Strange stuff
BLUE VELVET
Written/Directed by: Jo h n Lynch
Starring: Kyle Mac Lachlan, Laura Dem ,
Dennis Hopper, Isabella Rosellini
N o w Flaying: The Movie House
give the devil his due (alm ost literally), there is
a film here, when it’s all over, and it does leave
room for conversation afterwards.
Auteur Lynch, whose work seems to al­
ways g o so far without actually arriving, has
once again taken the long way hom e and left
us in a place that looks the same, but sure
feels different
Easily the headline grabber of the m onth,
this film has been drawing good crowds. T o
b y Eleeinor Matin
W hat makes this film work, (as well as it
does), is the good casting and nostalgia
evoking, and I d o n’t m ean just the song, Blue
Velvet. Clothes and furnishings are left vague.
Kyle M acLachlan and Laura D em , as the
young W A S P couple, rem ind you of that high
school couple nom inated “Best” of the
breed. A nd Dennis Hopper. Yo, Dennis.
W e’ve seen Hopper play crazies now for
w hat 10 or 20 years. A nd he does it very well.
He’s effective here as the drug-crazed, sadistic
brute, and this m ovie wouldn't have stood a
prayer had it not been for his all too realistic
histrionics.
Isabella Rossellini as the night club singer
w ho sings of and wears the Blue Velvet, will
m ake you feel nostalgia for Nastassja Kinski.
Let m e hasten to add Rossellini does good
acting in a part that m ust have been awful to
have to work on. But Kinski has been doing
those parts in other strange movies, and Ros­
sellini has the sam e high-cheekboned, thick-
lipped, now delicate, now coarse beauty.
Th is sim ple suspense story involves a
young couple who investigate a mystery. Th e
young m an found a hum an ear, went to a
policem an, later was told to forget it O n his
own, he checks out a night club singer’s
apartm ent witnesses a scene of violent and
kinky sex. Minutes later, he is nude and in­
volved in a scene of violent and kinky sex. Th e
story plays out as the young m an is alternately
drawn to the exotic night club singer, and the
innocent schoolgirl daughter of the police­
m an. A classic tale of good vs. evil, Lynch has
laced the works with sim ple sym bols— bugs
m unchin g ferociously on the leaf litter under
those beautiful bushes; a skeleton hanging in
a store window, a rotting hum an ear, roses
against a picket fence. Th e audience had all
read the reviews, and laughed at nearly every
line.
But H opper is great as the hotheaded
hophead with a penchant for blue velvet
violence and sym bolic song lyrics.
O n e scene in a whore house ( “Th is Is It” )
with Dean Stockwell as a raging som ething
pantom im ing “Candy-C olored Clow n’’ into a
lam p that looks like a m icrophone will leave
you in stitches.
•
IS Y
Mud
on )
344-4764
Open 7 a m -9 p m Weekdays
8 a m -9 pm Weekends
Ethnic,
entertaining
BEUZAIRE THE C A JU N
Written/Directed b y: Glen Pitre
Starring: Arm and Assante as Belizaire Breaux
Gail Youngs as Alida
Ju st left town. S hou ld be back soon.
Over 35 yt# s oi
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Belizaire Breaux ekes out a m arginal living
as a naturopath. Herbs and potions are his
stock in trade, and he’s good at it He also
understands voodoo, gris-gris medicine,
learned from an old Dom inican slave woman.
These useful skills, plus his innate charm and
powers of persuasion serve him well, though
he still lives lightly, as do the other Cajuns.
Th is film opens with Belizaire m aking his
confession. He draws five rosaries for pen-
nance (an all-day job). Beliziare negotiates by
holding out on the m edicine the priest needs
for his sore shoulder, getting the pennance
reduced to only one rosary. O ne can envision
him later trying to negotiate for a higher spot
in heaven, o r a cooler one in hell.
Negotiating is a them e that reappears
throughout the film. W hen the w ell-to-do,
late-com e vigilantes (wealthy non-Cajuns)
ride through the district and decree 20 Cajun
families m ust m ove within two weeks for al­
leged crim es, the sheriff later tells them they
ca n ’t just order these families to m ove. Th e
vigilantes insist Th e n the sheriff says, “All
rig h t you pick five families from the list and
I’ll pick five families from the list Th e y will
m ove, he others can stay.” At a later time,
Belizaire is to be hung for m urder. His cousin
has been killed, and the sheriff lets Belizaire
pick am ong the posse who wrongfully shot
his cousin to select the m en w ho will hang for
the crim e. Double irony. Belizaire, himself,
was selected by the dead m an's brother-in-
law, at the request of the sheriff, who just
wants a suspect any suspect Interesting
frontier justice.
Hypolite (Poleet) Leger, Belizaire’s slain
cousin, had been on the list His family had
already m oved, but he had been afraid to go,
even though he was wanted for cattle rustling.
In a story replete with surprises, ^eliziare
first negotiate s Poleet’s nam e off the list
dealing with Matthew Perry, one of the m ost
prom inent vigilantes. Perry soon learns of the
rustling charges and is furious with Belizaire,
who, quite clearly, is in love with Perry’s Cajun
half-wife, A lid a Half-wife, in that she and Perry
“ju m p e d the broomstick,” although a priest
was now available to administer the vows.
Perry and Alida had three children and
another on the way. Perry spends a lot of time
in the big house on his father’s spread, but
visits Alida, often enough, apparently.
Perry is found dead, and a lot of action
ensues, as a group sets out after Poleet who
has finally fled. Belizaire confesses to the
crim e to save Poleet There is action aplenty
in this folk tale, the film ing is the type of
gorgeous cinem atography we now expect
the acting is generally pretty good, and
A rm a n d Assante as Belizaire does a fine job.
He handles the w ry hum or dexterously, and
he looks the pa rt In his closely curled beard
and long hair, in the way he wears his hom e-
spun clothes, and with a plausible Cajun ac­
c e n t we get what the film is saying. M uch
attention to detail was paid here, and the
payoff is that you get even m ore than the
film m akers realized is there. T h e clothes for
one thing. W ith the look of handspun cotton
o r linen, you can see by the texture and cut of
the C ajun clothing two things — the clothes
are relaxed, as are the Cajuns; the dohtes are
practical, and, largely, so are the Cajuns.
We are given leave to w onder why the C a­
juns never prospered. Th e vigilantes’ families
didn’t get there until 100 years after the C a­
juns d id — but now they all are buying slaves
and w orking big plantations, and now that
they have som ething to protect they really
want to get rid of those pesky Cajuns. W hat
were the Cajuns doing those 100 years?
Surely not prospering. It’s not that they
co u ld n't o r w ouldn’t work. But their total dis­
regard of the Puritan ethic, their hand-tailored
Catholicism , and a seductively hedonistic
lifestyle are som e of the elements that m ade it
so hard for Cajuns to fit in. You really under­
stand m ore about their buffeting around from
one place to another, and why others in North
A m erica didn’t like them . Th is country wasn’t
built on goo d times.
It is no surprise that Beliziare was able to
learn gris-gris from the old slave wom an. As
she m ust have spoken in a broken and idio­
m atic French, so do the Cajuns. As she m ust
have had a handle on how the m ind works
and how to control that so does Belizaire.
You not only have to know w hich herbs to
use, but how to convince the patient the pro­
cess of healing will work — a fact only re­
cently gaining popularity in our own western
m edicine.
A t any rate, this film com es at a good time.
C ajun m usic is finally getting the recognition
it deserves as a true Am erican art form and
the little bits played in a dance scene and the
background m usic are just great
A rm and Assante really did his hom ework
here, and it shows. He’s just beautiful as
Beliziare, and Gail Youngs holds her own as
Alida, the passionate C ajun who dearly loves
her husband, but who still has plenty of feel­
ings left over for Belizaire. W hen she com es
to the dance (without Matthew), carrying her
baby and with two kids in tow, one of the
guests at the dance says, ‘W ell, here’s Alida
(a n d her three half-Am ericans).” W riter-
director Pitre, himself a Cajun, m anages a
scenario that skillfully depicts the timeless
C ajun lifestyle once again in conflict with a
w orld in transition.
How it might
have been
b y E. Ja n e Westlake
In her article, "Th e Challenge of C o m m u n ­
ity,” w hich appeared in last m onth’s issue of
Ju st Out, Cathy Siem ens quoted Audre
Lorde. A sentence from that quote still rings
in m y ears: "Difference is that raw and power­
ful connection from which our personal
power is forged.” Th is is contrary to the into­
lerance that seems to permeate society, into­
lerance w hich has created som e of the
greatest catastrophies throughout history.
O n e such catastrophe, and one that im ­
mediately com es to m ind for a lot of people,
is the H olocaust a disaster based on intoler­
ance that took the lives of m illions of people.
To d a y we look back at the Holocaust from
m ixed perspectives. Th ere is m uch debate
over what really happened and the events
leading up to it Som e people even believe
that it didn’t happen. Th ere have been count­
less books, m ovies and docum entaries cov­
ering m any different aspects — from the T V
m iniseries, The Holocaust, to Bent, a Broad­
way play. W e all agree that what we ended up
with was a race of people who set out to
destroy all that was different Th e victim s
were m any: Jew ish people, poor people,
hom osexuals, Catholics, disturbed people,
differentiy-abled people, sick people, people
with different political beliefs.
T h e W o m e n’s Eye View Film Series brings
us a film this m onth with yet another look at
the events surrounding the H olocaust
N ovem ber M oon presents a relationship
between a G erm an Jew ish wom an, N ovem ­
ber, w ho em igrated to France and a French
w om an, Ferial, who ends up working for the
Fascists to keep the police from suspecting
that N ovem ber is hidden in her apartm ent
D irector Alexandra von Grote has had a
difficult task because history is com m only
written from a male view point T h e lesbian
position in history is fuzzy. Th ere’s little to no
docum entation on what was happening with
lesbians during the H olocaust
Also, the Holocaust is still a sore spot for
both the G erm an and French people. Von
G rote said in an interview in the San
Francisco-based publication, Beef, last Ju n e
that this is a “difficult m ovie for G erm any”
and that there is also "a lot of anti-gay feeling
in Germ any.” Novem ber M oon was even re­
jected by the Berlin Film Festival and the
W o m en French Film Festival.
T h e research for the m ovie took nearly two
years and m any w ho lived through that time
were interviewed. I find it am azing that Von
G rote could produce such a film using what
little she had to go on. Leveritt and Guse
wrote in their article in Hot Wire last July, “It is
close to im possible to im agine what (lesbian)
lives were like in past tim es and in diverse
cultures. Novem berm oon shows that, yes,
lesbians were there, and this is how it m ight
have been.”
A n d so the film provides a m yriad of con­
trasts and differences. It shows acceptance
and intolerance. A nd it rem inds m e that A u ­
dre Lorde is right on as is Irena Klepfisz: “. . .
anti-Sem itism , like any other ideology of op­
pression, m ust never be tolerated, must never
be hushed up, m ust never be ignored. . . it
m ust a lw a ys be exposed and resisted."
Novem berm oon plays on Novem ber 6th
at 7 p.m . at the Irvington Theatre, 1333 N E
Broadway.
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