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tarkatheauteur
Reviews
En immersion (2015)
Maigret it sure ain't
This was compelling, but if there had been more than three episodes, I am not sure I would have got through it. I hung in there for the excellent acting and the brilliant b&w cinematography, but every 20 minutes or so I found myself slipping into existential despair and had to take time away to watch cat videos. Bleak does not begin to cover it. The Paris it depicts is to all intents and purposes post-apocalyptic - a place out of which all order, aspiration, joy, hope and positivity have been drained along with the colour. 'Immersion' is its overarching, and often visual metaphor, where individuals hover between survival and death by 'narcosis' (the French title of episode 2, stupidly transmuted into 'Ghost Ship' in the English subtitles). In my view it is worth the investment of time and effort, but you should make sure that something in your life that makes you cheerful is easily accessible when needed: brown paper packages tied up with strings, schnitzel with noodles, whatever.
Suburra - La serie (2017)
Why Rome doesn't work
If you have lived in Rome rather than just visited to see the sights, you will know that as a city to just does not work for its residents. Public transport is dysfunctional - about a third of the city's buses are at any time off the road and awaiting maintenance, and some of those buses that do make it onto the streets catch fire inconveniently. Trash is not collected. The roads aren't mended. It takes an eternity to get anything done. Etc. This show, which I love, for all its exaggerations for dramatic effect, does give an insight into why. That makes it absorbing for those who do or have lived there, but the acting, the editing and the writing are first class. I felt that Aureliano chewed the scenery a bit in series 1 but was terrific in series 2. But has anyone noticed that no one ever eats anything? For a show set in a culture and a city that places such importance on 'la cucina', it seems bizarre that the entire cast of characters get by without food .
Parfum (2018)
Beautiful but bleak
I could look at the brilliant Friederike Becht walking across rooms and through doorways and watch emotions flicker across her face 7 days a week, and, as other reviewers have written, this is absolutely beautifully filmed and paced - as long as you don't mind a bit of 'European' slowness, which some reviewers clearly do. The loss is theirs. Some other reviewers have registered disquiet at the level of violence against women in the show. Yes, there is a lot, and it is often very graphic. But on the one hand, I see it often said that the levels of exploitation of and violence against women in western culture is a suppressed narrative which should be brought out into the open, and on the other this series does make that narrative very explicit, but not in a way that seems to me to valorize, aestheticize (unless you are a perfumier) or legitimize it - rather the opposite. So either you suppress the narrative, which is bad, or foreground it, which is also bad. The problem, here, from my perspective, is that the central characters in this show, including the police (and Nadja, I am also looking at you here) could not between them manage to identify a single point on any moral compass if their lives depended on it. To that extent maybe it mimics Suskind's novel, which by the way I hated, in part for that reason, but it also makes it hard as a viewer to attach to any character in the show - they are all wandering in a moral and emotional wilderness. I kept wondering if I was supposed to relate to Nadja as a 'wronged' character, a victim, but I'm sorry, don't shag you married superior, Nadja. It's not that hard. Maybe this is the underlying point about 'attachment disorder' - individuals have fractured attachments because they have been sent to boarding schools, or put in care, or have experienced childhood abuse, or have been prematurely exposed to adult sexuality, or have been in foster homes. So, yes, this was interesting and good to watch, but emotionally as bleak as the flat lower-Rhine landscapes over which the camera often lingers.
Stranger Things: Chapter Four: The Body (2016)
Hanging In There
I came to this show having heard and read good things about it. I had not realised that it was so kid-centred, however, and four episodes in I am finding all the usual stuff about lunch-table and school-locker assholery, schoolyard bullies, self-appointed cool kids versus perceived nerdy kids and sneaky teenage sex-and-alcohol all a bit tedious. I am also getting a bit weary of the running homage to ET in particular, right down now to smuggling the found creature out of the house in a rather unbecoming blond wig. That said, having almost given up an episode ago, I did find my interest picking up here, perhaps because of Hopper's increasing involvement in the mystery. For me, David Harbour as Hopper is the star of this, while Wynona Rider continues to put in an excruciatingly over-the-top performance. The younger kids are growing on me too. I would give this 7, which is enough to keep me watching for now.
Dark: Gestern und heute (2017)
Yes, shocking dubbing
Charlesponchon (March 21) is not wrong about this. The appalling quality of the dubbing is beginning to make this interesting series borderline unwatchable. If you switch on the subtitles, the dubbers and the subtitlers are using different translations. I will try to carry on, but I gave up on 'The Frozen Dead;' because of this issue. For those who are struggling, as I am, to keep track of who is who and who is related to whom across the 1986 to 2019 time-shift, I recommend the Wikipedia entry on the series.