Light and color can be so seductive. I did these radish photos last night before retiring to bed to watch The Vertical Ray of Light by Vietnamese-French director, Tran Anh Hung. He also directed The Scent of Green Papaya, one of my all-time film favorites. Both movies revel in color and shapes. They are collections of sumptuous tropical scenes, the tropical fruits, foliage, even the attires of tropical peoples. In The Vertical Ray of Light, close-up images of the heads of the characters as they exchange intimacies are as voluptuous as images of fruits being cut up or plants decorating the typical open-air houses in Vietnam and many other places in Southern and Southeast Asian countries.
The film coloring reminds me of another French favorite, Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain, released in the U.S. mercifully as plain Amélie. A self-taught director, Jean -Pierre Jeunet declined the offer to direct Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) but in the 2001 tour-de-force story of a naive Paris girl who decides to help others and in the process finds love for herself he created a truly fabulous cinematic experience. If cinema is meant to take us out of the drudgery, often tortuous misery of everyday life, Amélie succeeds!
These two films anchor me when I think of color-correcting my photographic images. I don't always shoot for verity. If we want true-to-life, we need only stick our heads out of the covers in the morning.
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