Word: ne
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...comical in a way that the men's flabby clowning is not. Her blue-blooded New England accent, sharp and petted, is a perfect edge against Nicholson's nasal, sparwling diction and Beatty's bland tones (though she's mostly allowed to say things like. "You're so je ne sais quoi, I could just eat you!"). She has a great face, amazingly variable: she looks like the cherub on the Gerber Food labels. When she rages about boredom and neglect she might be indicting more than her costars. If Nichols had given her more to do she might have...
...plot, which matters least of all, has to do with Fanny Brice's later years after her separation from Nicky Arnstein, who did her so bad in the original. Omar Sharif, forever limpid, shows up again as the ne'er-do-well gambler who tries to tempt Fanny away from Billy, but she rejects him. The ending is an occasion for a few tears and a little heartbreak; we well know from all the funny ladies of movie history that happiness does not come with success. Only producers might think otherwise, and they keep it to themselves...
...about love and loss and even larger issues, such as old age, war and redemption. Brel is not modest, and neither are the people who honor him here. The songs have lots of volume but no energy or pith. The film's notion of mise en scène is to have one number-about sons-staged in front of a trio of crosses from which dangle three uncomfortable youths...
...Brel himself shows up looking appropriately dour, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth in the accepted Gallic manner. He slouches over a beer and sings one of his best-known tunes, Ne Me Quittes Pas, which we might translate roughly as "Please Don't Split." This is the first number after the film's intermission. It would have been more appropriate, even more poignant, if it had come just before...
Alceste's personal dilemma is peculiarly ironic. Here is a man who has an almost physical revulsion from all that society stands for, yet he is desperately in love with a girl who is society's darling. Célimène (Diana Rigg) is a widow of 20, a teasing, witchy, worldly enchantress. She gossips maliciously, she lies, she keeps two other lovers on the string. Yet until she finally rejects him, the puritan Alceste is in tormented thrall to this pagan Lilith...