watch

A Prophet (Jaques Audiard) Tahar Rahimi, Niels Arestrup, Reda Kateb. 2009.

Now over a decade old, Audiard’s brutal prison flick hums with vivacity as audibly as it did upon release. Bursting with the style and confidence of an acclaimed auteur in career best form, A Prophet is near flawless. Rahimi’s exceptional debut performance is the film’s glue, his portrayal of Malik, the nineteen year old abandoned by the system and left to find his way in a maximum security prison, integral to its success.

A coming of age tale set in the slammer rather than high school, Malik’s journey up through the prison ranks is by turns heart breaking, terrifying and exhilarating. When he arrives as a thoroughly green teenager staring down the barrel of a six year bid off the back of a questionable police assault beef, he is impossibly vulnerable. Singled out by the Corsican Mafia as a likely patsy he is missiled into the deep end immediately. The plot hinges on the murder of a fellow prisoner turning witness that Malik is forced to carry out by his newly self-appointed bosses. It’s a thoroughly harrowing scene but also a dazzling showcase of Audiard’s technical ability as a film maker. As Malik grows tougher and smarter, we the viewers, become embroiled in his actions but never turn on him. He’s an innocent after all, turned into a killer by a cold, uncaring system.

Matching Rahimi scene for scene is wily veteran Arestrup as César the Mafia boss, an evil man holding on to the power he has left as he slowly comes to the realisation that he’ll die alone in prison. Arestrup’s portrayal is ice cold, seemingly uninterested in giving César any redeemable qualities and consistent throughout. The dynamic established between the leads is just that.

Edging toward the end of his sentence Malik sets in motion the chain of events that will define his stay as well as the movie itself. In one of the script’s very few questionable choices, he will become the titular character for a brief moment whilst on day release. Returning to prison, prophecy fulfilled, he can get on with the business of attaining freedom a more capable man than the one who went in. The viewer shares his experience and will likely walk away horizons expanded. 5/5.

stream@: https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/1829097027585/

Lost Bullet (Guillame Pierret) Alban Lenoir, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Stefi Celma. 2020.

Making quite the splash on Netflix this past year has been Guillame Pierret’s rambunctious debut. As hyper-active as the class clown with a gut-full of red cordial, Lost Bullet isn’t interested in setting the mood or building characters for its viewer. Perhaps rightly so: action fans want action and they get it by the bucket load here, not without a fair helping of Gallic panache. Shot in the enchanting port town of Sète, Pierret’s film races out of the gates and doesn’t let up until the credits roll a crisp 93 minutes later. Several plot holes that you could could plough an armoured French police vehicle through are left uncovered, but them’s the breaks, or brakes if you will.

The plot, as immaterial as it may be, concerns Lino, a top notch mechanic turned thief busted out of prison by the police to work on their vehicles in order to increase their chances of chasing down drug dealers. So far so ridiculous. When Lino’s police mentor is murdered by nefarious elements of the unit, he is framed and must go on the run and attempt to prove his innocence. Memorable set pieces are pulled off with no little style, drawing in elements of the Mad Max and Raid movies for inspiration and are commendably shot using practical effects. In the lead role, Lenoir channels Jason Statham minus the irritatingly smug tough-guy schtick but equally lacks the charisma Statham can bring to a role. A former stuntman, Lenoir is an impressive specimen and pulls off the physical aspect of the performance but is far less convincing when asked to show emotional range. Not that it matters overtly in a movie such as this.

Rounding the home stretch in pole position, the movie rushes its ending leaving several loose ends unattended and falls short of the cult classic status it was on course for. It’s an enjoyable ride nonetheless and is a refreshing change from the bloated self-serious blockbuster fare Hollywood often serves up. 3/5

stream@: https://www.netflix.com/search?q=lost%20bullet%20&jbv=81108579

La Cage Aux Folles, (Édouard Molinaro) Ugo Tognazzi, Michel Serrault, Rémi Laurent. 1978

Both progressive for its time and notably dated, this adaptation of Jean Poiret’s juggernaut 1973 play may well fall victim to the rigorously applied and frequently evolving trial by social media when looked at through modern eyes. Molinaro’s high camp high farce romp presents a flamboyant gay couple posing as man and wife with nary a stereotype overlooked. The script’s setup sees Renato (Tognazzi) a vaudeville nightclub owner and his chief muse and life partner Albin (Serrault), preparing for the visit of the former’s son’s in-laws to be. Said in-laws happen to be the chief of the conservative “family morality party” and his dolefully like-minded wife. Needless to say hijinks ensue when Albin makes the 11th hour decision to arrive at the engagement in full drag in order to pose as mother and wife respectively.

For all the gay lifestyle clichés Poiret’s creation heaps upon its audience it’s worth remembering the time that has passed since the film’s release and the significant shift in public perception that has taken place. Jokes that may well seem base and crude by today’s standards were no doubt daring and cutting edge in their time. What’s more, the tone of the film is undeniably sympathetic and good natured, if it pokes fun at certain perceived habits of the gay community it does so with extra aplomb when aiming its lens at conservative ideals. Most importantly La Cage holds up as a comedy, it’s still funny 43 years later and funny throughout. The leads play off each other nicely as do the supporting players, Benny Luke as the couple’s preening housekeeper mortified at the idea of having to wear shoes for the big event is a particular hoot. The movie isn’t perfect: aside from not exactly ageing like a vintage Chateaux Margaux, it has pacing problems, putting too much emphasis on the lead-up to the big night before rushing the showdown. Nonetheless it’s still a vibrant concoction, and it hasn’t lost its fizz after all these years. 4/5

stream@: https://play.stan.com.au/programs/330909

read

Nana, Emile Zola 1880.

Rising from the wretched corpse of L’assommoir, is Nana, daughter of Gervais and Copeau and insatiable force of nature. Zola’s follow up to his much-loved study of alcoholism amongst the Parisian working class comes after a three year break, but the sabbatical clearly did little to brighten his general outlook. Whereas Nana’s aforementioned parents spent 400 odd pages drinking themselves to death in L’assommoir, their mercilessly sadistic offspring spends the great bulk of this novel inflicting misery upon a seemingly endless lineup of gormless menfolk. Turning his brutally incisive gaze onto high society with Nana, Zola offered up another bleak, unflinching study of human nature.

In his title character he crafted a demon of sorts, former child of the streets turned high class courtesan, wholly consumed by material possessions, completely lacking in self-awareness and cruelly sadistic toward the string of hapless rubes who line up to blow their respective fortunes on her. Which begs the question, is Nana a misogynistic creation? Is a central female character so thoroughly lacking in a redeeming feature other than physical beauty a barbed shot fired at women in general? Well, maybe somewhat, but such an argument would be more compelling if Zola didn’t so skilfully skewer all of his characters, laying their ugly characteristics bare in stark detail. If it’s difficult to feel much other than a healthy dislike of Nana, then her suitors with their vanity and pitiful neediness get off no lighter. Incapable of getting out of their own way and embarrassingly beholden to social staus, Zola’s opinion of the male aristocracy was clearly one of scorn and derision. Nana is certainly the star of the show, but she and her support players are surely mouthpieces to what Zola saw as the decadence and moral decline of his compatriots during the time of the second empire.

The novel, much like L’assommoir before it, is tough to swallow. Persisting with it can make you feel a bit like the long suffering Count Muffat himself, chief benefactor of Nana whose fortune is dwindled away with increasingly diminishing returns. Page after page reveals fresh depravity, yet you plough on knowing full well it’s bad for you, that there is no redemptive arc lying in wait to make the proceeding gloominess more palatable. That Zola’s stories have been so endearingly successful despite their turgid outlook and seeming contempt for their characters is a testament to skill with which they are told.

listen

Daft Punk, 1993-2021

Daft Punk deciding to part ways is a bit like a vintage television and VCR abruptly becoming incompatible after decades of reliably churning out digital content. A faceless electronic entity that has resisted and persisted as the game changed around it and frequent innovations combined to push it toward obsoletion. Attempting to sum up the oddball magic of the Parisian duo is tricky, after all what exactly is it that they do? Live shows give little away, two leather clad men wearing futuristic helmets and poking at monitors whilst blinding strobe lights bounce off the walls lends itself to interpretation somewhat. As usual though, the aural experience is the most telling component.

Perhaps Daft Punk’s mission statement was to bring electronica to the masses, to bridge the divide between glow-stick-waving gibberish-spouting festival heads and devotees of middle of the road contempory soft rock who had always sneered at each other with such contempt. The music, as un-lyrical as it often was, always seemed to promote the values of diversity and breaking down barriers. Despite their best efforts though they still managed to divide opinion and confound many. Maybe regarding Daft Punk, you’re simply either a Jermaine or a Murray.

Or perhaps yacht rock died so that Daft Punk could flourish. If musical compositions could talk, Punks would surely suggest slightly creepily that you kick back, pour yourself a wine spritzer and let the good times roll. Indeed, it’s easy enough to picture the boys standing starboard, top two buttons of their Hawaiian shirts undone and mixing it up with Kenny Loggins and the Doobie Brothers. Or at least it would be if we knew what the hell they looked like. Maybe, and just maybe now, talk of retirement is a mere smokescreen. Perhaps the boys have hung up their helmets and synthesizers only to rebrand themselves as tortured struggling indie folk merchants, revelling in their newfound ability to appear in public without fanfare. Would we really know?

Ultimately Daft Punk, like the world they coexisted in for so long, are what you make of them. If you find them to be over-hyped and unnecessary then they are. Alternately you might think of them as boundary-pushing mavericks who altered dance for the immeasurably better. It’s an equally valid opinion. You might even bounce back and forth between these two polarities before landing somewhere in between. Their songs, after all, range from effortless bangers that have you reconsidering previous notions about techno (aerodynamic, around the world) to the type of abysmal Euro trash you wish you could un-hear (one more time). Once again their beauty or lack thereof lies with the beholder.

Their 2013 album Random Access Memories was their commercial apex and cemented them as major players but perhaps the writing was on the wall. As the sound evolved and expanded so to did the guest-list with everyone from house impressario Todd Edwards to Pharrell making an appearance. Could the expanded entourage have been the first sign that Guy-Manuel and Thomas, inseparable for so long, were finally beginning to tire of each other? It was the last album they’d release together even if they left it till this February to finally announce their separation. All we have left are the recordings and plenty of time to consider and reconsider.

Daft Punk’s albums are available to download on Spotify.

eat and drink

Courgette, 54 Marcus Clarke St, Canberra, 2601.

Hat-flaunting uptown Canberra establishment positively sneers at its competitors with its precocious menu and exceptional customer service. Unapologetically pricey, Courgette’s sparsely packed servings leave you salivating as you work your way through four courses of inventive nouvelle cuisine. Save your visit for a special occasion and accept the cost going in and you’ll likely be delighted by what’s on offer. Be sure to fill up on the complimentary crusty bread and decadent whipped butter.

Highly regarded (except perhaps by Canberra police) restaurateur James Mussillon has dreamed up an endlessly surprising menu which in the wrong hands could go badly awry. The veteran’s evident attention to detail and high standards which permeate throughout his team ensure the patron has no justification to grumble. Highlights include the Confit Duck with corn purée and the porcini and Portobello mushroom risotto, but you’ll be hard pressed to find a weak link throughout. Adding a bottle of wine might well destroy your budget altogether but do so if your wallet permits. A chardonnay will compliment your meal nicely.

All told La Courgette is a hugely rewarding dining experience, but one that you might have to pencil in for that approaching birthday or anniversary. When the occasion does roll around, you’ll hardly be disappointed.

goal of the month

Misdirected through balls are of little concern to Karim Benzama. He merely flicks them ahead with his trailing leg before lobbing the onrushing keeper. The Swiss eventually prevailed on penalties but this goal would be the pinnacle of an epic clash.