If you have been following my account for a while, you may have seen my 2 {star} review for Jacque Rivettes’s OUT-1 — his twelve hour long magnum opus inspired by Balzac’s THE THIRTEEN. I had my reasons: lengthy run-time, pretentious commentary, and lack of narrative flow. And I’ll stay by my claim of it’s challenging nature, but I won’t mark that as a flaw, but instead a token of what makes this film so legendary.
For the past week…
Laemmle. 35mm.
The second we got out of the theatre, me and my dad got into a conversation with this older Italian man who walked out with us. He asked me how I got into older foriegn movies, and we chatted for a bit about directors like Jacque Rivette, Fellini & other classic auteurs.
He told us about how he acted in sitcoms when he was a teenager — and showed me photos of him acting. The man told us how…
A perfect piece of nostalgia, humor & heart. The film-making is masterful, the script is flawless, and the performances are phenomenal. There is no plot — just some kids hustling around — making money & memories, enjoying themselves against the backdrop of San Fernanando in the seventies. And this is perhaps the most PTA film PTA has ever done: oddball characters with substantial charm, perfectly captured era (via David Bowie & some glorious cinematography) and one random ass subplot that serves no purpose other than being batshit crazy, in this case, drunk rich Sean Penn riding a motorcycle over a fire pit screaming nonsense. It’s really fucking great.
