CosmosSometimes a movie makes you guess when you've crossed over from the normal, everyday world, and into the realm of absurdity. Cosmos, on the other hand, makes it clear from the start that the world in this film is more than a few degrees tilted to a slant, batty and nutty, where gibberish as dialogue is the norm, and characters behave with the rationale of a lunatic. It is the story of a failing law student with aspirations of being a writer, a man who waxes poetic in between bouts of shirt-rending melancholy named Witold (Jonathan Genet). His stay at a bed and breakfast in the countryside is peppered liberally with extra crazy, and he is not only far from exempt, he is largely a perpetrator in it.
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The final film of absurdist filmmaker Andrzej Żuławski after a long hiatus, Cosmos is quite the swansong of bizarre irreverence and gleeful derangement. In a sense, Cosmos is really a satire of the melodrama; Witold and his companion, Fuchs (Johan Libéreau), would be cliches in so many other light foreign dramas, the two young students from differing backgrounds, seeing the world and learning about life and love by staying with the local flavor in the coastal town. One can envision the sly smirk emerging on Zulawski's lips at the concept of turning that tired formula inside out and producing a film which defiantly subverts it. But rather than just twist the narrative to produce more convincing characters, Zulawski has done the opposite, making characters so ridiculous and overblown--and yet recognizable as their vacuous archetypes--that for those who "get it" earlier than later, the effect is enough to put you into giggles for the rest of the film. For instance, Witold and Fuchs go to the beach, but every outing is rainy. In fact, most outdoor excursion take place in miserable weather, so it makes one wonder why anyone would take the trouble to go out; it's as if nature itself were rebelling against these characters. The home the duo stays in is managed by a permanently manic matron, Madame Woytis (Sabine Azéma), who is occasionally given to loud, violent outbursts, knocking the butter on the floor while scrambling under the table for the cat. Her husband, Leon (Jean-François Balmer), is one of the highlights of the film's tone, a bumbling old man who adds Latin suffixes to his words, and rambles about one irrelevant subject, losing track and ending with another. He and Witold share what would in any other movie be a tender moment about their similar souls, a largely one-sided conversation with a flask, as the two discover that they share a lot in common, Leon recounting prior conquests and his life before, similar to the young writer. But even this scene is played out so large that it is evident that even this sacred cow of the simpatico between the "young man" and "old man" archetypes is roasted. Witold finds himself distracted--even aroused--by the inn's maid, Catherette (Clémentine Pons), particularly regarding her crooked lip, which he dreams about. But by contrast, he is brought to idolize the lips of the innkeepers' daughter, Lena (Victória Guerra), recently married to a young, pleasant architect named Lucien (Andy Gillet). Witold vents his passions into a dense and unintelligible stream of consciousness block of writing on his computer, his desperate attempt to purge the demons in his soul, clawing away at him in lust for Lena. This prompts him to commit cruelty mirroring the ominous and inscrutable greeting which met him in the forest en route to his lodging: a sparrow hanged by a blue thread.
Enough in the presentation of Cosmos suggests that it is the story which Witold has been writing, no doubt filtered through whatever madness has taken him. Elements in Cosmos recall the films of Ingmar Bergman, notably his film Persona. One shot in particular between Lena and Catherette is framed similarly enough to the one where the two women's faces move closer and closer to one another. When the party goes to a beach house to visit another couple, the woman, Ginette, looks identical to Catherette, save for the lack of a crooked lip--she is even played by the same actress. Similarly, as the credits roll, shots of the film production of Cosmos being taken down recall the deconstructed style of Bergman in that period. Even more so, the running theme of animals being hanged also recall's Bergman's The Passion of Anna, another similarly deconstructed drama. Cosmos also resembles--and perhaps satirizes--Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad, in that Witold appears to be crafting the drama around him, a storyteller in his mad world, narrating the events and controlling the plot as the main character does in Resnais' film. But Witold always seems to be at best morose, and at worst, cruelly unhinged, compared with his metrosexual travelling buddy, Fuchs, who seems to take everything in stride, even though he always seems to show up with a black eye or bloodied lip--for reasons which always go unexplained. If Witold is telling a story from his own experiences, it is enough to assume that this, or even some other experience, had broken his sanity, and what really happened is lost forever, muddied by his psychosis. That's certainly one reading outside of this parody of the melodrama of a young man "finding himself" whilst traveling abroad and falling in love. Witold reminds me of the main character, Lev Glebovich Ganin, of Vladimir Nabokov's first novel, "Mary", who stays at a boarding house and is wistful for his lost love, Mary, who is to return to her husband and fellow tenant. Ganin always struck me as mopey and a bit selfish, not unlike Witold, who lusts after his own young newlywed character, and is both besotted and scornful when he watches her in the arms of Lucien. Ironically, Witold includes Leo Tolstoy as one of his favorite authors, a Russian but also a realist, whereas Cosmos is far removed from being realistic. While the beats and scenes feel as though they belong in a traditional melodrama, it is the content of each scene in Cosmos--the dialogue, the actions of the characters, their motivations--which seem completely removed from natural behavior. It is as though to illustrate how absurd it is to condense powerful human drama into a neatly packaged two hour block, Cosmos shakes up all these moments and characters like Scrabble pieces, dumps them out on the board, and lets the tiles spell whatever words they may, even if you get repeated words used in all seriousness like "bleurgh".
Recommended for: Fans of an absurd and silly comedic satire, one that feels as if Pedro Almodovar and David Lynch got together and made a seemingly innocuous drama, but cast insane people in all of the roles. Clever and sly, it is weird, funny, and unsettling from start to finish.
Enough in the presentation of Cosmos suggests that it is the story which Witold has been writing, no doubt filtered through whatever madness has taken him. Elements in Cosmos recall the films of Ingmar Bergman, notably his film Persona. One shot in particular between Lena and Catherette is framed similarly enough to the one where the two women's faces move closer and closer to one another. When the party goes to a beach house to visit another couple, the woman, Ginette, looks identical to Catherette, save for the lack of a crooked lip--she is even played by the same actress. Similarly, as the credits roll, shots of the film production of Cosmos being taken down recall the deconstructed style of Bergman in that period. Even more so, the running theme of animals being hanged also recall's Bergman's The Passion of Anna, another similarly deconstructed drama. Cosmos also resembles--and perhaps satirizes--Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad, in that Witold appears to be crafting the drama around him, a storyteller in his mad world, narrating the events and controlling the plot as the main character does in Resnais' film. But Witold always seems to be at best morose, and at worst, cruelly unhinged, compared with his metrosexual travelling buddy, Fuchs, who seems to take everything in stride, even though he always seems to show up with a black eye or bloodied lip--for reasons which always go unexplained. If Witold is telling a story from his own experiences, it is enough to assume that this, or even some other experience, had broken his sanity, and what really happened is lost forever, muddied by his psychosis. That's certainly one reading outside of this parody of the melodrama of a young man "finding himself" whilst traveling abroad and falling in love. Witold reminds me of the main character, Lev Glebovich Ganin, of Vladimir Nabokov's first novel, "Mary", who stays at a boarding house and is wistful for his lost love, Mary, who is to return to her husband and fellow tenant. Ganin always struck me as mopey and a bit selfish, not unlike Witold, who lusts after his own young newlywed character, and is both besotted and scornful when he watches her in the arms of Lucien. Ironically, Witold includes Leo Tolstoy as one of his favorite authors, a Russian but also a realist, whereas Cosmos is far removed from being realistic. While the beats and scenes feel as though they belong in a traditional melodrama, it is the content of each scene in Cosmos--the dialogue, the actions of the characters, their motivations--which seem completely removed from natural behavior. It is as though to illustrate how absurd it is to condense powerful human drama into a neatly packaged two hour block, Cosmos shakes up all these moments and characters like Scrabble pieces, dumps them out on the board, and lets the tiles spell whatever words they may, even if you get repeated words used in all seriousness like "bleurgh".
Recommended for: Fans of an absurd and silly comedic satire, one that feels as if Pedro Almodovar and David Lynch got together and made a seemingly innocuous drama, but cast insane people in all of the roles. Clever and sly, it is weird, funny, and unsettling from start to finish.