But you have alot of friends...

That's the first thing she said...as Anamaria Marinca stood there in the corner of the Young Vic stage in July 2009, dressed in jeans and a white vest top, standing against a background of a wall with two narrow exits each side ,nothing more, nothing less. And so 4.48 Psychosis Psychosis began...my first experience of watching a one person stage play. I had loved Anamaria Marinca in '4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days', was surprised to see her pop up in the brilliant 'five days of heaven' and found it to be great pleasure when I got to meet her at the 2009 world cinema awards, as she gave a heartfelt thank you speech as herself and Cristian Mungiu accepted the best film award. At first I thought she was nervous and didn;t know what to say as she followed Cristian's speech with 'this film is for all the lost ones...we shall never forget you.' I ran into her during Berinale 09 a few months later, at an incredible Romanian party!

4: 88 Psychosis kept my attention, I throughly enjoyed it. After about an hour and fifteen minutes straight performance, she never moved from her one spot on the stage. It was a truely challenging and fantastic role to see her in.

My first stage play to be written with a one person would only come recently, as it coincided with me seeing Meera Syal act it alone in 'Shirley Valentine', a very talented woman whom I always enjoy watching, it was fantastic.

The one person stage play is a challenge...I plan to see more and hope that my first one person stage play, is the first of many more to come...

2 days in Paris

Marion: "It always fascinated me how people go from loving you madly to nothing at all, nothing. It hurts so much. When I feel someone is going to leave me, I have a tendency to break up first before I get to hear the whole thing. Here it is. One more, one less. Another wasted love story. I really love this one. When I think that its over, that I'll never see him again like this... well yes, I'll bump into him, we'll meet our new boyfriend and girlfriend, act as if we had never been together, then we'll slowly think of each other less and less until we forget each other completely. Almost. Always the same for me. Break up, break down. Drunk up, fool around. Meet one guy, then another, fuck around. Forget the one and only. Then after a few months of total emptiness start again to look for true love, desperately look everywhere and after two years of loneliness meet a new love and swear it is the one, until that one is gone as well. There's a moment in life where you can't recover any more from another break-up. And even if this person bugs you sixty percent of the time, well you still can't live without him. And even if he wakes you up every day by sneezing right in your face, well you love his sneezes more than anyone else's kisses. "

Chequered History

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/sep/22/fashion.middleeast

Somewhere in-between sunrise and sunset

'Memory is a wonderful thing, if you don’t have to deal with the past…'

My mate took a girl to his place for a date once, whilst we were at uni, to watch Before Sunrise. I had never seen it up until to this point. My mate told me 'oh you'll love it, it's just two people walking around a city and talking.' Sounded great to me!

I don't recall the frist time I saw the film...I think it was on videotape, perhaps the same one my mate used for his date...uni is a strange time, framented in places. A few years later, I heard about a sequel, Before Sunset, much to my sickness. A film which is originally about two people finding something in each other, the bravery of trust, the magic one night can bring and what really is love. In the end, is love a few hours spend together, leave it at that, make love, share and say goodbye, cut all strings loose?

And so Before Sunset seemed like it was to cut all this away, as it intruduced with the tagline...'what if you had a second chance, with the one that got away.' Before Sunset became the most commercial of the two films, confusing new audiences over which one film came first (America entitled the second one, Before Sunset 2) I remember the first time I saw Sunset, I had just finished my degree and gone back home, from Farnham, to London. My house was in a decorated mess, I had no bedroom, nowhere to really work, no job, only a laptop and a library down the road currently with an offer of free DVD's. As I watched Sunset, something came over me, as I ended up watching the film five times in a week. Was it the joy of seeing two people having the chance to be happy, did I just fall in love with Julie Delpy's character, was it the city of Paris, did it encourage optimism for love within me?

Being in a relationship at the time, I showed it to my girlfriend, who had not seen the first one. After watching it, she said...'it's not real.' What did she mean? Can two people not find such chemistry as is shown in the film or did she mean the film is so polite about the idea of chance, romance, chemistry?

I recently showed both the films on a date...perhaps if the date was the bit better, I might have got a better response than the one I got, which was that 'the first one was better.' It was at this point that I knew this date was over, perhaps I have the 'Before' films to thanks for this realisation.

When I saw Julie Delpy's on a panel discussion in Berlinale 2008, an audience member said to her, 'before sunrise and before sunset are two of my favourite films of all time, will there be a third one?' Julie Delpy was currently promoting her directing debut 'two days in Paris', a film which attempts to capture what a real relationship is like, can be argued in a more pessimist way, she replied to the audience member 'well, you're a romantic.' Perhaps that said it all...why I watched the second one five times in a week and why I'm writing this blog...

To end...

Jesse: Oh, God, why didn't we exchange phone numbers and stuff? Why didn't we do that?
Celine: Because we were young and stupid.
Jesse: Do you think we still are?
Celine: I guess when you're young, you just believe there'll be many people with whom you'll connect with. Later in life, you realize it only happens a few times.