The White Bus

Saw The White Bus (thanks, Anon!) It was an odd, calm, little art film. It follows a woman who wanders about the city of London and gets on a bus full of potentates and officials going on some kind of tour of the city. The woman every so often imagines herself in a chorus of schoolgirls who she is watching, or hanging, dead. These moments alert us that not all is as it seems and frees us to wonder expansively about what the film might "really" be about. I happen to have a theory myself.

I suspect that the bus is purely imaginary. She's merely wandering about. The potentates are simultaneously external stimuli and externalized versions of her thoughts on that stimuli. For example: she runs into a black guy in an art museum. Apropos of nothing he begins lecturing her on African tribal social structure. She is thinking it, I believe, but he is giving it voice. Neat.

The film is sleepy and drifts from thing to thing in what is either an arbitrary or a too-subtle-for-me sort of way. The film often reminded me strongly of the work of Jacques Tati, particularly Playtime, with its strident but genial attitude. Vaguely dismissive but sort of fondly affectionate, almost paternally amused by fussy and stupid old officials. There's a cross-pollinated whiff of Buñuel as well, I suppose.

I think the film is really a sort of playful snapshot of an intelligent woman walking about and thinking thoughts. The film is idle, browsing, interesting but not particularly gripping. A sort of dry little film.