One Year On

Kampai!!!

Heen and I had been thinking how we were going to celebrate the first anniversary of the Zaragoza Twins Blog, and as we couldn’t decide what to do, we decided not to do anything.

I was in favour of a massive party. I was going to invite all our old friends plus all the new ones we’ve made thanks to our blogging experience, but the logistics were scary and the prospect of confronting so many weirdoes was a bit offputting.

Heen would have liked to set fire to something. He has a strange pyromaniac streak and his celebrations usually involve candles, at least, and bonfires given the chance. He was toying with the idea of carefully pouring oil into the River Ebro and setting it alight; fortunately, he saw the error of his ways and realised that it would have disastrous ecological consequences.

By the way, he actually cremated his copy of The Tale of Genji when he had finished it. He has a friend who works at the local crematorium and a few weeks ago, they dealt with Genji in a very Heenish way. He chewed a couple of umeboshi and hummed the soundtrack of “Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence” as the flames did their work. Since then, he has never wanted to talk about the book. I tell you, my twin is high maintenance.

Anyway, we invited a few friends over and had a few bottles of Somontano wine. We laughed about some of the posts we’d written and commented on the statistics. It’s funny what draws people to other people’s blogs, it really is. We (Heen and I and our friends) all agreed that the best stuff we’d written were my write up of “Cría cuervos” and the tale of how we converted Soraya into Sonic the Hedgehog. I’m not going to tell you what our most popular post has been, lest that should sway the statistics, but whatever, we’re very happy that our blog has proved to be so popular.

The evening was, inevitably, tinged with a certain nostalgia. My plans to emigrate are still intact, and shortly after the summer I will be living alone, thousands of miles from my twin brother. It’s for the best. Heen will continue to live in this house, on the outskirts of Zaragoza, and obviously we will be in touch, but we’re not sure what will happen to this blog. Apparently, most blogs have a life of about three weeks, so this one has already shown its staying power.

Come September, when I’m living in my home, miles away from the nearest glimmer of civilisation, I may feel the urge to blog, either on my own or still with Heen, but my immediate plans are to submerge myself in a new culture so completely that I doubt there is room for blogging.

Heen isn’t happy with my leaving. He won’t say so, of course, but I know he’s pissed off that I’ve decided to go away and do my own thing.

You might be wondering where I’m emigrating to. I am reluctant to reveal my destination, however. I will let you know once I’m there. And it’s not Mongolia, by the way.

Anyway. I would like to propose a toast to this blog, to everybody who has posted a comment and to everybody who has ever had a look at it.

PLEASE don’t think this is the final post. No way. I’ll be here for a few more months, and there’ll be plenty of time for more scurrilous balderdash, which has made this website what it is today. As Heen said in his speech when Zaragoza Twins’s Blog won the “Most Incredibly Wonderful And Excellent Blog Of The Year” award last March in Cardiff, “Blogging is like a shark – it has to move forward or it moves sideways.”

Iechyd da!

What to Drink While Watching Lost In Translation, Les 400 Coups and Imitation of Life

Heen says:

 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: You shouldn’t watch one film straight after another. Consequences: You will mix up the characters, the plot, everything.

 

I was feeling a bit off colour the other day and I decided to indulge in a triple movie viewing binge, starting late afternoon and finishing late evening. The films I opted for were Lost In Translation, Les 400 Coups and Imitation Of Life. It took me most of the morning to choose these films, so I would like to start this post by justifying my decision.

 

I saw Lost In Translation shortly after it was released. I had very little faith in Sofia Coppola but was a fan of Bill Murray. The reviews were overwhelmingly positive, except in Japan, where the film bombed. Japanese critics slammed it for being offensive and it wasn’t hard for me to see why.

 

I saw Truffaut’s The 400 Blows absolutely ages ago, when I was a student. Rewatching it, I was amazed that I could remember so many scenes that I thought I’d forgotten. It is definitely a film that should NOT be forgotten, emblematic as it is of the Nouvelle Vague, nowadays rightly vindicated.

 

Imitation of Life used to be my least favourite Douglas Sirk film. A massive commercial success when it came out, it has been belittled ever since by just about everybody, and I was a bit uneasy about watching it again.

 

Lost In Translation was made in 2003. Les 400 Coups and Imitation Of Life were both made in 1959. Has film making improved since 1959? On the evidence of these three films, the answer is clearly not YES.

 

Sofia Coppola decides to do without a plot. OK, that’s fair enough, but she’s hardly Jean-Luc Godard, is she, and she relies too much on Bill Murray’s facial expressions and Shibuya landscapes. (Story line of Lost In Translation: boy meets girl in inhospitable surroundings; boy leaves; both upset; end of story).

 

Truffaut’s film has a flimsy plot, too: boy not happy at home; boy runs away.

 

Now. Which story is the viewer interested in? I was unable to sympathise with Johansson’s character; her husband is wrapped up in his work, so she drifts into Buddhist temples and swimming pools but mostly the hotel bar, never taking anything seriously, apparently feeling sorry for herself for no apparent reason.

 

Antoine’s character is in another galaxy. The way Truffaut describes this boy’s relationship with his parents is sublime – a careful combination of script, acting and editing that Ms Coppola could learn a lot from.

 

Imitation Of Life, in the best melodramatic tradition, doesn’t rely on succinct snatches of dialogue or anguished silences. Sirk has a big story to tell, and is dead set on blowing us away. Twenty years ago, I wasn’t blown away, but last week I was windswept, hurricaned, typhooned, nay, tsunamied. The plot is heavy; what starts out as a love story lurches into a grim and roaring tale of the human condition, sacrifice and redemption. It’s the kind of film Truffaut wouldn’t want to make and Coppola wouldn’t know how to.

 

Sofia Coppola tries to make a weepy. Truffaut aims at a rueful tear. Sirk says, “Cry, damn you!”

 

As I half-anticipated, I entangled the characters from the three films. Susie, as played by Sandra Dee in Imitation Of Life, was in a hotel in Tokyo. Sarah Jane, the black girl who pretends to be white, was a prostitute in Paris. Antoine somehow became Lana Turner’s boyfriend.

 

Douglas Sirk wouldn’t have known what to do with Bill Murray. François Truffaut would have despaired of Scarlett Johansson. Sofia Coppola manages to come up with a vaguely interesting film just by letting them get on with it.

 

As for liquid refreshment, it’s tempting to suggest whisky for Lost In Translation, rough table wine for Les 400 Coups and maybe Coca Cola for Imitation Of Life. So if you’re planning to watch these three films in one sitting, you may as well mix all three in a large bucket, add a few chunks of lemon and half a dozen ice cubes and call it “sangría”.

 

No. It’s better not to mix your movies. Definitely.

Your Fishodiac Horoscope Update

No tall dark strangers, please

 

Do you care about your lucky stars? Really? You realise, of course, that all horoscopes are horse manure, don’t you. Yes, all of them. Except this one: the Zaragoza Twins’ very own exclusive Fishodiac. In case you have forgotten what fish sign you are, click on this explanatory link:

http://zaragozatwins.wordpress.com/2008/04/26/the-ultimate-horoscope

 

It’s been a pretty dull time of late in the stars, which is the main reason we haven’t updated this section for a while. The second reason is that we don’t actually believe any of this nonsense. But, for what it’s worth, here is the Spring/Summer collection of the Fishodiac.

 

The Flounder

Happiness Index Rating: 59%

Scary Day: May 14

Lucky Novel: Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

 

The Pilchard

Stress Factor: B+

Thrill Day: June 2

Lucky Airline: Aeroflot

 

The Stickleback

Caution Ranking: 78

Boring Day: June 5

Lucky Film Director: John Ford

 

The Carp

Cynicism Rate: 20/30

Forgettable Day: May 28

Lucky Mobile Phone: Samsung G550

 

The Minnow

Generosity Index: C

Allergic Day: July 17

Lucky Continent: Asia

 

The Red Mullet

Desirability Rank: 4,582

Religious Day: May 30

Lucky Kitchen Appliance: Microwave oven

 

The John Dory

Apathy Rating: AAB

Hilarity Day: June 20

Lucky Beer: Becks

 

The Turbot

Stupidity Factor: 9

Insignificant Day: July 4

Lucky Nazi: Hermann Goering

 

Disclaimer:

 

Zaragoza Twins would like to stress that the above is infallible and 100% guaranteed. However, we are aware that in this present economic climate, there is no such thing as a free lunch and that “wishful thinking” and faith are not synonyms. Make of that what you will.

 

 

Small Is Beautiful

is that absolutely necessary?

 

Are there too many people in the world today? Some politicians, academics, writers, commentators, anthropologists, teachers, doctors, economists, professors, ecologists, policemen, social workers, judges, etc., say so. They reckon there are too many of us competing for the world’s food, water, oil, fresh air, wood, etc.

 

Very few measures have been taken to reduce this human overload, which may be taken as a sign that the authorities either don’t really think there are too many people or they just don’t want to stop people having more babies. Except in China, but let’s not go there, or people will start sending me even more hate mail since I mentioned the possibility of boycotting the Peking Olympics…

 

I don’t know if the population is growing too much. I know it’s growing a lot, but how much is too much? How many more people can the earth accommodate? Who could even begin to calculate that?

 

If the authorities don’t want to take draconian measures like stopping us having babies, what other measures could they take? They could fix a maximum age for us to live to, for instance. I’d say 70; the retirement age could be lowered to about 55 and we’d have 15 years to spend our savings, and the State would save a lot on health care for the aged while creating a lot of jobs for younger people.

 

But to carry this out, they’d have to dispose of a lot of people who are actually living a fairly productive or, at least, active life. It wouldn’t be nice to have some local government official come round to your house on your 70^th birthday and say, “Good morning, sir, our records say

 

you’re 70 so we’re going to kill you to make room on the planet for some more new people.” It sounds like something from Star Trek. And then there’d be the problem of actually putting an end to these old folk’s lives. The most elegant option would be for these people to take a voluntary overdose of sleeping pills or something (which could be State-subsidised), but it seems like an unlikely scenario.

 

No, I can’t see how we can reduce the world’s population that way.

 

Maybe one day in the future we can send whole swathes of the world’s people to another planet. Now that would be handy, but it’d have to be a really nice planet, because this would have to be a voluntary thing; we can’t just ship people off to Jupiter or somewhere without asking their opinion. And anyway, there’s no sign of any suitable planet at the moment, is there, so that’s that idea taken care of, at least for the next few hundred years.

 

So what else is there to do (if we’re convinced there are too many people on earth)?

 

Well, Heen and I have been thinking seriously about this, and we’ve come up with an original solution, by looking at the question from a typically ZaragozaTwins angle.

 

We have decided that there aren’t too many people, it’s that people are too big. We take up too much room on the planet not because there are too many of us but because each of us takes up too much space and uses up too many resources.

 

If each person weighed half their present body weight, the global saving in food and water would rise exponentially. If people were less tall than they are right now, they’d need to spend less on clothes, too.

 

If we were, say, just one metre tall, we could build smaller cars that used less fuel and caused less pollution. Our houses would be smaller, so we’d use fewer building materials and could fit more families in the same building space. The present roads and motorways would be less congested. We’d all have more space, more food, more resources.

 

Would it be too much to ask scientists to look into the viability of making the next generation a bit shorter? I mean, with all this research into stem cells and God knows what, devising people with shorter limbs and a more reduced torso shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

 

I’m not saying, “Cut everybody’s legs off”, I’m just saying, “Make sure that the next generation is smaller than us”. Beds would be shorter, thus saving mattress-making materials; swimming pools would also be shorter (and shallower), so you would save water there, too; pencils would be shorter, so you wouldn’t need so much graphite.

 

In fact, when you come to think of it, there are really no advantages of people being tall. OK, so basketball wouldn’t be so spectacular, but I think we could sacrifice the NBA for the sake of world prosperity, surely? I’m sure the American entertainment industry could invent some sport to replace it…

 

It’s easy to knock ideas like this. I anticipate millions of tallish people scoffing at the idea of their sons and daughters being shrunk to hobbit size, and I am the first to admit the changeover would be complicated, not to say traumatic, as society came to grips with this awkward transition, but time is of the essence, ladies and gentlemen. The sooner we start lowering the height limit, the sooner we will solve our problems. For too long we’ve looked the other way, insisting that “growth is good” but, whether it’s the economy or our physique, in actual fact, we should be thinking “small is beautiful”.

 

Replies are invited to this essay, but keep them short. 

Lucía Méndez

We don’t know much about Lucía Méndez. And when I say “we”, I don’t just mean the Zaragoza Twins, I mean everybody.

 

I can tell you she was born in the second half of 1901. I can tell you she died on 21/03/37. I can tell you she was 35 years old when she died but I can’t say exactly where. I can tell you (and it’s the only thing we really know about her) that she was probably born in Zaragoza, and that’s what entitles her to be included in this section of “Hijos ilustres de Zaragoza”.

 

Lucía was never really “illustrious”. She was, perhaps, notorious. “Disreputable” is another adjective that springs to mind. Dead set on flaunting and flouting convention, she was the first Spanish woman to take her own photographs. She posed exclusively for her own gratification and portrayed herself in dozens of amateur photographs, of which absolutely none remain except this one, the one that opens this post, the one that mesmerised you, o reader, when you saw it.

 

A friend (and perhaps a lover) of the great Hungarian artist Gregyor Czabo, she discovered photography when she was an adolescent, and exhibited her own self-portraits at the Edinburgh Photography Exhibition, the first of its kind, in 1921. Her shocking poses and brutal glare stunned critics and visitors alike. Flushed with success, she even challenged Man Ray to a “photographical duel”, which he refused with the surrealist counter-offer of an underwater pillow fight. Neither event took place, unfortunately.

 

Méndez moved to Paris some time in the early 30’s. After predictably mingling with dozens of frustrated painters and dissolute poets, she sank into alcoholism and resorted to selling photos of herself in her birthday suit in order to pay for her addiction.

 

“Lo único que tengo es lo que soy”, she would say. “The only thing I have is what I am.”

 

What she was, was herself. The only thing she could sell was what she was, a failed artist, perhaps, nothing more than an amateur photographer, probably auto-besotted (she was convinced that she was the most beautiful woman in the world), and she marketed her product with a pathetic desperation not unlike the great and not-so-great singers and actresses who would follow in her sordid footsteps in later years.

 

There are stories, or rather rumours, that she fell into prostitution. There is no proof of this. In a sense, her art became her prostitution. Lucía Méndez took this photograph of herself minutes before she hung herself, after bribing a friend to dump her body on a train heading towards the French-Spanish border. She was clutching her self-portrait, signed and dated, when border officials discovered the rigid corpse in the luggage compartment.  

 

If YouTube and MySpace had existed in Lucía’s time, she would be a legend today. Now she is forgotten. But she’s there in her last photograph, very much alive and challenging, bitter, proud, indomitable, aware that we are aware that she will live when we are dead.

 

 

Colungo 2.0

You might have observed that we haven’t posted anything recently. Then again, you might not. The thing is, Sheen and I have been away. And guess where we went to spend our Holy Week – yes, that’s right, you already read the title – Colungo.

 

I swore some time ago I would never return to that village. My last experience there was traumatic, to say the least. But, you know, it’s like a drug. I promise I will not do it again but in the end I fall. And I’ve fallen for Colungo big time.

 

I’ve never managed to shake off the Somontano Monkey. He mutters and rants somewhere on the fringes of my psyche and despite my conscious efforts to block Him out, His furious waffling seeps through and I always know He’s alive and kicking; when He’s calm and reflexive and when He’s edgy and concerned. And so, against my better judgement, I decided to try to assuage His neuro-itchy urges by paying another visit to His old stamping ground, His patria chica, the village of Colungo, where legend would have it He used to spout forth from the comfort of His sacred tree, showering His unparalleled doctrines on just about anybody in the vicinity.

 

Colungo receives a fair number of visitors every Easter, so I thought I would probably not be recognised, especially since I spent the whole time disguised as a nazareno, sporting a pointy cone-shaped Ku Klux Klan-like hood and mask. I explained to everybody that I was on a pilgrimage, atoning for my sins. Sheen dressed as a nun and pretended to be blind.

 

We decided not to stay at a hotel (too risky), so we squatted in an abandoned Chinese restaurant originally called Gran Feliz Siglo de Oro Divino or something, that we’d heard about because one of Sheen’s Facebook  “friends” used to squat here. Just to protect our identities even more, I called myself Freddy Sánchez (after the great Filipino lightweight boxer of the 70’s) and Sheen took the name Sor Angustias. We were alone in the Chinese squat apart from a seemingly narcoleptic hippy whose name we never found out because he always fell asleep just as he was going to tell us. He was the perfect flatmate – discreet, forgetful and uninterested.

 

We joined in the religious processions, although I’m not a big fan of that kind of thing, and, because we were appropriately dressed up, we blended in quite well. We visited just about all the watering holes in the village, sometimes chatting casually with the local folk but usually just listening to see if anybody mentioned the Somontano Monkey or maybe my name. I was on my sixth Cacique and Coke (no easy feat, wearing a mask that went down to my stomach) when suddenly Sor Angustias elbowed me urgently.

 

“They’re talking about your Monkey!”, she hissed.

 

“What?!” I craned my capirote in the direction of the two shady characters in the corner. Sure enough, I heard the word “monkey”, and then “Martínez”. Now, mine isn’t a rare surname – there must be hundreds of thousands of Martínezs in Spain – but I just knew they were talking about me. And, needless to say, the Somontano Monkey also knew…

 

I thought my head was going to explode with the racket He was making. “Ginger petrify southwest Carnegie! Lump hieratic shoal piecemeal strike!”, He yelled in Flemish (for some reason.)

 

I explained to Sheen we had to get out of there. She dragged me out of the bar and I felt the glare of the two thugs on the back of my hooded neck.

 

“We need to get to His tree!”, I gasped.

 

It had started to rain and we were soaked by the time we made it to the Monkey’s tree, which was, fortunately, nearby. The closer we got, the more relaxed my inner ape became. He kept rabbiting on, but less stridently and slightly more coherently. Words like “peace”, “comfort”, “release”, and even “ataraxia” were clearly audible. I knew He was at ease – excited, of course, but relieved to be home and I could even imagine He was smiling.

 

The next day we struck up conversation with a guy called Emilio who worked in the Ayuntamiento. He told us that the local government was in talks with some American firm to build a theme park in the area, with a casino, a golf course and God knows what else. The Monkey started making funny noises.

 

“The logo of the whole thing is a kind of monkey”, Emilio went on.

 

“What?!” I exclaimed for the second time in this post.

 

Emilio fished out a photocopy of what looked like a brochure. Somontano Ocio Park, it said. And there it was… a Disneyish monkey face.

 

“I think the mascot’s name is Pepito”, said Emilio. “What’s the matter, Heen? You’ve gone all pale…”

 

Those were the last words I remember. Sheen says I passed out at exactly 3pm on Good Friday.

 

But worse was to come. When I came to, all I could hear was an unhinged cackling inside my head.

 

“Oh, what is it now!” I cried, tears of blood searing down my nazareno outfit. I was definitely repentant.

 

And then it dawned on me. The Somontano Monkey was actually happy to be the mascot of the casino. He felt vindicated and, at the same time, relieved that he had been released of his savant status. He was now going to be a figure of fun, a pathetic Ronald McDonald of Colungo. I felt defeated, crushed. The Monkey was laughing at ME.

 

We returned to Zaragoza in grim silence. Sheen tried to cheer me up and the wretched simian was giggling and chortling. He kept singing corny little jingles that drove me mad.

 

Colungo is bad for me. Every time I go there, something tragic happens to me. And it’s all because of this bloody monkey. Will nobody rid me of this curse? Am I to spend the rest of my days tormented by this devil? Will I forever wander the earth haunted by the Somontano Monkey? 

What To Drink While Watching “Le Signe du Lion”

Heen and I have been watching a handful of old films by Eric Rohmer. You may recall his review of Suzanne’s Career, a film that we disagreed about. However, the one we watched today, Le Signe du Lion, united us once more. We both agree it’s the most “unRohmeresque” film we’ve ever seen, and neither of us cared for it much, mainly because of the silly ending.

 

It was Rohmer’s first full length film and, like I say, gives no clue as to the direction his film making would take. A failed American musician thinks he’s inherited a fortune, only for it to turn out to be a false alarm. He loses everything, money and friends, and wanders round Paris, sinking into clochardisme and contemplating suicide, until a stroke of luck reverts him to millionaire status.

 

Unlike so many of Rohmer’s films, there’s very little dialogue. Pierre, the main character, begins to lose his mind as he staggers through the summer streets, starving and filthy, and has an obsession with stone – “All these people, all this stone!” he wails in a beautiful crazy moment, clawing the walls in a delirious muddled rage. Even when his friends rescue him and inform him he’s a millionaire, he just tells them to go to hell. How unlike our friend Eric.

 

A word about the American actor who plays Pierre. His name is Jess Hahn and he made an amazing 120 films and yet is virtually unknown. He worked mainly with French and Italian directors, never won any awards, and died in anonymity in 1988. His performance is flawless in The Sign of Leo and it’s a shame he never made the big time.

 

There are a few scenes that Rohmer was to repeat in later films: Pierre sponging off friends and dodging out of hotels without paying; mundane shop scenes; lovers exchanging sweet nothingnesses with the main character looking on bemused; and, of course, scenes of the Seine at all times of day.

 

I was surprised at the way the film turned out, and not a little disappointed. I expected Pierre to jump into the river, to be quite honest. But the ending picks up a scene from the beginning of the film; the stars come out after Pierre has been moaning there aren’t any stars in Paris and he goes off to celebrate his unwarranted good fortune. This film comes in Rohmer’s “Moral Tales” category but it’s hard to see what he’s getting at from a morality angle. Something along the lines of “It’s OK if you’re a loser, everything will turn out all right in the end” or “It doesn’t matter what you do, somebody else will decide your fate” or just “I love Paris”, which I’d say is a moral precept on its own.

 

Right now I’ve got a heavy cold. Nobody in Spain gets a cold, by the way, everybody gets flu. But I know this is a cold. I’ve been taking loads of paracetamol so I couldn’t drink any wine watching this film, which is what I really wanted. Heen decided to drink a bottle of Sauternes and kept saying, “Mmmmm”. You’re supposed to drink plenty of liquid when you’ve got a cold, so I got through two cups of tea and a large glass of grapefruit juice and I think that may be one reason why I didn’t like the film much.

 

This cold will stay with me till I pack my bags and head off to Mongolia. The prospect is rather disturbing. 

 

 

Zaragoza Twins On Ice!!

You heard it right. Sheen and I are pleased to announce that we have been invited to compete in the World Figure Skating Open Championship, to be held at the King Abdullah Ice Palace, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on April 10, 2009.

 

You may not know this facet of the Zaragoza Twins; it’s possible we have overlooked to mention that we are, actually, rather adept at figure skating and whenever the Ebro freezes over, we are always there, cutting our figures of eight on the icy surface, dazzling onlookers with our scintillating pirouettes. We occasionally go to Barcelona to practise and have won a fair few awards in our time, but far be it from me to blow our own trumpet.

 

We are really looking forward to it. It will be our first official performance in Saudi Arabia, and we’ve pulled out all the stops to make sure this will be a memorable occasion for all concerned: our rivals, the judges, the audience and above all, ourselves.

 

The music we’ve chosen for our piece is the song “Dephekation” from the musical “Crass”, tastefully rearranged by Edmundo Dos Santos and sung by Rihanna Alawi. This will be a world premiere and we’re confident the judges will be gobsmacked.

 

What with our Genji reading and my other shady occupations, we haven’t had that much time for rehearsals, but we’ve always relied more on our ad hoc improvisations than on any mechanistic ritual and there’s no reason to suppose that we won’t be in fine fettle to walk away with the top prize: $100,000,000 in gold and a few camels.

 

The actual ice dance is based on a traditional folk number that Sheen unearthed practically unwittingly whilst researching her impending “spiritual retreat” in Mongolia. I was quite surprised to learn that the tango is so popular there, I must confess. They have this bizarre dance called “Mongo-Tango”, sometimes referred to as “Mon-Tan” and even as “Man-Ton”, which involves a lot of running around and leaping into the air, and we thought it would be just perfect for our freestyle event. Just look for “Mongo-Tango” on Youtube and you will see what I mean.

 

See you in Jeddah!

Emigrating

Aquí mismo, por ejemplo

Sheen says:

 

I’m thinking of emigrating. I want to go and live in a place where nobody has ever heard of The Tale of Genji or the economic crisis.

 

I still indulge Heen in our reading Genji, and it is getting so boring I keep wishing somebody would get struck by lightning, and I hope I don’t have to wait till April. I’m sure Heen finds it boring, too; he just pretends to enjoy it, but really he doesn’t give a damn about all these creepy people, the Commander, the Haven, His Cloistered Eminence, the Lady in the East Wing, the Heir Apparent, etc., and more than once I’ve caught him out for mixing up some of Genji’s lady friends.

 

Why on earth did the author not give her characters names? It’s all “that gentleman”, “the lady”, “the prince’s favourite”, “her daughter”, or they’re referred to by bizarre references to plants and flowers I’ve never heard of. Who is whose son? I don’t know and I don’t care.

 

And what a life they had, those people. They spend all their time and energy playing obscure musical instruments, composing poetry and admiring the cherry blossom when they’re not fornicating or planning how to fornicate or regretting not having fornicated when they had the chance.

 

Soraya soon abandoned her role as maiko and purposefully avoids us when our reading sessions take place. She’s decided to become an economic advisor to the Spanish government and spends most of her time reading articles from the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal now that her English is up to it. Then she gives me lectures on Keynes. I sometimes think she has become a toxic asset.

 

I want to go to a place where nobody will talk to me about courtly love in medieval Japan; where credit crunch is a breakfast cereal; where there are happy smiling people who will just leave me alone, and not too many of them, either.

 

I’m scouring the atlas and wondering about Mongolia.

 

I’m sorry. March hasn’t been a good month for me.

 

What to Drink While Watching “La Carrière de Suzanne”

Suzanne is dumpy and frumpy. Therefore she is the perfect character for this film, made in 1963 by the great Eric Rohmer. Why is she perfect? Because it intrigues the viewer what Guillaume and Bertrand see in her. The former becomes her official boyfriend, making the latter jealous, even though he pretends not to be. Both take advantage of her apparent gormlessness but in the end she gets her revenge by finding true love elsewhere and leaving Guillaume and Bertrand high and dry.

 

The film is just 50 minutes long. In this space of time, Rohmer manages to drag us through just about all the human emotions in the book; quite an achievement as this is a typical Rohmer film in that it’s what most people would call a “slow” film.

 

I’ve talked about “slow” films before, so I’m not going to dwell on this. Suffice to say that I have no objection to films being slow. The fewer car chases and special effects, the better. A few weeks ago I rewatched Kiarostami’s “Through The Olive Trees” and that must be one of the all-time slowies – remember that amazing final scene where Hossein and Tahereh are walking through the field away from the camera, ten minutes of silence, the figures getting smaller and smaller…? Reader, I loved it.

 

There’s always plenty of chirpy dialogue in Rohmer. That’s another criticism people make of his work: he’s too wordy. I would have to agree that the constant flow of dialogue in “Suzanne’s Career” is unnatural, but what they say is hardly out of the ordinary. Suzanne has to talk too much; that’s part of her character and what makes her easy prey for Guillaume, who enjoys her banter, and her chattering makes up for Bertrand’s introspection.

 

The film is all beautifully straightforward except for one mysterious loose end. Bertrand hides some money he’s got from his parents and it goes missing. He immediately suspects Suzanne of lifting it (and practically justifies her theft by admitting he’s been sponging off her for weeks) but the viewer also suspects it was the sly Guillaume. Bertrand evidently prefers not to know where the money’s gone and refuses to make enquiries. If Suzanne did take the money, it would be out of keeping with the character that the viewer knows, but maybe not with the girl Bertrand and Guillaume both find so maddeningly attractive, which take me back to the original question: What do they both see in this girl? Obviously something that Rohmer hints at but doesn’t reveal.

 

There’s something absolutely irresistible about Paris in the 60’s. Oh that I had been born there just after the War. I would have been great.

 

I would have drunk coffee and wine to excess and probably dabbled with absinthe. I think “Suzanne’s Career” is a coffee film, preferably dark on a terrace, served by a thin waiter with a white jacket, whom I would address as Serge and he would call me Monsieur Martínez. I would sip my café noir and smoke my Gauloise while eyeing up the jeunes filles and pretending to read my Sartre.

 

Ah, regardez, Suzanne has sat down at the table next to mine. She simpers inanely in my direction and I smirk superciliously back at her and return to my Sartre but, zut, there’s something about her, a certain je ne sais quoi…

 

Merde, maybe I’m beginning to understand the film, after all.