Anouk & Marcello in 8½ アヌーク・エーメ & マルチェロ・マストロヤンニ in 8½

Mario is 8½ in Tokyo.
4 years older than 8½.
Everyone in Japan knows that by now.
I, like every cinema enthusiast, love Anouk & Marcello.

Anouk remains forever in our memory, in our subconscious, lives on in our hearts. These two protagonists in La Dolce Vita and in 8½ remain monumental.

From time to time, when social circumstances allow, my woman shall call me Marcello. My alter ego, so to speak. Amore mio, chiamami Marcello…
Guido (his real name), my Italian mother’s last partner, with whom she spent a good time in Montecatini, too, was a cross between Guido in 8½ and Jep Gambardella in La Grande Bellezza. A real sophisticated Romano, pretentious and pathetic, with an inherited property near the Vaticano. I spent many years in Roma decadencia and know it as well as ma Tokyo aimée.
Marcello admires and respects Anouk’s feelings. She stands for the embodiment of the unapproachable, spiritual, lascivious donna, l’anima femminile essenziale.
Erotic finesse, sophisticated acting via a complex cognitive process, a true film star, elegant with a delicate appearance. Stylish Anouk Aimée showed us viewer an inimitable character that catapulted cinema into the realm of great art.

Anouk Aimée was married four times. Her third marriage from 1966 to 1969 to French actor-composer Pierre Barouh, co-starred in “un homme et une femme”, world-famed. Pierre Barouh, who wrote the theme song for “un homme et une femme”, which became an international romantic hit, married later Japanese Atsuko-san.
I do know BAROUH Atsuko バルー 敦子 in an admirable way, who until recently had a well known gallery and a club house near Bunkamura, Shibuya, Tokyo. May I take the opportunity to share with my dear ART+CULTURE readers a contemporary art related picture from 2015.

Federico Fellini said of the finale in 8½, and thus of life itself, that one must “immerse oneself in this fantastic ballet with all one’s vitality and only be concerned with grasping the rhythm correctly”.
Exactly. My life in Tokyo as 8½.

Venezia, 19th of June 2024
Mario A 亜 真里男