’s Women’s Federation Is a Farce. China’s Women’s Rights Are Dead” and “You Can Kill Me, But You Can’t Kill the Truth.” Born and raised in a remote Chinese farming village and currently based in New York City, Wang, who directed, produced, photographed, and edited Hooligan Sparrow, never backs down even as she meets with Chinese officials and is followed everywhere she goes, forced to become suspicious of nearly everyone she encounters. “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you,” Joseph Heller wrote in Catch-22. Wang clearly has reason to be paranoid.

The film is executive produced by Andy Cohen and Alison Klayman, who collaborated on the award-winning documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry; the Chinese artist and activist, who has been under long-term house arrest, took up Hooligan’s cause, and he included her belongings in an installation in his 2014 Brooklyn Museum retrospective, “According to What?” Wang, who has three master’s degrees, cowrote the film with Mark Monroe, who wrote the Oscar-nominated documentary The Cove and numerous Sundance winners. Hooligan Sparrow also features a subtly ominous score by Nathan Halpern and Chris Ruggiero that helps keep you on the edge of your seat as Hooligan and her group continue to fight the power, despite each of them being detained and imprisoned at one point or another — and some still are. Hooligan Sparrow is the opening-night selection of the 2016 Human Rights Watch Film Festival, screening June 10 at 6:30 at the Walter Reade Theater; it will be followed by a discussion with Wang, HRW Women’s Rights division director Liesl Gerntholtz, and HRW China director Sophie Richardson, moderated by HRW Global Initiatives director Minky Worden.

AN EVENING WITH THE WOMEN OF HOMELAND

Claire Danes will be at the Film Society of Lincoln Center on June 7 to discuss her Showtime hit, HOMELAND

Who: Claire Danes, Lesli Linka Glatter, James Wolcott
What: An Evening with the Women of Homeland
Where: Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway, 212-875-5050
When: Tuesday, June 7, $40, 7:00
Why: The world first fell in love with New York City native Claire Danes in 1994-95, when she spent two years playing Angela Chase on My So-Called Life, the popular drama about adolescence that also helped show that MTV was about more than just videos. So we’ve watched Danes grow up in public since she was fifteen, starring in such films as Romeo + Juliet, The Hours, and Stage Beauty as well as appearing on Broadway in Pygmalion and winning an Emmy for the 2010 HBO movie Temple Grandin, about a real-life inspirational autistic woman. But she has become best known for playing CIA operative Carrie Mathison (and serving as co-executive producer) on the Showtime hit Homeland for five seasons, a talented but troubled woman who suffers from bipolar disorder and a penchant for making questionable decisions but who will do just about anything to solve a problem. However, each time she does something major that is wholly unbelievable, making viewers consider to stop watching the series, she rights herself and we forgive her, compelled to see what she does next and how it affects her mentor, Saul (Mandy Patinkin). On June 7, Danes, who has won two Emmys as Chase, will be at the Film Society of Lincoln Center for a special discussion with Homeland director and executive producer Lesli Linka Glatter, the longtime television fixture who has helmed multiple episodes of such series as Twin Peaks, The West Wing, Freaks and Geeks, Gilmore Girls, ER, House M.D., Mad Men, and The Newsroom, garnering three Emmy nominations. The former dancer and choreographer was also nominated for an Oscar for her 1984 short film Tales of Meeting and Parting with Sharon Oreck. The talk will be moderated by Vanity Fair’s James Wolcott, who wrote the following about Homeland’s fifth season, an episode of which will be screened as part of the event at the Walter Reade Theater: “If there were a special Emmy for prescience and conspicuous valor in truth-telling (admittedly, quite a mouthful for any TelePrompter reader), it would have to be presented to the brooding minds behind Showtime’s Homeland, whose fifth season has anticipated the horrific headlines of the last few weeks with the uncanny foreboding of a crystal ball where the future is a black swirling cloud.” The sixth season of Homeland is scheduled to premiere in January 2017.