My fear of the red dot in the dark at the Venice film festival
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Version 0 of 1. I have returned from the Venice film festival, where just sitting and watching a film can occasionally match the drama of being one of the characters. In a certain type of action-thriller, the hero will get a frisson of horror at suddenly seeing a vivid red dot on his or her chest, about to fall victim to an unseen sniper, hundreds of yards away, with an infrared scope. A kill shot is imminent! During one film at Venice I felt the need to make a quick note, and to see what I was writing in the pitch black, I turned on my mobile phone (contravening regulations) intending briefly to use its muted glow for light. Related: Venice film festival takes on Everest as it regains ground lost to younger rivals As I scribbled, a half-dozen pinpricks of red lights appeared, whizzing around on my pad like angry fireflies in the profound darkness. Momentarily gobsmacked, I wondered: was my phone making these red lights? No. Someone in the auditorium – an usher, or maybe an outraged member of the audience – was attacking me with an infrared “pointer”, maybe more than one, to object to my phone use. I looked around, seeing only deadpan silhouettes in the darkness. These infrared pointers: aren’t they dangerous and illegal? Can’t they fry your corneas? Maybe they’re legal in Italy if you have cinema-usher training to use them with lethal military accuracy. How’s your father? Everyone’s dad embarrasses them, and every literary memoir taps into the rich seam of dad-embarrassment – mining it for laughs, for shocks and indeed for tears. But the great author and critic Adam Mars-Jones has recorded what is surely the most toe-curlingly horrible dad-embarrassment moment in history. In his newly published Kid Gloves: A Voyage Round My Father, Mars-Jones recalls attempting in 1977 to come out as a gay man to his father, the formidable high court judge Sir William Mars-Jones. He claimed to have noticed Adam covertly pleasuring himself at the sight of Jacqueline Bisset in Day For Night Sir William refused to accept it and with a lawyer’s triumph, produced irrefutable evidence of Adam’s supposed heterosexuality. He claimed to have noticed Adam covertly pleasuring himself at the sight of the glamorous star Jacqueline Bisset in François Truffaut’s film Day For Night, which they had recently seen together at the cinema. I’m surprised that both their heads did not explode from the sheer mortification at having this conversation.Nowadays we have a more sophisticated, layered sense of irony and sexual identity. Confronted with this accusation in 2015, a young man might roll his eyes and sigh: “Fiddling with myself at the sight of Jackie Bisset, Dad? Even I’m not that gay.” My so-called countess The idea of a rich English aristocrat getting an American wife is a stock situation from Henry James to Downton Abbey. How exciting to see that it is now happening in real life, and giving an electrifying thrill to all of us British fans of 90s American pop culture. Television connoisseurs treasure the memory of My So-Called Life, the drama series about teen trials and high-school angst. It featured Claire Danes as the lonely heroine Angela Chase, in love with a gorgeous boy called Jordan Catalano, played by Jared Leto. Danes went on to star in TV’s Homeland, and Leto went on to win an Oscar. But what of the programme’s other female player, AJ (Allison Jane) Langer, who played Angela’s friend Rayanne Graff: the charismatic wild child? Many of us felt she was the real star.Well, she has now become the Countess of Devon, and chatelaine of Powderham Castle in Exeter, having married the English barrister Charles Courtenay, whose father, the Earl of Devon, has died, bequeathing them the title and castle. I call on the new countess to introduce a My So-Called Life themed room at the castle and consent to be addressed as “Rayanne” by the peasantry. |