My good friend Milda never watches a film adapted from a book she has read and vice versa. I think I will follow this rule myself from now on, as too often the movie is not good enough because the book was so much better. This weekend I watched The English Patient, a 1996 epic showered with Oscars. The film tells the story of a forbidden love between a dessert explorer and his sponsor's wife set in the late 1930s. From time to time the plot jumps forward towards the end of WWII where we see the main character badly burnt and trapped in an Italian villa with a bunch of eccentric housemates (a Canadian nurse, a thief with Cavaraggio as a surname and a Sikh kipper). As they try to find out the identity of the mysterious patient, his memory goes back in time and the love story unfolds. It is all tragic and epic with beautiful dessert shots and fabulous frocks. But I couldn't help to compare the movie with the book, especially as there had been so many changes made in plot and in characterization. The most interesting thing is that I didn't enjoy either, but for different reasons. The book was too poetic and the film too slow.
Mixed feelings after Tribes at the Royal Court. Yet another middle class Jewish family on stage with their not very relevant problems (for example, the Guardian publishing an interview in Society section). Three adult children are back to live with their writer parents. They sit around the table and all just talk, argue and bicker, which is quite funny to watch. All except one, who is deaf. But he seems to be the most sane among them. He brings his deaf girlfriend home, who gets mildly shocked by the family's rudeness, and finally moves out, as the girlfriend helps to get him a job through the deaf community. That is the first act. The second turns all crazy with random kisses, lots of shouting and cheating. After the first act we compared it to intelligent TV entertainment, whereas after the second 'Where Did It All Go Wrong?' was playing in my head. 
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