november favourites !

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November is a pretty nice month. I like the way days get shorter, blending into each other to the point of disappearance, and how the leaves start to fall.
How life gets frenzied, how people fight against time to get everything done, as if their duties had heard of the coming of the month and decided to start piling up.
I like the late afternoons spent studying with a nice candle, a hot tea and some good music. The red noses and rubbed hands on cold nights, the small awkward jumps from one foot to the other that have never actually warmed anyone up. The melancholy in the air.
I like how, despite the fact that we know it's coming, every year it catches us off guard. How, never ready for the change it brings, we get mad at it for showing us where we're standing.
I like it all quite a bit.

And this november, these are the things i enjoyed the most !

wong kar-wai movies

This month, i caught up on the Wong Kar-Wai movies i had been meaning to watch. After having seen In the Mood for Love and Happy Together this summer, i was missing Chungking Express and Fallen Angels. I finally watched them, and i absolutely loved them!
faye looking at a window with her reflection fallen angels protagonists on a motorcycle
As I said in my very eloquent letterboxd review, the way Wong Kar-Wai portrays being human is mesmerising. The unique sensibility he has in treating his characters is, for lack of a better word, crazy.
Watching either of these movies, it's impossible not to be captivated by the neon, messy, packed-full and yet ever empty Hong Kong and its inhabitants.
Wong Kar-Wai's films take us on a journey through the days (and nights) of lost people as they look for connection in their alienated lives. We get to know them as they experience fleeting moments of love and heartbreak, and as they express themselves through peculiar habits and quiet routines. There's never a narrative being pushed (or much of a plot, really) - it's just the opening of a window into a reality seen for what it is. And by the end, we feel as if, maybe, we could have been part of their world all along.
chungking express protagonist eating fallen angels protagonist smoking
I think it's rare to find media that portray our humanity that well. Our yearning for togetherness, the deep way we feel and let other people know that we feel, the strings that pull us and those that loosen us - Wong Kar-Wai nails it all. And he does it in an insanely pretty way, too. Cinematography-wise, the movies are stunning and not easily forgettable, with vibrant colors and a dreamlike atmosphere that i eat up every time (!!). The scores are equally amazing, and they blend in perfectly, often adding to the nostalgia lingering in the air (California Dreaming lived rent-free in my head for at least a day after finishing Chungking Express - and, even though it's not one of the films in question, so did Yumeji's Theme from In The Mood For Love at the time).
Overall, i'm absolutely in love with his works, and i'm definitely going to watch the movies i have left (namely, Days of Being Wild and 2046), even though i suspect that they won't live up to these ones.

very real reviews

letterboxd review 1 letterboxd review 2 letterboxd review 3 letterboxd review 4

(p.s. amongst the "serious" reviews i read on letterboxd, i found this one very interesting!)

november music !

To me, november has a very distinct music vibe.
It's the month for low-toned, jazzy songs, for spoken word or chill rap, for is-it-dreamy-or-am-i-dissociating french songs. For songs you'd listen to when the lights are low - and yellow - in a plant-filled house (or, i imagine, in a winery - i don't frequent wineries). Or while you're walking to a pub at 6pm and it's raining but not enough to open an umbrella and the leaves are sticking to your soles.
It's a month for music that feels like the colour brown.
Some of the songs in the playlist might not feel like a november to you, but, to me, they captured this past one perfectly.

technically, i've also been listening to a lot of radiohead, but i do that on a separate playlist, and it isn't really a november thing-

tea !! of all kinds, all the time

There isn't a lot to say about it, really - november is the tea month: it gets colder, there's a lot of studying to do, the sun sets early - everything points to a good cup of tea.
In particular, i've been enjoying:

(all both with and without milk. you might think earl gray wouldn't pair well with milk, but it surprisingly does ! - oat milk, at least -)

other stuff that made my month