I believe every promise I hear. I’ve never achieved anything. I’ve never been useful or precious to anyone…

Part of Adele’s monologue from the film “The Girl on the Bridge” (1999) starring Vanessa Paradis as Adele.

Natalia Vodianova as Jean Shrimpton, The Great Pretender, Vogue US, May 2009 by Steven Meisel

“Some people are born to be happy.
I get conned every day of my life.
I believe every promise I hear.
I’ve never achieved anything.
I’ve never been useful
or precious to anyone, or happy,
or even really unhappy.
I guess you’re unhappy
when you lose something
but I’ve never had anything
except bad luck.
How do you see your future, Adele?
I don’t know.
When I was little,
all I wanted to do was grow up.
As fast as I could.
But I can’t see the point of it all.
Not anymore.
Getting older.
I see my future like a waiting room
in a big train station,
with benches and drafts.
Outside, hordes of people run by
without seeing me.
They’re all in a rush,
taking trains and cabs…
They have somewhere to go,
someone to meet…
And I sit there, waiting.
Waiting for what, Adele?
For something to happen to me.”

Film Saawariya (2007) and Art: Carl Krenek, Maurice Prendergast, Edmund Dulac

“I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year.”

Carl Krenek (1880-1948), A fairy tale scene: a dark lake, boat, weeping willos, blossoms, tempera on paper, 14,3 x 17,3 cm, c 1900s-1910s

It’s been almost a decade since I’ve first seen the Hindi film “Saawariya” (2007), directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, and I still find myself captivated by the songs and the setting of the film. What is especially interesting about the film’s plot is that it is inspired by Dostoyevsky’s short story “White Nights”, which was published in 1848, rather early in the writer’s career. In the story, the nameless narrator is a lonely and dreamy young man who lives in Saint Petersburg. One night, whilst wandering the cold, winter streets, he meets a pretty young girl called Nastenka who is also lonely. Of course, he is a dreamer and suddenly Nastenka is hope personified for his lovelorn, lonely existence. The two start talking but Nastenka makes it clear that she doesn’t want romance, and eventually she returns to her lover. In the film “Saawariya” the young man Ranbir Raj (played by Ranbir Kapoor) is the nameless narrator and the Dreamer from Dostoyevsky’s story. Raj’s Nastenka in the film is a young Muslim girl called Sakina (played by Sonam Kapoor) whom she meets one night. But Sakina is in love with her grandma’s tennant, a man called Imaan. Raj is also a musician and he spends a lot of time with the local prostitutes, trying to cheer them up and brings some hope to their sad lives, so he is a warm and kind-hearted man. That aspect is diffent from Dostoyevsky’s story, but the ending is, sadly, similar. Sad for the Dreamer that is.

Scenes from the film “Saawariya”

Now, another thing I love about the film was the aesthetic. The nocturnal, fantasy setting is gorgeous, with no real indication of time, place or the passing of time; a truly dream-like setting for the story because it is told from Ranbir’s memory. One of the most beautiful scenes, for me, is from the song Masha Allah when Ranbir and Sakina encounter each other at night; she is frightened and alone, her veil falls off and the moonlight reveals a beautiful face and Ranbir is instantly smitten and proclaims: Masha Allah! The scene, like the film itself, is bathed in indigo-blue light, and the two are gliding on a boat adorned with flowers over a lake and pass under a bridge where, for a mere second, Rabir can get close to Sakina. The light of the lanterns and neon signs on the buildings is showing them the way. The boat, the water, the bridge, all made me think of Venice and the nocturnal scene really has a magic about it. Here is an interesting commentary on the film’s aesthetic, from an article “The socio-political mutation of Dostoevsky’s White Nights in Hindi Cinema through the ages” written by Eshan Parikh here: “Bhansali created a real dreamscape, one that seemed to exist in a timeless space and was inspired by Indian and European architecture. There is no sense of day/night and seasons. There are shots where you see the dome of a Rajasthani fort like building inside the arch of the replica of Champs-Élysées. There are walls with graffiti in Urdu and shops with English names which were reminiscent of Colonial India. No real year is mentioned where this story may have been set and even the way people dress up is a mix of modern urban styles and more vintage styles of the Colonial era.”

This scene from the film captivated me so much that I started looking for similar examples in art; paintings whose mood and motif fits the mood of the scene in the film, and I found three. The first one is a tempera on paper called “A fairy tale scene: a dark lake, boat, weeping willows, blossoms” by an Austrian painter Carl Krenek. The intense blue and green shades are absolutely stunning! In the foreground of the painting there is a row of semi-abstract flowers which look really groovy and behind them is the vibrant blue lake. I especially love the strokes of lighter blue on the dark blue background; they are so flowing and free. In the middle of the lake is a couple on a boat, gliding towards infinity. We can even see a little bit of the sky – the starry night.

Scene from the film Saawariya (2007)

Now, here is a lovely passage from Dostoyevsky’s story where the nameless narrator talks about himself and his relationship with Nastenka:

“I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can’t help reliving such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experiened.

I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year.

I feel I know you so well that I couldn’t have known you better if we’d been friends for twenty years. You won’t fail me, will you? Only two minutes, and you’ve made me happy forever. Yes, happy. Who knows, perhaps you’ve reconciled with me, resolved all my doubts.

(…) If and when you fall in love, may you be happy with her. I don’t need to wish her anything, for she’ll be happy with you. May your sky always be clear, may your dear smile always be bright and happy, and may you be forever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness that you gave to another lonely and grateful heart. Isn’t such a moment sufficient for the whole of one’s life?“

The second painting which made me think of the scene from the film was Maurice Prendergast’s watercolour “Feast of the Redemeer”, painted in 1899. I have already written a longer post about it here, but esentially what reminded me of the film was the nocturnal setting, the dark waters, the magical ambience created by the plethora of lanterns and the the boats of course. I can imagine Ranbir and Sakina on one of those boats; he is mesmerised by her beauty, she is daydreaming of her lover, both are enjoying the fleeting dream-like moments while above them is a dark cloud of unrequitedness and an inevitable separation and ending.

Maurice Prendergast, Feast of the Redeemer, c 1899, watercolour

The third and the final painting I found is Edmund Dulac’s watercolour “The Fisherman – The Nightingale”, date unknown but probably early twentieth century. The watercolour shows a nocturnal scene with a fisherman in his little boat gliding on the waters of a river or a lake. The blueness of the water is kissing the blueness of the sky and it is hard to tell the line between the water and the sky. Instead of a fisherman I imagine Raj and Sakina on that boat. The crescent moon, half hidden by the tree branches, is a romantic touch, and I also really love how the trees are almost imposing their way into the painting, forcing their branches into our sight. There is ever so soft light of the moon falling on the water but it is subtle detailing such as that one that bring magic to the scene.

“Among these trees lived a nightingale, which sang so deliciously, that even the poor fisherman, who had plenty of other things to do, lay still to listen to it, when he was out at night drawing in his nets.”

(Hans Christian Andersen, The Nightingale)

Edmund Dulac, The Fisherman – The Nightingale, no date

Film: Brzezina (The Birch Wood) 1970

“From my window in the sanatorium, I saw things that could have been beautiful if I had been able to touch them. But I never touched them and never will.”

In December I watched the Polish film “Brzezina” or “The Birch Wood” (1970) directed by Andrzej Wajda and based on a short story by Jarosław_Iwaszkiewicz. I found it just…. captivating! The title alone was alluring to me because I love birches and I find them the most poetic and gentle of all trees. The film is set in the 1920s and it starts with a pale and sickly looking yet smiling young man called Stanisław returning home to a cottage in the woods where his brother Bronisław, a widower, lives with his young daughter Ola. Stanisław, a pianist and a man who has travelled and seen the world, is at once enchanted with the peacefulness, greenness and fresh air of the countryside, but something is not quite right. The atmosphere is tense; Stanislaw may be smiling and delighting in nature but Bronislaw is clearly agitated, shouting both at his maid and at his daughter who, as we see later in the film, seems lonely and neglected, often by herself, playing with a broken doll, sitting on a swing or visiting her mother’s grave in the birch forest. The film is full of such poetic scenes; poetic both in mood and visuals. The birch woods and blooming meadows certainly provide a lot of visual delights.

A very poignant scene in the film is around the fourteenth minute; in the evening Stanislaw is playing piano and Bronislaw comes to his room and tell him that the music is going on his nerves, and Stanislaw, smiling a smile tinged with nostalgia, dreaminess and melancholy, responds by saying that the music is irritating him too because it reminds him of a world that he never really got to know well; a world that he can never return to. Later in the conversation Stanislaw admits to his brother that he returned home to die because he is suffering from consumption. Bronislaw, who had not so long ago lost his wife, is disturbed at the thought of death in his house again, but his sadness never manifests itself in tears and gentleness, but rather through drinking and shouting, especially at his timid daughter Ola who is obviously frightened of him in many scenes.

Bronislaw is a desperate broken man badly coping with his wife’s death, and the handsome starry-eyed Stanislaw is desperate to live, to taste the life that is seeping away from him like sand in a sand clock. His eyes shine with a desire for life to the point that it’s tragic. The film shows two people, two brothers, who have completely different situations in life and it compares their two different life philosophies, or approaches to life. Stanislaw would give everything just to be healthy and strong again, and Bronislaw seems oblivious to all the good things he still has in life, such as his sweet little daughter Ola, and he allows himself to sink into grief and bitterness, giving away the precious life he has, drinking it away, he is alive but not really living. When you think of Stanislaw, so eager to live and so enchanted with music, nature and the world around him, it truly seems ungrateful to treat life the way Bronislaw does, to waste it away, to be “dead” before you actually die. It almost seems a sacrilegious to throw life away. Still, there’s a very Slavic sadness to this film which I like a lot. Also, now that I think of it, Ola reminds me of one of my best friends from childhood whose mother had also died when she was very little, the same blonde hair and timidness…

Simone de Beauvoir – Brigitte Bardot and Lolita Syndrome

I love Brigitte Bardot; her presence on the screen is simply delightful, her face is more beautiful than any painting to me, her pouting, her hair, her gaze, the way she walks… enchanting! She doesn’t seem to be acting at all, as Roger Vadim had said, she is just there, being herself. I love her in the early films of her career; “And God Created Woman” (1956), “Love is My Profession” (or “A Case of Adversity, 1957), and La Vérité (1960) in which the handsome Sami Frey plays the role of her lover. The other day I read Simone de Beauvoir’s essay called “Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome”, originally published in 1959 and I thought I’d share some interesting passages about Brigitte Bardot as the nymphet, a woman-child, the untamed waif. Everything bellow is from de Beauvoir’s essay, not my words:

Brigitte Bardot in “Une parisienne”, 1957

“Nabokov’s “Lolita” which deals with the relations between a forty-year-old male and a ‘nymphet’ of twelve, was at the top of the best-seller list in England and America for months. The adult woman now inhabits the same world as the man, but the child-woman moves in a universe which he cannot enter. The age difference re-established between them the distance that seems necessary for desire. At least that is what those who have created a new Eve by merging the ‘green fruit’ and ‘femme fatale’ types have pinned their hopes on.

(….) Brigitte Bardot is the most perfect specimen of these ambiguous nymphs. Seen from behind, her slender, muscular, dancer’s body is almost androgynous. Femininity triumphs in her delightful bosom. The long voluptuous tresses of Mélisande flow down to her shoulders, but her hair-do is that of a negligent waif. The line of her lips forms a childish pout, and at the same time those lips are very kissable. She goes about barefooted, she turns up her nose at elegant clothes, jewels, girdles, perfumes, make-up, at all artifice. Yet her walk is lascivious and a saint would sell his soul to the devil merely to watch her dance. It has often been said that her face has only one expression. It is true that the outer world is hardly reflected in it at all and that it does not reveal great inner disturbances. But that air of indifference becomes her. BB has not been marked by experience. Even if she has lived – as in “Love is my profession” – the lessons that life has given her are too confused for her too have learned anything from them. She is without memory, without a past, and, thanks to this ignorance, she retains the perfect innocence that is attributed to a mythical childhood.

(…) Vadim presented her as a ‘a phenomenon of nature.’ ‘She doesn’t act’, he said. ‘She exists.’ (…) She was moody and capricious. (…) She was described as a creature of instinct, as yielding blindly to her impulses. She would suddenly take a dislike to the decoration of her room and then and there would pull down the hangings and start repainting the furniture. She is temperamental, changeable and unpredictable, and though she retains the limpidity of childhood, she has also preserved its mystery. A strange little creature, all in all; and this image does not depart from the traditional myth of femininity. She appears as a force of nature, dangerous so long as she remains untamed, but it is up to the male to domesticate her. She is kind, she is good-hearted. In all her films she loves animals. If she ever makes anyone suffer, it is never deliberately.

Her flightiness and slips of behaviour are excusable because she is so young and because of circumstances. Juliette had an unhappy childhood; Yvette, in ‘Love is my profession’, is a victim of society. If they ever go astray, it is because no one has ever shown them the right path, but a man, a real man, can lead them back to it. Juliette’s young husband decides to act like a male, gives her a good sharp slap, and Juliette is all at once transformed into a happy, contrite and submissive wife. Yvette joyfull accepts her lover’s demand that she be faithful and his imposing upon her a life of virtual seclusion. With a bit of luck, this experienced, middle-aged man would have brought her redemption. BB is a lost, pathetic child who needs a guide and protector. This cliché has proved its worth. It flatters masculine vanity.

(…) BB is neither perverse nor rebellious nor immoral, and that is why morality does not have a chance with her. Good and evil are part of conventions to which she would not even think of bowing.”

Film: Jeune & Jolie (2013)

French erotic drama “Young and Beautiful” (Jeune & Jolie), directed by Francois Ozon, is one of my favourite films. The plot revolves around a seventeen year old girl Isabelle (played by Marine Vacth) who loses her virginity whilst at the seaside holiday in the south of France with a German boy Felix. The experience leaves her unsatisfied and she further retreats into her inner world. She ignores Felix and speaks to no one about her feelings. Upon returning to Paris, the school starts again in autumn and everything seems the same as usual, but something inside Isabelle is restless and curious. She starts working as a high class prostitute and meets many strange and interesting clients in luxury hotels. According to Isabelle’s own words, to her it was all “just an experience”. One of her clients, a sixty-three year old rich man called Georges, treats her with a special tenderness and a mutual affection develops between them. On one occasion Georges dies in the act of making love. Isabelle flees the hotel room frightened and sad.

Very soon, her double life and her secrets are discovered by the police and then by her mother and stepfather. Isabelle is forced to go to a therapy and starts pondering on the nature of everything she did. In her own words:  “What I liked was to arrange appointments. Chat online, talk on the phone. Listen to the voices, imagine things. Then go, discover the hotel …not knowing who I would find. It was like a game. At the time I almost felt nothing. But then, when remembered at home or in high school… I wanted to do it again.” The film is very erotic and follows Isabelle’s awakening sensuality and her explorations with sexuality through prostitution which could have ended up as a dangerous experience, but what captivates me the most about the film is Isabelle’s impenetrable inner life, her melancholy and her mysterious aura. From the beginning of the film, it is impossible to pinpoint how exactly Isabelle feels. She is quiet and withdrawn and eerily detached from everything that happens to her; from the loss of her virginity to her experiences in the hotels. She is there physically, but she isn’t really there in other ways. It’s like nothing touches her. When her mother found out about her daughter’s double life and deceits, she is furious and starts hitting Isabelle on two occasions actually, and Isabelle’s reaction is still: nothing. There are tears in her blue-grey eyes, but the reaction is never there. Her detachment is both serene and frightening.

The actress Marine Vacth is gorgeous to gaze at and I think she was a perfect choice for the role. She looks equally beautiful with no make up, her under eye circles and freckles add to her melancholy vibe. And yet, she is enchanting with red lipstick as well. Her appearance in the film matches the double life that she is living; at school she is a quiet, strange girl and her silence is off putting to boys her own age, but in the afternoon she is transformed into a creature of awakened sensuality who does unimaginable things. She is, as the title of the film suggest, young and beautiful. Her beauty and youth are a weapon by which she gains the admiration and desire of the men she meets, but her beauty also serves as a mask which makes her so distant and unreachable, it brings to mind Brancusi’s sculpture “Sleeping Muse” (1910).

I also enjoyed that Rimbaud’s poem “Novel” is used in the film in a scene where Isabelle and her classmates recite it in school classroom and analyse it. The poem’s verse: “No one is serious at seventeen” goes well with Isabelle’s crazy life decisions; she is but a young girl and she doesn’t know what she is doing. It’s a fascinating contrast that Isabelle is shy and quiet in school, but in reality she is living a life more wild and dangerous than any of her classmates. It’s always the quiet ones in the class who are hiding something. Francoise Hardy’s song “L’amour d’un garcon” is also very fitting; it plays as the background on the car ride from the holiday back to Paris, Isabelle is gazing through the window and thinking of everything that has happened to her as Francoise Hardy sings “J’ai bien changé”… and indeed Isabelle has changed and will change even more as the film continues. What I liked the most about the film is that it doesn’t give definite answers, nor does it condemn Isabelle’s behaviour. She never says “I did it because of….” So even we as observers are left with uncertainly. Isabelle cannot even explain her behavior herself.

John Fowles’s The Collector and The Smiths: What Difference Does It Make? It makes none

“Oh, the devil will find work for idle hands to do”

(The Smiths)

The original cover featuring Terence Stamp

This is my third and final post (well at least final for now) in relation to John Fowles’ novel “The Collector”; I already wrote a book review, a post about the theme of art in the novel because Miranda was an art student, and now this post which connects the film with the song by The Smiths. Allow me to first open the Bible of misery, melancholy and self-pity: Morrissey’s Autobiography that is, and let us go to the page one hundred and sixty three and see what is there to be said about the song What Difference Does it Make? and the Terence Stamp cover picture incident:

“I nominate Pretty girls make graves as the third single, but a bastion of bearded Rough Trade battleaxes drop on me like a ton of beansprouts and argue against a song with a title that would have made Mary Wollstonecraft throw in the tea-towel. Rough Trade wheel out “What Difference Does It Make?” as the next single. I had loved the song until its defilement on “The Smiths” album; the loose swain’s saunter now sounded stiff and inflexible, the drums sounding too frightened to move, the voice sounding like something gone to its reward – or, at least, resting in peace. I use a photograph of Terence Stamp as the sleeve image partly because I am assured that clearance can be gained from Stamp through Geoff’s mutual friendship with Sandie Shaw. Once the single is issued, Terence Stamp objects and will say (years later) that ‘Morrissey did not ask for approval.’ A new shot is panicked together, wherein I imitate the Stamp shot, although I choose to hold a glass of milk in place of Stamp’s strychnine-soaked muslin cloth. I am ugly against Stamp’s glamor-handsomeness, but it will have to do, since the single has already risen to number 12. Evidently Rough Trade are quite pleased about the sudden censoring of the original sleeve, because it might mean that collectors buy the single with the new sleeve also, thus bumping up sales.”

I really adore the song Pretty girls make graves, so I agree with Morrissey. In the novel, Frederick (played in the film by Terence Stamp) drugs the beautiful art student Miranda with chloroform not with strychnine, but oh well Morrissey, I forgive you a lousy little mistake. It seems that in both covers the devil did find work for idle hands to do because they are both holding something. Even though the song and the film have nothing in common really, the cover picture was Morrissey’s homage to the films and film stars of the 1950s and 1960s that he loved. The aesthetic of the kitchen sink dramas appealed to his grim view of the world around him.

The cover with Morrissey and a glass of milk

All men have secrets and here is mine
So let it be known
For we have been through hell and high tide
I think I can rely on you
And yet you start to recoil
Heavy words are so lightly thrown
But still I’d leap in front of a flying bullet for you

So, what difference does it make?
So, what difference does it make?
It makes none
But now you have gone
And you must be looking very old tonight

The devil will find work for idle hands to do
I stole and I lied, and why?
Because you asked me to!
But now you make me feel so ashamed
Because I’ve only got two hands
Well, I’m still fond of you, oh-ho-oh

So, what difference does it make?
Oh, what difference does it make?
Oh, it makes none
But now you have gone
And your prejudice won’t keep you warm tonight

Oh, the devil will find work for idle hands to do
I stole, and then I lied
Just because you asked me to
But now you know the truth about me
You won’t see me anymore
Well, I’m still fond of you, oh-ho-oh

But no more apologies
No more, no more apologies
Oh, I’m too tired
I’m so sick and tired
And I’m feeling very sick and ill today
But I’m still fond of you, oh-ho-oh

Oh, my sacred one
Oh

Voyeurism in Edward Hopper’s Night Windows and Hitchcock’s Rear Window

American painter Edward Hopper was born on this day in 1882 in the Hudson river town of Nyack, New York, and what better opportunity to publish this post than on the man’s birthday!

Edward Hopper, Night Windows, 1928

Although Edward Hopper is mostly remembered as the painter who captured the alienating mood of the modern city in his scenes of solitary people, lonesome bars and empty streets, but it’s not the portrayal of the alienation in the city which fascinates me the most in his art but the voyeurism which shines through in his painting “Night Windows”. While we gaze at the painting, we too are the voyeurs of this quiet night scene tinged with eroticism and mystery. Three windows reveal to us a sight of an illuminated room where a figure of a woman dressed in a salmon toned slip is half-hidden from us, and yet the little glimpse of her that we do have makes us crave her presence. The figure of a woman in a slip is sensual yet subtle. The darkness on the outside of the murky old building is contrasted strongly with the interior full of lightness and intrigue. The woman is like an actress on an illuminated stage, aware that all eyes of the auditorium are on her, yet feigning ignorance of the fact. The painting looks like a still from the film, and indeed Hopper’s other passion, besides painting, was the cinema. Two windows are closed, but the third one is open and allowing the fresh night air into the room. A billowing white curtain is dancing in the midnight breeze.

Even though the painting seems like a film scene, the inspiration came from literature and not from cinema: “Night Windows recalls the experience of the voyeur pastor in “The Strength of God,” one of Sherwood Anderson’s short stories in Winesburg, Ohio. From the clergyman’s study in the church bell tower, he accidentally discovers that he can see into the bedroom of a young woman in the house next door. He becomes a virtual Peeping Tom, unable to resist being drawn to spy upon the woman in various states of undress. “When the shade of the window to Kate Swift’s room was raised he could see, through the hole, directly into her bed.” (…) Night Windows communicates a mood like that, too, of Anderson’s 1923 Many Marriages, which was the first of his novels to focus on modern sexual experience. (…) Anderson’s preoccupation in Many Marriages is with the symbolic value of nudity, sexual frankness, and the inner emotional life of its characters. In a number of his subsequent oil paintings. Hopper addressed similar issues of voyeurism, temptation, repression, and sexual ennui, continuing the imaginative exploration of the etchings.” (Gail Levin, Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography, 1995)

The same voyeurism appears in Alfred Hitchcock’s film “Rear Window” (1954) where the broken-legged photographer L.B. “Jeff” Jeffries (played by James Stewart) spends the long, lazy and hot summer days resting and spying at his neighbours in his Chelsea apartment whose rear window is looking out into the courtyard. At first he is doing it to pass the time and then later their seemingly ordinary lives begin to intrigue him more and more. Each neighbour is like an animal in the zoos; not behind bars but behind their large windows and balconies, ordinary yet strange in their unique way. He observes a flamboyant dancer he nicknames “Miss Torso”; a single woman he calls “Miss Lonelyhearts”; a talented yet lonely pianist, a newlywed couple, and a middle-aged couple who sleep on their balcony in hot summer nights, a female amateur sculptor; and Lars Thorwald who is a traveling salesman with an ill wife. The beautiful and sophisticated Grace Kelly plays his girlfriend who joins him in his peeping Tom activities which ultimately lead them both to a discovery of a murder. I really liked something that Jeff’s friend Tom, who is a detective, said about spying on neighbours: “That’s a secret, private world you are looking into out there. People do a lot of things in private which they couldn’t possibly explain in public.” And Edward Hopper captured that world on his canvases.

Costume Sketches for The Young Victoria (2009)

I love period dramas and I love costumes in them! In fact, I love to gaze and admire the costumes so much that sometimes I don’t even care for the film itself; if the costumes are an eye-candy, I will probably enjoy the film as well. Aesthetic is everything. So, maybe I am not the best judge of a particular film itself, but I think it doesn’t take a genius to see that the costumes for the film “The Young Victoria” (2009) are gorgeous! The costume designer Sandy Powell won an Oscar for the costumes she designed for this film and today I wanted to share some of her, seems to be, watercolour sketches which look so vibrant and playful, and more free-flowing and sketchy than a Victorian era fashion plate would be. The film follows Victoria, played by Emily Blunt, from the times she was a Princess Victoria, through her coronation, falling in love with Albert, their marriage and ends with the birth of her first child, daughter Victoria in 1840. The time period is short, covering the 1830s and 1840, but fashion-wise subtle changes can definitely be felt, from puffy 1830s sleeves to simpler 1840s styles which I love very much.

Here is what Powell says about the process of finding inspiration and research for the costumes: “There are a lot of royal portraits of Victoria and the family, so obviously, we started with that. And written material, including her own diaries. She was very specific about her clothing and would describe in great detail what she was wearing and what she did that day, so that was very useful. And after that, I went to Kensington Palace, where there is a museum, and also some of her original pieces of clothing are archived there. We had access to look at those.” And also she emphasised the point of how simple the 1840s fashion actually is: “With the women’s clothes, I don’t think that they are complex. I think they’re quite simple for this period. The most important thing is the undergarment. A woman will have a corset and petticoats on, and that creates the silhouette — the base on top of which the dresses will go. The dresses themselves are very light. They’re made of fine fabrics– silk, mostly — and they just pop over the top of the underwear that’s already created your foundation. So in a way, once an actor has her underwear on, it becomes a question of putting another dress over it.” You can read the entire interview here. Ahhh, to be clad in those long silk gowns, with flowers in my hair, wander the lonely and cold corridors of my palace, only in a dream!

The Love Witch (2016): Psychedelia Meets Victoriana

Two autumns ago I watched this delicious eye-candy film called “The Love Witch” (2016) directed by Anna Biller and I loved it! Now, in these late October’s crimson leafy witchy days I find myself thinking about that film again and now I must tell you all to watch it too because it is just “wow”! It is fun, strange, sensual, vibrant, over the top and very aesthetically pleasing to watch.

I love him so much it just turns to hate
I fake it so real, I am beyond fake
And someday, you will ache like I ache…

(Hole, Doll Parts)

The main character is a beautiful witch Elaine, played by Samantha Robinson, whose long silky smooth black hair, dazzling outfits and vibrant eyeshadows catch the eye of many men in town, which is unfortunate for them because she isn’t just a witch – she is a love witch. Simultaneously, she is every man’s fantasy and his doom. Her victims just fall too much in love, and yes, ironically they die of too much love. Looking at Elaine, the way she walks the way she talks, it is easy to see why no man can resist her, there is a something magnetic about her, her figure oozes confidence and sensuality. In the opening scene, she is driving her pretty red car and explaining to us how she had to move because her former husband died a mysterious death and now she is partly blamed. She starts a new life in a small and charming little town of Arcata, California and moves into a beautiful Victorian house decorated in vibrant colours and garish designs which perfectly fit this witch’s taste. There she spends her time making spells and love potions, woodoo dolls and candles, and she also enjoys painting, tea and cake like a refined Victorian lady. After suffering from love in the past, Elaine was reborn as a witch and now she is determined to use that power to get what she wants from men, and not the other way around.

The time period isn’t strictly defined, it is supposed to be set in modern times but the aesthetic definitely draws heavily from late 1960s vibrant psychedelia and early 1970s with the Victoriana influence and the Edwardian era revival; the interior design of Elaine’s house and her costumes reflect this rich exuberant mix of styles. This film is extremely aesthetically pleasing to watch and it is what draws me to the film the most; aesthetic, if it’s the kind of world that I can imagine myself living in, if the characters are wearing the kind of clothes that I would died for, then I will watch the film, regardless of its other qualities, or lack of thereof. The aesthetic is everything.

All in all, Elaine just wants to find a man to love, and who will love her in return, but her mad intense search for this man has made her too desperate, and her witchcraft skills have made her too powerful, and so what started with an innocent understandable desire to be loved turned into a wild murderous fantasy. An officer she dated tells her in one scene in the bar “What you call love is a borderline personality disorder.” And indeed, her dark hypnotising eyes with long lashes and blue eyeshadow do have a look of madness in them. Also, she has no problem with burying people such as her unfortunate lover, she has done it before, she admits… Though it was his fault, he suddenly got so clingy and emotional after they had made love. He wasn’t the strong courageous prince charming that she is waiting for.

I am doll parts, bad skin, doll heart
It stands for knife
For the rest of my life

(Hole, Doll Parts)

“The Love Witch” feels entirely like someone’s fantasy, like an acid dreams translated into the art medium of cinema, which is wonderful! It’s a world seen through rose-tinted glasses, and it has its own logic. You know it can’t be real and these things can’t be real, but somehow you want to be drawn in and just savour all its colours and vivacity. The reason for this unique, dreamy feel to the film is probably because Anna Biller was practically its main creator; she is the film’s writer, costume designer, director, producer, art director, and editor. She wanted the film to look like it belongs to the era it was set in, and therefore the vibrant colours were used on purpose, in setting and in costumes, to emulate the look of technicolor films. Anne Biller said “I like to make films with a kind of dream logic. My films are a mix of reality and fantasy, or a mix of what is happening and what people wish was happening, or what they fear will happen.”

In one scene, her poor victim Wayne, a college lecturer, takes her to his cabin in the woods, but little can he sense that she put hallucinogenic herbs in his drink and that she will destroy him. She starts undressing and he is almost blinded by the bright rainbow of her coat. Here is how the dialogue goes:

“What the hell! Your coat, it’s so bright.”

“I always line my clothing.

“You have two selves. Dark and quiet that you show the world… who do you give that to? the Rainbow?”

“I give the rainbow to you. Right now.“ And she throws the rainbow-lined coat to him and proceeds to take the rest of her clothes off.

Now let’s take a look at Elaine’s to-die-for gorgeous costumes! Here is what Anna Biller said about them:

“It’s all stuff that I fantasize about wearing, outfits I would wear if I was that put together. I used to put a lot of time into my own wardrobe, but since I’ve been making films I’ve put a lot of that energy into film wardrobes instead. I love vintage-inspired clothing, and I used vintage patterns to create her wardrobe. I wanted her to look really stylish, but also to be dressed how I imagine a 1960s witch would dress. I know some girls who dress like Elaine, and I love the way they dress and do their makeup.” She also says: “I wanted the costumes to come from Elaine’s romantic self-fantasies. I made a lot of them, and also a lot of them were vintage.”

I love the emphasis Biller put on the costumes and how they are symbolically connected to the story:

“I like for the costumes to match sets or to be harmonious with them, so in the scene when Elaine is driving her red car I put her in a red dress with red accessories. Her dress is short and casual, since she is driving and it’s daytime. She is wearing a moonstone pendant, since that’s an occult piece of jewelry. She changes costume for the next scene in the tearoom, since that’s a pink room and features ladies in hats, so for that scene she wears an appropriate Victorian-style peach dress with a hat trimmed with flowers. Trish for that scene also wears a peach outfit, but hers is a pantsuit because she is a businesswoman. In the last scene at the bar, I have Elaine in a long dress which is in a Victorian style but feels defiant and witchy because it’s in a theatrical red polyester. I put her in this dress because she is defying Griff in this scene, and I wanted her to wear something that shows her power.” (read the whole interview here.)

I love that Biller designed the costumes to correlate to the scenes, so the colour and cut of Elaine’s dress can tell us much more than we might assume at first. On two different occasions Elaine is having a tea party, first with her friend Trish in a Victorian-style tea room where she is seen wearing a dusty peach-pink dress and a pink hat, and the other time she is at home alone painting and she made tea and cake and is seen wearing this delicate yellow and white dress. In these scenes, she is not a groovy vixen out to get her net victim, no, she is a delicate princess waiting for her prince charming to show up at her doorstep with flowers and chocolates. These two dresses show the influence of late Victorian and Edwardian era on design and fashion of the late sixties and early 1970s, I already wrote about it here. Pink and yellow tea dresses, like a delicate rose and primrose, sweet and nonthreatening. Here is what Anne Biller says about these outfits:

“The tea outfits were all vintage finds, but I had to do a lot of alterations to make them right. I looked for vintage Gunne Sax dresses specifically, wanting to give Elaine the look of those vintage Bradley dolls with the big eyes, and of the prom girls, bridesmaids, and Wild West gals you’d see in movies from the ‘60s and early ‘70s. The scene itself was inspired by an actual tea room I visited once where all the ladies wore hats trimmed with flowers, and pastel colors. I really saw Elaine in that setting, with all of her princess fantasies.” (more here.)

Now, at the end, my question is: how can I steal her wardrobe, and where may I apply to live there, in such a pretty Victorian house in sunny California in some undefined era which looks a lot like sixties????

Book Review: The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson

“I felt a tremendous distance between me and everything real.”

(The Rum Diary)

Rincón, Puerto Rico, picture found here.

Some time ago I watched the film “The Rum Diary”(2011) starring Johnny Depp as the main character Paul Kemp and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was just totally captivated by Kemp’s exciting lifestyle set against the vibrant backdrop of the Caribbean. The ocean, the sunsets, the rum…. ahhh. A few weeks ago, in these warm and yellow days of July, I decided to read the novel “The Rum Diary” written by Hunter S. Thompson. In took not three full pages for me to fall in love with it. I was especially intrigued by the fact that it wasn’t a work of pure fiction. Thompson actually lived and worked as a journalist in Puerto Rico in the late 1950s. He worked for the magazine El Sportivo which folded soon after his arrival but Thompson found another job as a journalist and managed to stay on the island long enough to gather inspiration for the novel which would spend almost forty years sitting in his drawer; it wasn’t published until 1998. The novel is based on Thompson’s adventures on the island, but is part-truth and part-fiction, written in the first person and told by a journalist Paul Kemp who comes to San Juan to work for the newspapers called San Juan Daily News.

“Like most of the others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that my instincts were right. I shared a vagrant optimism that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles — a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other — that kept me going.”

Thompson’s writing has the same qualities which I love and admire in Jack Kerouac’s novels; they both write in a fast-paced exciting style, they both brilliantly capture the atmosphere of the place, in Thompson’s case the vividness of San Juan, and they both have a similar type of character; young, wild, rebellious, idealist, wanting more from life but ultimately just wasting time on alcohol and women, characters who are prone to jumping from one thrill to another, because boredom equals death. No time to sleep – you’ll sleep when you’re dead. Life just seems so exciting in these novels, full or endless possibilities, and even a hangover seems like the most romantic thing in the world. Kemp is so excited about coming to the island and he says: “I wanted to write all my friends and invite them down. (…) I wanted to cable them all — “Come quick stop plenty of room in the rum barrel stop no work stop big money stop drink all day stop hump all night stop hurry it may not last.”

Picture found here.

Similar to Kerouac’s novel “Tristessa”, which I love, “The Rum Diary” captures the fragile moment in time. Two North Americans going down to more exotic southern places and writing about it. Kerouac spent a year in Mexico City and Thompson spent about two years in Puerto Rico. Their experiences are tied to a specific moment in time, had they gone to those places just five years later, nothing would be the same. Through Thompson’s writing you sense a layer of sadness under the ecstasy and drunkenness that he describes; a sense of going nowhere, growing old, time passing by… Perhaps this is the source of that rush to experience things which often leads to silly decisions. I also love the way Thompson describes the place; hot air, palm trees, narrow streets with buildings jammed together and balconies that hung over the street, chatter and music coming from open windows, narrow pavements where people sell peeled oranges for a nickel each, how he feels “the foreignness of the place”, he is specific with names of places and very observant to everything that is going on around him, the things he hears, the sights, the sounds, the smells:

“I leaned back in the chair and sipped my drink. The cook was banging around in the kitchen and for some reason the piano had stopped. From inside came a babble of Spanish, an incoherent background for my scrambled thoughts. For the first time I felt the foreignness of the place, the real distance I had put between me and my last foothold. There was no reason to feel pressure, but I felt it anyway — the pressure of hot air and passing time, an idle tension that builds up in places where men sweat twenty-four hours a day.”

Hunter S. Thompson in Puerto Rico

There is also another aspect of the novel; the exploitation of the beauties and nature of the island, represented by the businessman Yeamon who befriends Kemp. The Americans from the mainland saw Puerto Rico as a source of their wealth, they planned to built hotels and exploit what there was to exploit and that makes me quite sad. “At that time the U.S. State Department was calling Puerto Rico “America’s advertisement in the Caribbean — living proof that capitalism can work in Latin America.”

In one part of the book, it’s described how the houses use to have a view of the ocean, but now the hotel at the beach has a view on the ocean, and the houses are looking at the hotel. If Capitalism isn’t devil’s idea, I don’t know what is. And now some fun and interesting quotes:

“There was a strange and unreal air about the whole world I’d come into. It was amusing and vaguely depressing at the same time. Here I was, living in a luxury hotel, racing around a half-Latin city in a toy car that looked like a cockroach and sounded like a jet fighter, sneaking down alleys and humping on the beach, scavenging for food in shark-infested waters, hounded by mobs yelling in a foreign tongue — and the whole thing was taking place in quaint old Spanish Puerto Rico, where everybody spent American dollars and drove American cars and sat around roulette wheels pretending they were in Casablanca. One part of the city looked like Tampa and the other part looked like a medieval asylum.”

“Sala’s apartment on Calle Tetuán was about as homey as a cave, a dank grotto in the very bowels of the Old City. It was not an upscale neighborhood. (…) The ceiling was twenty feet high, not a breath of clean air, no furniture except two metal cots and an improvised picnic table, and since it was on the ground floor we could never open the windows because thieves would come in off the street and sack the place. A week after Sala moved in he left one of the windows unlocked and everything he owned was stolen, even his shoes and his dirty socks. We had no refrigerator and therefore no ice, so we drank hot rum out of dirty glasses and did our best to stay out of the place as much as possible.”

“It was so hot that I began to sweat each time we stopped for a red light. Then, when we started moving again, the wind would cool me off. Sala weaved in and out of the traffic on Avenida Ponce de Leon, heading for the outskirts of town. Somewhere in Santurce we stopped to let some schoolchildren cross the street and they all began laughing at us. “La cucaracha!” they yelled. “Cucaracha! cucaracha!”

Sala looked embarrassed.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“The little bastards are calling this car a cockroach,” he muttered. “I should run a few of them down.”

***

“At six-thirty I left the bar and walked outside. It was getting dark and the big Avenida looked cool and graceful. On the other side were homes that once looked out on the beach. Now they looked out on hotels and most of them had retreated behind tall hedges and walls that cut them off from the street. Here and there I could see a patio or a screen porch where people sat beneath fans and drank rum. Somewhere up the street I heard bells, the sleepy tinkling of Brahms’ Lullaby.”

“After living there a week I’d established a fairly strict routine. I would sleep until ten or so, depending on the noise level in the street, then take a shower and walk up to Al’s for breakfast. With a few exceptions, the normal workday at the paper was from noon until eight in the evening, give or take a few hours either way. Then we would come back to Al’s for dinner. After that it was the casinos, an occasional party, or simply sitting at Al’s and listening to each other’s stories until we all got drunk and mumbled off to our beds. Sometimes I would go to Sanderson’s and usually there were people there to drink with.”

And now here is an exciting part of the book which matches the memorable scene in the film where Chenault (played by Amber Heard) is dancing in a very provocative way in a stuffy and crowded club on the isle of St Thomas:

“They had made a big circle, and in the middle of it. Chenault and the small, spade-bearded man were doing the dance. Chenault had dropped her skirt and was dancing in her panties and her white sleeveless blouse. Her partner had taken off his shirt exposing his glistening black chest. He wore nothing but a pair of tight, red toreador pants. Both of them were barefoot.”

(…) Now, as if in some kind of trance, Chenault began to unbutton her blouse. She popped the buttons slowly, like a practiced stripper, then flung the blouse aside and pranced there in nothing but her bra and panties. I thought the crowd would go crazy. They howled and pounded on furniture, shoving and climbing on each other to get a better view. The whole house shook and I thought the floor might cave in. Somewhere across the room I heard glass breaking.

(…) Now they were close together and I saw the brute reach around Chenault and unhook the strap of her bra. He undid it quickly, expertly, and she seemed unaware that now she wore nothing but her thin silk panties. The bra slid down her arms and fell to the floor. Her breasts bounced violently with the jerk and thrust of the dance. Full, pink-nippled halls of flesh, suddenly cut loose from the cotton modesty of a New York bra. (…)

Yeamon was screaming hysterically, struggling to keep his balance. “Chenault!” he shouted.

“What the hell are you doing?” He sounded desperate, but I felt paralyzed.

Pictures found here.

“They were coming together again, weaving slowly toward the middle of the circle. The noise was an overpowering roar from two hundred wild throats. Chenault still wore that dazed, ecstatic expression as the man reached out and eased her panties over her hips and down to her knees. She let them drop silently on the floor, then stepped away, breaking into the dance again, moving against him, freezing there for a moment — even the music paused — then dancing away, opening her eyes and flinging her hair from side to side.”

***

“Moberg was a degenerate. (…) Often he disappeared for days at a time. Then someone would have to track him down through the dirtiest bars in La Perla, a slum so foul that on maps of San Juan it appears as a blank space. La Perla was Moberg’s headquarters; he felt at home there, he said, and in the rest of the city — except for a few horrible bars — he was a lost soul.”

***

“Driving along the beach I remembered how much I’d enjoyed the mornings when I first came to San Juan. There is something fresh and crisp about the first hours of a Caribbean day, a happy anticipation that something is about to happen, maybe just up the street or around the next corner.”