The rain and wind are caterwhauling around these parts at the moment, but the city has proved itself full of brightness and exciting things (as well as rain), from beautiful foreign films to the thrill of treasure-seeking at a Sunday fleamarket.
Here’s a look at the gems that I found at the Glue Factory fleamarket today…
I got these three badges for FREEEEE at a stall that seemed to be mostly selling strange hats for a pound and, well, giving away lots of stuff for free.
There was a huge temptation to buy all the hats so we could host a wear-a-terrible-hat party, but I resisted. Just.
I also got this wonderful bit of chintz for £3, to add to my collection of awful 1970s memorabilia:
And now, follow me on a journey through the world of the teenage girl of 1979…
From the delight of kitsch…
… to a wonderful Portugese film called Tabu, directed by Miguel Gomes, which came out this year and was wreathed in awards at the Berlin Film Festival (and rightly so).
It’s a graceful, thoughtful, beautiful film, which has a bit of a Wes Anderson vibe to it at times. It helps that it’s in black and white with subtitles and a sombre narration; sitting in a hushed auditorium watching it was a little like some Parisian dream of the good life, circa 1968 (and wouldn’t that be lovely).
I don’t want to unravel a heap of spoilers (so if you want to know nothing else about this film, look away now), but three reasons alone to go and see it are the recurring motif of a missing crocodile (menacing, eerie, and melancholy, all at once), the dapper Beat band dressed in white evening wear who play Ronettes covers in 1960s colonial Africa, and Ana Moreira’s dangerous, unhinged Aurora, an heiress, a gambler and a hunter who never misses a shot. She’s got to be trouble.
Amy Jardine 