Un peu de neige
Jan. 3rd, 2012 10:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bironicWe had a brief burst of flurries today, driven hard by the winds of a cold front. This of course occurred during five of the ten minutes in which we had to walk outside. The sun was out on one side of the sky.
Just watched Son Frère (His Brother), dir. Patrice Chéreau. I've been putting it off because the end of the book made me cry my eyes out and it takes a bit of bracing oneself to face that again. No tears this time, though. More… solemn. More… French? Can a French director make a French book more French? The last line makes me want to say yes, ha.
I'm still working through whether it was as successful as the book. Certainly the shift in genre allowed it to tell its story differently—like showing whole scenes of everyday hospital indignities and frights, shaving, taking blood, calm manhandling, passing out, etc., in place of narrative. All you have to do in place of entire paragraphs is show the startling purple splenectomy scar, Thomas' growing weakness, the changes in Luc's gaze, the body language each time Luc is in bed with his boyfriend.
I remember there being a different emphasis in the book; still a focus on Thomas and Luc's gradual reconciliation and closeness as Thomas progresses through his illness, of course, but more in the book about daily conversations with the old man in the seaside town, more recollections between the brothers about growing up. In that way the movie functioned more as a companion piece, a nod to various threads of the book and then a slightly different take to suit a film. I don't remember there being so much of a homosexual undertone to the brothers' relationship either, but that could have been my naïveté at the time. Certainly the director wasn't afraid to go there, anyway. And a cameo by Pascal Greggory, one of Chéreau's favorites and also mine.
Ooh. I'd so cast Greggory as a Cardassian for one of my Mary Sue stories.
(Whoops. Way to trivialize a book/film about dealing with a seriously ill family member.)
Just watched Son Frère (His Brother), dir. Patrice Chéreau. I've been putting it off because the end of the book made me cry my eyes out and it takes a bit of bracing oneself to face that again. No tears this time, though. More… solemn. More… French? Can a French director make a French book more French? The last line makes me want to say yes, ha.
I'm still working through whether it was as successful as the book. Certainly the shift in genre allowed it to tell its story differently—like showing whole scenes of everyday hospital indignities and frights, shaving, taking blood, calm manhandling, passing out, etc., in place of narrative. All you have to do in place of entire paragraphs is show the startling purple splenectomy scar, Thomas' growing weakness, the changes in Luc's gaze, the body language each time Luc is in bed with his boyfriend.
I remember there being a different emphasis in the book; still a focus on Thomas and Luc's gradual reconciliation and closeness as Thomas progresses through his illness, of course, but more in the book about daily conversations with the old man in the seaside town, more recollections between the brothers about growing up. In that way the movie functioned more as a companion piece, a nod to various threads of the book and then a slightly different take to suit a film. I don't remember there being so much of a homosexual undertone to the brothers' relationship either, but that could have been my naïveté at the time. Certainly the director wasn't afraid to go there, anyway. And a cameo by Pascal Greggory, one of Chéreau's favorites and also mine.
Ooh. I'd so cast Greggory as a Cardassian for one of my Mary Sue stories.
(Whoops. Way to trivialize a book/film about dealing with a seriously ill family member.)
