It's Lonely at the Centre of the Earth

It's Lonely at the Centre of the Earth by Zoe Thorogood
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The subject matter here is so specific and personal that it almost obviates criticism. What makes the book so impressive is the sheer craft on display – Thorogood digesting almost everything comics can do and compressing it between two covers. Every single page in this book has a neat design idea or layout or storytelling detail, and I was constantly being surprised at what was being thrown at me. At one point the comic literally starts again from the beginning – the audacity on display is simply stunning. And it all works. Thorogood turns the claim that she’s the “future of comics” into a joke (and who can blame her, no one needs that on their shoulders), but I’m afraid to say the intelligence and effort on display in this book makes that bit of praise just evidently true. Read this and every other comic feels tired and lazy in comparison.

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Foreign Studies

Foreign Studies by Shūsaku Endō
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This 'novel' actually collects together a short story, an essay and a novella on the theme of Japanese young men studying in Europe, an experience Endō himself went through in the 1950s. In the short story, the protagonist is patronised in every sense of the word by the Catholic community in France, and while some of the metaphors employed are a bit forced, Endō captures the tension between gratitude and resentment quite well. The historical essay is even more overtly critical of the Catholic church's attempts to convert the Japanese – to an extent that's surprising for a Catholic author.

The final piece strips out religion from the scenario – the protagonist is a professor of French literature sent to Paris by his university, and while he is too shy to act on the various temptations of living abroad and away from his young family, he has no hang-ups about it. Endō is skillful in foregrounding Tanaka's faults – jealousy, pride, pettiness, irritability – while still making the reader sympathise with his situation. The thrust of the story is about being overwhelmed by the sheer scale of European culture. Successful foreign students have to somehow ignore that realisation in order to survive – trying to fully immerse yourself ultimately triggers illness so severe that the scholar has to be sent home. For me, that idea wasn't as convincing as the smaller instances where Tanaka feels forced to assume a role he is uncomfortable with. His study of De Sade becomes an obsession, partly because of Tanaka's admiration for De Sade's flamboyant rejection of the social and ethical expectations of his day, and the suffering he experienced as a result. The moments of identification with this outcast figure are the most powerful in the book.

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A Gorgeous Girl Like Me

A very broad comedy from Truffaut, who clearly wanted to have some fun after the dour melodrama of Anne and Muriel. It’s a vehicle for Bernadette Lafont, who plays a bawdy provincial creating trouble wherever she goes, and using her looks to try and get out of it. Lafont gives a gutsy and energetic performance, matched by quite theatrical comic turns by the rest of the cast. It’s all very silly, but at least it avoids Truffaut’s reflex of ending on a death as a way to manufacture pathos. Here the bodies pile up, and nothing is taken very seriously.

There’s a bit of fun as well with a young cinephile whose amateur footage reveals the truth in a way that individual testimony can’t. The film has a certain Rashomon quality, whereby Camille’s narration doesn’t always tally with what we see in flashback. The film starts with a student looking for the professor’s academic paper and learning it was never published. The narrative is embedded in artefacts, most prominently the tapes the professor uses to record Camille’s story. It’s not as elegant as Citizen Kane, but Truffaut may be nodding to the idea that only something as artificial as the movies can give you the final truth of the matter.

The misunderstandings created by class is an undercurrent in the film – the sociology professor starts off befuddled by the language his subject is using. Truffaut has a snigger at well-meaning intellectuals who try to sympathise with the lot of the downtrodden to the point of excusing criminal behaviour. Camille is a remorseless psychopath, whose irresistible charms manage to get her out of the most outlandish scrapes. Her simps are marks – sometimes it’s that simple. The professor’s assistant is a snob who calls Camille a tramp. But a bit like the friend-zoned Midge in Hitchcock’s Vertigo, she has the professor's best interests at heart, and Truffaut is enough of a romantic to end the film with her, and what might have been if Camille hadn’t bulldozed her chances.