Arnaud Desplechin

[Lowry_Sam]

Deux pianos U.S. trailer. In theaters May 1.

What a disastrous trailer! It shows way too much and is completely tonally off.

And temporally too, it hasn't appeared at a single theater in the SF Bay area this month, could it still be coming?

[therewillbeblus]

This has the theatrical release schedule bottom of page

[Aunt Peg]

And coming to DVD only on 14 July: https://kinolorber.com/product/two-pianos

[Lowry_Sam]

This has the theatrical release schedule bottom of page

And coming to DVD only on 14 July: https://kinolorber.com/product/two-pianos

So in other words, coming to a library near you by the end of the year.

[Matt]

I doubt many public libraries are buying this, and I doubt many academic libraries are still buying DVDs if it's going to be on Kanopy or Kino's streaming. In other words, I don't really know who this DVD is for.

[Lowry_Sam]

My local library still buys dvds, usually for just the biggest titles of the year (and it has never bought blu-rays). The last Criterion discs to be added were Flow & Anora. Kino titles used to be more frequent, but now that just means a handful per year. Still looking at the release schedule it looks like there's still a better chance it ends up in my library as opposed to a theater within 50 miles.

[Never Cursed]

Here's a weird bit of news: the Saudi producers of Woody Allen's next movie have also announced that they will fund Desplechin's next, The Thing That Hurts. Ruimy has thrown around the names of cast (Lea Seydoux, Jason Schwartzman, Alfre Woodard, Felicity Jones, John Turturro, Golshifteh Farahani) and producers (Wes Anderson) that are supposedly in the process of being confirmed for the movie, but the Deadline article uses much less certain language.

Per Cineuropa, this shot last month (in Belgium and Paris as well as Benin) and has wrapped with the intention of being released in 2027. Most of the cast quoted above appears to be the same, though with Noémie Merlant rather than Lea Seydoux and André Holland and J.K. Simmons(!) rather than John Turturro.

[criterionsnob]

I finally watched Esther Kahn from the French box set, and noticed it has a running time of about 163 minutes, compared to the 142 minutes of my old Wellspring DVD. That DVD also has a two minute long deleted scene

Spoiler

the dream sequence with balloon men

which has been reinstated into the film on the French BD.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

The Cannes cut was 163 minutes, which was reduced for the theatrical release to fit in an extra screening per day. The original cut was the one on the French DVD. This is incidentally the same reason there are two cuts of Ismael's Ghosts, but in that case Cannes chose to screen the shorter cut and most international distributors went with the longer director's cut.

[Omensetter]

My gosh, I wish that Desplechin box had subtitles.

I'm a big fan of Esther Kahn, and Dan Sallitt helpfully noted the differences here: https://sallitt.blogspot.com/2019/09/es ... sions.html

[criterionsnob]

Thanks for the links. I had no idea there were different cuts until today. The DVD is unwatchable in comparison to the Blu-ray, though now I may have to hold onto it, so I have both cuts.

And as for Ismael's Ghosts, I just checked and the French BD is about 135 minutes vs. 114 minutes on the Arrow. Alas, no subs whatsoever.

[nitin]

if you can find a cope of the OOP Arrow LE, that had both cuts

[senseabove]

Edit: Whoops–missed that you were taking about Ismael there.

A new restoration of the directors cut [of Esther Kahn] just played Il Cinema Rotrovato, so I assume/hope someone will be putting that out anew.

[Never Cursed]

All this back-and-forth got me to watch the longer version of Esther Kahn. Wow. Desplechin's really long movies always overwhelm the viewer with tangents that only eventually reveal themselves to be the true path to the destination (a structure that naturally lends itself to stories of self-realization and personal growth), but this is a focused and successful character study to match Comment je me suis disputé.... It's a shame to read so many contemporary reviews of the film that complain that it's either too unfocused or else that the titular character is unemotional - few critiques have ever been as far off the mark. Phoenix's performance is a beautiful and true realization of the pain experienced by a creative, repressed woman coming out of her shell, swinging between controlled stoicism and inarticulate emotion because her family was too impatient to raise her on her terms. What the aforementioned naysayers have dismissed as bloat is in fact Desplechin's patient explanation that each phase of her maturation and self-discovery can only bring her so far, can only have value when taken as a whole. Cutting her teeth as an actress doesn't make her a great talent; Ian Holm can teach her stage presence, but not how to embody markers of adulthood that she hasn't grasped; love can make her comfortable, but also ignorant to shifting emotions and the suspect intentions of others. In the end, being a functioning adult is painful enough to drive someone to drastic actions, but the marker of adulthood is the capacity to control those impulses and channel them towards a purpose.

Spoiler

It's been a while since a film has made me as uncomfortable as the two self-harm sequences did, but they don't feel exploitative or maudlin at all, nor does the movie frame them as another form of adversity for Esther to overcome. That Desplechin forces you to sit with the aftermath of the glass-chewing scene, endlessly wondering if she'll make it on stage, is a risky but successful move, and a more impactful one than if Esther had either done the play flawlessly or else only been thrown off by Emmanuelle Devos' presence. Pushing through this kind of pain is what allows Esther to become a confident, mature, human being, giving her the ability to cast her caddish ex aside and concluding the film.

If you have access to back channels, don't let the French-only nature of the box set stop you from grabbing this - 95% of the movie is in English and the stray Yiddish lines in the first half hour won't infringe upon your ability to appreciate what the film is doing.