Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Word Play

My Nights are More Beautiful than Your Days/Mes Nuits sont Plus Belles que Vos Jours (1989) - ZulawskiImage
Lucas (Jacques Dutronc) just invented a new computer language that will revolutionize the world. But at the same time, he is diagnosed with some terminal brain disease that is eating away his brains and leaving him only speaking in non-sensical, free-association word games. He meets a lovely actress Blanche (Sophie Marceau) who is just about to become a star. They bond as they provide narratives for a fighting old couple on the sidewalk- are they in love or drunk? It's a love at first sight. Maybe because of his illness, he clings to her as if she is the sun and she in turn, sees him as a pure soul who might provide a solace from vultures that surround her.

Blanche takes off to seaside Biarritz to perform her clairvoyant act in a glitzy casino hotel and Lucas follows her. They go through tumultuous, surreal days and nights communicating only in word play, connected by childhood trauma (which is the weakest link of the film, btw) and understanding each other in madness.

Sophie Marceau bares it all in another Andrej Zulawski's film about love. Lighter than his other emotionally charged dramas but hardly any less amusing, My Nights showcases Marceau's beauty every chance it gets. She has a difficult duty of reacting off of Dutronc's checked-out-at-the-door performance. He's like a floating target that you can't ever pin down. I've seen My Nights when I was in High School, out of horny teen boy curiosity. Marceau was really big when I was growing up. And I never bothered to look seriously at the subtitles. The version I saw just now had great subs. I wonder how the delicate word games they play in the film come across in Korean. Probably not too well.

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