Film Festing!

Oh can you feel the excitement in the air, Vancouver? It's time for the film festival! Yes, fall is upon us and it is Vancouver's turn to host the buzz films from Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and all the other festivals that distributors prefer to reference the achievements of, rather than the lowly and often forgotten Vancouver fest. Vancouver doesn't generally have stars in attendance and there is no red carpet that I know of. But, Vancouver is a film town, and no one gives a rat's ass that we lack the glamour and star power of our famous cousins. We just like to watch films, preferably one's from Asia and sweet stories from our own East Coast.

I usually don't partake in the proceedings, as I hate crowds, taking chances on unknown entities, and anything "festival", but this year I've gots a pass. A full, you can see pretty much anything pass. Therefore, I shall share my thoughts, reviews and privileged perspective on the films and goings on with you, the devoted readers of Mutual JO - the web site. First up: Catherine Breillat's latest - Bluebeard (Barbe Bleu).



Bluebeard is a period piece set in... the past, you know - that time when people didn't have electricity and they danced those lame dances to dulcimer music. Horses, wagons, castles, eating meat straight off the shank yet remaining sophisticated - that time period.

But wait, don't walk away just yet, because as this is a period drama by an AUDACIOUS French feminist director, it's not boring like all those other ones. Two simultaneous stories are presented that mirror each other. The main story is that of a family saddled with debts after the unexpected death of their father. The film opens with the two daughters of this man learning of his death from their very sexy Mother Superior (or I may just be misinterpreting the Catholic school repressed female sexuality from a dominant female role - either way, with all the rest of her hidden by cloth, you can really only concentrate on her full and poutily stern lips. I'm pretty sure Breillat wanted me to be getting my chub on with her.).

This scene, and the rest of the film, is intercut with a parallel tale of two ridiculously cute little girls exploring the treasures of their attic, which culminates in the younger, way more ridiculously cute girl reading her older, less precocious sister the story of Bluebeard. The younger girls narrate the story of the even more olden times sisters which culminates in an arbitrary and somewhat ambiguous ending. Go art films!

I'm no film reviewer, and there are reviews out there that will give you a better sense of the hidden intricacies that make this film notable, so please don't look for them here. I think I caught some, but to sum up my favourite parts: you get to see a goose get it's head chopped off! Like a real live goose! There is some creative editing that suggests that the goose probably didn't end it's life with a renaissance-era axe beheading, but something slightly more humane, but we do get to see the last gasps of this goose's life complete with the final kicks of it's headless neck struggling to function. It was gross.

I also enjoyed the interplay between Bluebeard, the ogre-like monster/husband/billionaire who values truth, innocence and beauty, with his child bride, who is spunky and sassy way beyond her era. Breillat utilises several scenes contrasting their size and personalities to great visual effect, including Bluebeard feasting on a massive egg, while his petite wife samples several eggs of a much smaller bird. I too like eggs, so this scene strongly resonated with me. What does that big egg taste like? Is it more robust than a chicken egg? What kind of tiny bird produced those mini-eggs? Was it a quail? A tern? What?!

In summary, I enjoyed Bluebeard.