Cosmos

Macro and Micro

Show me a cosmos, a deep-focus woods, a young woman standing in relief against a rather ancient garden wall creating by an ivy network running from the edge of one frame to the other. The opening verses of Dante's Inferno carry from a forest path, recited by Jonathan Genet, the main character of Żuławski's Cosmos [2015] based on the eponymous 1965 novel by Witold Gombrowicz. As Witold (Genet) progresses down the way toward camera, he discovers a ruffled bird hanged dead by the neck from a frayed cord affixed to a tree branch. Other members of Witold's friend's household, wherein Witold has taken a summer sublet (studying law, perhaps but giving more time to the composition on a novel or poem of high-pitch) variously find on the estate grounds a hanged plucked chicken, another hanged bird, and maybe most gruesomely, a travestied black and white cat tied dead to a slim tree limb.

Juxtaposed with the traditional French family dinners that make up at least half the scenes in Cosmos, the animal deaths speak to the anti-Tenenbaum quality of this crazy film, all menace and curse. Two performances stand out in particular and during these sequences: those of Jean-François Balmer (as Léon Woytis) and his partner Sabine Azéma (Mme. Woytis): tributes to the acting of the stage — tribute and shuffle this time not just using Godard as an element in earlier films like L'amour braque (make no mistake that Godardian invocations are however present) but also the force of structure and neoclassical + modernist notes of Alain Resnais and his specific type of artifice of stage and screen. Azéma was Resnais's partner in real-life, probably a perfect match, the couple together for decades till his passing, — she has only gotten greater an actress in my estimation as the years go on. (For some reason, Azéma never broke through — or didn't want to break through — to the American film scene in the same way that Binoche, Deneuve, Huppert, and most recently Seydoux have.)

Genet and his friend from the dwelling Johan Libéreau (Fuchs) go for a walk at the rainy strand by the sea. They pick up a rugby match with some other beach-goers. The spray from the water flings droplets onto the camera lens. "Cosmos" (a perfect title for more Żuławski than one) is not immaterial. •

Other writing at Cinemasparagus on the films of Andrzej Żuławski:

L'important c'est d'aimer [1975]

L'amour braque [1985]

Cosmos [2015]

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