Women With Allure

At around 7.40 every week night a certain frisson enters our cosy lounge room here by the river as we watch the ABC evening news. Will he be on, or will it be his wingman? If it is the latter there is just the slightest hint of a sigh from over yonder in my love’s armchair, for it just isn’t the same. Yes, my DLP (Darling Loving Partner) has a tiny ‘thing’ for Alan Kohler – his side kick, Phillip Lasker, is just not in the same league. If indeed it is Alan there’s no gushing from DLP, but I can usually expect a positive comment about this thinking woman’s crumpet – Tony Jones is just not in the race as far as DLP is concerned. It might be about the cut of his finely tailored suits, his enlightening explanation of the latest bear or bull market, his iconic graphs or, most significantly, his quirky bon mots. It almost makes a man want to purchase the latest from Saville Row or start drawing up cutesy graphs! Unlike your scribe, my DLP had no interest in lists and no interest in having favourite this or thats, but I know there is the merest of a hint of a weakness for Alan Kohler.

Now no other can light up my life like my beautiful DLP, and I worship her. Each and every day I thank my lucky stars she entered my world near enough to eighteen years ago; she being the major contributor to my contented state of mind in my dotage. In the real world she is my one and only, and since that fateful day, in a Burnie café, when I first laid eyes on her, I’ve never remotely countenanced anyone else for me. Who’d have this clapped out old chalkie in any case?

But that is the real world. If others of my gender are wired the same way as I, in the male mind there is another compartment – one that looks, appraises and if greatly impressed, may award the epithet – alluring. So following is my list of the alluring women of 2013 – seeing as how we are now half way through. I know that such a list is a moveable feast – the attraction of some ‘newbie’ will wax, that of a former mainstay will wane – as is the case with Bardot, Saradon and Rampling. This is a contemporary list so does not feature departed beauties such as Marilyn.

So from this, I hope discerning, male of sixty plus, is this year’s list:-

1.    Nigella - There’s no need to give a surname, and most who know me also are familiar with my longstanding infatuation with the ‘kitchen goddess’ A cliché I understand, but very little is more erotic to me than to watch her dip a crimson tipped finger into some melted chocolate and bring it to those luscious lips, with that knowing look in her eyes. Recent events could have seen me giving a certain elderly advertising tycoon a good slapping had I been in the vicinity of his misogyny – his sort of behaviour towards any woman is inexcusable, but of course, being Nigella, it made headlines around the world. I have to be honest and make the codicil that, had this list been put together twelve months ago, then this raven haired English rose may have been further down the ‘menu’. All that was changed with her latest offering, ‘Nigellissima’, replenishing her aura for me. To see her wander to her fridge for a naughty midnight snack in slinky black bed attire rekindled the fire. Some misled commentators suggest such exhibitions are nothing short of prurient food porn. To me she’s simply taken the culinary arts to a higher plane.

2.    Christina Hendricks – This sassy lady shares a fulsome hour-glass figure with Nigella, or even Marilyn, and all other leading ladies of  small screen American television are left in her wake. In another list, as I eagerly await a new series to come to these shores on DVD, I’ve stated that ‘Mad Men’ is the best television programme in recent memory, and undoubtedly it is the presence of the Don Draper character that makes it so. Christina’s Jane Holloway is not far behind in his wake. To see her walk that walk of hers into any smoke-filled room in her tight, curve-hugging attire would make any red-blooded, ‘swinging-sixties’ advertising executive sit up and take notice. In the show she is no pushover, no simpering submissive plaything. She rules her domain and she uses her charms to push ever onwards and upwards.

3.    Penny Wong – I am a political junkie. For me the highlight of any given television year is an election night. You can have the AFL Grand Final, the Boxing Day Test – I just can’t wait until September 14th, or whenever Rudd decides, now the ball is in his court. It really gets my juices going, just as does a good stoush on ‘Q and A’. I became quite animated when the normally ice cool Tania Plibersek lost it with the execrable Sophie Mirabella recently. I love some pollie being bought to heel by our No10, especially if their name is Tony Abbott. I am all for women in politics, the more the better, being delighted that Kevin13 has packed his cabinet with them. Many are taking on the fellas at their own game, and although I wasn’t hugely enamoured of Julia, to see her lay into the Mad Monk over his anachronistic gender politics, a flaying that went viral, sure made me sit up and take notice. For me, now that Natasha has departed the scene, the most alluring of the crop in Penny. She is considered in all she does. As well there are her exotic looks and her guts in being openly gay in the bear pit environment of national politics. That she is now Senate leader says it all bout our maturity as a country – almost as compelling as a new minister being sworn in on the Koran.

4.    Miss Murphy – I was besotted with this newbie from the moment she appeared on ‘The Voice’, even before she opened her mouth. It was the way she carried herself and, as with Penny, it was her radiantly multicultural appearance. Then she opened her mouth and what a sound came out - the sublimely sultry, bluesy rich rasp of her songstering had me rapt. As well there was her soft purr with the spoken word. Her allure was complete. I suspect she may not be a stayer, depending on how her career from here on in pans out as a result of her recent exposure. After her, in my opinion, premature elimination, the show was hardly worth watching - no stuttering boy with golden tonsils could match Miss Murphy.

5.    Charlotte Gainsbourg – any offspring of Serge and Jane Birkin would possess so much latent talent in their genes it would be ridiculous – Charlotte G has delivered on hers in spades. She has lifted eyebrows around the world with her fearlessness as an actor and her trills as a chantreuse. In appearance she is the antithesis of Nos 1 and 2 with her almost androgynous figure – but if ever ‘so chic so French’ rings true, it does with this darling of European art house. She mesmerizes me any time she is on screen.

6.    Annabel Crabb – erudite as a television commentator, columnist, blogger – she is as well sassy of eye and smile as the presenter of ‘Kitchen Cabinet’. As my second favourite ‘kitchen goddess’, her retro fashion sense is just the glorious finishing touch.

7.    Marieke Hardy – always pushing at the envelope for her sisters, she sparkles on ‘The First Tuesday Book Club’ and as coordinator of ‘Women of Letters’. She is a throwback to fifties glamour, and is cheeky enough to use her assets to reverse that iconic Ellis image of Derryn Hinch to get a point across.

8.    Sidse Babett Knudsen – Some terrific new shows have made an appearance on our tele screens this year – Lillyhammer (SBS), ‘Last Tango in Halifax’ (ABC), ‘Adam Hills The Last Leg’ (ABC), ‘The Time of Our Lives’ (ABC) – but the top of the crop would be the Danish political melodrama ‘Borgen’ (SBS). The show was most prescient in Demark as the country had its first female PM shortly after its first series was shown. The final episode here was aired as our own gender warrior bit the dust. Birgitte Nyborg Christensen, played by a feisty Knudsen, forms minority government and faces much vicissitude in holding it together for a term in office – in another parallel. What does it for me is the complete authority with which Christensen dismisses her male colleagues and opponents with a frosty tak (thanks), particularly if she is pissed off with them.

9.    Olivia Williams – never a huge star and rarely a leading lady, she is a mainstay of British cinema and television, most recently espied in ‘Case Sensitive’. This slim, non-classical brunette beauty oozes class and sexiness to me – and all those freckles are enough to give me goose bumps.

10.    Leigh Sales – After the last twelve or so months of this potent redhead flying solo at the helm of ‘7.30’, we might well ask why did we ever think Big Red would be irreplaceable?’ To see her shred Tony Abbott was television gold. As my DLP stated just the other evening as Leigh was putting the bumbling Joe Hockey through the wringer – ‘They must quake in their boots waiting to face her with something to hide!’ Her persistence at cutting through the fluff and spin to get the type of answer we all want from our leaders is incredibly alluring.

HMs – Paz Vega, Kate Holden, Jennifer Lawrence, Megan Washington, Sophie Marceau, Clare Bowditch .

Our world is so much more alive for these glorious women who shine, intrigue and cause minor earthquakes in our lives – and giving me yet another cause to indulge myself.

Burnie Beach

A Hunting and A Snooping

Speaking as an ex-chalky, teachers are just not sexy. We cannot compete on the small screen with policemen who always solve the crime, forensic experts who always solve the crime or seers who, yes, always solve the crime too – even if there’s a fair bit of detective work as well involved in the care of pupils. A few in any cohort are as cunning as any master criminal. When was there last a decent series on tele about my former profession? The most recent I can remember is the eponymously named ‘Teachers’, a fine Brit production, but that was a while ago now.

On the big screen we fare a little better, and it is possible, as your scribe enjoys doing, to come up with a ‘Top 10’ list, just - of best teaching movies:-

1.    Mr Hollands Opus
2.    To Sir With Love
3.    Goodbye Mr Chips (various incarnations)
4.    Hoosiers
5.    A Beautiful Mind
6.    School of Rock
7.    The Wonder Boys
8.    Dead Poets Society
9.    The History Boys
10.    Stand and Deliver

Not too many of the above, though, have produced heroes to get your juices flowing, although my DLP (Darling, Loving Partner) reminded me that Indiana Jones was a lecturer as well as an adventurer, if that counts? Last year I was looking forward to ‘Monsieur Lazhar’, but it was disappointingly unrealistic.

2013 is looking better. To date I have visited the cinema for two movies with central characters as teachers – one of which was quite excellent, but neither were ‘feel good’ in the same way as many of the listed.

Scandinavia is punching above its weight these days on both sized screens, in particular with Scand-noir crime procedurals – there’s that trilogy, ‘The Killing’, ‘The Bridge’, ‘Wallander’ and the glorious ‘Lillyhammer’. ‘Borgen’ is great political drama for television with ‘Kon Tiki’, ‘A Royal Affair’, ‘Headhunters’, ‘After the Wedding’ and the sublime ‘As It Is In Heaven’ some notable recent success stories from that neck of the pine forests in movies.

‘The Hunt’ carries on this trend. This Thomas Vinterberg directed feature is also very noirish and involves a purported crime. It showcases an extremely fine performance by ‘Mr Everywhere’ Mads Mikkelsen, as Lucas, an early childhood teacher accused of every teacher’s nightmare, interfering with a young student. This should be recommended viewing for any would be classroom operator, particularly any male contemplating the primary area. Males are sorely needed in these formative years, but society’s obsession with the lurking pedophile is killing off the supply of positive role models operating with the very young.

Lucas has had a rough time of it lately, but is finally getting his life back together when the unthinkable happens and he is falsely ‘sent to Coventry’ by a small village after a young student’s confused claim. Of course the girl is believed and there is no chance of ‘innocence until proven guilty’ with a presumed deviant. He attempts to stand his ground with disastrous results for him and many he comes in contact with. Gradually the pendulum swings and he is absolved, but is he? A hunt in the forest, thus the title, is a rite of passage in Lucas’ village – and all is not as it seems!
This movie features bravura acting from Mikkelsen, with a strong supporting cast. I particularly liked Alexandra Rapaport as his torn new found love. Seeing Lucas crash to the bottom of the abyss, and then with the aid of a couple of constant supporters, clawing his way back out of the darkness, makes for mesmerizing cinema going.

Less successful an experience to my mind was ‘In the House’, coming from the formidable Francois Ozon, whose previous directorial efforts – ‘5x2’, ‘The Swimming Pool’, ‘8 Women’ and ‘Under the Sand’ I have thoroughly enjoyed. This is not in the same league, despite its fine array of acting stalwarts. Jaded Germanine (Fabrice Luchini) just goes through the motions in his job as a French literature ‘professeur’, until he becomes obsessed with a student unusually actually displaying some talent with the written word. Young Claude (Ernst Umhauer) is a stalker, in turn obsessed with his ‘best friend’s’ family – particularly the mother, played by Emmanuelle Seigner. He snoops around this family’s home, catching glimpses of intimacy and hearing secrets. He writes up his adventures in the form of homework assignments for Germaine, who cannot get enough of them, being sucked in by such Shakespearian prose such as ‘I left my friend’s bedroom and on passing a closed door I immediately caught the singular aroma of middle class woman’. He takes to giving the young man extra tuition and even involves his wife (Kristin Scott Thomas) in his absurd machinations. So, when the mother proves elusive to the young man, guess who becomes his next target? Lucas in ‘The Hunt’ comes out a saint compared to the devious Germaine, but unfortunately the film becomes too clever by half, so by the end of it the audience, or at least this part of it, has little notion as to what is reality and what is ‘fiction’.

Interestingly this movie was rated MA, as was ‘The Look of Love’ viewed earlier in the same week. Whereas there was a brief fairly chaste sex scene in ‘In the House’, the latter was jammed full of sex and copious nudity! That left me somewhat nonplussed. Perhaps the passionate kissing between Seigneur and the lad was the issue.

Thankfully my time at the chalkface was free of any of the issues that tainted the careers of both teachers in the two films – but they do display the darker side of the profession which is constantly and increasingly present. It would have taken one innocent slip up, or one former student out for revenge and/or monetary gain, with the result that there but for the grace of She up in the sky go I.

Blue Wren

A Blue Room Book Review - Louise Doughty – Whatever You Love

Sex. I think Louise Doughty has a problem with sex. Not in the real world I hasten to add. Judging from the author’s image presented in ‘Whatever You Love,’ she appears as an attractive woman of a certain age perfectly at ease with herself in her world – if you can judge anything from a photo. No, I am referring to her writing of it in this title. Otherwise she is a creditably gifted writer whom I first cottoned onto with ‘Crazy Paving’, her first published offering and one I enjoyed. ‘Dance with Me’ was less successful. She is not, for me, a must buy – although, I must admit, her new publication, ‘Apple Tree Yard’ is tempting me with its back cover blurb. She is one for me to pick up if to be found in a remainder bin – as was the case here - or cheap online.

Now about the sex. Fairly early in the piece we’re confronted with Doughty’s prose turning to something quite over heated when she comes to describe the heroine’s first sexual encounters with David. He’s somewhat of an ‘out there’ character who is destined to become her husband and father of her children. Up to this point her writing had been admirably restrained recounting a horrific happening that is the nub of the tome, but once sex is added it becomes, I would imagine, what is to found in something like ‘Fifty Shades…’. It seemed for a while I was reading another author entirely. Maybe it was a deliberate device, but it did not sit well. Hubby later trades Laura in for a younger model, a seriously deranged Chloe – and as for Chloe’s mother – just don’t go there. In truth, our heroine is behaving pretty oddly herself as well – but why wouldn’t she? She has just lost a daughter to a wayward driver, and takes to wandering about on cliff tops with a big knife – cliffs being symbolic of something in the book as there are some hairy moments spent on their edges. We discover Laura may or may not have been also responsible for Chloe’s final mysterious act.

Sex raises a much uglier head again in a totally improbable climax to this tale of sadness, loss and tough-love. I am not going to give the game away – this far-more-than- remainder-bin quality effort is probably available, at an inexpensive price, at a bookshop somewhere near you. Read it to see if you feel there is any logic to the despicable sexual act Laura imposes on her ‘victim’. But then, I am male, with thanks being to She up in the sky that my two beloved made it to adulthood – so what would I know?

If I seem somewhat flippantly dismissive of this book then I have created a wrong impression. I am not reflecting on the whole book, which is well within the bounds of believability; it’s just the ‘sexy’ bits let it down. The author effectively leads us along the ‘what will she do next’ journey in the way we just have to continue reading. We care enough to do that – always the sign of a skilled operator. There was no tossing aside of ‘Whatever You Love.’ She has also assembled a cast of credible, if flawed, persona to present obstacles to our heroine en route to discerning the answers she requires to attain a semblance of peace. You could do far worse for your money than outlay it for this finely honed thriller of sorts – maybe just fast forward the sex!

Loiuse Doughty's website = http://www.louisedoughty.com/

Busy Bee

A Blue Room Review - Zelda – Therese Anne Fowler

As a callow youth my reading was exclusively a diet of non-fiction. Tomes historical were pre-eminent, particularly those featuring the great deeds of war and exploration. Hardcover National Geographic omnibuses took me to exotic locales, and were especially exciting if bare breasted native maidens were involved. I had no time for fiction. For school purposes I waded through Dickens, Eliot and Austen and I found them alien, overly lengthy and turgidly dense. At least I did read them, unlike many of my classmates who purchased slim ‘study guides’, providing the stories in a nutshell and all the other gen they’d need on a title for exam purposes. Even though they ‘cheated’, their eventual results always seemed far better than mine.

Then in my final matriculation year I was introduced to Tess and Jay, and all of a sudden I had a mind shift. Fiction came alive. I found that once I commenced the two texts in which these protagonists figure prominently, I was transfixed – I was in another world, but one which I also wanted to inhabit. I desired to read on, rather than having to read on. As able as my English literature teacher was way back then, I didn’t need him to guide or explain – I now found I could do that for myself. Hardy and Fitzgerald’s characters were alive, were ‘real’ to me as opposed to the ‘dead on the page’ figures in the aforementioned. I hunted down the remaining oeuvres of these two authors with alacrity. I was now a fiction reader, and have remained thus.

‘The Great Gatsby’ is Fitzgerald’s shining masterpiece, never hugely popular within his lifetime, but exploding in sales during and after World War Two. Lately it has revisited the best seller lists for an obvious reason. To me this slim jewel of a book is the measure of all I read, its attributes rarely breached. I am in its thrall till this day.

It has filmed several times over the years, most notably in 1974 with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow in the leading roles, but that effort never quite captured the spirit of the print version. Perhaps that couldn’t happen until someone like Baz Luhrmann came along with his penchant for over the top voluptuousness and gaudacity. The parties; the two parties – one redolent with the vivacity of the age, the other foretelling impending doom as Jay’s dreams are about to implode, were the film’s centerpieces and I adored how the director went all out. He had the temerity to bring this iconic American work to antipodean shores to make and adulterate it with Australian thespians. Critics have nitpicked and sniveled about the result – that it’s not true to the book and so on – but the punters have responded in droves. In the post GFC world we’re looking for the glamour of times unfettered by economic woes, just as they were post Jazz Age.

One must therefore admire the timing of Ms Fowler in presenting ‘Zelda’ at the height of Gatsby-mania. A southern belle is attracted to a man in uniform – although the Great War ended before F Scott saw service – snares him, and them begins a roller coaster journey through life until their respective sad demises. The great author, as presented here, bore no resemblance to his best known creation. Fitzgerald threw himself into the hedonistic shenanigans of the Roaring Twenties, and for a time he and Zelda were the darlings of the dissolute times. Although they decamped from the Big Apple to Paris and the Riviera, they were party animals and their excesses continued unabated. Their marriage tumbled into an alcohol sodden morass, to such a degree that Zelda feared for her sanity, with Scott repeatedly having her institutionalised.

All the major events of Mrs Fitzgerald’s life are ticked off here, with some imagining between. There is her affair, Scott’s womanising - and then there was Hemingway. Ernest, at least in the novel, was the constant thorn in Zelda’s pathway to some semblance of marital bliss with her husband. What was it between these two? Was it ‘bromance’ or a step beyond? Fitzgerald had, Fowler reports, a great fear of being branded a ‘fairy’, and the literary duo did take ‘manly’ holidays together. Perhaps it could have been simply revenge on Ernest’s part. He tried to ‘have’ Zelda up against an alley way wall – in this publication’s telling of it – but was rebuffed with Zelda making some unkind remarks on his male bits. That was enough to get a fella’s dander up! Did he go on to ‘take’ Scott instead? Of course, as Hemingway’s literary star rose and Fitzgerald’s waned, so the latter’s behaviours became excessive in response, and Zelda suffered the brunt of his topple into an unhinged place.

As I completed this largely entertaining read, I also joined into the spirit by adding ‘Hemingway and Gellhorn’ to Luhrmann’s opus. Of course this is set at a later time, but director Kaufman’s portrayal of ‘Papa’ in this television movie is remarkably similar to our author’s. Clive Owen is done up to look uncannily like contemporary images of the creator of ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ and ‘The Old Man and the Sea’, although some critics have carped about his performance in the role. For me it was Nicole Kidman who did not ring true – she just appeared to me so unsuitable for and uncomfortable in the role of hard living, hard drinking, hard lovin’ war correspondent Gellhorn trying to match it with Hem.

The misogyny of the time, and that of Fitzgerald in particular, meant that Zelda never realised her potential as a writer, although she did attain some success at the time placing further pressure on the couple’s relationship due to her hubby’s unhappiness at potentially being beaten at his own game. In truth, this part biography is engaging, but not an overly flattering presentation of any of the significant real life figures. It is a tale of inflated egos. For all that, as well as all his failings and unadulterated dumbness, F Scott did give us Gatsby – a fairy floss of perfection that was the ‘green light’ that transported this reader away from boyhood preoccupations to search the fictional world for an equivalent. Mostly my fare pales in comparison – just as Robert and Mia are no match for Leonardo and Carey!

Therese Anne Fowler's website =  http://thereseannefowler.wordpress.com/