Les poupées russes
No, I did not fight my way into an early show of The Da Vinci Code, although I hear that it's not bad. Next Friday, maybe.
The movie that I saw yesterday was Les poupées russes (Russian Dolls), which might be billed as the sequel to L'auberge espagnole, Cédric Klapisch's comedy of 2002, but which is in fact the second half of a two-part work of art. Five years later, Xavier has still got a bit of the Peter Pan bug, but the events of Poupées russes make him get over it. I will write about the movie when it is released on DVD. For the moment, three things: 1. See it! 2. Don't see it unless and until you've seen the earlier film. 3. The huge difference between the two episodes is either natural or supernatural, I can't tell which: Kelly Reilly's Wendy has morphed from the gawky, whiny, somewhat clueless girl of L'auberge into an extraordinarily glamorous woman of great emotional resonance. Even if you've seen her platinum performance in Mrs Henderson Presents, you may not be ready for the alteration, which is the opposite of a shock: the uncanniness intensifies as the movie reaches its climax on the Neva. We can expect a lot of great work from this actress.
Oh, and 4. Visually, Poupées is even more fun to watch than L'auberge.
Les poupées russes was just part of a very nice midday. I took the train down to Hunter College, at 68th Street, and fetched the copy of The Leopard that Shakespeare & Co was holding for me. Then I caught the crosstown bus at 67th Street, boarding just as the first drops of rain were falling. The Park looked dreamy, deep green against soft grey, but we crossed it all too quickly and presently I was out in the wet. I had only a block of Central Park West to walk in the rain, thanks to a scaffolding at the Ethical Culture Society, but that was enough. I presented The Leopard to my friend, told him that I'd be back at around two for lunch, and went to the Lincoln Square Theatre. What a labyrinth that place is! It seems to be two floors below street level, carved out of nooks and crannies not needed by the building's plumbing and ventilation. The path to the men's room alone!
It had been my thought to walk over to Burberry's, on East 57th Street, after lunch, to buy some socks, but the weather inspired a change of plan - as did my friend's having an errand to run on my side of the Park. It was after our very nice lunch that the real downpour began. The trees in Lincoln Square were tossing in the wind while the waiters hurriedly stripped the sidewalk tables of their linen. We went back up to my friend's place to wait out the worst - and, lucky for him too, as he'd left two windows open. Even after the rain let up, we had a monstrous wait for a taxi. Each of us stood at one end of the drive-through driveway at my friend's building; we eventually snagged one that was ferrying two old ladies home from somewhere. We talked our way to 89th and Madison, where my friend got out. For a few blocks, I continued to enjoy the ride, but I found the crosstown travel tiresome, and was just about to get out and walk when the rain started up again.
The afternoon, as always on Friday, was given over to housecleaning, and this took a long time, because I was watching Luchino Visconti's 1963 adaptation of The Leopard while I dusted and vacuumed. I didn't get through the entire picture until after dinner with Kathleen. (We had another movie to watch, but Kathleen was tired and didn't think she'd stay awake.) There are many beauties in Il gattopardo, and the performances of Bert Lancaster and Alain Delon are exactly as good as I thought they'd be; it's as if Lampedusa wrote the book with them in mind - which, though I'm sure that he didn't, is just possible, given that M Delon's first film came out in 1957, the year of Lampedusa's death. But perhaps it's time for a remake. Visconti's textures are bright and superficial, while Nino Rota's score is almost intolerably trivial. Made at a time when voice-overs were taboo, the adaptation forces the Prince - a proud man of few words if ever there was one - to make observations that he would never utter in public. For all its sumptuousness, Il gattopardo shortchanges us of the lush beauties, so vivid in the novel, of the Prince's palace at Donnafugata. What we get instead are a lot of period rooms. And the movie suffers from inadequate production values. Even on the Criterion Collection repackaging, the dialogue is out of synch, and every sound appears to have been dubbed in a bright studio.
I wish I'd dreamt of Kelly Reilly while I was asleep, and got her out of my system. Instead, I'm dreaming about her now, which makes writing very difficult!
