Vidi Vidi Vidi. - Review - movie review

Film Comment, March, 2000 by Gavin Smith, Nicole Armour

PICKS

Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, Japan, 1997, unrated dir cut) -- The anime equivalent of a Dario Argento film, this thriller charts the psychic spinout of Mima, a childlike pop idol who abandons her career as one-third of a vacuous Spice Girls--like trio to relaunch herself as a serious actress. Shadowed by a stalker who murders anyone he perceives as a threat to her, she is also haunted by a figmentary alter-ego who increasingly usurps her identity. The film pivots on its equation of two linked psychosexual pathologies -- that of otaku (obsessive fan) culture and the condition of celebrity. Along the way, making pointed allusions to the paradigm of Jodie Foster, it suggests that the delusional states of fan and idol are complementary and interdependent. As with much anime, the protagonist is a squeaky-clean, desexualized innocent inhabiting a world that is graphic in more ways than one: sadistic violence and sexual exploitation are depicted with an emphatic, pulpy licentiousness (the murder of a sleazy photographer is particularly distinguished). The result is a pastiche quality, at once naive and distinctly pornographic. This, along with an increasingly Chinese box-like construction, reinforces the sense of pervasive dissociation. Mima's grip on things is repeatedly suckerpunched by deadpan shifts between reality, dreams, or scenes from her TV debut -- a psycho-thriller called "Double Bind" in which she plays a schizoid girl who believes she's a pop idol. Much other notable anime is available from Manga, including the striking cyberthriller Ghost in the Shell, as well Shinya Sukomoto's cultish live-action films Tokyo Fist and the remarkably manic Tetsuo II: The Bodyhammer. (Manga $19.95/DVD $29.99)

It Happened Here is one of the great curios of low-budget independent British cinema. Film historian and documentarian Kevin Brownlow's 1963 collaboration with production designer Andrew Mollo and cinematographer Peter Suschitzky is a docudrama-style speculative fiction laid in 1944 in a Nazi-occupied Britain. Set against the backdrop of an escalating conflict in which British SS units and German forces battle English resistance fighters and American forces, the action centers on the gradual moral awakening of a nurse who passively and unquestioningly accepts the authority of the Vichy-style puppet government. Brownlow shows plenty of chops as a director, not least in his surrealistic deployment German troops and hardware moving through sleepy English villages and London streets. Also recommended: Brownlow and Mollo's 1975 Winstanley, an absorbing, scrupulously unromanticized, painstakingly accurate period drama about the rise and fall of the Diggers' collective in 1649. From today's perspective, both films seem closer in spirit to Rossellini than to anything in contemporaneous British cinema. (Milestone, $29.95 ea/DVD from Image, $29.99) --G.S.

RUNNER-UP PICKS

Argento X 2: Inferno (80) &
Profondo Rosso/Deep Red (75) -- Anchor
Bay $14.98/DVD $29.98

Dreyer X 3: Day of Wrath (43),
Order (55) & Gertrud (65) -- Home
Vision $29.95

Kieslowski X 10: The Decalogue
(1988-89) -- Facets $99.95/DVD
Image $79.99 (see pp. 9-10)

Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick, 99) -- Warner
rental/DVD $24.98

Tierra (Julio Medem, Spain, 96) -- Vanguard
$79.95/DVD $29.95

The Insider (Mann, 99) -- Buena
Vista rental/DVD $32.99

NOTABLE DVD

Chaplin: First National Shorts X 6
(18-23), A Dog's Life & The Kid, The
Circus (inc. unused scene), City
Lights, Modern Times, The Great
Dictator, Monsieur Verdoux, A
Woman of Paris -- Image $29.99 ea

Cocteau X 3: The Blood of a Poet
(30   Edgardo Cozarinsky's 1983 doc
Jean Cocteau: Autoportrait d'un
inconnu), Orphee (50), Testament
of Orpheus (59   Villa Santo Sospir,
16mm color film by Cocteau) -- Home
Vision box set $79.95

Rohmer X 5: The Girl at the
Monceau Bakery & Suzanne's Career
(62-63), La Collectionneuse (67), My
Night at Maud's (69), Claire's Knee
(70), Chloe in the Afternoon (72) -- Fox
Lorber $29.98 ea

Tarkovsky X 2: Mirror (74) &
The Sacrifice (86) -- Kino $29.98 ea

The Abyss dir cut (Cameron, 89) -- 20th
Fox $34.98

The Big Sleep (Hawks, 45 prerelease
& 46 versions) -- WB $24.95

Buffalo '66 (Gallo, 98; no director's
commentary: too bad -- if there's one
guy you want to hear a commentary
from ...) -- Universal $24.98

Cross of Iron (Peckinpah, 76) -- Hen's
Tooth $29.99

D.O.A. (Mate, 50) -- Image DVD
$19.99

Duel in the Sun roadshow version
(King Vidor, 46) -- Anchor Bay DVD
$24.98

The Hidden (Jack Sholder, 87) -- New
Line $24.95

In the Realm of Passion (Oshima,
78) -- Fox Lorber $29.98

The Last Temptation of Christ
(Scorsese, 88) -- Home Vision $39.95

Shattered Image (Ruiz, 97) -- Universal
$24.98

The Tempest (Jarman, UK, 79   3
Jarman shorts, A Journey to Avebury
(71), Garden of Luxor (72), Art of
Mirrors (73)) -- Kino $29.95

OTHER NOTABLE RELEASES

Bardot X 4: The Naughty
Girl (Michel Boisrond, 56),
Come Dance With Me (Boisrond,
59), Les Femmes aka The Vixen
(Jean Aurel, 69) & Please Not
Now (Aurel, 61) -- Anchor Bay
$14.98/DVD $29.98

The Affairs of Anatol (Cecil B.
DeMille, 21) -- Kino $24.95

Around the World with Orson
Welles (Welles, UK, 55, 134 mins)
-- 5-part TV doc tour of Europe -- Image
$19.98/DVD $29.99

The Battle of the Sexes
(D.W. Griffith, 28) -- Kino $24.95

Boys Don't Cry (Peirce, 99) -- 20th
Fox rental/DVD $34.98

The Color of Money (Scorsese,
86) -- Buena Vista $29.99

Coming Apart (Milton Moses
Ginsberg, 69) -- Kino $79.95/DVD
$29.95

Horror Express (Gene Martin, Sp,
72) -- Image $19.99/DVD $24.99

I'm Still Here ... Damn It! (Marty
Callner, 99) -- Sandra Bernhard HBO
special shot by Haskell Wexler w/
30 mins bonus footage -- Palm
Pictures $19.95/DVD $24.95

The Limey (Soderbergh, 99) -- Artisan
rental/DVD $29.98

Marcello Mastroianni: I
Remember (Anna Maria Tato, It.,
97) -- Fox Lorber rental/DVD $29.98

Ms. 45 (Ferrara, 81) -- Image
$19.98/DVD $24.99

Shock aka Beyond the Door 2
(Bava, It., 79) -- Anchor Bay
$14.98/DVD $29.98

The Silent Revolution: What Do
These Old Films Mean? (Noel
Burch, UK, 87) 6 30-min films from
Channel Four: Along the Great Divide:
Great Britain 1900-12; Tomorrow the
World: USA 1902-14; She! Denmark
1902-14; The Enemy Below: France
1904-12; Born Yesterday: USSR
1926-30; Under Two Flags: Germany
1926-32 -- Facets set $49.95

Son of the Sheik (George
Fitzmaurice, 26) -- Kino
$24.95/DVD $29.95

The Suspect (Ringo Lam, HK,
98) -- Tai Seng $59.95/DVD $29.95

Three Kings (David O. Russell,
99) -- Warner rental/DVD $24.98

Vampyres (Joseph Larraz, UK, 75)
- Anchor Bay $14.98/DVD $29.98

Western (Manuel Poirier, France,
97) -- New Yorker rental