Films. And While We Were Here ...

This past Sunday, I was transported from a grey and rainy afternoon to warmer and colourful Southern Italy. Visually and aesthetically beautiful and with scenery which will take your breath away, While We Were Here provided an escape from my ordinary life into a romantic Ischian rendezvous.

Setting aside the movie's synopsis (some might say it is an ageless life story while others a much-abused topic), there is no deniying the pleasing cinematography and art direction present. I am a firm believer in the fact that Italy never looks bad on camera and Naples and the turquoise waters of Ischia are no different; the 10 minute sequence with no dialogue, just music and shots the characters making their way through the island is breathtaking.

Attention and detail are paid to costumes, vital to keep the soft aesthetic of the film. Pastel colours prevail: creams, whites, ochre, navy blue... Bosworth shines much like a young Jean Seberg in capri trousers and striped tops for a walk on the beach. Silk blouses and peter pan collars paired with crochet shorts give her petite frame and light hair an impression of allure but also fragility and naivety.

 A love poem to French neorealism and classic cinema which is worth dedicating a Sunday afternoon.

XOXO

Lirical Abstraction at DelPozo ...

I haven't been paying much attention to the Fashion Weeks starting all around the world at this time of the year. I tend to discover the collections which strike me weeks after all the hype is gone. However, as soon as a couple of pictures from Delpozo's Fall Collection came about, I knew I had to have a closer look. The brand posseses a rare elegance mixed with romanticism, classical lines but also breakthrough design, almost arquitectural. 

There are two currents of inspiration to creative director Josh Font’s DELPOZO fall / winter 2014 collection: Italian artist Duilio Barnabé and the novel “Logan’s Run” with its retro-futuristic aesthetic.

Long lean lines prevail in this collection taking form in 50s full skirts, structural beige coats, light-as-a-feather silk dresses (or superposed shirt + skirt or trousers) in sky blue, powder pink and bright green, embellished with metallic jewels and, to give a slightly futuristic touch, shimmering heeled boots to complete the look. My favourite piece? The eggshell angora sweater, embroidered with different textures (pictured above)

XOXO

Blue Valentine....

This is my Valentine's post for you all. Nothing pink, or sweet, or heart-shaped, or chocolatey, or surrealistic.

Blue Valentine, directed by Derek Cianfrance (The Place Beyond the Pines) is a story about love, rather than a love story. But love in its purest form, not metamorphosed into a consumerist, american-dream, sugar-coated, together-forever lies we hear every day. Love with all its facets and described not as an everlasting feeling but a combination of opposing sentiments, which shifts and transforms day to day, through the years. 

The aesthetics are exquisite, with great care to the visual imagery and the costumes, considering the time-span the movie takes place in. Costume designer was Erin Benach (Drive, The Place Beyond the Pines), responsible again for making us fall in love with Ryan Gosling's leather jackets...

BLUE VALENTINE

(director: Derek Cianfrance; 2010)

BY ANTHONY LANE
The new yorker

A delicate, complicated telling of a harsh and simple story. Boy meets girl; boy falls in love, marries girl; boy and girl fall out of love, and wish it were not so. This is hardly fresh material, but Derek Cianfrance, the director and co-writer, has fashioned it into something of startling directness and intensity. Throughout the film, he flips back and forth between the enlivening past, where the couple first met, and the ashen deadness of the present, where they are peeling apart; you can’t always tell which period is which, and that only makes things worse. The leading actors, Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, barely put a foot wrong, although the story is crammed with wrongness and awkwardness of every kind—the pair of them trying and failing to rekindle old desires, for instance, on the floor of a cheap motel, or the unforgettable sequence in which she dances, badly, to his tortured singing on a cold night. No grander, more foolish declaration of love has been seen, or heard, in recent cinema. There are fireworks at the end, but by then the hopes are fizzling away. With the remarkable Faith Wladyka as the lovers’ five-year-old daughter.

I don't know, I just feel like I should just stop thinking about it, you know, but I can't. Maybe I've seen too many movies, you know, love at first sight. What do you think about love at first sight? You think you can love somebody just by looking at them? But the thing is man, I felt like I knew her, you ever get that feeling? Yeah, I probably don't right... it felt like I did though.

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XOXO