Distraction
Jul. 4th, 2011 07:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chaniIn the last couple of days I sought advice from people around me, regarding the thesis dilemma, and everybody came up with their own piece of course, so I decided to let it "rest" and put my mind off the issue for a while (not too long because the Summer holidays are upon us so if I want to make my move and get in touch with Orléans prof I guess I must do it before the 14th of July)...
So I've been reading Michael Connelly's The Reversal, featuring both Harry Bosch and Mickey Haller, and it's fun. I got the copy from a colleague who got it from her son who bought it in the U.S so I'm reading it in English. It's an easy read and I'm almost finished. Every time I read Connelly in English it reminds me that he isn't a great writer, at least style-wise. But he's a good storyteller and I like the tapestry, or rather the painting, he has created, through all his recurring characters whose paths cross in L.A. And there's Bosch of course who remains his best creation, no matter how entertaining the others are. Haller, the Lincoln lawyer, makes for good stories but he can't compete with Harry's charisma. In the novel, every other chapter is from Haller's point of view (and written with the first person singular) while when it's Bosch' s chapter we come back to the omniscient point of view (although we often get to know what's ging on in Harry's mind) so Bosch remains more mysterious in a way. He is the only character that Connelly keeps protecting from Hollywood sirens while he lets movies borrow his other characters (that said the recent film based on The Lincoln Lawyer wasn't bad, and I also enjoyed Blood Work starring Clint Eastwood as Terry McCaleb years). Harry Bosch is one of a kind.
I also went and saw My Little Princess, my second French film, after the excellent yet very unusual Pater (who received a 17 minute standing ovatin in Cannes and is impossible to review) in 8 days!
Very disturbing movie. First, the topic is disturbing. The film takes place in the 70's and the" little princess" is a 10 years old girl, raised by her great-great mother, and whose quirky and instable mother, whose love she's desperate to get, decides to involve her into her artistic lifestyle and turns her into a model. The mother becomes a famous photographer thanks to her little muse...except that the pictures she takes are quite erotic and morbid so scandal ensues (to the point that the little girl is called a whore by her classmates and nicknamed "porn baby" by the media). It's the story of a stolen childhood and of a dysfonctional and yet passionate relationship between a mother and her daughter. The mother kind of loves her daughter but she's immature and displays more art (gothic and decadent) than heart, and the fact that she's from Romania adds to the vampire-vibe. Isabelle Hupper who loves twisted roles plays the mother (she's very histrionic, quite Drusilla-esque, something between a crazy woman and a self-centred diva to our eyes, and to her daughter's eyes between a fairy and a witch), but it's the young actress (twelve) playing Violetta who is really amazing on screen.
The film is disturbing because it shows how it all begins like a game for a girl who was neglected and is trilled to suddenly be her mother's favourite model, the only object of her attention, and also because all the little girls like to dress up, but then she slowly becomes the character she plays on the photographs, outside the shooting room, looking like her mother in parties and exhibition's previews; following the model her mother loves, she changes her looks in "the real world" (she wears make-up, tiaras and eccentric princess-like clothes at school, and later is dressed like a poptart with high heels and expensive clothes) and her behaviour evolves (playing the femme fatale with journalists, with boys) as if the photo sessions had some shaman power changing her! Violetta get caught up and becomes a freak which causes troubles and makes her a pariah in society, and eventually the desire to fit in, for "a normal life", wins and she rejects the role and her mother's world, looking for her lost self.
The most disturbing thing is that the film is quite autobiographical for it is the story of the filmaker, Eva Ionesco. Her mother, Irina Ionesco was a famous photographer in the 70's and actually the true story is "worst" than what is showed on screen for Eva's role as a sexualized model began when she was 4 years old and not 10 (and the film suggests things but of course doesn't show the girl in the nude).
Eva was a 70's icon, the darling of a certain artistic world (Louis Malle based his Pretty Baby starring young Brook Shields on her and even wanted Eva to play the role at the time) and her nude photos were sold to various magazines, but she finally rebelled against her mother and her icon status when she was 12 (besides there were complaints so Irina lost custody)and had a tough adolescence while carrying on in the Art world. She became an artist herself (model for others, actress and now film director) but hasn't forgiven her mother and has sued her to get her pictures back (claiming that her "droit à l'image" was stolen by her mother who keeps selling pictures she took at the time!)and I think that the two of them are still involved in a lawsuit.
So when watching the film you actually watch a sort of settling of scores or as we'd say in French, Eva "lave le linge sale en public". At the same time, it's ambiguous.
Of course Eva doesn't shy away from denouncing the abuse --nothing physical, young Eva just had her photo taken in "inappropriate clothing" (or lack therefof) for a child and suggestive poses, and her image used without consent -- and portrays her mother as cruel and manipulative, a predator with a camera, a sort of monster driven by some urge(her art but also the need to succeed and get recognition, and thanks to Eva's "natural talent" ), who can't understand that she crossed a line, that she's using her prepuberal daughter who is no longer happy with the "shooting game". However she doesn't show Violetta as a mere victim; she is very well aware of what she is doing and has a Lolita side about her, and when puberty kicks in she finally sees her mother as a pathetic creature; she understands that she is the real star not her mother, and the verbal violence the girl finally inflicts on her is almost as unbearable as the shooting scenes in which the mother told her to spread her legs or undress. Eventually the mother looks lost, like a clueless child who used to play with dolls (her favourite doll being her own daughter)and whose toys are broken or have been removed from her, and it seems that the roles are reversed. So, at work, there's something of Frankenstein and the monster he created too.
Besides the film, that is indeed a revenge and a therapy at once through "moving pictures", might also be a tribute to the mother's talent (the pictures in question were artistic and poetic, and many experts continue to consider Irina Ionesco a great photographer!), a mother who is half-sorceress living in a different world, half-torturer taking and broadcasting pictures that hurt her daughter; and "The Little Princess" might tell something about legacy too.
At the end of the day, as a viewer you're forced to become the witness of a complicated family affair, and a bit of a voyeur too. That said, "The Little Princess" does have film quality, and the fact that Eva chose to give it a sort of fairy-tale air is perhaps the most disturbing thing (even though it probably makes the film easier to watch). And to exorcize her past, she used a camera...and made a 12 years old actress play her own role.
She really is her mother's daughter!
ETA: The film made me think of those awful beauty pageant things in the U.S, and to abusive parents in sport, but it also made me ponder the use of children in arts, especially photography and cinema. Nudity and sexuality aside, is it acceptable to ask kids to do certain things, to pretend stuff in front of a camera and thus convey a certain image on which they have little control? And there's the impact of celebrity on children. How many kid stars have ended messed up? Shirley Temple didn't seem to be hurt back in the time, but more recently there's the case of Drew Barrymore and many others.
In the film, Violetta doesn't mind the shooting sessions -- she is unwilling to show her crotch at first but only "because she doesn't have hair and they will see that she is little"(an interesting line that points that that for her she's supposed to look like an adult on the pictures) until she realises the consequences of her pictures being spread around, until her "difference" makes her being bullied by her classmates, until the words "whore" or "incestuous" come back to her ears, until she becomes aware of the fact that people like the pictures precisely because she's a child and they see she is little. Then she begins to hate the shooting and her mother, she refuses to undress and she starts feeling damaged and sorta violated.
So I've been reading Michael Connelly's The Reversal, featuring both Harry Bosch and Mickey Haller, and it's fun. I got the copy from a colleague who got it from her son who bought it in the U.S so I'm reading it in English. It's an easy read and I'm almost finished. Every time I read Connelly in English it reminds me that he isn't a great writer, at least style-wise. But he's a good storyteller and I like the tapestry, or rather the painting, he has created, through all his recurring characters whose paths cross in L.A. And there's Bosch of course who remains his best creation, no matter how entertaining the others are. Haller, the Lincoln lawyer, makes for good stories but he can't compete with Harry's charisma. In the novel, every other chapter is from Haller's point of view (and written with the first person singular) while when it's Bosch' s chapter we come back to the omniscient point of view (although we often get to know what's ging on in Harry's mind) so Bosch remains more mysterious in a way. He is the only character that Connelly keeps protecting from Hollywood sirens while he lets movies borrow his other characters (that said the recent film based on The Lincoln Lawyer wasn't bad, and I also enjoyed Blood Work starring Clint Eastwood as Terry McCaleb years). Harry Bosch is one of a kind.
I also went and saw My Little Princess, my second French film, after the excellent yet very unusual Pater (who received a 17 minute standing ovatin in Cannes and is impossible to review) in 8 days!
Very disturbing movie. First, the topic is disturbing. The film takes place in the 70's and the" little princess" is a 10 years old girl, raised by her great-great mother, and whose quirky and instable mother, whose love she's desperate to get, decides to involve her into her artistic lifestyle and turns her into a model. The mother becomes a famous photographer thanks to her little muse...except that the pictures she takes are quite erotic and morbid so scandal ensues (to the point that the little girl is called a whore by her classmates and nicknamed "porn baby" by the media). It's the story of a stolen childhood and of a dysfonctional and yet passionate relationship between a mother and her daughter. The mother kind of loves her daughter but she's immature and displays more art (gothic and decadent) than heart, and the fact that she's from Romania adds to the vampire-vibe. Isabelle Hupper who loves twisted roles plays the mother (she's very histrionic, quite Drusilla-esque, something between a crazy woman and a self-centred diva to our eyes, and to her daughter's eyes between a fairy and a witch), but it's the young actress (twelve) playing Violetta who is really amazing on screen.
The film is disturbing because it shows how it all begins like a game for a girl who was neglected and is trilled to suddenly be her mother's favourite model, the only object of her attention, and also because all the little girls like to dress up, but then she slowly becomes the character she plays on the photographs, outside the shooting room, looking like her mother in parties and exhibition's previews; following the model her mother loves, she changes her looks in "the real world" (she wears make-up, tiaras and eccentric princess-like clothes at school, and later is dressed like a poptart with high heels and expensive clothes) and her behaviour evolves (playing the femme fatale with journalists, with boys) as if the photo sessions had some shaman power changing her! Violetta get caught up and becomes a freak which causes troubles and makes her a pariah in society, and eventually the desire to fit in, for "a normal life", wins and she rejects the role and her mother's world, looking for her lost self.
The most disturbing thing is that the film is quite autobiographical for it is the story of the filmaker, Eva Ionesco. Her mother, Irina Ionesco was a famous photographer in the 70's and actually the true story is "worst" than what is showed on screen for Eva's role as a sexualized model began when she was 4 years old and not 10 (and the film suggests things but of course doesn't show the girl in the nude).
Eva was a 70's icon, the darling of a certain artistic world (Louis Malle based his Pretty Baby starring young Brook Shields on her and even wanted Eva to play the role at the time) and her nude photos were sold to various magazines, but she finally rebelled against her mother and her icon status when she was 12 (besides there were complaints so Irina lost custody)and had a tough adolescence while carrying on in the Art world. She became an artist herself (model for others, actress and now film director) but hasn't forgiven her mother and has sued her to get her pictures back (claiming that her "droit à l'image" was stolen by her mother who keeps selling pictures she took at the time!)and I think that the two of them are still involved in a lawsuit.
So when watching the film you actually watch a sort of settling of scores or as we'd say in French, Eva "lave le linge sale en public". At the same time, it's ambiguous.
Of course Eva doesn't shy away from denouncing the abuse --nothing physical, young Eva just had her photo taken in "inappropriate clothing" (or lack therefof) for a child and suggestive poses, and her image used without consent -- and portrays her mother as cruel and manipulative, a predator with a camera, a sort of monster driven by some urge(her art but also the need to succeed and get recognition, and thanks to Eva's "natural talent" ), who can't understand that she crossed a line, that she's using her prepuberal daughter who is no longer happy with the "shooting game". However she doesn't show Violetta as a mere victim; she is very well aware of what she is doing and has a Lolita side about her, and when puberty kicks in she finally sees her mother as a pathetic creature; she understands that she is the real star not her mother, and the verbal violence the girl finally inflicts on her is almost as unbearable as the shooting scenes in which the mother told her to spread her legs or undress. Eventually the mother looks lost, like a clueless child who used to play with dolls (her favourite doll being her own daughter)and whose toys are broken or have been removed from her, and it seems that the roles are reversed. So, at work, there's something of Frankenstein and the monster he created too.
Besides the film, that is indeed a revenge and a therapy at once through "moving pictures", might also be a tribute to the mother's talent (the pictures in question were artistic and poetic, and many experts continue to consider Irina Ionesco a great photographer!), a mother who is half-sorceress living in a different world, half-torturer taking and broadcasting pictures that hurt her daughter; and "The Little Princess" might tell something about legacy too.
At the end of the day, as a viewer you're forced to become the witness of a complicated family affair, and a bit of a voyeur too. That said, "The Little Princess" does have film quality, and the fact that Eva chose to give it a sort of fairy-tale air is perhaps the most disturbing thing (even though it probably makes the film easier to watch). And to exorcize her past, she used a camera...and made a 12 years old actress play her own role.
She really is her mother's daughter!
ETA: The film made me think of those awful beauty pageant things in the U.S, and to abusive parents in sport, but it also made me ponder the use of children in arts, especially photography and cinema. Nudity and sexuality aside, is it acceptable to ask kids to do certain things, to pretend stuff in front of a camera and thus convey a certain image on which they have little control? And there's the impact of celebrity on children. How many kid stars have ended messed up? Shirley Temple didn't seem to be hurt back in the time, but more recently there's the case of Drew Barrymore and many others.
In the film, Violetta doesn't mind the shooting sessions -- she is unwilling to show her crotch at first but only "because she doesn't have hair and they will see that she is little"(an interesting line that points that that for her she's supposed to look like an adult on the pictures) until she realises the consequences of her pictures being spread around, until her "difference" makes her being bullied by her classmates, until the words "whore" or "incestuous" come back to her ears, until she becomes aware of the fact that people like the pictures precisely because she's a child and they see she is little. Then she begins to hate the shooting and her mother, she refuses to undress and she starts feeling damaged and sorta violated.