Moot Point

I feel like apologizing because I watched only four movies this week; though I did do a fair amount of reading, so that’s good. Also, years ago, four movies in a week would have seemed like an insane lot.

I do have a non-movie-related piece of advice. If you make drip coffee for convenience reasons, despite your knowledge that a French press produces a richer and more fully-flavoured cup, I would recommend ditching your paper filters and embracing the world of metal filters. You get all the delicious coffee oils and it doesn’t waste all that paper from regular filters. It’s almost as good as French press coffee.

1. Live Flesh (Pedro Almodóvar, 1997): Despite it working really well with all my arguments about late ’90s Almodóvar (his increasing political awareness shows a huge ambivalence about the absolute freedom celebrated in his earlier films) and the involvement of Javier Bardem (who you guys know I love), this remains not my favourite of his films. I realize the eventual redemption of the creepy stalker hero is kind of the point of the whole thing, but it’s not necessarily as fun to watch as the early comedies or as emotionally involving as something like All About My Mother.
2. Toto le Héros (Jaco Van Dormael, 1991): I’d seen this years ago, and I remembered liking it, but I didn’t really remember much else, especially not the way it maintains this unrelentingly cheerful tone in the face of a lot of really very dark content — your death, your incest, your really very sad delusional hero. It’s really good — the way they weave the different timelines together is really fantastic. Top points to the sex scene that’s intercut with fragmented close-ups of a corpse.
3. L’enfant (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, 2005): This movie’s really brilliant, but I don’t know that I actually enjoyed it. It’s really hard to sympathize with a protagonist who tries to sell his baby. Like, I realize that the point wasn’t necessarily for me to sympathize with him so much as watch the story unfold neorealistically. I loved all the scenes on buses; there is a lot of emphasizing transportation in this movie. I don’t have a snappy explanation for it, I just thought it had a nice rhythm.
4. Blood Wedding (Carlos Saura, 1981): This was lovely — it has a Jesus Christ Superstar-like opening with the cast putting on makeup and warming up — and then the whole thing is a flamenco ballet with the tragic love and this amazing slow motion sequence at the end. Not like, cinematically in slow motion; the dancers are actually dancing in slow motion. I found this, and Saura’s filming it, and me being aware of watching a performance that’s meant to mimic a cinematic affect that is itself filmed, really fascinating. On that theme, I would also mention the moment when the people at the wedding in the ballet “pose” for a photograph, and the music stops. Also, I am generally in favour of seeing stories told entirely through dance, especially tales of passion and forbidden love and so on. It really stands out starkly from other Spanish films I’ve seen from the transition period, being placed in this really hermetic world of performance, and not really dealing with the contemporary reality all that much. It’s an interesting contrast to someone like Eloy de la Iglesia or Almodóvar, for sure.