Let's All go to the Movies

Halloween season is here. The air's turned cooler, the skies are getting that different sort of light, leaves are turning, and all of Brittany is getting ready for the next three months of solid rain. I keep a hoard of "Halloween Season" movies in a stack under our cabinet and they've now built up high enough that we could watch a horror film every night for about sixteen months without letup.... but this is a good thing! We've had a nice low-key opener to this year's six-week fest of monster movies - "The House that Dripped Blood", a classic Peter Cushing/Christopher Lee film that also rolls in Denholm Elliott and Jon Pertwee (in a role that humourously foreshadows the character of Peter Vincent some sixteen years later).

Last night switched gears for a replay of "28 Days Later", a fun modern semi-zombie flick that offers some very creepy moments and a better experience the second time around. Thinking of movies spurred me to look up some info on the latest Peter Mayle expat fantasy "A Good Year", and I thought I'd write a little about expat movies.

I mentioned this topic already in an article on our regular site, but thought I'd toss in a couple more cents. Most expat movies are utter rubbish - sometimes entertainingly silly, like "Under the Tuscan Sun", but as often as not they're over-romanticized fluff aimed squarely at bored housewives wanting to fantasize about moving to faraway lands. For anyone who really wants to put their head into the experiences, feelings, and struggles of moving to a foreign country, I suggest the following films:

Lost in Translation - Already written about, as mentioned above. Nails the experience perfectly in every detail.

Spirited Away - Probably the best animated film I have ever seen, and one of my absolute favorite films of any kind, the film sums up well the life of the working expat. It's marvelous in conveying the sense of alien-ness, the surreal experience of watching different rituals and modes of behavior without really understanding them. Add in the need for resigned acceptance that there is no running away or going back "home", and each new day's battles must be tackled head-on, and it's a perfect mirror. Especially touching is the depth of feeling displayed in the story for the kindess of strangers, those random folks we encounter who decide to help out when they've no reason to. The same themes and "leaving home" feelings permeate "Kiki's Delivery Service" too, and I like it equally, but overall it's a bit more of a Feel Good film that shares SA's victories but not its terrors.

Jacob's Ladder - What, a horror film?! Yet the similarities are unmistakable in the overall subtle sense of unease.... Things aren't quite right. You can't hear what those people are saying, you don't know if the person you're depending on is behaving properly or intentionally causing problems, you don't know the customs, you feel plunged into a bizarre world where everything feels just a little bit off. We tried watching this one too soon after we arrived here, and had to turn it off. Everything was going wrong, we seemed to be losing massive amounts of money with no end in sight, we'd had all sorts of horrible problems, and, like Jacob in the film, I was occasionally plagued by vivid dreams at night that I was back in the US... that none of what seemed to be happening actually was happening, and that everything was still OK. In those days, waking up to the unpainted walls, bare flooring, and escalating mountain of debts and problems was like being punched in the stomach.

I'm sure I'll have more to add in future....