Female Sense

Extraordinary.

The Goddess of 1967 may be the most philosophical of all Law films. In terms of structure and characterisation, it bears a remarkable similarity to Autumn Moon: the chance encounter of a Japanese tourist with a local girl and their joint journey in search of self-discovery and self-salvation.

Floating Life

In Australia, Law returns to her favorite subject of the Chinese Diaspora and Floating Life is her most comprehensive treatment of Chinese immigration to date. It has rich intertextual references to her earlier films, yet the narrative is more versatile and accomplished, the study of the psychology of migration more nuanced and complex, and the presentation of cultural clashes more subtle and balanced, which result in a reservedly optimistic outlook for the future of the Chinese Diaspora. With vignettes from Hong Kong, Germany and Australia, Law offers a glimpse of a fractured traditional Chinese family struggling to find ?home? in a transnational context. The Chan family members' various responses to their ?floating? identities constitute a mosaic picture of Chinese immigrants, much of which reflect Law's paradoxical thinking about the benefits and the costs of immigration. The eldest son Gar Ming's (Anthony Wong) indecisiveness about immigration suggests the unity of the family is already in jeopardy before its geographical displacement; the eldest daughter Yen's (Annette Shun-Wah) discomfort in her comfortable German home and her insistence on her daughter learning Chinese means that ?assimilation? no longer operates with the either/or logic. Operating through this either/or logic is exactly what gets Bing (Annie Yip), the second daughter and the self-appointed family matriarch, into the path of a nervous breakdown. The way she welcomes the arrival of her extended family is to demand that her younger brothers speak only English and her parents give up fatty, spiced food. ?You're here as migrants,? Bing says, ?not to enjoy life.? Since she lives in white suburbia, she must act ?white? to fit in. It appears, for a moment, as if the fate of Hong in Farewell China will befall Bing. Fortunately, Bing has Mother (Cecelia Fong Sing Lee) on her side and it is Mother's prayer to the Chinese gods that rescues Bing from psychological ruination. As the film draws to a close, Mother saves Bing again from a ferocious Australian dog in the neighborhood: while Bing's first instinct is to run, Mother calmly approaches the dog and tames it speaking Chinese. This symbolic gesture spells the end of the assimilation model and beckons the beginning of an emerging Chinese Australian identity defined by the inclusion of both and not by the exclusion of either.

And this is exactly what happens in her breakthrough film Autumn Moon (1992). In dealing with differences between cultures and traditions, Law uses the logic of ?both? and ?all? in that the Self and the Other are mutually constitutive and one's ethnic identity is always in the process of becoming. The narrative of the film centers on an unlikely friendship between a teenage Hong Kong girl and a male Japanese tourist. Li Pui-Wai (Li Pui-Wai) is left behind by her Canada-bound family. Her life is now based around waiting out her grandmother (who is an inconvenience to the family's goal of emigration) so that she can join her parents in Canada. Tokio (Masatoshi Nagase) comes to Hong Kong looking for food, bargains and sex. Although neither is a migrant in a conventional sense, migration dominates their lives. When their paths intersect, they quickly form an awkward relationship. In staggering English, they understand each other through frustration and misunderstanding. More importantly, their friendship becomes an anchor for both in their search for self-identity in an alienating transnational world inundated with cliches and indifference. As their stories draw to a close, they commemorate their coming-together and impending departure with a creative rendition of Chinese and Japanese traditional rituals involving lanterns, miniature boats and fireworks.



As with many films by Second Wave directors, Autumn Moon foregrounds the changeover of Hong Kong in its narrative structure and displays a familiar anxiety regarding the identity of Hong Kong. In narrating Hong Kong in displacement and transition, Law, however, does not offer even a fleeting sense of a return, psychologically or culturally, to a place before the disruption of a political process that Hong Kong can uniquely claim as its own national space. For Law, transition is already a permanent happening, and migration is the fabric of Hong Kong's transnational life. The power of the film lies not in a skin-deep nostalgia for what has been lost but rather in a ruthless interrogation of the many established values that shelter one's sense of the nation and nationalism, values such as the native and the foreign, the familiar and the exotic, authentic tradition and adaptive modernity. By dismantling these dichotomous categories Law offers an imaginative version of a transnational Chinese subject who functions between memory and forgetting and who is always in the process of remaking herself. Autumn Moon encompasses so much of Law's artistic world that its thematic matter, narrative structure, characterisation and visual imagery will return to many of her ensuing films.

Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter) is a mute young Scottish widow, sold into marriage by her father to plantation owner Alistair Stewart (Sam Neill.) Arriving in New Zealand with her young daughter Flora (Anna Paquin), she is devasted when her new husband immediately sells her beloved piano to neighbour Baines (Harvey Keitel, complete with suitably funky Maori tattoos) rather than carry it up the cliffs to her new home. Ada offers to give Baines piano lessons in exchange for the eventual return of her piano. However Baines swiftly demands lessons of quite another kind?


Sounds a bit kinky? Don?t be (too) alarmed. Although Jane Campion?s historical drama contains several extremely erotic scenes, there is nothing gratuitous about them and they certainly aren?t plot fillers added as a bit of light relief. Complex, indeed disturbing, issues are raised in this film. The tragic themes of forbidden love and issues of power (is Ada a woman taking control of her life or is she merely being victimised throughout the film?) are perhaps not especially new or original, however they are dealt with sensitively and fit with the general mood of the piece. ?The Piano? isn?t everyone?s cup of tea ? it?s easy to watch and pick at as being a tad too pretentious. Perhaps it is. I myself am inclined to see it is as a much more ?conventional? sort of film as opposed to other fans who rave on about its profundities.


However there are several reasons that with ?The Piano? Jane Campion became the first female director to win the Palme d?Or Prize at Cannes. Holly Hunter delivers an exquisite performance, made all the more remarkable by not uttering a single word throughout the movie (coincidentally, trivia fans, she also played all the piano pieces in the film too.) Anna Paquin?s mischievous and meddling Flora forced me to re-evaluate my usual prejudice against child actors. Both fully deserved the Oscars they won for their roles. Other delights include Michael Nyman?s famous, romantic score and Stuart Dryburgh?s lush cinematography. Combine all this together and you have a haunting and memorable cinema experience.

Ambiguity

The essence of Jane Campion's films lies in ambiguity, in the opening up of narrative possibilities. Sue Gillett captures this perfectly when she notes that Campion's films are frequently concerned with what is unseen or unsaid. (25) This very openness of meaning lends power to the themes and issues (un)expressed, where the audience is left to interpret the information they are given ? or the lack of it. Campion is not interested in telling her audience what to think or how to respond. Indeed, the ambiguity in Campion's films is the catalyst for the critical debate her work inspires.

There is much about Sweetie's past that is unseen or unsaid. A key example of this ambiguity is the bathroom scene in Sweetie, where Kay pauses outside the bathroom door, left ajar, and sees Sweetie washing her father in the bath. As Sweetie 'accidentally' drops the soap, she playfully fishes around in the water near her father's groin, humming occasionally as she does so. Campion then cuts to a shot of Kay in bed, pulling up the sheets and blanket close to her chin, staring tensely at the ceiling. Throughout there is a subtle but ominous undertone on the soundtrack. The scene is less than 30 seconds, but its presentation is so haunting that it casts a shadow over the remainder of the narrative, especially in the subsequent scenes between Sweetie and her father, Gordon (Jon Darling). While this is the only scene of intimate physical contact between Sweetie and Gordon, the implication of an incestuous relationship is supported by Gordon's indulgence of Sweetie's unrealistic career ambitions and his fear of upsetting her.

Campion again employs ambiguity to suggest an incestuous relationship in The Portrait of a Lady. When Isabel first meets Gilbert Osmond (John Malkovich), his teenage daughter Pansy (Valentina Cervi) sits on his lap. Twice Campion shows a close-up of Osmond's hands stroking Pansy's, creating a sense of uneasiness in this display of intimacy. While no further evidence of an improper relationship between father and daughter is offered, these shots further arouse our suspicions about Osmond (after we have witnessed his scheming with Madame Merle [Barbara Hershey]) and establish the excessive control he exerts over Pansy, and her fearful obedience to him.


Isabel Archer (Nicole Kidman) in
The Portrait of a Lady

The concept of ambiguity is a key feature of art cinema discourse, and part of what defines Campion's films within these terms. Critics and audiences puzzled over the unanswered questions at the heart of The Piano's narrative: why does Ada refuse to speak? who is the father of Flora? why did Ada's father send her away? what to make of the film's conclusion that contrasts an image of domestic 'bliss' with that of Ada suspended at the bottom of the ocean, tied forever to her piano? (26) Like Sweetie, there is much about Ada's past that is unspoken and the occasional insight offered by the film ? such as Flora's tales of her opera-singing father ? are clearly marked as unreliable. The inscrutability of character motivation was the subject of intense critical discussion with regards to Isabel in The Portrait of a Lady: what exactly is it that Isabel wants? The ambiguous nature of Isabel's desire is expressed in the openness of the film's ending, as Isabel appears literally frozen on the threshold between escape with Caspar Goodwood (Viggo Mortensen) and retreat to the oppressive sphere of the domestic: what is Isabel's final decision? (27) The startling beauty of this final image ? Nicole Kidman's pale face and unruly red hair framed against the frost-covered glass panes of the mansion's door ? heightens the audacity of this unresolved narrative moment with which Campion concludes her film.

Ambiguity in Campion's films is not limited to her characters; it extends to critical analysis of her own directorial project. For reviewers of Holy Smoke, the film's uneven tone ? lurching between comedy and drama ? resulted in the obscuring of the film's intentions: to explore or exploit alternative belief systems? To praise or parody Ruth's pursuit of spiritual enlightenment? Dana Polan's close analysis of the film reveals the source of this confusion. Campion employs the kitsch stylings of 1970s pop culture to great comic effect in her portrayal of PJ Waters and her sense of humour is unforgiving in the presentation of Ruth's family, particularly her sister-in-law Yvonne (Sophie Lee). But, as Polan observes, ?moments of spirituality and vision [such as Ruth's conversion scene] are also treated in terms of a style that resonates with tackiness, and this contributes to the film's undecidability of tone.? (28)

The theme of ambiguity demonstrates the central role of discussion and debate in the reception of Campion's films. One of the most contested topics of discussion is her treatment of heterosexual relationships.

Significantly, Sweetie (Genevieve Lemon) is the only one of Campion's heroines who dies at the end of the film. She is also considered, by most writers, to be the only one of these women who is truly 'mad'. (15) Without providing 'evidence' from the film to support the following labels, Sweetie has been described variously as ?insane?, (16) ?mentally disturbed?, (17) ?obviously unbalanced?, (18) ?mentally ill?, (19) ?genuinely mad? and ?nuts?. (20) This is a curious assumption as it is based on scant evidence within the diegesis: Sweetie is never diagnosed with a mental illness and we do not see her receiving psychiatric treatment. This veiled, inferential representation of madness in Sweetie is linked to another theme in Campion's films: ambiguity (discussed below). By way of example, consider the first time we meet Sweetie, when she arrives unexpectedly at her sister Kay's house, looking both dishevelled and flamboyant with her heavy eye-make up, well-worn bra and lace cuffs, in contrast with the neurotic, uptight Kay (Karen Colston). The dialogue throughout this scene is ambiguous, inviting us to read Sweetie as mentally ill. Kay confronts Sweetie: ?what are you doing here? You know you're not allowed?. Sweetie has already been presented as socially unconventional in her manner of breaking into Kay's house and proceeding to trash the bedroom with her junkie boyfriend Bob (Michael Lake). Kay then challenges Sweetie: ?you've stopped taking your medication, haven't you?? to which Sweetie replies in a suitably 'spaced-out' tone ?yeah, well Bob and I are really gonna walk through some doors, Kay, we're really getting it together?.

It is characteristic of Campion's style that this is the only time Sweetie's illness is discussed, and we are never informed as to what the medication is for. Nevertheless, as the film progresses, Sweetie seems to us more and more 'mad'. By the time the family returns from a trip to the outback, Sweetie is so incensed at being left behind that she refuses to speak to them. Instead, she growls and whimpers like a dog, and even tries to bite her father's hand. Like Ada in The Piano, who also refuses to speak, Sweetie's nonverbal communication is a rejection of the symbolic order of language, and the aggressive nature of this rejection of the Law of the Father is visualised in Sweetie's attempted assault on her father's hand. Sweetie's barking like a dog can be read in two ways: as a sign of protest ? the renunciation of the patriarchal order of language ? or as a sign of madness, as Kay indicates with her threat to Sweetie: ?you'll end up in a damn home?. Sweetie's childlike inability to care for herself ? the house is a mess and she hasn't been eating ? also suggests her 'madness' or mental instability.

Sweetie's refusal to conform to patriarchal law is taken to fatal extremes. In her final scene, she is naked and covered with black paint, shouting obscenities at her father from her ?princess castle?, her tree-house from childhood. Kay's phobia about trees proves prophetic when Sweetie falls to her death from the castle. (21) The tragic outcome of Sweetie's rebellion underscores the potential problems, noted by some feminists, in reclaiming madness as protest. (22) For these critics, madness represents an impasse, a request for help, a position of powerlessness and vulnerability that only serves to reinforce patriarchy's self-appointed role as moderator and guardian of female behaviour. (23) As Mary Russo observes, ?hysterics and madwomen generally have ended up in the attic or the asylum, their gestures of pain and defiance having served only to put them out of circulation.? (24) However, it is the very expression of these ?gestures of pain and defiance? that marks Campion's films as powerful texts for feminist analysis.

Debate, perhaps even controversy, has characterised the reception of Campion's films since the premiere of her first feature Sweetie at Cannes in 1989, where it was greeted with boos and hisses. (6) Sweetie has since been reclaimed as a hallmark of Campion's iconoclastic style, with its black humour, striking visual design (in terms of colour and shot composition) and its penetrating look at dysfunctional suburban family life. Campion's eagerly awaited follow-up to The Piano, her 1996 adaptation of Henry James' novel The Portrait of a Lady (written in 1881), drew criticism for its modernising impulses and liberal treatment of James' classic text, and for the coldness of its characters despite the sumptuous Italian locations and art direction. (7) Yet the film was highly praised for the supporting performances of Martin Donovan (as Ralph Touchett) and Barbara Hershey (as Madame Merle), with Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for Hershey as Best Supporting Actress (1997). Despite an engaging performance from Kate Winslet, the Miramax-funded Holy Smoke (1999) was unable to recapture The Piano's success at the box office. The film was criticised for an uneven script that relied heavily on the stereotype of the grotesque, suburban family of the quirky Aussie comedy, which by 1999 ? some ten years after Sweetie and following on from a backlash against films such as Welcome to Woop Woop (Stephan Elliott, 1997) and Hotel De Love (Craig Rosenberg, 1996) ? was starting to wear thin with the locals and had lost its novelty for the international audience. (8) Even Campion's early short films ? despite being selected for Cannes in 1986, where she won the Palme d'Or for best short film for Peel (1982) ? were unappreciated at the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) where she made them. (9) Campion's only film to avoid such controversy and debate has been her prize-winning adaptation of Janet Frame's three-volume autobiography To the Is-land (1982), An Angel at my Table (1984) and The Envoy from Mirror City (1985). Originally made as a television mini-series, in three parts like Frame's autobiography, An Angel at my Table (1990) was later released theatrically as a 155 minute feature. This adaptation, also scripted by Laura Jones who adapted The Portrait of a Lady, had fewer problems in terms of the inclusion or exclusion of information from the original source ? partly due to the luxury of three episodes ? and it featured a modest visual style to suit its televisual medium. Nevertheless, while Campion consciously avoided the striking framings of composition and colour that characterised Sweetie and her short films, (10) An Angel at my Table has a strong visual sense in its broad vistas of the New Zealand landscape and its evocation of Janet's private world.

62nd Cannes Film Festival

Romance & Desire

In The Portrait of a Lady, several critics disliked the opening credit sequence, or 'prologue', of contemporary teenage Australian girls discussing the thrill of their first kiss and their romantic aspirations for future relationships. (29) Their open and frank tone was considered to be at odds with Isabel's repressed desire, and the 20th century setting unsettled purist fans of the period film. (30) But this opening preface is in fact the key to Campion's interpretation of James' novel; it illuminates her own fascination with Isabel's journey from stubborn independence, to entrapment, through to self-awareness. The girls' voice-overs narrate instances of feminine desire: the ?exquisite? moment before a kiss as a head comes towards you, the excitement of another body in contact with your own, the ?mirror? that is to be found in a lifelong partner. Early in the film, Campion visualises Isabel's sexual desires in a fantasy sequence, (31) when Isabel imagines her three suitors lying in bed with her, kissing and caressing her face and body, or looking on with desire. Campion is explicit about Isabel's desire for this physical contact. Hence, the significance of her first 'real-life' kiss that we see ? as opposed to her fantasies ? when Osmond declares his love for her in the shadowy depths of the catacombs. Despite the marriage proposal of Lord Warburton and the persistence of her American suitor Caspar Goodwood, up to this point we have not witnessed a kiss between Isabel and these men. The combined effect of the fantasy sequence and the prologue's voicing of feminine desire is to invest Osmond's kiss with a life-changing force. Isabel's desire for Osmond's touch ? which remains present throughout even their most brutal confrontations ? is the catalyst for a startling reversal, in a woman who claimed she would ?probably never marry?. Whereas The Piano stages the liberation that comes from a woman's desires, The Portrait of a Lady reveals the dangers of that desire, the seduction that leads to entrapment in a loveless marriage. In this sense, it has been described as an ?anti-romance? and a reverse narrative of the erotic journey to fulfilment undertaken by Ada in The Piano. (32)

It is worth recalling Campion's sceptical and cautionary portrayal of romance in An Angel at my Table, when the romantic longings of Janet are stirred by the attentions of an American history professor, Bernard (William Brandt), holidaying in Ibiza. We witness Janet's discovery of her sexual desire and erotic self-expression, most openly when she swims naked before Bernard, shedding the shyness and self-consciousness we have come to associate with her. But no sooner has Janet glimpsed a new, more confident self through her first sexual relationship, when Bernard declares he is returning to America, dismissing their relationship as simply 'a holiday romance'. Janet is crushed, and the specifically female perils of sexual desire are demonstrated in her discovery that she is pregnant, followed by a traumatic miscarriage. The lesson learnt is that romance is risky, and that sex distracts Janet from her 'real' purpose, her writing. (33)

Campion's fascination with the darker side of romance is demonstrated by her declared passion for the Gothic literature of the Brontës. (34) Her films suggest she is acutely aware of the risks of romance, the dangers of desire, (35) for women in patriarchal society: while Ada is successful in achieving romantic union with Baines (Harvey Keitel) in The Piano, it comes at significant cost ? the loss of a finger and two attempts at rape by her jealous husband. Indeed, we can assume Ada has already discovered the 'costs' of romance in raising Flora (Anna Paquin) without Flora's father.


PJ (Harvey Keitel) and Ruth (Kate Winslet)

In Campion's two contemporary films, Sweetie and Holy Smoke, the seductive pitfalls of romance give way to the considerably unromantic negotiations of sex. In Sweetie, Kay and Louis's (Tom Lycos) courtship may initially appear 'romantic' in its abandonment of logic to the forces of fate and destiny, but the film spends little time on their romance, preferring instead to chart the slow disintegration of their relationship into frigid frustration, typified by Louis's suggestion over pizza that they make appointments to have sex (needless to say, this approach is unsuccessful). (36) In Holy Smoke, sex becomes a bargaining chip between Ruth and PJ. Perceiving the weakness at the heart of his machismo, Ruth seduces PJ in an attempt to reverse the power structure implicit in her position as a cult follower in need of 'de-programming'. Their first sexual encounter is successful in arousing PJ's emotions, thereby rendering him vulnerable, while leaving Ruth unsatisfied by PJ's perfunctory love-making. In contrast, their second sexual encounter, with PJ on his knees underneath Ruth's skirt, suggests a weakening in Ruth's resolve, as the camera focuses on her ecstatic pleasure. This lowering of her defences through sexual satisfaction allows PJ to convince Ruth that she has been cruel, but instead of Ruth falling in love with PJ, she becomes disgusted at her own manipulations of him and she flees the hut. Now PJ assumes the feminised, pathetic position of delirious lover. (37) Campion is merciless in her depiction of a lovesick PJ, stumbling across the desert in a red dress and lipstick, finally collapsing and hallucinating images of Ruth as an Indian goddess. 'Romance' never looked so ridiculous, nor have its power relations been so cruelly exposed.

The themes of madness, ambiguity and desire are central to Campion's films. Her work has generated an extensive body of critical discussion, which is all the more remarkable when one considers she has released only five feature films to date. Campion is a director who inspired critical comment and analysis even before she made her first feature. (38) At the time of writing, Campion's current project is an adaptation of Susanna Moore's novel In The Cut (1995), due for US release in January 2003. Starring Meg Ryan and produced by Nicole Kidman, the film's plot deals with ?murder, sadism and sex?. (39) As a story that continues Campion's uncompromising exploration of female erotic empowerment and masochistic desire, (40) In The Cut may well again inspire debate and controversy.

My thanks to Dr Jeanette Hoorn and Alan Hopgood for their constructive comments on an earlier version of this article.

Jane Campion is Australasia's leading auteur director. As recipient of the Palme d'Or (1993), the Silver Lion (1990) and an Academy Award (1994), she is also one of the most successful female directors in the world. (1) These statements are not made innocently. They are intended to draw attention to issues of nationality, of auteurism and art cinema, and of gender. In relation to these issues, Jane Campion is the subject of extensive critical discussion. The Piano (1993) ? her most successful film, both critically and commercially ? was the catalyst for debates about what constitutes 'national cinema' and 'women's cinema'. In the case of the former, the genesis of the film and the mix of creative personnel involved proved problematic: the film was funded by a French company, Ciby 2000; the script ? developed with Australian government funding through the Australian Film Commission ? was set in New Zealand; the director was New Zealand-born but Australian-trained; it was produced by an Australian (Jan Chapman); the stars were two Americans (Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel) and one New Zealander (Anna Paquin); and it was filmed on location using a New Zealand crew and local extras. (2) In discussions focusing on the nature of The Piano as 'women's cinema', some praised the film for its exploration of female desire and sensibility, while others criticised it for aestheticising female masochism and presenting a universalising view of femininity at the expense of New Zealand's indigenous population. (3) The Piano also exemplified the changes in art cinema during the 1990s, with the rise of the 'crossover' film. (4) It powerfully demonstrated the potential for art cinema to cross over into mainstream awareness and commercial success, with its unprecedented box office takings and several Oscar nominations (winning Best Original Screenplay for Campion, Best Actress for Holly Hunter and Best Supporting Actress for Anna Paquin). (5)

Notes on the Adaptation of the Book Orlando by Sally Potter

My task with the adaptation of Virginia Woolf?s book for the screen was to find a way of remaining true to the spirit of the book and to Virginia Woolf?s intentions, whilst being ruthless with changing the book in any way necessary to make it work cinematically.

It would have been a disservice to Virginia Woolf to remain slavish to the letter of the book, for just as she was always a writer who engaged with writing and the form of the novel, similarly the film needed to engage with the energy of cinema. And although the book was already a distillation of 400 years of English history (albeit an imagined view of that history, told with a liberal amount of poetic license), the film needed to distill even further.

The most immediate changes were structural. The storyline was simplified?any events which did not significantly further Orlando?s story were dropped.

The narrative also needed to be driven. Whereas the novel could withstand abstraction and arbitrariness (such as Orlando?s change of sex) cinema is more pragmatic. There had to be reasons?however flimsy?to propel us along a journey based itself on a kind of suspension of disbelief.

Thus Queen Elizabeth bestows Orlando?s long life upon him ("Do not fade, do not wither, do not grow old . . .") whereas in the book it remains unexplained. And Orlando?s change of sex in the film is the result of his having reached a crisis point?a crisis of masculine identity. On the battlefield he looks death and destruction in the face and faces the challenge of kill or be killed. It is Orlando?s unwillingness to conform to what is expected of him as a man that leads?within the logic of the film?to his change of sex. Later, of course, as a woman, Orlando finds that she cannot conform to what is expected of her as a female either, and makes a series of choices which leave her, unlike in the book, without marriage or property?and with a daughter, not a son.

These latter changes seemed to me entirely consistent with Virginia Woolf?s views in her other works on the condition of women?s lives (especially A Room of One?s Own) and crisply logical within the framework set up in the earlier part of the story.

Orlando is at its heart a story of loss?the loss of time as it passes?a meditation on the impermanence of love, power, and politics. I simply carried that logic through to include Orlando?s loss of property and status in the 20th century. Whilst the loss of property in the story is a symptom of the second class status of women, there is also an aspect which is worthy of celebration: the loss of privilege and status based on an outdated English class system.

Orlando was of course originally written as a spoof biography of Vita Sackville-West. Where the book holds most tightly to apparent biographical facts it occasionally loses its power as a story (such as Orlando?s "keeping" the house at the end of the book?which was a way for Virginia Woolf to restore the lost Knole to Vita Sackville-West).

I tried to restore Orlando on film to a view more consistently detached and bitingly ironic in its view of the English class system and the colonial attitudes arising from it.

At the same time I needed to ensure that Orlando was a loveable character. The clue was to highlight Orlando?s essential innocence. He happens to have been born into a class, a place and time, and is shaped by it?but as the essential human being remains; the patterns of behaviour and attitude are transformed.

Other obvious changes from the book include dialogue (and poems) which have been invented from sometimes slender clues on the page?and Orlando?s words and looks to the camera which were intended as an equivalent both of Virginia Woolf?s direct addresses to her readers and to try to convert Virginia Woolf?s literary wit into cinematic humor at which people could laugh out loud.

Finally, the ending of the film needed to be brought into the present in order to remain true to Virginia Woolf?s use of real-time at the end of the novel (where the story finishes just as she puts down her pen to finish the book). Coming up to the present day meant acknowledging some key events of the 20th century--the two world wars, the electronic revolution?the contraction of space through time reinvented by speed. But the film ends somewhere between heaven and earth in a place of ecstatic communion with the present moment.

It's not just any illicit affair, this passionate liaison between an Irish American married woman (Joan Allen) and a Lebanese surgeon (Simon Abkarian), who are both living in London. In Sally Potter's "Yes," their relationship becomes the jagged interface between two clashing worlds, cultures, genders and personalities in the post-9/11 universe.

A nutty fairy tale about a displaced Jewish girl who must find her place in a hostile and often surreal world. 1927, rural Russia: Little Fegele (Claudia Lander-Duke) adores her father (Oleg Yankovskiy), a cantor, and is bereft when he leaves their small town to find his fortune in America. Soon after, Fegele's grandmother hears rumors of an impending pogrom and tries to send the child to join her father. Instead, Fegele winds up alone in England, where her name is changed to Suzie. Taken in by a foster family, the withdrawn child scarcely speaks but communicates through her lovely singing voice. Years pass, and the adult Suzie (Christina Ricci) still burns with the desire to find her father in America, to which end she joins a traveling cabaret troupe. That takes her to Paris, where she meets flamboyant Russian showgirl Lola (Cate Blanchett), also an expatriate. The worldly Lola, who cultivates a flighty image but lives by the practical motto "Never look back; always go forward," takes Suzie under her wing, finding her a job at the opera and sharing tips for getting ahead. Lola sets her sights on the opera's self-centered Italian star, Dante (John Turturro), while Suzie falls for a Romany horse trainer named Cesar (Johnny Depp). Suzie feels a deep kinship with the perpetually homeless gypsies, but when Paris falls to the Nazis she's forced again to flee. It's astonishing to watch English filmmaker Sally Potter suggest lavish production values with impoverished means. Her WWII saga, which suggests the German occupation of Paris with little more than the amplified sound of marching feet, and the destruction of a luxury liner with an explosion in the ship's swimming pool, stands in stark contrast to the absurdly over-budgeted spectacle of PEARL HARBOR, which opened in the US on the same day.

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/von_trotta.html

Rosenstrasse marks the return to film after nearly a decade in television of Margarethe von Trotta, the best-known woman director to emerge from the New German Cinema movement. It dramatizes a rarely documented moment of German protest against the Nazi regime that occurred in Berlin in 1943 when the Gestapo arrested Jewish men married to Aryan women and placed them in a holding area in a building on Rosenstrasse, a small street near Alexanderplatz. As the days passed, the wives gathered in increasing numbers to keep vigil and would not be driven away.

Here is the kernel for an unusual and wrenching Holocaust story. But von Trotta embalms it in a hokey and tedious framing device in a clumsy attempt to add an inspirational contemporary spin. Bumpily paced, it's overlong and freighted with a soppy, manipulative musical score. The movie kicks off in present-day New York, where a Jewish family in mourning for its patriarch is jolted when the widow chases her daughter's non-Jewish fiancé from the house and forbids her to marry the guy. Daughter Hannah (Maria Schrader) then discovers to her amazement that as a child, Mama had been saved and cared for by an Aryan woman during the war, after she lost her parents. Hannah hastens to Berlin and hunts down the noble nonagenarian, Lena (Doris Schade), who proves fecund with flashbacks. Lena (played as a young woman by Katja Riemann) had alienated her own aristocratic family by marrying a Jewish musician. In order to rescue him, she dons her sexiest party dress and makes out with Propaganda Minister Goebbels. Then, voilà!?doors open on Rosenstrasse and Jewish detainees are released, and von Trotta's sober chronicle devolves into just another kitschy-campy tall tale.

28th Int. Ist.

Ostensibly an adaptation of Charles Perrault's baroque fairytale, Bluebeard is also a distilled and densely layered exposition on Catherine Breillat's recurring preoccupation with socioeconomic and sexual politics. Structured as a tale within a tale, the film alternates between past and present, childhood and adolescence, fiction and reality.

Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919)




German revolutionary leader, journalist, and socialist theorist, who was killed in Berlin in 1919 during the German revolution. Rosa Luxemburg saw herself as a citizen of the proletariat. She lived the international life of a Socialist 'pilgrim', believing that only socialism could bring true freedom and social justice. Luxemburg was the advocate of mass action, spontaneity, and workers democracy, but her criticism of the "revisionists" and their ideological leader Edward Bernstein is considered her most important legacy to European political thought.
"Bourgeois class domination is undoubtedly an historical necessity, but, so too, the rising of the working class against it. Capital is an historical necessity, but, so too, its grave digger, the socialist proletariat." (from 'The Junius Pamphlet', 1916)

Rosa Luxemburg was born in Zamosc, in Russian Poland, into a Jewish middle-class family. At the age of five she became seriously ill. After recovering she walked with a limp; sciatic pain caused her much trouble for her whole life. Luxemburg was educated at the Warsaw Gimnazium. From the age of 16 she participated in revolutionary activities. during these years her favorite writer was the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz, whose patriotism and life in political exile influenced her deeply. In 1889 Luxemburg moved to Switzerland to continue her studies. But she was also partly forced to flee from her home country because of her political activities.

Luxemburg entered the University of Zürich, where she studied natural sciences and political economy. In 1892 she changed to the faculty of law. Two years later she researched at the major Polish library in Paris. She started her career as a journalist and became one of the leaders of the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania. In 1898 Luxemburg completed her doctorate. The dissertation was entitled The Industrial Development of Poland. Between the years 1892 and 1919 Luxemburg produced almost 700 articles, pamphlets, speeches, and books.

In 1899 appeared Luxemburg's Reform or Revolution, her defense of Marxism. It opposed Edward Bernstein's reformist position and criticized Bernstein's revisionist theories in Evolutionary Socialism (1898). Bernstein had published also in Neue Zeit a series of articles, in which he had attempted to disprove some of the basic doctrines of Marxism. He rejected Marx's theories of class struggle and concluded that revolution was unnecessary. Luxemburg believed that her work would make the "old guard" of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) to view her as a serious political thinker and leader. "Since the final goal of socialism constitutes the only decisive factor distinguishing the social democratic movement from bourgeois democracy and from bourgeois radicalism, the only factor transforming the entire labor movement from a vain effort to repair the capitalist order into a class struggle against this order, for the suppression of this order - the question: "Reform or revolution?" as it is posed by Bernstein, equals for the social democracy the question: "The be or not to be?" In the controversy with Bernstein and his followers, everybody in the party ought to understand clearly it is not a question of this or that method of struggle, or the use of this or that set of tactics, but the of the very existence of the social democratic movement." (from Reform or Revolution)

To obtain German citizen, Luxemburg married Gustav Lübeck, the youngest son of her friend. Luxemburg became in 1898 a leader of the left wing of the SPD and participated in the second International and in the 1905 revolution in Russian Poland. After insulting the Kaiser, she spend in 1904 a short period in prison in Zwickau. In the same year Luxemburg also drafted SDKPL (Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania) party programe What Do We Want?

During the 1905 Russian Revolution she developed the idea that socialism is a revolutionary process which transforms political and economic relations towards ever greater democratic control by the workers themselves. In 1906 she was arrested in Warsaw but released finally on health grounds. She returned to Germany where she taught at SPD party school in Berlin until 1914 and developed ideas about general strike as a political weapon. In 1912 appeared her major theoretical work, The Accumulation of Capital, in which she tried to prove that capitalism was doomed and would inevitably collapse on economic grounds. After differences with moderate German socialists, she founded with Karl Liebknecht the radical Spartacus League in 1916. She also drafted the Spartacists programme Leitsätze. Two years later the organization became the German Communist Party.

During World War I Luxemburg spent long times in prison, writing her Spartakusbriefe and Die Russisce Revolution, where she welcomed the October Revolution as a precursor of world revolution. In 'The Junius Pamphlet' (1916), written under the pseudonym of Junius, she argued that the choice of Socialism or Barbarism is a world-historical turning point which demands resolute action by the proletariat.

However, Luxemburg participated reluctantly in the Spartacist uprising in Berlin against the government. The uprising, which failed, was a defining moment among others for Adolf Hitler. Luxemburg and Liebknecht were arrested in 1919. While being transported to prison, she and Liebknecht were murdered on the night of 15/16 on January 1919 by German Freikorps soldiers. Luxemburg's body was thrown into the Landwehr canal and found on May. She was buried on June 13 in Friedrichsfeld cemetery, where the graves of Liebknecht and the other killed revolutionaries situated. Her burial became a mass demonstration, witnessed by a number of correspondents, including the American screenwriter Ben Hecht.

Luxemburg's lover Leo Jogiches was murdered in 1919. However, their affair had already ended in 1906 - Leo had gone too far in his infidelity. Just before his death, he had decided with Clara Zetkin and Mathild Jacob to publish Luxemburg's collected works. The project proceeded slowly because at that time Lenin's critical opinions of Luxemburg's thought were not easy to ignore. Lenin saw that she underestimated nationalist ideology, underrated the role of the Communist party, and emphasized to much the power of the mass action. Luxemburg was critical about Lenin's acceptance of the idea of national self-determination. In 'Organisationsfragen der russischen Sozialdemokraten' (1904) she criticized his theory of revolutionary vanguard centralism. Luxemburg argued that there could be no real socialism without democracy. Later Stalinist study was not very happy about her - her unorthodoxy was nearly as dangerous as Trotsky's. Luxemburg's collected works did not appear until 1970-75 in DDR.
"The list of people with whom Simone Weil was politically associated reads like an almanac of the French Left. Thévenon, Guérin, Battaille, Serret. Simone saw in Rosa Luxemburg (d. 1919) a kindred soul. 'Her life, her work, her letters affirm life and not death,' wrote Simone. 'Rosa aspired to action, not to sacrifice. In this sense, there is nothing Christian in her temperament.'" (from The Left Hand of God by Adolf Holl, 1997)

Thoroughful reevaluation of Luxemburg's work started in Germany in the 1970s. Her theories were considered as an alternative to Communism or Social Democracy. When Marxist study lost its attraction in the 1980s, Luxemburg arose still interest among feminist theorist. Luxemburg herself did not participate into women's rights movement; women's liberation was for her part of the liberation from the oppression of capitalism. However, she saw that socialist emancipation is incomplete without women's emancipation. Raya Dunayevskaya argues in her study Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution (1981) that Luxemburg's years after the break-up with her lover Leo Jogiches were not "lost years," as J.P. Nettl presents in his large biography (1966). Dunayevskaya documents Luxemburg's myriad activities and theoretical work including Mass Strike. In the 1980s Margareta von Trotta's film Rosa Luxemburg (1986), starring Barbara Sukowa, gained commercial success. The film was partly based on Annelies Laschitza's studies. However, feminist critic objected Trotta's conventional (melo)dramatic narration.
For further reading: Rosa Luxemburg by Paul Frölich (1904); 'Some questions regarding the history of Bolshevism' by J. Stalin, in Stalin, Leninism (1933); Rosa Luxemburg. Gedanke und Tat by Paul Frölich (1939); Rosa Luxemburg by J.P. Nettl (1966, 2 vols.); 'Notes of a publicist' by V.I. Lenin, in Collected Works, vol. 33 (1966); 'The Marxism of Rosa Luxemburg' by G. Lukács, in History and Class Consciousness (1968); 'Hands off Rosa Luxemburg' by L. Trotsky, in Rosa Luxemburg Speaks (1970); The Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg by N. Geras (1976); Rosa Luxemburg, Woman Liberations and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution by Raya Dunayewskaja (1981); Rosa Luxemburg. Ein Leben für die Freiheit by Fredrich Hetman (1987); Rosa Luxemburg. A Life by Elzbieta Ettinger (1988); Rosa Luxemburg. A Life for the Internationale by Richard Abraham (1989); Rosa Luxemburg - Die Rote Demokratie by Peter Bierl (1991); Une Femme rebelle by Max Gallo (1992); Philosophia: The Thought of Rosa Luxemburg, Simone Weil, and Hannah Arendt by Andrea Nye (1994); Eine Leiche im Landwehrkanal. Die Ermordung der Rosa Luxemburg by Klaus Gietinger (1995); Im Lebensrausche trotz alledem by Annelies Laschitza (1996); Rosa Luxemburg and the Noble Dream by Donald E. Shepardson (1996); Sozialismus oder Barbarei by Virve Manninen (1996); Rosa Luxemburg: A Revolutionary for Our Times by Stephen Eric Bronner (1997); Rosa Luxemburg und Leo Jogiches by Maria Seideman (1998); Die Welt is so schön bei allem Graus by Annelies Laschitza (1998); Rosa und Karl by Manfred Scharrer (2002) - See also: Luxemburg and Mass Action ; Rosa Luxemburg and German Social Democracy by Ernest Mandel ; Rosa Luxemburg, Polish Marxist Revolutionary

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1975) is one of those rare movies that has become more relevant with the passage of time. Set in West Germany during the early 1970s, the film deals with the potential political consequences of a one-night stand in a society where everyone is under observation. Katharina Blum (Angela Winkler), an average citizen who works as a housekeeper for a wealthy lawyer, attends a party where she becomes enchanted with a mysterious man, Ludwig Goetten (Jurgen Prochnow). At the end of the evening, she takes him back to her apartment.

The next morning, a squadron of police dressed in riot gear raids her apartment, searching for Goetten, a suspected terrorist. Blum is taken to police headquarters for a grueling interrogation session led by Kommissar Beizmenne (Mario Adorf). These scenes pack an unsettling power. An average, politically unaware citizen is subjected to an intense scrutiny over her possible motivations for sleeping with a terrorist. Her purely instinctual act ? and to Blum's way of thinking, a pure and honest response to a romantic scenario ? becomes perverted and denigrated. In the mindset of the police, where any citizen is a potential terrorist or collaborator with terrorists, there is no room for romance or "love at first sight" encounters like those found in fairy tales. There are no chance encounters or motive free decisions. Furthermore, in the eyes of society "good women don't invite strange men into their beds. Therefore, Blum has either known Goetten longer than she has let on, or she is a whore and sleeps with many men." There are no other alternatives, no shades of gray.

Katharina Blum's ultimate crime turns out to be that she doesn't play their game ? she doesn't submit meekly to their authority and doesn't allow them to set the parameters of her life as a single woman. When the interrogation group takes a break, she refuses to converse with them. In Blum's eyes, they have not only upset the order of her life, they have violated her. In the eyes of the police, they are "just doing their job, not making a personal attack." Ironically it is Beizmenne who takes her rebuff personally. When Blum refuses to converse with him over lunch, he orders her to be taken to a prison cell. He also sets out to destroy her credibility.

Beizmenne leaks "information" to a journalist, Werner Toetges (Dieter Laser), that he suspects Blum has been collaborating with Goetten for two years. Upon her release from the interrogation, Blum sees headlines in the paper proclaiming her as a terrorist collaborator. From here on, the press dogs her every step, interrogating employers and friends about her past. Even Blum's mother, hospitalized in an intensive care ward, is not off-limits from the press. Toetges, posing as a doctor, sneaks into the ward to ask her a few questions about her immoral daughter. His careless and callous disregard ultimately causes the mother's death.

When they don't get the answers they want, the press makes up the facts, creating a notorious public persona for Katharina Blum devoid of any connection to the real person. This very real campaign of terror breaks Blum down emotionally. It robs her of a private life and ultimately forces her down the only avenue she feels she has left to re-establish control in her life ? an act of murder. The government and media have warped her into a monster, no trace of which existed before. She is a creature of their making.

Based on an incident in the life of Heinrich Boll, who was accused by the press of being a terrorist sympathizer, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum is a chilling depiction of unchecked power and a thought-provoking analysis of the responsibilities of the police and the press to the private lives of citizens. For co-directors and co-writers Schlöndorff and von Trotta, this sordid collaboration between the police and the media to publicly humiliate and destroy an individual poses more of a threat to democracy than any terrorist. The film espouses the idea that both the press and the police should be accountable for their actions, and that the unchecked power of these institutions cause greater violence to society and the individual in the long run than any terrorist threat. Because of the film's frightening parallels to the current political situation in the United States, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum would do well to be required viewing for every U.S. citizen.

The Criterion DVD offers a generous selection of special features, including lengthy interviews with Volker Schlöndorff, Margarethe von Trotta, and cinematographer Jost Vacano. The highlight, though, is the half hour excerpt from the documentary, HEINRICH BOLL, which thoroughly covers the political situation in West Germany during the late 60s and early 70s, and covers the incident between Boll and the Springer press. Highly recommended.

Coup de Grace (1976) is a different affair altogether. For a number of years, Schlöndorff and von Trotta had wanted to adapt Marguerite Yourcenar's novel for the screen. The time never seemed right. The husband-and-wife team believed it was more important for them to focus on the current political situation rather than a story that felt remote or distant in time. After the success of The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, the team agreed it was time to finally bring Coup de Grace to the screen. The film was also to be a swan song, for von Trotta had decided to give up acting to pursue her directing career. She wanted her last role to be substantial, nuanced, and challenging. The character of Sophie fulfilled that demand.

Set in the Baltic Provinces near Riga amidst a civil war during the 1920s, Coup de Grace opens as Konrad von Revel (Rudiger Kirschstein) returns to his ancestral home, the castle Kratovice, now a stronghold for soldiers fighting against radical Bolsheviks. Accompanied by his childhood friend and fellow officer, Erich von Lhomond (Matthias Habich), Konrad receives a warm welcome from his sister Sophie (von Trotta) and his Aunt Praskovia (Valeska Gert). Unbeknownst to the soldiers, Sophie secretly sympathizes with the Bolsheviks, often crossing firing lines to visit with the collaborators.

One night, Sophie declares her love for Erich von Lhomond. He receives her declaration coolly, questioning whether he has time for love. Some time later, after Konrad and Lhomond return from a trip to headquarters, Sophie overhears gossip among the soldiers that Erich kept close quarters with a loose Parisian singer. This emotional bombshell ignites a twisted contest between Sophie and Lhomond to see who can probe deeper beneath the other's skin. Sophie begins a career of drinking and carousing with the boys, evolving into a regular party girl. She sleeps indiscriminately with many of the soldiers, even becoming engaged to several just to see the look on Lhomond's face. Lhomond cruelly taunts her, telling her that she could never be the woman for him. When Sophie learns from a jilted suitor that her brother Konrad and Lhomond were really the ones who kept close quarters during the trip to headquarters, she runs off into the night to join up with the Bolsheviks. The two are fated to meet one last time, when the dissident group has been captured. As she is sent to the firing squad, Sophie requests Lhomond as her executioner. Lhomond indifferently obliges.

Despite the high incidence of emotional mind games, Coup de Grace is a colder film than The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum. The emotional terrorist attacks launched by Sophie and Lhomond do not evoke the heat of outrage, as does Blum's abuse by the police and press. At times, Sophie and Lhomond's antics verge on annoying. Despite its cooler level of emotional engagement, Coup de Grace proves to be the more difficult film. Gaps of the narrative are left out or implied too subtly, causing disorienting jumps in the flow of the film. The motivations of Sophie and Erich are inscrutable. It's a mystery why one of them doesn't simply leave. Compounding the mysteries, the viewer never comes to a resolution whether Erich is using Sophie to get to her brother Konrad, or vice versa. What does keep the film's momentum flowing are the powerful performances by von Trotta, open and passionate, and Habich, detached and icy. Because of the solid performances and the prevalent ambiguity, Coup de Grace sticks in the mind long after the final scene.

Only one special feature is included with this Criterion DVD, a rather lengthy interview with Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta. Running about an hour, the interview is more of a documentary than a question-and-answer session. The questions are interspersed with clips from the film and archival photographs. Of special interest are the passages where Trotta talks about the changes she made in the screenplay ? in particular, increasing the presence of the war and enlarging Sophie's role in the story. The documentary also includes the alternate ending to Coup de Grace, which was shown only in France. In a voiceover, Lhomond ponders over Sophie's motivations for asking him to pull the trigger. Taken word for word from the last paragraph of Yourcenar's novel, this passage goes a long way towards clearing up some of the ambiguities of the film. The irony is that von Trotta, who fought against showing this ending outside of France, now concedes that the ending does work, and probably for the better. Coup de Grace is recommended for those who won't mind the challenge of working through several viewings to come to terms with an enigmatic film.

By AnaMaamjarmoluk

You can download it from
http://film.arjlover.net/info/astenicheskii.sindrom.1.avi.html
http://film.arjlover.net/info/astenicheskii.sindrom.2.avi.html
and
http://kinozal.tv/details.php?id=125545
This is her strongest movie. It doesn't need subtitles because there is little dialog.
all of her movies are available to download by this address
http://kinozal.tv/persons.php?s=%CC%F3%F0%E0%F2%EE%E2%E0&trn=11
of course you must be regis
Kira Muratova is one of the first russian art-house filmmakers.
By the way, it has nothing to do with Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona.
So, be ready for discomfort, I mean, other cinematographic "experience".

Muratova inspired many interesting filmmakers
"Place on earth" by Aristakisian, is a good example
http://kinozal.tv/details.php?id=183197
if you have a good stomach to resist this experiment (really was an experiment recorded, of course some episodes were reconstructed for dramatic purposes) However, I am not sure you can even tolerate this kind of cinema.

By AnaMaamjarmoluk

you will find this movie for download here
http://www.avaxhome.ws/video/genre/drama/chehovskie.motivy.html

I didn't try the links. I guess it takes time to download, and with language I am not sure, maybe there are any subtitles.
Although here the language matters, because it is the adaptation of Chehov's "Dificult people", and it is so reminiscent of the play "The bold singer" by Eugene Ionesco.
But again, you told me that you don't like the "absurd theatre".
I enjoy it very much, be it by Roy Anderson, or by Lars V. Trier.

Ann (Sarah Polley) is a hard working mother with two young daughters, a husband (Scott Speedman) who spends more time unemployed than working, a mother (Deborah Harry) with a history of broken dreams and a father who has spent the last ten years in jail. While other women her age are out partying, she spends her nights working as a janitor in a university she could never afford to go to in the daytime. She lives with her family in a tiny trailer in her mother's backyard. Somehow, she keeps her head above water: surviving but not "living."

After collapsing one day, she goes in for a medical check-up, where a shy doctor tells her some shocking news. She tells no one, determined to shield her daughters from the truth and at the same time to take control of her life and to make the most out of it. To Don, her eccentric co-worker Laurie, her mother and her kids, Ann chalks her weak pallor up to a case of anemia. In private, Ann makes a list of things she had always wanted to accomplish in her life but never had the time. They range from the mundane to the sublime-from changing her hairstyle and getting fake nails to finding and making love with another man.

Suddenly, Ann's life opens up, and the life force that was nascent in this 23 year-old, working-class woman blooms into a quiet yet steely determination.

Burdened with her secret but liberated by her new sense of control, Ann's emotional journey leads her to unexpected places and gives her life new meaning: the tender moments, the volatile emotions she must keep inside, the recognition that she has the power to understand, examine and fully live her own life.

This film focuses on ex-Foreign Legion officer, Galoup, as he recalls his once glorious life, leading troops in the Gulf of Djibouti. His existence there was happy, strict and regimented, but the arrival of a promising young recruit, Sentain, plants the seeds of jealousy in Galoup's mind. He feels compelled to stop him from coming to the attention of the commandant who he admires, but who ignores him. Ultimately, his jealousy leads to the destruction of both Sentain and himself.

There?s a lot to admire about this film ? the acting is strong, it has a beautiful design ? but it?s weighed down by a clunky script and melodramatics. It?s riddled with death and loneliness and the yearn to break free. Yes, it is as clichéd as that sounds. Music for Weddings and Funerals is not a terrible movie but it does try too hard. Its dramatics are too heavy-handed and its attempts at levity are never enough. Sara (Lena Endre) is a novelist who dwells in the past, guilty and distraught over her young son?s death. She stills lives in the concrete, modernist structure (it?s hard to call it a house) that her architect ex-husband built. The metaphor of it being her prison couldn?t be more obvious. Much of the film deals with Sara?s need to include the spontaneous in the well-ordered life ? not chaos but the unexpected. There is a mixture of cultures and nationalities throughout Music. It is a Norwegian film in Swedish and English (and for some reason there are subtitles for the English section, as well, which is just annoying), with Serbian folk music and belly dancing. Borders change, people move but everyone feels pain and joy. And music is the one thing, I assume, to that draws everyone together. Which makes me wonder why there is so little music in this movie. The most interesting relationship ? between Sara and Bogdon, a Serbian musician who rents the basement of her house ? is treated like an afterthought. They barely speak to one another and share very little screen time. One of the more frustrating things about Music for Weddings and Funerals is that the story happening off screen is more interesting than what we are watching. You can hope all you want for something exciting to happen but it never does. A very unsatisfying experience all around. By Kathleen Olmstead

Verlaine returned to Paris in August 1871, and, in September, he received the first letter from Arthur Rimbaud. By 1872, he had lost interest in Mathilde, and effectively abandoned her and their son, preferring the company of his new lover.[2] Rimbaud and Verlaine's stormy affair took them to London in 1872. In July 1873 in a drunken, jealous rage, he fired two shots with a pistol at Rimbaud, wounding his left wrist, though not seriously injuring the poet. As an indirect result of this incident, Verlaine was arrested and imprisoned at Mons, where he underwent a conversion to Roman Catholicism, which again influenced his work and provoked Rimbaud's sharp criticism.

The poems collected in Romances sans paroles (1874) were written between 1872 and 1873, inspired by Verlaine's nostalgically colored recollections of his life with Mathilde on the one hand and impressionistic sketches of his on-again off-again year-long escapade with Rimbaud on the other. Romances sans paroles was published while Verlaine was imprisoned. Following his release from prison, Verlaine again traveled to England, where he worked for some years as a teacher and produced another successful collection, Sagesse. He returned to France in 1877 and, while teaching English at a school in Rethel, fell in love with one of his pupils, Lucien Létinois and who inspired Verlaine to write further poems. Verlaine was devastated when Létinois died of typhus in 1883.

Dogme 12.

One of the best Danish films I have ever seen.

The film is telling nothing. However u can extract an idea that Life has no meaning without love. I accept that.

Pippa Lee is the perfect wife, adored by her husband and their friends. The perfect host, a wonderful, loving and accepting wife, and an always giving friend. However there's more to Pippa Lee than that, and what she's hidden for so long is starting to peek out the cracks as her perfect life and marriage begin to struggle.
When her husband Herb decides to move them both to a retirement village she begins to struggle, and ever so slightly you see the cracks begin to appear, and as life goes on these cracks become larger and we begin to get glimpses of her past, and it's through the past and the changes in her present life, that we really understand who the real Pippa Lee is and what made her.

Veronica Guerin (5 July 1959 - 26 June 1996)