Tuesday, December 10, 2024

Unknown filmmaker | The French Exchange — Renault Clio: Thirty Years in the Making / 2019

women in love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Unknown filmmaker The French Exchange — Renault Clio: Thirty Years in the Making / 2019 [2 minutes] [commercial advertisement]

 

In 2019 Renault Clio made an ad aimed at lesbians, what might almost be described as a lesbian melodrama. It begins with a British mother driving a young unhappy and somewhat frightened girl in her Renault Clio to the bus which takes her to a exchange summer in France.

    There she meets up with a girl of her age and they become close, and by the time they return  home have become close friends, sleepy heads against each other’s shoulders, and a hug as they leave one another’s company at the shuttle.


      In the next scene they have grown into teenagers, and still have a close relationship, going for a swim together in the ocean and kissing one another in a rather steamy teenage love scene. 


        Every time they meet up, of course, they travel by Renault Clios, each time in a different color.

      But finally, there seems to be a confrontation between one of the girls and her father (one article explains he has read one of the love letters exchanged with her girlfriend), and in the next frame she is being married to a man, with her English friend in attendance, as the bride sadly looks back over her shoulder at her former close friend.


    In the next frame, she is packing up her things, obviously leaving her husband, filling up the truck of her Clio and driving off to the shuttle which takes her back to her English girlfriend, the two hugging and driving off in a brand new red Clio.

    In the last scene, they return to as an adult couple with girls of their own to visit the British girl’s parents.

    The musical accompaniment here is a piano version of Oasis' "Wonderwall," with a female vocal. And although the director is unnamed, the film was made by the Publicus-Poke advertising firm.

 

Los Angeles, December 10, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).

Adam Tyree | The Places We Won't Walk / 2022

the problems of hawaii

by Douglas Messerli

 

Adam Tyree (screenwriter and director) The Places We Won't Walk / 2022 [12 minutes]

 

Adam Tyree’s gentle love story, The Places We Won’t Walk, begins at a party hosted by James (Se Oh) and his gay partner Trevor (Eric Graise). After dinner in conversation with their other guests, one of their lesbian friends, Stephanie (Skarlett Redd) announces that she and her lover Janelle (Hina Sabatine) are getting married and, of course, all of these friends are invited. The wedding will be a simple affair on the beach in Hawaii.


      It sounds perfect to nearly everyone and James quickly agrees that they’ll be there. But Trevor suddenly grows silent and distant. Trevor, with both legs cut off at the knee, lives in a wheel chair and realizes that sand is not precisely compatible with his major method of transportation. And if nothing else he will need his lover’s help simply to negotiate the cracked sidewalks and the sand itself.

      After a night of love making, he announces that he won’t go, but if James would like to attend alone that it’s all right. Strangely, the caring and loving James has not realized that his fiercely independent and self-pitying companion finally feels defeated, as he feels he would be holding back James from sharing all the reasons why people are so excited about Hawaii. No walks on the beach for him. No swimming. No hiking. He feels as if he is entirely selfish, refusing to permit all his own lover’s simple joys in life.

       When he finally breaks down and explains the difficulties he perceives, James assures him that if anyone had someone so special as Trevor in their lives that they would gladly give up swimming, walks along the beach, and other the outdoor activities that Hawaii proffers. Besides they can party, drink, and eat (James is an excellent chef, and cooks their meals, while Trevor shops).


     By this short work’s end, he has put Trevor’s fears to rest after a few tears, and perhaps he will join in the fun even if there are many places where they won’t walk, the song by Bruno Major and Finlay Robson which closes this tender little film.

       Tyree has been making excellent short films about people who overcome difficulties and misunderstandings since at least 2012, among them In Half (2012), Audition (2015), Open Mic (2018), and Green Light (2020). And there are others I look forward to seeing and write about.

 

Los Angeles, December 10, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).     

Gary Halvorson and David McVicar | Maria Stuarda / 2013

battling divas

by Douglas Messerli

 

Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti (composer), Giuseppe Badari (libretto, based on the play by Friedrich von Schiller), David McVicar (stage director), Gary Halvorson (film director) Maria Stuarda / 2013 [Metropolitan Opera HD-live production]


Watching the live H.D. presentation of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda on Saturday, I was reminded of and agreed with The New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini’s enthusiastic review of the opera:

 

                              if you think of a gala as a meaningful celebration, then

                              it was hard to imagine a better New Year’s Eve gift to

                              opers lovers than this musically splendid and intensely

                              dramatic performance of Maria Stuarda.

                                   The production stars the great American mezzo-soprano

                               Joyce DiDonato in the title role, a part that has been sung by

                              sopranos and mezzo-sopranos. Ms. DiDonato's performance

                              will be pointed to as a model of singing in which all

                              components of the art form — technique, sound, color,

                              nuance, diction — come together in service to expression.                  

     All the performances were excellent, particularly DiDonato’s Maria, but also South African Elza van den Heever’s powerful Queen Elizabeth and Matthew Polenzani’s well sung the Earl of Leicester. The marvelous encounter between the Scottish queen and the English ruler is, quite obviously, the unforgettable scene in the opera, wherein, after insulting attacks on Maria for licentiousness, murder, and treason, the patient Scott ruins her possibilities for freedom by lashing back, denouncing Elizabeth as “the illegitimate offspring of a whore.”

      But the glorious aria “Oh! Nube che lieve,” which Maria sings to the clouds over her head—just before that encounter, in one of her first times in which she has been released to the outside—is absolutely beautiful, as well as her last act confession to George Talbot (Matthew Rose) and her touching acceptance of her fate. All is equally stunningly staged.

     Despite all of this glorious operatic bravura, however, Donizetti’s opera still seems a bit clotted and somewhat strangled by the libretto, which focuses too much on the two queen’s battle, without filling in the audience about the issues that lie behind those horrific clashes. The religious differences—the fact that Maria was Catholic in a culture that had recently, through the hands of Elizabeth’s father, broken with the Pope—are certainly hinted at, but not explicitly developed. Scotland’s own turmoil between the Knox-led Presbyterianism and local Catholicism is not even hinted. And, although Maria’s checkered sexual past—the death of her husband Darnley and her relationships with David Rizzio and others—are vaguely suggested, unless you know the history, Elizabeth’s attacks are nearly meaningless. Elizabeth herself is portrayed as such a cruel cousin that one would have no comprehension of how difficult she found it to sentence Maria, a queen after all, to death, nor might we imagine that that death might have been a misunderstood request.


     Of course, the audience of Donizetti’s day—and even the audiences of contemporary Europe, well versed in European history—might immediately have understood the underlying facts of the story. But, even though I think of myself as fairly well-educated in terms of history, I missed a large number of Donizetti’s and his librettist’s allusions, which helped to create a notion of Elizabeth’s almost maniacal behavior and Maria’s confused innocence. Even if you grant both Schiller and Donizetti their fictional aspirations, what the opera finally focused on was a battle of divas—as engaging as that is—instead of a battle between two warring queens—both of whom, as the divas, in between acts admitted, believed they were right. More importantly, without any deep historical context, it is difficult to comprehend the marvelous scene of confession. Was Maria truly involved in Darnley’s death? Was she plotting for the assassination of Elisabeth? And what was Leister’s role in all of this? The fuzziness of the opera’s history takes away the consequence of the character’s actions, so that the incredible meeting of the two queens seems to occur more as a force of performance rather than the figures whom the performers represent.

     Finally, as beautiful as many of the arias were, Donizetti’s score is simply not as beauteous as it aspires to be. Throughout, his formulaic patterns of Bel Canto arias seem just that. In short, while I was absolutely delighted to see this seldom performed work, it did not take me to the level of “complete renewal” that Tommasini promised. It was only—what a strange qualification!—a wondrous treat.

 

Los Angeles, January 21, 2003

Reprinted from USTheater, Opera, and Performance (January 2013).

My Queer Cinema Index [with former World Cinema Review titles]

Films discussed (listed alphabetically by director) [Former Index to World Cinema Review with new titles incorporated] (You may request any ...