Computer Chess

Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess, currently playing at Film Forum, is an odd case. Even a movie like the classic Women in the Dunes posits an atmosphere that is somewhat engaging—in that case due to the existential inundation it so wonderfully describes. Let’s take horrifying movies like The Silence of the Lambs or The Shining or the crème de la crème of frightening movies When a Stranger Calls. As troubled as these landscapes are, they are places that you could imagine yourself trapped in. Computer Chess does for artificial intelligence what Boogie Nights did for porn. The film introduces a cast of nerds as devoid of intelligence, as Boogie Nights  produced porn stars lacking in eroticism. The setting of the movie is a l980 computer chess convention and the drab black and white in which the film is shot is a kind of computerized chess board in brownout. Stasi and Tsar 3 are two of the chess programs and there’s an iconoclastic character named Michael Papageorge (Myles Paige) who walks around in a three piece double knit suit that one of the characters in Saturday Night Fever might have worn to work Monday morning. Papageorge floats between the convention and a group of Esalen type spiritualists who follow an African guru. Bujalski’s film is beyond parody. The assortment of geeks and seekers rolling huge anachronistic consoles around their hotels rooms has all the makings of parody, but Computer Chess is really metaparody, if such a thing can be said to exist. We’re in Todd Solondz land in this parody of parody that turns simple comedy on its head. The problem is that despite all its brilliant concepts, it's difficult to watch. The world of the film is quirkily repellant; you don’t want to be there. The score accompanying the final credits recalls another 80’s icon Tiny Tim. If you like Tiny Tim, you’ll probably love Computer Chess.

Rust and Bone

Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone is amputee porn in the guise of a French art film. Marion Cotillard’s portrayal of Stephanie the femme fatale of the movie is so powerfully disingenuous that she actually succeeds in creating the ersatz emotion that lies at the heart of soft core movies. Rust and Bone is in love with itself and keeps doing what it knows best again and again. Not content with equating physical and emotional wounds, it slips away from metaphor by having its knight in shining armor Alain (Matthias Schoenaerts) end up with his hands in castes that mirror the disfigurement his lover Stephanie endures when she’s attacked by a whale earlier in the film. Sex and disability is a profound theme if for no other reason than the fact that even those who don’t suffer from literal disabilities are for one reason or another disabled. It’s a theme whose sensitive treatment in The Sessions shows that it can be handled in a complex manner that avoids turning love scenes into a side show. Most commercial films have an arena. For instance in Wall Street, it’s obviously the stock market. Rust and Bone is Jaws, Rocky and Saturday Night Fever all rolled into one. You have a girl who works at the French equivalent of Sea World, who hangs out in a disco (where her predicament is heavy handedly foreshadowed in a violent interchange early on) and whose savior is a taller version of Sylvester Stallone who practices a particularly grueling form of bare-fisted mixed martial arts. At one point, Stephanie now on prosthetic limbs shows up at one of Alain’s fights and steps in as his manager. The maiming never ceases and Alain’s son Sam (Armand Verdure) who actually bears some resemblance to the youthful McCauley Culkin almost falls victim to his father’s fighting and carousing when he’s left “home alone” one time too many in the film’s stultifyingly mawkish denouement.