This time, I'm bundling together a series, a short, and a feature film.

I'll start with Made in Italy.

I'm not particularly interested in fashion. To stay sufficiently up to date to remain inconspicuous is the limit of my ambition in that area... Nevertheless, I found this series quite enjoyable.

It's frothy, for sure. There's a bit of an attempt to ground the narrative in the turbulent times of 1970s Italy (social change, labour unrest, revolutionary activism, the vulnerability of the gay community), but mostly the story revolves around Irene Mastrangelo, her romantic attachments, her struggles with her family, and -- in particular -- the dazzling progress of her career with a fashion magazine. So far, so forgettable.

But the interesting thing about Made in Italy is its little cameos of the designers who put Milan firmly on the fashion map of the world. Names we know very well, if only from their ubiquitous mall presence (Versace, Prada, Armani...), as well as names that are not so familiar, at least to neophytes (Albini, Missoni, Krizia...), all had their origins, sometimes humble, in Milan in the 1970s. That was the era when "Milan exploded as the global fashion capital, specializing in ready-to-wear".

(I found the story of the Missoni brand particularly interesting, and the relevant sequences in the series were shot at the actual factory. )


Milan 2019



Visually, it's a very rich montage. The creators decided to use only genuine vintage pieces for the designers' creations, and 70-80% of the wardrobe is authentic: "We flew dresses from collections from all over the world...  Most of the jewels that we had on set came with armed security, straight out of designers' archives."

And, of course, in the day-to-day shots, we get plenty of reminders of the less elegant aspects of the 1970s: overdresses, platforms, tank tops, hot pants...





The theme song is interesting in its own right. La Bambola is a little hymn to female independence: "You make me spin... then you throw me down, as though I were a doll... From tonight, I won't put my life in the hands of a boy any more... [and] you won't put me with the ten dolls that you don't like any more..." It's sung by Patty Pravo, who was born in 1948, has a wonderful voice, and is still performing...





From Italy to Spain, and this super-engaging insight into the life of Juan Ramirez, a flamenco guitarist. It spoke to me for three reasons:

Firstly, the music is beautiful. (Does flamenco relate to fado? Some say it does, and certainly, both are a reflection of pain and hardship.)

Secondly, this art form, its practitioners emphasize, is something that you will never definitively master... "You may know it, but you will never finish learning."

Never finish learning...

Thirdly, the guitarist is very rooted in Sevilla. He arrived from Colombia to stay for a month, and he's been there almost 13 years... Of course, the little video doesn't tell us whether he ever gets the chance to go anywhere else. Maybe he does. But he's been there for 13 years. The last time I spent 13 years anywhere was during my childhood... Rootedness, especially contented rootedness, has a particular fascination for me at the moment, for obvious reasons. How do people achieve it?


Cordoba, 2020





And finally to Malaysia, where the Film Festival is now under way (on line, of course). Our first dip in the water was Edmund Yeo's Malu, a "haunting narrative of secrets and regret".

Wah... So hard to understand...

Very beautiful. That's undeniable. Red touches everywhere -- coats, cars, blankets. Fascinating interiors. Long, lingering looks.

But I finished it with very little certainty about what was going on...

At the beginning of the movie, we meet two young sisters and their tragically unstable mother, living in a Malaysian coastal village. Grandma takes the older sister, Hong, off to live with her (I'm not sure why she was able/willing to take only the older one), and this sister is able to carve out a very nice career for herself. The younger one, meanwhile, is left looking after their ailing mother, and earns a living shampooing hair in a salon. After the mother's death, Hong and Lan briefly meet, but then Lan runs off to Japan to start a new life for herself.

(Don't read on if you don't want to see plot reveals...)

Who is it who feels malu (ashamed)? Presumably Lan? (Lan surreptitiously kills her mother.) In Japan she becomes a sex worker, adopting many aliases and identities, meets "bar guy" (as I think of him), and eventually ends up dead. Strangled. 

Hong goes to Japan to sort this out. And presumably she feels malu too, because her sister has had a terrible life, and hers has ostensibly been much more successful. Anyway, it seems that Hong kills bar guy. But is it really bar guy who killed Lan? Presumably it is, as at the end, Hong sees (and is apparently reconciled with) Lan. But how does Hong know all this? What did I miss?

Yeo says: "My films are like my diaries. I am just expressing my emotions in my films. I usually ask questions in my films. But I do not necessarily provide the answers to those questions."

Hmmm... I don't expect movies to dot every I, and cross every T, but there's a limit to the amount you want to have hanging in the air... 

You might get a bit more enlightenment here... Maybe.

What came through loud and clear, however, were the themes of desperation and the impossibility of escape, which all feel very resonant at the moment...


Pulau Ketam, 2012