georgioskarpouzas
Joined Aug 2006
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Reviews119
georgioskarpouzas's rating
I am neither British nor homosexual therefore the particular circumstances of the characters of this movie do not relate directly with my personal experience. But I liked it very much because the particular case described can be generalized not withstanding its specific trappings as a depiction of the dilemmas and strategies that are available to people who realize that their choices and identity do not conform with those of the majority of their fellow humans in their working environment and society in general. The minority identity should be asserted in an outspoken manner to gain recognition or should one tread carefully and discreetly so as not to offend the sensibilities of the majority? "Blue Jean" depicts characters that make those different choices. It does so in a sensitive manner and that is what I liked in this movie. I also liked the acting and the depiction of the humdrum reality of school athletics. Truly a chunk of life in the border of realism with naturalism.
This particular movie is a testament of the moral climate of our times. The central character is a young woman living in the affluent West whose actions are dictated by her purely subjective criteria of her own emotional and carnal truth. She is not subject to any outside objective moral code( the obligation to pay the rent to her landlady, the duty to inform intelligibly the foreigners to whom she sublets her appartment about the dangers of certain electrical devices, the fact that her older lover has already a wife, the need to honor her obligations towards her academic supervisor) and everything and everyone has to succumb to her personal quest for self-realization and romantic/sexual interest.
She is very charming and lovable( the female lead is ideal for the role) but hardly a paragon of domestic virtue or a model of a responsible citizen.
She is the embodiment of the western ideal of hedonistic self-actualisation which makes Islamists and Russian ideologues and Chinese Communist Party officials so furious in its insistence on personal choice over tradition and the demands of the collectivity.
Of course this bacchanalian celebration of "anything goes" stumbles over the disapproval of venerable if declining institutions of the West itself such as the Roman Catholic Church. I quote from paragraph 61 of the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium issued by Pope Francis: "...We recognize how in a culture where each person wants to be bearer of his or her own subjective truth it becomes difficult for citizens to devise a common plan which transcends individual gain and personal ambitions." There is a saying attributed to de Gaulle: "How can you govern a country that has 245 kinds of cheese?" The French officials of today must come to terms with the reality of inspiring collective action and prosaic restraint to millions of self-willed hedonists if the behaviour depicted in the movie is representative of a large enough segment of modern French society.
Young and beautiful and irresponsible as an Olympian goddess Anais lives her life as she pleases giving to the pleasure principle precedence over the reality principle if one is to use Freudian terminology. Is such an attitude towards life feasible and sustainable in a long-term or collective level? Is it mature from a psychological standpoint? Is it sinful from a religious point of view? Can significant segments of the affluent West live in such a manner overcoming the realm of necessity and achieving the realm of freedom?
It is a seemingly light movie but if engaged in a deeper manner it raises fundamental questions.
Anais Demoustier and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi give stellar performances and their romance will be included in the anthology of cinematic lesbian romances. Comic interludes as well as certain scenes with sombre undertones interspersed with the frantic activity of Paris and the beauty of the French countryside make for a very appealing result which reinforces the image of the West in general and France in particular as a permissive heaven-on-earth or a society where social bonds are so loose that its collapse is imminent-depending on your point of view.
Either way a must-see if one wants to feel the modern western zeitgeist.
She is very charming and lovable( the female lead is ideal for the role) but hardly a paragon of domestic virtue or a model of a responsible citizen.
She is the embodiment of the western ideal of hedonistic self-actualisation which makes Islamists and Russian ideologues and Chinese Communist Party officials so furious in its insistence on personal choice over tradition and the demands of the collectivity.
Of course this bacchanalian celebration of "anything goes" stumbles over the disapproval of venerable if declining institutions of the West itself such as the Roman Catholic Church. I quote from paragraph 61 of the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium issued by Pope Francis: "...We recognize how in a culture where each person wants to be bearer of his or her own subjective truth it becomes difficult for citizens to devise a common plan which transcends individual gain and personal ambitions." There is a saying attributed to de Gaulle: "How can you govern a country that has 245 kinds of cheese?" The French officials of today must come to terms with the reality of inspiring collective action and prosaic restraint to millions of self-willed hedonists if the behaviour depicted in the movie is representative of a large enough segment of modern French society.
Young and beautiful and irresponsible as an Olympian goddess Anais lives her life as she pleases giving to the pleasure principle precedence over the reality principle if one is to use Freudian terminology. Is such an attitude towards life feasible and sustainable in a long-term or collective level? Is it mature from a psychological standpoint? Is it sinful from a religious point of view? Can significant segments of the affluent West live in such a manner overcoming the realm of necessity and achieving the realm of freedom?
It is a seemingly light movie but if engaged in a deeper manner it raises fundamental questions.
Anais Demoustier and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi give stellar performances and their romance will be included in the anthology of cinematic lesbian romances. Comic interludes as well as certain scenes with sombre undertones interspersed with the frantic activity of Paris and the beauty of the French countryside make for a very appealing result which reinforces the image of the West in general and France in particular as a permissive heaven-on-earth or a society where social bonds are so loose that its collapse is imminent-depending on your point of view.
Either way a must-see if one wants to feel the modern western zeitgeist.
Some film critics in Greece thought that this movie is a hybrid of parody and satire in its attitude towards organized religion. I disagree. Although the treatment of religious themes is rather blasphemous by pietistic standards the amount of human misery and suffering portrayed does not allow the viewer to conceive the movie as satire at least solely as such. Surely the religious visions and the sexual adventures of Benedetta treat religion irreverently but the consequences for her and her protégé Bartolomea have nothing humorous about them. In that time, unlike ours - at least in the West- no jokes were allowed concerning religion.
Misery, violence, intrigue abound in the plot and lust, although explicit, is just one of the sins portrayed. Ambition, struggle for power and precedence, avarice are the prevailing motives of the characters. Christian charity pales before those demonic passions although it is not totally absent.
The plight of the poor, the intrigues of the powerful, the omnipresence of the plague, the violence of the soldiery offer a bleak picture of society. One is reminded of Flesh and Blood by the same director situated in about the same historical period. Both have a central heroine with superb survival skills to help her navigate through insurmountable adversities.
Humour and satire exist but the general atmosphere is so ominous, so laden with menace, violence and disease that you are left saddened with the misery inherent in the human experience of 17nth century Tuscany. Nothing betrays the artistic splendour of the Renaissance, just a bleak struggle for survival and mastery, for power and precedence, for wealth and prestige where Christianity is used to serve those ulterior motives.
It is a sad movie. That said Virginie Efira and Daphne Patakia are gorgeous both artistically and sexually. But I think Charlotte Rampling in the role of the abbess gives the more memorable performance as a character full of ambiguity and contradictions. Lambert Wilson shines as the satanic nuncio although his character is rather flat in his evil propensities.
The costumes and the representation of the era are superb and the religious visions of Benedetta are far-fetched and subversive. Pietistic believers are going to be offended and will probably say: would he dare to do the same with Muslim religious symbols? But I do not think that the movie is anti-Christian. It shows how lofty ideals are used by flawed humans to further very earthly ambitions.
It is true though that without divine solace the society portrayed by Benedetta would be impossible to live in. Watch the movie and form your own opinion.
Misery, violence, intrigue abound in the plot and lust, although explicit, is just one of the sins portrayed. Ambition, struggle for power and precedence, avarice are the prevailing motives of the characters. Christian charity pales before those demonic passions although it is not totally absent.
The plight of the poor, the intrigues of the powerful, the omnipresence of the plague, the violence of the soldiery offer a bleak picture of society. One is reminded of Flesh and Blood by the same director situated in about the same historical period. Both have a central heroine with superb survival skills to help her navigate through insurmountable adversities.
Humour and satire exist but the general atmosphere is so ominous, so laden with menace, violence and disease that you are left saddened with the misery inherent in the human experience of 17nth century Tuscany. Nothing betrays the artistic splendour of the Renaissance, just a bleak struggle for survival and mastery, for power and precedence, for wealth and prestige where Christianity is used to serve those ulterior motives.
It is a sad movie. That said Virginie Efira and Daphne Patakia are gorgeous both artistically and sexually. But I think Charlotte Rampling in the role of the abbess gives the more memorable performance as a character full of ambiguity and contradictions. Lambert Wilson shines as the satanic nuncio although his character is rather flat in his evil propensities.
The costumes and the representation of the era are superb and the religious visions of Benedetta are far-fetched and subversive. Pietistic believers are going to be offended and will probably say: would he dare to do the same with Muslim religious symbols? But I do not think that the movie is anti-Christian. It shows how lofty ideals are used by flawed humans to further very earthly ambitions.
It is true though that without divine solace the society portrayed by Benedetta would be impossible to live in. Watch the movie and form your own opinion.