A memorable kitchen or cooking scene*

“Look at us. We're almost totally dependent on our maid. She cooks and washes for us, and is the first person to greet me when I come home from work. She is entirely at our service.”

– Dong-sik Kim

A housemaid works her way into a middle-class household and takes over the wife's tasks – cleaning, cooking, child rearing.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for November is, again, not date-based, but follows a sloppy schmaltzy all-American Thanksgiving-y narrative. Trying to make it work my way.

A dysfunctional family*

 

On a wedding day, and night, a family's dirty secrets are laid bare.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for November is, again, not date-based, but follows a sloppy schmaltzy all-American Thanksgiving-y narrative. Trying to make it work my way.

we are not what we seem

– words inscribed in the bottom of DeFeo's painter's stool

A movie with gorgeous sweater fashion*

“She's a strange breed.”

– Jim

Throwing in a little Movember for good measure.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for November is, again, not date-based, but follows a sloppy schmaltzy all-American Thanksgiving-y narrative. Trying to make it work my way.

Takes place on November 2 and 3.

 

“I'm a volcano of ideas.”

– Alessandro

“One… two… three… four… five… seven… six… six… eight… nine… nine…”

– Daisy Girl

A movie that feels like autumn*

 

A family of four share the same house and live their own lives. When the parents attend a company party, the neighbour's teenage daughter reluctantly babysits the children then promptly runs off with her secret boyfriend. Left to his own devices, the bored 10-year old Achim plays a game with his little sister

“Junge, du bist ja ganz woanders!”

I Initially nomintad the RAF critique Deutschland im Herbst (1978) for today's challenge, when I realised that Bübchen too is about Germany's youth's antics and the society that planted its seeds. Here again, a repressed community dutifully finds a way to bury the terror into the fabric of mundanity. You'll find it again in Michael Haneke's Das weiße Band (2009), now foretelling the German youth that came to embrace Nazism.

 

Eternal return, ad nauseam.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for November is, again, not date-based, but follows a sloppy schmaltzy all-American Thanksgiving-y narrative. Trying to make it work my way.

Until November 20.