Apr. 9th, 2011 11:23 pm
Perdant le fil
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muckefuckIt was a tiring week, and my reward for getting through it all was an indulgent Saturday at home. I napped outrageously, but it will be more than worth it if that marks the demise of my cold. When I awoke, the sun had the upper hand over the fog and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
monshu was in the kitchen assembling lasagne bianche.
At his suggestion, we watched Le fil. I was hoping for something more than a bourgeois fantasy, but that's pretty much all that was served up. There's a stab at acknowledging the class issues when the mother of our privileged young professional (played by an unrecognisable Claudia Cardinale) tells his proletarian lover than she feels more sorry for him because of what people will say. But at the end, it's all sunshine and smiles and happy fulfilling relationships for everyone. The Old Man said he didn't think the ending felt cheap, but I pointed out that's because there was never that much at stake in the first place.
It all works well enough as escapism (particularly if you're more interested in smooth slender physiques than I am), but even on that level there are irritating flaws. For one thing, the romance seems to come out of nowhere. We speculated that the actor playing the lower class love object was working so hard on projecting both machismo and deference that he forgot to put in any hints of interest in our neurotic protagonist.
For another, for all that the focus is clearly on the protagonist's relationship to his mother, the scenes with his departed father feel frustratingly truncated. In fact, we only witness one exchange between the two of them, and it cuts out before the moment of truth. Another flashback is confusingly placed, coming right after the mother discovers her son's homosexuality and seemingly concerning a previous revelation. But whatever it was is never explained, and in trying to make sense of it I actually entertained the notion that it was a moment of magical realism and she was having a conversation with someone already dead.
A real missed opportunity in my mind concerned the character of the young maid-of-all-work. She is understandably furious at having to serve the man who a few days earlier was doing odd jobs and living next door to her. But when we finally hear her speak, it's all phrased in terms of religious disapproval. And then it's all dispensed with by having our young hunk invite one of his young mates to assume his role, and he wastes no time in sweeping the girl off her feet.
The film came out in 2008 and I admit I was very curious what a post-Revolution crowd would make of it. Would they read the characters as fellow victims of a repressive regime or as the sort of upper-class exploiters who helped sustain Ben Ali in the first place? There's a particularly grotesque scene in this regard when the mother invites over a potential match for her son and he cynically lectures them about the need for young people to take a political stand in order to frighten them off.
On a linguistic note, the French was particularly easy to understand; I caught perhaps half of it. The linguistic ecology is intriguing. The movie actually opens in a language classroom where two of the characters who are re-immigrated beurs are struggling to learn Arabic. It's only with the maid and the grandmother that anyone in the family speaks Arabic. (In one of the few interesting bits of code switching, the father lapses into Arabic when he tells his wife his mother cannot find out that his son is gay.) And there's an early reference to Darija-MSA diglossia, but it doesn't go anywhere.
monshu was in the kitchen assembling lasagne bianche.At his suggestion, we watched Le fil. I was hoping for something more than a bourgeois fantasy, but that's pretty much all that was served up. There's a stab at acknowledging the class issues when the mother of our privileged young professional (played by an unrecognisable Claudia Cardinale) tells his proletarian lover than she feels more sorry for him because of what people will say. But at the end, it's all sunshine and smiles and happy fulfilling relationships for everyone. The Old Man said he didn't think the ending felt cheap, but I pointed out that's because there was never that much at stake in the first place.
It all works well enough as escapism (particularly if you're more interested in smooth slender physiques than I am), but even on that level there are irritating flaws. For one thing, the romance seems to come out of nowhere. We speculated that the actor playing the lower class love object was working so hard on projecting both machismo and deference that he forgot to put in any hints of interest in our neurotic protagonist.
For another, for all that the focus is clearly on the protagonist's relationship to his mother, the scenes with his departed father feel frustratingly truncated. In fact, we only witness one exchange between the two of them, and it cuts out before the moment of truth. Another flashback is confusingly placed, coming right after the mother discovers her son's homosexuality and seemingly concerning a previous revelation. But whatever it was is never explained, and in trying to make sense of it I actually entertained the notion that it was a moment of magical realism and she was having a conversation with someone already dead.
A real missed opportunity in my mind concerned the character of the young maid-of-all-work. She is understandably furious at having to serve the man who a few days earlier was doing odd jobs and living next door to her. But when we finally hear her speak, it's all phrased in terms of religious disapproval. And then it's all dispensed with by having our young hunk invite one of his young mates to assume his role, and he wastes no time in sweeping the girl off her feet.
The film came out in 2008 and I admit I was very curious what a post-Revolution crowd would make of it. Would they read the characters as fellow victims of a repressive regime or as the sort of upper-class exploiters who helped sustain Ben Ali in the first place? There's a particularly grotesque scene in this regard when the mother invites over a potential match for her son and he cynically lectures them about the need for young people to take a political stand in order to frighten them off.
On a linguistic note, the French was particularly easy to understand; I caught perhaps half of it. The linguistic ecology is intriguing. The movie actually opens in a language classroom where two of the characters who are re-immigrated beurs are struggling to learn Arabic. It's only with the maid and the grandmother that anyone in the family speaks Arabic. (In one of the few interesting bits of code switching, the father lapses into Arabic when he tells his wife his mother cannot find out that his son is gay.) And there's an early reference to Darija-MSA diglossia, but it doesn't go anywhere.