La Vie de Bohème

Saw La Vie de Bohème. A film about a trio of artists (a writer, a painter, and a musician) and their struggle to survive. The film has scenes of real poignancy softened by scenes of comic chicanery. The film opens with the writer cagily putting his typewriter out the window so that it would not be seized by his landlord in lieu of rent. The painter is making an absurdly self-aggrandizing self-portrait of himself parting the red sea. The musician's latest composition is so avant-garde that it requires a police-siren as an instrument. The pathos in the film is derived mostly from their struggle to keep their long-suffering girlfriends. Part of me began primly moralizing partway through (why should we smile at the self-serving machinations of these bums?) but I was won over by their genuine passion for art and they completely redeemed themselves by the end.