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Mon oncle (Jacques Tati, 1958)
Aug
29
Mr Hulot and three women enjoy an outdoor lunch in Villa Arpel's concrete backyard. A woman in furs laughs heartily, head thrown back, with Hulot looking into her open mouth, halting a woman reaching for a carafe mid-movement. The third woman, in an avant-garde Eastmancolor-red poncho, calmly smokes through her cigarette holder. DP: Jean Bourgoin.
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Mon oncle (Jacques Tati, 1958) / Koolhaas Houselife (Ila Bêka + Louise Lemoine, 2008)
Aug
29
grey
A delivery man in front of the gates of Villa Arpel (via), and custodian Guadalupe Acedo working the lift in Maison à Bordeaux. DP of Mon Oncle: Jean Bourgoin.
[A favourite] colour: grey*
Approaching the 60s, Mr Hulot finally switches from black-and-white to colour. Suddenly, we see that his suit is a beigeish grey and so is the Arpels' house, that modernist masterpiece designed by Tati. The beloved luddite struggles with hypermodern people and their hypermodern constructs, much alike the future Hulot from Playtime (1967).
– A house like yours must be such a job!
– Oh, a leaf! Ah, yes it's a chore.
– Admit it, you love it.
In similar absurd fashion, Guadalupe Acedo, cleaning lady, works her way through Rem Koolhaas' Maison à Bordeaux (1998) in Bêka and Lemoine's Koolhaas Houselife (2008). Too steep are the stairs, too leaky everything else. Levelheaded, she does her thing; a small beacon of romantic practicality in a world of absurd efficiency.
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