In the time since I’ve last posted, I’ve finished off exam week (three exams in one day, woo!), finished off graduate school in Paris, and moved out of France. I’m now in the middle of visiting family in Spain. That is, until Friday (it’s Wednesday evening now), when I will be taking the plane back home to the Greater Boston area. Where I will be for a week (a week coinciding with the spring break of one of my best friends!) before moving back to Manhattan to begin a second internship/trial period at IFF as a fine fragrance evaluator.
I’m very exhausted and I’m not sure how often I’ll be posting as all this gets gearing up (despite having so many ideas- recommended links! my dreams for the future! movies that have already come out that I want to see! things I’m looking forward to at home! things I’m going to miss in Paris!) but I would like to slide in a few amendments to previous posts.
The first amendment: An addition to my favorite films of 2019.
I cut off my list of favorite 2019 films at 8, but since then I was lucky enough to see the French submission to the Oscars for best foreign film, Les Miserables. There is a lovely group in Paris that shows French and other international films with English subtitles- they’re called Lost in Frenchlation. If you’re in the Paris area you should definitely check them out.
So Les Miserables. Not an adaptation of the classic novel, but a film that takes places in the same area of Paris, Les Bosquets, and looks at the tense relationship between the police and the largely North African and Muslim neighborhood they patrol over the span of a few days. It’s very powerful and I very much recommend it.
The second amendment: Three additions to my anticipated films of 2020:
Minari: A family drama seen through the eyes of a seven-year-old Korean-American boy whose father moves the family from California to rural Arkansas to learn to farm and make a better life.
Respect: A biopic profiling legendary singer-songwriter Aretha Franklin.
The teaser trailer was stunning and Jennifer Hudson deserves a break, post-Cats.
Passing: Two white-presenting black women are forced to confront their own choices, and each other, after they reunite to learn one is living as a white woman and the other as black.
I feel like I’ve seen and liked another Nella Larsen adaptation, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was.
List Mimsy 