That '70s Drift: Three Yards

TWO-LANE BLACKTOP (1971) (A-minus) - This landmark film is a time capsule of an era of hippies and gear-heads embarking on a cross-country trip, one that would set the template for a decade of American road movies.

With mostly non-actors in key roles and a shambolic, improvisational narrative, director Monte Hellman creates a documentary-like chronicle of a specific time and place. With real-life sights, sounds, and extras swirling all around, the film has a kinship with "David Holzman's Diary" from four years earlier, when the counter-culture was just emerging. It's a land of gas-station attendants, analog crowd gatherings, 10-ounce bottles of Coca-Cola, and tinny sounds emanating from car stereos.

Here, the dirty hippies have taken over, and with a new decade dawning, they are adrift. Pop stars James Taylor and Dennis Wilson play a driver and his mechanic, respectively, who tinker with their souped-up Chevy and seek out road rallies and drag races to earn enough money to drift to the next day. The long hairs mix cockiness with carelessness, revealing no particular inner world or outer world view. They just want to find the next mark and kick his ass.

Approached by a straight-looking punk, the driver works a quick hustle. When a $50 bet is suggested, Taylor, in his monotone, raises the stakes in memorable fashion: "Make it three yards, motherfucker, and we'll have an automobile race."

The pair drifts east, parallelling the old Route 66, passing through Santa Fe, where they enlist a teenage girl (Laurie Bird) to help them scrounge money from tourists on the plaza. At gas stations and roadside diners they occasionally run across an older hot-rodder (Warren Oates) who drives a snazzy GTO. Soon the big gamble is on: A cross-country contest to Washington, D.C, with the winner claiming the title of the other's car.

But rather than engage in an all-out tilt of speed and endurance, the rivals sort of galumph along, finding distractions along the way, the Driver and Mechanic bailing GTO out when his car is on the brink of breaking down. At one breakfast diner the pair mingle with some small-town crew-cuts who marvel at the sight of real-life hippies with a menacing inquisitiveness. The girl zigs in an out of the picture, finding other rides to hitch, a honeybee landing on different flowers.

And while Taylor and Wilson either will not or simply can't offer a glimpse into their characters underneath the axle grease, Oates creates a fascinating character, not so much a drifter as a free agent, longing for some human interaction. He resists the homosexual come-on from a hitchhiker (Harry Dean Stanton, transitioning from TV to film); he lures the Girl into his car for a while, showing off his fancy cassette deck; and he almost begs a salesman to stay with him further on up the road. He spins tall tales, folding them into one another, until even he seems confused about where he has come from and where he is headed. Oates knows sad sacks, and he imbues GTO (no characters are named) with a little-boy melancholy that is genuine.

As time goes on, it's obvious that the finish line is not the goal of any of the men or Hellman himself. Fans of "Smokey and the Bandit" will be disappointed in the plot arc and the dearth of crash-'em-ups. Hellman has positioned himself at a crossroads in American culture, and he doesn't have much interest in what your name is or what your game is. He throws these men together into macho combat that cuts across the American heartland, and it's more about the journey rather than the destination.
 

L.A. Report: Fake Empire

Took a road trip. Needed to be in Southern California this summer, to check on the Pacific Ocean (still quite pacific despite the choppy waves today), and used a show by The National at the outdoor Greek Theater as a rallying point for a long weekend. The boys played to a rather laid-back crowd, leaning heavily on 2010's "High Violet." They also workshopped about a dozen new songs that sound like they can continue the band's 11-year streak of great albums.

It's always been hard for me to describe the band. Moody pop, I say. They write songs like REM did, and there's a fine, sophisticated melodic thread through both bands. Maybe a cross between REM and Radiohead. Lead singer Matt Berninger was the master of ceremonies, rescuing a beetle from the stage and handing it to a front-row fan for safekeeping and referring to it regularly. (The band missed an opportunity for a Beatles cover; instead we got a slack Grateful Dead cover, "Morning Dew," from some compilation.)

The old stuff mostly held up. They thoroughly trashed "Squalor Victoria," but they seemed a little bored with "Mr. November," which just wasn't anthemic like I'd hoped. Berninger dedicated a song to America during its election throes (not, as I expected, "Fake Empire") -- "I'm afraid of everyone ... But I don't have the drugs to sort it out." Nice. Toward the end Annie "St. Vincent" Clark came out for a duet, a trippy song apparently called "Prom Song 13th Century," a title Berninger seemed to make up on the spot, with the refrain, "I'm gonna keep you in love with me for a while." Spin Mag was there to capture it on video. At first, hearing the opening lines, I thought they were covering Bob Dylan's "Threw It All Away" ("She said she would always ... stayyy").

It was all mellow like the Seventies.

BONUS TRACK
The now-traditional song to close the encore, an acoustic sing-along version of "Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks," and it went pretty much like this:


 

So Beautiful or So What

L'ATTESA (THE WAIT) (B+) - A middle-aged man can be so easily manipulated. An instant corrective by a friend immediately after watching this luscious drama snapped me back from the clutches of this male fantasy.

One of the more gorgeous and beautifully acted movies you'll see, "L'Attesa" is the story of a wealthy woman whose young son has died and who can't bring herself to tell his visiting fiancee the truth. And so the girl waits and the mother spins an elaborate deception, and the two circle around a central truth, using the dead man as a prized possession like a bowling pin in the middle of a gym during a game of Steal the Bacon.

Juliette Binoche is impeccable as the simmering, grieving Anna, a French ex-pat adrift in her mansion, under the eye of gruff Pietro (Giorgio Colangeli), who reprimands her for toying with Jeanne (Lou de Laage from "Breathe"), who keeps leaving voicemails on the dead man's phone, expecting him to arrive at any time, and struggles to get along with her would-be mother-in-law. The pas de deux between the older predator and her innocent prey is gripping and surprisingly compelling to watch.

The scenery is stunning. The music -- a mix of pop and classical -- is rapturous. An opening visual of travelers silhouetted as they lazily glide along an airport's moving walkway is seared into my brain. The dialogue is spare, the mood leaden. Much is communicated through longing glances. This artful presentation comes to us from the fussy producers of "The Great Beauty" and "Youth."

Binoche is aging into a lovely, inscrutable mask like Isabelle Huppert's, a face that can elevate any scene from standard drama into a swirl of foreboding and longing and heartbreak. Her raw beauty and de Laage's raw sexuality create a jangling inter-generational frisson. Is Anna jealous of the young woman's youth and fertility? Does she harbor an Oedipal resentment toward Jeanne or blame Jeanne somehow for her son's death?

I know. This debut from Pierro Messina is the ultimate kaleidoscope of the male gaze and ego stroke -- a young virile man, even in death, has women fighting over him, and not just any women but his mother and his boy-hipped, full-lipped lover. Jeanne must be espied taking her top off in front of a mirror early in the movie to establish her as a sex object. She has virtually no inner life. She frolics in a lake and befriends two strange young men, one of them gay, and invites them back to the house to dance provocatively with them, drawing one of those icy glares from Anna and later begging forgiveness by claiming it was all just innocent fun.

In addition, if you think too much about the plot, you'll roll your eyes halfway through, wondering just how stupid and gullible Jeanne must be to not figure this out. But it's not implausible. And it's a surprisingly sturdy narrative for such a flimsy plot. Like no other film I've seen this year, I savored every inch of the screen, and I was literally on the edge of my seat at times. When a big reveal comes it's with a clever twist, and my jaw dropped.

Despite the film's shortcomings -- and, maybe more important, mine -- I was profoundly moved. As a piece of art, I just couldn't avert my male gaze.

AFERIM (B) - This meandering western -- set in Romania in the early 19th century -- is probably best appreciated on the big screen.

We follow a constable and his son who have been hired by a nobleman to track down a runaway gypsy slave who had an affair with the lord's wife. Gruff old Costandin (Teodor Corban) and young Ionita (Mihai Comanoiu) set out on horseback, bantering endlessly as they follow the trail of the missing man.

Radu Jude, with just a few features under his belt, is assured behind the camera, shooting in brightly lit black-and-white, reveling in the beauty of the Romanian countryside (with the help of cinematographer Marius Panduru, "12:08 East of Bucharest"). Blinding sheets of sunlight rain through tall trees. Frequent long shots convey the breadth and slow pace of the pair's journey.

The film alternates from crude comic moments to harsh reminders of the clash of interests between the rich landed gentry and the dark-skinned immigrants (repeatedly called "crows" derogatorily). The dialogue is unrelentingly dark and disparaging toward the less fortunate of society. Slaves are hawked in the marketplace, and prostitutes are passed around casually. The men rescue a priest whose wagon has broken down, and after getting him back on the road they accompany him as he spews venom toward just about every race or ethnicity you can think of.

Jude and his co-writer, newcomer Florin Lazarescu, reportedly culled through historical texts from the time borrowing snippets of sayings and stitching them together for dialogue, not unlike a Nirvana song. The result seems choppy at first but then settles into a rhythm, recalling Jim Jarmusch's western epic "Dead Man," or a classic samurai film. Some examples:

"May he live only three more days, including yesterday!"
"A starving dog dreams of nothing but bones."
"The rich look in the mirror, the poor -- in their plate."
"In the ass of the humble, the devil sits cross-legged."

The narrative winds toward a showdown that is both low-key and violent. Life then was eminently disposable, and this film, with a jaundiced eye and a shrug, knows it doesn't have the words to explain the randomness of it all.

BONUS TRACKS
The XX takes care of "L'Attesa's" final credits with "Missing":



A clip featuring Leonard Cohen's "Waiting for the Miracle":



Our title track, from Paul Simon:


 

Soundtrack of Your Life

An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems and beyond. 

Date: 17 July 2016, 1:17 p.m.
Place: Lake Nighthorse, just outside Durango, Colo.
Song:  "Hey, Ladies"
Artist: Beastie Boys
Irony Matrix: 6.1 out of 10
Comment: On a road trip with my 20-year-old nephew. He insisted that we take a quick side-trip to see this lake a few miles outside of Durango. The problem was, the lake -- created just a few years ago -- is not open to the public. We tried bushwhacking a bit, but it wasn't looking good. We went back to the main road where there was a fairly straightforward -- though still forbidden -- trail. We decided I would hang back in the car while he explored. I passed the time reading Roberto Bolano's "The Skating Rink" for about 20 minutes, alone in the parking lot. At some point, a guy pulled up in some open-air jeep with a dog in the back. He sat for a minute, perhaps also contemplating the idea of breaking the law and trespassing down to the lake. Instead, he cranked his stereo, and I heard the opening strains of "Hey, Ladies," the 1989 romp from the Beastie Boys. The faux-funk blared as he drove off. A few minutes later, my nephew came trotting back up the trail. He showed me a few snaps of the hidden body of water, and we headed toward the main road back to New Mexico. 


 

New to the Queue

Unrelenting ...

Viggo Mortensen should be able to hold our interest through a drama about a family living off the grid, "Captain Fantastic." 

The girls are back -- Eddy and Patsy return to their debauched ways in "Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie."

Mike Birbiglia ("Sleepwalk With Me") brings his sharp comic eye to the world of improv with his ensemble piece, "Don't Think Twice."

The man who defined edgy sitcoms in the 1970s is a more than worthy documentary subject, "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You."

What can we say? The trailer won us over. Time for some mindless summer entertainment, "The Secret Life of Pets."

A documentary about a treasurer hunter, "Garnet's Gold."

An overview of the life and art of one of the most celebrated photographers of the 20th century, "Don't Blink: Robert Frank."

From France, a lesbian May-December love story set in 1971, "Summertime."
  

RIP, Garry Marshall

The man who brought us some thoughtful sitcoms in the '70s and a lot of treacly movie since died at age 81. He is embedded in my mind as the casino manager who resists giving back to Albert Brooks the nest-egg that his wife gambled away in "Lost in America." In his Bronx accent, Marshall's character explains the difference between a casino and "Santy Claus":



And this is a good excuse to revisit the "nest-egg" principle:

(Note that Brooks' films, including "Lost in America," started streaming this month on Netflix.)

So I Don't Have To: Pet Party

In an occasional feature, we present capsule reviews from correspondents who go see the movies that we don't have an interest in seeing (or haven't found the time to).  Today, up-and-comer Ally Jones, age 10, raves about the box-office hit "The Secret Life of Pets": 

"The Secret Life of Pets" is a great movie. It’s just the right length of time. The little white  bunny is so funny and cute. So if you have a night off go see "The Secret Life of Pets." It’s a great little kid and family movie. I give it a 5-star review. Thumbs up!!!!!!!!

GUEST GRADE: A 
   

Family Values

THE WITNESS (B-minus) - The killing of Kitty Genovese outside a New York apartment building in 1964, as residents purportedly turned a deaf ear, spawned a cottage industry of sociological studies about bystanders and the psychology of crowds. She became a symbol. This documentary seeks to make her a person again.

Her brother Bill Genovese embarks on a mission to interview friends, colleagues, witnesses and the journalists who created and perpetuated the legend of 38 witnesses turning away from a long, brutal attack against a young woman in the big city. At the time, the shocking reports were a sure sign that postwar neighborliness was giving way to Vietnam-era selfishness.

This film does a good job of picking away at the myth and instead peeling some layers away from the woman herself. The director is newcomer James Solomon, but the driving force is Bill Genovese, who is bullheaded in his determination to unlock the mysteries surrounding his sister and her life more than 50 years ago.

Genovese goes straight to the source and tracks down a frail Abe Rosenthal (who died in 2006, giving you an idea of the breadth of this project), who continues to defend the original reporting on the front page of the New York Times, a story that starts to fall apart by the time you've made it through its opening paragraph. We also hear from the killer himself, Winston Moseley (who died in prison earlier this year), including a bizarre letter to Bill Genovese putting forth a conspiracy theory involving the mob.

But the most effective interviews are with the scattered New Yorkers who knew Kitty Genovese -- customers at the pub where she tended bar; former classmates; neighbors (including the woman who belatedly tried to save her); cops; and her lesbian lover, who modestly declines to be photographed on camera. These folks connect the dots and fill in the backstory to that iconic photo above. Rare film footage captures a dynamic, joyous young woman frolicking as if she had a long life ahead of her.

Bill Genovese is generally an interesting narrator. He himself was hit by tragedy in the '60s -- he lost his legs in Vietnam, an explanation that is held back till late in the movie. Too often, the story here is too much about Bill and his surviving siblings, and how they have been affected by the death of their sister. You get the feeling that the other siblings don't want much part of this project, and their group scenes feel like forced drama. And a climactic scene in which Bill arranges for an actress to re-create Kitty's screams at the very spot she was attacked -- while Bill writhes helplessly in his wheelchair. That indulgence is really for him only, and it adds nothing to our understanding of the case.

In some ways, "The Witness" shares a kinship with another dig into family archives, "51 Birch Street," in which one of the folks whose secrets were uprooted, tells the camera, "What a relief for someone to really know us." After 52 years of that face staring out at us from what is literally a mugshot, we know have the chance to see behind those soulful eyes and that Mona Lisa smirk and get to know Kitty Genovese as more than a pop-culture touchstone or a paragraph in a textbook, as a human being, faults and all, who was a friend, a neighbor, a lover -- a woman whose life was cut short at a moment when nobody seemed to care whether she lived or died.

GOING AWAY (B) - This is shaping up to be a year for promising debut features. Here, veteran actor Nicole Garcia settles behind the camera for the story (which she co-wrote) of a vagabond grade-school teacher who gets stuck minding one of his students (abandoned by his playboy father) and takes the boy on a road trip where they run across the kid's down-on-her-luck mother.

Garcia and co-writer Jacques Fieschi (last year's "Yves Saint Laurent") cleverly let the narrative ramble and roam like their characters do. You expect the story to be about the boy, Mathias, and you brace for some male bonding. But, as if this were a relay race, the focus shifts to his mother, Sandra (Louise Bourgoin), who is slumming at a beach restaurant near Montpellier, barely keeping her head above water financially. Just as we settle in with Sandra, the story tilts toward the teacher, Baptiste (Pierre Rochefort), and a journey through his past.

It's a fascinating device in a tale that unfolds over the course of a weekend, even if the script sometimes wilts under the weight of the heavy drama of these lost souls. Sandra has some thuggish investors after her, from a failed restaurant launch the year before. Baptiste has a disturbing reaction to a night of drinking,  flash of foreshadowing that gets explained at the very end.

Bourgoin and Rochefort make for a winning couple, a pair tossed together unexpectedly. He is moody, with a shock of hair and a three-day beard. Peering out of expressive eyes, she is lanky, with an exotic tattoo snaking around the right side of her neck. They exude loneliness and fall together naturally and tragically.

This holds up more to a general scrutiny of its overall structure than to a close analysis of each scene. Some dialogue clunks. ("I love you because you are sad.") The final twist from Baptiste's past feels forced and antiseptic.

But overall, this is a quietly effective debut film, with winning lead characters and that winding narrative, which provides a series of satisfying turns that toy with your expectations.

Life Is Short / Soundtrack of Your Life

Life Is Short is an as-needed series documenting the films we just couldn't make it through. We like to refer to these movies as "Damsels in Distress." Previous entries are here , here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

My kingdom for some subtitles. We might revisit the second half of "Sunset Song," Terence Davies' ode to Scottish husbandry if we had an easier way to decipher the thick Scottish brogues of its characters. (Apparently some theatrical releases do have subtitles.) Shooting for an epic flair in between "Gone With the Wind" and a John Mellencamp Farm Aid performance, Davies' dreary, plodding family saga has the dour demeanor of "The Turin Horse" mixed with the bleakness of "Meek's Cutoff."

We get a gruff old man who treats his wife, son and daughter like cattle, just an unredeeming bastard who gets a send-off he deserves. This story hangs on the narrow shoulders of that daughter, Chris, played by Agyness Deyn, who has the angular features and the blank stare of a muppet. It takes half the film for her to finally inherit the family farm in rural Scotland in the days leading up to World War I and get this narrative chugging along. Little seems at stake, and it feels not so much retro as embarrassingly old-fashioned, an overly reverent adaptation of a beloved novel.

Davies, the master behind the whispery period pieces like "Distant Voices, Still Lives" and "The Deep Blue Sea," is the wrong fit for this project. Rather than his trademarked urban grit, he traffics in sweeping landscapes, such as glistening lakes and undulating amber waves of grain. As Ignatiy Vishnevetsky puts it succinctly for the Onion AV Club: "The result is awkward, sometimes corny, occasionally boring, but still elegantly composed and peppered with grace notes of sensuality and despair." And he sat through the whole thing.

Title: SUNSET SONG
Running Time: 135 MIN
Elapsed Time at Plug Pull:  65 MIN
Portion Watched: 48%
My Age at Time of Viewing: 53 YRS, 8 MOS.
Average Male American Lifespan: 76.4 YRS.
Watched/Did Instead: Walked home, stopping off for a slice and a beer.
Odds of Re-viewing This Title: 5-1 (with subtitles)

BONUS TRACK: SOUNDTRACK OF YOUR LIFE
An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems. 

Date: 3 July 2016, 7 p.m.
Place: Central Avenue at Stanford, Albuquerque, NM
Song:  "Mendocino"
Artist: Sir Douglas Quintet
Irony Matrix: 4.6 out of 10
Comment: On the walk home from "Sunset Song," I stuck along the main drag, Route 66, and sitting at a traffic light was a dude on a chopper, lady on the back, blasting his stereo with this all-time favorite from Doug Sahm, Augie Meyers and the boys. If I hadn't left the movie early, I would have never experienced that moment in time.


 

Life During Wartime

DHEEPAN (A-minus) - Intense director Jacques Audiard gets back on his A game with this intense story of refugees from Sri Lanka struggling to survive in a besieged housing complex in the suburbs of Paris.

Audiard is responsible for one of the most powerful films of the past decade, "A Prophet," about a young Arab who ends up in a French prison only to establish his mafia bonafides. Previous to that, he told another crime story in "The Beat That My Heart Skipped," about a young man hoping to avoid his father's soiled footsteps by becoming a pianist. Audiard slipped a bit with 2012's dour "Rust and Bone."

Working with frequent collaborator Thomas Bidegain, Audiard finds his voice with this suspenseful character study of a former rebel fighter trying to reconcile his role in a new country. That fighter takes on the identity of a dead man, Dheepan, as a means to escape a refugee camp. He bands together with a strange woman and a randomly selected orphan girl so they can pose as Dheepan's family and improve their chances of being selected for a berth on a boat to freedom.

Dheepan (Jesuthasan Antonythasan), Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan) and little Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby) embark on a journey that ends in a rundown banlieue outside of Paris, where Dheepan takes up as the property's caretaker while his "wife" keeps house for a shell-shocked former gang member and his "daughter" goes to school and learns French. Gangs, apparently made up mostly of Muslim men, run roughshod over the place; Dheepan is given special instructions on what times he may enter their main hangout to clean up the messes from their debauched nights. Dheepan is imbued with that magical immigrant ingenuity that makes him a reliable handyman (he is intent on wrestling the giant gears of the elevators into operating again).

This makeshift husband-wife-daughter trio awkwardly functions about as good as any other nuclear family. Yalini never hesitates to remind Dheepan, though, that Illayaal is not her daughter, and she frequently threatens to escape to a cousin's home in London. Yalini tiptoes around the gang members at the apartment she tends to, and she eventually befriends one of the thugs, Brahim (Vincent Rottiers), who sports an ankle monitor since his recent release from prison. Their interactions are some of the most profound moments of the film, as a grudging respect develops between them, with a hint of possible romance. At times they communicate without words -- the nod of a head, for instance, or merely a smile -- or just let the other speak in their native language, content with not understanding what's being said.

Meantime, Dheepan eventually starts lusting after Yalini, sneaking glances at her when she steps out of the shower, hoping to consummate this fictitious marriage. That's just one sign of his overall frustration with living among a bunch of wannabe gangsters who have no idea that he was the real deal in his homeland. Midway through the film, Dheepan's past catches up with him, as an old rebel pal surfaces. This unsettles him at first, but it eventually proves liberating. Soon he is slicking his hair back and walking with a renewed swagger.

This all leads to a rather shocking climax that might not square with what has come before, unless you consider that Audiard was setting the table for this endgame all along. He is well served by his two lead actors -- essentially amateurs -- who exude authenticity as desperate strangers in an uncertain environment. That new world is racked by danger and brutality. Audiard captures that mood with a granular realism and a camera that always seems to be peering over someone's shoulder.

The director immerses us so deeply in Dheepan's world that we can empathize with his dilemma: he essentially went from one war zone to another, and his training provides him only one tool with which to survive. Cross him at your own peril.
 

Introduction to the French Avant-Garde, Part II: Postscript

As promised in a May review of her breakthrough film, we return to Belgian/French artist Chantal Akerman and cover two recent films: her final effort, which is a documentary about her mother, and a 67-minute career retrospective that celebrates her independent filmmaking.

NO HOME MOVIE (B) - Chantal Akerman's swan song begins with a static shot, lasting a couple of minutes, of a tree in a sparse landscape being battered by an unforgiving gale. The rather gaunt tree stands up to the whipping, relying on its firm roots to keep it alive against the extreme forces of nature.

Akerman, a Belgian-born outsider on the fringes of French cinema the past four decades, seems to be telling admirers and detractors alike that she's a survivor. And no matter what the world throws at her, she's not budging from her arch approach to life.

Here, she turns her curious camera on her own mother, Natalia, at the end of the elderly woman's life. (In a morbid postscript, Chantal Akerman would die of an apparent suicide at age 65 not long after completing the film, so she wasn't so fiercely determined to survive, after all.) We watch as the pair go through the mundane routine of a daughter visiting her mother, with some obvious baggage between the two. At times they are joined by Chantal's sister, Sylvaine, and hired caretakers who help with the mother's deteriorating condition.

In a nod to her most famous work (1975's "Jeanne Dielman," with its memorable extended take of a woman preparing a meatloaf and mashed potatoes), daughter and mother sit at the kitchen table -- neither's face visible to the camera -- and dine on meat and potatoes, ruminating randomly on Chantal's domestic skills. In an acknowledgment of the modern era, they Skype during the daughter's travels across Europe and the United States. When Natalia complains to Sylvaine about Chantal's reluctance to open up, Sylvaine defends her sister and insists that Chantal talks to their Natalia all the time. But the mother complains, "She never tells me anything important."

When in Natalia's home, Chantal plants her camera firmly and lets it peer through main doorways, sometimes not concerned that her mother isn't in the room but can be heard toddling about just out of the shot. (It's as if Akerman is imagining what the house will be like after her mother is gone.) In one scene, Chantal sneaks around the house in near darkness in an effort to peep on her mother. As her mother's health declines, Chantal aims the camera at the mother sleeping in an easy chair, invading the woman's privacy. It's both intimate and borderline exploitative.

"A child sees what a child sees," Akerman intones at one point. At the halfway point, we get another extended exterior shot -- outside a car window as it zips along another barren countryside. This one seems to last even longer than the opening shot. Is it Akerman trying to escape from the clutches of her mother? Is it a symbol of the mother's inevitable crossing over into the next realm? Akerman shoots a murky body of water, and we can barely detect in the muck a reflection of her shadow, camera attached to her face, as usual. It's a ghastly, ghostly image that perhaps foreshadows her own death.

Mother and daughter obviously have a fraught, strained relationship. Akerman, with large piercing blue eyes, seems to be constantly struggling to hold herself together. It's obvious that Natalia, like a lot of mothers, doesn't really understand her daughter and the outre choices she made over the years. None of this gets articulated in words.

A closing scene echoes one of the early establishment shots of the mother's meticulously furnished home in Brussels. It's a credenza in a hallway. Atop it appear to be two urns, side-by-side. I wasn't sharp enough to have remembered the early establishment shots and to have noticed whether the same image had contained only one urn. Even so, it's a potent tribute, a nod across generations of the potent bond and the limitations of blood ties.

I DON'T BELONG ANYWHERE: THE CINEMA OF CHANTAL AKERMAN (B-minus) - This slim, efficient documentary feels like it doesn't do justice to the career of a woman whose work can be difficult to reconcile.

We sample from the greatest hits: "Je Tu Il Elle"; her calling card, "Jeanne Dielman," about the trivial household tasks of a single mother who happens to take lovers in her home for money; two revelatory documentaries from the '90s, "D'Est" (about life behind the Iron Curtain) and "Sud" (about the American South); and a disastrous 1996 bid for mainstream recognition, the romantic comedy (!) "A Couch in New York," with a rosy-cheeked Juliette Binoche and a surly William Hurt, whose diva behavior on the set provide some of Akerman's best reflections. (We're overdue to view "Jeanne Dielman," and the two documentaries look fascinating.)

First-time director Marianne Lambert struggles to add a layer of profundity to the proceedings, but she seems not better equipped than any of us to understand her subject or unravel the mystery of the filmmaker's oeuvre. The chain-smoking filmmaker is a fairly slippery subject, her intense gaze perhaps intimidating the less experienced documentarian. Talking heads don't offer much more insight. One of our favorites, Aurore Clement (seen most recently in "The New Girlfriend"), offers recollections from the '70s, when she starred in Akerman's "The Meetings of Anna." American director Gus Van Sant comes off as a bland fanboy, admitting to cribbing from "Jeanne Dielman" for the domestic scenes in his moody Kurt Cobain dramatization "Lost Days" from 2005.

But Lambert does not come up completely empty. It's here that Akerman, knitting this project together with the one above, acknowledges that her mother was central to her work. She wonders aloud what impact her mother's death will have on any future output. Alas, her own death makes that point moot.
 

New to the Queue

Too long in the sun ...

The ennui of a new generation discovering zipless sex, "Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story)." 

Todd Solondz brings back Dawn Wiener in the form of Greta Gerwig, in a dour ensemble piece, "Wiener-Dog."

The hard-to-define final film from offbeat director Andrzej Zulawski, "Cosmos."

 An examination of John R. Brinkley, the medical charlatan and pioneer in Mexican border radio, "Nuts!"

A documentary tries to define a musical chameleon through decades of recorded interviews, in "Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words."  

The story of a couple meeting is told twice, with two different dynamics and tones, "Right Then, Wrong Now."

It's a rascally kid and a gruff old dude trying to rise above cliche in a film from Taiki Waititi ("What We Do in the Shadows," from New Zealand, "Hunt for the Wilderpeople."

A French road movie inspired by John Ford's "The Searchers," the directorial debut of Jacques Audiard's screenwriter, Thomas Bidegain, "Les Cowboys."

Michel Gondry is back with a quiet little coming-of-age film, "Microbe and Gasoline."

Leslie Stevens, who would go on to write "Gemini Man" and TV episodes of "The Outer Limits," debuted in 1960 with this lost story of two thugs seducing a lusty housewife, "Private Property."