0707 2017 五

5點起。
已經有人在POST 劉曉波的死訊了，說預計周六死，有點過分。


近7點，39元的咖啡無法吃下。
來回票400元；不過忘記幾樓搭車。
忙碌的醫生。等植牙的約20人，更是慘：有人請假一小時。我竟然在照全口牙十張開眼。
當然要加粉。手術費3000萬PLUS材料，半年再植牙。
看不完的FACEBOOK。
午餐，阿佳談其美國分產的難題，老2~老3.....
每年健檢5~6萬是必要的。北醫。

原來是啤酒：我不信邪的後果。



從苗栗 (這回發現騎樓"路平"了，雖然中正路70年的老餐廳生意清淡)回來。出公館站，大滴地雨點灑落。 我拿起電腦包遮雨點。一路走下，過地道，過誠品(英文書77折起)。過懷恩堂，一位女士追過來送我傘，說她先生就在前面騎樓等她。我接受；過20公尺，追上他們，還傘；謝謝。辦公室到了。



Henry N. Cobb (AB ’47, MArch ’49) receiving the Harvard Medal at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association. Photo by Tom Fitzsimmons.
晚餐
最後3分鐘的送/頌詩沒找到

When you hear that Shun Li and the Poet concerns the experiences of a Chinese immigrant in contemporary Italy, you will almost certainly prepare yourself for a litany of atrocities. Relax. Andrea Segre’s elegant film does dally with quiet tragedies and small cruelties, but nobody gets raped, decapitated or sold into sex slavery. Rather, it’s a touching fable of the old school.

François Couturier, the gifted French jazz composer, layers the piece with melodic piano tinkles and plaintiff surges on the accordion. Cinematographer Luca Bigazzi, who has done such good work with Paolo Sorrentino, paints the Adriatic seascapes in soothing watercolours. You would have to be a very mean person indeed to dislike the film.

Zhao Tao, frequent collaborator with Jia Zhangke, plays Shun Li, a young Chinese woman working long hours in an Italian clothing factory. In the opening scene, her boss tells her that she must move to a fishing port near Venice and serve in a dockside cafe. Desperate to pay her debts, she accepts and finds herself adrift in a community apparently conceived by a less surreally minded Aki Kaurismaki. Gentle old men gather in the afternoon to drink laced coffee and discus old campaigns. A useless young hoodlum argues with his extravagantly hair-sprayed romantic partner.

Eventually, Shun Li makes friends with an elderly Yugoslavian fisherman named Bepi (the reliably brilliant Rade Serbedzija). They take trips out to his fishing shack. He reads her his rough poetry. She discusses her family. But the relationship, never exactly romantic, displeases both the locals and Li’s Chinese masters.

As the film drifts towards a sad but satisfactory conclusion, it occasionally flirts with mawkishness. But Segre, hitherto known for his documentaries, always pulls back before the slide is complete. We are left with a largely sincere study of loneliness and its consolations.

Unlike so many films on this subject, Shun Li and the Poet actually believes in the inherent decency of strangers. Don’t hold that against it.