We hear rumours...

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's top 50 films of 2023

#20 :   Pacifiction

Benoît Magimel’s French high commissioner confronts the end of his personal Eden in Tahiti, in Albert Serra’s distinctive film.

Well, that's not a very useful description from The Guardian, is it? I don't even know if it's fiction or non-fiction - and what on earth does it mean by "distinctive"?

165 minutes! Seriously?

Well, no - actually it was about 30 minutes before I gave up on it. As The Guardian tells us, Benoit Magimel plays the French high commissioner in Tahiti and this seems to involve him wandering around the island, doing some high commissioning whilst drinking a lot, often in a ropey touristy club. And what does this achieve? Well, before I gave up on it - absolutely nothing, glacially slowly. I even checked Wikipedia which is relentless in explaining every plot detail and it doesn't give any more detail than I have for the entire film, except for rumours about submarines. I assume something else must happen in the remaining two hours, but I can assure you I have no intention of attempting to find out.

In terms of acting, Benoit seems to be doing a reasonable enough job (and he's certainly better than plenty of others he interacts with) but I'd struggle to describe it as an acting masterclass. And the film looks nice enough, but a lot of that is just down to it being a nice environment - anyone could point a camera somewhere and it would look nice. And they probably wouldn't let the shot linger for quite so long either.

So, all in all, I was not impressed - if you fancy killing a few braincells out of boredom then you'll have to rent it because no-one can be bothered streaming it. But I've absolutely no idea why you'd want to subject yourself to this - what were The Guardian thinking?

#21 - Not for me

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm not wishing I was back in the USA, coz I come from Morecambe and the skies are grey

Image
Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 15/11/24 : Earth To Grace - Massive Wagons I will listen to the new entry at #1, but there's absolutely NO WAY I'm writing a whole entry on it - so instead we have this which I know absolutely nothing about. But it has to be better than the abomination at #1. Well, it's something you don't hear too much of these days - I guess "hard rock" is probably as good a description as any. It’s not going to win any awards for musical complexity but it’s quite catchy - I was r eminded of Gary Moore in his heavier days that teenage me used to like. It also certainly doesn't take itself too seriously - "Free And Easy" tells us "I don't shoot guns, it's not healthy - I drive a Ford C-Max I got off my dad and it's filthy" and "Rabbit Hole" offers up an amusingly sceptical take on conspiracy theories and then abruptly ends "Auf wiedersehen, adios - this song fucking ...
Read more

And she'll tease you, she'll unease you

Image
  A first for me! Cheap tickets often pop up to various All Points East events through work, but it often coincides with holiday time - and the one time I did make an effort to go a train strike prevented me from making out into the wilds of East London. Until now when, for no obvious reason, I went to a day when I had no great interest in the headlining act. It's based in Victoria Park in Hackney and it's a BIG site. The set-up is similar to Reading Festival with two main stages which alternate between acts, involving a lot of audience migration across the site. The distance between the stages might even be bigger than at Reading, but there's also a sizeable tented stage about halfway between so you can always stop off if you're feeling tired - and I did, on several occasions! Also, unlike both Reading and BST Hyde Park, there is a lot of shaded area on site which was also much used throughout the day whilst a LOT of music was being enjoyed, because I saw... Liana Flor...
Read more

Who are ya?!?

Image
A point each for the name, the song and the artist. 1. Her boyfriend’s a dick – he brings a gun to school 2. He took me to the future in the flux thing and I saw everything 3. He lives on the second floor 4. She told my baby we'd danced 'til three, then she looked at me 5. He tempted her with his treacle tart and his tasty wholemeal bread (2 names) 6. He’s stepping through the door 7. His girlfriend's pregnant too - he’s about to be a father 8. She’s gotta be strong to fight them, so she’s taken lots of vitamins 9. She came from Miami, F.L.A - hitch-hiked her way across the U.S.A. 10. Her smile is like a breath of spring, her voice is soft like summer rain 11. He’s darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there 12. He was jamming good with Weird and Gilly 13. Two American kids doin' the best they can (2 names) 14. I just act like I don’t remember and she just acts like she don’t care 15. She got a double wide and she rode a plane 16. You could have heard a...
Read more