Here's More Random Stuff; Or, I Suck at Titling Blog Posts

Windows on Monday (Ulrich Kohler, 2006)
Decidedly desultory, and sometimes vaguely quirky to the point of evoking Tati more than Hong, but no matter: it continues to grow in the memory, and contains the single most inspired take I’ve seen all year, a sort of inversion of The Wayward Cloud’s bittersweet reconciliation that is hilariously audacious in its blunt, albeit measured pessimism. I initially found star Isabelle Menke (pictured above, on the left) a bit of a blank, but Kohler unleashes her when necessary, and I can’t think of another movie character whose personality so closely mirrors my ex’s.

Light is Waiting (Michael Robinson, 2007)
Good for a laugh, but so is this. Being engaged with a text and being able to fashion grotesque abstraction out of it are not the same thing, and Robinson doesn’t even strike me as particularly aware of the little that Full House has going for it formally.

The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941)
The poster gives away the best bit, in which Fonda and Stanwyck, huddled closely together, flirt in a way that suggests the possibility of genuine aversion. I guess I buy Stanwyck’s series of internal transformations, but there’s a big contradiction between that degree of internal conflict and her extroverted personality that isn’t quite fully explored, in my view.

Haut les coeurs! (Solveig Anspach, 1999)
Anspach is obviously a born filmmaker, utterly committed to concision, contrast, and structure, and an unerring sense of where to put the camera and how to end a scene. Characterizations are almost too intelligently drawn: one doctor is admirable without being nice, another nice without appearing adequately sensitive. More impressive is Anspach’s control of atmosphere, which gives the impression of a world that is basically ideal—contented, yet sensitive—but oppressive to her protagonist anyway.

A Cry in the Dark (Fred Schepisi, 1988)
I will never forgive my Australian Cinema class for choosing to watch this instead of Sirens, but concede that they may never forgive me for giggling at Streep’s misery.

High Heels (Pedro Almodovar, 1991)
Barely remember anything about this a mere few days later—the melodrama is more theoretically “subversive” than finely tuned, a recurring problem with Almodovar—although Letal’s initial seduction of Rebecca is unassuming sexual confusion at its finest.

The House of Mirth (Edith Wharton, 1905)
Impressionistic in a way that doesn’t intensify emotion so much as particularize it, which works for me. Wharton’s worldview is like Austen + malice, tortured rather than bothered by a learned preoccupation with luxury. That said, her mastery is to never fully embrace contempt: character descriptions bordering on hateful are tempered by behavior anything but.

Nick Drake – Bryter Layter (1970)
I had trouble consistently enjoying Drake when I first started listening to his work, but in retrospect the problem was one of distinguishing between the Five Leaves Left period and this album, which now seems to represent a big leap forward in songwriting. I read somewhere that legendarily shy Drake was in awe of John Cale’s work on his records, which baffles me, since I hold Drake in much higher esteem than Cale. I would, however, be curious to have seen what Drake’s face looked like upon watching Richard Thompson play guitar on “Hazy Jane II.”