Seymour: An Introduction (***)

The title of the movie may grab J. D. Salinger fans who know it as the title of one of Salinger’s better known short stories. They’ll be disappointed to learn that, while the movie too is a character sketch, it’s of the wholly unrelated Seymour Bernstein, a successful pianist turned piano teacher and composer in New York City. This Seymour gave up the limelight for contentment, and it’s that sentiment that strikes you in Ethan Hawke’s documentary.

Hawke includes conversation with others in the film, but it’s the footage of Bernstein, nearing 80, interacting with his younger students that is most captivating. These students are advanced, already capable of playing the right notes, but if you’ve wondered what things make the difference between a very competent musician and a truly excellent one, you get some idea here. Listening to one student chop away at the keys, Bernstein notices not the student’s hands but his shoulders. Placing his own hands on those shoulders, he has the student play it again, now more relaxed. It’s these kinds of small observations, but also his manner, that must make Berstein a fine teacher. He is the opposite of the teacher in Whiplash, inspiring with calmness, confidence in the student, and even a little humor. “Not all notes can be passionate,” he say after hearing one loud performance.

But Hawke is not a piano student, and it’s not the technical skills that drew him to his subject. Both acting (notably in the partly improvised films of Richard Linklater such as Boyhood, Tape, and the Before trilogy) and in interviews, he’s struck me as someone who is maybe thinking too much, who never seems relaxed. Maybe he envies Seymour Bernstein, who strikes me as someone who is thoughtful but not overthinking; he’s gained wisdom with age and simplified the things he prefers not to think about, like where to live. (So he’s been in the same apartment his entire adult life.) Whether you are a music fan or not, he may inspire.

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viewed 3/26/15 7:30 pm [PFS screening] and posted 3/30/15

Avenue Montaigne [Fauteuils d'Orchestre] (***1/4)

? Along a posh Parisian boulevard: an ornery TV actress wants a movie role; a concert pianist wants to shed the trappings of his profession; an aging art collector wants to sell; and a perky waitress, crossing the paths of all these important persons, wants only to earn enough to pay for a flat. American director and occasional actor Sydney Pollack plays a director for whom the actress hopes to play Simone de Beauvoir.

+ You don’t see too many of these ensemble-cast movies coming out of Hollywood, and most of the recent examples are heavy works like Crash or Babel, but I always like it when I see this sort of multi-character comedy-drama done well. The waitressing job (she does room service too) is a nice device to have the poor pixie interact with all of the ritzier characters, who have a lot but want something else. The story does a nice job of introducing all the angst of these people while keeping the tone light. Other pluses are the cast (especially Valérie Lemercier as the actress, the most full-bodied character, and Cécile de France as the waitress), the piano playing, and some fabulous views of the Eiffel Tower.

- The movie is sometimes serious, but rarely deep. Not a great flaw, as it’s not striving to be.

= ***1/4 This charmer isn’t really a romantic comedy, but it has elements of and feels like one, so it’s worth a look for anyone who enjoys that genre. Lemercier’s and Pollack’s half-in-French, half-in-English discussion of whether de Beauvoir was sexually repressed is a seriocomic highlight.

IMDb link