Quai des Orfèvres & Bright Future

Quai des Orfèvres refers to the police station where much of the latter parts of the film takes place. It's basically a simple story, of a jealous husband/accompanist of a singer who may be willing to use sex to get ahead in her career and how the murder of a potential backer of the singer involves them both in recriminations and jail. It also has a terrible "twist" at the end, something that extremely pissed me off, something that would make me hate the Hays Code even more than I do, were the film not French. I'm not sure what the hell the point of the twist was. What makes the film interesting are the characters, especially the police officer investigating the case (and who has a North African son from his time in the army) and the lesbian photographer/pornographer (although she'll point out it's not illegal) living downstairs of the couple. Plus, you have an in-depth look at two centers of society: the theatre and the police station, with all that those entail. Backstage problems and the standing-room only crowd, the hardworking police officers and the only slightly annoyed by the inconvenience of being caught criminals are also things the film deals with in a skilled and interesting way. Just a little film that adds up to far more than the plot due to the details done right. It's directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, the only person who ever made a Hitchcock film better than Hitchcock could have: Les Diaboliques, a book that Hitchcock wanted to film so much that when he missed out on it, the authors wrote him the basis for Vertigo. I haven't seen Wages of Fear yet, but I have seen Sorcerer, the English-language remake, and I certainly have respect for Clouzot.

Bright Future is a strange film about two friends, one a guy who attempts to acclimate a poisonous salt-water jellyfish to fresh-water, and the other a mentally challenged and socially maladjusted guy with anger management issues. It's from Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who also did Pulse and Cure, but apparently, his last couple of films have found him floundering slightly after the awesomeness that was Pulse. This film is just weird, as the jellyfish becomes a huge metaphor for the need to move on with your life. It's very much about generational conflict (the boss of the friends is a particularly annoying example of trying to reclaim your past, but SPOILER interestingly both older people who try to reconnect end up being destroyed by that END SPOILER) and brine shrimp. Well, mainly about the generational conflict. The more I think about the film, the more I like it. While watching it, I wondered just what the hell was going on, but after a while, I finally understood the jellyfish metaphor, and the tug-of-war between the junk seller and the youth gang. Certainly not as good as Kiyoshi's Cure and Pulse, but far better after reflecting than during. And was clearly shot on digital film, as many scenes had that grainy look so typical of the not-extremely expensive cameras most filmmakers use.