A miss, then a hit.

Watched, with my beloved, The River's Edge last night. Staring Crispin Glover, Ioni Skye, and Keanu Reeves. This was not one of my favorites. While the premise was interesting, the execution was stiff, cliched, and filled with uneven performances.
The film is about the death of a girl and how a group of friends, especially Glover and Reeves, react to the killer admisson of guilt. That skeleton of a plot I find interesting but inserting the wooden performance of Reeves and the erradic, hyperactive performace of Glover leave an uneven film where I care about none of the characters. Denis Hopper, playing a paranoid drug dealer, has a realtionship with a blowup doll he names Ellen. Exactly! Why would this film, or any, need this relationship in it. It's distracting, ridiculous, and reeks of a director with no idea of what makes an audience interested.
I gave this two stars more out of the seed of ideas present than an sliver of entertainment I gleaned from the film.


Pickpocket, by Robert Bresson is a film I wanted to love before I watched it. I had heard, both in person and on the DVD by Criterion, Paul Schrader speak of the film and how it influenced him in his work. In particular Taxi Driver, my favorite film, owes much to Pickpocket. Knowing this, and having an affinity for the "existential loner" that is the lead of this film, created this want for Pickpocket to be an important film to me.

I liked the film, 4 stars, but Bresson tends to leave me a little cold. I've seen only this and Au Hasard Balthazar (and a scene from A Man Escaped in a college film course) but I find the flat performances take me out of the film. I imagine these films with understated modern performances and wonder if they would be better. The answer is probably not, because Bresson did everything, from framing to cutting, with purpose.

I was involved in the film, and found it more accessable than his other film. You could see an artist and an intellect behind the innerworkings.

I will not summarize the movie but I do recommend it to anyone with an interest in French cinema. Perhaps, like I mentioned in an earlier post about Opening Night, the film will stay with me and become more important. It does beg to be studied.