Laurent and his mother are oh-so-close in French coming-of-age classic
MURMUR OF THE HEART (Louis Malle, 1971)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
70 Lincoln Center Plaza, 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Friday, January 1, 4:00
Saturday, January 2, 9:00
Wednesday, January 6, 9:00
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
Louis Malle’s engaging semiautobiographical coming-of-age drama is about the ultimate mama’s boy. Set in Dijon in 1954 during the French Indochine War, MURMUR OF THE HEART follows fifteen-year-old Laurent Chevalier (Benoît Ferreux) as he investigates his burgeoning sexuality while his Italian mother, Clara (Lea Massari), struggles with her own, cheating on her French gynecologist husband (Daniel Gélin) with a mystery man and flirting madly with just about everyone else. Laurent, who has a heart murmur that requires special treatment, fights with his two older brothers (Fabien Ferreux and Marc Winocourt), has an uncomfortable session with a priest (Michael Lonsdale), tries to make a go of it with a prostitute (Gila von Weitershausen), and experiments with some older local girls, but somehow he always ends up in the loving arms of his very sexy mother. Nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar and the Palme d’Or at Cannes, MURMUR OF THE HEART is a beautiful look at growing up, with a rousing jazz soundtrack featuring music by Charlie Parker, Sidney Bechet, Dizzy Gillespie, and other cool cats. The film is being screened three times as part of Lincoln Center’s Louis Malle Sampler (January 1-7), a six-pack that also includes THE FIRE WITHIN, THE LOVERS, MY DINNER WITH ANDRE, PHANTOM INDIA, and VANYA ON 42nd St.; as an added bonus, Wallace Shawn will participate in a Q&A following the 6:15 screening of MY DINNER WITH ANDRE on January 6.
Natalya Bondarchuk and Donatus Banionis star in the Russian 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, in which something strange is going on in outer space that is unexplainable to both the characters in the film and the people in the audience. Banionis plays Chris Kelvin, who is sent to the Solaris space station to decide whether to put an end to the solaristics project that Burton (Vladislav Dvorzhetsky) complicated twenty years before. What he discovers is one death, two possibly insane men, and his supposedly dead wife (Bondarchuk). Ambiguity reigns supreme in this gorgeously shot (in color and black and white) and scored film that, while technically sci-fi, is really about the human conscience, another gem from master Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky (IVAN’S CHILDHOOD, ANDREI RUBLEV, NOSTALGHIA). See it whether or not you checked out Steven Soderbergh’s underrated remake with George Clooney and Natascha McElhone. The original SOLARIS is screening on New Year’s Eve at the Walter Reade Theater as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Back by Popular Demand series, highlighting works that appeared earlier in 2009 and deserve another go-round, including Orson Welles’s MACBETH (December 29, 1:30), Marco Amenta’s THE SICILIAN GIRL (December 29, 6:15), Kathryn Bigelow’s THE HURT LOCKER (December 30, 3:30), and Martin Provost’s SÉRAPHINE (December 30, 8:10 and December 31, 4:15).