La Femme Nikita

Nikita Taylor (Anne Parillaud) is a heroin addict who participates in robbing the pharmacy of the parents of a fellow junkie. The theft goes wrong and escalates into a gunfight with the police and the deaths of all her partners. After all has subsided, a very inebriated Nikita shoots a policeman. She is arrested and then convicted of murder and imprisoned for life. In prison, she is drugged to simulate a death sentence and then awakens in a nearly featureless room. A man enters and reveals that, although officially dead and buried after suicide by overdose, she is in the custody of the French intelligence agency. She is given two options: work as their assassin or "Row 8, place 30" (location of her fake grave: be killed and buried for real.) She selects the former and proves to be a gifted assassin.

She completes her first mission and begins her life as a sleeper agent in Paris where she meets a man who eventually becomes her boyfriend. The relationship becomes strong without him ever knowing about her eccentric lifestyle. Her assassin's career continues well, until a mission goes amiss, resulting in her needing the assistance of 'Victor: The Cleaner' (Jean Reno) in destroying any proof of the mission. Victor is killed and Nikita soon after abandons her boyfriend and the agency.



I think the movie is really about sense of self. Nikita spends all this time doing the most brutal thing one can do to another human being and is forced to live another life in which she is just ordinary and seemingly lovely. The view is aware of her Jekyll and Hyde scenario and witnesses how well she manages to hide one and unveil the other. When Victor becomes involved however, she appears to have reached her breaking point and loses her unruffled demeanor in a matter of minutes. She is finally able to live her life as she would like to; without puppet strings.

I thought the movie was very good. However, I think it could have been shortened. The dialogue was very good and I liked the poetry that was hidden in the plainest discourse between characters. Especially from the handler. It was definitely better than the American version and I’m not just saying that because the original > remake but because I honestly think the French did a nicer job overall: acting, cinematography, content and music.

Dreams

Dreams is a film featuring several short stories that are based on actual dreams dreamt by the director Akira Kurosawa. Some dreams are extremely dark, while others are quite mischievous. There are eight dreams and we watched seven of them: Sunshine Through the Rain, the Peach Orchard, the Tunnel, Crows, Mount Fiji in Red, the Weeping Demon and the Village of Watermills. Each dream has a somewhat “Aesop Fable” motif.

Sunshine Through the Rain and the Peach Orchard focus on the inexperienced minds of the young and the consequences of their exploratory nature. In the Tunnel, the sole survivor of a brigade of soldiers meets his dead comrades at the opening of a tunnel years after their death. The Tunnel represents a black hole of emotions and feelings. The dead soldiers have seeped out of this cavern of sentiment and now the platoon leader must confront his fallen allies; his guilt. Crows is about a painter who is given the opportunity to follow Vincent Van Gogh through a multitude of his paintings as he paints them. Van Gogh lets him in on some personal details regarding his passion for painting

Mount Fiji in Red, the Weeping Demon, and the Village of Watermills were all “Go Green” and environmentally oriented. Flowers are “crippled” in The Weeping Demon; the epitome of beauty when it comes to nature. The Village of Watermills depicts a tale of a young man making his way into a utopian village where modern technology is prohibited and believed to pollute the environment. They have chosen wellbeing over expediency.

I thought each film was very well done cinematography wise and definitely got their messages across without being too preachy. They were highly entertaining and relied more on visual story telling than dialogue. The films were subtitled and little reading had to be done. The atmospheres in each in film were of a wide variety and individualistic.

Centro De Brasil

Centro De Brasil is about a former school teacher named Dora who now writes letters for a living and a boy named Josue who has just become an orphan. The two travel quite a distance in order to reunite the boy with his father; a man the boy holds in high regards yet has never known. Dora works at Rio de Janeiro’s Central Station writing letters for the illiterate in order to make money. She usually destroys the letters she writes or leaves them sitting in her bedroom drawer. Josue’s mother is one of Dora’s customers. His mother sends letters to his father through Dora, with hopes of one day being together again soon. However, she is run over and killed by a bus outside of the train station soon after leaving Josue homeless and an orphan. Dora sells him, but after feeling guilty, steals him back from his captors. Though unenthusiastic in nature, Dora sets out to reunite the boy with his father and leave him with him.

The major theme of the film appears revolve around perseverance and guilt. When the film starts, we see that Dora helps the illiterate communicate for a very cheap price. You think, “That’s nice of her.” But then we learned what happens to the letters she writes: they don’t go anywhere. Her jaded nature doesn’t stop there: Dora decides to assist Josue after feeling guilty about selling him to the black market. Throughout the film however, I found myself thinking she was just a nice person and had to remind myself that her neighbor made her feel guilty before she even decided to go along with the journey to the boys fathers house. Even after deciding to go along for the ride, she questions her altruism several times and even leaves him on the bus alone in an effort to abandon him. After several fallouts however, the two become legitimate friends and make it through several obstacles and accomplish their goal.

I liked the film overall. The only thing I really wondered was if the illiteracy rate in Brazil was really that high. I think the film deserved its Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe win for dramatic film. You could feel the tension between the two lead characters. You also felt sorry for Dora when the religious truck driver literally ran away from her advances. At that point however, is when the two of them start to become friends and truly bond with one another. Through the entire movie, feeling and emotion just seemed to escape from the screen every sixty seconds.