LONDON & PYTHON

And two good films

The final four days of my brief visit to the UK were spent with cousins in London. There was a heat wave, an Underground strike and two annoying infections (inside me) battling for my attention but: I had a great good time all regardless.

There was a riotous 40th birthday party for one of the younger cousins and wonderful savoury pancakes with another younger cousin. There was her husband’s bonsais to admire and all the excellent good meals at the cousinly home at which I stayed. There was a pub visit with one of the youngest of my clan-cousins and also a very enjoyable dinner with Helen Gilbert, the first international editor to notice HARVEST, many years ago. She included it in her collection for Routledge, POSTCOLONIAL PLAYS: An Anthology.

At all three homes where I stayed, the focus was on improved nutritional habits. I really appreciated the interesting, tasty and health-focused meals I had. I’ve come back with at least one great breakfast idea (I’ll focus on it in a subsequent post). Despite all the eating, I have dropped two pounds since I left. Yaay.

I didn’t do much in the way of taking pictures in London. Not because I didn’t see subjects but because I can either take pictures or I can look at what’s around me. Unlike Real Photographers I CAN’T do both. I probably can’t walk and chew gum either! *grin*

Anyway. Here’s a tiny sample of images.

A gas-lit flame in a pair of exterior lanterns. I found it strangely thrilling. A discrete advertisement for a magicians’ club.

Flowers outside the Magicians’ Club.

Lush tropical foliage within the vast apartment complex where I was a guest.

My tropical self, in London-disguise. That slightly ethereal expression is misleading. I was merely trying to take a photograph of myself in the lift-lobby mirror, without looking down at my phone.

AND FINALLY, the two movies I mentioned in the subtitle. I saw both of them on board the American Airlines flight I took from London to Boston.

SIRĀT

The title is the name for the “razor-thin bridge that every soul must cross on the Day of Judgment. It is described as thinner than a hair and sharper than a sword.” The description is offered at the beginning of this Spanish-French film, produced by Pedro Almodóvar (and others).

We follow alongside a grimy-complexioned, anxious-looked middle-aged man, Luis, as he searches for his missing daughter, somewhere in the Moroccan desert bordering the Sahara. He has a large van and is accompanied by his 11-year old son, Esteban. They have been searching for some months and are now at the fringes of a desert rave: a vast sea of what look like hippie-zombies are swaying and dancing to the music that is pounding out at them from immense, gaunt speakers, set up against the backdrop of a great red-gold cliff.

The sound design is elemental. Even listening on disposable headphones aboard a transatlantic flight, the deep throb of the music had a mystical edge to it, booming its way into (my) gut, my teeth, my dreams.

There’s no point saying more, because it is less about the story than the experience. It has the quality of a fly-on-wall documentary – but of course there are no walls.

It won the Jury Award at Cannes last year. That’s no reason to watch it. I would say … watch it because everyone’s comfort-zone needs to have a bed of nails installed within it.

To reset one’s reality filter.

To feel bad, as a choice.

To wake up.

RENTAL FAMILY

So … this is so completely different that I had to swallow down my meds and eat a handful of the onboard galley “snacks” that are left out for anyone to graze – weird wafers and expressionless popcorn – during the flight before I could face such a total change of pace.

The setting is Tokyo. The protagonist is the actor Brendon Fraser, in the role of a somewhat failed and struggling actor, attempting to make a living in Japan. His burly shape and size, looming above the lithe and slender local population, is very much a part of the plot.

When I saw this film listed on board my flight to the UK, I immediately dismissed it because the name suggested a disaster-comedy of the cross-cultural kind. But it was strongly recommended by one of my hosts in the UK. And I needed to recover from SIRĀT.

I found RF to be a pleasurable mix of DEPARTURES and LOST IN TRANSLATION, both set in Japan.

Brendon Fraser’s character Phillip takes on a job with an agency that provides fake life-experiences to people who are in need of extreme solutions to their personal problems. His first assignment is to be “the sad American” at a funeral. He botches his entrance and is shocked when the “corpse” rises up from his coffin: because he (the not-corpse) is the actual client of that particular assignment. He had wanted to feel loved and respected by those who would perhaps mourn his passing. And he was fully satisfied.

Despite the inauspicious start to his new career, Phillip eases his way into the friendly-faux characters he is employed to impersonate. The film follows a series of mildly comic situations with odd little twists and side-swipes at the cultural divide between the Japanese and a Westerner. Fraser has the perfect presence for the role. Convincingly large and bumbling, with a marvellously flexible face and the ability to looked shocked and caring both at once.

Briefly, I tried to imagine RF as a movie set in India … *grin* … and soon gave up! But who knows? Maybe with the right mix of actors, it would be just as gently amusing-profound.