Fascinating day planned, with films from Singapore, India, China and South Korea and brunch at Café Français. It all kicked off at 11am with Ilo Ilo directed by Anthony Chen - his debut work, which was released this year at Cannes as part of the Directors Fortnight and came away with the Camera d'Or award - the first time a film from Singapore has won anything at the Cannes Film Festival - an amazing achievement and an absolute gem. Pitch perfect performances from everyone. The film rolls out effortlessly and is just wonderful to watch - a poignant story about a Singaporean family who employ a maid from the Philippines amid the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis.
A general stampede then round to Café Français. A beautiful Chinese buffet. Absolutely gorgeous, with wines as usual generously supplied by local producers. Café Français is our local live gig venue. It's just great. Small but perfectly formed. So a bit of a scrum inside but it worked superbly well, everyone sharing tables and chatting together often for the first time.
Back into the cinema for The Lunchbox - an Indian film directed by Ritesh Batra. Just superb. A simple concept, but with a complexity of outcomes, class conflicts and the loneliness that comes from an unhappy marriage, as well as after the loss of a partner. All these threads are linked to a lunchbox service. Bombay/Mumbai - thousands of lunchboxes (dabbas ) either prepared by wives at home or ordered from an eaterie somewhere in the city are delivered to workers at their offices. The charm of the film also came from the imagery - the bustling life and sound of Mumbai. The lunchboxes are collected by men on bicycles, either from the home or the eaterie. Each man collects at least thirty boxes (see photo left) which are a series of circular metal containers, staked on top of each other and held in place by what is effectively a metal strap, inside an individual covering and marked up with its destination. The boxes are taken to the station, loaded on to large metal containers, the deliverers go as well. Everyone and thing is put on to a train, then offloaded and taken to their various destinations. The film develops the story around what happens when a lunchbox is delivered to the wrong person. It's a bit like 84 Charing Cross road, except this time the link is food rather than books. The young married woman cooking the lunchbox contents and the man it is mistakenly delivered to, who is on the point of retiring, start writing to each other. A very gentle film, but superbly done.
A Touch of Sin - a Chinese crime drama directed by Jia Zhangke - had some terrific performances. It was an indictment of contemporary Chinese society - brutal, ruthlessly corrupt, increasingly violent - and allegedly based on true events from the recent past. Grim and very very graphic. The idea was an interesting one. Four different stories, of four different individuals, from different social backgrounds and regions in modern-day China. We were left wondering how it ever got passed the government censors. Somehow it did and was also nominated for the Palm D'or at this year's Cannes Film Festival. By the end of it, we'd had enough films for the day, so decided to skip the fourth one.
The fourth film The Host from South Korea, directed by Bong Joon-ho was a blockbluster plot mixed with political commentary, with some reference by all accounts of the American presence in Korea. Set in Seoul, American military types are seen dumping chemicals in the river at the beginning of the film, then some years later a monster arrives out of the river and attacks the local community. A huge success in S.K. it also won a series of top Asian film awards. A really interesting day of programming and like all the best festivals, gave us a chance to see stuff, liked or not, which would otherwise be unavailable.
The Seven Samurai - this time the long version, which at three hours thirty is a reasonable description - including an interval. It was followed by a discussion led by Charles Tesson, a French cinema specialist involved with the Cannes Film Festival. The idea had been to go the two films showing yesterday, but in the end the brain had had enough, so decided not to stay. Instead we spent time thinking and chatting about this fifty-nine year old wonder, that we'd once again been totally absorbed by. We do have it on DVD - the short version obviously - but hadn't watched it for some time.
The film we missed Tel Père, Tel Fils (Like Father Like Son), is a Japanese film - by all accounts superb - about a very successful architect, his wife and their six year old son Keita. They discover that after the birth, their baby was somehow swapped with another and that Keita isn't really theirs. The other couple involved live in vastly different circumstances - a very poor suburb - with three children, including six year old Ryusei. The couples meet, get to know each other and try to find a way to repare the situation. It's a film about family life in Japan, blood ties but also where love lies. We'll see if it's available on DVD.
As for The Seven Samurai - we've seen it at the most three or four times and always on TV - not the best place really, but usually the only option. Yesterday we saw it on the big screen for the first time. Fabulous. We were reminded just what a clever decision someone made to develop the idea as a western, and how much the success of The Magnificent Seven/Les Sept Mercenaires owes to director Akira Kurosawa. It's obviously not an exact copy, but it contains many ideas that appear in the original version. I love them both.
There was lots to discuss afterward. However not being overly familiar with the names of the Japanese characters, the conversation was simplified by calling them by their American counterparts. Outrageous behaviour may be, but it was practical. Mind you not all the characters are the same. For example, in The Seven Samurai, 'Kikuchiyo' played by Toshiro Mifune combines many of the traits found in 'Chico'/Horst Buckholz and 'Bernardo'/Charles Bronson. But he also brings a lot of Kabuki into the role, so it's very big character in sound as well as action. 'Kyuzo' played by Seiji Miyaguchi provides a blue print for James Coburn's Britt. Superb performances from both. Physically they look very similar, they each achieve the inner quiet that the character demands and move with ruthless elegance. 'Kanbe Shimada' (Chris), is played to perfection by Takashi Simura. A truly fabulous film actor. He was one of Kurosawa's favourite actors to work with as was Toshiro Mifune. They appeared in a lot of his films.
There's so much to admire in this film - direction and camera work, script, settings, lighting, all the performances. Ultimately, The Seven Samurai says plenty about our society and world, albeit nearly 6 decades on. The medium on this occasion is truly the message.
The Land of Hope is a fictional drama about the struggle to survive, after an earthquake causes the reactor at the nearby nuclear power plant to explode. Our own nuclear power station at Avoine is only about 19k away, so the film held some resonances for local audiences.
The Ono family consisting of two elderly parents (the mother has dementia), son and daughter-in-law, who are at the heart of the story, own, run and live on a small farm, primarily dairy, with a herd of about sixty cows. Some vegetables are also grown. The explosion presents a terrible dilemma for the parents, who remembering a earlier disaster, have to decide whether or not to stay and risk radiation poisoning or leave the family home and garden that several generations have spent building.
Whilst the story in the film is fictional, the family memories and the subsequent response to the situation as it develops is based on real events at Fukushima in 2011. The father Yasuhiko forces his son to leave home with his wife, for their own safety. leaving the father and his wife Chieko in total isolation, as all the other neighbours have by now been evacuated. The Land of Hope was
at times deeply moving, mainly because of the fabulous performances by
Naoko Otani and Isai Natsuyagi as the elderly parents. They just broke your heart with their devotion and love for each other and their determination to stay in the family home.
A double bill brought us into contact with a perspective on contemporary city life in China, and a parallel lifestyle which exists still, but is a seemingly archaic world in the mountains of Yunnan. Seemingly, because Yunnan is regarded as the most biologically as well as culturally diverse region in Chinon. Juxtaposition can be an interesting and useful tool. Both had French subtitles.
The first presentation, Mystery, is a 2013 film highlighting the burgeoning comfort of the young middle-classes against a seedier backdrop of city life, hidden behind a facade of acceptability. A class-ridden and complex drama, the director Lou Ye combines flashback with actual time to explore not only the tension between traditional mores and contemporary attitudes, but the lengths an individual is prepared to go to, to achieve self-gratification and avoid being caught in the process, regardless of the cost to others. Issues that are more often discussed in terms of 'western decadence', whereas in reality, they have as much to do with Peking and Moscow, as Washington and London. The film certainly lived up to its name. The story went off in all sorts of directions and because if the clever use of time, kept you wondering till the end.
After a short break we were back to see Les Trois Soeurs du Yunnan. Another Chinese film, directed by Wang Bing - love this name. It's a fly-on-the-wall documentary, which follows the daily life of three sisters aged four, six and ten. Their mother has abandoned them, their father works away in the city to try to earn enough money, only returning occasionally. They are 'looked' after by others in the village, referred to as aunts and uncles, although that is a term of respect rather than the description of family connection.The only dialogue is what occurs naturally among the people in the village. The conditions are tough and very very basic. At two hours thirty it was a long introduction to a way of life, that by all accounts even the Chinese aren't aware still exists. It wasn't comfortable viewing and life for the children is already mapped out as the generations before them. The future is to survive. The children sleep and work in the same clothes. Their shared bed is on damp straw with unwashed covers. They are lice ridden. Washing, means hands and feet which are mud covered, because shoes and boots are worn out and leak. A sharp cultural shock and a life-style that bears no relation to anything we know or have experienced. Yet amid the projected squalor you'll find mobiles and a televison. At a certain level, technology knows no bounds, but there remains an overwhelming sense of loneliness.
L'Image Manquante - The Missing Picture is a remarkable piece of work, focussing on the aftermath of the genocidal rule in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge, 1975 - 1979. It won a top prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival.The director and screenwriter Rithy Panh, was born in the capital Phnom Penh in 1964. His family were expelled from the city and held in a labour camp in a remote and rural part of the country. One by one Panh's father, mother, sisters and nephews died from overwork, exhaustion and starvation. He himself escaped to Thailand in 1979 and for a while was held in a refugee camp, before finally arriving in Paris. Initially training as a carpenter, he was given a video camera to try at a party. He was hooked and film became his passion, in particular the documentary, for which he is internationally renowned.
Panh was able to approach The Missing Picture from an authoritative standpoint, driven by his search for a specific image taken by the Khmer Rouge. Here's his synopsis of the film:
"For many years, I have been looking for the missing picture: a
photograph taken between 1975 and 1979 by the Khmer Rouge when they
ruled over Cambodia...On its own, of course, an image cannot prove mass
murder, but it gives us cause for thought, prompts us to meditate, to
record History. I searched for it vainly in the archives, in old papers,
in the country villages of Cambodia. Today I know: this image must be
missing. I was not really looking for it; would it not be obscene and
insignificant? So I created it. What I give you today is neither the
picture nor the search for a unique image, but the picture of a quest:
the quest that cinema allows".
How to film such a story and convey the cruelty and the grotesqueness of everything that happened and still hold on to your audience? The technique Panh adopted was to move the camera while everything else remained static. The only sound was his calm and gentle voice explaining the story with the occasional sound effect of rain. Hundreds of small clay figures were carefully crafted and painted. Each was completely different. Not just boy and girl, man and woman, but each figure showed an emotion through body language, movement and facial expression, in order to capture a particular moment, even death. The Cambodian landscape was also constructed in this way, with forests and fields, labour camps, stone quarry pits, all built to scale. It's a similar technique use in the Wallace and Gromit films. A labour intensive and time consuming process. We saw images of Panh's team at work as the credits rolled. They were all in one very large space, combining workshop and filming area. There was a table on top of which was a large box- the set - with the essential filming equipment all around. The hand-made figures were placed, repositioned, removed to create different images, while the camera panned across the scene. From time to time real film from the regime years was interspersed with Panh's story. An extensive re-education programme, particularly for the hierarchical/academic and culturally active communities was put into place, with devastating results. Panh's family were part of this.
We have a Cambodian family within one of our Anglo-French groups. The parents, as they are now, were as very young children caught up in the Khmer Rouge period, escaping into the forests with their families and managing somehow to survive and ultimately to leave the country as refugees before finally arriving in France. The things that happened and the things they saw, left them unable to speak for some years. Now of course things are different for them, but the memories of that experience will never go away.
That's the title of this year's Chinon Film Festival. Starts tomorrow and runs every day up to and including Monday 30 September. They are for the most part art house films, the most famous being The Seven Samurai which until now we've only ever seen on a DVD, at home. Really looking forward to it. Can't believe it's nearly sixty years old - 1954. The John Sturgess western-style remake, The Magnificent Seven which I also love is itself fifty three years old. They are at least for me, two classic films that remain timeless and which I know by heart - frame by frame.
The music for T.M.S. was composed by I think, one of the best ever - Elmer Bernstein. No relation to Leonard Bernstein. His other popular works include To Kill A Mockingbird, Ghostbusters and The Great Escape. An extraordinary individual who performed professionally as a dancer and an actor, including playing the role of Caliban in The Tempest on Broadway. Elmer Bernstein was also a painter and as if that wasn't enough, was awarded a scholarship to Juillard for the piano. Talk about multi-talented. While at Juillard he was taken to meet Aaron Copeland for whom he played some of his improvisations. One of my all time important and favourite musical moments was at the Royal Albert Hall with the National Youth Orchestra playing Billy the Kid and being conducted by the composer - Aaron Copeland. Can't remember what year, but I remember the concert very clearly. Stunning. Both men could interpret vast landscapes as well as intimate moments, as in the music here - the theme tune for To Kill A Mockingbird, conducted by Elmer Bernstein and played by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.
As for Extreme Orient, it's into the deep-end to watch films from Japan, South Korea, India, Singapore, France/Combodia and China. All will be sub-titled in French. Most have been released this year. There is one that was made in 1996, but the oldest film to be shown comes from Japan and was made in 1936 - Le Fils Unique. An interesting time for a film to be made, particularly one that focusses on the family and the tensions between tradition and modernity.
There's a key-note speaker from the Cannes Film Festival - a critic and a cinema historian - a slightly older and possibly a more academic version of our own Mark Kermode. We'll see. Fontevraud are partnering the film festival this year and each of the main features is preceeded by an animation, which is something Fontevraud began to specialise in a few year ago.
So an exciting week ahead.
Here's a first. The Venezuelan government has seized a toilet paper (t.p.) making factory. An official spokesperson announced that due to 'troublesome shortages', '. . .the temporary occupation of Manpa (Manufactora de Papel) is aimed at
verifying that toilet paper industry production, marketing and
distribution" are all in line with state policies'. Does the UK have such a thing? Something which, perhaps like our constitution, has never been entirely committed to . . . paper.
How to translate Venezuela's latest statement? Is there meaningful shorthand at work e.g. troublesome = plumbing problems? I've never realised toilet paper needed a state policy. And what is it? Two sheets per person perhaps, multiplied by average/stipulated no of visits and for a certain no of days? Why the shortage? There's only one really obvious use for t.p. And it's certainly not origami. Which is why in this house - the official residence of the origami chef - we are not t.p. hoarders. But it raises some interesting questions. What are the mathematics and commercial implications to achieving the most effective roll? If there aren't, should there be 'His and Hers'
sizes, t.p. for singles, en couple? The most important thing about rolls of t.p. is that they are as just as disappointing as those wine boxes. Which is shorthand for - they never last as long as you think they should.
I did catch myself saying 'Well I never' when I was out in the garden yesterday, carefully cutting the roses back. There was a hedgehog which had got itself jammed in at the base of one of the plants. It wasn't very well hidden and to begin with I thought it was injured. I had heavy gardening gloves on so very gently touched it. Clearly alive but only the slightest movement. I did as much as I could around it, but then needed to move him or her.
Apparently it is easy to sex a hedgehog. However they need to be co-operative and you need to know what to look for. Mine wasn't and I didn't. According to Hedgehog World, a simple glance at the underbelly of a hedgehog will reveal all. The link provides full details. Anyway I took him/her across to a more sheltered part of the garden, then carried on with what I'd been doing. I went back later on to check but the hedgehog had wandered off. So there was nothing wrong with it. Such a sweet creature.
For some reason the idea of recipes for hedgehogs popped into my head. Apparently the 'domestic goddess' of prehistoric times would be adept at roast hedgehog, with barley bread on the side and a little bit of nettle pudding for dessert. The link also has the details for a rather unpleasant sounding recipe called 'Road Kill Carbonara' (serves four). Would I eat this. If there was absolutely no other option. I once made the mistake of roasting a chicken using a recipe called Chicken Stanley - I couldn't eat. Far too personal. I have eaten roast porcupine (quill-free) in South Africa. From what I can remember, the taste was slightly gamey. Visual similarities there may be, but otherwise porcupines and hedgehogs aren't in any way related, although it would be rather fun if they were. Although I am not a Telegraph fan, it has at least listed some proper recipes for the wonderful hedgehog. Unlike Hedgehog crisps. What heartless git came up with that notion.
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