Over the weekend we borrowed a few videos from the library, including Peter Greenaway's Pillow Book, of which we watched only about the first half hour; I fast forwarded through the rest to see if it made any sense, and being a Greenaway film, of course it didn't. It might actually have been somewhat meaningful for me as I actually read the English translation of The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon and the film's protagonist was half Chinese and in fact spoke some Chinese in the movie. But it was still too arty for our "bourgeois" tastes.

We also saw Visconti's L'Innocente, which I've got to say was a little too slow for me. I guess we've been watching too much schlock. It was OK, though.

And finally, we saw Alan Parker's Birdy, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, apparently for being anti-war. Maybe the book made the war more of a problem for the characters, but I couldn't see it, especially for Matthew Modine's character, and I found the movie irritating. Anyway, it's interesting to see a young Nicolas Cage. Hey, look, all three movies were based (more or less) on books. How clever.

Update
Then we saw the Merchant-Ivory rendition of Maurice. It was alright, if a little long. Roger Ebert argues that the British class system would have caused problems for the lovers. I agree. I realize that it was based on E.M. Forster's autobiographical novel, but the other thing that I found annoying is that it would have been wiser to leave for a more tolerant climate given that at the time in question, the British viewed homosexuality as an abomination. That apparently wasn't an option for these gay men, because although they were wealthy, they wanted to enjoy their upper-class British existence. That doesn't get a lot of sympathy from me.

A word about our selection of films: they're mostly older, because I'm going through the library's film catalog by call number, and so I just get what they have. We have found some gems that way, though.

Update
And another thing--in the movie Maurice the character's name is pronounced as if it were spelled Morris.