red lights

nothing to fear, s is here. wow. i'm feeling very uninspired to write. i want to write about red lights which i saw yesterday but today is just not the day for it. i'm having a mini heartattack b/c it's 6 and i've been trying to work since 3 and i have to leave in 2 hours. i hope to write some serious pieces in the future but the point of this blog is to my understanding to both write interesting thoughts for the reader (not happening in this one) and to write about films so as not to forget any thoughts/impressions we may immediately have after watching a movie. ok i'm going to dive right into it, but i'm going to have to do this selfishly.

red lights. relationship movie--"we don't live here anymore" (excellent film), power dynamics.

ok nevermind that's bullshit. let me try again. i have to look at karna's blogs cuz he suddenly became a film critic over night. actually, not to toot my own horn, but let me toot it anyway cuz the sound is always uplifting--i did write movie reviews for the yale daily news so i'm no spring chicken at this. ok i see--a mix of conversational and contemplative.

so last night i rushed home from a futile walk with a friend to a thai restaurant--i say futile because we both had commitments in half an hour (she a meeting, I a movie), but we walked 15 minutes anyway to a thai restaurant pretending that we were going to sit down for a meal. upon arriving, i promptly took off for my movie, and last i saw, she was ordering take-out. i raced to brooklyn and ran to the theater, entering in time for the opening credits. i missed the first 10 minutes of dialouge b/c i realized as i always do at the movies that my glasses were disgustingly dirty and through a series of spitting and wiping, i finally got them from opaque to cloudy.

red lights is a french film that works as both a thriller and a sophisticated drama about the relationship between a married couple. the thriller/mystery side of the movie has been comparied to hitchcock. enough said. it's good. you should see it and decide for yourself how it works in that department.

what interested me more was the contrived nature of the cinematography and storytelling. like claude chabrol's la rupture (1970), the film took great pleasure in creating an atmosphere that was both musty and mad. the characters were living in the present and yet their dramatic expressions, the music, the uninquisitive camera were all reminiscent of a B-movie from the 70s. (karna just called. i told him i had nothing to say about red lights. i read him this paragraph for affirmation. he said it was boring. anyway let me proceed.) hmm...i should be describing this better. oh well.

red lights portrays a marriage that is mundane in its pathetic balance of power. in this case, it's the husband that indulges in a moment of excitement to write his wife a romantic email, and it's the wife that is too successful to be needy. it is not an uncommon reversal of roles. but it is uncommon in the way that it is scrutinized and still left alone by the director.

ok i'm saying nothing. i have to go.