On Sunday, 6th, I watched It's Spring in Prague Every Year, a Czech documentary about musicians in a famous mega-concert hald in Prague every year; mostly behind-the-scenes drama, very interesting, and very real. Not to mention I was soaking in the movements of the conductors like a sponge, I have to do this soon enough with my music society!
Then I hung around for a while and realised there was another movie on, from Cyprus, called Honey and Wine, a weird tale of a mother who lost her son ages ago and leads a lonely and enlessly repititive life (the first ten minutes of the movie kill you, they run through three completely identical days) until she makes friends with this gorgeous young actress who lives across the road. They both find a shoulder, and the movie stays, if not very deep-rooted, in your mind as a bittersweet tale of people.
But the movie I really loved was a Spanish film called Ficció, or Fiction. Directed by Cesc Gay, it is the story of a filmmaker (Àlex) about to go over the hill, facing a mid-life crisis and making a movie about a man whose friends come over on his 39th birthday and sit around in the dark, talking. He is on a sabbatical, as it were, from fatherhood (there are two kids, one in a stroller) and his wife; on holiday in the mountains (the film is shot on location in Barcelona, Cataluña, Puigcerdá and Girona in Spain) with his friends, Santi and Judith, who have another friend, a charming violinist named Mònica. The four of them are roughly the same age, Àlex is as he is, Mònica is about to adopt a baby girl with her boyfriend. They all go trekking to the most breathtakingly beautiful lakes and then to higher mountains. Àlex and Mònica get lost in the mountains and talk, sitting on a flat high up in the clouds. They just talk, like the man in his movie might.
- This is a beautiful place to shoot a movie. - Why don't you? - [Shrugs] - What would happen in this movie of yours? - Nothing, he says. This. Two people get lost on a mountain and sit there. Talk.They get back and all, it's not a high-energy drama like Speed or Twister. They end up spending the day together a couple of days later; he gives her a lift to the clinic in town to get a cut treated; then they just hang around in the prettiest little town. It starts to rain at one point, they enter a pub that's close by; nothing happens - you're waiting - is he in love with her? He looks at her sometimes, with that look. She looks at him sometimes, with that look. Is she in love with him? Nothing happens. They have to part ways soon enough, Àlex's family joins him and Mònica has to leave. He gets up early the morning she has to leave, Judith and her girlfriend are giving her a ride. He catches them midway, he wants to say goodbye.
- I felt something. - I had a knot in my stomach. - I think we've fallen a little in love. - It's good...to fall in love sometimes. - I would have loved to... - I know, me too. But I'm just beginning to do things right. - Maybe I'll see you again.They kiss heartwrenchingly and that's that.
***
Ficció is a beautiful film - there are scenes which make you want to photograph them, there is music that drifts out from the radio in the kitchen and fills the valley with loneliness. There is a sadness in the dark, when the lights go out and Àlex is sitting by himself. When they are on their way back, by a circuitous route, they get a room somewhere, to rest awhile. There is a piano there, and chess. They start a chess game, both pros, but leave it for the piano, she plays with care, gently, pianissimo, dolce. When they are in the pub, nothing happens. She is smoking a cigarette, he is drinking from a short broad glass, maybe whisky. They are in background and foreground, not more than a foot apart, on the bar stools, so it looks like they are back to back. The focus shifts from one to the other, there is a knot in the stomach. Nothing happens. Are you comfortable? he asks again and again. There is more that is going on, Santi and Judith and subplot, but I couldn't get over that line.I think we've fallen a little in love. It's good...to fall in love sometimes.
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