Light but not fluffy

It’s risky calling a film Tiramisu. It’s a bit like calling something ‘trifle’ or ‘sweet mush’. A free kick to reviewers. The texture is important in a really good tiramisu. It’s all in the savoiardi biscuits and really good quality mascarpone cheese. Tiramisu could have gone either way – sweet mush or something a bit more satisfying. While it teetered for a while, director Paula van der Oest avoided the most predictable narratives to produce a satisfying light drama. It’s billed as a comedy by MIFF; perhaps the Dutch language made it funnier than I could see.

The film is a two hander; ageing actress and straight-laced accountant. The most predictable of line-ups. Two characters come to appreciate each others strengths and become different, fuller, happier people as a result. These films are a dime a dozen. What made a difference was Anneke Blok, who played the actress. She gave the role dignity, nuance and a mix of vulnerability and resilience that took the film beyond the expected. The film played lightly with the theme of damage. Blok’s character, her skin damaged through age and sun, her life damaged through bad decisions. Her daughter physically damaged. Jacob Derwig, who plays the accountant Jacob, whose marriage has been blighted by caution; the film delicately explores the ideas of risk and passion.

Van der Oest’s willingness to upset the traditional narrative also added the requisite amount of texture. An added bonus was the setting; a canal boat in Amsterdam; lovely to see aspects of a country seldom seen in films viewed here. Its not a great film but not fluffy either.

June reading

11 July

I've decided to try to distil what I am reading into haiku. Yes, it could be seen as a sign of being a wanker but I think its a good way of trying to work out what the writer was really on about.

I re-read Marry Me by John Updike after reading Couples again. I last read these books in the 70's/80's when I was at uni and before I'd had affairs with men. I think I just thought about it then. I needed Esther Parel (Mating in Captivity) in my life but she only wrote it last year. I liked Couples - it was sexy, redolent of the 60's but still real. Marry Me was disappointing.

Flip-Flopping Jerry
Loves Ruth. Or Sally. Or Ruth.
Or? How will it end?

If I had more room, I'd write "And who cares?" I didn't like Jerry or Sally much. I liked Ruth and Richard. I wondered whether I liked any of them when I read it in 1980. I wish I'd written in the margins. This blog is a way of writing in the margins...

I also read The Road by Mr Cormac McCarthy who writes about men. This book is less obviously a book about men and more a book about the relationship between the anonymous father and the anonymous son in the face of a post-apocalypse world. It was absolutely gripping; both the unfolding of the story and the depiction of the tragic doomed relationship they shared. I loved the way that he avoided telling us what had caused the apocalyspe and that, contrary to the way the genre usually unfolds, the story is set several years after disaster has struck.

A world full of ashes.
Doomed father and young son lurch
onwards. World without hope.

The love story (if you can describe it thus) is what enables you to read this grim story. It's beautiful sparse prose. A wonderful book.

Life's Looking Good

"Life's looking good, like a chopping block should." This blog name is drawn from some graffitti I encountered on the toilet wall of the women's toilets in the Union building at Melbourne Uni. Amidst the calls to the sisterhood, political statements and sexual confessions was this small piece of black philosophy. I liked it and it's one of the few things that has stuck from my time at Uni. I want to write a blog which is about what I am reading, looking at and doing. This is my first entry on the day after I have turned 50.

I am a little inspired at the moment by the writer Amy Hempel who I heard on Radio National yesterday (9/7). I haven't read any of her writing. She was talking about brevity and cited Gertrude Stein who once wrote a 4 word short story titled Longer:

She stayed away longer.

Given what I have read of Gertude Stein, I can hardly believe this economy. And then Amy read one of her own short short stories (a one sentence story) Just Once In My Life:

Oh, when have I ever wanted something just once in my life?

They are like little haiku. My friend Julie shared this great haiku with me:

Writing a haiku

With seventeen syllables

Is very diffic

Amy can be found here: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2008/2294505.htm.

So just to finish, the mention of Gertrude Stein reminded me of this all time funny threat. In an episode of The X-Files called "Bad Blood", the character Fox Mulder warns his partner, Dana Scully, that if she goes to prison, "your cellmate's nickname is gonna be Large Marge, she's gonna read a lot of Gertrude Stein."