Jerry Lewis was lauded in France as an auteur for his freewheeling, unscripted zaniness long after English-speaking audiences grew tired of his antics. The reason is simple: his humour was physical and more easily appreciated by speakers of other languages unburdened by expectations of sophisticated plot, clever dialogue, and character development.
Lost in Paris [Paris pieds nus] is a feature film written, directed, and starring a married couple: Fiona Gordon and Dominique Abel. The plot is simple: a Canadian woman (Gordon) travels to Paris to save her senile aunt (Emmauelle Riva) from assisted living and falls in love with a homeless man (Abel). The charm of the film – and, yes, the film has its charming moments – is in the face and posture of Fiona Gordon, who, like Jerry Lewis, is an attractive, graceful actor ably portraying an ugly and awkward outsider. Opening scenes propel the film into magical realism aloft color compositions that would make Wes Anderson blush and Gordon’s pasty-faced innocence. Lost in Paris runs aground once Abel appears. With sculpted muscles and perfect posture, Abel is unconvincing as a homeless person. Gordon and Abel have an excellent scene together while dancing and another in a cemetery, but otherwise, they don’t make for a very convincing couple despite the very fact that they actually are married.
Over the course of two hours, Gordon’s face becomes familiar and the cinematography loses its lustre, as if shot on the cheap. Even Paris appears underwhelming – neither grand nor grungy enough to maintain the film’s initial magic. The late Emmauelle Riva, best known for Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), also has a dancing scene craftily choreographed on a bench, but she does not connect well with Gordon or Abel. An implied sexual liaison she has with Abel’s character, an Oedipal moment by way of Electra’s Clytemnestra in the last few moments of the film, has the texture of a ill-conceived lump on an otherwise flat plotline.
One of the most marvelous things about cinema is its capacity to transport viewers from our perpetually troubled existence, and in that way, Lost In Paris could make for a nice diversion for someone grieving or ill and it has the stuff of a fun date with your favorite elderly aunt. If, however, you seek to see something more substantial than a Jerry Lewis movie, aim your eyes elsewhere.
-- JEFFREY WENGROFSKY – New York, November 2017
More on Jeffrey Wengrofsky’s short films via the website Syndicate of Human Image Traffickers and the upcoming feature: Song of Hiawatha.
Good music to tell the world to fuck off to: TOMPKINS SQUARE
COLD LIPS gets a lot of mail. Some is beautiful, some is the kinda stuff we don't open: bills, demands, brown, deathly, stinky - rough with the smooth, uh? (Please support us by buying a print edition, fans! Or a T-shirt. Or a groovy black tote bag with sexy gold screenprint...)
When sieving through the overnight releases, music from Tompkins Square seeps through the hum of the Today programme, the old establishment's news broadcast on the BBC's Radio 4. The former is always a reliable source for those of us who like crate digging through the dead, falling upon outsiders, and cult leader-types. The Today Programme never calls those they feature words like that.
This morning, Tompkins Square greeted us with news of a release from LA resident, Rick Deitrick who they first released via the Brooks Rice and Michael Klausman curated series, Imaginational Anthem Vol 8 : The Private Press.
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On August 25th, they release two solo acoustic guitar albums by Rick Deitrick.
Gentle Wilderness was first released as a private press LP in 1978 (limiting to gifts, gigs, and 500 editions - kinda Crowley-style - giving copies to various libraries and leaving a few albums in the middle of the wilderness, next to trails, "so people would find them").
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River Sun River Moon consists of previously unreleased recordings from the same time period.
Ohio-born Rick Deitrick took up the guitar at 16 and decided to approach his playing as if he was the only guy on an island and the instrument had just washed ashore one day. According to Rick, "I completely divorced my playing from any formal music knowledge, but it was very important to me to use original tuning. During those years, the sixties/seventies, there was a lot of acoustic guitar playing, often using open tuning as a base. I wanted to create whole tones without de-tuning and keep access to the complex sounds stock tuning provided."
TSQ 5456 River Sun River Moon (LP)
TSQ 5432 Gentle Wilderness (LP)
Tompkins Square is distributed by INgrooves and Revolver in North America, Cargo for Europe.
Tompkins Square was set up in 2005 by chief proponent of napping: Grammy-nominated producer, Josh Rosenthal, who worked at Sony for years before.
I love a good nap. Napping is the best ‘fuck off’ you can offer the Universe. You’re losing consciousness, you know you’re going down, then that warm twilight. It’s like free, un-dangerous heroin. You will be a more efficient business person if you can fit one into your day. There are a few different kinds of naps. There’s the 20-minute power nap from which you awake re-charged and refreshed. There’s the slightly longer 30 or 40 minute nap, from which you awake disoriented, disheveled, wobbly, and all you want to do is get back under the covers for another 6 hours or so. So set your alarm for 20. When I worked for a big corporation, one of the few ways I maintained my humanity was by telling my assistant to hold my calls, and then I’d take a snooze. When you run your own label, you can take a nap anytime.
Brave enough to release the obscure, supported by Prefab Sprout, Max Ochs, Tim Buckley, Meredich Monk and the like, this is good music to tell the universe to fuck off to...
