Movie Night

Home  from a late night wine fest with good friends after a movie... This is admittedly a drunken, late night rambling.  Monsieur is away on business and I have the week alone.

  Walking home along the Promenade (des Anglais ); a few families with children back from the Carnival parade, one little girl with wings attached racing along,  a couple of youths dressed like women with plastic breasts exposed.  There were  a few of the usual "ladies on the game", two guys taking photos of each other on a bench;  a man scouring the beach with a Geiger counter.... In fact lots of folks out late at night.   In every town in the world would it be the same?

  I feel safe walking home along the Promenade tonight although their has been a mafia style killing in Nice this week.  It's interesting how we accept a certain level of violence in life now.  Maybe that was always the case or we just have more information now and are habituated to hearing about it.

  It's dark up my street but the champagne colored tiger cat with the celadon eyes awaits my return home.   He is not really my cat, I keep reminding myself.   His afternoon nap schedule on our sofa has been upset because I left early for the movie.  I open the door and he dives in.

The Iron Lady, the movie  " Femme de Fer" we saw was a tour de force for Meryl.  She nailed it with her false teeth, her voice modulation , in short her uncanny ability to inhabit any character she takes on.

 But more than that it was a lesson in how to understand what is happening in America today with the standoff between left and right.  I got to see how "giving in ", compromise,  is a sign of weakness to some.... as it was for Margaret Thatcher.

And I got to see a glimpse of how power seems to corrupt whomever it touches.  Margaret Thatcher was a very compelling leader but the school-marm scene where she corrects her colleagues and "dresses them down" was chilling and exemplary of this misuse of power.   It seems to come to every politician.  I can think of only a few exceptions.  

But I was determined to not be taken in by Meryl Streep's magnificent skills and there I failed completely.   She has made a real person for us,  an amazing character called Margaret whom we admire whether we agree with her politics or not.