- Jacques Doillon’s Ponette, featuring an extraordinary performance by four-year-old Victoire Thivisol, screens at Doc Films on Monday at 7 PM.
This Saturday the Siskel Center kicks off a two-month tribute to Jean-Luc Godard with 35-millimeter screenings of the director’s first two films, Breathless and Le Petit Soldat. From there the theater will present 12 more features from Godard’s trailblazing first decade and two from the early years of his late period (Hail Mary and Every Man for Himself). The centerpiece of the series is the Chicago premiere of Goodbye to Language, Godard’s latest (and possibly last) feature and his first to be shot in 3-D. The Siskel is installing new equipment in order to present Language in its intended format, and to celebrate the upgrade they’re running a sidebar series of 3-D classics, among them House of Wax and Creature From the Black Lagoon. That these movies seem to have nothing to do with Godard makes their presentation feel that much more Godardian, as the director’s mind-expanding take on film history (which reached its apotheosis in the video series Histoire(s) du cinéma) is built on unexpected associations.
- Madeleine Desdevises and Claude Hebert in The Hussy (aka )
One of the most distinctive things about Doillon might be the way he blurs the distinctions between outsider and professional filmmaking—his accomplished work with actors has inspired comparisons with such great directors as Cassavetes and Bergman, while his confined, nonjudgmental perspective evokes home movies. In my list of my favorite movies of 2014, I noted that one of the most encouraging trends in independent filmmaking is the repurposing of—and elaboration on—devices traditionally associated with home movies. Doillon seems to have anticipated this trend decades ago, making him a worthy subject of study today.
