Patchwork Compass

Foreign Films to Watch Instantly

I love movies, and I watch a lot of them on Netflix. One thing I really appreciate about Netfilx’s streaming service is its database of foreign films.

Between Netfilx’s recommended films based on my taste preferences and sifting through movies that are similar to ones I’ve watched or added to my queue, here’s a list of recommended flicks. 

Since my taste preferences slant towards comedies and romance, coming-of-age tales, love and marriage are the most common themes found throughout.

BRITISH

• Death at a Funeral: One of the funniest comedies I’ve seen in a long while. When a family’s patriarch dies their issues come to a head at his funeral.
• Like Crazy: For anyone who has fallen in love with someone who holds a different passport.

• Submarine: Fresh, witty Welsh comedy about a teenage boy grappling with the highs and lows of love and life.
• Albatross: Actresses Felicity Long (Like Crazy & Cemetery Junction) and Jessica Brown Findlay (Downton Abbey) are two talented British actresses who portray two teenage girls struggling to grow up in this coming-of-age comedy.

• Cemetery Junction: Another British coming-of-age movie about following your dreams.

• Sherlock: An entertaining BBC miniseries based on the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes featuring Benedict Cumberbatch (Star Trek & Downton Abbey (another BBC series I highly recommend)) with each episode running the length of a feature film.

FRENCH (Find a previous list of recommended French films here)

• Romantics Anonymous: Two quirky chocolatiers find love in this very sweet romantic comedy

• Women on the 6th Floor: Spanish maids change the life of a 1960s French bourgeois family.

• The Lover: A steamy romance between a young French girl and an older Chinese aristocrat set in Saigon in 1929.

• For Lovers Only: Not my favorite screenplay, but the landscape cinematography across France makes the movie worth watching.

ARGENTINE

• Sidewalls: A contemporary love story of boy meets girl.

• The Paranoids: A best friend’s girlfriend changes the life of an awkward twenty something.

BRAZILIAN

• Waste Land: In this moving documentary, artist Vik Muniz changes the lives of Rio’s garbage pickers when he involves them in his artistic process in which they are the subjects.

ITALIAN

• Agata and the Storm: The lives of many intersect in this film about love, loss and family.

GERMAN

• Soul Kitchen: A restaurant owner makes an attempt to transform his run-down restaurant and ends up transforming his life in the process.

• 3: An artistic film about a married couple living in Berlin caught in love triangle with a younger man.
• Bagdad Cafe: A quirky drama set in the Mojave Desert finds two unlikely friends turning a ramshackle cafe-hotel into a hotspot.

SPANISH

• Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!: A young Antonio Banderas kidnaps a porn queen and ties her up in her own apartment in this characteristically Almodovar film.

NORWEGIAN

• Happy, Happy: Two new neighbors dealing with marital issues find themselves in the arms of one another.
• Buddy: A 24-year old guy finds himself sprung into stardom when his video diary gets picked up for TV, which begins to complicate his friendships and love life.

SWEDISH

• Together: Set in a hippie commune in 1970s Sweden this comedy highlights the pros and cons of free love and living.

• My Life as a Dog: A 12-year old boy suffers the pains of childhood and acceptance in this comic drama.

ROMANIAN

• Tuesday After Christmas: A well-acted drama about a suffering marriage.

GREEK

• Dogtooth: A disturbing, but very well-made drama about a patriarch who traps his wife and children inside his estate to protect them from the outside world.

Italian Fashion: Prada & Schiaparelli

In the spirit of Milan fashion week, I wanted to highlight The Met’s Spring 2012 Costume Institute exhibition dedicated to the Italian fashion designers: Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada.

The Impossible Conversations exhibition juxtaposed around 100 designs and 40 accessories by Schiaparelli (1890–1973) from the late 1920s to the early 1950s and by Prada from the late 1980s to the present. Behind the collections were video reels of the two fashion icons talking about their experience with fashion, how it’s shaped them, and how they have shaped the industry.

In the themed gallery Waist Up/Waist Down, Prada’s famous footwear is paired with Schiaparelli’s iconic hats.  

Each designer in her own way pushed the boundaries of fashion, simultaneously creating and deconstructing society’s ideals of what is “beautiful.”  Schiaparelli was one of the first women to adorn trousers and was faced with a fierce backlash for appearing in public wearing “men’s attire.”

Unlike Schiaparelli who embraced typical beauty, Prada loved the challenge of making “ugly” appealing. The “Ugly Chic” gallery is full of brown tones because it is not conventionally considered a pleasing color, yet she found a way to challenge most people’s dislike for the color by creating a design that exemplifies “good taste.”

Prada is always looking for unique ways to express beauty while steering clear of clichés. Even she was surprised that her outlandish Carmen Miranda inspired spring 2011 collection became her most commercially successful to date.

She wasn’t convinced that many women would want to wear clothing with monkeys and bananas emblazoned on it, but the sales absolved her doubt.

In the later years of Schiaparelli’s career, she began collaborating with artist Salvador Dali. After the creation of her “lamb cutlet” and “shoe” hats, Schiaparelli became more frequently categorized as a surrealist designer.  

Schiaparelli always felt that designing was an art form. Prada, on the other hand, wholeheartedly disagreed. She felt that designing clothes was creative but not an art because you make clothes to sell them.

She does however comment on fashion’s ability to respond to current events quickly and critically with the ability to shape identity, both individually and collectively. No doubt influenced by her political science background, Prada celebrates the accessibility and democracy of fashion because everyone wears clothes and can relate to them.

Completing the exhibition I felt empowered by both women’s strength of character: daring to go against the grain, endeavoring to change people’s minds and prompting them to reeimagine their definitions of beauty.

Before I left the exhibit I jotted down a quote from Prada that summed up her spirit of rebellion and was a welcome reminder for any woman to stay true to her sense of style without acquiescing to society’s ageist cages:

“Women always try to tame themselves as they get older, but the ones who look best are often a bit wilder. Thinking about age all the time is the biggest prison women can make for themselves.”

Amen Muccia.