Reviews

A once great actor, Serge Tanneur (Fabrice Luchini), has retired from the limelight, in the process becoming a misanthrope not unlike Molière's famous character. For the past three years he has lived in solitude on the Île de Ré, spending his time cycling through the windswept landscape. He rejects society so much that he refuses to connect his septic tank to the main sewage pipe network. As a result, his house stinks. (Later, after the movie has been watched, this is revealed to have been a harbinger of the tragedy to come, but at this point of the movie it is comedic.) Fellow actor Gauthier Valence (Lambert Wilson), whose career is flying high, is planning a production of Molière's play Le Misanthrope and wants to offer Serge, first the second role, then, after Serge's insistence that he would only play the title role, the title role in rotation.

Instead of committing, Serge suggests they rehearse together for the week, and Gauthier changes his plans and withdraws from his appointments and obligations for the better part of the week. Almost secluded, the two rehearse the play rotating the title role among them. It is never clear whether Serge will accept, or whether he has really become a misanthrope who relishes at exposing other peoples' real or just made up weaknesses. The scenes where they rehearse together are magnificent ---high quality theater-in-a-movie---, the scenery is superb. The viewer is captivated, and begins to relax enjoying the star actors' theatrical performances. The film is replete with satire to the emptiness of modernity, for example when the young beautiful girl who is currently a rising porn actress (with her family's and boyfriend's approval) is revealed to have real Molière actress potential. For the greater part, it looks and feels like a cultivated bitter-sweet comedy of manners, not unlike Molière's original. But gradually then suddenly, the comedy of manners morphs into a full-blown psychological drama, as Serge is revealed to be less of Molière's charming character and more of a modern-day psychotic intent on destructing the conventions and indeed the basic human empathy that together hold the social fabric. Gauthier is also revealed to have faults, as do all of us (quote Molière), but, unlike Serge and like Molière's character, he gradually acknowledges them (if he had not already done from the beginning), and this makes him human and in the end likable. It helps that the actor's real person naturally emits a subtle melancholic charm.

Alceste à bicyclette pays tribute to France's greatest playwright. It pays tribute to the beauty of 17th century French language (the fact that at this writing there are no French subtitles available is a tribute to the inability of France's cultural bureaucracy to direct a trifle of funds where they might have the greatest effect). And it is a great movie in its own right. It may be acknowledged to have been a piece célèbre of a new cinematic genre, namely a comedy of manners gradually morphing into a psychological drama. Superb scenario. Magnificent performances by Fabrice Luchini and Lambert Wilson: this is a movie based not on special effects but on theatrical acting (content and notion being conveyed by diction) and cinematic acting (content and notion being conveyed by subtle facial expressions). One gets a feeling why the Comédie Française has maintained such a hold on European high culture for so long a time. Blessed be France's cinematic industry for churning out gems like that year after year.

The user review first to pop up when one opens the IMDb page is not only unfair, but IMHO idiotic. This is a masterpiece you MUST see.

As everybody who has read the novel knows (and I have read it at least four times), Master i Margarita is a 20th century masterpiece, perhaps THE 20th century masterpiece as far as novels are concerned. Theoretically, it is impossible to adapt to film. Yet Vladimir Bortko managed in this mini-series to convey to the viewer all the magical beauty, as well as the penetrating political satire, of the novel.

Of all the scenes/themes of the novel, only a single one is missed: the hoarders of hard currency locked in a theater for re-education and recanting. It is an inexplicable omission, however it does not affect the value of the mini-series. Then there are matters where one cannot follow Vladimir Bortko, as for instance the (IMHO) inconsistent alteration between BW and color. But just watch the mini-series, and you are lifted into a world of magic - magic realism for that matter. All actors are accomplished theater actors: close your eyes and you can imagine them playing Chechov on stage. The Russian they speak is seductively beautiful. I do not speak the language, and mini-series like this make me regret it: a friend of mine (native speaker) who watched it together with me was constantly laughing or frowning at parts of the video where the English subtitles gave no clue of anything. And, from a male viewer's perspective (Bulgakov was if anything a skirt chaser), you have to watch it even just for the pleasure of voyeurism. Anna Kovalchuk as Margarita is fragile, beautiful, erotic, daemonic: the woman you had always wished you had loved, and be loved by her in return. Dela the witch/vampiress is extremely seductive. And the eroticism of some scenes, most notable the Spring Ball with all these beautiful women clad only in jewelry, feathers and stiletto high-heels is, I think, impossible to beat.

I give it only 9/10, because 10/10 goes to the novel.

There is a dialog in a french film whose title I no longer recall where an intellectual is asked by a socialite lady why he so detests love movies. I reconstruct the dialog from (faded) memory thus: "Au contraire", he replies, "I love them. I have seen 'Morte a Venezia' several times". "This horrible movie, where this old man dies before he has attained love?" "Oui madame. True love is unattainable".

This is indeed the massage conveyed by Luchino Visconti's masterpiece, but many would disagree about it being the core message. Thomas Mann's core masseage in 'Tod in Venedig', of which the film is an adapration, is decay. This message - decay, the power of it, its morbid seduction -is indeed conveyed by the film, on an elegiac - even epic - scale.

The scenery is breathtaking: Venice, a museum masquerading as city, going under. Stark images of opulence contrast with those of people dying of cholera. So does contrast the image of Gustav von Aschenbach, who has lost his yoth long and recently also his artistic inspiration, thus could be said to be, as far as an artist, already dead, with the image of young Tadeusz, whose beauty penetrates every scene where he is present.

As to the soundtrack, the film would have been a masterpiece even if it had none. But it is dressed in the melancholic sound of Gustav Mahler's sinfonies, and it is worth watching even for those who feel nothing for anything but love Mahler.

And then, Dirk Bogarde: he would have been remembered today even if this acting were the only thing he did in his entire life.

You cannot call yourself cultured and not have seen 'Morte a Venezia'.

A sociological note. When I was seeing this film in Germany back in the 80s/90s, the theater was always packed, which is kind of natural. What was unnatural was the composition of the audience.

You had public prosecutors, criminal attorneys, corporate lawyers, bankers, all with their spouses dressed up as if they were going to the opera. You had artists, dressed as artists use to dress. You had intellectuals. You had an inordinate amount of homosexuals, who were visible, even though back then they did not try to be visible. You had BDSM freaks, culture freaks, and real freaks, all distinguishable by their respective dress codes. You had the Hell's Angels types with their body-pierced girlfriends. And you had the militant subculture, down to the anarchists of that day: supporters of domestic terrorists.

They were not seated in separate blocks; you had Hell's Angel sitting next to His Excellency's wife, and His Excellency sitting next to a freak. They entered the theater speaking in soft voices. During the film, they held the breath. Afterwards, they could not utter a single word, and left in silence.

It was like a church service.

I give this movie 9/10 only because I would give 10/10 to the trilogy on which it is based: La Foire aux immortels, La Femme piège, Froid Équateur. Read these three graphic novels - or even better, view them as cbr digital comics (it is surprising how much better these comics read in digital form). There are many more levels of action, abstraction and symbolism in the novles, and the whole tone is way more poetic and melancholic than it in the movie. Plus, the end is not a happy one - at least not for all heroes.

Reading the trilogy before seeing the movie does not spoil the movie, for Enki Bilal did not condense his trilogy into a movie. Rather, the movie is an alternative (not an abridged) version of the story. It is fair to assume that there were then, and possibly still are, even more versions of this story in Bilal's head.