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It is irresistibly French

Tell No One

An Illusion Review by Joan Ellis

            It’s about time. “Tell No One” is a French thriller that is intricately plotted, well acted, and full of old fashioned suspense. Because the pacing is steady and fast, we can be allowed to overlook a slew of improbabilities that could be troubling if we were bored. We aren’t; so don’t look for the holes, just enjoy the plot twists that are thrown at the audience like handfuls of confetti. Trying to track these while sorting the characters will keep you busy. Be warned that the process is both exhausting and rewarding. This movie bristles.

            It is irresistibly French. If you watched this as a silent movie, you would still appreciate the cultural differences. Scenes of the adult couple’s childhood friendship, for instance, are delicate without being sentimental; their love for each other as adults is conveyed beautifully in lakeside scenes without sexual sledgehammer that is required by American love stories. Add to that the fun of watching Parisian police work and the interplay among the characters. Strong cast, speedy direction, good story; good evening.

            We meet the childhood friends, Alex (Francois Cluzet) and Margot (Marie-Josee Croze) as married adults enjoying a night of skinny dipping and sleeping under the stars. It is the dock they knew as children. During the night, the couple has a minor disagreement and Margot dives into the lake and swims to the dock where they left their clothes. When he hears her scream, Alex follows only to be knocked out as he is exiting the lake. We already know him as a gentle and perceptive pediatrician. When, eight years later, two bodies are found buried near the lake, we can believe he is a suspect but not that he is guilty.

            Alex’s beautiful lawyer Elizabeth (Nathalie Baye) tips him that the police are coming to arrest him; Alex, who has received an email from his dead wife suggesting a meeting, jumps out his hospital office window and begins a run through Paris that would have exhausted an Olympian. This good man, who has loved his wife for all the years they have been separated, will stay out of jail until he finds her – if indeed she is alive. The chase and the evidence gathering take place simultaneously, straining our focus but never undermining our hope.

            The movie is full of good looking people, some of them distractingly alike, all of them giving first rate performances. No false notes here. As Margot’s father, Andre Dussollier is enigmatic and strong. What does this man know? From the moment we meet him, Francois Cluzet’s Alex wears an expression of a man preoccupied with burdens, as indeed he is. Why are we so caught up in this movie? Probably because Cluzet and Marie-Josee-Croze manage to create such a credible portrait of married love that we actually care about them; and because we do, the complexities of the investigation that envelops them becomes riveting.

December 10th, 2007

The perspective now developing on the last eight years has created a fury in parts of the electorate that surpasses even the anger generated by Richard Nixon and his multiple felonies or Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War.

We are trapped in the fifth year of a war started by a president and vice-president who lied to the American people about why it was necessary while linking it in an unconscionable way to 9/11 – an extension and justification of sorts of their newly minted War on Terror. George Bush and Dick Cheney wanted to invade Iraq. Now, five years later we are still blowing up bridges and buildings in that country and then rebuilding them with American companies hired at taxpayers’ expense. Why are we still in Iraq? Because civil war will break out if we leave? This war will end in a bloodbath of our creation whenever we leave. To bring democracy to Iraq? It is a concept so alien to the Middle East that is an embarrassment every time George Bush even mentions it.

Our country, untouched by the hideous cost of this war in lives and resources, goes merrily on living in a toxic culture that has spawned a profusion of luxury goods – houses at $15,000,000, handbags at $29,000 – a market catering to obscenely paid corporate executives, entertainers, hedge fund managers, and international visitors. Don’t dare answer that those salaries are simply what the market will bear and that whatever the market will bear is fair. Eighteen year old kids are...

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"Jesus.......fiddling with his cell phone."

Religulous

An Illusion Review by Joan Ellis

            Bill Maher: “I just ask questions.” And ask he does throughout “Religulous.” As you may suspect, this is a documentary with an agenda. Maher has chosen his subjects for their commitment to dogma. Doubt is his product; it’s what he promotes in “Religulous,” and the result is often hilarious.

            Raised Catholic in a Catholic/Jewish family, the young Bill Maher was delighted when told the family would no longer go to church. He hated having to wake up on Sunday mornings, hated getting dressed up, and was bored unto misery sitting through the service. His mother’s displeasure with the stand of the church on birth control became his reprieve.

            Maher challenges clerics to explain why the Old and New Testaments don’t match and wonders what Jesus did between being the baby we all know and the adult wanderer. Talking to the Reverend Jeremiah Cummings, who has no degree of any kind but lives the life of a prince, Maher wonders about the contrast between the legendary simplicity of Jesus’ life and Cummings’ own grand style. Dressed in a $2000 suit, adorned with gold jewelry, and shod in lizard shoes, Cummings replies that “Jesus dressed very well, in fine linen. Money comes, money happens.”

            Standing in front of the Vatican, Maher muses that the elaborate dress and homes of popes and priests are at odds with their Savior. “Would Jesus have lived here?” To another cleric he suggests that the idea of God sitting up there listening to millions of people murmuring to him is as impossible as Santa Claus dropping presents down every chimney in the world.

            Maher draws marvelous contradictions from his subjects not so much to prove them wrong as to get the rest of us to question the foundations Christians have been taught as truth. He screens quotes from Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin that disavow religion and postulates that 16% of our population has no religious affiliation. “It’s the great untapped minority,” he says, “and it’s time they came out.” He reminds us that if we belonged to other organizations that promoted bigotry, homophobia, and misogyny, we would resign from them.

            Maher does all this with the silences of a man who can’t believe what he has just heard. And he does it with good humor, leaving his often confused subjects with a parting handshake, a smile, and a skeptical shake of his head. At a religious tourist site, he interviews a man playing the part of Jesus (and fiddling with his cell phone) and asks, “When you go out for dinner, do people recognize you?”

            Will Bill Maher’s movie spark discussions of the faith and traditions that most of the citizenry regard as private territory? Probably. Let’s hope we can lace our own conversations with the same irony and humor that run through his movie. In “Religulous” Part II, Maher may possibly stumble on the vast difference between the literal interpretation of myth and myth as a symbolic guidepost.
 

HUNTING VIDEOS 

When you stand clueless in the video store, try these.  They won’t insult your intelligence.