Another very disappointing full moon night, Friday. Since decreeing, some six months ago, that every time there's a full moon I should try and do something I've never done before, I don't think I have even once done anything worthy of this noble idea...
When Bruce Labruce's militant queer terrorist erotica Raspberry Reich is sold out at the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, I go and see Claude Chabrol's La Demoiselle d'honneur instead. No one can pinpoint the foibles and pretensions of the French middle classes with more accuracy and efficiency than Chabrol, but then I guess he has been doing it for 45 years. In La Demoiselle d'honneur, Benot Magimel plays Philippe, an accountant type who falls for a femme fatale called Seinta played, really rather well actually by Laura Smet. Philippe meets Seinta at his sister's wedding and, that same night, she removes all her clothes and tells him 'I knew the moment I saw you that you were my destiny: you belong to me now', and proceeds to act with the kind of possessiveness that only femmes fatales in the movies can. At which point, all claims to verisimilitude go out the window. This may just be my own bitterness and disillusion surfacing, but I simply can't imagine a woman in the twenty-first century proffering these words, or, more to the point, a man in the twenty-first century being taken in by them. Ideas of destiny and belonging are surely no longer a part of what Roland Barthes called a lover's discourse, and, in all seriousness, they probably haven't been since some time in the early nineteenth century, if ever. As a result, Chabrol's film slides easily into comedy and, seemingly aware of this, the director plays up to it by turning several of his characters into caricatures (the beau-frre is particularly broad). There was an awful lot of snickering, let me tell you, in the Cin Cit on Friday night...
Yesterday, long long long walk into the banlieue - Pantin, Bobigny, Noisy-le-sec - where there's really nothing to see, apart from some mind-blowing graffiti alongside the canal (if only I'd had a camera). I ride the tram to Saint-Denis, sitting opposite a plumply pretty girl from La Courneuve, who's just waiting for me to take the initiative but, instead, in my usual art-preceding-life fashion, I go and watch Jean-Claude Guiguiet's Les Passagers, in which people actually do take the initiative on the tram...
Afterwards, as EVK has a four-and-a-half-hour haircut, I go and pick up her printer from BHV, which is toute une histoire in itself, but not one I have the strength to tell here...
When Bruce Labruce's militant queer terrorist erotica Raspberry Reich is sold out at the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, I go and see Claude Chabrol's La Demoiselle d'honneur instead. No one can pinpoint the foibles and pretensions of the French middle classes with more accuracy and efficiency than Chabrol, but then I guess he has been doing it for 45 years. In La Demoiselle d'honneur, Benot Magimel plays Philippe, an accountant type who falls for a femme fatale called Seinta played, really rather well actually by Laura Smet. Philippe meets Seinta at his sister's wedding and, that same night, she removes all her clothes and tells him 'I knew the moment I saw you that you were my destiny: you belong to me now', and proceeds to act with the kind of possessiveness that only femmes fatales in the movies can. At which point, all claims to verisimilitude go out the window. This may just be my own bitterness and disillusion surfacing, but I simply can't imagine a woman in the twenty-first century proffering these words, or, more to the point, a man in the twenty-first century being taken in by them. Ideas of destiny and belonging are surely no longer a part of what Roland Barthes called a lover's discourse, and, in all seriousness, they probably haven't been since some time in the early nineteenth century, if ever. As a result, Chabrol's film slides easily into comedy and, seemingly aware of this, the director plays up to it by turning several of his characters into caricatures (the beau-frre is particularly broad). There was an awful lot of snickering, let me tell you, in the Cin Cit on Friday night...
Yesterday, long long long walk into the banlieue - Pantin, Bobigny, Noisy-le-sec - where there's really nothing to see, apart from some mind-blowing graffiti alongside the canal (if only I'd had a camera). I ride the tram to Saint-Denis, sitting opposite a plumply pretty girl from La Courneuve, who's just waiting for me to take the initiative but, instead, in my usual art-preceding-life fashion, I go and watch Jean-Claude Guiguiet's Les Passagers, in which people actually do take the initiative on the tram...
Afterwards, as EVK has a four-and-a-half-hour haircut, I go and pick up her printer from BHV, which is toute une histoire in itself, but not one I have the strength to tell here...
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
they're so old I can't even read the make on the inside of the arm
I'm guilty of talking of fate and possession. Perhaps I should be chastised, or perhaps I belong in a French farce. But then, come to think of it, I am an aging femme fatale.
Sorry for the long long long absence (two weeks!) - hang in there, I will eventually get proper internet access back (although it could be another couple months yet)
[Crumbs, what an arrogant comment.
I do miss you, and it is not arrogant in the least.
Who am I lovesick for? I give you exhibit a) the wonderful surlyclown and exhibit b) my journal about his recent visit: The Visit of the Surlyclown.