(I saw these before I attended Hers’ Q&A, but didn’t get a chance to write them up til now)
Memory Lane (2010)
A quasi-sequel, in spirit and appearances, to
Primrose Hill, already the Hers film I least want to revisit. Various band members and tertiary associates/family members kill time and interact in a way that I found largely without interest. Sitting through this did give me a chance to crystalize where Hers’ strengths are found, as the film exhibits the Goofus opposite: what makes
Montparnasse and
Amanda work so well is the specificity and closeness of the films’ observations. We meet only a few characters and we are laser-focused into their lives, with details revealed organically and in a way that indicates they existed before the film started and will continue to after it ends. Hers actually had a lovely thought on this notion at his Q&A: Hers said he views films as existing not separate or “next door” to our lives, but within our lives, as part of the experience of living. And while films have clear trajectories and climaxes, life often does not. You can see this notion working throughout his work, but without a specific character focus on which to hang these normalcy markers, Hers’ generosity to his characters blurs the audience investment and ends up serving no one, neither on screen or in the seats.
Ce sentiment de l'été (2015)
We are introduced to a young woman (played by Hers-regular Stéphanie Daub-Laurent, one of the many familiar actors that pop up in most of Hers' pre-
Amanda work) and we follow her going about the mundane activities of her day until she suddenly drops dead (this isn't a spoiler, it happens within the first five minutes of the film). The rest of the film follows the twin paths of her fiancé, an American French-translator, and her sister, over the next year as their lives change in response to this tragedy. It’s impossible for me to see this as anything but a dry run for
Amanda, and while it covers much of the same ground, this like
Memory Lane seems to forget the lessons Hers appeared to have learned in
Montparnasse and spreads its focus too thinly and without much insight. It’s also more than a little jarring to see one of the Safdie brothers and Mac DeMarco playing barely fictionalized versions of themselves in the film’s NYC sequences, and Safdie’s energy in particular seems wholly at odds with Hers’ approach.
I think it’s kind of amusing how the sex scenes in Hers’ films have become gradually less and less graphic as his confidence in not needing to fall back on this kind of thing grows, with
Primrose Hill being the most explicit and exploitative,
Memory Lane muting the impact somewhat but still lingering far too long in its unnecessary depiction,
Ce sentiment de l'été giving us a more subdued sex scene finally tied to narrative needs rather than outre notions of shocking (false) intimacy, and then finally in
Amanda, lasting fleeting seconds and tied to a sweet and touching coupling, a flash of shared
amour without lingering beyond what is needed to get the idea. It like everything else in
Amanda shows how the film is a culmination in repeated efforts to arrive at using Hers’ voice to show with clarity and emotional surety the culmination of all his hangups and interests, from grief to the city to the vibrant normalcy of everyday life.
I also felt emotionally vindicated when the programmer for the Lincoln Center fest introduced the film by saying she hoped she would be able to talk afterwards since she knew she'd be crying so much during the movie! Spoilers for
Amanda:
I can’t remember the last movie I saw twice within such a short period of time, but I was struck on second viewing how knowing what happens informed my rewatch in an unexpected way: I found myself crying more in the first act, with its small scenes of everyday joy between mother and daughter & sister and brother. It reminded me of an earlier trip to NYC many years ago to visit the Jewish History Museum. Walking through level after level of their exhibit on the horrors of the Holocaust did little to impact my emotions, as I like most have become somewhat deadened to their impact. But there’s a room in the museum that is nothing but floor to ceiling pictures of hundreds of smiling, joyous French children and teenagers, all of whom we are told were killed by the Nazis. And that’s the part of the exhibit that overwhelmed me with emotion. Hers’ films gets at the same idea: a tragedy is not just the sadness of the act that instigates the change or loss, it’s the impact it takes on what came before, coloring it forever in memory. And so my second viewing of Amanda confirms my first impression: this is the best film I’ve ever seen on the subject of grief, precisely because it forgoes traditional melodramatics while showing keen insight into how personal tragedies feel to those directly involved.
I see swo has also added
Amanda to his 2019 Best Of list, hopefully more of you with access to back channels give it a chance (and of course God willing someone gives it an English-friendly release)— it’s certainly looking like a lock for a top space in my own best of the decade list too...
