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126 TREE BOOKS fl ,Y-0 XA:047,164- . otet le.n.y 1,i, 827 West 12th Street Austin, TX 2 blocks east of Lamar Monday-Saturday 10-6 512.499.8828 413 www .laz y nakbandb.com WRITE DIALOGUE The Texas Observer 307 W. 7th St. Austin, TX 78701 [email protected] door seeking signatures for their petition to have the international blockbuster, The Matrix, dubbed into their mother tongue, Breton. Local and globing is Godard’s repeated focus, not on the speaker, but on the person listening, giving us the emotional texture of the speaker’s voice as well the recipient’s reaction. Part of what makes this meditation on love incompatible with mass audiences is the film’s tendency to lapse into that particularly French mode of melancholy that reads as pretentiousness. All of us stare off into the night and think about love, but we don’t film it and then overdub it with sentences like: “I am thinking of something, but I can only think of that something when I am thinking of something else.” It might be nice if Edgar would occasionally light another Gitane and keep his pretty little mouth shut. The film is also fairly critical of America and Hollywood. It generally struck me as “fairly” so in every sense of the word, but some audiences may not appreciate the more bitter jabs. A lost tourist is referred to as a “pain-in-the-ass American” for no other reason than that she asks for directions. One of the themes of the movie is the importance of memory and history, and Americans are singled out for lacking a critical sense of both. Godard shows France’s superior grasp of historical context by including references to the French Resistance in WWII and the riots of May of ’68 all within the confines of this love story. Can you imagine if Harry met Sally and they talked about Cambodia? Not likely. There will always be a gap between what an art form can do and what it chooses to do; without that space to explore, the form is dead. But if you let that distance between potential and realization become a void, it will be filled with bloat and flatulence. Freddy will get fingered and serial killers will splatter the screen with gore. At 71, Jean-Luc Godard is still testing the limits of film’s evocative powers, still trying new methods of communicating through celluloid.When Edgar’s lover enters the frame and suddenly the screen is literally flooded by an ocean of longing, you get a glimpse at a new possibility in the characters’ lives, as well as the director’s longing to reach us. Jean-Luc Godard has medicine for our obese 24screen cineplexes, but it might not be easy for everyone to swallow Kirk Lynn is a co-producing artistic director and playwright-in-residence for Rude Mechanicals. MIFifteenth The Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center’s Annual San Antonio Inter-American Bookfair &T’ Literary Eestivai November 20 23 , 2002 at the Guadalupe Theater 1300 Guadalupe Street …… /111/11/11MINI 1111111MMMMI .4.._. ..?,,,,i, ALA,.\(rj rP Featuring: Marjorie Agosin, Gioconda BeIll, Jay Brandon, Sandra Cisneros, Maria Espinosa, Robert Flynn, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Stephen Harrigan, Rolando Hinojosa, Tish Hinojosa, Paulette Jiles, Demetria Martinez, Ruben Martinez, Mayra Montero, Cecile ,Pineda, Sergio Ramirez, Manuel Ramos, raiiIrsalinaS, r Pamela Uschuk, Alma Luz Villanueva, Kalamu ya Salaam and many more with spoeial thanks to our malty sponsors, inclading Trinity University, Barnes OZ -, Noble Bookstores, Nat. Endowment for the Arts, San Antonio Dept of Arts and Cultural Affairs, ‘texas Committee on. the Humanities, Texas Commission on the Arts, Southwest Airlines, San Antonio Public Library Foundation, Unit. of Texas at San Antonio, Alamo Community College District’s International Programs, Ili it of the Incarnate Word, 111exican Cultural Institute, Saint Mary Univ. Our Lady of the Lake \(Iniv, &ton Lutheran Univ Esperamm Peace & Justice. Center, and many generous individuals. Bookfair director: Bryce Milligan 10/25/02 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 23