I am back from Amsterdam! It is so hard to come home again. I want to live there so much.
Anyway, I have just finished a petite book about a unicorn, which I will post on here once it has reached its intended owner.
I had a lovely time with Dan, we watched some Godard (Une Femme est une Femme):
(this has to be my favourite scene...apart from the one where Anna's husband tells Jean-Paul Belmondo "hurry up, Breathless is on the telly and I don't want to miss it")
and the studio Ghibli film, Grave of the Fireflies, which was so relentlessly sad.
Dan also introduced me to a couple of incredibly beautiful films at the Filmmuseum:
Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno (L'Enfer):
(As you can see, Romy Schneider has the most wonderfully open expressive face, which lights up completely when she smiles)
and Gustave Deutsch's Film Ist a Girl & a Gun:
which was a beautiful assemblage of short silent films, many of which were from the film-museum (or "Eye" as it is now known) archive itself, with a soundtrack added.
We both especially adored this scene with its beautiful music:
The music is by Soap&Skin, taken from their album Lovetune for Vacuum. She reminds me of Chan Marshall crossed with Azure Ray. This is another song from the same album, called Thanatos:
On the last day we sat in the afternoon sun in the park by the edge of the canal, drinking Trappist beer, eating strawberry laces, watching the ducks...and we saw a bright green parrot fly up into the high branches of a tree. And then another parrot called to it. And they were joined by another.
