Violet in food or fashion. If in doubt, pick a title with ALL the colours of the rainbow!*

 

During their stay in the family summer house, two sisters imagine themselves as adults, once for every colour of the rainbow.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.

Violet: a building or structure *

“Is it the form of the clouds, or the tints of the sky, or the colours of the surrounding objects which are so changeable, which have troubled my thoughts as they passed before my eyes? Who can tell?”

– Guy de Maupassant, Le Horla, 1887 (via)

Objects and rooms have distinct colours ranging from the deepest blues and violets to a pale lavender, a muted silver and shocks of yellow. The usage of colour in Le Horla is striking throughout and reminds me of how Van Gogh's paintings became increasingly colourful as his madness enveloped him.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.

Indigo: a building or structure*

Him: It’s a film? Her: It would have been a film.

A truck, both the narrative structure and his (Depardieu's character) material representation. She – the director – and he – the lead actor – do a read-though while discussing her script. A communist truck driver picks up a female hitchhiker. They discuss the landscape, the cosmos, pointlessness, communism of course. All the while, the indigo truck plods on.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.

Cerulean, or blue: in food or fashion*

“I'm just fine. I have everything here. I have the TV. You can see the whole world”

– the mother

How could I not pick at least one instalment of Kieślowski's Trois couleurs trilogy. Here's blue, the liberté of the tricolor. Blue occurs as the sky to fall through, the room without life, and the cloth that binds.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.

Cerulean, or blue: a building or structure*

“Eh, i sogni a volte insegnano male, Dùnya, perché la verità intera non è mai in un solo sogno, la verità intera è in molti sogni.”

One of the many exotic locations is the مسجد شاه, [Masjed-e Shah, or Shah Mosque] in Iran with its otherworldly blue and blue-adjacent tiles.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.

Green: in food or fashion*

“She'd discovered a small beach far from town, with crystal-clear water and pink sand. She loved that spot. The colors of nature were so beautiful, and there was no noise. She'd leave only when the sun did too.”

– Giuliana

Antonioni's first film in colour beautifully utilises Vitti's brilliance – of her auburn hair, her porcelain teint, her vivid costumes (by Paola Carloni) – against the drab landscape.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.

Green: a building or structure*

“That's all the people we've got now. We'll get there somehow.”

Where the old folks' hands push the cart, the green's paler. That doesn't change anything about its importance. A lifeline, bread, is delivered once a week and with delivered, it means that the carriage is left on the rails, several kilometers away from Zhikharevo, or Township Nr. 3, which in its turn is about 80 km away from Saint Petersburg. It takes the seniors about two hours to get the wagon to their hamlet. We get to witness ten minutes or so. It lasts a lifetime.

 

As of 2002, only three people lived in Zhikharevo. I wonder how the wain comes home now.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.

Yellow: in food or fashion*

“Tourists prefer the trendy colors, yellow and blue. Pacing fancies, hotels are painted yellow and blue. Blue wins. All women want to be fashionable. All women wear blue, except the English, those learning to swim, and the Germans, who are dedicated to green.”

– narrator

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.

Yellow: a building or structure*

“Just when I really needed a raincoat, he returned to my side. It would be so great if it could rain forever.”

– Punkie

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.

Orange: food or fashion*

“Tell me the truth!”

– choir

An allegorical, psychedelic retelling of Genesis 3 and the Fall of Man

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.