And here we are, with part four (the French Chapter) of my very personal story with BBM.
As usual, in the days immediately after the viewing, I mingled with what were now my well known BBM-fever symptoms, mixing melancholy with sadness and regrets for all the opportunities I had missed along the road, and fighting with an overall difficulty in bearing all the burdens that everyday’s life continuosly brings forward, unabling us to think to what we really would like to.
But, something good was starting to blossom as well: My old time passion for cinema, which I had put aside for quite a number of years, was starting to resurface again. BBM had been such a great theatrical experience that ever since I saw it, I have been trying to go to the cinema as much as possible, as well as subscribing to Sky in order to make up part of the time lost in the last few years. The Motorcycle Diaries and Donnie Darko are just two of the “jewel” movies I saw recently - I had missed them when they were released – and they are already part of my best movies list.
But, back to BBM, I was soon to get a new theatrical experience. It happened that I was planning a few days in Nice, France, for a mix of business and pleasure, and BBM had already been released there and running in two different theatres. One cinema was offering the original version, the other the French dubbed one. I could even make a choice of language: great!
A quick check on the Allociné website enabled me to check the voices in the French-dubbed trailer: didn’t like them too much, so once in Nice I had no doubts: I would have opted for the original version again.
And there I was, at the “Cinema Rialto”, for the late viewing of February 8. No more than 20 viewers attending, and a very heterogenous mix of them. I’m quite sure most Niçois went to the other cinema, offering the French version. It was a “funny” public, participating in the story - pity we suffered two interruptions due to “technical” problems with the projector - and everybody around me - I had two gals behind my row, and a party of three guys to my left – really seemed to be deeply emotionally involved in what was happening on the screen.
Two days later I was there again, bewitched by the power of BBM, this time for the early afternoon viewing at 2pm, along with no more than 15 other viewers. This was possibly the saddest viewing I happened to take part, as a number of spectators started sobbing towards the end of the movie, and by the time the end titles were running a young lady was desperately crying.
I just sat there, as if I had been glued to my seat, feeling a huge burden on me, the voice of Rufus Wainwright singing the last lines of The Maker Makes, and almost unknowingly I decided to stay there, viewing BBM once again, two times in a row: I could do nothing else, but review it again immediately: it was an urgency I could do nothing but fulfil. Another first in my life!
And each viewing was bringing to me dozens of small details that Ang Lee had scattered here and there, and that I had missed in the previous viewings, but were all important to a better, if not complete, understanding of the story.
Overall I had the impression that truly in France BBM had been appreciated and loved. French people always seem to have a great relationship with romance. Ah, l’Amour!
- end of part four -
