Deja Vu

(Aplogies for the re-found re-post on Kavenagh). I don't know how to post it into the past, where it belongs.

I rented a film called "Deja Vu", directed by Henry Jaglom. I watched it 4 times back-to-back.

It's not the first time. I've done it before. The film is poorly directed; yet it charms me. One of my favorite Schubert pieces, “Serenade” runs throughout the film. Vanessa Redgrave appears in it. That is reason enough to rent it or pick it up at the library. It could have been a great film. Vestiges hint at this potential, for example when Venessa Redgrave speaks.

The film explores how people react when they meet the love of their lives. According to the film, true love is felt the moment you meet the gaze of the one you were meant for. This is a platitude, of course. My friend Patrick Kavanagh once said, “If platitude should claim a place, do not denounce his humble face”.)

You might be happily married or about to marry. Then you meet “the one”. Do you believe in love at first sight or go about your business and dismiss the feeling?

For me, watching the film conjured a sensation of Déjà vu because it was filmed, partly, in Israel, where I traveled with my first love, Bill.

The opening scene features "Dana" (female lead) strolling down a marketplace outside of Tel Aviv. Strange fabrics stretch over and cascade beneath crumbling walls, blotting out the sunlight from above. Trinkets, or belly dancer coins, faintly tinkle as people brush past.

I can still smell the sweet exotic spices that clung in the stifling absence of air as I inched along the cavernous passageways so many years ago. Goats and the skinned flesh of unknown creatures dangled from hooks, strung up overhead in rows for purchase, covered with flies.

Vendors in traditional long garb with missing teeth and mud crusted feet pushed past me selling coffee from strange brass contraptions or pita bread filled with gobs of Hummus.

In the film, the marketplace is overrun with Western tourists. When I strolled down these shadowy cobblestone streets, it was a different world. I was an oddity. Bombs were flying in from Lebanon. It was not tourist season. To say that people stared, is an understatement. My guide and best friend Carol, (a.k.a. loyal cab driver) was with me. Sometimes he would grab my hand and drag me away from a group of men selling bread or... He negotiated my purchases. I spent each day with him while Bill worked. Carol waited in the Taxi line up outside the hotel until I arrived. He would accept no other commission. He waited. He reminded me of my dead father, affable, kind and protective. 30 years later, he is as real and vivid as any friend I have ever known.

Later in the film, Dana meets a mysterious woman (ghost) at a cafe overlooking Jerusalem. This sets into motion a journey that leads to her true love. I sat at, perhaps, the same table and remember watching the boys riding donkeys below. Later she strolls along the Mediterranean, in Tel Aviv, past a cafe dotted with tables by the sad sea. It wasn’t a happy place when I was there. The city was in shambles, literally crumbling. I can still see Bill sitting at such a table by the Mediterranean Sea, beneath an enormous white umbrella. He's smiling his crooked smile and waving at me. I don't sit with him because he is conducting business.

What happened next, I will never forget. (Cliffhanger, courtesy of Pool Boy)