A reactionary grip on a state of grace.

The Man of My Life. I just finished watching this little French film. This I did instead of finishing Mike Amnasan's fantastic little book _Liar_ (which I will do after this post), and instead of finishing work (one hour to go), and instead of finishing my revising task for the month (14 pages to go, then putting it all into the computer), and instead of finishing the collage that's due (to me) by the end of the month. Why do I give myself deadlines? Perhaps now that I'm rather settled and happy with my beautiful one (i.e. no longer dating), letting myself down takes the place of letting others do it for me.

"The Man of My Life" is about a French family on vacation. The man falls in love with the gay neighbor. It's beautifully done in fragments, the art of it coinciding nicely with the gay man's graphic design/artful living style (see: glass ceiling, naked boy, angel, sun casting glass-painted letters onto the wall-painted letters, creating new words as the day goes, oh-and the red wall. There is something in me that loves a red wall). At times one is quite unsure of the chronology of things, but that's the way love goes.. moments repeat themselves while you're looking at something else.

The gay man was cast from his father's house 20 years before the film takes place. In the last twenty minutes we learn his father is dying. Should he go? The family convinces him - for himself and the family, rather than for his father who probably at this point won't even know that he's there. The film waits to get Amelie-quirky (what I hate about the French) until we see him walking up the imaginary shadow of a hill to a house at the top and a big big red door. So big, I mean, that the grown man reaches up to the doorknob to go in.

Should he see his dying father, who lies in a sanitary and cold room? (Note: I do not want to die in a room like this, the bed pulled away from the wall, no other furnishings, nothing on the walls, sad tile.) He climbs into the bed with his father and I can't help but notice what great shoes he has on (the son, not the father). My mother has surgery on February 7. Perhaps I'm not even supposed to know about it. From there they learn how serious the cancer is.

Quotes from the film that struck me:

"Must we love our kids because we planted the seed?"

"[Relationships are] a reactionary grip on a state of grace."