Doces Ecos do Passado

I saw this when it came out in 87.. I found it brilliant. Monique Spaziani gives an inspired performance as a woman imprisioned by her times. There is a sense of melancholy that pervades the film. The cinematography is beautiful. As usual, Gabriel Arcand's gorgeous face shows the emotions of a man confused by his mothers abandonment. I think it may be a difficult film for those used to Hollywood standards fo filmmaking...but it is wholely and unashamedly Canadian, strangly enough, it concerns someone who has to interpret Hollywood to Canadian people, I think Francis Mankiewicz purposely used a non-traditional way to tell the story to offset this plot device.

I recently watched this movie as part of a French course dealing with films and the books that inspired them. To say the least, the movie was a huge disappointment for me. The cinematography was brutal. There was such an overuse of soft filters, and the DOP tried to create illusions of different times by using coloured filters, and it turned out quite bad, at least I think so. I was also disappointed with the acting in this film. The actors were not up to par. Not only were the characters poorly written (except Lauda and Blaudelle), but the acting was unable to save a poorly written script. The music was perhaps the biggest upside to the film. The piece constantly played in the film changes rhythms, speeds, and each person that plays it has a different interpretation. It reminded me of "The Conversation" in the sense that one song/sentence can have several meanings. And I'm not even going to get into the ending of the film. At such a critical moment, there's a pause that lasts way too long, and ends up being quite comical, when it should have been a breathtaking moment. Overall, I wasn't too impressed with this film. With the knowledge that it had a prize from the 1988 Cannes Film festival under its belt, I expected a whole lot more from this.