Red: best use of red in food or fashion*

“She looked at the red shoes, for she thought there was no harm in looking. She put them on, for she thought there was no harm in that either. But then she went to the ball and began dancing. When she tried to turn to the right, the shoes turned to the left. When she wanted to dance up the ballroom, her shoes danced down. They danced down the stairs, into the street, and out through the gate of the town. Dance she did, and dance she must, straight into the dark woods.”

– Hans Christian Andersen, De røde Skoe (1845, tranl. Jean Hersholt, 1949), via

Another one of The Archers' #Technicolor extravaganzas. This time, not to wow the worn-down post-war black-and-white audience, but as an an active storytelling instrument.

 

Built around Hans Christian Andersen's haunting tale De røde Skoe (1845).

 

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

Someone is sad, or cries*

 

A wealthy Athenian writer on holiday on Hydra falls for the morose Marina (Ellie Lambeti), one of the daughters of his widowed innkeeper, causing disruption in the close-knit island community.

 

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

Someone naps or sleeps*

“I guess we like each other a lot, huh?”

– Monika Eriksson

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

 

Someone is in an ambulance or hospital*

“We still remember our high wall. Even the day we first climbed it, filled with curiosity. The sadness of the discoveries of those years seemed devastating to us. Then we wondered how we could have forgotten it so suddenly.”

– prologue

It's summer in Prague. Jitka, a girl on the cusp of womanhood, follows a stray cat and finds a tall hospital wall. Behind it, a young man in a wheelchair rests. The girl and the man connect.

 

* 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.

Someone's all bundled up*. No list of summer films is complete without Éric Rohmer.

“I even tried not to think. I was face-to-face alone with the sea, far from cruises and beaches, fulfilling a childhood dream put off year after year. I lost myself completely in the play of shadow and light, sinking into a lethargy heightened by the water. That state of passivity, of complete availability, promised to last much longer than the euphoria of one’s first summer dip into the ocean. I could easily see myself spending a whole month this summer this way.”

– Adrien

An art dealer and his writer friend plan to spend the summer together in a villa on the Côte d'Azur. A young woman, a collector of sorts, disrupts their retreat.

 

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

Someone with sunburn, or a skin condition*

“I treasure some kinds of old Thai disaster movies. Many of such tell a forbidden love story between a man and a woman that the mother earth destroyed them. Similarly, Blissfully Yours contains innocent narrative and simple characters. The settings are open landscapes and the disaster plot is there, except that it is transformed into another kind of disaster.”

– A.W., via

Min and Roong cherish their love among the uncertainty of his residence status. A old woman guards them, and soothes Min's blistered skin.

 

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

(People at) an airport*

 

It's foggy at Flughafen Berlin-Tempelhof, the Allies' airbridge to the West, and all the planes into and out of West Berlin are grounded. In any other metropolis this could mean taking a train, enjoy the city's nightlife or maybe just a bed for the night. In post-Wall bureaucracy-happy West Berlin, this means endless waits with strangers. And so, with nowhere to go, a Polish jazz band mingles with British spouses, a lonely South African farmer, a model and her beau.

 

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