Review: Homme au bain (Man at Bath)

One of the things Chicago does have on offer in abundance is cultural events, and every year at this time, one that has never disappointed is the annual Chicago International Film Festival, which is celebrating its 46th anniversary this year.  No matter how much I plan in advance on attending certain films, I often accidentally end up missing them, but I usually then find something else that makes up for what I didn't see. This year, I'd planned on watching Thomas Ikimi's thriller Legacy, starring Idris Elba, Eamonn Walker, and Monique Gabriela Curnen, but misread the dates, and that was all she wrote.  As I was scanning Saturday's offerings, I saw that Christopher Honoré's film Homme au bain ("Man at Bath") was playing late (10:45 pm), which gave me enough time to race down to the AMC River East theaters and make it with some time to spare.

The main draw of this film was and is the participation of none other than one of the major gay porn stars working today, the breathtakingly sexy Frenchman François Sagat, who plays Emmanuel, one half of a disintegrating couple living in Gennevilliers, one of the suburban communes (banlieues) north of Paris.  His other half, a budding filmmaker named Omar (Omar Ben Sellem), kicks Emmanuel out after a burst of petulance at Omar's imminent departure for New York to accompany actress Chiara Mastroianni (as herself) and document her time in the US leads to him to force himself sexually onto Omar--the act verges on rape.  The minimal plot tracks what happens to each afterwards: both spread their seed, as it were, Emmanuel in Gennevilliers and Paris, Omar in New York City, quite graphically, then the filmmaker returns home to the apartment in the banlieue, and voilà, le film s'est terminé.

Homme au bain, image from Tetu.com

On the one hand it's a trifle in the sense of feature filmmaking; nothing momentous really happens, nothing's really resolved (though I won't give away the ending), it's mostly atmospherics, backed by great classical and contemporary pop music, interspersed with various hints at deeper narrative possibilities Honoré might have explored. And, given that it's a French film, there's a significant bit of philosophical piffle that adds little beyond ambient texture, but when compared to most contemporary US queer cinema, stands out.  On the other hand, the verisimilitude, especially when the issue of money comes up, sometimes approaching the status of documentary (and Honoré ironizes this through the use of the DV pieces), is noteworthy. The film also has many small, true touches, especially when unfolding in and around Paris, that feel right.  Homme au bain offers what I would argue is a far truer portrait of contemporary French and gay life than anything we'd comparably see in the US. In that regard, in addition to the presence of a frequently nude Sagat, it's worth seeing.

The film takes its title from a painting by French Impressionist and art patron Gustave Caillebotte, whose 1877 masterpiece Paris Street: Rainy Day, is on view at the Art Institute of Chicago, and who was a resident of Gennevilliers.  Homme au bain, originally conceived as a short, is part of a regional film project by the Théâtre de Gennevilliers, and was commissioned by noted French filmmaker Olivier Assayas. Opening with a naked Sagat framed to evoke Caillebotte's 1884 eponymous work (© National Gallery, London), it contrasts the short, thickly muscled, emotionally and physically open Emmanuel to his more controlled and, we might infer, controlling ex, the (usually) clothed Omar. Throughout Emmanuel cannot help himself from self-expression, especially of the physical sort. Whether dancing (in a scene that feels stagy at first, but eventually gains some credibility from Sagat's ability to stay in character), caressing, embracing, nuzzling, fucking, he is almost all physicality, a rocket in human flesh; the irony of having a porn star play this role, which is almost completely about objectification, is palpable, yet Honoré tweaks it as the film proceeds, by showing another, affective side of Emmanuel emerging.  Almost clumsily, in filmic and narrative terms, he even calls out, as we see only his sculpted hairy legs poised on a bed and an unknown female assignation now out of the frame, "Douceur" ("tenderness") several times.

This softer, more emotional portrayal at first doesn't exactly ring true, but by the end of the movie, in part because of Sagat's performance and because of the film's contextualization, it persuades you. By contrast, Omar after the opening scene appears almost exclusively through what his endlessly running DV captures, which is to say everything but him; what signifies his presence, and his control of it, is his absence, from the apartment, from what he's recording, from nearly every frame except at the beginning and end. Or we see him through still images--a large portrait in his apartment, Emmanuel's crude by moving wall portrait, a near-double that Emmanuel picks up near the apartment bloc. His presence is truly virtual or, to put it another way, metonymic and synecdochic. The dichotomy suggests the relationship's dynamics and where it's heading, but the filmmaker underlines its reality when, after Omar's departure, Emmanuel scrounges not only for company, but cash.

Ben Sellem & Sagat

He first pays a working visit to a wealthy, perverse American, Robin (played by acclaimed queer writer Denis Cooper), who lives upstairs, and who in exchange for money wants not the sex he's gotten in the past but, as if channeling Nietzschean-infused aestheticism, dresses down Emmanuel, rating him lower and less compelling than the "art" that lines the apartment, and, desiring a compensatory performance, demands that he, in the fashion that one might find in one of Cooper's novels, "beat the shit" out of young ingenue whom has Robin has been seeing. Emmanuel demurs, but after Charles Aznavour's voice resets the moment, the American relents, handing over some euros. I wished that the filmmaker had brought Robin back, at least overtly. The power dynamics on display, along with the Bataille-heavy banter, presented a glimpse of what many a hustler probably endures, though without such intellectual freight attached.

Echoes of Nietzsche, Wilde, Bataille, and others in this philosophical line ensue, as Emmanuel explores his newfound freedom. A multicolored cavalcade, such as one seldom sees in American queer films, constitutes his experimental set. There is the threesome with a young black student and an Arab fellow banlieue resident; there is the female actress friend, living in Paris, whose male lover is less enthusiastic about an extra bedmate; and there is Robin's mop-headed ingenue, Rabah (Rabah Zahi), whom Emmanuel does push beyond his limits, all of which serves only to bring him closer emotionally to the beloved who is an ocean away. Meanwhile Omar, traipsing around New York, through the School of Visual Arts to the East Village behind Chiara, finds a playmate, Dustin (Dustin Segura-Suarez), a lean, 20-something visiting a friend in the City. Dustin not only becomes a temporary lover, to Chiara as well as Omar, but the subject of Omar's DV clips. You see him stripping, masturbating, reading Franny and Zooey in the bathtub, smoking, doing hardly anything beyond being.  He is as ephemeral as the wind, and you are hardly surprised when he hops in a taxi for the airport, leaving Omar to the life he has only momentarily left behind.

The film seems to track the grittier depictions of French urban gay male life that have appeared in literary form for some decades. The HD/DV to 35 mm transfer underscores this visually. What also struck me, especially given France's--and much of Europe's and the US's--economic realities is the air of economic privation the film doesn't stint in depicting. Several of the characters, and not just the younger ones, are students, or purport to be, as if to underline that an education is, as we are always hearing in the US, the only way of getting ahead these days. A real job is as evanescent as a dream. Exemplifying this even further, another young character, who may or may not be on drugs, and who admits to being "straight," hustles Emmanuel up, but does so in part to score some food and a place to shower. When Emmanuel's actress friend proposes a restaurant meal, as her refrigerator is bare and she believes she may have only "a tomato" at home, he must decline because of lack of money. In fact, all they have is companionship, conversation, and sex, which Honoré depicts almost always with full male frontal nudity.

Cooper & Sagat

Perhaps there are films in the US depicting this, especially as the economic crisis intersects with queer cultures, but I have yet to see many of them.  In addition, it doesn't culturally or ethnically whitewash France either, as US films, whether set in New York, LA or any other major urban area, are so prone to do; in this banlieue, the undigested diversity of contemporary France is on display. People of all colors, veiled young women, an African Frenchwoman in a brightly colored gown, come and go. It is Emmanuel who, it turns out, is the one slightly out of step and time, with his failed request to send a telegram. This parallels, at least to me, the film's slightly dated and romantic view of New York, though as several scenes make clear it doesn't blanch out the visual richness on this side of the Atlantic either.

By the end of the film, the film's main visual and narrative presence, Sagat, has become much more comfortable just acting, a fact that Honoré symbolizes by letting him keep his clothes on.  Most of the other actors merely appear, and when before the camera improvise, charmingly enough. Mastroianni smiles or frowns, speaks a few lines, and walks around, and that's about it, and I wished Honoré had done more, or less with her, and focused on Ben Sellem's experiences, though the premise was a plausible one.  It would be interesting to see these actors, and especially Sagat, in another film that required greater acting chops of all them. Whoever makes it, I'd be willing to watch it, even if Sagat did not strut around in his birthday suit, au bain or anywhere else--not that that would be a problem, either.

The trailer (NSFW)


Homme au bain (Man at Bath). Le Pacte release of a Les Films du Belier presentation of a Les Films du Belier, Theatre de Gennevilliers production. Produced by Justin Taurand. Directed, written by Christophe Honoré. With: Francois Sagat, Chiara Mastroianni, Dustin Segura-Suarez, Omar Ben Sellem, Rabah Zahi, Kate Moran, Lahcen El Mazouzi, Andreas Leflamand, Ronald Piwele, Sebastian D'Azeglio, Sebastien Pouderoux, Dennis Cooper. (French, English dialogue)

FIFA 2010 World Cup Underway

Amid my reading of the final versions of the novellas, and the conceptual art projects, I've taken some time to catch some of the FIFA 2010 World Cup games, which began yesterday with host country South Africa's match against Mexico. To the relief of the South Africans, and perhaps the Mexican fans, the match resulted in a 1-1 tie. Draws in fact have dominated the tournament's first day; in the other opening day match, France and Uruguay finished 0-0. On Day 2, today, South Korea trounced Greece 2-0, while Argentina beat Nigeria 1-0, and nearly scored several more.
The match to catch (and I missed it because I've been at a poetics conference), however, was England vs. the USA. Despite having a team packed with Premier League stars, England could only manage a 1-1 tie, which counts almost as a win for the Americans.  The game started in heart-dropping fashion for the US when English midfield Stephen Gerrard scored only 4 minutes into the contest, based on a defensive lapse, the sort of harbinger of a US debacle to come. Yet the Americans were able to hang on from that point onwards, even surviving a potential injury to their star goalie, Tim Howard, when England forward Emile Heskey slid cleet-first into the Howard's chest, and, in one of the most remarked moments of the tournament thus far, tied things when Clint Dempsey kicked a squibbler towards the English net and goalkeeper Robert Green couldn't hold onto it before it crossed the goal-line. From that point onwards the US team made no significant mistakes, despite being outshot 10-4 and corner-kicked 8-4. A great deal of credit goes to Howard for unflappable play, and to Dempsey and Jozy Altidore, who nearly got another US goal, for penetrating the English defense.

Tomorrow's games should provide some excitement, though I forsee Germany tromping over Australia, and Ghana v. Serbia ending a tie while I predict Slovenia will defeat the unheralded Algerians. The game I'm waiting for is Brazil's opening match, on Tuesday, against North Korea. In tribute to the match, I even wore my Brazil socks yesterday.  Below are a few of the photos from the games that I was able to cull thus far.

South Africa's goalkeeper Itumeleng Khune (R) and defender Aaron Mokoena (C) try to stop Mexico's striker Giovani dos Santos (L) from scoring during their 2010 World Cup group A first round football match on June 11, 2010 at Soccer City stadium in Soweto, suburban Johannesburg. (GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images)

South Africa's midfielder Kagisho Dikgacoi vies with Mexico's striker Giovani dos Santos during their Group A first round 2010 World Cup football match on June 11, 2010 at Soccer City stadium in Soweto, suburban Johannesburg. South Africa and Mexico play in the opening match of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. (PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU/AFP/Getty Images)

France's striker Nicolas Anelka (C) and France's striker Sidney Govou (R) fight for the ball with Uruguay's midfielder Alvaro Pereira during their Group A first round 2010 World Cup football match on June 11, 2010 at Green Point stadium in Cape Town. (FRANCK FIFE/AFP/Getty Images)

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA - JUNE 11: The French team line up ahead of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa Group A match between Uruguay and France at Green Point Stadium on June 11, 2010 in Cape Town, South Africa. (Photo by Jamie McDonald/Getty Images)

England's Jamie Carragher (L) fights for the ball with Jozy Altidore of the U.S. during a 2010 World Cup Group C soccer match at Royal Bafokeng stadium in Rustenburg, June 12, 2010. REUTERS/Brian Snyder (SOUTH AFRICA - Tags: SPORT SOCCER WORLD CUP)

U.S. goalkeeper Tim Howard fails to stop a goal by England's Steven Gerrard during a 2010 World Cup Group C soccer match at Royal Bafokeng stadium in Rustenburg, June 12, 2010. REUTERS/Brian Snyder (SOUTH AFRICA - Tags: SPORT SOCCER WORLD CUP)

 Clint Dempsey of the US celebrates after scoring during a 2010 World Cup Group C soccer match against England at Royal Bafokeng stadium in Rustenburg June 12, 2010. REUTERS/Brian Snyder (SOUTH AFRICA - Tags: SPORT SOCCER WORLD CUP)

Review: The Class

When I read the other morning about President Barack Obama's planned announcement on education, I realized it was as good a prompt as any to post my review of Laurent Cantet's Oscar-nominated film The Class (Entre les murs [literally 'Between the walls']), which despite its French setting explores some of the issues central to contemporary discussions on US public education. Cantet has based his film on a highly praised novel by former teacher, soccer journalist and singer François Bégaudeau, with whom he co-wrote the script, and the film has the feel of documentary truth; in fact, in its adroit use of non-actors, primarily the schoolchildren who populate the film's classes and playgrounds but also some of the teaching staff, and its somewhat grainy, handheld digital high-definition images, it impressively straddles the feature/documentary line. 38 year old writer Bégaudeau also stars in the film as a fictional version of himself: François Marin, a French teacher leading a diverse, packed French class of 14 and 15 year olds. As the French title literally and figuratively suggests, The Class tracks events between the school's walls, and more specifically, in Marin's class and the teacher lounge, over the course of a school year. In fact, except for the opening scene, the film never leaves the school building or grounds. The effect at times is claustrophobic, particularly in the classroom scenes, where the students appear to be stacked on top of each other in their tiny desks, or when they gather for recess on the outdoor asphalt lot which is smaller than a soccer field. Another way to read the title might through the trope of the domestic; the film repeatedly shows both the physical and emotional connections and distances between the faculty and students, putting the viewer in mind of a large, contentious, dysfunctional family, in which communication and understanding occur in alternating measures. Communication and misunderstanding across the figurative family of the school and within a specific family, as it turns out, are central elements of the film's plot.

The Class opens with teacher Marin polishing off a coffee at a tabac across the street from the school and then heading to a first-day meeting of the teaching staff. Old and new teachers introduce themselves, with the veteran staff, which includes Marin, urging the new staff the best. What we see is a mostly middle-class white teaching staff, with a few people of color scattered among them, a narrative fact that will prove key to the film's central theme and plot hinge of miscommunication and disrespect. Then we're in Marin's in the classroom, and the students pour in. They could easily be sitting in a New York public school classroom, though the racial and ethnic mix is specifically metropolitan French: there are Maghrebians, West Africans, Turks, several East Asian students, along with a smattering of white French middle and working-class students. Marin's primary antagonists turn out to be two girls, Esméralda (Esméralda Ouertani) and Khoumba (Rachel Régulier), the second of whom he's taught before, but who has now become intractable. Both girls use his grammar lessons as a scene to hash out personal and larger political issues. For Esméralda, the issue is belonging, or not belonging, in France, and her awareness of her position, expressed in constant challenges to Marin, gathers force throughout the film. For Khoumba, the issues are more diffuse and inexpressible, and Marin cannot grasp or tolerate them. But there are other antagonists, particularly the young men, whose degrees of participation, embodied by the bright and talkative Boubacar (Boubacar Touré) and non-participation, which is most of the boys, bedevil Marin. Among the most problematic is a popular Malian-French student, Souleymane (Franck Keïta), who rarely speaks and just as infrequently completes or turns in his work. The film shows Marin trying to connect with him, even after Souleymane, in a striking moment, tries to clock Marin by asking if he's "gay," but Cantet shows that Marin's view of and approach to dealing with Souleymane, while full of empathy, will not be reduced to this. Amidst all of the problem children, there are a few ideal students, including Marin's favorite, a Chinese immigrant named Wei (Wei Wang), on whom he and the rest of the faculty can heap no few praises. But Wei'spersonal life, like those of all the other students mirrors the various social crises and fractures affecting contemporary France; his father, in France illegally, is sent back to China, and there's great concern about how this will effect the son and the rest of the family.

The French class setting is a brilliant touch, since language is the material and discursive embodiment of any country's history, its society, its culture, its ideals, and its identity. In terms of France, the language also indexes the country's incapacity, at various levels, to fully acknowledge sociopolitical, economic and cultural differences and counternarratives to its sense of itself as a beacon of liberty, equality, and brotherhood. As I watched the struggles in the class, through the language itself, play out, I thought about debates in the US over Ebonics, English-as-a-Second-Language, and testing standards, while also considering the flexibility and pragmatic aspects of English itself. At various points in The Class, we see Marin's or students' questions or arguments over language, such as the use of the highly formal and rarely used French past subjunctive, which Khoumba knows and deploys correctly, to Marin's surprise and disbelief, then disdain, expand into serious arguments over class, race and ethnicity, citizenship and Frenchness. The more casual and colloquial language the students deploy, the language of metropolitan France, butts heads with the textbook French that Morin is trying to teach, that he wields at times, as a vehicle not only of learning, but also of condescension and superiority. For nearly all the students, including the white French students, there appears to be no easy identification with the language of Pierre Corneille and François Molière, André Malraux and Simone de Beauvoir, or the vast array of attitudes, the vast culture, these figures represent: they define themselves and their ideas against this France discursive, by other means and modes, such as religious affiliation, national belonging, racial categorization, or identity categories such as Goth culture. And in the classroom and outside, these forms of identity and identification keep clashing; during a series of in-class talks, students quarrel over the teams in the African Cup of Nations, dividing along national lines (Morocco/Arabs/winners vs. Mali/Black Africans/losers vs. Ivory Coast, whose teams have done well in international competition), which leads to a near fistfight between Malian champion Souleymane and a newcomer, Carl (Carl Nanor), a young Afro-Caribbean student who has been ejected from another school, and who identifies with...France. For Souleymane, the epithet "brother" goes no further than Mali touches Guadeloupe; blackness here fractures like French society itself.

It's appropriate to call The Class a tragedy with a small "t," as the unrelieved conflicts build to a sad but foreshadowed end. At the same time, tragedies of this sort, I imagine, occur all over France and, as we know, all over the United States, the larger tragedy being a national one, as generations of students remain undereducated, their psychological, emotional, economic, and cultural needs unmet, and the country, our country and the world, are the worse for it. In this film's case the triggers are language, naturally enough, and the concept of respect. At a teacher's meeting, the faculty debate the progress of students, and, in a truly French touch, student representatives must be present. In this instance, Marin's antagonist Esméralda happens to be one of them, and displays her utter respect for the teachers through giggling, joking, misremembering comments that will prove explosive when she recounts them later in Marin's class. The next day, Marin, in a bit of pique, tosses off an insult at Esméralda and her fellow conspirator, basically calling them sluts, and this leads to a violent outburst and confrontation with Souleymane, who is determined to preserve their honor. The altercation provokes a trial, but again Cantet mixes things up by having Marin as the chief defender of Souleymane, who, we learn, is in danger of being sent back to Mali by his father if he is thrown out of school. I won't give away the ending, but there are no comic turns here, no deus ex machina, no easy or slick redemptive turns. Marin takes his knocks, as does Souleymane, and the liberal attitudes the teachers may individually hold are no match either for the parents' representatives, the students' proxies or what amounts to the rule of law. When the film ends, as the academic calendar itself reaches its end, the school, Marin fields responses from the class on what they got out of his class, and the responses vary, but one young woman, who has barely uttered a word, her eyes wide with something verging on despair, expresses an anxiety that is redolent of many classrooms across France, the US and elsewhere: she has not learned anything, she says. Nothing. It was all beyond her. And we gather that she'll pass, move up a grade, and then what? Marin has no answers, as film offers none, instead uniting everyone on screen, as a family, even if the various dramas and traumas have not fully healed and what passes for the respect that the faculty and students have reestablished is as a fragile as a very thin pane of glass.

The acting throughout is unmannered and effortless, grounding the film in a realist mode. Bégaudeau inhabits Marin completely, demonstrating more than once that he is neither an angel nor a monster, but utterly human. Nearly as good are Jean-Michel Simonet as the principal, many of the teachers, and Fatoumata Kanté as Souleymane's mother. The performances by the student actors, however, are what set this film apart. All of them are excellent, but particularly noteworthy are Ouertani, Régulier, Keïta, Touré, and Nanor. Keïta is like a silently smoldering volcano, all charm and youthful cool covering a rage that could split an opponent in two, while Nanor smolder like an ember from the moment he hits the screen, his lips pouty and unibrow furrowing, as if it is taking every fibre in him not to punch anyone who crosses him out cold. Ouertani, however, is the revelation. Smart-mouthed, with a breathy voice and a cutting wit, the young actress plays her character as the kind of student many a junior and senior high school teacher may secretly fear, someone whose sense of outrage and justice fuels a contempt that matches a brilliance the teacher hardly expects or wants to deal with ever. All contribute to making the movie one of the best and truest to life I've seen about contemporary public school education. I now wish that an American filmmaker would attempt something along these lines, instead of the endless, soupy features and comedies about the education of the suburban rich and upper-middle-class, or the urban school redemption stories, which are more about the (usually white) teachers and less about the (usually not white) students, that flood our screens. There is a rich and worthy vein of narratives across this country, just awaiting a writer and a director talented enough to tell them.

Celtics Win + Willie Randolph Fired + Black French Love Obama

The Boston Celtics have won the NBA Championship in a blowout, 131-92, taking the series 4 games to 2. It's the franchise's 17th championship, and first in 22 years. Coached by Doc Rivers and led by longtime veteran Paul Pierce, the series MVP, and new acquisitions Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, they outplayed and successfully defended the Los Angeles Lakers, whose overhyped star Kobe Bryant faltered at the end of the game's last two quarters.

The victorious team

MVP Paul Pierce, whose teammates made up for his weakest championship game

Kevin Garnett, one of the key people behind the Celtics' victory

The stats say it all.

Congratulations to the Celtics!

***

And now for one of the hugest debacles of the baseball season: the New York Mets' firing of manager Willie Randolph.

What I wrote to Bernie and others was basically a summary of what everyone else has said, but I'll reprint it (with one change) anyways:

Really classy move, Mets. In the middle of the night, after sending the poor man out to California! Is it Randolph's fault that so many of his key players are aging and injured, or that the ones who're on the field are underplaying? Are the Mets that far out of first place? No. Do they have that poor of a record? No. Did he assemble all these overpaid has-beens (including Carlos Delgado, who is gorgeous but has the mobility of a grain silo)?

Bring back Willie and FIRE OMAR MINAYA!

***

On a different note, I posted Michael Kimmelman's New York Times article to the CC list:
"For Blacks in France, Obama's Rise Is Reason to Rejoice, and Hope." (Is it in the Arts section because Kimmelman's a well-known art critic?). Here's a snippet:

A new black consciousness is emerging in France, lately hastened by, of all things, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president of the United States. An article in Le Monde a few days ago described how Mr. Obama is “stirring up high hopes” among blacks here. Even seeing the word “noir” (“black”) in a French newspaper was an occasion for surprise until recently.

Meanwhile, this past weekend, 60 cars were burned and some 50 young people scuffled with police and firemen, injuring several of them, in a poor minority suburb of Vitry-le-François, in the Marne region of northeast France.

Americans, who have debated race relations since the dawn of the Republic, may find it hard to grasp the degree to which race, like religion, remains a taboo topic in France. While Mr. Obama talks about running a campaign transcending race, an increasing number of French blacks are pushing for, in effect, the reverse.

(Even the failed Socialist presidential candidate, Segolène Royal, is a fan; she even attended one of his speeches in Boston.) The excitement and enthusiasm goes far beyond France....