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OTHER CRAP:
Catch the deluxe
version of Other Crap in real time, with all the bells and whistles,
here.
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Lilian's Story
(1996)
Scoop's notes:
Lilian's Story begins with an elderly
woman being released from a mental sanitarium after 40 years. The film
then proceeds to answer two questions for us:
- How can such a person now survive in
the outside world?
- What led to her mental condition and
eventually to her institutionalization?
The basis of the fictional film is the
decidedly non-fictional life of Bea Miles, a busker in Sydney, Australia
whose unique form of street entertainment was Shakespearian soliloquies.
She became well known in Sydney, and she was able to survive off the
contributions earned by her eccentric performances. Perhaps everyone
knows of such a person. When in lived in London in the early 90's, and
made the walk every day from Waterloo station to Shell-Mex House across
the Thames, I passed the trumpet lady every day on my way to the upper
level of Waterloo Bridge. She performed (and probably lived) in the
bowels of the bridge, an environment which gave her shelter from the
elements and, just as important for her act, great acoustics. Her
impersonation of a trumpet echoed resoundingly through the cavernous
structure, and she could be heard for hundreds of yards.
Bea Miles was the Sydney version of the
Trumpet Lady. She was the Shakespeare Lady.
Perhaps you've wondered where those
people come from. Were they normal children from normal homes? At one
point did they detach from the behavior limitations that govern the rest
of us? A novelist named Kate Grenville wondered about Bea, and while "Lilian's
Story" did not stay faithful to the facts of Bea's life, it represented
an interesting reconstruction of how she might have come to be there,
presumably synthesizing many such stories into a single fictional
character.
It is a good film with no artificial
happy turns of events, although it suffers in comparison to Shine, which
covers much of the same ground. Lilian's story is kind of the grade b
Shine, in that:
- it just isn't as luminously well
filmed, even though Kieslowski's D.P. worked on the project. The
flashbacks are all presented through an amber tint which is quite an
ugly shade of yellow, and which was completely unnecessary. Why did
the director think we needed to have the old period in yellow? It was
obvious that the young girl and woman were Lilian 40+ years ago, and
the yellow tint was nothing but an aesthetic horror.
- in the same way that Shine was
filled out with piano music, Lilian's Story is filled out with
Shakespearian monologues. But Shine's David Helfgott, although
unusual, was a genius who won competitions. Lilian was a dotty street
performer who knew the words. I never got tired of good Rachmaninoff
in Shine, but I sure got tired of mediocre Shakespeare in Lilian's
story. In addition, music can act as background to action, thereby
allowing the pace to maintain itself. Lilian's recitations simply
stopped the forward movement of the film until they were done.
Toni Collete film
clips (samples below).
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Love, Pain and Vice Versa
(Mexico; 2008)
Johnny's comments:
"Amor, Dolor y Viceversa or
Violanchelo or Love, Pain and Vice Versa is a film that reaches high, but
falls on it's own sword. Consuelo (the incredibly gorgeous Bárbara Mori)
is living in her own fantasy world where she is in love with the perfect
guy, a doctor who may or may not be real. So, she decides to take matters
into her own hands and find him for real, so she files a rape claim
against him, giving the police a detailed description of his face and
hoping they will find him for her. And they do, in a most unusual way. And
then the doctor wakes up from his dream... Interesting idea told from both
Consuelo's and the doctor's perspective, but falls flat in the second half
when it gives away far too much information early and it feels like a
repeat of what we already know. Shame really, I liked the idea."
Here are the film clips of Barbara Mori
The collages are
below:
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