The Sunday Intertitle: That Happy, Sexy, Sax-Playing Prince

I’ve accepted the new Sight & Sound top twenty as a welcome nudge to see some films I’ve neglected. But, happily, I had just watched IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE so I feel I’m catching up. Since most of my BA1 students at Edinburgh College of Art are Chinese, I thought I should include some Chinese film and I was way behind in my Wong Kar-Wei viewing. Of course, it turned out this was the one film in my season most of them had seen, even though it was made before they were born, I think.

And it has intertitles! Already at the beginning I was thinking I might make use of the first caption, but since it’s right at the front end of the movie it’s not really inter-anything. But then the film ends with a trip to Cambodia and a flurry of titles.

It’s a film I’ll need to see more than once. WKW’s endings often seem a little mysterious — those I’ve seen, anyway — and this one is particularly evocative, tying together the historical past, and a country that was almost eradicated in Year Zero, still in this story’s future, with a romance that’s been tragically sundered by time and circumstances.

And I was absurdly pleased to recognize the name of Prince Sihanouk, “that happy, sexy, sax-playing prince,” from Spalding Gray and Jonathan Demme’s SWIMMING TO CAMBODIA.

Now I just need to watch JEANNE DIELMAN and properly revisit BEAU TRAVAIL to get my cinephile badge back.

Higher Education

My first year film class is split up into little rooms and scattered over the globe from the US to China, I’m trying to get us all together to view and discuss a film on MUBI, a platform which is free to film students. I’ve chosen Claire Denis’ THE HIGH LIFE because I want to see it and haven’t gotten around to it yet. It ends its run on MUBI today, I believe.

Looks like you can GIFT a viewing of the film to a friend also if you watch it on MUBI.

So hopefully there’ll be a lively discussion in the comments section. First-time commenters will not see their remarks immediately, I have to clear you first, so don’t worry if it takes a little while.

I liked the film — like a lot of art films it’s equal parts beautiful, confusing, frustrating and disturbing. I was concerned that the science was junk but I googled it and there is some theoretical basis to the idea of harvesting energy from a rotating black hole. But I’m not going to be the first to try it.

The song at the end convinced me I really liked this.

If this works we’ll do it again. If not, I’ll try and work out improvements.

Obviously, regular Shadowplayers are more than welcome to chip in here too.

And here is another essential bit of Denis to play us out:

 

Euphoria #7

“There are so many bits in ‘Boogie Nights’ that do it for me but

…how about the ‘Modern Love’ bit from ‘Mauvais Sang’?”

This example of Cinema Euphoria comes from Leos Carax’ MAUVAIS SANG and is the suggestion of genius comedy writer Graham Linehan (everybody in the UK knows FATHER TED, and the masses are now catching on to his current hit THE I.T. CROWD, but those of you elsewhere in the world, check ’em out! T.V. Euphoria awaits.)

Graham was super enough to plug this blog on his blog, with the result that my stats went through the roof. I hope some of you newbies will stick around and maybe even nominate some euphoric moments of your own.

Anyhow, it’s been generations since I saw Carax’s flick, but nobody who has can forget this delirious moment. Graham wrote:

“I love everything Carax has done with the exception of Pola X (or as I call it, ‘Pola eccch’).

MS is pretentious from time to time but it has moments that just make my heart THUMP inside my chest, Modern Love is just one of many. 

No, my official vote is for when the baby comes round the corner with Alex  in the same film.”

Since I don’t have a copy of the movie here, but some thoughtful person had already posted Modern Love on VousTube, that’s the clip I’ve embedded. Time I resaw this film.

Seeing Denis Lavant move about in a celebratory fashion (to use a phrase from Colin McLaren) will doubtless remind many of you of THIS (which is my addition, not Mr. Linehan’s):

Two-for-one Euphoria at Shadowplay!

Striking how many euphoric movie memories involve various forms of dance, a medium modern filmmakers have tended to either neglect or screw up hideously (Lars Von Trier, I’m talking about YOU), but which, addressed properly and with sensitivity, seems to have the greatest capacity for injecting happiness directly into the viewer’s heart, sort of like Travolta does to Uma in PULP FICTION, but in a more caring way.

Keep ’em coming!