CONTACT
WHEN THE CAT'S AWAY
Film reviews by Dave Cowen
Copyright 1997 Dave Cowen
CONTACT and CHACUN CHERCHE SON CHAT couldn't have come from more different places: CHACUN CHERCHE SON CHAT being a low-budget French film and CONTACT a big-budget Hollywood picture full of CGI special effects. However, they both derive their themes from the same part of human life; overcoming a sense of loneliness, and making contact with the world around one's self.
I had heard of CONTACT's opening scene before ever stepping foot in the theater: friends and posters were shocked by it's "silent" opening. Hardly was the opening silent, however: I was surrounded (literally) with radio broadcasts. Considering the nature of the film, and the emphasis on radio throughout Contact's opening sequence and early scenes, I had hoped to find that Robert Zemeckis (director of Forrest Gump), had found a counterpoint to his prior, feel-good hit: instead of a simple man finding others through his simplicity, a smart woman would discover the loneliness that is tantamount to (and a natural part of) life in the universe -- a loneliness that can be especially strong for a nonbeliever in an ever-present spiritual force, a God.
As the camera pulled back and the sounds traveled back in time to silence... brought back to a scene of young Ellie (Jena Malone, later played by Jodie Foster) DXing with her transmitter, attempting to make contact across the country... I had thought that the movie would be able to express such a thing.
There is possibly no more lonely experience in life than working with a radio transmitter to find broadcasts from far off. One is likely to find nothing but static, strange impulses of electricity and natural elements manifest as sound -- or, if one is lucky, one may be able to listen to a broadcast in a foreign language, the mechanical drones of a "numbers station" (information broadcast in numerical code, most likely by spies, that is typically jammed by metallic droning noises) or a data transmission, personified by its bleeping carrier tone. Most often, however, one will find the person on the other end a preacher, haranguing the unseen masses (of whom the lone DXer may be the only audience) about the interpretation of a bible passage. Ellie finds a fellow DXer in Pensacola, Florida, however... of whom she asks about the weather.
Working with a shortwave radio late at night suffuses the DXer with an impenetrable sense of eeriness: knowing that there are signals literally surrounding one's own body, but often not being able to find a broadcast of pertinence... or worse, finding one that is incomprehensible. Such must have been the motivations of writer Carl Sagan's when developing the original story of CONTACT... the dream of coming into contact with extraterrestrial life filtered through both the unlikeliness of establishing that contact, and the type of contact that could be made. So how can it be, then, that Zemeckis encodes his film with the much more common, banal message of those late- night radio preachers?
The character of Palmer Joss provides the answer. Giving the role to Matthew McConaughey, Zemeckis attempts to balance Ellie's sterile, scientific lack of belief with a sexy preacher man, one who would be a man of a cloth if it weren't for that darn celibacy requirement. Throughout the film, Palmer and Ellie quarrel about the existence of God and the importance of that argument to one's life, the two bound by a furtive sexual encounter at the beginning of the film... until finally, in the closing scenes, Ellie finds her faith: through science, she has reached contact with an alien being, and finds herself comforted by the knowledge that there is life beyond that of Earth...not at all unlike the comfort that Palmer finds in his belief in God. The audience leaves the theaters affirmed that no matter which path they take, they can always find solace in the knowledge that there is something greater which is there to protect them, something that has been there for millions of years.
This is an unfairly stacked deck, however -- Ellie's emotions are being filtered through an alien encounter that is as maudlin as it is absurd. Zemeckis isn't content having Ellie come into contact with another form of life, but a form of life that takes its form as her lost father.
This dumbing-down of the loneliness of the human condition, amplified by a plot device as crude as the drug-smugglers of a standard action film or best friend gone bad of your average thriller is a great insult to the audience's intelligence. When Ellie finds the alien, all the alien can tell her is that the weather's just fine on Vega... a pitiful and bathetic ending to what could have been an incisive commentary of the complexities of communication between not only different forms of life, but also between other cultures or between human beings of the same background. To the movie's credit, the script brings up some fascinating issues, and Jodie Foster gets bonus points for playing an atheist... but the answer to the problem of loneliness, whether existential or practical, isn't talking about the weather -- and it's an insult to the insights and extraterrestrial longings of Carl Sagan for the movie to put such a feel-good gloss on that questions that the film raises.
CHACUN CHERCHE SON CHAT (given the much less alliterative title WHEN THE CAT'S AWAY in the United States) has a much similar solution to the problem of loneliness, but is ultimately much more honest in its end. Chloe (Garance Clavel), a makeup artist working in the Bastille sector of modern Paris, lives with her male roommate and his latest flames. Other than doing touch-up jobs on pouting primadonnas and laying on the couch with her cat Gris-gris, Chloe doesn't have much of her life.
Chloe leaves Gris-gris with Madame Renee, a semi-professional cat-watcher (played by Madame Renee, a real-life semi-professional cat-watcher) in the neighborhood while she goes on vacation (which takes up a genuinely hilarious 10 seconds of screen time) only to find Gris-gris missing when she returns. The search for her cat forces her to leave the apartment to find her cat, finding a network of old ladies, a sweet Arab named Djamel (Zinedine Soualem) who helps her find her cat, the individual who provides many of the movie's scenes with a wonderfully inappropriate backbeat (Romain Duris) and pretty much the rest of the neighborhood.
The standout scenes in CHACUN CHERCHE SON CHAT are the ones which succinctly but hilariously outline the slow banality of Chloe's life. In one sequence, she and a friend (Flo, played by Estelle Larrivaz) look frantically around themselves while seated on chairs in the modeling studio, segueing directly into a shot of Chloe at the Laundromat, looking sadly beyond the camera while pounding rave music plays in the background. In another, she shares a wonderfully boring breakfast with her roommate's new boyfriend which concludes with her roommate's boyfriend asking her, longingly, if she'll be back later.
In CHACUN CHERCHE SON CHAT, Paris is fraught with minor dangers: Chloe puts on a nice dress to attract a suitor and is accosted by creepy men, the local barmaid hits on her, a lovely old building is demolished while the Bastille's residents look on with confusion, an old lady nonchalantly talks to her husband's ashes to Chloe's astonishment, a sexual encounter is aborted by a phone call. Chloe seems to recess into her shell more and more with each encounter.
In the end, Chloe finds her happiness in life... but it is one based on a lie, and one much to the chagrin of Djamel, who one suspects could truly put an end to Chloe's loneliness. In the end, with the film's most talked-about shot, the audience is led to believe that Chloe has found herself... but the truth is, she was never truly lost.
The banality of the images earlier in the film reveal a certain beauty, not unlike the vast silent pullback of CONTACT's opening shot... the images of inaction and loneliness hold a sense of wonder curiously lacking from the relatively obvious and traditional conclusions of both films. As such, both films have beautiful and promising beginnings that belie their tepid resolutions. Djamel's last words, as he sits in a local bar surrounded by people but close to no-one -- and not for lack of trying -- end up being the most true of anything said in either film.
Dave Cowen (esch@fische.com) Eschatfische. --------------------------------------------------------------
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