MA NUIT CHEZ ROHMER

BELOW IS MY REPLY TO "MEMORIES OF THE FUTURE" IN MY BLOG. YOU CAN READ "MEMORIES OF THE FUTURE"'S COMMENT HERE:
http://celinejulie.wordpress.com/2007/05/05/before-sunset-the-green-ray/


My comment sometimes looks as if it was a stream-of-consciousness writing. I apologize to anyone who feels confused reading it.

-I just listened to the album BEGIN TO HOPE (2006) by Regina Spektor. I like her playful use of voice very much. The lyrics of SUMMER IN THE CITY is very good. It gives vivid images. I think the lyrics is also very sensual and gives strong tactile sense, such as in the sentence: So I went to a protest just to rub up against strangers. This kind of vivid images and strong tactile sense also reminds me the movie VENDREDI SOIR. Claire Denis makes us feel as if we touch some skin by using her images, while Regina Spektor does it by using her lyrics.

Thanks very much, Jesse, for recommending Regina Spektor.

Speaking of Summer in the City, it makes me think about the movie SUMMER IN THE CITY (1970, Wim Wenders). I’ve got its video for a long time, but I haven’t watched it yet.

--I think THE MARQUISE OF O (A-) is a good film. The main thing I don’t like about it is that the heroine seems to be too weak. That’s not the film’s fault, but I normally prefer a film with a strong-willed heroine.

I like Edith Clever, the leading actress in THE MARQUISE OF O very much. She gives great performances in THE LEFT-HANDED WOMAN (1978, Peter Handke, A+), in which she played a woman who left her husband for no reasons at all and started to adjust to a new independent life, and in PARSIFAL (1982, Hans-Juergen Syberberg, A+), in which she played a witch who tried to seduce her own son. I think Edith Clever is very great when she plays strong woman, and I admire her more when I can’t recognize her in THE MARQUISE OF O. Her characters in THE LEFT-HANDED WOMAN and THE MARQUISE OF O seems to be an antithesis of each other. That means she is a great actress who can play both roles successfully.

You can read a review of PARSIFAL here.http://www.moria.co.nz/fantasy/parsifal.htm

The DVD of PARSIFAL is available from amazon.com. I strongly recommend this film.http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/6305131112/imdb-adbox/
http://g-ec2.images-amazon.com/images/I/51AYCE5AJML._SS500_.jpg

This is a comment from someone in amazon.com about PARSIFAL:

>>Syberberg regarded Kundry as the centre of the opera, and so chose for the part the outstanding German actress, Edith Clever. Her incarnation of Kundry as variously mother, seductress and penitent has been unanimously praised as a performance of hair-raising intensity. Parsifal himself is played by two people, first a boy (Michael Kutter) and then, after Kundry's kiss, by a girl (Karin Krick). Parsifal's sex-change is a coup-de-theatre for which Syberberg gave no complete explanation.<<

Actually, PARSIFAL is not my most favorite Syberberg’s film, but I think it is a film you shouldn’t miss. The film is 255-minute long. It is an opera, but a very beautiful opera.

I also wish I could see the film EDITH CLEVER READS JOYCE (1985, Hans-Juergen Syberberg), which is 180-minute long. I assume it would be just as the title implies—the audience will see only Edith Clever reading the writing of James Joyce. What an interesting idea!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089070/

--I’m sorry the DVD of THE LEFT-HANDED WOMAN, starring Edith Clever, hasn’t been released yet. I’ve got a PAL video of this film, but I wonder if anyone still has a video player today.

Though the DVD of Peter Handke’s film is hard to find, I recommend everybody to read Peter Handke’s novels. I read ABSENCE, which is regarded as a minor work by Handke, but I was still very impressed by it. It is very difficult to understand. After I finished reading this novel, I still can’t describe what happened in it. I just knew that in this novel, some people travel, but the details of the travel--who travel, what happen, why they travel, where to and where from they travel--are beyond my understanding. I have to read it again.

I also have a video of ABSENCE (1993, Peter Handke), starring Jeanne Moreau and Arielle Dombasle, but it has no English subtitles, so I haven’t watched it yet.

ABSENCE book is available from amazon.com.
http://www.amazon.com/Absence-Peter-Handke/dp/0374527636

This is the description of ABSENCE in amazon.com

>> German author Handke ( Afternoon of a Writer ) enlarges the recurrent metaphysical preoccupations of his prolific output in this latest challenging and rewarding novel. The story's four nameless protagonists meander through a surreally disconnected and flattened landscape. An old artist, a gambler ignorant of himself, a callow soldier whose self-effacing "absence" is a defense against the world, and a vain woman whose frantic mirror-staring fails to make her present to herself, "roam"--as the novel's epigraph from Chuang Tzusp ok puts it--"in the palace of Nowhere, where all things are one." As they wander across an almost featureless northern plain, the past, present and future become one and the characters' insubstantial identities collapse into one another. But when they detect legible symbols in the surrounding blankness and read them with conviction, the landscape springs into recognizable life and the characters discover their strength. In this smoothly written fable, Handke forcefully summons readers to the recognition that the essence of human life lies in the striving for self-expression even though its perfect realization must always remain elusive.<<


For anyone who love the bewilderment of Marguerite Duras, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Alain Resnais, and Virginia Woolf, I recommend PETER HANDKE, especially the novel ABSENCE.


--Another interesting thing about THE MARQUISE OF O is that it was adapted from a novel by Heinrich von Kleist. I don’t know about this writer, but my friends seem to like him and suggest me to watch THE JACK BULL (1999, John Badham), which stars John Cusack and is also adapted from Heinrich von Kleist’s.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0171410/

--People also tell me that if I worship Eric Rohmer, I should watch MUTUAL APPRECIATION (2005) and FUNNY HA HA (2002) by Andrew Bujalski, but I haven’t watched them yet.

--I also found these films to have the thing that I like in Rohmer’s films:

1.THINGS YOU CAN TELL JUST BY LOOKING AT HER (2000, Rodrigo Garcia, A+)

2.I AM A SEX ADDICT (2005, Caveh Zahedi, A+)

3.HOTEL SORRENTO (1995, Richard Franklin, A+)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113337/

4.many German films by Rudolf Thome

5.some Malaysian films by Tan Chui Mui


The “thing” that I think similar among these films is the success it achieves in making its characters look like human beings and talk like real human beings. When I watch Rohmer, Thome, Garcia, and Zahedi’s films, I usually forget they are fictional characters. (I may be wrong to call Zahedi’s characters ‘fictional’, but I like them no matter whether they are fictional or not)

I also wish I could see some films which are described as Rohmer-esque, including:

1.GITO, THE UNGRATEFUL (1992, Leonce Ngabo, Burundi)

Synopsis of GITO, THE UNGRATEFUL:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104344/

>>Gito is a young African intellectual returning home from France with numerous academic degrees and ministerial ambitions. Gradually his ambitions are crushed by the daily realities of his country. Gito is tested further by the alliance between his French girlfriend and his old sweetheart who join forces to teach Gito an unforgettable lesson.<<

2.TOGETHER ALONE (1991, P.J. Castellaneta)

This is a GAY FILM IN ERIC ROHMER’S STYLE. It’s about two gays talking for 85 minutes.

Below is the description of TOGETHER ALONE from Planetout.com
http://www.planetout.com/kiosk/popcornq/db/getfilm.html?528

>>It's one of those all-night discussions where you tell a perfect stranger things you would never tell your closest friend. They recount stories from college. Reveal inner secrets. Argue and console. It's their attempt to make sense of their lives, the world around them, their attractions to other men, AIDS, and why their socks never match when they come out of the dryer.<<


--As for MY NIGHT AT MAUD’S, I like it very very much. I watched it in 1995 or 1996, when my ‘senses of cinema’ hadn’t developed fully. It was one of the films that opened a new door for me at that time. MY NIGHT AT MAUD’S and BEFORE SUNRISE are among the first films that I saw that are full of talking. Before that, I saw mostly Hollywood films. So MY NIGHT AT MAUD’S is the film that teaches me that talking all night with someone might be a very wonderful experience. I would love to talk all night with someone like that. Jean-Louis Trintignant is gorgeous in my point of view. In 1996, I became crazy for Jean-Louis Trintignant, Jean-Pierre Leaud, Jean-Claude Brialy (LE BEAU SERGE), and Jean Sorel (BELLE DE JOUR). I wish I were a girl in Paris in 1960’s.

--DEJA VU, TORCH SONG TRILOGY, and BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY make me cry a bucketful of tears. TORCH SONG TRILOGY might seem so-so in the first act, the second act is intriguing, but the third act is heartbreaking. There's a scene of Harvey Fierstein and Anne Bancroft in the third act which makes me want to cry every time I think of it.