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Va Savoir

Jacques Rivette appears to be lightening up in his old age. The first of the Cahiers du Cinema critics to direct a feature, he's best known for challenging films like La Belle noiseuse and L'Amour fou. But with Va Savoir (now playing at the Music Box in Chicago), he's made an enjoyable if slight movie about love and fate in the theater.

The basic plot will be fairly familiar to those who enjoy European imports. Camille (Jeanne Balibar) and Ugo (Sergio Castellitto) are lovers as are Pierre (Jacques Bonaffe) and Sonia (Mariane Basler). Complicating matters, Camille and Pierre used to sleep together and, with Camille back in Paris, they're rekindling the old flame. Since it's not fair for Camille to be the only one choosing between two mates, Ugo finds himself attracted to a local grad student named Do (the spectacularly gorgeous Helen de Fougerolles). Rounding out this love hexagon, Do has a boorish brother named Arthur (Bruno Todeschini) who's having a fling with Sonia but is secretly attracted to Camille and seems to have a rather too affectionate relationship with his sister. Over the movie's 150 minutes, the various couples love, fight, and try to understand each other.

All of this takes place while Camille and Ugo are acting in a play entitled "As You Desire Me." The other characters come to see it at various points, and we watch as well. I'll be honest--I suspect the play mirrors what's going on in the movie, but I had trouble keeping up with the subtitles while also watching Rivette's intriguing mise en scene.

Va Savoir is a sophisticated take on standard elements. The acting is top-notch, especially Castellitto in the role of Ugo. But I had the sneaking suspicion that Camille was merely standing in for Juliette Binoche and Do for Julie Delpy. The film's conclusion is positively out of fantasy land, as everyone's dilemmas are seemingly resolved through binge drinking and one-night stands. Nonetheless, the movie breezes by with such style its clunky ending is forgivable. 

101 Reykjavik

The Icelandic film 101 Reykjavik is a different sort of European import, though also of a familiar genre--the immoral black comedy. Hlynur (played by Hilmir Snaer Gudnason) is a layabout guy in his 20s who lives with his mother and spends his weekends at a local bar and his weekdays watching porn. He has no interest in getting a job and, despite his sorry state, no desire to improve his life. But when Hlynur sleeps with his mother's best friend (played by Victoria Abril), who turns out to be her lesbian lover, AND the lover is carrying Hlynur's child (and stepbrother!), well life gets complicated.

The movie uses its Icelandic connections to exotic effect, and some of the cinematography (courtesy of Peter Steuger) is extraordinary. Nonetheless, the film's bleak tone and obsession with sexual perversion gets old quickly, and the humor is rarely more than crass. And when this movie, too, wants to enter fantasy land and find its "heart of gold," well I didn't believe it for a second. 

Fat Girl

Catherine Breillat's new French film Fat Girl has a fantasy ending of an entirely different nature. This extraordinarily provocative look at the relationship of two sisters and their burgeoning sexuality is deeply unsettling and very powerful. Elena, fifteen years old and beautiful, is forced to take Anais, twelve years old and quite overweight, along with her while the family's on vacation. But having a tag-along doesn't stop Elena from picking up a much older boyfriend. That night, he sneaks into the girls' room and, in what is a gripping and yet horrifying scene, proceeds to break down Elena's resistance. All while Anais "sleeps" just a few feet away.

If that twenty-minute sequence is the centerpiece of Fat Girl, it's the relationship between Elena and Anais that forms the core of the film, a remarkably true-to-life example of sibling love and rivalry. Anais is repulsed by her older sister's sexual exploits, but her own entry into adolescence has brought about a sexual awakening of a different kind. When their mother finds out what's going on, she abruptly ends the vacation, but that doesn't end the rivalry or Anais's fantasy.

Fat Girl won't be for everyone (it's genuinely shocking in both its sexuality and a scene of brutal violence), but it is extremely thought-provoking. 

J. Robert Parks 11/20/2001