Netflix

Today the wife flew off to Miami for four days. Already this year she's been to Seattle, Houston, Milan--and two weeks after she comes home she has a three-day conference in Ocean City (on my birthday).

So I took a half-day and skipped French class and spent six hours doing yard work: weeding, planting, transplanting, seeding, mulching, edging. Then I did laundry, cleaned the kitchen, and rewarded myself with Louis Malle.

Elevator to the Gallows is a stylish murder movie by turns suspenseful and hilarious. Julien teams up with the wife of his boss in a scheme to off the old man and make it look like a suicide. After the murder he's to meet his lover and do what lovers do, but while committing the perfect crime he forgets one detail, which he notices after starting his car on the street outside his office building. Leaving his car running with all his belongings inside, he runs back in only to...well, I've given away too much already. Malle is quite a clever tease, and the soundtrack by Miles Davis hurts not a bit.

In class today we were going to watch the second half of Malle's



which is much lighter but also worth seeing.