★★★★☆
11 June 2012
This article is a review of BONSAI. |
“Those who have read Proust, raise your hand.”
Slacker-romance, this doesn’t fit BONSAI, even though the laid-back approach to love and filmmaking ostensibly seem in evidence. We’re not in mumblecore territory, the choice of camera positons and atmospheric lighting is too composed and artful.
Slacker-romance, this doesn’t fit BONSAI, even though the laid-back approach to love and filmmaking ostensibly seem in evidence. We’re not in mumblecore territory, the choice of camera positons and atmospheric lighting is too composed and artful.
Even though I find the lead at times frustrating, unable or unwilling to embrace the truths of his life, he, Julio, is very human, and easy to sympathise with. The audience is told in voiceover immediately that Julio will live and Emilia will not – we’ve not met them yet. I didn’t know whether to believe this initial narration. I still found the ending emotional.
Jumping back and forth – eight years earlier, eight years later – Julio in the present looks to be shell-shocked. He never cracks a smile in the present day chapters. And that’s how the film is broken up; the idea of entwining literature as part of your life is explored in a refreshing way. It has been done with huge success before, see WONDER BOYS; though BONSAI is a different beast, concerned about Julio and Emilia (eight years in the past) loving each other. And the idea of loving literature, while not really making the effort to fully consume and create – they listen to music during lectures, read one page per night out loud, lose a lecturer’s book, and pretend to have read Proust.
Eight years later, Julio is having a sexual relationship with his neighbour, Bianca, and falls into writing an autobiographical novel, though the opening says that everything apart from who lives is a work of fiction. What then unfolds, quietly and romantically and sexily, is an exploration of first love.