French Film Festival

We returned to Wellington to find the French Film Festival in full swing. We made our selections from the programme and set about going to see some of them. They’re mostly shown at the smaller cinemas in the city – the three Lighthouses and Penthouse, with some at The Embassy. For some reason our local, the Roxy, doesn’t participate. Anyway, here’s what we saw:

The Stranger (L’Étranger): based on the novel by Albert Camus. I say “based on” (I‘ve never read it), but according to Nicola, it was a pretty faithful transliteration of the novel. Filmed entirely in black and white, it’s the kind of film that wins plaudits and awards in France (it did) and is roundly ignored by the rest of the world. Coming in at over two hours, the length of the film reflects the main character’s ennui and disengagement from the world. By the end, I knew how he felt.

The Musicians (Les Musiciens): A wealthy heiress, Astrid, has tracked down the final instrument of a quartet made by Stradivarius. She already owns the two violins and the viola, and acquires the cello at auction for £10.5 million (plus taxes). She then assembles a quartet of renowned musicians to play a previously-unheard piece which her late father had commissioned from a contemporary composer, specifically to be played when the last instrument was found. Naturally, all the musicians and the composer hate each other, or have unresolved past issues with each other and the piece itself. Astrid attempts to bring all this together with a looming deadline for the one, live, performance and recording of the piece. Quietly comedic in places, it comes to a predictably heartwarming end.

Leave One Day (Partir Un Jour): The winner of TV’s Top Chef has 14 days until her restaurant opens in Paris. She finds out she’s pregnant, and that her father has had a heart attack (his third) so goes to visit her parents in the rural truck-stop town where she grew up. Cue unresolved past boyfriends, family arguments, all the usual “city girl returns to country town” stuff. Inexplicably, everyone bursts into song at regular intervals. Most of the people in it are annoying.

De Gaulle: Tilting Iron (L’Âge De Fer): A big-budget, 2½ hour monstrosity about De Gaulle. And this is only Part 1! It follows De Gaulle’s early career, setbacks and triumphs, his adventures in Africa and difficulties being taken seriously by the British establishment during the Second Word War. The main set-piece is the battle of Bir Hakeim, which, according to the film was “won” exclusively by the Free French (it wasn’t). Simon Russell Beale is typecast as Winston Churchill for the third time in his career – presumably the money’s good. Look out for Part 2 later this year!

A Nun In the City (Doux Jésus): A nun from an enclosed nunnery has her health check-up and incurs a bang to the head, setting off a chain reaction which leads her to abandon the nunnery and go in search of a long-lost love, currently wanted for armed robbery. Along the way she discovers what’s been going on in the outside world for the last 20 years, talks to God, and gets involved in a police raid and a car chase. Yes, it’s a comedy.

Side note: Why change the name of the film? “Sweet Jesus!” is a perfectly good name for a film, and is uttered many times throughout by different characters.

Maigret And The Dead Lover (Maigret Et Le Mort Amoureux): Maigret is one of those subjects which must be approached with hushed reverence, lest you incur the wrath of the French nation. Whilst this has been updated to the 21^st century, very little of it impinges on the plot – there’s one mobile phone (2001 vintage) and a laptop used by a policeman, but the main characters don’t use them; they dress in old clothes, smoke pipes and cigars etc. At the end of the film Maigret comes up with a completely different explanation of events to the official version, but no evidence is offered, nor is his thought process to arrive there shown. Not sure what the point of that is.

The Richest Woman In The World (La Femme La Plus Riche Du Monde): This is a lightly fictionalised telling of the true story, the Bettencourt Affair, involving the heiress to the L’Oréal fortune. The names have been changed (Égoïste magazine becomes “Selfish” magazine), presumably due to lawyers etc. It’s largely about rich people behaving badly. There’s some French politics which extend back to WW2, who said what about Jewish people at the time. Meanwhile, the heiress is making very chaste whoopee with a flamboyant photographer, and spending the kids’ inheritance, much to everyone’s displeasure. According to the blurb it has “several twists too good to spoil”. Spoiler alert: no it doesn’t. It all gets settled out of court, and ends not with a bang but a whimper.

So that’s all the French films for the year. Some of them held my attention for a short while, but there wasn’t anything outstanding that I’d recommend from this year’s selections. One I wanted to see but missed was Redress– maybe it’ll come out on general release later. OK, when does the New Zealand International Film Festival start?

Julia

Back into the routine with Circa Theatre, and Nicola is volunteering as usher. This time it’s the acclaimed Julia, a one-woman tour de force written by Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith, whose works include Switzerland. The Julia in question is Julia Gillard, former prime minister of Australia. 

I hadn’t booked anywhere nice for dinner, so we were forced to go to Chou Chou. I’ve expressed my opinion on the restaurant attached to Circa before, but they have now revised their menu and offer some semblance of a reasonable choice…if only their wait staff would listen to the orders! Having been out for lunch after a French Film Festival offering, we weren’t that hungry, so Nicola ordered Caesar salad without chicken. Yes, you’ve guessed…they served it with chicken. They didn’t charge for it, though. Also, they were out of tiramisu, which you shouldn’t be early in the evening.

The play is 90 minutes long with no interval. Lara MacGregor has been a notable figure, both at Circa and elsewhere, including television (and not just Shortland Street!) and film. The plot follows the life of Julia Gillard, the pivotal moments in her childhood and adulthood that led to her becoming Australia’s 27^th, and first female, Prime Minister. It culminates with the speech given by Gillard in parliament in response to Tony Abbott’s attempts to use a political scandal about Twitter to bring down the then Labour government. The speech struck a nerve amongst Australians, and women around the world, and led to some small changes in how women were perceived and treated not just in politics but also in the wider world.

The play captures the challenges faced by Gillard and other women in politics, where the size of your arse or the cut of your jacket are treated as more important topics of debate than irrelevant things, like policy or philosophy. Hey ho. Go watch it and enjoy.

 

Island Hopping

When first we arrived in Croatia we booked an island tour – the Elaphiti Islands, close to Dubrovnik. However, my back rebelled, and we postponed it until Monday – our last full day here. Not quite such an early start for this one, as they requested we be at the dock at 9:00am. The marina isn’t far from our hotel, but it’s not on the No. 4 bus route, so we Ubered it instead. We hadn’t booked lunch originally and they’d told us we could order it on the day, but I was running out of cash so searched around in vain for an ATM near the marina. Usually there’s more ATMs around than fleas on a dog, but I could only locate one, and after a lengthy interaction “computer says no”.

We boarded the Rita, and were immediately offered a cherry rakia, which we politely declined. Not all of our fellow passengers did, though! Instead we had a peach tea. It turns out I needn’t have worried about having cash for the lunch as they were able to take cards anyway, so we did that. 

Our transport - Rita

First stop was the island of Lopud, where we stayed for three hours. This would have given us time to get to the other side of the island (about 30 mins walk each way), or explore the botanical gardens (closed for renovations. At the start of the tourist season. How!?!) After an espresso we wandered about, admired the church and monastery, explored some of the coastline, and came back for an ice cream. We also saw the now deserted and abandoned Grand Hotel, designed and built in the 1930s as a statement of modernism and kick-started tourism on the Dalmatian coast. It survived WW2 and the communist era, but not the Croatian war. The company went bankrupt in 2001, and since then it has stood empty. 

This still left us an hour to go, and by now the sun was over the yardarm, so I had a beer and idled about in the morning sun until it was time to reboard the Rita.

Ruins of the Grand Hotel

Wood carving in the church

We reboarded and were served our lunch – chicken or fish with potatoes and tomatoes. Doesn’t sound much, but it was yum. There was unlimited wine served with lunch but as we still had two islands to go in the sunshine I wasn’t inclined to take full advantage of this offer.

Next stop was for one hour on Ŝipan, which was much the same…and the final island of Koločep, where we’d been promised something which is in short supply in Croatia: a sandy beach! And there it was. We stripped down to our togs, and like New Zealanders marched purposefully into the sea. It wasn’t actually cold, although all the tame Europeans were standing knee-deep and shrieking like big girl’s blouses. We swam a bit dried off, then headed back to the boat.

The beach at Koločep

We sailed back the way we came, arriving at the marina around 530pm. We walked about five minutes to the shopping centre we’d been to a couple of days ago, so we could mooch off the wifi in the café we’d frequented, and order an Uber back to the hotel. It’s Italian night at the buffer restaurant so we’ll see what that’s like. Tomorrow we begin the long haul back to Wellington, so daily updates will now cease!  

 

Bosnia & Herzegovina

Another early start, another country…we’d booked a tour to Kravice waterfalls and Mostar. There are three options: standard tour, on a bus, up to 50 people; medium tour, midi bus, 18-25 people; or small group, up to 10 people; each priced accordingly. We opted for the mid-sized tour, but when the bus turned up, it was a small one, as only eight people had booked, so we were quids in already. As the first pick-up at 7:00am, we had the choice of seats, and picked the front with our driver and guide, Angelko, as this had the best views. We stopped off for three other couples – one from Norway, one from Ireland, and one from Australia, then set off. Our fellow tourees were not a sociable bunch, so we didn’t have much chat with them on the way. Angelko pointed out some interesting features along the road to the border to BiH, as it is abbreviated. This was fortunately not as arduous as the first crossing into Croatia, but we still had to do the facial recognition scan.

As we drove along, Angelko pointed out the road signs. These are in both Roman and Cyrillic scripts, but due to ongoing tensions between the two communities, many of the Cyrillic parts of the signs have been spraypainted, painted or taped over so that they are illegible or invisible. I guess this is done by the same sort of people who paint George crosses on roundabouts in the UK.

We headed straight to the waterfalls. These are picturesque, and we’d brought swimming gear, but when we got there no-one was swimming and the changing rooms weren’t immediately apparent, so we took pictures – including the fish in the lake and some strange insects, which turned out to be Beautiful Demoiselles (Calopteryx virgo meridionalis) – then sat down and had an ice cream instead. Then some people started swimming, we found out where the changing rooms were, but by then we’d decided we didn’t really have time any more, as we still had to ascend the 173 steps up the hill to the car park. There was supposed to be a road train but we’d not seen any sight of that either, so we slogged up the hill. Whilst there’s been some development here – a few cafés and stalls – a little more effort would go a long way. Angelko told us there was talk of a major hotel being sited there, but there’s objections from locals, and that may be an overdevelopment. 

Come here, little fishy!

One couple wanted to go to Medugorje, which had been an option on our trip, so we took a detour there. We didn’t have time for the full ascent of the mountain, so just stuck to the town. A service was in progress at the church, with loads of people sitting outside as it was full. The town itself is a temple to the gullible: loads of shops selling religious tat. Many people in wheelchairs were there, presumably to be cured. The whole place is a depressing reminder that people will believe anything. 

Bags of tat

Shoploads of it

The church is nice, though

A short drive away is Mostar. This is a city that featured heavily in news reports in the early nineties, being the scene of some of the main conflicts in the Balkan war of 1991-1995. There are several museums about the war in the own, but frankly we've had enough of grim stuff in Albania. Some of the buildings still bear the scars of that war. We spent three hours in the Old Town, including lunch at a restaurant recommended by Angelko - Foodhouse - where we also got a welcome drink (rakia – what else?) and complementary dessert (apple pie) as well as our choices of lunch – dolma and Ćevapcici. After lunch we wandered the Old Town, bought a turtle and an evil eye, and looked for but missed the divers who jump off the Old Bridge. They basically ask tourists for money, and when the pot reaches €50, they jump. What a way to make a living!    

The Old Bridge

 

Jewellery shops everywhere!

We had one more stop on the way back – the small medieval settlement of Počitelj, which has a fortress high on a hill. Again, we weren’t going to climb all the way to the top, so we admired it from afar. 

We then headed back through the border crossing, again being scanned. This whole area has a confusing number of border and currency arrangements: some are members of the EU, some are also in the Eurozone, some are not members of either, some are not members but use the euro together with their own currency, and some aren’t members of either but only use the euro anyway. There’s a word for this: Balkanisation. We were fortunate to be spending euros and getting change in euros (not a given – some places give change in the Bosnian Mark).

We made it back to the hotel by around 7:30pm, so we’d been out for over 12 hours. We found in our room yet another bottle of wine and a written apology about the cleaning! I mean, guys! Last night’s was enough! Oh well, waste not, want not…

On our Italian trip two years ago we visited Slovenia, so with today’s excursion we’ve now knocked off five of the seven former Yugoslav republics. Just Kosovo and Serbia left…unfortunately we’re not going to get to them on this visit.