Sunday, February 08, 2015

Lucia (2013)

From the projectionists' booths have come films packaged with everything that the medium has brought: all the desires, all the dreams. From the Italian great Nuovo Cinema Paradiso to the ambitious Kannada Lucia, the crumbling theaters are only held together by love, an innocent assistant (Salvatore or Toto, Nikhil or Nikki), and a wise master loyal to his craft (Alfredo, Shankaranna): and these theaters will become the scenes from where the young men will launch onto the seas of life, equipped with everything they have learnt, spending hours changing reels or showing torchlight in the 'talkies'. But while most of such films focus on life's journey and romance, Lucia takes a step up: it delves into psychology and science fiction, and even metaphysics. The unforgettable film does it all packaged tightly in the typical Indian masala: a pejorative term for many in the West who are unable to see spices lacing up good cuisine, and yet a beloved ingredient for any real food lover outside of those milieux where a film is cut and dried into genres.

Set to pulsating music and bright humour, the film brims with energy through its constant alternation between two worlds (or one?): the real and the dream. The switching starts to happen so constantly, that soon both worlds meld easily into one story in the spectator's mind, unable to take in such fast pace of dual lives: until the amazing end of the film, when the viewer is forced to cleave the two. Or, unable to, is left with stranded questions. I wonder what would have been the result if Pawan Kumar, the director of Lucia, had met Kieslowski, the director of Rouge. The film world could never have been the same. Kumar does well also to rope in two relatively unknown actors for the two major roles of Nikhil and Shwetha: in particular, Sathish Neenasam as Nikhil is the person who makes the film really work. He slips easily into both his characters, and while an endearing smile plays on his face as the torch shiner, a tiredness of life hovers around his mouth as the famous celebrity.

The film leaves you with the question: "Is the dream within you? Or are you within the dream? Or are both of you just in the Omniscient eye?" And it shall haunt you forever.

Saturday, February 07, 2015

La ragazza con la valigia

Valerio Zurlini's film La ragazza con la valigia (English title: Girl with a Suitcase) is one of those black & white masterpieces that seem to have faded with time: not because color has appeared, but because there is not enough time to savour each emotion, each wave of the sea. The beautiful film, in spite of its sentimentality, often a vice in films, doesn't give in to melodrama: rather, playing on ambiguity throughout, the film manages to seek the meaning of liberty through characters who seem on first glance to be trapped in their lives.

The world of Lorenzo, sincerely played by Jacques Perrin, is in straight colours: he adores his older brother, he will adore and love Aida, he adores the occasion of helping someone. A rich boy with a heart not so decadent as the society around him, he has however taken the higher pedestal, unwittingly: and he will continue to try to 'help' Aida up to him, rather than step down for once. He plays Florent of Anouilh's brilliant play La Sauvage, and so are there many Lorenzos and Florents in real life: meaning well, but unable to be adventurous, not willing to shake off their fetters and take a deep plunge, to die.

The world of Aida, played by Claudia Cardinale, is wrapped in shadows pierced by shafts of sunlight: she probably sleeps around or at least incites men, she is not ashamed to seek monetary donations from anyone, even if that means milking Lorenzo, and she is not someone whom you would bet your life on - maybe. A poor girl with a heart noble enough to let the boy Lorenzo adore the ground she walks on but not lead him on, she plays Thérèse in the play, and there are not that many Thérèses in this world, or if there are, then just like this Aida, they are misunderstood, mistaken, 'misknown': willing to barter everything, including her body, but not her soul, her freedom, she can step on and step off the pedestal, with no qualms of innocence and etiquette bothering her.

Well acted overall, the film's ending 15 minutes are indeed one of the best excerpts from cinema. Claudia Cardinale is considered to be sexy by some, so maybe she fits, though in my opinion someone else, more voluptuous and as much expressive, could have been better: however, the story of this cat-and-mouse game remains intriguing, and Perrin manages to fill the voids left by Cardinale. To top it, the cinematography and the beautiful musical score give an unexpected sublimeness to the film.