Cinema Verdict Review: Wild Grass

Wild Grass

OPENING: 06/25/2010

STUDIO: Sony Pictures Classics

RUN TIME:104 min

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
A story of obsession between two strangers – who become even stranger.

Opening Statement
Oh, the making of art as a medium to be left to the viewer’s interpretation. It has long perplexed and frustrated me to go to the local modern art museum and see people fawning over a stack of quarters in the middle of a room or a Jackson Pollock painting. To be left only to your own devices to try and suss out what the heck the artist was trying to say…if anything at all (See the 2009 film (Untitled) to get a good idea of the artists behind this type of art-for-the-sake-of-art). Movie as art is something that has been dabbled in, at times jumped into head-first, by art-ISTS! like Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol and David Lynch. Whoever does it though, it always reminds me of the episode of Family Guy where Diane is in the college short “Lint.” They always leave me saying “Wha…?” There are some who can evoke this type of filmmaking and do it without alienating half of the audience while giving the other half a feeling of superiority that is unwarranted – Darren Arnofsky, Andy Kaufman and The Coen Bros to name a few. Many would say that this film just wasn’t for me and actually I’ll be the first to admit that. But it leaves me to wonder, who then was this movie made for?

Facts of the Case
The story starts with a woman, Marguerite Muir, (Sabine Azéma) with a large afro of red hair getting her purse stolen. A man with a shady past, Georges Palet, (André Dussollier) surreptitiously finds Marguerite’s wallet and opens the door to Georges and Marguerite’s romantic adventure – even though Georges is already married. After examining the ID of its owner, it is not a simple matter for Georges to turn into the police the red wallet he found. Nor, for some reason, can Marguerite retrieve her wallet without being piqued with curiosity about the person who found it. As Georges and Marguerite navigate and obliterate the social protocols of giving and acknowledging thanks, turbulence enters their everyday lives largely due to their asinine and unreasonable decisions.

The Evidence
The film’s opening credits are nearly all placed over a single shot of grass growing through cracks in concrete. It was something I hadn’t seen in films since the 70’s and I wonder if the fact that director, Alain Resnais, is now 87 has any bearing on part of why this film was not for me, it looked so dated, and felt so scattered. At one point in the film, a detective suggests that the ruffians who stole Marguerite’s purse may have used the money to buy music on cassette tapes. Really?!? How long ago was this script written? There’s loyalty to the source material but this is taking it too far. The first half hour of the movie was done in almost complete voice over. Since this was based on the book “L’incident” by Christian Gailly, it was like being able to watch pictures while someone read the book to you. It did work well to put us in the head of the main characters – to see what they see, to hear what they hear, to find out what they think – with selection. However, that trope is then discarded and never picked up again.

The two leads are inevitably brought together, first by the wallet and later by unknown and unexplained reasons. The director was brave in casting two older stars as his leads, especially when it felt as if the parts were written for kids in high school. That may have been the point though, to show people later on in life dealing with love as if was their first time. However, that does not translate well if the filmmakers don’t tell us why they are acting that way. Without giving us a back-story or a motive for the character’s decisions, the leads don’t come off as youthful – they come off as immature. Instead of being the Wild Grass of the title – struggling to find the light, overcoming obstacles, pushing through barriers violently and sometimes painfully in order to be with the one you are attracted to – they become two people who are unrelatable – both by people their own age and by people who act like them.

Closing Statement
The final scene, after all this madness has flashed by, is a mother in her daughter’s bedroom and the little girl asks “Mommy, when I am a cat, can I eat dry food?” We have never seen either the mother nor the little girl, nor have there been any cats anywhere in the film. This may have been the director’s attempt to say that as some wildness dies away, more wildness is springing up elsewhere. To me though, it was a final “F – you!” from the filmmaker to his audience.

The Verdict

3/10

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