Sorry, I know we said we'd start with Bunuel, but as always I have a lot to say about him, and I'm already late, late for a very important dim sum date with Sarge Baker and Lovely Lulu, and I thought this would be a quicker post to concoct.
Plus there have been tedious lack of internet issues, so we may stretch out the foreplay and make it a 3 day European Pervert Cinema Weekend. Is that OK everyone? Get your fake coughs ready, call in sick, and we'll spend the day in bed together. Let's live a little: it's the European way, after all.
The other interesting news that's developed since last we spoke, dear readers, is that I may in the future have a fellow traveler on this cinematic hajj, who we'll call the Russian. This means that I have become very much like a cinematic Jesus, attracting followers as I wander through the godless multiplexes.
That's right, JC, I'm comparing myself to you. And if I'm wrong, sue me.
The point is I was telling the Russian that when you're on a quest like this, there becomes a kind of banal Sisyphisian element to it, where you just want to get it done as soon as possible, so you watch the movies that are the shortest just to whittle down the list faster, thereby ignoring great movies that are over 90 minutes long. (But for all my moaning, remember that, as I told the Russian, and as Camus wrote, we must imagine Sisyphus happy, and I very much am.)
Anyway, I took Jeux Interdits (Forbidden Games) out of the Janus set simply because I was afraid I was lagging and it was short. I had no idea it would turn me into Humbert Humbert.
But the fact is that the romance, the deeply charged and deliciously conspiratorial relationship between the two children, Paulette (Brigitte Fossey) and Michel (Georges Poujouly) is just incredibly sexy and erotic and arousing.
Yes, Jesus, I said it. Come and get me. In court.
Part of the allure is that most of global society so vehemently denies the fact that young children have a sexuality, that anytime it's portrayed on screen it's refreshing and exciting.
But that's not all, these children give incredible performances. Not at all too precious or treacly, and filled with a raw passion and emotion that many adult actors are never brave enough to put out there.
The other thing is that theirs is a romance forged out of tragedy and death, engendered in a world full of all that is most nasty brutish and short about adulthood. They're united in their rebellion of truth, youth, innocence, love and beauty; a pint-sized Bonnie and Clyde for bohemian ideals, and that's very sexy.
Yes, they're beautiful rebels, playing games, trying to remake the ridiculous, sullied rituals of adult life that they see around them into something pure and beautiful. And that's sexy also. And their love is challenged and dominated by forces beyond their control, which leads to tragic, brutal, rupture, which is sexy even though it breaks your heart.
I wish I could say something more cinematically astute about this film, but the sexiness is so very seductive you just get carried away by it.
The score, by Narciso Yepes, is absolutely beautiful and divine. There, I've managed to say one non-pervy thing in this whole post.
Happy Sunday everyone. I'm off to church to lasciviously cleanse myself in holy water.
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