Pina

Wim Wenders biopic of the late choreographer Pina Bausch caused half a dozen people to walk out of the QFT in Belfast when I watched it this week.
There is a barely suppressed sexual energy, often violent, about many of Bausch's pieces but I also suspected that the walk-outs may have had more to do with people not really understanding what was happening. I certainly didn't.
The highly stylised movements and interactions between the dancers set to a mixture of classical, jazz and contemporary music defies interpretation.
Like abstract painting or avant garde music, contemporary dance is intended to express the inexpressible, to tug at some emotion that can not be articulated by mere words.
Bausch's best-know piece, Cafe Muller, involves women in clinging white chiffon dresses, with their eyes shut tight, seeming to be reluctantly dragged by some unseen force from one end of a stage to another, while a waiter hurls tables and chairs out of their way. It features as the opening scene of Pedro Almodovar's Hable Con Ella.
It is a Beckettian scenario, absurdist and non-sensical. I haven't a clue what is going on while watching it, what it is supposed to mean or symbolise, but it is strangely moving.
The film Pina was narrated by members of the German-based dance ensemble who worked with Bausch, some of them for more than two decades.
There was footage of Bausch herself, occasionally dancing or talking about her methodology, but Wender's, correctly concentrated on the dances she choreographed - visual representation of her psychic landscape.
There were generous extracts, sometime recreated in the urban setting of Wuppertal in northern Germany where Bausch's Tanztheatre company were based.
Even though the QFT screening was in 2D it was cinematographically stunning. I would love to see the three-D version but can't see it getting an airing somehow in our local moviehouse.
Pretentious? Probably, but a superb and inspiring 1hr 45min experience.

Hable Con Ella

Following my musings on Spain in my last post in which I used an image from the Almododvar film Hable Con Ella (Talk to Her) it was almost inevitable that I would want to watch it again. It is my favourite film and strikes me as a complete work that operates at a variety of levels. It has a fairly straightforward narrative, but it is filled with symbolism, cinematic vignettes, mini stories and minor characters that enrich the overall narrative.
That it should be viewed as symbolic is clear from the very start as the film opens with a dance sequence, Café Muller, choreographed by Pina Bausch which is being watched by the two central characters Benigno and Marco, who are sitting beside one another in the audience but who have not yet met.
The film ends with another piece of dance theatre and sandwiched between them within the main body of the film are numerous choreographed sequences.
The second scene where Benigno, a male nurse, and his colleague Rosa, wash and dress the comatose patient Alicia is a highly stylised piece of cinematic ballet as are the bullfighting sequences in which the female matador Lydia appears. Similarly the scene where Lydia is dressed by her, male, assistant is also a beautiful piece of cinema in which careful lighting and closely choreographed movements are used to create a highly intimate moment.
The female bullfighter has been much commented on as an attempt by Almodovar to challenge the macho world of the Spanish male but he also does so in other more subtle ways. Marco weeps at the performance of Café Muller and we see him welling-up on a number of other occasions as he remembers the pain of his breakup with his previous partner Anglea. Yet it is this highly emotional man who ends up with Lydia the bullfighter – who out of her matador garb is intoxicatingly feminine in short body-hugging dresses and dripping barely covered by a towel as she steps from a shower.
Despite his vulnerabilities Marco is portrayed as a sophisticated man of the world – an Argentine-born journalist who works for El Pais and who has written a series of travel books.
In contrast Benigno is portrayed as sheltered and naïve – described as a “retard” by his boss. He spent his youth nursing his mother who was confined to bed, not because she was ill but because she was “a bit lazy”. He is slightly creepy and stalks Alicia to the point where he arranges an appointment with her psychiatrist father so that he can get into their home and while there sneak into her bedroom – yet it is he who ends up nursing her after she is left in a coma following a road accident.
We see the former stalker Benigno washing down Alicia’s naked body and looking after her every need, to the point where he is even allowed to clean up her period. He confesses to Marco that the four years he has spent nursing her have been the most satisfactory of his life.
Benigno’s journey from a sad and lonely obsessive through to the imprisoned, unshaved “psychopath” who raped his comatose patient is dramatic and yet despite his crime it is hard not to feel sympathy for his action which was driven by devotion and desire for the woman in his care.
And here Almodovar sets us up with a moral dilemma for his audience – by raping Alica and impregnating her Benigno proves to be her redemption as she miraculously regains consciousness and we are left with the philosophical conundrum that if by performing an act of evil something good is the result can we still judge the original act as evil.
Marco’s development is more subtle than that of Benigno and he emerges from his morose, introspective self pity to engage with Benigno. He even shares some his traits, his obsessiveness and loneliness, and he admits to Benigno that he too is very fond of still-comatose Alicia. Marco is redeemed by his unquestioning support for the incarcerated Benigno when all others have abandoned him even though he is horrified by his friend’s crime.
Almodovar uses Hable Con Ella as vehicle to show of his considerable skills as a filmmaker. It jumps back and forward in time – and even contains a flashback within a flashback – but never seems to lose its narrative thread.
It even contains a film within a film, which he uses to symbolically depict the rape of Alicia. The silent movie tells the story of a man who drinks a potion concocted by his mistress which causes him to shrink until he ends up just a few inches high and cavorting over her naked body from where he “disappears inside her for ever”.
Almodovar also manages to strategically place objects and sequences of dialogue that hint at deeper levels of meaning.
On Marco’s bedside table we see a copy of the novel Las Horas (The Hours) by Michael Cunningham, while beside Alicia’s hospital bed is the novel version of La Noche del Cazador (The Night of the Hunter).
Alicia’s dance teacher, played by Geraldine Chaplin, describes a ballet she is working on set in the trenches of World War One where the ethereal emerges from corporal depicted by female ballerinas emerging as the souls of dead male soldiers who have been killed by warfare.
It is the dancer Alicia who eventually emerges from her near-death state while Benigno, whose rape of her instigated her recovery, is incarcerated in prison and eventually in a grave after he takes his own life during an attempt to induce himself into a coma through a drugs overdose so that he can “be with Alicia” whose recovery he is unaware of.
Throughout, Almodovar paces his main narrative with slight distractions and humorous interludes. The female nurse explaining how she can tell how well a man is endowed by the shape of his face and the pretty receptionist who works for Alicia’s father answering the phone and telling her friend that she has just had “an elephant-sized dump” (surely one of the great lines in cinema) add nothing to the plot but help create a multi-layered feel in which numerous elements mingle.
The visual impact is enhanced by the soundtrack by Alberto Iglesias which for me is now so synonymous with film that even when playing it while driving in my car I can visualise the scenes that each track accompanies.

Mi vida española

IT'S not easy being Spanish when you haven't got a drop of Spanish blood in your body and live in Ireland - but I try.
My day usually starts with a cafe con leche and a bit of bread while I sit and watch the news on 24H, an online news channel broadcast by Televisión Española. A couple of times a month I will pick up a copy of El Pais (which is usually a day out of date).
Lunch is often paella, tortilla español (potato omelet), sopa Castellano (garlic, egg and chorizo soup), or gambas a la plancha con ensalada (grilled prawns with salad). Sometimes I might have a copa de tinto (small glass of wine) with my lunch.
Other Spanish delicacies are harder to come by. There is a shop in Belfast which sells boquerones (anchovies in vinegar) - but they are absurdly expensive. As for navajas (razor clams) I have never even seen them on a restaurant menu in Ireland.
There is a continental market being held in the centre of Belfast at the minute which sells churros (deep fried strips of donut) but it is not quite the same standing outside in a frosty December and eating them as sitting in warm bar in Madrid with cup of hot chocolate to dip them in.
In terms of music I have a decent selection of Flamenco, Galician traditional music and more contemporary Spanish artists – including Mano Chao, Los Rodrigues, Celtas Cortos – and quite a lot of very dodgy Spanish pop. Thanks to broadband I can also listen to a lot of Spanish radio stations.
I also enjoy Spanish (and South American) cinema and would probably rate the Pedro Almodovar film Hable Con Ella (Talk to Her) as my favourite movie.
I've spent quite a bit of time in Spain, teaching in Madrid and working in the tourism industry in Mallorca and in Andalucia - but that was in the early 1990s. However, I still go back when I can, I was there in June this year, 10 days last year and a fortnight the year before that.
My Spanish is flawed and very ungrammatical but it is a language I am fairly competent in. Technically I should be able to speak Irish at least as well but I lack the confidence to launch into a conversation and worry that I'm using the wrong tense or transposing English idioms.
No such problem with Spanish... if I don't know how to say something I'll find my way around it and have often launched into topics of conversation with absolutely no idea of how I'm going to construct a sentence.
For the most part I find that I am understood and I can usually understand what is being said back - watching Spanish television and listening to the radio has also helped, as has reading the papers, in print and online.
Of course there are nuances of Spanish life that I will never master and like anywhere else there are vast regional differences that tend to be glossed over in the overall outsider’s image of Spain.
I am fairly au-fait with the broader politics concerning the Basque issue and Catalan autonomy but I have found it best to avoid getting involved in debate - it is a bit like an outsider coming to Ireland and launching into a conversation about constitutional issues here.
I occasionally muse on the possibility of going back to live in Spain. Maybe not in Madrid which is a much bigger and much more complicated city than the one I remember, although I'm sure I could adapt.
I quite fancy Malaga. It is on the coast of Andalucia, within easy reach of Seville, Granada and Cordoba as well as the northern coast of Africa. Given the huge ex-pat population living down the coast on the Costa Del Sol and the number of holiday makers who come to the region there would be plenty of work for an English speaker.
But while I enjoy a hot climate I also like a bit of rain now and again and so I think I would be more suited to a northern city - Zaragoza, Valladolid, or even Santiago de Compostella in Galicia.
However, maybe I'm simply deluding myself that is what I want. Could I really live without being close to the Mourne Mountains or my favourite coastal walks.
I have quite a romantic image of Spain and eulogise it because of the memories I have of the times I spent there. But I was in my twenties when I lived there, was much more sociable and enjoyed going out and meeting people. Now I prefer taking it easy with a quiet glass of wine and a bit of music.
No reason why I couldn't do that still but there are other factors - not least Sinead who quite likes Spain but who might not necessarily want to live there.
There is also the danger that I am simply deluding myself that I would prefer life there. I remember a couple of years ago dropping off a hire car at Barajas Airport in Madrid and when the guy who worked in the office saw my passport he started lamenting how he'd spent the best year of his life in Ireland and would love to come back and live here. We almost agreed to swap lives.
I wonder if he wakes up in the morning and makes a cup of tea and toast and has fish fingers with beans or a big greasy fry for lunch and yearns for sausages and champ accompanied by a pint of Guinness for his evening meal?