15. NAKED, dir. MIKE LEIGH, 1993
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i saw two catherine breillat pictures last week, THE LAST MISTRESS and then, ROMANCE, for our blog. i now want to see everything breillat has touched.
i loved, loved romance. in a certain sense it seems perhaps a strange film to love, or at least not really a film you could blindly recommend to a passerby as a good one to watch. you'd probably have to really know someone before telling them to rent it. or, maybe going in cold is the only way. i loved the sterility of the scenes in her apartment with her untouchable mate, an early scene in her bathroom and shades of white and the only sound some sort of appliance humming.
let's try this again.
sometimes i feel i could write and write nonsensically about a film i have loved, without ever really being able to get to the heart of why i loved it. i rarely ever know anything about a film before i watch it, so i do not have background information at my disposal in the after-thought write. i half wish i had more to compare my response to, i have no idea if this was a well or poorly received film. however, although i love the idea of criticism, ideas and opinions on paper, i am terrified of reading reviews, i am terrified of my immediate response being shattered. the feeling of pure response (whether or not such a thing really exists) means everything to me, probably / certainly to a fault. i suppose we love things in relation to who and what we are, and to some degree it is impossible to criticize or applaud a film exactly because of this: it means something to us only to the degree in which it resonates with something about 'me', just 'me'. and of course, somehow great films are able to get inside us, all of us, grab something that in some way we all must share. this is getting sappy, and it is not my intent.
romance was sexually explicit, yeah. but the explicitness and the jarringness and what made me feel like i was watching something new and old -- a new expression of an old idea, the best thing -- was not the blatant sexuality but the blatantness of thought, of emotion and presence and detachment. the way the lead character expressed who she was, what it was to want what she wanted. why she did it, why she sought what she sought. the voice over, often only a few words, was for me, probably the most gripping part of the film.
i am still knocked over in thought after only one viewing, and at this point i think i could go on and on and ultimately say not much. proving further breillat's great feat in saying so much, with so few words, only hairs longer than an hour and a half. maybe that was really my intent. poor and ill-conceived written thought to prove the importance of a film. i'll take it.
i've seen naked years ago. i want to see it again. i think romance made me think of it once more.
5 comments:
i am fascinated!
it would have been a great experience to watch this film with you, as our responses to it were obviously totally opposite. your writing here touches on the things you loved about it, though i can tell you have lots more to say... i wish i could have heard it all in real time. i have more to say on my end, too. i think i hated it with the same intensity that you loved it. i can't remember the last time this happened, if ever!
anyhow, these differences are exciting. i hope you feel the same way.
and i'd love to hear how you like 'fat girl.' i still feel it's a great movie, despite my feelings about romance. bleh. :)
oh, and i've never seen 'naked' and am excited to. my film-watching is suffering a little this month, but i'm trying to pick up in the last half.
Naked is a film that is very near and dear to me for many reasons. I saw it during a very important time in my life (three times theatrically in the space of two weeks). I think Johnny is an amazing character, one that is difficult to love (the opening scene takes care of that) but near impossible to not empathize with, at least a little. He’s funny as hell, but as dangerous as a beaten dog.
The whole film feels like a bitter, phlegmatic rant, but also a cry for compassion in this cold, lonely world, a sad song for the people we push away when we get so consumed with trying to figure out the order of things. It would be almost too much to take if it weren’t for the healthy strain of humor.
This is one of those movies whose script is virtually embedded in my brain (my email address & url of my blog come from this film). Revisiting it recently for the first time in a while (after seeing Happy-Go-Lucky, a not dissimilar film), I was amazed at how I remembered almost all of the dialogue and camera set ups, and certainly every note of the score.
juliet:
yeah, that was part of what i was trying to say about the sometimes- uselessness of criticism: "i like it because of who i am" says virtually nothing about it, it says something only about me.
i love that we could each love and hate it.
ps: i'm so sorry we did not get a good screencapture of 'romance' for the header last week. a combination of lateness in the week and disgruntlement. bad excuses both.
will definitely be better about naked.
haha. i was going to ask where all the spliced photos went. but i really like the photo of i fidanzati, thought maybe you guys just wanted it to stand alone for awhile. it works solo, for sure. but i also look forward to seeing the splice-progression, so excited for when it makes its grand return. to have a week or two off will only make me appreciate it more.
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