Ash is Purest White and Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (1978) on Monday Morning Diary (March 18)

by Sam Juliano

On Thursday, March 21st Lucille will be at Engelwood Hospital for a procedure to replace a disc above her spine that has deteriorated due to arthritis.  This is the second time this school year she will be under general anesthesia after the partial knee replacement completed back in September.  Though I am sure all will be well, I am still of course on edge like the rest of my family.  I anticipate speaking to some of my friends by e mail late on Thursday.  On a very sad note the dear mother of my lifelong friend Larry Weise, (Bernice) suddenly passed away on Sunday morning of kidney failure connected to severe diabetes.  Bernice was 81.

The 1978 winner of the Best Foreign Film Oscar and the National Society of Film Critics choice as Best Film, “Get Out Your Handkerchiefs” is running as the centerpiece of the Bertrand Blier Film Festival. Lucille and I attended Sunday morning’s 11:00 A.M. showing, which showcased a beautiful new print of the courageous film about a menage a trois formed to cure a woman who is the center of the man-woman-man trio of her continued depression. The woman, Solange is highly erotic and her alternating needs are addressed with uncompromising ardor by her husband (Gerard Depardieu) and the man her husband enlists to help her get pregnant. Her relationship with a 13 year-old boy elevates the film into narrative controversy, but this often hysterical farce is unlike any film before or since and its a gem and Blier’s masterpiece.

Lucille, Sammy, Jeremy, Broadway Bob and I watched the Chinese epic “As is Purest White” by master artist Jia Zhangke at the Quad last night. The most mainstream of Jia’s work this mobster romance again showcases the director’s mastery of the urban dynamic in this story of a woman who spends five years in jail saving the life of her gangster boyfriend, whom she travels far and wide to locate after she is discharged. The director’s wife and muse Zhao Tao is a force of nature in this triptych-structured film which is poetic and visceral as it chronicles a changing China.

Ash is Purest White   **** 1/2   (Saturday)        Quad Cinemas

Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (1978)  *****  (Sunday)   Quad Cinemas