French Movies -- Maybe Pretentious, Maybe Not -- and RIP Kevin MacV

Thursday Night Film Series continue dernier soir avec Entre les Murs, une film intéressante si elle n'est pas particulièrement amusant. I actually thought it was a documentary. Although I’d never heard of it before, apparently it won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2008 and was the French Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Film, which just goes to show you how up I am on all things cultural. (Not, in other words.)

Film chronicled a year in a middle school in the 20th arrondisement. French education has changed a lot since Zero Pour Conduit or even Les Quatre Cents Coups (one of my all-time favorite movies) – now it resembles education in Oakland or inner city Los Angeles or even (gasp!) Monterey with Africans subbing for Mexicans. That was the most fascinating part of the film for me, watching how the ever flickering internecine classroom feuds among the different nationalities – Berber Moslems from Morroco, black Moslems from the Republic of Mali, black Christians from Martinique – could be pushed aside when dealing with a common enemy i.e. the teacher. Student actors were very good – I had a hard time believing they were working from any kind of script.

Film was frustrating to watch because the teacher was such an awful teacher. Serious boundary issues there.

Afterwards Marybeth and I got pleasantly drunk at the nearly empty nearby Jack’s, and she described her student teaching assignment in the heart of Oakland – “So there I was crying hysterically in the bathroom, and my Master Teacher just shook her head. ‘The problem is you’re trying to be their friend. Tomorrow go in there and be Adolph Fucking Hitler.’ And that’s exactly what I did and it worked. And that’s exactly what I’ve done ever since.”

Marybeth and Kim are going to Paris in April and I am going to house sit which is beyond perfect – they have one of my favorite houses in the world.

I also got the Marybeth seal of approval for my future plans. “Traveling with the circus sounds wonderful to me! In fact, I’m jealous. No, Patty, no – you have worked and worked and worked and worked your ass off these past six years. You need a break. Just do one thing for me – get a video camera and make a movie about the circus! Even without any film making experience, you should be able to make a movie at least as good as The Class.”

Not a bad idea. Robin's adventures could make an interesting documentary.

I’d spent the day divesting yet more junk via Freecycle and sorting through old photographs. Only one of them made me cry – snapshot of Kevin who was killed by a drunk driver eight years after this picture was taken. The Hares have a familial curse – the firstborn of every generation dies in a car crash. This has been going on since there’ve been automobiles and Hares.

I lost touch with Desi, Pat and their kids after my divorce from Bill (understandably.) But I’d liked Kevin very much as a kid, was very sad when I learned he’d died. He didn’t deserve to be the generational sacrifice.

Not counting Kevin pathos, I cried for two and a half hours yesterday. Slight improvement over the day before.