esrosedotblog

Today's film is very meta*.

What I mean by this is that there are layers to reality that both remind us that we are watching a reality and an artificiality at the same time.

Our Beloved Month of August

Miguel Gomes has designed a film about filming a group of people filming.

A lot of the DVD is watching Gomes chasing down these layers. Then, obviously, we do NOT see him editing the footage.

There is a love story at the center. A pretty good one. A Portuguese father watches over his daughter as a young touring musician takes her out for a date. Or whatever he thinks they are doing. We see the date, the idea of the father about what is happening. There is also a level of awareness that this is going on so that is another aspect of the same thing.

A kind of hall of mirrors.

When it is working this film is very good. Whenever it gets slowed I wanted to look at my watch or the viewer to see how much time until it was over.

Mixed reaction netting out to a 3 out of Netflix 5.

It is worth one's time but I would not want to watch it again because I am sure that I would "see" it differently and then that would be another level entirely.

Hall of mirrors.

*referring to itself or to the conventions of its genre; self-referential.

Labels: films