Right Now
Posted by Jared
À tout de suite (2004)
Benoît Jacquot
viewed 02.11.06
A reviewer of À tout de suite wrote "Few movies have the power to grab the viewer from the very first frame and never let go." I missed the first 90 seconds and have to admit to never being grabbed.
Much like Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers, Jacquot intends his film as an homage to French New Wave cinema, but only achieves a dull, lifeless aping of shots and themes. New Wave films are shocking with their energy, life, absurdity, recklessness, and wit. Attempts at repeating that time and spirit of innovation resemble the real thing as much as a faded memory of first love compares the astonishing moment of hope and desire.
In describing the limited variety of the stories we can tell, Ben Marcus (again) writes of a one-word language where speakers can only communicate something new by altering its pronuciation. For us "stories keep mattering by reimagining their own methods, manners, and techniques." When we mimic the intonation of another the results are methodological, mannered and forgettableble.
I'm sure there's a life application in here somewhere.