Penn Badgley, the actor who plays a handsome sociopath in the series You has said that he is not going to shoot any more sex scenes in the future because he feels that when he does he somehow betrays the bond of his marriage. He is not the only interpreter who moves by those coordinates. Chris Pratt, who was a stripper in his youth and now belongs to the controversial Hillsong church, accused of lgtbiphobia, also writes in his contracts that his films should not include sex scenes. Luckily for him, he moves in the Marvel universe, in the Guardians of the Galaxy and The Avengers films, and in the Jurassic Park saga, where there is not much steamy intimacy either. And other performers like Julia Roberts, Sarah Jessica Parker and Jessica Alba include non-nudity clauses in his films. The reaction to Badgley's announcement has been curious, with some very young commentators calling for a kind of return to chaste cinema that was shot under the Hays Code.
SAURA AND CRUZ NOVILLO
With the death of Carlos Saura and the many tributes that have been paid to him, the wonderful posters of his films from the seventies have been put back into circulation, when he established a collaboration with the designer Cruz Novillo. From this tandem emerged key graphics for the modernization of the aesthetics of the time, such as the Peppermint frappé poster, with an ecstatic Geraldine Chaplin in a cocktail glass, the geometric minimalism of The Burrow, the graphic symbolism of Ana and the wolves. or the game with the grid of bees in The spirit of the hive. The duo, which was actually a trio (the hand of Elías Querejeta was also there) maintained that dialogue from 1967, when Cruz Novillo designed the Peppermint frappé poster, until 1981, with Dulces horas. In some cases, some of Cruz Novillo's best work was used to promote Saura's films (and others, such as Borau and Jaime Chávarri) at festivals and on the international circuit, but much more conservative versions were chosen for Spain. It wasn't until many of these movies came out on DVD that each film was remarried to its original billboards.
A FESTIVAL TO GO BAREBACK
Faced with a (blessedly) outrageous cultural offer, proposals that entrust everything to the criteria of the curator are increasingly appreciated, which are based on: go there and they will give you good things. That is the idea behind La Inesperada, the “film festival you probably haven't seen”, as its subtitle says, programmed by documentary filmmaker Núria Martínez Lorang (My Mexican Bretzel). It is now in its third edition, it is held from March 1 to 5 between the Filmoteca de Catalunya and the Zumzeig cinema in Barcelona and consists of several medium-length sessions, almost always hybrid documentaries as unexpected as Nous, Estudiánts!, by Rafiki Faralia, about the university students of the Central African Republic, or Vaychiletik, by the Mexican Juan Javier Pérez, who traces a portrait of a shamanic musician from Chiapas. To go without reading the program and be surprised.
THE (A LITTLE) NAZI HOUSE OF LYDIA TÁR
No one leaves Tár without commenting on the lavish brutalist apartment inhabited in the film by Cate Blanchett's character and her partner in the film, played by Nina Hoss, and their daughter. It is not a recreation made by scenery but a real apartment, decorated almost the same, owned by art collectors Christian Boros and Karen Lohmann. It is in the Berlin neighborhood of Mitte, built on top of a Nazi-era bunker designed by the architect Karl Bonnatz on the orders of Hitler himself. Later, the warehouse was a fruit warehouse (they called it the Banana Bunker) and later a fetish nightclub. The lower part, the so-called Sammlung Boros museum, can be visited with prior reservation and in groups of a maximum of 12 people. The family apartment, the one featured in the film, includes a swimming pool and a garden terrace. In Tár it produces a certain awe to see a girl, little Petra, in that icy and overdesigned house, but that is also taken from reality. Anton, the Boros' son, who is now in his early twenties, spent his childhood there and his bedroom, as minimalist as the rest of the house, was featured many times in design and decoration magazines.
FOR THEATER MARATHONERS
The actress Ruth Wilson (The Affair, Luther) will shortly undergo the play-marathon The Second Woman at the Young Vic in London, the piece by filmmakers Nat Randall and Anna Breckon that lasts 24 hours straight and consists of doing the same seven-minute scene (a marital fight dialogue inspired by John Cassavettes' Opening Night) up to a hundred times, each with a different actor, between professionals and members of the public who can vary the script as they please. Compared to those 24 hours, the five hours that the show Domestic Violence lasts, at the Teatre Lliure, seem few. It took place a couple of weeks ago and the format was that of a performance that you could go in and out of, a textless piece by Markus Öhrn, set in a family room with Ikea furniture in which there are occasional outbursts of violence. .
