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Photography and film reviews by Armando Gonzalez Buitrago __ Miami - FL

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La Chinoise (1967)

  Five Marxist students gathered in an apartment are convinced that the road to socialism leads to revolution. Veronique (Anne Wiazemsky) comes from a family of bankers, she is aware of the contradiction, as much as Guillaume (Jean Pierre Leaud) is aware of the menacing contradictions of Soviet revisionism. The students identify their enemies in bureaucrats, magnates, landowners, and revisionists, justifying the use of violence and terrorism, although later on, the film fabricates the following question: Once you kill all these people, what comes afterward? To what apparently there is no simple answer. La Chinoise is not only a film about social interaction and Marxism, it points out contradictions with the intention of making radicalism look insignificant. 

In La Chinoise, Godard participates in activism through the collectivist vehicle of cultural action without quitting on his notorious artistic individualism of the late 1960s, “a mixture of fictional narrative, reporting, essay, and absurdist interludes”, according to film critic Pauline Kael. The contradiction in Godard’s direction is that he steps back to point out the absurdity in the idealism of his characters, and then mocks them as if he wasn’t using Wiazemsky and Leaud as sheer mouthpieces.

Visually, the minimal aesthetic of La Chinoise, with no camera moves and limited production design - probably made with a small fraction of the budget that was spent in setting cars on fire in “Week-end”- leaves a lot of space to fill with words, both spoken and graphically represented, hence the notable connection to pop art.

Why America didn’t bomb the communist countries from western Europe but went after Vietnam? Why the class struggle won’t end under the dictatorship of the proletariat? Where do ideas come from? If Godard formulates these serious questions in La Chinoise, then why does the film have to be farcical? It’s a strange self-complacent effort where Godard makes a parody of his own anti-imperialist ideas to prove how postmodern his take on a Dostoevsky novel can be. La Chinoise is conflicted propaganda, a stimulating approach to Marxism.

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Your dad said that he couldn't adjust to the schedule that we were imposing him, that he couldn't have lunch every day at 7pm. Maybe he can't tell that we've just been eating when we have to at this point. We've tried everything to wake up earlier... I'd like to believe that we have. I got a message from a friend that misses her life: "I was so bored that I cried. I just cried. It was the only thing I had to do"

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The Invitation (2015)

Eden (Tammy Blanchard) and her husband David (Michiel Huisman) set a get-together at their home, inviting Eden’s old-time friends and her ex-husband, Will (Logan Marshall). The strange behavior of the hosts drives Will to believe that they’re hiding something, the other guests -including Will’s girlfriend - notice it, but believe that he’s overreacting. Everythings turns more cryptic when David welcomes his own guest, Pruitt (John Carroll Lynch), and when later Will finds out that the doors and windows of the house - at one time his home - are locked.

Screenwriters Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi try to add depth to the film by forcingly presenting us flashbacks of a mysterious and traumatic backstory involving Eden and Will, while at the same time hinting a powerful bond between Will and his deceased son, which also creates an apparently significant connection between Will and the house. However, there is not how to ignore the ineluctable information that reveals the fate of the film: There are four people that start to act bothered when someone tries to leave the house, there is one person suspecting it and seven more that do not care. It’s an uncomplicated reality.

There is an extent to allow how different from us are fictional movie characters, but director Kary Kusama does not understand the basics of human nature. The Invitation is unbearably unrealistic. My biggest issue with the film is the farcical setup. While David claims that all he wants for his guests is “to stay and have a good time”, they sit around with no music on, talking softly without stepping on each other’s dialogue, doing cocaine with nothing to look forward to, and remarkably disclosing how uncomfortable they feel. Nobody smokes cigarettes, maybe if they did they’d expect the front door to be unlocked. At some point, they all quietly watch a three-minute video on a laptop and then proceed to listen to a stranger's four-minute monologue explaining how he murdered his wife. Them staying in the house is what propels this story, but then again, they have so many reasons to leave.

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Day for Night  (1973)

Day for Night is a film about all the inconveniences that happen in the production of the movie “Meet Pamela”. Its producers have minutely planned the filming so the only delays are attributed to unexpected technical problems, but many delays end up being caused by the emotional fragility of the actors, like in the case of Severine’s depression (Valentina Cortese) or in the arbitrary absences of Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Léaud). However, this is not what disturbs the sleep of Ferrand (François Truffaut), the director of “Meet Pamela”, who is constantly approached by all the members of the production team, asking him to approve the color of a car or the model of a handgun. At one time, the make-up artist shows Ferrand a wig and proceeds to ask him, "is it too light?”, to what Ferrand replies that he really doesn’t know. Who is gonna tell if a wig is “too light”? What difference does it make? Ferrand must finish “Meet Pamela” without extending the schedule and the last thing that might go through his head is the color of a wig. A film director is asked many questions, sometimes he has the answers. Day for Night indicates that making any choice lightly that can affect a movie later, as insignificant as it may seem, is what tortures a film director and makes him question if he could have tried harder, if he must do any re-writes or if he has to conform with what he has done. A lot has been documented about the deliberate artifice and director François Truffaut’s attack on Hollywood’s studio system, but Ferrand struggling to find meaning in directorial choices that look insignificant might be Day for Night’s most precise observation. This is a movie for anyone that has tried to make a movie and has struggled to finish it. Cinema is king.

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A Better Tomorrow (1986)

In this tale of betrayal and redemption, directed by pre-Hollywood John Woo, Ho (Ting Lu) is a former criminal trapped as the central character of a conflict between his former partners in crime Shing and Mark (Waise Lee and Chow Yun-Fat), and his police cadet bother, Kit (Leslie Cheung). A Better Tomorrow, is very self-aware and committed to the structure of the film genre it belongs to, heroic bloodshed, a very unmodifiable genre because of its conventional motifs of honor and loyalty. There might be no payoff for the good-willed criminal in Woo’s world of unmerciful justice, one character dares to synthesize that idea by stating that “a bad guy for a day, will never be a good guy again”. That being said, Is there any type of meaning in redemption? 

The way the movie looks is very effective. Werner Herzog has shown his contempt for telephoto lenses in the past, claiming that he’d like to see people up close and at the same time see as much of their surroundings, all in focus. Herzog says that he wants the camera “to breathe and be physically present”. John Woo takes the opposite direction and gives space to his characters to walk like menacing giants in his city pop landscapes. Ultimately, Herzog underestimates the power of zoom lenses to faithfully represent the mystique of sumptuous criminals. Why would you want the camera to act with curiosity in front of the bad guy?

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The Electric Pickle

The first time that I ever heard about the Electric Pickle was in the middle of a conversation with Luis Nieves, a co-worker with whom I shared the two things that link me to any person: the abiding thrall of retail and a taste for nightlife. At the time I only had eyes for Bardot -the exquisite club that would eventually get dragged to Club Space and become Floyd- and so did he, we would hit those Slap and Tickle parties every tuesday on a weekly basis and talk about them at work. Every now and then Luis would mention how absurd this place Electric Pickle was: “I heard that there are people doing cocaine on the tables”, he’d say. It wasn’t true, but he did mess with my imagination and introduced me to the idea of a darker Bardot going down south on North Miami Avenue. I’m ashamed to admit that I got to enjoy the Pickle at a really late stage of its run, It took Terry’s birthday to finally take me there for the first time. It was september of 2016, a tuesday night, The Love Below party. I fell in love with the design of that club, it was like nothing I had seen before, it didn’t have sofas and tables arranged to look like a hotel lobby, It didn’t have a line of unfriendly yuppies by the bar, it wasn’t glamorous... It was indeed a darker club, but a masterpiece as well, starting by a mellow bouncer that never acted like the most important part of his job was to make people implore, then you’d climb the most erotic steel steps in Miami - a feeling as intense as walking to an execution- emanating a rising energy that foreshadowed the merciless fence of a crowd that never noticed your arrival; and finally a small room, dark enough, hot enough, loud enough; embellished by an amber glow and the sparks coming out of borrowed lighters and deep drags of Marlboro Lights. Everything was in the right place: The bar, the DJ booth, the tables, even the ATM in between the bathrooms was where it fucking needed to be. When the music got loud, there was no chance of telling people about your problems, the strobes went on, arms up, and the infamous disco ball -that acted as if it had a life of its own- exploded in colors as a drunken rant in the front seat of an Uber... And everybody was dancing... There really was no better place to be. Many times I headed there with only $60 in my pocket and a screenshot of the RSVP, and inside I’d act like a host, offering cigarretes and asking randos if they were having fun. Sometimes those same randos would ask me to keep drinking with them in a hotel room or in a condo at Midtown 2, because meeting people at The Pickle was the closest thing to a 9 year old making friends in a public pool. The Pickle’s booking was very diverse -They would book someone like Avalon Emerson and then book Omar S months later- it could give you a heavy dose of techno -courtesy of visionary promoter Diego Martinelli- or you could just go there for Love/Hate Classic Sundays and listen to an entire hour of Mary J Blige.  That club was whatever the fuck you wanted it to be for you. To me, It was a romantic place. I even remember telling owner Will Renuart how grateful I was for that, “Hey, listen to this guy! He takes all his Tinder dates here”. And I did, girls loved it. I remember dancing with Lis to Lovefool by The Cardigans on a New Year’s Eve party, and I don’t know if that kind of feminine fantasy could have happened somewhere else. The Pickle was the first nightclub that Estefania ever stepped into and Kourtney’s favorite spot for an entire summer. But what really made the Pickle a great nightclub? Why do people continue to refer to it as “intimate”? That overplayed word that sounds like an easy way of describing any room that happens to be somber. Well, there was this one night. All Vinyl, september of 2018. Will Renuart is DJing and around 6:oo am there are just about 20 of us randos inside. The place is dead, no one is buying drinks and people are leaving. After 7:00 am, Sino -Will’s wife- starts passing out cans of Modelo and a bottle of mezcal, complimentary drinks. Will is doing that thing where he holds each vinyl as if it was a handheld fan. Like it’s too hot, like maybe he thinks “get ready cause this record is fire”, I don’t know, ask him. And then it’s 8:00 am and no one wants this thing to keep going but him and maybe the part of myself that never wants to go back home. It’s not a business anymore, so what’s the point of keeping the music so loud? It’s not a private party. At this point Will Renuart is DJing in an empty club, for a handful of friends and strangers, some kind of Denis Lavant in the last scene of Beau Travail. And I think to myself, this dude must really love this. And now it’s all over.  

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Dr. Martens Pascal Di Paolo.  Downtown Dadeland / Miami

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Shot at Hotel Colonnade Coral Gables.   Model: Betsy Guillén.  

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The Brickell loop.  View from the Eurostars Langford Hotel. 

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COAST CITIES UNDERWATER 

So much we talk of the unfairness of life that we forgot how cold it gets in your car.

On sundays we go to Chilli’s after work and you tip the servers with the tips that you’ve earned hours before. 

Do you go to bed thinking about death? Do you still think of the seventh grade, the future, the many stuff you’ve seen and the people that left, just about six months ago? I bet you ask yourself, how much plastic there is in the world and where does it go.  And I bet you feel sorry for every street cat,  you get slowly devoured, and that’s how I know. Oh, that’s how I know  you’ve been planning something for years, when you look at those Brickell high-rises and think of the stuff that should be rightfully yours. The uncertainty that gets to the core of the bone, when it’s 4 am and you’re sipping manhattans alone. All the things I could never got to do, the unfinished stories I told on our first rendezvou, when the pub was still there and you were just 18, the things I tried to ruin and fix, every feeling undue; those things have to happen, but they have to happen to you.   I will be in the passenger seat  when you drive over the sidewalk like you do in every corner. This love is long awaited,  like coast cities underwater.  To Estefanía. 

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As a Miami native, I must say: this is a dope blog.

Thanks, man!! That’s something really cool to read. I haven’t post in a while, but these kind of comments make me wanna go out shoot some pics on Washington Ave or La Ocho. Cheers!! 

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IRMA, MARÍA Y JOSÉ. When we met, traffic lights were not working and restaurants were closed. We crashed at a small corner crowd. Coronas sunken in ice water, cash only. Even the nightlife went up north. Every song had to be hummed and every word recited on a whisper manner. And around 2AM, you found a pair of green Puma sunglasses by the dumpster and you wore them without hesitation. I never thought it had to get that dark. As you only seem to come when hurricanes happen, I'm throwing threats at the wind, marlboro butts at the sea, berating the peace of the shore, satanizing open skies, from Key Largo to Jacksonville Beach.

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Portrait of Manny Coll. Manny gets you free drinks at Bougies. He's a fucking legend of South Miami. Once he carried a six drawer dresser on his shoulders while texting his mom. Some even dare to say that he was in fact texting Dwayne Wade.

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