Wild Grass (2009)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Potentially the swansong of French New Wave visionary Alain Resnais "Wild Grass" is a wild journey into the intuitive cinema cookbook, where various ingredients are hurled in seemingly random proportions. Sometimes the resultant pastry is delicious, other times barely edible. Throwing around his movie aficionado weight Resnais delivers a piece verging on farcical, pretentious, but ultimately with enough self-awareness to avoid ridicule.A tale of two zany (but unforgivably underdeveloped) protagonists, who through a random mundane crossing of paths become almost neurotically obsessed with each other. 50 year old Georges (Andrei Dussollier), a tired man with a dark past (never revealed throughout the movie and the slight suggestions as to the nature of his mishaps just muddle the story) finds a stolen wallet belonging to 40-something Marguerite Muir (Sabine Azema), a fuzzy redhead dentist. Within it he gets infatuated with her picture in a pilot's license, which suggest certain frivolous freedom and a fulfilment of childhood fantasies. After returning the wallet (via the police) Georges starts compulsively stalking the woman, sending her letters, phoning her and in sheer anger slashing her tyres. Inexorably once Marguerite cuts this off by informing the police, she in turn becomes unstrung and overpowered by a drive to get to know the would-be stalker. Flung in the midst of all this is Georges wife, Marguerite's co-worker and a well-meaning police-officer. All leading to a misogynistic wet dream with a suitably cinephile double ending Fin.All of the above placed within the confines of a Amelia-like narrator, who attempts to push forward the action and expand the context, but ultimately tires and dissuades attention. Characters themselves lack any foothold in real life, seemingly more like a conjecture imposed onto a movie reel (with grown-ups acting like crazed love-stricken teenagers on permanent entactogenic drives. Actions and reactions are borderline asinine (this includes everyone) detached from normalcy, not helped by the dissoluted plot, which forgoes attempts to build up character motivations. The motive of obsession seems to be the theme, but when a woman falls madly in love with a stalker, another female gets all gooey and blissful from being sexually assaulted, while his wife understandingly accepts all this unmistakeably points to pseudo-artistic masturbation of Lars von Trier proportion...Adding to this Resnais' comedic jabs and nods the movie feels like extrapolated absurdity posing as serious nouvelle cinema. This movie actually ends in the la-la-land of blue skies and romantic endings, juxtaposed with Georges being unable to close his fly (zipper) after taking a pee-pee. Much too my frustration the viewer has to sit out through two appearances of the word FIN, before they actually fly off into the blue yonder...Some of the experimentation during various shots was also pretty irritating, felt misplaced and added a further layer of ridicule.

Wild Grass begins, more or less, with a man finding a stolen wallet and returning it to the woman it belongs to. He then becomes obsessed with said woman and stalks and harasses her. She falls obsessively in love with him in turn, like you do.Okay, let's cut straight to the point: the script is dreck, concealing its misogyny under layers of nonsensical character interaction and forced quirk. Cinephiles, who have never been really concerned with scripts in the first place, have lapped this up and praised it as a sign that the octogenarian Renais still has it. (And as an aside, it is totally badass that him and Godard are both still making films at this point.) And that's not wrong. The actual film has all of the charm the script lacks: it looks gorgeous, and between the lead actors and Resnais's idiosyncratic directing the film manifests most of the charm its script tries for.And that's all well and good, but a film cannot subsist on charm alone. It's no a long movie, but the back half felt like an eternity to me. If you like movies where people wander around Paris and talk about old movies, this one is for you. If you don't, this is pretty to look at, but it's best not to look beneath the surface.

Maybe the fact that this is getting 6.4 out of 10 on this site is evidence of the forgettable non-impact of this film. I usually enjoy French films and the way they don't insult the viewer's intelligence and their ability to make you feel involved with the characters. That is really why I didn't enjoy this. Thoroughly forgettable, characters who you really don't care about - including a thoroughly unlikeable main male character and his wife who puts up with his obsessive tendencies- and a whimsical plot that really doesn't know where it is going. I had heard some good things about this before I watched it and then wondered why I had listened ! One to miss.

WILD GRASS, aka "Les Herbes Folles" in French, is aptly titled, naturellement. Such grass that grows wild, is unpredictable in how it blooms and affects its surrounding neighbors. It can be amazing or annoying, subtle or gregarious. Consulting my French-English dictionary: 'herbe' is grass, while 'folle' does mean mad, wild, foolish. Either way, veteran French filmmaker Alan Resnais, emboldened by his worthy age and years in the world of cinema, gave us quite a treat to what the joy of cinema can truly be, a film about a pair of 'madman and madwoman' - 'folles' foolish, tremendously so or otherwise.The story is a series of events string together, seemingly easy to follow, with the comfort of a narrator voice-over interjecting certain rhyme or reason - the varying plot points converge, yet without notice, diverge also. Scratching your head? Don't mind that - ignore the inquisitive curious "why's" - why ever not! Go along with the characters offered and enjoy the ride.A fabulous French cast: Sabine Azéma again is the leading lady Maguerite in exciting red frizzy hair-do, André Dussollier is Georges exuding his baffled charm in the guise of nonchalance, Anne Consigny is the unperturbed wife of Georges, Mathieu Amalric (of "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" 2007) is one curiously affable French Police, Emmanuelle Devos (of "Read My Lips" 2001) is dear friend and go-between Josépha to Maguerite. At times the characters and situations might classify as caricature-like. The style and approach of cinematography (by Éric Gautier) and editing (by Hervé De Luze) skilfully call upon different genres and nostalgic inferences to cinema fantastique, along with vivid colorful set design, as seen in Maguerite's living space.The wisdom of employing music by composer Mark Snow (of "The X-Files" who had collaborated with Resnais on his prior film "Private Fears in Public Places" 2006) deftly matches Resnais' non-conforming storytelling with mystery-tale notes infused, then it's catchy jazz rhythm, to gliding unobtrusive scores, sheer glove-fitting music accompaniment enhancing our Resnais-induced cinematic experience, indisputable.I suspect Georges could still be under the influence of his 'grief' phase to his father's recent passed away, that any behavior irrational can be forgivingly disregarded by partner, family, friends. On the other hand, for Marguerite, she's probably bored by the day in and day out routines of her dentistry bread & butter profession, so why not succumb to a total stranger and go loop the loops in the vast sky of possibilities. Sure sounds dreamlike, capricious, unscrupulously playful - certainement. We are blessed with this dessert délicieux from Resnais at 87 (in 2009), hence ask not why. It's Wild Grass - no foreseen reason or logic. Take it in stride and s'amuser.Bonus noted: subtitles were by Ian Burley, my favorite French/Italian film translator, who provided the outstanding subtitles in "Bread and Tulips" 2000. He was absolutely keen in matching rhymes on the English subtitles to the French lyrics sung in Resnais 1997 "Same Old Song" aka 'On Connaît la Chanson'.