Claire Denis

White Material

35 Shots of Rum

The thing that makes Claire Denis's films so extraordinary is that she expects her viewers to fill in the narrative gaps and ellipses through the accumulated power of her sensual images (almost all shot by the great Agnès Godard, though not her latest, White Material, because Godard was unavailable), evocative music (by the rock band Tindersticks, plus a few perfectly chosen pop songs), and sensitive performances by actors who develop resonances across multiple Denis films (Isaach de Bankolé, Alex Descas, the gorgeous Grégoire Colin, Béatrice Dalle, Michel Subor, Vincent Gallo). How Isabelle Huppert, star of White Material, will fit into Denis's world remains to be seen. 35 Rhums, based in part on Ozu's Late Spring, has its belated premiere today at Film Forum. I saw it originally at Rendez-Vous with French Cinema back in March. I'll have more to say about this great film after a second viewing.

UPDATE 9/19: A second viewing of 35 Shots of Rum confirmed for me Claire Denis's extraordinary ability to tell a story through hints, indirection, glances and small gestures, while seducing you with the beauty of her images, music and performances. The striking parallels to Ozu's Late Spring are evident to me in two brief scenes: the sequence of the daughter (Mati Diop here, recalling Setsuko Hara in Ozu) looking stunningly beautiful in her wedding outfit, after which her character disappears from the film with the wedding taking place completely offscreen; then, in place of Ozu's famous image of Chishu Ryu alone, peeling an apple, Denis gives us a comparable scene of the father (Alex Descas) alone, finding the rice cooker that his daughter had bought and hidden after he bought one for her the same day, taking it out of the box and putting on the lid. The End. This conclusion gave me chills both times I saw it, both for the resonance with Ozu and the way it perfectly summed up the nature of this particular father-daughter relationship with a simple image.

Another extraordinary scene, which most critics have rightly singled out, takes place in a small restaurant where the characters take refuge after their car breaks down in a rainstorm on the way to a concert. The father and daughter are dancing to the song "Siboney" (for me an echo of Wong Kar-Wai's 2046) when the music changes to the Commodores' song "Night Shift," and suddenly her fiance (Grégoire Colin) cuts in, as if compelled by the music, and begins an extremely intimate, erotic dance which is observed with fascinating, jealous glances by her father. There is so much else going on in this film, but the remarkable soundtrack and the richness of the images complement a very personal story which demands multiple viewings.