Bros (Nicholas Stoller, 2022); Fire Island (Andrew Ahn, 2022)

Bros may be "the first romantic comedy from a major studio about two gay men maybe, possibly, probably stumbling towards love," to quote Universal Pictures' proud press release. But Universal never seemed to wonder who in 2022 cares about gay content coming from a major studio. TikTok and Onlyfans and the Big Streamers shove more gay content down our throats than we can swallow. So while I always want the best for the talented, screamingly camp co-writer and star of Bros Billy Eichner, I wasn't sad when his project failed to set the box office on fire. 

A bigger problem is the "possibly, probably stumbling towards love" part of the equation, i.e., wedging gay characters into the quintessentially heterosexual rom-com formula. As a child growing up in the 1970s and 1980s with a relative paucity of gay representation, I always wanted a genre film with characters who just happen to be gay, say, a Total Recall (Paul Verhoeven, 1990) where Arnold Schwarzenegger has the hots for Michael Ironside instead of Sharon Stone, no big whoop. Then I saw D.E.B.S. (Angels Robinson, 2004), a sort of lesbian Charlie's Angels, and realized that you cannot make a gay film with the master's tools. For the most part, you wind up with what Kristen Warner calls "plastic representation." To this end, the most perceptive critique of Bros I've encountered is SNL's trailer for Megan 2.0 in which they announce that "It's like Bros, but for gays." So while Bros is cute and funny and as gay as can be within the rom-com formula, the formula itself deadens the film's import.

Fire Island comes off as a critique of Bros avant la lettre, having been released a few months prior. It corrects for Bros' concentration on white characters with a gay/Asian director and a gay/Asian screenwriter and star, Joel Kim Booster. But structurally, the two films are de facto clones of one another. Fire Island even has a further structural burden in that it's inspired by Pride and Prejudice. Cute and funny too but so damn well-behaved in its adherence to formulae that it forestalls any obsessive reception.

Bros: B+

Fire Island: B+

Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven, 2021)

It was apparently preordained that a deliciously overstuffed film such as Paul Verhoeven's Benedetta would elicit an overdetermined screening yesterday afternoon at the 59th New York Film Festival. In addition to the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property protesting the film outside and asking for reparations (for what, though?), the screening was the North American premiere of the film. It was also my partner's first time at the NYFF and my first time seeing a movie in a theatre since early 2020. Even more redolent for me, this is the first film I've seen since the death last year of my number one filmgoing buddy Bill Weber. I will carry his loss with me at every screening I attend. 

NYFF programmer Dennis Lim introduced the film by asking if any Catholics were in the audience. After about two or three dozen patrons raised their hand, Lim thanked them for sharing their Sunday with us. Verhoeven was not in attendance due to travel restrictions. But David Birke, who co-wrote the screenplay with Verhoeven, was on hand to provide some brief context and then we were off. No Q&A afterward.

I don't want to say too much about a film that most people will not get to see until December, especially one that depends on shock for much of its savor. So just thematics ahead, no spoilers. Loosely based on Judith C. Brown's Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy, Benedetta tells the story of Benedetta Carlini (Virginie Efira), a nun in seventeenth-century Italy who had a sexual relationship with another nun, Sister Bartolemea (Daphne Patakia). She experiences visions of Jesus and starts to bleed from her hands and feet. Due to these apparent miracles, she is made abbess of the convent, much to the chagrin of the previous abbess (Charlotte Rampling) who has serious doubts about the authenticity of Benedetta's visions. And when the lesbian relationship is discovered, problems very much ensue.

Verhoeven never settles the question of whether Benedetta's mysticism is real or just really great theatre. In her visions, Jesus is a studly Samson who vanquishes lurid CGI manifestations of fleshly guilt, a link back to the video game work of Isabelle Huppert's character in Elle, Verhoeven's previous provocation (2016). And yet Benedetta experiences these moments so fervently that they halt several convent ceremonies. Clues are dropped to suggest that she is faking her stigmata. But Jesus may be telling her to do so, therefore, how fake is it really? The central question of the film then becomes how willing one is to believe what one knows full well is not true.

In this, Benedetta reminds me of "Between Things and Souls: Sacred Atmospheres and Immersive Listening in Late Eighteenth-century Sentimentalism," a recent essay by Anne Holzmüller in which she analyzes late-eighteenth/early-nineteenth-century travel reports of Protestant German travelers to the Sistine Chapel during Holy Week. The reports record all manner of disappointments: patrons blithely eating oranges throughout the chapel; constant chatting before the illumination of the cross (pic below); Allegri's Miserere sung out of tune; improper positioning of the Pope during the papal blessing on Easter Sunday; etc. And yet, they also register succumbing to the high theatre of the events. Thus, in Holzmüller's estimation, "[a]s pietist, art-loving tourists, [they] face the dialectic tension between a desire for authenticity and immediacy on the one hand and, on the other hand, an awareness about the illusionary and deceptive character of the experience to its full extent" (231).*

As with Holy Week, so with Benedetta. And with Benedetta. Bartolemea, for one, wants to believe in Benedetta's mysticism. But she sees the fakery. How does one reconcile the two, if at all? It's a fundamental tension at the heart of religion (even for the protestors outside, I suspect, especially given how young so many of them were) and at the heart of cinema as well. Beyond the surface nunsploitation outrages, Benedetta's wrestling with these antinomies is Verhoeven's most compelling achievement. 

Grade: A-minus

*Holzmüller's essay appears in Music as Atmosphere: Collective Feelings and Affective Sounds, by Friedlind Riedel and Juha Torvinen, eds. London and New York, Routledge, 2020, 218-237.

The film maudit - my favorite film genre!

J. Hoberman has a (mostly) terrific new piece in Sight & Sound on the film maudit, my favorite film genre ever! Translated literally from the French as a "cursed film," a film maudit is one that is "widely panned even as it is staunchly defended by a devoted minority." My real-time example of the film maudit process is Showgirls (Paul Verhoeven, 1995) which, as I never tire of proclaiming, I saw on opening night and deemed a masterpiece within ten minutes. But Hoberman dives into the long history of the genre including its origin in the Festival du Film Maudit, a counter-Cannes organized in 1949 by André Bazin and Jean Cocteau to showcase those films that in “their indifference to censorship and the demands of exploitation were cursed like the books of certain poets," as per Cocteau.

The gambit worked since many of the titles shown at the festival have long since passed on to masterpiece status: L’Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934), The Long Voyage Home (John Ford, 1940), Les Dames du Bois de Bologne (Robert Bresson, 1945). But I know of no maudit energy surrounding The Flame of New Orleans (René Clair, 1941) beyond a brief, warm mention in Henri Agel's 1950 Hollywood Quarterly piece "What is a Cursed Film?" And I'm intrigued by the inclusion of Mourning Becomes Electra (Dudley Andrew, 1947), a three-hour adaptation of the Eugene O'Neill play that always seemed like a slog to me but has suddenly risen near the top of my must-watch list, especially since Bazin considered it “the film maudit par excellence.”

But here's where the messiness of generic boundaries seeps in because Hoberman loses me in trying to define this genre. To my mind, there must be something of the preposterous to a film maudit. Thus, Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1970) and Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1977), both masterful but sober, don't count, not even as rehabilitated films maudits just because they "suffer[ed] all manner of indignities before being hailed as national treasures." And then there's the matter of determining both the panning and the defending necessary for a film to become maudit. Hoberman claims Myra Breckinridge (Michael Sarne, 1970) "remains unredeemed." But he should check out David Scott Diffrient's 2013 Cinema Journal article "'Hard to Handle': Camp Criticism, Trash-Film Reception, and the Transgressive Pleasures of Myra Breckinridge" which details the film's redemption. And I know a vocal minority who hail Cats (Tom Hopper, 2019) as a masterpiece and "not just a titanic flop," even one Hoberman calls "ridiculous" as if such a designation weren't central to the maudit process.

Weirdest of all, Hoberman claims the genre is no more, a situation he blames on social media. Wondering if Southland Tales (Richard Kelly, 2006) might be the last film maudit ever, he concludes that "the net has fostered a cinematic counterculture capable of embracing, defending and blessing nearly anything." But that's always been true even during the era which Hoberman perplexingly labels "the great age of cinephilia (1945-2000)" (huh?). From "Charlton Heston is an axiom" to the Gay Girls Riding Club to the Psychotronic encyclopedias, plenty of energy has been expended on blessing all manner of cinematic detritus and it will continue to happen. Cats is proof of that. Cameron Crowe's 2015 fiasco Aloha might be too although I've yet to see it. I imagine there's a candidate ripe for mauditation among the nominees and winners of the Golden Raspberry Awards (there was a Basic Instinct 2??). For sure, M. Night Shyamalan has enjoyed the most maudit career of any mainstream Hollywood director this century with at least two fabulous films maudits, my beloved Lady in the Water (2006) and The Happening (2008), and one irredeemably awful movie, The Last Airbender (2010), to his name. His gripping new Apple TV series, Servant, is suffused with maudit energy, continually threatening to jump the shark but never yet doing so over the course of two seasons. As a panning and defending machine, the internet will keep all this maudit energy alive. 

Still, Hoberman's essay is a fantastic repository for the cursed and the adored that put my mind in overdrive. I should finally get to that Shelley Winters/Liberace entry South Sea Sinner (Bruce Humberstone, 1950). Was Major Dundee (Sam Peckinpah, 1965) really maudit? I've never even heard of Kid Blue (James Frawley, 1973). And I should really watch my beloved Skidoo (Otto Preminger, 1968) again sometime soon. 

Happy Birthday, Showgirls!

 I saw Showgirls opening night with a couple of friends. Barely five minutes into the film, Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley) is in a Las Vegas parking lot where she discovers that the suitcase carrying all her possessions has been stolen. She bangs on a random car in rage. The owner of the car, Molly Abrams (Gina Ravera), suddenly appears and yanks her off. The two scuffle, Nomi throws up, and Molly tries to console her. Nomi runs off into the road and almost get hits by oncoming traffic. But Molly pulls her to safety and the two embrace. The moment takes up less than a minute of screen time. But it was enough for me to turn to my friend and say, "This will be the greatest film of the year."

And I was right. 

Happy 25th birthday, Showgirls! 

New York Film Festival Screenings 5

Sieranevada (Cristi Puiu, 2016)
I came in late for this 173-minute film and had to sit on the floor. But as a measure of Puiu's genius for enriching the passage of time, I could've sat through an extra 173 minutes with no qualms (well, maybe a cup to pee in). Most of the film takes place in a cramped apartment where a family has gathered to commemorate the recent passing of their father and Puiu transforms it into an epic battlefield of private vs. public. It's a comedy-drama of closed doors and impossible interiors (There's a *couch* in the dining room? Where? Oh there! Wow.). Much of the fun is imagining where Puiu could possibly put his camera in an endlessly deferred dinner during which the extended family debates 9/11, Communism, and the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Indeed, as we discover that Puiu is taking up the position of now the Christmas tree, now the television set, we come to know Sieranevada as a narrative about how our identities derive from the taking up of space (which is why one of the few scenes outside the apartment revolves around an argument about parking spaces). A masterpiece.

Elle (Paul Verhoeven, 2016)
Verhoeven planned to film this adaptation of Philippe Dijan's novel Oh... in English but couldn't find an actress to play the role Isabelle Huppert eventually took on. Gawd bless the French. Huppert plays the owner of a successful video game development company who is raped in the first scene of the film. But as Huppert made clear in the Q&A, she's neither a victim nor a rape avenger but rather a new archetype. Me, I'm left with the usual itchy questions. Do we need a new archetype with respect to films about rape or do we need less films about rape overall? Is it a failure of imagination to use rape as a framing device for a story about a successful woman or is it an honest appraisal of what it means for a woman to live in world framed by Gamergate, Donald Trump, Bill Cosby, etc.? Do depictions of rape merely stoke our desire to see one happen, missing an opportunity to forge new pleasures, or do such depictions rub our faces in it enough to blot out that desire? And to what extent is this even a film about rape, a dangerous provocation that likely had much to do with why no American actress would touch this film?