La Femme's Top Five...of 2013

This is a belated list, but much like my favorite podcast, Battleship Pretension, I save my list of best films of the year until The Oscars (yes, I realize they were a few weeks ago… you can't rush genius!).  It gives me time to catch up and watch everything most some of the stuff I missed from last year.  There are still a bunch of movies I want to see from 2013, but based upon what I've seen so far, this is my top 5. So here is the belated, but surely much anticipated La Femme's Top Five Films of 2013!

1. Frances Ha  (Noah Baumbach): Frances (a luminous and charming Greta Gerwig) is abruptly left without a roommate and therefore a place to live when her best friend Sophie moves out to be with her new boyfriend.  Frances, who is training as a dancer but doesn't have much talent, finds herself untethered and quasi-homeless, and we watch her float from one place to another.  She lives with two guys and has an awkward, almost romance with her roommate, visits her parents at home, has the saddest trip to Paris ever, and eventually, in a small way, learns how to be a grown up and accept and even embrace responsibilities.  Writer-Director Noah Baumbach nods to the French New Wave, from the camera work to the musical cues, and Gerwig is so winning as Frances that she reminded me of a modern day Anna Karina, only a lot more awkward.  Baumbach combines the very cinematic elements of the New Wave with an extreme naturalness and awkwardness that reminded me of early Woody Allen.  Gerwig meets the challenge of making Frances, who could be an extremely annoying hipster character, all whiney and self righteous and privileged, and instead infuses her with intelligence, kindness, and naiveté.  By the time the nature of the title is revealed in the last shot of the movie, we are not only completely on Frances's side, but even a little bit proud of her. 

2. Behind the Candelabra (Steven Soderbergh):  I have already written about this riotous, campy, sad, and beautiful film here, so I will keep it short.  Although technically for HBO, Behind the Candelabra was just so damn cinematic that I would be remiss to not include it on my list.  Michael Douglas is revelatory as Liberace, and Matt Damon, as his lover Scott Thorson, meets him at every step.  The costumes and set are the stuff of my dreams.  But what makes the film compelling is the perfect tone Steven Soderbergh sets: a little campy, a little over the top but mostly just an honest look at the tragedy of the closet. No matter the fame, no matter the excess, Scott and Lee are forced to hide their relationship and Soderbergh explores what constantly lying does to a relationship.  Spoiler Alert: it doesn't end well.  But they look great doing it.

3. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater):  I am going to be short and sweet on this one too because I have a big post planned for the entire "Before" series.  This was a movie that made me literally sob when I saw it.  I think I may have said to K, "Are they trying to ruin my life, how can I even believe in love anymore?"  Such is the toll the third installment in the romance of Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Deply) had on me.  Some twenty years after they first met, Jesse and Celine are exactly where so many fans of the series imagined them to be: together!  In the first films, we shared some of the best times of their lives, but in Before Midnight we see  one of the worst nights.  A huge fight;  a real, terrible, relatable fight, breaks out between two people that know each other very well and know exactly how to hurt each other in the worst way possible, and we see their personalities, all the beautiful and terrible things about them on full display.  Hawke and Delpy are just so natural and their chemistry is so pronounced that you believe every moment.  During that moment that K had to pause the movie due to my sobbing, I would have said this movie ruined my life.  But by the last, perfect scene, I started to feel the exact opposite (ok, maybe not exact opposite).  Too say to much would be to spoil that ending so you'll just have to take my word for it.   Like the films before them, I was left with a feeling of hope, that maybe I still could believe in love after all. 

4. 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen):  Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave was a film I kept putting off watching, because I assumed it would be too oppressive, too depressing, too difficult to watch.  That was my mistake. 12 Years a Slave portrays terrible human suffering without every wallowing in the misery of it.  I hate the phrase misery porn but this film could easily have devolved into something more lurid, and while McQueen never shies away from the truly disgusting torture of slavery, he manages to affirm life instead of condemning it.  If anything, Solomon Northup (brilliantly and humanely portrayed by the lovely Chewitel Ejiofor) has a deeply felt will to “not just survive, but live,” and McQueen brings that somewhat modern idea to the screen in this period piece of the most shameful period in our country’s history.  Solomon is tricked, disappointed, deceived, tortured, and worked nearly to death, and, while McQueen shows us the frankly horrifying and ugly-beyond-belief moments of slavery, he does it with a deft touch.  We are moved but not oppressed. Lupita N’yongo and Michael Fassbender are equally great as master and slave caught in a terrible web of lust, power, and self-hatred.  An important film, yes, but also a great one.

5. Room 237 (Rodney Ascher):  Rodney Ascher’s exploration of obsession of the Stanley Kubrick-classic The Shining is something every cinephile can appreciate. Ascher uses clips from the film to illustrate the theories of people obsessed with the hidden meaning of Kubrick’s most famous film. Some think it is a metaphor for the genocide of the Native Americans, some  see it as a metaphor the Holocaust, some even think it is Kubrick’s confession of being involved with the government faking the moon landing.  All the theories seem crazy at first, but Ascher’s superb, hypnotic editing begins to creep under your skin, and the film slowly becomes as creepy as the movie that inspired it.  I love the fact that a film can inspire this bizarre loyalty and attention to detail, and, although I don’t think any of the theories hold any weight, Room 237 is still a fascinating exploration of a world of film criticism that I think both enriches and poisons the cineastes plight.

Julie