1 La Moustache
This Week in Cinema (10.03.06)
By Beth Capper
Published: October 3rd, 2006 | 3:21pm
When critics used to probe Spanish film-maker Luis Buñuel about the symbolism in his surrealist cinema, he would belligerently deny it had any meaning at all. Likewise, getting to the bottom of things is often superfluous to enjoying the confounding scenarios in a Lynchian nightmare.
It is in the vein of these ingenious auteurs, then, that Emmanuel Carrère makes his cinematic debut with the excellent La Moustache. Adapted from a short story that Carrère himself wrote, La Moustache starts out as a bizarre comedy and quickly escalates into a Kafkaesque nightmare. In the opening scene, husband Marc Thiriez shaves off his moustache to surprise his wife; however, he is overcome with confusion when she fails to notice. After brooding considerably, he points it out, and she denies he ever had one. To make matters worse, his colleagues and closest friends concur. What is happening to Thiriez is never clear: is he mad, are the people around him involved in an intricate conspiracy, or do we simply live in a confused world?
While Hollywood is known for churning out films that seem to rehash formulaic storylines time and time again, independent cinema tends to veer away from being quite so stagnant. Ryan Fleck’s Half Nelson, however, goes to considerable lengths to disprove this point, in an uninspired portrayal of drug abuse. The story revolves around the relationship between Dan Dunne [Ryan Gosling], a crack-addicted inner-city high school teacher, and his student Drey [Shareeka Epps], a 13-year old girl with a brother in prison and a mother working hard to keep food on the table. Their relationship evolves beyond that of teacher-student when Drey stumbles upon Dunne passed out from crack in the girl’s bathroom after school. As the film progresses, Dunne tries hard to protect Drey from the drug world he is deeply entrenched in – a storyline which culminates in Drey delivering drugs to his apartment. In this scene, the juxtaposed innocence of Drey faced with her drug addled teacher seems like a trite narrative device primed to send a moralistic message. Sure, as school-room dramas go, Half Nelson happily avoids playing on the stereotypes expounded in films like Dangerous Minds. However, in its portrayal of drug use, the film is unerring in recycling the same gritty imagery – Dunne’s apartment is like a crack den and throughout, drug abuse is coupled with various forms of violent behaviour. While taking crack on a daily basis is bound to ruin your life, this ground has been covered many times before. The ‘drugs are bad’ tagline is getting old.
Beth Capper is a freelance music journalist from Brighton, England. She writes for Venus Zine, Punk Planet, and Plan B Magazine.
Issue #28
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