Jane Austen Wrecked My Life: This French romantic comedy is the most beautifully photographed mainstream movie I’ve seen this decade. France hasn’t been deracinated by a Marvel or a Disney, but really it’s Marvel who’ve ruined film production in North America. Nothing is lit or composed properly because so much is left for post; computer graphics haven’t gotten better in 20 years, they’ve stalled out or gotten worse; the general level of intelligence and maturity has plummeted, which Marvel exacerbated but by no means caused. It’s also worth noting that France had no #MeToo movement, or rather it simply didn’t take off there, not even close to the level it reached everywhere else; since 2017, the romantic comedy and comedy in general has been rare at the movies, even as standup comedy continues to, unfortunately, grow in popularity.
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is in the tradition of Nancy Meyers and Nora Ephron. The bookstore that writer Agathe (Camille Rutherford) maintains is gorgeous, something out of a Ross Hunter movie; Charlie Anson’s a bit strange as one in a love triangle, constantly bug-eyed, but the film is executed so well, and in such a familiar way that you just don’t see in America anymore, that it’s like peering into the reality we should be living in, one where films made in the 2020s have a defined aesthetic, and one that’s pushing the medium of film further, even if it’s just in the lighting of the female lead slumped on the floor by her open refrigerator—a cliché we’ve seen countless times, but as necessary as bullets in a Dirty Harry movie. If you like going to the movies as a matter of course, Jane Austen Wrecked My Life offers the kind of middlebrow programming that doesn’t insult the audience’s intelligence, a kind of movie America used to crank out.
Lost Highway: The most 1997 movie ever made. This is David Lynch’s dry-run for Mulholland Drive, a masterpiece that isn’t easy to shake; it colors your day, and to a lesser extent this is true of Eraserhead and Blue Velvet. I’m not unnerved by Lost Highway, even if it is Lynch’s darkest, angriest, and most obscure work. More than anywhere else, he’s swimming with the tide, with a soundtrack full of hot acts (Nine Inch Nails, The Smashing Pumpkins, Marilyn Manson, Rammstein, David Bowie in his jungle phase) playing in a style that would be dated by 1999. Bossa nova and the space age bachelor pad aesthetic ruled pop culture from 1997 through the end of 1998: “Walking on the Sun,” “How Bizarre,” “Steal My Sunshine.” Blue Velvet captured the 1980s more vividly than any other American film, while Lost Highway merely nails a fleeting and rather obscure strain in the culture. Unlike his transformational use of the songs “Blue Velvet,” “In Dreams,” and “Crying,” the songs in Lost Highway date it and prevent it from reaching that higher place—you just wouldn’t hear Madonna or Morrissey in Twin Peaks, nor Britney Spears in Mulholland Drive.
But it’s obvious this would be most any other director’s masterpiece. Lynch is in the Kubrick/Hitchcock zone, and his second tier work is still mighty.
All About My Mother: Pedro Almodóvar is taken for granted, the one Spanish auteur who’s regularly distributed in North America, a director with a vivid and compelling aesthetic and as particular concerns and obsessions as any other master. 1999’s All About My Mother was, according to him, “the closest I ever got” to the Palme d’Or. Until last year, Almodóvar had never won the top prize at any of the major European festivals; his English language feature debut The Room Next Door won the Golden Lion at Venice, but came and went here; I saw it in an empty theater on a Tuesday night last fall. All About My Mother may have nearly won at Cannes, but it doesn’t stand apart from his other films, nor is it some massive leap in quality. Almodóvar has been building a body of work for 40 years as in the manner Fassbinder talked about, like a house: some films are the doors, some are the doors, more still are the windows—but in the end, it will be a house, they hope. Almodóvar may have dealt with heroin on and off for decades, but he’s thankfully avoided a fate like Fassbinder’s, and while he’s by no means on the level of the late Bavarian master, he’s close enough. I’ve seen nearly all of his films on initial release since Broken Embraces in 2009, and while he’s got an audience, the level of devotion and enthusiasm leaves a lot to be desired. You see the way people get worked up about the Andersons Wes and Paul Thomas—they should be treating Almodóvar with the same attention and respect.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter: @MonicaQuibbits