The chief character in Eric Rohmer‘s French film, A Tale of Winter (1992, available on YouTube), Felicie (Charlotte Very) is a not-very-bright young woman who is “protected” by the supernatural, by God.  She is protected in the sense of being granted a miracle of sorts.

But Felicie is no saint, and she says “Religion and I don’t get along.”  She risks getting pregnant during a joyful romance with her beloved Charles, and pregnant she becomes.  After foolishly losing track of Charles, she gets involved with two men at the same time, as though she is greedy.  One of these men, Loic (Herve Furic), is a wishy-washy Catholic intellectual—unmarried when he probably shouldn’t be.  Deeply fond of him, Felicie nevertheless does not love him (she loves Charles).  And Felicie, without converting, seems to receive God’s favor.  In a way—because in the film’s beginning footage she frolics unclothed with Charles—she is the naked pagan who turns into the blessed “Christian.”

With much, much talk, A Tale of Winter is another Rohmer film that demands a lot from a viewer, but it’s worth it.  It is quiet and heartening, and in Luc Pages’s cinematography there is subdued, wintry prettiness.  Charlotte Very is pretty too.  Close to being one of Rohmer’s best films, Winter is, I think, simply too static but also rather lovable in spite of itself.

(In French with English subtitles)

Directed by Jafar Panahi and written by the acclaimed filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, the Iranian picture, The White Balloon (2005), is talky but brilliant.  At the center here is the childish desire for a chubby, not a skinny, goldfish for an Iranian New Year’s celebration.  A childish desire, this, because in fact it belongs to a child—seven-year-old Razieh (Aida Mohammed-Khani)—who lives with her parents and her brother Ali (Mohsen Khalifi) in Tehran.

Rezieh’s hard-working mother un-eagerly gives Razieh money with which to buy the goldfish, but the girl loses the money down a grate.  Much of the film concerns the efforts of Razieh and her brother, aware of financial hardship, to retrieve the 500-toman note.

Though adorable, Razieh, like Ali, is being shaped by the prejudices of her society.  She will probably never respect, as Ali does not, a man like the one she encounters and talks with:  a non-Tehranian army conscript with an accent.  And she will probably never smile on an Afghan person like the boy who sells balloons on the Tehran streets for a living, who, indeed, offers the kind of white balloon found enticing by Ali.  But Ali never comments on the balloon since it is an Afghan boy who is selling it.  It is clear that the film is saying that Iranian society is one of prejudice and loneliness—even that it is damaging: e.g., Ali may have been hit in the face by his father.

Years after seeing The White Balloon at the theatre, surprisingly I saw it for free on YouTube.  Perfectly directed (with many a tight shot) and cleverly photographed, it is about children or childhood only on its surface.  It is beautifully subtle.

(In Farsi with English subtitles)

Directed by Jafar Panahi and written by the acclaimed filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, the Iranian picture, The White Balloon (2005), is talky but brilliant.  At the center here is the childish desire for a chubby, not a skinny, goldfish for an Iranian New Year’s celebration.  A childish desire, this, because in fact it belongs to a child—seven-year-old Razieh (Aida Mohammed-Khani)—who lives with her parents and her brother Ali (Mohsen Khalifi) in Tehran.

Rezieh’s hard-working mother un-eagerly gives Razieh money with which to buy the goldfish, but the girl loses the money down a grate.  Much of the film concerns the efforts of Razieh and her brother, aware of financial hardship, to retrieve the 500-toman note.

Though adorable, Razieh, like Ali, is being shaped by the prejudices of her society.  She will probably never respect, as Ali does not, a man like the one she encounters and talks with:  a non-Tehranian army conscript with an accent.  And she will probably never smile on an Afghan person like the boy who sells balloons on the Tehran streets for a living, who, indeed, offers the kind of white balloon found enticing by Ali.  But Ali never comments on the balloon since it is an Afghan boy who is selling it.  It is clear that the film is saying that Iranian society is one of prejudice and loneliness—even that it is damaging: e.g., Ali may have been hit in the face by his father.

Years after seeing The White Balloon at the theatre, surprisingly I saw it for free on YouTube.  Perfectly directed (with many a tight shot) and cleverly photographed, it is about children or childhood only on its surface.  It is beautifully subtle.

(In Farsi with English subtitles)

The 1933 British movie, The Private Life of Henry VIII, by Alexander Korda, ushers us into the awful sphere wherein Anne Boleyn (Merle Oberon) is executed, but, avoiding all genuine unpleasantness, the picture doesn’t make this very troubling.  The film is pure tragicomedy, yielding, nonetheless, a rueful message about marriage:  it is madness.  Little is said about Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne B., but what follows are dismaying details about the other unions with imperfect women, married to an imperfect man.  Charles Laughton (as Henry) is better here than he is in Rembrandt.  He is humbler, savvier, as well as commanding and rivetingly passionate.  Screenwriters Lajos Biro and Arthur Wimperis did quite well with drama and wit.

An English gangster, Jack Carter (Michael Caine), seeks to learn the truth about his brother’s death by investigating a rival mob.

Long before there was the British film Croupier, there was the British film Get Carter (1971), directed with flair by Mike Hodges.  Both films are harsh and violent, the Hodges concoction being rather uglier because it is mildly sexist.  I say this not because three female characters in the movie are plainly corrupt, but due to its suggestion that all that is needed to pacify a woman outraged by shady behavior in her home is an offer of copulation.

Caine is disturbingly spot-on, cooly potent.  Get Carter‘s acting is excellent.  Though it’s a movie hard to love, it is easy to respect in many of its particulars.  It even seems to tell us that if you’re a gangster, somehow you’re going to get it in the neck.