"A Beautiful Mess"

THREE LIVES AND ONLY ONE DEATH

Original title: Trois vies & une seule mort
Year: 1996
Country: France/Portugal
Language: French
Number: 906
Director: Raoul Ruiz
Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Anna Galiena, Melvin Poupaud, Chiara Mastroianni

Raoul Ruiz' Three Lives and Only One Death is a what the title suggest. In this case it's the schizophrenic man, played by Marcello Mastroianni. He's playing three different people, from a butler to a politician. We don't know whom of them he really is. He's a dangerous man, who makes it worse for the people around him. But one thing is for sure, is that it's all are about to collapse, because of all his personalities.

This might sound like a great premise for a story, and it is. I liked how it all in the begining feels like three different short films with Mastroianni playing different roles, but it rounds up with some of the stories merged with each other and we understand it's one person. I liked the story concept, some of them I liked more than the other, some of them I can't stand, specially when all kinds of genre is blended, but one can argue that because it's many different stories of different genres that it's gonna be a mess in the end anyway. But for my taste, it kind of destroys itself when they decides to have a fantasy story in the beginning.

When it comes to the characters, they are basically just marionettes for Mastroianni's crazy actions, and seems to be helpless from all of his pranks and charades. It's basically him who controls the story. The other characters hasn't any control of their own actions, which I'm not sure if I like or not. But I certainly loved Marcello Mastroianni's performance which was one of his last before he died the same year. And he tops it all with a quarter dozen splendid roles. And it's thanks to him that I give this movie a marginal thumbs up.

grade: C+

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"I Really Have to Read More Books"

TIME REGAINED

Original title: Le temps retrouvé
Year: 1999
Country: France/Italy/Portugal
Language: French, English
Number: 954
Director: Raúl Ruiz
Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Béart, Vincent Perez, John Malkovich

Raoul Ruiz' Time Regained is based on Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, a book that I should probably have read first, because this movie is to difficult to understand because it certainly doesn't follow a normal story structure. For me it's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle without the picture on the box, or looking for a treasure with out a map, which was of course the book. This is just the kind of film you have the feeling that you should read the book before the film, and from now on I shall follow that feeling.

Trying to judge it as a movie, it goes like this: It's confusing, it's impossible to keep track of who the character is, because there are too many of them. There's to many different plot lines. But what I did like was the whole setting of the film, the aristocratic one who barely notice the war. And also some of the characters are interesting, like John Malkovich as the Baron de Charlus who loves being whipped by other men on his time off. An the also features two beauties, Catherine Deneuve and Emmanuelle Béart, which is of course a plus. I did in fact like the acting pretty much, the characters have such a depth, that it actually makes me want to read the book. It's so close, but I have to give it a thumbs down because of the plot itself.

Grade: C-

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