I keep viewing foreign films so that I can imagine for an hour, or so, that I don't live the saddest looking place in Canada (yah that's right I said it Southern Ontario, not a scenic area. Disagree? Go North on Bathurst way past Steels). However I keep being disappointed.
I saw Biutiful which was set in Barcelona, great film, not very scenic though. It shows all the places you wouldn't want to go in Spain. It's like The Vice Guide To Travel: Barcelona Edition, if there was one. Example: If you ever wonder where the sweat shops are in Barcelona, you get a tour of them in this movie (isn't it funny that movie is the word we use for films. It's the equivalent of saying talkie. I think I'm gonna bring back that term, talkie. Oh boy what a talkie I saw last night! Yeah, I like it).
Then last night I went to see a talkie called Certified Copy. I knew nothing of it except that The Toronto Star gave it four stars, Juliet Binoche won a Best Actress award at Cannes, and it is set in Tuscany. Plus they speak French, English and Italian. I was very excited.
Ever since I visited Italy last year, I'm all about seeing it on film. The cool thing about Italian scenery is that it does not need exaggeration. You know how sometimes you see things on film and then in real life it's quite underwhelming. Well Italy is the opposite. You can't begin to show how breath-taking amazingly stupid pretty it all is on film. Movies/talkies capture very limited views of Italia, in comparison. But are still worth-while, apparently.
So I was all up for this film/talkie, until it started. I do not know what movie/talkie the reviewer and everyone at Cannes was watching but it was so pretentiously unwatchable.
There were only two actors in it and the man character was poo. It took a while to understand how bad he was because he was speaking various languages throughout so I thought maybe it was a character choice to be a bad actor but no, he was just poo.
I don't want to judge (but I will and I do, often) but you'd think at the age of fifty plus you would get better as an actor by default, you know experience etc, but not this guy. I do not want to know what he was like acting-wise at twenty.
The worst part was all the camera shots were tight so you couldn't see the background, which the characters made constant reference to. The scene that I walked out on was the two actors discussing the beauty of a sculpture in front of them, but the movie only showed the feet of the art. Ack. This was after an hour of this kind of torture so I left. I usually stay to the end of movies but nerts to that.
So I am going to try one more talkie tonight. I rented something called Late August- Early September. It's French, it has the guy from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and it BEST be showing some good scenery (and romance, I want to be swept away dammit!), or else I guess I'm going to have to leave the country. Wish me luck.
Thanks for reading!
You better be worth it!
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