he loves me, he loves me not.

He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, directed by Laetitia Colombani is a psychological thriller that goes over the same narrative from two points of view, the first from a young art student who has fallen in love with a married doctor, the second from the married doctor who is being stalked by a homicidal one night stand. We come to believe the second narrative as true as we are given more information to piece together. We find that the art student is a sociopathic killer who is bent on controlling her "lover" who does not even know she exists.

Ma Vie en Rose

In Ma Vie en Rose directed by Alain Berliner,  Ludovic, played by Georges Du Fresne is convinced he's a girl trapped in a boy's body. Its an interesting portrayal of the transgendered plight as Ludovic faces intolerance and criticism for wearing girl’s clothes at a family barbecue and performing in Snow White. Ludovic is serene in his assertion that there was a mistake made in his chromosomes, and he will be the one to correct it. It is very similar to all about my mother in terms of politics, with a cinematic french twist, allowing for more aesthetic camera angles and editing.

An Affair to Remember

This is an example of classic Hollywood cinema and romance. It was even alluded to in the many-played movie Sleepless in Seattle on Lifetime. Starring Cary Grant and Deborah Karr the story follows two people who fall in love on a cruise from Europe to the United States. Each of the couple is engaged to someone else. They agree to meet at the top of the Empire State Building, leading to the most memorable scene as Cary Grant's character Nicky Ferranti waits for Terry McKay, who was busy getting run over by a bus. The film culminates as the two find each other, find out the truth, and continue their relationship:classic Hollywood ending, only interrupted by Terry's accident and a brief stint as a teacher for under-privileged children.

Persepolis

Rebekah Murphy     

KVC 

Women's Literature 

11.20.2008 

The Shifting Corporeality in Film and Textual Versions of Persepolis 

    Alothough Marjane Satrapi wrote both the comic book and screenplay of 

Persepolis there exist some discrepancies between the two scripts, most of which are present due to time limitations that accompany the medium of film. Yet the discrepancies whose significances are not so easily qualified must be examined further, and one of these scenes involves Marji's depression and loss of identity which led to her attempted suicide. Satrapi depicts the loss of Marji's identity in differing manners within the textual and film versions of Persepolis. In the comic Satrapi can physically erase Marji, leaving only her outline within the panel to depict her loss of identity, yet within the film she uses a far more subtle visual queue. Marji's beauty mark which is linked to her identity as an adult becomes less and less prominent throughout this sequence of her narrative, mirroring her less and less prominent sense of self. Satrapi also uses this disappearing beauty mark within the comic, but it is the complete lack of form which completely illustrates Marji's disappearance. 

     Satrapi's first portrayal of this scene within her textual comic pictures Marji's face in her left profile, omitting her beauty mark that appeared as she went through a violent puberty, one that resembles her grandmother's and links the two characters within the comic. Her grandmother is coupled with her identity within the comic, She provides the voice of her conscious when she lies about her nationality to Marc while at a party at school (Satrapi 41). Her grandmother also reprimands her for falsely accusing a man on the street of harassing her in order to get out of being arrested herself (Satrapi 137). Her grandmother is her voice of reason, of family, and of identity, and her beauty mark, resembling her grandmother's corporeally, is representative of these virtues.  

    And these virtues are what Marji is lacking as she goes through her depression, as she takes anti-depressants and loses herself in the process. This    loss is illustrated in the comic by a physical absence of her form within the panel accompanied by the text: "But as soon as the affect of the pills wore off, I once again became conscious. My calamity could be summarized in one sentence: I was nothing. I was a Westerner in Iran, an Iranian in the West. I had no identitiy..."(Satrapi 118). 

    This scene does not occur in the film version of  Persepolis so this loss of identity must be conveyed through a subtler more fluid visual queue. From the time that Marji speaks to the psychiatrist, who diagnoses her condition as "Clinical Depression" and prescibes a "treatment" for her (Persepolis), her left profile is shown more prominently, omitting our view of the beauty mark on the right side of her face. We then see a cascade of pills and her disinterest in her surroundings. Our senses, too are muffled, as the sound becomes hazy and far away and our focus is brought to the bottle of pills upon her table. Instead of seeing Marji lost, we lose ourselves with her, And at the moment she awakens her beauty mark is completely prominent once more as we see a full shot of her face, and not a profile (Persepolis). Marji has regained her sense of identity,  and has a new mandate from God and Karl Marx to live out the remainder of her life, for "The struggle must continue..."(Persepolis). 

    The comic book version of Persepolis is able to completely illustrate Marji's sense of nothingness and lack of identity with the absence of her presence, but at this stage of the film, this same scene would have provided an interruption in the progression of the images of the movies, and the background narration it would have taken to completely explain her feelings would have detracted from the connection the audience was compelled to feel as we drifted away from the world and ourselves with Marji.

Slumdog Millionaire

I went to see this film at the Robinson, and it was hands down one of the best movies I've ever seen. Going far beyond normal Bollywood romances, Slumdog tells the poignant story of a young man who grew up amongst mounds of trash in the slums win who wants to be a millionaire, because it is written.

The foreshadowing and flashbacks throughout the film allow this story to unfold somewhat chronologically, and tears at your heart with the heinous crimes that are considered everyday to the characters of this film. The film builds upon tragedy, but the juxtaposition with the great triumph of the human will, knowledge and unadulterated love between two people who believe in destiny becomes that much richer, and denies any cliche to enter into the emotion. The wide set landscape shots, and arial shots of the cities involved gave much to the film showing the cramped spaces and extreme poverty of the surroundings in a way that perspective shots cannot. But in keeping with Bollywood tradition, and shakespearean tradition, the movie ends with a dance, that incorporates the culture even further and allows the audience to access it no matter what their ethnicity is.

To Live

 To Live is a Chinese film that follows a single family through the change from capitalism to communist Government after the civil war. The Head of the family began the movie as a gambler who lost his father's house and possessions. His wife leaves him as she is pregnant with their second child. He is reformed, comes back to her determined to be the best father he can be, which means going to war. His family loses everything while he is away, and works as mild deliverers. The family goes along with the communist government, and at first it seems to signal happy times for them, until the youngest child is sacrificed, not only due to the Father's lack of compassion but to the communist government as an officer is responsible for his death. This film walks a line between cultural comment upon the drawbacks of communism, as loss of culture is symbolized in the loss of the shadow puppets the father used to keep his family afloat during the hard years. Once the shadow puppets were sacrificed, there was a darker picture of the government who by the closing of the film were locking up doctors and having students with little to no training bringing about new life into the world.

Unveiled

Unveiled is a German Film which I also saw on my own that follows the plight of a young Iranian woman's illegal immigration into Germany due to her relationship with another woman. In Germany she dresses and passes for a man and befriends another woman in her factory. The two form a relationship under the premises that Faribi is a man, yet the eventual revelation only garners compassion from Anne, and the two stay together as they fight to keep Faribi in Germany as a political refugee, which was not allowed due to sexual preference. This film is mostly of political importance, yet is beautifully shot as the camera becomes just as secretive as Faribi needs to be when she is in hiding, as if it too were defensive and hiding its true identity, with short frames, quick spans and dark lighting situations. It gave an interesting contrast to many of the other German films that I have viewed in this class so far. It is indeed from an "other" perspective, but maintains many of the trademarks of German film such as interest in perspective, and focus on the "other" characters within films.