When I was an undergraduate in Washington D.C., during the Johnson Administration, the Circle Theater had an Ingmar Bergman Festival that ran for several days. I remember cutting classes to go to double and triple features of that great director’s films in hopes of seeing Harriet Andersson naked or Bibi Andersson naked or any other actress, named Andersson or not, naked. Such delights were still a few years away in mainstream American movies. Amazingly enough, I absorbed bits of Bergman’s cinematic vision along with visions of the glorious Anderssons, and my interest in foreign films began.
Sex in non-pornographic movies is problematic. You risk taking the viewer out of the narrative and into contemplating an actor or actress’s normally covered bits. Ang Lee manages not to do this in “Lust, Caution”. The actors are naked and the sex is realistic enough that it got an “NC-17” rating from the MPAA (they’re particularly down on thrusting and there’s lots of that) but the sex is not arousing and it absolutely furthers the plot in a way that is rarely seen.
The film is set before and during WWII and is about a young woman (played by Wei Tang), an idealistic student supporter of the Chinese Nationalist Government, who takes on the task of becoming the mistress of an official (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) in the Chinese Collaborationist Government, a torturer and executioner, so that she can set up his assassination. She succeeds eventually in becoming his mistress but through watching their sex together and other aspects of their relationship we see the complications developing. No spoilers!
People who don’t like the film complain that it takes too long getting to the sex but I think the pace is necessary to build the tension. The rest of the cast is as good as the principal actors and the film is beautifully shot. I find it a minor masterpiece and wish that it had been seen by more people last year.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Thursday, August 7, 2008
The San Francisco MOMA – August 7, 2008
We went down to see the Frida Kahlo show. She’s like Jack Daniel’s Whiskey, very popular but also very good. It was crowded but we are museum members and could walk in.
Over the years Madame Le Chef and I have seen several shows of her work, and her paintings reproduce well, so there were few revelations, although there was great pleasure, in seeing the actual pieces.
What was a revelation were some unfamiliar photos of her and Diego Rivera and a delightful home movie of them. There is a long tradition in Western Art of a court painter doing a portrait of some misshapen royal and making him or her look godlike. Frida Kahlo did the exact opposite thing to herself. In the photos and the home movie you see just what a beautiful woman she was but when she painted herself, she was unmerciful to every defect.
There were major revelations to be had on the same floor as her show. We had forgotten that there was a show of contemporary Chinese Art at the museum that was all from the Logan Collection. In this case it was very important to see the actual pieces, most of which are large.
There is a wonderful piece by Sui Jianguo that consists of a collection of several thousand brightly painted toy dinosaurs with a life-sized Chairman Mao asleep on top of them. It’s called “The Sleep of Reason” (shout-out to Goya). The same artist also has a large piece called “Made in China” out on the 4th Floor terrace, which is the only piece one can photograph and we did.
There are also a lot of very interesting paintings. Not everything is as Pop as the two pieces I’ve mentioned but there is very dark humor manifested in a lot of them.
I definitely recommend the show to any of my Bay Area readers.
Over the years Madame Le Chef and I have seen several shows of her work, and her paintings reproduce well, so there were few revelations, although there was great pleasure, in seeing the actual pieces.
What was a revelation were some unfamiliar photos of her and Diego Rivera and a delightful home movie of them. There is a long tradition in Western Art of a court painter doing a portrait of some misshapen royal and making him or her look godlike. Frida Kahlo did the exact opposite thing to herself. In the photos and the home movie you see just what a beautiful woman she was but when she painted herself, she was unmerciful to every defect.
There were major revelations to be had on the same floor as her show. We had forgotten that there was a show of contemporary Chinese Art at the museum that was all from the Logan Collection. In this case it was very important to see the actual pieces, most of which are large.
There is a wonderful piece by Sui Jianguo that consists of a collection of several thousand brightly painted toy dinosaurs with a life-sized Chairman Mao asleep on top of them. It’s called “The Sleep of Reason” (shout-out to Goya). The same artist also has a large piece called “Made in China” out on the 4th Floor terrace, which is the only piece one can photograph and we did.
There are also a lot of very interesting paintings. Not everything is as Pop as the two pieces I’ve mentioned but there is very dark humor manifested in a lot of them.
I definitely recommend the show to any of my Bay Area readers.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
I Am The Odd Shaped Object
The morning of July 3rd was cold and gray in Paris. I tucked in my canvas overshirt for warmth and put on my straw hat. We took the Metro to the Concorde station to change to the Number One line. As we walked through the connecting tunnel it occurred to me that the crowds were getting thicker and that I should move my wallet from the back pocket of my jeans to the front. I didn’t.
A train was pulling in as we arrived at the platform. Madame Le Chef was trailing slightly behind me in the crowd. I stepped onto the train. A short girl with black hair and a pink top suddenly stopped in front of me, blocking my way. I assumed she was unsure if she was on the right train. I had the impression she was a young teenager. I never saw her face.
She was violating the unspoken rule that one moves rapidly on and off the Metro. The trains do not normally linger in the station. I was trying to figure out how to get around her without pushing when she turned and left the car, just as the doors closed. I turned and found Madame Le Chef who immediately asked me if I had my wallet. I put my hand back. It was gone.
I felt sick as the train accelerated. It was a fait accompli. We got off at the next station, thought briefly of notifying the police and rejected that idea. We headed back to the apartment where I got on the phone and canceled my Credit and Debit cards. We were out over 120 Euro and my driver’s license, which meant that Madame Le Chef would be the chauffeur when we rented a car.
Since she was behind me, Madame Le Chef saw much more of the robbery although she did not realize at the time that that’s what it was. While the first girl blocked me, her identically sized confederate came up behind me. Madame saw her put one hand on my back but did not see her other hand pick my pocket. I never felt anything. The teenage Artful Dodgers exited the train with military precision.
Everyone I told the story to said, “Oh, Gypsies”. Apparently Les Gitanes have the franchise for petty thievery or, at least, are widely perceived as having it.
I realized in retrospect that the pintsized felons probably first noticed me because of my straw hat and then registered the wallet shape in my back pocket. Maybe I even sensed them watching me and that caused my inkling that I should move my wallet. As an American, everything has to be a learning experience, so the moral of this tale is: if you have an inkling, act on it. (Unless it’s an inkling telling you to take off all your clothes and start screaming about Earth’s imminent collision with an asteroid.)
A train was pulling in as we arrived at the platform. Madame Le Chef was trailing slightly behind me in the crowd. I stepped onto the train. A short girl with black hair and a pink top suddenly stopped in front of me, blocking my way. I assumed she was unsure if she was on the right train. I had the impression she was a young teenager. I never saw her face.
She was violating the unspoken rule that one moves rapidly on and off the Metro. The trains do not normally linger in the station. I was trying to figure out how to get around her without pushing when she turned and left the car, just as the doors closed. I turned and found Madame Le Chef who immediately asked me if I had my wallet. I put my hand back. It was gone.
I felt sick as the train accelerated. It was a fait accompli. We got off at the next station, thought briefly of notifying the police and rejected that idea. We headed back to the apartment where I got on the phone and canceled my Credit and Debit cards. We were out over 120 Euro and my driver’s license, which meant that Madame Le Chef would be the chauffeur when we rented a car.
Since she was behind me, Madame Le Chef saw much more of the robbery although she did not realize at the time that that’s what it was. While the first girl blocked me, her identically sized confederate came up behind me. Madame saw her put one hand on my back but did not see her other hand pick my pocket. I never felt anything. The teenage Artful Dodgers exited the train with military precision.
Everyone I told the story to said, “Oh, Gypsies”. Apparently Les Gitanes have the franchise for petty thievery or, at least, are widely perceived as having it.
I realized in retrospect that the pintsized felons probably first noticed me because of my straw hat and then registered the wallet shape in my back pocket. Maybe I even sensed them watching me and that caused my inkling that I should move my wallet. As an American, everything has to be a learning experience, so the moral of this tale is: if you have an inkling, act on it. (Unless it’s an inkling telling you to take off all your clothes and start screaming about Earth’s imminent collision with an asteroid.)
Thursday, July 31, 2008
The Myth of the Super-Pigeon
You may ask, who was promulgating this myth? I have to admit that it was me, le chef de bureau. The apartment in Montmartre that Madame Le Chef and I had rented in years past was not available and so we rented an apartment on one of Paris’s other (barely perceptible) hills, Montparnasse.
The apartment was in an architecturally dismal but actually comfortable 60s high-rise on the totally un-photogenic rue de Vaugirard (the longest street in Paris). The apartment was in the rear of the building and its small balcony overlooked a green courtyard that was enclosed by some other high-rises and by the tall brick wall of the Institut Pasteur. We could see the roofs of the 19th Century institute buildings above the wall.
A flock of pigeons occupied the top of the wall, the roofs of the institute and the vegetation of the courtyard. These were not your raggle-taggle everyday city pigeons, subsisting on a diet of used chewing gum and Snickers wrappers. No! These were huge, sleek, robust pigeons with white markings on their necks and wings. Their deep calls echoed between the buildings in the early morning and they apparently let none of their lesser pigeon brethren in their territory.
I didn’t know what they were but enjoyed speculating that they were a new evolutionary branch thrown up by Paris’s enormous pigeon population or, even more fun to speculate about, an experiment from the institute next door. The truth was simpler but still interesting.
At the end of our Paris visit we took a train to Tours, rented a car there and headed off for Chinon. As soon as we got out into the country, we began to see the “Super Pigeons” everywhere. It turns out that they are the Wood Pigeon (Columba Palumbus) and are a very numerous inhabitant of rural woods and fields in a large part of Europe. Of course the question remains as to why that flock in Paris abandoned their usual habitat and colonized that particular courtyard. I’m still entertaining the Institut Pasteur experiment theory.
The apartment was in an architecturally dismal but actually comfortable 60s high-rise on the totally un-photogenic rue de Vaugirard (the longest street in Paris). The apartment was in the rear of the building and its small balcony overlooked a green courtyard that was enclosed by some other high-rises and by the tall brick wall of the Institut Pasteur. We could see the roofs of the 19th Century institute buildings above the wall.
A flock of pigeons occupied the top of the wall, the roofs of the institute and the vegetation of the courtyard. These were not your raggle-taggle everyday city pigeons, subsisting on a diet of used chewing gum and Snickers wrappers. No! These were huge, sleek, robust pigeons with white markings on their necks and wings. Their deep calls echoed between the buildings in the early morning and they apparently let none of their lesser pigeon brethren in their territory.
I didn’t know what they were but enjoyed speculating that they were a new evolutionary branch thrown up by Paris’s enormous pigeon population or, even more fun to speculate about, an experiment from the institute next door. The truth was simpler but still interesting.
At the end of our Paris visit we took a train to Tours, rented a car there and headed off for Chinon. As soon as we got out into the country, we began to see the “Super Pigeons” everywhere. It turns out that they are the Wood Pigeon (Columba Palumbus) and are a very numerous inhabitant of rural woods and fields in a large part of Europe. Of course the question remains as to why that flock in Paris abandoned their usual habitat and colonized that particular courtyard. I’m still entertaining the Institut Pasteur experiment theory.
Back In Town
For any readers who have checked into the Bureau during the last month looking for new reviews of worthy films, I apologize. Madame Le Chef and I have been on summer vacation in Ireland, France and the East Coast of les Etats-Unis. I don’t carry along a computer when I travel. Actually I am glad to be rid of it since it fills me with the endless desire to log on and check the latest news which is usually dismal or epically unimportant.
We honed our French by trying to follow the news in Le Monde and on television. I’m happy to report that there was zero French coverage of the American presidential campaign in the first part of July since really nothing was happening except media manufactured non-events. On the other hand Ingrid Betancourt’s rescue was on 24/7. Jeez, you’d think she was Milely Cyrus or something.
We honed our French by trying to follow the news in Le Monde and on television. I’m happy to report that there was zero French coverage of the American presidential campaign in the first part of July since really nothing was happening except media manufactured non-events. On the other hand Ingrid Betancourt’s rescue was on 24/7. Jeez, you’d think she was Milely Cyrus or something.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Old Virginny
Part 1
As chef de bureau I’m always searching for interesting odd shaped objects, even while in Virginia for my dear mom’s 90th birthday. In Richmond, VA I was hugely gratified to come across an actual odd shaped object that was both interesting and delicious. At one point in the several days of festivities, my sister (hostess extraordinaire) brought home some crispy legs and thighs from Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken. I had never heard of it. The crust was so thick that a thigh was not recognizable by its shape but my suspicions died when I tasted it. It was greaseless and wonderfully tasty.
I’ve lived in San Francisco for over 30 years and decades go by without my eating any fried chicken since I’m not aware of any good emporia of that delight. If Lee’s was located here, instead of 2438 miles away, I’d be eating fried chicken a lot more often. (You can get fried livers and gizzards too but we abstained).
Part 2
I grew up in Virginia but in the northern part, the suburbs of Washington D.C. That is the most populous region of the state but is often considered by Virginians further south as not really Virginia.
Some friends in Richmond recently moved out to a house on the Chickahominey River. No one is going to say that’s not Virginia. The river ran with the blood of Union and Confederate soldiers during the Civil War and is an example of the Tidewater region, although the salt water is blocked from their part of the river by a dam.
I’ve always had a 19th century vision of swamps as miasmal cesspools so I was amazed at how pleasant the swampy banks of the river were. It wasn’t even buggy since the flies and mosquitoes were kept down by the abundant fish, birds and bright green dragonflies.
Our friends’ house is on dry land but has a long boardwalk that goes through the swamp and out to the river. There’s a wide part in the boardwalk, under some trees, where there’s a table and chairs. We sat there and watched the natural world go by. I include a few photos, which is a first for The Bureau of OSO.
As chef de bureau I’m always searching for interesting odd shaped objects, even while in Virginia for my dear mom’s 90th birthday. In Richmond, VA I was hugely gratified to come across an actual odd shaped object that was both interesting and delicious. At one point in the several days of festivities, my sister (hostess extraordinaire) brought home some crispy legs and thighs from Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken. I had never heard of it. The crust was so thick that a thigh was not recognizable by its shape but my suspicions died when I tasted it. It was greaseless and wonderfully tasty.
I’ve lived in San Francisco for over 30 years and decades go by without my eating any fried chicken since I’m not aware of any good emporia of that delight. If Lee’s was located here, instead of 2438 miles away, I’d be eating fried chicken a lot more often. (You can get fried livers and gizzards too but we abstained).
Part 2
I grew up in Virginia but in the northern part, the suburbs of Washington D.C. That is the most populous region of the state but is often considered by Virginians further south as not really Virginia.
Some friends in Richmond recently moved out to a house on the Chickahominey River. No one is going to say that’s not Virginia. The river ran with the blood of Union and Confederate soldiers during the Civil War and is an example of the Tidewater region, although the salt water is blocked from their part of the river by a dam.
I’ve always had a 19th century vision of swamps as miasmal cesspools so I was amazed at how pleasant the swampy banks of the river were. It wasn’t even buggy since the flies and mosquitoes were kept down by the abundant fish, birds and bright green dragonflies.
Our friends’ house is on dry land but has a long boardwalk that goes through the swamp and out to the river. There’s a wide part in the boardwalk, under some trees, where there’s a table and chairs. We sat there and watched the natural world go by. I include a few photos, which is a first for The Bureau of OSO.
Monday, June 9, 2008
La Double vie de Véronique
As chef de bureau my filmic purview has so far consisted of genre films with the exception of “The Namesake”, a drama, although one with seemingly modest aims, a chamber piece. Now, however, we’re turning the bureaucratic gaze on a film that comes stamped “Art”.
This 1991 film is by Polish director, Krzysztof Kieslowski. Its motto could be Hippocrates aphorism, “Ars longa, vita brevis.”
The first section of “Véronique” is suffused with beauty: the beauty of the autumn light in Poland; the beauty of Zybigniew Preisner’s music; The luminous beauty of Irène Jacob as Weronica, a young classical singer.
Weronica has a wonderful voice and is full of youthful exuberance. She also has a sense that she has a double somewhere and then knows that she does when she glimpses Véronique (also Irène Jacob) on a tourist bus. But the existence of her double is not the central focus of this section.
Weronica has a chance to make her concert debut and is determined to put all other things aside for it. She has already left her lover behind in another town but now she starts to experience cardiac chest pains. She ignores them and goes ahead with her performance. If this were a thriller, I’d worry about spoilers, but this isn’t that kind of film. Weronica collapses and dies while singing.
We see a shot looking up from her casket, presumably through a glass panel, as her family, lover and friends drop handfuls of dirt that cover the frame until it’s black. We cut to Véronique who is in bed with a young man who she has no intention of seeing again. She feels Weronika’s death and, in the next scene, quits her music lessons as if she somehow knows that her double sacrificed her life for art. She’s not going to do that. We see scenes of her with EKG printouts so we know she has heart disease also.
From this point the film wanders and becomes a bit of a beautiful mess. As chef I have nothing against messes. I regard Jean Renoir as the greatest director of all and his films are often grand messes and transcendent works of art at the same time (“la Règle de jeu”). However, my sense of plot demands more than a catalogue of the various elements in Véronique’s life. A large amount of screen time is dedicated to Véronique following clues to a puppeteer who she probably could have found in the phonebook. The film has an ambiguous ending that one could interpret as meaning that Véronique also dies, although she turned away from art.
This ending was not acceptable to Harvey “The Butcher” Weinstein who bought the American rights and demanded an unambiguous happy ending. Kieslowski complied but only for the US.
Kieslowski was an artist and had heart disease. He died on the table during open heart surgery in 1996. His “Trois coleurs” trilogy is magnificent. “La Double Vie de Véronique” is a very beautiful odd shaped object. I recommend seeing it dispite the problems I have with the second part.
This 1991 film is by Polish director, Krzysztof Kieslowski. Its motto could be Hippocrates aphorism, “Ars longa, vita brevis.”
The first section of “Véronique” is suffused with beauty: the beauty of the autumn light in Poland; the beauty of Zybigniew Preisner’s music; The luminous beauty of Irène Jacob as Weronica, a young classical singer.
Weronica has a wonderful voice and is full of youthful exuberance. She also has a sense that she has a double somewhere and then knows that she does when she glimpses Véronique (also Irène Jacob) on a tourist bus. But the existence of her double is not the central focus of this section.
Weronica has a chance to make her concert debut and is determined to put all other things aside for it. She has already left her lover behind in another town but now she starts to experience cardiac chest pains. She ignores them and goes ahead with her performance. If this were a thriller, I’d worry about spoilers, but this isn’t that kind of film. Weronica collapses and dies while singing.
We see a shot looking up from her casket, presumably through a glass panel, as her family, lover and friends drop handfuls of dirt that cover the frame until it’s black. We cut to Véronique who is in bed with a young man who she has no intention of seeing again. She feels Weronika’s death and, in the next scene, quits her music lessons as if she somehow knows that her double sacrificed her life for art. She’s not going to do that. We see scenes of her with EKG printouts so we know she has heart disease also.
From this point the film wanders and becomes a bit of a beautiful mess. As chef I have nothing against messes. I regard Jean Renoir as the greatest director of all and his films are often grand messes and transcendent works of art at the same time (“la Règle de jeu”). However, my sense of plot demands more than a catalogue of the various elements in Véronique’s life. A large amount of screen time is dedicated to Véronique following clues to a puppeteer who she probably could have found in the phonebook. The film has an ambiguous ending that one could interpret as meaning that Véronique also dies, although she turned away from art.
This ending was not acceptable to Harvey “The Butcher” Weinstein who bought the American rights and demanded an unambiguous happy ending. Kieslowski complied but only for the US.
Kieslowski was an artist and had heart disease. He died on the table during open heart surgery in 1996. His “Trois coleurs” trilogy is magnificent. “La Double Vie de Véronique” is a very beautiful odd shaped object. I recommend seeing it dispite the problems I have with the second part.
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