Bob le Flambeur is a brisk crime caper, directed by Jean-Pierre Melville that comes with an unexpected ending. Roger Duchesne plays the lead role with a slick white mane and a casual approach to life. There’s an inkling of that fatalism that seems to be a central element that we see in Le Samourai and Le Cercle Rouge.
Naked Gun 444 1/4?
Looking a helluva lot like Leslie Nielsen makes things confounding because there’s a tendency to think Bob’s going to slip on a banana peel or something. But no, he’s got more panache in one fingernail than George Clooney could ever have. He breezes through most everything, always seemingly in control and calm to a point. He also manages to pull a girl young enough to be his granddaughter without even trying. Its a slightly unconventional character to be the lead anti-hero in a noir crime caper.
Apparently Bob has been clean for 20 years. He’s even got a good friend in a police inspector. On the first day, he wins big at the races but then blows it all at roulette almost just as quickly, justifying the title in one nonchalant sweep. Almost broke, he hatches a plan with a mate to steal 800 million francs from a casino. He finds a Scottish backer, pays a croupier off for information and gathers a crew in preparation for the heist.
Things get complicated when someone blabs to a girl and another bitch snitches. The police get wind of things and the inspector even invites Bob for dinner, trying to persuade him not to do what he was going to. Bob pays little heed to the warning, instead suiting up for the final showdown, where things don’t quite fall into place the way we were shown beforehand.
If I have learned one important lesson from the film, it’s Bob’s little quip, “Never spill to a dame.”.
I have to hand it to Matthew Barney. Having just completed the viewing of his film, Drawing Restraint 9, I must say I am duly impressed. Visually, I think the film is a feast for the eyes. Its sensual, textural and graphic. Whether it’s a big piece of pretentiousness is entirely up to you.
To me, the film is pretty much an ultra elaborate Shinto themed wedding video that comes packaged with a tea ceremony using primodial seashells, a 25m long petroleum jelly sculpture shaped a touch like a whale, a big whaling ship, pearl divers, and some ambergris disintegrating into a spinal cord thing. On the one hand, we have these workers assembling the massive sculpture, which later interacts with the ambergris, and then gets broken into bits, all above deck or in the hold. Then, below deck, we get the simultaneously occurring love story / wedding ceremony between the 2 main characters.
You know those wedding videos that people play at wedding dinners? Well Matthew Barney & Bjork just pissed all over them and I reckon its gonna be hard to top theirs. Plus, they’re also still not actually married but they managed to make some kinda arthouse/ritualistic ceremony/film. Instead of a simple kiss the bride thing, we get a scene where they’re in a room getting flooded by petrol and they’re cutting each others limbs off, eating a slice of “sashimi” in the process, before they finally evolve into whales.
Its not quite the egg exchange in Tampopo but I guess its sorta sexy if you’re into the idea of man shedding his hair and denim (he visibly wears Levi’s!) and returning to the sea from whence he came, elevated beyond his mere mortality. Mr. Barney has now become that guy who remade Titanic into his “wedding” video and will be remembered for all eternity as such. Frankly, despite the 2 lines of dialogue in the entire film, I think its probably a whole lot more exciting than the DiCaprio/Winslet behemoth of yore. Also, there’s a happy ending!
