Take One (Oct 1976)

RILMIREVIEWS Pease porridge cold Will Aitken reviews L’Argent de poche (Small Change) Directed by Francois Truffaut It has always seemed to me that a very few children can go an awfully long way. Twenty minutes with any two assure a sufficiency. Francois Truffaut manages to give us two hundred children for two hours in his new L’Argent de poche — certainly a glut for any but the most ardent pedophiles. A fairy tale of sorts, L’Argent de poche presents the idyllic little lives of the little people of Thiers, France. All the mummies are madonnas and all the daddies at least concerned and involved, and infants fall from breathtakingly high windows without receiving a scratch. There is one unfortunate but lovable delinquent who frequently gets battered by his reclusive and drunken mother and grandmother, but he is, according to his school principal, “‘un cas spécial.” His status as the one miserable child in Thiers — his ramshackle home a Grimm contrast to the comfy bourgeois abodes of his classmates — gives Truffaut the chance to deliver a neat economic analysis of the oppression of children. Somewhere between the economic analysis and the fairy tale, L’Argent de poche runs aground on the shores of Ickypoohland. We are dragged through every possible obligatory scene of childhood — awkward adolescents necking at the movies, a bashful lad’s infatuation with an older woman, the delinquent’s essays at petty thievery, a delightful gamin wreaking havoc on his mum’s groceries. Comparisons with Robert Mulligan’s Summer of ’42 are unhappily inescapable (and also with the self-indulgent excesses of Felliniis Amarcord), for Truffaut plays directly to his audience, calling up the most facile emotional responses with transparent situations that seem to arrive labelled “Winsome” or “Bittersweet” or simply “Cute.” Visually L’Argent de poche is a strikingly pretty film, Thiers and the children equally photogenic. There are, in Will Aitken in his spare time wanders from day-care centre to day-care centre disabusing the inmates of the existence of Santa Claus. 38 65) Pe #1 L 3 Se & : hae Two winsome cuties from L’Argent de Poche. fact, no ugly children amoiig the 200 — no one sports glasses or braces or cheeksful of acne. One positively longs for an evil-smelling nose-picking noxious little brat, for a real kid complete with the monstrous complexities of childhood. We miss the foul-mouthed Zazie, Antoine Doinel igniting his altar to Balzac, the school children in Zéro de conduite raining bricks and rooftiles on their parents and teachers. And where is Humbert Humbert when we need him? L’Argent de poche is not an especially boring movie. There are many pleasant chuckles to be had and some _heartwarming sermonettes (“Les enfants — ils sont tres solides’). And it is charming and well-made for all its slightness. But then so are commercials for Coca Cola. =) icarus drowned Will Aitken reviews The Man Who Fell to Earth Directed by Nicolas Roeg Despite enough hand-held cameras to cover a_ tiddly-wink convention, innuWill Aitken is also a Montreal-based critic, broad caster and poet. He teaches at Concordia University and Vanier College. merabie ominous zooms and flashy razor cuts from Japanese Noh theatre duels to S & M battlesex — the most memorable image in Nicholas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth lies on the printed page. An anxious-jawed science prof (Rip Torn) receives, for no apparent reason, a coffeetable art book from his estranged wife. He flips the book open to a glossy reproduction of Brueghel’s “The Fall of Icarus,” and the camera moves back to show us the accompanying text, Auden’s poem ‘Musée des Beaux Arts.” Unhappily, we haven't time to scan more than the first few lines before we’re whisked away to parts less tranquil. The Brueghel remains, the blessed stillpoint, while The Man Who Fell to Earth clatters on. But never on much beyond its Heinleinian title. Thomas Jerome Newton (David Bowie) falls to earth from a distant dry planet in search of water for which he hopes to trade advanced technological secrets (self-developing film and phonograph records in the form of IBM Selectric-type balls seem about the best he can manage). His hopes for a return home with revitalizing water are dashed, however, by the earthling distrust of things alien. We know, long before Newton does, that he can’t go home again; it’s simply a question of waiting for Paul Mayersberg’s screenplay to admit neither Newton or the considerable remaining footage of the film is going to go much of anywhere.