Films

I’ve gone to the cinema for the first time here in France, and seen a wonderful Czech film from the 1960s, called Daisies in English and Les Petites Margarites in French.

I found it vastly entertaining, with a sort of relentless anarchic silliness propelling its basic storyline. Two disaffected young ladies decide to humiliate older men out for a roll in the hay, and they have a great time frolicking and pranking their way through the city and eventually the countryside.

The film’s use of color and prismatic effects, its clever montages and collage sequences, its peculiar cuts and crisp photography demonstrate a mastery of technique. Young director Věra Chytilová made a small miracle behind the Iron Curtain. Which, of course, was promptly banned.

While watching Daisies I had to wonder if John Waters saw this film–it features his sort of merciless energetic absurdity. There is a lot of food porn thrown in for good measure.

The film was shown in Uzerche at the Cinema Louis-Jouvet. The theater is sort of like Baltimore’s Charles with its art-house fare mixed in with big release horror and French and Hollywood releases. I had no trouble following the French subtitles except for the word vioc, which occurred twice, and apparently is argot for old dudes.

I’ve also watched Stalker on the MosFilm YouTube channel. They have several classic Soviet films and other arthouse fare available on high-quality streams with English subtitles. I was quite happy to note they had several Andrei Tarkovsky films I’d not seen.

Stalker puts the bleak in oblique. It is, like many of this maestro’s titles, a spiritual workout. You’ll feel like you spent a month in Gurdjieff’s labor program after slogging through nearly 3 hours in The Zone. It is harrowing and beautiful. Imagine Estragon, Pozzo, and Lucky no longer waiting for Godot but trying to find him/her/it/they instead.