The Wayward Cloud
An explicit Taiwanese lovestory, eh? This is one strange, strange film. It is easily the most aural film I have ever seen. With fuck-all dialogue—you never hear the lead male speak at all, and probably only get a good 40 words from the female lead (there's more dialogue between the Japanese pornographers than there is between the leads)—the emphasis is put on those everyday sounds: her constant footsteps up and down the hallway of her apartment block; the shooshing of plastic bags; a jackhammer; the gooey, crunchy sounds of chewing; of choking and swallowing; of slurpy, slappy sex; of heaving breathing, sighing and grunting; of pouring water, dripping water. So while we watch as our heroine goes about her everyday tasks, her suitor is upstairs shagging his co-star senseless, literally. Watermelons used as sex-toys, as food, as drink, as birth surrogates. And there are bodily fluids to match the sounds, there's saliva and tears and cum aplenty. And an ending that I am at a loss to explain. Just plain disturbing. Explicit and disturbing.
Le Pont des Arts
And within 15 minutes I was back in the cinema. For a pair of parallel love stories, of sorts. He on the poster is a disillusioned student with an all-too-serious serious girlfriend. She is a classical singer with an amazing voice, an arsehole conductor and a misunderstanding, well-meaning boyf. She is at the end of her tether. She can't handle it anymore. He hears her recordings and pulls his head from the oven. They fall in love. Ish, because she's dead.
Film-making by numbers this one. French film-making by numbers. The entire film was shot direct-to-camera, all speech by all characters spoken to camera, all very nouvelle vague. Our lead fills the role of Jean-Pierre Léaud, the self-substitute used by both Godard and Truffaut, very well—to the point that he looks like him. All very left-bank and outre and gauloises-smoking. And so while holding up the arts as lofty and sacred, it took the piss out of the arts, the arts being run, in this case, by a shady trio of ridiculous, aging, sugar-daddy queens sharing their aspiring art-boy 'stewards'. There was more direct-to-camera business. There was a bunch manifesto-like Godardian philosphy. There was musing and repression and very little expression. There was some humour, there was a lot of very beautiful music. I liked it. In a wanky French trying-too-hard kinda way. And it didn't end with a woman with a cock in her mouth and tears streaming down her face.
Film-making by numbers this one. French film-making by numbers. The entire film was shot direct-to-camera, all speech by all characters spoken to camera, all very nouvelle vague. Our lead fills the role of Jean-Pierre Léaud, the self-substitute used by both Godard and Truffaut, very well—to the point that he looks like him. All very left-bank and outre and gauloises-smoking. And so while holding up the arts as lofty and sacred, it took the piss out of the arts, the arts being run, in this case, by a shady trio of ridiculous, aging, sugar-daddy queens sharing their aspiring art-boy 'stewards'. There was more direct-to-camera business. There was a bunch manifesto-like Godardian philosphy. There was musing and repression and very little expression. There was some humour, there was a lot of very beautiful music. I liked it. In a wanky French trying-too-hard kinda way. And it didn't end with a woman with a cock in her mouth and tears streaming down her face.
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