14 DAYS OF UNROMANTIC FILMS

PART II:  "Obsession, Delusion, and Limerence"

Written by Diane N. Tran


Here's the other half of the "unromantic" film list.

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08 - DANGEROUS LIASIONS (1988)

Centred in the French 18th-century ancien régime, before the Revolution, where moral decadence of the privileged classes rivaled that of Sodom and Gomorrah and Ancient Rome, satirizing human sexuality as well as subtly examining sexual hypocrisy and desire, a kind of oh-so sophisticated laugh at bourgeois morality that would have delighted Voltaire and Molière and greatly amused Shakespeare, this cynical tale is that pins two bored, aristocratic schemers against each other, as they play God with other people's lives in an elaborate lechery and revenge — either to protect themselves, to get what they want, or simply out of pure entertainment — with the skill of world-class chess players:
     Based on Choderlos de Laclos' Les liaisons dangereuses, the elegantly calculating Marquise de Merteuil (Glenn Close), a proper lady with a secretive double life of sex and cruelty delivered with a Mona Lisa smile, desires to destroy the reputation of a girl's reputation for revenge on her ex-lover who dumped her for this young lady by seeking the help  of her closest friend/confidante/co-conspirator, the serpentine Vicomte de Valmont (John Malkovich) to pilfer her prized virginity.  He, indeed, does the Marquise the favour of bedding the naïve teenager that was almost too easy for him.  He, however, confides in the Marquise his plan for the ultimate challenge of love and deceit:  To bed the Madame de Tourvel (Michelle Pfeiffer), one of the most reputable ladies in society known for her fanatical high morals, marital faithfulness, and devotion to God.  What better contest could there be?  But Valmont finds himself in over his head when he falls in love for the genuine and demure Madame de Tourvel, much to wrath and jealousy of Marquise de Merteuil that she challenges him to obliterate Madame de Tourvel with an emotional and psychological brutality in order to achieve his greatest conquest of all — the Marquise herself.
     I really can't tell you how much I love and adore this film.  Everything about it, from the lush settings, lavish costumes, pristine makeup, and superb performances, reinforce an atmosphere of oppressive opulence and an environment of sickness, degradation, and evil — and to look at the very face of evil and to see it smile back.  It's so chilling and so real.  The simple act of being dress and made up in the morning foreshadows the masquerade the characters put on.  You are horrified by the shameless, ruthless, almost inhuman actions the characters, yet you are seduced by them as well and you feel guilty for being seduced by them as well.

09 - CYRANO DE BERGERAC (1990)

Adapted from the novel/play by Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac (Gérard Depardieu), Captain of the Gascony Guard, has a big, whopping great nose and he is quite sensitive about its size.  He considers himself a freak, a mutant, and that nobody will see past the nose to his soul.  Although a talented poet, brave warrior, and sensitive romantic, he feels he can never be loved because of his physical deformities.  The woman that he loves, Roxane (Anne Brochet), is in love with another man, the handsome Christian de Nauvillette (Vincent Perez), who is in his battalion, but Christian does not know how to be romantic, so Cyrano Christian's romantic side, using his beautiful, romantic words to create an intellectual depth to Christian that does not exist.
     The character Cyrano de Bergerac is a tragedy in a number of ways.  There is no fulfillment in the romantic sequences.  Hearing Cyrano's words written under Christian's name, Roxane confesses that she loves Christian for his soul that she reads in his words, not for his good looks, Cyrano attempts to confess the truth that they were his words, not Christian's, but he is killed in action during a battle at Spanish Front and Cyrano keeps his love silent and unconsummated.  Years past, she dresses in black mournful and lives her days at a convent.  Cyrano spends time with her, every Saturday, and even manages to crawl to visit her on his death bed, but it is a love that remains silent and the only person that knows and can reveal it is dead.      The film has one overriding theme and that is carpe diem — seize the day.  Though such a thing does not happen in this movie, it shows us that it is something that we should do.   We cannot let our love kindle unspoken, especially when the woman that our love is focused on so dearly wants to hear.  In my opinion, it is not something that should be done for I feel that we need to be tactful in regards to the woman that we speak with and shouldn't overwhelm them, but in Cyrano's case he feels that his nose makes him hideous and that Roxanne won't want anything to do with him, which is not true as you learn at the end.  When it comes down to self-doubt then it should be cast away.  One should be tactful, but one should not attack oneself in belief that no woman would even want him.  (I couldn't find a link to the film with English subtitles, sorry.)

10 - THE FILMS OF GONG LI, "THE GRETA GARBO OF CHINA"

Aptly described as the "Greta Garbo of Mainland China," actress Gong Li first came to international prominence through her close collaboration with Chinese cinematographer-turned-director Zhang Yimou, best known as part of China's so-called "Fifth Generation" of filmmaker, who has produced some of the most intensely passionate films this side of cineaste nirvana and whose turbulent life has often matched the melodrama of his films.  Zhang was a married man when he met actress Gong Li, fresh out of drama school, and became hopelessly infatuated with her that she became his self-professed "muse."  Their relationship , although was never confirmed to be a sexual affair but rather a voyeuristic love-from-a-distance towards the actress that bordered on obsessive and just plain creepy, was quite the scandal of China, nonetheless, and yet became one of the most productive times of both their careers, making seven films together — Red Sorghum (1987, banned in China), Ju Dou (1990, banned in China), Raise the Red Lantern (1991, banned in China), The Story of Qiu Ju (1992, banned in China), To Live (1994, banned in China), Shanghai Triad (1995, banned in China), and Curse of the Golden Flower (2006).      Her second most notable collaboration is with director Chen Kaige, fellow graduate of Zhang Yimou's, friend, contemporary, and another leading figure of the "Fifth Generation" of Chinese cinema.  Together, Chen Kaige and Gong Li made three films together — Farewell My Concubine (1993, banned in China), Temptress Moon (1996, banned in China), and The Emperor and the Assassin (1999).  There are upstanding rumours that a rift between Gong Li and Zhang Yimou formed because of her association, which was (as far as I know) completely professional one.  All this aside, I'd like to talk about two of her most famous, perhaps most important films of her career — one with Zhang Yimou and one with Chen Kaige:
• RAISE THE RED LANTERN (1992) — After the death of her beloved father, which left her family bankrupted, a headstrong, independent nineteen-year-old honour student Songlian (Gong Li) is sold into marriage by her stepmother as the fourth concubine of a wealthy merchant named Master Chen (Ma Jingwu) during 1920s Warlord-era China, who welcomes her into his household, lavishing her with treatment more luxurious than any she has known.  However, luxury, as always, comes with a price and the three other wives of the household are less than enthusiastic about the sudden presence of an attractive young, pretty rival:  The world-weary First Mistress or "Big Sister" (Jin Shuyuan) is too old to be of any sexual interest to the Master, yet she is the mother of the eldest son and receives honorary rank for this reason and this reason alone.  The frumpy Second Mistress (Cao Cuifen), who has given the master only a daughter, still dreams of having a son, as her devious schemes and plots are hidden by smiles and fake good will toward her sisters.  The vibrant and beautiful Third Mistress, an opera singer (He Caifei, formerly of the Peking Opera), uses her allure in vying for the Master's attention.  To make matters worse, the Master of the House decides, on a daily basis, which of his four concubines will receive his nocturnal patronage.  The woman he settles on receives all the services the house has to offer, and the women who come up short are summarily forgotten.  Consequently, the women must jockey for position, all vying for the privilege of the titular lanterns, lit outside the house of whatever woman is lucky enough to receive the Master's company and Songlian, in spite of herself, finds herself caught up in the competition with the others.
       Director Zhang Yimou, best known for his recurrent themes is the resilience of Chinese people in the face of hardship and adversity, brings us a breathtakingly beautiful film, exquisitely composed as any master's painting and his palette extends beyond the obvious beauty of Gong Li to include the details of the courtyards, lanterns, silks, and rooftops with an inexplicable mixture of tranquility and austerity taken from the pages of Su Tong's novel, Wives and Concubines.  But the real horror depicted here, though, is in the brutality used to maintain the system, not in the polygamy itself.  For China, the 1920s was a time of collision, between ancient traditions and the rumbling of modernity, between entrenched patriarchy and the almost teasing suggestion that women might begin taking stock in their fortunes.  Caught between the promise of freedom and the reality of servitude, the women do not see themselves as having any significance on their own.  They can only find power in the privileges when the Master "lights the lantern" in their house, when he favours them as sexual partners, that they become in any way of value in their own eyes and in the eyes of each other and the rest of the household — and yet the more they exploit these privileges, the more the privileges control them.  In the microcosm that is the paternity and imperiously privileged society of Raise of Red Lantern, women are barely acknowledged as human beings; they are, instead, sex toys and baby vessels.  The mistress that has a son gains stature, while the one who has a "worthless girl" is ashamed and humiliated by it.  Also, we never see the entrance to Master Chen's massive, sprawling compound, nor do we get a clear idea of its size, its layout, or its exact population.  It appears to have no limits, expanding outward to infinity, encompassing all of China, becoming China itself.  Master Chen, for his part, is something of an enigma.  At no point in the film do we get a clear look at his face.  He's more concept than creature, inseparable from the oppressive rules of his house, from the dictums of tradition, from Chinese society at large.
       Although this film was nominated for an Academy Award in Best Foreign Language Film, Raise the Red Lantern did not come on DVD until 2006 (for the Zhang Yimou DVD Collection when the ban on the film was finally lifted by the Chinese government), fourteen years after its initial release.  However, this DVD was completely unwatchable!  The transfer was absolutely appalling:  The picture quality was nonexistent, as the negatives were peeled, ripped, speckled, skipped, and were, at times, completely wiped out, and the sound was out of sync!  This was the first time I saw what was suppose to be a "restoration" of a film become a "decomposition" of it!  I was forced to return the DVD I bought for $40 (because of crazy-ass import fees) and forced live off the copy of the original 1995 VHS, which I stole from a library because I couldn't find it anywhere else, for over twenty years now!  I am told that the recent 2007 DVD release (for MGM World Films) is far superior now, but it was released in limited supply, sold out when it hit the shelves, and now costs $75 to get.  Because of near-impossible rarity of this film, sadly, I exclusively own the film only on VHS.  End of rant.
• FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE (1993) — Adapted from the novel by Lilian Lee, spanning fifty years from the last days of the Qing Dynasty in the 1920s, Japanese invasion of China in the 1930s, the Communist takeover in the 1940s, and the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, Cheng Dieyi (Leslie Cheung) and Duan Xiaolou (Zhang Fengyi) grow up enduring the harsh training of the Peking Opera, where instructors regularly beat the children as a means of instilling in them the discipline needed to master the complex physical and vocal technique.  As the two boys mature, they develop complementary talents:  Dieyi, with his fine, delicate features, is trained to play female roles of consorts and concubines, while the brawny, imposingly athletic Xiaolou is groomed to play masculine kings and warriors.  As performers, they are wed for life to these roles and, in a sense, so are the two friends.  Their dramatic identities become real for the homosexual Dieyi when he falls in love with Xiaolou, but the resolutely heterosexual Xiaolou, however, spurns his advances and marries a prostitute, Juxian (Gong Li), creating a dangerous, jealousy-filled romantic triangle.  The line between their art and their lives is smudged and so they play their roles, both on-stage and off, without deviation or variation.
       Director Chen Kaige carries the audience the two characters' history with impressive sensitivity where the story and its characters are so tightly interconnected with the opera that it is fundamental driving forces of the film.  It is the work that makes stars of the two actors who are its principal characters, Dieyi and Xiaolou, dominating the professional and personal lives of both men, mirroring their actions in the real world, to convey it the director draws parallels between theatre and history, between the perpetual order of art and the chaos of real life.  Dieyi and Xiaolou represent this order, and yet according to the politics of the time, their relationship is a distortion of natural law and must not be allowed to stand.
       When the film was released in the United States in limited theatres, ten minutes of the film were removed.   These cuts were not long extended scenes, but rather a minute or so from many different scenes, causing the film to make little to no sense to audiences.  Luckily, the original, uncut 171-minute film was released by Miramax on DVD.  (Be sure to get the this original, uncut version.)

11 - M. BUTTERFLY (1993)

Based on the award-winning Broadway play by David Henry Hwang and directed by David Cronenberg (and, anyone who knows me, knows how much I love Cronenberg), is the incredible true-life tale of French diplomat/foreign service officer Rene Gallimard (Jeremy Irons) and how his career was brought into ruin — conviction of espionage and treason — by a bizarre twenty-year affair with Song Liling (John Lone) a Peking Opera diva.  Not only had the Frenchman failed to recognize that his lover was a spy, he had also failed to figure out that "she" was actually a "he."  He had lived together with Song Liling, slept beside her, even had sex with her, and yet, through some mind-boggling circumstances, never knew her greatest secret of them all.  Faced with the unbearable truth that his lover is actually a man, he himself takes on the role of "the Butterfly" from Puccini's opera, Madame Butterfly, the woman who died for the sake of an illusory love.      While the premise seems too fanciful and too extraordinary, it was, in fact, a true-life story that rocked France to its core and made an international joke of the nation back in 1968.  While this is one of my favourite, if one of his most flawed, Cronenberg films, M. Butterfly, the ultimate post-modern, post-structuralism kind of story, is a remarkably compelling film, even though the premise has been spoiled (and pretty early in the film).  The story is, at once, compelling, explosive, slyly humorous, and quite surreal, but does require a healthy stretch of the imagination for the film to work its magic.  It is a work of unrivaled brilliance, illuminating the conflict between men and women, the differences between East and West, racial stereotypes — and the shadows we cast around our most cherished illusions because, sometimes, that's all we have to protect us from the cruelties of reality.

12 - THE CROW (1994)

Comic book movies have always held a fascination for me that's profound and deeply personal.  Comic books, in their own way, have shaped my life.  Comic books are filled with tales of men and women possessed of great courage and, sometimes, fantastical abilities who put their lives on the line and fight against evil beings of terrifying power and, more often than not, triumph in the face of adversity.  They're modern mythologies, our modern-day epics, our modern-day Hercules and Gilgameshes.  But not all of them are about superheroes, nor are they always from the hero's perspective.  Sometimes, the good guys don't win.  In this way, comics are similar to real life.  What the best stories do is inspire the best in us.  They make us want to make the right choices and hopefully, by those actions, inspire the same in others.      On October 30th, the eve of Halloween, a night that has come to be known as "Devil's Night," in reference to the hundreds of fires set by dangerous gangs, Eric Draven (Brandon Lee), an aspiring goth/grunge rock star, and Shelly Webster (Sofia Shinas), a woman who protested against the gangs for the demolition of their slum neighbourhood, are brutally attacked in their downtown apartment:  Eric was stabbed, shot, beaten, and forced to watch his bride-to-be Shelly raped by the gang before he is thrown out of a five-story window and died himself.  They leave behind a close friend and younger-sister figure, Sarah (Rochelle Davis), a city of broken buildings towering high over the urban streets ruled by an underground society of arsonists, a sad foundation without law, justice, or order where the rain never stops and filled with the infinite sorrow on those who knew them.  Their deaths left a score unsettled and, as a result, an ancient legend becomes reality, as a mystical crow descends from the heavens, who normally carries souls to the land of the dead, brings Eric Draven's soul back to life, so he can exact revenge on the men who killed him and his lost love.  He dresses himself in torn black clothing, boots, and paints his face like a clown, a clown that is forever crying yet forever grinning at the same time, and sets out on a quest for retribution, seeking out each one of his murderers, one by one.  He is helped along the way by two people, Sarah and Officer Albrecht (Ernie Hudson) against an army of arsonist gangsters led by the mysteriously incestuous Top Dollar (Michael Wincott), the orchestrator of Devil's Night, who inspires his troops with quotes and dialogue from Dante's Inferno and Milton's Paradise Lost.  With the crow leading the way, Eric Draven sets out to redeem his soul and regain his justice in a city that has never stopped raining since his death.      From its opening shot right to its final seconds, The Crow is a depressingly gripping film made with passion, performed with intensity, designed with precision and influence, throwing in the then-trendy grunge theme and heaping a (bloody excellent) goth/industrial soundtrack on top to finish.  A fairly faithful adaptation of James O'Barr's comic book series, who wrote it after the death of his fiancée, this film draws its inspiration from both the comic book and films, such as Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927), Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982), and Tim Burton's Batman (1989).  Much has been made of the controversy of the film, actor Brandon Lee was shot and killed during the making the film, mirroring the death of his father Bruce Lee, and the film almost dodged being released and, if that happened, no one would have ever known the amazing degree of Brandon Lee's acting capabilities.  He exhibits confidence, cunning, and menace, while at the same time communicating pain and depression to stay true to his character, articulate and powerful with his delivery.  He had become a martyr for the exposition of the character of Eric Draven.

13 - NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS: THE MUSICAL (1998)

I've seen so many adaptations of Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame, from Lon Chaney, Charles Laughton, Anthony Quinn, Anthony Hopkins, Mandy Patinkin, to Disney, this opera adaptations remains my favourite.  I don't like calling this a musical because, I feel, it's more of an opera:      The story is one of the cruelest, most heartbreaking romances, if you want to call it a "romance," in literature.  Set in 15th-century Paris, during the height of the Middle Ages, Esmeralda (Hélène Ségara), a beautiful, barefooted gypsy dancer with a kind and generous heart, becomes the object of desire of many men and the centre of the human drama of the story:  Quasimodo (Garou), the deformed hunchback bell-ringer of the cathedral Notre-Dame de Paris, falls in love with Esmeralda due to her beauty and kindness, showing him mercy and gentleness by giving him water when he was tied and flogged publicly, but knows that someone as beautiful and kind as her could never love a monstrous man like him.  His adopted father Claude Frollo (Daniel Lavoie), a cruel, tormented Bible-thumping archdeacon of Notre-Dame, is torn between his obsessive lust for Esmeralda and his celibate devotion to God.  Pierre Gringoire (Bruno Pelletier), a poor, struggling street poet, mistakenly finds his way to the gypsies' secret "Court of Miracles" who Esmeralda marries in order to save him from bring hanged.  Although married, she does not love him and, according to gypsy law, cannot lie with her for five years.  And, of course, Phoebus (Patrick Fiori), the lecherous captain of royal guards betrothed to a fifteen-year-old aristocrat Fleur-De-Lys (Julie Zenatti) for her wealth and position, but desires to lie with Esmeralda for one night before his wedding.      When Esmeralda is charged with the attempted murder of Phoebus, whom Frollo actually attempted in jealousy, Phoebus tells his fiancée that he was lured by Esmeralda by witchcraft.  Esmeralda is tortured until she confesses that she is a witch and sentenced to death by hanging.  Frollo offers himself to save her life, but when she refuses, he attempts to rape her in the prison and Quasimodo saves her, letting her stay with him in the safety of bell tower of Notre-Dame under the law of sanctuary.  With Clopin and his people occupying Notre-Dame, Frollo orders Phoebus and his men to break sanctuary and attack the cathedral to drive them out, but Clopin, the King of the Gypsies (Luck Mervil), is killed in the process, leaving Esmeralda to lead her people against the soldiers, which ends in inevitable defeat, hanging her.  Quasimodo, driven by anger and sadness, hurls Frollo to his death down a staircase and, while cradling the dead Esmeralda in his arms, laments her to dance one more time before dying himself of a broken heart.      This operatic reduction has gained international fame, was #1 top-selling musical/opera for years, but has remained practically unknown in the United States.  In fact, Disney attempted to rip-off the conceptual production of Notre-Dame de Paris with their 1996 animated feature, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and failed miserably.  It's ranked as my all-time favourite opera/musical/ballet and, if I ever did a listening of musical reviews, this would take the number-one slot.  Words cannot express how much I love and adore this production!  (Do not listen to the English translation, it's so painfully horrible; only listen to the original French.)

14 - MALÈNA (2000)

Directed by Guiseppe Tornatore of the Oscar-winning Cinema Paradiso (1988), this is an atypical coming-of-age story set against the rich, nostalgic backdrop of a small Sicilian town situated Mediterranean coast on the day Mussolini declares war on Great Britain and France, spiraling Italy to enter the Second World War.  The twelve-year-old Renato (Giuseppe Sulfaro), still too young to wear the long trousers, a symbol of sexual maturation, is given a bicycle that represents the first stage of his passage to manhood and, on that very day, discovers his sexuality, getting his first erection, when his eyes casted on the most beautiful woman in town named Malèna (Monica Bellucci).  Malèna, a quiet, unassuming seamstress and daughter of a kindly (but deaf) Latin teacher, had moved to the town to be with her husband, Nico, who promptly goes off to war, whose beauty had become her curse, center of lustful attention of almost every man in town and envy for every woman of the town.  Upon hearing the news of the death of her husband in action and her father dying in an air raid by the Allied forces over the town, poor Malèna is left to fend for herself.  She, a woman who only wants to be left alone, becomes the centre of gossip.  No man will give her a job in fear the spiteful jealousies of their wives, no woman will sell her food or drink because they fear she will cause infidelity within their husbands, and this leads to her into prostitution to get her daily ration of bread, cheese, and a few scraps of money.  On the day the war was declared over, the women gang up and drag Malèna from bed of the Nazi officers into the town square, beating her with stones, insulting her, kicking her with their heeled shoes, and cutting off her hair, the symbol of feminine beauty, in front of all the men in town.  Her only defender in all of this was the voyeuristic Renato who spies upon her through keyholes and cracked windows, as he grows towards manhood under Malèna's shadow.      There are scenes in the film that were considered too graphic, erotic, and wild, if beautiful yet vulgar at the same time, which caused it to face the chopping table in many countries.  It is not an American film where people have sex with their clothes on, or are filmed from unnatural dark angles because everyone is scared of the MPAA.  This is sophisticated European artful cinema at its best — clean, classy erotica with nothing cheap or out of place — where nothing restricts creative minds.  In fact, it's nearly impossible to find an unedited/uncensored version in the United States.  The American DVD was heavily, heavily cut stamped with an R-rating, completely removing some of the most essential scenes, as graphic as they may be, of the film.  Your best bet to get the movie from the original "Tutti"-rating edition with fan-made subtitles (which is what I had to download) from Italy, which is the Italian equivalent to G-rating.  How amusing is that?

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To say that these are bad films because they don't end happily is arrogance.  We have had "happily ever afters" spoon-fed to us since we were children.  In reality, the ideal of love, with all its nuisances, is nowhere as simple as that.   It is perhaps the most complex, most varied of human emotions — both positive and negative, good and bad, selfish and selfless.  Love cannot be give freely and it cannot be demanded.  Love, like respect and trust, has to be earned every day and every moment.  If anything, these films make the idealization of love all the more precious and all the more attainable.

Thank you so much for joining me this Anti-Valentine's Day/Singles Awareness Day!  Be safe and wear a condom:  I assure you that it's the best advice you'll get all day...

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Back to PART I: "Cruelty in Black and White (and Technicolour)"...