Pierrot Le Fou

To say that Ferdinand Griffon is a husband and father is only to describe the incidental situation in which he has found himself. As the movie begins he is sitting in a tub, cigarette hanging out of his mouth as he reads aloud: Velazquez, past the age of 50, no longer painted specific objects. He drifted around things like the air, like twilight, catching unawares in the shimmering shadows the nuances of color that he transformed into the invisible core of his silent symphony. Henceforth, he captured only those mysterious interpretations that united shape and tone by means of a secret but unceasing progression that no convulsion or cataclysm could interrupt or impede. Space reigns supreme. It's as if some ethereal wave skimming over surfaces soaked up their visible emanations to shape them and give them form and then spread them like a perfume, like an echo of themselves, like some imperceptible dust, over every surrounding surface...These words invite us into Ferdinand's chaotic world.

A babysitter arrives and Ferdinand and his wife leave for a party where pairs stand close, smoke cigarettes, hold drinks and exchange superficial observations and we become the observers in this filmmaker's mockery of mindless self-absorption. Ferdinand wanders through, unsatisfied. He finds himself standing beside an American filmmaker and asks, "What are films?' The filmmaker replies that a film is like a battleground: love, hate, action, violence, death.

Ferdinand soon leaves the party, returns home, runs off with the babysitter, Anna Karina, and this film, this battleground begins. She has a mysterious past and present. There is "love" but only in the self-love sort of fashion, these two are too aloof and consumed with their own issues to create a viable relationship. She's running from her sins, he's running from his life and love seems to be something they've adopted as a travel partner. The film progress through the other four necessary elements.

This is a pretty film, Ferdinand and Anna wander and flop through France on their way to Italy. There are beaches and parrots, islands, boats and stolen cars plunged into lakes and left burning in fields. But the poignancy of the film is found in the ideas and emotions between the two runaways and the words Ferdinand compulsively records in his journal during their directionless and fateful lark.

To want something you have to be alive.

Life is so different than books. I wish it were the same, clear logical, organized.

I feel alive and that's all that matters.

Life may be sad, but it's always beautiful.

Real life lies elsewhere.

Why do you look so sad? Because you speak to me in words and I look at you with feelings. I can't have a real conversation with you. You never have ideas, only feelings. That's not true. There are ideas inside feelings.

In the end, the only thing of any interest is the paths people take. The tragic part is that even when they know where they're going and who they are everything is still a mystery. And the mystery forever unsolved is life.

Mother of Mine

When World War II began to threaten Finland, the Swedes opened up their homes and took in 70,000 Finnish children until it was safe for them to go home. This is the backdrop of Mother of Mine, a premise that at once stills my heart to a low murmur, my head says No, don't go there. I did watch this stunning film then with lump in my throat and tears in my eyes, placed it high on the list of my favorite foreign films. This is a seamless and poignant story of lives coming together, lives that have come apart.

The story centers on Eero, a nine year old boy whose beloved father leaves to enter the war and never comes back. Eero and his mother are alone as Russia invades and she is forced to send him away for his safety. In a dim, depressing scene he boards a ship with other children and is carried away with two promises - to be returned as soon as the war is over and to be given a new bike in Sweden. The girls are promised dolls.

Some children are taken to facilities, but there is a home for Eero. His new home is by the sea. Pale green rolling hills, absent of trees or bush, and constant soft blue skies pair together filling the screen in nearly every scene . A farm house and low barns, all white and trimmed in green, connect to form a small cobblestone courtyard. There are geese and pigs and a humble couple who care for an elderly father. Willingly but cautiously they welcome this boy and begin to share their lives with young Eero, who misses his mother and doesn't speak their language.

Colors are prominent in this film: the perfect spring green of the grassy hills, the permanence of the blue sky, the staid white house with hopeful green accents, the dark blue car that cuts through this unchanging scene carrying child welfare managers, and the red mail box that stands alone at the bottom of the winding driveway. Here Eero waits to hear from his mother and the woman of the house, his new mother, retrieves letters that affect her present, dictate her future and dredge up her past.

See the Sea

Settling in with a cup of tea, surrendering to beaches with high rocky ledges, meadows, a young mother a baby on one hip, lazing through summer days. It is the perfect beginning to a film, a story - only, in this case, not a perfect story.

The first glimpses of Sasha and Siofra's lives in See the Sea are a pebbly beach through clear shallow waves with foamy edges, thick green meadow grasses holding gently in stiff coastal breezes and a solitary whitewashed, concrete house with royal blue shuttered windows and doors. A baby cries and a mother calls a sleepy answer from bed, and in her husband's white t-shirt, walks to a playpen and leans down for her sweet baby.

The part of 10 month old Siofra is played flawlessly by a sweet babe who cries when Mommy leaves, quiets when Mommy comes, sleeps on the beach under a hat and a thin blanket or snuggled beside Mommy on the couch. Her tiny toes are teased by the surf as she walks, holding Mommy's hands, in the wet sand.

Sasha, Siofra's mother, is a pleasant young woman with the bright, callow face of an adolescent boy and shoulder length straight honey colored hair. She fixes the whining baby a bottle, cleans a naked Siofra's bottom in the sunny grass, she rides Siofra down the empty road to the beach on a bike laden with towels, a bucket. Any mother can remember those peculiar days of young motherhood, a mixture of precious simple moments, mild weary frustrations, gazing loneliness, profound and mysterious love.

Sasha falls asleep on her towel, Siofra wobbles to stand using her mother's behind as a prop. Her eyes climb the rock rising before her where a backpacker walks and stops to look out over the sea and then down to the solitary pair on the beach below her.

We meet the backpacker. She stakes her red tent in Sasha's backyard. They share meals and odd conversations. Her manner is rather flat, raw, unfriendly - rude even. Sasha doesn't seem to notice as she willingly, perhaps because of the sweet dullness of her days, lets this strange visitor into her life. We learn that Sasha's husband is coming home soon from business but in the meantime we are helplessly beached with these three people in the whitewashed house by the sea.