Sometimes interacting with others is such an exhausting task that it makes you want to disappear. And disappearing, not necessarily dying, is what Fran, a young girl who works at the Port Authority in a gray, cloudy, rainy, humid and apparently too quiet small town in the United States, does. One fine day a new co-worker appears and begins to take away her apathy. If it were one of those romantic comedies made in series, in the third act, after the couple’s separation, she would learn a valuable life lesson. But Rachel Lambert’s film escapes this trap and sensitively shows what the protagonist feels.
Even though it’s from 2023, a friend recently turned me on to my favorite movie this year, Perfect Days.
A toilet cleaner in Tokyo silently going about his daily life, finding beauty in quiet moments of stillness and vintage cassette tapes, not quite fitting in with the expectations of modern society. An achingly gorgeous, quiet meditation on relationships, contentedness, and expectation. Very sparse dialogue, and simple story, but wow what a depth that can be divined from the space between the words. A monument of “show, don’t tell” storytelling. The sparseness of it won’t be for everyone, but it refreshed my soul and I definitely teared up a few times.
Seven Breillat films are being added to Criterion this month, completely different ones from the four (Romance, Bluebeard, Sleeping Beauty, Abuse of Weakness) which were part of the last Breillat spotlight. 36 fillette is the only one I can personally recommend, but I’ve found her work to be quite good so far. Anatomy of Hell and A Real Young Girl reportedly have some quite explicit content, so they’re not terribly likely to show up on many other streaming services in the future. If those sound too intense, Sex is Comedy, inspired by Breillat’s real life difficulties shooting sex scenes in her prior work, promises lighter fare.
There’s a guy I follow on that thar YouTube called the Feral Historian.
He wanders out into the Wilderness and natters about some sci-fi series or book or game, usually with some interesting observations.
He’s quite anti-authoritarian, but also seems to hold some views somewhat to the right of my own. Doesn’t stop me enjoying his content though.
If you fancy a gander, find him over here:
To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of youse lot are already familiar with his work and maybe even know him?
I’m subscribed, though I’ve only watched about a half dozen or so of his videos so far. His meandering discussions are interesting though, and a good length.
Based on this, I give kudos to his makeup people, but the voice really isn’t there and he seems too energetic. Billy Zane is probably about the right age for Brando in this period, but I bet he’s kept himself in better shape and it shows.
