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hi, ya'll,

many of ya'll know i occasionally review or remark on movies, concerts,
trips, ie, things i do i think most of those on my mailing list might
enjoy hearing of, so in that spirit i wanted to recommend two movies
sheila and i saw this past week as part of our 4th of July rambling
celebration; i was gonna also write about our walking trip down to
townlake to see the fireworks and have margaritas at the same time, but
i'll have to save that for another time  :-)

i first heard of La Vie en Rose via a movie review in the NY Times movie
review email i get, and first heard of Paris, Je T'Aime via Michael
Barnes's Out & About blog on the AustinAmerican Statesman

both films are at the Arbor Cinema, and one or both may also be at the Dobie
theatre; we went to see Le Vie en Rose first

not much for me to debate within myself on this one, first rate movie,
four or five star depending on your preferences, but either way,
undeniable photography, music, and story

much like judy garland, edith piaf rose from a young age with a compelling
voice and personality that all the tragedy and bumps and stops and
heartaches only deepened

the actress, marion cotillard, played all the singer's years except for
her childhood (and the child actress was terrific too) in an immersion the
movie poster itself refers to, unbelievably believable; almost
unrecognizable as the same actress at times save for her speaking voice
and eyes (marion lip-synched, and good luck trying to tell if you're a
music layman like me); from young street smart and tough to glamorously
successful to the many levels of downward sloping slippage into an old age
in her 40's, the 2 hr plus movie is totally engrossing

the photography nicely mirrored the differing ages, from the early
nineteen hundreds of ww 1 thru the depression into the post world II world
of emerging technology; from paris to new york one could feel the time
change as this determined woman held onto being herself

i always like to remind myself too that those wonderful shots of paris and
new york, paris especially, of those decades long past, were all shot
recently; those locales still exist, still can be experienced

Google had a nice set of reviews on a search.



Paris, Je T'Aime was our second choice because if it happened we missed
one movie and had to netflix it in the future, it'd be this one; i still
think that's true, but maybe more so now because the large screen did so
much justice to the portrayal of edith piaf and paris; plus i don't have
as big a speakers for the music as the theatre  :-)

and as the second of the two links below narrates, echoing my own thoughts
pretty closely, the first part of this movie had me not only convinced we
were right to let it be second, but almost thinking i'd made a mistake all
together in seeing it, almost...

i'd thought the whole collection was 5 minute shorts was gonna be a varied
wonderfully nuanced celebration of living in paris, and it turned out it
was, but in a much more subtly structured manner

noisy, too short, barely promising of things to come, the first shorts
were too much what it's like living here in austin when things aren't
going so well, when daily grinds accumulate into one giant high-humidity
over-the-top dew point chore-laden day one goes to the movies to forget
for a few moments

but we'd paid our money and sheila and i, determined in our own way,
persisted viewing each developing 5 minute short, and develop they did

past the first two noisy too short flustered segments, came sorrow and
disappointments, the immigrant mother (spanish from lang she sang to her
child) having to leave her child in a room of unattended infants to hurry
through crowded subway rush hour to an extravagant household where the
mother who didn't even show herself to this young nanny "was late" and had
to rush off to still be "late" coming back, to the lonely struggling
immigrant man, who said Laos was better or safer, can't remember for sure
now, who was stabbed by punk  thugs who obviously thought they had it
tougher, to a french mom who'd lost her boy; then to relationships
struggling to connect through language and expectation dissonance; to more
mature relationships struggling to stay connected or wanting to
disconnect, to the final few vignettes, the sense of life itself,
especially so in paris the movie says, but more especially because of
paris, life will win out in a way that is satisfying after all, finally
:-)

several of the segments some reviewers hadn't liked at all, the mimes for
instance, sheila & i both thought were really good

but the final segment made the movie; it was like having arrived to eat a
huge multi-course meal, expecting much more from the first entree, getting
a little less than expected, but enjoying it more and more, a little more,
through each course, yet aware of still not feeling full as expected, then
hitting the final dish, blandly prepared, and suddenly savoring all your
expectations at once, suddenly feeling very very full; kinda like that

we walked out of the dark theatre into lobby of the theatre in north
austin (come on, this is no way even close to being "central austin")
feeling I MUST be in paris, i mean, that i WAS in paris

oh well, we did go both times afterwards to Fresh Choice and w/little to
no guilt indulged in as many and much of their huge variety of veggies as
we wanted

so, kinda like paris  :-)

movie reviews of "paris, je t'amie"

http://www.channel4.com/film/reviews/film.jsp?id=161836

thanks ya'll,

adan
www.adanlerma.com


ps - news next week hopefully on an invitational show where i'm showing
one large piece in san marcos