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Screen Magazine - Index

Screen Magazine - Screen Magazine: Vol. 29, Issue 21 - Index

scratch, it’s almost like alchemy. Mike is the ultimate magician.”
Finally, I ask Ms. Hawkins if she misses Poppy. “Ultimately I do think
there is a time when you have to say goodbye to your character.
But I do think Poppy will be very hard to completely let go of. So
I’m holding on to her for a little bit longer. She’s tough one to say
goodbye to as I love her very much indeed.”
As will everyone who sees the film.
At the press conference after the screening of Agnes Jaoui’s
charming and wry comedy “Let It Rain” (“Parlez-Moi de la
Pluie”) Ms. Jaoui was asked what film directors had influenced
her. “Chekhov,” she replied without hesitation, quickly adding,
“Well, of course he’s not a film director, but he was certainly an
inspiration. [As were] Renoir, Rohmer and Woody Allen.” Ms. Jaoui’s
achievement is to have created, and assembled, a group of
assorted unhappy, dysfunctional characters – and, with apologies
to Tolstoy, made each of them unhappy in their own way.
This is Ms. Jaoui’s third feature (after “Look at Me” and “The Taste of
Others”) and she has become a supremely confident director. The
central thread of this bittersweet film is, to quote one of the film’s
central characters is “everyday humiliation.” Ms. Jaoui explains
in more detail in the production notes: “Everyone [in the film]
feels…a victim of injustice or discrimination. [T]oday, lots of people
experience life as victims and shut themselves in this position…The
problem is that everyone thinks they’re more of a victim than the
next person.”
The nonjudgmental way that Ms. Jaoui and her longtime coscreenwriter
Jean-Pierre Bacri tackle this rather heavy subject
reflects their allegiance to Renoir’s classic line in “La Regle le Jeu”:
“The sad thing in life is that everyone has their reasons.”
As Ms. Jaoui explained at a post-screening Q&A: “Every family is a
little society and for me everything is political, so I tried to keep a
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balance between a comedy of manners and a political comedy.”
Ms. Jaoui’s fondness for Chekhov is evident.
Set in Avignon and Tarascon, in southern France, the film is filled
with many Tati-esque scenes, one of the drollest of which is when
Bacri, playing a doltish filmmaker, drops a piece of camera
equipment into a baptismal font – just as the baby herself is being
baptized. Another equally hilarious scene involves the completely
unexpected appearance of a herd of sheep.
Just before the “Let It Rain” press and industry screening, IFC
announced that it had the U.S. distribution rights (making six films
bought by IFC at the Festival.)
Winner of the
Golden Lion at
this year’s Venice
Film Festival, and
selected as the
Closing Night
film for the New
York Film Festival,
Darren Aronofsky’s
“The Wrestler”
is an existential
triumph, both
for the over-thehill
battler Randy
“The Ram” Robinson and for Mickey Rourke who plays him. And, of
course, for Aronofsky, whose dedication kept the project alive for
a decade and a half.
Before “The Wrestler,” Aronofsky had directed three films in ten
years: “PI” in 1998; “Requiem for a Dream” in 2000 and “The
Fountain” in 2006. All were challenging – both to get made
and to watch. “The Wrestler” was equally difficult to mount. The
producers originally wanted Nicolas Cage (too much money and
availability problems) in the title role, but it
is easily Aronofsky’s most accessible – and
most fully realized – film. It’s just as well that
Nicolas Cage wasn’t cast because Mickey
Rourke gives a staggering performance,
one which Academy Award voters will
surely acknowledge with a Best Actor
nomination.
The genesis of “The Wrestler” goes back to
the early 90’s. “When I graduated from film
school, one of my first film ideas was to do a
film about professional wrestling,” Aronofsky
revealed at the post press screening Q&A.
“I felt that boxing had been done to death,
but that no filmmaker had ever ‘done’
professional wrestling, so my producer, Scott
Franklin, and I were determined to get this
film made.”
Mickey Rourke, who was also on stage for
the Q&A, was equally committed, but he
also knew that it would be a very tough
(physically and emotionally) shoot. “Darren
is very relentless and I’m no spring chicken.
Most of what you see up there was done by
me, not a stuntman.”
When asked a question about the very
audible grunting heard on the soundtrack,
Rourke broke up the audience with his
deadpan response: “I was just tired all the
time. When Darren would ask for ‘more’ I
would have to tell him, ‘I can’t f-----’ move,
brother, what ‘more?’”