Thursday, October 20, 2011

Movie Confessions contd....

Sometimes when searching for a good movie to watch over the weekend, one gets lucky to pick the right one from the movie library. It is possible that the world might not have liked those movies but you feel satisfied after watching them. I would like to share two of such movies which I happened to watch just by chance. After writing some review here and here, I thought of writing two more reviews. Incidentally, both are French movies. It might be possible that these movies are not of everyone's taste.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le scaphandre et le papillon - France)
Consider yourself seeing the world only with your left eye. More so, consider yourself completely paralyzed from head to toe except your left eye but at the same time your brain is still working fine. I personally feel that this is the epitome of imprisonment. What could be more frustrating than this situation? I am not talking about a hypothetical situation but this is the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the former editor of french fashion magazine ELLE. A man leading a flamboyant, self centered lifestyle suffers an attack while driving leaving his complete body paralyzed except his left eye.With not many options left to communicate, he starts communicating by blinking his left eye. The speech therapist sits besides him reciting the french alphabets by order of their frequency in the language and stopping when he blinks. This is how he had written his complete book by the same name and the movie is based on it. The director has done an incredible and impressive task of depicting the whole thing on screen. What captured me the most was the patience of the speech therapist to first teach the guy how and when to blink and then constantly repeating the alphabets again and again and then writing a complete book one alphabet at a time. The movie is beautifully made and a definite recommend from my side.

Little White Lies (Les petits mouchoirs - France)
If you like life and want to see a slice of it on screen then this is the movie for you. A group of friends and family go on a holiday away from the daily grind even though one of their group member is lying in the hospital battling his life after a severe motorcycle accident. This is not a real life story but the way it is made, I would say that life cannot be more close to it. The acting is very natural to me and the way the story goes on shedding light on different shades of human characteristics made me watch this relatively long movie with complete interest. The story never seemed to slag and always kept up the momentum. It might not be the best of the movies I have seen but it was worth watching it once. If you like watching human behavior very closely and always get amazed how human beings can be so selfish and forgiving at the same time then I am sure you would like this movie. I know another french movie with the same theme but somehow I am not able to recollect its name.

I don't know if anyone even read these reviews. In case there are any readers, do share some good ones which you would like to recommend.

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