A nine-hour flight: that will be three films, thank you

My Air Canada Zurich to Toronto flight Monday was going to be a grind, even after a one-and-a-half hour delay leaving Zurich because of some European Union aircraft monitoring program that day. The flight is 8.45 hours. I spent the first hour or so finishing downloaded newspapers from my previous hour-plus flight. Now it was twiddling my thumbs time. Okay, let’s have a look at AC’s entertainment offer. I am one of the few people who praises AC (Canucks notoriously bad mouth the airline). Besides the fact they still offer booze at meals - and in a plastic as opposed to paper cup! – their back-of-seat entertainment system is one of

the most voluminous I’ve seen. As I scrolled through offerings, Polly Findlay’s Midwinter Break came up. Released this year I’d  been wanting to see it. It’s the story about a couple from Glasgow, long married, trying to revitalize their relationship with a short trip to Amsterdam. It stars one of my fave Brit actresses Lesley Manville, and Irish actor Ciarán Hinds. They’re Baby Boomers who seem to have arrived together at the end of their tether. The winter scenes of Amsterdam’s streets are gorgeous, as is the artwork in the Rijksmuseum (don’t forget to see the Night Watch). But there is unsettling ennui as the couple stroll by the moonlit canals. Manville’s Stella is

going in an opposite direction to the taciturn Gerry (Hinds) – stereotypical husband alert! – and the trip dissolves. Or does it?.....Next up on my flight were two vintage French films. First was Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour (1967) with Catherine Deneuve. I’d seen this before. Deneuve as Séverine is a bored housewife who wants, shall we say, a walk on the wild side or to jump-start her libido. She applies as a prostitute to a high-class Paris brothel (Geneviève Page as Madame Anaïs is especially memorable in projecting an authoritative though tender charm). The film shows many intimate images (though no nudity) and I wondered what the passengers behind me may have thought with a very young and slim Deneuve (her wide eyes reminding me of Princess Beatrice’s), stripping down as she services her mainly bizarre clients…..The third film was a French Nouvelle Vague classic, Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1962 Le Doulos, starring the great Jean-Paul Belmondo and, like in the last film, a personal fave, Michel Piccoli. Le Doulos refers to a police informer. And a hat. And since this is 1962 and criminals looked like businessmen, which in a way they were, they all wore hats. This is an age-old crime flick of betrayal among gangsters, Belmondo’s Silien outsmarting his brothers and the cops among some nasty happenings. This Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) film has all the earmarks of a classic noir, "à la française", with double dealings underlying the cliché, No Honour Among Thieves. Just put your fedora down gently.