A Walk in the Clouds: Pumpkin Flower Soup and Chocolate Flan and with Frosted Grapes 🥁 🥁 🥁 🥁

Year Released: 1995
Directed by: Alfonso Arau
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Anthony Quinn, Aitana Sanchez, Giancario Giannini, Debra Messing
(PG-13, 102 minutes)
Genre: Romance

Do films have to be cynical and unhappy? Not hardly. Put away your cares and take “a walk in the clouds.”

Oh, and you’ll have to travel back more than 25 years – when the film was made in 1995 – another half century to the end of World War II, which is the setting.  An era both more tragic and yet simpler, too.

Army sergeant Paul Sutton (Keanu Reeves) returns from the war to San Francisco and the wife he met and married the weekend before shipping out.  More common than we might think, by the way.

The war has changed him; internal scars from that deadly conflict still haunt. Paul Sutton is not the same man now and wants to give up his job as a candy salesman for a new life.

All of which he has expressed in the daily letters he has written to his wife Betty (Debra Messing), who unfortunately has just stashed them away instead of reading them.

We all know this quick marriage is a mistake, but the decent Paul tries to do the right thing and takes a train to Sacramento to reapply for his old dead-end job.

Here is where we must inject Roger Ebert’s take on the film.  He sees it as a sort of litmus test for the audience, giving it his highest rating:

“A Walk in the Clouds is a glorious romantic fantasy, aflame with passion and bittersweet longing. One needs perhaps to have a little of these qualities in one's soul to respond fully to the film, which to a jaundiced eye might look like overworked melodrama, but that to me sang with innocence and trust...At a time when movies seem obligated to be cynical, when it is easier to snicker than to sigh, what a relief this film is.” – Roger Ebert

This romantic soul (Different Drummer) has to agree with Ebert. The younger me rejected sentimental films as below par even if I secretly liked them.  Now I have seen enough sadness in life that I embrace happy endings, innocence, and trust with open arms.

Yes, it is mostly melodrama that follows in our film – a chance meeting with a lovely girl on the train, Victoria Aragon (Aitana Sanchez), heir to a wealthy family that traces its roots to Mexico and Spain before that.

Her aristocratic and traditional family headed by a father who rules the roost and is sure “to kill his daughter if he finds out she is pregnant without a husband.”

The ever decent Paul volunteers to stand in for him in a temporary ill thought out scheme.

Anthony Quinn plays Victoria’s grandfather, the opposite of his son. He is filled with love and acceptance, the kind that orphan Paul has never known.

We have a lot of set pieces, some kind of hooky, like a grape stomping dance with barefoot women smashing grapes in a huge wooden tub. And somehow we forget the whole 3 week fermentation process, and the new wine is ready to taste almost immediately. Just as it was in Kirk Douglas’s Ulysses.

We also have a set of calamities that hit so hard and fast that it takes our breath away, but what anchors the film, which of course audiences loved and so many “critics” loathed, is the innocence and thorough decency of Victoria and Paul.

Each is willing to sacrifice their chance for happiness out of deference for others.  Of course Paul must return to his wife, Victoria tells him, even we all know said wife is a superficial manipulator, not worth the lovely raven hair on Victoria’s head.

We laugh as they rush to cuddle together on the family’s bed when anyone enters their bedroom, Paul quickly returning to his quilt on the floor afterward.

I guess the same critics who complain about toxic masculinity are not too happy when it’s not there.

Enjoy this sweet film with Pumpkin Flower Soup or Chocolate Flan with Frosted Grapes, celebrating Victoria’s family and Paul past job selling chocolates, As well as many other creative and delicious treats.

–Kathy Borich
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Man on the Inside: Pasta Puttanesca 🥁 🥁 🥁 🥁

Year Released: 2024
Directed by: Rebecca Asher, Morgan Sackett, Michael Schur, and Anu Valia, each directed two episodes. 
Starring: Ted Danson, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Lilah Richcreek Estrada, Stephen McKinley Henderson
(TV-14, 8 episodes, each approx. 30 min)
Genre: Comedy, Drama

“For the majority of seniors, the biggest threat to their well-being isn't an accident or health. It's loneliness.” –Didi Santos Cordero (Nursing home director)

Spy world for the senior set, with Cheers Ted Danson playing a retired widower using his good looks and charm to go undercover at a high end San Francisco nursing home.

Based on a Spanish documentary The Mole Agent, the series explores loneliness and isolation, but a spoonful of honey makes this sometimes sad elixir go down smoothly. 

Half the fun comes from the episode names, which recall more serious mysteries, film noir, and spy sagas, such as 

Tinker Tailor Old Spy

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Painting Class,

Presents and Clear Danger

Our Man in Sacramento

Russian Hill with Love

Part of what keeps us going is the slow unmasking of everyone’s past, especially that of Charles, who likes to pretend all is well, despite losing the love of his life as well as his current estrangement from his daughter Emily (Mary Elizabeth Ellis).

But while he was an excellent professor of engineering, Charles is rather clumsy as a spy, lying easily but not well, and drawing attention to himself when he is supposed to be doing the opposite.  His most facile and bungling excuse is belonging to a club, such as a peach club, where he end ends up buying out a vendor’s complete supply of peaches to make his exit.

Or as he tells his daughter, who is not supposed to know about his undercover work,

“I’m taking a class in a retirement community. It’s a photography, uh, you know, painting and gardening class.”

Gradually Charles starts to fit in at the nursing home, though, being one of the few males there, making him a rare commodity, but that also causes some problems. Longtime resident Elliot (John Getz) thinks that is his turf, especially Virginia (Sally Struthers), with whom he has a past. Before he knows it, Charles in sporting a bloody nose.

While trying to find who has stolen a very pricey necklace, Charles gets himself into more trouble, often wrongly suspecting fellow residents and earning their ire.

But he makes connections, too, one of the most heartfelt being with Calbert, a very quiet loner.  During backgammon games Cal opens up and their friendship blossoms, but it is one formed on false pretenses, and there’s the rub.

A day out together on the town, a cable car ride, a baseball game, and visit to a redwood forest, not to mention a dinner at a great Italian restaurant might actually threaten any long-term relations, because their footing is based on a lie.

***

Like some other recent films with comic undertones, such as La Dolce Villa, or The Life List, Man on the Inside uses comic touches to open us up to real emotions.  Sudden losses past and present hit the characters and the audience harder because we have been lulled into easy laughs.

This technique reminds us of Shakespeare, who often presented his boldest ideas in comedies or interposed a comic scene right before a tragedy, such as the drunken porter scene in Macbeth.

As in Made in Italy with Liam Neeson reconciling with his estranged son (played by Michael Richardson, his actual son), Man on the Inside starts out crass and cliched, but ends subtle and bittersweet.

A noteworthy new series that has pleased audiences and critics alike. And they are already filming a second series.  Wow!

Maybe there’s some hope for cinema lovers at last.

–Kathy Borich
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Trailer

Film-Loving Foodie

Okay, I am going to level with you.  I tried and tried but I could not find the name of the Italian pasta dish that Charles’ late wife loved.  The scene at their favorite restaurant is pivotal in the film because he shares the final time he took his wife there and the difficult evening it turned out to be.

I found a wonderful recipe that is a non-typical Italian pasta, but after finding it, I also found out a few less than pleasant facts about its name:

Pasta Puttanesca literally translates to "in the style of a prostitute". The name is derived from the Italian word "puttana," meaning prostitute or whore. The origins of the name are debated, with some theories suggesting it was a dish created by prostitutes in Naples, possibly using readily available pantry staples. Others suggest the name comes from the bold aroma of the sauce, which could be used to attract clients. 

At any rate, I am going with this recipe anyway.

Enjoy and don’t let the history of the dish deter you from making it. It looks delicious and seems to be easy enough to make, something I always consider when choosing my recipes.

Buon Appetito!

Pasta Puttanesca

Ingredients

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
4 cloves garlic, smashed or finely chopped
4 anchovy fillets, chopped
1 (28-oz.) can diced tomatoes
1/2 cup kalamata olives, pitted and halved
1/4 cup capers
1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes Kosher salt
1 lb. spaghetti
Freshly grated Parmesan, for serving

Directions YIELDS: 4 serving(s) 

Step 1 In a large skillet over medium heat, heat oil. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, 1 minute. Add anchovies and cook until fragrant, 1 minute more. Add tomatoes, olives, capers, and red pepper fakes. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and let simmer, 15 minutes.

Step 2 Meanwhile, in a large pot of boiling salted water, cook pasta until al dente, 7 to 8 minutes. Drain and add sauce, tossing until coated. Sprinkle with Parmesan.

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