A strange and unsatisfying movie. It is about a doctor in Romania, and about his daughter and the pressure he applies on her to be successful, but maybe at too high a cost.
Bill
Cecile McLorin Salvant Master Class
There were were three singers in the class, but there was no program, and I didn’t take notes. I remember in particular two of the songs:
- Summertime
- I Didn’t Know What Time It Was
Tyné Freeman was one of the singers, and she sang beautifully, but perhaps needed more volume. Here is a short clip:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BKrDDHhBsQF/
Cécile advised listening to lots of classic jazz, and the famous singers. She also suggested make the song their own: they can play with the rhythm, within limits.
Maudie
Ethan Hawke was the well-known name that we were watching for here, and he didn’t disappoint. This was a surprisingly interesting story based on the folk artist Maude Lewis from Marshalltown, Nova Scotia. This looks like a crossroads, near Digby.
Maudie answers an ad placed by fish seller Everett, and ends up staying. She is fleeing a hostile family environment.
She starts painting, and bit by bit, paints her entire shack. She gains some fame, in part with a CBC documentary, but not enough to lift her from poverty and her tiny house.
Things to Come
Isabelle Huppert is great in this movie, with her blunt dialogue, but you have to like essentially plotless French films. Fortunately, I love them. It starts off as her husband of many years announce he is moving in with another woman. They are both philosophy teachers, with a great love of books.
The film meanders through other events. The most interesting is her visits to a former student and protegé in the countryside, where he is hanging out with a group of anarchists. But it is not a romantic liaison, just a visit. Just as it would be. And life goes on.
Neruda
This film was a more typical choice for Telluride, and had a promising storyline of a policeman chasing Neruda as he flees a fascist Chilean regime.
I was surprised by the adulation that Neruda received, and the character’s popularity with women even though he is a paunchy, bald middle aged fellow. When I dug into Wikipedia, it turns out that the actor does resemble Neruda.
I loved how Neruda espoused Communist ideals in support of the working man, while acting most of the time like a lazy aristocrat, exploiting all those around him.
The strange part, and where the movie failed, was the wasted Gael García Bernal. He played the strangely named Oscar Peluchonneau, an inspector who doggedly tracks Neruda through the remote country side. He maintains an interior monologue speculating on if he is a character in his own story, and it never seemed to fit.