A royal woman’s constricted life

 

   She sensitive about gaining weight, especially at age 40. She spends inordinate amounts of time having servants comb and braid her hair.  She's a loving mother and a somewhat indifferent wife. She's widely known as a major figure in 19th Century Europe. 

  She's Elisabeth of Austria or, more precisely, a fictionalized version of an empress who once created international buzz.

    Vicky Krieps plays Elisabeth in Corsage, a movie in which director Marie Kreutzer defies period-piece conventions. Kreutzer  purposefully loads her movie with anachronisms, suggesting that any contemporary relevancies in Elisabeth’s story should not be ignored.

  To cite two examples: At different points, you'll hear renditions of Help Me Make It Through the Night and As Tears Go By, not exactly 19th-century tunes.

    Not everything about Kreutzer's approach works, but at her best, Kreutzer disarms, turning Elisabeth (known as Sisi in her day) into a woman defined by a role that she's increasingly reluctant to play.

   As for the title, Corsage refers to the corsets that Elisabeth wears, instructing her handmaids to pull them so tight, they seem like instruments of torture. Metaphoric leaps encouraged.

   Elisabeth cared about her waistline.  She obsessed about it. For much of the movie, she seems so averse to eating that her behavior probably qualifies as an eating disorder.

   The men in Elisabeth's life don't do much for her. Florian Teichtmeister plays Emperor Franz Joseph;  he doesn't care if his wife's amorous attentions wander so long as she fulfills her public duties as a regal representative of the empire.  

   Elisabeth has freer relations with Louis Le Prince (Finnegan Oldfield), a visitor who introduces her to his invention, an early motion picture camera. She's attracted to a man who tends to horses (Colin Morgan) at one of her estates. But these relations don’t do anything to topple the rigid structure under which Elisabeth lives.

  Although interestingly appointed and visually deft, Corsage belongs to Krieps, who creates a complex woman: petulant, rebellious, narcissistic, and keenly aware that she's losing the beauty for which she was widely admired. 

   Elisabeth also possesses a rueful understanding that nothing she says or thinks will impact her husband's decisions. She's meant to be the living equivalent of an official portrait. 

   Pay attention to the movie's third act, which sets up a tricky finale. Those familiar with Elisabeth's story will know that Kreutzer has taken many liberties, particularly with the movie's conclusion.

    Krieps performance intrigues, as does this adventurous take on how to present an historical figure. Kreutzer and Krieps opt for humor, purposeful distortion of time and place,  and, ultimately I think, respect for both the contradictions and resolve that marked  Elisabeth's personality.

'Les Cowboys' lassos many issues

An ambitious French movie about acute cultural divides..

If nothing else, Les Cowboys -- the first directorial effort from French screenwriter Thomas Bidegain -- deserves to be called ambitious.

In a single, sprawling movie that covers 15 years, Bidegain addresses cultural oddities, Arab immigration, the breach between Europeans and Muslims, the seduction of Europeans into Islam and the furious dedication of a father who won't abandon the search for the 16-year-old daughter who has run away from home with a local Arab.

Despite this overload of issues, the movie manages to tell an involving story that takes us into the pre-9/ll back alleys of European cities that are beginning to be filled with Muslim immigrants and into the wild, open spaces of Pakistan.

But all that comes after a beginning that looks as if Les Cowboys might be a rousing comedy about a group of Frenchmen who have taken up the ways of the West. These folks don cowboy hats and boots, ride mechanical bulls, sing country songs and square dance. They seem pretty happy with their assumed identities as cowboys in France, and they meet regularly to act out their fantasies.

At this point, the movie focuses on Alain (Francois Damiens), an imposing bear of a man who takes the stage at one of the group's Western gatherings to sing Tennessee Waltz.

Before the day ends, Alain's happy life will be turned upside down. His 16-year-old daughter Kelly will have vanished.

When it becomes clear that Kelly has left home voluntarily and in the company of a local Arab boy, Alain becomes consumed with the task of locating her, a goal that takes him into hostile territories -- from tough Muslim neighborhoods in Antwerp to shabby trailer parks where groups of Muslims live and even to Yemen.

On most of these outings, Alain travels with his young son.

This part of the movie has been compared to John Ford's The Searchers -- and not without reason. But Les Cowboys eventually becomes something else, focusing on the adventures of Alain's grown son (Finnegan Oldfield), who picks up the search years later.

I'm leaving out a lot, of course, but for good reason. The movie's many plot twists, some arriving after 9/11, are best discovered in a theater.

I will tell you, though, that John C. Reilly pops up as a rogue who trades money for hostages in Pakistan. He convinces Oldfield's character, who by this time is serving as an aid worker in Pakistan, that he may be able to help find the young man's sister.

Bide gain has written screenplays for Jacques Audiard's A Prophett, Rust and Bone and Dheepan, not bad preparation for a filmmaker striking out on his own, and after Les Cowboys, most of us will want to see more from a filmmaker who's not afraid to engage volatile issues.