I mostly enjoy summer by staying inside in the cool and shade (and waiting for winter, haha), but occasionally if I miss that childhood vacances feeling I’ll treat myself to homemade iced tea or my favourite romantic comedy: ‘Three Plus Two’ or Три плюс два (USSR, 1963). If many youth-focused films of the ‘50s/’60s take place on whirring factory floors or snowcapped outposts, this film takes a refreshingly lazy pendulum swing in the other direction, taking the Soviet Thaw literally by basking in Black Sea sunlight. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the opening montage, a long, roving walk over the crowded beaches that so many of us remember, holidaymakers depicted with affectionately familiar humour: mothers, aunts in their elegantly matronly bathing suits, taking meditative moments of rest between reining in excited little children – pops, grandpas wearing the vacation shorts and caps they’d been saving all year – young people warm-limbed in pretty bright things – everyone jostling and stretching amid parasols, picnic baskets, card games, enjoying their place in the sun/sea. It’s one of those sequences that sort of combines the appeal of location filming and home movies/newsreels, like the camera temporarily assumes a relaxed/neutral eye, apart from the story’s fictional universe, to capture tiny slices of life as they were/as some like to remember them. I love film/TV moments like this anyway, like Brick Lane market day in a 50’s detective mystery or the crowded racetracks in a Runyonesque noir, but what makes this one especially memorable is the playful effect of a piece of fruit which tumbles out of someone’s bucket hat/basket and floats over everyone, bobbing and weaving around almost entirely unnoticed, drawing more attention to the make-believe real-life beauty of these quotidian tableaux – as if to say, look at us, ourselves, see what we sometimes look like :’) Xo
(boy I hope I get to those long-writing leisurely afternoons and evenings again - soon c:)
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