A Magnificent German Requiem

Saturdays are usually relaxing but not this Saturday. I had to rush off to the Cultural Centre almost immediately after a meal which I had following an earlier stunningly beautiful French film. But when the concert ended, I felt that all the double quick leg work was worth my while: what the earlier French film was visually, Brahm's German Requiem was sonically. They do have something in common though; both were hymns, but in vastly different ways: the first to Nature and the second to man's divine nature.

In many ways, the German Requiem was a landmark. It established Brahm as a composer not to be passed over lightly. Its second movement was Brahm's tribute to his mentor Schumann who tried to commit suicide by jumping into Rhine two years earlier in 1854. Schumann is not only Brahm's mentor, but also his beloved friend and he had a complicated relation with Clara Schumann, his wife. The piece was a completely new kind of Requieum. It did not have the usual theme of resurrection through Jesus Christ. It was sad in places but there is in that music a certain optimism, a spirit first of quiet, then tender and then of resplendent, almost exploding transcendence, which finally uplifts humanity from the Biblical destiny of a life of sorrow in a vale of tears. As Brahms said, it was written less in memory of the dead than in exhortation of the living. 

Throughout his life, Brahm never had much confidence in himself. For that reason, he was extremely critical of his own work and often had to write and then rewrite his pieces. The piece was written not just in one go and there were fits and starts spanning a number of years starting in 1865. By the time he wrote it, Brahms had already had some experience in choral writing because he was in charge of a woman's choir in his hometown Hamburg and he had already written motets in German, instead of in Latin, as he did in this masterpiece which he substantially completed in 1867. Some scholars suggest that the piece was inspired by the death of his mother, especially the 5th movement. The final piece was not presented to the German public in full in 1869!. It's a peculiar mix of the traditional Bach-style fugue counter-points and cantata form and his more romantic treatment.

Critics and scholars have noted certain symmetries in the 7 movement piece eg. the first and last movement in F major with parallel texts "blessed" and harmonic progression. . The 1st movement is "Blessed are they that have sorrow", the 2nd "For All Flesh is as Grass", the 3rd "Lord, make me know that I must have an end", the 4th "How lovely are your dwellings, Lord of Sabbath, 5th "You now have sorrow, Thee will I comfort", the 6th "For we have no abiding city, Behold I show you a mystery" and the last "Blessed are the dead, which die in the Lord." , To me, the first movement is slow and sad becoming less so as the movement progresses. The second has a very insistent and heavy rhythm which is not dispelled till the very end. The third is bit sombre but wavering and undecided. The fourth is more tender, relaxed and soothing. The fifth also shifts between sadness and consolation. The sixth is where the music finally burst forth in magnificence following its contemplative start whilst the final movement successfully resolves the tension of sadness and sorrow built up by the previous movements by an explosion of joy and optimism which nostalgically recalls certain themes of the first movement but now repeats it in a mood of quiet repose,contentment and acceptance. Far from being a depressing piece, the German Requiem is in the end full of hope.

Except for the much too loud and domineering sound of the low organ notes in the first movement, the HKPO and the combined Tasmanian and West Australia Symphony Orchestras' Choruses under Jaap van Zweden gave a truly unforgettable music performance. Though I have heard the German Requiem in CD before, it's  a completely different matter to listen to it live. The impact is so much more powerful. It'll probably take me some time to fully assimilate these two unforgettable and emotionally powerful experiences in a single day one following so closely upon the heels of the other. It can be a bit heavy going.

The Field of Enchantment (La Clé des champs) (魔法池塘)

For 81 minutes this afternoon, I was sucked into and got completely immersed in another world. That is the world of red poppies, fluffy will of the wisps, daisies, water lizards, tadpoles, water skaters, snails, frogs, toads, eels, water snakes, carps, spiders, dragon flies, butterflies, swallows, owls  and all kinds of tiny insects and reptiles at an out of the way pond in a marsh a little distance from a small village somewhere in France. It's a world where initially one and then two lonely children would slip away quietly during their summer vacation, looking, smelling, feeling and being fascinated by all that they experience through their own eyes and their own senses, allowing their childlike minds to wander into the world of imagination, a private world all their own, establishing a silent bond, joined by their common entrancement by the wonders of the profusion of life on that tiny pond which no farmers would approach because a sheep once drowned there. In that world, they would exchange tiny but thoughtful gifts, dolls made of a blade of grass, a tiny stick and a poppy and tiny boats of leaves with another leaf stuck to a twig to serve as a sail and carrying a cargo of tiny pebbles made by the little girl and a jeweller's magnifying glass by the boy and where they would walk hand in hand under water amidst water weeds and gape at the wonders of nature. It's an enchanted world in which children and nature have become one. The story ends when we see the girl (Lindsey Hénocque) whom the boy names "Iris", leave the village in a bug like Citroen at the end of the summer vacation. But the memory of that summer is etched forever into and deep  within the psyche of the boy protagonist. (Simon Delagne,) whose name we don't even know. Throughout the film, they never spoke to each other. But what passed between them is beyond words. They merely hold hands, play and exchange looks. That is good enough for them. The film however is narrated by the boy in a voice off.

The film is  entitled "La Clé des champs" (literally "the key/secret of the fields"), in English "The field of enchantment"  written and directed by the directors of the former award winning  Nature film "Microcosmos": Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou, The photography by Laurent Charbonnier, Laurent Desmet , Claude Nuridsany  and Marie Pérennou is first class: clean, clear and poetic all at the same time. And the movement of the insects, fishes etc are perfectly matched by the music written specially for the film by Bruno Coulais. It's the type of film done with the kind of meticulous attention to details and spectacular photography and sound as only the French could do so. Like the two children, the memories of that 81 minutes will probably last me an entire life time. 

Saturday Fun

I don't know how it is for others. As for me, this is a French fortnight. Apart from having to take "frites" as substitute meals from time to time, may be I could take some French jokes or is it jokes on the French. Whatever it may be, here are some that I managed to angle from that treasury of fun, aka the 'net"  or is it "l'internet" or "le reseau"?

1. Q:   How do the French kill themselves?
    A:    They shoot 15 centimeters above their heads, right in their superiority complex

2. Q: What do you call someone who speaks 3 languages?
    A: Trilingual
    Q: And what do you call someone who speaks 2 languages?
    A:  Bilingual
    Q: And what do you call someone who speaks 1 language?
    A:  French

3. After God created France, he thought it was the most beautiful country in the world.
    People were going to get jealous, so, to make things fair, he decided to create the French.

4. Seen in a Paris hotel elevator: Please leave your values at the front desk.
    Outside a Paris dress shop: Dresses for street walking.
    In a Chambres d'Hôtes in Brittany, France: "The genuine antics in your room come from our family castle. Long life to it." And.... "Please avoid coca watering, cream cleaning, wet towels wrapping, and ironing drying."

5. A real headache from the famous French Prime Minister, Charles de Gaulle
    "How can anyone govern a nation that has 240 different kinds of cheese?

If you fancy some cheese over the weekend, there's little to beat the French!

Low Profile (Je Me Suis fait tout Petit) (渺小如我)

My second film at the FFF is a bit like its showing time, 9.50 p.m., a bit dark. It's "Je me suis fait tout petit" (literally, "I make myself all small" or "cut myself down to size). It's the debut film written and directed by a new female French director Cécilia Rouaud, relying heavily on the acting skills of its principal actors/actresses, Denis Ménochet as Yvan Le Doze, Vanessa Paradis as Emmanuelle, Léa Drucker as Ariane, Laurent Lucas  as Luc, Louise Grinberg as Elise, Angèle Garnier   as Manon, Valérie Karsenti  as Claire,  David Carvalho-Jorge as Léo. Quite a number of characters! But all having as their emotional centre, the protagonist Yvan, a middle-age middle class French school teacher whose wife Claire ran away with another man to Thailand and now running a French restaurant there but leaving behind a 5 year-old-son Leo, whom she had with the other man. Yvan loved his wife very deeply. Her departure left him devastated, completely enclosed within an extremely hard exterior shell, taciturn, abrupt, tactless and even at times, even brutal. He would now respond to the little gestures of friendliness shown him by his garrulous male colleague Luc, who helped him  with his packing great reserve and would react with apparent indifference the advances of an art teacher Emanuelle who accidentally bumped into his bicycle one day and by another coincidence got engaged as a substitute teacher in the Paris school where he was teaching when the former teacher died of old age. He could find emotional release only when he visited the seaside chalet he had in Brittany.

As the film opens, we find him packing things, preparing to leave Paris for good for Brittany and would visit a bar after work just to pass the time. He was lucky to have a sister, Ariane who had agreed to look after his two teenage daughters Manon and Elise, who was studying in the same school that he taught. Both his daughters wanted his attention, one by telling him that she had decided not to use contraceptives because she wanted to have a baby by her deaf-mute boy friend and the other by not doing her home work so she would have to receive as punishment not being permitted to enter her class and would have to sit in the corridor where she knew he would pass through and by distributing pamphlets about animal rights in and outside the school.To add to his troubles, he had to deal with a 12-year old girl in his class who had a crush on him and would leave notes in his locker telling him that she was in love with him. He ignored her and told her she did not know what she was talking about and should stop doing so whereupon she would feign an immediate fainting. But she was as stubborn as he and this led to him being reprimanded by his headmaster who said he had to report such matters to him. He did and had to meet the girls parents as a result of which he got a bruised eye.

Things came to a head when he learned from his sister Ariane, who is full of love and had always wanted a child of her own with her husband Simon who is now living with Yvan's two adolescent daughters and had applied for an adopted child, that she had learned that Claire had left behind a child Leo whom she left with her own sister. After some quick change of mind, Yvan suggested that Ariane should adopt Léo although he was originally opposed to the idea and said she was crazy. She did so. Then he decided that he wanted the child and forcibly took it from her. But he did not know how to deal with the child, who was as absorbed within his own inner world as he was and had to interview one baby sitter after another to be able to do so until his friendly colleague agreed to do so. In the meantime, Emanuelle, who had intimate feelings for him and who told him that he was fighting against himself, continued to encourage him to open himself up and who continued to love him. He took her to his little chalet in Brittany as he did Leo, who both said the place smelled really bad, something which he refused to admit.He only opened himself up when without knowing why he did so, he knocked on her door at 4 or 5 o'clock in the night/morning to tell her he wanted to see her and in the hurry, she closed the door behind her without her key and whilst waiting for the locksmith, she played charade with him.

Then Claire's grandma died and Claire came back with another over-active kid for the funeral. Yvan resigned from the school and drove to his little chalet again, all alone, cleaned up the place and for the first time, he felt relaxed and began to dance to the music of a portable music deck. He had come out of his despair, his anger and his pent up emotions. He decided he was ready to live with his two daughters again together with Leo. The film ends. To me, his chalet in Brittany, close by the sea, is his subconscious, his last emotional refuge, where he could really be himself: run on the beach and breathe the sea air and be rid of the thousand and one trivialities of living in an often cold and impersonal big metropolis like Paris. The story of an emotionally wounded man finally accepting his condition.

The story is not particularly dramatic but the acting is good. I like in particular the quasi-autistic little Léo, Denis too portrays well a man who has such difficulties in expressing all the emotions churning deep within his soul and which makes him so unapproachable. The film is almost like a documentary but is not. Perhaps the director wishes the film to be "se fait petit": low key, land even its humor is so low profile and as unobtrusive as the dumb and unarticulated emotional crisis suffered by Yvan? Is that not why his daughter Manon said she wanted to have a baby by a deaf mute? Is Leo, who would not say a word and would never talk to any one but his rag baby Arlette, his transitional object, not another reflection of Yvan?  

Happiness Never Comes Alone (Un bonheur n'arrive jamais seul)(命中註定搭錯線)

I feel it coming. A really big headache ! The triple F (French Film Festival)  like the tricolor, has come to Hong Kong. The next fortnight will be hectic. Somehow, I got to squeeze time from my busy work/study/talk/concert schedule to accommodate seeing the kind of films I like. That will mean inter alia, hurtling through the MTR corridors, doing my best not to knock people over, drastic time cuts for that other love of my life, hundreds of concubines beckoning on my bookshelf, sandwiches and coffees instead of proper meals, performing impossible logistic of moving from spot A and/or B/C to the location where the latest film will be screened, groping gingerly on the steps of the relevant movie houses before my eyes have gotten used to the sudden darkness upon entry and hopefully not, having to restrain myself from exploding into a florid display of abusive words after being exposed to 110 minutes of banal celluloid. But it began pleasantly enough last night. It's a film featuring my favorite French actress, Sophie Marceau. It's Un bonheur n'arrive jamais seul ( Happiness Never Comes Alone).

It's a light-hearted contemporary French comedy, a mime-like slapstick or burlesque which looks like a perfect embodiment of Murphy's Law (everything which can possibly go wrong will go wrong!). It began with a beautiful looking middle-aged French lady rushing out of the entrance of a posh metal and glass building in the rain and in the process stepping onto one side of an overlong red gauze shawl and sustaining a fall. She was instantly helped to get up by some gallant French gentlemen passing by but insisted that she was OK despite the fall. All this was witnessed by a balding bohemian type in his convertible whose hood which got stuck outside of the same entrance after attending an interview with regard to a possible contract. She was trying to hail a taxi but had no success. Worse, whilst waiting, she was given an unneeded shower from the sprays from a roadside puddle by a speeding car just in time to be late, immediately after the bohemian raised a hand to warn her of the on-coming car. Too bad. His car hood remained stuck and rainwater kept collecting on the car seats. She still failed to have any luck with taxis. He laughed it off and offered to take her to where she wanted to go IF she didn't mind. She lifted her head, made a characteristically French gesture with her hands signifying reluctant acceptance her "destiny" and got into his car. They looked into each others eyes. There seemed instant chemistry or is it electricity (?) in their looks. But both just engaged in polite exploratory chit chat. The journey soon ended in an elegant quarter. She introduced herself as a talent scout and he as an ad song composer. The lady said good bye, The man said, "on se voit (we'll see each other). The lady smiled and left. The man stayed to make sure that she's safely inside the main entrance to the mansion. 20 seconds later, the main entrance of the mansion re-opened. The lady emerged, rushed over to the car, held the man head with both her hands and kissed him passionately

In the next scene, we see them in her bed. Suddenly we hear the voice of a child. A big round face appeared at the door. The man quickly jumped off the bed with incredible speed and covered himself with a white bed sheet on the far side of the bed from the door, in mortal fear. He learned that the lady got a son. In an earlier scene in which he was playing jazz at a club, we hear him declare his abhorrence of children during a casual conversation prompted by one of his friends' comment about how cute a lovely young boy sitting quietly on a chair looked, completely absorbed by what he was hearing from a pair of ear phones whose circumference is bigger than his head . Then he discovered another, and ...another. After the third bedroom door was opened, he asked if there were any more. Much to his relief, there was none. This is the start of an impossible romance. The lady was Charlotte (Sophie Marceau), a woman with two ex husbands and three kids, one 4, the other 7 and the third 14-15. Her current ex was Alain Porshe, the boss of a huge multinational which
is the number 1 in French entertainment and she works for a charitable
foundation established by Porshe specializing in discovering young
artistic talent which deserve help. The man was Sacha (Gad Elmaleh), a
very talented jazz/classical pianist who just lives for the moment, who plays jazz for free at a night club out of
kicks for the genre and who never misses any chance of chatting up and
sleeping with pretty girls there, a guy who at his age is still having his laundry and meals done by his mom and who makes a living composing catchy advertising
ditty which he could turn out in anything from 3 minutes to half an hour
and who is partner with a completely dedicated shadow show choreographer Laurent  (Maurice Barthélémy), a short bald guy who is always full of ideas about what to do next. He loves his piano, his music, his friends, his life of carefree fun.

The film is directed by James Huth and co-written by him with Sonja Shallito.. What makes this slapstick comedy totally credible is the low-keyed acting by Sophie and Gad, whose timing and expressions are just perfect and had the audience laughing almost non-stops at the unexpected problems presented by life with three kids. It turns out that despite his congenital aversion to children, Sacha had a real knack for making children happy with his incessantly inventive antics . The film ends with Charlotte's extremely jealous husband Alain who put the squeeze on by using his enormous influence in having all of Sacha contracts canceled conceding defeat and coming to a kind "detente" with Sacha by lifting the alimony condition that Charlotte shall not have any man around her house and Sacha returning to the side of Charlotte upon learning, after having had a successful run of his musical at Broadway, that before he finally decided to leave for New York, his buddy Laurent had had a private conversation with Charlotte during which he managed to persuade her to let him go to New York for his own good. The film ends with all three of Charlotte's children jumping on to Sacha's body after he accidentally fell on the ground, hugging him on the garden floor outside of Charlotte's new residence, with, of course, Charlotte too in his arms. It's a kind of comedy which I cannot see any Americans, Brits, Germans, Italians or Chinese making: perfect timing for the slapsticks and perfectly "natural" and un-exaggerated acting in a society where everything is possible.   A perfect start to the film festival. Shall I continue to be so lucky?