LIONS LOVE ***1/2
IDEA: The exploits of a trio of hedonistic actors, who welcome visiting underground New York filmmaker Shirley Clarke into their rented home in the Hollywood Hills.
BLURB: Has there ever been a filmmaker who could make a lolly-gagging lark as consistently delightful and engaging as Agnès Varda? From so many angles, Lions Love is nothing more than a piddling romp, an off-the-cuff goof made while Varda was horsing around in LA with a Warhol actress and the guys who created Hair. But for the consummate Belgian director, having fun and producing meaningful art are never mutually exclusive. Refusing to settle for the frivolous or haphazard, Varda pours her inexhaustible ingenuity and ludic spirit into the film, imbuing it with both formal rigor and loosey-goosey energy, pin-point artistry and a relaxed aimlessness reflective of California’s easygoing vibe. Varda revels in her bag of tricks as she merges documentary and fiction in meta-cinematic collage, accenting events with everything from whimsical, cellophane-printed intertitles to an offscreen chorus. It’s a jocose celebration and vivid time capsule of free-living late-60s America, but Varda knows there’s more than just sunshine outside the windows. Gradually, as in the director’s Cléo from 5 to 7, grim current events creep up from the margins, interrupting the characters’ frolicsome tomfoolery and giving their indulgent dawdling some much needed perspective. Robert Kennedy is killed. Warhol is shot. A TV draped with the American flag arrests the image, idealism fading in mass-mediated real time. Without exactly stopping the party, Varda notes the literal and metaphorical earthquakes building beyond the frame. Yet the art persists, spontaneous and unruly, its form resiliently mutating to the shape of cultural upheaval.
No comments:
Post a Comment