I have been thinking recently about a few films that I love and I’ve noticed that a similar mood, theme and aesthetic connects them all. They’re all about young girls, all five have a romantic dreamy mood with a touch of mystery, a coming of age theme, and they are all aesthetically pleasing. If a film awakens my imagination, if it gives me delightful daydreams, then I will watch it. If I love a film, I will probably watch it many times because I love to soak all the details, gaze at the costumes and surroundings, and be a part of that dreamy world at least for an hour or two.
Faustine and the beautiful summer (1971)
Now, I already wrote a review for Faustine here, and that shows just how much I loved it! The film follows Faustine’s summer stay at her grandparents countryside house. She is a dreamy sixteen year old girl who loves nature and there are many beautiful shots of her hugging the wheat, kissing a tree, swimming nude, that mingle the love for nature with sensuality. She mostly spends time in her head, but also spies on her neighbours and eventually befriends them, and falls in love with one of them. Through a beautiful and dreamy aesthetic, the film shows Faustine’s growth and explorations, and touches topics that a girl her age could understand, such as the conflicts between daydreaming and living life, innocence and awakening sensuality etc. Chopin’s music is often in the background and there are many lovely and delicate scenes with a sensuous touch; Faustine indolently lying on the bed wrapped in nothing but white lace and eating cherries and strawberries, or Faustine running through the field of golden wheat and poppies which not only brings to mind the beautiful paintings of the Impressionists, but also the verses of young Arthur Rimbaud’s poem “Sensation”:
On the blue summer evenings, I shall go down the paths,
Getting pricked by the corn, crushing the short grass:
In a dream I shall feel its coolness on my feet.
I shall let the wind bathe my bare head.
I shall not speak, I shall think about nothing:
But endless love will mount in my soul;
And I shall travel far, very far, like a gipsy,
Through the countryside – as happy as if I were with a woman.
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
The latest dreamy-romantic-coming of age film I watched about a month ago and found it amazing to say the least! The film is based on the novel by Joan Lindsay and is set in girls school in Australia in 1900. A seemingly idyllic world of white lace, smiles, pressed flowers, and yellow haired girls goes horribly wrong one day in February, Valentine’s Day to be precise, when girls go to a picnic with their teachers. A mysterious mood and a gorgeous Edwardian aesthetic are not the only interesting aspects about the film, the soundtrack with some classical music pieces and the title music with panflute played by Gheorghe Zamfir is so so dreamy and really fits the mood of the wild Australian nature, hot burning sun and those red rocks, you can listen to it here. The intro, which you can watch here, is in my view the most beautiful part of the film, skip to 01:23 and you will see the dream begin. Oh how I love their white gowns, them lacing their corsets, washing their faces in water with roses, reading Valentine’s day cards, oh so romantic!
Virgin Suicides (1999)
A film based on a book by Jeffrey Eugenides, and both are really good in my view. It’s about five sisters living with strict and pious parents in a nice, clean, safe and boring suburb of Detroit in the 1970s. Their home life is sheltered and claustrophobic, plenty of things are forbidden; boys, rock music, nice clothes, and it gets stricter as the story goes on. Shielding them from the world has created numbness, decaying mood and a desire for death. Both the novel and the film are told from the point of view of a few adolescent boys who observe and admire the girls from afar. Just like us, they couldn’t unravel the mystery behind their death nor know for sure what was in their hearts, and this is the aspect that creates a lot of intrigue.
The Beguiled (2017)
Another film by Sophia Coppola . When I started watching it, I thought it’s too slow and unadventurous, but the atmosphere of secrets and claustrophobia, and the gorgeous costumes kept me intrigued. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Thomas P. Cullinan and the story is set in a turbulent era of Civil War, in 1864, and revolves around pupils of a girls school in Virginia. Only five girls are left, with one teacher and headmistress, and so the atmosphere is a bit eerie. Their isolated existence is what gives the story its flair, similar as in “Virgin Suicides”, and I loved how the theme was explored. One girl saves a wounded soldier and everything intensifies from there because those pretty angelic faces and impeccable white gowns hide a lot of secrets and desires. The film beautifully captures their isolation, the are shown dreamily conjugating French verbs, clad in their white cotton dresses, alone in that big white mansion, completely unaware of what is going on in the outside world.
Valerie and her Week of Wonders (1970)
I put this film last on the list although it should be the first chronologically, because it is more strange than dreamy, and more surrealistic and romantic and that makes it a bit different from the previous ones. “Valerie and her Weeks of Wonders” is a Czech film based on the same-named novel written in 1935 by a Czech avant-garden writer Vítězslav Nezval, first published in 1945, and described as “part fairy-tale, part Gothic”. The film is bursting with strangeness and plenty of things don’t make sense, so you needn’t seek logic, just embrace the dream. The main character is a girl named Valerie who is thirteen years old and we follow her life in the countryside with her grandmother who looks frighteningly pale. She has a friend named Orlík and often looses her earrings, her grandma disappears and another woman comes, a local priest is a vampire-like creature with a white fan… Everything is twisted and intriguing and very dream, but I have to add that this film is a bit different, a bit more weird, to the ones I’ve talked about before so that’s why I decided to put it last in this list. Also, I have already written a review on this film here.
I hope you decide to watch one of these films, and if you have any to add on the list of especially dreamy films with flowers, maidens and secrets, feel free to do so in the comments.
Byron's Muse 