Camille

Recentemente foi lançado o curta-metrgem Camille, novo projeto de Gui Pereira.

O curta é inspirados na “nova onda” do cinema francês dos anos 60, mais especificamente nos filmes de Jean Luc Godard, como “O Desprezo”.
O filme conta a história de André, um rapaz prestes a pedir a mão de sua namorada em casamento, mas por um descuído acaba confundindo o nome de sua amada com um outro nome. Agora, André tem que procurar em sua mente quem seria essa tal de Camille que ele acaba de chamar.

O filme tem aproxiamdamente 8 minutos de duração e conta com atuações e fotografia incrível.

 

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Film Response: Persona

Persona
Sweden – 1966
Director: Ingmar Bergman

 

Different from many of my classmates, and my teacher, I loved persona. The fact that I was warned to not use my technical side of the brain, but to use my creative side, had a major influence in how I watched the film. I had in my mind that I should not try to make a logic out of the things, I simply should “go with it”, and that’s exactly what I did. And you know what? By doing that I completely understood the movie and the story behind it.

The movie is really vague, and pretty much only one character talks during the film. The movie is open to interpretations, and I’m going to describe my own. For me, the movie is about an actress that got really connected with a character that she recent portrayed. Due to that fact, she starts to lose conscience of who she really is, and starts to live her life as if the other character is alive and trying to take over her. She than moves to a house to isolate herself from the rest of the World just to try to get her mind back together. Some clues during the movie is that someone (?) is shooting a film on a beach. There’s a cameraman and a director directing the sea. Besides that, the main actress is an actress, and Persona stands for a mask or appearance one presents to the world. By the way, in theater, Persona is a social role or a character played by an actor.

Overall I had the feeling that I got smarter while I watched the film. I loved that sensation! Ingmar Bergman is truly a great director, who was sure of every single frame that he wanted, and he could capture my attention during the entire film. The cinematography is beautiful, I couldn’t take my eyes of the screen, I wanted to observe the characters even when they wouldn’t say anything.

Persona is one of those films that I had to do a lot of Internet researches in order to get more out of the movie. Watching the movie wasn’t just enough for me, I had to learn more about this art piece that Bergman gave to the World.

Film Response: That Obscure Object of Desire

Aproveitando a estréia do novo filme do Woody Allen “Meia-noite em Paris”, estou colocando minha “film response” de um filme dirigido por Luis Buñel, um dos pesonagens que aparece no filme.

That Obscure Object of Desire
France/Spain – 1977
Director: Luis Buñuel

That Obscure Object of Desire quickly entered on my TOP 10 favorites list at the exact moment it ended.  Luis Buñel just proves to be a great storyteller, but he doesn’t lose his surrealistic elements. The film tells the story of the dysfunctional relationship between Mathieu and Conchita.

The entire film is pretty much a Flashback, Mathieu is telling the story of his relationship while traveling on a train. The story that he is telling is pretty linear and easy to follow, but Luis Buñel used his surrealistic personality to show the bipolarity of Conchita. Conchita is played by two different actresses throughout the movie. The two actresses are not only physically different from each other, but they also have completely different temperaments, which contributed to make the movie more interesting and unique than anything I’ve ever seen before.

The relationship that the main characters share goes from romantic dinners to violent situations.  Mathieu is an older guy, but he is the most immature of the relationship, which is representing all real life men. When a man falls in love, he suddenly becomes a immature and spoiled little kid. Mathieu has obscures desires by Conchita, some desires are extremely crazy and morally wrong… but every single desire that he has is true and believable.

On the background there’s the story of terrorists bombing and shooting random places for random reasons. Every time that a television is on, it is showing a recent terrorist attack. Sometimes, a few things just suddenly blow up on the screen. Those attacks are pretty much a metaphor for Love. Everything might seem right, but it all can explode in the blink of an eye.

I felt really sorry by Mathieu character, but I could understand his obsession for Conchita. I felt in love by the “two” Conchitas. Each one of them are unique and have characteristics that made me fall for them, every time a different Conchita was on the screen, I founded something different, and felt more in love by this character, who in my opinion, is one of the most memorable character in Film History.

Film Response: The Double Life of Veronique

Continuando, estou postando, novamente em inglês, sobre a co-produção Francesa/Polonesa The Double Life of Veronique.

The Double Life of Veronique
France/Poland – 1991
Director: Krzysztof  Kieslowski

The Double Life of Veronique has a very interesting concept: Living two different lives at the same time. Irène Jacob is the main actress and she plays two girls who share the same name (Veronique and Weronika) and pretty much the same emotions, but they live in two completely different places (France and Poland). Throughout the movie they only see each other at one point, and they don’t even realize that they have meet their other “half”.

The movie uses elements of Fantasy, resembling sometimes a Fairy Tale. I’m not even going to say that it resembles a dark fairy tale, because some of the moments of the film are extremely cute and magical, and the cinematography (like the Puppet Show scene, for example) somehow made me remind of the movie “The Little Princess”. I believe that happened because of the color balance, the telephoto lenses and the use of warm colors. The movie has some dark themes and aspects, but the director didn’t go deeper on those themes, he concentrated on creating a feeling of “experimenting the unknown without fear”.

Music is a very important aspect on both Veronique’s lives. The soundtrack of the film was really good, and each of the songs represents a different mood for the main character.

Even though the two characters have pretty much the same life, I was way more interested on Weronika’s story than on Veronique. I felt like Weronika had many more struggles and many more flaws that I wish the director could elaborate more. I got really disappointed due to the fact that the film concentrates on telling Veronique story, and not Weronika.

Watching the film for a second time was easier to me and I could care a little more about Veronique, but overall I must say that I got disappointed during some moments of the film. The film has a great idea and a theme (supernatural/fantasy) that is one of my favorites, and I can’t why I didn’t get much involved with it.

Film Response: M

Olá! Decidi publicar aqui algumas respostas que tive sobre alguns filmes que assisti recentemente.
Os textos estão em inglês… mas mesmo assim decidi publicar pra tentar trazer aos poucos esse blog de volta a ativa. =)

 

M
Germany – 1931
Director: Fritz Lang

I’ve seen Fritz Lang’s “M” before, but I’ve never actually analyzed the movie. I didn’t remember that “M” uses both, Silent Film Language and Sound to tell the story of a brutal serial killer from the streets of Berlin. I know that this is the first Fritz Lang movie with sound, and I believe that he made a stupendous job by still using elements from Silent Movies. The first scene that shows a child murder is the perfect example of Lang’s geniality. By using montage and great juxtaposition between images, the first sequence is one of the best moments in film history.

“M” has very dark themes, such as pedophilia. Even nowadays is really hard to see a movie that shows a criminal who is a pedophile, and I believe that back in the days the theme used with more caution (another movie that has a particular short-scene evolving a pedophile is “The Bicycle Theft”).

“M” has a lot of characteristics of a “Noir” film. I know that many things, one of those things being the German expressionism, influenced Noir films, but “M” has more “noirish” characteristics. Dark shadows, detectives, brutally realistic crimes. I believe that the truly birth of the Noir Films happened in “M”.

Peter Lorre does such a tremendous job as the pedophile serial killer. It’s funny to know that he started basically as a comedian actor. The song that his character whistles scared me for a while after I watched the movie. I thought that it was really cleaver that whenever we heard the song being whistled, we knew that the murder was around and the he was about to show up. This was great, and it kind of reminded me of  Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill”.

On Jean-Luc Godard’s “Contempt”, Fritz Lang affirms that “M” is his favorite movie directed by himself. I’m a big fan of “Metropolis”, but I must agree with him. “M” is one of the greatest movies of all time. The last scene of the movie at the court house is an example of that. Peter Lorre’s monologue about “The voice inside of me told me to do that…” is really powerful. The accusations about the judges show that everyone has its secrets. “M” really is one the greatest movies ever made.

 

 

Film Response: Roma, Citta Aperta

Olá! Decidi publicar aqui algumas respostas que tive sobre alguns filmes que assisti recentemente.
Os textos estão em inglês… mas mesmo assim decidi publicar pra tentar trazer aos poucos esse blog de volta a ativa. =)

Roma, Citta Aperta
Italy – 1945
Director: Roberto Rossellini

Religion, Nazism and Neo-Realism. The perfect combo. Roberto Rossellini’s “Roma, Citta Aperta” is consider one of the greatest movies of all time by movie critics all over the world.

I see this film as two. A Neo-Realistic peace and a great Studio Film. The first part of the movie has a clear neo-realistic structure. The movie was shoot on the streets of a Rome destroyed by the Nazis. We can see the effects that World War II had on Italy. The dysfunctional Italian families are also present on the movie, giving more realism to the peace. The second part of the movie, felt like a studio movie for me. I often caught myself thinking about “Casablanca” and “Inglorious Basterds” during the second part of the movie. The conversations, the conspiracies, the accusations and the Nazis; all of those things had an association with those two movies that kept popping on my head.

I really liked how the movie portrayed religion. This was one of the very few times that I’ve seen a catholic priest represented as an honest and humble person. I usually see movies about pedophiles priests and stuff like that, but this is honestly the only movie I can name right now that showed an honest Catholic Priest. Probably because Italy is immensely catholic. I’m catholic, I don’t like catholic church, but I consider myself a catholic in respect of my grandparents, and when I see a film that shows catholic priests as good guys, I can relate better with my grandparents and try to see why they care so much about this religion.

The end of the first part and the end of the second part were extremely depressing. I just couldn’t believe that this kind of movie used to be made back then during a time that that was the reality. I actually though that dark movies about the War would only be done a long time after the war was over. The fact that this film was made during the war, just makes the movie more believable and realistic.

Film Response: La Strada

Olá! Decidi publicar aqui algumas respostas que tive sobre alguns filmes que assisti recentemente.
Os textos estão em inglês… mas mesmo assim decidi publicar pra tentar trazer aos poucos esse blog de volta a ativa. =)

 

La Strada
Italy – 1954
Director: Federico Fellini

La Strada touched me really deep. Coming from an Italian neighborhood back in Brazil, I’ve seen dysfunctional families, lots of exquisite homemade food and machos like Zampano. I believe that Zampano doesn’t only represents the Italian grouch man, but West Europeans in a generally way. My grandpa is Portuguese, and I’ve seen him acting extremely rude with my grandma in front of everyone (the only difference being that he has always been extremely faithful to my grandma).

Giulietta Masina portraits Gelsomina in such a wonderful way that I felt in love with the character [and the actress]. Gelsomina is just a kid. She didn’t grow up. She is innocent; she has no real fears, no long-term goals. And she is certainly faithful to Zampano. She suffered a lot on his hands, and she had the opportunity to run-away leaving him all by himself, but she never did. She always was there to look after him.

Anthony Quinn just proved me that he was one of the greatest actors ever. I’ve seen him in Mexicans, Brazilians, Americans and now a Italian movie. And he was believable. I honestly forgot lots of times that I was watching Anthony Quinn. His character of Zampano is a really messed up guy. He must’ve had some trauma on his life. He acts all macho all the time, but he is the character with the most flaws and the most fears. He is the one who actually left Gelsomina alone. He was a coward, and he knew it. After doing that, he lived his life with uncertainty and fear. He knew that he had left a pour and hopeless child alone by herself. For me, he bursts into tears at the beach after finding out that Gelsomina died, is one of the most touching scenes in film history.

Fellini is really a genius. His neo-realism is so neo-realistic that I felt like I was watching a window. I felt like a voyeur on somebody else’s life. It was really hard for me to hide my tears from my classmates. Coming from another country, I sometimes feel that people do not see reality the way I do. I feel like this could be just a movie for them… but I know this is reality. I’ve seen things like that.