Watched them 2 or 3 years ago.
puts the Basque (and I think Navarre in this instance) areas in a very dark and pagan light.
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Lots of rain and overcast weather, not at all how Spain is usually pictured, but is very much in keeping with the gloomy plot.
When I went around Spain in 2016…we thawed out as we hit Barcelona to start the circle…warm in Barcelona, stinking hot in Valencia, Granada, Sevilla and Córdoba (40+)…milder in Toledo, Madrid and Segovia…started to rain in Santiago de Compostela, through Galicia and across the north coast…the rias, Oviedo, Santander, Bilbao, San Sebastian and Pamplona…it urinated down…finally stopped as we left Pamplona and returned to Barcelona. Then went onto 5 days in London and it was mild there. Returned home for the Bulldogs GF.
Couldn’t go out in Santander or San Sebastian, rain was so prevalent.
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In Melbourne for a couple of days, so headed up to the Kino for The Teacher Who Promised The Sea.
Arianna is a 30-ish pregnant woman from Barcelona who receives a letter confirming her grandfather’s request that the site where his executed father was buried (along with more than 100 others) during the Civil War 75 years before, is being excavated. She goes along and meets a very old man who knew grandpa at school. Unfortunately grandpa is suffering from strokes and not long for this world, so she wants them to get their skates on.
The village school is tiny…about a dozen kids…and he teaches in a very humanist fashion, raising the ire of the parish priest, and a ■■■■■■■ evil ■■■■■■ he is. This village is hundreds of k’s from the coast and he wants to take the kids to see the sea.
Wonderful, superb movie.
They’re running out of time for these movies, because there’d hardly be anybody left who was old enough to remember the war in a meaningful way.
In Spanish and a little bit of Catalan. True story with the actual class photo.
Saw that Iris and the Men is on too, with Laure Calamy. Made by the same people who made her movies, Antoinette in the Cévennes. So i’ll be making time for that one too.
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Melbourne band Surprise Chef will play live music for a screening of the 1971 cult classic Wake in Fright at Hamer Hall tomorrow night (16 August). Sounds awesome!
Was wondering what do before meeting old schoolmates for lunch, and saw Iris and the Men had a 10.20 session. Tons of time.
Iris is a forty-something year old dentist in Paris and the 16-year marriage is getting stale. No porkage for 4 years. Her husband is full time with work and the two daughters, and someone suggests a dating app for marrieds.
She makes a few assignations successfully until a family lunch where her views seem to have changed and suspicion takes hold.
Very light film, that the French do so well and so naturally, compared with Hollywood.
Laure Calamy is a delight as usual and a musical number of It’s Raining Men (in French) goes well.
Not as good as yesterday’s film, but still very watchable.
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Wow. Great band and a great movie. What a ■■■■■■■ combo!
The Beasts.
This decent foreign film popped up on iPlayer (BBC) recently. Also available on Prime I noticed so should be gettable elsewhere e.g. SBS. Anyway, it’s a decent Spanish (Galican) / French number with English subtitles art-housey drama… Quite long but suddenly you’re halfway in and totally committed.
Based roughly on a true story involving a dutch family, its set in that NW corner of Spain, covering tensions with incoming neighbours and the locals. French v Galicians isn’t often thought of as a combat mix… but such scenarios these days and over the many years and centuries within western European countries is all too common. Outside of wars, think more recent Dutch, British and Germans all increasingly snapping up old homes to restore and live or sell in the countrysides of Spain, Portugal and Italy. Not always welcome.
Recommended.
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Just rewatched Full Time (À Plein Temps) on SBS.
Julie (Laure Calamy) is a divorced mother of two who’s lost her job in marketing and is working as the head chambermaid in a swish Paris hotel. She’s trying to get back into her old field but France is crippled by strikes and she lives on the very outskirts of Paris.
She’s cutting corners in her job and trying to get out to job interviews. Her ex is not paying his child support, so she’s really skint. The seppos subtitled it so it’s all Mom and Alimony. An old neighbour is minding her two young children, but that’s putting a massive strain on her.
Calamy is always excellent after her starring, but lesser, role in Call My Agent.
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Dropping “The Outrun” also in here … a very recently released BBC / Film Scotland film. It may go straight to streaming but if it gets over there and preferably on a Palace theatre type venue, its worth watching on a bigger screen. With black skivvy on, why not.
Set largely in the rugged Orkney Isles and London, based on Amy Liptrot’s memoir. Gritty and at times hard to watch. But I love the natural raw power layered onto raw human struggle. Thats life often enough. Probably part of being an old Bomber fan. He says …
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Having recently returned from a tour of the Greek Islands that visited some of the places Odysseus visited during his 10-year long voyage home to Ithaca, where he was king, after the 10-year long Trojan war, I went with a few others from the tour group to watch The Return, which is playing at Palace Cinemas as part of the British Film Festival. Ralph Fiennes plays Odysseus, Juliet Binoche plays his extraordinarily patient and faithful wife Penelope, and somebody Plummer plays Telemachus, the son of Odysseus born after O had left for the war. Odysseus is shipwrecked off the coast of Ithaca and washes up on the shore naked, unarmed and alone. Ithaca is a mess. Penelope is surrounded by a pack of fortune hunters who are trying to convince her that Odysseus is dead and that she should marry one of them, and in the meantime they are living lives of luxury at the expense of Odysseus and the people of Ithaca. The suitors would all kill Odysseus if they knew he had returned, so O’s problem is to convince people, including Penelope and his son, that he really is the returned king, and get himself in a position where he can get rid of the suitors and reclaim his throne.
Not a great movie, but I enjoyed it because I have been living the Odyssey for a couple of months. I didn’t think Ralph Fiennes really convinced, but Juliet Binoche looked stunning all in black and every inch a queen. Young Plummer (apparently not the son of Christopher) was too soft and floppy for Telemachus. Some of the shots of Ithaca were stunning. 7 out of 10.
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I haven’t and I probably won’t. It looks great, but very much for Ithacans.
It was my favourite of the islands. We saw Crete, Kefalonia, Ithaca and Corfu. Also some of the mainland.
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There was a series recently on SBS (might still be there) about Odysseus’s return to Ithaca based on geographic descriptions.
They decided that Ithaca was actually a nearby island. People from Ithaca were definitely not happy with the conclusions.
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I heard about that argument. There are arguments about everything, including whether there ever was a Homer and whether there ever was a Trojan war. The argument in that case is whether Odysseus (assuming he existed at all) really was from Ithaca or Kefalonia, which is very close and considerably larger. The argument that it was Kefalonia is a minority opinion.
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The Fig Tree by Arnold Zable, the Melbourne connection with Ithaca ( I knew some of the people).
He was my tutor in first year politics at Melbourne in 1969. Very much the young firebrand.