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Greta Gerwig’s Little Women Finds New Life In A Classic

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After over a dozen adaptations on big and small screens, does the world really need Greta Gerwig’s take on Little Women? For reviewer Chris Cassingham, the answer is a resounding yes.

Louisa May Alcott’s book Little Women is about four girls growing up during and after the Civil war; Greta Gerwig’s movie Little Women is, in many ways, about that book. Good adaptations mold and reshape their inspirations to say something prescient about the times in which we live, but the greatest ones go beyond that, paying respect to their origins while reevaluating the way they need to be presented to today’s audiences.

Alcott’s Little Women has been adapted for film and television over a dozen times. What is there left to mine from the 150 year-old pages borne of her real life? Gerwig, directing her second feature film, manages to distill overlooked modern concerns about artistic integrity and a woman’s economic imperatives from Alcott’s beloved novel, creating a film that feels alive with these ideals, as if they were being introduced for the very first time.

To do this, Gerwig makes significant changes to Little Women’s narrative structure. Past and present intermingle in ways that may confuse a passive viewer, but will reward an active one. The film opens on Jo March (Saiorse Ronan) in New York City, already making her own way as a writer, living in a boarding house, and already friends with Freidrich Bhaer (Louis Garrel).

The destinies of Jo and her sisters Meg (Emma Watson), Beth (Eliza Scanlen), and Amy (Florence Pugh), are divergent branches of the same existence; they hint at the wild storm of potential and conflict that colored Alcott’s own life. It is 1868 and each sister has a life of their own: Meg, a mother of two, is trying her best to live frugally, though not invincible to her desire to live more elegantly; Beth, frail and quiet, is still at home with Marmee (Laura Dern), passing the time by playing the piano; and Amy, living in Paris as her Aunt March’s (Meryl Streep) companion, is practicing painting but harboring doubts about her talent.

Gerwig hearkens to Jo March’s past organically; often in throwaway moments, such as when Jo burns the hem of her dress by the fireplace at the boarding house in New York as she furiously scribbles away in a journal. Other times they are deliberate, a reflection of Alcott’s dedication to telling a story that is distinctively hers. The scorched dress by the fireplace doesn’t trigger a flashback, but it certainly inspires one; that flashback occurs a few minutes later during a boisterous party that fluidly transitions to the warm tones and hopeful sentiments of seven years earlier at the March house, as the sisters prepare for another party. There, Jo meets Laurie (Timothee Chalamet), a long-limbed, energetic free spirit, unencumbered by the weight of his social position. He asks Jo to dance, but she says she can’t on account of her accidentally burning the hem of her dress earlier by another fireplace. 

These moments and others are fuel both for the story that is unfolding in front of us, and for one yet to happen. The memories play a wonderful trick on the audience, and betray the powerful pull of home that is working on Jo from the very beginning. When she receives a letter from Marmee saying Beth is sick again, her mind drifts off to Christmas morning years ago — their trip to the Hummel family to give them food and supplies, the letter from their father, and their play, “Poison,” rehearsed to perfection under Jo’s dictatorial control. Once Jo returns home to help take care of Beth, the memories come swiftly and directly; memories of the beach, of Meg’s wedding, of Jo’s burnt book.

Amy March’s life in Paris, happening parallel to Jo’s life in New York City, is another critical anchor to Gerwig’s thesis about independence and economic sacrifices. Dissatisfied with her talent as a painter, Amy decides to give up the craft and marry Fred Vaughn — though Laurie, idly wasting his time as a Parisian socialite, harbors feelings for her, too. When he visits Amy’s studio to apologize for his drunken outburst at a party, they have a prescient discussion about the kinds of sacrifices women have to make to secure economic stability.

Laurie, ever the romantic, believes Amy is free to marry rich, just as long as she loves the man. Amy, on the other hand, is attuned to the restrictions already working against her, even before she has given up on her passion. She knows she is not afforded the same freedoms as Laurie, who she has noticed is wasting away his time and money in Paris, while she has to worry about securing a husband in case she cannot make her own money as a painter. 

Gerwig’s talent in cohesively threading flashbacks through the present is equal to her generosity for her characters. More often than not, once Jo has returned home, memories weave their way in and out of the lives of all the sisters, not just Jo’s. The most powerful and emotionally devastating of these belong to Beth, overlooked in previous adaptations but now a central figure representing, as Amy says before her return home, “the best of us.” It’s a testament to Gerwig’s unwavering commitment to the source materials — that is, Little Women the book, and historical accounts of Alcott’s own life — that she can outsource these memories to all members of the March family while maintaining the integrity of the book’s message.

In the wake of Beth’s death and Amy’s return and marriage to Laurie, Jo’s story is the only one left to be tied up. In her despair, fueled by lost loves of all kinds, she doggedly writes down her life. All through the night she churns out page after page of her years of longing, desire, and heartbreak as a young woman. It’s the opening chapters to a book called Little Women. Gerwig gracefully weaves Jo’s writing with her spontaneous — verging on contrived — coupling with Friedrich, who has shown up at the March house out of the blue to see her, as well as her final meeting with her New York editor, Mr. Dashwood (Tracy Letts). He’s meant to arrange the publishing terms for the book, having been made aware of its potential by his daughters, who read the chapters Jo sent and demanded to know the rest of the story.

Dashwood offers Jo either an upfront payment in exchange for the book’s copyright, or five percent of the royalties, though she ends up with 6.6 percent of the royalties and the copyright to her book in exchange for writing in a marriage for her heroine. As this arrangement unfolds, Gerwig intercuts scenes of a rain-soaked Jo March as she descends to the train station from which Friedrich is about to depart. Their perfectly timed reunion ends in frantic words and a passionate kiss. It is rapturous, cathartic, and a bit silly, but completely romantic, and bolstered by a playful and exquisite Alexandre Desplat score; it’s exactly what Gerwig and Alcott wanted us to experience.

These delicate, interwoven strings of narrative blur the lines between reality and fantasy, between Jo March and Louisa May Alcott, but create one of the strongest and most potent flashes of agency in any movie this year. The ending is so wonderful because it balances along the edge of the compromises Alcott made for Jo March in her Little Women, as well as the sacrifices Jo March made for the heroine in her Little Women. It imagines a world in which a woman living in the aftermath of the Civil War can fully and uninhibitedly tell her life story, while toeing the line of the economic and cultural expectations that held that fantasy back in real life. It’s meta in the best way; Alcott never married, but she was able to live the life she wanted on the sale of Little Women alone, by securing an unprecedented amount of economic control over her book. This is the part of Little Women, the movie, that is crafted to reflect Alcott’s story, and Alcott’s story alone.

That Jo’s love for Friedrich, however improbable it may seem, feels so strong, so powerful, is a testament to both Alcott and Gerwig. It’s Alcott’s writing that brought them together, and it is Gerwig who imagines a world in which these agonizingly authentic fictional characters are not bound by the realities we assumed for them. Did Jo March actually marry Friedrich? Alcott may have written it that way, but it also doesn’t matter, because this Little Women is just as much about Alcott’s real life as it is about Jo’s fictional one. That is where the power lies in this, the most radical and, ultimately, faithful adaptation of an American classic.

Portrait Of A Lady On Fire: A Love Story About Identity, Equality, and Independence

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Celine Sciamma’s powerful period piece, Portrait Of A Lady On Fire, creates a sensitive and devastating portrayal of two women falling in love.

“Is it better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all?”

It’s a question that has been asked countless times throughout the history of cinema, to the point where, frankly, it isn’t that interesting anymore. But in Céline Sciamma’s period drama, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, this question finds new life.

When the film begins, we meet Marianne (Noémie Merlant), a painter who is commissioned to paint a portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel). Because the painting is intended to find her a husband, Héloïse has refused to pose for any previous painter her mother has hired. Therefore, Marianne has arrived on the isolated French island where Héloïse lives under the pretense of being a companion for walks. Unbeknownst to Héloïse, Marianne is studying her face in order to paint her portrait in secret.

However, about midway through the film, there’s a shift. Héloïse is reading a book to Marianne and a maid named Sophie, and they discuss the ancient Greek tragedy of lovers Orpheus and Eurydice. After Eurydice dies, Orpheus travels to the underworld in an attempt to bring her back to life. Hades makes a deal with him — he will bring Eurydice back to life, but only if Orpheus doesn’t look back at her as they walk out of the underworld. Unfortunately, just as they’re almost out, Orpheus can no longer resist looking at Eurydice. By giving in to this urge, he damns her soul and loses her forever.

Sophie sees the story from an entirely straightforward and cynical perspective, calling Orpheus an idiot and wondering why he’d choose a life of solitude and sadness when he was so close to having his love back. But Héloïse sees it differently, arguing that, after already losing a great love, all you have left is the memory of what’s lost. Why, she asks, should Orpheus risk the anguish and heartache that would come if he lost that love again? Why not simply keep the memories and preserve the greatness you’ve already experienced?

Over the course of this film, Héloïse faces a similar situation in her own life, as she and Marianne begin to fall in love. Lesbian romance has been portrayed onscreen before, but never in such a purposeful and singular way. We see the seeds of passion planted slowly and delicately. As Héloïse and Marianne grow closer, and their companionship begins to blossom into something much richer, it causes the viewer to fall in love with the couple. Sciamma crafts her own cinematic rhythm and language to tell their story. So much of the depth and subtext you get from the film is non-verbal, and lies in the glances exchanged by the characters.

All of this builds up to a breathtaking final scene that calls back to the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. It’s both beautifully romantic and devastating, ripping your heart out of your chest as you watch.

Haenel and Merlant are key in honing this subtle rhythm, becoming the paint that Sciamma uses to create her art. The chemistry they have is electric, and the film thrives due to their strength and bravery as they give every inch of their souls to the camera, Sciamma, and each other.

Portrait Of A Lady On Fire is a love story about equality. Equality in intimacy, vulnerability, and generosity. Sciamma strived to make a film that’s compassionate to all of its characters, showing that you can be selfish and angry while also being open and giving. When Héloïse and Marianne first meet, they are both objects in a world seeking to define them by their appearance and gender. They’re also entirely alone, emotionally and physically. Both relish solitude, and find it hard to connect to others. But through their passion, the two find a unique sense of sexual and artistic liberation. They are no longer objects, but the subjects of their own story, allowing each other to explore facets of themselves they didn’t even know existed through the canvas.

An obvious benefit to having Sciamma, herself a lesbian, direct the film is that the female gaze is so clearly key to the construction of the scene. This is most clear in the film’s sex scenes. The sex isn’t exploitative or smutty; instead, we are given a tender look into the way passion is expressed through the body, and builds an emotional bridge to a partner.

Sciamma chooses to place emphasis not on body parts like breasts or posterior, as has been done in other films dealing with lesbian love, such as Blue is the Warmest Color. Rather, she focuses on the eyes, utilizing extremely tight close-ups and long unbroken shots of the women’s faces to invite the audience into the souls of Héloïse and Marianne, granting unrestricted access to these incredibly intimate private moments.

This film is an excellent depiction of a lesbian relationship due not just to Sciamma’s craft, but the sensitivity and grace with which she handles the characters. Marianne and Héloïse are fully realized and feel like real people rather than the caricatures they could have become. Their realization that true freedom doesn’t lie in solidarity, but in being loved and knowing that love comes unconditionally, is the beating heart of this film, and what makes it so special.

Portrait of a Lady On Fire is a masterful, searing, and impeccably crafted piece of art from one of the best filmmakers alive. It is a heartbreaking and hypnotizing vision of passion and desire that everyone should experience.

Images via Pyramide Films

Reckoning With Elaine May’s Study In Male Discomfort, Mikey And Nicky

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The excesses and studio battles around May’s third film ultimately derailed her directing career, but the film’s heart is its penetrating look at the actions of desperate men.

While already an established comedian, writer, and actress by the mid-1970s, Elaine May was still a rising director, gaining fame for her ability to present unlikable men in complicated situations, and understand what exactly makes them tick. May was simultaneously capable of getting a laugh (usually a nervous one) and creating a bold, nuanced take on the dark side of man.

In fact, May might be one of the most overlooked directors of the 1970s. Beginning her directing career with the one-two punch of 1971’s A New Leaf (a film revolving around a man trying to kill his new wife for the insurance money) and 1972’s The Heartbreak Kid (in which a Jewish man starts pining for a gorgeous not-so-Jewish blonde while on his honeymoon), May seemed poised to be another ambitious voice in 70s cinema, at a time when the New Hollywood movement was gathering steam. However, her directing career eventually became a forbidding cautionary tale of what happens to female directors who become “too difficult.”  

May’s third film, Mikey and Nicky, is less a crime film and more of hideout film. John Cassavetes perfectly plays Mikey, a terrified gangster who is at the end of his rope. He is emotionally shattered, anxious, and paranoid that there’s been a hit called on him. He can’t be certain who to turn to. The only man he does seem to trust is an old compadre, Nicky (Peter Falk), who he has not been too close with in recent years, but is his oldest friend.  

The film takes place over the course of one desperate night. During that night, it’s up to Nicky to help Mikey get out of town before something bad happens. Seeing the two interact with one another, unable to fully commit to any particular mood, is rather enthralling, and brings a live-wire performance out of Falk and Cassavetes. The two characters have known each other since childhood, and have the baggage to prove it. Mikey’s mood swings lead them to some strange places: hotels, bars, buses, and even cemeteries. As the clock winds down, an ordinary-as-they-come assassin, played by Ned Beatty, is hot on Nicky’s trail.

May’s reverence for comedic and dark themes perfectly transitions into Mikey and Nicky, but there’s a newfound despair at play here that hasn’t been felt overtly in her previous work. Perhaps the most uncomfortable scene finds Nicky joining his emotionally frayed girlfriend in her apartment. First, he tells her he loves her, then tries to give her to Mikey as a kindly gesture. Mikey might be slightly more mature and grounded in his demeanor, but he is really no better or wiser; he falls for the setup. The encounter ends soon with a slap in the face, which provokes the two men to storm out, angry at one another for the disaster that has occurred.

These scenes are profoundly uncomfortable, and provide telling evidence of the way both men operate, with one another and within their own egos. These are men ultimately defined by their own greed and desperation.

May was only the third female director to release a film through the major studio system in the sound era; a fact that is as sad as it is impressive. Cassavetes’ attachment to the project isn’t a surprise — Mikey and Nicky feels like a film he himself would direct and cast himself in. By this time, he was already known for making raw, gritty films that lacked polish in favor for intense performances by unorthodox actors. The voyeuristic appeal of these films, and the “off the grid” way they were produced, were not usually tolerated by the studio system. Indeed, during the production of Mikey and Nicky, Paramount Pictures was worried that the film was going over budget (it did) and becoming too unpolished to be commercially viable (it was not).

May’s tumultuous relationship with the studios soured her promising start; Mikey and Nicky would be her last film for over a decade, until she was given another chance at the behest of Warren Beatty to helm what became a much more infamous bomb: Ishtar. That film reportedly cost Sony a small fortune; it was derided almost unanimously by critics upon its release, and became a synonym for a mess of a film. May’s productions were often fraught with creative differences, and frequently going over budget.

Mikey and Nicky was no exception. Reportedly May shot three times as much footage for the film as was standard even for epic films like Gone With The Wind. She would often leave cameras rolling when actors weren’t present, and would hide shot footage from Paramount to maintain creative control of her work. These events eventually put her in director’s jail, but she did find success writing scripts, and even received Oscar nominations for writing The Birdcage and Primary Colors. Given the way films are made now and the type of films that thrive in a world dominated by quasi-indie films made by big companies, May was sadly ahead of her time.

Mikey and Nicky makes its way to the Criterion Collection through a 4k digital blu-ray presentation, supervised by director Elaine May, along with an uncompressed monaural soundtrack. The film has never had a blu-ray release, so this is a considerable upgrade.

Supplements included are: a new making-of-the-film program featuring interviews with distributor Julian Schlossberg and actor Joyce Van Patten, a new interview with critics Richard Brody and Carrie Rickey, and an audio interview with Peter Falk from 1976, along with a trailer and TV spot. Author and critic Nathan Rabin contributes the essay. Rabin is a fantastic writer and clearly has enormous respect and enthusiasm for May’s work, giving much insight into her career.

May herself is absent in just about all of the supplementary material, and that’s a shame, if predictable; she’s notoriously private. However, the material presented is decent enough, and the film’s presentation is better than ever before.

Elaine May
1976
United States
Spine #957
Available on DVD & Blu-Ray

Criterion’s Reissue Of A Dry White Season Lends New Power To Apartheid Resistance Classic

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The opening shot of Euzhan Palcy’s 1989 film, A Dry White Season, in a bright sunburst gleam and green grass, depicts two young South African boys, one white and another black, playing soccer and laughing in warm, idyllic harmony.

This particular scene, as upfront as an opening shot can be, was absent in the film’s original script, but it offers a direct message about segregation to the audience early on. Palcy’s upfront imagery drives the powerful argument that racial harmony is not only simple and beautiful, but even natural. This uncorrupted image exists as a direct contrast to way the film reveals the oppression of South Africa’s black majority, and an indictment of the white apathy surrounding it.

Set in South Africa in 1976, a year in which the country’s apartheid regime faced mounting protests, the film stars Donald Sutherland as Ben du Toit, a good-natured history teacher who is ironically unaware of the current events surrounding his community, and the mistreatment of those not in his classroom. Ben’s middle-class life is quite peaceful; he has a comfortable existence, a wife, two children — a typical life for an educated white man. He is also warmly drawn to his black gardener, Gordon (Winston Ntshona), who he tells to call him “Mr. Ben” in a most affable way.

While things seem ideal for Ben, Gordon’s son Jonathan is reprimanded by the state for a peaceful protest and is severely punished. Gordon, horrified by Jonathan’s wounds and fearing this incident might lead to further targeting, brings his son to see Ben and ask what can be done. Having seen the bloody cane lashes on the boy’s backside, Ben naively concludes that Gordon’s son must have done something to warrant such a severe punishment. Since Ben is resistant to intervene, Gordon concedes and leaves.

While Ben’s wife, Susan (Janet Suzman), matter-of-factly assures Ben that the young boy “…probably deserved it,” the experience stirs unwelcome concern inside of Ben, leading him to doubt his own conclusion.

Things get worse quickly when Jonathan is killed by police. Eventually, while trying to find the whereabouts of his son’s body, Gordon is arrested and jailed for conspiracy. Ben initially sees it as an odd if unfortunate outcome for a man he considered to be quite likable. Things become even more serious when Gordon is tortured and murdered while in custody on these dubious charges. Gordon’s mysterious death, labeled a “suicide,” shocks Ben as he realizes that the police and the powers that be are in fact corrupt, and will do anything to maintain the status quo. This final straw is frustratingly slow to arrive.

And so, Ben seeks justice and answers for his murdered friend in the only way he knows how; through the law. Season then follows Ben’s trials and tribulations as he becomes a political annoyance, undermining the powers that be. Ben approaches a human rights lawyer, Ian McKenzie (Marlon Brando, with his first role in about a decade), who warns him that his efforts are likely futile and would never stand with an apartheid judge. The film then becomes a mini-courtroom drama, McKenzie presents a case arguing that the government has done wrong.

While the case for foul play is strong, the system ultimately denies any acknowledgement of misconduct. In defeat, Ben befriends Melanie Bruwer (Susan Sarandon), a worldly reporter interested in the case, who leads Ben to further examine the injustice in his own society. After all, this is not a new problem.

This attempt to undermine the system is the beginning of the end for Ben, who is under excess pressure and scrutiny from his family (apart from his faithful son), his job, and his community to withdraw this cause and resume his business as usual. The cost of allyship is a fraught one, and unfortunately Ben is made an example, showing that even the most reasonable person can have blind spots.

Season was adapted from a novel of the same name by André Brink, which was released in 1979 and quickly banned by the South African government, due to its condemnation of the apartheid state. The message in film remains faithful, and is still sadly relevant.

While it is a studio picture, released by MGM/UA, the film was only a minor success commercially. However, it did earn Brando an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and garnered some strong reviews from critics, including an enthusiastic perfect score from Roger Ebert. Ebert felt the film was not only important but highlighted a range of depth and emotional nuance largely not presented for western audiences. He is completely right in that regard; American cinema is still pretty homogenous in its scope of world issues.

A Dry White Season comes to the Criterion Collection in a director-approved Blu-ray and DVD, complete with a digital 4K transfer upgrade and an uncompressed soundtrack. In terms of supplemental material, Season is packed, and surprisingly dense for a film that was somewhat overlooked at the time of its release. Included is a new interview with Palcy by film critic Scott Foundas, a feature with Palcy discussing five scenes in particular, a 1995 interview with Palcy and Nelson Mandela, a 1989 interview with Donald Sutherland from The Today Show, and a snippet of the 2017 South African National Orders awards, where Palcy receives the highest distinction given to foreign dignitaries. Also included is an essay from by filmmaker and scholar Jyoti Mistry. All in all, it’s hard to ask for a more complete package. It does a wonderful job of contextualizing Palcy as filmmaker, as well as the film’s compelling indictment of South Africa’s racist apartheid-era regime.

A Dry White Season
Euzhan Palcy
United States
Spine #953
Available on Blu-Ray and DVD

Hubris, Hedonism, and Hair: Warren Beatty’s Shampoo (1975)

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Directed by Hal Ashby (Being There, Harold & Maude), 1975’s Shampoo is a multifaceted comical look at sex, politics, gender, and well, hair.

Set on the day that Richard Nixon won the 1968 presidential election, Shampoo stars Warren Beatty as George Roundy, a handsome lothario and hairdresser from Los Angeles who aspires to one day open his own shop and be in charge. With his rock-star swagger, rippin’ motorcycle, and bouffant hair, it’s hard to take Roundy seriously, despite his actual talent and charisma. Having been rejected for a loan and feeling lost in his life, Roundy is more vulnerable than the women he routinely services in his salon… and in their beds.

We learn that Roundy is simultaneously sleeping with his ex-girlfriend, Jackie (Julie Christie), and her best friend Jill, his current girlfriend (Goldie Hawn). He juggles his sordid bedroom escapades while also trying to get a loan from a prominent businessman, Lester (Jack Warden), despite the fact that he is also sleeping with Lester’s wife, Felicia (Lee Grant). Lester is an older conservative, and just assumes Roundy is gay. After all, he is a hairdresser.

Lester asks Roundy to accompany Jackie to a Republican soiree that night. The night does not go as planned, and things soon turn out worse for Roundy, who finds he is still in love with his ex-girlfriend and may have ruined his only shot of appeasing, well, anyone. It is a screwball comedy seemingly where everyone is getting screwed one way or another.

Beatty offers a complex and compelling character study in Roundy, who seemingly can never give a definitive answer, nor turn down an attractive client’s advances. It is hard to sympathize for him even as a quasi-tragic character, as he’s seemingly talented, beautiful, and wooing women left and right with little to no effort. He is essentially an artist with no capability to go anywhere. Roundy’s profound indulgences offer him no real insight or understanding of his relationships. Ultimately, they bring about his own personal and professional undoing. The film showcases Roundy’s lack of focus, vanity, and callousness continuously, conveying these things without much preaching against Roundy’s objectionable behavior.

Some aspects of Beatty’s character may stem from Beatty’s own reputation around Hollywood at the time as a libertine. Casting his ex-girlfriends in Shampoo is pretty meta, and adds to the hubris of his character for those in the know. The sexual minutiae of the film remain provocative and engrossing today. Carrie Fisher’s debut role in the film is also noteworthy; she plays Felicia’s young daughter, who quizzes Roundy on his practice and his heterosexuality before eventually seducing him. The sexual politics of these scenes are not about exactly about titillation, or a lack of moral fiber, but rather about self-absorption, and how clueless the characters are in their actions and search for satisfaction.

Shampoo articulates a specific lack of understanding of oneself and one’s own desires so well that it feels worth the truly-earned bummer ending. As the film ends, our hero seemingly has lost everything he holds dear. Roundy realizes his opportunity for real romantic connection may be gone, and he is now adrift in the wake of his own carelessness. His ending mirrors the way Nixon’s presidency, still to come on the day the film takes place, will eventually go down in flames and bring about uncertainty in turbulent times. Roundy’s comeuppance is well deserved, as is ours, as the political separations and extreme economic inequality of Nixon’s era have never been resolved and still linger today.

The film’s long gestation in pre-production, which Beatty began in the late 60s, was worth it; Shampoo was a massive hit, making 60 million on a modest 4 million dollar budget, and landed Lee Grant a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, among other nominations for the cast. Its reputation has dimmed in the following decades, however; in Hollywood, aging can be a tricky thing. Shampoo is not as provocative as it once was, and its political undertones are somewhat less novel than they were at the time. They seem almost quaint in light of the way the political landscape has mutated. That said, the film does offer some great acting and compelling insight into a transitional period in American history.

Shampoo comes to the Criterion Collection in a wonderful 4K digital restoration with an uncompressed monaural soundtrack exclusive to the Blu-ray. The amount of supplements is a little low, but what’s there is good. The best is a new 30-minute conversation between critics Mark Harris and Frank Rich, who discuss the film’s various topical points and background. Rich also contributes an essay on the film. Also included is an excerpt from a 1998 appearance by Beatty on The South Bank Show, which gives some insight on the star, producer, and co-writer of the film.

That’s really all we get, though, and it’s a shame, since a lot of principal players are still around and would have made for some interesting interviews.  While the extras are nothing to write home about, the transfer does look great and really upgrades the film’s look. The film feels shiny and sunny during the day, cool and sexy at night, which informs the L.A. setting perfectly. The bright colors are rich and robust here, complementing the film’s sense of fading idealism from a bygone era.

Shampoo (1975)
Hal Ashby
United States
Spine #947
Available on DVD, Blu-Ray, and Itunes

Kyle’s Criterion Corner: The Virgin Suicides (1999)

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The Lisbon girls, oh the Lisbon girls.

Sophia Coppola’s brilliant and vibrant 1999 debut “The Virgin Suicides” follows a group of teenage boys (now men 25 years later) obsessed with the five teenage Lisbon sisters, fixating on their lives just prior to their mystifying, premature deaths. Adapted from Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel, the film faithfully captures not only particular melancholy and ennui of youth, but also the romanticism of young obsession, pining, and desire. The boys cultivate their fascination of the girls by collecting various artifacts and sharing their fragmentary knowledge with one another. In doing so, they hope to piece together the evidence to unravel the mystery of the sister’s eventual downward spiral, and their seemingly just as perplexing self-demise. For years following, the boys would gather and deliberate every minute detail amongst themselves; hoping to find some new theory to add to their reverie of events.

The renowned Lisbon sisters, totaling in five, are outwardly ordinary outside of their opulence of beauty and seamless mystique in all things girl. Coppola stylishly conjures scenes of the sisters laughing, playing, posing in amber fields with even a unicorn fill the boy’s imagination of what their world must be like and how they must live. With each sister more distinct and enigmatic than the next, the girls in these young men’s imaginations habitat in this hazy, dreamlike fantasy that they hope to one day somehow comprehend or be a part of. The boys surmise that these sisters are all really “women in disguise”, sophistication they can only sense but never quite articulate or hope to fully fathom. It isn’t until the youngest girl Cecilia (Hanna Hall) slits her wrists, much to the surprise to everyone in their quiet Michigan suburb, that something seems amiss in this world of dreamy sisterhood.

To help the girls feel better, their panicked and overly protective parents (Kathleen Turner & James Woods), throw a party for the recovering Cecilia, her worried sisters, and the eager to mingle neighboring boys. Mr. Lisbon is a boring math teacher and mostly impotent when it comes to raising his daughters while Mrs. Lisbon is rigid and scared to death of her daughters possibly sinning or maybe just growing up. While the party seems to be going well, out of place Cecilia eventually retreats from the festivities and horrifyingly impales herself onto the garden spikes outside her window for the entire party and neighborhood to see. The devastating death sends the already fragile Lisbon household into a tailspin of heavy control.

Lux (Kirsten Dunst) is perhaps the centerpiece of the sisters and even the wandering “Lolita” of the girls. While only 14, she’s as development and womanly as the oldest Lisbon sister and starting to be noticed by not only boys in her school but by the men as well. She seems mostly aloof but put on by her new control over the opposite sex. Enter Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett), a recently emerged from baby fat teenage stud enters the picture. He’s currently consumed with sex and beauty, as the girls are swooning over him in masse. Trip falls hard for initially uninterested Lux, who he successfully woos by whispering into her ear that she’s a “stone cold fox”, a daring maneuver. After a very awkward family date with the Lisbons, Trip secures Lux and her sisters for one night for his friends to take to prom, baring the boys get them home in perfect condition.

The heavily chaperoned dance goes splendidly and shortly before the night ends, Trip and Lux sneak away to the football field to relieve their hormones. We see the two teens clawing and grinding each other as the headlights of the cars pass by, knowing that the night has given away its innocence. But once the idealism was gone, Trip finds he is now disenchanted and afraid of what he has done and flees into the night. Lux wakes up alone on the football field, prom queen tiara in hand, having been abandoned by Trip after presumably deflowering her and ending their dream. Trip recounts this event in rehab, qualifying the event as the only taste of true love he ever felt.

The Lisbon sisters are punished, subsequently taken out of school and are rarely seen outside of their home, only communicating with the boys with postcards and playing popular songs over the phone to them. Communication becomes sparse until the boys get invitations to sneak out with them. After heading over in the dead of night and being let into the house by Lux herself, the boys discover one of the girls hanging in the basement and scurry to flee, finding another one with her head in the oven. That was the last they ever heard from them, as all four have killed had themselves, and thus cementing their legacy into their minds forever and never knowing “why?”

As the memory of the girls starts to fade, the final summer of boyhood concludes with attending a lavish party, ironically celebrating the horrible smell around town left by the tree fungus that had spread leaving the stench of algae in the air. The town smelled like death beyond just the recent string of suicides. Prior to all of this, the remaining Lisbon sisters once protested the tearing down of Cecelia’s favorite tree out in their yard, as it was supposedly her favorite but it was already dead and festering the disease. The idea of a Copycat Suicide (or suicide contagion) is thought to be prevalent among teenagers, especially currently with the rise of social media.

The film is actually humorously dark at times. The news report about the girl who accidentally poising her grandmother before she can eat her own death dessert shouldn’t be exactly comedy, but it somehow is. The juxtaposition of the cheesy evening news report and her guilt-ridden description of her failed attempt at suicide remain just as unnerving as comical. Just like the strange foreign boy who jumps from the roof of his house for a girl who simply went away for the summer, as if to see if God would reward him in his sacrifice. The film is nuanced and complex enough to find you to keep coming back and examining the undercurrents at play over and over, much like the men who can’t let go or forget the Lisbon sisters or what they represented.

“You don’t understand me. I’m a teenager. I’ve got problems!” yells one party-goer as he drunkenly mock-dives into the pool, as if to end his own suffering. With that belittlement, “The Virgin Suicides” seems to reject the condescending of teen suicide or at least takes the act seriously, even if it is seemingly shortsighted. “The Virgin Suicides” is still today a rather controversial novel, as it deals with not only budding sex but death among teenagers and how they intersect with the family dynamic. The more we see of this dynamic, the more red flags there are. We see Mrs. Lisbon adding layer and layers of fabric to the girl’s prom dresses to they resemble “four identical sacks”. This fear of her girls becoming women leads to a perpetual need to overprotect, eventually rising the girl’s lust for life through travel magazines and the dangers that could await them.

Coppola’s take on the film is fairly faithful and simply exquisite in tone and execution. It never feels simplistic or overtly sentimental. While a rather dour subject, the film never feels bogged down with any saccharine or torrid love affair that often places similar work of teens that depart before their time. It is subjectively told through the boys’ memories, but objectively told through Coppola’s own beautifully eccentric vision of that.

“The Virgin Suicides” comes to the Criterion in a new 4K digital restoration, supervised by cinematographer Ed Lachman and approved Sofia Coppola herself, complete with a 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack. This is the first time the film has gotten a Blu-Ray upgrade, so this is a huge upgrade. Like last year’s Criterion release of 1999 “Election”, the film looks noticeably sleeker than before and maybe not specifically the same color you might remember. Brand new interviews with Coppola, Lachman, actors Kirsten Dunst and Josh Hartnett, author Jeffrey Eugenides, and writer/blogger Tavi Gevinson are included and are enlightening. Gevinson’s inclusion is rather unique as she is merely a fan of the film and often wrote about her emotional connection to the film from her vantage point of being a teenage girl discovering the film. Brought over from the Paramount DVD release is the making of a documentary directed by Coppola’s mother, including behind the scenes footage and cast and crew interviews. Coppola’s short film, “Lick The Star”, is also included and shows off her early promise of being able to enthuse young actors. The music video for Air’s “Playground Love”, featuring the cast, is also included. Making it a very family-oriented packaged, it was directed by Sophia’s brother, Roman Coppola. The film’s trailer and an essay by novelist Megan Abbott is included, making this release well worth the wait.

The Virgin Suicides (1999)

Sophia Coppola

United States

Spine #920

Available on Blu-Ray and DVD