There’s four of us in the car. I know the man next to me, I know the one at the back seat. The identity of the fourth traveler is still unknown to me, but she is one of us. She brings the balance. The windows are rolled all the way down to counter the mean heat. Breathing is difficult. We start in a traffic jam on a dirty Sofia street, first car at the red light, engine purring in anticipation. There is a Soundgarden album turned all the way up, we’re all sweaty t-shirts, tattoos, shaved heads, Frusciante locks, shades and coolness. I’ve got my hands on the wheel, and I keep casting lusty looks to my left and right, seducing teenage girls with fat sneakers, nervous, plump bankers, dumb-eyed policemen, and chain-smoking home chemicals delivery guys. I’m the fucking king, and I’ve got my men by my side. We all know the lyrics to the song and own the neighborhood with our voices. Everybody wants to be us. Everybody wants to be with us. But this is an exclusive, if very rugged, club. We share the same scars. We know the same truths. We feel the same pain, and(…)

Get on that train, get on that tram, get on that bus, cause they’re all really meant to go somewhere… that place is not a big surprise, and you don’t want one anyway… you need to keep it warm, put some thick chocolate in, browse the shops, pick up a flier or catch sight of something worthy through a flying window… then you can decide if you go here or there… snow falling on channels, in a quiet, soft night… we walk on to the next bar, or maybe it’s even finally time for that midnight coffee… we live in a shipping container for a week and the water heater keeps steady almost all the time… we shop for cheap food that is so good, we love the bread, we love the cheese… we go to see the artist with the cut-off ear and his ear is the last thing we care about… his work is thorough – I love this word… never thought of his work as thorough, genius explained in a short stroll… libraries await and people in them seem warm and calm… there is a time and a place for everything and everyone, if your temperament is(…)

Here is a very good article on the nature of our combat with climate change, the change we need to make in our approach to climate change, the uselessness of Copenhagen-style forums… with its realism and soberness, it kind of gives me hope all is not doomed. It’s a long article, be warned.

Interestingly enough, I watched through this entire movie thinking I was seeing Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience. Soderbergh’s film was released an year later, in 2009, and I’ve no idea who borrowed ideas from whom, if at all… but apart from unsuccessfully straining to recognize Sasha Grey (who plays the main part in The Girlfriend Experience), I had no doubt I was watching a Soderbergh film. Pietrobruno’s GFE has the same structural boldness and self-referential elements as Full Frontal, for instance. Made as a fiction-documentary, or better said, documentarised fiction, it centres on the dissolving life of a man obsessed with paid sex. In particular, with an expensive provider of special sex+emotions services, known as girlfriend experience (GFE). Pietrobruno has a background in documentary film editing, which probably explains to some extent the assuredness with which she tackles the unorthodox narrative form. The movie is interspersed with fake “re-enactments” – episodes in which the main character, Daniel, plays himself, while another actress plays the part of Adrian, his GFE love interest. So you get an actress playing the role of another role played by another actress… sounds a bit too complicated, but it’s basically a movie within the movie, and(…)