Marble Moment

Whether good or bad, a movie can keep me interested based purely on the quality of its set design. While watching The Only Living Boy in New York recently, I found myself generally enjoying the views I was getting of various New York city locations. But when the above scene came up of the protagonist returning to his family home, I almost swooned. Since I'm tall, I've always been a fan of kitchens that opt out of over-hanging cabinets, preferring to have an unencumbered prep area. Seeing the bare space above the counter tops used as a canvas for the beauty of slab marble was a first for me. Now my eye is trained to notice gray and white marble slab and I'm loving the dramatic effect. Though it's most often found in kitchens, bathrooms and commercial spaces, I'd love to employ it on a wall in a woman's dressing room/closet. It would allow for the hard/soft textures and masculine/feminine contrast that creates balance in residential spaces. 

         

       

Images: 1) Roadside Attractions. 2) The New York Times. 3) Jeremiah Brent Design. 4) Yabu Pushelberg. 5) The Zhush.                                        

Film Interiors: Love and Other Disasters

Love and Other Disasters is one of those movies that I go back to every couple of years and continue to enjoy on both an aesthetic level and a personal one. Jacks is an English-born American who has returned to her home country to work as an assistant at Vogue UK and who lives with her gay best friend, an aspiring screenwriter. The radiant late Brittany Murphy plays Jacks and Matthew Rhys is her roommate Peter and the victim of her constant attempts to mend his frayed love life, even though her own needs as much work. Everything about the way she dresses and lives references Jacks' favorite movie, Breakfast at Tiffany's. The wardrobe and sets are gorgeous (especially the lead characters' apartment -- which a magazine assistant and struggling writer would never be able to afford) but beyond the froth is a lovely story about friendship and making yourself vulnerable in order to make room for love. There's also a hilarious cameo by Dawn French as Peter's shrink who shares her theory on the farting stages of a relationship that can't be missed.

   The entry/living room lets the paint and a few curated pieces of lighting and furniture set the mood.   

Every light fixture is a piece of art. The palette of dark gray and white is both sexy and serene.

The kitchen is on the industrial side, with a couple of mismatched stools and desk lamps for lighting.

A white bedroom with a few glass and silver touches sets the backdrop for Jacks' enviable wardrobe.

The divine Dawn French as a flaky, yet incisive, therapist with the requisite leather couch (which she lounges on instead of her client) and piles of books.

Brittany Murphy as Jacks, in her best Holly Golightly iteration.

Images: Image Entertainment.

Film Interiors: Last Love

Last Love is a quiet movie about beginnings and endings set in Paris and and the picturesque walled island of Saint-Malo. Michael Caine plays a widowed professor (Matthew) who regularly contemplates suicide and Clemence Poesy is a lonely dance teacher (Pauline) with no family or personal ties. They strike up a friendship and fill the blanks in each others lives that his children and her boyfriends can't reach. The set design helps to reveal who these characters are, while also being lovely to look at. Pauline's apartment is colorless and largely devoid of furniture. She hasn't made any major commitments in her life yet and she lives like someone who expects to be on the move before long. In contrast, Matthew's large Paris apartment represents a lifetime of choices with its overstuffed library, the bedroom full of personal finishes and the stack of newspapers by the door. The house on Saint-Malo is further evidence of the history he shared with his wife. People have a way of lingering in spaces long after they're gone and that can be both a comfort and a curse.

    

  

 

 

Images: Sidney Kimmel Entertainment.

Tent for All Seasons

I've never been a huge fan of camping -- what's fun about sleeping on a hard and lumpy surface, rain drumming on canvas all night long (which always seemed to happen when I hit the woods) and not being able to shower? But the thought of pitching a permanent tent in my own backyard or even my bedroom carries an appeal that goes back to the days of building forts out of stacked furniture, open drawers and draped sheets. As much as I loved the houses that were at the center of a house swap in the movie "The Holiday," it was the tent that Jude Law's character created for his daughters that really made me swoon (below). Keeping a tent in permanent residence also seems like a good way to get out-of-town friends to visit more often.

Images: Pinterest. Elegant Abode. By Mildred. Remodelista. Souls of my Shoes. Pure Complex. Rooted in Style.  

Film Interiors: W.E.

So much of Madonna's W.E. represents the best offerings of film artisans that the senses have trouble absorbing all that is projected at them. The gorgeous original score by Abel Korzeniowski brings to mind Yumeji's Theme from In the Mood for Love. The costume design is flawless, with Wallis (Andrea Riseborough) always dressed for company in haute couture gowns and Cartier jewels and Wally (Abbie Cornish) wearing a black and white Chanel-inspired wardrobe. And the sets that are their backdrops tell as much about the characters as the dialogue. Surrounded by opulence first in England and then France, Wallis' residences start to feel like gilded cages as she learns what it really means to be married to a royal who has committed the unforgivable sin of abdication. Similarly, Wally's Park Avenue apartment seems to mock her as it suggests a perfection that she cannot approach in her marriage. Everything is in its place and yet all is not as it should be. When Sotheby's security guard, Evgeni, rescues her from her abusive husband, she is finally able to breath again in his welcoming exposed-brick loft. Spaces tell stories, and sometimes we have to change the spaces we move in to live a different story.

Images: Semtex Films.

Film Interiors: Easy Virtue

 

What's not to love about a wicked comedy based on a Noel Coward play and centering on the war of words between a glamorous American race car driver (Jessica Biel) and her deliberately hideous mother-in-law (Kristin Scott Thomas). Add Colin Firth, a decaying English mansion full of antiques and Jessica's Chanel-inspired wardrobe and the result is definitely worth a rainy afternoon's viewing.

 Foyer

Conservatory

Nursery

Libraries

Sitting room/games room

Images: Sony Pictures Classics.

Film Interiors: Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky

Picking up where Coco before Chanel leaves off, Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky tells of Chanel's affair with a married Stravinsky. Having worked her way out of poverty and dependence on her lovers, Chanel invites the Russian composer and his family to stay at her country house. The house is a pure reflection of Chanel's tastes and its uniform style (almost all black and white with art deco lines) is testament to her independence. When shown her bedroom, Stravinsky's wife Katarina asks Chanel if she doesn't like color. Chanel responds that she likes black. The few pieces of color are provided by Katarina's tapestries, which she drapes around her bedroom in an effort to make it feel more like home. The bedrooms are the most dramatic spaces -- I particularly love the Moorish touches in the girls' room, punctuated by banners that hang from the ceiling around the entire room.

Hallway leading to the music room.

The Stravinskys' bedroom.

Girls' room.

Coco's bedroom.

Coco's bathroom.

Music room and dining room.

Perfume factory and shop atelier.

Chanel boutique.

Images: Sony Classics.