6 words

I will/might be trying to hit 50.000 words again from the 9th of November onwards (yes, nanowrimo has already started. However, I have midterms), but let us not forget some of the most brilliant fiction takes only 6 words. Joss Whedon's is, of course, one of the best.

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I like them better tortured

I just finished watching episode 4 of the new BBC Jane Eyre series. And, first things first, I loved it. It manages to be thrillingly romantic without having a too modernised Jane, all but the first episodes made me cry, and all in all I agree with most of the deviations from the book, especially how they handled the tricky scene from the book in which Rochester dresses up as an old fortuneteller gypsy. I also thought the casting was note perfect: Ruth Wilson is sensuous and passionate yet also believable as a literal "plain jane", and Rochester, well, Rochester, he might have been just a touch too pretty but he was burly and gruff enough to make up for it. Enough for me to get my panties in a bunch, in any case.

But let's talk about those panties. See, I think I have a small problem. I loved the early scenes of him drawing her out. I loved the scenes in which she is so obviously clueless to his intentions, misinterpreting everything he says. The proposal scene: wonderful. The wedding preparations and short span of hopeful bliss? Interesting only because I knew what was coming.

Same thing afterwards. The flashback scenes in episode four of Rochester trying to tempt Jane to stay? Almost unbearably sexy. Yet everything after they find each other again, especially the final scene with Rochester with a baby in his arms and a beatific smile on his face? Somehow disappointing.

Ok, ok, I should say something positive: thank God they left the miraculous recovery of sight out, something that always bothered me in the book. But my criticism is, in fact, not so much a criticism of the book or the series, but more a problem I'm discovering with myself. I'm generally a happy kind of person. Glass half-full, rather than half-empty. I mean, I might not be looking for a long-term relationship at the moment, but I'm sure at some point it'll be nice. So why do I like my romances better doomed?

It's not just me of course. Just look at the list of favorite romance books and films. Romeo and Juliet. Yeah, I hope I'm not spoiling this for anyone, but they kinda end up dead. Tristan and Isolde: it depends on the versions, but basically same thing. Want to go further back? Take Pyramus and Thisbe. More modern? Take Love Story. An Affair to Remember. Titanic. Brokeback Mountain.

So yeah, then someone can raise a finger, and annoyingly, say, what about Eliza and Mr. Darcy? What about Harry and Sally? And, ehm, didn't Jane Eyre, at the end, write "Reader, I married him"?

Ok, so yes, back to me. What makes me a Bronteite rather than and Austenite, to put it that way (and to make sure I am, I am currently downloading the 1939 version of Wuthering Heights)? Make no mistake, I like Jane Austen, admire her wit and clear eye for social interactions, but in the end, I'm less drawn in. I think Elisabeth Bennet is a wonderful character, one I would personally be like much more than I would want to resemble Jane Eyre, who is, in the end, just a little too puranitanical (in other words, I probably would not have been able to, or even wanted to, resist living in sin with Mr. Rochester all that much). But the gothic world in which Jane Eyre lives seems so much more alive than Austen's world, which seems to consist solely of social visits that last for months. So much more thrilling.

In my dreams tonight, I'll be walking the wild marches. I'll (hopefully) meet a man with dark, wild eyes. But does that have to mean I'll never be happy calm and peaceful with a nice guy?

"Avond van het Liefdeslied"

Lyrics are often mistaken for poetry. Only rarely is a good poet also a good songwriter, and only rarely to lyrics stand up as poetry when read out (a rare example of a succesful double-tasker, and the only one I can think of, is the great Leonard Cohen). So what happens if you ask 13 poets and 13 pop musicians to collaborate in pairs and make 13 love songs?

Apparently, 13 love affairs.

Tonight on Dutch television, the "Night of the Love Song", showed the results, and as can be expected with these projects, it was a mixed bag. Some songs were perfect, others interesting but not quite succesful, and other pretty but rather bland. But in every case, it was clear that soulmates had been found. Hafid Bouazza declared he wouldn't mind sharia to be instituted right now so he could marry all three lovely belgian singers of "Lais" who hauntingly brought his poem to life. Ilja Leonard Pfeiffer (who managed to be both awesomely cool and utterly, heartbreakingly adorable) was so inspired he considered writing a book of poetry titled "songs for Ellen", and I for one would not mind if he did, since his collaboration with Ellen ten Damme was, as far as I am concerned, the most perfectly crafted and satisfying song of the night. Hagar Peters could not take her hungry eyes off Martin Buitenhuis (of "de Dijk"), and Erik-Jan Harmens did not even try to hide his crush on fiery-haired Roos(beef).

Maybe it's inevitable, when collaborating on a love song, to fall at least a little bit in love. It wasn't limited to same-sex pairs either (or compatible sexual orientations). It did however, seem to go mainly from the poets to their interpreters. I wonder why.

In any case, it was nice for once to break from narrative (although make no mistake, I am still addicted to storytelling) and to sit back to enjoy just aesthetics for once. To be reminded of how beautiful Afrikaans sounds. To discover the voice of Frederique Spigt. And of course, last but not least, to see a 62 year old man in a cap be happy as a little boy performing with a rap band.

For a great WTF moment...

...check www.ryan-adams.com




Also: the song that currently fits my mood best consists of Norwegian guys singing in french...Kings of Convenience - Parr a Pluie

Furthermore: Marcello Mastroianni is/was currently my kind of sexy. Some guys should always wear glasses.

What's more: Veronica Mars starts kicking butt again tomorrow. W00t!

And did you know that I also sometimes still manage to enjoy physics in my free time?


Finally: I'm in a random mood. Can you tell?

Heroes = freaking awesome

And my addiction to scripted TV continues...

I'll elaborate later, but suffice to say it's the closest any TV show has come to a comic book. There's a lot of total crap in it (but then again, you know, radioactive spider bites don't scientifically lead to spidermen either), and I hope they'll insert a little more humor lately, but it's visceral, it drags you along, and it's wonderfully grounded in common myths.

I cannot wait

Viva Pedro

So, here's to bucking the trend that all things 'net should be new

The Films of Pedro Almodovar

Volver is opening in a few weeks here. Until then, this article, and in the style of Mainly Movies, my "sidebar" on Pedro (and yes, I am aware I have seen shamefully few)

Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios: B+
Todo Sobre Mi Madre: A
Hable Con Ella: A-
La Mala Educacion: A

The Daily Show: scientifically proven to be poisoning our youth?

Supergirl

All reluctance to make this a personal blog aside, I think this shout-out is justified: I'm DONE! As in, finally, I've finished my last assignments, and while I still need to get most of my grades and officially graduate and all that, I think I can already claim to be a Bachelor of Science. I think a W00t is in order.

Somehow, being this close to the end of yet another stage, I've been flashing back a lot to the end of the last one: high school. It probably contributes too that my little sister is in the middle of her final exams of high school now. Or that I keep running into things that were a big part of my life then. Cultural things, I mean.

It started when, as a part of his top 5 "Movies about America", Adam of Cinecast (soon to be rechristened filmspotting) listed, at number 4, "Pleasantville". Now, while Adam is absolutely right in saying that Gary Ross "never met a metaphor he didn't want to beat into the ground", this is one of the movies that made me love movies, this is one of the first movies that I wanted to see more than once to unpack all its layers. It's also a movie that I'm afraid I might have become a little "sophisticated" to love as unconditionally now.

Then, this morning, the song "Supergirl" by Reamonn was played on the radio, and all of a sudden I was in a bad teen movie, dancing in my bright yellow skivvies and T-shirt (yes, I wear brightly colored underwear. Usually pyjama pants too, but at that particular moment I was halfway through getting dressed), or rather making un-coordinated weird movements with a silly smile on my face, admittedly much less graceful, pretty and skinny than the girls who usually do this in movies, but dancing nonetheless. This song I hummed to myself continuously throughout my last year of high school, like a mantra, and hearing it again was both weird and exhilarating.

So yeah, no real point to this post....but I definitely feel like I supergirl! And supergirls just fly.

H.

Question of the day: Can a book and a movie be redeemed by the totally hilarious pans they inspire?

Why Charlie Kaufman is us

Glad to know plan B can work out - telling stories with Sufjan

Looking forward to: Brick (no NL release date yet, unfortunately)

Stuff I learned: even Nobel prize winners sometimes to switch their phones off
Listening to: Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan
Thinking about writing about: Pleasantville
Not enthusiastic about: unexpected shower visitors
Wants to read: about one of the men who fascinate me most

From the vault: What should I read next?

Unrelated comment: 1 down, 4 to go. 1 more week until being DONE.

The Eccentrics

Armond White has a very interesting piece up at slate about the group of filmmakers he calls "the Eccentrics", prompted by Wes Anderson's brilliant AmEx ad. The filmmakers he labels as such are:

• Wes Anderson
• Spike Jonze
• P.T. Anderson
• David O Russell
• Alexander Payne
• Sofia Coppola

Now, I don't have any issues particularly with this list, although I think Sofia Coppola's inclusion is still up for debate, at least until I see Marie-Antoinette (luckily coming out soon already, the 8th of June I believe). It's not that I don't like her: I love Lost in Translation, and while I've only seen parts of the Virgin Suicides, I love the book and still want to see the whole thing. She just seems a little less ideosynchratic, cramming less strange details into her frames, keeping her themes more clearly separate, and maybe most importantly she invests her characters with psychological realism. I can understand why she'd on the list, though: like the others, she takes a long time to make a film, and like many of the others, she pays a lot of attention to which (pop) music she uses.

So, what about these eccentrics? White's point seems to be mostly that they take their time with their movies, out of perfectionism perhaps, but that this doesn't make for perfect films perse. He puts it quite critically: "It seems that the Eccentrics' own egotistical indolence has resulted in self-imposed limits to their skills". He contrasts them in this respect to another group, the "entertainment specialists", a list which I'm afraid I have more issues with. The names:

• Quentin Tarantino
• M.Night Shyamalan
• Bryan Singer
• Michael Bay
• Brett Ratner
• John Moore

First of all, according to White's own criteria, Quentin Tarantino is definitely an eccentric, and not someone who "turn(s) out updated genre vehicles as if on schedule". True, Tarantino's sensibilities are less "indie", less quirky than the others, but he definitely takes his time on every movie, and he also definitely ponders over every single detail, every single element of the frame, and, obviously, every single song. Second of all, I really have trouble lumping in Bryan Singer, who's shown to be able to see into the blockbuster genre and make it both more fun and more interesting, with the lover of explosions Michael Bay and utter studio hack Brett Ratner (I dread to find out what he did with the X-men...).

Finally, I really take issue with the suggestion that what these guys (Tarantino excluded) do, filming movie after movie, playing with genres, is better somehow, more satisfying than what the eccentrics do. I agree with White that for example "the Life Aquatic" was far from perfect: yes, it was clunky in parts, the pirate thing didn't work at all, the tone was uneven, but it also had moments of pure cinematic genius in it, and I think those are the result of the maybe slow development. Maybe these perfect details need time to grow, to ripen. In any case, I doubt whether working faster and smoother, and therefore necessarily with less attention to detail, will improve the films of not only Anderson but also Russell (I {heart} huckabees was a mess, but some parts were inspired, transporting even) and PTA (though admittedly Magnolia was overlong). In fact, I think it would flatten them instead, and there are enough flat films out there already. Enough Michael Bay's, in any case.

Another filmmaker that White mentions is Spielberg, as a professional, fast worker "whose ideas and reflexes keep flowing" because he gets the opportunity - from his financial success- to jump from style to style and from theme to theme. I think Spielberg is actually the perfect counterexample to White's argument that the Eccentrics should stop being "precious" and just work faster and more. There is no doubt that Spielberg is an extrordinary filmmaker, with more talent for suspense and storytelling than maybe any other living director, a craftsman who could direct and action scene in his sleep and still make it rivetting. Lately though, his films have been burdened by more than just his obsession with absent father and overbearing mothers, by more than just his sentimental impulses. Lately, his movies have started to be less interesting, to me at least, because the jumping from theme to theme means that every one of his movies has just one main theme, usually quite a simple one, and this removes all possible depth.

Take any Wes Anderson movie, any movie by Russell or PTA or Payne or even Coppola, and they're not just filled with visual details but also all kinds of thematic excursions. Yes, Anderson's movies talk mostly about dysfunction (surrogate) families, but also about success, love and jealousy, creative ambition, etc. Payne's "Sideways", while pretty straightforward on the surface, was allowed to meander a little bit. Spike Jonze's Adaptation took on all kinds of things.
"The Terminal" or "War of the Worlds"? Not so much. Munich restricted itself to even a single message, and one not as wise or enlightened as it apparently thought it was: "An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind", well, yeah, we knew that. (Just as an aside, I greatly admire Spielberg's refusal to take a side in this film, when both sides are angry at you you're doing something right, but I just didn't think the film was all that interesting. Plus, it had MAJOR perspective issues). I'll still go see any new Spielberg movie because he is so good at making things compelling, because he knows better than anyone how movies work (although he apparently still doesn't get that happy endings can just be wrong, and even if he's apparently still uncomfortable with sex scenes), but I'm more interested when I hear about a new Wes Anderson or Sofia Coppola or Tarantino project, because I know that while it will probably be flawed, it will be fascinating.

It's unfortunate, of course, that we have to wait so long every time, but I think it's rather worth the wait. I'm still waiting for the new Dave Eggers too, after all. Meanwhile, we can just watch the AmEx ad over and over again.

H.

Westerbork, May 3rd 2006

Finally, summer is truly upon us: the heat lingers now after the sun is gone, especially in my room with its huge windows facing south, the heat stifling but still so new that it doesn't bother me much: it makes my skin sticky and salty, and I've rarely felt more bloated, but I can't be made to mind. The nice thing about sunny weather is that whatever your doing it feels like it's the break: in between writing this, browsing the facebook - the University of Utrecht was recently added, which means I finally stopped pretending that I'm still at UCLA - and listening to the new music I downloaded in order to find my summer sound (so far, "Stadium Arcadium" seems a worthy candidate, but I also recently discovered a scottish band called "My Latest Novel", a Scottish band which could offer some serious competition), I am in fact working on the physics paper on neutrino oscillations that's due tomorrow, but without any sense of urgency: this warmth slows everything down, even time, it seems. Doesn't it affect quality, slow down the brain as well? It probably does: the creative writing portfolio I handed in earlier today wasn't one of my proudest achievements, especially not the short story that was supposed to be its crowning piece, but as I said before, things like that stop feeling like they matter. It's over now, it's done, and I'm free to revert to my tendency to write overlong sentences filled with asides and comments between brackets.

This was never a personal blog, and despite what the above might suggest, I don't really mean to make it one. I still don't think my life is very interesting to anyone who doesn't know me, I often think it's not even interesting to those who do. The reason my blog sorta, well, died was that I stopped thinking my opinions were very interesting to anyone either. That, and taking five courses -four of them science, three of those on the highest level- left little time for watching movies and discovering new music. I failed to keep my "movies seen in 2006" list up to date, but I wouldn't have had many to add, a dozen at most. A short list of those I remember right now:

• Walk the Line: Nice performances, nice music, but ultimately too long and not very interesting
• Capote: Riveting, fantastic, mind-blowing. I expected to find this a good movie, but I didn't expect I would be so involved by it
• Mar Adentro: Beautiful and much less manipulative that I had expected. Still, not a movie I'll probably watch again, I'm not sure there will be much to find in a second viewing and I never look forward to watching a movie that I know will make me cry.
• The Squid and the Whale: Funny, sharp. Ultimately not entirely satisfying.
• The Opposite of Sex: Glad I finally saw it, and I definitely laughed. It feels very dated already though.

Two lines for every movie, and I already bore myself. I suppose it's always a back and forth, especially for me: I have periods in which the arts fascinate me and in which I can blab on for ages about every single aspect and every tiny detail of movies, books, songs, but currently I can't find anything interesting to say, while I could - if my friends let me, which they usually don't- talk on and on about things like, well, neutrino oscillations (the paper is already over 5000 words, and there are a dozen more things I want to say, not to mention all the things I still want to understand better). Don't worry, I won't start about them here, but I suppose I felt like I needed to offer some explanation for why I've neglected this blog so badly. And the poor Boomerang, of course. Last semester my ambitions took flight, but now I realize I'm definitely not fit to be a journalist: I need to be able to write consistently, and not give up anytime I cannot find an interesting angle.

That's exactly why this post exists, despite the lack of a purpose you might have detected. Any purpose aside from light procrastination, that is. I'm going to write here again, try, at least, and hope that inspiration will follow. Waiting for it to come to take the lead certainly didn't work. I hope this will.

H.

WARNING: blog re-animation attempt starting soon

I really need to see more movies of his

"If something freaked me out, it wouldn't mean that I would be less likely to do it. I'd be more likely to do it. I think that is what the artistic compulsion is, that you don't accept reality as it's presented to you, either socially or even physically. You're always wanting to know what's really going on, so you're going into the ceiling, you're going into the walls, you're digging under the floor. You don't feel as if you've necessarily gotten the real version of life on earth and the human condition, as it's presented officially by human society, or by art. So you're constantly looking for that....

[Y]ou're looking for those moments where things go wrong; usually when things go wrong is when you see how they're put together. You don't bother about the engineering of your car until something goes wrong. Then you want to know how it works. Not to be too mechanistic about it, but that to me is the impulse.

I don't really think of myself as someone who's driven to push things to the edge. I just seem to be naturally drawn to those things. I just think it's a very common artistic impulse to do that. If you're talking about censorship, and what things should be shown and what things shouldn't be shown, I've said that as an artist you have no social responsibility whatsoever. Once again, it's a willing amnesia. You have to forget for the moment what the effect of what you're doing might be, or what the revelations that you come up with might suggest, or what the implications of them are. Of course, no artist works in a vacuum, you're working in a social context ultimately. So you have to balance those things. You have to deal with the consequences of what you've done.

It's so easy to destroy yourself by being responsible -- what I mean is that an artist who's worried about being politically correct, to me, is dead as an artist. And on censorship, the ultimate triumph of any totalitarian state has always been to create the internalization of censorship, so that the state doesn't even have to worry about it. The citizens are so self-censored that they have reduced themselves to impotence. It's very easy to do that, even in a place that's not a totalitarian state, but that has gentle, right-minded political movements. You could make a case that the origins of political correctness have a certain validity, but if you incorporate that into your nervous system, and that is there when you're trying to create art, you're finished. "

David Cronenberg (via GreenCine via Jim Emerson)

There are no words...

Twitch

Have you picked a fight today?

Discovery of the week

A friend asked me earlier today, just as a part of conversation, what we (the other people at the table) had discovered in the previous week, movies, shows, book, lines, etc. Unorginal copier that I am, I conceived this wild plan to implement this as a weekly blog feature. In other words, it's here now, might be here next week again, and after that, well, Insya'Allah.

My discovery of (last)(the) week? Imogen Heap . Not my usual kind of music, true. I tend to go for the more acoustic, singer-songwriter, and - to quote someone else with a somewhat, shall we say, different appreciation of music - "boring" artists, with admittedly the occasional foray into the more electronic (Air, Portishead), oddball (Sufjan Stevens, the Fiery Furnaces) and orchestral (Rufus Wainwright) realms.

Imogen Heap is a little different. I can't find a better description for her music than "Goldfrappy", but you know what, I had a Goldfrapp period some time ago, and I think this is just the right time for an Imogen Heap period. See, I'm trying this new thing called "discipline" (don't worry, it's already starting to wear off) and most of my music is either too distracting or well, unsuited because its combination with physics equations is a powerful soporific.

Energetic music, then, is what I need, but as I have a strong aversion to dud-dud-dub beats and too overcheery girly voices, the right energetic music can be hard to find. This works perfectly. What also does is the new Belle & Sebastian album, "The life pursuit". It's surprisingly dancy, more so even than "Dear Catastrophe Waitress", without losing the great lyrics.

Had I thought of it at the time, my discovery of the week might also have been the following brilliant exchange from last week's Gilmore Girls, which I hereby shamelessly copy-paste from Jess' blog:

(Lorelai is stealthily attempting to put a leash on her dog)
Sookie: What are you doing?
Lorelai: Uh, he freaks out if he sees his leash. You have to make sure you hide it from him, make sure he doesn't see you putting it on him.
Sookie: How is he once he's on the leash?
Lorelai: Oh, he's totally fine having his personal freedom slowly stripped away, as long as he's completely unaware that it's happening. Just like a true American.

Don't worry, I won't turn this into a political blog (Bush-bashing, as justified as it usually is, gets boring after a while), but I just have to mention this here: on the case of the Danish cartoons, George dear (or his spokesperson, anyway), defender of freedom and crusader in the name of personal liberty, has stated that the cartoons were unacceptable. Insert disturbing lack of shock.

Stay tuned for next week's discovery of the week, or something...

H.

Back at last

I've been more or less on break for the past four weeks now. You'd think that would allow me to update my blog more rather than less often, but as you might have noticed, the opposite was true. My meager explanation? Breaks tend to suck all creativity out of me, leaving me rather like a depressed zombie. Somehow I seem to need some bustle, some energy around me to write. I hereby apologise to my non-existant readers for my absence. The good news? The new semester is starting in two days, and I expect the two posts I just made won't be the only ones.

H.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

When I review a film, even when I simply think about a film, in the end I come back to one basic question: did the film work for me, or didn’t it. A History of Violence worked for me on all levels, and got to look even better the more I thought of it. Serenity worked for me after the “how could he do that!” shock, because what he did was shocking and hurtful but in the end absolutely fucking brilliant. Broken Flowers and Le Temps Qui Reste did not “work” for me entirely, and neither did Munich. Most of Spielberg’s body of work doesn’t work for me, as a matter of fact, but more on that and Munich later.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, directed by Agent K himself, Tommy Lee Jones, worked for me, and to judge by the applause at the end of it, it worked for many people. It’s not a film that will probably become anyone’s favorite movie of all time, it’s not really extraordinary in any way, but everything in it just feels right.

The first half is told non-linearly, jumping back and forth in time, but it is always clear where we are in the story, and the pace is so leisurely that it never feels in the least confused. The basic gist: Melquiades Estrada, an illegal mexican vaquero, is friends with Pete (played by Tommy Lee Jones, who got the acting prize for this in Cannes and who is fascinatingly vulnerable). Melquiades accidentally gets shot by an aggressive new border patrol guy, who hides it. The local police finds out, but chooses to cover it up; Pete finds out and decides to take matters into his own hands, in the linear second half abducting Mike, the border patrol guy (played by Barry Pepper) to give Melquiades a final burial in his homeland.

Tommy Lee Jones apparently object to this be calling a Western. On the one hand I understand, because in a way the word Western implies themes of vengeance, violence, men’s men, black and white thinking, the thrill of shoot-outs and all that. This film has much more texture than the average Western, I’ll admit, but I don’t think of the word as being pejorative, and for me it has to do more with grand vistas, characters who say little but feel much, and of course with the wildness and unpredictableness of border towns, and if you see these as the fundamental elements of Westerns, then the term fits the film perfectly.

It is hard to say what makes the difference between a film that works and one that doesn’t. Here, so many things could have gone wrong. The parts with the corpse could have been too absurd, too gross, too ridiculous (there was much laughter in those sequences, but I think it stemmed mostly from discomfort), but they manage to stay just within the bounds. Barry Pepper’s character was almost too despicable, but he was luckily given some redeeming moments too. The ending could have been a let-down, but was pitch-perfect. The entire film could have been cheap sadism, and it is very sadistic at some points, but the film rarely (in fact, only really at one particular moment) lets you enjoy seeing vengeance exacted, lets you cheer, and the true sadness of Tommy Lee Jones’ character keeps things grounded. The enotional core of the film, the friendship between these two men, is set up in just a few short sequences, but it is crucial to elevating this film above your average revenge fantasy.

Les Amants Reguliers

Both The Dreamers and Les Amants Réguliers take place in Paris, at least partly in 1968. Both films star Louis Garrel (who, by the way, is dreamy, though googling for pictures of him reveals a somewhat misguided choice of hairstyles). So, going into Les Amants Réguliers, I expected something roughly like The Dreamers.

There’s a pretty good chain of DVD stores in the Netherlands called “DVD Valley”, good in great part because they sort their films by genre, and not alphabetically. Two of the genres they have are “Arthouse” and “Arthouse light”. The Dreamers definitely fits under the arthouse light category, despite all the full frontal nudity. Les Amants Réguliers? Far out in the hardcore arthouse field. And you know what? I kinda really liked it. To put it more precisely: it reminded me of what film can do, reminded me that indie films aren’t just be about a slower pace or quirkier characters, but that true arthouse films can be an entirely different experience from traditional narrative film.

This is a black and white film with barely the outline of a plot which nonetheless manages to be three hours long, with long almost static takes in which little happens, only scatterings any background music in the first half, and characters with no clear personality traits. I understand entirely if it sounds like torture to sit through it.

The film gets to the Paris riots pretty soon, long before it gets to any part involving lovers, in any case. Molotov cocktails and police charges. Sounds exciting? Not really. There is only extremely long take showing people throwing Molotov cocktail after the other at a burning car, with a few people in the foreground with helmets on watching impassively, a girl with a similar helmet kissing a guy, the main character crouching on the ground, standing up, crouching again. They move a car, throw it on its side as a barricade.

This sequence is crucial in the film, I believe, because it allows you to let go. It was during this passage that I stopped trying to make sense of things, look for the usual signs of narrative, stopped registering everything so precisely. It’s when I stopped watching the film to much and just let myself be carried away. And I love that, especially in the cinema, just letting you forget yourself for a moment (and I’ll admit, in one very slow passage, close my eyes for a few seconds). It’s why I loved La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2, though this film was far from Fellini’s level, the individual passages much less fascinating, the artistic vision much less clear, and, to be honest, the characters a little generic. Interchangeable, even, at points. Despite these failings, the film took me somewhere else for a few hours, somewhere a lot less glamorous than I like imagining it, but in a way that I had somehow managed to forget existed.