I saw two great foreign films this week. I'm really sleepy right now, but I want to write a bit about them, in case, you know, no one reads this.
Friday was the day after one of my cousin's birthday, and we planned to watch the new Wes Anderson movie. The audience was seated and the movie began--but it was the wrong movie! It was the new Adam Sandler movie! So we left and got our money back since there wasn't much we felt like watching. I must admit I did want to see A Very Long Engagement but then I didn't think it would be something she'd want to watch. So we rented.
She'd never seen There's Something About Mary so she rented that one. I too felt like seeing it, for since I'd last seen it I've found out that the guy who keeps singing throughout the movie is none other than Jonathan Richman. I wanted to rent Run Lola Run a.k.a. Lola Rennt because I've recently developed a crush on Franka Potente.
While the title of this entry is an ironic statement, one I might make with just the right hint of indignation in my tone to convey hip I am, I do love 'independent' and foreign films, and not because it's cool to do so. Thus I suppose it's taken quite a while for me to see Lola, given that it came out in '98. So let me hide behind the fact that it is quite difficult to find new foreign and 'independent' movies in the Philippines, which is precisely where I am not right now on account of my trying to get a good college education and while I am now in a place where such movies prove to be easy acquisitions, I am also broke.
Run Lola Run is a German film written and directed (and scored, I might add) by Tom Tykwer, then the boyfriend of the star of the film, Franka Potente. The plot is simple: Lola must obtain and deliver 100,000 Deutschemarks to her boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu) in twenty minutes, hence all that running. The whole movie looks like one whole techno music video but is also nice study on destiny and the ramifications of the little things that happen--things we do or fail to do, perhaps--as we approach that destiny. I had on good authority for almost a year now that it was a great movie, and boy, was it ever.
This is stuff I've thought about for a while now and thought I was just being paranoid or something, you know, like if I decided not to type this tonight and wait till morning. But it needn't be that momentous an event. When I decide to take a swig from the bottle of water that is next to my computer or even when I decide to blink my eyes--even those tiny things may influence the future. Is that called the butterfly effect? I may have to check that movie out too, but it looks so crappy.
I did get around to seeing A Very Long Engagement. Just came home from it tonight with my sister. It is a great movie, very touching. It's directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and stars Audrey Tautou, whom he also directed in Amelie. A wonderful love story, that's all.
The title to me sounds like the movie could be an old French comedy, which it isn't (although it would be considered a comedy in the classical sense that the Dantean trilogy is a comedy). Beautiful locations, nicely shot, in my opinion. Very French, very, very lovely.
I wonder if Jeunet and Tautou are a couple? It may very well be so. There are many examples of directors coupling with their leading ladies, like Tykwer and Potente, as well as Luc Besson and Milla Jovovich. I suppose the directors do get very close to the actors during filming and there will be mutual admiration, especially if they are making a great film. Then there is also something like that which goes on between Uma Thurman and Quentin Tarantino, where Tarantino seems to be in love with Thurman in a non-sexual way, as if he worships her like a goddess (and what man wouldn't?). It really shouldn't matter as long as they make great films, but for some reason it interests me.
Incidentally both Potente and Jovovich sport bright-red hair in Lola and The Fifth Element, respectively. Why is bright-red hair so hot?
No comments:
Post a Comment