Arnaud Desplechin

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Never Cursed
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Re: Arnaud Desplechin

#102 Post by Never Cursed » Tue Jan 18, 2022 4:50 am

Desplechin delivering some relatable bon mots in that piece:
Arnaud Desplechin wrote:Right now I’m deep in editing, which puts me into a very depressive state. I only started editing 10 days ago, and I already feel like a dead man. It’s like something George Lucas once said to Steven Spielberg: ‘Any director who doesn’t puke after the screening their first edit has a serious problem.’ So I’m living that moment right now.


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Re: Arnaud Desplechin

#104 Post by yoshimori » Wed May 04, 2022 12:41 pm

Thanks for that. But OMG. Rois et reine on a double dose of valium. Looks like Desplechin at his most safe, deflavorized. The casting, the performance, the light, the camera - oh Ms Devos, Mr Amalric, Mr Gautier*, where were you? Even the music. I can only hope the trailer is a bit misleading, but I will begin lowering expectations now. We'll know the extent of the damage in 10 days or so.

*He was shooting Stars at Noon.

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knives
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Re: Arnaud Desplechin

#105 Post by knives » Mon May 16, 2022 5:05 pm

Next week le cinema club will be streaming Le vie des morts.

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Matt
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Re: Arnaud Desplechin

#106 Post by Matt » Wed May 25, 2022 6:17 pm

knives wrote:Next week le cinema club will be streaming Le vie des morts.
Finally got a chance to see this. It’s essentially a dry run for both Ma vie sexuelle in terms of the interpersonal dynamics of a large group and for A Christmas Tale in terms of semi-autobiography filmed in (what I think is) Desplechin’s own family home. It’s stylistically quite sedate in comparison to his later features, but the germ of everything he’s interested in is present in this film.

I wish I had an explanation for why his films are so difficult to see in the US. I know there’s the problem of defunct distribution houses, but is there also just no audience for his films anymore? Or for any French cinema that’s not “extremity” or prestige costume drama?

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knives
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Re: Arnaud Desplechin

#107 Post by knives » Wed May 25, 2022 6:24 pm

It is weird how off the map he’s fallen even though I suspect many would enjoy his stuff. I mean a French Angels in America seems like something the internet would be curious about.

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domino harvey
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Re: Arnaud Desplechin

#108 Post by domino harvey » Sat Jun 04, 2022 12:44 pm


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therewillbeblus
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Re: Arnaud Desplechin

#109 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Jun 04, 2022 12:59 pm

Haha that’s such a bizarrely niche idea- but I also don’t know if I can not own it

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Re: Arnaud Desplechin

#110 Post by kekid » Sat Jun 04, 2022 11:57 pm

What would Desplechin admirers on this forum suggest as the best 5 films to start with? English or French subtitles required.

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Re: Arnaud Desplechin

#111 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Jun 05, 2022 12:18 am

Start with My Sex Life.. or How I got into an Argument, Kings & Queen, and A Christmas Tale. I'd then watch My Golden Days and Ismael's Ghosts, which are sequel/prequels to the first two, though it hardly matters. I saw both before their precursors and it didn't hamper my enjoyment, I just think those first three are his best and most accessible works, and the best examples of what his artistic vision is. Esther Kahn, Deception, and Roubaix, une lumière are all great, but I wouldn't suggest beginning with them, as they won't give you as strong an indication of his approach to humanity within a vacuum like the others do; they work better with an established context

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domino harvey
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Re: Arnaud Desplechin

#112 Post by domino harvey » Sun Jun 05, 2022 8:44 am

I started with Un conte de Noël and it made me want to see everything he had done, and it’s fairly easy to see thanks to Criterion

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Re: Arnaud Desplechin

#113 Post by kekid » Sun Jun 05, 2022 3:34 pm

Thank you, therewillbeblus and domino harvey.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Arnaud Desplechin

#114 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Nov 25, 2022 12:08 am

For those disappointed by Desplechin's latest ventures into crime milieus and literary adaptations, Frère et Sœur is a return to form- a kind of a spiritual offshoot to Un conte de Noël's hostile sibling relationship between Amalric and Consigny. Desplechin is at his best when messily picking at the open wounds of emotional vulnerabilities fatalistically tied to social/familial histories, and he uses his typical slapdash focus to attend to seemingly trivial details intertwined with critical ones, functioning like a collective soup of nonlinear, shifty memory. What better way to celebrate Thanksgiving?

It's difficult for me to convey how realistic this film is, as someone who works with people in therapy specializing in interpersonal conflict, and who has two elderly parents in longstanding conflicts with their siblings over no particular identifiable 'thing' - but Desplechin masterfully captures the devastation of this duo's mutually-perceived irreparable damage, the resulting shame, depression, and anxiety, and never attempts to summarize the animosity from rich family archives. There is no known source of the infection, because even if there is a tangible qualifier for one of them, it’s disingenuous to assume their current state of disharmony hasn't been achieved through a complex history riddled with suffocating nebulous material accumulated over all developmental stages from each respective lifetime clashing with the other. Desplechin hints at neglect, non-consensual expectations for responsibility (perhaps parentification), and loss- though, per usual, doesn’t cue us in to the specifics, except for one loss that opens the film and serves as the faux-ignition of part of the conflict. Even when it comes time to bury the hatchet, the source of the apology is elusive to the one humbling themself, and of course making amends and suddenly seeming stable can be a sign of impending self-harm, so who's to say what is coming from where and why. Desplechin's obfuscation of a lucid connection is appropriately reflexive to the principals' own impotence to access some semblance of a coherent logic to alleviate their suffering. This has been a long-standing theme for Desplechin, going back to Amalric forgetting the argument with his former friend entirely in Comment je me suis disputé... (ma vie sexuelle), and yet remaining profoundly affected by it. That film’s title even evokes the significance of the memory’s vacancy, yearning for meaning yet crippled by the ellipses.

Desplechin also calls attention to the iceberg model of social engagement, which highlights how our limited perspective is restricted to the exteriors of others, leading to our inherent narcissistic drives impeding our ability to access another’s side evenly with our own felt depths. As they say in the synagogue: “We cannot uncover others' nakedness.” They even specifically mention one's parents and sister, reinforcing that Poupaud is in his own solipsistic world in that moment. But the surreality of the scene is authentic regardless of whether it was actually said that way or just prompted that thought for our protagonist, piercing out through his solitary experience and consuming the world of the film.

Here are two people desperately trying to stay afloat and using their most symbiotic ‘other’ as shields, to evade facing their individual mental health issues without skills or confident tools. This honest reflection of how sometimes the people who remind us most of ourselves are the ones who accentuate our triggers also resembles an extension of the Deneuve-Amalric dynamic in Un conte de Noël in addition to the sibling one. Conversely, it can feel safer to let a stranger (the role of Cotillard's fan in the narrative) into our pregnable spaces, compared to a family member, because at least with them it's a clean slate that offers reprieve from irremediable baggage. The impact of small interactions with idols on our well-being has always been of interest to Desplechin's worldview of emotion supporting existential value. In Un conte de Noël, Deneuve was an idol for Amalric, but his familiarity sparked her hatred, as her rejection spawned his. Cotillard and Poupaud have a similar story, and were idols for each another at one point in time. Maybe more than one- or if not 'idols', something even more profound and selfless: their "hoists of rescue." Late in the film they are referred to as such, alongside reciprocal "muses," personifying inspiration even if sourced in agony.

What I loved most about this film, though, is how Desplechin gestures at the service each sibling provides for the other through this aggressive antagonism. He truly understands how some people who have lived through such immeasurable pain desperately need subjects to project their bottled-up hatred onto.. How sometimes, in a twisted way, the most loving action we can provide is to enter into that dynamic and become an unconscious martyr, cyclically self-flagellating to aid the other in softening the blow of their introverted depression that would otherwise be unbearably contained in isolation, even if that participation does consequently perpetuate our and their own pain as well. It's an offbeat reading, but I think it's there, hidden in the trenches of the sludgy relational information we're given to work with.

History overwhelms us as a makeshift Higher Power, something we draw from to seek simplified answers, by locating stimulating details to latch onto in an effort to cope with our confusing and intolerable emotions.
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By choosing to let go and find "new guides" in the end, they are seeking that higher power in a healthier but less grounded trek; looking beyond palpable human vessels to direct anger as a secondary emotion, so they have a fighting chance to lean into the discomfort of the feelings that anger has been covering for. Hope exists in emerging from a cocoon of fear-based repression to become "alive" again, and perhaps they can inspire one another here as well. There's no doubt they have already, in some unclear form, but one that's felt in a language of invisible energy none of us could begin to comprehend, nor should we be able to.
There’s no room for Hollywoodized catharsis here, but Desplechin’s brand of somber validation -in subverting the presented scenes begging for exonerative purging- is even more gratifying for respectfully refusing that mirage of a safety net. There is simply no living filmmaker so emotionally competent about the intricacies of our convoluted psyches and interpersonal relationships

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Re: Arnaud Desplechin

#115 Post by domino harvey » Sat Nov 26, 2022 4:05 pm

I did not like it as much as you, but I am absolutely stunned at the opposite end of the spectrum this film endured. I’m reading through Letterboxd reviews that reflect the animosity it faced at Cannes perfectly (it was the worst reviewed film of the fest), and it’s like trying to engage with a QANON truther. There are really people who know enough about films to be on Letterboxd or sitting in the audience at Cannes and yet who possess so little in the way of media literacy and who have a perverse desire to read everything wrong, to be uncharitable and cruel because of their own ignorance. Like, this movie is a mess, but there is an unquestioning assumption on the part of the angry audience that it was not intended to be so. Numerous reviews saying the film is so self-serious that it’s unintentionally funny… Desplechin, unaware of the comic elements in his material… yeah, you might want to dwell on that thought before sharing it with the world. I think there are a lot of flaws here, but these critiques aren’t engaging those fairly and frankly don’t seem capable of doing so because I’m not convinced they know what separates a good movie from a bad one. If this is the worst film someone has ever seen, they have never explored outside of the comfort zone of whatever reaffirms their current tastes

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Re: Arnaud Desplechin

#116 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Nov 26, 2022 4:48 pm

I was pretty surprised to see those reviews too, but I also think this is a challenging film to like because it's essentially taking one strand from Un conte de Noël's far more entertaining, multifaceted, and explicitly tonally-eclectic ensemble and bleeding it dry while still unflinchingly holding its enigmatic ground. That's a hard sell, but I also don't think anyone can have seen a Desplechin movie before and not at least 'get' what he's up to here

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Re: Arnaud Desplechin

#117 Post by domino harvey » Sat Nov 26, 2022 5:15 pm

I think both of his recent films feel to me too short and choppy, like I'm missing an hour of connective tissue that would justify their disparate sprints with the introduction of a sprawl, so I understand receiving this with a sense of "lack"... but I suspect none of these people want an extra hour if they somehow found this film interminable already

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Re: Arnaud Desplechin

#118 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Nov 26, 2022 5:26 pm

I agree with you on this one, which I liked more than Tromperie, though that film worked more for its deliberate disconnectedness emulating dreams and memory. I think Desplechin frequently plays in that mode of fragmentation, but I also wanted 'more' here, and even though I found it a wonderful refreshing reminder of what I love about Desplechin's singularity, it definitely lacked the generous scope of his 2.5 hr+ movies. I was pretty surprised how concise this one was, and I couldn't help but feel like Desplechin had way more of an understanding of some of the rich side characters, only to curiously withhold their presence to a few brief scenes in the finished product

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Re: Arnaud Desplechin

#119 Post by Rupert Pupkin » Sun Dec 18, 2022 9:09 pm

how comme "Comment je me suis disputé... (ma vie sexuelle)" is still not release by Criterion on blu-ray ? Does Criterion plans (or gives us some hint about an upcoming release by tweeting about it) to release it on blu-ray ?

There is a Japanese blu-ray box set (with "La Sentinelle" (one of his best movie).
https://www.cdjapan.co.jp/product/IVBD-1255

And the restauration done by Eclair is pretty good; not greenish or yellowish it looks accurate, lovely in HD and with film-like grain texture.
There is a WEB 1080 around. I don't know if the Japanese box set used this restoration.
I wonder why this has not been released on blu-ray in France so far.
Is there some problems/legal issues ?

I have searched for some vidcaps with no success at all. No review on the forum of Blu-ray.com fo this box set.
If this is the Eclair restoration for "Why Not" (same as the WEB 1080 release which looks great to me) and if the blu-ray are not messed up in 1080i like this could happen sometimes with Japanese blu-ray and are really 1080p24 with no forced or ingrained subtitles, then, since La Sentinelle is one of my favorite movie with Comment je me suis Disputé; perhaps I should by it...
This could take one year before Criterion release Comment Je me suis disputé; and I don't expect a full Desplechin box set (would have hoped so, but I'm realistic).
I bought in the past (not from this label IVC) some Japanese blu-ray such as "La Belle Noiseuse" new restoration or some J-L Godard such as "Une Femme est Infâme" and was more than pleased by the quality of the transfer.

This Japanese label (IVC) : https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/movies.php?studioid=1128 has a very interesting blu-ray catalogue : some Criterion ("Le Bonheur" (Agnès Varda), El Sur, and some wanna be Criterion)

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Re: Arnaud Desplechin

#120 Post by Matt » Fri Apr 21, 2023 7:43 pm

I discovered, quite by accident, that Frère et Soeur (Brother and Sister is currently available to rent online as part of the “Rendez-vous French Film Festival” which occurred in February?!? I don’t know how long it will remain available, but get on it soon, I guess, if you have any interest in seeing it.

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Re: Arnaud Desplechin

#121 Post by Aunt Peg » Sat Apr 22, 2023 2:24 am

I saw Frère et Soeur (Brother and Sister) last month at our annual French Film Festival and found it a fascinating and somewhat infuriating work at the same time. It felt like a film where half the material didn't end up in the final cut.

It is coming to physical media (sadly only DVD) from Madman in late June: https://b2b.madman.com.au/actions/catal ... seId=66198

I'm still disappointed that Oh Mercy! went straight to streaming after the 2020 French Film Festival with no English friendly physical media release of any kind. Still hoping against hope that some enterprising US or UK distributor will pick up Oh Mercy! and give it the exposure it so richly deserves.

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Matt
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Arnaud Desplechin

#122 Post by Matt » Sat Apr 22, 2023 5:31 pm

Having watched it now, I see what you mean about it being frustrating. Though what would a late Desplechin film be if weren’t frustrating in some respect?

It does feel like an appropriate continuation of (or ending of) the Vuillard family saga, with a similar dramatic structure of tension, tension, tension, and a final release or moment of peace.
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The reconciliation between Louis and Alice does feel sudden and unearned. I feel it would have been better if they continued to hold some animosity but agreed to put it aside for the time being while they buried their parents. How can you go 20 years hating someone and then everything is fine after one brief conversation?
Melvil Poupaud can be a very good actor, but the presence of Mathieu Amalric in the lead role is sorely missed. And it’s confusing since Poupaud played the younger brother in Un conte de Noël (called Ivan instead of Fidèle as here) so it took me a good half of the film to understand him as Louis (who was called Henri or Ismaël previously. And I still wonder if Paul Dedalus is meant to be a different character entirely, perhaps a Philip Roth/Nathan Zuckerman/David Kepesh kind of thing).

At any rate, I enjoyed it tremendously and am glad I had an opportunity to see it. And I share your disappointment at the continued unavailability of Oh! Mercy. Sometimes I think I should start my own boutique video label just to release Desplechin’s many orphaned films in English-friendly editions. (And a publishing imprint to get English translations of Anne Wiazemsky’s books, but that’s a whole other issue.)

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Re: Arnaud Desplechin

#123 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Apr 22, 2023 5:53 pm

I already recorded enough of my thoughts on it above, but I highly recommend watching it during an unplanned all-nighter going into a triggering holiday in the midst of an acute episode of emotional dysregulation related to traumatic family dynamics to get the full effect

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Re: Arnaud Desplechin

#124 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Aug 14, 2023 1:57 pm

Desplechin is currently filming Spectateurs, which finds Mathieu Amalric reprising his role as Paul Dedalus for the third time, alongside The Mother and the Whore's Françoise Lebrun, in a "docu-fiction film" (whatever that means) that “centers on a movie theatre from the 1960s to the present day."

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