Third Trintignant double-bill of the week, and this time a pair of films by Alain Robbe-Grillet. First up, his most popular work as director, TRANS-EUROP-EXPRESS, a surprisingly playful, even fun - not a word Id ever associated with him from reading his books all those years ago! - for the first hour, at which point I started to feel it was not going anywhere, though thats probably not an accusation its creator would have felt he needed to defend against. Tim Lucas apologises to the listener for his audio commentary simply repeating whats happening on screen, but I found he was almost always pointing out things that the viewer would/could not have not know or likely would have missed. Next was THE MAN WHO LIES, which to me felt like a backward step from the previous film, with a more avant-garde feel to it...Im sure if you played the two to an unknowing viewer, they would claim TMWL was made before T-E-E. Essentially it seems to be covering similar territory to the earlier film, and while I did like some individual scenes - especially one Tim describes as being the most cinematic - as a whole I found it neither particularly entertaining nor stimulating. Since theres really nothing to get - something even Robbe-Grille admits - Tims commentary on this can only go so far in increasing ones appreciation, though he clearly finds more in the film than I do.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 06:06:25 +0000
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