Asteroid City

Wes Anderson: Asteroid City (US 2023).

Wes Anderson: Asteroid City (US 2023). Scarlett Johansson in Zelda Zonk mode. A Focus Features release. Courtesy of Pop. 87 Productions / Focus Features. Please do click on the photo to enlarge it.

Asteroid City / Asteroid City.
    US © 2023 Pop. 87 Productions LLC & Focus Features LLC. Focus Features and Indian Paintbrush present an American Empirical Picture. P: Wes Anderson, Steven Rales, Jeremy Dawson.
    D: Wes Anderson. SC: Wes Anderson – story by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola. DP:  Robert D. Yeoman – photographed on Kodak Film with the Arriflex Camera System, color by Company 3 – in black and white and colour  – in Academy and Scope. PD: Adam Stockhausen. AD: Stéphane Cressend. Set dec: Kris Moran. Cost: Milena Canonero. Make-up and hair design: Julie Dartnell. SFX: Pau Costa. VFX: Gorilla VFX, Vast, Jellyfish Pictures, Goodbye Kansas, Red Visual Effects, Misc Studios. M: Alexandre Desplat. S: Wayne Lemmer. ED: Barney Pilling. Casting: Douglas Aibel. CAST:

    Jason Schwartzman as Augie Steenbeck,
Scarlett Johansson as Midge Campbell,
Tom Hanks as Stanley Zak,
Jeffrey Wright as General Gibson,
Tilda Swinton as Dr. Hickenlooper,
Bryan Cranston as The Host,
Edward Norton as Conrad Earp,
Adrien Brody as Schubert Green,
Liev Schreiber as J. J. Kellogg,
Hope Davis as Sandy Borden,
Stephen Park as Roger Cho,
Rupert Friend as Montana,
Maya Hawke as June Douglas,
Steve Carell as the motel manager,
Matt Dillon as the mechanic,
Hong Chau as Polly,
Willem Dafoe as Saltzburg Keitel,
Margot Robbie as the actress / wife,
Tony Revolori as the aide-de-camp,
Jake Ryan as Woodrow,
Grace Edwards as Dinah,
Aristou Meehan as Clifford,
Sophia Lillis as Shelly,
Ethan Josh Lee as Ricky,
Jeff Goldblum as the Alien.
    Film shot in Chinchón, Colmenar de Oreja, Aranjuez y Valdelaguna (Comunidad de Madrid), Spain.
    104 min
    Festival premiere: 23 May 2023 Cannes Film Festival.
    US premiere: 13 June 2023 (limited).
    US premiere: 23 June 2023 (wide).
    Finnish premiere: 9 June 2023, released by Finnkino, Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Janne Mökkönen / Frej Grönholm.
    Viewed at Finnkino Strand 4, Iso Kristiina, Lappeenranta, 9 June 2023.

IMDb synopsis: " The itinerary of a Junior Stargazer convention is spectacularly disrupted by world-changing events. "

AA: INITIAL MUSINGS AROUND A MASTERPIECE.

Wes Anderson is at his best in Asteroid City. It is also one of the best films of the year and among the best of the decade.

André Bazin divided film-makers into those who believe in realíty and those who believe in the image. Wes Anderson is a master in the latter group, sharing the honour with contemporaries such as Roy Andersson (no relation). (Wes Anderson did not start this way, as can be seen in Bottle Rocket).

Wes Anderson has a carefully cultivated style, totally artificial in many ways, and sometimes close to what Susan Sontag called "camp", but with a different electric current, a complexity and sensibility of his own.

Set in the year 1955 in a tiny Southwest desert town, Asteroid City is a retro-futuristic adventure like The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. The Jacques-Yves Cousteau parody took us beneath the sea. In Asteroid City we are looking at the sky in a Junior Stargazer convention.

Like Robert Altman and Woody Allen, Wes Anderson is a wizard of the all star cast, able to engage major stars even into bit parts. The ubiquitous Bill Murray has been replaced this time by Tom Hanks, playing the cantankerous grandfather.

Asteroid City is not a genre film, but besides science fiction, I mostly find it a comedy. In a very general sense this kind of comedy belongs to the Buster Keaton tradition. It deals with colossal issues including death, nuclear peril and alien invasion. A major source of comedy is a deadpan attitude, registering the overwhelming with understatement.

Another source of comedy is formality: symmetry, frontality, and multiple framing meta-levels that are smoothly accessible despite their complexity. I was smiling from the beginning, and I believe that the whole audience was having fun in a special, Wes Anderson kind of way. He won our sympathy instantly.

For a fleeting while I was thinking about Nope, which shares some of the premises of Asteroid City, yielding quite different results.

A sympathetic feature in Asteroid City is that the dramatis personae include several generations, including children and the young. One of the expressions that come to mind in Anderson's films is "naivism" which in his case is also a defiant, unpatronizing empathy with a childish perspective. Like in Moonrise Kingdom, Anderson pays respect to tender and awkward truths of young and sincere love.

A passion in animation belongs to Wes Anderson's distinctive features, in films such as Fantastic Mr. Fox. In Asteroid City, animated figures include the Alien (modelled after Jeff Goldblum) and a Roadrunner (in Finnish: juoksukäki), not to be mixed with the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes / Merrie Melodies character. 

Anderson belongs to the film-makers who prefer photochemical film, although we are deep in the digital era. In Moonrise Kingdom the reward was a warm and tender hue.

The colour world of Asteroid City is unique and hard to pin down. Ever since the release of the trailer, there has been wide debate and admiration for Wes Anderson's palette, which is also already being simulated.

The word "pastel" has been mentioned, and why not, but pastel painting is a wide tradition, and I have happened to pay special attention to it this year at Musée d'Orsay, its Manet / Degas exhibition and the Albert Edelfelt exhibition. Perhaps a certain kind of pastel has affinities, but I don't find the pastel description convincing in general.

"Low contrast" comes to mind, but it is not accurate, the imagery cannot be defined in the "low contrast" / "high contrast" register. It is something stranger, about the middle ground being more even and flat than usual. The imagery is at once bright and dull in a special combination. At once colourful and subtly blurred. A special event is the "full frontal" shot where we see everything and nothing, of a stunt double to boot. The imagery evokes old, slightly faded colour magazines or picture postcards. And obsolete colour film systems from the 1920s and the 1940s (Thomsoncolor? Rouxcolor?).

Perhaps this colour world will be called "Asteroid City Color".

ZELDA ZONK

There would be a lot to say. Personally, I was moved by one of the movie's subtexts (it is discussed in the film's press book, so this is not just my imagination): Marilyn Monroe.

Asteroid City is a dream play about the baby boom age, the space age, the early nuclear age and the sex bomb age. It was still the period of the cinema's greatest love goddesses and fertility symbols. Marilyn Monroe was one of the last female superstars of the classical Hollywood studio system. In The Misfits she managed to reach out towards the new space of the cinema of modern alienation.

Major stars have channelled their Marilyn Monroe passion, including Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino, not forgetting Michelle Williams, Jessica Lange and Michelle Pfeiffer. This time it's Scarlett Johansson conveying her inner Marilyn Monroe in a delicate yet frank fashion.

There are many affinities and references: the year 1955, the superstar's meticulous care with photographs, Actors Studio, the marriage with a major playwright, the aspiration to serious drama, Bus Stop, the desert (like in The Misfits), the nuclear tests (Robert Kennedy combined Marilyn Monroe and nuclear tests in his weekend agenda in California).

The family story and the new love affair in Asteroid City are Jewish. MM converted to Judaism when she married Arthur Miller, and although she was an atheist, her connection with the Jewish people and the Miller family was heartfelt and profound. Her films were banned in Egypt during her marriage with Miller.

The black hair on the blonde: all through the 1950s MM donned a black wig when incognito, registered as "Zelda Zonk", and also did a major photo session as a brunette. Most importantly, the joy of life, the absence of taboos, the life-affirming presence of children.

One of the popular books of the era was Norman O. Brown's Life Against Death. That is the question also in Wes Anderson's lovely movie.

Beethoven 250: the last piano bagatelles: 6 Bagatelles Op. 126 (Piotr Anderszewski, 2008)

From: Ludwig van Beethoven: 6 Bagatellen: 6. Bagatelle: Andante amabile e con moto. From Jan Caeyers: Beethoven: A Life (2020). Caeyers discovers the final dedication and love confession to Josephine in Beethoven's last composition for the piano. Maynard Solomon has a different theory of the immortal beloved, but all can agree with Solomon when he says that "even at the end, the piano remained Beethoven's most intimate means of communicating with his inner self". Please do click on the image to enlarge it.

Beethoven: The Complete Works (80 CD). Warner Classics / © 2019 Parlophone Records Limited. Also available on Spotify etc. I bought my box set from Fuga at Helsinki Music Centre.
Ludwig van Beethoven 1770–1827.
Beethoven 250 continued.
From: CD 26/80  Piano Bagatelles Opp. 33, 119, 126 + Other bagatelles. Tracks 1924: Piotr Anderszewski, 2008:

6 Bagatellen Op. 126 (1825)

1. Andante con moto in G, 3'07
2. Allegro in G minor, 2'44
3. Andante in E-flat, 3'15
4. Presto in B minor, 3'55
5. Quasi allegretto in G, 2'40

6. Presto, cut time then Andante amabile e con moto, E♭ major, 4'41

JAN CAEYERS: THE LAST PIANO BAGATELLES

" 'Bagatelles' can best be defined as 'musical aphorisms'. They are concise, pithy expressions of an original, highly personal, and often surprising character: profound wisdom in a nutshell. The concise format also puts more resources at the composer's disposal (remembering that a work's length should be inversely proportional to the quantity of musical material), allowing for the deployment of rhetorical devices such as antithesis, paradox, understatement, ambiguity, and irony. Beethoven was in his element and after his work on the colossal Ninth Symphony most likely glad of the opportunity for some lighthearted diversion on a smaller scale."

"Yet despite his bagatelles' whimsical nature, and however experimental and unconventional their technique and frameworks, these dissociations belie an underlying logic. In this sense, the opus 126 bagatelles differ markedly from their opus 119 predecessors, which seem rather disjointed by comparison. The latter bear the stamp of their haphazard origin and create the impression that they are interchangeable or that their ordering is arbitrary. The opposite is true of the six bagatelles composed in 1824. Beethoven himself described them as a 'cycle,' with a rhetorical structure, a robust tonal progression, and a latent, "subthematic" cohesion that, while not perceived directly or audibly, is experienced subconsciously. "

" The circle was now fully complete. Almost half a century after receiving his first childhood spanking for daring to improvise at the keyboard, and decades since he had electrified audiences with his wild fantasies as a pianistic demigod, Beethoven could now finally surrender to the tantalizing pleasures of scintillating ideas and vivid imagination. Trusting in his highly developed intuition for structure and proportion and free from any desire for excess or vanity, Beethoven could finally give free rein to his musical ideas; a luxury that had cost him over one hundred opus numbers and a musician's lifetime. "

" To complete the cycle well and truly, one final remark. The sixth bagatelle, Beethoven's very last piano work, bears the telling tempo and character indication 'Andante amabile e con moto' and is based on the all too familiar motif from both the Andante favori and the song cycle An die ferne Geliebte. "

" Skeptics may dismiss this similarity as pure coincidence. But even so: what a beautiful one it is! "

From: Jan Caeyers : Beethoven : A Life (Beethoven : Een Biografie 2009, revised in 2020). Translated  in English by Brent Annable. University of California Press / Beethoven-Haus Bonn, 2020. pp. 466–467.

WoO 36  Klavierquartette 1 in Es-Dur (1785) published posthumously in 1828

WoO 57  Andante favori (1804) composed for the Waldstein sonata, published separately

Op. 98  An die ferne Geliebte (1816)

Op. 126  6 Bagatellen (1825)

NB. AA: Each Beethoven biographer has a theory about the "Immortal Beloved", and Caeyers might come closest to the truth, examining all alternatives before proposing Josephine von Brunsvik in Chapter 45 "From the 'Immortal Beloved' to a 'Distant Beloved'". Caeyers also discusses Minona von Stackelberg (1813–1897), perhaps the daughter of Ludwig and Josephine. A tragic story anyway for everyone involved.

P.S. 8 July 2025. I am listening to Beethoven's piano quartets, WoO 36, composed in 1785 in Bonn when he was aged 14, and published posthumously in 1828 in Vienna. 

Piano quartet in E flat major, WoO 36, No. 1, the first movement, adagio assai, starts with what sounds like the Josephine motif.

Klavírní kvarteto Bohuslava Martinů ℗ 1977 SUPRAPHON a.s.

1. Adagio assai

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmIf89jLbb8&list=RDHmIf89jLbb8&start_radio=1

2. Allegro con spirito

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luDKodfatnc&list=RDluDKodfatnc&start_radio=1

3. Theme and variations: Cantabile

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAF59PPX_W0&list=RDAAF59PPX_W0&start_radio=1

Der Passfälscher / The Forger

Maggie Peren: Der Passfälscher / The Forger (DE/LU 2022) starring Louis Hofmann as Cioma Schönhaus.

Väärentäjä / Förfalskaren.
    DE/LU © 2022 Dreifilm GmbH, Amour Fou Luxembourg sàrl mit Network Movie Film- und Fernsehproduktion GmbH & Co. KG, Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF) (Mainz) und Arte Deutschland TV GmbH (Ettelbrück). P: Alexander Fritzemeyer, Martin Kosok mit Alexander Dumreicher-Ivanceanu, Bady Minck, Dietrich Kluge, Jutta Lieck-Klenke.
    D+SC: Maggie Peren – based on the memoir by Cioma Schönhaus: Der Passfälscher. Die unglaubliche Geschichte eines jungen Grafikers, der im Untergrund gegen die Nazis kämpfte. Hrsg. von Marion Neiss. Scherz Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-502-15688-3. DP: Christian Stangassinger – colour – 2.39:1 – shooting format: Digital AlexaMiniLF ProRes S35 16:9 3.2K – Verleih digital. Szenenbild: Eva-Maria Stiebler. Costume designer: Diana Dietrich. Make-up: Katja Alexis-Reinert. M: Mario Grigorov. M supervision: Superstrings, Carolin Heiss. S: André Bendocchi-Alves. Mixeur: Loïc Collignon. ED: Robert Sterna. Casting: An Dorthe Braker, Karimah El-Giamal, Bady Minck. C:
    Louis Hofmann – Cioma
    Jonathan Berlin – Det Kassriel
    Luna Wedler – Gerda
    Nina Gummich – Frau Peters
    André Jung – Herr Dietrich
    Marc Limpach – Franz Kaufmann
Dreharbeiten: 18 Jan–2 March 2021 Bayern und Luxemburg.
    Loc: Bavaria Filmstadt – Villa Höppner, Haus Kreitmeier (Munich/DE), Parktheater im Kurhaus Göggingen (Augsburg/DE), Arcelor Mittal Schifflange (LU), Epicerie (LU), Café du Viaduc (LU), Casemates (LU), By Jaco (LU) Centre de la Croix Rouge (LU), Fond de Gras/Minettpark (LU).
    Language: German
    116 min
    Erstverleih: Z Verleih AG (Berlin).
    US distributor: Kino Lorber.
    Uraufführung: 13 Feb 2022 Berlin International Film Festival Special.
    Luxembourg festival premiere: 4 March 2022 Luxembourg City Film Festival.
    Kinostart Deutschland: 13 Oct 2022.
    Finnish premiere: 2 June 2023 – released by Future Film, with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Samuli Kauppila / Michaela Palmberg.
    Viewed at Finnkino Strand 4, Iso Kristiina, Lappeenranta, 2 June 2023.

New edition to the 2004 book: Cioma Schönhaus: Der Passfälscher : die unglaubliche Geschichte eines jungen Grafikers, der im Untergrund gegen die Nazis kämpfte : mit Zeichnungen des Autors, bearbeitet, mit einem Nachwort versehen und herausgegeben von Marion Neiss, Frankfurt am Main : Fischer Taschenbuch, Februar 2022, ISBN 978-3-596-16446-2

NB. The Finnish title Väärentäjä was also used for another recent Holocaust movie, Die Fälscher (AT/DE 2007, D: Stefan Ruzowitzky), about Operation Bernhard, the most massive money counterfeiting operation in history.

AA: Among films about the Holocaust, The Forger is exceptional. It is based on a true story, published by the protagonist Cioma Schönhaus himself (1922–2015) in 2004. To the festival premiere in 2022 it was republished in a new edition.

It is a story of chutzpah (audacity): in wartime Berlin, during the Holocaust, Cioma survives in his parents' apartment, works in the arms industry, and acts normally, ignoring the yellow star, riding the bus and eating in the best restaurant.

Cioma has studied arts and crafts, he is a skilled graphic artist, and so he starts to get assignments to forge documents, including passports, thus saving the lives of 300 persecuted Jews, even finally himself.

But the theme of forgery expands to a much wider field of behaviour. Cioma and his friends themselves speak of mimicry – the capability of a creature of nature of assuming the appearance of its predator. Cioma's best friend Det Kassriel is a tailor, and they create Kriegsmarine uniforms for themselves. The success is complete as long as they keep their sang-froid.

Even without uniforms Cioma learns to master the situation. The most astounding scene is at the Fundbüro when people lined up to pawn their belongings land into a razzia of the police wanting to check their Personalausweise. Cioma is carrying no document, and so he assumes the attitude of a higher police officer and asks the policemen to show their papers, instead. An ingenious variation of the story of the Hauptmann von Köpenick, famous from the play by Carl Zuckmayer and others.

The theme of mimicry and playing the part of the enemy reminds me also of Charles Chaplin in The Great Dictator and Ernst Lubitsch in To Be Or Not To Be.

It is a miraculous survival story but not a story of heroes and villains. It is also a merciless story about abuse, egoism, opportunism and cynicism. I am also thinking about Billy Wilder's A Foreign Affair and Stalag 17. Maggie Peren, the writer-director, moves on the same levels of complexity and audacity, but reaches a higher sense of maturity.

The situation is rigged to turn people into each other's enemies, but Maggie Peren and her actors see more in them. Human relationships are mercenary but also something beyond. Tenderness is genuine. Tradeoffs can lead to something else. There is a shortage of young male attention. Maggie Peren knows how to portray female desire subtly. Attractions can be surprising.

I was not looking forward to this film, fearing it to be yet another entry in the Shoah business. There have been many films on the topic in recent years that seem partly exploitative. With The Forger, I was happily surprised. It is among the best.

...

CINEMA AND THE HOLOCAUST. Claude Lanzmann's Shoah is for me the supreme achievement in the "mission impossible" of expressing the inexpressible. Nothing is shown, yet everything becomes vivid and unforgettable.
    The original footage by George Stevens and Samuel Fuller, the material in Todesmühlen and Memory of the Camps, and in Alain Resnais's Nuit et brouillard, are of primary value.
    The NBC series Holocaust (Gerald Green / Marvin J. Chomsky, 1978) and Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List belong to the films that have most changed awareness of history.
    Mark Donskoi's The Unvanquished, Wanda Jakubowska's The Last Stage, Andrzej Munk's Pasazerka, Vittorio De Sica's I giardino dei Finzi Contini, Louis Malle's Au revoir les enfants, István Szabó's Bizalom and Sunshine, Taru Mäkelä's David, Roman Polanski's The Pianist and Lajos Koltai's Fateless reach high levels.
    Some of the best films about the Holocaust are of recent vintage: Sergei Loznitsa's Babi Yar Context and Ken Burns's devastating U.S. and the Holocaust, both from last year (2022).
    For me, Maggie Peren's Der Passfälscher belongs to this league of the finest.

P.S. Viewers may find Cioma's chutzpah unbelievable, but I find the account of the young man's sang-froid and derring-do credible.

I recently read the memoirs of Boris Grünstein (1917–1992): Jude i Finland : galghumoristiska berättelser [A Jew in Finland : Gallows Humoristic Tales] (Söderström 1988).

In the 1930s, Finland's extreme right wing was vocally antisemitic. Even highly cultured, traditionally Germanophilic circles were often prone to Hitler admiration.

During Operation Barbarossa, Grünstein served in the Finnish Defence Forces, which was allied with the Wehrmacht. While stationed in the port town Hanko, Grünstein got to experience the threatening presence of Finnish SS men returning from the Ukraine bloodlands.

The young Grünstein was fearless. Only in his mature years he let the dread sink in.

I believe that Cioma Schönhaus and Boris Grünstein were soulmates, also in their sense of humour and appetite for love.

Boris Grünstein (1917–1992): Jude i Finland : galghumoristiska berättelser [A Jew in Finland : Gallows Humoristic Tales] (Söderström 1988). A tale of chutzpah in Finland during Drittes Reich.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: KINO LORBER EPK:

Les trois mousquetaires : D'Artagnan (2023) / The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan

Martin Bourboulon: Les trois mousquetaires : D'Artagnan / The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan.(FR/DE/ES/BE 2023). Above: Eva Green : Milady de Winter.
Center: Pio Marmaï : Porthos – Vincent Cassel : Athos – Romain Duris : Aramis.
Below: François Civil : D'Artagnan. Please do click on the image to enlarge it.

Kolme muskettisoturia: D'Artagnan / De tre musketörerna – D'Artagnan / The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan
    FR/DE/ES/BE 2023. PC: Chapter 2 (Mediawan) et Pathé Films. Co-PC: M6 Films, Constantin Film, ZDF, DeAPlaneta, Umedia. P: Dimitri Rassam
    D: Martin Bourboulon. SC: Alexandre de La Patellière, Matthieu Delaporte – d'après le roman Les trois mousquetaires (1844) d'Alexandre Dumas. Décors: Stéphane Taillasson. Cost: Thierry Delettre. M: Guillaume Roussel. Montage: Célia Lafite-Dupoint.
    CAST (WIKIPÉDIA):
    MUSKETEERS
François Civil : D'Artagnan
Vincent Cassel : Athos
Romain Duris : Aramis
Pio Marmaï : Porthos
    OTHERS
Eva Green : Milady de Winter
Lyna Khoudri : Constance Bonacieux
Patrick Mille : le comte de Chalais
Julien Frison : Gaston d'Orléans
Dominique Valadié : Marie de Médicis
Thibault Vinçon : Horace Saint Blancard
Gabriel Almaer : Benjamin de la Fère, frère d'Athos
Raynaldo Houy Delattre : le comte de Rochefort
Laurent Claret : De Monfort
Dominique Daguier : juge Tréville [pas clair]
Nicolas Vaude : juge Athos [pas clair]
Charlotte Ranson : Isabelle de Valcour
Stéphane Margot : un protestant, allié d'Athos
    HISTORICAL CHARACTERS
Louis Garrel : Louis XIII
Vicky Krieps : Anne d'Autriche / Queen Anne of Austria, Queen of France
Éric Ruf : le cardinal de Richelieu
Marc Barbé : le capitaine de Tréville
Jacob Fortune-Lloyd (en) : le duc de Buckingham, George Villiers
    Loc: Île-de-France, Bretagne, les Hauts-de-France, Normandie, les Invalides, la cour du Louvre, la cathédrale de Meaux, le Château de Chantilly, Fontainebleau, Compiègne.
    Languages: French – with some English.
    Genre: Cape et épée.
    121 min
    Date de sortie France, Belgique, Suisse romande: 5 April 2023
    Finnish premiere 26 May 2023 – released by Nordisk Film with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Ilse Rönnberg / Charlotte Elo.
    Viewed at Finnkino Strand 2, Iso Kristiina, Lappeenranta, 27 May 2023.

" Du Louvre au Palais de Buckingham, des bas-fonds de Paris au siège de La Rochelle… Dans un Royaume divisé par les guerres de religion et menacé d’invasion par l’Angleterre, une poignée d’hommes et de femmes vont croiser leurs épées et lier leur destin à celui de la France. " (synopsis Unifrance)

AA: The Three Musketeers, a swashbuckling adventure entertainment, is grounded in broad outlines in the history of Baroque France.

The background is the great religious wars. The Thirty Years' War is raging in Europe in the year 1627 when the movie starts. France, led by the Bourbons, supports the war against the Holy Catholic Empire of the Habsburgs. Reformation has started a hundred years earlier, and a nadir of religious persecution, the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, is remembered with shudder.

The persecution was stopped in the Edict of Nantes by Henry IV, France's first Bourbon king, the father of Louis XIII, himself the father of the future Sun King, Louis XIV. To fortify the nation against religious and regional divisiveness, all power is being centralized, in a development leading towards absolutism.

After the assassination of Henry IV by a Catholic fanatic, the queen, Marie de' Medici, becomes the regent, but her son Louis XIII takes over and reigns while keeping track on his mastermind, the prime minister genius, Cardinal Richelieu – and his own Queen Anne, who carries on with the enemy via her liaison with the Duke of Buckingham. When French Protestants pursue a separate republic inside the kingdom of France, England supports them. Richelieu disarms them and gets equipped to a decisive battle in La Rochelle.

Into this highly explosive hub of international political, religious and military intrigue, spiced with sexual tension, arrives the clumsy but fearless young hunk from the provinces, D'Artagnan, who wants to join the King's Musketeers. He commits every imaginable blunder but soon earns the grudging approval of the renowned Three Musketeers, being finally recognized as the Fourth Musketeer.

This is the tale we know from the novels of Alexandre Dumas and countless adaptations and references in other media, not least in the movies. My favourite D'Artagnan interpreter in the movies is Douglas Fairbanks, particularly in The Iron Mask (1929), one of the most extraordinary action adventure films ever made. I agree with those who say that Douglas Fairbanks was born to play D'Artagnan.

I have only good things to say about Richard Lester's Musketeers series. My French friends seem to prefer George Sidney's film adaptation starring Gene Kelly. It is fascinating that while Frenchmen have produced several memorable Monte Cristo film adaptations, the best Musketeer films seem to have been made by foreigners. Perhaps the subject is too familiar for Frenchmen?

Most Musketeer films have emphasized comedy, with Fairbanks's The Iron Mask among the exceptions. Martin Bourboulon's approach is also more serious and tragic, faithful to Dumas. A sense of humour is present, reverberating here on a darker foundation.

The screenwriters Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte have dramatized the adventure very well. Martin Bourboulon introduces the characters memorably and intertwines the private affairs with the epic turning-points deftly. Grandiose setpieces include the masked ball at the Buckingham Palace and the cancelled wedding of Gaston de France, the King's brother. Actual locations were used whenever possible, and the costumes seem authentic.

The cast is great. François Civil, Vincent Cassel, Romain Duris and Pio Marmaï project a convincing sense of camaraderie. In awareness of a widening perception of identity politics, Porthos is conveyed as bisexual. Eva Green as Milady de Winter, Vicky Krieps as Anne d'Autriche, Lyna Khoudri as Constance Bonacieux and Dominique Valadié as Marie de Médicis bring a formidable female presence to the male-dominated world. Milady is of course one of the great female villains in fiction. In this account we get an insight in the abuse she has been forced to endure in her formative years. Louis Garrel as Louis XIII, Eric Ruf as cardinal de Richelieu and Marc Barbé as captain de Tréville make their characters forces to reckon with.

While I admire the epic sweep of the movie, I have misgivings about the action scenes. Handheld camerawork and ultra rapid edits convey the general feeling of frenetic combat, but it is hard to make sense of who does what to whom.

Cinema is an art of light, and relentless darkness in prolonged passages may start to feel depressing. In real life, eyes are highly adaptable to darkness, but in movie darkness there is no room for eyes to adapt.

I am always deeply moved by a Three Musketeers presentation, since Les trois mousquetaires and Le Comte de Monte-Cristo by Alexandre Dumas were the first novels I read as a child, and Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D'Artagnan were among the first words I learned to write.

I also remember from those years a tv show in which "Vive l'amour (Vive la compagnie)" (1818 trad. college song) was sung in French by Finnish actors (Ismo Kallio among them I believe) dressed as the three musketeers. There can be no greater motto than "All for one! One for all!"

" Tous pour un ! Un pour tous ! "

Don Giovanni (opera "live in HD" from The Met, 20 May 2023)

W. A. Mozart / Lorenzo Da Ponte: Don Giovanni. The Metropolitan Opera, New York, 2023, P: Ivo van Hove. In the beginning there is Vatermord. Donna Anna and Don Ottavio witness in shock the death throes of the Commandatore, Anna's father. The shock waves of the primal act of violence reverberate through the tragedy until the last supper, where the dead father, reincarnated as the Stone Guest, consigns Don Giovanni, his murderer, to Hell. Photos: The Metropolitan Opera. Please do click on them to enlarge them.

W. A. Mozart / Lorenzo Da Ponte: Don Giovanni. The Metropolitan Opera, New York, 2023, P: Ivo van Hove. Don Giovanni and the three masked avengers at the end of Act I.

W. A. Mozart / Lorenzo Da Ponte: Don Giovanni. The Metropolitan Opera, New York, 2023, P: Ivo van Hove.

W. A. Mozart / Lorenzo Da Ponte: Don Giovanni. The Metropolitan Opera, New York, 2023. Peter Mattei as Don Giovanni.

Il dissoluto punito ossia Il Don Giovanni / Der bestrafte Wüstling oder Don Giovanni. KV 527.
    AT 1798. Dramma giocoso. Composer: W. A. Mozart. Libretto: Lorenzo Da Ponte – based on: Giovanni Bertati: Don Giovanni Tenorio. Original in Italian. Premiere: 29 Oct 1787, Prague: Gräflich Nostitsches Nationaltheater (today: Ständetheater). Duration: 165 min
    The action takes place in Sevilla in the 17th or 18th century.
    Cast:
Donna Anna, die Tochter des Commandatore und Braut von Don Ottavio (soprano) / Federica Lombardi
Donna Elvira, vornehme Dame aus Burgos, Don Giovannis verlassene Geliebte (soprano) / Ana María Martínez
Zerlina, die Braut von Masetto, eine Bäuerin (soprano or mezzosoprano) / Ying Fang
Don Ottavio, der Verlobte von Donna Anna (tenor) / Ben Bliss
Don Giovanni, ein ausschweifender junger Edelmann (barytone) / Peter Mattei
Leporello, Don Giovannis Diener (bass) / Adam Plachetka
Masetto, ein Bauer, Bräutigam der Zerlina (bass) / Alfred Walker
Il Commendatore (Der Komtur) / Der steinerne Gast (bass) / Alexander Tsymbalyuk
contadini, contadine, servitori, suonatori (chorus)
    A co-production of the Metropolitan Opera and Opéra National de Paris.
    Conductor: Nathalie Stutzmann
    Producer: Ivo van Hove
    Production and lighting design: Jan Versweyveld
    Costume design: Christopher Ash
    Choreography: Sara Erde
    Live in HD director: Gary Halvorson
    Live in HD presenter: Erin Morley
    Duration announced: 3h 15 min - 3h 35 min (allowing flexibility of opening commentary and intermission). The presentation started at 18.00 and ended at 21.30 (3h 30 min with an intermission, opening speeches and closing credits.
    English subtitles.
    Recording from The Metropolitan Opera, New York, 20 May 2023.
    Viewed at Finnkino Strand 3, Iso Kristiina, Lappeenranta, 23 May 2023.

AA: I am not an opera-goer, but in a parallel life I would love nothing more. I see today for the first time a full-length performance of Don Giovanni which is familiar to me only as a music listener and from Joseph Losey's film adaptation.

Unlike Ingmar Bergman in The Magic Flute, Losey decided to open up the opera on real locations, which does not work for me. The Mozart / Da Ponte piece was conceived as music theatre and in my opinion is best kept that way, even in film adaptation keeping a "filmed theatre" approach like Bergman did with The Magic Flute.

The co-production of the Opéra National de Paris and The Metropolitan Opera of New York is a magnificent achievement, perfection in all departments, conveyed beautifully in the "live in HD" presentation from three days ago.

The Paris leg of the show opened in 2019, and the New York production was scheduled to open right after, but because of the 2019 global Covid pandemic, the opening at the Met was postponed until now. The production is the same, but the casting and the musicians are different.

Don Giovanni belongs to the Mozart / Da Ponte trilogy of operas "before the Revolution": Le nozze di Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787) and Così fan tutte (1789/1790), the last of which was actually premiering during the Revolution.

Don Giovanni / Don Juan is a character well-known in European fiction at least since Mannerism, the earliest notable dramatization being Tirso de Molina's play (1630), followed by Molière, Goldoni, Zorrilla, Byron, Hoffmann, Pushkin and many others. In many versions, in the beginning, Don Juan kills Doña Ana's father, whose grave marker, "the stone guest", he meets at his last supper before being sent to Hell.

The protagonist's name has become a watchword, Don Juanism meaning the male desire for a maximal number of women, immortalized in Leporello's "catalogue aria".

The 2019 / 2023 approach to the opera is Me Too. This is Don Giovanni as Donald Trump. Don Giovanni as a hitman. Don Giovanni as James Bond. Don Giovanni from Pulp Fiction. He defies Death. He can commit murder or a brutal assault in cold blood. 

Don Giovanni is a predator, so virile, fearless and determined that everyone else seems paralyzed. In a scene in the end of Act 1 Don Giovanni is directly menaced by all, yet walks away scot free. Don Ottavio fails to stand up to him and therefore loses the love of Donna Anna. Masetto is stronger, yet ends up brutally beaten, which undermines Zerlina's love.

The sexual mystery is not simplified or trivialized. The women are horrified yet also aroused and attracted. The encounter with Don Giovanni is something even more disturbing that being abused, harassed or worse. Don Giovanni's animal alpha male charisma shakes women down to the roots.

Reportedly Giacomo Casanova visited the premiere of Don Giovanni in Prague, but in case he did, he did not discover a mirror image of himself on the stage. Casanova claimed interest only in women he loved. Don Juan is insatiably interested in all women, young and old, blondes and brunettes, all sizes, nations and walks of life. Love is not an issue.

Don Juan is indifferent to love, but he cannot live without women, they are like air and water to him, essential Lebensmittel for conspicuous consumption. Don Juan's way with women is nearer to hate than love. Classically, Don Juan has been seen as a narcissist, but his approach is nearer to self-hate than self-love.

In the age of Tinder, women are as likely to have multiple partners as men, and that was probably so also in Mozart's time ("così fan tutte").

Don Giovanni is being played in modern dress. Modern dress for classic plays has been the norm all my lifetime, a tired convention already when I started to see classics as a child. In the middle of the first modern-dress performance I saw (The Merry Wives of Windsor, Finnish National Theatre, 1967) I registered Tauno Palo as Falstaff (another bigger-than-life Mannerist figure like Don Giovanni) winking and smiling in resignation: "please bear with us, I don't like this any more than you do". It is a bit of a case of underestimating the audience that we are not trusted to get the topical relevance of the play without pretending that it is happening today. And yet, importantly, but this is not an issue for a Don Giovanni performance: women of today are not like the women of Rococo Austria or Renaissance Spain.

But there are men today like Don Giovanni played by Peter Mattei. There is a complexity and a determination in him that is convincing. He keeps his poker face in the most amazing situations of danger and bluff. He has seen it all and seems mostly be enjoying his skill at the routine of surviving any threat. He can still play the part of the serenading lover very well, perhaps more perfectly than the other men who are genuinely in love. For the women it is heartbreak non stop.

Like other archetypal Mannerist figures (Don Quijote / Sancho Panza, Doktor Faustus / Mephistopheles), Don Juan has a sidekick, here called Leporello. He is a buffoonish Doppelgänger, and he can trade places with his master to save him from trouble and mislead vengeful women. I like Adam Plachetka's performance. He is a survivor and a scoundrel, ein Mitläufer in his master's demonic ploys. He sings the devastating catalogue aria with abandon, particularly the "è la grande maestosa" line where he transforms into a towering figure.

I am not a music connoisseur. Natalie Stutzmann and the orchestra play the incredibly wonderful and complex music perfectly, perhaps making it slightly more sober, avoiding brio (I imagine). Similarly, Peter Mattei's masterful interpretation of the songs is more about control than abandon.

I notice that on the Met's cast list, Federica Lombardi, Ana María Martínez and Ying Fang, the three female leads, are first billed. Federica Lombardi as Donna Anna is the real center of the production, magnificent in her beautiful and sensual interpretation. Ana María Martínez transcends the traditional buffoonish view of Donna Elvira. She is comical but also dignified although she is being repeatedly cheated in the meanest possible way. Love is blind. Ying Fang brings a spirit of fighting courage to her Zerlina.

Don Giovanni is full of "greatest hits of the opera". This time I am struck by Don Giovanni's surprisingly tender and genuine serenade performance in "Deh, vieni alla finestra". Similarly with the brilliant but cynical "Là ci darem la mano". Among the most memorable performances are Ben Bliss as Don Ottavio singing "Dalla sua pace" and "Il mio tesoro" apparently out-Mozarting Mozart in incredibly challenging passages.

All great, subtly toned down, all holds barred. The digital age cinema theatre is black. The stage image aspires to the condition of the monochrome, as does the costume design. Black, bleak and dark prevail. Only the music conveys the light of love and transcendence in the black night of the soul.

Don Giovanni is a tale of passivity, powerlessness, appeasement and defaitism against violence. This is striking from the viewpoint of the philosophy of history, because the opera was premiered on the eve of the revolution – the uprising against the very type of ruthless aristocracy personified by Don Giovanni. But we see the mounting furor even here.

Mozart believes in divine intervention. Don Giovanni being sent to Hell in the end is not a deus ex machina shortcut. Mozart was a true and profound believer. He died three years later, and during the last year of his life he completed Die Zauberflöte, his greatest celebration of love, and his sacred masterpieces, Requiem and Ave verum corpus.

Il materiale emotivo / Un dragon en forme de nuage / A Bookshop in Paris

Sergio Castellitto: Il materiale emotivo / Un dragon en forme de nuage / A Bookshop in Paris (IT/FR 2021) starring Sergio Castellitto (Vincenzo) and Bérénice Bejo (Yolande). Sur le Pont Mirabeau. Facing Pont de Grenelle-Cadets de Saumur (with Statue de Liberté Paris, invisible behind Castellitto in this photo but visible in the film itself).

Pieni kirjakauppa Pariisissa / En liten bokhandel i Paris.
    IT/FR © 2021 Rodeo Drive / Mon Voisin Productions / Tikkun Production. P: Marco Poccioni, Marco Valsania.
    D: Sergio Castellitto. SC: Ettore Scola, Furio Scarpelli, Silvia Scola – Margaret Mazzantini, Sergio Castellitto – from the story "Un drago a forma di nuvola" by Ettore Scola. Cin: Italo Petriccione – colour – 2.39:1. PD: Massimiliano Sturiale. AD: Emanuele Pellegrino. Set dec: Ilaria Fallacara, Matteo Mattei. Cost: Andrea Cavalletto. VFX: Virginia Cefaly. M: Arturo Annecchino. S: Alessandro Rolla. ED: Chiara Vullo. Casting: Angélique Luisi.
    C: Sergio Castellitto (Vincenzo), Bérénice Bejo (Yolande), Matilda De Angelis (Albertine), Clementino (Clemente), Sandra Milo (Madame Milo), Alex Lutz (Gérard), Marie-Philomène Nga (Colombe), Nassim Lyes (Alain), Maxence Dinant (Padre Mathieu), Bruno Goeury (cleptomane), Alessio Montagnani (clochard Hector), Julie Ciccarelli (Fioraia). Voice talent: Domitilla D'Amico (Yolande's voice).
    Languages: French and Italian.
    Studio: Cinecittà Studios, Rome.
    Loc: Paris, France.
    IMDb, Wikipedia: 89 min, Finland: 97 min
    Festival premiere: 5 March 2021 Berlin International Film Festival.
    Italian premiere: 7 Oct 2021.
    French release (VOD internet): 28 Nov 2021.
    Finnish premiere: 19 May 2023 – released by Future Film – with Finnish subtitles by Lauri Holma & Tarja Sahlsten / Swedish subtitles by [the credit flashed by too fast].
    Viewed at Finnkino Strand 3, Iso Kristiina, Lappeenranta, 22 May 2023.

AA: Based on an unproduced screenplay by Ettore Scola (1931–2016) and his team, A Bookshop in Paris was first adapted as a graphic novel by Ivo Milazzo, imagining Gérard Depardieu and Massimo Troisi in leading roles.

Sergio Castellitto catches engagingly the emotional arc of the story about the ageing bookstore owner Vincenzo (Castellitto) and his paralyzed daughter Albertine (Matilda De Angelis). Vincenzo seems to have been caught in a timeless existence: he does not even have a mobile phone. He is shaken up from his routine by a wild spirit, the actress Yolande (Bérénice Bejo).

The film is openly theatrical and studio-bound, mostly shot on Cinecittà sets. In the beginning and the end there are even opening and closing curtains.

A Bookshop in Paris is a celebration of books and reading. Vincenzo is committed to literature. Yolande is a living negation of his calling: "Who needs books? We live in the digital age." "You are dead men walking". But Vincenzo is happy to fight for his cause: "Literature is eternal. Actuality is lethal".

When Yolande complains that she has no time for big books, Vincenzo gives her Marguerite Yourcenar's Les Trente-Trois Noms de Dieu. Other books discussed include Boris Vian's L'Écume des jours, Le Journal d'Anne Frank, Madame Bovary and Schopenhauer's Hedgehog's Dilemma. Oscar Wilde is quoted ("I live in terror of not being misunderstood").

But the true meta-dimension is provided by Dostoevsky. A Gentle Creature is another "small book" recommended by Vincenzo to Yolande who has no patience for big ones. It was filmed by Bresson as Une femme douce. A poster of Visconti's Le notti bianche, an adaptation of another Dostoevsky tale, White Nights, can be seen on Vincenzo's wall. Dostoevsky sets his story in the midnight sun period by the river Neva in St. Petersburg. In Visconti's imagination we are on a wintertime bridge in the Venezia Nuova district of Livorno. Castellitto's film reminds us of Bresson's version, Quatre nuits d'un rêveur, shot on Pont-Neuf (and paid homage to in Leos Carax's Les Amants du Pont-Neuf).

Castellitto stages a central scene on another bridge over the Seine, Pont Mirabeau (see poster above), famous from a poem by Apollinaire. Like Dostoevsky's dreamer, Vincenzo is waken up by a vibrant woman, only to be discarded by her in the end. But both he and his daughter have been jolted back to life.

Like Visconti and Bresson, Castellino approaches his story as a fairy-tale. We are in a tourist Paris of retouched / photoshopped picture postcards. The bookshop is on the pictoresque side of Montmartre like Amélie's home. Eiffel Tower is visible on the other side, on the left bank. Everything is in pastiche. There is an obvious, even flaunted, digital look.

Despite the artifice, the "emotional material" promised in the film's title is genuine. But again, perhaps due to pandemic circumstances, there is a lack of vigour and power in the movie.

Ellos eatnu / Let the River Flow

Ole Giæver: Ellos eatnu / Let the River Flow (NO/SE/FI 2023) starring Ella Marie Hætta Isaksen as Ester.

Ellos eatnu – La elva leve [Norwegian title] / Anna joen virrata / Låt älven leva.
    NO/SE/FI © 2023 Mer Film / Zentropa Sweden / Bufo / Knudsen Pictures / Helmet. PC: Mer Film. P: Maria Ekerhovd. Co-PC: Bufo, Zentropa Sweden, Knudsen Pictures, Helmet. Co-P: Misha Jaari, Mark Lwoff.
    D+SC: Ole Giæver. DP: Marius Matzow Gulbrandsen – 2K. PD: Ragnhild Juliane Sletta, Cecilie de Lange. Cost: Nell Knudsen. Makeup: Salla Yli-Luopa. ED: Wibecke Rønseth. S: Bent Holm – 5.1. M: Ola Fløttum, Pessi Levanto.
  Cast:
Ester – Ella Marie Hætta Isaksen
Mihkkal – Gard Emil  
Risten – Sofia Jannok
Piera – Beaska Niillas
Marit – Marie Kvernmo
Stein – Finn Arve Sørbøe
Thomas – William Sigvaldsen
Áhkku – Mary Sarre
Gøran – Ivar Beddari
Principal – Maria Bock
Ailu – Robert Amadeus Gaup Mienna
Ailu's father – Mikkel Gaup
    Languages: Northern Sámi, Norwegian.
    Duration according to the pressbook: 123 min, Filmikamari 124 min, Norwegian Wikipedia and IMDb 118 min
    Festival premiere: Tromssa Film Festival 2023.
    Finnish premiere: 5 May 2023 – distributor: B-Plan Distribution – 118 min – subtitles in Finnish and Northern Sámi by Thomas Brevik Kjærstad.
    Viewed at Finnkino Strand 2, Iso Kristiina, Lappeenranta, 21 May 2023.

IMDb: "Ester hides her identity to avoid being exposed to racism. When Ester suddenly finds herself in the middle of demonstrations against a big dam development in Alta, a personal journey out of the shame she has carried so long begins."

Wikipedia: "The Alta conflict or Alta controversy refers to a series of massive protests in Norway in the late 1970s and early 1980s concerning the construction of a hydroelectric power plant in the Alta River in Finnmark, Northern Norway." [In Finland, Finnmark, to the North of North Finland, is known as Ruija].

AA: A powerful dramatic subject: the Northern Sámi people's fight for their survival and existence in the 1970s. A subject relevant to themes of the Sámi, indigenous rights and new colonial history. More generally it is a major history lesson of civil disobedience and passive resistance.

The protagonist, the timid teacher Ester, is played by Ella Marie Hætta Isaksen, a Sámi activist herself, in her debut film role. It is a coming of age saga of Ester, who has learned to hide her identity, turning into a fighter for the rights of her people. The tale is told with honesty and a sense for complexity.

There are memorable scenes in the film. Ester, the young teacher, is bullied, belittled and insulted by her fellow teachers. When she finally speaks up, she says it out loud in her native Northern Sámi. Nobody understands a word of what she is saying, but everybody gets the message. The bullying ends here.

The cinematography by Marius Matzow Gulbrandsen is breathtaking. The wild North is captured in endless grandiose views. The Sámi people have an experience of millennia in surviving in these harsh but compelling surroundings.

Today is Remembrance Day / Kaatuneitten muistopäivä / Commemoration Day of Fallen Soldiers in Finland. We raised the flag in the morning, but it has failed to fly because of a lack of wind.

A similar trouble haunts Let the River Flow. All ingredients are in place: a great subject and a magnificent production on location. But there is no wind. Perhaps yet another case of what I have called "the pandemic phlegmatic syndrome".

DATA FROM THE PRESS BOOK:

Revoir Paris / Paris Memories

Alice Winocour: Revoir Paris / Paris Memories (FR 2022) avec Virginie Efira (Mia).

Muistan sinut, Pariisi / Minnas Paris.
    FR © 2022. PC: Dharamsala, Darius Films. Co-PC: Pathé Films. Vente internationale + distribution France: Pathé Films, Pathé International. P: Isabelle Madelaine, Emilie Tisné. Co-P: Ardavan Safaee.
    D+SC: Alice Winocour. DP: Stéphane Fontaine – 1,85 – colour. PD: Florian Sanson. AD: Margaux Remaury. Cost: Pascaline Chavanne; Caroline Spieth. Original M: Anna von Hausswolff. S: Jean-Pierre Duret, Pascal Villard, Laure-Anne Darras, Marc Doisne – 5.1. ED: Julien Lacheray. Casting: Anaïs Duran.
    C: Virginie Efira (Mia), Benoît Magimel (Thomas), Grégoire Colin (Vincent), Maya Sansa (Sara), Amadou Mbow (Assane), Nastya Golubeva Carax (Félicia), Anne-Lise Heimburger (Camille), Sokem "Kemso" Ringuet (Hakim), Sofia Lesaffre (Nour / Madeleine), Clarisse Makundul (Essé), Zakariya Gouram (médecin cicatrice), Jonathan Turnbull (restaurateur brasserie), Dolores Chaplin (Estelle, la femme de Thomas).
    M soundtrack selections: – Arvo Pärt: Fratres (1977). – Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov: La Fille de neige / The Snow Maiden / Снегурочка / Snegurochka (1880).
    Loc: Paris – Maison de Radio France (Paris 16) – Brasserie Vaudeville [L'Étoile d'Or] (Paris 2) – Arc de triomphe de l'Étoile / Avenue des Champs-Élysées (Paris 8, aerial shot) – Place de la Bourse (Paris 2) – Place de la République (Paris 3/10/11) – Opéra Bastille (Paris 12) – Musée de l'Orangerie: salles Les Nymphéas (Paris 1) – les bords de la Seine (the homeless, the illegal immigrants) – autour la Tour Eiffel, in the maze of the Champs de Mars (Paris 7). [My attempt to register them, to be verified].
    105 min
    Award: César de la meilleure actrice: Virginie Efira.
    Festival premiere: 21 May 2022 (Festival de Cannes: Quinzaine des réalisateurs)
    French premiere: 7 Sep 2022.
    Finnish premiere: 5 May 2023, released by Atlantic Film, with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Joel Kinnunen / Michaela Palmberg.
    Viewed at Finnkino Strand 2, Iso Kristiina, Lappeenranta, 11 May 2023.

AA: Alice Winocour's film has been inspired by the November 2015 Paris attacks by the Islamic State. There were six targets. The direct reference here is the attack on the Bataclan Theatre. The movie is multi-layered, and it discusses several themes, but terrorism is not among them.

Revoir Paris is a profound study about memory loss and post-traumatic stress disorder. Mia (Virginie Efira) is a survivor of the attack on the restaurant L'Étoile d'Or. She suffers from amnesia, blackout, and loss of focus and concentration. She returns from a three month convalescence as a stranger in her own life.

The approach can be compared with Alain Resnais in Nuit et brouillard, Hiroshima mon amour and Muriel: coming to terms with a traumatic social experience that transcends the limits of understanding. The level of ambition is the same, but Winocour is not imitating anyone. She has conducted a heartfelt research gaining both human and scientific results. A key concept is the "trauma diamond": in the hard process of recovery a new insight may crystallize.

After an initial retirement, Mia returns to Paris and skeptically and reluctantly starts to approach a trauma therapy network. The debriefing findings in the post-crisis meetings seem initially banal and useless, even destructive, but little by little trivial details turn into building blocks in a meaningful jigsaw puzzle. "You need two to remember". Key sentences also include: "Someone was with me" and "I have never felt such closeness" (there was a love act between two people who were expecting to die).

I feel uneasy to discover that the main channel of communication among the survivors is Facebook, which for me is increasingly an (the) embodiment of hate speech. Today I have been reading Vanessa Barbara's essay "Brazil at the Crossroads" in The New York Review of Books. She refers to Max Fisher's book The Chaos Machine (2022) about the backlash of misogyny, antisemitism, authoritarianism and fake news, the main forum of which is social media such as Facebook. In Brazil, Facebook is widely seen as a main reason for the destruction of civil society.

Mia's relationship to her partner Vincent (Grégoire Colin) disintegrates because Vincent cannot connect with the trauma which has become the central experience in Mia's existence. Instead, Mia comes closer to Thomas (Benoît Magimel), a convalescing invalid with severe leg damage, in addition to which he now suffers from claustrophobia.

Thomas is a fighter, refusing to act victimized during the painful treatment in which the bones of his legs are reconstructed bit by bit. The closeness of Mia and Thomas leads to a night of love, made special by the attention needed for the scars of both and the metal prostheses of Thomas. The tender sequence is far from Cronenberg land.

The saga of recovery is psychologically genuine, and more than that, it has philosophical depth: this is a film about memory and identity. Revoir Paris is a film about dialogue, about a meeting of the minds. We are who we are in dialogue with the other. Mia wins back her identity via memory flashes. Little memories build to a bigger picture.

The journey on the memory lane includes a visit to the Orangerie to the rooms displaying Monet's Water Lilies. Mia takes an orphan girl there because that painting was the last thing her parents saw before they died. In her press notes, Winocour says:

" What I didn’t know was that Monet had given this picture to France after the horrors of the First World War so people could meditate on a scene empty of human presence. He said that visitors should stand in silence before the painting, the better to contemplate the beauty of the world. Since it was sheer intuition that had led me to chose the museum, I was very touched to learn that. "

Besides being a psychological, medical and philosophical movie, Revoir Paris is also a sociological survey. Mia's memory flashes include a tattooed arm and holding hands. She draws the conclusion that the person must have been kitchen staff and launches a quest to find him.

Winocour's approach evokes classics of neorealism (chasing a single person can lead to revelations about society). Mia finds out that many have vanished from the scene of the massacre. There were a lot of paperless, illegal immigrants among the restaurant staff.

We are led to the revelation that there is an undocumented shadow existence, a secret society among us. More than that, we hear as an aside that the presence of illegal restaurant staff from Senegal, Mali and Sri Lanka is so overwhelming that if they would go on strike, Paris would not eat.

In my Sight & Sound 2022 Top Ten list I included Charles Chaplin's City Lights and commented that the movie is getting increasingly topical due to the global refugee crisis. I am moved by Winocour's direct reference to City Lights in the final sequence. As well as the presence of Charlie's granddaughter Dolores among the cast.

After many false starts and dead ends, the tireless Mia finds the man who goes under different names and changes location constantly. This is not a love story, but it is about something equally grand: affirming and celebrating our mutual humanity. Finding ourselves we find the other.

I keep registering a peculiar pandemic / post-pandemic phlegmatic syndrome in recent movies. Revoir Paris has many strengths. It is a character-driven movie in which Virginie Efira gives an outstanding performance in an exceptionally difficult role. It is thematically strong and complex but never confused.

I was thinking about The Beatles, why they disintegrated. They needed to play together in live performances to keep the band spirit. There was nothing wrong, but they missed the greatest joy of the play, and so they quit as a band and continued on their different paths.

In the fragmented circumstances of remote work crews may have lost something of the irresistible, infectious joy and team spirit of film-making. I may be wrong about Revoir Paris. I think that powerfully story-driven films may be easier to accomplish in exceptional circumstances than character-driven ones, visionary films, or any kinds of films that are based on the power of presence, the sense of being or a revelation or epiphany (the Chekhov school of fiction).

Revoir Paris is an exceptional and highly distinguished film, and it could be a great film if there were a sense of irresistible energy and drive.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: REVOIR PARIS PRESS BOOK:

Albert Edelfelt 2022–2023 touring exhibition in Paris (Petit Palais), The Gothenburg Museum of Art and Helsinki (Ateneum)

Albert Edelfelt: Självporträtt i 1600-talsdräkt / Self-Portrait in Dress of the 17th Century (1889), National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum. Photo: National Gallery / Jenni Nurminen. – A humoristic Baroque reincarnation, a self-reflection as if seen by Edelfelt's favourite painters, Diego Velázquez and Frans Hals.

Albert Edelfelt (1854–1905): Den brända byn / Burnt Village. History painting. 1879. Oil on canvas. Height: 124 cm (48.8 in), width: 199 cm (78.3 in). Collection: Cygnaeus Gallery. The painting depicts an imaginary scene from the time of the Cudgel War of 1596–1597, a peasant uprising in Finland, which was then part of the Kingdom of Sweden. In the painting, a Finnish peasant family has fled their home village, which has been burnt down by a military force. Photo and text: Wikipedia: Burnt Village (Finnish, Swedish, English, Ukrainian).

Albert Edelfelt: På havet / At Sea. 1883. Oil on canvas. 165,00 x 152,00 cm. Frame: 206,00 x 195,00 x 12,00 cm. Collection: Gothenburg Museum of Art. Accession number: F 22. Testamentarisk gåva av Pontus och Göthilda Fürstenberg 1902. This file was provided to Wikimedia Commons by Göteborgs museer och konsthall as part of a cooperation project with Wikimedia Sverige. Göteborgs konstmuseum, foto: Hossein Sehatlou.

Albert Edelfelt (1854–1905): Ett barns likfärd / Conveying the Child's Coffin / A Child's Funeral. 1879. Oil on canvas. Height: 120 cm (47.2 in); width: 204 cm (80.3 in). Collection: Ateneum. Accession number: A II 819. Purchase 1907. Valtion taidemuseo. Source/Photographer: LAG1bHKWVB7VvQ at Google Cultural Institute.

Albert Edelfelt (1854–1905): Louis Pasteur, en 1885, huile sur toile, H. 155,0 ; L. 127,5 cm. Achat à Albert Edelfelt, 1887 ; Dépôt du musée national du château de Versailles, 1986. © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d’Orsay) / Martine Beck-Coppola. "Like many of his contemporaries from Northern Europe, the Finn Albert Edelfelt came to France when he was scarcely twenty to study at the fine arts school in Paris. He quickly took part in the official exhibitions and soon won medals and awards. The presentation of his portrait of the chemist and biologist Louis Pasteur at the Salon of 1886 marked a new stage in his career because it earned him the Legion of Honour. At a time when painters readily chose contemporary scientific subjects rather than historical painting, which was bogged down in the reproduction of anecdotes, this portrait of one of the most famous scientists of the time was very popular. Pasteur is shown in his laboratory in the rue d'Ulm, in the midst of his experimental apparatus. He is holding a jar containing the spinal cord of a rabbit infected with rabies which he used to develop a vaccine against rabies. As a result of this discovery, he was hailed as a benefactor of mankind. Far from being a heroic representation, the painting is the epitome of poise, both in its composition and lighting. Light from a window out of sight on the right spreads delicately over the scene, highlighting the equipment and the scientist's thoughtful face." Musée d'Orsay

Albert Edelfelt (1854–1905): Portrait of the Opera Singer Aino Ackté ; 1901. 200,5 × 90 cm, oil on canvas ; purchase by the Antell deputation, 22.2.1902, A I 739 ; owner: Suomen valtio / Museovirasto. Collection: Antell collections. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jenni Nurminen. Ateneum. Aino Ackté was a Finnish coloratura soprano. She was the first international star of the Finnish opera scene after Alma Fohström, and a groundbreaker for the domestic field. The young Ackté studied singing under her mother's tutelage until 1894 when she entered the Paris Conservatory, studying under Edmond Duvernoy and Alfred Girodet. Her debut at the Paris Opera was in 1897 in Faust and she was signed on for six years as a result. Ackté's coterie included Edelfelt. Aino Ackté married a lawyer, Heikki Renvall, in 1901 and gave birth to a daughter, Glory, the same year (Glory Leppänen became a grand lady of the Finnish theatre). She officially adopted the surname Ackté-Renvall. Their son, Mies Reenkola, was born in 1908. In 1904 Ackté was engaged by the New York Metropolitan Opera where she remained until 1906. She performed the title role of Richard Strauss's Salome at its local premieres in Leipzig (1907) and London (1910). The Covent Garden premiere was an enormous success and Strauss himself proclaimed Ackté the "one and only Salome". Ackté considered the London performances her real breakthrough. In 1911, Ackté, Oskar Merikanto, and Edvard Fazer founded the Kotimainen Ooppera (renamed in 1914 Finnish Opera, and then in 1956 the Finnish National Opera). She was to act as its director in 1938–1939. After parting ways with the National Opera, Ackté organized an international Savonlinna Opera Festival beginning on 3 July 1912; it was held 1912–1914, 1916 and 1930. Her final public performances took place at the Savonlinna Opera Festival in 1930. She provided the libretto for Juha, and opera that received two treatments: the first by Aarre Merikanto (1922) and the second by Leevi Madetoja (1934). She died of pancreatic cancer in 1944. Because of the connection with the "l'air des bijoux" in Gounod's Faust, Ackté may have been one of the models for the coloratura diva Bianca Castafiore in the Adventures of Tintin by Hergé. (From Wikipedia: Aino Ackté).

Albert Edelfelt: Une citoyénne de l'an II (1877). Huile sur toile. 60 x 45,5 cm. Niemistö Collection.

Albert Edelfelt (1854–1905): Den första snön / The First Snow. Collection: Signe ja Ane Gyllenbergin säätiön taidekokoelma. G-2011-304. 70,0 x 60,0 cm. 85,0 x 75,0 x 5,5 cm. 1902-1903. Oil on canvas. Resource ID 402749. Kuva: Villa Gyllenberg / Matias Uusikylä CC BY-NC-SA 4.0'.

Albert Edelfelt (1854–1905): Utsikt från Kaukola ås i solnedgång / Kaukola Ridge at Sunset. 116,5 × 83 cm, oil on canvas, purchase, 8.1.1976, A IV 4248, omistaja: Suomen valtio. Kuva: Kansallisgalleria / Hannu Pakarinen

Albert Edelfelt 5.5.–17.9.2023
The exhibition visited at the press conference, 3 May 2023.

Official introduction (Ateneum / Finnish National Gallery):

" The exhibition provides an overarching view of the life’s work of one of Finland’s most renowned and popular artists. 

An international perspective on a Finnish master

As well as being a pre-eminent artist, Albert Edelfelt (1854–1905) was socially skillful and spoke several languages. He travelled widely across Europe and the Nordics and lived a large portion of his life in Paris. While living and working in France, he met several of the leading names in the field of arts, culture and science as well as art collectors and dealers.

The Edelfelt exhibition will present portraits of the artist’s family members, prominent figures of the time, and artist colleagues. Other exhibits will include landscapes and views from Paris, as well as depictions from Edelfelt’s travels in the south of France, Italy and Spain. He painted familiar landscapes in Porvoo, at his villa in Haikko, and in Helsinki. The exhibition will include many beloved works that are considered to be Finnish national treasures, such as Boys Playing on the Shore (1884), The Luxembourg Gardens, Paris (1887), Women of Ruokolahti on the Church Hill (1887), and Conveying the Child’s Coffin (1879).

Edelfelt is a widely researched figure, which speaks to his central role in the history of Finnish art. Prior to the Ateneum Art Museum, the Edelfelt retrospective toured Petit Palais in Paris and the Gothenburg Museum of Art.

Received to wide public acclaim, the exhibitions have produced further research and new knowledge on Edelfelt’s life and career. The exhibition and the accompanying catalogue open up completely new perspectives into the artist’s career.

The exhibition is curated by Anne-Maria Pennonen and Hanne Selkokari, curators at the Ateneum Art Museum.

Touring exhibitions:
Albert Edelfelt, 10 March–10 July 2022, Petit Palais, Paris
22 October 2022–12 March 2023, Gothenburg Museum of Art

The retrospective of works by Albert Edelfelt (1854–1905) examines Edelfelt’s entire career and, in particular, his role as an international influencer.

This is the first solo exhibition of works by Albert Edelfelt in Paris and it introduces the Finnish artist to a French audience. The artist was a trailblazer who paved the way for later Finnish artists to gain a foothold in Paris. Edelfelt also played a major role in the World Fairs held in Paris in 1889 and 1900, both as an artist and a spokesperson.

Edelfelt’s first exhibition in Sweden took place in Gothenburg in 1884. He had several close contacts in the city, for instance the couple Pontus and Göthilda Fürstenberg, who were among his patrons. The Gothenburg Museum of Art’s collection includes several important works by Albert Edelfelt and the exhibition defines Sweden’s and Gothenburg’s place in the artist’s cosmopolitan geography.

The exhibition features works from the collections of the Finnish National Gallery/Ateneum Art Museum, and the collections of French and Nordic museums. Exhibits also include works from other public and private collections in Finland and abroad. A total of approximately 110 works will be on display. The works travelling to France for the exhibition include Queen Bianca (1877), Conveying the Child’s Coffin (A Child’s Funeral) (1879), Boys Playing on the Shore (1884), The Luxembourg Gardens, Paris (1887), and Women Outside the Church at Ruokolahti (1887).

The curators of the exhibition are Anne-Maria Pennonen and Hanne Selkokari for the Ateneum, and Anne-Charlotte Cathelineau for the Petit Palais and Eva Nygårds for the Gothenburg Art Museum.

The international collaboration has been partly funded by Jane and Aatos Erkko foundation. "

AA: Albert Edelfelt is a mainstay of Finnish culture. He had a special talent in creating enduring images of history and culture, works that transcend the anecdotal and the particular and convey the timeless. His works belong to the core imagery of Finland. In France, he achieved that with his portait of Louis Pasteur.

The Pasteur painting is an example of Edelfelt's talent. Pasteur himself and his family recognized it as definitive and further commissions followed from family members. One of the most moving experiences in the Atenem exhibition is to find oneself surrounded by dozens of Edelfelt's portraits. They feel alive. Look at them, and they look back. The human presence is vivid and dignified. Edelfelt portrays queens and czars on a human scale. In turn, there is nobility in his portraits of working people such as fishermen. For Georg Brandes, Edelfelt was "adelsmannen som realist" ("the nobleman as a realist"), quoted by Salme Sarajas-Korte.

In Finland Edelfelt is such a fixture of national iconography, including school book illustrations and postage stamps, that there is a risk of the over-familiar and the cliché. "Don't we already know him?" "Haven't we seen enough?" "Haven't we seen too much?" But this exhibition gives new food to thought and reassessments.

We live in an age of rising nationalism and populism, even in the field of art. Albert Edelfelt was a patriotic activist in the period of Finland's national awakening (from ca 1870 until the declaration of independence in 1917). But he was also always an internationalist whose second home was Paris. His lineage was in Swedish nobility, and he was a court painter of the Russian Empire.

As an artist, Edelfelt's roots were in the classical tradition, with influences from realism and naturalism. Edelfelt lived in the period of the breakthrough of impressionism. It was a road he did not take, but his art was subtly influenced by the new freedom. A key current was national romanticism, for instance in works based on the historical epics by Zacharias Topelius and J. L. Runeberg.

At the press conference I heard that the term "the Golden Age" is no longer popular when discussing  Finnish art in ca. 1870–1905, but I think it still has validity. Finnish literature, music, theatre, architecture, design and art all gained international prominence during that brief period. During the national awakening a new self-confidence emerged that was crucial on the road to independence. Edelfelt was a major figure. A parallel term that I find essential for Edelfelt is "Belle Époque".

During the last five years, the Me Too debate has revived John Berger's classic "male gaze" discourse (coined in his tv series Ways of Seeing, 1972). Is there a male gaze in the Edelfelt oeuvre? Obviously, Edelfelt was a ladies' man with the expected lifestyle of an artist based in Paris. He loved to paint women, but in his portraits, women have agency. They are self-confident, they are heroes of their own lives. They are subjects, not objects. Edelfelt created the definitive portrait of Aino Ackté, the international soprano diva and founder of the Savonlinna Opera Festival. But also Edelfelt's paintings of Virginie, a Parisian demi-mondaine, explored in the books of Anna Kortelainen, are full of grace and self-assurance.

It is fascinating to register Edelfelt's empathy for the fighting woman. Une citoyenne de l'an II (1877, see above) is a striking portrait of a revolutionary woman. Year II in the French revolutionary calendar began in September 1793 and ended in September 1794. As a 17-year-old student in September 1871 Edelfelt drew the pencil sketch Une pétroleuse from memory, conveying a fighting woman of the Paris Commune (March–May 1871), inspired by a lithograph by Adrien Marie. I am alerted to these works by Anna Kortelainen in her chapter "Edelfelt's Political Thought: 'The Art of the Possible'? in the exhibition catalogue. Albert Edelfelt seemed to have an acute social consciousness with an affinity with his mentor Zacharias Topelius.

Edelfelt's distinction in the "male gaze" discourse is even more pronounced if we compare him with his teacher, Jean-Léon Gérôme, and his passion for the odalisque and the (female) slave market. Such voluptuous emphasis is absent from Edelfelt. The difference is equally great from Edelfelt's dear friend Anders Zorn who celebrated Dalarö's buxom beauties in summer paradise wear. To the classic subject of the nude, Zorn added something new: the magic impact of the Nordic summer light.

Edelfelt did not indulge in nudity like Zorn, but he joined him in the plein air voyage of discovery of the Nordic light. Plein air artists such as Zorn and Edelfelt provided inspiring models for the first Nordic masters of the cinema such as Sjöström (Terje Vigen) and Stiller (Song of the Scarlet Flower).

Edelfelt lived in the age of a growing prominence of photography and the birth of the cinema. Edelfelt used photographs for portraits if the subject was dead. Following the example of his teacher Jules Bastien-Lepage, he also had Louis Pasteur's study photographed in order not to waste the scientist's time for painting the interior sur place.

I know nothing about Edelfelt's reactions to the cinema, but I find in his work an affinity with the Lumière brothers. "Lumière" means "light", and all associations are valid here. The 2022 Petit Palais leg of this exhibition was called "Lumières de Finlande". Edelfelt was a realist with a special talent and passion in plein air, just like the Lumière brothers. I'm thinking about my favourite Lumière movie, Barque sortant du port.

I was also thinking about Luchino Visconti, the aristocrat who felt a profound brotherhood with the working people. Among Edelfelt's passions was the sea and the life of the fishermen, like in Visconti's La terra trema. The ordinary becomes extraordinary. The true nobleman recognizes the inner nobility of his fellow citizen. Visconti, like Renoir and Becker, believed in the aristocracy of the spirit. The same grandeur of spirit is evoked in Edelfelt's portraits of Larin Paraske, the Fenno-Ugric Mnemosyne (Izhorian, not Finnish), "the Mother of Song".

One of Edelfelt last works was a series of ink washes for Selma Lagerlöf's tale Sir Arne's Treasure, the illustrated edition published in 1904. They were acclaimed for their striking dramatic impact and concentration. Lagerlöf even modified the ending of her tale to better fit the illustration. Mauritz Stiller paid tribute to Edelfelt's visualization in his film adaptation Sir Arne's Treasure (1919). The composition of the final funeral procession may have inspired in turn Fritz Lang in Die Nibelungen and Sergei Eisenstein in Ivan the Terrible. This chain of tributes and influences was suggested by Bengt Idestam-Almquist in his books Eisenstein, ett konstnärsöde i Sovjet (1951) and Mauritz Stiller (Anthologie du Cinéma, no. 25, Mai 1967), qualified by Gösta Werner in his monograph Herr Arnes pengar (1979) in the chapter "Albert Edelfelts teckningar", pp. 154–158.

Edelfelt had exceptional talent for the archetypal. His angle was both national and international, temporal and eternal.

Aimo Reitala points out that Edelfelt's first breakthrough paintings form a series about four basic emotions:
– Love: Drottning Blanka / Queen Blanche (1877). For Reitala, the emotion here is "joy". The greatest love in Albert's life was his mother. Historical period of the painting: Folkungatiden / Folkung Period (in the Middle Ages). Blanka av Namur (1320–1363) was Queen of Sweden, Norway and Scania via marriage to King Magnus Eriksson.
– Hate: Hertig Karl, skymfande Klas Flemings lik / Duke Charles IX of Sweden insulting the corpse of his enemy, Klaus Fleming (1878). The historical date of this scene is 1597, one year after the Burnt Village (see above). For a man/woman of the cinema, this painting is fascinating because of the mise-en-scène of the eyelines.
– Fear: Den brända byn / Burnt Village (1879). See above. The Finnish-born Klaus Fleming, seen as a corpse in the previous painting, conducts here a brutal repression of the Finnish peasant rebellion known as Nuijasota / The Cudgel War. Having shown bravery in Gustaf Vasa's Great Russian War against Ivan the Terrible, Fleming rose to the inner circle of the Vasa dynasty [monarchs of Sweden from Gustaf Vasa till Queen Christina, 1523–1654], also wreaking terror as quasi-dictator in Finland.
– Sorrow: Ett barns likfärd / A Child's Funeral (1879). See above.

The sense of history was alive in Edelfelt's family. They were friends of J. L. Runeberg and Zacharias Topelius whose historical epics inspired Edelfelt. He covered the Finnish War 1808–1809 in his cycle for The Tales of Ensign Stål (Runeberg) and the history from The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) to the coup d'état of Gustav III (1772) in The Tales of the Field Surgeon (Topelius).

Particularly close to Edelfelt was the 16th century, the Early Vasa era (1523–1611, between the Kalmar Union and the Swedish Empire / stormaktstiden). The 16th century was portrayed by Edelfelt in the Burnt Village, Duke Charles insulting the corpse of Klaus Fleming and Sir Arne's Treasure. This was the century of Reformation and Renaissance, of Shakespeare and Cervantes. Henry VIII, Anna Boleyn, Elizabeth I, Don Carlos (the Spanish Inquisition), Ivan the Terrible, la Reine Margot and St. Bartholomew's Day's massacre of Huguenots would inspire countless artworks, including movies. Edelfelt's works witness that North Europe was not safe from the brutality of the century.

Except for Huguenots: the Nordic countries were among the first converters to Protestantism and a safe haven for Huguenots. Officially Huguenots entered Sweden in 1617. Albert Edelfelt's wife was born Ellan de la Chapelle, from a noble family that arrived from France in 1611 and still flourishes in Finland. I am not aware that they were Huguenots, but they were certainly aware of the dragonnades in France.

Edelfelt became something like Finland's cultural ambassador in Paris during the country's crucial fight for its autonomy. He was in charge of the Finnish pavilion in the Exposition Universelle of 1900, the Paris world's fair where Finland for the first time appeared as a national cultural entity. There were hesitations about participation because of l'Affaire Dreyfus: Edelfelt and his circle were Dreyfusards.

As an early "Parisien from Finland", Edelfelt, the leading Finnish artist of the 19th century, become a generous and benevolent big brother to younger colleagues such as Axel Gallén, Helene Schjerfbeck, Ellen Thesleff and Magnus Enckell. Edelfelt let them use his atelier when he was abroad.

The exhibition is well curated, the three catalogues (the French, the Swedish, the English / the Finnish, all different) all eminently worth studying. The hanging and the lighting are perfect. The lighting is softer for pastels to protect them. Try to chase away the mobile phone tormentors with their blinding screens to fully immerse the tenderly lit pastels.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: PETIT PALAIS INTRODUCTION: