Airport movies

Stand-By

After all the years of travelling I've come to detest the whole airport rigmarole. After September 11 the hell got even more hellish. I find that I am constantly fatigued and jetlagged when travelling on planes. And when you live in Australia, trust me, there ie a LOT of fatigue and jetlag.

I absolute hate the security hooha (I mean all the queuing and everything taking forever)... The only thing that can save me from airport hell is having nice duty free shops to browse in, or nice cafes/restaurants to eat in, but that all depends on how early I arrive there before my flight and how much money I have to spend ;)

For some reason, it only just occured to me that I have a fascination with films involving airports. I love Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones in the film The Terminal which was set in New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport and loosely based on a true story of a man who lived in Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport.

There is a lesser known film released a little earlier called Gate to Heaven (Tor zum Himmel) which was set in Frankfurt airport.

I saw it during the 2004 Sydney German film festival and remembered it as one of my favourite foreign films ever. I have not seen it since and can barely remember what happens but I love all the 'behind-the-scenes' lives of the airport workers.. whether or not it's realistic I don't know but I remember the storyline was wonderful and I am still trying to track down a copy of this film but it's not very well known.

Then, recently I saw Up in the Air as I briefly mentioned here which is not really a film about airports but a lot of scenes take place in them.

Finally, I just saw this weird French movie from 2000 called Stand-by where everything that happens is described in the blurb on the back of the DVD case. At the beginning of the film there is a couple in an airport and the guy decides to dump his girlfriend then and there and go on their trip to Buenos Aires without her. She totally freaks out but there is nothing she can do...

The whole movie takes place in Orly Sud airport on the outskirts of Paris, where the woman spends her days, moonlighting as a high class prostitute, sleeping with random businessmen in hotels, which are now her accommodation as she refuses to go home or to her sister's place.

She kind of goes a bit insane (I think) but it's an interesting look at how people deal with painful relationship breakups. It's the story of this woman, and her relationship to (ex) boyfriend, the staff she meets (and gets to know) at the airport, and the random passengers who she tries to proposition.

It was far too long I felt as I found myself wondering when the heck it was going to end and all I can say is, it was one heck of a bizarre movie.


Something I've been finding myself doing when watching French films is, noticing when two characters (who don't know each other at the beginning) change from the 'vous' form of 'you' to 'tu'. It's quite interesting. Sometimes they mention the tutoyer, other times they don't. Sometimes one person continues to call the other 'vous' but the second person calls them 'tu' back!