Lust, Caution managed to be intense and boring simultaneously, like a loathsome Spielberg drama. Too pedestrian for Pedestrian Saga. The student resistance troupe wasn’t compelling enough. The ending was disappointing. And all that wasted Tony Leung sexual tension (and, ehm, release) simply left me in the mood for In the Mood for Love again.
***
Coming soon: any and all Tony Leung gigs not directed by Ang Lee
La commare secca (The Grim Reaper) was Bernardo Bertolucci’s directorial debut (at 21 years old, the upstart). Pasolini (a mentor) wrote the film but then went to work on Mamma Roma, so Bertolucci was hired to direct instead.
It’s a murder mystery unraveled via slice-of-life stories of the various Roman proles who passed through the park adjacent to the scene of the crime. Each segment begins with a police interrogation and a flashback to the beginning of the day, and is marked by a sudden afternoon downpour. In between these episodes are glimpses of the victim moving gently around her room during that storm, preparing for her night’s work. Bertolucci claims he hadn’t yet seen Rashomon (1950), but I’m not convinced. Maybe Pasolini was influenced by the famous Kurosawa film?
La commare secca is very easy on the eyes and by far my favorite of Bertolucci’s films.* Beautiful faces and some terrific moments of melodrama—just engrossing. Fascinating Italian dialects too! And I love the strange and striking six-tays dance scene at the climax. Feels like I’d seen it before. Ditto the scene with the kids dancing to a record player in the apartment.
Criterion + my public library = big love
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From here:
*Last Tango in Paris—traumatizing; the four hours of 1900—forgettable, apparently; The Last Emperor and Little Buddha—I don’t remember much about them either (totally overshadowed by Scorsese’s Kundun in my mind); Stealing Beauty—gag me with a spoon; The Dreamers—just not interested…
While I harbor no particularly negative feelings toward Wings, Jefferson Airplane, or Jerry Garcia, I so agree with the thesis of this polemic against the month of August: It consistently sucks. Decimate it! Diminish it! Down with August!*
It sure is swell to collect some external validation for my intense, long-standing, and mostly irrational personal prejudice against the month.
August is for me the anxiety and indigestion that ushered in a new school year and its attendant social insecurities. Later I graduated to paralyzing fears of academic and professional failure.
August is about Type A dysfunction, exacerbated by oppressively hot, restless nights.
I’ll never be ready for August. August means premature endings. People leave in August and never return. Marriages dissolve beyond repair in August. August is when my little sister drove that damn hand-me-down car all the way up to the Great Library in the Sky.
And there in the middle of this miserable month is the most uncomfortable day of the year. For as many birthdays as I can remember, I’ve choked on feelings of inadequacy and despair, or mild embarrassment in the best of times. Martha Stewart’s calendar indeed offers little consolation to someone prone to bathetic metaphorical thinking:
“If it rains, organize basement.”
*Hat tip to the Librarians’ Internet Index for unearthing the 2001 Slate column.