Depression Movies #1: A Rouge Holiday With Saudade

When on Friday I saw on IMDb that it was Audrey Hepburn's birthday I instantly decided to homage her by doing a Hepburn marathon as soon as I got home from college; but I was so tired when I arrived that it'd be hard to watch three movies in a row, so I had to pick one. Many would choose Breakfast At Tiffany's on the first hand, but even though I love it to death, differently from the other titles I have, I've seen it like a million times. So I chose Roman Holiday: Audrey's first hit in Hollywood, Audrey's first and only Oscar [I don't count the honorary ones].
On this second screening of this Paramount classic I wondered how would be like if Audrey had the chance to work with Woody Allen. I did it because this woman's sense of naturalness in her acting is so vibrant that even if you see her in some flamboyant and hardly-to-happen situations like in Roman Holiday, you still feel like they're the most common thing to happen.
Well, in it Audrey plays the young Princess Ann who for political duties is touring around Europe. In her stop in Rome she's clearly tired and bored, like any young person would be, and decides to flee so she can see the vivid Roman nightlife. So, things happen and she ends up spending the whole following day with a sly and mischievous American journalist [a marvelous and absolutely charming Gregory Peck] who, realizing he's in the company of such royalty intends to do a bombastic sensationalist report on her. Like many other classics this movie has become pop culture icon and was imitated by many other movies and medias [even Sabrina, the teenage witch]; so for me it's an amusement to watch and try to remember where else I've seen those scenes.
Despite tiny flaws, [we hardly feel Princess Ann and Joe Bradley's affair grow, you simply know it's going to happen and it simply does] superficially this is a movie at cinema's basic premise: entertaining; but of course there's more to it than this. As you follow their adventures on Rome's beautiful and historic landmarks you experience a young woman maturing in front of your eyes. Ann goes from an innocent girl crashed by her larger-than-life duties to a woman finally aware of her importance to her country; and she gets to it by living - even for only one day - her life as she pleases and doing the expected things from a normal adolescent [even if Ann's age is never specified]. That becomes clear when she enters a beauty salon and cuts her hair, as an act of desire for independence, and it makes us wonder if the young should really mature as early as nowadays, missing that way things that will mold them for the rest of their lives.
Audrey Hepburn seems at each moment to be in perfect knowledge of it and owns Ann with sublime and subtle acting [what's that scene when she finds out Joe and Irving are journalists!]. During the shootings Gregory Peck raved on Hepburn's acting abilities and said she should and would win an Oscar for her portrayal of Ann. And well she did, beating established and genius stars like Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr [as the mysterious and mesmerizing Karen Holmes from From Here To Eternity].

All the colors, music and vibrant life in Moulin Rouge! disguises a deep and sorrowful love story. We all know the ending is beyond sad, but few people realize that it's the culmination of elements that have been explicited since the begining. The fact that Satine's death is revealed on the first ten minutes of the picture is a warning that this is no sappy musical we're watching. For me, this is one of the most heartbreaking and dark movies ever made; I decided to watch it last night due to life synchrony and I was aware it'd be a tearjerking experience.
The contrast between the pop culture carnival and the dark melodrama from the screenplay is delivered by Baz Luhrmann in a glitzy and so glamourous way that you can't help having your jaw dropped, your eyes watered, your body chilled; the kitsch and all over-the-place sets and costumes get wonderfully joyous when you hear all those wonderful songs glued perfectly like the soundtrack of our lives. I mean, if your life were a musical it'd be filled with the songs you listen to everyday; so it's pure amazement to watch Moulin Rouge and sing-along those songs as if you were listening to a mixtape.
Then there's that Kidman woman razzle-dazzling us all with her milky skin and violent red hair combined with that gorgeous blue cinematography. For me Kidman is on the top of her game here; this is my favorite performance of her so far, because she does absolutely everyhting here: she sings, dances, comes down from a trapeze, does comedy, romance and drama all in her first ten onscreen minutes. After that her Satine brings a rollercoaster of emotions and a charisma so hard to find [and still those old sons of bitches gave the Bald Man to that hateful bitch Berry]. Later, when that naughty Christian boy [the always hot and perfect Ewan McGregor] sings her that song, that song we all claim as ours, it's impossible for us not to root for their love.
Oh, and there's Kylie Minogue! It took me millenia to find out that the Green Fairy is her, but now everytime I see it I longer for the moment she pops out of the absinth bottle and turns The Sound Of Music into a sexy and horny thing. She being in such project makes me love Baz even more, meaning he's tuned up to every aspect of the cult, including the underrated G-ds like Minogue. Kylie's cameo in it is one of those pleaseant surprises I love in movies and one of the various others in Moulin Rouge. I abso-fucking-lutely love when Christian and Satine fly to the top of the roof on Your Song and the Singin' In The Rain reference; or the heart-shapped fireworks on I Will Always Love You [not to mention the whole Elephant Love Medley]; and oh man, talk about Material Girl in Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friends.
So in the end, Baz's pop culture collage feels like a musical should make you feel but better, simply because it turns the world in a more happy and beauitful place despite its darkness. And since I'm a sucker for cathartic experiences, this movie is for me the one I need to watch whenever I'm melancholic or romantically crushed; and here stays the tip.

Ages ago I was talking with the ho about how Almodóvar makes his actresses look so hot and desireable even when they're not beautiful; a great example is Rossy De Palma. Last year he turned Penélope Cruz into a real woman again, dropping behind the American startlet image Hollywood imposed to her. So, last night as I watched Hable Con Ella for the second time I got this idea to my mind again. The way Rosario Flores looks masculine and manly is just the cover of a huge feminility she exhales whenever she's onscreen.
But for me, in this 2002 masterpiece Pedro goes mostly about a Portuguese word that is hard to be translated to other languages: saudade. Basically it is like when you miss someone in a way your mind stays caught up into nostalgia. And in this movie it's portrayed in a heartbreaking yet quirky fashion that only Almodóvar can do. Marco missed so much his troubled wife that he cried whenever he lived something sublime and emotional. Why? Because he didn't have her next to him to share it. That's saudade my friends.Another thing that hooked me on this second screening was all the cute flirts he does with Brasil. You all know Caetano sings Cucurrucucú Paloma in it; before that, on the first bullfighting scene the song played is Por Toda A Minha Vida by Elis Regina and Tom Jobim; later Marco cites a Jobim song to Lydia [How Insensitive]; and among the guides written by Marco, there's one from Brasil.

Hable Con Ella by the end turns out to be a beautiful essay about solitude pinched with saudade, where Almodóvar shines his adorable style homaging the art of Cinema [this time the silent era] and using polemic plotlines; but for me this is a movie that has such a hopeful and lightful end that it reassured on me the power of good-bye; but also incited my current desire for love, and I'm not talking about sex.

[Song: Lamb - Gorecki]