Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Visited T and D on Memorial Day weekend. On Saturday we drove more than two hours to the Clark Museum, newly redesigned by Pritzker Prize-winning architect, Tadao Ando. GH and I liked the Lunder Center at Stone Hill more than the main museum itself. The Center had a pure and simple form. The museum was cluttered with too many pools and differently colored walls. Great small collection of art, especially portraits by Renoir, Gainsborough, Delacroix, and Théodore Géricault. Also Piero della Francesca's "Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Angels" and William-Adolphe Bouguereau's "Nymphs and Satyr." George Innes's atmospheric landscapes were very beautiful. On Friday night we watched a documentary on the La Sagrada Familia, but I was too tired and fell asleep for most of it. On Saturday night, we watched François Ozon's Time to Leave (2005), about a young gay fashion photographer who learns that he has only three months to live. He pushes away his s...

Dans la maison ( In the House ), 2012, directed by François Ozon, is many things. It is a story about a cynical teacher and a talented student. It is also a study of the sexual frustration of middle-class women, the art gallery owner married to the teacher, and the housewife married to a corporate hick. At the heart of the film is the voyeur in everyone of us, the student (compelling Ernst Umhauer) who wants to see what a perfect family looks like, the teacher (Fabrice Luchini), and his wife (Kristin Scott Thomas). It is an homage to Teorema by Pier Paolo Pasolini, in which a stranger enters a home and seduces everyone in it, maid, son, mother, daughter, and father. And, most profoundly, the film is an allegory for the creative process. The fact that all these levels cannot be separated from one another easily as the film moves towards its unexpected ending is a testament to the skill and vision of the director. GH and I watched it last weekend, and we still felt its impact last nigh...