Cinematic Distractions...

[dulcedemon]

Three Times(Zui hao de shi guang - 2005):
A duo of actors, a trio of times, a trio of love triangles...
1966: A Time for Love:
The first of these love stories is the standout of the group. In my opinion, this one gets everything right in terms of look, sound, pacing, and emotional involvement.
The look is the smoky pool halls of mid-1960s Taiwan attended by fashionably dressed, well-coiffured pool hostesses, leaning over green-felted tables while(more often than not) racking red balls for snooker.
The music is strong, and tied tightly to the plot. There are two main songs: Smoke Gets In Your Eyes(The Platters - 1958), and Rain and Tears(Aphrodite's Child - 1968)
Smoke wafts, cues and balls clack, chalk scrawls, looks are exchanged as the music plays, and the game goes on...
He is a soldier who likes to spend his leave hours playing pool. He develops a crush on the pretty hostess with whom he often plays. He writes to her while he is away in the army. Upon his return, he finds that she left her job, and moved away without telling him.
She is the new hostess, who has taken the place of the soldier's pen pal pseudo-girlfriend. They play game after game, night after night. He falls for her, but must leave once again. Months pass, he writes to her, but upon his return she is gone. He sets out to find her.
I'll stop giving away the story there.
Favorite scenes:
--The opening scene where Smoke Gets In Your Eyes plays for the first time. It's the first scene, but it's the second pool hostess.
--Every scene where she opens/closes the heavy wooden sliding doors to the pool hall.
--When they get to the train station late, and stand together looking up at the train schedule before deciding to go to the nearest bus stop.
--At the bus stop, when they stand together under an umbrella, holding hands in the rain.
1911: A Time for Freedom:
Instead of a pool hall we have a brothel. The garb is traditional. She works there, but wants out. She is the main attraction/leading courtesan there, and can't leave until her understudy is ready to replace her. He is a married man with at least one child at home.
The times are tumultuous, a revolution is brewing, and he is a participant in it. He frequents the brothel along with his comrades who use it to discuss business while avoiding authoritarian suspicion.
This is the saddest of the three. It's less a love triangle and more a financial one. The understudy gets pregnant, and with help from the revolutionary, buys her way out of the brothel to get married. The leading courtesan must stay even longer until another replacement can be found and trained.
She is in love with the revolutionary, and hopes he will make her his second wife, but he doesn't approve of the practice of keeping concubines. Revolutionary ideals, and all...
Another girl is brought to work in the brothel, but it will be many years before she is trained and ready. "Girl" is intentional. The new understudy is only ten.
2005: A Time for Youth:
The zebra is a bar code.
The line above refers to a piece of art hanging on a wall in one of the scenes.
The most sexual of the three stories is a take on love in the modern world. In this clearly delineated love triangle, we have a photographer(he), a singer(she), and her girlfriend. It's moody, austere, lit by screens, spotlights, and fluorescent tubes. The sound is a meandering, grungy, Mazzy Star style groove.
The setting is strewn with art, provocative photos, and cold urban landscapes. Qi Shu, and Chen Chang are the actors who play the lead roles in each story. They are well matched, and very convincing.

Martha(1974):
Had a fun time synch with this one. Date mentioned in the movie: September 23rd. Date on which I watched this movie: September 23rd.
Martha(Margit Carstensen) is a librarian. She is stunningly attractive in a department-store-mannequin-come-to-life way. Her vivid crimson lipstick lips can probably be seen from space. Her boss wants to marry her, and she has no trouble getting attention from men.
She rebuffs suitors and proposals, citing her obligation to take care of her mother, but really, it's her own reticence and aloofness. Eventually, she accepts a proposal, and things go from not so bad to hellish to completely psychotic from there.
The new husband(Karlheinz Böhm) is a master manipulator extraordinaire, not unlike Martha's father. Daddy issues, mommy issues, misogyny, gaslighting, emotional abuse, and sexual violence --and also some animal cruelty make this a tough movie to get through.
Yet, I sat through it twice. I hated it so much the first time. I worried that my outrage was in excess of what was due. The second time through, I had to skip the part with the cat.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder was not known for making the most likable movies. Thought provoking, reaction provoking, yes. I've seen more than a few, but I'm hard pressed to name a favorite. I guess World on a Wire is the one that provokes the most thought while offending me the least. Fassbinder reminds me of Kubrick in that regard.

Ramen Shop(Ramen Teh - 2019)
Family feel-good noodle slurping to the tune of Telstar. It's a food movie about a young man trying to reunite his family, which had been fractured by geography, and personal tragedy.

La Ronde(1950):
I'm not the biggest fan of French movies, especially romantic ones. Interesting in its devices with the interlocutor, and linked vignettes, but underwhelming in its emotional impact.
Shabby in its treatment of women for the most part. There is a particularly irritating exchange between a head waiter and a busboy in which they go back and forth about what derogatory term is most appropriate for the young woman accompanying a married man to a private dinner at their establishment.
No matter what happens, the men all go bounding off like Pepé Le Pew in the end.

Comfort Movies:
Carted out a couple of favorites from our collection. I've talked about them before on more than one occasion. They are not included in the ranked list above.
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse(1933 - Directed by Fritz Lang):
No matter when I watch this film, it's always pertinent to the now.
Animal Crackers(1930):
The first Marx Brothers movie I ever saw. Of jokes of theirs I have memorized, most are from this. Hooray! for Captain Spaulding, and rest in peace Sid Haig.