Autumn And The Cinema

Autumn
There's a poem by some French poet I can't recall about autumn leaves, put to music and sung by Juliette Gréco, that just about gets the mood here now. The extended warmish weather has meant the trees and vines have kept their leaves longer than usual and all are now putting on a great autumn display: yellow, orange, red through to brown. And it's everywhere. Opposite the front of my house Mt Bluye is full of cover and the back road to Vaison through St Marcellin, which goes quite high up, gives some beautiful panoramic views.

I hadn't expected as much. There are a lot of fir and pine trees here and the truffle oak which also abound don't turn brown in autumn (they do later on). However, the vines can put on a display and this year the fruit trees haven't lost their leaves yet (plus the poplars, lime and plane trees). After a few years of wandering around arboreta in England and wondering at Japanese acers I decided that these were a bit too showy. A group of them can look quite startling but you never get enough to make a broad panorama; for that you have to rely on the native trees and the natives here this year are doing great.

Cinema
Autumn is also the time to start scrutinising the cinema programmes. I went to see Fish Tank, which I liked, then Le Syndrome du Titanic which was a worthy documentary on the state of the world's resources but a bit too worthy and obvious. Despite some great photography I fell asleep in places. Then I saw Partir, which disappointed me. Despite good acting from Kristin Scott Thomas et al, and good reports on the IMDB database, I felt the plot lacked something and didn't feel much in sympathy with any of the characters except perhaps the kids, whom I don't think were supposed to figure much in the overall film. Maybe that is just me (and the wrong film for me). Next week it's off to see Le ruban Blanc