THE TIME TO LIVE AND THE TIME TO DIE (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1985)

About a quarter of Hou Hsiao-hsien's film of his childhood passed before I became ensnared in its soft rhythm and transfixed by its emotional depth. The experience was much like watching Cafe Lumiere (a less dramatic film) and slowly realizing how much lied under the quiet exteriors of its characters. I wonder if I was more ambivalent toward Millennium Mambo because it begins with such a masterful, hypnotic shot that even articulates a possible rhythm to the film- Vicky's dreamlike inability to leave Hao-Hao- but ends up being dull and quite lifeless.

The Time to Live and the Time to Die is dark but honest, unobtrusive, and humanistic. Character motivations are so unemphatic that familiar coming-of-age tropes seem to take place naturally. As I've seen in other Hou films, scenes are sometimes constructed in a way that makes it unclear where the main characters are fixed or if they are present at all. This could speak to the family's history as emigrants to Taiwan from China (the grandmother perpetually getting lost trying to walk back), or perhaps to the modest ambitions- to be teachers or members of the military- that seem to lie on the fringes of their everyday concerns. In a film where dying is so inevitable and assured, living seems to be far more uncertain.

A SHORT FILM ABOUT LOVE (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1988)

I like when recently watched films unexpectedly resonate with one another. Rather than watch the Hou Hsiao-hsien film I've had queued up for the past two days, I watched what is apparently one of his favorites. But more than Hou maybe, Tsai Ming-liang's Vive L'Amour (six years later) and Edward Yang's The Terrorizers (two years prior) struck me as spiritual brethren to this fantastic effort from Kieslowski. 

Of course, no one can spy on their neighbors without evoking Rear Window. And not knowing anything about A Short Film About Love, I had been curious about the Hitchcock influence on Kieslowski's Red. There is voyeurism abound in these three films, sure- the peepers, eavesdroppers, and us, the viewers. But A Short Film and Red are highly memorable in their emphasis on the spatial geography that connects and distances its characters.

Red is masterful in its omniscient view of Geneva, especially the street corner where Valentine and the young judge live. Long shots highlight near encounters and two lives intertwined. The windows of their apartments, through which the camera regularly moves, make their lives seem frighteningly vulnerable.

Traces of Rear Window can't be overlooked in this regard, but- to return to him- Hou Hsiao-hsien's Cafe Lumiere (a film whose status grows in my mind the more I think about it) also has some Red-like qualities. There is an incredible scene in Hou's film where the two main characters (friends or maybe more) are both shown riding trains and gazing out the window. Suddenly, we see the trains pass on adjacent rails, but Yoko (the female lead) is no longer gazing and slightly hidden from the window, so they never see each other.

Cafe Lumiere

Valentine in the background in Red

Is there ever anything but loneliness and emptiness behind this attention to spacial proximity? 

A Short Film About Love doesn't really play any beautiful serendipitous games for the sake of the audience because the peeping construct is, to some extent, dismantled very quickly. When Tomek and Magda meet, the film even flirts for a bit with being an uncomfortable sexual coming of age story in the vein of Skolimowski. But the climax of the film (a climax in itself) proves that it is indeed a film about love, which is more than sex. 

If not sex, what is love? When Tomek utters the word, he explains that he wants nothing. His love comes from her presence (even across the street), his visual access to her, and their overlapping routines. Tomek's innocence is underscored when we learn he no longer cares for Magda's sex life, just the banality of her everyday routines. She mistakenly tries to provoke some sexual response from him by having him caress her hands in the cafe and touch her thighs in her apartment. But the most important physical contact is clearly what begins and ends the film- Magda trying to touch the sleeping Tomek's bandaged wrist. It's a purely emotional gesture to frame this film of reverse sexual awakening.

OBSESSION (Brian De Palma, 1976)

Naturally, I'll begin this blog with a film I dislike.

Brian De Palma generates divisiveness on a number of levels. There is debate over preference for his Hitchcockian thrillers vs. his crime films vs. his divergent efforts (most of which seem to be commercial failures). There is probably just as much debate about whether his films are trash or goofy referentialism/overblown satire or something more (intellectually demanding I guess).

I tend to approach De Palma films within that second category. For certain cinephiles, this might create the tendency to project some postmodern game onto these movies, where the goal is to catch the reference and evaluate based on how well that reference is complicated or played with. I don't consider myself a cinephile, but I've felt this impulse to varying degrees.

But is there any play in Obsession? On first viewing, I would answer no. At least it is not play on the level of Blow Out, Body Double, Sisters, or Hi, Mom! In other words, if there is play in Obsession, it's not fun or enjoyable. All of these other films are vastly superior in this regard. You do have a little humor in waiting for LaSalle's (Lithgow) unscrupulous nature to reveal itself. I also found the film lighthearted in its sudden reveal that Courtland's (Robertson) obsession is actually ruining them financially. But is there any exploration of the self-reflexiveness of the film beyond what can be summarized by its premise? Not really.

I should give the ending credit for being ambiguous and inviting some different readings. Not until the very end does Courtland realize this is not a typical happy ending, but an incestuous one. He learns Sandra is his daughter Amy (Bujold) and cheerfully goes along with their embrace, whatever that might imply. Is Courtland just a daydreaming cinephile who is at last awoken from the movie playing in his own head, with its insular language of cinematic reference? Is this revelation the final act of De Palma's hand unraveling the cloak of Hitchockian signifiers to remind the viewers that this is in fact, his own original invention (as well as Schrader's (and Herrmann's) who I should have mentioned probably)? Maybe if you found yourself caught up in the drama of the film it worked like this. But I was just happy for it to be over.

Is a sense of play necessary to make a referential film worthwhile? Can the absurdity of it all be excised? As far as Vertigo tributes (See how I'm just bringing this up now?) go, I much prefer André Téchiné's Barocco, which lacks the flair of American postmodernism. Amazingly, it and Obsession never get brought up together despite the fact that they were both released in 1976.

To Hitchcock's credit, the two are incredibly different films that both seem to capture some essence of their point(s) of reference. While De Palma weaves in pieces from multiple Hitchcock films, Téchiné (originally a critic) draws from French film and even includes word-for-word dialogue from Johnny Guitar for good measure. I faintly remember reading a quote from Téchiné that said his early films were so referential because they were all inspired by the cinema. In other words, he needed to work through his cinematic language to find an original voice (something that seems fairly common among auteurs). But that statement undersells the originality and beauty of a film like Barocco. It's obviously fair to say that De Palma is more interested in humorously underscoring the fucked-upness of Hitchcock characters than revealing some underlying beauty. But Obsession, in some ways, represents the worst case scenario of where cinematic language limits rather than expands the possibilities of expression through reference.