"I've Loved You So Long" film review

The impact of I've Loved You So Long may take longer to seep in, so I have posted a very good review from the Guardian and have added my own conclusions, only where they differ from Peter Bradshaw's.

**

Peter Bradshaw’s review of

I've Loved You So Long (2008)

in the The Guardian, 26/9/2008

The presence of Kristin Scott Thomas in this literate French movie was so powerfully distinctive that it's as if director Philippe Claudel wrote the lead role for her. Her formidable presence, her middle age beauty, her awareness of all the tiny absurdities and indignities with which she was surr-ounded, all created an intelligent, observant drama about dislocation and fragility of unshakeable memories. Scott Thomas was on screen for almost every minute of the film, often in close-up and her face was eloquent and withdrawn.

She played Juliette, a woman who after a long and painful separation was taken in by her younger sister Léa (Elsa Zylberstein). When we first saw Juliette, being picked up at the airport, she wore no makeup, smoked perpetually and had clearly been institutionalised.

Juliette and Léa's childhood home was near Rouen, but Léa had now moved with her husband (Serge Hazanavicius) and two young children to Nancy. Juliette's English-accented French was explained by the fact that she spent some time in England and that the women's mother (Claire Johnston) was English, a demented woman in an old age home. Juliette's sole meeting with her mother was relentlessly awful.

The reason for Juliette's absence was a grim, unnameable secret. It was the elephant in the living room whose shadow had fallen over all their lives, and it was only when Juliette went for job interviews, or for mandatory meetings with caseworkers, or the local police officer with whom she had to sign in once a week, that she could speak the truth aloud. This Juliette did with a proud defiance, and a perverse pleasure in shocking people, to pre-empt their scorn.

While Juliette's 15-year-old secret had sent her entire family into shock and collective dysfunction, it was Juliette who had been able to look the facts squarely in the face and, having had a long time to come to terms with it, was relatively well adjusted. But Léa, carry­ing the twin burdens of her own family respectability and the need to appease her parents' angry demands for silence on the matter, had to spend her adult life in denial. Yet all this made Léa's pass­ion­ate need to reach out to her damaged sister all the more moving.

Without any uncomfortable cramming, Claudel adroitly suggested the slow process by which Juliette was gradually accepted into the family and the community. With miraculous efficiency, he gave her a flirt­ation with a melancholy cop, a sexual encounter with a stranger in a bar, and a growing, tender intimacy with Léa's colleague and fellow lecturer Michel (Laurent Grevill). Bradshaw didn’t mention the children but I would suggest that they went a long way to ease Juliette’s gradually acceptance into the family.

Peter Bradshaw reported that the final revelation, when it came, was just a little strained. It turned on the discovery of a photo and certain details on the back of a handwritten poem. But these details, he thought, did not appear to offer us much more know­ledge than we might have already guessed. I, on the other hand, found the final resolution of the story to be artificial and trite. It retrospectively undermined what had been realistic and painful tensions in the story line.

Annie Besant, Theosophy and Australian Women Artists

In An Edwardian State of Mind and Victorian/Edwardian Paintings, find all the facts about Annie Besant's early life. Now we need to examine her connection to Australia.

In 1889 Besant was converted to Theosophy i.e the supreme wis­dom religion that would supersede Christianity. Within a very short time, she was visiting Melbourne “for the purpose of lecturing on Theosophy. Mrs Besant's daughter is married to a Melbourne pressman .. and was a spokeswoman of an adult-suffrage deputation to the Vict­or­ian Premier”  (Bulletin, Sep 1894). Then Mrs Besant continued her lecturing tour in Sydney.

Annie Besant introduced a strong socialist element to Theos­ophy, because she was very well known in the Fabian Society. Her second important tour of Australia was in 1908.

In 1911 Besant was a keynote speaker at an important NUWSS suffragist rally in London. Soon after becoming a member of the Theosophical Society, Besant went to India for the first time. Thereafter she dev­oted her energy to the Theo­sophical Society, to India's freedom and to women’s prog­ress, in India and back at home. She started the Home Rule League in India for obtaining the freedom of the country and reviving the country's cul­t­ural heritage, attended the 1914 session of the Indian National Cong­ress and was elected its president in 1917. Despite being interned by the British authorities during WW1, Besant continued to write letters to British newspapers, arguing the case for women's suffrage.

The real surprise to me was not Besant’s energy and various pas­s­ions. Rather I want to know why intellectual, educated women artists in Australia would flock to Theosophy. Jane Price became a founding mem­b­er of the Melbourne Branch of the Theosophical Society, and spent long hours discussing theosophy and Besantian writings. May Vale in particular wanted to use Besant Hall as a venue for exhibitions. Wal­t­er Burley Griffin, the (male) American architect and city planner who designed Australia’s capital city, Canberra, was apparently another follower of Theosophy. Ethel Carrick Fox eventually joined the Theos­ophical Society in Sydney.

Artist’s Foot­steps concluded “The role of Theosophy in Australian art has yet to be fully examined. However, given the number of artists who took an interest in theosophy, esp­ec­ially in the early years of the C20th, it is likely that theosophy was a factor in the production of a number of their artworks”. Jill Roe in Beyond Belief: Theosophy in Australia suggested that Theosophy’s popularity was due to middle class Church of England women’s disappointment with their church’s lack of vision for women outside home, family and charity.

With its emphasis on the power of love, on service and on a duty to protect the weak, Theosophy prefigured many of the values of modern feminism. I would suggest that Annie Besant’s personal appeal to intellectual women was no less compelling. Certainly the Theosophical Society has become a major focus of interest by cultural historians.

Were Some of Vermeer's Models Pregnant?

Were some of the Women in Vermeer’s Paintings Pregnant? by Nagore Barbero, 2/6/2008

Barbero wrote “Even though to the modern eye 3 or perhaps 4 women in Johannes Verm­eer’s works seem to be pregnant, there is good reason to believe that this was not the case. Marieke de Winkel, Dutch costume expert, said pregnancy was not a common subject in art and there are very few depictions of maternity wear. Even in religious paint­ings such as the Visitation, where depictions of pregnant women is required, the bod­ies of the Virgin and Saint Elizabeth were usually completely hidden by draperies. De Winkel further argues that to his knowledge there are no examples of or pregnant women in Dutch por­t­raiture, an interesting fact considering that many women were paint­ed in their first year of marriage, a time when they could have been with child. Pregnancy was most likely not seen as aesthetically attractive.

Arthur Wheelock wrote that Dutch fashions in mid-C17th seemed to encourage a bulky silhouette. The impression of the short jacket worn over a thickly padded skirt creates in Verm­eer’s painting in particular may create just such an impression. It is interesting to note that in the 1696 Dissius auction in which 21 works by Vermeer were sold, the Woman Holding Balance was desc­ri­b­ed as A young lady weighing gold, in a box, by van der Meer of Del­ft, very artful and vigorously painted. Since preg­nancy was not portrayed in Dutch painting of the C17th, it seems noteworthy that the catalogue’s author would not have noted such an exceptional fact. Afterwards, no mention of the woman’s pregnancy can be found until 1971 despite the fact that the work can be traced in an unbroken line to this century.

And modern scholars generally believe that Vermeer syst­em­atically drew upon fellow genre painters of the time such as  Gerrit Terborch, Frans van Mieris, Gerard Dou for both his compositions and themes. He did not substantially subvert or even widen established iconographical boundaries but rather seemed completely absorbed in realising their fullest expressive potential. In this light, it seems doubtful that Vermeer addressed such an uncon­vent­ional theme such as that of a pregnant women.”

I too was very interested in Nagore Barbero’s question but came to a different conclusion. There were three main reasons for thinking at least some of the women in Vermeer’s works were indeed pregnant.

Vermeer, Woman reading a letter, c1662
Rijksmuseum Amsterdam,

A] Firstly Mrs Vermeer and her contemporaries were almost always pregnant or nursing. Mrs Vermeer herself had 11 pregnancies where the babies survived infancy and possibly several more pregnancies where the baby did not survive. Vermeer would certainly have been used to the sight of pregnant women and he may have even liked the contemp­lative, peaceful glow of pregnancy. I am showing Woman Holding a Balance specifically because the woman may have been weighing hers and her baby's life in the balance.

B] Vermeer was a slow, extremely careful painter who completed relatively few (c34) paintings in his entire life. Money was a constant problem, so it seems unlikely that the artist would have wasted money paying a professional model. More than likely, Vermeer used his wife, family members, visitors and staff in the home as his models, whether they were pregnant or not.

Vermeer, Woman Holding a Balance, 1663

National Gall Art, Washington DC

C] Calvinist Dutch families valued cleanliness, godliness, thrift, educating their children well, teaching their staff well and keeping a well-run home. Having specialist maternity clothes for the last 20 weeks of pregnancy would have seemed extremely wasteful to these good burghers. So we might assume that pregnant women would simply wear their loosest, most comfortable ordinary dresses, above the fundus if necessary. Kees Kaldenbach was even more specific, noting that in French fashion, women could wear a robe battante, a wide garment which would incid­ent­ally cover up any sign of pregnancy. But depicting pregnancy intentionally would have been totally unacceptable.

Specialist data are needed, so I recommend people read the Fashion and Its Histories sessions in Art Association of Australia & NZ Conference, Brisbane, Dec 2008.

The Bauhaus Moved to Tel Aviv

When Tel Aviv was recognised as a city in 1921, Meir Dizengoff was elected mayor. He remained in office largely till his death. Sir Patrick Geddes (1854–1932) was a Scottish urban planner. Having publicised his Cities and Town Planning Exhibition 1911, Geddes lived mainly in India, where he was involved in town planning work. Geddes was not Jewish, but he was very familiar with the Old Test­ament and was committed to Utopian ideals that could be applied to the new Jewish homeland.

Rothschild Bld, green centre

In 1925 Mayor Meir Dizengoff asked Geddes to submit a mas­t­er plan for Tel Aviv. The city limits he worked to were the Yarkon River in the North and Ibn Gvirol St in the East, the original boundaries of the city. Ged­des presented a fascinating report in 1927 which was quickly ap­prov­ed by the City Council. He brief was to cr­eate a European Garden City for 40,000 citizens. Geddes’ plan provid­ed wide, main streets on a grid pattern, single plots for family homes, small pub­lic gar­d­ens in the side streets and open access to the beach. And Ged­des sp­ecified mixed residential-commercial use, at least on the main roads.

Bauhaus design, Tel Aviv: flats and shops

Inevitably Geddes’ plan had to be modified so it never fully mat­er­ial­­ised in its purest form. During its implementation, the density of the city had to be greatly in­creas­ed, to cater to the flood of imm­igr­ants to Tel Aviv in 1930-9. By the height of British Mand­ate, the city had grown enormously and was home to 150,00 people and 8,000 buildings. Of Geddes’ 60 public gardens, only half were ever built.

You can still access the 1931 Master Plan of Tel Aviv, drawn up by the city engineering department, according to the original Geddes master plan of 1927. The primary roads, containing the city’s com­m­ercial activity, are indeed broad and flow north-south. The second­ary roads, mainly residential and still broad, do flow east-west. Wide tree-lined streets increased the sense of shade and of pleasant public space; trees added essential colour.

German Jews who made aliya in the l930s brought with them the then-newest architectural ideas: the modernist ideas of ar­ch­itects Le Corb­usier and Walter Gropius. And at the VERY time the Tel Aviv was getting going, modernist archit­ects at the heart of the Bauhaus movement were leaving Germany: 1933! While many of the lead­ing Bau­haus ar­chitects fled to Britain and USA, at least 20 Bauhausers and their colleagues migrated to British Palestine. Timing is everything!

Tel Aviv very quickly adopted their style as a route to defining the charac­ter of a new Jewish city, burgeon­ing on the Mediterranean. No more Levantine made from stone, peaked roof, wooden balconies, Arab­ic windows, grand colonnades and lots of metal decoration. By the mid-1930s it was the only city in the world being built ent­irely in the Bauhaus Style; its simple concrete curv­es, boxy shapes, small windows set in large walls, glass-brick vert­icals, asymm­et­ric­al fac­ades, horizontal lines and balcon­ies all washed with white. I would love to have seen Tel Aviv when it app­eared as a vis­ion of startling white: c4,000 buildings, all built from 1933 on.

Tel Aviv city council design­ers chose the Bau­haus style because of four political, ideological and practical reasons:

1. There was no need for Tel Aviv architecture to be historically consistent with pre-existing buildings as there WAS no past. They could focus on developing a new, modern direction.

2. Bauhaus architects believed it was their job to improve so­c­iety with their designs: a new form of soc­ial housing for working famil­ies, trade union cooperatives and free medical clinics. Bau­haus' socialist ideas were popular with Jewish intell-ectuals, especially its view on form and function.

3. Bauhaus designs were quicker and cheaper to build. A Bauhaus building needed prefabricated blocks of reinforced concrete, had a flat roof and sheer façade, with no cornices, eaves, addit­ions or decorative bits. There was a 3 storey limit. As colour was considered bourgeois, build­ings were white, grey or beige.

4. At least 20 young, energetic Bauhaus-influenced architects fled Germany in 1933 and were living in Tel Aviv, looking for commissions. The city council could draw on this amazing pool of available talent.

The elements of the Bauhaus buildings were largely characteristic of Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, with a couple of local Tel Avivadaptat­ions. Glass was used sparingly and long, narrow, horizon­tal win­dows are visible on many of the Bauhaus buildings in Tel Aviv. Vertical windows were used on stairwells.

Along the Mediter­r­anean balconies were mandatory: to in­crease the movement of breezes and to enj­oy the sea view. Where possible, over-hanging brows blocked dir­ect rays of sunshine from entering the win­dows. Roun­ded balcon­ies were clearly no more functional than angled ones but they were often chosen to mitigate the harsh, linear fac­ades. This changed in the 1930s when immigrants arrived in desperate need of hous­ing. Many elegant Bauhaus lines were then obscured by balcony enclosures, giving an extra room but looking ugly.

Concrete stilts, which raised the buildings off street level, creat­ed room for a green garden area while providing greater air flow. As with the balconies, much of the once-open area created by the stilts has since been enclosed.

Flat roofs were already a feature of the Bauhaus buildings in Eur­ope, as opposed to the more typical shingled and slanted roofs. While Tel Aviv roofs in most cases did not feature roof gar­d­ens as planned by Le Corbusier, they at least served all building res­idents.

Note the flat roof  with gardens

Bauhaus interiors in Germany were already white, functional and unadorned. But Tel Aviv has a hot climate, so rooms had to be made as cool as possible. Wall to wall carpets and curtains were out; marble or tile floors were substituted; and shutters could close windows entirely. Since space was at a premium, there could be no narrow and useless hallways. And space could be used flexibly, of necessity.

I have lived in, or visited many modernised Tel Aviv flats, but I have never seen a photo of what the interiors looked like in 1933. Thus this photo is, at best, a guess.

Living area, 2008

The Bauhaus Centre, 99 Dizengoff St, organises group or individual tours on foot for visitors. The guide showed me buildings by the architects who worked in Tel Aviv from 1933 on, including Joseph Neufeld, Richard Kauffmann, Carl Rubin, Arie Sharon, Dov Karmi, Shmuel Mistechkin, Munio Weinraub-Gitai, Shlomo Bernstein, Sam Bar­kai, Ze’ev Rechter, Genia Averbuch and Benjamin Anekstein. I must find the work of Leopold Krakauer, Dov Kutchinsky, Joseph Berlin, Yohanan Rattner, Yehudah Megidovitz, Alexander Levy, Yossef Minor, Pinchas Hutt, Moshe Cherner myself.

Over the decades, buildings were seen to be too degraded to restore. The original Bauhaus build­ings would have all ended up being bull­dozed unless enough people cared to save the derelict ones still standing. Three miracles happened:

A] In 1991 the Engin­eer­ing Dept of Tel Aviv municipality created a Modern Heritage Preservation under architect Nitza Szmuk.
B] Bauhaus Renovation Foundation was formed and organised a Bau­haus Conf­er­ence for May 1994. 2,000+ inter­nation­al particip­ants arrived.
C] 2003-4, UNESCO declared central Tel Aviv a protected city, on the World Heritage List.

So I am sitting here in Melbourne, thinking fondly of Geddes. With the hearty help of Dizengoff, Geddes planned a Garden City of wide tree-lined boulevards, small roads with smaller green spots, clean-lined, boxy buildings with very little ornamentation and a beach focus. Appropriately Tel Aviv now has a Bauhaus Museum to dis­play Bauhaus-designed furnishings and related objects. It opened in 2008 at 21 Bialik Street.

This blog will be continued in Sept 2025