The Year of Madness

2007 was a sleazy year, a year when screens were full of ugly nightclub colors and Asia Argento's (and Eva Mendes') thighs and shoulders. A year full of self-important films and important films that we didn't want to see. A year of madness, a year when we could make idiots of ourselves, a year of magnificent obsessions, films that'd make you seem half-crazy when you tried to describe them to your friends. A year of blinding darkness punctuated with little respites of gentle daylight courtesy of Hou and Anderson. The daylight was good, it set us right, but the dark, the murk, the confusion was better. Andre Techine struck a balance with his twilight, but I still prefer Gray or Ferrara's neon to his fading sunset. As beautiful as an evening shadow is passing over a young man's face, I prefer the stark and dark hallways of those imagined New Yorks -- one constructed in Cinecitta, as artificial and nightmarishly nostalgic as the city of Eyes Wide Shut, the other doubling for its past self with minimal set dressing.

Nylon stockings, sunglasses, mirrored ceilings and booming bass. It was Asia Argento's year. She's even better at making images than her father -- he has to try, set up lights, pick lenses, while she just contorts her body to fit any frame. She is the model who controls the picture. So 2007 mostly happened in Nighttown. You could smell the spilled beer and cigarette smoke in the images, pick up traces of sweat and cologne in the parks where The Witnesses would go cruising. Almost everyone worth watching was made up like a whore or carried himself like a hustler.

1. We Own the Night (James Gray)
2. Go Go Tales (Abel Ferrara)
3. The Witnesses (Andre Techine)
4. Boarding Gate (Olivier Assayas)
5. Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-Hsien)
6. The Last Mistress (Catherine Breillat)
7. Zodiac (David Fincher)
8. Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg)
9. The Duchess of Langeias (Jacques Rivette)
10. Mad Detective (Johnnie To) / The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson)