A boys' night out: men having fun on their own*

“Bruno, I've spent the best two days of my life with you… I mean it!”

– Roberto Mariani

Serious law student Roberto (Jean-Louis Trintignant) goes on an accidental road trip with bon vivant Bruno (Vittorio Gassman).

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for July is, for unknown reasons, mostly not date-related and follows some sort of vacation narrative.

 

A character pigging out*

“The most revolting film I have ever seen”

– Mary Whitehouse, via

Four hedonistic gourmands throw a party of the flesh, of meat, of lust, and death.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for July is, for unknown reasons, mostly not date-related and follows some sort of vacation narrative.

Shopping for food*

“I thought you'd be hungry, maybe.”

Schneider and Ronet's characters go get their groceries in a tiny, surprisingly well-stocked-with-Asian-food-items French corner shop, ánd manage to find all the ingredients needed. One rookie mistake: Uncle Ben's. Of all the rice in the world…

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for July is, for unknown reasons, mostly not date-related and follows some sort of vacation narrative.

Characters go on a date, or fall in love*

“It would be thrilling if you were willing, and if it can never be, pity me, for you were born to be kissed, I can’t resist, you are temptation, and I am yours!”

– Nacio Herb Brown & Arthur Freed, Temptation (1933)

On a beautiful summer day in Rimini, Carlo, the handsome son from a bourgeois home, saves a little girl and becomes infatuated with the girl's mother, a young widow years his senior. Set in July 1943, the events in the outer world (poss. spoilers) and the fate of the two uneven lovers slowly come to their logical conclusion.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for July is, for unknown reasons, mostly not date-related and follows some sort of vacation narrative.

 

 

My ideal vacation spot, country, city, town, or resort*

 

An island, in this case Capri (granted I've never been there), off-season, in a space and time lost in the mists. It'll occasionally rain and it's cold enough to dress up.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for July is, for unknown reasons, mostly not date-related and follows some sort of vacation narrative.

A [favourite] movie kiss for National Kissing Day (USA*), not to be confused with International Kissing Day aka World Kiss Day which falls on July 6.

“I don’t have the inhibitions that a practicing Catholic would in that I’m not paralysed by the sacredness of the text, nor do I have the inhibitions of a lapsed Catholic who would view approaching the story of Jesus as compromising his Marxist beliefs, of sinking back into conformity.”

– PPP, via

An neorealist, straightforward adaptation of the Gospel of Matthew, populated by non-actors (“Jesus” is a 19-year Catalan trade unionist picked for his resemblance to El Greco's Christ), intellectuals, and anachronistic characters based on biblical art through the ages.

 

According to said Gospel, apostle Judas kissed prophet Jesus to signal to the police who of the 13 men present was the one to arrest.

 

Interestingly, the word Matthew chose to describe the kiss is καταφιλέω, the same word used by philosopher Plutarch to describe the kiss between Alexander the Great and his eunuch Bagoas

 

* no one wants to kiss you anymore, America

Characters say or wave hello on Say HI Day

 

A sickly composer meets and becomes infatuated with a boy during his stay in Venice.