See You Up There * * * *
This is a highly rated French film which is currently on at the local Art House Cinemas. I liked it but I wasn't ecstatic about it.
The main characters are a couple of swindlers and a precocious
urchin girl who live together in a one room shambolic "apartment".
The men are WWI veterans who have not been able to find decent employment since they come back from the war. One of them is so badly damaged from combat he has to wear a mask and live off liquid food. But he is an artist, and not satisfied with the ugly "practical" masks the State could provide he makes his own rather beautiful Venetian style masks.
Not that it makes much difference to his social life as he is mostly housebound anyway. The young girl brings him food and helps him with his mask making.
His friend goes to work daily but can only find work beneath his ability - walking around with a sandwich board or operating an elevator in a department store.
Although there are more complications including a dastardly villain and a frighteningly bombastic man of wealth, the basic plot is that one day our heroes devise a scheme, which can only be described as an immoral rort, but France owes them something, so with their charm and cheekiness we don't lose sympathy.
It's a film so visually powerful it could almost be shot as a silent movie if they'd chosen to go that way. Indeed there is a bit of a Chaplinesque feel about it. Personally, See You Up There didn't thrill me, but I think anyone would have to acknowledge that it is a very, very good film. I enjoyed it enough and I was certainly left in admiration of it.
The main characters are a couple of swindlers and a precocious
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| I got a plan. |
The men are WWI veterans who have not been able to find decent employment since they come back from the war. One of them is so badly damaged from combat he has to wear a mask and live off liquid food. But he is an artist, and not satisfied with the ugly "practical" masks the State could provide he makes his own rather beautiful Venetian style masks.
Not that it makes much difference to his social life as he is mostly housebound anyway. The young girl brings him food and helps him with his mask making.
His friend goes to work daily but can only find work beneath his ability - walking around with a sandwich board or operating an elevator in a department store.
Although there are more complications including a dastardly villain and a frighteningly bombastic man of wealth, the basic plot is that one day our heroes devise a scheme, which can only be described as an immoral rort, but France owes them something, so with their charm and cheekiness we don't lose sympathy.
It's a film so visually powerful it could almost be shot as a silent movie if they'd chosen to go that way. Indeed there is a bit of a Chaplinesque feel about it. Personally, See You Up There didn't thrill me, but I think anyone would have to acknowledge that it is a very, very good film. I enjoyed it enough and I was certainly left in admiration of it.
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