The Damned/Là-bas (1891)

There’s not much of a plot to this book, in fact it reads more like nonfiction sometimes. But the subject matter is interesting and shocking for its time, hence quite a page turner. The novel starts with the author’s rambling on his dislike for Naturalism through the main character Durtal, a 19th century man bored with unromantic modern life and delved into writing a biography on Gilles de Rais, who’s also known as the “Blue Beard,” the world first known “serial killer” who tortured, raped and killed more than five hundred young boys during the Middle ages. A large part of the novel devoted to Durtal’s biography on Gilles, chronicling his role in aiding Joan of Arc to the very horrific atrocities he committed for Satanism. Dural also attempted to explain “how an honest soldiers and a decent Christian, could suddenly turn into an evil, cowardly, sacrilegious sadist.” These parts are the most captivating parts of the novel. It’s a good source to learn about Gilles de Rais and the medieval time. The author offered some interesting views on the matter through the characters.

Another interesting portions of the novel is on the dinner parties Dural and his friends held at the bell-tower of St Sulpice. They shared knowledges of alchemy, occultism and satanism throughout the history. What an appropriate topic for a dinner party that’s held at a Gothic church right? ^^;; There’re lots of fascinating historic informations on occult that you’ll never read from history books. I like Huysman’s humorous tone in these scenes, such as describing gruesome details of a satanic ritual like it’s a regular dinner conversation, followed with “want some more mash potatos?”

In between writing about Gilles de Rais and going to dinner parties, Durtal encountered a married woman who sent him amorous fan letters and it turn into an affair. She was later revealed to be a member of a modern satanic cult and led Durtal to witness a real black mass in person. I found this part a bit dragging. Durtal acted like the typical misogynistic man: create a hyper-fantasy for the mysterious woman before he knew who she was and immediately lose interest when he found out her identity, to the point that he had to forced himself to sleep with her just to get it over with. Though I appreciate the fact that the woman was not the typical Femme Fatale whom he couldn’t resist, rather she’s merely a “he’s not that into you” victim. I found the black mass at the end to be quite anti-climatic, especially compare with the black mass we read about in the dinner parties, though that’s probably the point. Fantasy always fail to meet reality.

Rain was pouring nonstop Friday night and we were lining outside soaking wet sans umbrella at The Roxy Theater to get into the Hedwig and the Antry Inch show. On top of the pricey ticket, The Roxy forced everyone to buy $15 drink tickets when we get in. -_-;;; But it’s all worthwhile. To see Hedwig live is a much different but more fitting (the way it ought to be) experience from watching the film version; it is both a small livehouse rock concert + standup comic. Hedwig’s story is still as hilarious and emotional. Playing Hedwig was the incredible Donovan Leitch, and the one playing the female-as-male bandmate was not Bijou Phillipes as saids on flyer. The tall, dark and handsome Donovan Jr. is amazing, even though he seems lot taller and bigger than the original creator/performer James Cameron Mitchell, he still looks divine as Hedwig. Better yet, at the end when Hedwig striped his drag queen attair and transformed to a rock star, god he was so HOT! *O* His voice is more waspy and deep, making songs like “Wig in a Box” and “Wicked Little Town” very Bowiesque….*LOVE*!!! The audience was great, they were way more animated than a lot of the crowd from the actual rock concerts I’ve been to. Some of the audience were such crazy fans, this one girl can’t stop crying out loud “this song is SO FUCKING GOOD!” after “Wicked little Town” was played. ^^;; The show is just awesome…though Yitzhak’s transformation at the end isn’t as powerful as the film version because her dim entrance was drown in the finale.

Les Yeux sans Visage (Eyes Without a Face)
Directed by: Georges Franju
Release: 1959
Cast: Pierre Brasseur, Edith Scob

More gothic gems~ Finally saw this legendary French arthouse horror classics Eyes Without a Face. The premise: a doctor’s beautiful daughter was disfigured in a car accident caused by himself. The title of the film refers to the iconic image of the blank, expressionless white mask wore by the disfigure daughter, whose pair of eyes shine through the holes of the mask. The guilt ridden doctor is determined to reconstruct his daughter’s face by kidnapping girls in Paris, then cut off their facial skins for skin grafting surgery.

While the doctor dwindling down to a Frankinstein nightmare, the humanity inside the daughter slowly disintegrated. At one point when her beauty was temporarily restored, the nurse remarked on her stunning beauty as ‘angelic’…an oddly ironic expression describing her new beautiful yet empty and inhuman face. Her mannequin-like prefect features, rigid movement and the blank stares was one sublime shivery moment. How ironic the pair of eyes showing throught the holes of the blank mask has more soul and emotions. Such contradictions was a running theme throughout the film…including the music, such as the daughter’s sweet childlike innocent theme music and the carnival-ish theme that’d played during the doctor’s deeds.

This story features two most quintessential girly horror elements: obsession with beauty and disfigurement

The film is a pure atmospheric, mesmerizing, ethereal and surrealistic beauty. A mundane scene of a car parking straight at a curve curb becomes poetry. The pacing is French Arthouse-slow (^^;;) but tantalizing, it is especially effective during the first surgical sequence. I know it’s 1950s’ makeup special effects, but the slow, real-time process of the doctor’s knife and scissors cutting the bloody facial skin off the victim was still shocking and revolting (too spoiled by PG-13 friendly ‘horror’ flick these days, I expected scenes like these would be treated as suggestive then fade to black ^^;;). It is film sadism; a lesser degree of torture was to witness the slow, tantalizing fall and inevitable demise of the tragic main characters (who were bounded by the love for each other and the consequences of bad choices). Though we were only tease by a blurry reveal of the disfigured face; her destroyed face would form only in audience’s imagination.

I also like how the ‘evil’ doctor and his assistent were calm, cool and collected people who loved and devoted to each other; they weren’t portrayed as twisted and psychotic monster as some moralistic storytelling rule goes for Hollywood. The redemptive ending was rather predictable as of today’s standard, but I like it nonetheless as it’s the ultimate contraditon: the disfigured girl freed everyone, including herself, from the nightmare through destruction. The story and imagery lingers on my mind afterward. As for the quintessential Gothic list: secluded mansion with dark secrets and dungeons, malady, mask, innocent girl in white lace pajama (designed by Givenchy! ^o^).

Donkey Skin (1970)

Directed by: Jacques Demy
Written by: Jacques Demy, Charles Perrault
Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Jean Marais

Finally get to see the 2004 digital restored version of the 1970 French film on DVD. Directed by The Umbrella of Cherbourg’s Jacques Demy, it also starred the impossibly beautiful and elegant Catherine Deneuve~ It is a lovely, magical, innocent yet slightly wacky adaptation to the Charles Perrault version of Fairytale story “Donkey Skin”. It’s one of my favorite stories, particularly memorable because of the disturbing incest premise (errr…a much needed moral lesson for little girls back in the days?). There were about 4-5 song numbers, mostly fluffy love songs. The humor, the painterly floral set and the outrageous costumes just made it so much fun to watch.

So this is a story where a King owned a donkey who shit gold and gems from its ass. X-D The King promised the Queen on her deathbed wish that he would remarry only to a women more beautiful than her, and of course there was none. The only person who can rival the dead Queen’s beauty was their daughter. So the daddy wanted to married his own daughter. Daughter tried to delay the wedding by asking dear Daddy to achieve impossible tasks but somehow he managed to succeed them all. At last she escaped by covering herself with the filthy dead donkey’s skin and hid in the forest working in a pigsty. Then enter the Prince and the stories made a Cinderella turn (instead of a glass slipper, it was a ring).

You know how Shrek was noted for made a refreshing modern humorous twist on fairytales, well they did that here 30+ years ago. The Fairy godmother was characterized as a upper society socialite who was always filing her nails and riding in helicopter. It is quite disturbing to hear her sing merrily “daughters can’t marry their father,” when the Princess was all confused and kept asking “why not? I mean I love my daddy~!?” yet the fairy godmother never elaborate, just kept singing “you just can’t, it is wrong, ok?” ^^;;;

The King’s throne is a weird giant Hello Kitty faced white feline, it is simply awesome! . His costume was like a rock star from a theatrical rock opera with silver shimmer gloves, pants and boots! He was played by Jean Marais, most known for his leading roles in Jean Cocteau’s films (Beauty and the Beast, Orphee).

The impossible task the Princess asked for were three dresses that are made of ‘Good Weather’, ‘Moon‘ and ‘Sun.’ I like the Good weather dress most, it is projected with moving white cloud~ so beautiful~~).

The Good Weather Dress

The Moon Dress

The Sun Dress

Picnic at Hanging Rock is a hauntingly beautiful, ethereal, atmospheric film directed by Peter Weir, it left me desperately intrigued and mystified.

The premise: Valentine’s day, 1900 – A group of students and teachers from an upper-class all-girl boarding school went picnic at the Hanging Rock, a landscape attraction in Australia. Four girls and one teacher went up and never returned. The search party’s efforts were fruitless, until days later they found one of the girls unconscious at the top of the rocks, who later recovered but seems to have lost her memory of the incident. The disappearance haunted those remained: fellow students, headmistress, police, strangers. They mourned, speculated and questioned…what happened to the other girls? what really happened up there?

Yes it’s one of those frustrating stories where mystery remained unsolved in the end as solution was not the point. Were the girls abducted by the natives? ran away? group suicide? aliens? were they raped and murdered as the headmistress so keen on insisting? Maybe they merely fell into a hole somewhere up there and trapped inside the rocks? Or were there some kind of esoteric supernatural forces involved that many clues seemed to have suggested?

The Victorian all-girl boarding school setting totally got me hooked, it’s one of my favorite themes (reminded me of those 70s gothic horror Japanese girls comics inspired by ‘Suspiria‘) ^^;;; The girls dressed in beautiful lily-white virginal Victorian dresses, everyone looks so pure, delicate and doll-like. There’re lovely intimacy between the girls: a mix of girlhood romanticism, obsession and lesbian overtones. The central figure is Miranda, a very beautiful girl whom everyone loves. She has this mesmerizing angelic and other worldly quality, very beautiful~ She only appeared at the beginning before the disappearance and spoke little, yet her image lingered and loomed throughout the movie as if it’s possessed by her.

Fellow student Sara is a rebellion figure who’s not afraid to profess her love for Miranda (more than friendship or sisterly). She was devastated by Miranda’s disappearance. Sara has an antagonistic relationship with the strict, unforgiving and repressed headmistress that’d led to a devastating outcome.

There were loads of symbolism that gave the film a subliminal quality: the overbearing, looming rocks erected in phallic shapes; the swan (from Greek mythology); shoes, socks & corsets (garments of Victorian sexual repression) ; color white vs red (pure vs impure); Botticelli angel; clock that stopped…etc. They were to deal with the themes of puberty and sexual repression/liberation.

At the start of the film there’s a disclaimer saying this is a real incident. A lot of people believed it and searched for news archives. But from what I read it is all fiction (including the disclaimer itself).

Some of the quotes the girls said before they disappear that added on the esoteric and mystifying quality in the mystery:

Everything begins and ends at the exactly right time and place. A surprising number of human beings are without purpose, though it is probable that they are performing some function unknown to themselves.

(the rocks) Waiting a million years, just for us.

What we see and what we seem are but a dream, a dream within a dream.

Perhaps this line in the film saids it all:

‘There’s some questions got answers and some haven’t.’

The version I watched is a director’s cut that has cut 8 minutes of footages! Those 8 minutes helped clarify the unexplained ending involving the headmistress and Sara at the end. errr….

The theme music is a new agey pan-flute piece that added-on the creepy, weird, other-worldly feeling but it is a little borderline Yanni-ish ^^;;;;

Here’re some good links to speculations and analysis:
Solution to PAHR (include summary of the Secret Final Chapter)
8 minutes of cut footage from original version
Informative site from Germany
Film Analysis
More Analysis

A deleted final chapter from the book that resolved the mystery

Pictures source from: here

Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964)
An absolutely lovely and eye-candy French musical by Jacques Demy. Music by Michel Legrand and starring the very young Catherine Deneuve. My god she’s so classically beautiful and full of graceful, innocent, youthful charm. Her perfect doll-like golden curls, pink overcoat, rosy cardigan, peach one piece dresses clothes, golden clutch, pastel purple poncho…it’s every vintage girl’s fantasy comes true. The entire movie is just the perfect romantic vintage-fashioned French dream. Everything is so stylized with very fashionable color palette: the wallpaper, the cute little teapot set, furnitures, little boutiques, miniature planes, umbrellas…etc. It could very well be called ‘Anthropologie: the movie.’ ^^;;

As for the story…well doesn’t really matter. ^^;; Middle class girl fell in love with handsome but poor boy. Mom opposed their marriage hoping for better prospect for girl. Boy got drafted to war. Girl found out she’s pregnant after he left. Fragile young lovers couldn’t bear long distance relationships. Out of desperation girl gave in and married a rich successful man who’s willing to raise her child. The clueless boy came back few years later heartbroken. Boy descend to depression. Boy rebuilt his life with the help of a female friend. Boy married the friend. Then one night the girl and boy met by chance …(no Hollywood ending).

What made it an experimental musical was that ALL (I mean really, ALL) dialogues are sung in songs. So unlike usual musical the actors do not suddenly break into songs in the middle of their lines. And the song lyrics are not ‘lyrics-ish’ but in everyday conversations. Actors won’t break into choreograph dances; they just acted normal. This treatment completely convinced me of the saying that ‘French is a very musical language’.

The opening title sequence is quite nice: view from the top looking at pedestrians carrying umbrellas (in various bright shades and patterns) on a rainy day. Very graphic design feel! The music by Michel Legrand is his usual sappy and soupy style with the always lovely and romantic French flair. The theme song is catchy. Of course Catherine Deneuve didn’t sing her part (she can’t hit note at all according to her later pop albums). Though when it’s the interaction between mom and daughter (female + female) the high-pitch, shrilly and airy vocals got a bit ear-piercing (constant high frequency ^^;;).

François Truffaut’s Nouvelle Vague classics. I Love it~

Story: 14 year old boy Antoine Doinel is neglected and unloved at home and undermined at school. He skipped school with his best friend to have fun and engaged in petty crimes. When Antoine was caught stealing his father’s typewriter, he was sent to delinquent correction center…

The boys wanted to live their own life, but their striving for freedom only led to more constrains and confinement …bounded by responsibility, consequences and social labeling. This is classic teen angst masterfully done with class and honesty that just feel so personal and touching. The child actor Jean-Pierre Léaud is so wonderful~~ the anger, emotions and rebellion spirit are very subtly conveyed on his poker but solemn face, so rare to see such maturity and depth in a boy.

My favorite sequence is definitely the PE class part depicting the young boys falling out of social/adult conformity. The PE teacher, blowing his whistle in rhythm, led the class of boys jogging through the city of Paris. In a brilliant long aerial shot, we see the boys who were jogging behind stolen themselves out of line two by two, until there’s only 2 students left behind the teacher (who’s not aware the students were all gone), that was just so cute and hilarious!

I also like the sequence where Antoine and his friend went to the circus and played in this spinning wheel thing (what’s it called? You stand inside a circular room and it’d spinned so fast that you’re suspended in mid-air without gravity). The beautiful but somewhat haunting hypnotic spinning sequence depicts a momentary drunken feeling of freedom.

Another sequence is when Antoine made a secret shrine for Balzac as his private spiritual sanctuary, but it caught on fire. Instead of scolding him, his parents forgave him and the whole family went out and spend a fun night at movies. They laughed all the way until they’re back at their small poor cramped apartment…back to reality. This is the only true happy moment in the film, which made their laughters the more heart-breaking.

The final sequence have Antoine escaped the correction center. He kept on running, he ran and ran and ran…finally ran to the beach and saw the sea that he’d never saw before. Then it freeze frame at this moment. Very cathartic.

The Piano Teacher

Author: Elfriede Jelinek
Release Date: May 3 2005
Publisher: Serpent’s Tail
Pages: 288

Austrian author Elfriede Jelinek won the 2004 Nobel prize for literature. The Piano Teacher was her classic from early 80s. Between the book and the acclaimed 2001 film version, I’m glad that I read the book first because…I don’t think I can stomach the visualization, especially of several horrible scenes involving self-multilation and rape. Also I wouldn’t be in a tantalizing hell pondering about characters’ underlying motives and feelings from the film, as these were all stated clearly like a psychoanalytical profile in the book. If interested read about the story here.

It is disturbing and unpleasant from beginning to end – endless suffocating psychoanalysis of its disturbingly perverted characters. The writing style is just as suffocating. There’s no chapter break, no dialogues, no quotation…maybe that worked well in German but it just read like one giant 300 pages of run-on sentence in English. I had to put down reading every 5 pages or so. But her prose get a bit addictive to read, especially the usage of interesting and powerful analogy. The painfully gripping and destructive ending was so devastating to get through, it’s like closing your eyes on a disaster in action yet can’t help peeking. It is a powerful pessimistic portrayal of relationships as power and control, submission and domination…between teacher and student, mother and daughter, man and woman.

I got lots of favorite passages, here’re a few:

p.38 on being left behind to decay
“SHE feels left out of everything because she is left out of everything. Others go farther, even climbing over her. She looks like such a minor obstruction. The hiker strides on, but she remains on the road, like a greasy sandwich wrapper, perhaps fluttering slightly in the breeze. The paper can’t get very far, it rots away right there. The rotting takes years, monotonoous years.”

p.67 on mediocricy
“Afterall, people with a herd instinct hold mediocrity in high esteem. They praise it as having great value. They believe they are strong because they are the majority. The middling level has no terrors, no anxieties. They huddle together, indulging in the illusion of warmth. If you’re in the middle, then you’re alone with nothing, certainly not yourself. And how content they are with that state of affairs! Nothing in their existence offers them any reproaches and no one could reproach them for their existence.”

p.90, on death of art
“Every day, a piece of music, a short story, or a poem dies becaue its existence is no longer justified in our time. And things that were once considered immortal have become mortal again, no ones knows them anymore. Even though they deserve to survive.”

p.194, on artist
“How often have we agreed that neither the creator nor the performer can endure rigidity. The artist prefers to avoid the bitter pressures applied by truth or by rules.”

Though for some blasphemous reason, when reading on the heroine Erika, I was reminded of Squidward (from Spongebob ^^;;;;;;), who’s also the unattractive, uptight, bitter, misanthropic loner pride in being different and ‘above’ everyone else for their rare artistic talent and unique appreciation and understanding for high art, yet they like to be bound by an overbearing authoritative figure, and got a perverse sadomasochistic side lurking beneath… ^^;;)

Howl’s Moving Castle
Directed by: Hayao Miyazaki
Written by: Hayao Miyazaki, Diana Wynne Jones
US Release: June 2005

Finally it’s released in US theaters. I love the book by Diana Wynne Jones, though it was a long time ago since I read it and my memory is failing me on the details. But my impression was still strong, hence I was very disappointed with the Miyazaki adaptation. He took too much artistic liberties yet didn’t do a good job, particularly with the characterization and changes of the story, both plot and theme-wise. First of all the entire part about the ongoing machinery and war destruction was entirely Miyazaki’s own insertion as a ‘war is senseless and stupid’ commentary that wasn’t even concluded in a satisfactory way.

Then the biggest let down was the character of Howl. In the book, Howl is a very lovable and hilarious character: childish, narcissistic, irresponsible, whiny, flamboyant…but when the times come it was a great paid off when his depth and motives were revealed. In the movie he was just a confusing ‘kidadult’ pretty boy with a brooding presence.

In the film Sophie was reduced into a shy low self-esteem bystander who innocently got caught inbetween, realized she is a strong and beautiful woman through true love. Witch of the Waste was reduced to this jealous love rival who later redeemed as a harmless grandma. In the book, the Witch of the Waste was a nasty villain all the way, and she cursed Sophie to rid of a threatening rival: Sophie didn’t realize she actually has the extraordinary power of giving life by talking to inanimate objects. Sophia also did not break the old age curse until the last 2 pages, though the constant shifting of her ages according to her emotional state in the film was a nice touch. The film never introduced the Sophia-as-a-witch aspect so Sophie and fire demon’s pact won’t make sense.***

In the book the climax was an illusion-conjuring battles between Howl and his master that would have been more cinematically spectacular and original compare to the tiring bomb dropping monster warship scenes reminiscent of any war film. All in all it was especially disappointing because, as this article pointed out, The book is more Miyazaki-esque than the film. Plot and characters could have been so much richer and more interesting as they were the notable strength of the book aside from the imaginative magic (the house portals part was nicely done though). The design of the fire demon was quite blah~ and every time he spoke I can only think of Billy Crystal, not the character. But the English cast was very good (Christian Bale over Kimutaku anytime), in fact I have the tendency of preferring Miyzaki films in English (I can’t stand anime’s girl voice).

Anyway it was still delightful to watch , but it could have been so much more (more epic, more wondrous magic battles and more heart).

***Here’s what I remembered: in the book, the fire demon Calcifer was originally a shooting star that’d die as it hit the ground. Howl gave Calcifer his heart so the fire demon will live on as Howl lives, and Howl can wield the demon’s power. But Howl was losing his humanity as the heart left him too long, so the fire demon wanted to break the pact. But once the heart is returned to Howl the fire demon will die so Howl refused. When Calcifer met Sophie he recognized her power and he took a chance to ask her to break the pact since she seems to have the power to give life.

Cute new poster illustrated by Keiko Kimura.

Riotto pictures is rereleasing Jean-Luc Godard’s 1966 French New Wave classic Masculine Feminine at theater (watch the awesome trailer on the website) and we watch it at NuArt last weekend (showing from Feb 11 – 17 only). This rerelease has new print and new subtitle but sadly the sound is still very poor. But it’s cool to experience it on big screen. This is the first Godard film I watched and I love the The film starred the eternal boyish icon of French new wave Jean-Pierre Léaud (who was barely grown up here) and yé-yé girl Chantal Goya. The film is a zeitgeist about 60s Paris youth and their musing on politics (ranging from half-ass consciousness, complete indifference or feeble protest in form of prank), love, sex and pop culture…as if they are the only things that matter in lifes, which is pretty much the universally spirit for most youth in any generation.

There’s very little plot, the film is a collections of random conversations and exchanges between an obnoxious political young man named Paul and his self-absorb pop-idol wannabe girlfriend Madeleine and their circle of friends.

One flashcard title reads “This film could be titled ‘The Children of Marx and Coca-Cola’” sort of saids it all. It’s youth’s awkward struggle between politics and pop-culture, intellectual and shallow, right vs left, America vs France…etc. These polar aspects are often juxtaposed against each other through the male vs female characters, one oblivious, indifferent, clueless about the other. Paul imposed his superior taste in Bach on Madeleine ’s pop music (who called Bach ‘horrible music’), but when interviewed by radio Madeleine cited Bach as her favorite musician. They encountered scenes of homicide and suicide around them but their reaction are mostly amusement or “oh really?”

There’re also musing on the rising feminism in the 60s. Though women are not portrayed as raging men-hating angry bitch (though one of Madeleine’s friend, Elizabeth, came a bit close), they’re mostly acting quite cool and indifferent toward males. The other Madeleine’s friend, Catherine (who claimed she don’t need men since she has a ‘gadget’ ^^;;), was playing a toy guillotine chopping head off a doll (male) while Paul unawarely looked on.

Some fun soundbites from the film:

There’s a ‘mask’ and ‘ass’ in Masculine, there’s nothing in Feminine

Kill a man and you’re a murderer. Kill thousands and you’re a conqueror. Kill everyone and you’re a god.

We control our thoughts which mean nothing, and not our emotions which mean everything.

Chantal Goya’s songs were played through out the movie, she sounded like France Gall except for worst singing, but they sounds awesome nonetheless ^^;; For fans of 60s French pop and yé-yé girls, there’re pleasant pop-culture references: cameos by Francoise Hardy (very brief, easy to miss…she played the American officer) and Brigitte Bardot (whose appearance on screen cause a cheer among the audience). There’s also mentioning of Sylvie Varton and France Gall. The clothes and hairstyle of all the female characters are uber cute and awesome. But they all instantly went pale against Brigitte Bardot’s presence (bunch of undeveloped little girls without any sex appeal ^^;;). Francoise Hardy was scarily skinny.

No doubt I have a lot of fun. It is still very refreshing to watch and I see why he’s so influential on auteur directors to come (especially for those who don’t ‘get’ directors like Wong Kar-Wai). I’m looking forward to check out other Godard classics.