Reviews
Le violon rouge (1998)
An excellent film about music, passion, and obsession with excellence
I missed this film at the Seattle International Film Festival but figured it was going to come back for regular showings shortly thereafter, and it did. This is clearly a 4 star movie. I think the sign of a great movie is that you forget you are in a theater watching it - you are drawn into it far enough to feel like you are watching real events unfold. Another sign of a great movie is that you are really elated about the successes some characters have or "depressed" about tragic things that happen to the characters. This movie succeeds on both fronts. And who would have thought that a violin could be a character so successfully? The score is fabulous - I want to own a copy of John Corigliano's music. The Paganini-like virtuoso in the middle of the film and the Paganini-like music were remarkable. The well enunciated Italian, German, French, and Mandarin (the last-mentioned I can only say presumably well enunciated) also added to my enjoyment of the movie. I want to rent the video of Immortal Beloved again to compare the two films more closely. As Rachmaninoff once said, "Music is enough for a lifetime, but one lifetime could never be enough for music."
La vita è bella (1997)
Deserves a Best Foreign Film Oscar
Here is a film that really deserves a nomination as Best Foreign Film (like last year's The Thief) and also deserves to win (which The Thief did not) . Who but Roberto Benigni (who brought us the mayhem of Gianni Stecchino and that incredible cigarette-in-the- pants scene in Il Mostro) could write a scene about "explaining" the rules of a concentration camp to his son such that it was incredibly funny? After having used German for 30 years, but having studied Italian only this past fall, I found it amazing that I understood the Italian in this film better than the German. I was very, very impressed with the script and the performances in this film and highly recommend it to everyone. I agree that this is what film making should be!
Firelight (1997)
19th century bodice-ripper
This is a wonderful movie about how a woman's love can overcome major obstacles. Sophie Marceau is a beautiful governess, who seven years prior was hired by a rich Englishman to conceive a baby because the man's own wife had been seriously injured but did not die after a riding accident. Marceau's motivation is to pay her father's debts and get him out of prison. Thus the two principal characters are having this weekend "affair" out of a sense of duty to others. Unlike many movies set in the mid-19th century, the rich people in this movie are not one dimensional and heartless, and the poor people are not powerless victims. Marceau manages to track down her child after 6 years and becomes her governess. The girl has become a spoiled brat, and Marceau is the first to teach the girl how to read, and much about life. There is not exactly a happy ending, in the Hollywood sense. In order to get something, one must take risks and be willing to give up other things.