JC Among the Sharp-Dressed Men
Italy, 22nd-26th April 2002
10% of all books sold in the UK are sold at airports. Which is why it's so annoying to find three separate franchises in the no-man's land at Stansted, all selling exactly the same stuff. The "Staff Recommends" shelf at Books Etc contains nothing but JK Rowling, as if she needed any more publicity.
"Can I help you?" asks the manager sniffily.
"You can stop pushing Potter," I suggest.
The check-in desk boasts a gimlet-eyed English girl with a sense-of-humour bypass.
"Do you have anything sharp in your case?" she asks.
"Just my suit," I reply.
I get a look. Next time I can just bring a small packet of runny goat faeces and smear it over her counter to get the same effect.
Altitude fluctuation rewards me with a splitting headache as we land - Italy on a Migraine a Day, this is going to be fun. I stumble out into the sunshine, and encounter two impossibly handsome, tanned young men wearing perfectly-tailored immigration uniforms. The place is also crawling with soldiers - Udine is barely a cough and a spit from Sarajevo.
Lorena is my designated minder - a pretty Italian girl who wears too much make-up, whose English stays at the permanently-cute level because nobody wants to correct her. She is accompanied by a dark, handsome male driver, who is charming but silent. Everything-a she says-a, it contains the evidencio, of-a language that needs-a the vowels to end-a all the words-a. I think they should do a cultural-exchange deal with the Czechs, who seem to have too many consonants.
The hotel concierge wearily addresses me in English, and I'm ashamed not to speak any Italian. Back in my room, I decide to try the passive immersion method. It's only now I remember that I had a plan - I was going to set all my DVDs to Italian audio and watch them with English subtitles the week before I came, but I never had the time. Perhaps its for the best: would the Italians really have appreciated someone whose only vocabulary stemmed from Fight Club?
I watch the Opera Karaoke show open-mouthed for a while, then a children's show about how locusts mate. When Italians Attack is running Springer-style on another Berlusconi channel - Francesca has dumped Alessandro for Massimilliano because he treats her better in bed. I also find a German version of Judge Judy, best described as The Persecution Game, in which Teutonic lawyers argue in extremely complex legal terminology about precisely where to lay blame. I am just about to begin proper Italian acclimatisation by watching Il Creeko di Dawson, when Lorena arrives to take me to the cinema.
The film festival venue is Udine's 1200-seater opera house, home to 64 Asian films for a week. The whole event is government sponsored - the largest Asian film event outside Asia, drawing guests from all over the world. Any film student from Italy can register for just ten Euros. After that, they get to see all the films for free, and the organisers even throw in free hotel accommodation. Which means that the medieval Italian town is packed for a week, and the local restaurants all get their taxes back in foreign business.
There's a cappuccino bar in the foyer that looks more like the cantina from Star Wars.
"I've got a bad feeling about this," I say to Lorena.
"No-a," she says soothingly. "Everything will be all right-a."
I am introduced to several pretty Italian girls who wear too much make-up, and a few more impossibly handsome, tall, dark and silent Italian men. Also a Japanese producer, who stares at me bug-eyed with joy while I tell him how much I like his obscure TV movie My Boyfriend is a Sniper.
The opera house is packed for the screening of McDull, one of the Chinese animation season that I am responsible for curating. I address the crowd in English, while simultaneous Italian translation hisses from a thousand ear-pieces across the theatre. At the end, Lorena scurries up to me with a large coffee-table book, bound with black and white ribbon - the colours of the local football team.
"This-a," she breathes, "is from the may-jor of Friuli. For all of your-a help."
Because I have spent the day speaking Chinese and Japanese, my Italian is still limping. At dinner that night, I order a hovercraft and two rolls of sellotape. The producer literally drags me away from the Chinese table to sit with the Japanese, where I am plonked next to one of the most famous directors in Japan. He has been at the festival for a few days, but is leaving tomorrow. My rusty Japanese is cranked up to walking speed, and we talk about TV drama - they're very impressed that my favourite is Crimes of the Housewives, and very pleased to hear Udine might be doing a TV drama season next year. They really want to come back (so do I, and they won't need a Chinese animation season next year). I come away with a card and an offer to visit if I ever get to Tokyo.
Japanese is now back up to 30 miles an hour, but my Chinese is still floundering. At breakfast the next day, I sit with Mr Wong from the Shanghai Animation Studio, who regales me for two hours with his theories on Confucian ethics in broadcast media. He also invites me to come to Shanghai and teach his staff how to beat the Japanese at making animated films. It feels like someone has been slowly driving a nail through my head, but appears to recharge my Chinese.
At the cinema, I try to restore order with a cappuccino, sold by a girl who has a Sigourney Weaver thing going. I keep thinking of my grandparents, who went right through Italy saying "Cuppa-Tea No?" and said the Italians didn't have any PG Tips.
The need for cigarettes forces me to face a tobacconists. I decide that if I don't know any words, I will simply resort to Latin.
"Salutations, purveyorix of alchemy," I say confidently to a bemused shop assistant. "Beside the viridian irridescence of the Salem Menthols, lies the golden glow of the Marlboro that is Light, which I wish to purchase from you forthwith, with some sticks for making fire."
She gingerly places the pack in front of me as if feeding a shark, and I proudly hand over my Euros.
"That went well," I boast to the assembled Japanese outside.
A seven-year old girl from Suzhou, whose parents have come to Italy to open a restaurant, is fascinated to meet a foreigner who speaks Mandarin. She quizzes me about all the animated films in the catalogue, while her mum smiles indulgently. Mum seems to have signed a sponsorship deal with Versace. By the time they leave, my Mandarin has gone into warp drive. For some reason, I sound better than I really am, prompting people to try and talk to me about complicated issues that I stand little chance of comprehending. I have to plead defeat when a Chinese director tries to engage me in conversation about lens apertures and automated projection facilities.
The next day, Lorena looks tired.
"It has-a been a… a tough night-a," she says. "I had to get-a, the Korean guests, to-a pick-a them up from the disco, at five in the morning. And then, when I got-a home… my cat… my cat he has the problem. With his arse."
We pass a woman in a shell-suit, pushing a baby-buggy. As we get closer, I see it's a Gucci shell-suit.
Back at the cinema, there is a film critic from Frankfurt in the front row.
"I do not vish to be nagging," he says. "But in ze program it clearly states that zis film should be in videscreen. I sink the ratio was incorrect."
"It is true," agrees another German. "Ze ratio vas not videscreen. I believe the program vas in error, or the projectionist has behaved in an imprecise manner."
Something bothers me about the Germans. It takes me a while to work out, but it has to do with my favourite advert - a 1940s poster that says "What did you do during the war, Daddy?" The image has obsessed me for years.
In need of someone who reminds me of home, I buttonhole a passing Dutchman. I explain to him that with a name written by the English as 'Vango', at least some of my ancestors came from Holland. He explains that 'Clementsz' is short for 'Clementszoon', and that I'm probably more Dutch than I realise.
"And that's the thing," I say, to a man from Rotterdam who looks like me with a beard. "Holland and England, we've fought three wars, and the Dutch won every one. But we're friends. I talk to the Japanese and we get along. The Chinese don't blame me for the Opium War. Lorena's ancestors could have traded mine as slaves, but I don't hold it against her. But when I talk to the Germans, I can't help imagining them in uniform."
Two charming Germans do their best to behave nicely - they have a film distribution company and are here to look for new product. His name means Dagger of Ice. There's a Japanese erotica season going on in the evenings, and I ask Dagger's wife if she's going.
"No," she says firmly. "I do not like all zis male power and violence. I get enough of zat at zer home."
Lorena heads off to deal with her cat's arse, and I chair a discussion on Chinese animation - my last official duty for the festival. The director and producer of one of the films I selected are incredibly thrilled to have been invited, and hold me personally responsible. The producer is even more pleased when she discovers we went to the same university in Taipei. I am boggled at the amount of power I have been inadvertently wielding. All I did was choose a few Chinese films on a whim; the immediate effect is that she got a free week's holiday in Italy. But her film was regarded as old news until a foreign festival picked it up - now the director is prepared to raise the finance for a follow-up. Someone in Frankfurt wants to mount a retrospective of works of art by one of the Mainland animators. A cinema-owner from Hong Kong wants to mount his own season of Chinese animated films. And I have a pocket full of business cards.
Having seen a couple of the other panels, I do my best to make sure that all of the guests get the chance to say something. After introducing myself, I stay out of answering questions, instead directing them at the panelists, who include the Taiwanese ladies who have adopted me, would-be Confucian broadcaster Mr Wong, and a venerable French film archivist whose voice quavers so much that she always sounds like she's about to burst into tears.
The panel goes very well, much better than similar events I have attended. It's not just my imagination, a lady who looks like the twin sister of my old Chinese teacher tells me she really enjoyed it. It turns out she's from the Chicago Film Festival - two minutes later, she sidles next to one of the festival organisers in the cinema and hisses: "Who is this Jonathan Clements?"
"With any luck," I say to the pretty Chinese-Australian girl who runs the Sydney Asia-Pacific Film Festival, "that will transform into 'Get me Jonathan Clements'."
"That reminds me," says the Australian. "I have an important question for you. Have you ever been to Australia?"
"Yes!" I say, unable to conceal my excitement. "Yes I have and it's great. I love it."
"Have you ever been to Sydney?"
"Yes, yes," I say, looking deeply into her eyes.
"You know Dendy's cinema on the harbour?"
"Yes," I shout, holding up a small sign that says "TAKE ME NOW."
"Well, they don't have a dual projector set-up, and I was wondering if you thought that they had in-house facilities for running anamorphic, or if I'd need to buy something in…" Or something like that.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," I say forlornly. It's easy to forget that I am not really one of these people. Many of them seem to be jet-set nomads, who live from film festival to film festival. It's fascinating, though. I am starting to understand how business is done in the film industry, and how people get to be producers - two deals are struck at tables where I'm sitting.
I have dinner with three Japanese marketing girls, who all think it is incredibly impressive that my agent's name is Fox.
"Does she have magic powers?" asks one.
"Oh yes," I say, and the whole table erupts in one of those rising Japanese Eeeeeeeh sounds.
"Can she transform into a beautiful woman?"
"Oh yes." Eeeeeeeeeeh.
"Can she make men do her bidding?"
"Oh yes." Eeeeeeeeeeh.
The trio immediately start doing a bizarre shifty-starey-eyed dance which has something to do with foxes, much to the surprise of the waiter trying to put risotto in front of them.
"Japanese are nutters, aren't they?" says one of the Chinese.
Lorena is still occupied with her cat's arse, so I find myself alone in the car with a tall, silent driver.
"It's such a wind-up," I say to him. "I spend all this time devoting myself to studying Chinese and Japanese, then I come here and I might as well be another monoglot."
"I don't know about that," he says, without taking his eyes off the road. "I don't speak English, and you just said all that in Italian."
"Resulto!" say I.
The last animation to be screened is Princess Iron Fan, China's first-ever feature-length cartoon, and a film that inspired the Japanese to begin their own animation industry. I was very pleased to get it at the festival. I think this is also the first time it has been screened with English subtitles. The French archivist, whose print it was, is ecstatic at the quality of the projection. I am ecstatic at the turn-out - at nine-thirty in the morning, there are still several hundred people in the audience.
Cat issues dealt with, Lorena returns to take me back to the airport.
"This business with the arse," says Lorena. "It is such basta! You know, basta, in Italian, it means -"
"I know what it means," I say. "I used to hear it a lot from my girlfriend."
"Oh… you-a have the Italian girlfriend? So you-a maybe speak a little?"
"Just the very rude words."
We drive past ramshackle buildings that look like they've been there for hundreds of years. A long time ago, I knew someone who loved Taiwan because the buildings reminded her of Italy. Italy reminds me of her.
Lorena and I walk for ages down a long corridor until it comes to a dead end.
"I don't think this is Departures," I say.
"No-a," she says. "Why-a did you come here?"
"I was following you."
"Oh… but-a I… I was following you…"
"This is another basta moment."
"Yes-a," she says. "That would be the correct usage."
The pilot on the plane is Dutch, and apologetic.
"The weather in London," he says, "Is… well… it's the same as usual."