nineveh_uk

Spent this morning making a muslin of a top that I know I have to alter. It was the only simple non-button-front, non empire line, non stretch top I could find in 6 pattern companies*, and would be perfect did it not date to an era of rather loser fitting clothes and can be pulled on over the head. Somehow, therefore, I have to alter it. Firstly, however, I have to work out what size I should be altering. I am normally a 12, but there was so much ease I made a 10. Now I can’t work out whether the basic fit would be better in an 8 or a 12. Happily I have lots of old sheeting so I can make both, but I think I’m going to end up over at Pattern Review begging for help. I suppose I shall learn from it. I really need to make a Vogue fitting shell. Also, the much-lauded Fit for Real People (honestly, you can tell from the title) is completely useless.

I saw Chéri at the pictures this afternoon. It looks gorgeous, but is unfortunately not a very good film. The script is a mixed bag, the pace all over the place, it’s wholly unsexy despite the subject matter, and Michelle Pfeiffer, though she acts reasonably well (though nothing like as well as the critical plaudits she’s been getting would suggest), is miscast. My impression of Léa in the novel was of a sensual, practical, fairly intelligent woman with a degree of self-knowledge. Pfeiffer just isn’t interesting – one doesn’t wonder about her background, what she finds amusing, what she likes to eat (indeed she doesn’t eat onscreen at all - ‘maigre’ indeed). Rupert Friend, on the other hand, is rather good as the young man who isn’t vacuous enough to be happy, but doesn’t know what to do with himself in the circumstances. He’s trivial, often spiteful, charmless and monumentally selfish and self-absorbed, but retains, though largely oblivious to the fact, genuine feelings.

There is a 1950s French version I’m curious to see, but I can’t help thinking that what it really needs is a stage adaptation by Ibsen. A central heroine, a closed community of shuttered lives, desires suppressed and unknown. It’s right up his street. Although I’m not sure whether in the Ibsen version Edmée would end up making a respectable but dull marriage, announcing she intends to set up a business, or running off to seduce the King of the Belgians.

*It is very tedious that despite producing fashionable (or at least modern) skirts, suits, dresses and trousers, pattern companies only seem to manage the dullest shirts, empire line tunics for 15 year olds, and other tops that the FLDS would consider desperately out-of-date.