#César Award for Best Original Music

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L'Écume des jours (2013, Michel Gondry)

28/04/2024

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Un Monstre à Paris - La Seine And I by Vanessa Paradis & Sean Lennon (Piano vocal)

Un Monstre à Paris - La Seine And I by Vanessa Paradis & Sean Lennon (Piano vocal)

https://rumble.com/embed/v3n1fl2/?pub=14hjof

Un Monstre à Paris

A Monster in Paris (French: Un monstre à Paris) is a 2011 French 3D computer-animated musical comedy science fantasy adventure film directed by Bibo Bergeron, and based on a story he wrote. It was produced by Luc Besson, written by Bergeron and Stéphane Kazandjian, and distributed by EuropaCorp Distribution, and features the voices of Sean Lennon, Vanessa Paradis, Adam Goldberg, Danny Huston, Madeline Zima, Matthew Géczy, Jay Harrington, Catherine O'Hara, and Bob Balaban. Many plot elements are drawn from Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera. It was released on 12 October 2011. It was also produced by Bibo Films, France 3 Cinéma, Walking The Dog, uFilm, uFund, Canal+, France Télévisions, CinéCinéma, Le Tax Shelter du Gouvernement Fédéral de Belgique and Umedia. Its music was composed by Matthieu Chedid, Sean Lennon and Patrice Renson. Music The soundtrack includes both songs and short clips from the film, in both French and English. The soundtrack of the English version was released in the UK a few days after the film's release on both CD and digital download. The album is credited to Vanessa Paradis & (-M-) French version "Les actualités (Interlude)" (0:27) "La valse de Paris" (0:43) "La Seine – Cabaret" (Vanessa Paradis -) (1:17) "Emile et Raoul" (2:00) "Sur les toits" (1:28) "Maynott" (1:05) "La rencontre" (1:45) "Un monstre à Paris" (-M-) (2:18) "Le baptême" (Interlude) (Lucille) (0:11) "Francœur"/Lucille (2:13) "Brume à Paname" (1:01) "Cabaret" (1:02) "La Seine" (Vanessa Paradis & -M-) (2:48) "Perquisition" (0:59) "Sacré cœur" (0:56) "Papa Paname" (Vanessa Paradis) (2:23) "Sur le fleuve"/"Tournesol" (1:15) "Tour Eiffel infernale" (2:29) "L'amour dans l'âme" (-M-) (1:30) "Flashback" (1:39) "U p'tit baiser" (Vanessa Paradis & -M-) (2:24) "Funky baiser" (5:13) English version "Interlude – the News" (0:27) "La Valse de Paris" (0:43) "La Seine and I Cabaret" (Vanessa Paradis -) (1:17) "Emile et Raoul" (2:00) "Sur les Toits" (1:28) "Maynott" (1:05) "La Rencontre" (1:45) "A Monster in Paris" (Sean Lennon) (2:18) "Interlude – Lucille 'The Baptism' (0:11) "Francœur – Lucille" (2:13) "Brume à Paname" (1:01) "Cabaret" (1:02) "La Seine and I" (Vanessa Paradis & Sean Lennon) (2:48) "Perquisition" (0:59) "Sacré Cœur" (0:56) "Papa Paris" (Vanessa Paradis) (2:23) "Sue le Fleuve – Tournesol" (1:15) "Tour Eiffel Infernale" (2:29) "Love is in My Soul" (Sean Lennon) (1:30) "Flashback" (1:39) "Just a Little Kiss" (Vanessa Paradis & Sean Lennon) (2:24) "Funky Baiser" (5:13) Awards Annie Awards 2014 Annie Award – Outstanding Achievement in Character Design in an Animated Feature Production – Christophe Lourdelet – Nominated César Awards 2012 César Award – Best Animated Film (Meilleur film d'animation) – Bibo Bergeron (director), Luc Besson (producer) – Nominated César Award – Best Original Music (Meilleure musique originale) – Matthieu Chedid, Patrice Renson – Nominated Read the full article

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THE ACADEMY TO HONOR MICHAEL J. FOX, EUZHAN PALCY, DIANE WARREN AND PETER WEIR WITH OSCARS® AT GOVERNORS AWARDS IN NOVEMBER

     LOS ANGELES, CA – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced today that its Board of Governors voted to present Honorary Awards to Euzhan Palcy, Diane Warren and Peter Weir, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to Michael J. Fox.  The four Oscar® statuettes will be presented at the Academy’s 13th Governors Awards on Saturday, November 19, 2022, in Los Angeles.

        “The Academy’s Board of Governors is honored to recognize four individuals who have made indelible contributions to cinema and the world at large,” said Academy President David Rubin.  “Michael J. Fox’s tireless advocacy of research on Parkinson’s disease alongside his boundless optimism exemplifies the impact of one person in changing the future for millions.  Euzhan Palcy is a pioneering filmmaker whose groundbreaking significance in international cinema is cemented in film history.  Diane Warren’s music and lyrics have magnified the emotional impact of countless motion pictures and inspired generations of musical artists.  Peter Weir is a director of consummate skill and artistry whose work reminds us of the power of film to reveal the full range of human experience.”

       Fox gained fame playing Alex P. Keaton on the sitcom “Family Ties.”  His hit films include “Back to the Future,” “The Secret of My Success,” “Casualties of War,” “Doc Hollywood” and “The American President.”  He returned to television in his award-winning lead role on “Spin City,” followed by guest appearances in series including “Rescue Me,” “The Good Wife” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”  His many awards include five Emmys, four Golden Globes, one Grammy, two Screen Actors Guild awards, a People’s Choice award, and GQ Man of the Year.  In 2000, he launched the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, which is now the leading Parkinson’s organization in the world.  He is the author of four New York Times bestselling books: Lucky Man, Always Looking Up, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future and No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality.  Fox is the subject of a documentary from Oscar-winning filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, which is currently in production.

        Euzhan Palcy

           Palcy is a writer, director and producer born in Martinique in the French West Indies. Her first feature film, “Sugar Cane Alley,” won the Silver Lion at the 1983 Venice Film Festival, a first for a Black director.  It went on to win a César Award for Best First Work, the first César won by a woman director and by a Black filmmaker.  She continued her journey with “A Dry White Season” (1989), a drama made at the height of apartheid, becoming the first Black woman to direct a film for a major Hollywood studio and guiding Marlon Brando to his last Oscar nomination. Her films also include the musical fairytale “Siméon.”  Palcy’s work has been an inspiration to filmmakers, contemporary artists and novelists.

     Warren is one of the most prolific contemporary songwriters and has written original songs for more than 100 films.  She has earned 13 Oscar nominations in the Original Song category, starting in 1987 and within each of the past five decades, for songs including “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” “Because You Loved Me,” “How Do I Live,” “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing,” “Til It Happens To You” and “Stand Up for Something.”  She has collaborated with such prominent music artists as Beyoncé, Cher, Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, Jennifer Hudson, Lady Gaga, John Legend, Reba McEntire and Carlos Santana.

     A leading figure in the Australian New Wave film movement in the 1970s, Weir emerged as a visionary filmmaker with “Picnic at Hanging Rock” and “The Last Wave.”  He earned Oscar nominations for Directing for “Witness,” “Dead Poets Society,” “The Truman Show” and “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,” for which he also received a Best Picture nomination, and earned a Writing nomination for “Green Card.”  His other notable films include “The Way Back,” “Fearless,” “The Mosquito Coast,” “The Year of Living Dangerously” and “Gallipoli.”

    The Honorary Award, an Oscar statuette, is given “to honor extraordinary distinction in lifetime achievement, exceptional contributions to the state of motion picture arts and sciences, or for outstanding service to the Academy.”

    The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, also an Oscar statuette, is given “to an individual in the motion picture arts and sciences whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry.”

    The 13th Governors Awards is proudly supported by Rolex, the Exclusive Watch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.     

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Sparks accept their award for the Best Original Music Score for the movie Annette at the 47th César Awards in Paris this past week. Kudos to Russell for speaking French in the acceptance speech.

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Translated interview with Adèle Haenel, heroine of “Portrait of a Lady on Fire”

Performing in order to richly live the now

Tomoko Ogawa, in: Ginza Mag, 3rd of December 2020 Translation by Rose @rosedelosvientos​ 🙏🏾

Set in 18th-century France, the daughter of an aristocrat who refuses marriage and a female painter who makes her portrait  - two people of different social status - meet and fall in an unforgettable love that will last for a lifetime.

In the film “Portrait of a Lady on Fire”, Héloïse, an aristocrat, is played by Adèle Haenel, who, as an actress, always thinks, acts and decides constantly for herself. Late last year, she filed a complaint against the director for sexual abuse during/after her first film debut 18 years ago. At the César Awards, she protested and walked out after Polanski won Best Director, which shook the world of French cinema and is also still fresh from memory.

This film is also the work of Céline Sciamma, the director of Water Lilies, in which Adèle Haenel also appeared. Adèle recounts her thoughts about her current film, and director Sciamma’s “Female Gaze”, who, for many years was also her partner in her private life.

Q: Last year, “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” opened and was screened in Europe, and won Best Screenplay at the 72nd Cannes Film Festival. A year and a half has passed since then. Do you feel the magnitude of this work’s influence on women empowerment?

A: If put this way, people might think that it may be too subjective, but I think that not only this film, but Céline Sciamma’s works have constantly played a role in empowering women. But, it was understood that, surely, there’s also a way - that it’s possible to show the worldview of equal love between women from a different perspective, in a history where there are a lot of films that contained an element of women being controlled unilaterally from men’s point of view.

Q: Not dominance, but the joy of collaborating and creating something with someone, and the love that continues to grow is depicted in this film. What do you think sets it apart from many other films that have depicted love until now?

A: Until now, love has been depicted in ways such as controlling the other person, and in a sensual manner, but in this film, the nature of love is kinda different, I guess. The two women who happen to be in that place - while interacting extemporaneously using language that is characteristic of themselves and figuring each other out - are building up their relationship. While it’s fictional without altering historical facts, it’s a proposal that’s entirely different from what love looks like until now. I think that it’s a film that brings with it a new perspective.

Q: It’s not a one-sided view from the painter’s perspective where the person whose portrait is being painted is the “muse”, but rather of both sides looking at each other, and the connection of being seen is depicted. I think that you’ve also been called a “muse” up to this point, but during those times, do you remember how you felt then?

A: The word “muse” is used against actresses as a stereotype, and there were people who did say that to me that but, even if I were called a “muse”, I’ve come to be aware of not taking that position that’s being asked. That’s because even if it’s the director who’s directing, ultimately it���s up to the actors how they perform something while working together with different actors. So, you’re supposed to actively consider how you build up the character relationships artistically, politically, all aspects. In the first place, it’s not acceptable that in most films it’s the men looking, and the women being looked at, so even for things that aren’t visible on the surface, I constantly think and make decisions for myself.

Q: Tell us about the charm of Céline Sciamma as a director.  

A: She has a very clear perspective, doesn’t she? She’s a person who can raise all sorts of questions and kinda make you rethink various ideas, not about how reality is, simply, but beyond those ideas that are based on the reality that there is. She’s also a visionary, and she understands the wonder of fiction, and has philosophical ideas.

Q: In this film, you were also able to apply the relationship of trust that you’ve built with your partner, at the time, through the course of many years.

A: That’s right. I’ve been friends with her for as long as 15 years, and of course she was also my partner, and that’s because I’ve been collaborating artistically for many years. This time,  in the script, too, the character of Héloïse was written with me in mind. So since we’ve already built that trust with each other, there was no need to talk about every little thing, like, “I’m thinking of doing it this way”.

Q: This film has a mostly female staff, such as director Céline Sciamma, cinematographer Claire Mathon, Hélène Delmaire, the female artist who carried out the painting on-screen, etc. What do you think about its significance?

A: From the very start, this film’s intent  - especially since the relationship between women hasn’t really been presented as something very important - is to focus the spotlight on women across history who weren’t written about. This time, an axis (focal point) has been put together by the film crew for the women who properly understand that importance, so there’s a part  where the production did really well, I think.

Q: Through this film, is there anything that you discovered about yourself?

A: I don’t think in a way like, that there was a discovery or change just because of the role that I played. Basically, I’m the type of person who keeps moving and doesn’t stand still, who constantly asks and answers my own questions, and raises issues. Whichever work it is, I perceive them in one of those processes.

Q: I see. In the midst of constant movement, what is your primary motivation as an actor?

A: Meeting with people with whom I can collaborate with is a big one. Whenever I work with new people, I’m made to realize that there’s also such a different way of depicting (t/n: lit. “drawing”) the world. That there is a way to richly live the now, that is in film and art in general. That also motivates me.

Q: With all this motivation that’s hitherto been given to you by the director, do you think that it’s because you both share a common perspective?

A: Since I take the responsibility myself when I perform, there’s no such thing as being influenced by the director. I’m a person who doesn’t really care (t/n: I’ve a feeling ‘give a shit’ is what she really wanted to say here) about hierarchy, and the people whom I can really respect are those persuasive people who have a clear perspective, and, within the silence, can properly show what they want to talk about. Directors who give hints to the actors on how they can arrive at the reality that they’re thinking they want to depict more. I’m thinking that actors don’t express form, rather, their role is to explore the expounding of their own vocabulary. So a person who has a clear vision of what they want, and what they want to draw is amazing, in my opinion.  

Q: Finally, all the handmade dresses have an impression that they’re being fastened thickly and heavily, but how do you think the costumes influence your acting?

A: When I wear the costumes, I feel like a pilot in the Star Wars series (laughs), so as we handle the costumes that we’re given, I really think about how I’m going to move while in it, you know? The one we had was a basic dress, but at first there was a feeling of nervousness, a tense kind of stiffness. But as the story went on, I try to be aware that the movements of the dress will become a bit softer along with my facial expressions. Even if it’s the same costume, I performed while feeling that change of heart.

“Portrait of a Lady on Fire” Original Title:  Portrait de la jeune fille en feu Director: Céline Sciamma Cast: Noémie Merlant, Adèle Haenel, Luana Bajrami, Valeria Golino Music: Jean-Baptiste de Laubier Distribution: GAGA 2019/France/122 mins./Colour/Vista/5.1 Digital Channel Dec. 4, 2020, TOHO Cinema Chanter, Bunkamura Le Cinéma Nationwide Screening © Lilies Films https://gaga.ne.jp/portrait/

Profile Adèle Haenel Born in January 1, 1989 in Paris, France. Attended theater classes at 13 years old. In 2002, debuted as the heroine Chloe in Les Diables. In 2007, her name became more well-known after being nominated for Most Promising Actress at the César Awards. Furthermore, she was also nominated for her role in House of Tolerance (2011), and for Suzanne (2013), achieved Best Supporting Actress, and won Best Actress for Love at First Sight (2014) – becoming one of the actresses representing the world of French cinema both in name and substance. Her major appearances also include The Unknown Girl (2016) and Bloom of Yesterday (2016), among others.

***

Translated excerpt from ’“Portrait of a Lady on Fire” - Approaching the True Face* of Adèle Haenel’

Atsuko Tatsuta, in: Madame Figaro Japan, 4th of December 2020 Translation by Rose @rosedelosvientos 💜

(*t/n: may also mean the 'true nature’ of AH. Literally it means bare face with no make-up.)

“A woman who has an adventurous spirit, while living under constraints.”

Interviewer: Marianne and Héloïse are depicted as contrasting characters, aren’t they? From the outset, when the canvas falls from the boat, Marianne jumps into the ocean in order to retrieve it. Héloïse, which you performed, has never gone into the sea despite living in the island. How did you interpret the contrast between this free and conservative way of living?

Adèle Haenel: Marianne and Héloïse were indeed depicted contrastingly. Not just marriage, but Héloïse is a person who’s lived within various restrictions. But, as the story progresses,  you’ll understand that actually she’s a character who is highly curious, and also has an adventurous spirit. People tend to think that she’s dull and lacks vigour, but it’s soon understood that up to this point, in reality, her actions are coming from a place of being shackled. Playing the transformation of such a character was very interesting.

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Anonymous asked: Thoughts on Jane Birkin? - Talented elegant actor-musician-model? Overrated at everything but she was pretty? Or, never thought about it, but she did design a nice bag for Hermes?

My thoughts about Jane Birkin is that she is and will always remain an all round feminine icon. Plain and simple.

That’s not just my contrarian view because she was an icon that overlapped into my grandparents’ and parents’ generation of the late 60s and 70s but it’s also the view of many French today too. I knew of her because her songs alongside Françoise Hardy and other French chanteuse were always playing on my parents stereo system growing up overseas. Indeed so well-documented is the love affair between Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg, that to picture it retrospectively is to watch a flickering series of film stills in one’s mind. Enter the young British actress in 1970s Paris, basket swinging nonchalantly from one arm, baby daughter clasped carefully in the other, dancing down Boulevard Saint-Germain with the thoughtful French musician’s adoring figure at her side. They loved, smoked and fought fervently, their ten-year-long affair an archetype of that between musician and muse in bohemian Paris, and 40 years after its dissolution, the French still can’t get enough.

As you allude to in your question, she has famously said of herself and Serg Gainsbourg that, “He was a great man. I was just pretty.” Which has led a small minority - especially those in her native England - to be dismissive of her as a long forgotten pretty face of the 70s and who was over-rated because she was nothing without riding on the coat tails of the crooning bad boy, Gainsbourg. On the face of it it was a very disingenuous remark to make because Gainsbourg was indeed a great man (as a musician and French cultural male icon) but she was so much more than a pretty face. I strongly suggest that she was just being her usual self-deprecating Anglo-self and one who remains to be a tad embarrassed at 73 years old to be continued to be lauded as a genuine timeless French style and chanteuse icon.

No one can doubt that Jane Birkin has always had some talent as an artist. Birkin has enjoyed a long career in the arts as a singer, songwriter, actress, and director. Her longevity is one proof of her staying power. Arguably though, it is her reputation as a style icon, and more specifically being the namesake of the iconic Hermès Birkin bag for which she is best known today. She might well have been Gainsbourg’s baby doll (his words) but she was very much her own popular muse and actress.

This may surprise many but Jane Birkin has appeared in over 70 films over several decades. As an actress it is often forgotten how good she is because most of her films were made in France and she rarely did films outside of France.

She was already known even before she hooked up with Gainsbourg. She was born in 1946 to an actress mother, Judy Campbell, and her Royal Navy lieutenant-commander and spy, David Birkin. Her mother was an acclaimed actress of her generation and muse to the older Noel Coward. She had a typical upbringing that one might call comfortably posh upper middle class. She was already married at 17 to film composer, John Barry (yes, the same John Barry who composed all the music for the James Bond films and other Hollywood films (Out of Africa, Dances with Wolves, Cotton Club etc) in 1965 but divorced in 1968 with custody of their daughter. Birkin quickly became part of the swinging London scene in the 1960s and appeared briefly in a handful of films.

Birkin was already well known but it was her nude turn in Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film Blow-Up that really put her on the map. Even today it’s seen as one of the iconic films of the swinging sixties.

She famously arrived in Paris unable to speak French with her newborn daughter in her arms. The story goes that she was offered the lead role in the 1968 French film Slogan alongside Gainsbourg after sobbing through her screen test. Starring alongside Serge Gainsbourg, Birkin performed with him on the movie’s theme song. It was on that film set that they would begin their truly passionate relationship as well as artistic collaborations throughout the 1970s.

Indeed a year later in 1969 they both released the song that has forever defined them both to non-French people around the world, the duet  “Je t’aime…moi non plus” which was met with scandal and disapproval by the Vatican and banned in many countries.

It may have solidified Birkin’s status as the British-born emblem of French chic but in all honesty it also drowned out her notable acting talents. Although Birkin took a brief hiatus from acting to return as Bardot's lover in the 1973 film Don Juan or If Don Juan Were A Woman (for which she got rave reviews because she held her own against Bardot),

it was only until 1975 in Gainsbourg’s own first film Je t’aime…moi non plus that her acting was properly honoured. Again, because of the damn song, people forget that she was nominated for Best Actress César Award (The French version of the Oscars or the Brit’s version of the BAFTAs). To be nominated for a César as best actress in a culture of truly talented actresses is saying something.

This wasn’t a flash in the pan. She was nominated again in 1984 for Best Actress César Award for her role as Alma in La Pirate  - directed by her then partner, Jacques Doillon with whom she did another critically acclaimed film La Fille Prodigue (1981). Her work led her to work on stage with critically acclaimed directors such as Patrice Chéreau. She worked with director Herbert Vesely on Egon Schiele Exzess und Bestrafung in 1980, appearing as the mistress of Austrian artist Egon Schiele, played by Mathieu Carrière. Jacques Rivette collaborated with her in Love on the Ground (1983). The jury of the 1985 Venice Film Festival recognised Birkin's performance in Dust as amongst the best of the year, but decided not to award a best actress prize because it was decided by the jury that all of the actresses they judged to have made the best performances were in films that already won major awards - Dust won the Silver Lion prize so she lost out.

In 1991 she was again nominated for a César Award but this time as best supporting actress in the classic La Belle Noiseuse directed by Jacques Rivette and starring Michel Piccoli and Emmanuelle Béart.

She did of course English films but much more sporadically. She put in a famous turn in both the delightful Hercule Poirot movies starring Peter Ustinov, Death on the Nile and Evil Under the Sun. She also appeared in Merchant Ivory's A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (1998) (which also used her song "Di Doo Dah”). In 2016 she had the lead role in La femme et le TGV, a short film directed by Swiss filmmaker Timo von Gunten. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. I believe after it was widely reported that she had no plans to return to acting.

I think it’s the parochialism of the Anglo cultural world that has led to this misconception that she wasn’t an actress of note when in fact she has always been up there with the best of French actresses of her generation.

As a singing icon she has been frozen in time. Her fame for one song have clouded a proper critical appraisal of her singing talents. And I think here I have to be honest and say that her critics - from a purely singing technical point of view - might have a point her being over hyped. Not that Jane Birkin ever said she was a great singer as she described herself self-deprecatingly as singing through more keys than a locksmith.

As a singer, Birkin is of course is known for that song that cheekily and perhaps even enviously reinforces the tropes the non-French world have about the French and amour. In 1969, she and Gainsbourg released the duet "Je t'aime... moi non plus" ("I love you ... me neither"). Gainsbourg originally wrote the song for Brigitte Bardot. But Bardot famously declined to sing the track because she found it "too erotic" and she was married at the time.

Although Birkin started out in films, she preferred to focus more on singing than acting. This was primarily because of Serg Gainsbourg who saw Birkin as his muse and wrote songs for her. She released an album in 1975 entitled Lolita Go Home and in 1978 called Ex Fan des Sixties, with the help of Gainsbourg's songwriting. Her music was successful in France, but not in her home country of England. She has made more than a dozen albums, nearly all in French and perhaps one or two in her native English. 

One cannot escape the nagging feeling when I listen to some of her albums - really the later ones - that if she had attempted a career as an English recording artist, she would have stayed a minor singer. If fished out of her small pond and dropped into the music ocean, then Birkin would surely in the words of one music critic, “be engulfed by the plankton of mediocrity”.

And so the troubling truth that must be faced is that because she has been granted access to the ranks of the iconic, it is more because of our interest in the intriguing liaison she had with the maverick Gainsbourg more than anything else.

There is no doubt that her marshmallow accent, reedy voice and modern look made Jane Birkin a singing idol. She has a sense of discretion that is inversely proportional to her dazzling repertoire, which is studded with such astounding masterpieces as ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’, ‘Swimming Pool’, ‘The Pirate’ and ‘Les dessous chics’. But her later recordings such as Le Symphonique, in which she is accompanied by a 90-piece orchestra - are mostly re-worked recordings of her songs with Gainsbourg who had died in 1991. Or take her 1996 album Arabesque which featured re-workings of Gainsbourg’s music, along with instrumentals backed by five Arabic musicians. Nearly all her later albums are quite mediocre.

This isn’t her fault so much as it is the musical artistry of Gainsbourg. He was the puppeteer behind the promulgation of this 'veule aesthetic', this aesthetic of weak plaintive croaking. But he was perhaps the first French singer who knew that manipulating the media would lead to manipulating record sales. Gainsbourg once had a job punching holes into métro tickets on Paris' underground before this ‘poinçonneur de lilas’ went on to almost single-handedly drag France's chanson tradition into the postmodern age. He sat in the opposite corner to the great chanson Musketeers: Leo Ferré, Georges Brassens and Jacques Brel. Gainsbourg is known in France for having cast himself in twin roles: Gainsbourg the musician and Gainsbarre the provocateur.

But there is also a definite divide in his musical production with a pre-1971 period that has a foot in chanson with driving melodies and Boris Vian narratives and the other foot in the fledgling pop tradition, and a post-1971 period that was driven more and more by dodgy electronic drumbeats, tiresome perpetual punning, and repetitive allusions to la femme enfant and Lolita-esque love (his last partner, Bambou, was 30 years his junior).

It remains difficult, therefore, to see how anyone with an ear for melody could think that much of Gainbourg's non-chanson output is melodiously pleasing. Much of his production seems so excruciatingly the work of an ageing pervert with personal hygiene issues.

My French friends, including one of my apartment neighbours in particular - of an older generation with whom I’ve grown close to - will put me through the wringer for saying anything bad about Gainsbourg and Birkin as singers. I just feel no one should be above a critical appraisal. Worse, it becomes very difficult to say anything critical for fear of being told that you just have not understood Gainsbourg's genius (surely Jarvis Cocker and Portishead can't be wrong!) But in reality there is very little to understand. He gave up trying to sing early on - the songs I really do like and find interesting - and quickly became the one-trick pony until his unfortunate death in May 1991 at 62 years old: a suggestive lyric about a questionable relationship here, a pun on every other word as an excuse for poetics there, slurred together with the voice of a sneering old man. The man stood out, broke away from troubadour-like folklore, but ultimately a tad mediocre.

The truth is Birkin without Gainsbourg was never much of a truly great singer. Combined with their public spats, Birkin reportedly grew tired of Gainsbourg's drinking and melancholy habits, so much so it became impossible to live with. They separated in 1980 despite never being married, despite reports of the contrary. Birkin later said that their friendship and his songwriting improved after they split. “You could talk back to him for once,” she said. “You were not just his creation any more.” As much as she was his muse, she was Pygmalion to his Prof. Henry Higgins. But the sad and prosaic truth is that without his unique style of songs to carry her limited singing range she was dreadfully exposed outside of Gainsbourg’s repertoire.

This was brought home to me when I listened to her cover version of Cohen’s iconic song, ‘Hallelujah’. Cohen's lyrics tell of David composing a song in praise of God, he describes the euphony that 'hallelujah' forms in his prayer, "the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift." Birkin on the other hand warbled her way through. As she said once of her singing, she went through more keys than a locksmith.

Does Jane Birkin fare better as a style icon? Yes, she does. Absolutely.

To understand the Birkin bag one has to understand how Jane Birkin a Parisienne fashion style icon without her necessarily wanting to be one.

The quintessential trope of Parisienne woman is a conflation we likely owe to the framing of the 1950s and ’60s mavens of French popular culture like Françoise Hardy, Catherine Deneuve, and Brigitte Bardot as French icons, but who remain eminently tied to Parisian mythology - their reverence to a billion-dollar fashion archetype (thank you LVMH) is as reductive to the real women of Paris as it is to the women aspiring to be them. Of course this kind of Parisienne chic exists - a walk down the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in the 8th arrondissement of Paris should satisfy the many star struck ‘American Emily’s’ coming to Paris (what a God awful Netflix drama it is). 

But like London or New York or even Rome and Milan, there is no such thing as one Parisian style. There’s a plurality of Parisian styles and personalities - that’s obvious from walking the different arrondissements of Paris.

Jane Birkin in her day brought her own style to fit her British personality that was a far cry from the elegantly and expensively dressed mavens. From her laissez-faire fringe, to her layered necklaces, vintage denim, peasant blouses and white t-shirts, she wowed Parisienne women.

Today if you ever wander around Paris looking at the younger girls - or look at French young girls sporting their Paris street chic style on instagram or other social media - they call it Paris street chic. It’s not fashion, it’s a street style.

It’s really bunch of every day clothing items and accessories stylishly thrown together. So it’s not surprising to learn that the original source of French street chic started with Jane Birkin. It was Birkin who ‘pioneered’ the kind of off-duty dressing you now see all over the streets of Paris. I say pioneered but the truth is she dressed for herself without even wanting or trying to become a French style icon.

Still as fashionistas will tell you, Birkin was always several decades ahead of the style curve (easy for them to say). It was stylish but above all it was timeless. It amuses me no end that when one sees doe eyed American girls who are so enamoured by French girl fashion but don’t realise they owe their thanks to an English girl.

I’m sure it amuses Birkin too because she always thought her Haute-hippie style and free spirit was her way to insulate her personal insecurities about how well dressed and stylish haute bourgeois Parisian women were in their Chanel and YSL clothing. Her style is her own, as she said to Vogue, “I buy things often, but I sleep in them for two weeks, and then they really look quite rough.”

If there is common ground between the elegantly dressed mavens of high end brand fashion houses and the ultra casual minimalist street wear it is around the very simple Parisian quality of simplicity. Simplicity - not necessarily in colour or print but in the total look. Simple but important enough for a younger generation of Parisienne women should be free to express themselves free  from the grips of a generations-old myth.

In a nutshell if Birkin’s style and influence endures it’s because her style is about simplicity.

Nevertheless her place as a style icon rests upon a simple straw basket (or wicker basket). However, in 1981 a chance encounter on a plane would result in the straw basket’s replacement by the world’s most desired leather bag - the Hermès Birkin bag.

In the 70s she was mainly known for her use of a straw/wicker basket which she used instead of a regular handbag. She was famous for her straw basket as she went everywhere with it, even dancing at the most exclusive of clubs or eating at the finest dining places. She carried all kinds of bits and bobs, including baby milk bottles, diapers, and baby change wear as well as collecting trinkets on her journeys around Paris. It was seen as a stylish English eccentricity by the Parisians.

There is famous story about Jane Birkin and her straw basket that has entered into legend. The straw basket bag’s anonymous shape and generous size lent it to concealment, so when, during a lavish Christmas evening spent at the famous Parisian Bistro Maxim’s with Gainsbourg, the young English actress slipped a few pieces of the institution’s fine monogrammed crockery into it, nobody batted an eyelid. It was only later, when the basket slipped from her wrist while signing an autograph and sent her stash of china flying across the floor, that she was found out. In a perfect act of Parisian discretion a kindly waiter collected it up for her and replaced it in the basket. “A gift from Maxim’s,” he is reported to have whispered to her. “If you require more, you only have to ask.”

In 1981, Birkin was on a short flight from Paris to London. Carrying her famous straw basket, she placed it in the overhead compartment of her seat. However, the lid of the basket opened, and the contents spilled all over the floor and on the seats around her. Sitting next to her and assisting her in retrieving the contents of her basket was the late executive of Hermès, Jean-Louis Dumas. Birkin complained to Dumas that she was unable to find a suitable leather weekend bag that she liked. According to folklore, the remainder of the flight consisted of the pair designing a bag together and sketching ideas on an air sickness bag.

Fast forward three years and a prototype handbag was developed and presented to Jane Birkin – the Hermès Birkin bag. The bag, crafted from supple leather and handmade in France by a single, highly trained artisan, and takes up to 24 hours to complete. Designed specifically to provide ample room for jet-setting women, the bag quickly became a fashion icon and status symbol for women worldwide. The Birkin bag comes in a range of sizes, leathers, exotic skins, and hardware, with new colours introduced each season and limited edition versions of the bag crafted occasionally.

Since the creation of the very first Birkin bag, Jane Birkin had always carried one. However, true to her unique style and fashion, she continually customised her bags with beads, trinkets, protest stickers, and other titbits to create a unique look. Birkin even defaced her namesake’s bag on Japanese TV in 2008. The fashion icon repeatedly stamped on a tan-coloured Birkin bag to make it look “unique.” 

Not surprisingly, the customisation of the Birkin bag caught on quickly and “defacing” Birkin bags is now a modern and trendy pastime practiced by D list celebrities including Kim Kardashian, Tamara Ecclestone, and many of today’s so-called fashion icons and social media style influencers.

Commendably Birkin auctions off her complimentary Birkin bags from Hermès for charitable causes. She often works with Amnesty International on humanitarian issues and donates her yearly royalties for the Birkin bag (approximately $50,000 per year) to a charity of her choice. Jane Birkin has said she now rarely uses the famous handbag that bears her name. In an interview with the BBC she told the BBC that if, like her, she used to fill the bag with "junk... and half the furniture from your house, it's a very, very heavy bag. Now I fill my pockets like a man, because then you don't actually have to carry anything."

In typical Jane Birkin style, she doesn't own one.

Jane Birkin will always be France’s favourite “petite Anglaise” as she was often known. And therein lies the clue why she remains beloved French icon despite her being English for two main reasons that come to mind.

Firstly, I suspect it’s because of her remarkable quality to be down to earth and cheerfully optimistic in public. Above all she displays a wonderful talent for mocking herself and not taking herself seriously. When for instance she was invited to take a role in a theatre production of a play by the 17th-century French writer Marivaux, she thought she was in a play by Marie Vau! The French have always been beguiled by her because of the stardust of the Sixties.

Despite Birkin being diagnosed with leukaemia in 2002, she said she conducted her life and love affairs with “an absolutely unfounded optimism”. That is not in doubt. With the recent publication of her diaries (Munkey Diaries 1957-1982 - a fantastic read) a more fuller picture has emerged that have further endeared her to the French.

Birkin was always riddled with insecurities, “I think I’m nothing, I’m persecuted by women who I love more than myself... Oh for the face of Nastassja Kinski, of Fanny Ardant, oh, the talent, the courage, the qualities. I have nothing interesting to say...” Above all she was convinced she was “suffering from mediocrity and no personality”, and wanted above all was to be loved. England never gave her that love, France did so happily. Even today France openly loves her.

Secondly, the French, especially the Parisians, love her because she embraces the French way of life with gusto and gaeity. Birkin speaks French fine but she stumbles in her heavily accented French. But she doesn’t mind and neither do the French. She was schooled in England into a culture where it’s okay to stumble, to try and fail, to be less than perfect. However, the old, rote, didactic, shame-based French schooling system dies hard. French people are often afraid to speak English unless they can feel assured it is impeccable at the same time - alomost in contradiction - they feel put out by foreigners who simply speak English to them without even having the courtesy to speak a little French, they think it rude and respond accordingly. But Birkin is so transparent and open to falling flat on her face that I think the Parisians find it strangely endearing.

Birkin is that living truism that you don’t have to be French to be a Parisian icon of style and especially when beauty pertains to age.

Outside of native born French women, Brigitte Bardot, Françoise Hardy, Catherine Deneueve, Jeanne Moreau, Fanny Ardant, Juliette Binoche, Inés de la Fressange and one or two others (Isabelle Huppert is an outlier of arthouse chic style), there have been other non-French women besides Jane Birkin who have personified Parisian chic and style: Sylvia Vartan, Charlotte Rampling, Nastassja Kinski, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Carla Bruni, to name but a few. Each has come to embody ‘Parisian style’ without ever being raised here but now very much live and breathe the Parisienne spirit.

Just as importantly Paris, like French culture as a whole, values beauty especially as it ages. There are many seasons to women as there are to make fine wine. This is one reason why Jane Birkin endures even at the age of 73 years old. Style icons like Jane Birkin and others like Inés de la Fressange (who was the face of Chanel for so long and is now going strong at 63 years old) have given a well deserved middle finger to the notion that there is a codified set of rules for fashion and beauty for women over 50 years old.

Indeed this is one of the secrets of living in Paris, it knows how to renew and refresh itself without losing its unique identity e.g. the model and actress Jeanne Damas, is arguably this current generation’s Jane Birkin and all power to her.

The stylish contributions of all these iconic women, and especially Jane Birkin, is a testament of why the allure of Paris as a cultural centre will continue to endure seamlessly because it values the aesthetic truth that true style is beauty that timelessly matures.  

Birkin said once she was in no doubt she would always be best known for her erotic record Je t'aime, moi non plus. Of course she under sells herself as she has always done because she is so much more.

Compare her to modern style icons. Kim Kardashian would be the nearest but her fame as a style icon rests on one cynically contrived (and boring) sex tape, a narcissistic family TV reality show, and being married to a grossly deluded rap singer. I don’t think the modern day airheads are true style icons but fashion victims because as Yves Saint Laurent once memorably put it, “Fashions fade, style endures”.

Jane Birkin will endure. Her contribution to French cultural life has been immense. The gap-tooth smile that looks irrepressibly cool, the messy fringe, the long string bean legs, the ability to elegantly wear denim for any and every situation, the reason she made a lowly wicker basket her bag of choice all year long. We may never know why, but honestly it’s not worth questioning at this point because it was so seriously chic - is one even allowed to say the word chic again? When it comes to Birkin, it’s a word that bears repeating.

Birkin might cheerfully be accepting of the fact that for an older generation much of her fame still rests on one scandalous song but for the contemporary generation it will be the Hermès Birkin bag.

"It's a rather extraordinary record," Birkin said once. "Perhaps more interesting than the bag." I daresay Serg Gainsbourg would agree about the song and the bag.

Ah yes that bag. The Birkin bag. To me it’s not a fashion item but a life saver.

From mothers juggling diapers and milk bottles whilst chasing after their toddlers in stores to busy career women hurriedly scooping up and stuffing in reams of files, phone and lap top while rushing off their feet to their next meeting all can thank ‘la petite Anglaise’ for her Birkin bag.

I know I do. I use mine for a work lap top, mobile phone, work files and folders, pens, chewing gum, girls stuff (make up kit and tampons), a spare pair of knickers, sun glasses, gloves, an apple, a bottle of water, playing cards, a cigar case (and cutter and lighter), and a few books to read when I fly on a business trip.

Thanks for your question.

[justforbooks]

Bertrand Tavernier was born on April 25, 1941. He was a French director, screenwriter, actor and producer.

Tavernier was born in Lyon, France, the son of Geneviève (née Dumond) and René Tavernier, a publicist and writer, several years president of the French PEN club. He said his father's publishing of a wartime resistance journal and aid to anti-Nazi intellectuals shaped his moral outlook as an artist. According to Tavernier, his father believed that words were "as important and as lethal as bullets". Tavernier wanted to become a filmmaker from the age of 13 or 14 years. He said that his cinematic influences included filmmakers John Ford, William Wellman, Jean Renoir, Jean Vigo and Jacques Becker. Tavernier was influenced by the 1968 general strike in France. He associated with the OCI between 1973 and 1975, and was particularly struck by the writing of Leon Trotsky. The first film director with whom he worked was Jean-Pierre Melville. Later, his first film (The Clockmaker, 1974) won the Prix Louis Delluc and the Silver Bear – Special Jury Prize award at the 24th Berlin International Film Festival.

His early work was dominated by mysteries, but his later work is characterized by a more overt social commentary, highlighting his left-wing views (Life and Nothing But, Capitaine Conan) and presenting a critical picture of contemporary French society (Ça commence aujourd'hui, Histoires de vies brisées : les double-peine de Lyon).

In 1986, his film Round Midnight won two César Awards (Best Original Music and Best Sound), the Best Film Award at the Venice Film Festival and the Oscar for Best Music (Original Score) at the 1987 Academy Awards.

He won the BAFTA for best film in a language other than English in 1990 for Life and Nothing But and a total of four César Awards and was joint winner of another.

In 1995, his film L'Appât won the Golden Bear Award at the 45th Berlin International Film Festival. Four years later, his film It All Starts Today won an Honourable Mention at the 49th Berlin International Film Festival.

His film The Princess of Montpensier competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.

Tavernier was married to screenwriter Claudine (Colo) O'Hagan from 1965 to 1981. They had two children. Their son, Nils Tavernier (born 1 September 1965), works as both a director and actor. Their daughter, Tiffany Tavernier (born in 1967), is a novelist, screenwriter and assistant director.

Tavernier was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 42nd International Film Festival of India in Goa for his outstanding achievements and work in the film industry. He died on 25 March 2021 at age 79, a month before on his 80th birthday.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[chiburkie]

The secret talents of stars, from Madonna to Bob Dylan and Ryan Gosling

By Marie Périer, translated by Stephanie Green on 06 August 2018

There are 10 slides with stories. Kristen is #4 and Rob is #9. I listed them. 

4/10 Kristen Stewart:

Who? Kristen Stewart A César-award winning actress turned singer, guitarist and artist

Kristen Stewart doesn’t restrict herself only to acting – she’s talented in many different art forms. The actress incorporates her music skills into her roles, like in the 2010 biopic The Runaways, which allowed her to show off her rock music talents. Playing the role of Joan Jett, the then-20-year-old actress effortlessly played the guitar to produce epic riffs. Not only that, but the singer used her singing skills in Queens of Noise and Dead End Justice. With her on-screen partner Dakota Fanning, who played Cherrie Curry, they sang many songs throughout the movie. Her unique voice helped her get scouted by an agent during a school Christmas concert when she was only 7 years old. In Into the Wild, a best-selling adaptation directed by John Krakauer, a 17-year-old Kristen sang and played guitar for many songs on the original soundtrack. She has shared her passion for music with previous romantic partners, including Robert Pattinson, French singer Soko and St Vincent. Inspired by Seventies rock music, Kristen Stewart revealed to Patti Smith herself in Interview magazine in 2015 that she got into painting after reading her memoir, Just Kids: “Just Kids made me want – you know, it's super-romantic and cheesy – but I genuinely started making paintings because of you." However, she keeps her art works secret – for the moment, anyway.

Photo: AFP - Film The Runaways directed by Floria Sigismondi in 2010

9/10 Robert Pattinson

Who? Robert Pattinson Actor turned singer

Pattinson, who is best known for playing the famous vampire in Twilight, has more than one trick up his sleeve - he’s composed a lot of music for the movies he’s starred in. Since he was young, the English actor has sung and played guitar and piano. For the first of the Twilightmovies, he sang two songs on the original soundtrack, Never Think and Let Me Sign, and he also sang three new songs in the 2009 movie How to Be.  Robert Pattinson has often said that if he wasn’t an actor, he would be a musician. In 2010, he received the “Hollywood’s Most Influential Top Unexpected Musicians” award, and many sources have hinted that the star is going to release his own blues album one day. "I generally just do stuff that sounds nice. I don’t really write songs in a conventional way. I don’t write lyrics separately, it’s quite instinctive."

Photo: How to Be by Oliver Irving, 2008

Source: https://en.vogue.fr/fashion-culture/fashion-exhibitions/diaporama/the-secret-talents-of-stars-from-madonna-to-bob-dylan-and-ryan-gosling-kristen-stewart-woody-allen-robert-pattinson/52348

[krakowergroup]

OPERATION FINALE ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK

MUSIC COMPOSED & CONDUCTED BY AWARD-WINNING COMPOSER ALEXANDRE DESPLAT

(24 August 2018) – Sony Music releases OPERATION FINALE (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) with original music by Academy Award® winner Alexandre Desplat (The Shape of Water, The Grand Budapest Hotel).

The soundtrack will be available for streaming/download and on CD August 24, 2018. Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures (MGM) will distribute Operation Finale theatrically on August 29, 2018.

MGM’s razor-sharp thriller, Operation Finale, brings to life one of the most daring covert operations in modern history. Starring Golden Globe® winner Oscar Isaac (Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Ex Machina) and Academy Award® winner Sir Ben Kingsley (Gandhi, Schindler’s List), and the film vividly captures the ingenious and brilliantly executed mission to capture Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust. Fifteen years after the end of World War II, acting on irrefutable evidence, a top-secret team of Israeli agents travel to Argentina where Eichmann (Kingsley) has been in hiding together with his family under the alias “Ricardo Klement” and execute an extremely dangerous abduction. In attempting to sneak him out of Argentina to stand trial in Israel while being pursued by the country’s right-wing forces, agent Peter Malkin (Isaac) is forced to engage Eichmann in an intense and gripping game of cat-and-mouse with life-and-death stakes.

Operation Finale is directed by Chris Weitz (About a Boy, The Twilight Saga: New Moon) from a screenplay by Matthew Orton. Oscar Isaac is also a producer, along with Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and Fred Berger under their Automatik company and Jason Spire’s Inspire Entertainment.

Alexandre Desplat says about the soundtrack: “Writing a score for the abduction of Adolf Eichmann has been a tremendous challenge. Chris and I tried to bring the audience into the mind of the Mossad squad, struggling to succeed in one of the most famous chases of a Nazi official; a criminal with no regrets or remorse whatsoever, hidden in Argentina. Organizing the train transports of Jews throughout Europe and supervising their systematic killings in villages or forests were some of Eichmann’s tasks. The music I composed tries to modestly capture these elements of tragedy and madness. A group of 10 percussionists leads the London Symphony Orchestra into a Mephistophelian dance.”

ABOUT ALEXANDRE DESPLAT Composer, orchestrator and conductor Alexandre Desplat is a two-time Academy Award® winner, nine-time Academy Award® Nominee, with over hundred scores and numerous awards to his credit and is one of the most worthy heirs of the French film scoring masters. A true cinephile, his approach to film composition is not only based on his strong musicality but also on his understanding of film which allows him to intimately communicate with directors. Inspired by the works of Maurice Jarre, Bernard Herrmann, Nino Rota or Georges Delerue, he expressed his desire to compose for film early on but really made his decision after listening to John Williams’ score to Star Wars. After scoring 50 European films, with legendary French directors such as Philippe de Broca and Francis Girod, he burst in 2003 onto the Hollywood scene with his evocative score to Peter Webber’s Girl With A Pearl Earring earning him nominations at the Golden Globe Awards®, BAFTAs and European Film Awards. His singular and remarkable scores for the films of Jacques Audiard showed a new musical voice and his composition for The Beat That My Heart Skipped in 2005 earned him the Silver Bear at the Berlinale as well as his first César. Alexandre Desplat then started to expand his U.S. career keeping his European collaborations. In 2007 he received his first Academy Award® nomination for Stephen Frears’ The Queen which earned him his first European Film Award. The same year he won the Golden Globe, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award and the World Soundtrack Award for his score to John Curran’s The Painted Veil, performed by Lang Lang. He composed in 2008 for Florent Siri’s Intimate Enemy, Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution, and David Fincher’s The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, which earned him a second Oscar nomination and a fourth BAFTA and Golden Globe® nomination. With his score for Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer in 2010, starting an inspiring relationship, he won a second César and a second European Film Award. The same year, he wrote the music for Twilight-New Moon by Chris Weitz, a platinum record, Anne Fontaine’s Coco Before Chanel and for Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech for which he won the BAFTA, the Grammy Award and receives his fourth Academy Award® nomination and his fifth Golden Globe® nomination. In 2010-2011 Alexandre Desplat scored David Yates’ films Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Part 1 and Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Part 2, which became the third most successful movie of all time. As eclectic as prolific, he wrote nine scores in 2011 including Terence Malik’s Tree Of Life, Roman Polanski’s Carnage, Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, Daniel Auteuil’s The Wells Digger’s Daughter and George Clooney’s The Ides of March. In 2012, keeping his artistic exchange with European directors, Alexandre Desplat collaborated with Kathryn Bigelow for Zero Dark Thirty, Matteo Garrone for Reality, Gilles Bourdos for Renoir, Jérôme Salle for Zulu, Wes Anderson for Moonrise Kingdom and Jacques Audiard for Rust And Bone, the latter of which he won a third César. He also scored Argo by Ben Affleck, which was awarded the Oscar for best film and earned Alexandre Desplat a sixth nomination at BAFTA, as well as a fifth nomination at the Golden Globes® and the Academy Awards®. In 2013 he scored George Clooney’s The Monuments Men, Roman Polanski’s Venus In Fur and Stephen Frears’ Philomena, for which he received his seventh BAFTA and his fifth Oscar nominations.

In 2014, he scored Gareth Edwards’s blockbuster Godzilla and received a rare double Academy Award® nomination for his scores of Morten Tyldum’s The Imitation Game and Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, which earned him a BAFTA, a Grammy Award® and his first Academy Award win.

In 2018, Alexandre Desplat won his second Academy Award®, second Golden Globe® Award and third BAFTA for Guillermo del Toro's The Shape Of Water.

TRACKLIST: 1. Operation Finale 2. Sacrificed Children 3. Nazis Rising 4. Malkin's Memories 5. Setting Up Operations 6. Stakeout 7. Death 8. Killing in the Woods 9. Race to Airport 10. Solingen Blade 11. Number 45326 12. The Monster 13. Lost Children 14. Air Control 15. To Israel 16. Operation Finale (Orchestral) 17. Sorrow

For more information contact The Krakower Group: @KrakowerGroup on Twitter & Instagram

[ryanmckern]

David Lynch is an American filmmaker, musician, and visual artist. Lynch is best known as the lauded director of an idiosyncratic cinematic oeuvre that combines neo-noir, surrealism, American kitsch, mystery, horror, and, in his later work, non-linear “dream logic” narrative structures. He’s been nominated for multiple Academy Awards in the categories of Best Director and Best Screenplay. Lynch is also a two-time recipient of France’s César Award for Best Foreign Film, as well as the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or, the festival’s highest prize. In addition to his cinematic work, Lynch has been recognized for his work in visual art, music, and design. He lives and works in Los Angeles. Originally from Missoula, Montana, Lynch studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts, where he was first introduced to filmmaking. Inspired by his school experience with the medium, Lynch relocated to LA and produced his first motion picture, Eraserhead (1977), which became a major cult classic for its iconoclastic surrealist-horror tenor. Following that film’s success, Lynch was invited by executive producer Mel Brooks to direct The Elephant Man (1980), for which he contributed to the sound design. The success of these two films launched Lynch towards a mainstream career. https://www.instagram.com/p/CUPt36tr-wE/?utm_medium=tumblr

[thecostumeplot]

Episode 8: A Very Long Engagement & Parasite

Please consult these Instagram slideshows for accompanying images: A Very Long Engagement Parasite

Both  

Welcome to The Costume Plot.

Jojo

I'm Jojo Siu.

Sarah  

And I’m Sarah Timm. We're professional designers with a passion for costume design and the performing arts. Our podcast does contain spoilers. Accompanying slideshows for each movie are linked in the episode description.

Jojo

We hope you'll join us every other week as we delve into the wonderful world of costume design in The Costume Plot. [music]

Sarah

Hi, welcome.

Jojo  

Welcome! So we just wanted to give a shout out to all of our new listeners this week. Sarah, you want to tell them a little bit about what you did? [laughs]

Sarah  

Yeah, my favorite fashion blog, Go Fug Yourself, who-- I have been following them for literally like, 10 years, at least. I emailed them. And I was like, "I love you. Could you possibly shout us out?" And they did! They were so kind. And we had a huge spike in listeners. So hello, welcome. We are so happy to have you here.

Jojo  

Yeah!

Sarah  

And we hope you like the show. Because we're really excited that you're here. [laughs]

Jojo  

Yes. And we would be nothing without our listeners. So thank you so much for adding to our numbers. And also just getting to know us a little bit better through this podcast. So, welcome.

Sarah  

Yeah. We've had a couple of Instagram DMs from people who are just really excited to have found us, and I... I said this to my friends, I was like, "I feel like we have something really good. And we just need to find our audience." So like, I hope that we're getting close to finding more people, you know?

Jojo  

Yeah, definitely.

Sarah  

And then another thing just at the top, I wanted to... I had this idea this week, and then Jojo was like, "Yeah, that sounds good." I listen to this other podcast, it's-- I mean, it's called Good Christian Fun. Shout out to them. But they do this thing where to incentivize people to give them reviews, they donate $1 for every review they get on iTunes. So we're going to try that.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

So if you could leave us a review, that'll also help us grow our audience. And then we're going to donate $1 if you do that, and we're going to pick... we haven't decided which charity yet. But it's it's going to be something related to our subject matter. So like, Dress for Success, which is the one that like helps people find wardrobes for... to find careers. Or maybe Equity Fights AIDS, which is like the Broadway Cares foundation that everybody knows about. So yeah!

Jojo  

Yeah, definitely.

Sarah  

Please review us!

Jojo  

Or, if there's... I was gonna say also, if there's people who have charities related to what we talked about, and have an interest in sending money somewhere, please let us know. We'll consider it. And think about it. So yes, please give us reviews.

Sarah  

Yeah, if there's like a theater costume specific, or even film costume specific charity... I don't know what that would be. But yeah, if there's a good cause, a worthy cause you know of, please send it our way.

Jojo  

Mmhmm. It also just gets us knowing what's out there as well. So, always better.

Sarah  

Yeah, yeah. I mean, a lot of theaters are struggling right now. So like, a good cause is always to donate just to a theater. But I don't-- I don't know if we should single one out because like... we're in California...

Jojo  

There's so many.

Sarah  

Yeah. There's so many, like, how do you pick? Yeah.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

I don't know.

Jojo  

Cool. That's so exciting! New year, new things.

Sarah  

New year, new us. [laughs]

Jojo  

I know, in the midst of all the craziness that has happened this week.

Sarah  

Oh, God. Yeah. We hope they we are a little distraction from the craziness... in the world.

Jojo  

Yes. That's what we try to be.

Sarah  

Talking about some pretty dresses. Well, not in the case of my movie this week, but... [both laugh]

Jojo  

I was gonna say, "Mmm... Maybe not!"

Sarah  

So what's theme this week, Jojo?

Jojo  

Yeah, our theme, I'm super excited about. Because Sarah and I decided to do foreign films this week. And this is actually the first time both of us have not seen these movies prior to this week's recording.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

So that's also really exciting. Because, you know, we don't always choose movies that we've seen thousands and thousands of times. Of course, it means we watch it at least a couple times before we talk about it on this podcast.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

But we are not the experts, just remember that this is because we love talking about these movies. And I'm really excited to be talking about a movie that I've heard a lot of good things about and then finally had the chance to see. So this movie that I'm going to be covering is actually called "A Very Long Engagement." It's a French film, which... I actually do watch quite a few foreign films. I watch a lot of Korean films. And I also watched a lot of... I should say, Korean dramas, not really Korean films. [bl] And then I also watch a lot of Bollywood, but this is one of the few French films that I've gotten to see, and it's the same director who did "Amélie," Jean-Pierre Jeunet. He's actually a self taught director who teamed up with a designer-slash-illustrator named Caro, and they together came up with one of their first projects, "Delicatessen." Which was one of their first full length movies. And it actually won four César Awards, which is basically like the French version of the Academy Awards, which is amazing.

Sarah  

Nice.

Jojo  

Obviously, "Amélie" is another one of his that Americans will probably recognize a little bit more. And then he also did "Casanova," which was a TV movie. So it's, you know, most of his films are not going to be as recognized to an American audience unless you study more art films, because he does have a very art film bend. But just the fact that he's come from kind of this self taught direction is pretty amazing. And then our costume designer is Madeline Fontaine. She's most well known for "Jackie," she was nominated for the Academy Award there, but she also won a César Award for Best Costume Design for "A Very Long Engagement." So that was kind of the claim to fame. A little bit of background about the movie, it is actually set in 1917. The director was really fascinated with World War I and did actually three years of research before he even started filming this movie...

Sarah  

Wow!

Jojo  

...which is pretty amazing. He has a very specific and very quirky perspective, which obviously you see that in "Amélie," but it does carry over a little bit into this movie as well, mostly in the way that the characters kind of interact. And also the way he kind of jumps from place to place in the script, which is also very important and very reminiscent of "Amélie." This is obviously a much darker movie because it's about World War II-- World War I, sorry. And there's a lot of like, violence and gore, and body parts being blown up.

Sarah  

Really?

Jojo  

And he really wanted to depict the war as it would have been, and as he-- as, you know, normal people would have experienced it, as opposed to a more glorified... or, I guess, romanticized version of the war. So, so that was one of the things that he talked about wanting to really emphasize in this movie. And I think the costume designer also reflected that pretty well. The movie itself is actually based on an original novel by Sébastien Japrisot. I'm probably saying that wrong as well. [bl] It received a nomination for Best Art Direction, as well as Best Cinematography at the Oscars. Unfortunately, it didn't win either at the Oscars, but it did win, again, several César Awards in France.

Sarah  

It can be very hard for foreign movies to break through to like, regular Oscars that aren't just Best Foreign Film.

Jojo  

Yes, definitely. And it's interesting too, because there's all these comments from people who love this movie, you know, who all rave about how they should have gotten the Oscar awards, and all these other things. And I'm sure there's a lot of other politics involved with that as well. But yes, beautifully stunning movie, there's a lot of... it's a little hard to follow, I will say. That's kind of one of the things that I think was a disadvantage of this movie. Because, and this is also very characteristic of "Amélie," his movies do tend to be very... non-chronological?

Sarah  

Right.

Jojo  

And nothing is like, in order. And you also aren't really told where-- what time period you're in, what location you're in. It's a series of a lot of flashbacks. And it's more about kind of the idea of memory and sort of whether it's Audrey Tatou's memories, or other characters' memories. You're kind of not really ever sure where you're at in the movie. So that was kind of hard to track when I was trying to do costumes and figuring out like, what scene is this? And when is this happening? I almost wish that I had bought the DVD, because apparently there's an extensive hour and a half long documentary about the entire process, including costumes.

Sarah  

Oh my gosh.

Jojo  

So unfortunately, I won't be able to speak to some of that stuff that's on the documentary, but I've been told to go and just watch that. Because apparently it's pretty extensive. But I will talk about the costumes that I covered for this, just because there are still a lot of really beautiful details that I think we can gather just from costume... you know, sort of fact-finding as you're watching.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

Before I go into that, I did want to start with a quote from one of the cinematographers because I think especially in film, costume designers do have to work very hand in hand with cinematographers, because it's all about the image. And the cinematographer is kind of like your art-director-boss, for lack of a better term. Obviously, they're the ones that are looking at the whole entire image, the entire big picture visual of the movie. So one of the things Delbonnel, probably also saying that wrong, said in his quote was... "Delbonnel's richly colored images transport the viewer past realism and into what could be called 'cinematic impressionism.'" Sorry, this was something that was said ABOUT his cinematography.

Sarah  

Mm, okay.

Jojo  

"As the film reaches its emotional conclusion, the viewer is left with an unforgettable patchwork of multi-hued memories." So this was from The American Cinematographer, which is an international journal that follows film and digital production techniques. So I thought that was actually a really accurate portrayal. And we'll see this as we go through the costumes... of, you know, what the cinematography did and how the costumes helped reflect that. Let's see... the other thing that I wanted to mention before I get started, because I'm going to be covering a lot of Audrey Tatou's character's costumes, because she is our main character. And she's really the one that we see the most. One of the things that IndieWire actually wrote about her character was that it's one that gives off "sentimentality and intense emotion," and it's a fine balance between the two. So that's definitely something that, you know... as I was looking through this movie, I was able to look at how the costume designer was able to do that. And I think she did a pretty successful job.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

So the first image we're looking at is actually her in bed. And this is shortly before she's-- obviously, she's heard in the war that her fiancé Manech... so, Audrey Tatou's character's name is Mathilde. And basically the idea is, the story follows her and her fiancé Manech, who has been sent off to war. And he's one of five soldiers who basically tries to get their hand decapacitated--incapacitated, sorry, is the right word--in order to try and prevent... like, to try and escape the torment of war, or the torture of war. However that happens. And it's a series of different stories about how each of them did that. And in the case of her fiancé, he basically lights a cigarette and holds his hand up over the lines and then gets shot in the hand.

Sarah  

Mmm.

Jojo  

So with that, obviously, it's a way for them to try and get home, or get sent home and say, "Okay, this is a war injury." However, it also was a sign of essentially cowardice. So their way of trying to punish them was to basically throw them over the trench lines and leave them on German no man's land, so that the Germans could basically take care of them. So this movie is basically her trying to find any kind of access to Manech, and find him and be reunited with him and find out what's happened to him. So it's a series of her kind of doing this investigative sleuthing by trying to get in contact with all the people that came in contact with her fiancé. So her first outfit is when she is like-- right before she goes to Paris, and that's where she's actually hiring an investigator, she essentially lives out on a farm with her aunt and her uncle. And she also suffers from polio. So like, this character has a lot going on. [laughs]

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

She was born with polio, or I should say she had polio when she was very little. And so she's got this limp that she's always walking around with. And there's a very long and like, really sad and overly dramatic story about how she and Manech met as children, which I'll go into detail more a little bit later. But with this one, I wanted to focus on just the softness and the quality of the colors, because for this particular costume design in general, not only was the cinematography super tight and really limited in color palette, but the costume design was also very much like that. And so you can kind of see here, she's got a lot of earth tones. Most of the movie, Audrey Tatou is actually in essentially browns, beiges, a lot of kind of sepia tones. So it is very much like a memory.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

Which is something I really love. And also a color palette that I actually like to use a lot in my own work. So that was already something that was kind of a favorite. The other thing that we've talked about in the past is obviously texture. You can see on her cardigan here, most of her clothing actually features some kind of either vertical stripe, or some kind of really tiny plaid. It's always a very kind of structured look. And the only times that we ever really see her in color are when she goes into flashbacks of her memories with Manech before he went off to war. So obviously a very, very specific direction with color palette.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

And you can see here, she's got a lot of-- there's that same corduroy with the wale that we talked about last episode. [bl] Only laughing because we can never figure out the best way to explain what "wale" means. But hopefully if you listened to our "Jingle Jangle" episode, you know a wale is now. [laughs]

Sarah  

Hopefully if you had questions, you've just googled it. [bl]

Jojo  

True.

Sarah  

So... once again, we are professionals but we're not necessarily experts. That's why when I tell people about this podcast, I make sure to stress that it's conversational.

Jojo  

Yes, very much so.

Sarah  

We're... we're not what you should be referring to in your research papers, how about that. [bl]

Jojo  

Yes, maybe one day? I don't know. But I do love that there's such a mixture of different textures here, and everything is always very structured and kind of a geometrical line or pattern. There's not... I shouldn't say there's no florals, but it's mostly in the lace work that you see any of the kind of more organic shapes on her. But for the most part, especially when she goes into Paris, we'll see that she definitely changes kind of the silhouette and textures of what she's wearing. But most of the softness that happens when she's in the farmyard is this kind of softer cardigans, a lot of corduroy, you'll see that in her jackets later on as well. And much softer drape, too. So you can see that the cardigan obviously is a much softer garment in general than say, a blazer, or something that's a little more structured. So when she's at home, it's a much softer silhouette. When she goes into Paris, you'll start seeing that change. So I'll move on to the second look. The second look, this is again, still her at home. And it's her writing letters, basically, to the people to try and find out who has information about her fiancé. Who can get her in contact with, basically, the soldier that was in charge of the five defactos... whatever the right word is.

Sarah  

Is it defectors?

Jojo  

Defectors! Yes, thank you. But yeah, so she's writing letters, basically to the investigator to start this investigation and start figuring out who she needs to get in contact with. But one of the things I love about this outfit is because... this actually does show her in a lot of the blouses that are very characteristic of her character. It's a lot of very sheer cottons. But you can see here, the designer really took the time to like, make sure that the embroidery was there. It sounds like they had a really extensive process. Again, because I didn't watch this documentary... it sounds like a lot of it was handmade, or I assume that a lot of it was handmade, because they wanted this to look like they were really living in rural farmland in France.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

And you can see that, not only in the kind of handmade embroidery quality that's on her clothing, but even just the fabric itself, everything is very organic. So I did want to mention that about this particular look. Okay, so now we're on the train, she's going to Paris, and she's trying to find-- she's meeting the investigator, basically the detective that she's going to be hiring to find Manech. And it's not as easy to see here. But this movie is... because it's set in 1917, there's a lot of 1920s. Of course, it's set back a little bit. So it's probably more between 1905-1910 in terms of actual fashion trends. She's obviously from a lower-- I don't want to say "low class," but more mid, probably lower-to-middle class, in terms of...

Sarah  

Yeah, she's not a rich lady.

Exactly. And so in terms of her clothing, you do see a lot of repeats, because it was very, very realistic. They wanted this to be a true representation of how people lived in that time during the war. So you'll see this jacket repeated quite a few times throughout the movie. Interestingly enough, she always has some sort of a brown kind of straw hat. There's this one, which is a little bit of a taller brim and almost looks like almost like a top hat.

Hmm.

Jojo  

But it's not quite a top hat, but it's made out of straw. And she also has decorative pieces on it. But she also has another brown straw hat that is more like a cloche. And it has sort of a flipped-up brim in the front and kind of a dovetail in the back. So it's-- I don't know if it was meant to be two hats, or if it's supposed to be one hat that she kind of restyled for different occasions, because that was also done in the 1920s. So I just wanted to focus on that, because it just shows the versatility of these outfit pieces, because she's obviously wearing them for different occasions.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

But also her focus right now is not to look trendy. She looks nice enough to go into the city. But she's obviously got a much higher priority.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

The interesting thing that's-- and I don't know if I have a closer picture of this jacket. I want to say I do. Yeah, so if you look really close, this is a zoomed in picture. And this is that other hat I was talking about. So it's got that front brim that's kind of flipped up, and then the back is actually left down. So very much like cloches from that time. The other thing you'll notice here in this really big close up, is that that jacket is actually made out of corduroy again. So like, I really feel like the designer used corduroy to define this character.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

That whole idea of that kind of textured rib is very prevalent, and stripe is very prevalent throughout the entire movie.

Sarah  

I love the gloves too.

I know. So many gloves. [laughs] She wears a lot of those kind of lace gloves. It's like this mixture of kind of the hard and the soft, or the delicate.

Yeah.

Jojo  

Which I think defines a lot of that idea of the balance between that sentimentality and that intense emotion that they quoted for her character earlier. I think the costume designer, that was her way of embodying that balance, which I think was really successful. So again, another version of that, or another view of the other hat that she's wearing, but again, it kind of looks like-- it's almost like the brim has changed a little bit. And then obviously, the hat has been pushed back up to the kind of more top hat shape. So again, I'm not sure if this is the same hat or if she just has those two hats that she's wearing between her looks. But again, another really great shot of that corduroy on the jacket. Okay. Oh, and other gloves. This was a big movie for gloves, because the 1920s also, you really wore everything. Like, it was all about wearing all the pieces to go out. You never went out without your gloves and your coat.

Sarah  

Yeah, gloves and hat, too. Like, being in public without a hat was like, "No way." You know?

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

In pretty much every period up until, like, the 60s.

Jojo  

Okay, I'm gonna start with this image first, because-- so Marion Cotillard, who is also a French actress that we know very well in America. She actually plays a very small side character in this movie. But interestingly enough, because there's these five soldiers in this movie, it's not just Audrey Tatou's, you know, love story. There's also these other four soldiers who also have their own kind of love stories. And that's sort of where the side stories kind of branch off. Another reason why this movie is very confusing, because there's just so many characters. But Marion Cotillard is one of the characters who actually is a prostitute in the beginning, and ends up falling in love with one of the other soldiers who gets killed fairly early on. So when she finds out he's killed, of course, she's kind of doing the same thing as Audrey Tatou's character Mathilde, except that she is actually going back and finding revenge on all the characters that have killed her lover.

Sarah  

Ooh.

Jojo  

So she is secretly figuring out who all these people are, and then going around and killing them, kind of starting from the top down.

Sarah  

That's awesome.

Jojo  

So this is one of the scenes where she meets with one of the people that has killed her lover. And she's in this great... it's almost like a long coat from the 1920s. And almost like a riding coat from-- actually probably from more Edwardian era.

Sarah  

Wait, but this isn't the 20s, right? It's World War I.

Jojo  

It's 1917.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

So it's like, right before the 20s.

Sarah  

Yeah, so it kind of bleeds into each other.

Jojo  

Exactly. So you'll see a lot of the kind of-- it's like, leading into the 1920s. But like, the-- it's almost like Edward, late Edwardian.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

But she's got kind of that... it's not quite a cloche, but the hat is kind of entering the cloche shape, it's starting to fit close around the head. I love that she's got this kind of dead bird on the front of her hat, [laughs] because it's very characteristic of this moment in particular. And the big thing that I thought was really phenomenal about this particular outfit is that she actually... well, one, she's got the black lace gloves. She's kind of-- like, she sort of embodies death right now, which is basically what she's kind of doing. She's the harbinger of death for all these people. But she shows up in this dark tunnel, you know, and she meets this guy who basically sees her from a distance and just sees this silhouette of this woman dressed in black. And she's got these black little round, like, moon specs. Or not moon specs, but they're like brown specs.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

And the funny... not "funny." But it's the greatest thing about this is that the specs are actually chained. There's like, chains that actually connect to her belt. And her belt has this little pulley system that basically is linked to this little pistol that sits right at her hip in the beginning. So this is after she has turned the belt to the front.

Sarah  

Cool!

Jojo  

And I caught this, I caught this great screenshot of it because I was like, "I need to show the public how this happened." [bl] Because it just happens so fast. And of course, there's no actual images of this online. But I love that she's basically come up with this huge contraption all on her own of how to connect her glasses. So she-- when she takes off the glasses and pulls on it, it basically pulls the chain and yanks the pistol to fire. And of course, that's how she shoots the guy once he gets within range. [bl] So it's, you know, of course, it's this whole elaborate ruse, and that's the only thing in the scene that you ever see. Again, it's all these short, small scenes that you ever see Marion Cotillard in, and yet she's kind of doing the same thing that Mathilde's character is doing throughout the story, just from opposite sides.

Sarah  

Mmhmm. Wow.

Jojo  

So yes, I didn't talk about her costumes, which I'm a little sad about, but most of her stuff is very over-elaborate. It's very much height of the 1915 era, because she is a prostitute, so she's getting a lot of these kind of hand-me-down clothes. But from, you know, wealthy men who are paying her.

Sarah  

Mmm.

Jojo  

So she is very, very well dressed. And it's not until kind of the end of the movie when they finally capture her, after she's killed all these people and left bodies in her wake, that she finally goes back into a dowdier look, to match in the same sort of sepia tones that Mathilde is.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

Okay. So again, like I mentioned before, really the only time that we see Mathilde's character in color is when she's in these flashbacks with Manech. And even in this one, I wanted to focus a little bit more on kind of the softness and the texture of how the designer really created this character. Everything about Mathilde is very, very homespun, and very homely. And it kind of makes us think more, like, French countryside, as opposed to height of Parisian fashion.

Sarah  

Right.

Jojo  

And they did a really good job of really foiling her with Marion Cotillard's character by doing that. So I just wanted to-- again, most of these costumes are just things that I really enjoyed looking at. [bl]

Sarah  

Yeah, that's fine!

Jojo  

Because also, it was a lot of sweater cardigans that I was like, "I just-- I want to own that, and I want to own that." [bl]

Sarah  

[sing-song] We love cardigaaans.

Jojo  

But yeah, so I love the texture on this and how subtle the colors are, and then kind of, you know, contrasting that with... even Manech is very, you know, I mean, he's obviously dressed very rural class. But just the soft tweed-ness of his jacket, as opposed to sort of this done-up coat, which he wouldn't have been in anyways. But the softness of both of them in this scene really complement each other very well. And it's really, really lovely. There's a lot of film critics who actually compare this movie to "The Notebook" and, like, you can't compare it because it's so much more beautiful! Because like basically, it's kind of like those first ten minutes of "Up."

Sarah  

Oh, God! [laughs]

Jojo  

Basically you see their whole entire, you know, love story within maybe 15 minutes,

Sarah  

And you're like, "Is this a children's movie?! I'm crying!" [bl] Yeah, that.

Jojo  

So this movie, within the first... I mean, this isn't even in the first 15 minutes. This is probably like halfway through, or maybe a third of the way through the movie. But she goes into this flashback, and there's this huge bell tower. And actually, she always goes up to a lighthouse that's in her countryside hometown, to basically look out for if he ever comes back. But this scene in particular-- because they walked to the bell tower quite a bit when they were children. So it's her flashback of him carrying her up the stairs of this bell tower because she's got polio...

Sarah  

Aww.

Jojo  

...on his back! [laughs] It's just them going up to have this romantic moment in privacy with this bell tower.

Sarah  

How sweet.

Jojo  

So yes, really, really tragic, but also really beautifully... beautiful visuals for this movie. So most of these I pulled just because I wanted to continue tracking through all the unity of costumes that I think this costume designer has done really beautifully. So again, going back to that idea of the stripe on her. This is kind of when she's starting to get closer to finding Manech, she's starting to put together hints and clues from all the people that she's now come in contact with. And also, I just I thought this was interesting, because the entire movie, she's looking for this man named Célestin Poux. And that sounds like a horrible last name, but it's spelled P-O-U-X.

[laughs]

And I was like, "I guess that's how you say it." But she ends up finding him finally, which is this guy here with this giant handlebar mustache. And he's basically the guy that... from what I remember, again, this was a very confusing movie with many, many characters. But Célestin is basically the man who kind of like, found Manech and basically kind of passed him on, and was sort of the last one to see him before he disappeared. So he is kind of helping her, when they finally find him, to find out what really happened with Manech. Because there's a lot of back and forth, you're not really sure if he's alive, you don't know if he's died. You want to hope that he is, and then you know, you get something that happens that... maybe he isn't. So there's a lot of back and forth with this movie. It's a very emotional roller coaster, let's just say that. But I love that he's in this kind of light pink. And then she's in this, you know, it's still the same color palette of the sepia with her. But now that she's got some hope, she's let her hair down. Because the other thing in this movie is that she always has her hair kind of braided up. Sort of in, like, the Princess Leia braids.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

Which also makes her look very kind of youthful and a little more countryside, as opposed to this more, for lack of a better term, "let loose," like-- I feel like she's now got hope, she's got a little bit more of a better outlook on whether or not Manech is actually alive. And I think this is sort of where she starts having her turning point of like, "I'm going to find him." So I wanted to do a couple of the shots of her as a child, because I thought the-- I loved the childrenswear in this movie, I really do feel like it is not talked about enough. And we haven't really touched on childrenswear either.

Sarah  

Yeah, we haven't.

Jojo  

But I think the costume designer did a really beautiful job. I love that this dress is actually buttoned in the back, I think that was also pretty common in the 19-- you know, early 1900s. And again, it's that same kind of gingham that we still see in her older clothes, that we tie in with her childrenswear. I also do love that in that previous scene where she's starting to have hope, again, is when she returns to the one braid. And I thought that it was interesting that that's what she also wore as a child.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

So it's kind of this idea of like, "Okay, I'm returning to youth, I believe that he's alive, I have a little more hope," and it's returning to this youthfulness. Same thing with the next outfit I chose for the children. So this is actually not even a real memory from her childhood with him. This was when she first meets him and he invites her to the lighthouse. And so this is her as a child imagining that this is what's going to happen when she gets to the lighthouse. Because there's this whole made-up moment in her head where like, she basically gets to the top of lighthouse and then almost falls over the side. And he grabs her up and does this whole romantic gesture, and this is sort of what happens after he's saved her from falling over the edge.

Sarah  

Aww.

Jojo  

So none of this really happens, it's just in her memory. But I love that the costume designer has still put her in this very romantic color, which also gets carried over later, in the next look where we see her lying on the cliff side. And this is after Manech has basically made his proposal to her. So it's that same idea of that same-- you know, even though that particular memory didn't happen, that feeling of the happiness that she felt in that memory is reflected in her clothing, color-wise and also silhouette-wise.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

So I thought that was really, really lovely. And again, showing how much color psychology can really affect not just the character, but also the audience watching it. Because I think this movie was very much more about the emotions that it was evoking as opposed to the historical... even though there was a lot of historical accuracy. It was less about the historical depiction in terms of chronology, as opposed to the actual emotion of what was happening between these two. Okay, so a couple of the side characters, and I'm going to kind of...

Sarah  

Jodie Foster?!

Jojo  

I know, right? [laughs]

Sarah  

She speaks French?

Jojo  

Yeah, apparently. And actually, she speaks French pretty well in this movie.

Sarah  

Wow!

Jojo  

So she is yet another side character. So she actually is married to one of the other soldiers that was in this group of cowards... defectors. And she has five children with this soldier. And he basically has this whole idea that if he has a sixth child, the military will allow him to go home. Because if you have six children, it's too many children for you to take care of, too many mouths to feed, whatever. So we can't have you in war when so many people are relying on you. So he basically comes up with this idea for his best friend--who is also a soldier in this small group--to sleep with his wife so that she can have this sixth child, because he is actually barren.

Sarah  

Ohh.

Jojo  

So then there's this whole side story where she basically falls in love with the best friend. And so she's like, also hearing about him, because he ends up also dying in the war. So a lot of this is very much like-- she hears all these stories of all these other soldiers around Manech. And then you kind of see glimpses and small snippets of what happens to the women around the war. So in that sense, I feel like, you know, even if you're not looking at the costumes, just the sheer amount of what you're seeing is like... you really are seeing the war from every side, from a very realistic perspective. Of not just the people in the war, and the soldiers that were experiencing such trauma--and all this PTSD from the war--but also the women surrounding them that were trying to support them, or wait for them to come home, or... you know, all the other stuff.

Sarah  

I actually read a book called "The Nightingale" recently that's literally about that. It's about two French sisters during World War II. And it really is just like... I realized that so many war stories focus on the loss of life and the horrible experiences that the men have, which are all very...

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

...of course, relevant and horrible and tragic. But like, the women are fighting their own war back at home, basically.

Jojo  

Absolutely. So this, of course, is Jodie Foster. You know, this is kind of towards the latter half of the movie where Mathilde has finally discovered who this woman is and gotten in contact with her, because she knows she's related to one of the soldiers. And so this woman basically--or Jodie Foster basically--writes her a letter explaining what happened from her perspective, and how she heard about the death of her husband, and the death of her lover. So one of the things I wanted to point out for this particular character is that, you know, she's basically a single mother now, of essentially five children. I don't think they ever actually ended up having a sixth. But just the sheer softness and kind of broken-down quality of her silhouette, and you know, just the clothing that she's wearing. We first see her in a market, like an open marketplace. So then in this particular look, I love that it's this kind of really soft and almost very delicate lace cardigan that she's wearing over top of this. Let's see if I can zoom in. It's basically like a Swiss dot cream blouse. But everything is kind of this sheer, and sort of very vulnerable. And even the neckline is very vulnerable. It's very low, it's very open.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

So I think that was something that I thought the costume designer did really well for her character.

Sarah  

I love big, open, holey knits.

Jojo  

Yeah. [laughs]

Sarah  

I love 'em. I love a knit!

Jojo  

Especially when you can really see the pattern.

Sarah  

Yeah!

Jojo  

Like, you can see the lace on this one. Because sometimes, especially from far away, even if something is really delicate and kind of lacy, you don't always see the detail.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

But I do love that about that. Okay, so for this one, this is one of the first memories where basically it's like the first night that they sleep together. So this is Mathilde and Manech. And I love that the costume designer here has thrown in such a subtle-- again, she's in a stripe, but he's also in a stripe, and they're varying different widths of stripes. But the fact that they kind of match together and that they're in this scene together... not only does it just show their class and their character and who they are, but it also just ties them together very well. And I do also love that the costume designer has continued to use this idea of this very subtle kind of romantic red... in a much more muted color palette, of course. But that you're always seeing some sort of love, or some sort of representation of love, in all of Mathilde's character. Or, sorry, in all of her costumes, and all of her clothes. I do also love that you get to see sort of the more "undressed" of the early 1900's, because I think sometimes... I don't want to say we all assume that everyone wears, like, a full three-piece suit or a two-piece suit. But I love seeing kind of the more dressed-down, like... what is everyone else wearing? What is the everyday look? What are the clothing pieces that are underneath all of the vests jackets, all the other accoutrements, I guess. And also, you know...

Sarah  

I think that's important. Like, a lot of costume history is studying fashion plates, and what was trendy, but it's also important to study, like, what were real people wearing?

Jojo  

Yes.

Sarah  

And like, what was practical at the time, you know.

Jojo  

Yeah, I mean, and when you are dressing a character, you're thinking about what they're wearing underneath, because it is also about like, "Okay, well, when I put on clothes, I don't just suddenly show up in a suit, I have to put on all the layers underneath it."

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

You know, what goes under a suit? I have an undershirt, I have a button up shirt underneath that, then I have the vest, then I have, you know-- or in this case, the suspenders, which... we've talked about this before, but I also just love a really good worn suspender. So...

Sarah  

Oh yes. [laughs]

Jojo  

...both of these clothes just look so lived in. And it really... it just gives you a lot of insight about these characters that, you know, they're not people that are looking for the trendiest, cleanest things and the sleekest outfit. They've lived in these clothes for a long time. And you know, right now, the important thing for them is that they're together, not that they have the most fashionable outfit.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

So yeah, you can definitely-- I feel like sometimes costumes can evoke a feeling as opposed to just telling you what is practical, or what people are actually wearing. And I really loved this shot for that reason.

Sarah  

It's beautiful.

Jojo  

Yeah. Okay. So obviously the final shot of the movie... and huge spoiler, she finds Manech. [laughs]

Sarah  

Yaaaay!

Jojo  

And of course, there's this very bittersweet moment at the end, because he actually has lost his memory.

Sarah  

Ohh.

Jojo  

And one of the things the director has talked about too, is that he wanted to focus on this very real part of the war, that many war heroes--even if they made it back--would have memory loss. Would not even remember the people that they left behind. Which is also just a huge, tragic part of the war. But I love that in this final moment when she comes to see him-- because she finally finds out that he is still alive. So of course everyone in the audience is raving because they're like, "Yes! She finally found him after this incredibly long journey of going through everyone else," and then she comes and finds out that he has amnesia and that he probably won't remember her. And yes, the fact that he is just alive is of course, you know, the happiest thing that she could ever imagine. And so she comes to him in this beautiful cream-- like, it almost looks like an 1900s short coat? I'm not quite sure what the actual garment name is. But it's very traditional. Like, she's got the blouse on underneath that's in sort of a white lace, which I'll show in a couple seconds, the close up of that. And then she's got this pleated kind of 19... probably 1907 skirt. And it's got like, really small pleat tucks in it, which she also uses a lot--the costume designer uses a lot--in a lot of her skirts. And again, to kind of  harken back to the corduroy, that idea of the stripe, she always has some kind of stripe somewhere. And then the coat itself is actually also a cream corduroy.

Sarah  

Really?

Jojo  

So again, this idea of carrying corduroy throughout her costume for the entire movie, I think was really, really well done by the costume designer. And again, such a subtle detail that you would never notice unless you were really looking close, and stopping and starting this movie like I did. But I love that she used that subtle detail to give her that character. The other thing that I wanted to focus on talking about for this particular outfit is that because this is her first time essentially reunioning with... I don't even know if that's a word. [laughs]

Sarah  

Reuniting?

Jojo  

Reuniting, thank you!

Sarah  

I like "reunioning," though, that's fun.

Jojo  

I totally just made up that word. But she basically... this is her first time reuniting with Manech. And so even though he doesn't remember her, it's her chance to show up in this almost bridal gown? Almost as if like, this is their wedding. Like, even if he doesn't remember her. She has hoped now that he's alive after this long time. And so she comes presenting herself to him in this very... I don't want to say "virginal," but it's almost like she's basically kept herself pure for him.

Sarah  

Right.

Jojo  

So I love that she switched to this color, because this is really the only time you ever see her in such a bright array of white. Because obviously she has, you know, cream colored blouses that she wears and pairs with other things. But this is the only time you ever see her pretty much head to toe in white. So just the close up of this.

Sarah  

Ooh!

Jojo  

So yeah, you can kind of see here, it's really subtle, but it's a really small wale corduroy all over her coat. And then she's got this really lovely kind of delicate lace underneath. So I love that that last moment is that... such a huge visual marker of of her kind of reuniting with him, and essentially is their wedding without really being a wedding.

Sarah  

Right.

Jojo  

So... so yeah, that was my take of all the costumes in this movie. Again, I didn't focus too much on the men in this one, mostly because it was a lot of soldiers' wear, and I think that... I don't want to say that that's not important. There's a whole 'nother podcast that can be done about...

Sarah  

Sure.

Jojo  

...you know, costumes in military, because it is so extensive in terms of all the things you need to know to understand the uniforms. The ranking, the hierarchy of what happens in military uniforms.

Sarah  

It's a lot of work, like...

Jojo  

So much.

Sarah  

...that's so much research that you have to do, to even know...

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

...like, what any specific character should be wearing.

Jojo  

Yes, absolutely. Well, and the fact that you know, when you're in-- when you're doing any war movie, it's a lot of distressing.

Sarah  

Yes.

Jojo  

So we talked about distressing last time, the level of distress on these these military costumes, like... I can't even imagine. It must have taken so long. Like, this was I think they said this was a $4.5 billion budget or something like that?

Sarah  

Did you say "billion," with a B?

Jojo  

Yes.

Sarah  

What?! [bl]

Jojo  

I was like...

Sarah  

I don't think so. Maybe euros?

Jojo  

Maybe, I don't know. I mean, it was done... like, I think he contacted Warner Brothers about it.

Sarah  

No one does billion-dollar budgets.

Jojo  

It was just something so incredibly crazy that I was like... I mean with this movie, though, because like, they spent half of the budget just building the entire French Parisian metropolitan scene.

Sarah  

Oh, gosh.

So it's like, it did require quite a lot of money. I don't know if it was in the billions. I'll have to go back and check on that. [Post-episode fact check: the budget of the movie was $51.2 million.] But yeah, I was like, "Oh my gosh, the sheer amount of just things to make this movie is insane."

Yeah.

Jojo  

But yes, I will say one quick thing about the military, all of the scenes in the war. The cinematographer really... you can kind of see there's almost like... so the rest of the movie is kind of in this sepia tone, but most of the war scenes are, you know-- it's sort of a mix of sepia tone. And then all of the costumes--or sorry, all of the military uniforms--are blue, because it's the French Army, but it's this really beautiful almost, like, cornflower blue.

Sarah  

Ooh.

Jojo  

I don't know how to describe that. But I think you know what I'm talking about, Sarah.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

But it's this really beautiful kind of muted blue. That's in contrast with all the brown and earth tones that are around it. So yeah, visually, super stunning movie. I cannot say enough about the production value of this movie, because it was really well done. Like I said, the only thing that was a little hard to follow was just the amount, sheer amount, of characters.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

But yeah, beautiful movie, beautiful costumes. And also just... Audrey Tatou is just a really beautiful actress.

Sarah  

She's lovely.

Jojo  

And also like, Jodie Foster and Marion Cotillard. They picked some really big names for this movie. So...

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

...so yes, if you get a chance to watch it, it's sort of one of those underrated movies. It's not really talked about a lot, but it's really well done.

Sarah  

Love it. Great job.

Thanks!

You're welcome.

Jojo  

I'm excited to hear about your movie.

Sarah  

Me too. Can we take a quick break, 'cause I gotta pee. [short musical sting]

Okay, so I was blown away by this movie.

Jojo  

I still need to see it. So excited.

Sarah  

So this is... I'm covering "Parasite," in case you didn't read the title of the episode. [laughs] It's a Korean film by director Bong Joon Ho. It was released in 2019. And it kind of, you know, made a huge splash when it came out. I'm sure everybody's heard of it. It won Best Picture, right? I'm pretty sure.

Jojo  

I think so. Yeah.

Sarah  

Which is a huge deal for a movie in the language other than English.

Jojo  

Yeah!

Sarah  

And it's... I went into it not knowing, like, anything about it. I knew that it was a commentary on like, wealth inequality and class. And that's about it. So I recommend, I mean, if you haven't seen it, I recommend watching it. I am going to spoil some of it. But I'm going to not-- I'm not going to spoil the very end, I decided. just like, you know, "Murder on the Orient Express," I didn't tell you who done it. So I'm not going to tell you what happens.

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

I'm just gonna tell you the lead up. So yeah, the costumes are designed by... I'm so sorry. These are Korean names. I'm gonna do my best. Okay. Choi Se-yeon designed the costumes. I don't know if that is a man or woman, so I'm gonna say "they." Because I couldn't really find any information on them. They don't have, like, a website. And I googled the name Se-yeon and it's unisex. I was like, "well, that's helpful." [bl]

Jojo  

Yeah, sounds about right.

Sarah  

And I couldn't find any interviews with this person, either, about the costumes. I found interviews with Bong Joon Ho about the production design and the costumes kind of together. But this designer has also done other Bong Joon Ho movies, like "Okja," and then just like a bunch of other Korean films.

Jojo  

That's usually how it goes, I think, with with Asian directors, though.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

They sort of have their team especially Korean--like, from Korea--directors.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

They'll work with their team from Korea. So...

Sarah  

That makes sense.

Jojo  

...that's probably why we don't get a lot of news in the press about them.

Sarah  

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it's about the movie as a whole, I think. I think they're not really all that fussed about featuring, you know... they're a team and it's a unit. So it's about the movie.

Jojo  

Yeah, yeah.

Sarah  

Yeah. So this movie came about, I found this really interesting-- Bong Joon Ho said that actors had been asking him to write a play.

Jojo  

Ooh, interesting.

Sarah  

And so he originally conceived of this as a play. And he said, "The stage is a limited space. I was trying to come up with a story that I can tell with just two homes, one poor and one rich." So that makes sense, it doesn't have a lot of... like, they don't go a lot of places other than just their houses.

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

And he described himself as "Very fascinated with the sense of infiltration. When I was in college, I worked as a tutor for a very rich family. And I got this sense that I was spying on the private lives of complete strangers." So that's kind of like where the conception came from. So broadly, sort of, the story is about two families, one rich and one poor. And the poor family basically infiltrates the rich people's home, and it starts with the son. He gets a job tutoring the daughter of the rich family. And then they're like--the rich family's like--"Oh, we need an art tutor for our son." And so he gets his sister in there, but they do it by lying about like, their credentials, they make up college degrees, and they pretend like they're not related to each other. And then they eventually get the dad in as the driver, and then the mom in as the housekeeper, and they get the other people who are working there fired.

Jojo  

Woooow.

Sarah  

And they lie their way into employment basically, because they're super poor, and desperate, and struggling, and they need the money. So they basically con their way into taking these rich people's money, which, like... I had no idea this movie was about that. [laughs] It's so good.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

So yeah, the themes of the movie include wealth disparity, social inequality and imperialism. Like a lot of countries, especially right now, South Korea has a really big gap between the wealthy and the poor. Like in America, you know, it's like the gap just keeps getting bigger. They have really high rates of unemployment. So at the beginning of the movie, the poor family, the Kims, are all unemployed. And then the imperialism and colonialism theme kind of comes in when... because the rich family's son Da-song is obsessed with Indians. American Indians, Native Americans.

Jojo  

Mmm, okay.

Sarah  

So he has like, a teepee. And he plays with all these replicas of Indian stuff. And Bong says, "The Native Americans have a very complicated and long, deep history. But in this family, that story is reduced to a young boy's hobby and decoration. That's what happens in our current time, the context and meaning behind these actual things only exists as the surface level thing." So I thought that was really interesting, too.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

And then the other thing I loved from this interview, that has nothing to do with costumes, or the theme of the movie, is that they built all of these sets from scratch...

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

...including the apartment--and about 16 other facades--in a water tank, so that they could flood them. Because there's a flood scene where like, the water is up to here in their apartment. And so the whole thing was built on a soundstage with a water tank. And I was like, "What!"

Jojo  

Whaaat!

Sarah  

Expensive.

Jojo  

There's so much that I learn about, like, how movies are made behind the scenes when I'm doing these... you know, research.

Sarah  

I know.

Jojo  

Or when I'm... sorry, I can't talk today. When I'm doing research for these.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

And it's like, it's incredible how much you learn about just the process. And like, why films need and require so much money. [laughs]

Sarah  

Yeah! Yeah, yeah. And they built the rich people's mansion too, which is like, so nice looking. Okay, onto the costumes. Okay. So the Kim family, which is our poor family, they're stuck in this sub-basement level apartment. And the coloring and design of the frame... you can tell that Bong Joon Ho is like, really particular and exact. And he works with his team to come up with something very-- like, it really evokes the feeling that he's going for.

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

Because the way that it's shot, and how crowded it is, you can see this first picture of them in the bathroom. Like, the frame is so crowded, and everything is very dirty looking, and it looks really damp. And they always are very sweaty when they're in their house. And since sub-basement level apartments flood a lot apparently, in monsoon season and stuff, they're always full of mold. And like, it looks like that, you know?

Yeah.

You can feel the desperation, I think. So then... so you have these-- here are the two siblings, their names are... The son is named Ki-woo, and the daughter's named Ki-jung. Jung? Ki-jung. [bl]

Jojo  

Just smile and nod.

Sarah  

I'm sorry. Ahh... you would think, as a lover of k-pop, I would have gotten better at Korean names, but I have not.

Jojo  

[laughs]

Sarah  

Yeah, so you can see they are wearing loungewear. Lots of times in their house, they're wearing short sleeves and shorts because it seems like it's hot and sweaty and sticky in their house.

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

And then, this character sweeps in. This is Min. And he sweeps in and gives him the idea. He's like, "Oh, I was this tutor for this family. But you should-- I'm not going to do it anymore. So you should do it." And he is like, such a contrast to Ki-woo because he has this very smart blazer on. And his pants are also kind of cropped at the ankle, you know, really trendy looking. And you can tell, like, Ki-woo was like, "I'm a loser." Like, you can tell that he thinks of himself as a loser, and then Min comes in and he has this thing to aspire to, basically.

Jojo  

Okay.

Sarah  

And then so when Ki-woo goes for his job interview with the rich family, then he basically wears exactly what Min was wearing, which is a blazer and nice pants. But he does keep this, he has this button up shirt that is just like, collarless. It's not a mandarin collar, because I think mandarins stand up further up your neck.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

I think it's just collarless. That's how we say it. That's how I say it. [laughs]

Jojo  

Is it like a henley? It's hard to tell.

Sarah  

Here, I'll zoom in. It's a button up.

Jojo  

Okay.

Sarah  

It just doesn't have a collar. Which I thought was interesting.

Jojo  

Interesting.

Sarah  

So next I'm going to talk about Ki-jung. Gosh darn it. I didn't write down how to pronounce that one. Jung? J-U-N-G.

Jojo  

I find it ironic I chose the French movie and you chose the Korean movie. [bl]

Sarah  

So, it's because... it's so we could have a pronunciation adventure on both of our parts. [laughs]

Jojo  

Yep!

Sarah  

So I love this picture of her. She's really smart, and kind of just, like, doesn't give a crap. And this is her in an internet cafe forging him a certificate from school. And she's smoking a cigarette indoors at an internet cafe. And she just does not give a crap.

Jojo  

NBD.

Sarah  

Yeah. I love-- I LOVE her. She was great. Oh, and I was gonna say, like...this movie has costumes in it, obviously, because all movies do, but I'm kind of just going to talk broadly about the characters, because the specific things they wear are not necessarily as important as just the feeling that they give, because it's contemporary.

Jojo  

Yeah. Right.

Sarah  

So... it's clothes, you know. So this is Mrs. Park. And she is very Western... fashion-y. Like, her clothes look like they come from American stores, or maybe European stores. And that was intentional. Like, she even she gives Ki-woo the name Kevin, and she wants everybody to have American names. And then she says multiple times, she talks about ordering stuff from the US and how that means that it's really good. So she clearly aspires to this sort of American ideal of wealthiness. And you can kind of tell in this, this white outfit that we meet her in. White... I think, to me, a pure white outfit definitely connotes wealth, because white is so hard to keep clean.

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

So it's almost like this luxury thing where you're like, "Well, I can afford to wear all white in my house because I'm not doing any housework," you know.

Jojo  

Right.

Sarah  

Yeah. And then this is her housekeeper, who they get fired. And I pulled this that has-- this shot that has both of them in it, so that we can see what she looks like later on when she loses her job. But we'll get to that.

Jojo  

Ooh. [laughs]

Sarah  

Yeah. She looks very different later. So this is also Mrs. Park and they call her "Madam" the whole time, which is interesting.

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

And I like this outfit. It's kind of-- sort of like, oh, it's kind of brown. It looked green to me earlier. Kind of greeny-brown, like...

Jojo  

Almost like a greenish-gray though.

Sarah  

Yeah. It's like a gingham check. And I think that this looks very 60s. It looks kind of Jackie O to me.

Yeah.

Here's a shot of the full body. So it's like a little matching set. So cute.

Jojo  

Yeah, very Chanel.

Sarah  

Yeah, Chanel! Maybe it is, I don't know. I couldn't find any interviews, so I don't know specifics. [bl]

Jojo  

"I have no information." [bl]

Sarah  

And then I grabbed this shot of her in her jeans. And you can't really see in this screenshot, but it looked to me, when I was watching the movie, like they had sparkles. Maybe on the back pocket. So this is her dressing to go camping. And it's so funny to me that like, even when she's going into the wilderness, she's wearing very expensive jeans, probably, you know.

Jojo  

[laughs]

Sarah  

And it kind of gave me-- it kind of reminded me of how Marie Antoinette used to dress up as a peasant for fun. You know, like a rich person putting on clothes that look like a poor person, almost, but they're not, 'cause they're very expensive versions of it.

Jojo  

And it's still like, looks like it's well put together.

Sarah  

Yeah, it looks-- the textiles look high quality, you know.

Jojo  

Right.

Sarah  

She probably ordered them from J.Crew or whatever.

Jojo  

Right.

Sarah  

And then also, you can see in these screenshots, just as a direct contrast to the shots of the Kim family in their home, the Park family in their home. It's like a palace. Like, there's-- the frame is empty, kind of, for a lot of the shots. And it just shows you how much space they have, versus the poor people having no space.

Jojo  

Right.

Sarah  

And they're like, living on top of each other. And then in this scene, she's carrying a full Birkin bag. Which... if our listeners don't know, a Birkin bag is a specific purse made by Hermès. And it is a purse that you have to join a waitlist to buy. And it's going to run you at least, like, $40,000. [laughs]

Jojo  

Yep.

Sarah  

Which is insane.

It doesn't even look like you could carry very much in there either.

I know, it's just... it's JUST a purse. [bl] I'm pretty sure this is a Birkin. Yeah, that strap across the front is Birkin-y.

Jojo  

And the scarves on the handles, too.

Sarah  

Oh yeah. Hermès scarves are a thing. Yeah, you're right. It's basically just a status symbol. And it's just-- it's like, another, you know, example of her aspiring to this... basically, rich white lady aesthetic. And this is just her at the grocery store.

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

She just took her Birkin bag to the grocery store. [laughs] What's next? Oh...

Jojo  

And also, you're wearing that blazer and those pants to the grocery store too.

Sarah  

I know. And I mean... behind her is Mr. Kim, the dad of the poor family, and he is basically like her...

Jojo  

Like, gofer? [laughs]

Sarah  

Yeah, like he's pushing the cart, he bags the groceries, he drives her home. Like, she might as well not even be there. [laughs] But...

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

So... and then the last Park family thing I have... I didn't really talk about the dad, but the dad kind of fits into the same aesthetic as her. He wears a lot of business wear suits, sort of American-y looking, these are their pajamas. And in the interview, the one specific costume thing that I could find that Bong Joon Ho talked about was their pajamas. Because apparently in Korea, it's not super common to have pajamas that are different from your regular loungewear. So like, around the house, most people would wear just like, you know, sweats and soft shirts and whatever. Loungewear. And then they would sleep in that too. But rich people have pajamas.

Jojo  

Ahh.

Sarah  

So the fact that they have these silky L.L. Bean-looking pajamas is just another way to see their status.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

As Richie Rich, rich, rich people. So let's talk a little bit more about the Kim family. This is them in their apartment. And you can see, just like I said, the crowdedness of the frame. They're all wearing loungewear, you know, soft... like, he's wearing--the son is wearing--basketball shorts, they've got sweats on. And the contrast of them in their own house versus when they get these jobs at the Park family house is pretty stark. So this is Mrs. Kim. And she's you know, she's very clean. I think she even gets her hair cut in the middle of the movie. She's wearing her most elegant ensemble, you know, and then here's her that same day at home eating dinner. She looks very sweaty.

Jojo  

Mmm. Yeah.

Sarah  

And hot.

Jojo  

Yep.

Sarah  

You can tell, there's some movies where you're like, "Oh, every time they they cut the makeup artist was like spritzing them with that fake sweat stuff," you know?

Jojo  

Mmhmm. Like the glycerin?

Sarah  

Yeah. [bl] Just got to look really, really damp. And you can see also that the lighting is so different. The lighting in their apartment is greener, it gives you that sort of under the sea, moldy feeling.

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

And then the the rich people house is like, not that.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

It's much warmer. And then here's Ki-jung. She's... she's laughing at me every time I try. [bl] This is her...

Jojo  

It's a good effort though!

Sarah  

I'm trying! I didn't want to just...

Jojo  

I know.

Sarah  

...do the American thing and be like, [pronouncing hard "R"] "Mrs. Park." [bl] 'Cause I know that's not right. But this her before the son-- the rich son's birthday party. And this is... this comes right after their apartment gets flooded. So they have this really traumatic night where they have to... so... I'll explain a little more of the plot. The Park family goes camping. And so the Kim family comes in and are basically just like hanging out in the house, because they're not there.

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

Having, like... they're drinking, eating a bunch of food, making a mess. And then the rich family comes home before they're supposed to, so they have to hide. And it's a very stressful scene, and so they escape and it's pouring rain. And then they get home and their apartment is flooding. And there's a scene... I pulled it here. She's sitting on the toilet of their house, in the bathroom, surrounded by flood water, and the sewer is backing up. So like, the toilet is spraying brown... liquid.

Jojo  

Ohhh.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

Gross.

Sarah  

So she did this, and then they had to sleep in a shelter. And then she has to come to the rich people's house the next day and look like this, and pretend like nothing happened. And it's just like, so... heart-wrenching.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

And upsetting. And also what upset me is there's a scene where Mrs. Park is talking about how the rain was such a blessing, because it like, got rid of the pollution from the sky. And she's just so oblivious. Like, the whole theme is that she's oblivious, and spoiler alert, there are people living in her basement. There's a guy living in the basement of her house and she doesn't even know. It's the housekeeper's husband.

Jojo  

Oh my gosh.

Sarah  

So here-- there she is. So this is them. This is her after she gets fired. So remember how I was like, "Here she is before she gets fired"?

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

This is her after. So it's like, he's really illustrating the line between destitution and getting by. And the husband, her husband, is hiding in this house because he's hiding from debt collectors because he's so far in debt.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

So.

Jojo  

So much. So much happening.

Sarah  

This movie is... so good. So then here's them at the birthday party. We just have to pretend everything's fine. So this is her dress that she chooses. And I love it because she really blends in. This is the shot of the party. And she looks like she belongs there, you know, she not sticking out. She doesn't look, like, poor. And she just has to like pretend everything's fine. It's this chiffon... floral print. I think it's really pretty.

Jojo  

Ooh, yeah.

Sarah  

Very feminine.

Jojo  

Gorgeous.

Sarah  

Yeah, very different from everything else she's worn up until this point. The... toilet... oh, I think the last picture I have is just the-- this is Mrs. Park in her closet. Oh, does she have more than one Birkin? Look at that.

Jojo  

Oh my gosh. Yes, she does.

Sarah  

She has three!

Jojo  

One in every color.

Sarah  

She has red, brown, and black. Oh, God.

Jojo  

That's crazy.

Sarah  

I grabbed this shot because the size of this closet is basically like the size of the entire apartment, the Kim's entire apartment. And it's just like another way of illustrating, like, how much space these rich people have and how oblivious they are to the fact that the people who are in their house every day are struggling so, so profoundly.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

Okay, is that it? Yeah. So I'm not going to tell you what happens at the end, you guys will have to watch it. It's on Hulu. The twist came out of nowhere. I had no idea that it was going where it was going.

Jojo  

Wait, it's free on Hulu?

Sarah  

It's on Hulu, if you have Hulu.

Jojo  

Oh, I do have Hulu.

Sarah  

You should watch it!

Jojo  

I have to watch this movie!

Sarah  

Yes! Yeah, like I said, I was blown away by it. And at first I was watching it and I was like, "Uh-oh, this isn't like a costume movie. What am I gonna talk about?" You know?

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

But contemporary movies, you-- it allows you to kind of just like talk about the themes, and how the costumes help illustrate the theme. So I really think the contrast between the scenes in the Kim's apartment and the Park's house are so... they're really good. I don't know how to say it. Like...

Jojo  

I think that's-- it's an inevitable part of costume designing, is that you do have to understand, not just the factual research that comes along with designing a costume for someone. But it's also understanding the emotion. I mean, and I think that that kind of happened with the French movie, too. It's like it was very much more about the emotions that you're kind of feeling when you see those costumes, as opposed to how accurate. I mean, like, yes, the accuracy was still there in terms of what they would have worn and, you know, in your case, what what your characters are wearing. Like, obviously, these are all very realistic people.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

But I think the fine art of being a costume designer also takes into account, how are these pieces--and how is this outfit--going to evoke the idea of the feeling that the director is going for? Which-- that's the harder part, I think, of costume design, is learning how to design for an abstract idea or a concept.

Sarah  

Right.

Jojo  

As opposed to, "I need this literal cardigan," or "I need these literal pants," or "this specific hat."

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

Sometimes it's harder to kind of conceptualize that in an abstract form and figure out how to still do that with costumes.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

Whether that's through color or texture, or, you know, that kind of thing, or even just interacting with other costumes.

Sarah  

Yeah, I think a good way to do that is to ask yourself, "Why is this character wearing what they're wearing?" And kind of start there.

Jojo  

Mmhmm. Yeah.

Sarah  

Also, like, we talk about color a lot. But it's important to know what color does and which colors represent what emotion, subconsciously. I think once you have that sort of foundation of knowledge, it's easier to think about those abstract things. And how...

Jojo  

Yeah, definitely.

Sarah  

...how clothes can be interpreted in certain ways.

Jojo  

It goes back to psychology a lot too, I think psychology is a huge factor in costume designing, because a lot of what we wear, even if we don't think about it, that comes from a psychological reaction to how we've looked at clothes, or how we've appreciated clothes before. So... it's definitely important.

Sarah  

And how we see ourselves, as well.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

How you want to be seen and how you see yourself is a huge part of how you dress the way you dress, you know? Which is...

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

...like in "Parasite," it's very clear, because when they go to these rich peoples' house, they know they need to present themselves as these people that they basically, like, invented. They invent their credentials.

Jojo  

Right, right.

Sarah  

They pretend like they have all these years of experience and all these contacts. And so in order to to look that part, they need to wear the right clothes.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

Because, like, rich people... it goes back to the obliviousness of the rich family. They see a nice outfit, and they hear, "Oh, I have this degree in Art Psychology," or whatever BS that the daughter is coming up with. And they're like, "That sounds great!" And they're fooled, basically, by...

Jojo  

Yeah. Right.

Sarah  

...by the facade.

Jojo  

It's... I mean, it says a lot about our culture too, because I think even in America, the people that are the most cynical or the most suspicious are the people that have endured that hardship, and have been tricked before, and that are desperate. Because we've seen what that looks like. You know, I feel like it's-- I don't want to say all wealthy people are not smart or intelligent, or that all not-wealthy people are super smart or cynical. You know, obviously, there's nuances in all of humanity. But I feel like, you know, people that have to work for that and have gone through the hardship of being tricked or cheated, kind of understand from a different perspective than people who have had things handed to them, that have never had to deal with that hardship.

Sarah  

Yes.

Jojo  

So yeah, it makes a big difference.

Sarah  

Yeah, it's a really different life to not ever have to worry about, like, when your next meal is going to be, or whether you'll have a house next month, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. So crazy.

That got heavy at the end there. [laughs]

Jojo  

I know! Well, it's interesting, too, because it's coming at an appropriate time, because that's what's true nation right now.

Sarah  

It's true! Yeah. So in summary, we should eat the rich.

Jojo  

Everything is timed, it's such a coincidental, and maybe not so coincidental...

Sarah  

Well, yeah, I mean, you know, Bong Joon Ho made this movie not that long ago. And it's, you know, it was only a couple years ago. So it's very relevant.

Jojo  

Yeah. And it's already been happening in Korea. So I'm...

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

I'm sure-- it's a very universal message, which I think is why so many people flocked to this movie so quickly.

Sarah  

Yes. And it's very smartly done too. Like, it-- it has layers to it that you don't immediately realize upon first watch that you kinda have to think about.

Jojo  

Yeah, absolutely.

Sarah  

I loved it. Ten out of ten. Perfect movie. [bl]

Jojo  

I love it. Cool. So that wraps up our foreign film theme of the day.

Sarah  

Yeah!

Jojo  

I'm super excited. Thanks for sharing about that movie. I'm looking forward to seeing it now.

Sarah  

You're so welcome.

Jojo  

And I'm glad to know that it's on Hulu. Unfortunately, my movie is not for free right now.

Sarah  

Aww.

Jojo  

But but you can rent it for very cheap on Amazon Prime.

Sarah  

That's a pretty good deal. That's-- we like that.

Jojo  

Yeah, it's like three bucks to rent it.

Sarah  

Oh, that's not bad at all. Yeah.

Jojo  

All right.

Sarah  

Okay.

Jojo  

That concludes our episode for today. I'm Jojo.

Sarah  

I'm Sarah. Thanks so much for joining us. We hope you enjoyed.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

Please interact with us on social media. Our handles are going to be in the outro. Once again, hi to everybody who's new and we hope you like it.

Jojo  

Yeah. Thanks for joining us.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Both  

Bye!

[OUTRO]

Jojo

Thank you for listening to The Costume Plot! You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @thecostumeplot. If you have a question, comment, or movie suggestion you can email us at thecostumeplot@gmail.com.

Sarah

Our theme music is by Jesse Timm, and our artwork is by Jojo Siu. Please rate and review us wherever you listen to your podcasts.

[cabrinimc]

The Two Popes (2019)

Running time     126 min. Country      United Kingdom United Kingdom Director      Fernando Meirelles Screenwriter      Anthony McCarten Music       Bryce Dessner Cinematography       César Charlone Cast    Jonathan Pryce, Anthony Hopkins, Juan Minujín, Cristina Banegas, Sidney Cole, Luis Gnecco, Federico Torre, María Ucedo, Thomas D Williams, Pablo Trimarchi Producer       Co-production United Kingdom-Italy-Argentina-United States; Netflix. Distributed by Netflix Genre    Drama | Religion. Friendship. Based On A True Story Official Site       https://www.netflix.com/title/80174451 Synopsis / Plot    Explores the relationship and opposing visions between two of the most powerful leaders in the Catholic Church, both of whom must address their own pasts and the demands of the modern world in order to move the church forward.

Awards    2019: Golden Globes: Nom. Best Drama, Actor (Pryce), Sup. (Hopkins) & Screenplay    2019: BAFTA Awards: 5 Nominations, including Best British Film    2019: Critics Choice Awards: Nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Hopkins)    2019: Satellite Awards: 5 Nominations, including Best Film & Adapted Screenplay

Critics' reviews        "Two acting sorcerers go head-to-head and seduce the audience (...) The film is a triumph of writing as well as unostentatious filmmaking. One of Netflix’s strong original works"        Stephen Farber: The Hollywood Reporter        "[A] literate, exceptionally acted drama (...) It’s a gift to see two actors of this caliber playing against each other, speaking in an array of languages (...) to exchange spirited dialogue about the fate of the Catholic faith."        Peter Debruge: Variety        "The dialogue gives Pryce and Hopkins so much material to chew on their expert bantering almost transforms high art (...) Clearly, miracles, even cinematic ones, never cease."        Gregory Ellwood: The Playlist        "[It] skillfully examines that gulf between the human and the divine and where two religious figures of conflicting beliefs fall into it."        Matt Goldberg: Collider        "This is a smart, empathetic film about the need for both resilience and uncertainty in a faithful heart. And it’s a funny character piece"        Brian Tallerico: rogerebert.com        "A fascinating proof of why the Church remains central to more than a billion people worldwide—in addition to being a very funny and entertaining double act between two old men with a lot on their minds"        Katie Rich: Vanity Fair        "Surprisingly funny and humane dramedy (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"        Gavia Baker-Whitelaw: The Daily Dot

https://www.filmaffinity.com/en/film691766.html

[corkcrab7-blog]

The Best New Shows and Movies on Netflix This Week -- The Society, Wine Country

Looking for something new to watch on Netflix? Here is a list of all the best new shows and movies released on Netflix the week of May 10-May 16.

This is a very well-rounded week on Netflix. We've got a star-studded comedy movie (Wine Country), a suspenseful teen thriller series (The Society), the final season of a well-liked anthology series (Easy), some anime, some kid stuff, some foreign cinema, and some documentaries, and not too much of any one thing. Sometimes it's like "why do we need three murder documentaries this week," you know? Nothing this week is going to be a big hit, except mayyybe The Society, but nothing is especially bad, which isn't always the case. Steady as she goes, Netflix!

If you're looking for even more hand-picked recommendations, click over to our Watch This Now! page.

(All titles are out Friday, May 10, unless otherwise specified.)

The Biggest Releases

The Society, Season 1 Netflix's latest TV-MA YA offering is its best one yet, an inspired Lord of the Flies riff about the teenagers of a wealthy New England town that gets mysteriously cut off from the world. "No parents, no school, no rules" sounds like fun, right? Think again! Things Chinua Achebe real fast — and that's the kind of reference these kids would make, because they're all hilariously well-read. This is a show where ominous graffiti in Romanized Hebrew appears on a wall and a jock is like, "Oh, that's from the Book of Daniel. It means you've been judged and found wanting." It's a lot of fun.

Wine Country Amy Poehler is making her directorial debut with this feel-good comedy about a group of longtime friends taking a trip to Napa to celebrate a 50th birthday. The cast includes Poehler's own longtime friends and fellow Saturday Night Live alumni Maya Rudolph, Rachel Dratch, Ana Gasteyer, Paula Pell, Emily Spivey, and Tina Fey. In addition to directing, Poehler also stars, executive-produces, and wrote the story with Spivey and Liz Cackowski (who used to write for, you guessed it, Saturday Night Live). (Trailer)

Everything Else

Easy, Season 3 Writer-director Joe Swanberg's low-key anthology series is back for a third and final season of charming little tales of the love, sex, and app lives of a gaggle of Chicagoans. Returning faves include Jake Johnson, Aya Cash, Dave Franco, Zazie Beetz, Marc Maron, and Elizabeth Reaser, along with new faces like Sophia Bush and John Gallagher Jr. Is this the final sigh of mumblecore? Maybe!

Dry Martina I feel like this came out already? Or maybe Netflix puts out so many similar movies that I can't keep track of them all. Anyway, this is a sexy Chilean dramedy about a former teen pop star rediscovering her libido and finding out about who she is in the process. Lots of talk about "concha" in the trailer. (Trailer)

Gente que viene y bah (In Family I Trust) This is a Spanish movie about an architect whose boyfriend cheats on her with a news anchor and everyone finds out so she returns to the small town where she's from and gets her groove back with the help of her family and the local hot dude. You've seen this one before. (Trailer)

Harvey Girls Forever!, Season 2 The animated series formerly known as Harvey Street Kids is back for another season of after-school adventures on the street where every day feels like Saturday. Fun fact: The voices of the boy band the girls adore belong to Joey McIntyre (New Kids on the Block), Nick Lachey (98 Degrees), Joey Fatone (*NSYNC), and Shawn Stockman (Boyz II Men). That's star power! (Trailer)

Jailbirds People sure do love jail documentaries. Here's another one, profiling the women incarcerated in the Sacramento County Jail. It's as close to a real-life Orange Is the New Black as Netflix has gotten. (Trailer)

ReMastered: The Lion's Share The eighth and final installment of this season of monthly music documentary series ReMastered follows South African journalist Rian Malan's quest to redistribute the wealth of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," which has earned millions of dollars for American artists but nothing for the impoverished family of songwriter Solomon Linda, an injustice which Malan sets out to rectify as an act of personal contrition for his own family's role in apartheid. (Trailer)

Shéhérazade This gritty French indie is set in the slums of Marseille, where teenage petty crook Zach falls in love with streetwalker Shéhérazade, which leads to serious consequences. It won three César Awards (the French Oscars), for Best First Film for director Jean-Bernard Marlin and Best New Actor and Actress for its young stars Dylan Richard and Kenza Fortas. (Trailer)

Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, Volume 3 Hasan Minhaj is back for another batch of informative John Oliver-style political comedy. Topics in this volume include censorship in China (which comes after Minhaj was banned in Saudi Arabia), politics in India, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development and its loony leader Ben Carson. (Trailer / Sunday, May 12)

Malibu Rescue The premise of this kids' movie is Baby Baywatch. Some kids including Breanna Yde and Ricardo Hurtado from Nick's School of Rock learn how to be junior lifeguards. If this were a theatrically released movie, it would be rated PG for "mild rude humor." (Trailer / Monday, May 13)

revisions, Season 1 This anime series has a pretty similar premise to The Society in some ways. It follows some teenagers from Shibuya who get time-warped into a future version of their city. But then there's big robots and stuff they have to fight, so it's actually pretty different than The Society. You should just watch The Society. (Trailer / Tuesday, May 14)

Still Laugh-In: The Stars Celebrate This special is a tribute to the classic Nixon-era sketch comedy show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. Dan Rowan and Dick Martin are both dead, so they won't be there to accept the praises. There doesn't seem to be much of a point to this besides the fact that it launched the career of Lily Tomlin, and Netflix loves Lily Tomlin. It also launched the career of Goldie Hawn, but she's not in this. But it does have Tiffany Haddish crip-walking, which is something we all know and love from the original Laugh-In! (Trailer)

Stop searching, start watching! TV Guide's Watch This Now! page has even more TV recommendations.

The 52 Netflix Originals You Should Be Watching

Tim Robinson, I Think You Should Leave with Tim RobinsonPhoto: Netflix

Source: https://www.tvguide.com/news/the-best-new-shows-and-movies-on-netflix-this-week-the-society-wine-country/?rss=breakingnews

[artwalktv]

Based on a 150-word poem by Ron Koertge, “Negative Space" is a short animated film that depicts a father-and-son relationship through the art of packing a suitcase. Making of video: http://bit.ly/2kieL5x -Avec la participation du Centre National du Cinéma et de l'Image Animée - Contribution Financière -Avec la participation d'Arte France - Unité de Programmes Cinéma -Avec le soutien de la Mairie de Paris en partenariat avec le CNC -Avec le soutien du CNC (Nouvelles Technologies en Production) -Avec le soutien de la Procirep et de l'Angoa -Funding has been made possible by Puffin Foundation Ltd. -Marcella Brenner Grants for Faculty Research Development from Maryland Institute College of Art -La maison des scénaristes Negative Space has been supported in production by Ciclic-Région Centre Val de Loire, in association with the CNC. It has benefited of the support for original music creation by the SACEM in association with Ciclic. It has been hosted in Vendôme (France) from June 2nd to September 2nd, 2016, and from December 1st to January 31st, 2017. Ciclic is a public institution for cultural cooperation created by the Centre-Val de Loire Region and the French State. http://bit.ly/2kghAUE. Full Credits and Presskit: http://bit.ly/2kghCfe To date, “Negative Space” has won 127 prizes (including 63 Grand Prix/Best Animated Short awards) and played in over 314 festivals. Nomination for Best Animated Short Film: 90th Academy Awards, US (‘18) Pre selection: Académie des arts et techniques du cinéma - César, France(‘18) Nomination for Best Animated Short Subject: Annie Awards, US (‘18) Prix Fipresci : Annecy Animation Festival, France (’17) André-Martin Special Distinction for a French Short Film: Annecy Animation Festival, France (’17) Grand Prix: International Festival of Documentary and Short Film of Bilbao ZINEBI, Spain (’17) Grand Prix: Anima Mundi, Brazil (’17) Prix Emile-Reynaud : Association française du cinéma d’animation (‘17) Grand Prix: Krok Animation Festival, Ukraine (’17) Grand Prix: Taichung Int Animation Festival, Taiwan (’17) Grand Prix: Thessaloniki Animation Festival, Greece (’17) Grand Prix: ReAnimania - International Animation Film & Comics Art Festival of Yerevan, Armenia(‘17) Grand Prix: Monstra, Portugal (‘18) Grand Prix: Multivision Festival, Russia (’17) Grand Prix: Xiamen International Animation Festival, China (‘17) Grand Prix: Indie Júnior Allianz Festival, Portugal (‘18) Grand Prix: Tokyo Anime Award Festival, Japan (‘18) Grand Prix: Cyprus Animation Festival, Cyprus (‘18) Grand Prix (Short Film): Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival, US (‘18) Grand Prix (Short FIlm): International Film Festival of Uruguay, Uruguay (’18) Grand Prix (Short FIlm): Stopmotion Our Fest, Argentina (‘18) Grand Prix (Short): Chilemonos, Chile (‘18) Grand Prix (Prix Bernard Jubard):Ciné-Rencontres de Prades, France (‘18) Grand Prix: Animation NOW!, New Zealand (‘18) Grand Prix: AnimaSyros, Greece (‘18) Best international short film: 3D Wire, Spain (’17)

[thexfridax]

Adèle Haenel Marie Claire Japan, October 2020

‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ will be released in Japan on 4th of December, 2020.

See here for the PDF / full article in Japanese.

[h/t @mlleclaudine]

***

UPDATE [29 Oct 2020]

w/ big thanks to @rosedelosvientos​ for the translation

"Now, the most-watched French actress Adèle Haenel's charm at full throttle"

[October 15 Marie Claire Style] "Portrait of a Lady on Fire", which won Best Screenplay at last year's Cannes Film Festival and garnered the highest praise from actors such as Charlize Theron, Brie Larson, Xavier Dolan and other shining movie stars of today, will finally be screened in Japan this coming December. The heroine is played by the very talented actress Adèle Haenel, who won two César Awards (the French version of the Academy Awards), and is now receiving quite a lot of attention in France. We ask her, she who has a model-like physique of 175 cm and beautiful eyes possessing a strong-will, about the allure of her new film.

In the 18th century where cameras were non-existent, and of course no smartphones, European aristocrats used portraits of their sons or daughters in place of photos as an introduction to their potential marriage partners. "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" depicts the romance between a female painter and an aristocratic family's daughter over a portrait, and is up-and-coming female French director Céline Sciamma's newest opus. The screenplay that the director herself wrote was adapted into film for the role of heroine to be performed by Adèle Haenel. "It had the potential to be a great work, and I felt that the responsibility was serious." Adèle recounts the first time that she read the script. "I've collaborated with Celine for quite a long time, so for me this is a very special piece of work. That's because it's a testament to how much she trusts me. "

Adèle, who debuted when she was 12 years old, appeared in Sciamma's "Water Lillies" (2007), garnered high praise for her performance, and at a young age was nominated at the César awards. Since then, the two have become partners in public and in private, and during the awards ceremony in 2014, came out publicly regarding their relationship (at present they are separated). Currently she is 31 years old, but has already appeared in more than twenty films, and as a leading young actress she is well-loved in France. Furthermore, she accused film directors last year for sexual harassment that she suffered when she was younger; in February of this year, she protested when Roman Polanski won Best Director at the Césars; she is also known as the driving force behind France's '#Me Too' movement.

The stage of her newest film is set in 18th-century northern France, in a solitary island in Brittany. The daughter of an aristocratic family, Héloïse (Adèle Haenel)'s portrait was commissioned to Marianne (Noémie Merlant), a painter, who secretly completes it under the guise of a walking companion; however, Héloïse disapproves of the completed work. Marianne thus requests to redo it within five days. During this time, the two open their hearts to each other, a friendship blossoms, and before they know it, develop feelings far beyond it.

"It's a film about love towards the same sex. It differs from romance between a man and a woman where one dominates, and the aspect where two people are equal in a romance is very important. From there a special romantic feeling and eroticism, imagination expands further. With no rehearsals, I invented a new melody within my lines (in the script). I wanted to pursue, in an artistic way, Héloïse's journey from a passive into an active existence."

After her older sister's death, Héloïse was made to return home from the monastery. She is forced into marrying instead of her sister, however she just could not accept it. "Héloïse knows absolutely nothing about her fiancé. Even though it's her own life, she feels like why is it that she has no right to make decisions? Trying to avoid this marriage is her own way of rebelling against the world that has nothing to do with her."

On the other hand, there is Marianne, who, as a painter, is treading the path of her own life. She is shown as a modernistic woman but, during the 18th century there were actually a lot of women painters who existed. Focusing the spotlight on these women whose existence were erased from history is also another important aspect of the film. "It may seem like the 18th century is being shown in a contemporary light, however, historical facts aren't changed. Céline strove towards looking at historical facts without bending them, through a different perspective and a new form of emotional expression. I think that's why you can feel that this is a contemporary film."

While this piece is a delicate romance film that depicts that inexplainable state of mind when falling in love, one can also say that it is a social film: marriage, career, abortion, eating habits, smoking, literature, music, etc. - everyday life seen through the female gaze - and is thus also a powerful, piercing feminist film. The director herself references Nietzsche - lyrics that she wrote in Latin are sung by a female chorus repeatedly, a breathtaking theme; music by Vivaldi, an old castle, simple but elegant clothing, the picturesque scenery of the coastline of Brittany - everything is at its most beautiful, and wrings one's heart.

Film Information "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" Director & Script: Céline Sciamma Performers: Adèle Haenel, Noémie Merlant Screening Date: December 4, 2020 (Friday) @ TOHO Cinemas Chanter, Bunkamura Le Cinéma, other movie theaters nationwide TBA Distributed by: GAGA https://gaga.ne.jp/portrait/ Original article in Japanese: https://www.afpbb.com/articles/marieclairestylejp/3308645

[glam-uh]

▪️Black History Month Day 25▪️ The fam FINALLY won an Oscar!!! 👏🏾👏🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾 Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee is an African American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, has produced over 35 films since 1983. Born March 20, 1957, in Atlanta, Georgia, Spike moved from pre-civil rights Georgia, to Brooklyn, New York at a very young age. He came from an artistic, education-grounded background; Spike’s father was a jazz musician, and his mother, a schoolteacher. He attended Morehouse College in Atlanta and developed his film making skills at Clark Atlanta University. After graduating from Morehouse, Spike attended the Tisch School of Arts graduate film program where he made the controversial short, The Answer (1980), a reworking of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915). Spike made his directorial debut with She's Gotta Have It (1986), and has since directed such films as School Daze (1988), Do the Right Thing (1989), Mo’ Better Blues (1990), Jungle Fever (1991), Malcolm X (1992), He Got Game (1998), The Original Kings of Comedy (2000), 25th Hour (2002), Inside Man (2006), Chi-Raq (2015), and BlacKkKlansman (2018). He also had starring roles in ten of his own films. Spike’s films have examined race relations, colorism in the black community, the role of media in contemporary life, urban crime and poverty, and other political issues. He has won numerous accolades for his work, including an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, a Student Academy Award, a BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, two Emmy Awards, two Peabody Awards, and the Cannes Grand Prix. He has also received an Academy Honorary Award, an Honorary BAFTA Award, an Honorary César, and the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize. Through his production company 40 Acres and A Mule Filmworks, Spike Lee continues to create and direct both independent films and projects for major studios, as well as working on story development, creating an internship program for aspiring filmmakers, releasing music, and community outreach and support. #Day25 #SpikeLee #OscarWinner #40AcresAndAMule #ASpikeLeeJoint #BlackHistoryMonthTribute (at 40 Acres And A Mule Filmworks) https://www.instagram.com/p/BuUC5Njl6l4/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=d455dm9vxqg0