Ticket of No Return (1979)

This movie is, as my friend Allison put it, David Lynch meets Jacques Tati. And... that is surprisingly a rather fun combination. Ulrike Ottinger's movie is bananas but in a good way. Bildnis einer Trinkerin (Ticket of No Return) is about a woman who books a one-way ticket to Berlin and then once she gets there she drinks. She wears the most elegant outfits every day – gowns and heels and fabulous makeup – and she drinks, hangs out with a bag lady, breaks many, many glasses, goes to a Nina Hagen show, rides on a boat, and stumbles around Berlin drunk. She never twists her ankle or ruins a shoe, but she isn't exactly elegant. She also never speaks a word. It's a fashion show without a real plot, and it's sort of delightful.

More Jacques Tati for Me

One of my favorite movies from last year was the Sylvain-Chomet-directed animated fairy tale L'Illusionniste (not to be confused with the very boring film starring Edward Norton from 2006). Anyway, one of the reasons I loved L'Illusionniste so much was that it reanimated (literally!) a film star whom I absolutely adore: Jacques Tati. So it was with glee that I noticed that one of Tati's movies was playing on Netflix Instant.

Mon Oncle is an absolute delight from start to finish. It is about modernization and new technologies and the jumps and starts that accompany shifts in technologies, but more than anything, Mon Oncle is about silliness and clever Rube Goldberg jokes that get more and more complicated with each scenario. I loved it. So funny.

2011's Nominees: Part 9 of 12

I AM LOVE

1 Nomination:

  · Best Costume Design

Director: Luca Guadagnino
Cast: Tilda Swinton, Edoardo Gabbriellini, Flavio Parenti, Pippo Delbono, Alba Rohrwacher, Marisa Berenson, Mattia Zaccaro

 
Another film that is wonderful that was mostly ignored by the Academy. I Am Love is actually a masterful achievement. If you love food or John Adams or Tilda Swinton or Italy or pretty things you will love this movie. I have written about it here, and it wasn't my favorite movie of the year, but it is excellent nonetheless and Tilda Swinton's performance is absolutely genius. The woman is at the top of her game – a shocking thing to say about an actress who has been giving incredible performances for over a decade – and the fact that the Academy ignored her (and cinematographer Yorick Le Saux) ought really to give them shame. But, as someone wise once said, a good film is its own reward. I Am Love is one of the year's must-see pictures.

Will Win: N/A
Might Win: N/A
My Rating: #15 out of 48

THE ILLUSIONIST

1 Nomination:

  · Best Animated Feature

Director: Sylvain Chomet
Cast: Jacques Tati (!), Jean-Claude Donda, Eilidh Rankin

 
Lovely, beautiful, charming, whimsical, funny, nostalgic, and magical, but also critically aware, and very very smart. I cannot tell you how much I loved this film and was moved by it. I was not as over the moon about Chomet's previous film, The Triplets of Belleville, but The Illusionist (not to be confused with the boring film with Edward Norton) just hits every note perfectly. I cannot emphasize what a great movie this is. I don't think The Illusionist has much of a chance of winning the Oscar against Toy Story 3, but it is my favorite in the category all the same.


Will Win: N/A
Might Win: N/A
My Rating: #2 out of 48

SALT

1 Nomination:

  · Best Sound Mixing

Director: Phillip Noyce
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, August Diehl, Andre Braugher

 
Who is Salt? Who cares. This movie is actually one of the stupidest action movies I've ever seen. What happened to Phillip Noyce? Remember when he made Rabbit-Proof Fence and everyone was talking about him? Now he makes awkward Angelina Jolie vehicles that mostly consist of chase scenes. Where did it all go wrong? The colossal stupidity of this movie nearly defies description so I am not going to go into it. Suffice it to say, that you may avoid this film easily without it impacting your life and you would be wise to do so.

 
Will Win: N/A
Might Win: N/A
My Rating: #47 out of 48

Monsieur Hulot Est Vivant!

I find myself biased against animated films, generally. This isn't that they aren't good films. There have been some really great animated movies in the last ten years. This year, I really liked Toy Story 3 and How to Train Your Dragon, for example, and last year I was a big fan of The Princess and the Frog. I like animated movies, in other words, and I see most of the ones that get good reviews.

They almost never, however, rank very high on my end-of-year film rankings. For a while I have wondered why this is, and I have been given a bit of grief over it before -- this was probably around the time of Les Triplettes de Belleville and Finding Nemo. But I think that my anti-animation bias is mostly due to the subject matter of many animated films. Of course there is Miyazaki, and I love John Lasseter, but even when these films are not about children per se, they frequently feel geared toward children.

All of this rambling is a preface to me telling you that I adored Sylvain Chomet's L'Illusionniste. Absolutely adored. And I didn't feel this way about Les Triplettes; L'Illusionniste is a whole other kettle of fish.

The first thing to say about this movie is that it is a Jacques Tati film. That fact, to me, already makes the film a must-see. If you have loved Tati's films in the past you cannot miss L'Illusionniste. Chomet has adapted a Tati script from the mid-1950s that had never been filmed by Tati himself. The adaptation is lovely! The main character is a down-on-his-luck magician named Tatischeff (Tati's own given name) and though he is an animated character, he possesses the unique gangliness, awkward gait, and seeming obliviousness that easily identified Tati's Monsieur Hulot. In other words the film's star is immediately recognizable and lovable on the instant.

But L'Illusionniste is also a Sylvain Chomet film. It is a comical movie, but it is also deeply sad. Chomet's balance of these two is flat-out masterful. The film manages to juggle a persistent nostalgia (the film's star is, after all a beloved icon who has been deceased many years) and a delightful, often breathtaking sense of whimsy with a rather sad plot about a man with outdated skills looking for work in an unkind economy. This is also a movie about regret: a kind of love-letter to or hopeful vision of a more generous mode of parenthood.

For L'Illusionniste is, at heart, a film about parenting; it is not, however, a film about children.

It's also a film about being poor, about how much things cost, and about how children don't understand the sacrifices parents make.

And it is also a movie about magic: illusions, sure, but also noticing the magic around us all the time. Parenting is itself magical in this movie, and Chomet asks us to see the labor our parents do to support us, the worry they expend for our safety, the dreams they give up to nurture our dreams, as quiet, unacknowledged miracles, little bits of magic that grace our lives every day.

L'Illusionniste displays Chomet's characteristic style. Some of the characters are intentionally (if rather beautifully) grotesque, and there is less dialogue than in a silent film.

Instead of dialogue the movie is filled with powerful standalone images, beautifully choreographed farcical sequences, and delightful non sequiturs; these accumulate to form a whole that is emotionally arresting and whimsically transportive. It is easily one of the best films of the year.