We watched Buffet Froid last night. If you don’t know it it’s a French film directed by Bertrand Blier and starring Gérard Depardieu, Bernard Blier and Jean Carmet.
I must have bought it some time ago and then forgotten about it. I do that. A lot of our DVD collection is still in cellophane (just as many of my books are unread). Regular work seems to be improving my attention span though. I’ve finished several books recently and can now cope with whole TV programmes and films on an occasional basis.
So we watched it. I didn’t know anything about it beforehand. The cover speaks of a theme of urban alienation, but that hardly does it justice. It’s bonkers. Albert Camus and Luis Buñuel must be major influences. You have to work hard to make some sort of sense of it, but it is an enjoyable task. I’m still working on it today. I can’t see Hollywood remaking it.
In other news we have had a bear in the garden. We think it was bear. We have this new bird feeder thing – a pole with hooks on, water bowl, all that sort of stuff. It’s very popular with the birds and Morris the local squirrel.
Anyway, this morning the peanut holder has been unhooked, thrown to the ground and the peanuts emptied out and eaten. That’s got to be a bear, right? It might be a squirrel I suppose but Morris is no heavyweight and that nut holder is sturdy. So we have a bear. Or a squirrel. Or an owl – it could have been an owl.
They found the smallest dinosaur in the world just up the road the other day but that’s long dead.
Lance Woodman 