a film a book


Image result for portrait of a lady on fire
To welcome the new year I celebrate the artistry of two women: film maker Celine Sciamma and author Bernadine Evaristo - and their recent creations.

Celine Sciamma has created a wonderful, brilliant film called Portrait of a Lady on Fire featuring Adele Haenel and Noemie Merlant (as seen above) in the lead roles. I love this film so much I don't want to even describe it - simply recommend it! - and leave it to Sciamma to explain. She says the film is about reclaiming the female [historical, lesbian] narrative 'the goal ... was really to give back to these women their hearts, their bodies and their minds.' The film moves very slowly and lushly, and cleverly, and the end is to be savoured, and savoured.

Bernardine Evaristo's co-Booker Prize winning novel Girl, Woman, Other is equally wonderful and delightfully challenging to the reader in a multi-layered playful thoughtful way. Evaristo is an author I did not know, but now must read her seven or so previous novels. This is how the novel is described on the cover: 'Welcome to Britain and twelve very different people - mostly women, mostly black - who call it home. Teeming with life and crackling with energy, Girl, Woman, Other follows them across the miles and down the years. With vivid originality, irrepressible wit and sly wisdom. Bernadine Evaristo presents a gloriously new kind of history for this old country: ever-dynamic, ever-expanding and utterly irresistible.'
I agree with all of that - and more - it's funny, deep, queer and twisty, and really makes you aware.

 Image result for bernardine evaristo Atwood & Evaristo co-winners Booker Prize 2019

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