Days of The Week (Films Watched June 18 – 24)

 

Watching took a bit of a dip this week thanks to concerts, weekends at the cottage, and catching up on a bit of television. I’d say that I’m falling behind where the films of 2016 are concerned…and yet, I don’t really feel like that’s the case. More on that later this week.

 

#52FilmsByWomen continued this week with EDEN directed by Mia Hansen-Løve.

 

Mia Hansen-Løve is, I believe, the youngest director I have encountered yet in this series. Following Julie Delpy last week, she is my second French director in a row…and only my fourth foreign film director overall (a trend that will change in the weeks ahead).

EDEN is Hansen-Løve’s tale of the dance music scene in Europe in the 1990’s. It shows the rise of the sort of music Daft Punk made their bones on, and the people that music and that life affected so deeply. It centres on one particular young man’s life, and the rises and falls he experiences on the scene…and yet it eschews the typical music biopic tropes we see in films like RAY or WALK THE LINE.

Perhaps the reason for this is because Mia Hansen-Løve is less concerned with capturing the world of one singular artist and more interested in capturing a world.

Like the music itself, there is a fluidity to Hansen-Løve’s filmmaking; an effervescence to her storytelling. She wants us to understand that music that is assembled in loops, drops, and beats isn’t just about what comes through the speakers, but what all of that makes a person feel in their every extremity. The music infuses itself into the bodies around you, the drinks you consume, and the very walls of the room to make a moment feel singular. To capture this in a film without leaning on the usual hallucinogenic tropes is a difficult trick…but Hansen-Løve pulls of the trick with grace.

EDEN is the sort of film one can drift in and out of, and I mean that in the best possible way. It’s not quite so vanguard that one doesn’t need to follow the plot, but at the same time, every time the focus turns to that pulsing music; one wants to close their eyes and just…let go. It’s a beautiful approach to filmmaking that makes me equally curious to learn more about the film’s subjects and its filmmaker.

Mia Hansen-Løve is a woman whose work I probably should have been following all along, and a woman whose work I look finally digging into in light of EDEN. Happily, her follow-up – THINGS TO COME – is already making the rounds on the festival circuit.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to listen to some Daft Punk.

 

 

Here’s the week at hand…

 

Streaming/Blu-Rays/DVD’s I’ve Never Seen
GIRL CRAZY – Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney at their most charming.
PUNCHLINE – An underrated artifact from the 1980’s with Sally Field and Tom Hanks
SERIAL MOM – Lordy, is John Waters so delightfully messed-up. I’ll never hear “Tomorrow” the same way again.
EDEN – Pass me my headphones, please.

 

Streaming/Blu-Rays/DVD’s I’ve Seen Before
BIG HERO 6 – I finally showed this to Lindsay, and finally discovered that there is an Easter Egg after the credits.
MINORITY REPORT – I will never forget how this was pointed to as the 2002 summer film that had the best grip on how to use special effects.

 

Boxscore for The Year
114 First-Timers, 74 Re-Watched
34 Screenings
188 Movies in Total

How’s about you – seen anything good?