Rosetta (1999, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)

Superior Cannes winner from 1999. Rosetta came from Belgium from Dardenne brothers. Rosetta is young girl who tries to escape from her miserable life, but not from miserable people around her. Her mother is an alcoholic who sells her body to camp owner in order to pay the rent. Although Rosetta almost hates her, she tries everything to improve their lives, but it looks that everything is against her. Film starts with her fire from work (literally, she is taken out from factory) and the rest of film deals with her fight for work. It looks that she's not desperate - she's agressive, angry but she's not strong, but in her struggle she lost her dignity and humanity. She betrayed the only person in her life who showed sympathy and probably love to her, young guy Riquet - in order to substitute him on the bakery benchboard.
What a misery... To loose a friend because of low-payed job. But, from her point of view, it's not ammoral, it's just like what it is. The world is hard place to live and you must do everything you can to deserve good and respect life.
Mostly shot from handheld camera, Rosetta succesfully shows intense and almost hysteric life of title character. There is no aestetic here, no beatiful images, no some original camera work, just her life in all his reality.
Emilie Dequenne as Rosetta was great choice and key of the film's success. In her debut she gave all her energy in this role(according to some reports, she spent some time in similar environment to prepare to the role) and deserved the Best Actress Prize in Cannes. Rosetta refers greatly to the Italian Neorealism and British hyper-realistic movies from 60's (like Ken Loach and Tony Richardson films) in theme about homeless and poor people from bottom of society. But, besides all these qualities, this film is not so great as all prizes will suggest. If you see list of nominated movies in Cannes 1999 you'll see that, IMHO, that competition was not so "rough" as usual. There were Lynch with Straight Story, Greenaway with 8 1/2 Women, Almodovar with Todo Sobre Mi Madre but others. It wasn't unforgettable year in Cannes...

Max, mon amour (1986, Nagisa Oshima)

Strange, strange film... I mean, what do you think about movie about love affair between middle-aged woman and real monkey? Real love affair, not Platonic love, or pet love but love, sexual love and passion? What is your opinion about that? Perhaps – "What a silly idea!" or "This is one of the stupidest things I ever heard about". You have right to think that and perceive that this is some trash movie or some –xploatation movie, but this is not that kind (for me). In fact, this is very European (in style and cast) movie from famous (and somewhere arrant) director Nagisa Oshima. You probably heard about his semi-pornographic art movie from 1976 - Ai no Corrida (english title is In the realm of senses) which contains some antological scenes like cutting the penis, explicit felatio and many, many more. So you see, this movie is not the biggest excess in his career. What was the most interesting and thought-provoking thing here was the feel of this movie. After first shock when you (and her husband) discover that she has a lover, but not of mankind, you'll (surprisingly) accept it as a fact and continue to watch this movie without any feeling of disgust or something wrong. This is because the accent was on love, not on physical attraction (although Oshima didnt's forget to stress it) between woman and hairy chimpanzee. And surprisingly, this film didn't descend into goofiness, although behaviour of husband of woman who fell in love into monkey is very questionable and doubtful because he didn't hate his rival and after time he accept that situation. Some critics understood this movie as some allegory on alienation and crisis of institution of marriage in upper European Burgeoisie, but I'm not sure that this was the real intention of Oshima. He and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere made fun and interesting movie about so unusual theme. I think that they just wanted to make subversive movie whose intention was not to shock audience with some "I don't believe it" images and scenes but to surprise viewers with their reactions, feelings and their accepting of romantic view at zoophilia.
This is one of the movies which is hard to rate: you can't say this is a masterpiece or something near to that but this is also not an average movie. I would rate it 7/10 although it looks too high and too low rating at same time.

The Jerk (1979, Carl Reiner)

Steve Martin is a really good comedian, one of the best ever. He proved it many, many times, not only in the movies, but also in many series and stand-up shows. And his time is not gone yet, although in recent days he involved himself in some doubtful projects. This is the movie which made him famous... There he was an actor and co-screenwriter, and it worked well. But... I can't tell why, but I'm not fully satisfied with this film. The humour here is not-so political correct and based mainly on irony on stereotypes (at this point, influence of this movie at jerk-comedies in 90's is incredible – for example, Farelly brothers movies). You can see here white trash lifestyles, rednecks, simple-minded rural black family, greedy Jews but there is no offense at anyone. The acting was good – although Martin was superb in main "title" role, Bernadette Peters as his girl and saviour was surprise for me. I don't remember did I watch her in some important role, but she was brilliant here as naive, quiet and good-hearted girl who fell in love in circus weight-teller (does this job exists?) Martin. Supporting cast also made a good job. So all elements for good comedy are here, but what is missing, what's wrong? Maybe predictable plot... Or exactly, not enough original plot development. It was predictable that he, the ultimate jerk, the jerk of jerks will reach the top and become famous, succesfull or rich, but after that he will fall down to the bottom. It's some kind of cliche in portreting the idiots, jerks or mentally retarded individuals in comedies. Remember Forrest Gump and especially legendary Chauncey Gardiner in cult Being There (his fellow from 1979!). But after all, plot is not the most important thing in comedies. Jokes ARE. And there is plenty of them here. Go, check them!