This Week... #2 (28th November to 30th November 2012)

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28^th November 2012: A Good Time For A Dime (Dick Lundy, 1941)

Donald visits a penny arcade. He watches Daisy dance the Dance of the Seven Veils, but the light goes out for veil 5 and he misses the end. Then he tries a prize crane, to increasing frustration. Finally, an airplane ride goes wild when Donald tries to get some extra time. (IMDB)

Not the best animated short I have seen from Disney, but still fun nonetheless. It does make me realise how much I want to go back to the animated shorts I used to watch on Cartoon Network – Tom and Jerry, Looney Toons – as well as go through others for the first time – Disney, the Fleischer brothers – and see their artistry from adult eyes. Their short lengths go against them unfairly because I will immediately go to the feature length films first, but they deserve their praises too some day.

From http://www.coffeecoffeeandmorecoffee.com/archives/i%20am%20love.jpg

29^th November 2012: I Am Love (Luca Guadagino, 2009)

Over two decades ago, Emma left Russia to follow Tancredi Recchi, the man who had proposed to her. Now a member of a powerful industrial Milanese family, she is the respected mother of three. But Emma, although not unhappy, feels confusedly unfulfilled. One day Antonio, a talented chef and her son's friend and partner, makes her senses kindle. It does not take long before she embarks on a passionate affair with the sensuous young man. (IMDB)

This was watched under the worst throws of man-flu, which may have drastically coloured the viewing experience, but the glaring issues I had with the film would probably have stayed the same if I was physically well. It’s amazing that such a critically acclaimed film really has little in it, even a point to its existence, a really drab drama that feels empty without any sense of emotional engagement to it. It doesn’t live up to the praise it has been given for its ‘luxurious’ look either.  It completely pales to Italian films like The Conformist (1970) or Fellini’s Roma (1972) for example in terms of visual artistry, and considering the significance of food with its narrative, showing its vitality merely by glowing a golden light over Tilda Swinton’s face is not enough to convey the beauty of taste. It is a hollow film, even more disappointing so as there are moments in this where Swinton herself becomes a radiant, older beauty onscreen, the few threads of magic Italian cinema has within the film making a justifiably talented actress also completely gorgeous as any actress in an Italian movie becomes when reinterpreted on film.

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30^th November 2012: The Bloodiest* (Jean-Pierre Beholo, 2005)

Two streetwise women are sent on a strange odyssey through a decaying society in this offbeat sci-fi comedy, set in a fictional African nation in the year 2025. (MUBI)

A striking combination of sci-fi, softcore, feminist cinema, comedy, political art film and straight-to-video African cinema. It’s not for everyone, as is the case of the incredibly negative reviews I have read online for this film, but I wish more films like this were available to see. With its two beautiful protagonists driven by the ‘mevungu’, a word taken from a ritual among Beti women of Cameron that celebrated the clitoris and feminine power, this film is a lot more interesting than its Nollywood-esque genre melding appears to look like, feminine strength shot through such genre eroding aesthetic. (And it helps that the low-fi aesthetic, including martial-arts fight scenes at the end, is immensely entertaining). If only more African films, let alone this, were available in the West the world would be a lot better off, an erratic but fascinating film like this the sort of thing I need more often and African cinema may provide a lot of.

[*There is a possibility that the English translation of the film’s title, Les Saignantes, as The Bloodiest is a complete mistranslation. In the film, the two protagonists call themselves Bloodettes, and it may be the case that the title should be The Bloodettes, which someone needs to correct first on the film’s IMDB page and start from there.]