Tag: Vincent Cassel

Default (Gukgabudo-ui Nal)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

The year is 1996. The news media are championing South Korea’s economy as it seemingly goes from strength to strength, never questioning whether financial institutions might in fact be pursuing practices which are sooner or later going to have disastrous economic results. Ms. Han Si-hyun (Kim Hye-su) who runs a fiscal policy unit at the Bank of Korea submits a devastating report to the Bank’s governor, explaining that she and her small department have procedures set in place to save the economy and protect ordinary Koreans from disaster.

The politicians have a very different agenda, however, specifically the smarmy Vice-Minister of Finance (Jo Woo-jin) who views financial collapse as a way to weaken the rights of the working class and restructure the economy in favour of large business interests. Although it’s not name checked, there are echoes here of Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine and the film based upon it. Against Han’s advice, the government secretly holds talks with the IMF in the form of Michel Camdessus (a suitably creepy Vincent Cassel).

While most of the government officials and the bank’s governor are male, Ms.Han’s small team comprises both genders in equal measure. At one point, she’s subjected to verbal abuse as to how women are emotional and shouldn’t be allowed to work in banks. At another, she bravely holds an unauthorised press conference to reveal to the press what’s going on, only for none of the papers to cover the story.

In a second plot strand, young, smart and hungry stockbroker Yoon Jung-hak (Yoo Ah-in) quits his established financial firm who are convinced the country is on a sure financial footing because, like Han, he can see the impending crash ahead. Unlike Han, however, he wants to play the market and help investors profit from it. The film doesn’t quite know how to handle Yoon. He’s shown as both the visionary who accurately predicts what’s coming and the ruthless predator who helps his clients profit from it – yet on one occasion he rails against his investor clients, suggesting that making money isn’t everything.

A third plot strand takes the proceedings closer to ordinary people as small business owner Gap-su (Heo Jun-ho) is paid for a lucrative deal with a promissory note rather than cash which later turns into a worthless piece of paper when he has creditors to pay. He reassures his workers that they will get the wages they were due two days ago while his wife who works elsewhere loses her job. He contemplates jumping off the balcony of the high rise apartment in which his family live as his two children sleep soundly in their room.

The relentless pace never allows itself to get bogged down in the radical ideas at the film’s heart, preferring instead to keep things moving. An audience-pleasing melodrama as exciting as any Western blockbuster, it successfully conveys a pivotal moment in recent Asian economic history.

Default played as a teaser for LKFF, The London Korean Film Festival. Watch the film trailer below:

One Wild Moment (Un Moment d’Égarement)

Posted on by victorfraga

It all starts like a conventional French comedy. Laurent (Vincent Cassel) and Antoine (François Cluzet) are old friends going on holiday with their daughters, Louna (Lola Le Lann) and Marie (Alice Isaaz). The famous Charles Trenet song La Mer plays over the soundtrack as they drive to a sun-dappled country-house in Corsica. The teenage girls complain about the lack of mobile reception while the men – one divorced, one seemingly soon to be – moan about their love lives. You might think all four characters are about to find love on the beautiful Mediterranean island, all the while offering up bons mots about the complications of sexual desire.

But initial appearances can be deceiving, as director Jean-François Richet has something far deeper on his mind. A remake of the 1977 film with the same title, One Wild Moment exploits the limits of male desire, offering up a queasy moral play with no easy answers. As the title suggests, the film is structured around one key incident; the seduction of Laurent by Louna by the beach during a party. She may be the one who has started it, but she is only 17 and his best friend’s daughter, making Laurent’s willingness to go along with it all that more problematic.

There’s a lot of ways that this material can go wrong, either leaning too hard on poor-taste comedy or feeling too much like soft-core porn. While the film does very occasionally lean a little too much in the latter direction, it still shows the consequences that such an awful decision can bring. All is held together by a nuanced performance by Vincent Cassel, who plays a decent man who makes one extraordinarily bad mistake and has to get out of the situation alive. While Louna is somewhat underwritten, Lola Le Lann does her best to draw her character out with a lot of youthful energy. The scenes between the two of them are the best in the movie, the couple dangerously navigating each other’s fears in an awkward yet effective way.

A sense of foreboding is created by the boars that ravage Antoine’s garden, trampling on the grave of his forefathers, all buried in the same garden. Antoine, suffering from being estranged from his wife, is taking out his rage on the animals, suggesting that if he were to find out, there’d be hell to pay. This laces every moment in delicious dramatic irony, knowing that the facade of happy vacationers could fall apart at any moment. Yet, the film could’ve done more in using the island itself to represent more primal emotions (like Laura Bispuri’s Daughter of Mine did with neighbouring Sardinia earlier this year), thus coalescing into a suitably catastrophic conclusion. While the house and the neighbouring mountains and coastline are suitably picturesque, the film doesn’t allow the scenery to speak for itself, relying more on dialogue to carry its central moral dilemma.

Ultimately unsure whether its a feel-bad comedy, devastating drama, or straight-up Mediterranean noir, the movie flows gently between genres without ever truly involving us up in its story. Although enjoyable from moment to moment, especially in any scene involving Vincent Cassel alternating between ‘good guy’ dad, friend and even lover, its final power is lost by the underwhelming conclusion, which seems to sweep all its contradictions together and dismiss them with a shrug. It feels like a betrayal of its previously foreboding sense of danger, complicated depictions of power and lust, and of Cassel’s fascinating central performance. Nonetheless, it remains a fascinating portrait of men who think that their indulgences can occur without any repercussions, and how the actual reality can be so different. For one thing, it’ll make you think twice about going on holiday with family friends again.

Watch One Wild Moment right here with DMovies and Eyelet:

It’s Only The End of The World (Juste la Fin du Monde)

Posted on by mjbstaging

Dear Jean-Luc Lagarce,

It’s all over now, I know. Your struggle finished on September 30th 1995, when you took your last breath. But let’s pretend your death was fictional and it was not the end of the world. If you could only peep from your coffin and read my letter. There are some good news for you.

Your play has been turned into a film! Before you write back to me, perhaps saying you have no interest in cinema, and that very own your life was a tribute to theatre, let me tell you a little bit more. Now your work is universal. Your script was handed to a prodigy French-Canadian filmmaker. He is just 27 and he’s done some terrific films, such as Laurence Anyways (2012), Tom at The Farm (2013) and Mommy (2014). Xavier Dolan is an excellent auteur, who takes excellent care of every single detail. He writes his stories, sometimes he acts, he has ideas for the costume designer and director of photography, and he even creates the props. You should see it as an honour that Dolan developed an interest in someone else’s writing.

In fact, Jean-Luc, Dolan didn’t connect to It’s Only The End of The World at first. He read the play, a suggestion made by the lead role in Mommy, Anne Dorval, and he abandoned the idea of filming it. It was only after meeting Marion Cottilard, Vincent Cassel and Léa Seydoux in Cannes two years ago that he realised they could be a fantastic cast for your play. You cannot foresee, Jean-Luc, what a masterclass in acting they deliver. You might say Léa Seydoux is a top model, but she is perfect for the role of a tomboy! Together with Nathalie Baye and Gaspard Ulliel, they embellish and give an extra dimension to your writing.

Do not worry about the authenticity of the film. Your nervous words are in the film. Dolan knew perfectly well that one of the strongest aspects of the film is the conversation between all members of the family, and all that is left behind because they are incapable of expressing it. Everyone in the house instinctively acknowledges that Louis (Ulliel) has a good reason to return to his hometown after 12 years, but they cannot guess that he is dying. Not him of all people, the successful writer who had the courage of leaving the toxic family. And when Dolan found that it was necessary to include a scene that was not originally in your play, he emulated your style. If you read it, you’d probably think his words are yours.

But a film is not a play, you might say, you can look at the landscape and get distracted. The tension is gone. Well, Jean-Luc, this is why Dolan explores close-ups ad nauseam. The intimate study of your characters are on their faces. Take the ride with Antoine (Cassel), when he tries to get closer to the brother he envies. There is fury in his eyes, in his hands, even in his ears. He cannot even listen to his brother Louis. Louis is the symbol of freedom, of all Antoine wanted and could never get, though in reality this freedom is about to end abruptly.

What about the melancholy? Is it in the film, too? Yes, it’s in its colours, predominantly blue. And in the props – the photo album, the postcards -, in the desire to revisit the house they lived as children, in the tragic revelation that Louis’s first lover has died of cancer.

Remarkably, the film is not sad. It’s centred on a celebration. The family is waiting for the prodigious revenant. The soundtrack contributes to it. Dolan picks up one of the most kitsch Brazilian songs ever made, Latino’s ‘Festa no Apê‘, and uses it in a magical scene in which all of them surrender to joy.

Jean-Luc, I wish you could see this picture. It won the Grand Prix in Cannes and it was in BFI London Film Festival in October 2016, when this piece was originally published. It’s now out in cinemas, and also the the BFI Flare London LGBT Film Festival – just click here for more information.

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Jean-Luc Lagarce (14 February 1957 – 30 September 1995) was a French actor, theatre director and playwright. Although only moderately successful during his lifetime, since his death he has become the one of the most widely-produced contemporary French playwrights.

Xavier Dolan’s It’s Only the End of the World is on Mubi from December 30th, 2020.