Lady Bird, by Greta Gerwig

A very nice movie, that was a pleasant surprise. I had seen Greta Gerwig in her Noam Baumbach movie Frances Ha, which I didn't like that much - the kind of First World artsy problems that I find pretentious and leave me cold. But this one is quite different, so much better - a tender depiction of teenage growing pains, mother-daughter relationship, the sensitive young's yearn to escape the banal and find one's place in the world. The characters are believable and likeable, the performances are great. One cannot but love the moving character of Lady Bird - and even if later in New York City she will become a sort of annoying Frances Ha, that doesn't take away her freshness as a hopeful teenager. With Boyhood, one of the best coming of age movies from the last few years.

Orient, by Christopher Bollen

This is the second Christopher Bollen book I've read, after the very good The Destroyers. And I liked it very much - it's an excellent thriller, it reminded me of an Agatha Christie book for 21st century adults, also made me think of J.K. Rowlings' A Casual Vacancy for its convincing depiction of a small community, with all its petty secrets behind apparently normal and boring provincial lives. Bollen's writing is rich and beautiful, some scenes seem a little too long, because one wants to know what will happen next - the essence of a true page turner. There are some clever twists, and the scene on the ice near the end feels eerie, it reminded me of Peter Hoeg's Smilla.

A very good book, I recommend it.

The Post, by Steven Spielberg

This is a very nice movie, better than most of Spielberg's "grown-up" movies (I always thought he was much better with adventure "teenage" movies like Indiana Jones or ET, when he tries to be serious he tends to be too moralistic and becomes somewhat parochial, in a very American way). This one is a newspaper movie/thriller in the best tradition of All the President's Men, with great performances by Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks and, obviously, very relevant to the present American situation, when a constantly lying president declares war on the press. These were the values that truly made America great, and whose erosion is making it increasingly irrelevant. Unfortunately, Americans seem to be getting used and immune to their administration's lies and shamelessness.

Call me by your name, by Luca Guadagnino

I had seen so many good reviews of this movie that my expectations were pretty high - or not that much, since I usually get somewhat mistrustful when something is too praised. But it's actually a very good movie, a tender nostalgic evocation of the discovery of love and sexuality, in a beautiful setting, very well directed and with an outstanding performance by the young Timothée Chalamet. It somehow reminded me of Conte d'Été by Eric Rohmer, probably because of the european atmosphere, the depiction of long and lazy summer time and young people 's experiences of love.

I liked the movie more after I'd seen it, when I knew the Oliver character was 24 years old. Because, while watching it, I thought he should be about 30, and that bothered me a little, somehow it didn't ring true that, as much liberal minded as the parents could be, they should be comfortable with their 17 year-old son having a fling with a much older man; then everything fell into place when I realised he was only 24. Maybe Armie Hammer, handsome as he is, was not the perfect casting? Anyway, they had a great chemistry on screen.

The Book of Dust - La Belle Sauvage, by Philip Pullman

I was ill when a good friend lent me a book to read, saying something like "It's a beautiful fantasy, it will take your mind away from troubles". It was Northern Lights, by Philip Pullman, I had never heard about him, but ever since the first few pages, when Lyra was sneaking in the Oxford college library and Pantalaimon flew around her as a moth, I was captivated and enthralled. The strange yet familiar world(s) depicted are fascinating, and the story and the characters are great - I loved Northern Lights and soon read The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. I find Philip Pullman's universe (or better, multiverse) much more interesting than C.S. Lewis', to whom he's so often compared. It's curious how the movie adaptation failed; I actually found it not inferior to the Tolkien movies adaptations of The Lord of the Rings; Nicole Kidman was an excellent Mrs. Coulter, and the movie was visually very beautiful. But of course the books are so much more interesting.

So I was curious when last year there was a new book developing the story, and now I read it and liked it very much. There is no more the fascination of discovering a new world, rather the pleasure of returning to an old familiar and beloved one. It's another beautiful narrative, that adds information about daemons and Dust, told in a gripping way that makes it a page turner. The new characters, Malcolm, Alice and Bonneville, are as engaging as Lyra, Will or Mrs. Coulter. And I always like the way good fantasy and sci-fi writers deal with real important subjects to make us think, in this case the dangers of religion, single-mindedness and youth indoctrination.

I am looking forward to the next volume.

The Berlin Stories, by Christopher Isherwood

Like many people since the 70s, I first heard of Christopher Isherwood as the author of the story that inspired the movie Cabaret; unlike most of the people that then read him, the movie didn't make me read him, quite the opposite, it actually pulled me away from it for many years - until now. I enjoyed the movie, it has very good musical acts, but I found the story feeble and far from appealing (guess it would have been different if it had been A Single Man, a movie I watched many years later).

Anyway, I kept stumbling across Christopher Isherwood's name along the years: he was published by the Hogarth Press, he was admired by Gore Vidal, his portrait (with his partner Dan Bachardy) had been painted by David Hockney... So I kept him in my to-read list.

And now I finally read him, and understood what all the hype was about. I was overwhelmed, it is really first class writing, I hadn't enjoyed a book so much in a long time. Not only the writing is beautiful and the stories engaging, but the characters are unforgettably created - even more than the famous Sally Bowles, there is Arthur Norris, Otto Nowak, Natalia Landauer, Bernhard Landauer, even fraulein Schroeder, all incredibly believable and endearing each in its own way.

It is so good to find great fiction, to feel there are still so many books to read and enjoy. Isherwood absolutely deserves his fame, it's a wonderful author.

Requiem

I've been thinking a lot about her lately, and wanting to write about her, but keep shying away from it out of fear of not doing her justice.

She was born in Guinea-Bissao, from a middle-class family, worked as a government clerk and was happily married. Then she got pregnant, and then everything went wrong: eclampsia, renal failure, a plane to Lisbon to get dialysis. Then here she was, alive but alone in a foreign country, with no support whatsoever from Guinea's embassy, as so many other renal patients. That's when I met her, as another recently arrived patient from Guinea.

I instantly took to this very fat and beautiful young woman, with the most happy smile and friendly demeanour I have ever seen. She was the kind of person that is born to be happy, always optimistic and with an indefatigable love for life, even when things went terribly wrong. And wrong they went, time after time. She lost her relatively comfortable life in Guinea, her husband soon found another woman. With no money, she had to support herself with cleaning work. A renal transplant failed, vascular accesses failed, the bone complications of secondary hyperparathyroidism crippled her and gave her constant pain and a hip fracture, she suffered from several blood stream infections from her catheters, she got hepatitis C.

A second transplant worked for a few years, but rejection followed, and she was back on dialysis. Meanwhile, she kept struggling with poverty - I remember being appalled when I knew her landlord had removed the doors and windows of her flat in winter because she was late with her rent.

But through it all, she almost always managed to keep her good spirits, her sunny disposition. She used to ask me about my children, and then always said: "Take care of me, I'm your oldest child! I'm counting on you!" "You'll never get rid of me, mark my words!" And her hearty laugh always warmed my heart, and I'd tell her: "Yes, you're just as foolish as my kids!"

And thus many years went by, I was her doctor for 22 years. It was always a pleasure to meet her, her smiling black face, her colourful outfits and afro wigs so typical of an attractive West African woman. We shared jokes about her weight, I would tell her how worried I'd be if she ever get thin.

And now she is dead, as so many of my patients. Another of the many complications she suffered from, only this time she didn't make it. And I'm so sad. Because it really felt like she was my oldest daughter. She was born to be happy, but fate dealt her a really gloomy hand. And I'm SO sad. Could I have helped her more? I feel so useless sometimes. She deserved such a different life.