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Another fairly unremarkable day...
Sep. 21st, 2002 10:47 pmThe kids are off camping with friends and may not be back tonight. Huntur was dropped off to us at around 3 pm, and I've got to tell you that I'm a little out of shape when it comes to holding an infant's attention.
We went outside and looked around, and watched a plane take off from the airport (anyone who takes off on runway 19 and does not turn off that heading after gaining some altitude will pretty much fly over the house). We came back inside and took everything out of Huntur's toy "box" (a large boxy plastic container with a screw top), then we went and pounded on a keyboard for a while, then played with the funny Chinese balls with the chimes build into them, which are intended for excercising the fingers, which in turn aids the health, etc.
After a while, she insisted on being held in the arms, first by me, then by Galina, then by me again, then by... (you get the idea). Anyway, about 7 pm or so, she finally zonked. Galina and I went to the other room to watch another Netflix selection: a French film titled La Promesse.
In the film, an amoral 15-year old who is the apple of his equally amoral father's eye becomes involved in the coverup of an accidental death of one of his father's illegal alien workers. As the man lies dying, he makes the kid promise to look after his wife and child, newly arrived from Burkina Faso. The rest of the film finds the boy sticking to his promise.
It's an intriguing idea, but I don't get the kid's motivation for suddenly finding religion. I don't think the kid does, either. Heck, he was introduced in a scene where he helps a little old lady get her car started, and then lifts her wallet (containing the woman's pension money) without so much as a twitchy eyebrow, and we watch his character develop even more while he intimidates poor wretches in the tenement where his old man rents rooms and sells gas for heating at fairly exhorbitant prices.
Don't get me wrong: it's not as if I don't believe it could happen. I just can't identify the reason for it. Was it watching the man die that did it? Or was it his participation in the ensuing cover-up, as his old man embedded the dead worker in the concrete of the building he's renovating for himself and his son?
To be sure, the woman is obstinate. She is sure her husband did not run away (he had, it turns out, a gambling problem, and owed significant amounts to various people). She guts a chicken to confirm her suspicion, and later, after treating her baby at a hospital, gets a seer's opinion, which is that her husband is not with his ancestors.
When all is said and done, this is another one of those dreary, to my taste, French films that insist on taking a rather generous slice of a rather unglamourous life and shoving it down your throat. OTOH, this film stands head and shoulders above the Russian film the other night, which stands out more for its curious quirks (the emptiness of the streets when our players are out and about, the uniform plaid design of all luggage toted by characters, the sepia monochrome), than for any other reason.
Translation went well today, relatively speaking. Everything remains on schedule.
Cheers...
We went outside and looked around, and watched a plane take off from the airport (anyone who takes off on runway 19 and does not turn off that heading after gaining some altitude will pretty much fly over the house). We came back inside and took everything out of Huntur's toy "box" (a large boxy plastic container with a screw top), then we went and pounded on a keyboard for a while, then played with the funny Chinese balls with the chimes build into them, which are intended for excercising the fingers, which in turn aids the health, etc.
After a while, she insisted on being held in the arms, first by me, then by Galina, then by me again, then by... (you get the idea). Anyway, about 7 pm or so, she finally zonked. Galina and I went to the other room to watch another Netflix selection: a French film titled La Promesse.
In the film, an amoral 15-year old who is the apple of his equally amoral father's eye becomes involved in the coverup of an accidental death of one of his father's illegal alien workers. As the man lies dying, he makes the kid promise to look after his wife and child, newly arrived from Burkina Faso. The rest of the film finds the boy sticking to his promise.
It's an intriguing idea, but I don't get the kid's motivation for suddenly finding religion. I don't think the kid does, either. Heck, he was introduced in a scene where he helps a little old lady get her car started, and then lifts her wallet (containing the woman's pension money) without so much as a twitchy eyebrow, and we watch his character develop even more while he intimidates poor wretches in the tenement where his old man rents rooms and sells gas for heating at fairly exhorbitant prices.
Don't get me wrong: it's not as if I don't believe it could happen. I just can't identify the reason for it. Was it watching the man die that did it? Or was it his participation in the ensuing cover-up, as his old man embedded the dead worker in the concrete of the building he's renovating for himself and his son?
To be sure, the woman is obstinate. She is sure her husband did not run away (he had, it turns out, a gambling problem, and owed significant amounts to various people). She guts a chicken to confirm her suspicion, and later, after treating her baby at a hospital, gets a seer's opinion, which is that her husband is not with his ancestors.
When all is said and done, this is another one of those dreary, to my taste, French films that insist on taking a rather generous slice of a rather unglamourous life and shoving it down your throat. OTOH, this film stands head and shoulders above the Russian film the other night, which stands out more for its curious quirks (the emptiness of the streets when our players are out and about, the uniform plaid design of all luggage toted by characters, the sepia monochrome), than for any other reason.
Translation went well today, relatively speaking. Everything remains on schedule.
Cheers...
