Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

 I promised you guys a third feature for the Criterion Challenge, and we're coming close to the wire, but here it is!

A heads-up - as a rule, I've tried to anchor these entries on a particular point or aspect of the film. It became a good way to vary the writeups rather than do every one by the same format. I bring this up because, in the case of Portrait of a Lady on Fire, I realized the point I wanted to come at it from is the movie's ending.

So if you haven't seen it yet and would wish to avoid spoilers, I'd recommend putting this one aside for now and going to watch the film. It's worth seeing and this will be here when you get back.

Still here? Okay. Anyone who's not seen it has been warned, and hopefully will still seek it out.

This was an interesting revisit for me. The last time I'd seen this, it was in theaters - the last weekend before everything locked down due to COVID. This isn't really related to my main point, I just wanted to note it and use it as a context note.

Since that first viewing, that final scene has stuck with me. It was the moment I was both most curious, and most apprehensive, to revisit after over a year and see if it was as good as I remembered or if time and memory had overextended it for me.

I'm pleased to see it's held up well, and, if anything, I feel like I appreciate it more this time around.

For anyone who hasn't seen the movie and decided 'Spoilers be damned!' or those who don't remember as well, a quick refresher -

The bulk of the movie recounts the arrival of Marianne (Noémie Merlant) to a remote island where she's been commissioned to paint a portrait of the soon to be married Héloïse (Adèle Haenel.) In the relative isolation, spending much of their time together, the two women fall in love. Ultimately, however, they are unable to avoid the larger world - Héloïse still has to go ahead with the marriage, even as it hurts both women to have to end what they have together.

Having gone their separate ways, Marianne recalls two times since then that she saw Héloïse. The first in the form of a portrait, in which the depicted woman left a visible clue to her past romance. The second at a concert years later, unknown to Héloïse. This is the moment that stuck with me - the performance being from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, a piece Marianne previously played for her. As the song plays, we hold on Héloïse, watching the performance entirely in Haenel's non-verbal expressions as she's overcome with emotions remembering what she had with Marianne.

It's a shot that's simple on paper, but powerful and beautiful to watch played out.

Rewatching it, the scene resonated for me even more care of an observation from another conversation with Jamie (hey, her perspective has been a big help this month.) That regarding how the ending feels in the larger history of queer cinema - most notably with regards to the infamous concept known as 'bury your gays.'

This refers to the long, checkered tendency for cinematic depictions of queer relationships to ultimately end tragically with one or both parties dead, institutionalized, or similarly having left that part of their life behind.

This is also part of why La Cage's earlier depiction of Renato and Albin was so surprising in how it bucked against type, especially for the late 70's.

As for Portrait, I have to admit, a part of me did briefly wonder that first time if this film was going to go with the more common BYG trope (anyone who's seen the trailers can see where that feeling would come from.)

Instead we get this ending. Yeah, it's not conventionally happy - ultimately Marianne and Héloïse can't be together as a consequence of the larger world at the time - but it's still a push back against the trope. Héloïse is married, but she hasn't fallen out of love with Marianne. In fact, the portrait and the concert show she has kept those feelings alive, just as the framing of the flashbacks show Marianne has kept Héloïse in her heart as well.

It's an ending that was powerful to me the first time, and it resonated even more looked at in that larger context.

The whole movie is well worth the watch, but it's those final few minutes especially that have, and will likely continue to, stay with me.

Whew. That was a lot more than I initially expected to say for one scene. What can I say? It was that good for me.

This brings Pride Month to a close here and just in time to keep rolling into July - where I'll be celebrating the Fourth in a suitably questionable fashion with two films that dig into the darker corners of the American dream.

Till then.

La Cage Aux Folles (1978)

 Welcome back to the Criterion Challenge.

As I said last time, we're doing something a little bit different today. Along with this writeup on the 1978 French-Italian comedy, La Cage Aux Folles, I'm taking part in a crossover discussion with a friend, offering a second perspective on the movie. In particular, discussing how it compares to its 1996 American remake, The Birdcage.

That discussion will be available to read here: https://theguyinthe3rdrow.blogspot.com/2021/06/la-cage-aux-folles-1978-discussion.html

There's no intended reading order here - whichever appeals to you to read first, by all means, do so.
With the majority of the comparisons in that discussion, I'm looking to focus on just the merits of La Cage on its own, but I apologize in advance if I retread ground. I say this because, honestly, the thing I keep coming back to with this movie is how relatively well it has aged.

Ordinarily, doing a movie with this subject matter, especially as a comedy, is a really iffy prospect. As Drew McWeeny arguably put it best, comedy ages faster than almost any other type of film. So much so that, on paper, the idea of a late 1970s comedy about a homosexual couple automatically sounds like a representational minefield.

To be fair, there are some aspects that haven't held up well - the racial dynamics of the movie, care of the houseboy, Jacob, come to mind  - but as far as its central couple is concerned, this holds up surprisingly well.

To clarify - Jacob is the ONLY non-white character in this
movie.
Yeeeeeeeeeeah...

A big part of where this comes from is Ugo Tognazzi and Michel Serrault as the film's central couple. I will admit there are some cliched and stereotypical aspects to the performances, most notably in Serrault's Albin, who fits a lot of the effete gay man tropes. Several of those work in the context of the film, both as a farce and as far as Albin's character as an aging drag performer.

Even with the broader cliches and comedic elements, however, the movie works because of the chemistry between the two. From their first scene together, playing as a bickering couple, to moments like the genuinely touching scene at Albin's cemetery, when Tognazzi's Renato tells him of his desire for them to share a plot together, the movie maintains the love between its two leads.

For not being explicitly presented as a romantic movie, that love is the central piece that the entire story hangs on. It's the complication that Renato's son's marriage hinges on, it's the relationship that they try to fool the conservative in-laws about, and at the end, it's the genuine love between Renato and Albin that winds up bringing the film to its entertaining conclusion.

With that as the lynchpin, this movie could have aged like milk if it hadn't been done well. Instead, it's one of the strongest parts of the movie and part of why, comparisons to its remake aside, it's still a very entertaining farce with a lot of heart at its own center.
Two down, one to go.

Catch you for the end of Pride Month next time.

Till then

La Cage Aux Folles (1978) - The Discussion

As mentioned in the other entry, this is the other piece to the discussion of La Cage Aux Folles - in which I'm joined by Jamie, a good friend of mine, to offer a queer perspective, both on this movie and its subsequent American remake, The Birdcage in terms of representation then and now.

The main writeup can be viewed here: https://theguyinthe3rdrow.blogspot.com/2021/06/la-cage-aux-folles-1978.html

and Jamie's writing can be found here: https://elessar42.medium.com/

Enjoy

---

Todd: Hello and welcome, dear readers.

This is a bit of a different approach from usual, so I will ask that you bear with us, as this discussion is going to be posted on two different sites.

So, in the interests of addressing the readers wondering 'Who the Hell is this?', let's get started with some introductions.

I'm Todd, aka TheGuyinthe3rdRow. I'm here for this as part of a long term project digging into the films of the Criterion Collection with a thematic twist per month.

And for this particular entry, I'll be doing something of a crossover event with another site, so for that, I turn the proverbial mic over to Jamie.

Jamie: Hi everyone, I'm Jamie! I also go by Elessar42 on twitter and similar stuff everywhere else. And since this month is pride month I thought I would assist my buddy Todd with his criterion project, because I figured he needed a queer perspective. You see, I'm both a trans woman AND I'm bi. A queer two-fer

Todd: Indeed!

It's a perspective I'm definitely welcoming for this one (and honestly, something will be open to doing more with in the future!)

And with that in mind, we're here to discuss a title that Jamie actually suggested (and I will admit, got me to cave and pick up the Blu Ray on) - the 1978 French-Italian farce La Cage Aux Folles

Jamie: And what better time to cover an Italian made film than 2021, the year that Italy won Eurovision.

...so I was the only one who watch-oh okay. Anyway, I picked up my own copy of La Cage Aux Folles for my birthday this year and thought that a compare and contrast between it and it's 1996 remake The Birdcage would make for good Pride Month Content. And knowing Todd is doing a similar project meant I felt we should talk about it together before we separated to write about them apart

Todd: and I'm glad you wanted to make that the main point of discussion for this, cause I was telling myself I wasn't going to try and do that for the write-up on this end (it's probably still going to happen to an extent) so this is a great way to still dig into that as its own topic.

Because watching the two in close proximity it's really striking how the movies manage to be both incredibly similar - to the point where many jokes are played with the same beats - while also having a very different feeling just in terms of context and delivery

Jamie: It is kind of fascinating to watch the points of this movie where they are, essentially, doing the exact same jokes with the exact same timing. Honestly, one of the main things that keeps this from being a Gus Van Sant's Psycho remake is that occasionally the movie just has to stop to let Robin Williams Robin Williams everywhere.

But even when they're doing the exact same lines, a lot of them land kind of different in the remake and part of that I put down to the shift in time. 1978 and 1996 are only 18 years apart, but in terms of where gay rights and representation were, they are centuries apart

Todd: Very much agreed on Williams. The dance rehearsal scene especially comes to mind there as probably his most heavily Williams-style riff.
It's a little jarring given the dynamic is supposed to be Armand/Renato as the serious, occasionally harried one while Albert/Albin gets to riff it up (and to be fair, Lane gets his moments there too) but it does work for the movie.

As far as the shift in time, I have to credit you as being one of the people who's pointed out one of the biggest differences there - Armand and Albert's longstanding relationship carries a lot more emotional heft watched in the wake of the 1980s and the AIDS crisis (it's honestly kind of jarring to remember La Cage was RIGHT on the cusp of that.)

Jamie: La Cage existed at a fascinating moment in queer history. It was right on that cusp, where queer people were starting to be treated like people in media (Boys in the Band and Private Life of Sherlock Holmes were 1970, Dog Day Afternoon and Rocky Horror were both 1975) but then right after, the AIDS crisis hit and basically completely upended what kind of movies were getting made about queer people.

And I do stand by my comment, that a line about being here for 20 years does hit very different in a post-AIDS film, and I think the movie knows it because...well the director and co-star were both queer, something the original just did not have.

Todd:  Memory serves, isn't that line exclusive to the remake? I just did a rewatch on La Cage before we started this, but I didn't catch that sentiment in there.

Jamie: There's a similar line. I don't recall the exact line so it might be slightly different, but the line happens at more or less the same moment, and it serves more or less the same purpose: To draw attention to the fact that this story is about straight people, intruding on an explicitly queer space and being asked to change to suit their needs

Todd: Fair enough. That does speak to how much that context really adds to the moment.

And as far as the intrusion aspect, one of the takeaways this time out is how, while the movie positions the in-laws as the designated antagonist, it's the character of the son that winds up coming out of this looking particularly bad.

Jamie: I think that's one of the places that the remake benefits from having Nathan Lane in the cast and Mike Nichols (who supposedly had a decades long affair with a man) directing.

The original is very sympathetic to the gay couple, but it doesn't seem to realize what a huge, selfish ask the son is making of them. The remake does get bogged down in a lot of ancillary stuff (my brain had completely deleted all the OJ jokes) but it does seem to realize the son is being a complete asshole.

Todd:  (If anything puts that movie at a set point in time...)

And Nichols definitely seems more willing to push back on the son, particularly in that last act.

La Cage ALMOST seems like it's aware of Laurent's unreasonable side, but it mostly just takes the form of scenes of the rooms being redecorated than then cut to him just looking not particularly phased by how much this is visibly affecting his parents.
No one really pushes back on him quite as much as there is in the remake.

Jamie: I'll admit, I was a baby gay when I first watched this movie (11) and while I never responded as strongly to stories about gay men as I did to stories about lesbians (gee wonder why that is) I do think the moment where both Armand and Val confirm that Albert is one of Val's parents is one that the story sorely needs and I don't think that moment lands quite as hard in the original.

I think that might be the core thing that separates the remake from the original; While both of them play Albert/Albin's overreactions for comedy, the remake is a little more willing to let some moments actually be taken seriously. The original does take Albin seriously, but not as often and not as much (although that might just be the increased runtime)

Todd: There is something to be said for the run time factor. That said, I agree as far as the remake's willingness to take some scenes more seriously. The conversation at the cemetery comes to mind as a big example of that. The scene is structurally and functionally the same in both versions, but the remake holds the scene a bit more, just giving us more time to remember that, amid all the farce and absurdity, the core of this story is these two men and the life they've built together.

Jamie: That's another reason why I think the same story, told 18 years later, is so interesting. Both of them try to take the relationship seriously, but La Cage is so much more daring at that moment in history for even trying to do that. Stonewall was only 7 years before La Cage (and only 4 years before the play came out). Hell, Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court case that declared anti-sodomy laws were unconstitutional wasn't until 2003. 1976 doesn't seem THAT long ago, but in terms of gay acceptance, it feels like a million years.

Todd: In that context, it becomes that much more impressive that the film became as much of a hit as it was at the time.

Jamie: It is pretty impressive that they were both smash hits (although the remake can be at least partially attributed to the fact that Robin Williams was white hot at that point). I remember reading The Final Cut, about the making of Heaven's Gate and they get the opportunity to distribute La Cage in the US and the writer mentions that he loved it, but thought they could never release it in the US

Todd: Sidenote - holy Hell, the opportunities UA passed up in the back half of that book are painful to read.

and reading up on the impact earlier, I genuinely had a doubletake being reminded Molinaro actually got an Oscar nomination for best director.

A film about a gay couple in a foreign language getting that high an accolade would have seemed unreal here even up to five years ago

Jamie: The Academy is...very mixed on gay rights stuff. They occasionally get it Very Right (Moonlight, for example) and other times they get it Very Wrong (I still need to write a strongly worded letter to every singly member of the academy for every time they've tossed an Oscar to a cis man for playing a trans woman)

Todd: (That it's been multiple times now is...that's a whole other discussion right there.)

Jamie: Yeahhhhh. I was going over some of the Academy's queer representation and I remembered that The Crying Game got a bunch of nominations. And also remembered that that movie has its lead respond to finding out his love interest is a trans woman by throwing up. So that's uh, that's where we were in the 90s.

Todd: Oh jeez, that's right.

Again, really says something pretty impressive that this remake managed to be both a critical and box office hit

Jamie: It does, and the fact that it's worth discussing I feel shows how fast we've moved on a lot of stuff in terms of representation. I mean, in 1993 (within my lifetime) we were so starved for any even kind of positive portrayal of queer relationships that the Seinfeld episode The Outing won a GLAAD media award.

Which I guess is as good a way as any to segue into talking about the elephant in the room; The ways in which this movie has aged...awkwardly

Todd: This is the moment where I'd call for Jacob and Agadore to take a bow, but...maybe not on this one.

Jamie: Oh Agadore.

I know that Sephardic Jews are from the Spain/Portugal area but...could you not find anyone else to play a Guatemalan Gay Man than Hank Azaria?

Todd: At that point in time? Tough to say.

Then again, the role in general is kind of an awkward blind spot in both versions - what with the only non-white character being the main couple's houseboy, which is...yeah

Jamie: The African houseboy is easily the worst element of La Cage Aux Folles. Like, I understand that France and Italy don't have America's exact history of slavery but like...their history with Africa isn't much more positive. France still has a massive amount of financial and political control over its former colonies to this day

Todd: I get the sense when Nichols looked this over for adapting, that change was one of the first things on the block.
Because that definitely would come with a LOT of uncomfortable extra baggage in the US, especially with Jacob's repeatedly calling Laurent 'Little White Master'

Jamie: Yeah I dunno if I've ever been able to track down the original US translation, but I feel like even in 1978 someone knew that was a problem, and by 1996 everyone knew there was no way in hell that was gonna fly.

But on the other hand I don't think Hank Azaria's performance in The Birdcage would fly right now, so who knows

Todd: I do wonder if anyone's asked Hank how he feels about the role nowadays, especially in light of some of the Simpsons controversy over the past few years

Jamie: I feel like everyone memory holed it pretty hard, but I also recall that when the Simpsons got incredibly weird and defensive over the Apu thing, he was the one who said "Yeah this is shit, I'm sorry, I'll stop playing him" so maybe he'd feel different if someone asked him now.

Todd: Exactly why I'm wondering. He was the one who chose to step away from Apu, I wonder how he looks at Agadore nowadays in that light.

Jamie:  I think the Apu thing was, in miniature, a really good example of how lots of media, comedy in particular, can wind up insensitive. Apu wasn't originally written as Indian in his first script, he was just a convenience store clerk, and Azaria did the line in an Indian accent, it got a laugh and it stuck. No one made a conscious choice to have a white dude doing a comedy Indian accent, but that's still what happened in the end.

Todd: Now this has me really wanting to dig more into the behind the scenes on The Birdcage and see how much of what we got was always the plan and how much was just what it evolved into

Jamie: That is sort of the thing. None of these choices get made in a vacuum but the movie we get is the movie we get, and there is a lot of stuff in there that reads as...stereotypical. Albert mostly escapes because Nathan Lane is imbuing it with some authentic emotion (even if he wouldn't come out for 3 more years) but a lot of the rest of it...has aged poorly, we'll just say that

Todd: In hindsight, it's really no surprise this was Lane's live action breakout. He pulls that balancing act off altogether well.

And as for the rest...such is the drawback of cinematic progress in that way, yeah. For the time it was progress, but at the same looked back at, it also calls attention to how much things have come since then.

Jamie:  It does, but it doesn't need to be perfect forever, it just kind of needed to be...well the movie that they needed in 1996. And I guess that's kind of what they needed in 1996.

Any final thoughts?

Todd:  That's a good way to look at it. Commend the steps it took, but also realize there was still a long way to go.

And that prettywell sums up my final thoughts on this comparison in general. Yeah, some aspects of both versions are dated now, but taken in their places in history, it's fairly impressive how much ground the two takes on the same story each accomplish.

You?

Jamie: I think I summed up my last thoughts with the comment that while it's not a perfect movie, it's the movie they needed in 1996. And 1978 I guess.

And no, I'm not gonna end this on a quote from The Dark Knight.

Todd:  Fair enough.
Gotta say though, that'd be one Hell of a pivot to close on.

 ---

 Again, catch you guys soon with the next entry to close out June.

Paris is Burning (1990)

 Welcome back, readers, for another round with the Criterion Challenge.

We're getting there. Still workshopping the name some more, but we're getting there.

With that, a happy Pride Month to those celebrating it, both just as a general courtesy and as Queer Cinema will be the theme for this month.

And to start said theme, I'm firing up the one movie that was an automatic lock for this month since as soon as the theme was locked in - the 1990 documentary Paris is Burning.

I actually watched this in the back end of last month because I have more than two films lined up this time, and because I wanted some time to really turn over this one. This is in part because, honestly, I recognize I'm an outsider on this topic. I know that's at least part of the point for a documentary like this, in its exploration of drag and ball culture, but it also means I wanted to really process thoughts on it rather than just go off the cuff.

So here goes and please bear with me.

I know I've brought this up in the past, but I need to repeat it here - the older I get, the more my attitude towards film and the idea of 'could have been' has changed. In the past, it was a sticking point - a demerit when I came out of a film feeling like it could have made a better choice and didn't (it sometimes still is, but nowhere near as often.) Lately, I'm more struck by those movies where you can see how it could have gone a safer, more traditional route to its relative detriment, and didn't.

Paris is Burning definitely falls into that latter category. Part of this is thanks to how director Jennie Livingston handles the subject matter. In a different set of hands (I'm not sure I want to say less capable as much as less aware) this movie would have played more like a travelogue - a filmmaker positioning themself as an outsider to whom the world of drag and ball culture is to be explored and findings brought back to the 'normal' world. To Livingston, however, the movie is first and foremost about the people who inhabit this culture.

To that end, Livingston herself isn't really a presence we are aware of in the movie. She is the one filming and asking the questions, but she is never seen on camera, and the main reason we know the questions being asked is because her subjects clarify them before answering. The focus is framed entirely on the people - from seasoned veterans like Dorian Corey to relative up and comers like Venus Xtravaganza, for just two examples. Ultimately, the movie becomes more focused on learning about those who are competing than about the nature of the competition itself.

That is a big part of what keeps this from feeling like the cinematic work of a tourist, for lack of a better descriptor. Livingston films this aware that she is a relative outsider - while she is an out lesbian, that is still an altogether different experience from what many of her subjects go through (contrary to what some pundits will insist, the LGBTQIA+ experience is not a monolith). Further, instead of just making it perfunctory questions about the competition only, she lets her subjects open up about their lives - the homes they came from (and, sadly, in many cases were driven from) and the new family they have found in the drag community. As Livingston herself has put it best, one of the main themes of this movie is how those interview have learned to survive in a world that is, in many cases, openly hostile to them, while keeping their dignity.

If you wind up checking out only one of the movies I've picked for this month, this should arguably be it. Nothing against the other two, which are both altogether excellent movies, but in terms of this theme, this is arguably the movie that best hits the mark. It's a reminder, at different times funny, encouraging, sobering, and heartbreaking, that under all the cultural tags and debate, it's people just trying to find a place they feel they can truly be themselves in the world.

Well, with any luck I didn't just set too high a bar for the rest of the month.

Especially because next up, I'm going to be doing something a little bit different. This next entry marks a first for this project, with a guest on for a crossover discussion.

The discussion, and subsequent writeup soon to come.

Till then!