Daily Archives: April 3, 2008

PG-13 Shotgun Stories?

Amusements, Musings

I was a big… well, decent-sized fan of Michael Shannon’s intense work in Bug (less so in World Trade Center), so I was already predisposed to think about casting an eye toward his next indie offering, Shotgun Stories, even before news that the revenge flick — a $68,000 festival darling which
centers around a feud that erupts between half-brothers following
the death of their father — scored writer-director Jeff Nichols CAA representation and a gig directing another movie, for Killer Films. Then came the effusive advance critical praise (above), from Variety and Roger Ebert, among others. So you can imagine my considerable surprise when I then saw that the film which has been dubbed “a point-blank buckshot blast of American rage” is actually rated PG-13. Is that possible? I mean, rage, real rage — and, even more specifically, American rage — connotes something harder, with edge. Not necessarily graphic, but prone to profane outburst and pot-boiled-over intemperance. Something rated R, not PG-13. Poor word choice, perhaps? Or does the movie skirt critical issues it purports to examine?

Love Songs

Film Reviews

Cut from loosely the same cloth as Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of
Cherbourg, the exquisitely French (in every sense of the phrase)
mini-musical Love Songs, which played in competition at the Cannes Film Festival last year, tells a tale of “indigestible love,” in
the form of longtime Parisian couple Ismaël (Louis Garrel, below right) and Julie (Swimming Pool‘s Ludivine Sagnier, below left),
and their recently added third lover, Alice (Clotilde Hesme). How
they got to this point no one seems quite certain, and just as up in
the air is where things are headed. When unforeseen tragedy strikes,
though, everyone copes in different ways.

In mostly rearranging the preexistent pop songs of Alex Beaupain and having his cast perform them in intimate, naturalistic registers, writer-director Christophe Honoré (Ma Mere, Dans Paris) crafts a few very effective lit-pop scenes of quarter-life ambivalence, but the overall cumulative effect is a bit twee. Nothing much here cuts psychologically deeply, so Ismaël’s fraught relationship with Julie’s family, and his subsequent emotional meandering come off as hollow. In fact, so concerned with self-analysis yet totally free of any tangible angst are Love Songs‘ main characters that one might feel the entire movie — a cinematic valentine-cum-diagnosis — could just easily be performed by their therapists. Still, the work here is pretty engaging and delightful, if some of the arcs a bit dubious in their direction. For the slightly truncated original review, from CityBeat, click here. (IFC Films, unrated, 96 minutes)