Come Here, Mister

Life isn't about being drunk, it's about being merry.

At least, that was the distinction made in "Story of a Love Affair," the tenth and final film in the VCU Cinematheque retrospective of Michelangelo Antonioni. And as Professor T. pointed out ahead of the screening, ordinarily you'd have to go to a major city, say NYC or LA, to be treated to a retrospective of the master Italian filmmaker.

We have it so good in Richmond.

But before diving into Antonioni's first feature-length film, we strolled over to Ipanema, arriving so early that they were still serving the lunch menu. Not fussy about what meal we were eating, Mr. Wright and I scored the front-most booth - the one that used to get removed when bands played so they could occupy the space - and settled in until showtime.

Tuscan salads of greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, marinated artichoke hearts, cannellini beans and olives were topped with smoked salmon, despite my suspicion that salmon would not typically be part of a Tuscan meal. Given the chilly temperatures, we accompanied the meal with hot tea, mine a mint, his a South African Rooibus.

You know it's cold when I resort to drinking hot beverages since they're not my thing, though I must say it was a fine accompaniment for my slice of blueberry pie.

It was while eating dessert and discussing that tonight was the conclusion of the Antonioni series that I overheard the two guys in the next booth talking about another ending, that of the Italian Film and Food Festival. One guy recalled that it had always been at the Firehouse Theater. The other, a DJ I've known for years, thought he'd attended it at Artspace, but his friend wasn't convinced.

Without a moment's hesitation, I turned toward the other booth, called my friend's name and set out to clarify things. Yes, the Italian Film Fest had been at Artspace as well as the Firehouse, I shared. I know I saw Marco Bellochio's "Fists in the Pocket," there in 2010, along with killer eats from Mamma Zu, Edo's and 8 1/2.

"And Karen weighs in!" the DJ announced,  Just trying to help. I could have told him to look it up on the blog for further details, but refrained.

After crossing the street to the Grace Street Theatre only to find someone in my favorite seat, we made do with alternate seats nearby. Mr. Wright offered to go explain to the interlopers that they were trespassing, but I was feeling magnanimous.

Professor T. began the evening by explaining that we'd be seeing an archival Italian print on 35 mm, a rare treat which came with one small glitch. Archival prints don't get spliced to allow for standard two projector screening, so we should expect to see brief periods of black every 20 minutes. It seemed a small price to pay to see an archival Italian print on 35 mm.

And, as Mr. Wright later pointed out, the brief black breaks wound up feeling like scene changes during a play, perfectly appropriate given the high art we were seeing.

The visiting professor gave his usual 12-13 minute reading of his prepared paper on Anonioni and this particular film, his voice an odd combination of monotone, inappropriately inflected words and a question mark at the end of statements.

I'm not knocking the man's knowledge, just his delivery.

After seeing five of the ten Antonioni films this semester, films full of middle class malaise and post-war bleakness, I couldn't have been more surprised at the director's first foray into film. It was a black and white film noir, loosely based on the novel, "The Postman Always Rings Twice."

Hello dark streets, steamy love scenes and piano and sax score to set the mood. I love me a good film noir.

But then, as a bonus, there were scenes set in an uncrowded 1950 Milan, gorgeous clothing and gowns worn by the lead actress and a dead sexy car (see: 1948 Maserati A6G 1500, which surely must have been the inspiration for speedy cars in cartoons for decades to come).

What was strange was how very American the lead actor, Massimo Girotti, looked, a fact which worked fine in the context of the story but left me wanting for a more appropriately Italian actor, say, Marcello Mastroianni or Giancarlo Giannini.

What good are all those vowels in his name if he looks like John Garfield?

As for the distinction between stages of intoxication, it was when the older husband entered his younger, unhappy wife's bedroom late at night with a bottle of Champagne and two glasses that she asked of him, "Are you drunk?" and he responded, "Not drunk, just merry."

I've always labeled the stage before drunk as "loopy," but there's something charmingly dated about referring to it as "merry." As in, I've had a few glasses of bubbly and I'm feeling kind of merry right now. Not "deck them halls" merry, just merry.

Of course, that's just me weighing in. Again.

Be Beautiful But Shut Up

I feel certain that I alone reveled in the table fan.

That the Italian film began with a close-up of a table fan, that said fan seemed to blow our (unexpectedly) blond heroine's hair no matter where she stood in the room while breaking up with her lover, that the fan set the scene for a warm weather plot revolving around love, undoubtedly made me happier than anyone else at the Grace Street Theatre tonight.

I'd gone to VCU Cinematheque to see my second Michelangelo Antonioni film, "L'Eclisse," but if I were honest, I went because I'd read Alain Delon was in it (and the lump sum of my knowledge of him was from reading and let's face it, you really need to see a man in the flesh to fully appreciate him) and because it was a 1962 film, easily one of my favorite periods in movie history (especially in Italy...or France or swingin' London) for its depiction of a cultural tipping point.

Let's just say that the first music played was a variation called "L'Eclisse Twist." Groovy.

But a table fan, I mean, come on, I still have one that does double duty: as auxiliary breeze during warm weather and as white noise every night.

I realize most 21st century people see them as relics of a bygone age, but not me.

And if you think my fan devotion is absurd, know that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. My father still has his mother's table fan, an extremely heavy relic from the '50s, which miraculously still works.

The beautifully shot black and white movie was full of post-war ennui as well as a Rome completely unrecognizable from the one I saw four years ago because "L'Eclisse" was shot during a period of massive urban renewal and aerial shots particularly showed huge swaths of the city as no more than empty lots and barren wastelands.

I wish I didn't love you or that I loved you much more.

Alain was rakishly handsome as anticipated, but he was also shallow, materialistic and incapable of love, as much a problem for our heroine as for any smart woman.

Two people shouldn't know each other too well if they want to fall in love.

Although the audience had several familiar adult faces - the Frenchman, the book reader, the record collector, the theater critic - the crowd was mostly students and while film students may have appreciated the 54-year old movie, many of the others apparently did not grasp our heroine's distrust of the frenzy of the modern world.

I feel like I'm in a foreign country.
Funny, that's how I feel around you.

But if they occasionally drifted out when the story got slow, they left in droves during the last 7 or 8 minutes when neither character showed up for their supposed rendezvous, leaving the audience to watch the business of life - buses, pedestrians, water - at the intended place of the assignation.

Too bad for them. Life doesn't always happen in a quick cut, rapid-fire manner but the beauty of Anonioni's film is that he demonstrates with exquisite beauty how hopeless the pursuit of love can be.

It's then that you shut yourself away from the modern world, turn on your table fan and drift off to dreams of somehow getting it right.

As an old friend said at dinner tonight, if not now, when?