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Nine people attended the 9:40 Dobie Theater screening of Jean-Luc Godard’s newish movie In Praise of Love (original title: Éloge de l’Amour) last Saturday night, and three of them couldn’t sit still, giggling and talking in some strange and unfamiliar language, dropping things under their seats and crawling around with lit cigarette lighters. The couple in front of us propped up their legs, mercifully obscuring the subtitles, wheezing and sniffling through the entire ten hours. Tamara dozed off during the second half of the film. I think the couple in the front row may have been dead. I dutifully sat through the whole thing and didn’t make a noise, even though the movie was shit and I was feverishly devising a plan to dash out the door and into the arcade next door. But everyone else there was smart, and I’m a sucker.
I’m going to give away the most revealing scene. The hero is auditioning actors for some vaguely conceived film that he’s making. He speaks to a vagrant, from what I can tell not because he intends to cast him, but because a vagrant is sort of like a real human being except that he exists only to symbolize guilt. The vagrant says, “My shoelaces are frayed, and I’m always out of breath.” Get it? I wish I hadn’t. It’s a dirty trick to remind you of a good movie when you’re already six hours into a bad one.
The cinematography was gorgeous, though. We also drove to San Marcos to see an exhibit of dramatic, painterly photographs inspired by the novel Pedro Páramo, hooked up the Dreamcast and played Soul Calibur, and on Sunday we sat on the porch, basked in the sun, and drank Turkish coffee.
Today I commemorated Dr. King’s day in the office, staring at a computer monitor, dreaming sad dreams of John Coltrane.