Monthly Archives: January, 2012

Not your mother’s apocalypse.

We haven't been this excited about senior citizen couplehood since Bergman's Saraband. Not that we have any problems with the more extreme samples in his filmography, but we welcome this change of pace for Haneke. Kudos to the Austrian filmmaker for tackling a rarely addressed subject matter head-on and for employing octogenarian screen legends Emmanuelle Riva (Hiroshima Mon Amour) and Jean-Louis Trintignant (The Conformist). The film also happens to be a third pairing with Isabelle Huppert (Time of the Wolf/The Piano Teacher).

Firstly, Hoffman saddles back in PTA land and will be given more screen time than Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch Drunk Love put together. Secondly, the tech crew is comprised of Mihai Malaimare Jr. who is using 65mm, Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood is laying the track, Production Designer David Crank (Tree of Life) and Jack Fisk are fitting this with a 50's look. I'd have a hard time finding a more proficient working director than PTA (David Lynch needs to come out of retirement) - I'd measure his impeccable track record next to anyone out there. There will be plenty of award season kudos for this one and once a premiere date is announced, the buzz should be of biblical proportions.

With a cast and tech crew (Emmanuel Lubezki, Jack Fisk) worth boasting about, I'm betting this will be the least ambiguous film in Malick's slender, four-decade spanning filmography.

With Assayas currently on a roll with Carlos and Summer Hours, we imagine this coming-of-age project as in the vein of The Dreamers with perhaps some biographical elements embedded in the protagonist (first time actor Clement Metaye plus the co-lead is Lola Créton who is the latest icon in French auteur cinema as she was recently seen in Catherine Breillat's Bluebird and in Assayas' significant other Mia Hansen-Løve's Goodbye First Love.