2016 ‘Rester vertical’ Directed by Alain Guiraudie
Screenwriter Leo is searching for the wolf in the south of France. During a scouting excursion he is seduced by Marie, a free-spirited and dynamic shepherdess. Nine months later she gives birth to their child. Suffering from post-natal depression and with no faith in Leo, who comes and goes without warning, Marie abandons both of them. Leo finds himself alone, with a baby to care for.
垂直人生, 保持勃起
“He sadomizes and euthanizes an old man in front of his baby”. Sex as the beginning and end of all things. Man lost and found. A religious pastoral about how biology rules all. Nature gives and takes. Above all, I love Guiraudie skies.
Hidden behind its graphic sexuality, shock values and morbid humor is the pure heart and soul of Staying Vertical. Alain Guiraudie proves why boundary-pushing gay voices in cinema are always important even when the heterosexual world is not ready for them.
As I've said before, you can always count on Alain Guiraudie to cast charmers at the center of his productions, and Damien Bonnard is for sure the perfect fit to play Leo, a reticent writer whose sex appeals see no sexuality. In a wacky story that shows no patterns and no predictabilities, we go on a seemingly spontaneous journey that's peppered with shocking images and ambiguity that very probably account for the atrocious reviews at its Cannes premiere. But…
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My review for Movie Mezzanine appears here.
An excerpt:
What is Guiraudie trying to accomplish with Staying Vertical? For one thing, as with all of his films, Guiraudie is forging an alternate universe in which sexual fluidity is simply assumed. There are no clear boundaries between gay, straight, or bisexual in Staying Vertical. There is no predicting whose desire is going to fixate upon whom. This has been a dominant feature of Guiraudie’s cinema from the beginning. For example, in his 2009 film The King of Escape, a hefty, middle-aged gay farmer suddenly decides to have sex with a young girl (The Secret of the Grain’s Hafsia Herzi), likes it, and the two form a couple. In fact, Stranger…
The most striking shot has to be the otherworldly image of the newborn being squeezed out from its mother's womb, as if to say that life, i.e. the mere fact of being alive, is strange and magical (or alternatively that Nature sure works hard to bring us into this life, considering how little joy we find once we get here) - and there is indeed an uncanny quality to this minor-key movie, its spare, witty contours seeming to contain a whole world. The landscape adds to the spell, the rolling fields and occasional pools of water - plus a glimpse of a town where the shapes of the trams echo the sinuous curves of mountain road - the fact that…
77/100
A.V. Club review. Finally, a Guiraudie joint that fully clicked for me, both thematically and structurally. Though I'm still confused about why the old dude identifies music as Pink Floyd that is clearly not Pink Floyd. (It doesn't seem to be an intentional joke.)
Jerking off in the desert is so like him.
A very odd one. Really unsure of whether or not I liked it, but I do have interest in watching it again, so that has to be worth something. Staying Vertical is from Alain Guiraudie, the writer/director of the (in my opinion) modern masterpiece Stranger by the Lake. This never comes close to reaching the greatness of that, but there are parts of it that are absolutely interesting. For one, Alain's lack of fear when it comes to showing graphic sexuality and nudity returns. Hope you're cool with seeing an actual birth and real genitalia, because it's happening whether you like it or not. There is also something about the way…
86/100
1. Seeing as how the highest rating I gave last year was an 85, there's a good chance this will end up being my favorite film of 2017. Not going to make any claims for objectivity, tho. If I ever have a career in film, this is pretty much exactly the kind of film I would want to make (except this is obviously much much, much, much, much, better). I dunno. Something about this sort of gently swelling, After-Hoursian nightmare surrealism speaks so profoundly to me. Couldn't really tell you why. Hope it doesn't mean I'm paranoid or delusional or whatever (tho I have been told more than once that I look like young Kafka).
2. I'll be back…
The last half hour of this movie, even the last five minutes, snap the whole film into focus in a really, really important way. Not sure how successful it is and there's some that I could have done without, but it's directed so well that it almost doesn't matter. This strikes me as a unique kind of queer film - one written and directed by a gay man that aims to tackle what it means to be gay using nontraditional narratives.
If you are looking for an auteur who is unashamedly queer, look no further than Frenchman Alain Guiraudie. People sat up and took notice after his Cannes-lauded beat sex whodunnit, Stranger by the Lake, but as out there as that was (for many), by Guiraudie standards that was very near mainstream. Now, with a stash of prizes tucked under his arm, he heads back into actual queerdom with his latest, Staying Vertical.
This is outside the box stuff, though corralled back into Guiraudie’s favoured rural aestheticism. Léo (Damien Bonnard), a middle-aged writer on the run from writer’s block, spends the film’s runtime grabbing experiences where he can get them. The experiences are varied but invariably sexual. They involve fresh life,…
