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Images:

1-2 --- Cold Water, 1994. Virginie Ledoyen

3-6 --- Irma Vep, 1996. Maggie Cheung, Nathalie Boutefeu, Nathalie Richard

7-8 --- Late August, Early September, 1998. Virginie Ledoyen

9-11 -- Les Destineés, 2000. Emannuelle Béart, Julie Depardieu, Isabelle Huppert

12-15 - Demonlover, 2002. Connie Nielsen, Chloë Sevigny, Gina Gershon, Abi Sakamoto

16-18 - Clean, 2004. Maggie Cheung

The point of this post is really to highlight these films themselves, and the rather unique and wonderful shooting style of Olivier Assayas, in this case with a focus on ten years and six feature films from 1994's Cold Water to 2004's Clean. I believe that three of these films were shot by Denis Lenoir and three by Eric Gautier. Yorick Le Saux, who from Assayas’s next film, Boarding Gate, would work either as a sole cinematographer, or as co-cinematographer with Denis Lenoir (who also shot Assayas's four features which preceded Cold Water) on most of Assayas's future feature films (Eric Gautier shoots Summer Hours and Something in the Air).

It just happens that most of the striking shots from these films in the IMDb image libraries feature actresses.

I maintain that if you didn't understand French, and watched these films without subtitles, you could still get a lot out of them, still being able to appreciate the texture of the images, the camera movements and editing rhythms, the performances and often the soundtracks. Assayas is a great director, maybe particularly during these ten years and the following ten years, through Boarding Gate, Summer Hours, Carlos, Something in the Air and Clouds of Sils Maria.

For all that, he isn't the most ardently followed of directors, even French directors, today. As is also true of directors like Arnaud Desplechin and Francois Ozon, who each emerged in the nineties, I suppose Assayas doesn't have one signature early classic (maybe Irma Vep was viewed as such at one time?) comparable to Beau Travail by Claire Denis, Fat Girl by Catherine Breillat, or a combination of older and new major films, such as Leos Carax's Mauvais Sang, The Lovers on the Bridge and Annette.

I became interested in these directors, and Jacques Audiard, to greater or lesser degrees really first among all foreign language filmmakers and so I consider it foundational to my taste. Arsinée Khanjian has a cameo in Irma Vep, a small role in Late August, Early September and plays the mother in Breillat's Fat Girl. I heard that sometime in this period Assayas, Claire Denis and Khanjian's husband, Atom Egoyan, were interested to make either a protmanteau film or otherwise linked films, but it didn't happen. This is just to say that Egoyan was another filmmaker I got really into. In terms of an English language filmmaker whose style reminds me in any way of Assayas, I would say that Noah Baumbach from Squid and the Whale through Greenberg has some echoes. Both filmmakers now seem to really like actor Lars Eidinger.

Any appreciation for Assayas, for his cinematographers, the other French directors named here, or thoughts on any other filmmakers whose styles resemble Assayas? Or what aspect of Assayas's films do you think is the most standout -- the ideas, the 'feel' which is a combination of camerawork and performance, or something else?

I saw Sentimental Value in December. I thought it was good. There seemed to be a lot of thought put into who the characters were and how the story would explore different relationships in an interesting and circuitous way until it reached its ending.

It came out on streaming in the last couple of months. I didn’t rewatch it, but I admit I saw a few minutes here and there while someone else was watching, and I saw the last couple of minutes again. I don’t know how much that influenced this feeling I have that actually I’m not satisfied by the movie. Maybe I would just feel this anyway?

But where at first I thought the film was satisfyingly complex, I now doubt this response. The way it comes together for the characters in the end feels like a comic touch, since it’s all so light. Let alone director and daughter, but director and old cinematographer are working together too, just because.

I’d heard when the film came out in Cannes some critics wondering why there was focus on the grandmother character in the movie. I didn’t question this when watching the film, but months later I find myself hard pressed to understand why exactly there is any focus on the working life of the second sister (archivist researching her grandmother) included in the film.

Recently I’ve begun to speculate whether the film might be improved by having some extra framing device. For instance, Bergman Island breaks the distinction between the main narrative of the writer on her retreat and the story she’s working on there, by having one of her fictional characters interact with ‘real’ characters in the ending.

Anyway, so, where at first I didn’t question whether Sentimental Value worked as a movie, or whether it was a good movie — I thought both were true — now, without rewatching it, I seem to have revised my opinion. Now my thought about it seems to be that I’m not satisfied with the film as it is, and I almost think of it as akin to some stuffy thing in a middle ground between a film and a bit of serial TV.

Do you think it’s odd to revise film opinions suddenly, multiple weeks later and without rewatching? Or is it normal? Do you have any examples? Also if you want to share your opinion of Sentimental Value.