Change Your Image
veerybird
Reviews
Marie and Bruce (2004)
How to Love a Radish
"What do I know about man's destiny? I could tell you more about radishes." -Samuel Beckett
Marie and Bruce tell me what I otherwise often take for granted about radishes, for me an apt metaphor for long-term relationships. Marie dwells on her disgust for her husband, Bruce, ad nauseam, and she continues to "bite" into him, taste the disgust anew, and "bite" again. This disgust seems to be the driving force behind the reverie that leaves her craving for that radish all over again. Bruce goes about his day, being the radish, knowing it, accepting it, even flaunting it in the face of Marie's disgust, vised between her gritted teeth. Some dialog reflects apt wisdom from John Gray's Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, and Deborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. Taste for radishes may be something acquired, as is taste for theater of the absurd. Bravo Wally and Tom. I love Beckett, Pinter, Ionesco, Stoppard, ... and you.
Painted Angels (1998)
strengths far outweigh weaknesses
I'll watch paint dry if the painting pulls me in. The well-developed characterization did exactly that. Early on in the film, when Eileen stands up at her sister's wake to sing My Lagan Love, a haunting Irish air in her raw and sincere alto, I knew I would be watching the story of sisters past. I'll admit some of the dialog was thin, perhaps could have been much better crafted, but the portrayal of the poignancy of the respective lives of the "girls" in Annie's house held my interest all the way.
Indeed plots and subplots do exist. How will Eileen deal with her profound sense of loneliness? How will Katya's survival instincts save her? What will happen to aging Ada? How will Georgie deal with the pain she causes her sisters in slavery? How will the house survive to continue to support its girls, for as Nettie says, much worse places exist? The painterly cinematography is at once rich and stark. Many times the camera dwells on one of the girls alone and brooding, achieving the effect of a colorized daguerreotype. Chick flick? Yep.
The soundtrack performed by Continuum Orchestra is one reason why I've enjoyed this film through many watchings.
I agree with an earlier poster that the VHS packaging did this artistic film a great injustice, and perhaps ultimately resulted in so many bad reviews here.