There are some movies that many critics regard highly that make no sense to me. Wild Grass, a peculiar uncategorizable film directed by Alain Resnais, is an example of this phenomenon. Some critics acclaim the film as full unexpected surprises; in my estimation, the movie seems entirely arbitrary, constructed of disparate elements that don't cohere, a capriccio that feels improvised and inconclusive. Aspects of the picture that I interpret as "inconclusive" are seen by people who admire the movie as ambiguous, enigmatic, and open-ended. Perhaps, there is an element of personal preference embodied in my skepticism about the movie. Resnais is most famous for Last Year at Marienbad, his signature work, and a film that I have never been able to watch without distaste -- the picture's chilly elegance feels like an advertisement for some product I'm not interested in buying; it's glamorous and empty at the same time. I think Hiroshima Mon Amour and Muriel are slightly better and more interesting -- but I don't have any fondness for them and wouldn't voluntarily watch these films again. Although Resnais first became famous for his harrowing concentration camp documentary, Night and Fog from 1956, he continued to make movies into his old age -- Wild Grass released in 2009 was made when Resnais was 87. The movie is muted, but technically splendid and there's no sense that Resnais' powers have been diluted by time -- indeed, most critics praise the movie as seeming like the work of a young man (but tempered by the wisdom of age). My problem is that I simply don't understand the movie. And, on the evidence of the reviews I have read, even the picture's admirers have no idea what the last five minutes mean. In general, Resnais is a film maker who would reward, I think, close study -- he has made many pictures that I haven't seen and that were scarcely released in the United States (if released at all). And, a number of these films, were highly acclaimed in France. Wild Grass wasn't his last movie -- he directed two more pictures after this film before dying in 2014 at 91. Resnais' later career (in fact, almost his whole career) apparently consists of films of varying types, including light comedies, adaptations of Victorian melodramas, and musicals -- he adapted three plays by the British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. Despite his affinity for English actors and scripts (one of his most famous pictures is Providence with John Gielgud), I have the impression that his movies are so intrinsically gallic that they don't travel well. So this is to confess that I have probably misunderstood Wild Grass and underestimated.it.
A woman goes into an expensive part of Paris to buy shoes. (Her feet, we learn, are hard to fit.) She buys some spike high heels. Walking away from the shoe store, a thief on a moped (or possibly a skateboard) snatches her yellow purse -- the film is punctuated with shots in slow-motion that show the purse airborne in the clutches of the thief. The woman, who turns out to be dental surgeon named Marguerite Muir, goes home to a suburb near Paris where she takes a cold bath. A middle-aged man (he seems to be about 55) finds Muir's wallet in a car-park. He studies the wallet, looks at several pictures of Muir including a fetching image of the woman as an aviatrix (wearing goggles and a scarf). Muir has a pilot's license. This establishes an affinity with a man, name Georges Palet, who has had a lifelong fascination with flying. Palet is an odd duck. He lives with his wife in a big mansion. There seems to be something highly sinister about him -- he fantasizes, for instance, about murdering a young woman because she has had the temerity to appear in public with her black panties visible through her white slacks. Palet has done something terrible and may be a felon -- he muses that he can't vote. The film teases the notion that Palet, who acts in an erratic fashion and shows a terrible temper, may be some kind of serial killer or rapist.
Palet returns the wallet to the police, fretting about whether they will remember him from some previous crime that he committed. (The cops are distracted by a party that they are having in the stationhouse -- it's someone's promotion.) Apparently, the cops return Muir's wallet. She calls Palet and thanks him but declines his offer to meet -- he clearly wants some kind of relationship with her. Disappointed by the dentist's standoffish attitude, Palet writes an impassioned letter to her, mentioning his love of aviation, and insulting her. He delivers the letter to her home and drops it in a mailbox, but, then, repents and tries to get it out of the locked box. He talks to one of Muir's neighbors and learns more about the woman. She sends him a three-line note, accepting his apology for the letter that he has conveyed to her through the neighbor lady. This encourages Palet to write to her repeatedly and call her every night. She is upset with him, but, also, oddly nonchalant at what seems to be his stalking. Palet has constructed some kind of elaborate persona claiming that his wife is dying in the hospital and that his father was a motorcycle mechanic -- all of which is untrue. When he calls at an odd hour, Muir answers the phone and tersely tells him that she wants to be left alone. Palet flies into a rage and goes to her house where he slashes all four of the tires on her snazzy little sports car. She reports this to the cops who go to Palet's big gorgeous house (he is painting it blue) and interview him. These are the same cops from the stationhouse who are strangely sympathetic to the angry Palet and urge him to leave the woman alone. Palet reveals that he has been married for 30 years and has grandchildren. (We see a dinner party with Palet's daughter, her husband, and Marcellin, Palet's surly and obnoxious son.)
One night, Muir, for some unknown reason, calls Pallet's wife. She learns that Pallet has gone to see a flying movie, the Korean war film The Bridges at Toko Ri. Muir rushes to the cinema located near an Italian restaurant and down an alley from a cafe. She sits in the cafe and sees Palet leaving the theater -- she has never seen him before and so there is a question as to how she is able to identify him. (The film suggests some sort of elective affinity between the woman and Palet that allows her to identify him by intuition.) She summons him into the cafe where they briefly talk. He tells her that the movie, a childhood favorite, "did nothing for him." Their meeting is peculiar from the outset. Palet's first words to Marguerite are "So you do love me." The interview goes awry and Palet says he never wants to see Marguerite again. Marguerite proceeds to take her anger out on her dental patients apparently torturing them in her dental chair -- we see a painful montage of patients protesting at her cruelty. Muir is now fascinated by Palet and wants to see him with his wife. With her colleague, another female dentist, Marguerite goes to Palet's house. Palet has gone somewhere but is expected in a few minutes. While Marguerite chats with Palet's pleasant and attractive wife, Palet appears outside, castigates the lady dentist waiting in the car before, apparently, seducing her and possibly having sex with her in the car. The next day, Marguerite doesn't go to work -- her dental office fills with unhappy, miserable patients. Marguerite has gone to the Aerodrome (airport) to look at a Spitfire she flew for a group of enthusiastic mechanics at the hangar. Marguerite drives back to Palet's house and picks up Georges and his wife. The other lady dentist is along for the ride. They go to the small rural airport. Palet has to urinate and so he goes upstairs in the terminal, pees, and, then, his zipper sticks. He can't get his pants zipped up. Marguerite is looking for him, sees he is embarrassed about the stuck zipper, and kisses him rapturously while the 20th century Fox Fanfare plays (we earlier heard this on the soundtrack from The Bridges at Toko Ri.) As they kiss, the screen flashes the word Fin (or "End") although, in fact, the movie is not yet over and its most puzzling sequence is about to occur. With Palet and his wife in a Cessna, Marguerite Muir takes off and flies into the sky. She lets Palet take the controls. His pants are unzipped and his underwear is bulging out. The plane, as seen from below, does a series of acrobatic rolls and, then, drops down vanishing behind a line of trees. The film cuts to wooded landscape, a lane with some strange-looking austere and humble-looking buildings in the distance, then, a jagged, razor-like outcropping of fractured rock, beyond the rock there are woods and meadows and a graveyard over which the camera sweeps. Then, we see a domestic interior: a little girl, who may be sick, is in bed while her mother works at a table: the little girl says "When I a become a cat will I be able to eat cat munchies." And, on this note, the film ends.
The ending makes no sense: does the plane crash? Why is Palet's zipper stuck? Why does the plane begin doing aerobatics rolling and spiraling through the air? What is the meaning of the landscapes, the jagged rock, the graveyard? Why does the little girl (who is she supposed to be?) make the weird comment about "cat munchies" and what does this have to do with the rest of the movie? And, further, what has Palet done? Why is he proposed to us as some kind of rapist or murderer? Why does he fly into rages and, suddenly, lose interest in Marguerite? And why does Marguerite suddenly become obsessed with him,. seek him out, and kiss him (when he's slashed her tires and been stalking her) in a scene purported to be the end of the movie but not. Why does the film end twice? Does Palet really seduce the other dentist or does he rape her or is this just some kind of fantasy? Is there anything about the movie that we can trust? The film is based on a novel called The Incident. It is very brilliantly made with dense saturated colors. Marguerite is played by Resnais' wife Sabine Azema, an extraordinarily beautiful woman, who appears in the film with a huge Afro-style mop of red hair. There are ingenious scenes with voice-over while images appear in halos of light on the right side of the screen -- these are vignettes. There are stream of consciousness sequences in which Palet muses on various things. He seems obsessive and half-delirious until, suddenly, he's not -- then, he's inexplicably disinterested in the object of his desires (and, even, seduces another woman). Azema's dentist appears flirtatious with her patients but it's hard to understand whether this is an act or authentic. The beautiful dentist has no back-story, no husband, no family, no history of any kind; by contrast, Palet has a sinister history but one that is never explained in any meaningful way. The movie is all innuendo and intimation; it's a feast for speculation. It's quite a feat to make a movie that is meaningful and classically lucid in form and mise-en-scene but impenetrable as a matter of character, motivation, and, even, fundamental narrative. The movie is more interesting as an object of discourse and speculation than as an cinematic experience but it is, probably, some sort of brilliant work of art.
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