Catching up...

I haven't been as regular as in the past in terms of immediately writing reviews of films that I've watched and I'm sure a few have slipped the net for whatever reason, eg Albert Maysles 1975 observational documentary "Grey Gardens".

To address this, working backwards from the most recent film, Tamil director Adoor Gopalkrishnan's 1987 "Anantaram" (Eng: "Monologue"), a disturbing and experimental film that explores identity, memory: real or constructed, and mental illness, that breaks new ground in terms of Indian cinema and challenges generally accepted notions around what cinema can be about besides pure entertainment or social commentary - it deserves a more detailed review but broadly speaking it feels very like the plot of a short story by Chekov or Dostoevsky as far as being an examination of the conflicted internal world of the protagonist who narrates the story in the first person.

Halloween demanded a suitable genre film but I wasn't really up to it, instead I finished a Hong Kong horror/fantasy mash-up that I had totally forgotten about, "Evil Cat" - forgotten because the first two acts have a convoluted expository plot - and only picks up in the third act where it's clear that it was riffing on popular fantasy/horror films of the 1980's such as Tobe Hooper's "Lifeforce", or, less obviously, John Carpenter's "Thing", to deliver a bonkers animated visual and practical effects climax.

I've watched Bunuel's "Belle De Jour" before and I discovered by coincidence that my viewing coincided with the week of the birthday of its star, Catherine Deneuve, where her character "Severine" is compelled to explore the seamy world of high class prostitution while living an upper middle class double life as the wife of a well-respected surgeon. The themes and subtext echo her role in Polanksi's "Repulsion" with it's implication that early sexual abuse can lead to aberrant behaviour later in life and here it's hinted at in a throwaway shot much as in Polanski's film. Bunuel's Catholic upbringing is very much in evidence in various kinky vignettes that make up the film as "Severine" has to submit to the demands of various clients while her dreams are full of retribution and punishment that eventually play out in reality by the film's conclusion.

I'm not really sure why I chose to watch Robert Altman's "Pret A Porter" other than perhaps that it's often mentioned as a film of the 90's but it turned out to be quite revealing when seen in the context of the early 2000's crowd pleaser "The Devil Wears Prada". Both films are set against the backdrop of high fashion, the former in Paris, long regarded as the centre of high fashion, and the latter, in New York and inspired by real-life fashion magazine editor celebrities like Anna Wintour.

Altman's film feels like a genre relic of an earlier era - the multi-starrer - where a means of guaranteeing audiences was to stuff a film with as many big names as possible, but the flaw of the film is that it threatens to sink under the weight of those stars as the the film tries to give them equal screen time in largely uninteresting vignettes, flat running gags like people stepping in dog-poo and a thread featuring Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren that culminates in a recreation of an iconic scene from the 1963 Italian comedy film "Ieri, Oggi, Domani", easily the best part of the whole film IMO (you have to struggle through most of the film to get to it) but that may go over the heads of most viewers now, or even at the time.

"The Devil Wears Prada" mines the same territory but its lighter ensemble cast and the setting of a New York fashion magazine office makes for something that feels very contemporary and watching it I had the inescapable conclusion that it's energy inspired my favourite Netflix series "Call My Agent" (Fr; "Dix Pour Cent ) which appears to consciously use its stylistic template and larger than life characters besides shifting the story to that of a Paris actor's agency rather than a fashion magazine to explore office dynamics in contrast to Altman's sly but ultimately flat take-down of the fashion industry of the 1980's.

Slightly out of order of viewing, the 1973 "Hollywood 90028", directed by Christina Hornisher is an odd independant exploitation film that was marketed with various alternate lurid titles such as "The Hollywood Hillside Strangler" and "Twisted Throats" but is in fact a look at the life of a young film maker (band member Christopher Augustine in his one and only film role) in Hollywood who's only means of income is to make skin flicks for a sleazy producer while he aspires to move on to better quality work, something that never comes to pass.

A titles prologue reveals details of his early life and a tragic accident involving a younger sibling that he feels he was responsible for and the plot and protagonist's motivations echo that of theMichael Powell film "Peeping Tom" and the objectification involved in his work and a difficult relationship with women lead him to commit murder. Besides the rather absurd ending where the film-maker hangs himself from the Hollywood sign, echoing the real-life tragedy of the British actress and Hollywood aspirant Peg Entwistle, the film is an interesting window on Hollywood in the mid-1970's and worth watching for that alone.

"Anantaram", Dir: Adoor Gopalakrishnan, 1987

"Evil Cat", Dir: Dennis Yu, 1987

"Belle De Jour", Dir: Luis Bunuel, 1967

"Pret A Porter", Dir: Robert Altman, 1994

"The Devil Wears Prada", Dir: David Frankel, 2006

"Hollywood 90028", Dir: Christina Hornisher, 1973