
            It's 1927 and we meet silent movie star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) on top of the world. He's behind the screen; in front of it an ecstatic audience is enthralled by his latest starring role. As the credits roll, Valentin takes the stage for what a virtuosic display of bowing, his canine sidekick performing some cute tricks too.Outside the theatre, adoring fans and press push and surge to breathe the same air as their hero. A pretty young girl at the front of the crowd drops her wallet, and makes the most of picking it up to slip under the security cordon. There's silence as Valentin looks shocked, confused, angry even - but it's all his joke and, laughing at his own power to create such confusion, he gamely poses for photos with the young lady to the delight of the assembled press, and to the chagrin of his stern, world-weary wife who reads of the escapade in the papers the next day.The young girl - one Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), we learn - having shared a moment with her hero is inspired to follow his path, and turns up at the studio to audition, successfully, as an extra. Valentin himself arrives at the same studio where he is again the star, this time of 'A German Affair'. On entering the studio the star is enthralled by a pair of legs he sees rehearsing on the other side of a screen. He joins the dance from his side of the screen, and beckons to the set builders to remove the screen, hoping to surprise the girl. It's he, though, who is surprised to discover the legs belong to the same Peppy Miller from last night's crowd and this morning's papers.Years pass, one presumes in a similar fashion. One day though, Al Zimmer, the immaculately stereotyped cigar-chomping, braces-pinging studio boss (John Goodman) calls Valentin in to see the latest technological innovation - a primitive attempt to record sound with motion pictures. Valentin scoffs at the footage, but is clearly ruffled by it. He dreams a nightmare where everyday sounds are exaggerated (for the first time here the film takes on a diegetic soundtrack) culminating in a confusing cacophony where a feather lands with a boom. Only his own voice is stifled; despite the soundscape around him, he is mute.Valentin's instinctive suspicion of the technology proves well-founded, when he - once the king of the silent movie - is quickly marginalised, and eventually fired by Zimmer. Audiences want change, he's told. It's time to move on.Devastated by his sudden fall to insignificance, Valentin takes to drink. Peppy, meanwhile, has done well out of the new 'talkies'. Now the doyenne of the Hollywood set and as wealthy a pin-up herself as her mentor once was, she gives a radio interview in a café in which she attributes her success to the simple truth that audiences want change. "Out with the old, in with the new," she quips. From an adjacent table, unseen, Valentin listens in before theatrically 'making way' for young Peppy, dramatically taking his leave.Valentin's circumstances go from bad to worse. A self-funded attempt to make a return to the era of silent film ("Tears of Love") flops, and the rest of his savings are wiped out by the 1929 stock market crash. When the whisky runs dry, the ex-star auctions off everything he owns. His dour wife leaves him (perhaps the one bit of good fortune he has enjoyed since the days of stardom) and he is forced to sack his loyal butler Clifton.He visits a bar and passes out after envisioning a hand-sized miniature of him dressed as his "Tears of Love" character scolding him and miniature savages attacking him with spears. Clifton finds him on the floor of the bar and takes him to Valentin's apartment.Valentin stands in a home film projector room and has a vison of his shadow moving by itself while the screen is blank, and then off the screen.Finally, in a climax of drunken rage, Valentin sets fire to his old film reels, and, with them, his apartment. Attempting to save one canister in a sudden moment of regret, he is overcome by fumes, and it is only thanks to the endeavours of his ever-loyal dog that he is rescued by a nearby fireman.Peppy has discreetly been following Valentin's fortunes and is shocked to learn of the fire from the newspaper. She leaves a shoot to visit him in hospital, and, stopping short of declaring her love for him, takes him to her grand villa to recover. Waking briefly, Valentin realises his luck and the pair embrace.However, while Peppy is out at a shoot, Clifton arrives and reveals that he is now employed by Peppy, tosses a film script at the bed and what appears to be a Whitman Sampler on the nightstand, and gives a short speech about the drawbacks of being too prideful. But Valentin appears disdainful of the talkie script.After Clifton leaves, the convalescent Valentin roams the villa, and discovers to his horror a room full of the very possessions he himself had previously auctioned off. His pride deeply wounded by her having come to his rescue without his knowledge, he flees the house and returns to the embers of his burned-out apartment to root out his old pistol. Returning home and realising Valentin has left in anger, Peppy gives chase in her car, guessing his intention.Valentin sits in his chair with the gun in his mouth, while the dog frantically pulls at his trouser leg.The intertitle flashes up: "Bang!"But it is outside that we find the source of the noise; Peppy has crashed her car into a tree. She leaps from the wreckage and consoles Valentin just in time to avert catastrophe. She tells him she has secured a role for him in her next production. Valentin is sceptical, saying the audience doesn't want to hear him talk. Peppy tells him she has another idea, and the film ends with Al Zimmer toasting the next entertainment sensation as Valentin is back in the studio, and back to his ebullient self with Peppy as his tap dancing partner. The consummate artist, Valentin has found a way to use the new sound-recording technology without lowering himself to a speaking part.
    

The Artist


            
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Mesrine: Killer Instinct

Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1

The Search

Les années sandwiches

One Wild Moment


            Shot entirely from the lead character's point-of-view, Frank Zito (Elijah Wood) is a mentally disturbed young man who has taken over his family's mannequin sales business after the recent death of his mother Angela (America Olivo), who also moonlighted as a prostitute. Frank has frequent childhood flashbacks of seeing his mother bring home clients or being taken out with her to turn tricks. This has left Frank unable to enter into meaningful relationships with women, and his sexual impulses tend to manifest themselves as violent urges that Frank externalizes as his mother's will. Struggling to come to grips with his mother's mistreatment and abuse of him, and spurred by memories of his mother brushing her long black hair before going out at night, Frank stalks, murders, and scalps a young street walker one night, attaching her hair to a mannequin that he then keeps in his bedroom.Attempting to enter into a normal relationship with a woman, Frank joins an online dating site, where he befriends a local girl named Lucie (Megan M. Duffy). The two eventually meet for what turns out to be a successful date. The pair return to Lucie's apartment, where she attempts to seduce the virginal Frank. However, Frank, feeling overwhelmed by homicidal impulses, insists that he likes Lucie and that he must leave before something bad happens. Lucie, mistaking Frank's panic for nervousness, becomes sexually aggressive and begins performing fellatio. Though he attempts to control himself, Frank eventually strangles her with his bare hands and then scalps Lucie. Frank takes her hair back to his apartment, where he attaches it to another mannequin.One morning, Frank awakens to find a young woman named Anna (Nora Arnezeder) taking photos of the mannequins in his storefront. Frank invites her into his store, where she becomes taken with his work restoring antique department store mannequins. The two develop a friendship, with Frank agreeing to help Anna put together an art exhibit using his mannequins. As the two spend more time together, Frank begins to fall in love with Anna, and becomes more aggressive about trying to control his urges to kill, attempting to take pharmaceuticals to quiet his impulses. Nonetheless, one night he follows a woman home from her dance studio and stabs her to death in a garage parking lot. Once again, he scalps her and attaches her hair to a mannequin in his bedroom.As the date of the exhibit opening approaches, Frank learns that Anna has a boyfriend, sending him into a jealous and emotional tailspin. At the opening of the exhibit, Frank meets Anna's boyfriend, Jason (Sammi Rotibi), in which both men take an instant disliking to each other. Frank also meets Anna's mentor, art director Rita (Jan Broberg), an older woman who encourages Anna to leave Los Angeles to seek more opportunities back in Europe. In a drunken state, Rita later mocks Frank, first sexually propositioning him and then accusing him of being a homosexual and teasing him for his interest in mannequins.After the exhibition, Frank follows Rita home, subduing her in her bathtub and then hog-tying her on her bed. Frank begins addressing Rita as his mother, expressing his rage for her treatment of him and articulating his feelings of being unloved, unwanted, and abandoned. Remembering a night he begged his mother to stay at home with him, only to be left alone while she went out to prostitute herself, Frank flies into a rage and scalps Rita while she is still alive (very gory and disturbing scene).Several nights later, Frank calls Anna, who tearfully tells him of Rita's murder and of a fight she had with Jason, resulting in their breakup. Frank comes to Anna's apartment, where his attempts to comfort her lead to them nearly having sex. Anna expresses feelings of guilt for Rita having been murdered following her show, which Frank dismisses by saying that Rita lived nearby and that she knew the risks of her own neighborhood. Anna immediately becomes suspicious that Frank knows where Rita lived. Attempting to cover for himself, Frank inadvertently lets slip further details of Rita's apartment, and Anna comes to realize that Frank is her murderer. The two fight, with Anna stabbing Frank through the hand with a butcher knife before locking herself in her bedroom. Anna's neighbor, Martin (Joshua De La Garza), after hearing the commotion, breaks into the apartment to save her, only for Frank to maim him with a meat cleaver. Martin gets back up only to be knocked back down again and killed. Breaking down Anna's bathroom door, Frank puts her into a choke hold and knocks her unconscious.At his apartment, Frank attempts to remove Anna from the back of his car. When she regains consciousness, Anna ambushes Frank and stabs him in the stomach with a piece of rebar attached to a mannequin hand Frank had stored in his back seat. Anna flees down the road and is picked up by a passing motorist, who panics at the sight of Frank and runs him down in his car. In the process of hitting Frank, the driver loses control and crashes into a bridge gate, flinging Anna through the windshield. A bloodied Frank hobbles to the mortally wounded Anna and gorily scalps her as she dies.Frank returns to his apartment, attaching Anna's hair to a mannequin dressed in a bridal gown. In great pain from his injuries, Frank collapses on his bed and suffers hallucinations of the mannequins transforming into his victims and tearing his body apart, finally ripping off his face to reveal a mannequin head. Before he dies, Frank sees Anna (clad in a wedding dress) lower her veil and turn her back on him.Later that day, a police SWAT team breaks into Frank's apartment and finds him dead in his closet.
    

Thomas Langmann

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