Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 04/12/25

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Saturday, April 12, 2025

Staying Vertical (Alain Guiraudie, 2016)

Damien Bonnard and India Hair in Staying Vertical

Cast: Damien Bonnard, India Hair, Raphaël Thiéry, Christian Bouillette, Basile Meilleurat, Laure Calamy, Sébastien Novac. Screenplay: Alain Guiraudie. Cinematography: Claire Mathon. Production design: Toma Baqueni. Film editing: Jean-Cristophe Hym.

Like his film Sunshine for the Poor (2001), Alain Guiraudie's Staying Vertical seems to be about (among other things) the dangers of getting involved with people who herd sheep. Which makes both movies entries into the anti-pastoral genre, one that hasn't been much explored since, oh, the sixteenth century. (The classics would include Shakespeare's As You Like It and The Winter's Tale.) The setup is this: Léo (Damien Bonnard), a filmmaker, is traveling through the south of France in search of inspiration for his next film. On the road, he spots a handsome young man named Yoan (Basile Meilleurat), whom he tries and fails to pick up with a variation of the old "would you like to be in the movies" line. Rebuffed, he continues until he meets Marie (India Hair), a shepherdess living with her two young sons and her father, Jean-Louis (Raphaël Thiéry). Léo gets Marie pregnant, but after she gives birth she leaves Léo to take care of the baby as well as assist Jean-Louis with the flock, which is being decimated by wolves. Meanwhile, Léo's producer is bugging him to finish a screenplay. And, oh yes, Léo reconnects with Yoan and the old man he looks after, Marcel (Christian Bouillette). As if he didn't have enough distracting him from finishing the screenplay, everyone except Yoan wants to go to bed with Léo. It can't end well, and it doesn't, but with a film like Staying Vertical the journey is everything.