| Welcome to Nikki And Helen. We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| Another tortured couple; New film Violette might appeal to BG fans | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: Oct 10 2014, 12:53 PM (170 Views) | |
| ElspethR | Oct 10 2014, 12:53 PM Post #1 |
|
Up to Basic
|
I have seen this film twice in a month at the cinema, because it is special. It came out on general British release a week ago but I saw it at a film festival previously. I think people reading this forum might like this film, Violette. It's about two women essentially - so much of Bad Girls' appeal was about the relationships between women, and you can see a kind of Nikki/Helen parallel in it. There's also a third important woman - Violette's mother, as well as a few significant male (often gay) friends. Like many of the women at Larkhall, Violette has been abandoned many times. She supports herself by illegal dealings through necessity. Her relationships with both men and women are unconventional - she lives with a gay friend whom she lives as his husband in post war France; she's been divorced and had an abortion; and she wishes her mother did to her, or at least that's what she assumes her mum thinks. And her dad's long vanished. Violette is a writer - a real life one - whose wranglings are keenly felt by the audience. She's endearing though potentially exasperating too. She's not easily understood. She spends spells in two institutions, neither are the best place for her. And she loves someone who appears to be unreachable, someone with a different temperament, who is more of a public figure, freer, who is not good with protestations of love, who hides behind a professional mask when she's flummoxed. This woman is Violette's inspiration and kind of mentor to freedom. I'm seeing Helen in none other than Simone De Beauvoir - another Simone! Sometimes, I am proud of Simone, sometimes I am exasperated and I gasped at her statement that Violette cannot have friend, she is acting out of duty. But the look on the other person's face shows we're to be shocked by theat. I think it's a little like Helen dressing down Nikki in that post shed meeting, and what she means and says aren't the same. Simone is a support to Violette for many years, and it's her final speech which gives the final words of the film, on live television, as series 1 and 3 ended. Throughout writing, Violette is liberated; it is her salvation. She has swapped destiny for freedom. She felt impoverished and alone, but Simone knew Violette was not. And now her outer circumstances have caught up her inner ones. It's a kind of post release courtroom steps speech - though I'm surprised that other than Bab's diary, writing or arts haven't been the solace of more of Larkhall's inmates. Nikki found some kind of inner freedom through literature - it began her better relationship with the Scottish Simone's character. But I wonder why Nikki didn't try writing herself? Think there's much to ponder on - I'd love it if anyone else has seen this film, or just wants to discuss writing as liberation, and the notion of letting words go further into the world than you do. |
|
Elspeth author of Parallel Spirals http://parallel-spirals.webs.com/ | |
![]() |
|
| mlbach | Oct 15 2014, 10:39 PM Post #2 |
|
Keys for the handcuffs!
|
I think inmates in Larkhall didn't write because it wasn't safe to do so. |
![]() |
|
| « Previous Topic · The Comfy Sofa · Next Topic » |







8:45 AM Jul 11