The Diary of Queen Mothy |
Black Unicorns written @ 2:33 PM on March 10, 2004 So, here's some trivia: what do most French films have in common? Answer: how about a lack of plot, Alex, for five hundred, please? French director Truffaut may have been a pioneer for his time, but goddamn... I can't figure out how I'm going to write a synopsis for most of his films... because one simply doesn't exist. Okay, maybe that's not fair. There is a "theme" to his work, that much is certain. I watched The Wild Child, which is about this, well, wild child French officials find out in the middle of the wilderness. A doctor adopts him and tries to civilize him. Think The Jungle Book meets Helen Keller. One word, kids: Yikes. Then came Small Change. The jury is still out on this one, folks. It's supposed to be yet another film commenting on Truffaut's rough childhood, but, alas, discerning a plot from this entanglement of characters is a rather daunting class. You get the theme, at least, when the school teacher in the story has a monologue at the very end about lost innocence and overcoming childhood trauma and the such. Jules and Jim was just absurd. Two best friends become consumed in their love for this selfish broad. "Selfish" is the word I use. Our two lost heroes, however, use "mystery" and "vision." *If you're really interested there's spoiler ahead, but I don't expect my regular readers to be running off to Blockbuster to nab this one anytime soon...* The broad ends up driving poor Jim off an unfinished bridge (which suddenly appears out of oblivion, it would seem) and drowning him, leaving her daughter and Jules alone in the world to care for each other. I think I'm approaching these films with too much modern practicality, n'est-ce que pas? Then I watched two modern French movies, Est-Ouest and Chocolat. No, not the Chocolat with Johnny Depp that was up for Oscars a few years ago, more like a French colonialism je ne sais quoi set in the Cameroon. Cinematography was excellent, story was lacking, but the characters are interesting enough to engross your attention for an hour and forty-five minutes. This is another one I'm not sure about. Where is our protagonist going? Why does she reflect on her father's governorship in the Cameroon? Honestly, what's Protee's deal? The story is unresolved, but otherwise interesting and cultural. Lastly is Est-Ouest (East-West), which has a few French stars to boast and-- at long last-- a real story. It's set during the last few years of Stalin's reign in "the Mutherlaand" (<-- said with a Russian accent, please) in which a family emigrates to the U.S.S.R. (the husband is from Kiev, the mother and son are French) with the hopes of starting over, only to find they got what they didn't bargain for in this Communist society. The mother, Marie, tries to scheme her escape from this country a la Not Without My Daughter (which I think stars Sally Fields???). This movie has the Sam Stamp of Approval. Not bad. There. Now that I slashed some French classics, I will say this about my time on the couch watching the tube: 1) my French has improved substantially, and I discovered I understood more than I thought after two years of being out of the cirque de francais; 2) French films are full of "beautiful moments," which is almost enough for me to forgive them for not having strong-standing plotlines; and 3) I still have no idea how I'm going to present all this information to my film class without wincing. C'est la vie. *** Speaking of wincing, I've had experiences with two blasts from the past. Christine and I met up with an old chum from the nineth grade who was involved with theater, Sarah. She didn't like me back then, but, hell, who did? The first thing she said to me when Christine and I went to pick her up was, "Hey! It's the frog!" So at least she remembered me from the days we performed the skit Fish Is Fish for the preschoolers (yes, I was the frog. Consult the newspaper archives for the picture). As for me, I remembered her being a little rough around the edges in the nineth grade, the only year I knew her, but she was smart and she had spirit. Now she's a felon. To each his own, right? I believe the song "Friends In Low Places" applies here, and my variety of aquaintances since entering college has expanded both up and down. Ahhh, that's the magic of college though, eh? Sarah is still very smart and very spirited-- that much hasn't changed-- and I'm not going to cast the first stone. Come to think of it, Christine's old beau Chuck was the first felon I ever met. I think I'll pause and muse on that for a moment . . . Okay, I'm done. The second blast from the past came not an hour ago when I received an e-mail from an old school-- and I do mean "old school"-- chum, Melanie. Melanie goes as far back as Daisy Girl Scouts and the first grade-- all when I lived in Pittsburgh what seems a century ago. Mmm, Daisy Girl Scouts. Hell hath no fury like flower power, and Melanie was exactly that. I had my first slumber party with her, when we bonded over popcorn and Dr. Mario for regular Nintendo. We fought like cats, too, and I remember she once lectured me about sharing private property, i.e. crayons, in the second grade. Another fight entailed how I came to school one day with Little Mermaid and Minnie Mouse bangle bracelets, and all day I played with them because I liked the way they looked on my wrist. She scowled at me all day about how I "wasn't cool." Years later I realized she probably wanted my bracelets. I also realized she was part of the reason why I was a closet introvert until the tenth grade, when I stopped giving a damn. Otherwise, we were friends. And the fights that we had were because she was smarter than me and because we were too alike. Her e-mail was strange. She included a bunch of "omg" and "!!!" for my eyes' reading displeasure, and then she went on about how everything my friend Lisa said was wrong. Lisa was my best friend in the first and second grade before I moved, and we regained contact last year. I think Lisa ended up showing a bunch of our e-mails and correspondances to Melanie, in which we discussed Melanie and Suzy and Amanda and a slew of other people. And it may have rubbed Melanie the wrong way. Boy, talk about grudges from elementary school, eh? They are all coming out of the woodworks trying to figure out "whatever happened to Sam." I expect my old fundamentalist next door neighbors will be e-mailing me one of these days (the ones that believed He-man was a bad guy and Halloween was the devil's birthday), telling me Travis went to prison, Matthew a missionary, and Seth a disgruntled drug dealer. Actually, I don't think Seth and Matt are either of those things. But I would wager good money that Travis is in prison now. Travis once beat me with a CandyLand board game when I was three or four years old, and as the years went on, I recognized very young he was not on a bright sun-shiny path to righteousness. Listen to me go on like this! Right before we moved to New Jersey after the second grade in 1992, my next door neighbors had my brother and me over for a special surprise. They gave us going-away presents. Knowing how I loved unicorns so much, they gave me a beautiful ceramic black unicorn posed on a sand dune. Their mother, well meaning and sweet though she was, looked at me with a frown even as my eyes lit up in delight and said, "We knew it was perfect for you, but we apologize... Black is the color of the devil, but the others were simply too much money." I think I muttered, "It's okay," and feigned humility and gratefulness for her efforts to please my childhood wonder. I looked into the lilac-painted eyes of my little ceramic unicorn and, black or not, I saw no malice or evil devil.
A Bit of History ~ And Onward! L'Amour Toujours! - August 08, 2005 |
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