Leaving sees Kristin Scott Thomas once again in a French-language production, following on from her powerful performance in I’ve Loved You So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t’aime, 2008), which was released here in October 2009. She doesn’t disappoint, and while her character, Suzanne — a woman fighting the suffocating boredom imposed by her upper middle class life — hasn’t the same edginess of Juliette Fontaine, the unrepentant murderer of her own child from I’ve Loved You So Long, it is for the most part a marvelously nuanced interpretation of a Lady Chatterley-like character.
Leaving tells the story of Suzanne, a physiotherapist married to a doctor in a stable if not terribly passionate relationship. They have two children, both going through a rather aggressive adolescence. Suzanne wants to get back to work, and her husband Samuel (Yvan Attal) has spent a considerable sum of money to set up a consulting room for her in their spacious home. The worker on the project is Ivan (Sergi Lopez, Capitan Vidal from Pan’s Labyrinth), a Spaniard working illegally in France who has a blue-collar directness and easy manner that contrasts vividly against Samuel’s formal manner. The charm of the set up is that while the husband is far from being anyone’s romantic fantasy, he is considerate and kind. He does, however, want value for money.
Thomas creates in Suzanne a kind, rather naive character who has the best of intentions and an almost total ignorance of the harsh world outside her privileged existence. In discovering passion, she steps outside the rules that have always protected her. That she has done wrong is never in doubt. Attal gives her able support as Samuel, for while we might not find his demand that his conjugal rights be respected wholly sympathetic, he does not forfeit our acknowledgement that he has a case to make. Suzanne has stepped outside the rules, but although she is the film’s romantic heroine, our indulgence for her actions is never a forgone conclusion.
Photo courtesy of iFilm
For most of the film, Leaving has much to admire as an interpretation of an age-old story of how passion can take hold of a life and destroy it.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
Mongolian influencer Anudari Daarya looks effortlessly glamorous and carefree in her social media posts — but the classically trained pianist’s road to acceptance as a transgender artist has been anything but easy. She is one of a growing number of Mongolian LGBTQ youth challenging stereotypes and fighting for acceptance through media representation in the socially conservative country. LGBTQ Mongolians often hide their identities from their employers and colleagues for fear of discrimination, with a survey by the non-profit LGBT Centre Mongolia showing that only 20 percent of people felt comfortable coming out at work. Daarya, 25, said she has faced discrimination since she
RSS