Olivier Assayas Poll

surprised Eric liked Cold Water so much given all the klassik rokk

That's like saying you're surprised I hated Thank God It's Friday so much given all the disco.

I remembered the bonfire party centerpiece pretty well, but otherwise the core of the film is very familiar, incl the Tragic Babe embodied by Ledoyen. Very well made from scene to scene of course, but I don't get the claims of greatness.

and he repeated the bonfire sequence to more sublime effect in Summer Hours.

well that i don't remember at all

it's at the end

Girish Shambu situates Cold Water as an "art-teen movie"

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5916-cold-water-dancing-on-the-ruins

They're not art movies, but there is much art in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Clueless.

and Heathers!

well, Girish points you toward Bresson and Yang

His list is fine, but it seems to be based on marketing--this is an art film, this is a commercial teen comedy--not artistic quality. To me, it's not that different than saying On the Beach must be a better film than Psycho, because On the Beach is about nuclear annihilation and the fate of mankind, while Psycho's about a murderer who keeps his mother's corpse locked in the basement. Many film critics would have subscribed to that in 1960.

Norman only moves his mother's corpse from her bed to the basement near the end of the movie

I'm sort of in the dark about what the discrepancy is here, clem.

Just that I think Fast Times and Clueless belong with the films he listed, but I get the sense--maybe I'm wrong--that the writer thinks non-English films about teenagers are inherently more artistic.

Oh, in that case I think you're wrong.

There are art-film releases and multiplex releases in the USA, at least in the last 44 years.

Right--which kind of circles back to my point that his notion of "art-teen movie" is grounded in marketing, not art. But I think we're going in circles now.

I think he's way more interested in art than teens, tbh.

But to each their own.

I haven't read that essay but I just watched Cold Water and it is in a completely different universe than Fast Times, Clueless, Heathers, Dazed & Confused. Yeah, "art teen movie" is otm.

(xpost) He's not though. Else he'd list Fast Times and Clueless alongside those other films.

Impasse.

I'm not trying to be willfully stubborn here. But I am going to be stubborn. We're talking past each other.

If "art-teen movie" is a genre based on how a film is marketed, its target audience, etc., then his examples make perfect sense.

But if "art-teen movie" is a genre based on how artistic a movie about teenagers is--how much it has to say about life, how much it has to say about the experience of being a teenager--then Fast Times and Clueless belong. Cold Water is a really good film--I saw it twice and would see it again. Fast Times at Ridgemont High is a better film than Cold Water. It's not great as in "great for what it is." It's a great film period.

"art film" means something specific, and it doesn't mean a "popular film" can't be art. But we all know 95% of Americans having an Edward Yang film sprung on them would walk out in 10 minutes.

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FFS

Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which I've no fondness for but that's beside the point, is not an art movie ffs.

I think it boils down to Virginie Ledoyen vs Phoeve Cates

I think we all know what this boils down to.

Nico vs the Go-Go's

I think we all know what this boils down to.

Please, continue.

Please stop.

I was trying to making a point, and I was civil the whole way. It's you who turns impulsively rude in these situations. You made some vague allusion above--I'm supposed to leave something like that unchecked? Say precisely what you want to say. And if you don't want me to respond, stop descending into nonsense like that.

Sorry for being rude, but it's a lesser sin than believing that someone writing on art films about teens, even on as consumer-minded a forum as the Criterion Collection's website, made a grievous error for not making sure to name-check Clueless.

I don't think I called it a grievous error--I understand the context in which he's writing--I'm simply saying he's making a distinction I don't agree with.

It's funny because Cold Water comes up in the liner essay (by Kent Jones?) for the CC Dazed & Confused.

I'll try to find that online, sounds good. That's how I see these things: as a continuum, not this group of films and that group of films.

(I'm guessing he makes a specific connection between Cold Water's bonfire party and the keg party in Dazed and Confused?)

It is online:

http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/424-dazed-and-confused-dream-on

Dazed and Confused was marketed as a teen comedy by the clueless Universal offshoot Gramercy Pictures, when it should have been pitched to those of us in our thirties, who had passed through this odd, floating moment in history when all decisive gestures seemed strange and suspect. One year later, Olivier Assayas would make Wood’s “horror movie” with Cold Water, which gave us the hair-raising anxiety of the seventies. Linklater was after something else..

Yes: how a film is perceived and marketed is not necessarily the same as what it actually is.

Those movies are still really different

also dazed and confused is a great movie to watch as a teen

These days I’m writing for A24 a serial based on my 1996 feature “Irma Vep.” It keeps me busy and I find it very exciting, even stimulating as it has a zany pulp element and also deals with the state of cinema today.

Just rewatched Irma Vep for the first time in probably 20 years. Such a great movie, smart and "meta" and all but still grounded in Maggie Cheung's character/performance.

I rewatched it two weeks ago and otm

I rewatched it about two years ago when it showed up and MUBI and yeah.

I love the little Godard/New Wave pastiche at the end when they show the bit of film that Rene had completed. Meanwhile, Assayas gets to make his own Hong Kong/Feuillade mash-up in the scene where she steals the necklace.

Only saw Irma Vep once, a few years ago, but he does the same thing (really well) in Something in the Air, ending with a clip of an experimental film his old girlfriend Laure is in.

(With a great Kevin Ayers song playing.)

Wasp Network is only the second of his films that I've seen (after Personal Shopper, which I really like) so I have no real way to fit it into his filmography. It's a pretty straightforward espionage thriller based on true events; the story is interesting (I don't remember the incident from the very scattered attention I paid to the news in the mid 90s) enough and the performances are fine, but as a film it is kinda generic, I suppose. Perhaps this explains why I am seeing almost zero discussion of it anywhere?

Have only seen Personal Shopper and Carlos, both of which I love - based on those, I feel like I'd be pretty into the idea of him doing a straightforward espionage thriller

I didn't like it. Generic is otm. Haven't seen Carlos but a friend told me the new one is basically a worse version.