Word: clevernesses
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...lovers: two are buffoons, her husband and a stranger he recruited to cheer her up, and one, a thirteen-year-old boy, is sensitive to her need for friendship. The plot is inconsistent, the jokes are obvious, and the direction is heavy-handed. You might find this film a clever and coy French farce--if you're drunk...
Arnolphe (Stephen Toope) is the quintessential insecure male chauvinist who wants his wife to be ignorant, simple and submissive. He fears clever, educated women, nearly all of whom, he is convinced, cheat on their husbands. So Arnolphe takes absurdly elaborate precautions to avoid being cuckolded: having adopted Agnes, the daughter of an impoverished peasant, Arnolphe has raised her in seclusion, isolated from the pernicious influences of education and interaction with intelligent people...
...Very Clever...
...notion of art as roof gutter is nicely suited to Wain's thoughtful treatment of two middle-aged men joyfully making fools of themselves over younger women. In less knowing hands, The Pardoner's Tale might have been only a clever sex reversal on the stock English romance about a maiden schoolteacher's brief tryst in Italy. But instead of sentimentality, Wain offers genuine sentiments. Instead of passion enveloping quivering loins in petals of fire, there is a steady sensuous glow that warms the brain...
...back to the 40s and the studio system and let me direct movies."' Carpenter's cunning proficiency, the workman like spit and polish of his low budget productions and his obvious debt to and affection for earlier movie-makers have tempted a number of critics to consider him a clever contemporary heir to several 40s and 50s directors whose exciting grade-B films have been sauvely generalized under the label film noir. Just now, with the success of Halloween, more careful critics are insisting that Carpenter is not as good as all that...