Wednesday 20 November 2019

Those two were real class, at the end : Responses by Tweet (and not) to La belle époque (2019)

Responses by Tweet (and not) [an accreting list] to La belle époque (2019)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


20 November

Responses by Tweet (and not) [an accreting list] to La belle époque (2019)





Key film-references (in order of significance) :

* The Game (1997)
* Midnight in Paris (2011)
* Westworld (1973)
* The Truman Show (1998)
* Les Beaux Jours (Bright Days Ahead) (2013)
* A Fish called Wanda (1988)
* Nathalie (2001)
* Souvenir (2016)


A film whose (unexplained**) opening, which we may have forgotten by the time of its descent into romantic comedy (which are usually either 'ardour cooled' [Le Week-End (2013)], or 'hate at first sight' [You've Got Mail (1998)]), promised more interesting fare, as if a significant riff on The Game (1982) and others (as just listed) :

In its own terms, it got us to where it wanted, but its ideas could probably have done with being thinned out, so that - some adept pacing and editing apart, which certainly kept the story's tick-over going in the important moments - it did not feel as if some strands had been mimetic of the possibility of something more, but essentially thrown out (but kept in) as misleading pointers (rather than feeling like 'true' misdirections) and / or ideas that had been sent down a dead end :


For a film, itself shot on a set, that is largely set on a set, it is necessarily likely to get quite a bit Sunset Blvd. (1950) [not to say Mulholland Drive (2001)].



[...]


Other references :

* Hope Springs (2012)
* Les émotifs anonymes (Romantics Anonymous) (2010)
* The Pornographer (2001)
* Le Week-End (2013)
* Absolute Beginners (1986)


[...]




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

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