Well, work life this week has transformed from general, lingering malaise to a complete catastrophe.
If this were a bitching blog I’d have a Shakespearian tragedy for you.

Fortunately, I had a great weekend – and I’m just now getting around to posting about it.
It was the first glorious Spring weekend I was able to enjoy this season and I got a lot of exercise and color. Of course I spent way too much money on my garden for some one who is absolutely broke at the moment. Mother’s Day was wonderful and my sister and her husband’s new/1930s style apartment brings new appeal to the Uptown area for me.

I did catch the screening of Jacques Demy’s little seen Model Shop on Saturday at AFI. The experience was kind of trippy, especially since I have not been to downtown Silver Spring in some years – what changes…my teenage destination for vinyl, art supplies, and comic books is really going through a transformer phase!

French filmmaking of a certain “feel” has never translated well into US-based productions, and Model Shop was Demy’s only foray into Hollywood and indeed much of the film is laughable. Especially the dialogue and the earnest but heavy-handed handling of issues faced by youth culture in 1969. However the film is colorfully and vividly shot – a unique time capsule of an era - and one can’t help but be drawn into the maladroit but undeniably sexy leads. The LA rock band Spirit! make an appearance in a pivotal scene and their music provides the backdrop for the production, pushing Model Shop’s groove vibe to a pleasurable maximum.
Did I mention the experience was trippy? The main draw and surprise for cineastes is that Model Shop revisits Anouk Aimée’s character from his first film, Lola. Our one-time cabaret singer is in limbo in LA, abandoned by her hard gambling husband, and posing for semi-pornographic pictures – hence, the Model Shop – to earn airfare back to her native France to be reunited with her son. The film draws parallels with Cecile/Lola’s relationship with the American sailor in Lola with the disaffected architect and draft-facing, George Matthews, played by tragically B-list Gary Lockwood, using the Vietnam War and the draft as a backdrop. The film’s vibe is permeated by acid culture and to see Lola transplanted after all these years in LA lends itself to a kind on what if?/alternate reality situation. And there are several direct references to Demy’s muse Catherine Deneuve. Indeed, Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet (same edition that I own!) is prominently and tellingly displayed in a background bookcase in one scene. Anouk Aimée, of course, played Justine, around the time of Model Shop’s release, in the infamous “Peyton Place with camels” Douglas Sirk production. I’m more than a bit of a Durrell completist so these nods are more than welcome.
At any rate, Model Shop is not for everyone and requires a bit of seasoning to appreciate. I would like to see the documentary made around the time by Demy’s widow, Agnes Varda, high priestess of the Cannes festival. Harrison Ford was the male lead in Model Shop and interviewed in the film, later recast.

So whats a blog post without some Feist love. My favorite Canadian chanteuse/Paris transplant will be making an in-store appearance and performing at Tower Records in Foggy Bottom DC tomorrow, Thursday, May 12, at 3 pm. I’ll be worming my way out of work for that one and hope to catch her later opening for British Sea Power later in the evening at the Black Cat.
My new buddy She’s Bitter has been much better about posting about these types of things this week.

Awwwright, I’m off to Straits of Malaya, which I haven’t been to since they re-opened this year. Gotta make the most of this Spring weather.
Tomorrow morning is the office where I’ll die another little humiliating day.