Word: gallimard
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This all but destroys the supposed deeper meaning of the film. Eventually you begin to suspect this story would work better on "Geraldo" than as a metaphor exposing gender and race as performance. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction, and in this movie Gallimard's story seems so peculiar it simply does not hold any implications beyond itself...
...scenario, based on a real story, seems full of dramatic potential. In 1964, Rene Gallimard (Jeremy Irons), a French diplomat stationed in Beijing, starts a long-term affair with Song Liling (John Lone), an opera singer who enchants him with Eastern modesty and feminine mystery. Several years later Gallimard learns he's been had, so to speak: Song was a spy for the Chinese government...
...abstraction. They've included a few truly bizarre sex scenes, which probably would be better left to the imagination of the audience. As it is, you spend less time thinking about race and sex fantasies than about exactly what these two were doing in bed, and exactly what Gallimard thought they were doing...
Portnoy took his complaint to a Paris civil court in an attempt to bar Gallimard, the publishing house, from selling any more copies until the hero's name is changed. Argued the publisher's lawyer: "There is no risk of confusion. Philip Roth's hero is a New York lawyer. Our adversary is a French garage owner. This hero is not odious or detestable. He is touching." Besides, the attorney added, "How can you expect an American writer to investigate whether somewhere abroad there is a living person with the name of his hero...
Last week part of that version unexpectedly appeared. Pirated excerpts were printed in the newspaper France-Soir -two months ahead of the book's scheduled publication date. Malraux's publisher, Gallimard, duly registered its consternation at the leak, but the 3,500 words that were made public were only a teasing glimpse of what was to come...