Cosmos (2015)

 

Director: Andrzej Żuławski

Screenplay: Andrzej Żuławski

Cast: Jean-François Balmer as Leon; Sabine Azéma as Madame Woytis; Jonathan Genet as Witold; Johan Libéreau as Fuchs; Victória Guerra as Lena; Clémentine Pons as Catherette / Ginette

An Abstract Candidate

 

Fuckallismus!

Taking residence in a family run country guesthouse, Witold (Jonathan Genet), an aspiring novelist and law student who has to retake his exams, and his friend Fuchs (Johan Libéreau) believe themselves to be in the midst of a mystery when Witold finds a dead bird hung by its neck on a branch. Witold, visibly in emotional turmoil from the start, is nonetheless convinced of this mystery as further strange sights disrupt his reality - the maid Catherette's (Clémentine Pons) lip disfigurement, a tea kettle in a tree, strange images marked on the wall - as everyone around him in the family is as eccentric and in the midst of their own emotional angst. One such figure, the married daughter Lena (Victória Guerra), becomes a singular obsession for him. From the get-go, the idea that legendary Polish director Andrzej Żuławski's last film is seemingly a comedy of manners is itself a great conclusion for him to have done. Taking a novel by legendary Polish author Witold Gombrowicz, whose namesake fittingly travels through this modernised parody of a mystery, he makes a tale of purpose or coincidence, the seemingly strange choice for a director who was both acclaimed and infamous for his filmmaking style, its hyperbolic emotion, a great joke from the get-go before you get to the story itself. Why the bird is tied to a string like a noose is just the beginning of the questions which may be real, as even before the sparrow hanging, dialogue emphasises this has been happening beforehand the students arrived, with a plucked chicken left in the street a week before to dumbfound people.

Żuławski's unpredictability is his forte; like the best and true definers of auteur theory, they are never predictable in the types of genre they blend and tackle, and the bias of Possession (1981) as the key film of his career, and the only film of his most had been able see, does have a drastic effect on your attitude of his filmography as a whole, which has a vast spectrum of genres he tackled. Cosmos stands in fittingly among them; the only difference is that whilst the likes of Diabel (1971) have characters constantly screaming about death and misery, this is a farce where a family and their paying guests constantly scream about how each other not understanding them or how they have unrequited feelings for another whilst they are trying to collect all the peas dropped on the kitchen floor. Witold in particular, in his attraction to Lena, fits the template of the director-writer's male leads of films before in their obsessions, becoming more on edge than he was before, a neurotic who over thinks, is over enlightened and will eventually set off the catalyst for all this pressure in the guesthouse at the halfway point.

The film is exceptionally dense just in the literary and cinematic references alone, the dialogue and the story needing multi watches to fully digest, but the significant idea behind Cosmos is this pressure cooker farce, between love being a destructive and compelling force, which has been a common theme between the director's films, to that farcical nature, be it the childish older patriarch Leon (Jean-François Balmer), the idiosyncratic turns of phrase and punning, and the piss take of the notion of a mystery. The extremes, the hysterics, were for the psychology of Zulawski's films. This seemingly quaint film, tonally like many middle class French dramas, is exaggerated by hang ups and strange obsessions, when odd details appear or are presumed to be. It becomes slapstick in its own way, hormonal angst found seeing sensuous calves being bend and flexed, or the stain on the dining room wall which may be more of a stain, but could also be Witold's obsessions consuming him. That he is missing things, like the more explicit looking stain on a wall when he sees a rake, adds to this parody, especially as the clues and suspicious are curious, like the aforementioned tea kettle, as much as they can be morbid.

In the end none of the strange circumstances Witold encounters are anything else but odd coincidences or a result of someone's angst, even he going as far as contributing to the events with the most severe of the acts, an incident involving the pet cat that, in any other film, would damn him as a villain, but in the world of Zulawski emphasises the madness of the emotions. Tailed by his trusting friend Fuchs, smartly dressed but appearing in each scene with new bloody noses and bruises each morning from constantly disastrous cruising nights, they have to wrap their heads around the guesthouse owners and their quirks, which are just as irrational to our world as viewers. The matriarch Madame Woytis (Sabine Azéma) can get so overwhelmed, she actually freezes in the spot for a period of time like a malfunctioning machine. Leon, whose dialogue at first is witty and henpecked by his wife, but starts to take on childish plays on words and more swearing as he goes along. Their maid Catherette, who is baring a small lip disfigurement, is the sanest person in the house, but with someone in the family who is also played by Clémentine Pons later on in the film, continuing an obsession the director-writer has had with doppelgangers. And Lena, the object of Witold's overwhelming obsession, who is introduced lying on a bed without the mattress on the springs, does not react to severe events as the viewer would presume her to, and whose husband is more disconnected to her than he wishes to be. Then there is the other character who eventually dresses as Tintin, which in itself is just as strange in context as outside of it.

As the mystery is ultimately a farce, you are instead turning your attention to the world and its little details; a "metaphysical noir thriller" according to its late director, the title Cosmos is apt in how ultimately the mystery Witold is obsessed with is insignificant to the literal cosmos of human behaviour, able to see a rake etched in water stain in the corner of the wall but completely blind to the significantly bigger sexual symbolism in the same spot in the lounge. A pressurised farce, where the performances break into maniac expressions and dialogue as Zulawski trademarked as his own, the anxiety that is normally found in these type of French dramas, even when their scenarios are as absurdist in the plotting, is here acted out literally. Even in terms of the plot, this is the same, as the strange acts are part of someone's plan just to keep the people around them shocked alert. Sometimes as well, Zulawski even breaks into the completely unnatural when, at a dynamic moment, suddenly one man unzips his trousers and bees are projected from them, seemingly the most irrational and unexplained moment but in context a sudden break in the tensions.

As Witold reacts violently to each odd event which bursts his personal bubble, even beating his chest like a deranged gorilla at the dinner table at one point, everyone's internal emotions are literalised as part of Żuławski's trademark, slapstick for him kinetic and as exhausting for the characters themselves as it will be for some viewers. All Witold is able to find is absurdities with little connection, instead the real mystery to be found in dealing with his emotions for Lena, her emotions for him back and how her husband, a likable guy himself, reacts badly when he pegs what is taking place between them as they all decide to go to a summer cottage to escape the stress of the hostel. Żuławski's style is entirely artificial but for the sake of his own form of realism, hence why his most well known trademark, the hyper stylised and extreme acting style, is what it is, the idea mentioned before of literalising his characters' external concerns as much as the events they are negotiating around. Restraining his use of prowling camera movements for his final film, it makes his prescience known instead by gliding through the guesthouse corridor and tracking characters along through their monologues, the irony of his hyper dynamic style tackling a genre which would seem safe and dialogue heavy perfect as the final film in the shift in tone. It is fitting for such an openly brazen and intelligence person to conclude on for his filmmaking career this production, able to get away with actor Jonathan Genet doing one scene directly to the camera, in extreme close-up, in a Donald Duck voice and it making perfect sense in context.

The dialogue in particular, in testament to translator and Żuławski documenter Daniel Bird for creating English subtitles for a film this quickly paced and dense, is a huge chunk of Cosmos' style. Restraining himself in terms of the more extreme moments of his career - from a man who had Isabelle Adjani writhing around in white milky liquid in the subway to On the Silver Globe (1988) and its mass anal impaling crucifixion - or in the use of constantly moving camera, the dialogue is still rapid fire and breath taking to follow, each character having individualistic quirks to them seen in their dialogue which, even if you were to struggle with at times, still paints their character in the poetic flourishes they use. That Żuławski has no qualms with referencing anything from himself to even Star Wars means the dialogue is exceptionally flexible and inventive, a reflection of how imaginative he was as a screenwriter. The acting as well is also exceptional as to be expected from Żuławski's films, able to convey just in exaggerated body language what their emotions are before they even speak. As a result, Cosmos feels like entering an alien environment, yet one relatively close to reality within a guesthouse full of arguments, constantly delicious culinary dishes and nature constantly appearing within the middle class environment, a slug literally letting nature be known sitting on the butter for the croissant. When the extreme emotions of the occupants of the house are shown, and reach their peak however, things drastically change, having to keep pace with Cosmos and see the literal "cosmos" of title in how dynamic and unconventional human behaviour is at its fullest.

As a result of this, the experience of Cosmos is an ever increasing series of stranger events taking place. As the realisation Lena is as interested in Witold is eventually known, the deliberately maniac energy is actually more pronounced in a film like this than in one like Possession as, while the later is more extreme in content and tone, the stereotype of what this type of slice of life drama with possible mystery content is belies the surprise of what actually takes place, having greater impact. Sadly, Żuławski would pass in 2016, just after this film, but with his final production Cosmos he was still as uncompromising as his reputation suggests, delightfully wild with intelligence and actively encouraging people to rewatch it over and over again to catch more details and moments of gleeful humour. Even ending the film, on the end credits, by breaking the forth wall and showing the film itself being produced is the sort of subversion befitting him, aptly ending the film and his life with waking up the audience too.

Abstract Spectrum: Expressionist/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium