Doinel in Tokyo
Jul. 27th, 2004 08:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusIn Paris a couple of weeks ago I made an appointment to meet someone in the Taschen shop on the Rue de Buci. My friend was slightly late, but that didn't matter, because Taschen were projecting one of Francois Truffault's Antoine Doinel films on a screen at the back of the store: Domicile Conjugale (1970). It was running with the soundtrack mute, and I found that, in the same way that I understand certain things about Japan precisely because I don't speak Japanese, the lack of linguistic distraction in the Truffault film laid bare some essential truths about French culture. Often, when you switch off your language centres, you suddenly see the elephant in the room.
There it was in Doinel's body language: Doinel is a pierrot. He's also a man who lives entirely for, with and amongst women. There's a scene early in the film where he stands in a courtyard colouring flowers. His movements come straight from a Marcel Marceau mime routine. He has the same manner when, later, he seduces a certain 'Mademoiselle Hiroko', a young Japanese woman called Kyoko. Doinel's face remains grave and distant, for a pierrot always has something lunar about him, even when he's not wearing white face paint, and even when his goal is something as earthly as the seduction of a woman. Leaud's portrayal of Doinel reminds us that 'charm' in Paris is all tied up with the historical presence in the city of the Comedie Italienne, with its direct links to the archetypes of the Commedia dell' Arte, gestural refinements of the medieval theory of 'the humours'. The gestural repertoire of 'the Italians' has spread throughout french culture. The bearing of the melancholy pierrot Scaramouche comes in particularly handy when you're a slim and serious young man who wants to charm a woman with signs of your gentleness, otherness, sincerity and refinement. There's also the fact that the pierrot seems schizoid, childlike, beyond normal moral constraints. Which is handy when, as here, Doinel is betraying a young wife who has just given birth.
Someone made the comment the other day that I am a 'pussy-whipped art fag'. I don't demur (yesterday, for instance, consisted of a visit to a digital art festival in the Panasonic building at Odaiba followed by a rendezvous with a certain 'Misako' at the Cafe D'Eau in Daikanyama, and the inevitable attempts to memorize the names of her sisters) but I prefer not to use such an American phrase. After all, in the language of a culture which dislikes both women and mimes, how can 'pussy-whipped art fag' be anything but a bad thing to be? I prefer to call what I am 'a sort of Antoine Doinel', and to declare that there is no higher calling or greater pleasure in life.
The film I am now living, a film Truffault never, alas, got around to making, is 'Doinel in Tokyo'. I would tell you the plot, but since the film's essence lies in gestures, fleeting expressions, textures, tastes, smells, barometric pressure and subtle effects of the light, that wouldn't tell you much. Suffice to say that it involves gently humorous, lightly romantic action in cafes and private apartments across Tokyo, a number of pretty actresses, a series of amusing deceptions and confessions, some philosophical dialogue conducted entirely by means of diagrams on a napkin, a scene upstairs at the kabuki theatre in Ginza, a trip to the beach, a game of 'Paper, Scissors, Stone', a walk by the Shibuya river involving lanterns and a small crescent moon... And did I mention Doinel's nemesis, the cloud of extras: Tokyo mosquitoes delivering itchy karma from farcical, stabby snouts?
There it was in Doinel's body language: Doinel is a pierrot. He's also a man who lives entirely for, with and amongst women. There's a scene early in the film where he stands in a courtyard colouring flowers. His movements come straight from a Marcel Marceau mime routine. He has the same manner when, later, he seduces a certain 'Mademoiselle Hiroko', a young Japanese woman called Kyoko. Doinel's face remains grave and distant, for a pierrot always has something lunar about him, even when he's not wearing white face paint, and even when his goal is something as earthly as the seduction of a woman. Leaud's portrayal of Doinel reminds us that 'charm' in Paris is all tied up with the historical presence in the city of the Comedie Italienne, with its direct links to the archetypes of the Commedia dell' Arte, gestural refinements of the medieval theory of 'the humours'. The gestural repertoire of 'the Italians' has spread throughout french culture. The bearing of the melancholy pierrot Scaramouche comes in particularly handy when you're a slim and serious young man who wants to charm a woman with signs of your gentleness, otherness, sincerity and refinement. There's also the fact that the pierrot seems schizoid, childlike, beyond normal moral constraints. Which is handy when, as here, Doinel is betraying a young wife who has just given birth.
Someone made the comment the other day that I am a 'pussy-whipped art fag'. I don't demur (yesterday, for instance, consisted of a visit to a digital art festival in the Panasonic building at Odaiba followed by a rendezvous with a certain 'Misako' at the Cafe D'Eau in Daikanyama, and the inevitable attempts to memorize the names of her sisters) but I prefer not to use such an American phrase. After all, in the language of a culture which dislikes both women and mimes, how can 'pussy-whipped art fag' be anything but a bad thing to be? I prefer to call what I am 'a sort of Antoine Doinel', and to declare that there is no higher calling or greater pleasure in life.
The film I am now living, a film Truffault never, alas, got around to making, is 'Doinel in Tokyo'. I would tell you the plot, but since the film's essence lies in gestures, fleeting expressions, textures, tastes, smells, barometric pressure and subtle effects of the light, that wouldn't tell you much. Suffice to say that it involves gently humorous, lightly romantic action in cafes and private apartments across Tokyo, a number of pretty actresses, a series of amusing deceptions and confessions, some philosophical dialogue conducted entirely by means of diagrams on a napkin, a scene upstairs at the kabuki theatre in Ginza, a trip to the beach, a game of 'Paper, Scissors, Stone', a walk by the Shibuya river involving lanterns and a small crescent moon... And did I mention Doinel's nemesis, the cloud of extras: Tokyo mosquitoes delivering itchy karma from farcical, stabby snouts?
Les enfants du paradis
Date: 2004-07-26 07:27 pm (UTC)On another note, are the Tokyo cafe society still creating the latest 'kei' ( or is too premature to ask )?
Richard G
Re: Les enfants du paradis
Date: 2004-07-26 08:30 pm (UTC)I don't think the TYO youth are really making much more than delicious cakes in their cafes at the moment. You have to go to Paris to find a contemporary music scene that'll really shiver your timbers, in my opinion.
Glitch 'n' Gateaux
Date: 2004-07-27 09:14 am (UTC)I shall look forward to checking out some cutting edge glitch and gateaux when I go to Paris next year. For some reason I was reminded of your Essay on Cafe scenes and the gentrification of Nakagmeguro. In LA sadly, the most dominant cafe scene is situated around Starbucks where sad scriptwriters on laptops can be spied trying to write the next blockbuster . Musicians and Pierrots are all busy working in Las Vegas...
Richard G