Olivier Assayas Poll

My favorite working filmmaker, I think.

Anyone seen Something in the Air yet?

of what i've seen; irma vep, demonlover, clean, and carlos; it's carlos, no question.

i was not nearly as taken w/ summer hours as many ppl but id still prob vote that (havent seen carlos)

I voted for Summer Hours. That offhand, "slight" little thing kills me.

think it opens in NY this Friday or next.

I will likely be the only person voting for Les Destinees. Then Carlos, Cold Water, Late August Early September.

I've liked them all except Boarding Gate.

Carlos is probably my favorite. We should do an Audiard poll.

Summer Hours, Irma Vep, Cold Water, Demonlovers. I'm unconvinced I need to see the rest.

I saw Clean again recently and it's much more than an excellent Nick Nolte performance. Assayas understands families – blood or makeshift – moving in confined spaces quite well.

Demonlover is my least favorite; I hate cybershit.

Demonlover def his worst that I've seen, have yet to see Clean but of the rest it's gotta be Carlos. I hate throwing masterpiece around, but that one came the closest of anything I've seen in the last few years.

irma vep, haven't seen carlos

Only seen Carlos so I won't vote but it is incredible.

Surprised to say I've seen four. Carlos, easily--looking forward to the new one.

irma vep!

Have, um, never seen any of his films, though Clean, Summer Hours and Carlos have all been somewhere in the depths of my endless "to watch" list. I guess I can let these poll results decide where I should start for me.

Irma Vep and Summer Hours are good starts.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I've only seen Demonlover and Carlos, both of which I liked a lot but Carlos takes it.

From the D.C. thread (Stevie D didn't like Demonlover):

I was just asking about the AFI's separate fest:

May 2–July 1
Hailed by many as the most important of contemporary French filmmakers, Olivier Assayas has made more than 20 films across a diversity of genres, including features, documentaries and shorts.

He directed Irma Vep and Carlos and others (and includes Sonic Youth, John Cale & Pixies music on the soundtrack in some--says the blurb), and that controversial one Stevie says to skip (soulds like good advice).

― curmudgeon, Monday, April 29, 2013 5:29 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
sounds

― curmudgeon, Monday, April 29, 2013 5:30 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
it's not even controversial it's just boring and poorly made.

― siouxsan sarandon (Stevie D(eux)), Monday, April 29, 2013 5:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
you can skip Boarding Gate too. Summer Hours/Irma Vep/Carlos essential.

― Gukbe, Monday, April 29, 2013 5:38 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

boarding gate isn't that bad. it's just... really trashy.

I've only seen Demonlover and Carlos, both of which I liked a lot but Carlos takes it.

― 誤訳侮辱, Monday, April 29, 2013 7:37 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

demonlover was nuts! loved it.

but it's gotta be Carlos.

more like olivier assy-ass am i right?

ugh demonlover was so dull

Summer Hours is my favorite of those I've seen, I think. Carlos was also very good.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I saw Irma Vep when I was in HS and I didnt get it. Peace

Summer Hours one of my faves of the last five years.

Something In The Air is a real drag

I'm cool with the three finalists.

Something in the Air (orig title: Apres Mai) is not a real drag, but I suppose it is a sort of downer-sequel to Cold Water, as it's set in the going-downhill era of student radicalism (1971-72), and CW had a better (or more original?) bonfire scene.

And looking at this dude is not any kind of drag:

http://images.movieplayer.it/2012/12/14/qualcosa-nell-aria-clement-metayer-in-una-scena-del-film-261174.jpg

They were all very pretty but the lead actress in particular was a cinematic sedative

she was a Serious Young Lady, didn't bother me.

Pretty close to Number None above on Something in the Air--pedestrian, anyway (or maybe I've just seen variations on this basic material too many times now). And the deadpan of everyone--lead guy in particular--wears me down after a while. Doesn't anyone here ever smile? The Nick Drake song was nice, and I've got to track down the Kevin Ayers song played over the end credits.

Watching this tonight.

had a really gd time at this, last night. i thought it was actually quite different subject matter for a film - the immediate post-'68 period of european leftism, which in some ways was an even more ideological/political battleground - and something that i thought the film articulated really well in places (ie that great scene in the village square where the audience and filmmakers hash out the clash between radical politics and radical film representation - nice little non-didactic laying out of 'what was at stake'). ok, maybe it's another coming-of-age/coming-of-adult-disillusionment romance, but it looked gorgeous (including all the gorgeous pouting lead performers), the music was spot on throughout (dr strangely strange! and i liked the faux-prog gig in purple), i was sold on all the fire imagery (burning corso's 'gasoline' as an act of remembrance) and its sun-stroked sense of drift (from country to country, lover to lover). i have also stayed at that incredible palatial youth hostel in venice and was stunned to see it featured in the film (tho' i did notice an out-of-period electronic indicator on a london underground scene)

and the lead actor dude was totally laughing, never mind smiling, in that terrif scene abt simenon and maigret

youth hostel in FLORENCE

Maybe someone else can watch for that--I remember him as being irritated in that scene, not amused. I honestly don't remember him ever breaking out of that one flat, neutral expression he had the whole way. Which sometimes can work for me--Anzavour in Don't Shoot the Piano Player--but usually doesn't. I remember even Anzavour wryly smiling at times, though, or even someone like Hackman in The Conversation.

Don't mean to fixate on that one point. Three things I liked: the bonfire party made me nostalgic for that time in my life when I drugged and drank and didn't care; the elliptical ending was nice; and the Kevin Ayers song, which I've identified as "Decadence" from '73 or so.

and the lead actor dude was totally laughing, never mind smiling, in that terrif scene abt simenon and maigret

Terrific when you think of the relationship between cinema and TV, its almost as if Assayas was wanting to put across how wrong he was about what his father was up to? (guessing this is part-autobiog) and of course when you think about how cinephilia went to hell to today where its wall-to-wall HBO. You see that scene and think to the awful Bradshaw rev in The Guardian where he knocks it for nostalgia and you think wtf was he watching. It is nostalgia, but in scenes like this there are no illusions.

re: music, Beefheart's Abba Zaba was nice to hear, liked that he wasn't that bothered to aargh 'soundtrack' the early 70s.

Ward Fowler otm

Yeah

Forgot the flipping-through-records scene--obviously an homage to Almost Famous. (Yes, kidding.) That was great.

The Slant review gets at some of the reasons why the film fell short for me.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/something-in-the-air

Gilles and Christine are relatively bland, albeit pretty, ciphers...the film, enveloping as it is, proves woefully short on burning dramatic or thematic intensity.

I don't know that I needed burning intensity, but something along that road would have helped. I love Carlos.

Richard Brody didn't like it.

I did.

he's kind of a chameleon, in terms of the thematics and subject matter of his films. something about his body of work feels modish--not as obviously or as crassly as, like, gus van sant or tsai ming liang or something, but just like he's making films to be cool or something. i know that's not a very sophisticated criticism. he just doesn't seem to have a recognizably original approach, and he ends up doing the same boring handheld camera thing for most of his films. i admit seeing "irma vep" twice--when it came out, and then about four years ago--and didn't "get" it either time... by which i mean, didn't get what critics seemed to feel was so startlingly original or incisive about it. it felt like he was making the film _for_ critics, in a way, and thus everything kind of reduced to this low-frequency feedback loop.

i admit i kind of put him and arnaud desplechin in the same box in my mind, though i recognize that he's probably a more interesting filmmaker than desplechin (whose films i mostly cannot stand).

my mom really liked summer hours.

i really liked cold water and, to a lesser extent, carlos.

also the poll skipped a few of his features, no? or maybe just désordre (which I haven't seen)?

how do you pronounce his name, anyway? ah-say-ahz?

he ends up doing the same boring handheld camera thing for most of his films.

disagree? At some point in his last three films his camera will lose interest in people and note these people's interaction with the environment. It's quite moving. He's probably my favorite living director, which sounds more pretentious than I intend.

Where Brody is hopelessly wrong is noting how Assayas is modish in the best sense: his characters have lived through the allusions they make to literature, film, poli sci, etc.

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.

The perfect couple pic.twitter.com/08VJAVm0tk

— Nicky Smith (@nickyotissmith) February 9, 2021

Non-Fiction was on Kanopy so I watched it purely because it was Assayas... my God it was awful!

Anyone watch the Irma Vep miniseries? I just finished the first episode, which I enjoyed. Hard for me to imagine that even at eight hours it will supplant the original for me, but it’s pretty entertaining on its own.

The original?

I mean the original Irma Vep movie, not the original Les Vampires.

I thought it was excellent!

demonlover robbed

The new Irma Vep series doesn't really go anywhere at all plot-wise (if that is important to people), but it is a nice reflection on the 1996 film and the original 1915-1916 series, and is funny, inventive and visually beautiful

still think about SUMMER HOURS all the time

need to go back to CLOUDS soon, had to turn it off for extradiegetic reasons last month

Summer Hours is close to being my favorite film by anybody.

Irma Vep: The Series was a really fun summer watch. The way things are going I’d be surprised if HBO funds another hour long show so niche and low stakes any time soon.

Odd sentence from the Assayas Wikipedia entry: "His work has become synonymous with the film movement known as the New French Extremity ..."

Maybe you could put Demonlover in there, but that's a long way from his work being synonymous. I've never classed him with that group at all.

Right up there with Arnaud Desplechin among horror-heads.

when I saw the Irma Vep series I had just rewatched Maren Ade’s Everyone Else (a film I liked much more on second viewing). It also starred Lars Eidinger, and I thought it was interesting to see the comparison between his roles in those

Finished the TV series, a good diversion during COVID week. I loved it! It's completely ridiculous that it even exists (as several characters note at various points), it's inherently self-indulgent, but it's so much fun. The last episode is pretty glorious, it's really firing on all cylinders.

I watched Summer Hours again this afternoon: the best film of the 2000s (that decade, to be clear). So wise about property and the benign indifference b/w siblings and parents. I know no other film like it.

Is it still the image on your homepage? Haven’t checked in a while.

Not anymoe.

I liked it a lot, will have to see it again.

I'm still thinking about the new version of Irma Vep, a story about the chaos and chemistry of making movies, and about how successful filmmaking involves many accidents - personal relationships, fortuitous casting, productive clashes between film departments. I loved that it made many references to Assayas' first iconic Irma Vep (1996) as well as to the original source of inspiration, Les Vampires from 1916

I still think Boarding Gate is really underrated, the sense of movement is so thrilling (same as in Demonlover I suppose)

Watched the early short film Laissé inachevé à Tokyo with Elli Medeiros - the plot is kind of nothing (bored author goes to Japan and gets involved with/escapes from gangsters, told non-linearly) but it's absolutely beautiful to look at and well worth 20 minutes of your time.

omg demonlover

beyond description, a thriller that barely has a story and if there is one its plot movements only occur only in the unconscious senses, in diffracted reflections, in the cold light droning from computer screens, also contains tentacle hentai and gimp outfits, the best movie ever made

like an episode of succession that gradually wanders into a dennis cooper novel

loved watching the power relationships in this film invert and revert and spiderweb with the film barely remarking on it at all

It's a hell of a trip, that film.

It deserved a couple votes.

Kind of want to watch Carlos again, the cinema version, never saw the miniseries, maybe will finally watch Demonlover first.

Maybe I did watch Demonlover before but have forgotten it, so another reason to watch.

Recommend the whole Carlos series! I enjoyed the immersion.

Indeed. A real kick.

Not easy to stream it, unfortunately.

can't believe you hadn't watched demonlover, brad

now go see boarding gate next!!

started from the bottom
now we're here

dreamlover on Criterion Channel!

er Demonlover

Finally watched Something in the Air after meaning to forever. Very much enjoyed it, I thought it was charming and evocative. Traffics in a certain level of nostalgic romanticism, but that's OK with me. I'm kind of a sucker for that whole era.

Have you seen Cold Water? It's like a blueprint for Something in the Air, and--I think--much better.

No, it's also been on the mean-to list for a while. I should.