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Julieta
At the start of JULIETA, the folds of a red cloth expose a recognizable lushness. This is “Un film de Almodóvar.” The cloth belongs, when the shot pulls back, to a dressing gown worn by Julieta, played by Emma Suárez, no less luminous now than she was in the Julio Medem films in which I…
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ma ma
I am avoiding the obvious word to describe Penélope Cruz in MA MA, but so be it if by saying that she illumes the screen I call the cliché to mind. Magda is among her finest creations, a great screen performance. It is no surprise that Julio Medem, the most illuminative of contemporary directors, elicited…
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Café de Flore
Antoine is happy, the narrator of CAFÉ DE FLORE informs us, in the presence of the blond mistress for whom he has left his wife as a result of a shared glance at a Quebec nightclub It was an instantaneous connection, not unlike that which he and his wife experienced in childhood, or, oddly enough,…
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Room in Rome
Exactly why I found ROOM IN ROME to be so beautiful is not easy to explain, but it goes well beyond the prurient interest, which, once one is watching the film itself (when the actresses are draped by many more towels and bathrobes than implied by the publicity), gives way to the enchantment of the…