In fact, it's difficult to see much of Florence without witnessing a Brunelleschi-designed or inspired building. He was a leading light of Renaissance architecture and nuts for re-establishing the classical ideas of carefully calculated geometry and symmetry in buildings, with lots of circles on squares and arches on squares and squares on squares.
San Lorenzo has a very plain exterior (though it had an abandoned plan for a Michelangelo façade) and a Brunelleschi-designed interior, plus two awesome bronze pulpits by Donatello that were used by Savonarola to fulminate against the corrupting influence of Medici-commissioned Renaissance art. I got one picture on The Shoddy Camera Phone before continuing my record of being told off for taking photos where we shouldn't. I'm find myself sympathising with those 1990s aeroplane spotters banged up in Greece more than I used to.
The Seffalice is in two minds about Brunelleschi. One mind can't get enough of it, the other finds it a frustratingly reined-in, restrained way of designing. The former mind has, admittedly, a much greater grasp of the historical context and importance of his work which which to appreciate it.
Talking of restraint, The Seffalice watched Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love again and for the first time respectively. It's a briliantly conceived movie – think Remains of the Day meets Sky 3's The Best is Yet to Come meets the scenes with Bruce Willis's wife in Die Hard set in Hong Kong. In the 1960s.
Set in 1960s Hong Kong, a man and a woman move into spare rooms in adjoining flats, with their respective wife and husband, and are incredibly polite to each other. It has only the two main characters, a handful of locations (a couple of rooms in the two neighbouring flats, the corridor connecting the two flats, the street and noodle bar outside and a couple of workplaces), and a very minimal script. It could easily be a stageplay, but is made into a movie - in the way that, say, the movie of Glengarry Glen Ross is not - by the editing, the speed of turnover between scenes and the outstanding set and design. The camerawork is brilliant making even the exterior scenes feel cramped, with Mrs Chan's clothes, a different colourful slinky dress in every scene, rebelling against their lack of space.
The highlight for both halves of The Seffalice was the incidental music, in particular a phrase of very beautiful violin and cello that was repeated several times during the first half of the film. Michael Galasso was credited with the original score, but there was several pieces of licenced music (including a Nat King Cole version of Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps recorded in Spanish. Have pop stars stopped doing that now? The Beatles used to record versions of their songs in at least German and Spanish). I think the one we liked most is the theme by Shigeru Umebayashi. Definitely worth looking for emusic or iTunes. Anyone else heard any other of their work?
Suffice to say it's not a quick-paced movie, lots of sitting quietly looking askance. If you're in the mood for a slow movie, however, you'll love it. Beware though, if you can't speak Cantonese as fluently as The Seffalice you may find irritation in the use of white subtitles in film in which most of the male characters wear brilliantly white shirts. The Mighty Reptile, do you have any influence in the world of international subtitling?
Which reminds me, good news from before The Seffalice left the UK from Tesco's Cooked Sliced Meats Packaging Department: they've finally hired someone with enough gumption to realise that packing the meats with the toppermost piece of meat stacked at the opposite end of the pack to the pack's opening tab is madness. One fewer reason for The Seffalice to spend its lunch hour angry.
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