Full circle in Shanxi province ?

This is a Festival review of A Young Patriot (2015)

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19 June

This is a Festival review of A Young Patriot (2015)
from a screening and Q&A at Sheffield Doc/Fest 2015 on Saturday 6 June at 12.30 p.m.

From the audience, the first question in the Q&A for the director of A Young Patriot (2015) was from The Agent, about why we see so much of Changtong as he is taking photographs (having failed to get a place at Chengdu University the first time, he is taking a degree in photography), but only have two glimpses of his photography : two images, in passing, on a screen, and a glimpse of the photos that he is sending by post to the school, in Shanxi province, where his fellow students and he taught for a few weeks in the summer.

Haibin Du said that he realized that he had not shown much of Changtong’s work. However, the answer, which he timed so as to be amusing, was that the subject himself was more interesting than his photography. Indeed, he got a laugh by saying that, but did not thereby allay one’s doubts about the ethics of his practice in filming :

The question had not been couched as one about exploitation, but it, and the answer given, imply that it could have been*. For, at least three times, we see this film’s subject (its so-called young patriot) expressing himself unnecessarily candidly through the medium of drink. Yet, apart from his younger brother, who leads him away through embarrassment at what Changtong is saying about him (not that, on any occasion, others are not embarrassed at Changtong’s naive dogma and repetition), no one is there to intervene and stop the filming – and could a man as wildly idealistic in a way to rival the character of Dostoyevsky’s Prince Myshkin (in The Idiot – brilliantly adapted for film, in Estonia, in a screening seen at Cambridge Film Festival 2012) have given any meaningful consent ?


This film, in seven chapters, brought out the fact that the cinema-seats in the Vimeo-sponsored Screen 2 at the Showroom cinema in Sheffield are hardly the most luxurious in the world : it was at least ten minutes too long, and irremediably chronological, even if it did sometimes juxtapose places. It was mainly – apart from the pivotal excursion to Shanxi (though not treated as one by the film-maker : please see below) – set in Sichuan province, in Pingyao and, as mentioned, Chengdu.

Mao and lion.jpg

For a subject who was almost romantically attached to Mao, liking to sing (well, almost croon, in a higher pitch ?) his revolutionary songs**, maybe it made sense for us to have opening shots of, seemingly, a fading memorial to those times (unannounced, and wrongly identified by the producer afterwards, who also acted as translator, as Datong). If we had dwelt on those images and what they might have signified, could it have been a better film, and might we not have focused, and been more helpful in not doing so, not on Changtong’s extreme form of (historical) patriotism, but rather on his finding himself in modern China (if on him at all) ?

Several times, the film alludes to Tian'anmen Square, and to an (unstated) background, in the West, of knowing what that name means and what happened there : from the first, Chengtong is aware that there had been a protest, but believes that it had had a humane, even benign, outcome :

Not uniquely for a film-maker, Haibin Du chooses not only to leave Changtong in his ignorance (and, in a film that he later said that he has hopes might be seen in China, he does not inform the viewer), but also to concentrate on it as an ignorance that is specifically his – as part of his great dedication to Mao, and what he understands of the history of his country through that lens. That said, in a scene where we see Changtong and fellow students reciting words and singing in a vigil for an apparent anniversary of Tian'anmen Square (the massacre happened in 1989), it is clear that meaning has been generally lost or suppressed about it, and that they are just as much in the dark as he about what they commemorate.


Clearly, it would have been a different film, and not that of Haibin Du, to consider wider attitudes to, and understanding of, the past, but maybe film-makers have a duty not to take ‘the soft option’ in choosing their subject (or how to portray it : however important the topic of orca in captivity may be, does Blackfish (2013), for example, lose the opportunity to tell a totally coherent story about it ?). To allow oneself to be attracted to a very colourful figure such as Changtong may be normal, and almost necessarily full of emotional conflict and with scope for development, but perhaps a maker of documentaries needs to be aware of what it truly is about a subject that glisters to know it from gold, and to have a full appreciation of other stories that could have been told – or of a different construction to have been put upon this one.

Did one need to have asked what simply following Changtong’s story actually says about his lack of self-knowledge (and his growing and eventual disillusion, precipitated by what happens to his family, because of the Chinese equivalent of compulsory-purchase orders, and how resistance gains no benefit) ? In psychological terms, his adherence to a partial account of the co-eval past, in the kind of patriotism that he has adopted, always had to mean something more than an attractive premise for a film :

From the first, Changtong was really crying out for attention (if not unavoidably for that of a film-crew), but the film itself never seems to have engaged*** with what that was or signified (except that he almost had to be heading for a fall – which brings us back, again, to his naivety and whether he was a fit person to give consent). In relation to other Chinese people of his age, 1989 was (just about) part of his life, but not one of which he could have had direct experience or comprehension. Of course, the film did not have to give regard to the wider question of the state of knowledge, but the fact is that it did not.

It also, by not treating the events and experience of being in Shanxi as central to the chosen arc of Changtong’s story (although, cinematographically, it is obviously where the film is most alive, by creatively, and truly strikingly, directing the camera to all forms of local life – and, likewise, showing the difference that the students had made as volunteer teachers), held out for that time when life would break in on his lack of self-awareness, and leave him more bitter (maybe even depressed). That said, the film probably did not owe it to Changtong to show him his vocation (in seeming to enthuse the young village children quite effortlessly), or the fall for which he was heading.

We did hear, when asked about whether he had seen the film, that he had, somewhat nerve-wrackingly, been with its director at the back of the screening in Hong Kong. He told us that Changtong had borne it with what sounded like equanimity, seeming to have regarded it as a separate entity. Which maybe it is – maybe too separate from what could have been distilled from his life, not as apart from, but as part of the generality of modern China’s relationship with its own recent history ?

Seen at Sheffield : Doc/Fest films with full reviews


End-notes

* The question had also said how Chantong’s early flag-waving and declamation (in an old uniform of The Red Guard) had come into its own by being a genuine inspiration to the young children in Shanxi, and had even proudly bought and started flying the starred Chinese flag. (Not surprisingly, another question elicited being told that it was the ostentatious behaviour that had interested Haibin Du in his subject – character, not photographic aspirations.)

** By heart, and seemingly moved by their sentiments when he had finished a rendition (although one somehow doubted whether he could have laid his finger on what they really were, and their relevance to Mao’s days of struggle).

*** Inevitably, with hours of footage reduced to just a couple, one knows relatively little even of the onscreen contact between director and subject, let alone at other times.


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

Kafka, killing, and punishment

This is a Festival review of A Short Film about Killing (1988)

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17 May

This is a Festival review of A Short Film about Killing (Krótki film o zabijaniu) (1988), as screened at Saffron Screen’s (@Saffronscreen’s) Polish Film Festival on Saturday 16 May 2015 (which is held to celebrate ten years of establishing community cinema in Saffron Walden ?)

The film was introduced by Dr Stanley Bill, from the Faculty of Modern and Mediaeval Languages at the University of Cambridge, who drew attention to two people who had been instrumental in its making : its cinematographer (Slawomir Idziak) and composer (Zbegniew Preisner, who has written for other films by Krzysztof Kieślowski*), the former for his use of filters in front of the lens, the latter for his self-taught style and beautiful melodies.

After A Short Film about Killing, some conversation took place with Dr Bill (and Andrew Atter) about the death penalty**. It appears that there is no definitive version of the film’s relevance to what happened in Poland : in one, it may have done no more than fitting in with the Zeitgeist, whereas, in the other (reported in the Festival’s leaflet), it was instrumental in creating it, first through a moratorium, then as part of a post-Soviet identification with, and desire to join, the EU.

Be that as it may… but is any perceived weakness in the film’s juxtaposition of state and individual killing just because one might assume that Jacek should previously have told Piotr what he does in the prison cell (as if it would, or could, have made a difference, as an exculpation for what had been done – please see below), whereas the fact is that (although the trial judge praises the speech) we do not ever hear what the latter said, in the former’s defence and against the death penalty, and for the failure to avoid the latter of which Piotr blames himself ?

If one knows about the law (as Kieślowski’s co-writer Krzysztof Piesiewicz also did), although we are told (by the prosecutor, in his narrative prior to the judgement being carried out ?) that the case had gone to appeal, and that a higher authority had not granted a pardon, it is extremely unlikely that a fledgling barrister such as such as Piotr (Krzysztof Globisz) would have handled those further stages : in fact, everything is consistent with what Jacek (Miroslaw Baka) tells him, that he asked for Piotr to be present, because the sole part of the judicial process that had registered with Jacek was his name being called from the court building just before he was driven away. A dual purpose is served, of course, not only that Piotr hears Jacek out, and wants to defy the inevitable, but that his being there point up the inhumanity and the horrible reality of the sentence : his opposition is symbolic, but what, when seeking admission as a barrister, he had said to the Bar committee about criminal penalties (not least capital ones) not being a deterrent is borne out by Jacek Łazar’s own case [does the name denote the word for ‘leper’, connote Lazarus in the New Testament ?].


The film, not just polemically (for we are free to make our own mind up), juxtaposes our notions of crime and punishment : as Dr Bill agrees, we are not a little reminded of Dostoyevsky (even if there seems to be more redemption in pre-Soviet Siberia than in Soviet-era Poland), and opinions may differ about what ‘sentimental’ means as a description. Piotr Balicki’s stance against the judicial machine may be emotional / polemical, but his defiance (as Christ’s is, before Pilate ?) is in words, not actions – maybe, on reflection, we are reminded of, and hope for, what happens in Kafka’s ‘In der Strafkolonie’, where the Explorer’s not so much disagreeing with as failing to endorse*** the Officer’s justification for fitting the punishment to the crime upsets the regime, albeit bloodily and crudely.

In handling and taking as its text Thou shalt not kill [better rendered as ‘murder’ ?], the film is tied to two dates, 17 March [1986 ?] and 27 April 1987, both of which link Jacek and Piotr – or, as we see him in his celebrations on that day, Piotrek (the diminutive by which his girlfriend calls him). With a different, though not wholly dissimilar, aesthetic of connectedness to that of James Joyce, commemorating 16 June 1904 in Ulysses****, A Short Film about Killing shows how, at the moment when Piotr’s reflections over coffee are being coloured by negativity at the thought of what he might have to bear in his professional life, Jacek, who has been cursed by the gypsy woman whom (in a catalogue of bad-mindedness, by him and others) he had rudely rejected, turns his mind to murder (heralded by sinister tones in Preisner’s score) :

The word ‘reflection’ is where we began the film, with the confusing image of a building seeming to rotate and twist as we see it in the glass of the door that Waldemar Rekowski (Jan Tesarz) opens and closes (maybe as Jacek’s own heart and soul are shown doing, as work is found around town for his idle hands, be it frightening the pigeons, or edging a stone forward, as if were just obeying gravity in an accident ?). And, as Dr Bill had mentioned that we might notice, in the cinematography can be seen occlusions of part of the frame*****, but also how the light on the buildings, even of the housing estate, becomes a sort of golden sepia, and the sky, particularly, seems perpetually that of sunset – culminating, after the killing, in a halo of bright sunlight, as if of some unholy transfiguration (in which we might identify Georg Büchner and his revolutionary play Woyzeck ?), before the sombre, washed tones of court-room and prison.

There are hints, here, at Jacek’s mental state, but maybe knowing of the events that had led to the death of his younger sister Marysia would not, as the law stood then in Poland, have afforded him the help of pleading diminished responsibility : Kieślowski does not dwell on the moment, but, when Jacek finds Beatka [with a name that seems to connote blessedness / saintliness, just coincidentally the girl who interested Waldemar and to whom he made a suggestive offer ?], his ideas about what they can do, now that he has acquired a car (and whoever exactly they are to each other), may have lucidity, but they betray that it is in fantasy that he has found a solution to their problems.

Think of capital punishment as a fit one as one may, or as a deterrent, but it may not have been a fit one here, where no one in Jacek’s place would have been contemplating the actual consequences of his actions.

People have claimed that, to A Short Film about Killing (Krótki film o zabijaniu) (1988), they prefer the hour-long version that forms part of Dekalog :

It's where I started, but I cannot agree with them - there is just too much going on to be limited to that length. pic.twitter.com/loobwqOgri

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 5, 2018

End-notes

* As well as the Dies Irae for The Great Beauty (La grande bellezza) (2013).

** Only abolished in the UK, and in living memory, by the efforts of Victor Gollancz, Arthur Koestler and other campaigners – however well known it may be that Ruth Ellis was the last woman to be hanged, relatively few seem to know that this cessation was not merely something that happened (and by no means overnight).

*** Respectively, they are der Reisende and der Offizier : well Kafka knew how (as also in, for example, ‘Das Urteil’) to portray ego-states in all their fragility. So much so, that we almost easily credit that his own personality was of this kind, or else that he was always foreseeing crushing bureaucracies – as if, despite what Alan Bennett wishes to tell us in The Insurance Man, Kafka did not work as a lawyer for The Workers’ Accident Insurance Office. Or even foreshadowing Nazi horrors (as if what The Third Reich resorted to was scarcely unfamiliar to Eastern Europe ?).

**** Albeit one which is more akin to that of Michael Haneke’s films from The Seventh Continent (1989) onwards, or to that of Cloud Atlas (2012).

***** Over coffee with his girlfriend, and when she carries out a palm-reading (the service offered by the gypsy woman, but rejected), we see Piotr’s and her brows shielded by a dark bar at the top of the frame, as he tries to contemplate the future.


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

Going for the double

This is a review of The Double (2013)

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5 April

This is a review of The Double (2013)

Anyone who is familiar with the trailer for The Double (2013) (though we should know that trailers are not made by the film-makers) is not going to expect Dostoyevsky’s novella to be any more than a jumping-off point for the film (as Thurber’s story is for The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)), but what the trailer does do is to suggest misleadingly* that the latter is also a benign, and less dark, study in the nature of inadequacy.

Particularly at the start (before we meet Simon James’ double), it feels as though co-writers Richard Ayoade (who also directs) and Avi Korine (from that family whose members brought you, amongst other things, Spring Breakers (2012)) have ‘mashed up’ sources such as those that follow (although that feeling of making reference, or borrowing, does dissipate somewhat over time, as the propulsive nature of the telling takes over (please see below)) :

* Gogol’s story ‘The Overcoat’ (some see Dostoyevsky’s work, four years later, as a rebuttal of Gogol’s works)

* Yury Tynyanov’s Lieutenant Kijé (as popularized in Western Europe by Prokofiev’s Suite, Op. 60, distilled from his film-music)

* Brazil (1985)

* Rear Window (1954)

* Elements of Lynch (not least the feel, look, and sound of the world of Eraserhead (1977))

* Even The Apartment (1960)


Without saying more, one will see – unless one guesses – what aspects of the film correspond with the earlier material to make this disturbing whole, driven along by the Glass-like rapid string arpeggios of Andrew Hewitt’s score, or the low-frequency rumbling that makes the corridors seem so unnerving …


And that apart from other disturbances in James’ life of the kind given by Sally Hawkins in a nice authoritarian cameo, let alone the increasingly hostile security guard (IMDb puzzlingly says that it is ‘rumored’ that this was Kobna Holdbrook-Smith’s role), or the grumpy service in James’ local café (asked why he comes back here, he says that he is ‘loyal’ – and one cannot conceive of James doing anything very domestic in his flat, with utensils that look to be of grandmaternal origin).

In an early scene, in an underground train equally devoid of comfort (or a sense of the common good), we imagine that it must be a nightmare of the type in 8½ (1963), or a parody of one – James is, in what is established here, seen to be so labile that we have to hope hard that he can show himself as in the Mitty film, and maybe wonder whether he is more in the vein of Ronnie Corbett’s Timothy Lumsden in Sorry !.

In this film, partly because we are influenced to identify with Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg), partly because we look for an emergence into real life of The Replicator** (in the form of Paddy Considine), which James says is his favourite t.v. programme, we invest a hope in what might happen. We believe that Hannah (Mia Wasikowska) might respond to James (whose interest in her is reminiscent of that of Josef K. in Fraülein Bürstner in Kafka's The Trial ?), if he knew the right thing to do, and we believe in the notion from Roxanne (1987) (and its more illustrious antecedents) that he might he helped to, and for, his own good.

It might have been fun if Wasikwoska had doubled the part of Melanie, played by Yasmin Paige, to mimic Eisenberg’s duality : as it is, we are offered an insight into her character’s fragility, which has been exploited by a knowledge of that of James, and we see her torn, although not in a way that is not unusual in cinema (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) ?), between what attracts everyone else and the likelihood (which, with Marilyn’s Lorelei, fatally attracts, or at least fails to repel) of getting hurt.

Of course, the theme of betrayal by a seeming friend is an age-old one, pre-dating Judas, and which has resonated ever since, in, for example, the tables being turned on K. in Kafka’s The Castle by his assistants (themselves a form of substitute). Here, far more was possible with the topic of identity theft than the film encompasses, and it prefers to stay within the general bounds of what is a person and what about a person is perceived to make him or her worthwhile.

In the end, subverting the messages of James’ powerlessness (as we provisionally thought that it had to), it offers the sort of Pyrrhic victory*** that we know, for Ray, from In Bruges (2008). It is not unlike many other endings (e.g. from episodes of Star Trek (original series only, please) or Dr Who, amongst others), and so concludes the piece, nowhere near Dostoyevsky (unless we make some massive inferences), because there had to be some ultimate resolution.

That said, principals Wasikowska and Eisenberg are both excellent, and the film is not without an effect from how it contrasts the homeliness and colour of her flat with that of his, as well as from Hewitt’s score, and the levels of tension that it gives to this cheerless universe.



End-notes

* NB Contains a spoiler As does IMDb : A comedy centered on a man who is driven insane by the appearance of his doppleganger (sic).


** Shades of The Reprisalizer from Matthew Holness’ A Gun for George (2011) ?

Here, the t.v. series is a sort of Orwellian distraction from the predominant greyness of life in this place and time, though it is less clear that it is a degraded world of the kind that Gilliam’s referenced film gives us, or a reimagined instance of the early computer age a parallel for the world of the pre-Soviet government department.

The real Replicator in the film is Hannah (probably in more senses than one), because she is a junior member of the copying department, operating what some might describe as a steam-punk take-off of the large and clunky Xerox® machines from the late 1970s : James and she are amongst the few of an age in this organization. Her boss tells James that any sensible person would want two copies (which proves to be astute, although James does not want another he), not just the one that, as a pretext for being there, he keeps coming up and asking for.


*** You could even posit a reference to the scene with the Patronus across the lake in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)…


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

It left me cold !

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29 September 2013

* Contains spoilers *

Definitely the word film that I have seen screened at this year's Festival was Cold, a film from Turkey that was, frankly, a turkey, and which, although it could have been filmed in the same snow-laden river-sited city as Kosmos*, one of my top three from the Festival in 2011, it in no way occupied the same space.

Oh dear, Cold (2013) at @camfilmfest - trying to bring Chekhov's sororial trio to Turkey, mixing in The Idiot, and larding with domestic v.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 28, 2013

So what am I getting at ? Well, the title-characters of Chekhov's Three Sisters - one of whom is the very striking Valeria Skorokhodova as Balabey's desire - have taken their parlous state to heart, and found that prostitution in Turkey may pay for their future.

Said Balabey is a person at whom the audience was early laughing, although the mention of taking his pills should have alerted them to the fact that he has not only either some sort of social phobia or related learning difficulty, but also a mental-health condition (we also know that he has been in hospital) - they were laughing at him outright, not partly with him, partly despite him, as in the film of Dostoyevksy's The Idiot at last year's Festival.

Balabey has much in common with (Prince) Mishkin, not least lack of self-awareness and self-confidence, and a huge streak of self-destructiveness. Thinking that a woman paid to sleep with him reciprocates his feelings for her is an insight that only we have, and it, just as woman, whether he actually does ever sleep with him (rather than talking about prayer, her beauty, and trying to slope off when she is in the shower), is only sure near the end. Even the man, referred to as some sort of chief, we arranges and pays for the first liaison is laughing at his expense.

It seems common knowledge that the place that we are shown, where patrons / diners take a table, and then one or more women are called, by name, to go to the number of that table, is merely a staging-post for the seedy hotel (wallpaper peeling off the wall, etc.), one of whose rooms we see - for some reason, Balabey and his chosen partner always end up in the same room, which I would believe was for symbolism of the room number (22 ?), except that it clearly simplified the shoot and gave a (bogus) sense of continuity of the encounters into the bargain. So far, so good with the tawdry aspects of Dostoyevsky, except that that novel actually has a sense of ambiguity about whether the Prince is risible, or a saint.

Point already made that women and sex with them are bought and sold, so hardly surprising when Balabey's sexually frustrated brother Enver both takes it out on his wife with his fists (although the erectile dysfunction appears to be his fault, not the wife's lack of flirting or sexual provocation), and has recourse to the same venue as his brother. Neat ending to Balabey's enduring attraction, such that he even dynamites a bridge** to prevent escape to Moscow via (a boyfriend in) Georgia, to have Enver and friends hire the sisters for a house-party in which another sexual failure leads to shooting into the air, demanding that the sisters have sex with each other, and one of them being brutally killed ?

As life is cheap, most of all female life, the two others are killed as witnesses, only leaving Balabey to find out and to strap Enver to the railway-line, camouflaged with snow, and for the express (has the bridge miraculously been repaired ?) to go through***. All sewn up, you could say - but only in the sense that Terry Gilliam's massive animation foot coming down and stamping on everything provides a resolution...



End-notes

* I have checked, and it was Kars again.

** As another viewer agreed, he has already said that he checks the railways-line, and that trains stop or proceed on his say-so, which means that destroying it was overkill.

*** My fellow viewer concurred that nothing tells us how this is possible, both as to getting Enver there from the side of the crude grave, and the operation of a railway service. He was still included to give the film 4 out of 5 for highlighting the domestic and other violence.


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

Making out in Marseille

This is a Festival review of The Snows of Kilimanjaro (2011)

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14 September

This is a Festival review of The Snows of Kilimanjaro (2011)

The Snows of Kilimanjaro (2011) is a sort of fable for our time*, with strikingly strong performances, both from (as Michel) Jean-Pierre Darroussin (whom I knew from Conversations with my Gardener (2007)), and Ariane Ascaride as Marie-Claire, a couple whose integrity and good hearts are at its centre.

Subject to an event that leaves all shaken, but especially Marie-Claire's sister Denise (Marilyne Canto is very sympathetic), the course of things unfolds in a manner consistent with not only justice, but also responsibility and reconciliation, almost a modern Dostoyevsky, I often enough felt (which maybe Victor Hugo, a poem of whose is the film's starting-point, and he had in common).

Certainly, although The Angels' Share (2012) is equally good natured and hopeful, this film makes a challenge to our thoughts and prejudices far beyond it: this film treats of its themes seriously, whereas Loach launches into a romp from whose end the dark and threatening scenes from earlier seem far removed - director Robert Guédiguian has sketched a world that acknowledges deep-seated human emotions of envy, resentment and greed, but wants to offer those who feel them a way back.

The centre is the family, whether a party for Michel and Marie-Claire (to which he has invited the other nineteen whose posts were made redundant at the same time as his), them playing cards with Denise and her husband Raoul (a good part for Gérard Meylan), or at the home of their son Gilles and his partner / wife, and the tensions, more or less freely articulated, between them because of their differing viewpoints: in Leigh's Glasgow, the family has little or nothing to offer any more.

Guédiguian answered questions after the screening, and some (as well as some observations from the audience) were of a rather political or judgemental nature, as if depicting certain truths, rather than presenting a story, were the film's purpose. As he sought to stress, cinema is not reality, and the Internet was not there because a screen is not that inetersting, and the focus was elsewhere.

I asked about the use of Ravel's Pavane pour une infante défuncte, which is a beautiful theme, both thoughtful and with a hint of real, not over-blown, sadness to it: he did not comment on that theme in particular, but that, classical or otherwise, the music is fitted early in the editing and has to be what belongs. Later, I aked about the Hemingway novel with the same titles as this film, assuming that there was no connection, as the origins appeared in a song sung at the anniversary party. This was apparently a very popular song in the 60s, and Guédiguian did not comment on whether the Hemingway associations carried any regrettable or deliberate overtones.


End-notes

* To quote a title of Tames Thurber's.


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