Water Lilies

[fish]

Louise Balchère's new Facebook profile pic.


This is really a "super-slo-mo movie".
If you stare at it for three hours you can actually see what she wipes from her nose.

[DMt.]

Step away from the skunk...step away from the zombie skunk...

Hmmm...Louise in a darkroom or something? Those clips and lines for the pics look sort of pro. "I'm Watching YOU", says one.

You know what, Louise was no less brave to play Anne, than Pauline was to play Marie; and she too completely inhabited the character, in the same courageous and whole-hearted way.

[fish]

And she still seems very involved in the business too.
If I can find some time I'll have to investigate a bit more.

[Cheevers4ever]

Is this a better apple [FA/SML] than that sour cherry [NdP/WL]?

Or; FA/SML is Spring, NdP/WL is a hot Summer...

I have just spent half-an-hour producing a very detailed irritable response to Cheevers question, which the pHP technology timed out and chewed up when I attempted to post. Actually I'm glad. I think Dave's point sums up it very succinctly for me, although I remain uncommitted to choosing one over the other.

I never got the Whole Water Lilies love on here, I can see thats its the nearest film we got to a Fucking Amal since that films release and the leads are every bit as cute. But i found it took itself way way too serious and is so terribly French. Fucking Amal had heart and has the better performances.

[DMt.]

These are totally subjective matters, Cheev, so one can only really say, "For Me Fucking Amal had heart and has the better performances."

After that, it boils down to natural affinity. I really like FA/SML, but NdP [and especially Pauline] got rather further under my skin. Someone else, of course, may have a completely different reaction, or even be left quite cold.

[snaps]

I never got the Whole Water Lilies love on here, I can see thats its the nearest film we got to a Fucking Amal since that films release and the leads are every bit as cute. But i found it took itself way way too serious and is so terribly French. Fucking Amal had heart and has the better performances.

Ima sorry you feel that way Cheevers.

I really don't want go over my exposition again. Ultimately I don't see what point it serves There are as many points of dissimilarity as there are points of comparison. But, I agree they do occupy common turf. But so does ''Kamikaze Girls'' and that is a totally different (Japanese) culture. You say NdP is 'so terribly French.' I totally agree. But then FA is so TERRIBLY Swedish. That's what endeared it to its home audience. Poking fun at liberal Swedish sensibilities, especially when they are hypocritical, best summed up in Mama Karin's attitude i.e. I fully support gay culture, just so long as it's not MY daughter.

I think NdP/WL DID break important new ground, in dispensing TOTALLY with the adult/family perspective.

Just as FA, no doubt influenced Celine's thinking, I have recently re-evaluated Nordzee Texas, which does bear repeated watchings. Undoubtedly influenced by NdP it presents the story PURELY from the perspective of the protagonists.

I'm sorry to be contentious , but you say you found NdP ''took itself way way too serious''. I am having to make some dire assumptions here. If you had ever been through a same-sex attraction scene in your teens, I don't believe you would be even posing that as a serious question.

Likewise. I don't wish to challenge your assertion that ''Fucking Amal had heart and has the better performances''. Let the audience judge. Frankly, I think that is EXTREMELY unfair on the actors. The difference is NOT made by juvenile actors but by the DIRECTORS ability to work with them and draw out their best performances. Sciamma certainly scored on this again in her film ‘Tomboy’.

FA was certainly a breakthrough in this style of direction. It has been carried forward into the method of the Swedish film ‘Let The Right one In’. Most recently, I have seen it best portrayed in the multi-award winning Danish film ‘In A Better World’ Again, like Nordzee Texas, the protagonists are boys, not girls.

You say ‘the leads are every bit as cute’ ?? Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

[DMt.]

<<...the barman cautiously peers over the bar top...the saloon is empty, the gamblers, prostitutes, miners and general no-'count clientele have all melted away...with a sigh of relief, he stands up, and puts away his sawn-off shotgun...the piano player slowly and cautiously emerges from behind the piano. "What happened, Jimmy?" says the barman, puzzled..."I dunno", says Jimmy uncertainly, "one minute I was sure there was gonna be a shootout, next...it all went quiet..." "Well, that suits me just fine, damn it", says the barman, ruefully eyeing the day's insufficient takings...>>

[fish]

You were at my local?

I don't remember that scene in NdP.

[DMt.]

You haven't watched NdP - the Western?

Good God, man, you haven't lived.

[fish]

...NdP - the Western ...

[snaps]

'Fun In the Pool' Digital painting by the Swiss artist Marcel Baumann.

I like this as a sort of meme for 'Naissance des Pieuvres'; the childhood innocence of play, the protection of water-wings against sinking (parents), the symbolic plastic duck on the surface (free-floating friendships), about to be drawn down into the dark world of the upreaching tentacles of adulthood, from deep, fathomless depths beyond the normal safety of swimming-pool limits.

[DMt.]

Strange and creepy, but oddly compelling, too...

[fish]

...the upreaching tentacles of adulthood...

Very creepy.
Funny though.

[Ian]

Sounds like snaps herself.

















Sorry, snaps.

[Dahls]

I sure as hell would'nt hang that painting on my livingroom wall

It's a pretty cool picture though, but with the view of those tentacles, I would probably hide behind the couch