Favorite films
Don’t forget to select your favorite films!
Don’t forget to select your favorite films!
A visual tone poem and appropriate watch for Carnival season. It’s very much so an artifact of a time when film making allowed the pursuit of broad sensory themes and literary interpretation in lieu of linear plot points or verisimilitude. Also of its time is the exoticization of its subject matter. The broad strokes the director takes with this movie produces a lyrical yet ultimately reductive representation. To be absorbed more than analyzed.
A realistic portrayal of the complexities of abuse presented as a fantastical odyssey. All the men in Bella’s life are exploiting her but few are framed as outright villains. This is because, as so often happens in reality, Bella’s abusers are the people closest to her in life, whom she cares for on some level, or who have something to offer her that makes it worth engaging with them. Watching the film I thought of how often women are questioned…
Hepburn and Grant ooze charm, but on closer inspection their characters are both absolute weirdos. This makes for a deeply satisfying pairing as the two banter their way around would-be assassins, a missing fortune, and mistaken identities. The film’s aesthetic blends dreamy on-site Parisian shots with clever set design, Hepburn’s Givenchy wardrobe serving as an immaculate center piece. I don’t often regret quitting smoking but damn, I’d break off the filters and smoke the pack too if I were in 1960’s Paris rocking a bright red skirt suit with white gloves.