Category Archives: life

Back from Le Crotoy

What I Want by Fireball

Just got back from Le Crotoy where the clip above was a summer hit.

I spent two weeks with my children at Le Crotoy, a coastal village in northern France where Joan of Arc was captured before her execution. We had a wonderful time. I caught up on some reading and finished Georges Wolinski‘s Open Letter to My Wife, Being There by Jerzy Kosiński, Theodore Roszak‘s Flicker (extremely boring novel with interesting bits on the American reception of French theory, the love of films and the Cathars), Kronhausen‘s Pornography and the law: The psychology of erotic realism and pornography (no mention of Sade in a work on obscenity?, interesting texts by Poggio‘s Facetiae (placing him on a par with Aretino and Rabelais)). Also stories by de Maupassant (Le Horla, Tellier and Chevelure), and the exquisite Exquisite Corpse by Robert Irwin (a tale of amour fou reminiscent of Before She Met Me by Julian Barnes). I also managed to skim most of Louis Paul Boon’s historical masterpiece Het Geuzenboek (see Fugger bankers family, the Münster Rebellion).

The girls and me watched Maybe Baby, a comic dramatization of a writer’s own life (and the after-effects when his wife finds out) and the first two and a half episodes of Sex and the City, which was somewhat of an enigma to me (Aids not mentioned until episode 3?) because it was both trite and addictive. I sympathized with Mr. Big, at times loathed Carrie, loved Samantha and Miranda and had a crush on Charlotte.

I bought the 2007 sex special issue of Les Inrockuptibles and found La Beauté du Diable by Roland Villeneuve at the local market.

While I was away, Woebot did a Cutting Records thing, Esotika wrote on Hour of the Wolf by Bergman and Lee Hazlewood and Tony Wilson had died. And I was flattered to find that Simon Reynolds had linked to my blog.

La tristesse durera toujours

Auberge Ravoux

The Auberge Ravoux, Auvers-sur-Oise, in 1890

On this day in 1890, Vincent Van Gogh – at the age of 37 – walked into the wheat fields in Auvers-sur-Oise and shot himself in the chest with a revolver. Without realizing that he was fatally wounded, he returned to the Ravoux Inn (pictured above), where he died in his bed two days later. His brother Theo hastened to be at his side and reported his last words as “La tristesse durera toujours” (French for “[the] sadness will last forever”).  After Vincent’s death, Theo was not able to come to terms with the grief of his brother’s absence, and died six months later.

A reminder of the events

In early 2005, Fernando Botero revealed a series of 50 paintings (Google Gallery) that graphically represent the controversial Abu Ghraib incident, expressing the rage and shock that the incident provoked in the artist. The works were initially presented in Italy, Germany and Greece. In 2006, they had their first showing in the United States. In 2007, the Abu Ghraib series was exhibited at the University of California in Berkeley. Botero has stated that he does not plan to sell the paintings, but instead intends to donate them to museums as a reminder of the events depicted within. Are these on display somewhere now?

Cultissime!

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd6D8PU95qU]

Buffet Froid (1979) – Bertrand Blier

Context of clip: Depardieu has stabbed Carmet, Depardieu denies, “no I could’nt have done it, I just arrived”. Carmet does not seem to mind dying. Depardieu asks: “how does it feel”. Carmet answers: “Like a sink draining”. At the end Carmet offers Depardieu to take his knife back and says: “You’d better because your fingerprints are on them.” Depardieu thanks him. Spoiler warning: Carmet lives.

Buffet froid is a 1979 French film, written and directed by Bertrand Blier, and starring Gérard Depardieu, Carole Bouquet, Bernard Blier and Jean Carmet.The plot of this film is extremely complex and elusive, for the simple reason that we are left at odds as to the motivation of the characters to perform acts that are systematically the opposite of what is expected of them. Thus, the police inspector allows murders, commits murders himself and pretends not being occupied with his profession when off duty.

The film owes much of its ideological framework to surrealism, re-enforced by an ambience of mystery et theatricality, very similar to the work of Luis Buñuel, who was known to punctuate his work with numerous « gratuitous » murders. We are also reminded of the absurd theatre of Alfred Jarry and Eugène Ionesco.

The location of the metro station of the RER of La Défense, then ending its construction phase and not yet receiving its 170 000 daily employees as is the case today, highly contributes to the atmosphere of the opening sequence of the film: a dehumanized urban space, cold and anxiety-ridden, filmed by night, the only encounters to be expected those of marginalized human beings. All “urban” scenes were filmed in Créteil, in areas under construction at the time.

Bertrand Blier reunites a sublime trio, with his fetish actor Gérard Depardieu), a un-police officer (Bernard Blier) and an assassin strangler of women played by Jean Carmet, all at the peak of their careers.

Digression: Happy birthday Roky Erickson.