Word: mathieu
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...probably predictable from the opening shots of the film, when the camera pans a statue of Rousseau--himself a utopian dreamer and a resident of Geneva--and an omniscient voice quotes him to the effect that man is always enchained in his social institutions. And at the end, as Mathieu returns to his factory, the camera returns to the philosopher's statue, suggesting that little has changed, that these idealists will never put their dreams into effect. Only their hope for a future world will sustain them. And a shot of Jonah in 1980, a small boy scribbling...
...their idiosyncrasies become strangely endearing. Perhaps the nicest character is that of Marie, a tousled blonde supermarket checker who blithely undercharges anyone she feels has been cheated by the system but there is also Marco, a pudgy history teacher philosopher with bizarre theories of time and history; or Mathieu, a devout Marxist, who identified himself only as "Labour", trapped in the machinations of capital, a former union organizer who goes out to work on the farm having despaired of revolution...
...times their fumbling efforts to find an alternate way of life are humane and joyous, as the characters slowly discover they can integrate their efforts and find some hope for the future. Mathieu, the Marxist, turns to teaching the children on the farm how to listen to whale songs in a greenhouse turned-schoolroom; Marguerite, the farmer, joins with the tantrist secretary Madeleine in putting out a newsletter detailing the chemical additives in commercially-grown vegetables. Even Max, the diehard cynic, finally joins the others in their vegetable farm retreat with warm enthusiasm and comraderie...
...rule of the establishment, is imprisoned for petty theft, and loses her child-like carelessness. Marco loses his job for teaching his unorthodox theories. And finally the pressures of the outside world break apart even the bonds between members of the group: Marguerite, the farmer, refuses to finance Mathieu's teaching efforts, and he is forced to return to a factory job he hates...
Along with Cocteau, the avant-garde French writer and film director whose aphorism he quotes frequently these days, Yves Henri Donat Mathieu Saint Laurent may be fou like a fox. After years of beguiling women into austerely tailored pantsuits, now, in this cool age of less is more and casual is all, the world's most influential couturier has stopped the parade with a collection of high-camp peasant fashions that are impractical, fantastical and egotistical. They are also subtle, sumptuous, sensual and jubilantly feminine. The overwhelming first American response, both from those who deal in clothes and those...