La última
I went to see the last film of Festivalissimo tonight. In fact, I intended to go see Elsa y Fred at 5pm, but even though I was there plenty early, it was sold out. Aargh! So I got a ticket for Vida y color, the last film showing at this year’s festival, at 9pm, and walked back home, only to return a 3.5 hours later. The movie was quite good (about a boy coming-of-age in Spain in fall of 1975, just before Franco’s death), except the quality was awful — it turned out they were projecting a DVD, and there was some kind of weird aliasing artifacts that were distracting. We were offered our money back (many took it), but I stayed. There were a few other screening problems during the showing…but in the end we saw the whole film. The good news for those of us who “toughed it out” is that afterwards they offered us a free invitation to next year’s festival premiere gala. I’ll get my tuxedo ready.
I wish I’d seen Iluminados por el fuego (which won the “prix du public” at this year’s Festivalissimo). Also Elsa y Fred — hopefully they will be on DVD soon and at La Boîte Noire for me to rent. I don’t remember all the other (”critic’s”) prizes they gave, but of course one of them was to Batalla en el cielo. Sigh — yeah, what do I know? See why I’m not a film critic?
For the record, in terms of my own enjoyment, the five I saw rank as follows (from most enjoyable):
- En la cama
- Astronautas
- Vida y color
- Batalla en el cielo
- La mujer de mi hermano
So there.
When I came out of the theatre the city was awash(?) in fog, very mysterious. It glowed blue and red with the spinning lights from about five police cars that were parked just outside the mall entrance. They were shining spotlights up onto the walls of the La Cité apartment complex. I assume someone was going to jump or something(?); they wouldn’t tell me and I just kept on moving. Nothing to see here, folks…go home to bed.