Is Foreign Cinema Overrated?

Last night I tried to watch an Austrian film called Revanche. It actually put me to sleep, before 11pm.

I'm not entirely sure which artistic movement films like this should be associated with. The camera work is simple and direct; scenes are shot from one angle, with few cuts. For the most part, nothing happens. Yet it was a well-received film and was nominated for an Academy award; more evidence, if any was needed, that the Oscars don't count for much.

The story is about a Viennese prostitute who robs a bank with her boyfriend. As they flee, a policeman tries to shoot out the tires of their car but hits her instead. It might sound like an exciting formula - plenty of opportunities for car chases and explosions. Instead, every opportunity for excitement is ignored, and the rest of the film is uneventful as a film can be while still having a plot.

Perhaps the lack of action is meant to reflect the boredom of Austrian life. Maybe it's a European way of getting back at Americans for the fast-paced brutality of American movies. Either way, I've found the limit of my tolerance for cinematic boredom.

But it's not all bad! A few nights before, I watched Terribly Happy, a Danish film about a policeman who is reassigned to a small town in the countryside. It was GREAT, and much more frightening than I'd expected. I'd watch it again in an instant.

Here's the Danish version of the poster, and no I can't pronounce it. Were there a movie like this for every movie like that, I'd be happy.

Narrow Thinking At The Times

Cathy Horyn is a distinctive fashion critic, primarily because she seems to hate fashion and therefore feels no compunction giving bad reviews. Unfortunately, for one who doesn't seem to care what others in the fashion business think of her, she has a lot of trouble taking criticism. Her blog, On The Runway, is usually a good read, but it could be better: it could tolerate some dissent.

I should know because I'm a regular reader. When I have something to contribute on a given topic, I leave comments. The funny thing? Anything even faintly challenging of her will not be approved.

Now, if Horyn's blog works the way other New York Times blogs work, it's the author who does most of the work of reading and approving comments (that's how Paul Krugman's blog operates, at any rate). If it's not policy at the Times to squash criticism, it's Cathy herself approving the comments she agrees with and dismissing whatever she doesn't.

What's wrong with that? you might wonder. After all, it is her blog - if you don't agree, start your own blog.

First, that's exactly what I've done.

Second, no serious newspaper should get away with publishing only one point of view. An editor who published an article stating a controversial opinion, then refused to publish any dissenting letters from readers, would be seen as a partisan hack. Why should it be any different for a blog about fashion?

There are two things here that Horyn needs to think about. Does she want to become a Devil Wears Prada-like figure with whom polite disagreement is simply not possible?

Perhaps more importantly, does she want to drive discussion away from her blog? At times, her commenters are little more than a chorus of sycophants. That means that the real discussion must be happening elsewhere. Wouldn't she prefer to keep it close?

Think about it, Ms. Horyn. They don't call it the Grey Lady for nothing.

Racism in Fashion

Fashion is not the most politically correct industry. Rarely will you find anyone who is fat, short, ugly or poor being made much of, and people with darker skin are often treated like curiosities, brought in to illustrate exoticism and then shown to the door.

Yet it's not clear that anyone has a workable solution. For example, bloggers frequently demand more women of color in fashion shows. But how many is enough? Should fashion shows be like universities, where a certain number of spots are reserved for minorities? Ideally, modeling would be a color-blind job. The best girls would be hired regardless of skin color or quotas.

Another time, I heard someone ask when an Asian woman would be featured on the cover of Vogue - with the same tone with which one might ask, When will I be free of these shackles? The answer that I didn't quite have the heart to give her is that it will happen whenever an Asian - American actress or model becomes famous enough to warrant it.

Then I came across this, an article at the Guardian in which the writer angrily takes Christian Dior to task for this advertisement, shot by a Chinese photographer and on display at the Dior store in Shanghai.

What do you see? I think it's a perfectly sensible depiction of the sameness of Mao-era China contrasting with modern splendor. Since the photographer is a Chinese artist, I don't see the neo-colonialism angle. Isn't the multiplication of identical faces a theme in contemporary Chinese art?

The writer also seems to lack a basic understanding of what drives the luxury market in China. Criticizing a Chanel ad, she writes, "The message couldn't be clearer – the Chinese are ignorant of their own history, desire to imitate the West, and need a cultured European to educate them." Now, I don't know whether Chinese people are ignorant of their own history or not, though according to the New York Times the answer seems to be yes.

As for the idea that they imitate the West, there's not much to dispute - how else do you explain the explosion of French and Italian luxury goods in China? Ditto for acquiring European tastes.

In short, I doubt that any of Dior's actual Chinese customers (as opposed to Chinese-Americans) will be bothered. After all, they're hardly buying Dior out of a desire to celebrate Chinese heritage.

Conquerors of the useless

Last night, I veered away from my usual Netflix diet of foreign cinema and noir thrillers to watch something a little different: 180 South, a documentary about mountain climbing and surfing in Patagonia. It was a gorgeous film - how could a film set in Patagonia not be gorgeous? But I had a realization: no matter how much I admire the outdoors, I'm very different from the kind of person whose idea of fun is a yearlong hiking trip.

Jeff Johnson, the film's narrator and protagonist, quotes Yvon Chouinard, founder of outdoor clothier Patagonia, to the effect that mountain climbers are "conquerors of the useless." Indeed. Since retirement, Chouinard has been involved with land preservations efforts in South America, including the sometimes controversial work of Conservacion Patagonica. It's an interesting case, yet one the film explores with little depth. Shades of neo-colonialist environmentalism? Perhaps.

Mostly, I was struck by one of Johnson's statements: that every time he finds himself in a wild, desolate place, he comes back with answers to questions he didn't know he had. I'm completely the opposite: when I find myself in a wild, desolate place, my thoughts go something like this: Wow, this is pretty. Is it time for dinner?

Regardless, I enjoyed the movie. I think I'd love to go to Patagonia someday.

(Photo credit: DailyHiker.com)

Imperial Decline

Chanel is the most idolized name in fashion, and consequently the one least likely to be looked at objectively. It's not just the advertising dollars, it's Karl Lagerfeld's personal celebrity and the loyalty he seems to inspire among critics and editors. I've long felt that his creations are a special form of ugliness - perfect for rotund little old ladies upholstered in tweed, the kiss of death for anyone else - but his shows are guaranteed a rapturous reception in the press.

Some other people seem to be coming around to my point of view. It's slow, for sure, but then big, famous houses don't become irrelevant overnight. It takes time, and Pierre Cardin is the perfect example: long after his name had been licensed into oblivion and the creative spark had died, he continued to draw favorable reviews from WWD, among others. It was only in the late 80s and 90s, when the degeneracy of his brand was apparent to all, that it became acceptable to say out loud what everyone had known for years: Cardin was over.

Chanel doesn't have a licensing problem. It's problem is that the current sketcher-in-chief, Karl Lagerfeld, is mentally stuck in the 80s and no longer fresh. In some ways, the fashion system knows this: think of the rumors which surfaced earlier this year that Lagerfeld would be replaced by Alber Elbaz of Lanvin, for example. Consciously or not, the realization is sinking in that it's time for a change.

This opinion was articulated by an academic named Mark Ritson, who - not coincidentally - comes from the marketing world, and who is therefore at liberty to think and write freely in a way that fashion people are not. In a tremendous article for Marketing Week, he writes that, according to a marketing consultancy, the Chanel brand lost 11% of its value last year. This in contrast to Louis Vuitton and Hermes, both of which gained.

Ritson argues that Chanel missed the boat in Asia by not entering the Chinese market until many years after its competitors, and that in London it is playing catch up to Louis Vuitton, which recently opened a lavish new store there. To that I might add the online space: most brands by now offer some form of ecommerce on their websites. Not Chanel - as far as I can tell, its online strategy hasn't advanced past the year 2000.

Ritson's most stinging criticism is a very simple one: the brand has simply gotten boring. He writes, "Its shop windows lack inspiration, the new collections are a little too derivative and the clientele looks older to me on each visit. Whisper very softly, but I think Chanel is getting dusty."

I don't care about China, but this is important. Lagerfeld has brought Chanel full circle, back to where he found it. Once again, it is repetitive, mired in the past and undeniably dowdy.

I think that Chanel knows this too: recently, prices for their handbags were raised by 30%. Why would they do this? Perhaps because the brand's managers are afraid of becoming aspirational. For luxury to remain luxurious, it must be kept out of the hands of the masses.

Maximum Francophilia

Today I caved and watched a movie which I had originally made fun of when I saw previews. The movie? Paris. Should I have left it at the previews? Well, it wasn't a complete wash. But probably.

Paris is one of those tapestry of life films where strangers bump into each other and connect across the tableau of a big city - Paris, in case there was any ambiguity. The movie begins and ends with sweeping shots from the Eiffel Tour, as if the picturesque Parisian skyline is sufficient justification for whatever happens in the rest of the film.

The story concerns a young dancer who has a heart condition and is dying, also very picturesquely. His sister is Juliette Binoche, the only character who doesn't come off as trite or two-dimensional. She doesn't have a man and he advises her to "take a chance on life," whatever that means.

There's the aging professor who gets ahold of one of his student's numbers so he can send her flirtatious texts - a story that barely ties in with anything else in the film. Even as the girl becomes interested in her dorky old professor, it feels like a grotesque caricature - the idea that an older man can "regain his youth" with an affair, while the whole time it's evident that she's stringing him along and that he's going to lose her. And then he'll be sad. Which isn't predictable, or anything.

There are some stabs at global significance - a French model meets a man Senegal, who then tries to come to France. Crossing the Mediterranean in a speedboat, he nearly drowns while she is attending a fashion show. Quickly, the film moves on. Instead of registering as a portrait of inequality, desperation and indifference, it strikes the viewer as a bizarre little subplot that could have just as well been left out.

If there's one thing this movie does well, it's the little portraits of ordinary people. For example, the owner of the neighborhood bakery, a pretty blond with a predator's smile who greets her customers with saccharine sweetness, then berates her employees and complains that young people today have no work ethic. She's a minor character, but she sort of stole the show (insofar as there was a show to steal).

After a few of these ensemble movies, I find myself wishing that the directors had instead focused on just one of their stories instead of trying to weave them together. Conventional, perhaps, but probably a better way of telling stories.

Ma chambre a la forme d'une cage…