Literature and Cinema for Spring
- Kierstyn Herrmann
- Apr 3
- 3 min read
Happy April, my delicate flowers.
Spring melancholy is in full bloom, and I want to supply you with movies and literature to feed your desire for something more wistful, mysterious, even bittersweet. I consider Spring to be the process of rebirth, but our hearts often wander back to how we used to be. To memories, or people we once knew.
Let these works whisk you away during quiet mornings, lingering afternoons, and reflective nights under the moon—all the perfect companions for a season of introspection.
Literature
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Goodreads Description
Heralded as Virginia Woolf's greatest novel, this is a vivid portrait of a single day in a woman's life. When we meet her, Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the last-minute details of party preparation while in her mind she is something much more than a perfect society hostess. As she readies her house, she is flooded with remembrances of faraway times. And, met with the realities of the present, Clarissa reexamines the choices that brought her there, hesitantly looking ahead to the unfamiliar work of growing old.
A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
Goodreads Description
Lucy has her rigid, middle-class life mapped out for her, until she visits Florence with her uptight cousin Charlotte, and finds her neatly ordered existence thrown off balance. Her eyes are opened by the unconventional characters she meets at the Pension Bertolini. Lucy finds herself torn between the intensity of life in Italy and the repressed morals of Edwardian England, personified in her terminally dull fiancé Cecil Vyse. Will she ever learn to follow her own heart?
Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
Goodreads Description
Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three of the girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of Hanging Rock. Further, higher, till at last they disappeared. They never returned.
(What I enjoy about this book is that it’s fact or fiction. The reader must decide for themselves.)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
Goodreads Description
In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. This magnificent novel juxtaposes geographically distant places, brilliant and playful reflections, and a variety of styles, to take its place as perhaps the major achievement of one of the world’s truly great writers.
Cinema
Donkey Skin (1970)
IMDb Description
In a magical, faraway land, a widower king (Jean Marais) decrees that he will wed his daughter, the princess (Catherine Deneuve), because she's the only woman able to match his former queen's beauty. To dodge the incestuous union, the princess -- with the help of a magical fairy (Delphine Seyrig) -- disguises herself as a donkey and escapes to a neighboring kingdom. There, the donkey-skinned maiden encounters a handsome prince (Jacques Perrin) who falls in love with her.
Morgiana (1972)
IMDb Description
Klara and Viktoria are sisters. Their father dies, leaving most of his property to Klara. When Klara becomes involved with a man that her sister loves, Viktoria begins to plot her murder.
Phenomena (1985)
IMDb Description
A young girl who has an amazing ability to communicate with insects is transferred to an exclusive Swiss boarding school, where her unusual capability might help solve a string of murders.
If you choose to accept any of these suggestions, please let me know if you enjoyed them!
With love,
Kierstyn
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