the enigmatic

mood: sad

Because it had to be said.*

mood: creative

Water Lilies was the main feature at the MOMA today, part of their New Directors series. It was preceded by a 15-minute short titled Man, a gripping little film about two sisters and their encounter with a man that one of them has met online. It was written and directed by the newcomer Myna Joseph, who was at the screening.

Parisian Céline Sciamma is the writer and director of the full-length feature, Water Lilies, a film in French with English subtitles. Sciamma wrote the screenplay as her thesis while in school and made the film shortly after. She currently writes for a French TV series and this is her only feature-length film so far. She was at the screening and there was an interesting and informative Q&A afterward, in which she discussed her vision for the story.

Set in any-suburb-anywhere, the film is about a teenage girl Marie, her chubby friend on the synchronized swimming team and a pretty and self-assured girl on the team to whom Marie becomes drawn. There is almost no adult presence; the two or three adults that we see are on screen for no more than a minute. Likewise, the role of men and boys in the film is not as important and Sciamma is not commenting on teenage boys or their behavior. What's important is the view of Marie and other teenage girls like her and their perception of the boys. They don't "get" boys; they're attracted to them and/or fear them, but they don't understand them.

Synchronized swimming is the activity of choice for the main characters in the film. The sport is not any bigger in high schools in France than it is in the U.S., but it's a sport that Sciamma discovered as a teen and became obsessed with. In the movie, it's a microcosm of many of the themes and psychological terrain that are explored in the film. On the surface, the routines look beautiful and effortless; but in reality it takes great effort, as we're given a glimpse at what the swimmers look like from underneath the water, a sight that is hidden from the spectators. For Sciamma this is a symbol of being a teen girl. On the outside she must be feminine, pretty, confident and make it all look effortless, while the turmoil hidden beneath the surface.

The movie shows us the shifting personal relations between Marie and her friends as they have their first sexual encounters, the competitiveness between girls, and the ways in which girls can be cruel to one another. We see this competition and cruelty among the members of the team as well.

This film has a very naturalistic feel to it, which I really liked. Sciamma's vision was to cast actresses who were very physical, and it was the right choice. The film has a sensuality and emotional rawness that helps to express what these girls are going through. She also insisted on using actresses who were the age of the characters. Only one actress had made a feature length film before this. These were less experienced newcomers who were very committed to this film, and Sciamma and the cast worked together with a coach. In particular, there is one scene that was very risky and difficult to pull off. As with the casting choices, the director's decision to use no adults was the right one. She wanted the audience to identify with the teenagers; without the presence of adults we're immediately drawn into the film through the eyes of the girls. This is a teen film that goes over territory we've seen before, but it does so without being clichéd.

Highly recommended.

mood: calm

It's been a few weeks since I've seen this film. I should have written about it right after I saw it, but I got side-tracked with holiday season gigs. Here are my impressions only of the film, as I think I will have to watch it again in order to write in more detail.

First and foremost, this was a beautiful, deeply touching film. The cinematography is gorgeous. Told from Bauby's point of view, what's inside his head and what he sees, I was drawn in right away and felt for his plight. Julian Schnabel is a painter first and a director second and he brings a painter's eye to the creation of the film. It is indeed a work of art and makes my list of all-time favorite movies. And the transfer from book to screen has been handled with great skill and success.

Max von Sydow deserves an Oscar nomination for this film. He has two scenes in the entire movie, and they are stunning, particularly the second scene (a telephone call between father and son), which is heartbreaking. In just two small scenes a sense of intimacy and love is conveyed.

Mathieu Amalric was fantastic in a physically limited role. His only means of facial expressions were his one eye, plus his voice over on top of that. He was phenomenal in an extraordinarily difficult role.

Despite the sad subject matter, this film is not depressing at all. In fact, I left the theater feeling uplifted. The subject matter is handled with heart and humor. Many people have described it as a "triumph of the human spirit". But it's much more than that. It's about the people in Bauby's life as well, and how, with patience, persistence and selflessness, they learned to communicate with him and in some way drew him out, beyond the boundary of his "locked-in syndrome", and helped enable him to express himself. This is a story about the human capability to love and to go out of their way to assist another person. In short, it shows human beings at their very best.

mood: creative

An American in Paris
Bandwagon of 1940
Cabaret
Easter Parade
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Oliver!
Shall We Dance?
Singing in the Rain
The Threepenny Opera
Top Hat

Honorable mentions: Gay Purr-ee, Hairspray, Quadrophenia.

mood: cheerful

Some classics, some masterpieces, some guilty pleasures:

A Letter to Three Wives (Joseph L. Makiewicz)
Adventures of Robin Hood (Michael Curtiz)
Alice (Woody Allen)
All About Eve (Joseph L. Makiewicz)
Beauty and the Beast (Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise)
Blood Simple (Coen Brothers)
Bossa Nova (Bruno Barreto)
Casablanca (Michael Curtiz)
Cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore)
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
Clerks (Kevin Smith)
Daisy Kenyon (Otto Preminger)
Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari - Robert Wiene)
Desk Set (Walter Lang)
Det Sjunde inseglet (The Seventh Seal - Ingmar Bergman)
Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet)
Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos (Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands – Bruno Barreto)
Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder)
( more after the cut )

mood: accomplished

Just thought I'd tally it up for the year. :)

Aching for Beauty
Atonement (reread)
Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos
El Club Dumas
Empress
Empress Orchid
Freedom Next Time
Frontiers of Heaven
Geisha: A Life
In the Empire of Genghis Khan
Love in the Time of Cholera (reread)
Mao’s Last Dancer
Massacre in Mexico
Mistress Oriku
Nine Parts of Desire
No Country for Old Men
Os Sertões
Raise the Red Lantern
Red Azalea
Samba
Tales of a Female Nomad
The Asian Mystique
The Book of Disquiet
The Fifth Book of Peace
The Girl Who Played Go
The Good Earth
The Good Women of China
The Heart That Bleeds
The Kite Runner (reread)
The Last Empress
The Woman in White
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
Wild Ginger
Woman Warrior

mood: amused

Isabel Allende
Manuel Antonio de Almeida
Jorge Amado
Joaquim M. Machado de Assis
Andrei Biely
Charlotte Bronte
Emily Bronte
Bill Bryson
Pearl S. Buck
Miguel de Cervantes
Paulo Coelho
Joseph Conrad
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Alexandre Dumas
Thomas Gray
Beatriz Guido
Alma Guillermoprieto
Garrison Keillor
Maxine Hong Kingston
Victor Hugo
Franz Kafka
Jack Kerouac
Milan Kundera
Garcia Lorca
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Cormac McCarthy
Ian McEwan
Anchee Min
Mary Morris
Vladimir Nabokov
Boris Pasternak
Fernando Pessoa
Edgar Allen Poe
Aleksandr Pushkin
Shan Sa
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Amy Tan
Hunter S. Thompson
Leo Tolstoy
Xinran