I haven't seen La Pianiste, but I remember hearing about it when it was out. Re: the white font stuff I figured that's what they do. I wonder how the kids will feel when they are older about having been in those roles. Also if I were the parent, I'd never be able to watch the final product. Far too disturbing.

Most amusing IMDB user comment on La Pianiste:

Why was the whole film in French?

Why was the whole film in French?

Seriously...?

I'm not sure what I think, but it certainly feels wrong when you see it.

The latest issue of Sight and Sound (with Clive Owen on the cover - mmmm) contains an interview with Gregg Araki which includes the following paragraph:

Much of it [Mysterious Skin] is acted straight to camera. Partly, this was a response to the problem of how to make a movie showing scenes of child abuse without traumatising the child actors. "Those scenes are so critical to the story that I didn't want to make the movie if I couldn't include them," says Araki. "So I figured out a cinematic stragegy to shoot them using subjective camera and point of view, and eye-line. It was related to the Kuleshov experiement, in the sense that meaning is created through the collision of images. It was possible to create those scenes by editing disparate shots together".

I haven't seen the movie yet, but I bet if you pay attention to the editing in those scenes (always difficult on a first watch), you'll find that the kids weren't necessarily present for the nasty stuff.

Araki directed one of the worst movies I have ever seen, The Doom Generation. It seemed totally exploitative, and wanky in a "how can I shock the great unwashed masses?" way. Since then, he's on my list. The bad one.

What, the naked skinheads played by porn stars stopping to give a big speech in front of an American flag before brutalizing the film's leads didn't give you a chuckle?

Yeah, I didn't care for Doom Generation either. The only Araki movie I liked besides Mysterious Skin is nowhere.

I haven't seen the movie yet, but I bet if you pay attention to the editing in those scenes (always difficult on a first watch), you'll find that the kids weren't necessarily present for the nasty stuff.

Yeah, this is true and I noticed it when I watched. But it's still so disturbing to see, for example, a young boy with a man's thumb in his mouth.

Everything else aside, was MT good in her role?

Araki directed one of the worst movies I have ever seen, The Doom Generation. It seemed totally exploitative, and wanky in a "how can I shock the great unwashed masses?" way. Since then, he's on my list. The bad one.

Nearly every review of the movie that I've read has commented that his other movies have been exploitative and sensationalistic. The majority of them have gone on to say that he finally found a subject and script that worked for him, and proceeded to praise the movie.

MT was good but she wasn't in it all that much. She played the best friend of one of the kids. It was funny to see her all gothed out.

To switch to a director who is Greg Araki's oppsite in every way--I just saw Cinderella Man this evening. Predictable, safe filmmaking, but also a helluva movie. The time flew by and the performances were uniformly excellent. Crowe and Giamatti are GREAT together. I don't actually like Crowe that much but I thought he was nuanced and powerful and amazing.