Claire Denis

Started by wilder, April 18, 2013, 08:27:14 PM

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wilder

35 Shots of Rum + In Conversation with Claire Denis
via BFI

Inspired by Yasujiro Ozu's Late Spring, Claire Denis' 35 Shots of Rum portrays the intimate relationship of a widower who devotes his life to his only daughter. The sensitive balance of their bond is challenged in this warm, atmospheric film portraying the affection of human relationships.

Denis confesses that the story derives from a deep personal memory of her grandfather being an only parent to her mother. Their exceptional bonding motivated her to explore the possibilities of such a relationship through cinema.

5 minute video interview with Claire Denis

Also, some images from her latest film, The Bastards, which is premiering at Cannes:





Container ship captain Marco Silvestri is called urgently back to Paris. His sister, Sandra, is desperate... her husband has committed suicide, the family business has gone under, her daughter has been admitted into psychiatric care. Sandra accuses the powerful businessman, Edouard Laporte of being responsible. Determined to find the businessman's weak spot and exact a terrible revenge for the violence done to his family, Marco moves into the building where Laporte's mistress, Raphaëlle, lives with her son.

But Marco hasn't planned for Sandra's shameful, secret manipulations... Or to fall in love with Raphaëlle...

wilder

Cannes 2013: This is noir
by Amy Taublin
23 May 2013
via The Guardian

Claire Denis' The Bastards peers into the contemporary heart of darkness.



William Faulkner, always a French favourite, has had a work-out in the past two days, first with James Franco's dense evocation of the backwoods of mythical Yoknapatawpha County in As I Lay Dying, and then with Claire Denis's The Bastards (Les Salauds), in which a shack done up as a rudimentary sex dungeon features a bunch of bloody corn cobs straight out of Sanctuary, probably the only Faulkner novel to function as an S&M jerk-off aid for American Lit majors. (It was published in paperback with a particularly lurid pulp-fiction cover.) The novel was the basis for the 1933, pre-Code Hollywood movie The Story of Temple Drake, with Miriam Hopkins as the rich southern belle who becomes a 'nympho' after she's gang-raped.

The Bastards has a more obvious source of inspiration – the ubiquitous French sex-trafficking and prostitution scandals involving men of wealth and power. Denis said she took note of a news article about a young woman found drugged and naked next to a garbage dumpster. The fragmented opening sequence includes just such a naked women (Lola Créton) tottering on five-inch heels out of the darkness near a house where her father has just committed suicide and her distraught mother (Julie Bataille) is being led away by the cops.

Those relationships may not become clear for quite a while. The Bastards trades in obscurity. It is the darkest movie – visually, psychologically and spiritually – that Denis has made. It's also one of the rarest of cinematic objects – a completely contemporary, disturbingly relevant film noir.



The mother has a brother, a naval captain (Vincent Lindon), who jumps ship to come to the aid of his sister and niece, and get to the bottom of his sister's story that an international financier (Michel Subor) is responsible for bankrupting her husband's business. The naval captain rents an apartment in a building owned by the financier, and soon he and the financier's mistress (Chiara Mastroianni) are going at it hot and heavy. It is a rare actor who can be both the moral and the erotic center of a movie, but Lindon more than fits the bill, which makes it doubly devastating when he's outmatched by the titular Bastards – being just about everyone else in the movie except a psychiatrist (Alex Descas), some children and their smiling school teachers.

Most of Denis's usual creative team is in place: cinematographer Agnes Godard, co-writer Jean-Pol Fargeau and Stuart Staples, who composed a particularly ominous and sparse Tindersticks score. The new element is the digital camera (the RED Epic) from which Denis and Godard manage to wrest the tactility that is their trademark. Close-ups of faces (incredible faces in this movie) and of bodies nearly submerged in darkness, and not a tortured pixel or any other kind of digital noise in sight.

wilder

Artificial Eye Acquire Claire Denis' Bastards
via blu-ray.com

Artificial Eye have acquired the distribution rights to acclaimed director Claire Denis' latest film, Bastards (2013), starring Vincent Lindon, Chiara Mastroianni, Julie Bataille, Lola Créton, and Michel Subor. Earlier this month, Bastards was screened in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival.

Official Cannes synopsis: Captain on a container-ship, Marco Silvestri is called urgently back to Paris. His sister, Sandra, is desperate... her husband has committed suicide, the family business has gone under, her daughter has gone adrift. Sandra accuses the powerful businessman, Edouard Laporte responsible. Marco moves into the building where Laporte's mistress lives with his son. What Marco hadn't foreseen are Sandra's shameful, secret manœuvres... and his love for Raphaëlle which could ruin everything.

Note: In the U.S., Bastards will be distributed by IFC Films.

wilder

Claire Denis joins writer/critic Eric Hynes in a discussion of her creative process, influences, and the films she's made over the course of some 25 years.


max from fearless

Thanks for this Wilderesque, some great moments in this!!!

Robyn

what is the first claire denis movie I should watch?

I am really looking forward to watching her movies.

max from fearless

Beau Travail is incredible, I'd watch that first and then 35 Shots of Rum. White Material didn't quite do it for me, so I'd say Chocolat next.

jenkins

was trying to find a trailer but cannot find a trailer. did find a solid youtube video, and they give a solid explanation
Quote"Between Laure and Jean, almost no word is exchanged; almost no explanation is offered to us. This is Denis's initial tour de force: succeeding in making us feel the emotions and the desires of her characters with recourse to neither dialogue nor voice-over. " Aimé Ancian, 2002

edited because i used french to find a trailer and that's shorter

Ghostboy

BEAU TRAVAIL is where I started too, and 35 SHOT OF RUM would make for a beautiful feel-good movie after that. TROUBLE EVERY DAY is my other favorite.  CHOCOLAT and VENDREDI SOIR are the most huggable.

A few years ago I set out to write in-depth pieces about all of her films, but never finished. The ones I did write are here:

http://www.davidpatricklowery.com/weblog/2010/11/claire_denis_no.html


jenkins

it's nice she has a selection of a noted classics. so many good ones, it's true. like most similar artists, your tastes calibrate the scale. for example, my favorite sequence in 35 shots of rum is a direct reference to friday night, which i think is a movie that's about way more than hugs alone

max from fearless


BB

Claire Denis To Make English-Language Debut With Sci-Fi Movie Set In Space, Co-Written By Zadie Smith
Source: Playlist

Whether you're an arthouse fan or literature lover, this news is going to be a pretty exciting. And if you have a foot in each camp, then today is truly one that edges toward being mindblowing, because no one could have guessed this kind of collaboration was coming.

Screen Daily reports that French auteur Claire Denis will make her English language debut with a sci-fi film set in space, co-penned by the filmmaker with acclaimed author Zadie Smith ("White Teeth," "On Beauty") and Nick Laird. Plot details aren't being shared just yet, except that the story will be set "beyond the solar system in a 'future that seems like the present.' " So yes, we're already totally on board. And the list of collaborators is even more fascinating with Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, and astrophysicist Aurélien Barrau lending their skills, with Stuart Staples of Tindersticks one again reteaming with Denis to score the movie. Better yet, things are moving right along with production to begin either in late 2015 or early 2016.

jenkins


Gold Trumpet

Most anticipated movie ever?

Kellen

thank you based claire