La Haine review

 Number 220 on the top 1000 films of all time is the French social thriller 'La Haine.' (The Hatred)

Vinz (Vincent Cassel,) Hubert (Hubert Kounde) and Said (Said Taghamaoui) are three friends and second-generation immigrants living in Paris. The day after a riot, where one of their friends is brutally beaten, we see the three young men navigating life in the ghettoes of Paris.

Part immigrant experience, part gritty drama, part slice-of life, La Haine was an illuminating look into working-class life within Paris. It was a far cry from the romanticised Paris that we see on social media. It was raw, gritty and stark. There were no frills - just an authentic portrayal of life in Paris. It strongly reminded me of similar dramas set in London like Kidulthood or Top Boy.

Those dramas have no pretensions; they don't impart any judgement on their characters. Instead, they give you the facts and allow you to decide for yourself. And that's what the best film makers do. They leave their biases behind and leave matters in the hands of the audience.

You could argue that Vinz, Hubert and Said aren't the most likeable of characters. They're destructive miscreants causing trouble wherever they go, but they're not meant to be liked. They aren't heroes. They aren't villains. They just are. We're forced to see the world through their eyes and nothing more. We have no choice.

What made La Haine so powerful was its realism. Everything felt so real. I was right there with the characters walking through the dark streets of Paris. And that was only made better through the excellent decision of rendering the film in monochrome. The stark black-and-white only made the action all the more poignant. There are no distracting colours to hide behind. 

Watching La Haine was a hell of a ride. It was intense and it didn't let up for a second. But it had a brilliant authenticity that carried things along very smoothly. For those who are thinking Paris is like the way you see in Amelie, think again. La Haine presents the oh so painful, but also necessary truth.

La Vie En Rose review

 Number 603 on the top 1000 films of all time is the musical biopic La Vie En Rose.

This French film tells the story of famed singer Edith Piaf, otherwise known as the Little Sparrow. Marion Cotillard stars as Piaf. From her impoverished childhood to her untimely death, we see the rise and fall of France's national chanteuse. 

I didn't like this film. It wasn't just that the subject matter didn't interest me - I am neither French nor a baby boomer so Edith Piaf has never been something that's high on my music list. Call me a culturally ignorant millennial, but c'est comme ca. I didn't like the way the story was told. It seemed random, chaotic and very incohesive. Like many other films it is told in a non-linear fashion and regularly plays around in time. 

It opens up on Edith as an adult and then cuts to her childhood and then to her as an adolescent, but whereas with other films there is a logic to this time-jumping, I failed to see any logic here. It was like the film-makers had realised at the last minute they had forgotten something important and stuffed it in anywhere they could. For example, near the end of the film we find out she has a child who died from Meningitis. We find this out in a flashback, but why was something of this magnitude not revealed until so late in the film? Not to mention all the numerous flash-forwards where we see Edith's ailing health.

And I certainly don't mean to diminish Marion Cotillard's performance. She won the Best Actress Oscar for this role - just one of six actors to win the award for a non-English speaking role - and she was good as Piaf. We bore witness to the many trials and tribulations of Piaf's life and Cotillard took us through her emotions well. And I think she embodied the character well. Reportedly she shrunk her already petite 5"6 frame to reach Piaf's diminutive 4"11 role. And I do remember reading somewhere that she worked with a dialect coach to capture Piaf's speaking voice as best as she could, although all the singing was dubbed by French singer Jil Aigrot.

Maybe this film would have been better suited to a lover of classic French music and not a philistine like me, but c'est la vie. Non, je ne regrette rien. 

La Dolce Vita review

 Number 212 on the top 1000 films of all time is Federico Fellini's 'La Dolce Vita.'

Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni) is a tabloid journalist who is going through a mid-life crisis. To rediscover his passion in life, he spends seven days and nights journeying through Rome.

This is my third Fellini film after 8 1/2 and La Strada and I was really hoping it would be closer to the latter than the former. But alas it was not to be. Just like 8 1/2, La Dolce Vita was slow, boring and surreal. It reminds me of Modernist literature where nothing happens in the real world. Everything plays out in the character's minds. And there's nothing inherently wrong in having films that are effectively character studies, but you need to have interesting and likeable characters. Similarly, to the Great Gatsby, La Dolce Vita is populated by rich people having existential moments. These are people I'm never going to relate to or care about. You can only imagine my horror at realising that I have to watch these characters for three bloody hours.

And that is especially true of the arrogant and unlikeable Marcello who very much has a meltdown at film's conclusion. All of the movie's themes culminate in the surrealist and most vulgar way. Marcello and his friends break into a beach house. Marcello becomes drunk and tries inciting the partygoers into having an orgy. He then has a young woman crawling on her knees and starts to ride her before covering her in alcohol, ripping a pillow and sticking feathers to her. And he only does this out of spite as the partygoers refused to agree to his demands. Yet the young woman is fine with it? And nobody else reacts to this. It's just so weird.

You get surrealism and then you get Fellini. He is on a whole other level. Let me tell you, I did not have a good life while watching this film.