July Films¶
470 words on Films , Woody Allen
This month with Conte d’été, The Darjeeling Limited and Don’t Drink the Water.
Conte d’été
Eric Rohmer’s Conte d’été (aka Summer’s Tale) is part of his four ‘Tale’ films which span all season. But it’s the only one I saw so far. Just now I watched it again on a VHS tape which I recorded from telly back in the 1990s.
It’s a nice film telling about a guy named Gaspard spending his summer at the beach, being into music and flirting with the girls. He means to meet Lena, a girl he’s in love with. But he first meets Margot instead and gets along well with her and who introduces him to Solène, so Gaspard ends up in a bit of a messy situation. And only after he leaves it becomes clear that some opportunities may have been missed.
The film’s end is almost tragic, but in total I liked the lightness in it. People don’t actually do anything. They enjoy their summer, and they get themselves into a little mess.
The Darjeeling Limited
Highly lauded last year and only seen by me now The Darjeeling Limited was a fun film to watch. Just like Wes Anderson’s Royal Tenenbaums and Life Aquatic it’s a bit weird and quite colourful. And somehow these films manage to have a very similar and distinct ‘feel’ to them which gives away the director right away (with my bad memory for names I actually had to head over to IMDB whether it’s from the same guy who made The Royal Tenenbaums).
In the film we see three rich brothers travelling through India on a luxury train with a whole load of personalised baggage. Slowly you learn about their relationship to one another as well as the whole point of the journey. Things don’t go smoothly, but they don’t fuck up too badly either. It’s weirdly entertaining that way.
And the Technicolor India the film presents is amazing. Everything is very colourful
Don’t Drink the Water
I think with Don’t Drin the Water I’m reaching a point where I arrive at the lesser Woody Allen films in the interminable quest to see all of them. Set in the cold war, Woody Allen is caught in an Eastern Bloc country and has to flee to the U.S. embassy because he tried to take a photo and was then pursued. There he has to stay for a while rather than being back home at work and of course he doesn’t see what the fuss is all about. Obviously he’s also neurotic vis-à-vis the foreign food he may have to eat or the the Arab dignitary who comes visiting.
With the ambassador being over in the U.S. and his son (Michael J. Fox) taking his place not all that competently, more room for laughter is created.
