Philippine is not a name, it’s a game. A silly, juvenile game that teenage girls play and appears once in Adieu Philippine. It’s meaning is incredibly clear. “Farewell Philippine” is a farewell to adolescence. French cinemagoers in the early 1960s would perfectly understand.
Jacques Rozier may be the most obscure filmmaker of the French New Wave. Compared to his contemporaries -Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, and Varda -he has received far less attention as a figure of the movement, perhaps in large part due to the fact his career was far less prolific. In a career dominated largely by shorts he made just five feature films, only one of which (arguably two) came from the era of the New Wave’s prime. But he was there at the beginning -Adieu Philippine predating the major works of Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette- and following the death of Godard he wound up being the last surviving associate of that movement, until passing himself just two years ago.
Adieu Philippine may be his only substantial contribution to the French cinema of that era, but it very much belonged and spoke with the same stylistic zeal as Breathless or Jules et Jim. Specifically it seemed to capture the atmosphere of youth at the time -even if in perhaps a limited range. In many regards it is the original French American Graffiti, especially in the note that it ends on.
The story centres on three characters in the summer after their end of schooling -Michel (Jean-Claude Aimini), who works as a camera operator at a Paris TV station while awaiting orders to ship out to Algeria, and two girlfriends Juliette (Stefania Sabatani) and Liliane (Yveline Céry), each attracted to him. He dates one, then the other through his time in Paris whilst he and his colleague find apparent work with an Italian commercial director Pachala (Vittorio Capriloi), until he absconds with their money. In the latter part of the film, Michel quits his job to holiday in Corsica until his orders come through with the girls following him there and the three of them embarking on a quest to get that money back from Pachala.
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The film’s pace is very loose and relaxed -a coming-of-age hangout movie in the vein of Richard Linklater (whose endorsement is why I watched it). Though there is conflict and stakes, they aren’t particularly important -Michel seeming mildly interested at best in confronting Pachala, and the girls’ interest in Michel never translating as much more than superficial and sexual, in spite of how far they are willing to go for him. We get more than a few reminders of everyone’s relative immaturity -Michel with his veneer of ambivalence, his strutting confidence and stubborn attitude (also the tidily-kept upper lip hairs of a kid desperate to grow a moustache for real); the girls rather constantly giggle, frolic, and see everything including competition over Michel as whimsical fun, until it is not -and threatens to tear their relationship.
That comes late and the movie plays with a menage a trois dynamic instead for quite a while. Yet it is not so shallow as may appear, this pretense of two girls chasing a boy they are to some extent willing to share (a sentiment he encourages early, ordering at their first meeting a milkshake with three straws Archie style). Perhaps a credit to Rozier’s co-writer Michèle O’Glor, the girls are modestly more curious and compelling characters than Michel, with a better conveyed interiority that speaks realistically to their feelings and motivations. Michel by contrast is a fairly distant protagonist, perhaps because of the inevitability of what awaits him.
Though the movie concerns itself on the surface with the nuances of this relationship, while also occasionally checking in on Pachala -a comic character- whose commercial ideas, stolen or otherwise aren’t particularly good (and we get some fun commentary from Rozier on the industry and business of television), what the film actually seems to represent is that last thrill of youth before adulthood. Michel is on the verge of leaving his adolescence behind in an incredibly dramatic way, and what’s different between this film’s approach to its theme and American Graffiti is that there’s no nostalgia here. It’s the same sense of tragedy in the end, but more immediately striking. The Algerian War that Michel is on his way to fight would end a year after the film was made, but Rozier didn’t know that. And there existed a generation of young French men like Michel facing the same thing. That had to have resonated in a profound way; this movie’s sense of escapism, its gorgeous Corsican beaches, sensual allusions to sexual freedom, even its compliment to the ingenuity of youth -something Pachala claims to value in his interview with Michel- it really meant something. Hell, it means something today as well.
Criterion Recommendation: Strange Days (1995)
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Kathryn Bigelow should get some recognition in the Criterion Collection, and it should be for perhaps her most esoteric movie Strange Days -a thrilling futurist film set in a Los Angeles that is incredibly and critically about the time it was made in. Extrapolating off of the city in the aftermath of the L.A. Riots -which the movie comments on severely- it is set on the eve of the new millennium and follows the mystery surrounding a violent rape and murder carried out with the use of a virtual reality device that allows people to experience memories and sensations second-hand. Blunt and uncomfortable in the POV depiction of its crimes, the starkness of the movie’s subject matter and themes is palpable and unavoidable -as it likewise predicts a lot of the worst elements and effects of the internet age. Deemed to be the 90s Blade Runner in its noir-influenced style, it features engaging and awesome performances from Ralph Fiennes (hot off of Schindler’s List with a halfway convincing LA accent) and Angela Bassett -who has never been cooler. Their relationship winds up being one of the movie’s subtle charms, and it is otherwise such a distinct and captivating movie for Criterion to consider.
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