Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Eccentricities of a Blonde Haired Girl:

The sketch is often approached as one of two things – a study, or practice for, an eventual painting (polished and final; heavy) or a scribbling, something done on impulse and then put away or passed over – a doodle. But the sketch can offer something more, a kind of energy, the very lack of refinement opening up the possibility of a less mediated dialogue between artist and viewer. I’ve always preferred Surrealist drawings to paintings, particularly Dali’s. And who can forget Rembrandt’s self portraits, or Giacometti’s furious, violent charcoal storms, gradually accumulating layers approaching the human face. I’m also thinking even more specifically of the Impressionists: Millet, Courbet, Degas, Pissaro, and especially Cezanne and Picasso. The looseness, the lack of self awareness are refreshing, the lines of the pencil alive with energy – “drawing is the artist’s most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing – a study of even the swiftest sketch discloses the mind and nature of its author”. (Maurice Serullaz).
Film can do the same: Rivette has created his epic sketch (Out 1); Chris Marker’s essays have a similar quality, along with late period Kiarostami, Assayas’ Irma Vep and Garrel’s Frontier of Dawn. Video doesn’t immediately signify the qualities I’m thinking of, and one shouldn’t push the analogy too far, although we do have Godard’s Histoire(s) du Cinema and Mann’s Miami Vice. Manoel de Oliveira has switched back and forth for some time now, vacillating between the unprepossessing and the heavier, more concrete – my favorite de Oliveira, The Uncertainty Principle, is film with a capitol 'F', along with A Talking Picture, Magic Mirror and The Convent. The sketch films include two of his earliest features, Rite of Spring and Doomed Love (epic in the Godard/Rivette sense), the more recent Porto of My Childhood and I’m Going Home, and now Eccentricities of a Blonde Haired Girl.
Clocking in at a mere 65 minutes (although brevity is not the sole signifier or even a pre-requisite for a sketch), De Oliveira moves with economy and broad strokes, the film’s opening scene announcing, literally, that a man has a story to tell about a woman, and that it will not end well. De Oliveira regular (and grandson) Ricardo Trepa is the heart broken man; he flashes back to the beginnings of his love affair, the great lengths he has gone through to secure his beloved’s hand, and the abrupt ending of their affair, shocking in its immediate finality as much as anything else.
De Oliveira has sometimes been accused of focusing too frequently on the upper class, but here he has snuck in a critique that barely registers until that ending – charting Trepa’s rise through polite society and jockeying for financial position, the film is ultimately not about doomed love but his own failure to achieve the status he desires. De Oliveira films Trepa’s introduction to his obscure object of desire through several layers of artifice, framed (accordingly) through windows. Sitting in his accountant’s office, Trepa chances to gaze upon Catarina Wallenstein and her Chinese fan. Catarina first parts a lace curtain to reveal not only herself, but a framed portrait of a woman hanging behind her. She then coyly obscures her face with the waving of the fan, before lowering a window shade. Now blocked from view by the shade, although obliquely visible as if seen through gauze, she moves behind the curtain and walks underneath the portrait, leaving the image’s frame. At this moment, she essentially becomes a ghost of herself, physically receding into an opaque mirage-image, and it is the moment that Trepa falls in love not with a woman, but with a portrait of a woman – an idea. It is not until the film’s end that she will reveal a part of herself, only to be violently rejected by her suitor. The “eccentricities” of the title is Catarina’s humanity, and it is a humanity that is spurned in favor of societal appearances and resentments. A sketch of a film, to be sure, but what a moving, complex sketch it is, as de Oliveira indulges tangents through a literary club, with a brief history of its founder, as well as a musical scene featuring a harp and a poetry recital (a poem, incidentally, bemoaning class warfare and resentment in favor of the simple pleasures in life). Yes, this sketch might be one of the master’s finest.

3 comments:

Andrew said...

This review-- a sketch itself, one might favorably argue-- is more engrossing than the entirety of INQUIETUDE. In the paraphrased words of my small screen lookalike, that was meant as both a compliment to you Danimal and a slight to de Oliveira.

"At this moment, she essentially becomes a ghost of herself, physically receding into an opaque mirage-image, and it is the moment that Trepa falls in love not with a woman, but with a portrait of a woman – an idea. It is not until the film’s end that she will reveal a part of herself, only to be violently rejected by her suitor. The 'eccentricities' of the title is Catarina’s humanity, and it is a humanity that is spurned in favor of societal appearances and resentments."

Sounds rather devastating. I'll have to check it out if and when it hits the Siskel proper.

Interesting, I never really thought of MIAMI VICE as a "sketch." But it does seem to loosely encapsulate a lot of Mann's big themes about masculinity and identity, all the while feeling rather unchained from to its oh-yeah-there's-a-story narrative. (Just a compliment that time.) PUBLIC ENEMIES, on the other hand, is Mann scribbling on a bar napkin with a crayon.

Danimal said...

You just can't resist a snub every time you stop by, can you buddy? I vividly recall your feelings on Inquietude, and can only hope that you'll give my boy another chance one of these days. I freely admit that I wasn't sure what to do with Inquietude myself, although I clearly enjoyed its surface pleasures more than yourself. I do think he's got a shot at winning at least a begrudging kind of admiration from you with his shorter films. Easy on the eyes, chock full of big ideas, and then over. Remind me to bring I'm Going Home over to your crib soon. And really, you can't just end with a 'see ya' or 'peace out'? You've got to work in that P.E. dig, huh?

Andrew said...

Yeah, I know, you're right. Just snark for snark's sake. It's clearly a defense mechanism, so don't take it too seriously.

I would actually love to give your boy one, two, several more chances even. He is a revered figure; maybe I just caught him on an offday-- for him or maybe just me. I'M GOING HOME seems like a good place to dive back in, mostly as its clearly the popular favorite of this decade. Bring it over and we'll make an evening of it.

Incidentally: just watched ESTHER KAHN and was pretty floored. I've seen Summer Phoenix in probably three other movies; she made so little an impression upon me that I pretty much forgot of her existence. Where did THIS come from? That climax!-- she finally finds her feeling and it's everything she wanted/the worst thing she could imagine.

Desplechin = officially my boy.