Short Term 12 is about a young female supervisor at a foster care facility.\u00a0 It is a story that is sincere and heartfelt, but in the end, about the only thing it has going for it is its sincerity and heartfeltness.\u00a0 It\u2019s written and directed by Desin Cretton and I\u2019m not sure that he has anything to offer yet, though it\u2019s only his second feature film, so it\u2019s too early a call yet.\u00a0\u00a0 But like so many recent films both written and directed by someone new or relatively new to the job, it\u2019s unambitious, unoriginal and unimaginative, and technically bland and uninspired.\u00a0 It\u2019s more of the sort of social problem play that use to be de rigueur<\/i> as movies of the week on network TV thirty years ago.\u00a0 The acting is of the obvious sort with no real subtlety and everything\u2019s telegraphed before it\u2019s shared.\u00a0 But when the characterizations are this flat (as flat as the direction), what else is to be expected?\u00a0 It ends with an action by the lead that I think is supposed to make one respect her.\u00a0 But for me, it was so irresponsible, over the top and troubling, I was praying she\u2019d get fired before she did something really stupid the next time.<\/p>\n
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I can just hear director Anne Fontaine and screenwriter Christopher Hampton give their elevator pitch for Adore, their new Australian film about two mothers who have affairs with each other\u2019s sons: MILFS who become GILFS.\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s kind of basically it in a nutshell.<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s certainly a well done movie.\u00a0 One can\u2019t complain about the technical aspects of any of it. There\u2019s a lot of beautiful scenery to salivate over, and the backgrounds aren\u2019t too bad either.\u00a0 The acting is first rate, especially Naomi Watts, Robin Wright and Ben Mendelson as the adults; the young himbos, played by Xavier Samuel and James (Animal Kingdom) Frecheville, were more cast for their bodies than their abilities.<\/p>\n
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But when all is said and done the whole thing never really comes together in a satisfying whole.<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s the sort of movie you can form fit into your favorite Rorschach test psychological theory.\u00a0 Are they all going to bed together because the women really want to bed each other, the same for the boys, and this is the only way they can do it?\u00a0 Or is it incest by proxy?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The whole thing is suppose to be tres, tres<\/i> daring, I suppose.\u00a0 But the movie takes itself so seriously, I certainly can\u2019t.\u00a0 And it\u2019s been so long since I cared about who went to bed with whom, I just can\u2019t get much indignation worked up.<\/p>\n
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If the film had been made in the 1940\u2019s it would have starred Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins and had at least one big cat fight.\u00a0 Now, everybody does their best to keep a stiff upper lip and be Masterpiece Theater civilized about it all.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s an improvement.\u00a0 After all, if you remove the camp element, all you\u2019re really left with is soap opera.<\/p>\n
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And to add insult to injury, it just takes forever to resolve itself.\u00a0 It\u2019s structurally clunky and just when you think it\u2019s about to come to a close, it keeps on going for thirty minutes or more.<\/p>\n
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In the end, it\u2019s a handsome film, as handsome as its two leading ladies.\u00a0 But if all you\u2019ve got going for you is shock element (and the element isn\u2019t that shocking), then you really haven\u2019t got a lot going for you.<\/p>\n
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There\u2019s a scene in Francois Truffaut\u2019s last film Confidentially Yours in which a secretary (Fanny Ardant) has to hire her replacement because her boss (Jean-Louis Trintignant) has rather unceremoniously fired her.\u00a0 The first applicant can only type with one finger.\u00a0 Ms. Ardant is ready to dismiss her outright until the applicant actually types\u2014and types like a machine gun on St. Valentine\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n
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I don\u2019t know if the filmmakers of the new French rom com Populaire (director Regis Roinsard, writers Roinsard, Daniel Presley, Romain Compingt) took that movie as its inspiration, but since the story is about a woman dreaming of becoming that new symbol of female independence, a secretary, and one who can type with two fingers like a said machine gun on said holiday, it would be hard to convince me otherwise.<\/p>\n
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Populaire is a pastiche of 1950\u2019s American sophisticated comedies (if it had been done in the U.S. way back then, it would have starred Cary Grant or Rock Hudson and Doris Day or Audrey Hpeburn).\u00a0 It\u2019s as light as a French souffl\u00e9 and looks as sweet as puff pastry.\u00a0 It has all the bright pop colors made popular by that rock and roll decade and more recently by the television show Mad Men and the film\u2019s a delight to look at.\u00a0\u00a0 And it has its inside droll jokes as when the hero is asked not to smoke in his office by the heroine and he says only a law will stop him (like the U.S., it is now illegal to smoke in places of employment\u2014unfortunately, I was the only one in the theater who laughed).<\/p>\n
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It also starts off rather well with young, perky Sandra Dee-like Deborah Francois as Rose Pamphyle (in what seems a change of pace roll from such serious ones as L\u2019enfant and The Monk) coming to town to become a liberated woman.\u00a0 But things go off the rail very quickly with the introduction of Romain Duras\u00a0 (that incredibly handsome, perpetually sneering, hirsute leading man) as her new boss, Louis Echard.\u00a0 He hires her not because she\u2019s good at her job (in fact, the implication is that she is suppose to be a terrible secretary, though she never seems all that bad), but so he can enter her in a typing competition.<\/p>\n
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What is odd here is that though this is Rose\u2019s story, it\u2019s Louis who is driving it.\u00a0 But Duras is not given a character to play.\u00a0 It\u2019s unclear why Echard is so desperate to have Rose become the world\u2019s next speed typist champion.\u00a0 We have no clue as to what his feelings toward relationships are generally.\u00a0 Duras is left to create a character out of nothing; but unfortunately, he can\u2019t come close, so the movie just meanders along without any real focus or forward momentum.\u00a0 Without Echard having motivations for his actions or inner or outer conflicts that need to be resolved, there\u2019s really nothing for the audience to grab onto.\u00a0\u00a0 It also doesn\u2019t help that there\u2019s little chemistry between the two leads (also the same problem as Truffaut\u2019s Confidentially Yours).\u00a0\u00a0 And like Adore, just as you think the movie is over, it just keeps going and going and going.<\/p>\n
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There\u2019s no reason something couldn\u2019t have been made out of all the ingredients here.\u00a0 But in the end, it has to be said that the souffl\u00e9 fell and the pasty just wasn\u2019t as sweet as it looked in the confectionaries\u2019 window.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Short Term 12 is about a young female supervisor at a foster care facility.\u00a0 It is a story that is sincere and heartfelt, but in the end, about the only thing it has going for it is its sincerity and heartfeltness.\u00a0 It\u2019s written and directed by Desin Cretton and I\u2019m not sure that he has […]","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[866,878,869,879,874,876,865,871,867,872,873,868,875,877,864,870],"series":[],"class_list":["post-1265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-adore","tag-anne-fontaine","tag-ben-mendelson","tag-christopher-hampton","tag-daniel-presley","tag-deborah-francois","tag-desin-cretton","tag-james-frecheville","tag-naomi-watts","tag-populaire","tag-regis-roinsard","tag-robin-wright","tag-romain-compingt","tag-romain-duras","tag-short-term-12","tag-xavier-samuel"],"episode_featured_image":false,"episode_player_image":"https:\/\/www.rumblespoon.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/REAL-Short-Box-New-Logo-FINAL-scaled.jpg","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"dark","subscribeUrls":{"amazon":{"key":"amazon","url":"","label":"Amazon","class":"amazon","icon":"amazon.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https:\/\/www.rumblespoon.com\/wp\/feed\/podcast\/the-real-short-box","embedCode":"
Movie Review of SHORT TERM 12, ADORE and POPULAIRE by Howard Casner<\/a><\/blockquote>