The Throwers of the Tantrums

What does Jacques Rivette's LA BELLE NOISEUSE (1991) and THE ROCKER (2008) have in common? That's right: they both depend on nudity for substance, and they both suck. You heard me.

I hate to Emperor's New Clothes it with Rivette; the man makes a pretty picture, and there's some great subtle naturalistic work from Jane Birkin (second fiddle to husband Serge Gainsbourg for so many years, she's the ideal rich artist's nurturing aesthete hostess). But the film is a pretty, airy bore; the worst part is - the "artist" played by Michel Piccoli can't even draw!

We see him spend so much time dabbling around his big studio--stalling, wiping off the flop sweat, wandering through his lovely estate and pontificating evasively about passion, positioning his model (Emmanuelle Béart) around in different positions, and then when he goes to dip pen into ink or get a paint brush going, we see that he has absolutely no skill whatsoever. The guy who does his painting for him (we see the hand) is either playing possum or totally talentless. We cringe in pain as the dry quill of an ink-dipped pen scratches ineffectually at the paper, making a horrible scratching noise; we cry "why not use charcoal?" and it takes him an hour to figure that out. In the end he fobs off pathetic rendering of Béart--one of the most beautiful women in the cinema--where she's crouched in a "pose of the child" yoga position, head obscured, ala Picasso's 1902 "Blue Nude."

A three-year old finger-painting would have been much more interesting.

Which brings me to THE ROCKER-- a film that is so inane that even the points of tantrum don't make sense. (continued on Acidemic)