Monday, June 16, 2014

Our French Film Festival

When we went to the French Film Festival and found that they were out of tickets for the weekend, I was utterly crushed. We had been looking forward to it for weeks and had every detail planned—brunch at TWG, pastries from Paul, and six beautiful French movies one after the other. I was distraught.

Cholo, however, made everything better. As fast as he could, he acquired copies of all the festival movies and we had our own French Film festival at his home. It was infinitely better.





First we watched “Amorous et Turbulences,” the story of two former lovers and their pivotal chance encounter aboard a plane. We loved how it is adorable and poignant all at the same time, and seeing chic Paris on the screen delighted me to no end. “Mood Indigo,” on the other hand, for all its color, fantasy, and vibrancy, left us shaken. The world of “Mood Indigo” is one where god wants nothing to do with humanity, and where the philosopher “Jean-Sol Partre” is a rock star and human freedom is celebrated. This same freedom, however, we later found, is responsible for that hopeless forlornness, which will consume our beloved characters later on. Humanity is not as free and powerful after all. The movie’s surrealism, too, turns out to be but superficial, for it undeniably speaks glaring truths about the real. We were left utterly disturbed for the movie hit so close to home. And so we had to stop our festival for the moment, to turn to each other for hugs—we needed to be reminded that we are not alone in our forlornness.

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