About Chocolate Parfaits

Ukigusa (Floating Weeds, Abschied in der Dämmerung)

With this last film review, I won’t be posting all that much because Shii is going to come visit me tomorrow (while I plan to watch Decalogue 9 today, so no review of it yet). I doubt that he will want to watch movies here though, since there is way too many things to do in Berlin. We will most likely go to the Cinema Paris though, so we will most likely watch “Un baiser s’il vous plaît” because personally I don’t want to see “Paris”. (It sounds like a horrible film to me, really. Their Paris is never my Paris after all.)

After finishing watching this film, I was dying to write about it (similarily to how I really wanted to write about “La Belle Noiseuse” as well, but now I find myself speechless. It doesn’t say anything about the film though, as it really is a delightful piece of work. The only thing I am seriously wondering about is why it is so incredibly highly acclaimed. I had lots of fun watching this, but at the same time, I wonder what makes people think that this is a great film. The actors are nothing special, the story is nothing special, the cinematography is nothing special (or rather, it is special because nothing moves and I liked it, but I don’t think it has all that much artistical merit). Why do people like it so much? I’d say it’s because this is an old japanese film and everybody raves about it, because Ozu is some old guy who shows the core of the “weird japanese culture” to the west, and as much as I actually liked watching this, I can’t but wonder what makes it a masterpiece that is so popular among cineasts. Perhaps I should check some articles about this. Suggestions?

Onto the film itself, it took me a little while to get into it, as it happens so often with good, slow-paced films. At first, I was shocked and thought “Oh god, they speak japanese but I can’t understand anything!” Of course my japanese is really bad to begin with and I only feel like understanding something without actually being able to do so, but here, I felt incredibly dependent on the subtitles. It did matter a bit, because the subtitles weren’t all that great, as it often happens with translations from comparably exotic languages. Later on, watching this film really felt a lot like watching an anime – perhaps it’s because of the non-existent camera movement?

What I did like a lot was the subtle humour especially in the form of the three kabuki actors who always stick together and are just being idiots. Somehow these three comedical side-kicks are a common thing in movies, no? Right now, it only makes me think of bad examples like the three girls in Potemayo (*cough cough*) and the three gargoyles in the Disney version of the “Hunchback of Notre-Dame”, but I am sure there are many more of these.

On another side note, I had to think of Jiro Taniguchi‘s manga a lot when I watched these films. The themes, the looks – everything reminded me of him. I guess that Taniguchi himself sees his roots much more in the french comics area rather than Ozu’s very japanese films, but I think Taniguchi is just as japanese as Ozu ;)

When I got into the store further, I started to come to like the characters, especially the young girl. What really broke the ice for me, however, was the scene in which they shut down the kabuki group. Apart from the unreal sobbing of the child (god, if Ozu is considered such a perfectionistic director, why couldn’t he choose a better actor for these scenes?), I felt so incredibly sad when it happened. These were the moments in which the film became really human and accessible to me, and where I liked it a lot. And even though everything turned out different than expected (due to the son’s unnecessary emoness), I have really liked the end. The last scene was actually felt quite happy.

All in all, this film makes me want to watch more of Ozu’s work, especially “Tokyo Monogatari”, but I wonder if I should watch any more than that.

Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire)

I have a feeling that I am supposed to love this film, because it just represents everything Berlin is in such a subtle, thoughtful way and I do think that it’s quite an affront that City of Angels is an adaptation of this beautiful film. But just like I dropped “Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter” (the book that “The Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty” is based on), I had to drop this film as well. Sure, it’s poetic, meaningful, very artistic (the random insertion of coloured scenes is brilliant), well executed and everything… I even like its message, but it was such an incredible drag to watch it that I ended up watching Potemayo instead. It’s quite silly, but I suppose I just don’t like Handke’s style of writing.

While writing this postings, I have been thinking about whether I should give this film a second try or not. I realized that in the end, I might do so, but perhaps not in a long time, and only when I feel that my tastes have changed.

Finally, I doubt I will ever watch this film again, but I actually recommend it to anyone who wants to watch a serious film like this.

La Belle Noiseuse

The above title of the post has become the film’s secret title, like “Ein Kartoffelliebesfilm” for Roman Holiday or “Dunst im Schloss” for Marie Antoinette. Basically the attraction of the film is Emmanuelle Béart, although she actually looks less attractive than Brigitte Bardot or herself in the H&M commercials. It doesn’t matter though, although the film took a little while to get interesting (exactly an hour, in fact), I could have watched this film forever, I feel.

After finishing the film, I saw that that it’s an adaptation of Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu by Balzac, and quite a great one. But, it took me ages to finally get myself to watch this film, and the beginning of it was utterly boring. More than that, I have been annoyed at most (if not all) characters in the film and have found them very questionable, especially Frenhofer who just seems to be an old perverted oyaji to me, that’s it. Compared to that, Marianne is much more understandable, as she feels empty and has yet to find herself. (She doesn’t seem to do anything in her life after all.) If she needs to do so by posing naked, well, why not – it’s a very french thing to do so, I suppose. I do feel sorry for Nicholas, but it’s not like he actually did anything to prevent the worst to happen. For me, the worst character of all of them was Liz. Jane Birkin surely was very beautiful when she was young, but in this role, she just fades into an rather old, sexually frustrated looking woman, it’s quite a pity. I didn’t even like her as an actress as she always looked the same to me.

Another rather negative thing about this film are the clothes of the characters. Normally I really don’t mind, but in french films like these, style matters a lot. The only remotely nice thing Emmanuelle Béart has worn in this film was the dress at the very end – and even there her hair and the whole outfit is so 80s, uh oh.

Now that I have said so many negative things about the film, I should stress a bit more that I actually find it to be a really good film. The process of creating the artwork was really interesting for me and I thoroughly enjoyed watching Frenhofer drawing. It fitted the mood and blended in with the characters’ actions very well. The development of Frenhofer’s study of Marianne’s body was a pleasure to watch. In that respect, this film is exactly like “Va Savoir” – it starts off somewhat boring and extremely weird only to become quite enjoyable (funny in the one case, a visual feast in the other). I don’t even want to know how “Divertimento” is, because that is supposed to put an emphasis on the characters rather than the drawing process.

As much as I find the film interesting, I must admit that it’s not really accessible to me. I understand Marianne, but I can’t help but shake my head about Frenhofer’s emoness. Why do you need a model to create these kinds of paintings anyways? Where is the actual connection to the person or her appearance? French-style nude pictures honestly all look exactly the same to me. Actually my failure at understanding these things makes me want to try it out (either to pose or to draw).

One last thing I would like to mention is the fact that I have seen the last scene of “La Belle Noiseuse” along with the actual picture used in the film in the museum of the Cinémathèque francaise. That’s where I got the inspiration to watch this film from, and I’m glad I saw this. To some extent, it’s a beautiful film and quite unusual in its theme and execution, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it because of its length – and because I still am a fangirl of Emmanuelle Béart.

PS. Actually I wanted to brag about having managed to watch a 4 hours movie, but reading these comments, I suppose I have nothing to say anymore.

Inspired by the current poll on Manga-Updates, I was wondering how you guys feel about the length of movies. In fact, I have to admit that the length of a movie is quite a deciding factor when I have to choose what movie to watch next, and then I tend to end up with a comparably short film. How bad I am.
Then again, a film easily can be too short. (For example, I felt that “Before Sunset” was a bit too short, while I didn’t feel like that at all with “Before Sunrise”.) A film that just lasts about an hour can’t build up that much development so it feels more like a short film to me (like “Permanent Vacation”).

So, what do you think about this?

Months after I left Paris, I finally find myself capable of really reminiscing about it. I admit honestly that I tried to avoid thinking of Paris, because I felt I would be missing my time there so much. As of now, the day I go back to Paris, these would be the things I want to do:
– Spend a day in the Centre Pompidou
– Spend another day for Louvre and Musée d’Orsay
– Go to the Musée Rodin and the Orangerie
– See all the upcoming buildings that hopefully will be finished by the time I go back
– See the following museums: Musée Marmottan, Musée des arts décoratifs, Fondation Cartier, Catacombes, Musée Cernuschi, Musée de la Contrefacon, Musée Dupuytren
– Buy at least three pairs of Chucks at St-Ouen
– Go to the Flèche d’Or and the Café Universel again
– Go to Poissy and the Parc Astérix
– Go to a manga café and buy lots of manga
– Go to eat in the Rue Ste-Anne and our barbecue place
– Buy baguettes and cakes
– Watch a movie in a parisian movie theater
– Eat soufflés, since I seriously doubt I’ll ever be able to make them
– See something at the Opéra Garnier
– Walk up the Eiffel Tower

Enough nostalgy, back to the actual point of this post: Inspired by short and clear pages like this, let me attempt to give a short for all of them, except for the grand 10, hehe.

32. Conciergerie
Incredible waste of time and horribly overrated. Somewhat nationalistic touch and absolutely pointless.

31. Musée de l’Homme
A little boring, a little interesting and in many, many ways very questionable. Tries to be political, eek.

30. Musée de la Vie Romantique
Mostly boring, but somewhat cute in a weird sense. Way too small, but that saved us time.

29. Musée Maillol
Art that I find personally boring and not aesthetic at all. But it has some interesting temporary exhibitions: the one we saw “Allemagne. Les années noires.” was brilliant, perhaps one of the best exhibitions in my life.

28. Hotel des Invalides/Musée de l’Armée
Parts of it are very interesting, Napoleon’s tomb is impressive, but the Musée de l’Armée is mostly large and glorifies the war in a disgusting way.

27. Maison Victor Hugo
Definitely something for the fan, but since I’m not, I wasn’t all that interested in Hugo’s personal belongings. But it’s free and an okayish detour when you’re at the Place des Vosges anyways.

26. Musée Gustave Moreau
I am a big fan of the famous staircase, I just find it sublimely beautiful. Apart from that, this is a very personal, small museum without much interesting to see.

25. Petit Palais
The entrance is beautiful, but there was not one single piece of art I have liked. Boring for most of the part for me. Perhaps my expectations are just too high and I’m too used to great art.

24. Musée National de l’Histoire naturelle – Grande Galerie de l’Évolution
In the Jardin des Plantes, this is a somewhat silly museum for children. Somehow I found the atmosphere in it a little creepy due to weird lighting conditions, lots of dead animals and the fact that there were barely any people.

23. Musée National de l’Histoire naturelle – Galerie de Minéralogie et de Géologie
A somewhat underrated museum which had a really nice temporary exhibition of underwater creatures.

22. Musée de l’Érotisme
I admit that I have somewhat expected more than this, perhaps a better mix of seriousness and actual art. Most of the pieces were curiosities that looked rather tasteless, making the museum everything but erotic in itself. But, parts of it was quite educational, funny and interesting.

21. Musée du Moyen-Age/Thermes de Cluny
The interior is quite nice and some pieces (especially the famous tapestries with the unicorns) were nice.

20. Institut du Monde Arabe
What a stylish museum! It was inspirational and made me very interested in the arabic culture, however, the little amount of information given and the way these few exhibition pieces were presented made this museum a little bit disappointing. A lot felt like propaganda (but perhaps I also am rather sensitive to anything that could look like propaganda).

19. Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie
It’s a place for kids, that’s for sure. But I like science museums and am thus a little biased towards it. Also, it looks cool from the outside, especially the Géode.

18. Musée du Quai Branly
Quite controversial indeed: It looks great and has a nice-looking interior too. There was one single piece I really liked (an african coat that had quite a great pattern on it), but the museum itself is quite weird and horribly structured and not very pleasant to walk through.

17. Jeu de Paume
I was there only once, and that was for some silly video installations which took ages to go through and ultimately were quite bad. However, the modern style of the museum and its openness to so many different kind of things is quite nice.

16. Espace Salvador Dalí
A little bit too small for my taste (especially for that price), but it had lots of nice, small things and made me realize that I really like Salvador Dalí. I also want his illustrations of Alice in Wonderland.

15. Mosquée de Paris
It’s the first mosque I’ve ever been in my life, and the interior looks absolutely splendid in my opinion.

14. Musée Carnavalet
For some reason, everybody loves this museum, and if it’s for the supposedly 60 paintings of the Pont Neuf. It is quite a sweet thing to go for when you actually like Paris.

13. Cinématheque francaise
Well, what can I say: This has turned into a film blog, so obviously I would have enjoyed the Cinemathèque. There were lots of objects especially from the very beginnings of film, and I learnt quite a bit about old films. But for the most part, this is a museum for people who are already cinephiles and have seen lots of films: Most of the exhibition consists of dark rooms with scenes of films being displayed and objects from those films.

12. Musée Picasso
Personally I like Picasso a lot, so of course I liked such a large coverage of his works, especially since it shows that Picasso didn’t only do the cubism stuff. Also, the building and its surrounding are pretty nice. Definitely worth it if one is interested in Picasso, otherwise not for obvious reasons.

11. Arts et Métiers
Actually, to be honest, I have somewhat mixed feelings about this museum, but finally I have to admit that I have really, really liked it and would easily recommend it, and if it’s just for those beautifully old showcases. It definitely is one of the most unique and stylish museums of Paris.

10. Panthéon
I would never recommend anyone to see the inside of the Pantheon, I mean hey, who would be interested in seeing the tombs of unknown french people. 7-something euro are not worth the great architecture in it, but the building is plain splendid in my opinion, I could go there and stare at it for ages. Hands down, I love the Pantheon for silly personal fangirling reasons.

9. Grand Palais
Perhaps one of the greatest buildings in Paris, the Grand Palais at least had one really good exhibition which was a large exhibition of Courbet works in an astounishing show. Besides that, the Grand Palais is grand in every sense possible and a pleasure to look at, whether it’s on the inside or the outside. It’s just costy.

8. Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
It’s for free, that’s what makes it attractive for most people, I suppose, but I also think that there are quite a few interesting works on display. Museums like this and the Centre Pompidou made me realize that I’m the type of person who actually likes modern art from an aesthetic standpoint, and doesn’t care all that much about whether I “understand” the work.

7. Palais de Tokyo
Same as for the Musée d’Art Moderne, it’s very modern art and thus an absolute hit or miss. I like the concept and the philosophy of the museum a lot though.

6. Musée Guimet des Arts Asiatiques
I’ve been there 3 times and although I do feel bored after seeing the same pieces 3 times, I think it has a lot of treasures on display and is surprisingly large. Perhaps I am biased towards asian culture or something, but I think that the museum shows quite a lot of nice things, representing quite a large variety of asian cultures.

5. Musée Rodin
Everybody has been raving about this museum, but I have never been a huge fan of Rodin before I went there, and never expected to be so positively surprised: The parc of the museum is splendid and the museum itself has so many impressive sculptures, very representative of the major picture of Rodin’s work. While the most famous work of other artists are mostly displayed in the Louvre and the likes instead of the museums dedicated to the artists, this museum actually also has a lot of Rodin’s famous sculptures. And boy, how amazing these sculptures are. The anatomy always feels a little off, but the dynamic poses totally make up for it. Rodin’s sculptures come to life, and I love them for that.

4. Orangerie
How should I put it, I have loved Monet since I was a little child, and even own an artbook with large, fold-out pages of his water lilies. In the Orangerie, they are displayed in the most beautiful way ever, and even besides that, there is a small, but nice collection of art from the same time.

3. Musée d’Orsay
I find it difficult to speak about the Musée d’Orsay because it is just too overwhelming. To name all the interesting works and artists in the museum would make me run out of space and it’s one of the museums where you always discover something new whenever you go into it. Many people say it’s their favourite museum in Paris, and I can see why: So many great artists, such an impressive interior and interesting temporary exhibitions.

2. Louvre
No further comment needed, I suppose. You walk through the Louvre and feel like everything in it looks familiar because it’s actually a famous piece of art. Just last year alone, I think I’ve been there 5 times, and before, there were at least 2 times where we walked through the whole museum. I probably have seen the Nike more often than the posters in my room, and I could spend my life in the Louvre.

1. Centre Pompidou
Going to the Centre Pompidou honestly was an incredible culture shock for me. Even though I have seen (and liked) the MoMA before when it was in Berlin, I have never expected myself to be taking such a strong liking on all those crazy exhibition pieces in the Centre Pompidou. As long as one is not particularily desinterested in modern art or art in general, this is the museum to go.

Yeah, so the first three places are reserved for the big three museums of Paris. It is my theory that many european cities have a triad of museums. For London, it’s British Museum + National Gallery + Tate; for Paris, it’s Louvre + Orsay + Pompidou; for Madrid, it’s Prado + Reina Sofia + Thyssen; for Berlin, this doesn’t work all that well though: there is the Museumsinsel, but there also is the Jewish Museum and the Neue Nationalgalerie, hm!
The first five museums in the rankings are the absolute must-sees if I’d have to give a recommendation, and besides that, Paris is a fabulous place to slowly indulge yourself into the pleasure of going to museums. It really was one of the greatest part of being in Paris, and I would have never expected for museums of all things to influence my life and thinking so much.

Was nützt die Liebe in Gedanken? (Love in Thoughts)

It’s interesting how I watched this on Tuesday while chatting with Shii, and immediately wrote up this post afterwards. I just didn’t come around to copy/paste this post and click “publish”. How silly.

Of course, it was Shii who proposed to me to watch this film, and here I am. I have watched the trailer years ago and decided that this would be a horrible film, but I am intrigued by adolescent suicide themes (especially since I’m not an adolescent who could pull that off anymore) and I actually think that Daniel Brühl and August Diehl both are pretty good actors. I’ve seen “Good Bye Lenin”, “2 Days in Paris” and “Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei” (The Edukators) with Brühl and I watched “23” with Diehl who was actually pretty great in it. So yeah, here I am, watching a film with both of them.

Another reason why it took me awhile to watch this film is the Wikipedia picture of Anna Maria Mühe. She’s Ulrich Mühe’s daugther with this abominable woman (his second wife) and looks like quite a bitch. There are femme fatales that I admire and there are femme fatales that I am jealous of and find horrible – she definitely is the second kind. Her eyes look extremely large in this film, and you easily see how she uses these eyes to give off an ‘irresistible’ air. Perhaps it’s just that she’s not my type, but the predictability of her charm just makes me feel repulsed somehow. She is attractive after all and the way how the males in the film fall for her is pretty well done, and she’s not too bad an actress (just a little bit bad).

Also, Shii says that this film is like “Frühlings Erwachen” by Wedekind. The only thing that both have in common is that they are about german children growing up. But there are millions of coming of age films out there – and these are fundamentally different for me. The ones don’t know about love; the others think they know about love but don’t love at all. The ones get screwed by society while trying to fit in; the others refuse society and want to rebel. The ones have issues with their future on a rational level; the others only have issues with their feelings. The one is about the attitude of adults towards growing children; the others are about adolescent relationships among themselves. Very simply said, the one is about sex, the other about love. Or so. How are these stories similar?

In some aspects, the brother and sister + best friend constellation is a little bit like “The Dreamers”. It’s also both about finding ‘love’, but really, they are like day and night too. Especially when comparing Eva Green’s personality and Anna Maria Mühe’s role in these respective films. I actually find it impressive that Eva Green has not turned out a second Maria Schneider.

Another aspect I really liked was the friendship between the young boys. Even though it wasn’t *really* well portrayed, I was able to feel the something between them, and I liked that. Unfortunately all the other relationships along with the characters involved are pretty boring and none of their feelings of “love” have touched me, even though August Diehl brought up an impeccably passionate yaoi kiss. It’s too bad.

What struck me deeply however was the beauty of this film. The style is exactly my thing. Sure, it looks absolutely wrong. The characters look wrong, the acting is wrong, the english party music is wrong and especially the clothes are wrong. But who cares? Their white shirts are so incredibly attractive, the backgrounds are great and the slow pacing (although it made the story very simple and short) contributed greatly to the stylish atmosphere. The scenes under the moonlight make me want to spend a night swimming naked in one of the lakes around here. Simply for the style, I am glad that I have watched this film in the end. It just suited my tastes.
However, it is a little bit sad that the film is such a bad depiction of that time. The Weimar Republic is fascinating after all.

With this nice style, what I like the most about the film are its details. For example, the menu of the DVD features white butterflies (which appear a little bit in the film): It struck me because butterflies have a very special place in my personal life, I’d even call them my favourite animals and there is a beautiful symbolism for them. What is interesting is that black butterflies stand for death. Perhaps white butterflies stand for suicide? *hrr* (An “innocent” death?) After all, with all those overly white shirts, white is probably the leitmotif colour of this film.
Another detail is the white (!) “cravatte” that Anna Maria Mühe wore at the very end of the film. It’s basically just a very long and thin scarf draped like that – I want it!

Finally, I think I could never really, really like this film. Firstly, the story is so simple and predictable, but my ain issue is that I don’t agree with their “dying out of love philosophy” at all. I totally understand that one can want to die at the happiest moment of your life, but didn’t these two boys die at the most unhappiest time of their life? Right when they were incredibly unhappily in love? How silly.