Weekly Cinemeh

Hello, and welcome back to Weekly Cinemeh. This week's theme was French films. French cinema is known for being obtuse and artistic, and from what I have seen, this is close to the truth, though I am far from an expert. This was a fairly mixed week, but ultimately I am curious and will look up more French films. Anyway: to the list!

1: Les Visiteurs
The visitors is a French Comedy about a 12th century knight and his manservant being sent into the future while trying to go to the past to prevent the knight from killing his girlfriend's dad while tripping balls (because a witch spiked his water). The knight and his peasant friend are essentially a French version of Black Adder and Baldrick. While in the future, they need to find a way back with the help of the knight's descendants. This movie was pretty funny. Jean Reno is good and his Baldrick, played by Christian Clavier, is very funny, especially when he finds out that the nobility in the future got rid of the feudal system. This is also one of the only movies about the past that I have seen that addresses the fact that people from the middle ages had fucked up teeth, which was actually a plot point. It was fun to watch the medieval peoples fuck with the status quo, and I loved that the one of the first things that happens with them is that they get thrown in a mental institution. The only weird thing in this movie was that Jean Reno's character kept throwing out a "I wanna Fuck You" vibe to his descendant who looked like his S.O. from the past. Give it a watch.

Eshi: I enjoy Jean Reno; I don't think I've ever been disappointed by him and this movie isn't an exception. Watching a relatively dignified french actor run around with a flail squealing in battle rage is just delightful. Christian Clavier is simultaneously repulsive and charismatic and his whirlwind romance with the delusional baglady was great. I agree with Brian though that the whole, "Time to fuck my Grandkid" thing was disconcerting, but I don't know how the French go about their incest. They are making a third movie in this series, I'm not sure it needed a second (which I didn't even know  about) and a third, almost twenty years after the second, is disappointing. This one's pretty good though, you should watch it.

2: Amelie
I love this movie. This wasn't my first time watching it, but I felt that if we are to suggest French movies we would be wrong to not include Amelie. Amelie is a movie about a introverted, oddball, and slightly naive French girl who decides to become a superhero of sorts, helping those in need and punishing bad people. Its a heartwarming and hilarious movie. Audrey Tautou was charming as the quixotic Amelie, and the rest of the cast was good as well, adding a delightful amount of charm to each scene. This movie focuses on the importance of having connections with people in your life. Amelie spends the bulk of her life in her own head, not giving much though to the world around her. When she discovers that it feels good to help people she dives into it, imagining herself as a Zorro type character and slowly coming out of her shell. Its a sweet movie that has some beautiful scenes, and I would suggest it heartily.

Eshi: Amelie is the most genuine and charitable examination of the fantasy-minded I've ever seen, and it brings me great joy. The characters are wonderfully exaggerated and fucking filled with personality. The story rambles and meanders just enough to be comfortable, cinematography is bright and spectacularly emotive, even the psycho-stalker character manages to be more playfully neurotic than threatening. Amelie is the movie version of your favorite candy: sweet, pretty, and interesting enough to always make you feel better.

3: Fascination
This was my first interaction with "erotic horror". This movie was about a thief who gets into trouble when trying to hold up a house inhabited by vampires. There is a lot of tits in this movie, which was only shocking because I didn't know that the movie was erotic horror until a bit into it. The plot was simple, and the characters where kind of bland. The thief is also the stupidest motherfucker that has ever lived. The entire movie revolves around the vampires killing this guy. They fucking tell him that they are going to kill him, but he stays because the power of boners. I am not saying that they elude to his possible death, they outright fucking tell him, and he doesn't run. I get people acting appropriately stupid in horror films to advance the plot, but rarely does a plot tell the victim that they are a victim, and then the victim doesn't even try to leave. The special effects also leave a lot to be desired. and when the vampires eventually eat someone on screen it is super obvious that they aren't eating a person, just hovering over the body pretending. All of this negatives aside, there are some beautiful scenes, specifically when Brigitte Lahaie walks casually along wielding a scythe after murdering a bunch of people. It was beautiful and frightening all at once. It was boring though, and for a horror movie that's a mortal sin. This movie didn't turn me off of the idea of erotic horror, but it might make me a little hesitant in the future.

Eshi: Man, if you like gratuitous nudity and amateur pantomime this is the one for you. Half the conversations basically end with one or more parties trying to look alluring and wandering off, leaving the last person speaking just kind of standing there, trying to figure out what the fuck they're doing there. That character is the audience surrogate regardless of who they are at the time. The thief is too busy trying to be cool to give a fuck about his grandiosely telegraphed and clearly outlined demise, the vampires are pretty much just crazy rich ladies who get off on ineffectually mouthing travelers for their blood, and the sex scenes are all pretty much what it would look like if rape had a sibling with Down's. Brian is right though, Brigitte Lahaie does a grand job of answering the age old question, "why does that corpse have a boner?" for all kinds of reasons.