Tuesday, July 03, 2007

OVERLAPPING LAYERS OF FICTIONS

THIS IS MY COMMENT IN SUPPOSED AURA BLOG:
http://supposedaura.blogspot.com/2007/06/scenes-from-parallel-life.html

I have tagged you as THE THINGKING BLOGGER. The details are in the link below:
http://celinejulie.blogspot.com/2007/07/five-blogs-that-make-me-think.html

By the way, I like what you write about SLEEPWALK and DUELLE very much. I haven’t seen these two films, but I love Jacques Rivette, and think that any films that can be compared with Rivette’s must be worth watching.

I haven’t seen any films by Sara Driver, but my friend, Sonthaya Subyen, saw YOU ARE NOT I (1981, Sara Driver) and he seems to like it a lot.

Your writing makes me think about films which have overlapping layers of fictions. I think films in this category are very interesting. The ones that I like include:

1.OBABA (2005, Montxo Armendariz, Spain)

In this film, a woman tried to use her video camera to tell stories of some villagers, but she didn’t know that by doing it, she risked becoming a part of the stories.


2.AN ARIA ON GAZE (1992, Hisayasu Sato)

Synopsis from imdb.com

“Surreal, semi-pornographic fantasy in the "pink cinema" genre, exploring serious themes of voyeurism, alienation and perversion. Former actress Kyoko is miserable in her cold marriage, ignored by her lover, and obsessed with filming and being filmed. The boundaries of real and imagined are blurred more and more as she starts experimenting with the impersonal sexual rituals and hallucinogenic drug that may have killed her sister.”


3.THE PEACH-BLOSSOM LAND (1992, Stan Lai, Taiwan)

Synopsis from imdb.com

“Two drama companies happened to share one auditorium for rehearsal. Friction was inevitable. One of them played 'Peach Blossom', a comedy in medieval costume. Another played 'Secret Love', a sad story with contemporary setting. Though unreconciled in all aspects, they find themselves telling the same story: the story of Chinese people forced to leave home.”


4.LA LECTRICE (1988, Michel Deville)

Synopsis from imdb.com written by Michele Wilkinson

“A multi-faceted film based on Raymond Jean's novel "La Lectrice". Constance (Miou-Miou) reads the novel aloud in bed to her lover. Inspired by the story of Marie, a woman who advertises her services as a reader of literature, Constance decides to do the same. Here the film takes on a kaleidoscopic effect as the lives of Constance and Marie become merged, making it hard to distinguish what is real and what is fantasy. This structure is further complicated when the lives of Constance's clients become tangled with the stories she reads. The film is interspersed with readings from well known literary sources as diverse as, amongst others, Baudelaire, Duras, Tolstoy, Lewis Carroll and de Sade's "120 days..."”


5.music video BACHELORETTE by Bjork


--My friend told me that LA PURITAINE (1986, Jacques Doillon) presents some interesting relationships between a play and the characters’ lives. I think this film is worth checking out. It was shown in Alliance Francaise in Bangkok several years ago, but I was busy on that day, so I couldn’t go to watch it.

Synopsis of LA PURITAINE written by Jay Seaver from eFilmcritic.com
http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=13802

“Renowned theater director Pierre (Michel Piccoli) has just received a letter saying that his daughter Manon (Sandrine Bonnaire) is coming home and will meet him at the theater the next day. His next move, therefor, is obviously to call in all the actresses in his troupe, assign some representation of his daughter to each of them ("you will be Manon's eyes... you will be her voice... you will be her hand...") so that he can figure out how to speak with her upon her return. In the meantime, Manon arrives at the theater, lets herself in the back way, and observes this whole exercise, occasionally talking to one of the actresses or her father's assistant Ariane (Sabine Azéma) before finally speaking to her father.”


A POSTER OF LA PURITAINE
http://www.moviecovers.com/film/titre_LA+PURITAINE.html

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1431/706934112_a0d7fdf41f_o.jpg



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nice post! You have said it very well. Keep going.