Love and Anarchy: Camille Claudel 1915

I still need to mention this one film, Camille Claudel 1915, that I saw at the Helsinki International Film Festival, because I happened to visit a little exhibition of Camille Claudel at the Musée Rodin in Paris by coincidence a week later.

Jeune fille à la gerbe, by Camille Claudel. Photo from the website of Musée Rodin.

Camille Claudel was first Rodin's student and later his lover. It didn't end up well as we learn from the film. Claudel ends up in a mental institution where she spends the rest of her life, though she obviously doesn't belong there.

Juliette Binoche played Claudel in the film and she was absolutely fantastic in the role. In her face, you can feel Claudel's dolour, despair and hope. Not much is happening in the film, but the intensity of Binoche's presence is outstanding. The use of actual mentally handicapped people in the casting was courageous, but as it turned out, the best possible solution. I can't understand how the people next to me in the theater could have been eating popcorn - constantly, during the entirety of the film - while watching a film as agonizing as this (who invented the combination of popcorn and cinema in general? Argh!).

At the Musée Rodin, which is by the way a very comfortable museum to visit, I wasn't very impressed by Claudel's works (above one of them). But I really like this one sculpture by Rodin: Voix intérieure ou la méditation.

Love and Anarchy: Grigris

Grigris, an African film from Chad, that I saw at the Helsinki International Film Festival had pretty bad actors (or maybe I'm just not used to African style of acting) and very traditional storyline, but I just loved watching it. I felt so happy seeing the African landscape and the African dusty roads and villages. It must be pretty weird, but I felt a bit home-sick.

Too bad, my next holiday flights are already booked for Asia... 

Hmm, I guess I need to live Africa through culture for a while then. Luckily, I have a pile of African literature waiting for me and our last book club reading was The Last Flight of the Flamingo by Mia Couto from Mozambique. How funny, by the way, that we wanted to pick up an African novel by a female author and chose this one among many alternatives. So it was a bit of a surprise when I opened the book the first time and a photo of a white guy greeted me. Mia...

Love and Anarchy: Omar

Once again the Helsinki International Film Festival "Love and Anarchy" offered an excellent selection of movies. 

I went to see five films and while I can recommend all of them, I was perhaps mostly touched by the last film I saw on Saturday. It was a film called Omar by a Palestine film director Hany Abu-Assad. Probably I would have been satisfied just watching the gorgeous principal actor Adam Bakri, but not only that, the film was excellent. The story was like a Shakespeare's tragedy and the spectator can only wish the movie to end quickly so she knows how badly it will end. At some point you just realise that it won't end with a honeymoon in Paris.

Already the beginning of the film is powerful, showing the crossing of the wall surrounding West Bank. The wall is absurd and depressing, anyone should see that. However, the film is not strongly taking sides in the Israel-Palestina conflict. It rather shows the human tragedy taking place in this context - love, betrayal, loyalty, trust. The insanity of wars! The vicious cycles connected to this conflict. In short, a film worth watching, though be aware of some post-film anxiety. 

The conflict in the Middle East hasn't interested me for ages because it seems to be without an end. However, after a good friend of mine spent some time in Palestina as a volunteer, I have taken a new interest in the place. Omar also shows beautiful aspects of the country (and I'm not only talking about the actor playing Omar, but the film in general). Definitely a place to visit in the future.