French arthouse titan Claire Denis’ upcoming “35 Shots of Rum” now has a trailer thanks to the Cinema Guild, who will be releasing the film in U.S. theaters this fall.
Some Playlist staffers caught this at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, and can say it’s the notoriously cryptic filmmaker’s most stylistically straight-forward work since at least 1997’s ensemble drama “I Can’t Sleep,” far removed from the filmmaker’s last film, 2005’s heavily symbolic and narratively opaque epic “The Intruder.”
’35 Shots’ stars Denis regular Alex Descas, something of a French arthouse legend who delivers his most affecting and memorable performance since 1992’s “No Fear, No Die” (also a Denis film). Here, Descas plays train conductor Lionel, coping with the absence of his wife, his odd relationship with an ex-girlfriend, and valuing the companionship of his only daughter above all else. This makes the intrusion of a handsome young man (Gregoire Colin, another Denis regular) that much harder to accept, as Lionel’s only dependent drifts away from him and into young adulthood. Likewise the daughter struggles to find a compromise that preserves her close, devoted relationship to her father, and one that affords her the independence she desires.
As was the case in Denis’ 2003 reverie “Friday Night,” a simple plot yields complexity and emotional force; Denis proves most capable at pealing back the layers of this vibrant family and leading us inside. Like so many films this year (Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Tokyo Sonata” and Oliver Assayas’ “Summer Hours,” to name a couple), Denis’ latest is a perfectly calibrated study of the ties that bind families and the stubbornness that often fractures their loving relationships.
We also get to hear a bit of that evocatively melancholy Tindersticks score – one more for the pantheon of great Tindersticks/Denis collaborations – making the news that there’s no planned release for this delicate music that much more disheartening (as was the case with the band’s minimal but haunting compositions for “The Intruder,” which never surfaced on disc either).
And as for the title: “What’s with the 35 shots of rum?” the daughter asks. I could tell you, but Lionel explains it so much better. -Sam C. Mac