[BASTARDS screens Saturday
January 25th at 7:05 pm and Sunday January 26th at 8:35 pm at the
Cleveland Cinematheque.]
Review by Milan Paurich
Claire Denis’ films have always been
a contest between the feral and the lyrical. In BASTARDS, her
latest cause celebre, the feral side definitely wins out. A pulpy
family melodrama whose convoluted plot machinations wouldn’t be out
of place in a night time soap (are there still night time soaps?),
the movie reduces human beings to their basest instincts. Sex,
murder, business chicanery, dysfunctional families behaving badly,
Denis serves them up with a straight face and barely contained glee.
Still, if you’re somehow able to
strip away the exploitation film veneer, you’re left with another
supremely aestheticized Denis examination of hubris in all its
various forms. Apparently that wasn’t easy for some critics who
greeted BASTARDS with scorn at its Cannes premiere last May.
(Denis’ cannibals-in-Paris tone poem, TROUBLE EVERY DAY,
received a similarly muted response in most quarters a decade
earlier.)
The two families at the center of the
movie pretty much define systemic rot. Sea captain Marco (Vincent
Lindon) returns to Paris to help his recently widowed sister (Julie
Bataille) with her failing shoe business and problem child daughter
(Lola Creton). He rents an apartment in the same building as an
attractive single mother (Chiara Mastroianni) who’s the mistress of
a wealthy business mogul (Michel Subor) with some mysterious
connection to Marco’s late brother-in-law and self-destructive
niece. There’s also a scruffy-looking pimp (Denis regular Gregoire
Colin) who operates a kinky sex show out of a farmhouse (?) on the
outskirts of town.
None of the characters are particularly
admirable or even trustworthy. At times, ostensible protagonist Marco
seems to have a hidden agenda. We’re never entirely certain whether
he’s a knight in shining armor dashing in to rescue his sister and
niece, or somehow implicated in the depravity and corruption
surrounding him.
Not that Denis makes figuring out any
of these connections (familial and otherwise) easy. As usual, she
prefers an indirect, teasingly enigmatic/elusive approach to
narrative: the type of thing that drives literal-minded critics
batty. Yet watching Denis’ films build a head of toxiferous
steam--and always at their own measured pace--remains one of the
great joys of contemporary cinema. You just have to readjust your
movie-watching antennae.
Denis’ films have always felt
supremely tactile. The dense fabric of a winter coat, a tuft of hair
blowing in the wind, a buffed parquet floor: they’re all fair game
for a raging, wide-ranging sensualist like Denis. (The great Agnes
Godard remains her non pareil director of photography.)
A lot of terrible things happen in
BASTARDS, and it’s definitely not for the faint of heart.
But Denis remains a force of auteurist
nature whose artistry is unimpeachable. 4 out of 4 stars.
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