{"id":1238,"date":"2026-03-03T08:18:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T16:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lauragrey.com\/?p=1238"},"modified":"2026-03-05T18:36:43","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T02:36:43","slug":"nihilism-and-nightlights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/?p=1238","title":{"rendered":"Nihilism and Nightlights"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The following is one of a series of six film review parodies I wrote for the Sunday Punch section of the <\/em>San Francisco Chronicle in the 1980s. Each piece featured imaginary foreign films that I reviewed in the voice of a dry and humorless foreign film critic.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the new foreign film releases this season are two films by female directors: Bebe Francobolli\u2019s ode to Dada, Ciao Chow Chow<\/em>, and Christiane de Geronimo\u2019s children\u2019s thriller, Nightlight.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Francobolli is the daughter of the Suprematist painter Mazlow Molotov (\u201cThe Black Russian\u201d) and Constructivist painter Kiri de Kulpe Kloonig (a former courtesan known as \u201cThe Dutch Treat\u201d). Bebe\u2019s parents met in Rome at an international stamp-collecting convention and became Italian citizens before their only child was born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Named Bebe Francobolli (literally Baby Postage Stamps) after her parents\u2019 avocation, she refused to become a philatelist and rejected the art of her ancestors. She turned to Dada, the nihilistic movement that created \u201cnon-art,\u201d laughed at overly serious artists and spawned Surrealism.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Close-up<\/a>
Dadaist director Bebe Francobolli’s beloved Chow Chow, Antipasto, star of her ridiculous early films<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

These influences can be seen clearly in Ciao Chow Chow,<\/em> in which Bebe herself stars. Translated from Italian into English, and then back into Italian again, with no subtitles, the film begins and ends with Bebe waving goodbye to her beloved Chow dog, Antipasto, symbol of her lost youth and of her ridiculous early films.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ciao <\/em>is a parody of a self-parody, masterful in its simplicity and in its bold statement that life is to be laughed at, and that nothing is serious or sacred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Basically nihilistic, with Dadaist subject matter and camera angles, this film is convoluted and uneven, personalized and stylized, and will make no sense to anyone who has not seen Bebe\u2019s early travelogue films. Yet, Bebe promises that it will be her last film work, and that alone has prompted critical acclaim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Avant-garde director Christiane de Geronimo\u2019s Nightlight<\/em> tells the terrifying story of the night the Mickey Mouse nightlight burned out in the Turner household. Little Bobby Turner is forced to face The Clown Puppet, The Vicious Animal Slippers and The Dreaded Man from Under the Bed.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"A<\/a>
In Christiane de Geronimo\u2019s<\/em> Nightlight, the terrifyingly blank-eyed Clown Puppet is finally subdued with a chain around his upraised arm\u2014or is he?<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Filmed in black and white, Nightlight<\/em> captures the shadowy horror of every child\u2019s bedroom, and forces even the adult viewer to come to grips with The Thing in the Closet. Not for the squeamish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

De Geronimo\u2019s earlier attempts at children\u2019s thrillers include The Teddy Bear with No Face, Scream, Barbie, Scream<\/em> and Revenge of the Katzenjammer Kids,<\/em> in which comic-strip characters from the past are set loose on an unwitting Nebraska farm town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nightlight,<\/em> the third of her bedtime stories series, features the late French film star Estella de Lumiere in her final role before the dreadful accident on the set of Murder on the Trampoline.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"A<\/a>
Coming Soon: Professor Haro Hiru instructs one of his students in Fujiko Shiatsu\u2019s sumo wrestling remake of<\/em> The Music Man<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Next month, two recent remakes: Canadian filmmaker and ice-hockey champion Pete Steed\u2019s sport-oriented version of A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream;<\/em> Fujiko Shiatsu\u2019s sumo wrestling remake of The Music Man.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This foreign film review parody is one of six Laura wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle in the 1980s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2043,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,25,29],"tags":[1693,1696,1686,1685,1680,1679,1681,1687,998,1688,999,1689,1690,995,1695,1000,919,996,1691,1694,997,1684,1683,1682],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1238"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1238"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2048,"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1238\/revisions\/2048"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}