Time Regained (Raoul Ruiz, 1999)
I'm no expert on Chilean director Raoul Ruiz or Marcel Proust, but I do believe that I understand them both much better after watching this epic film, basically covering the entirety of Proust's life. The film is fractured in that the time frames are constantly changing, and I can understand why it may confuse some people, but the film is so lush, so well-acted and so floridly-directed that the pure cinematics will have to draw you in, and if you feel the need to give up (hopefully not) before the ending, I suggest going to the final scene because it has a very simple way of understanding this movie, and dare I say it, almost any movie, at least if it's about someone you recognize as a human being. The cast includes Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Beart, Victor Perez, Marie-France Pisier (R.I.P.), John Malkovich and various actors playing Proust. The real fun for a film freak is to watch Ruiz's technique which uses all sorts of sleight-of-hand, including freeze frames, moving platforms to increase viewer disorientation, extreme long shots with dozens of characters, visual, literary and musical motifs, filters to accentuate which time frame we're seeing and just a general overall command of almost anything which could be considered avant-garde but plays out as a way to reveal rather than to mask.
Donkey Skin (Jacques Demy, 1970)
A lush, "realistic" Charles Perrault (
Cinderella) fairy tale with the luscious Catherine Deneuve as both a Queen who dies too young and her daughter who plays the central character here. Demy makes another musical with Deneuve and composer Michel Legrand, following their popular
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and
The Young Girls of Rochefort. This one has Jean Marais (the Beast from Cocteau's
Beauty and the Beast) as the King, Delphine Seyrig as the Princess's Fairy Godmother (literally the Lavender Fairy) who has an axe to grind with the King, and Jacques Perrin makes a somewhat eccentric Prince Charming who sees the Princess (known as "Donkey Skin" when he sees her) for what she truly is and not a scullery maid. The cinematography is gorgeous, the color scheme is witty and various plot points are very strong, including the use of the Donkey. I won't mention anything else so as not to spoil it, but this is a very adult-themed G-rated flick.
Two Women (Vittorio De Sica, 1960)
This is a latter-day neorealist classic from De Sica, just as good (or better) than his
The Bicycle Thief and
Umberto D., focusing on a mother (Sophia Loren) and her twelve-year-old daughter (Eleonora Brown) trying to make it throughout Italy during WWII. Jean-Paul Belmondo follows up his
Breathless breakthrough here playing a sympathetic Communist who's attracted to Loren. Without any noticeable use of makeup to glamorize her here, Sophia Loren is as beautiful as she's ever been on screen, and what's more, she deserved her Oscar for Best Actress of 1961, no matter how hard it may be for you to believe that someone speaking Italian got an Oscar for such a major category over 50 years ago. Although it may seem to be something of a spoiler, most plot synopses do reveal that the film is about a gang rape suffered by the mother and her daughter and how it affects their relationship and their lives. Perhaps that makes it easier to understand how powerful the film truly is.
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