Several Futures — Erotic Nature: The Films of Pierre Creton

[domino harvey]

Are the Creton films any good? This is another of the new wave of Cahiers favorites, but I haven’t caught any of them yet

[swo17]

Are the Creton films any good? This is another of the new wave of Cahiers favorites, but I haven’t caught any of them yet

I can't answer your question, but it's curious that this new label is putting out a bunch of films from this director that are not his "international breakout" Un prince (which I only know from John Waters championing it)

[senseabove]

Are the Creton films any good? This is another of the new wave of Cahiers favorites, but I haven’t caught any of them yet

I really loved A Prince, and the scant scattering of folks on LB who logged these during a BAM retro last year seem to be fans, so that's all I'm going on. A Prince is on the Channel right now, if you want to sample, and his latest, 7 Walks with Mark Brown is on Hoopla. From what I gather, neither is a significant departure from his other work.

[Never Cursed]

Are the Creton films any good? This is another of the new wave of Cahiers favorites, but I haven’t caught any of them yet

I enjoyed A Prince and Seven Walks with Mark Brown (neither included in the set) quite a bit; they're both interesting whatsits. They may be more zedz movies than you movies, but then again they may not. Creton is an interesting guy: he's a farmer-turned-filmmaker that gradually expanded from short films into semi-esoteric features about the rural French relationship with nature. A Prince got some attention when it made the festival rounds because it's a queer romance (complete with an eye-popping visual effects shot that probably weighed heavily on the minds of the people who titled the box set), but I'm (pleasantly) surprised that there's any legal, English-friendly way to own his earlier work.

[Lowry_Sam]

I really loved A Prince, and the scant scattering of folks on LB who logged these during a BAM retro last year seem to be fans, so that's all I'm going on. A Prince is on the Channel right now, if you want to sample, and his latest, 7 Walks with Mark Brown is on Hoopla. From what I gather, neither is a significant departure from his other work.

I watched un prince right before leaving for vacation as it was on the "leaving this month" list & I'm very glad I did. I was surpprised by how much I enjoyed it in light of its 5.6/10 on IMDb. I would put it very much in the slow cinema camp and the editing and dry presentation reminded me of Bresson, so it didn't surprise me that it's rating is so low as it's definitely not a crowd pleaser. I can't believe Criterion pulled it from the channel before pride month, I don't recall any promotion for it and the only reason I noticed it was because it was included in the "leaving this month" group and I searched IMDb for it's info. Yet another example of poor curation on the channel. Did anyone catch who is distributing it in the US? It doesn't seem to have a disc release to date.

[criterionsnob]

I was hoping for a Blu-ray too, but Strand already released it on DVD a couple of years ago.

[Lowry_Sam]

I believe Criterion has picked up a few Strand titles over the years, though I don't recall which titles offhand. This seems to me to be an ideal Janus/Criterion Premieres candidate.

[CSM126]

I believe Criterion has picked up a few Strand titles over the years, though I don't recall which titles offhand. This seems to me to be an ideal Janus/Criterion Premieres candidate.

It’s not a Janus title and it’s not fresh from theatres so that’s out.

[swo17]

I believe Criterion has picked up a few Strand titles over the years, though I don't recall which titles offhand

All those Reygadas films

[Matt]

I believe Criterion has picked up a few Strand titles over the years, though I don't recall which titles offhand.

The two Wayne Wang films and the Gregg Araki trilogy are licensed from Strand. But I think there are also some films that used to be with Strand that Janus now owns, Ira Sachs' The Delta, for one.

[beamish14]

I believe Criterion has picked up a few Strand titles over the years, though I don't recall which titles offhand.

The two Wayne Wang films and the Gregg Araki trilogy are licensed from Strand. But I think there are also some films that used to be with Strand that Janus now owns, Ira Sachs' The Delta, for one.

Kiss of the Spider Woman as well

[Matt]

Are the Creton films any good? This is another of the new wave of Cahiers favorites, but I haven’t caught any of them yet

I'm committing myself to working my way through the set chronologically without any prior knowledge of the films, having only seen (and not particularly loved) Un prince. I'll read the essays and watch the documentary on Creton last. I'll try to post reactions to each film here as I watch them.

Secteur 545 is a pretty straightforward vérité documentary about a handful of dairy farmers (and one sculptor) in Normandy, shot in what looks like MiniDV and presented in black and white. It alternates between scenes of farm labor; scenes of interviews where Creton asks the farmers "what's the difference between humans and animals;" and some staged scenes of a regional dairy official (not sure what his actual job is) reading Kierkegaard and a cookbook on potatoes or modeling for the sculptor. It culminates in a small art exhibition opening with that man, the sculptor, and the farmers discussing the sculptor's finished bust of the man.

It largely eschews the pictorialism and romanticization of some agricultural/zoological documentaries in a similar vein like Sweetgrass or Bestiaire, and doesn't even really insist too much on investigation of that central philosophical question Creton asks of his interviewees. He basically asks the question and then leaves it up to them to answer however they want without judgment or even much followup. So it's the manner in which they respond to the question than their actual responses that seems to be of most interest to Creton. There's a very sweet farm boy who gives perhaps the most interesting response towards the end, yet before him a man who takes the question as an excuse to rail against people on welfare. There's a little bit of an arc there from the farmers interviewed earlier who see a stark divide between humans and animals and this boy at the end who sees the divide as, essentially, just a language barrier, so one could possibly see the construction of the film's "narrative" as progressing along a distinct philosophical line.

For me the star of the film is a tubby little camera shy farm cat named Mimine who shows up a few times. And there are a few shots that, despite the ugliness of DV, are really striking: a vat of milk being homogenized/pasteurized, some cows and a duck standing peacefully in a foggy meadow, and a man (Creton?) hugging a cow. Maybe this film presages Creton's later style because of its matter-of-factness about rural life and lack of judgment of the characters/personages, but I'll have to see the rest of his films to confirm.

I have a few quibbles with some of the subtitle translations ("réactionnaire" translated as "conservative" instead of, duh, "reactionary"), but then again I relied on the subtitles to understand about half of what these country folk were saying.

[domino harvey]

Damn, everyone’s getting their orders in but me! I picked up this set and the botanical one too, so I look forward to joining you in the watch-thru once mine actually ships