Everyone else is watching It’s A Wonderful Life, or Charlie Brown Christmas, and I’m watching a movie about teens who spend every waking moment having sex, doing drugs, and stealing. And every non waking moment passed out between a toilet and a bathtub in a flophouse. I blame Sweetie, who has taken control of my Netflix queue and inexplicably orders these movies during what should be a cheerful holiday season. Continue reading
Vitus (2006) Directed by Fredi M. Murer
(Winner of Swiss Film Prize for Best Film of 2007)
Vitus (played in part by piano virtuoso Teo Gheorghiu) is a child genius whose life is carefully guided along by his loving, but ambitious parents. He chafes under the regimented schedule by sassing his teachers and occasional displays of stubborn independence. One by one, his world is narrowed and choices taken away. His teenage babysitter, whom he secretly loves, is dismissed. His beloved piano teacher is replaced by a more fitting one. The only relief that remains is the time he spends with his Grandfather, carving boomerangs, making model airplanes, and discussing a dizzying array of life choices that Vitus finds outside his reach. As the pressure grows, Vitus makes a dramatic choice, launching himself off his balcony with play wings to land crumpled on the courtyard below. His injuries are minor, but he has lost his genius and testing reveals he is “normal”. As his parents struggle to come to terms with the change in their son’s prospects, Vitus’ grandfather discovers the truth. It’s at his home that Vitus can truly be himself, playing the piano and amassing a stock market fortune in his grandfather’s name. Will Vitus be able to live both worlds? Can he break free of his parent’s expectations and pursue the life he wants?
This is an amazing film, showcasing not only how parental excitement over the possible future of their children can blind them to their real needs, but how kids are kids. Vitus stubbornly refuses to play for the exalted piano teacher his mother has worked so hard to provide an interview with. He argues against taking his exams at such a young age, not wanting to be thrust in with kids twice his age. He wants to connect with other children, make friends, have an unrequited crush on his teenage babysitter. Just like everyone else. Is it sad that Vitus sabotages what could have been a stellar piano career? Not really. He loves piano, gets great joy out of his music. Sometimes living up to your potential is another person’s dream, not yours. And that is probably the hardest thing for us parents to realize.
VOLVER – Directed by Pedro Almodovar
This Spanish film, with Penelope Cruz, is clever and quirky as it follows two sisters dealing with death and return in their lives.
The opening scene sets the tone of the film, showing women working to clean the gravestones in their village cemetery as a fierce wind quickly eradicates their work. The scene is oddly funny and tragic, an emotional mix that runs throughout the movie. Cruz deals with one loss after another Continue reading
Movie Review: La Vie en Rose, Director Olivier Dahan, 2007
La Vie en Rose tells the story of the life of Edith Piaf, born in 1915 into a life of poverty and raised for a portion of her life in a brothel. As a child, she joined her father’s street performance act, and began singing at an early age. Eventually she was discovered and began the rocky and personally tragic road to fame as one of France’s most famous singers.
I’ve heard a few of Edith Piaf’s songs, but knew nothing of her life prior to the movie. I can’t say I know much more of her life after the movie. One issue with La Vie en Rose is the method in which her life story is revealed. The movie switches constantly between her youth, which appears to move chronologically, and short excerpts of her at fame and at the decline of the career. These do not appear to be presented chronologically, which causes great confusion. Did this happen before that? The moments we see of her in a sort of nursing home setting, do those happen before her collapse on the stage or after? Did she have multiple concerts where she collapsed on the stage?
People appear in the movie at seemingly random moments, presented as though we are supposed to know who they are and their significance. I’d latch onto a character, remember his name, only to have him disappear forever after a few scenes. Suddenly another man would appear, and I’d wonder if this was the childhood friend grown up? Or perhaps the delivery boy briefly introduced twenty minutes before that I assumed was an extra? Add this problem in character significance to the inexplicable timeline and I was lost.
The most frustrating part of the movie was in the very end, when Edith is on her death bed. The movie cuts to at least four flashbacks of different parts of her life. Again I struggled to figure out what happened when. Suddenly, with no foreshadowing whatsoever, we discover that Edith had born a daughter in her youth, a child she struggled to care for as she continued her career as a street performer, a child who died young of meningitis. This revelation came like a lightning bolt in the last ten minutes of the movie. I was outraged that such a significant portion of her life was slapped onto the end, like a minor afterthought in her life. I can’t believe, given her own difficult childhood and equally difficult relationship with her mother, that her own struggles at motherhood and the death of her daughter were nothing more than a blip in her life.
Disappointing, disjointed. Edith Piaf deserves better.
