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Patricia Rozema in person for the new 4K director’s cut restoration of her queer classic WHEN NIGHT IS FALLING + screenings of her latest, MOUTHPIECE.

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We’re proud to soon screen two films by Canadian filmmaker Patricia Rozema: her just-restored 1995 romance When Night is Falling (May 7 at the Royal and May 8 at the NoHo) and her most recent film, Mouthpiece (May 13 & 14 at the Town Center, Monica Film Center, Glendale, and Claremont). Rozema will participate in Q&As after the Tuesday, May 7 and 8 screenings of When Night is Falling at the Royal and NoHo. Tracy E. Gilchrist, VP, Executive Producer of Entertainment for equalpride, will moderate the Royal Q&A.

Long considered to be a pivotal entry in the LGTBQ+ canon, When Night is Falling is a sexy, daring and visually resplendent story about the thrilling temptations of passion. Camille, a Christian academic, is engaged to Martin, a fellow theologian. Then she meets Petra, a flamboyant performer in an avant-garde circus. To her surprise, Camille finds herself falling deeply and almost magically in love. Forced to choose between the woman she wants, and the man who loves her, Camille discovers that the only true duty of the soul is desire.

From WHEN NIGHT IS FALLING.

A Canadian classic that was in Official Competition at the 1995 Berlin International Film Festival, When Night is Falling tells a lesbian story beautifully photographed by Douglas Koch, catching a romantic, wintry Toronto landscape.

Adapted from the play by Amy Nostbakken and Norah Sadava, Mouthpiece follows Cassandra, an aspiring writer who, while struggling to compose a eulogy after the sudden death of her mother, comes to discover that her own rebelliousness is as much a response to the male gaze as her mother’s conformity. Enacting the two sides of Cassandra’s conflicting inner dialogue, playwright-performers Nostbakken and Sadava create a compelling portrayal of the tension between regression and progress that is often found within women.

From MOUTHPIECE

Mark Olson of the L.A. Times just published a good piece about Rozema and her work and also interviewed her, as did Gilchrist for The Advocate:

There’s a scene in Patricia Rozema’s 2018 film Mouthpiece where the main character, Cassandra, is flooded with a memory of her mother, who’s just died. The camera pans the room, lingering on Cassandra’s mother’s books and music. In the frame there appear works by Joni Mitchell, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, and the groundbreaking lesbian author, actor, and activist Ann-Marie McDonald, who appeared in Rozema’s first feature, 1987’s I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing. Through Cassandra’s memories of her mother, Rozema pays tribute to Canada’s great women storytellers, and considering the filmmaker’s body of work, her name belongs among them…Throughout her canon and evident in the restored films is Rozema’s singular poetic film language that includes queer identity, interior monologues, and a duality in her characters or what she refers to as “twoness.” Unburdened by the machine of Hollywood and working from artists’ grants from Canada, Rozema cemented herself as a true auteur out of the gate with I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, a self-reflexive and heartfelt comedy about a quirky secretary to a lesbian art gallery owner. The film investigates the nature of art itself, something that Rozema would continue to examine throughout her career.

“But I think I was protecting my ability to make movies, because I was ambitious too. Not for fame or for money but for being able to make movies, which is the best job in the whole fucking world in my mind,” she adds. “I was terrified that I would be shut down. So I was careful, maybe too careful sometimes, so that I think some people wished was different sooner.”

Despite Rozema’s thoughts of being “too careful” at some points, as a progenitor of the Toronto New Wave with the likes of Atom Egoyan and Jeremy Podeswa, her contributions to cinema include making elevated films about queer women with happy or hopeful endings that expanded the notion of fixed sexuality.

“I also spoke quite early about fluidity, a gender continuum, and a sort of orientation continuum,” Rozema says. “At the time, it was very binary: You’re gay or you’re straight. Period. I felt like there’s got to be more colors in this human palette.”

Greg Laemmle on the return of the senior moviegoer.

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We know that over the past four years, you may have become accustomed to hearing bad news from us.  So we are pleased to share some good news. Qualified good news. But still, a sign of improvement.

It appears that older audiences are returning in larger numbers. That’s welcome news for all of us at Laemmle Theatres, and at art houses across the U.S. Before the pandemic, the hand wringing was about the “graying” of the arthouse audience. But since reopening, as arthouses have had success with younger-skewing films, the concern instead has been about how to reconnect with the older audiences that were once weekly guests at our theaters.  

Now, we love showing films like HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS and LOVE LIES BLEEDING. But we also love showing the English-language period films (i.e., Merchant Ivory films), foreign-language romantic dramas (pick your prototypical French film) and non-studio American independent films that are aimed at an audience that grew up in a world without cell phones and the internet. And since reopening, while we’ve had some success with films like THE DUKE, THE TASTE OF THINGS and MOVING ON, we can’t help but notice that the numbers are still not where they would have been in the days before COVID.

But starting at the end of 2023, it felt as if things were beginning to turn around a bit. Films like ANATOMY OF A FALL and THE HOLDOVERS made more of a mark at the box office than “comparable” films did in 2021 and 2022.  And you also have FALLEN LEAVES doing more business than almost any prior film from director Aki Kaurismäki.

So far this year, and leaving aside films that were part of the Oscar race, films like DRIVING MADELEINE, ONE LIFE, THE OLD OAK, FAREWELL MR. HAFFMANN, COUP DE CHANCE and WICKED LITTLE LETTERS are performing better. In fact, the latter four are hanging around, showing good word-of-mouth. These films are still doing a fraction of the business that they would have done pre-pandemic. But better is good. And hopefully, we and our distributor partners can build on this trend.

“When pandemic restrictions eased, many couldn’t wait to get back to the movie theater,” wrote Jon Keller of CBS last year. “But a new study found older adults are in no rush to return. And that trend is about more than just fear of COVID. Before the pandemic, people over 40 bought 41% of all movie tickets in the U.S. and Canada.”

It’s not COVID rates, which a quick check of the L.A. County Department of Public Health website shows are vanishingly low. And the fact remains that seeing a movie in a theater instead of at home is still 1000% better. (We’ll never tire of quoting the filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev, who compared watching a movie at home to reading a novel while skipping every other word.)

According to one of Variety’s recent dispatches from the annual trade show CinemaCon, “the box office hasn’t recaptured its pre-pandemic stride — studios estimate that roughly 15% to 20% of frequent moviegoers have yet to resume their old entertainment habits now that COVID has dissipated. Plus, the labor strikes that consumed the media industry for much of the previous year as actors and writers hit the picket lines resulted in production delays that left theaters with fewer movies to hawk on their marquees.”

Big budget popcorn movies that mostly appeal to younger audiences can be fantastic and we happily screen them at some of our venues, but those kinds of films are not Laemmle Theatres’ popcorn and butter, to alter a phrase. The current drama CIVIL WAR may be a surprise hit because it combines action movie elements with serious subject matter, drawing cinephiles of all ages. But what about films with zero guns which are purely cerebral? If audiences don’t turn out for these films, fewer will get made or picked up for distribution; it’s just supply and demand.

How do we reach older moviegoers when the L.A. Times isn’t running reviews?

We are happy to see some new signs of strength recently. But more would be better. So if you know an older moviegoer who used to attend regularly, but no longer does, we’d like to hear why not. Because the existence of a local movie theater that can show, for example, classic reissues like CLASSE TOUS RISQUE (opening May 3 at the Royal!) or the artful woman-made Senegalese drama BANEL & ADAMA (opening June 14 at the Royal!) is not a given.

“Like discovering a bottle of marvelous French wine,” CLASSE TOUS RISQUE opens May 3 at the Royal.

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Family man and gangster Abel Davos (Lino Ventura), holed up in Italy for over a decade, needs some startup money in order to return to France, where he’s been sentenced to death. With Milan’s Duomo looming in the background (shot on location), he and a crony execute a split-second payroll heist — in broad daylight — then begin a lightning-fast getaway via underground passages, cars, motorcycle, bus, speedboat, and ambulance. Only the beginning of the mounting mayhem.

Bridging argot-rich ’50s masterworks like Dassin’s Rififi and Becker’s Touchez Pas Au Grisbi with Melville’s pared-down thrillers of the ’60s, Classe Tous Risque (referring to a kind of insurance policy, à la Double Indemnity, but also a pun on “tourist class”) is a penetrating study of a tough guy at the end of his rope, drawn from screenwriter and ex-con José Giovanni’s first-hand knowledge of the post-war French underworld.

“Film noir is a French coinage but France’s homegrown crime movies, a staple of the 1950s and early ’60s, seldom get their due in the United States, however first-rate they might be. Case in point: Claude Sautet’s 1960 slam dunk Classe Tous Risque.” — J. Hoberman, The New York Times

“Powerful and timeless.” — John Woo

“As revolutionary as Breathless.” — Bertrand Tavernier

“Like discovering a bottle of marvelous French wine you didn’t remember you had, opening it and finding it every bit as delicious as its reputation promised. That’s how good this classic fatalistic French gangster film is.” — Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

“Never wastes a minute of your time, right up to its abrupt ending: this is condensed, intense story-telling that never once loosens its grip.” — David Gritten, Daily Telegraph

“The young Belmondo alone is worth the price of admission to Classe Tous Risque.” — Andrew Sarris, Observer

“Belmondo is the clincher: He’s got so much jaunty charisma, the screen can barely contain him.” — Jan Stewart, Newsday

Directed with an acute feeling for characterization, this was the first major feature for Sautet (Cesar and Rosalie, Les Choses de la Vie, Original title: Un Coeur en Hiver, etc.) and the first teaming of the two great French cinema icons: former wrestling champ Ventura, here making a career-decisive move into lead roles, and 26-year-old New Wave wunderkind Jean-Paul Belmondo, straight from Godard’s Breathless.

Despite a “Who’s Who” crew and cast — including composer Georges Delerue (Contempt), cinematographer Ghislain Cloquet (Au Hasard Balthazar), and co-stars Marcel Dalio (Grand Illusion, The Rules of the Game, Casablanca) and Sandra Milo (the late star of Fellini’s 8 1/2) — Classe Tous Risque got lost in the New Wave shuffle. In this country, a dubbed version called The Big Risk came and went in drive-ins and grindhouses before disappearing — until Rialto Pictures’ first U.S. release of the complete French language version in 2005.

2024 marks the centennial of director Claude Sautet.

Restored in 4K HDR Dolby Vision by TF1 Studio at Éclair Classics laboratory, from the original camera negative and the French sound negative. Funding provided by the CNC, Coin de Mire Cinéma, and OCS.

UNCROPPED Q&A Saturday at the Royal with cinematographer Robert Yeoman.

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Robert Yeoman (Uncropped) and Scott Peterson (moderator) are confirmed for the 4pm Q&A on Saturday 4/27 at Laemmle Royal.

Celebrated cinematographer Robert Yeoman is known for his collaboration with director Wes Anderson, having worked on all of Anderson’s films beginning with Bottle Rocket (1996). Yeoman was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. Other notable credits include Gus Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy (for which he won the Independent Spirit Award for Cinematography), Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale, and Paul Feig’s Bridesmaids and Ghostbusters. Yeoman currently teaches at USC in the School of Cinematic Arts.

Scott Peterson is a Los Angeles-based script supervisor who has worked with Scott Cooper, Tom Ford, Steven Soderbergh, Joel Coen, Martin McDonagh, Gus Van Sant, and Wes Anderson. A highlight for Scott was working with his chums James Hamilton and Bob Yeoman on The Royal Tenenbaums.

‘Photographic Justice: The Corky Lee Story’ Q&As at the Royal and Glendale.

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Photographic Justice: The Corky Lee Story LAEMMLE PANELS

ROYAL:

4/25 Thursday 7:30

Q&A with 

Jennifer Takaki / Director

George Hirose / Executive Producer 

Linda Lew Woo / Producer

Moderated by: Jeff Yang / Author and Friend of Corky Lee

GLENDALE:

4/26 Friday 4:30 

Informal Q&A with 

Jennifer Takaki / Director

George Hirose / Executive Producer 

Linda Lew Woo / Producer

4/27 Saturday 4:30

Q&A with 

Jennifer Takaki / Director

George Hirose / Executive Producer 

Linda Lew Woo / Producer

Moderated by: Chris M. Kwok / Community Organizer

4/28 Sunday 4:30

Informal Q&A with 

Jennifer Takaki / Director

George Hirose / Executive Producer 

Linda Lew Woo / Producer

Featuring a “spine-tingling” lead performance, NOWHERE SPECIAL opens April 26.

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Uberto Pasolini’s new film Nowhere Special stars the gifted English actor James Norton as a single father who dedicates the last few months of his life to finding a new family for his four-year-old son. It’s based on a true story. We open Nowhere Special April 26 at the Royal and May 3 at our Claremont, Glendale and Encino theaters. Pasolini wrote the following about how he, his cast and crew were able to create this brilliant, understated movie:

“I wanted to make this film as soon as I read about the case of a terminally ill father attempting to find a new family for his toddler son before his death. Although the situation the main characters find themselves in is very dramatic, the decision at script level was to approach the story in a very subtle, “quiet” way, as far away from melodrama and sentimentalism as possible, as in a film by Yasujirō Ozu, or, more recently, the work of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. This approach was reflected in the style of the filmmaking we adopted, direct and free from distracting stylistic flourishes. Marius Panduru’s camera work was designed to be both fluid and unobtrusive, when appropriate even reflecting the child’s point of view. The main directorial challenge of the film was that of working with a very young child, and of creating a believable and moving father-son relationship on camera. Fortunately, in young Daniel Lamont, then four years old, we have an extraordinarily aware and sensitive natural performer, and in James Norton a most generous actor, who was happy to dedicate long days into creating a connection with the boy well ahead of the shoot, and to support and guide Daniel throughout what for any child would have been an intense and at times bewildering experience.”

“In spite of myself I invested totally in Norton’s spine-tingling, intimate performance; and, in spite of myself, the end had me in floods of tears.” ~ Cath Clarke, Guardian

“Uberto Pasolini’s film takes a real-life story as his starting block and turns this tiny Northern Ireland-set tale into an almost sensory experience.” Fionnuala Halligan, Screen International
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“Be warned: you will need to keep a box of tissues to hand, if not all the tissues in the world.” ~ Deborah Ross, The Spectator

“If it is indeed Loach’s farewell, it’s one hell of a fine note to go out on.” THE OLD OAK opens Friday.

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The 28th feature directed by renowned British filmmaker Ken Loach follows a once-vibrant mining town’s response to the arrival of a group of Syrian refugees. TJ, the amiable proprietor of the titular pub – the last meeting point left in town – struggles to keep his more narrow-minded local clientele amid prejudice as he befriends these new residents, in particular a Syrian photographer, Yara. As he has over his six-decade career, Loach gives compassionate voice to the oppressed – both the Syrian migrants as well as the out-of-work locals — in this, the concluding chapter of his Northeast England trilogy (following I, Daniel Blake and Sorry We Missed You) and his self-proclaimed final film. 

Laemmle Theatres is proud to open The Old Oak this Friday, April 12 at the Royal, Town Center and Claremont and April 19 at our Glendale theater.

“It’s as engrossing, thoughtful, heartfelt, angry, hopeful, and altogether valuable as his best work. If it is indeed Loach’s farewell, it’s one hell of a fine note to go out on.” ~ Matt Zoller Seitz, RogerEbert.com

“With The Old Oak, Ken Loach goes out with one last, full-throated call for brotherhood and solidarity. It’s the most hopeful the old soldier’s been in years.” ~ Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture

“A film as fired up and human as any you’ll see this year.” – Phil de Semlyen, Time Out 

“Ken Loach’s fierce final call for compassion and solidarity… He is the fierce plain-speaker of political indignation with a style that is unironised and unadorned… It is a filmmaking language utterly without the cynical twang that is de rigueur for everyone else…I hope that this isn’t Loach’s final film, but if it is, he has concluded with a ringing statement of faith in compassion for the oppressed.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian (UK)

“[Loach] could hardly have delivered a more resonant, timely or indeed angry swansong than this feature which takes up arms against the decay of national compassion.” – Jonathan Romney, Screen International

“What Loach adds to this scenario, as he’s done in most of his films, is a natural intimacy that goes beyond the issues to bring something human and emotional to the table… Working with screenwriter Paul Laverty, who’s been the auteur’s trusted scribe ever since Carla’s Song in 1996, Loach builds up to such emotional high points through a slow-burn narrative that sets up all the conflicts and then has them play out as naturally as possible…as if he were capturing real life as it happened, with cinematographer Robbie Ryan (American Honey) adding a dose of warmth and color to the drab town setting.” – Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter

“A poignant and moving coda to a career spent chronicling personal indignities amid broader social ills like poverty and unemployment.” ~ Jocelyn Noveck, Associated Press

“In place of magical thinking and a happy ending, “The Old Oak” serves up something harder: a meditation on hope.” ~ Alissa Wilkinson, New York Times

“The chemistry between Turner and Mari leads to a relationship rarely seen in cinema.” ~ Sophie Monks Kaufman, indieWire

“The film unfolds with a fierce crackle. And a wide lens is in play alongside the micro close-up.” ~ Danny Leigh, Financial Times

“Loach’s faith in the human capacity for empathy prevails in the end. Best of all, he brings off this optimistic flourish without the taint of sentimentality.” ~ Sandra Hall, Sydney Morning Herald

Anniversary screenings of Claire Denis’s debut, “a film of infinite delicacy,” CHOCOLAT.

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The next film in our Anniversary Classics Abroad series is Claire Denis’s intense 1988 debut feature, Chocolat, screening April 24 at our Claremont, Encino, Glendale, Newhall and West L.A. theaters. Denis drew on her own childhood experiences growing up in colonial French Africa for her visually beautiful, multilayered, languorously absorbing movie. She explores many of the themes that would recur throughout her work. Returning to the town where she grew up in Cameroon after many years living in France, a white woman (Mireille Perrier) reflects on her relationship with Protée (Isaach De Bankolé), a Black servant with whom she formed a friendship while not fully grasping the racial divides that governed their worlds.

Roger Ebert was quick to identify Chocolat as a major accomplishment. His review is worth reading in full, but here’s its final paragraph:

“Chocolat is one of those rare films with an entirely mature, adult sensibility; it is made with the complexity and subtlety of a great short story, and it assumes an audience that can understand what a strong flow of sex can exist between two people who barely even touch each other. It is a deliberately beautiful film – many of the frames create breathtaking compositions – but it is not a travelogue and it is not a love story. It is about how racism can prevent two people from looking each other straight in the eyes, and how they punish each other for the pain that causes them. This is one of the best films of the year.”
Denis was nominated for several major prizes for Chocolat: the Palme d’Or at Cannes, the Best First Feature at the César Awards, and the Best Foreign Language Film prize by the New York Film Critics Circle. Some of her later career highlights include Beau Travail, High Life, White Material and 35 Shots of Rum.