Christian Bale Rant + Isabelle Adjani & When Cultures Collide in Classroom

I’ve had friends in the mountains of Papua New Guinea and in some impenetrable spot in the Amazon jungle e-mail me about Christian Bale’s expletive-filled blow-up on the Terminator Salvation set last July. (That was around the time the actor was arrested for allegedly assaulting his mother and sister in London.)

For those who have spent the day somewhere in Orion, let me briefly explain what happened:

Suddenly, last f#$%ing summer, Bale had a f#*ing scene ruined by director of photography Shane Hurlbut (nominated for an American Society of Cinematographers award in 1998 for the TV movie The Rat Pack), who walked within Bale’s f$#*ing field of vision throwing him off character. Bale went f*@$ng ballistic, cursing the d.p. for a good three never-ending f#!*ing minutes – never mind who or what was f$%*ing watching. (Among those were co-star Bryce Dallas Howard, director McG, and assistant director Bruce Franklin, who has since defended the actor.)

The problem is that someone recorded what Bale did last summer. And that f$#*ing recording has been leaked online. And that has led some creative people to come up with various artistic/parodic versions of the unartistic/unfunny Bale Blow-up.

If the word “fuck” offends you, skip the videos, though the top two have some catchy music (Barbra Streisand is the Special F*#$ing Guest Star in the topmost video), while in the bottom video Bale loses it because the Craft service guy failed to bring him his favorite donut. (“No, I don’t want a bagel! … No, I don’t need any fucking walking! I want a donut right now!)

Now, I’m eagerly awaiting the Paul Rudd-Michael Showalter Bale Blast parody. See here their hilarious take on the Lily Tomlin-David O. Russell Class Act during the making of I Heart Huckabees.

And let’s not forget The Bullying Institute guidelines. (According to Washington state’s Department of Labor, workplace bullying is behavior that “intimidates, degrades, offends, or humiliates a worker, often in front of others. Bullying behavior creates feelings of defenselessness in the target and undermines an individual’s right to dignity at work.”)

Isabelle Adjani ‘Skirt Day’: Clash of cultures

In the San Francisco Chronicle, Mick LaSalle briefly discusses several of the films he saw at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival (Feb. 5–15), including the latest Isabelle Adjani star vehicle:

So the [Paul] Schrader film [Adam Resurrected] was a disappointment. To a lesser extent, so was the Chabrol film Bellamy, with Gérard Depardieu as a cop investigating an insurance scam: not bad, but languorous and a bit like a TV movie. Another French entry, Skirt Day [La journée de la jupe], was more interesting. A mix of black comedy and social comment, the film marks the screen return of Isabelle Adjani, who plays a frustrated teacher in an ethnically diverse school who finally gets the attention of her students by holding them at gunpoint.

Skirt Day is a mess, but it comes as a refreshing antidote to a glut of politically correct films overtaking Europe – the same film, over and over – about how wonderful immigrants are, and if one happens to turn nasty or violent, it’s your fault for being a greedy Western slime. By the way, the film’s title refers to the short skirt Adjani wears to work that fatal day. The sartorial choice sets off her students, who come from cultures that tell them a woman in a skirt is a prostitute or loose woman.

Isabelle Adjani movies

From 1970 on, Isabelle Adjani has been featured in more than 30 films, mostly French productions. She has taken home four César Awards and has been nominated another three times. She has also been shortlisted twice for the Best Actress Academy Award.

Adjani’s Best Actress César Awards were for the following:

• Possession (1981).
• One Deadly Summer / L’été meurtrier (1983).
• Camille Claudel (1988).
• Queen Margot / La reine Margot (1994).

Her nominations were for the following:

• The Story of Adele H / L’histoire d’Adèle H. (1975).
• Barocco (1976).
• Subway (1985).

Isabelle Adjani’s two Best Actress Oscar nominations were for François Truffaut’s The Story of Adele H and Bruno Nuytten’s Camille Claudel (1989). She lost to, respectively, Louise Fletcher for Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Jessica Tandy for Bruce Beresford’s Driving Miss Daisy.

Prior to Skirt Day, Adjani was last seen on the big screen in a cameo in François Dupeyron’s Monsieur Ibrahim / Monsieur Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran (2003), starring Omar Sharif.

Isabelle Adjani Skirt Day image: © Jean Marie Marion / Mascaret Films.