32A
As the program stated, it was about young girls obsessed with their growing breasts but it was actually more interesting and kind than that.The brightest moments were with the most powerful music - something with refrain "I'm a woman" in the beginning when the main character wears her bra for the first time, and the other one very funny with western kind of music when a hero walks into a saloon full of enemies, only it was the last girl from the company walking into a shop to buy her first bra. 32A is the size.
I also particularly liked the way the main character overcame her humiliation with first attempt at dating with work in her home and caring about two younger siblings while her mom was in the hospital for a light operation, and it shows how it made her grow up internally.
They got another movie after that which was a comedy and I decided to stay although my friend had to go for a preset appointment.
Perrier's Bounty
That was kind of a black comedy but really funny and ending well, I liked it. It also got action so it was pretty energizing.
But the main challenge was lying ahead of me! I saw they're having next a
FRANCOPHONE SHORTIES NIGHT!!!
A real all-nighter of short movies! As I graduated in French and haven't been touching this language for a while, I had to stay!
I have to say that the room wasn't packed at all for any of them but still, strangely, there was more public for the night than for previous shows and they were all very young people, also for some reason all particularly small in size, like a gathering of pixies, but that could be just my perception...
Anyway, there were 35 movies in the program but this day they added another half a dozen or so, therefore the movie night was prolonged from 22:30 to 6am till something like 8am. I can't really say for sure because I left at the end, about 7:40.
I have to say the collection was rather terrible! First of all, ~35 of 42 movies were dealing with death or killing in one way or another!
The African pack was really depressive and we've got enough of our own problems in Ukraine to be really touched by theirs. I mean, this can impress European public comparing to their safe and provided life, but we are struggling for a piece of bread here every day too, a whole nation, thank god we don't have to do this with arms, but still - no, thank you.
And when it didn't deal with socio-political situation, it was still about death in one way or another, really gloomy, and senseless deaths for more, 100% of African pack, except, perhaps, Les princes noirs de Saint-Germain des Prés where it was rather about how the black indulge in France in harmless ways; it was also nice to recognize the suburb where I lived with a friend for a couple of months.
Romanian pack was a wee bit better - not so gloomy, thank god, but also not touching for our public, I believe. They just depicted something so routine, close to our reality, that I think it could probably only touch outsiders, which can explain their prix at festivals, but to me it made no sense whatsoever. I mean, if they were giving some special outlook on those problems or something, may be, but no, it was just pieces from life without start or end.
Canadian, French and Swiss packs were mostly more entertaining although also contained quite a few pieces bordering on horror, based on real events for more! Like that one about a woman who didn't give out a young drug dealer who beat and shot her trying to rob her shot because her son would have been her age if he didn't die. Or the Romanian one where a bunch of kids have beaten and raped two adults, stole their car and left them on the beach, unclear dead or alive. And the other French one about a lady in regression who believed she was 9 such a poor child with a doll, who, as it turned out, killed her whole family setting the house on fire while hiding in the fridge where her parents kept her in childhood - away from harming others. That kind of things! Not very pleasant at all.
But I want to talk about the few good pieces I liked.
One theme was repeated even two times - about how one person can take the place of the other and nobody notices. One at the end was La délogeuse where it's rather a particular case and in first place makes think about how little happiness there is and how little attention there is in a conventional marriage. But the first one really took it to the global level, so as everyone should think about themselves or how they feel - as if they're leaving someone else's life, not their own! The name is Dans leur peau.
I did like a couple of shorts about death. Toute ma vie in five minutes turns your way of looking at death in more ways than one. I did not remember the name of the other one, unfortunately, but it was an animation about a woman trying to deal with the death of her beloved husband, how she despaired, went to the cemetery, even tried to kill herself, feeling him around (or rather a memory of him) but the wind didn't let her jump off the cliff, so she rolled and then she went mad and she danced and then the sun rose and she was free.
The one that really touched the audience for laugh and interaction was a Belgian animation Dji vou veu volti. Those were the only lyrics in a song that a funny lover-guy was singing to a princess. It contained the ridiculousness of how sometimes we try to mean too much by those only words and then how many stupid things we can hide behind the love, and it ended badly (death again) but somehow inspiring because the song lived on. And when they started to point out the syllables of those lyrics with a dancing dot like a karaoke, in the corner of the end titles, the public did start to sing!
But my absolute winner, the only real and uncontestable chef-d'oeuvre of that whole hight was Next Floor by Denis Villeneuve from Canada. It's about consumer society. Very laconic, bright, meaningful and cutting-edge, performed really brilliantly like a samurai's stroke! I'm really upset I can't find it anywhere to share with friends but here's a preview trailer:
During that time I had to eat two times at the local cafe, drank 5 cups of coffee-tea, a glass of bier and a bottle of water. I also had to stretch my legs once every couple of hours too.
By 7:20 everyone who still stayed was really tired and asked to let us go after a more or less mood-leveling Swiss pack, but they started to show on top some Armenian animations based on their famous painters. I sat through the first antiutopian one out of sheer stubborness coz I knew the program had to be nearing the end, but when the next one started about a concentration camp, I just said enough and left.
And it was a beautiful walk by empty Sunday early morning streets under the warming sun which shone just enough for me to get home ;)
I can't say those movies were worth all that time, but I had other useful things to occupy myself with, like: trying to keep my body relaxed (to avoid pains and falling asleep), watching people and their masks, distancing myself internally from the movies I'm watching, keeping a certain inner state of my own permanently in background of it all - pretty busy, as you see
A pleasant discovery certainly was that I now feel absolutely OK on my own in public. Nice!
