Word: bellocq
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...failing too. In this show, which travels next to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the best pictures match his dryness to his darkness. Go first to his elastic Nude (Drying Herself), which begins in weird lamplight and ends in shadow. As raw as any of E.J. Bellocq's shots of New Orleans prostitutes, it also has the strange torsion of Lee Friedlander's tumbling nudes. This is Degas, cold and formidable, who saw what was angular in what was modern, even when he painted ballerinas...
...grip of reality, aged photos are intermittently flashed against the set. Sometimes the pictures help us relate to the stylized movements on stage by giving us a sense of context, but at other times these just complicate an already nebulous plot. For example, Bolden and a fictional photographer named Bellocq make a pact in which the musician supplies his friend with nude women for subjects. Besides the questionable relation of the episode to the plot, the constant flashing of nudes borders on the offensive and pornographic...
...story line and unidentifiable in its ideology, all in all a pretty big let down. Shields conveys all the mischieviousness of childhood, and none of the mystery. Her mother (Susan Sarandon) strands her in their New Orleans brothel without us ever really understanding why. And although a photographer named Bellocq (David Carradine) comes to save Shields and sweep her into marriage, Carradine is never really all there. Even the cinematography, exquisite as it is, never really hangs together; unlike in his other films, Malle never really uses his colors and compositions to illustrate his theme. But that's the real...
...seedy brothel atmosphere that surrounds Violet is equally unexplored. How Malle will photograph the setting of the Storyville section of New Orleans is an obvious question, since the plot itself draws attention to photography. In his screenplay Malle crosses Violet's path with that of a photographer named E.J. Bellocq, an actual figure who shot a series of photographs of Storyville prostitutes in 1912. (Here he arrives to take pictures and ends up living with Violet and finally wedding her.) Malle also has an acute aesthetic sense; his other films have been very painterly in their effects and often masterful...
...flesh out that theme. She simply ups and weds one of her johns in the middle of the movie--leaving Violet being and leaving us wondering why she did it, and where we missed something. Less self-explanatory still is David Carradine's portrayal of the photographer-suitor, Bellocq. When he first intrudes on them the house madame calls him an "invert"--he begins to just hang around, looking less like a sinister voyeur than a dazed peanut vendor at a ballpark. The scene where he finally admits his love for Violet lacks both preparation and emotion...