Capital Projections: Working women edition
A common thread runs throughout this week’s Valentine’s Day openings: depictions of women at work, from a fictional itinerant painter to documentary portraits of a celebrated movie critic and a biologist whose work should be better known. Addressing other themes, repertory offerings include a mid-career masterpiece from Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, as well as a seldom-seen film from the Ivory Coast and a Bollywood classic.
Capital Projections is The DC Line’s selective and subjective guide to notable movie screenings in the coming week.
PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE
The latest from director Céline Sciamma (Tomboy) is an exquisitely photographed drama of art and forbidden love. Yet while the slow-burning film asks profound questions about deception and the nature of art, its strong performances heat up what is ultimately a sentimental, conventional period piece.
The embers are stoked in 18th-century Brittany, where Héloïse (Adèle Haenel) lives with her mother (Valeria Golino) and their servants in an isolated estate reachable only by boat. Héloïse is to be married to a gentleman from Milan, and her family wants to present a portrait of her to her fiance. The trouble is, Héloïse has already refused to pose for one artist. So when the newly hired painter Marianne (Noémie Merlant) arrives, Héloïse is told that the artist is merely a walking companion. What starts as a job soon becomes much more.
Strolling past roaring waves and steep cliffs, this is the stuff of Gothic romance, but the sparks come more from the difficulty of Marianne’s task than from sexual frustration: She must capture her subject from memory, sneaking in sketches and brushwork when Héloïse isn’t looking; while memorizing her gestures and face, she quietly falls in love with her subject. The secrecy creates a sexual tension that sets the cold environment ablaze, and the leads develop a strong chemistry in enticing fits and starts.
Much of the movie is effective in its smoldering rhythms and uneasy rapport, but the drama is undercut by a cheesy framing device. The film begins with Marianne as an art teacher, whose memory is awakened when one of her students just happens to bring an unusual painting out of storage. This sets the remainder of the film up as a memory that is at times unreliable — much like art. This theme is reflected in a story of two portraits: Marianne’s first attempt at an “official” portrait is almost lifeless, revealing none of the artist’s passion for her subject. The “real” portrait is the one awkwardly inserted at the beginning of the narrative; this is an otherwise dreary canvas punctuated with Héloïse, her dress aflame in a heavy-handed metaphor.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a tale of frustrated desire and imperfect art, its theme too obviously stated when Héloïse tells Marianne, “Your presence is made up of fleeting moments that lack truth.” Yet if the film ultimately strikes a false note, that only proves its thesis.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday, Feb. 14, at Landmark E Street Cinema, Landmark Bethesda Row and Angelika Film Center & Café at Mosaic. $12.50 to $15.
WHAT SHE SAID: THE ART OF PAULINE KAEL
Speaking of a lady on fire, here’s what critic Pauline Kael wrote about actress Jeanne Moreau’s performance in Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1961 film La Notte: “Is the delicate movement of the derriere supposed to reveal her angst or merely her ennui?” Opinionated and sometimes cruel, the longtime New Yorker critic is the subject of a new documentary by Rob Garver, and for anyone interested in film criticism or just a writer’s life, it’s a satisfying portrait.
Garver charts Kael’s life and career through audio recordings, vintage talk show footage, home movies and old photos. Talking heads pay their respects, with sound bites from directors like Quentin Tarantino to critics like Greil Marcus and a particularly entertaining Camille Paglia. But when it comes time to argue for Kael’s cultural importance — her review could make or break a film — it’s her own professional writing that tells the story. Actress Sarah Jessica Parker reads excerpts from Kael’s work that demonstrate the acerbic author’s snappy prose and sharp insight, whether it’s analyzing Citizen Kane, admiring Bonnie and Clyde (which many critics at the time dismissed), or defending Brian DePalma and other purveyors of what Kael considered “good trash.”
What She Said is no hagiography; Garver makes it clear that Kael’s barbs could sting, and in one archival interview, director David Lean explains that her judgment shook his confidence so severely that he stopped making movies. Kael had written a scathing review of Lean’s 1970 film Ryan’s Daughter, but she didn’t leave it there — she confronted him when he was guest of honor at a luncheon hosted by the New York Film Critics Circle. Lean wouldn’t make another movie until 1984’s A Passage to India, which was nominated for 11 Oscars and won two.
One imagines that Kael wouldn’t think much of the amiable score for What She Said by Rick Baitz, but this is a terrific celebration of movies and film criticism that will rightly inspire many viewers to hunt down her books.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday, Feb. 14, at Landmark E Street Cinema. $12.50.
THE WOMAN WHO LOVES GIRAFFES
This new documentary from director Alison Reid profiles a Canadian biologist who was one of the first scientists to study animal behavior in Africa — and she was only 23 at the time. Anne Innis Dagg was first intrigued by the beautiful, long-necked creatures when she was a child visiting Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo. In 1956, she set off on her own for South Africa to begin her field research, several years before Jane Goodall would study chimpanzees in Tanzania. The expedition should have been the start of a lifelong project, but circumstances got in the way, and Dagg, until now, has remained relatively unknown outside her field.
Reid combines present-day footage of Dagg, now 87, with 16-mm footage from the biologist’s 1956 trip, and nature lovers will be happy to see giraffes in a then-unspoiled habitat. Yet the film is also a frustrated-adventure story: Dagg would go on to write a 1976 book that for decades was the primary reference for anybody interested in giraffes. Yet despite her unprecedented work, she was denied tenure at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, and, unable to get funding, would not return to Africa for more than half a century.
Dagg turned from her tall charges to write a number of books exposing sexism in academia, and she all but gave up on ever seeing giraffes in the wild again. Fortunately, organizers of a 2016 conference on giraffes in Chicago invited Dagg to attend, which led to a much-delayed return to South Africa. There, she witnessed a natural environment that had become polluted and a species on the verge of extinction. Meanwhile, technological advances have made it easier to film the animals; although the vintage 16-mm footage captures some sense of the animals’ unusual grace, drone-mounted cameras now provide an unprecedented look at these majestic creatures. The Woman Who Loves Giraffes offers an inspiring story of human resilience and animal conservation, as Dagg and a new generation of researchers work to make sure that the species lives on.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday, Feb. 14, at Landmark West End Cinema. $12.50.
TASTE OF CHERRY
The AFI Silver and Cultural Center continues its Abbas Kiarostami retrospective with a 1997 drama that was the Iranian director’s international breakthrough. Like many of Kiarostami’s films, much of it was filmed in and around a moving car. Mr. Badii (Homayoun Ershadi) is driving around a desolate construction site in a desert on the outskirts of Tehran. As he stops men along the road, he might appear to be cruising for sex, but his desperate, defeated expression reflects a much darker impulse: He’s looking for somebody to bury him after he kills himself.
The film seems to take place in a colorless purgatory that constantly reminds Badii of the dusty fate that all of us inevitably face. We don’t know why he wants to commit suicide but see him wander among trucks that, for no apparent reason, dump loads full of dirt into a deep pit. At one point, he is moved to get out of his Range Rover to sit by the side of the road, where the dust flows over him — and it looks for all the world like he’s being buried alive. But the film doesn’t remain so bleak: After giving rides to a series of men who refuse his requests to bury him, he finally meets Mr. Bagheri (Abdolrahman Bagheri) — a taxidermist, of all things — who agrees to do so but tries to convince Badii that life isn’t something to be thrown away. The cinematic action consists of little more than a sad man driving and talking, yet Taste of Cherry is a frequently mesmerizing work of art. Next week the AFI will also be screening Kiarostami’s 1994 film Through the Olive Trees (on Monday, Feb. 17, and Wednesday, Feb. 19), and the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery continue their own Kiarostami series with the late-career films Shirin (2008) and Ten (2002) on Sunday, Feb. 16.
Watch the trailer.
Taste of Cherry screens at the AFI Silver Theater and Cultural Center on Tuesday, Feb. 18, at 7:15 p.m. and Thursday, Feb. 20, at 7:15 p.m. $13.
SHOLAY
With a film career that has spanned 50 years, Amitabh Bachchan is one of Bollywood’s elder statesmen. He’s appeared in more than 200 films that range from Indian action movies to Baz Luhrman’s 2013 3D adaptation of The Great Gatsby. This weekend the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery screen Sholay, a 1975 thriller that the British Film Institute named as one of the best South Asian films of all time. The film stars Bachchan and fellow Bollywood legend Dharmendra as criminals hired by a former police officer (Sanjeev Kumar) to capture a vicious bandit (Amjad Khan). Sholay is part of a special musical celebration at the museum. The film will be introduced by Rochester, New York-born jazz drummer Sunny Jain, whose new album, Wild Wild East, addresses his Indian heritage and influences. Jain will discuss the film and his music with Washington-area jazz drummer Sriram Gopal.
Watch the trailer.
Saturday, Feb. 15, at 2 p.m. at the Freer Gallery of Art. Free.
LA FEMME AU COUTEAU
The National Gallery of Art’s series “African Legacy: Francophone Films 1955 to 2019” continues this weekend with a 1969 drama in which director Timité Bassori observes the traditions of his native Ivory Coast through the eyes of Sigmund Freud. The film tells the story of a young man (played by Bassori) who returns to Africa after having spent time in Europe. His travels have apparently ruined him for life back home: Romantic prospects seem out of the question when he’s haunted by dreams of an African woman wielding a knife, a symbol that, according to the director, represents “a traditional Africa fighting to reclaim her children.” The film has been newly restored as part of The Film Foundation’s African Film Heritage Project, which was established to preserve and disseminate African cinema.
Sunday, Feb. 16, at 4 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art in the West Building Lecture Hall. Free.
Not to sound rude but…did you even watch Portrait of a Lady on Fire? You’re statement about the second portrait isn’t correct and you completley missed the mark on the themes of the film.