Something terrible this way comes: comes to a woman living in rural China in the 1920s.  She becomes the slave wife—a purchased spouse—of an old man who savagely beats her when she cannot bear him a male heir.  Unbeknownst to him, the fault is his, not hers.  In despair of her life, she seduces the old man’s adopted nephew, who fornicates with and comes to love her (and she him).  But Chinese director Zhang Yimou’s pessimism kicks in; Ju Dou, his 1990 film, ends unhappily.  It isn’t just the old man who is oppressive; it is society, this society.  It is despotism.

In the title part, Gong Li is unerring as sufferer and seducer.  Zhang is an enormously gifted tragedian with all the right camera moves.  No, not moves; placement.

The new high school comedy, The DUFF (2015), is entertaining, but very frequently it does not ring true.  Mae Whitman nearly overacts but (oh well) this is a comedy, so in truth she is amusingly watchable, pleasantly straightforward.

Although a crummy self-esteem message concludes the film, a Slate.com writer has sincerely praised The DUFF for “offering the most realistic, interesting depiction of cyberbullying we’ve ever seen.”  Doubtless this is true, and is one of the film’s few virtues.

There is no excuse for the Nick Roeg movie, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), constantly making no sense.  What’s more, this arty sci-fi product based on Walter Tevis’s novel is a nudie show with too much sex:  David Bowie, whose acting is undistinguished, eventually exposes his offputting phallus.  If Candy Clark (of American Graffiti fame) was underused by Hollywood after this film, it may be because it didn’t care for her unspectacular naked body.  Roeg’s film, then, is a rather homely nudie show.

It is, in fact, another mid-Seventies piece of cinematic rottenness, like The Last Woman, That Obscure Object of Desire and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Cover via Amazon

Russian Dolls (2005), a Cedric Klapisch picture from France, is the perfect sequel to his hokey L’Auberge Espagnole because it itself is not hokey and is acceptably written.  All it does, really, is catch up with Xavier and a few others five years after their Barcelona experiences, but provides some laughs and a certain air of sadness while avoiding the European Union dopiness of L’Auberge.  Typically, Klapisch’s directing is fancy and childlike, the beguiling credit sequence setting the tone.  The acting, even that of Audrey Tautou, pleases mightily.  Romain Duris loses himself in the Xavier part and gets completely naked for Klapisch. I mean literally, of course.

Russian Dolls is French bounty.

(In French with English subtitles)

Cover of Russian Dolls

Atlantic City (1981), directed by Louis Malle and written by John Guare, shows us an old mobster of sorts who finds the beloved casinos of Atlantic City, N.J. too wholesome.  Curiously, he himself, a big believer in Protecting The Women with whom he associates, is basically a coward (and not the killer he says he is).  One of these women is a food-service worker, Sally, who dreams of becoming a croupier and thus desires—and here she resembles Lou, the mobster—a higher status for herself than she has ever had.  It is Lou’s desire to prove he is tough enough to withstand the punks.  In THIS exists something that is not too wholesome, but what small ambitions people consistently have!

Although Burt Lancaster is slightly miscast as a criminal and shows little depth, he is passable.  Better are Susan Sarandon (Sally) and Kate Reid, both solid and pleb-realistic.  Guare’s screenplay is unusual without being genuinely strange; it is clear-cut and faintly menacing.  The film as a whole has “a lovely fizziness,” Pauline Kael said.