Directed by Alfonso Arau (Like Water for Chocolate), this is a 1995 remake of an Italian feature with the setting changed to northern California by screenwriters Robert Mark Kamen, Mark Miller, and Harvey Weitzman. Returning home from World War II, a young American soldier (Keanu Reeves) has a chance encounter with the daughter (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon) of a Mexican-American vineyard owner and winds up posing as her husband to help her deal with her father (Giancarlo Giannini). With Anthony Quinn and Angelica Aragon. Read more
This semiautobiographical 1971 film by Louis Malle is one of his finest. Set in Dijon in the mid-50s, it concerns the sexual initiation of a precocious, intellectual, wealthy French adolescent (Benoit Ferreux), a process that’s assisted at one crucial point by his sensuous Italian mother (Lea Massari). Malle’s sense of the period and milieu is precise and confident throughout, as is his effective use of jazz (mainly Charlie Parker) on the soundtrack. The film is enjoyable, but viewers who find the aristocratic narcissism, the self-congratulating superiority, of most of Malle’s work repellent may think it’s a bit creepy. In French with subtitles. 110 min. With Michel Lonsdale, Daniel Gelin, Fabien Ferreux, and Ave Ninchi. (JR) Read more
Three short films from the 60s by Richard Leacock, one of the pioneers of the cinema verite documentary style. The first twoHappy Mother’s Day and The Fischer Quintupletsare alternate versions of the same 1963 film shot in Aberdeen, South Dakota, in collaboration with Joyce Chopra for ABC TV; the former was rejected by ABC, which reedited Leacock and Chopra’s footage to yield the broadcast version. The third film is Chiefs (1968). (JR) Read more
