Love Games
Two very similar films hit Ukrainian movie theater screens last week. So similar, in fact, that it is even risky to juxtapose them within one film review. Still, their mutual presence on the Ukrayina Movie Theater repertoire is definitely significant.
Amelie Poulain is the latest film by Jean-Pierre Jeaunet, a French producer renown for his unrestrained visual fantasies. He already has to his credit a horror comedy, Delicatessen, a rather weird fairy tale, The City of Lost Children, and a fourth part of The Strangers horror film titled The Resurrection that Jeaunet, in deliberate defiance of all Hollywood standards, managed to convert into something almost bordering on farce.
Amelie is a filmstrip where Jeaunet’s basic talents, rich imagination mixed with thick black humor, have revealed themselves most amply, with even sad things treated lightly. The game is something Jeaunet and the characters created by him are ever ready to plunge into. Amelie (played wonderfully by Audry Tautou) is a master of hoaxes, with the author bringing situations, characters, and images of various scale into play. Quite inventively, she hands out valuable advice to strangers, while being completely unable to manage her own affairs. A fairy tale a la Alice in Wonderland, it gradually grows into a grownup melodrama. Amelie eventually finds her fairy prince, as weird as she, played by Mathieu Kassovitz, a most gifted actor and producer. Everything ends well, but long before the happy ending comes, one feels the sadness of being fed up with what is happening. The banal scenario has been lavishly adorned with various Hollywood gimmicks. Unfortunately, the film’s well balanced vividness is unable to hide its superficial and static features. One gets the impression that the whole two-hour film was shot for the sake of a series of jokes, both verbal and visual. All these funny witticisms can keep viewers attention just for one hour, but after that we are just bored. In other words, this same story could have been retold with more thought and in less time. However, Jeaunet has never lain claims to any special depths of introspection. The moral of his films can rather be defined by the motto that nobody can be stopped from having fun.
For Austrian film producer Michael Haneke the notion of a game is also central. But both the message he wants to relay and the temperament of players are different. In the world of cinema Haneke is probably known as a monster, with Funny Games and especially Benny’s Video revealing his preoccupation with violence and pathological cruelty. Funny Games seriously scared viewers at the 1997 Cannes film festival, with embattled critics fleeing the hall, unable to keep watching. True, The Piano Teacher reaped a lavish harvest of awards in Cannes, the jury’s Grand Prix and Golden Palm for the best male and female performances.
The film has a long list of advantages, with the wonderful duet of actors (Isabel Huppert as woman pianist Erika Kohut and Benoit Magimel as Walter Klemmer) as its major attraction. The actors successfully coped with a very complex task, for during the film their characters suffer a radical metamorphosis changing them almost beyond recognition. Tough and given to sadomasochistic fantasies, Erika suddenly becomes a vulnerable, loving, and deeply unhappy woman, while the charming and intelligent Walter turns into a cruel and soulless scoundrel. This juxtaposition in the behavior of characters is played so brilliantly by both actors that the audience is galvanized. Again, the anticipated outbreak of violence makes those in the hall avert their eyes from the screen. The game started by Erika backfires on her, and it is not her fault that she has not learned any other way of making a declaration of love. Haneke always keeps himself at a safe distance from his characters, both villains and heroes, but those who watch the film closely will sure share the misfortunes and catastrophes of Erika and Huppert.
We must honestly admit that many of us have begun to play games with our beloved or someone who loved us, games that seemed so funny and whose rules we regarded as fair. But we prefer not to remember what price was paid by our significant other.
That is why Haneke is not loved by his viewers; he makes them remember.
