Lilac Lovewine Poem by gershon hepner

Lilac Lovewine

Rating: 5.0


Sweet and headier than wine,
lilacs tell girls to be ready
to lift, erotic, the hemline
of dresses, made by bouquet heady.
The fragrance tells them that young love
is brief as May, but skirts when short,
enabling men to look above
their knees, will help abort
all moral qualms, and prove them ready
to give themselves to those men whom
their legs attract, once made unsteady
by lilac lovewine and perfume.
Inspired by Jeff Buckley’s “Lilac Wine” which was part of the soundtrack of “Tell No One, ” a thriller directed by Guillaume Canet, during the scene where Alex Beck (Francois Cluzet) remembered the alleged cremation of his wife Margot (Marie-Jozée Croze) :
This French adaptation of Harlan Coben’s 2001 best seller is the kind of conspiracy-minded mystery almost no one seems capable of creating anymore, except David Lynch in his surreal way. Watching it is like gorging on a hot- fudge sundae in the good old days when few worried about sugar and fat. There are no bogus geopolitics weighing it down with a spurious relevance. Beautifully written and acted, “Tell No One” is a labyrinth in which to get deliriously lost. The story, which involves murder and depravity in high places, is so elaborately twisty that about halfway through the movie you stop trying to figure it out and let its polluted waters wash over you, trusting that the denouement will reveal all. It does and it doesn’t. When the truth spills out, and ugly revelations pile onto one another in an extended final confession, the puzzle pieces fit more snugly than those of “The Big Sleep, ” the granddaddy of impenetrable noirs. But one of the pleasures of both films is surrendering to a vision of corruption and evil that resists tidy explanations. The protagonist, Alex Beck (François Cluzet) , is a kindhearted pediatrician in Paris who goes out of his way to help the poor in the clinic where he works. He is also a spiritual cousin of Scottie Ferguson from “Vertigo” in his obsession with a woman who may or may not be dead. As the story begins, he and his wife, Margot (Marie-Josée Croze) , are revisiting the remote country lake where they spent summers as children and became sweethearts who carved their initials on a tree. Blissfully married decades later, they return to swim nude in the moonlight, then sprawl on the offshore raft where they have a minor squabble about real estate. Margot abruptly departs and disappears into the woods. A minute later Alex hears a stifled cry. Scrambling to shore, he is struck on the head while pulling himself out of the water. He remains in a coma for three days. While Alex, who was inexplicably pulled to shore, recuperates, Margot’s father, Jacques (André Dussollier) , an imperious police inspector, identifies his daughter’s body in the woods. In the film’s most wrenching moment Alex comes apart in a drunken reverie remembering her cremation, as Jeff Buckley’s version of the early-’50s torch song “Lilac Wine” is heard on the soundtrack.

7/2/08

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