musical supermarket moment in movies #3
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Artist:
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Album:Live in Amsterdam with the Metropole Orchestra, 12.2008
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Track:Senza Fine (with Sarah Polley V.O.)
No one ever thinks about death in a supermarket. It is a line from a movie I've had in my head for some years. Either the writer-director, Isabel Coixet, or the novelist, Nanci Kincaid, had written it.
Ann (Sarah Polley), two kids and a trailer home at 23, finds out she has little more than a month to live and keeps it to herself. She sets out to do a list of things before she dies, such as make love to another man and say what's on her mind. Charging her cart along the aisles in slow motion, she thinks it, No one ever thinks about death in a supermarket, and shoppers break into a dance.
Supermarket dancing, the one bit of magic realism in this Spanish-Canadian Pedro Almodóvar production, plays out to an infrequently remade Italian pop song, Senza Fine (Never-ending / Without End), by Gino Paoli. You can hear Sixties naïveté in it. Mike Patton, whom it appears speaks Italian and married one, covers the song with the Metropole Orchestra; I mixed it up with the supermarket voice-over and a piped-in Paoli.
Mi vida sin mí (My Life Without Me) is one of those films in which music (also, books) derives naturally from the story. Dying, Ann begins a love affair with a guy whose sister works at a radio station and sends him mix CDs. He would play her the songs from his car stereo, like Omara Portuondo or Blossom Dearie, whom he tells her is eighty three and still singing (title release: 2003).
One song in the movie that does not spring from the story but weighs in on its notions of aloneness is Sometime Later by the Bristol trip hop / downtempo group, Alpha. You can hear Nineties resignation in it. When it says, A lonely bird, a-lone-ly-bird, alone, I get to thinking that, even when we live most days as if we are dying, there is a lot of waiting to be done.
Comments (13)
Cast: Sarah Polley, Amanda Plummer, Scott Speedman, Leonor Watling (Hable con ella, Paris, je t'aime), Deborah Harry, Maria de Medeiros (Henry & June, Pulp Fiction), Mark Ruffalo, Julian Richings, Alfred Molina
An internet lookup indicates Patton's version will be available this year in a covers album, Mondo Cane, in collaboration with Aldo Sisillo and Roy Paci.
....Leave it to our own MOG Philosopher Queen to hit me with this first thing in the morning. Senza Fine....intentional or not there is an ominous undertone...unsettling in it's harmless facade. The woozey horn section does nothing to dispell the notion, and the big finish adds to the ambiguity.
Sometime Later....is a different beast. Truth be told....I didn't make it too far into that one. Hell, I just got up! That one will put me back to sleep. LoL. Good to hear from you though, I miss our Saturday morning (for me) "chats".
ahahah. excuse you, it's my evening and song 2 works for evenings. song 1's a pretty alright cover, i'd never heard the original 'til i saw this movie years ago.
boy, are you up early! Jeff, your sleeping hours put a newspaper boy's to shame. ...and good morning. ;p
Funny, I just came from the supermarket, and while I didn't think about death, I did think about yogurt. Yogurt, and the idea that if I looked to be lost in the vastness of the flavor options I could pretend I didn't recognize the woman coming up the aisle towards me. She stopped next to me and began pondering the yogurt herself while I shuffled away, pretending to inspect the margerine. She knew what I was up to, and she knew that my fate was in her hands. She could have chosen to spare me, but she didn't. She also chose not to put me on the spot. As she walked away she said, "Get the yogurt, it's good for you," smiled, and continued on without waiting for a reply. A quick, clean kill. I guess she was thinking about death in the supermarket, but it surely wasn't her own.
My Life Without Me is fantastic. I loved it. I wish she did more films.
Nice mix of the voiceover and the song...really enjoying this. I'm loving all this music. *sigh* I forgot how I love Alpha. Bristol trip-hop steals my soul, I swear.
xox
Matt, very funny. did you remember to knit your brows and stroke your chin? i'll bet she had chosen to keep mum 'til you inspected the margarine.
most recently, this guy i know and i were walking towards each other, something that was too late to get out of. just before collision, i could not resist kneeling down to ponder the bottom shelf. sunflower seeds, in their shells. still have it, don't know what to do with it.
Lucy, you've seen it, yay. between you and me, the "If you don't kiss me right now, I'm going to scream" scene makes me giddy with what girliness i can muster. (besides, she actually screams so it isn't lame.) [ sigh ]
yes, Bristol trip hop is so worth the flashback trip. i noticed you had Roads in one of your mixes. love that song. i think i'll listen to it right now...
Always love Patton's voice, it's so resonant. That song sounds like something you'd hear in a Fellini film. The movie sounds intriguing, I like Sarah Polley, she's an intelligent actress who chooses interesting films/characters to do & doesn't go for the typical hollywood fare. I just checked my library's website & they don't have it, so I probably won't be seeing it too soon. I still haven't seen 'Morvern Callar' since they don't have it either. I may need to do a special run to the vid store & rent these since I know I'll enjoy them if you're recommending them.
Not familiar w/Alpha. Not sure what I think of that song. Kinda ambivalent about it. It doesn't come across to me as trip hop at all imho, but I guess I'd have to listen to more of them to be able to judge that.
Sometimes when I was in the supermarket in the Virgin Islands-not as shiny,no fresh milk,some empty shelves, and I was in a bad marriage (not to mention trapped on an island)-death did cross my mind.
I am gonna netflix this bad boy..thank you for the tip. I actually saw a movie in the theater today..Two Lovers. A Brooklyn set love triangle. My wife and I both cried after the happy ending, but then I turned to her and said, "man it would've been better if they both dumped him." She got mad at me then.
Aug, Mike Patton does it for me, too. the song does indeed suit a Fellini film, now that you mention it. i can picture a bittersweet human relationship story tied to the place where it happens. aw i love Sarah Polley. i read somewhere that she got a lot of Hollywood offers after Doug Liman's Go! but chose to accept projects to her own liking and at her own pace, unwilling to have her non-actor's life suffer, or something like that.
you are correct. the second song is downtempo, or chill-out as it was called back in the '90s when it was made.
Cody, i can relate! those slow, lazy saunterings along the aisles sure empty your head enough that you start to think about your life, even when you don't mean to.
Two Lovers, huh? on account of your preference in story endings, i shall keep an eye out for that one. nothing like a love triangle to remind you that just because you love someone doesn't mean they're yours. {:
I love 'Go!', such a great commentary on rave & drug culture. It's funny as hell too. I own it, so I've watched it numerous times.
Ah yea, the chill out genre, quite familiar w/it.
Not heard of this movie, but if Almodovar blew his nose on the script I would go see it. And both versions of "Senza Fine" are, in their very different ways, sublime. Others have rightfully praised the Mike Patton take, but I would like to take a moment here to give a thunbs up to Gino Paoli's wallow in overwrought strings and romantic earnestness. I'm a sucker for that crap. I'm even liking the Alpha track much more than I usually do "trip-hop" - probably has something to do with the fact that the earmarks of the genre are actually in the service of a particular song, rather than free-floating signifiers of the genre itself....
between you and me, the "If you don't kiss me right now, I'm going to scream" scene makes me giddy with what girliness i can muster. (besides, she actually screams so it isn't lame.) [ sigh ]
yes, that line gets me everytime. as does Bristol trip-hop.
What an unlikely but delicious banquet, this post! "My Life Without Me" is one of those fell-thru-the-cracks underappreciated treasures. Totally agree with all of Lucy's points. And August's and Cody's and ivy's and poeby's. Patton, Italian pop, Bristol trip-hop, Coixet, Polley, Pedro...nothing more needs saying. Except maybe...
Yes, "Two Lovers" is worth the time. BTW, if you haven't seen the best of director James Gray's other two collaborations with Joaquin Phoenix, "The Yards," you probably should. It's another very fine film that hasn't received its due.