Up and Down - 1993 - Dir. Moullet

AHHHH!!!! Up and Down was adorable. Basically covering a bike race up and down a mountain and the eccentrics doing so. Although the bulk of the film is just people biking up a mountain, it's pretty entertaining. Made up of mostly little jokes, visual or otherwise, the film has a good-natured feel that I was immediately attracted to. It's playful. Featuring a beautiful landscape of what I'm guessing is the French Alps, Moullet also lets us just take in the scenery. It's kind of like It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World except the grand prize everyone is racing towards is the pride of getting to the top. Although, I must admit, it does drag. I began to multi-task as the film went on. It can be a little difficult to watch, after all, it's almost an hour and half of biking. An hour would have been perfect, but hey, I'm not complaining. I'd even watch the movie again. It's a shame it's not better known. So far, I think this might be easily my favorite Moullet film. Granted, it was made twenty years after all of the other ones I've seen and of a completely different tone, I feel like it highlights all of Moullet's strongest suits and puts them into a simple form, a film about bicyclists.

Le Velo!

Brigitte and Brigitte - 1966 - Dir. Moullet

So I'm writing this blurb fifteen days after seeing the film. Apart from the scene where the two girls meet, I'm having trouble recalling distinct details from it. So certainly, it's not terribly memorable. It's pretty straight-forward as French New-Wave is concerned. With numerous rants, young people, and a consistent concerned with American films, even featuring a cameo from Sam Fuller. The film is less fun than the premise suggests (two almost identical girls with the same name meeting in the big city) and actually felt less fun or maybe playful than the previous Moullet films I've seen. It's his first, so it's not fair to impose such things so I'm not gonna be a dick about it. This in fact, awfully cheap looking, which I feel is a big thing to say of the generally low budget Moullet. So I suppose if you're hard up for some New-Wave and aren't familiar with Moullet, this might work. It's a nice crossroads between the two as far as I'm concerned. Not a great introduction to either though.

FRANCE!

A Girl Is A Gun - 1971 - Dir. Moullet

And less than 24 hours later, I see A Girl Is A Gun (SWEET TITLE!) another one of Moullet's features. I think I liked The Smugglers better... I THINK. I'm not exactly sure. They are both very similar featuring gratuitous running around in a desert/chase sequences. The Smugglers seems to have a lot of nice individual moments while A Girl Is A Gun feels like a stronger movie in general. I suppose that is the point that I feel I want to make about Moullet, having seen two of his movies. His movies are kind of purposeful failures in some sense. Like movies TRYING to be other movies but they can't quite cut the mustard. Like the characters aren't driven enough, or smart enough to pull through their plans. The story inevitably gets side-tracked by any old thing. A thrilling chase becomes a romantic attraction. Moullet seemed to try hard to work within his limitations of budget to make something that feels pretty original in some sense. I mean, this is definitely French New Wave, no doubt about. Oh! And Donnelle/Guy from La Chionese plays who I'm assuming is Billy the Kid (we don't ever get a proper introduction by any means). He's a scrawny guy. I watched the English dub because Moullet said with the dub he wanted to try and replicate the shabbiness of American genre films. I think that's what has really sold Moullet for me. SHABBINESS! He's definitely a little shabby. But Leaud's dub was purposefully manlier than Leaud (a skinny frenchman) appears. I mean, that's just silly. And it's fun! You know, I have fun Moullet. And A Girl Is A Gun has a totally bitchin' psychedelic score. The movie does a good job of getting progressively sillier too. Actually the same goes for The Smugglers. I feel like movies like them have a tendency to fizzle out but both of those movies sort of throw us a nice curveball that generally amps up the film in general.

Billy the Kid famously stole his pants from Beetlejuice.

The Smugglers - 1967 - Dir. Moullet

I had never heard of Luc Moullet before. I read about A Girl Is a Gun and the film came on a double feature with The Smugglers, which I watched first because it was listed first on the DVD. The man is a French New Wave director who never really hit it terribly big. Smugglers is his second feature following the tale of a customs agent who has assembled a smuggling operation with two ladies. Naturally, being french, he gets romantic with both of them. The women don't really know how to react when they learn about each other. Sometimes they try and kill one another, sometimes not. Generally the film gives in to French New Wave randomness pretty quickly. A good portion of the film involves the two women chasing each other/escaping with each other from the SMUGGLERS UNION and the government. Another portion involves the trio quitting the life of smuggling to persue the GRAND ADVENTURE of City Life working in an office. I mean, it's fun in the French New Wave-y way, a bit less pretentious than a lot of the films of that time. More prone to general silliness, as well. I didn't particularly laugh out loud by any means, but the movie is clever. And you also can to watch Francoise Vatel run around in a bikini a lot. And that lady has a lot of pluck and is quite shapely. ;) There's also a pretty adorable sequence of her BRAVELY making hot cocoa at her desk. As I look back on the film, I'm feeling quite fond towards it. At one point, they throw everything they own into a river. Later on in the film, they regret this and get everything back. It's told with a voiceover and we see footage of the stuff flowing down the river reversed. I mean, a movie that pulls that stunt has got some good ideas in my book. Also ladies wandering the desert mumbling nonsense is awesome. It really does move quite slowly, but I was still surprised the movie was only eighty minutes long. But I think the pacing made me a little critical of it. It's a fun movie to watch. I'm interested in A Girl Is A Gun but moreso in Bridgette and Bridgette which features Vatel as one of the Bridgettes.

THE HARROWING LIFE OF SMUGGLERS!