I actually liked this movie a lot. It was last feature (for me) at the Gay & Lesbian Film Festival. The singing by Claire Keim was also a surprise and I would like to hear more of her singing. The audience were impatient at the pace Worth seeing and there was a lot of nervous laughter in places but for those that understood what the story was trying to tell it was refreshingly different from all the other items in festival. Worth seeing especially for the lighting the colours and the lovely shots of the Seine.
9 Reviews
Toronto 2000 Wrap-Up
DJFreak15 October 2000
9/9 7:00 pm THE GIRL (**1/2)
Sexy but thin lesbian love story. Male characters are silent which is very effective. The decidedly feminine pace is refreshingly unsettling. On hand for the Q & A after this world premiere were director Sande Zeig, producer Dolly Hall, writer Monique Wittig and actress Agathe de la Boulaye who told an amazing story about how a couple of drunken yahoos became completely lost when her butch yet slightly fem character emerged from her trailer. Agathe's performance was remarkably patient which was a nice change from the obsession usually depicted in these kinds of stories.
Sexy but thin lesbian love story. Male characters are silent which is very effective. The decidedly feminine pace is refreshingly unsettling. On hand for the Q & A after this world premiere were director Sande Zeig, producer Dolly Hall, writer Monique Wittig and actress Agathe de la Boulaye who told an amazing story about how a couple of drunken yahoos became completely lost when her butch yet slightly fem character emerged from her trailer. Agathe's performance was remarkably patient which was a nice change from the obsession usually depicted in these kinds of stories.
An artist, the Painter, meets a night club singer, the Girl, in Paris and finds herself obsessed with the thought of her.
etrans-118 March 2006
I have absolutely never ever felt like leaving during a film I was watching in the cinema - bar this one. I couldn't stand the pacing up and down the Seine. This film is pretentious in its aim to appear arty and fails dismally in its eager to engage the audience (at least this viewer) with a thin lesbian story line of attraction and jealousy. The main characters remain cardboard figures, no real emotions at stake at any point. Very few directors have managed to create an erotic and sensual atmosphere between two women. I can think of only four: Patricia Rozema (When Night is Falling), Andy/Larry Wachowski (Bound), David Lynch (Mulholland Drive) and Lukas Moodyson (Show Me Love). But of course, it's a matter of taste - or perhaps I've been missing something?
All foreplay
s_pike8 July 2011
This movie can't quite commit to being noir and so comes off as a pale translation of what a woman might imagine noir to look like if it was focused upon the female characters. All foreplay and no action. What non-sexual action that does take place is anemic. The toughest thing in the movie is the attitude that affects an insouciance while betraying that indifference in the plot. The thing about tough guy noir movies is the action the pace of plot development hits you repeatedly like a drunk boxing champ down on his luck and only doing what the boss paid him to do. The personal and emotional indifference is as hard as the cold cement reaching up to claim your face as you fall. None of that is in this movie. It is, as another reviewer points out, self conscious and pretentious. The emotions in noir hard scrabble movies are always embedded in the context while greed, lust and power play out in the service of hard reality and the rules of the game. That is why the "dames" are treated the way they are and why they betray husbands and lovers for their own advantage. This movie brings the emotionalism to the foreground, (maybe in service to an assumption that the audience they anticipate will want that), and places the action into the context. In doing so they lose the plot of what a noir-ish thriller is about and all we have is the atmosphere without any content. If they wanted to do lesbian porn they should have done so explicitly, as it is, it is neither a good sex film, a good art film nor a good thriller. Like the singing in the movie, it has all the pretense and none of the soul.
Good but not great
dbborroughs23 December 2007
Lesbian noir romance about a street wandering painter who almost looks like a man in a feminine sort of way who falls in love with a singer who tries, and fails to keep their romance to one night. As the two spiral together the fact that the singer has other lovers (in the hopes of furthering her career) becomes problematic as a jealous man with a thing for the singer won't let go. Good but not great film is like ten thousand other tales except the leads are two women. The change is enough to keep it watchable even when the plot sort of sputters along, though if you're in a less forgiving mood you'll be reaching for the remote. The sex is mostly kissing and hugging so those looking for more graphic thrills best look elsewhere. I particularly liked the fact that the people are not perfect beauties, they have moles and real skin. The painters other lover is wonderfully sexy in her plainness. I think the exchange between the painter and this woman that made me click with the film. In it they remark about how they are both in love with women who aren't their type, the painter speaking of the singer while the lover is speaking of her bed mate. Worth a look if you want a film thats familiar yet a change of pace, though yet again wait for cable since the four bucks I spent to see it wasn't really worth it.
Looking At Life From An Aquarium...
wobelix8 February 2005
Highly stylized this film comes close of being surrealistic, but won't go any further than surreal.
Most people do not talk in this film, and all except two are clichés: ruffians, harlots, macho's, babes.
Which two ? AHA, now we're getting somewhere.
Two beautiful women go through life as tropical fish in an aquarium: the whole world notices them, watches them, gazes upon them. Yet they feel invulnerable, feeling protected by their own cocoon, the glass of the fishbowl.
Time in this film adapts to this aquarium-in-the-middle-of-the-world feeling: it floats and is no bother at all for the two wonderful ladies. I haven't seen such a lovely soft-paced film in a long time !
But of course, doom must creep in. This is the world, or in this case: Paris, we're talking about ! Sheer beauty is intolerable for the human race, it has to be soiled. Even in a city as gorgeous as Paris, which is displayed here with picture-postcard beauty.
The silent cliché people start to tap and knock on the glass of the aquarium. One of the beauties keeps floating on majestically; the other rubs her nose to the glass and interacts with the 'others' outside the bowl.
The inevitable happens: the bowl cracks, symbolized in the film by the harsh lights of a car beaming straight into the lens. Time seeps in and becomes a burden ! Violence sets in, and although the women keep on feeling safe for a while longer, in the end the aquarium will be shattered.
An intriguing film, excitingly acted by the two protagonists, the incredible Claire Keim and the enigmatic Agathe de la Boulaye. Not in a natural way, some Japanese theater-style of acting has been blend in.
Well worth your attention !!! And your appreciation !!
Most people do not talk in this film, and all except two are clichés: ruffians, harlots, macho's, babes.
Which two ? AHA, now we're getting somewhere.
Two beautiful women go through life as tropical fish in an aquarium: the whole world notices them, watches them, gazes upon them. Yet they feel invulnerable, feeling protected by their own cocoon, the glass of the fishbowl.
Time in this film adapts to this aquarium-in-the-middle-of-the-world feeling: it floats and is no bother at all for the two wonderful ladies. I haven't seen such a lovely soft-paced film in a long time !
But of course, doom must creep in. This is the world, or in this case: Paris, we're talking about ! Sheer beauty is intolerable for the human race, it has to be soiled. Even in a city as gorgeous as Paris, which is displayed here with picture-postcard beauty.
The silent cliché people start to tap and knock on the glass of the aquarium. One of the beauties keeps floating on majestically; the other rubs her nose to the glass and interacts with the 'others' outside the bowl.
The inevitable happens: the bowl cracks, symbolized in the film by the harsh lights of a car beaming straight into the lens. Time seeps in and becomes a burden ! Violence sets in, and although the women keep on feeling safe for a while longer, in the end the aquarium will be shattered.
An intriguing film, excitingly acted by the two protagonists, the incredible Claire Keim and the enigmatic Agathe de la Boulaye. Not in a natural way, some Japanese theater-style of acting has been blend in.
Well worth your attention !!! And your appreciation !!
Room in Paris
tedg8 January 2012
Warning: Spoilers
I guess I should describe what the filmmaker described as her goals. She wanted to make a noir love story and to 'abstract' it, making it pure, and therefore effective.
This isn't noir as I understand it, but that does not matter in this equation. She can call things whatever she wants, I suppose. But there seems to be a lack of understanding about what works, about the craft of abstraction.
Noir is a specific abstraction technique, an integrated set of narrative techniques that connects at a more basic level than genre (I think). The common notion of 'abstract' is simplification, removed from reality, but every story is an abstraction, and every theatrical and cinematic convention a way of manipulating abstracted representations.
Jarmusch and the Andersons make things that work because they understand this process that instead of simplifying, increases depth through clarity. The 'abstraction' here is just a matter of plainness, and it doesn't work. But quite apart from what the filmmaker thought she was doing, it could have worked, because there is the device of the artist.
The girl of the title is a performing artist, wanting to be in a movie. She uses sex to advance her 'career' and what we see is her captured by an abusive man. The relationship IS effectively abstracted by reducing the men to one man, surrounding by similar looking guys all of whom are silent. The sex, the control are all offscreen and imagined. She sings in his night club, sings of love.
She is approached by a woman — a painter — who becomes obsessed with her. We see the relationship between the two. The girl consumes her pleasure casually, without an awareness of how to grasp love. The artist has a real partner who she deeply loves, and into whose arms she returns every night. But that is deep and true, while the obsession is hot and dangerous. The artist struggles to turn the experience into art; we have many indications that the quest for this artistic depth is what is driving her life of obsession in with the artist's skin and the attendant dangers. In this sense, it is less abstract than 'La belle noiseuse,' or even 'Maze.' Or even for that matter 'Nightwatching,' 'Pearl Earring' or 'Stealing Beauty.'
But our filmmaker gives us no narrative friction to allow us to follow this course. And so instead of abstraction, we get dimness.
Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.
This isn't noir as I understand it, but that does not matter in this equation. She can call things whatever she wants, I suppose. But there seems to be a lack of understanding about what works, about the craft of abstraction.
Noir is a specific abstraction technique, an integrated set of narrative techniques that connects at a more basic level than genre (I think). The common notion of 'abstract' is simplification, removed from reality, but every story is an abstraction, and every theatrical and cinematic convention a way of manipulating abstracted representations.
Jarmusch and the Andersons make things that work because they understand this process that instead of simplifying, increases depth through clarity. The 'abstraction' here is just a matter of plainness, and it doesn't work. But quite apart from what the filmmaker thought she was doing, it could have worked, because there is the device of the artist.
The girl of the title is a performing artist, wanting to be in a movie. She uses sex to advance her 'career' and what we see is her captured by an abusive man. The relationship IS effectively abstracted by reducing the men to one man, surrounding by similar looking guys all of whom are silent. The sex, the control are all offscreen and imagined. She sings in his night club, sings of love.
She is approached by a woman — a painter — who becomes obsessed with her. We see the relationship between the two. The girl consumes her pleasure casually, without an awareness of how to grasp love. The artist has a real partner who she deeply loves, and into whose arms she returns every night. But that is deep and true, while the obsession is hot and dangerous. The artist struggles to turn the experience into art; we have many indications that the quest for this artistic depth is what is driving her life of obsession in with the artist's skin and the attendant dangers. In this sense, it is less abstract than 'La belle noiseuse,' or even 'Maze.' Or even for that matter 'Nightwatching,' 'Pearl Earring' or 'Stealing Beauty.'
But our filmmaker gives us no narrative friction to allow us to follow this course. And so instead of abstraction, we get dimness.
Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.
It's beautiful and ethereal.
carynjames7423 April 2003
I loved this movie. It is very artistic and honest. Ms. Zeig seems to want to express an understanding and deep love between two people - a "no matter what" kind of love. I think she does that with the painter and her muse. Although the singer seems a little new to acting natural at times, the chemistry between the two is evident.
not worth your time
kmagnacca26 October 2001
A strikingly bad movie. Poor plot, screenplay, acting, editing, etc. Even the sex scenes weren't very good; even though she is frequently squirming in bed with The Girl, you see nothing of the narrator below the shoulders (although The Girl is prominently displayed). You could say that the silence of the other characters was a plot device, but I suspect it was to save money (actors who speak have to be paid more). I saw it with a theater full of lesbians, and everyone was laughing at how stupid the lines and acting were.
Don't be fooled by the "USA" attribution, this is a typical French film - trying to put deep thoughts in a film with no plot development and one-dimensional characters. If you liked "Irma Vep", you'll love this.
Don't be fooled by the "USA" attribution, this is a typical French film - trying to put deep thoughts in a film with no plot development and one-dimensional characters. If you liked "Irma Vep", you'll love this.
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