Jãnis Abele: The Last Will
I am in Paris. In Rue Saint Denis. In an apartment where I have been several times with my wife. In an area where Anatols Imermanis (1914 – 1998) would have loved to have stayed. And he did through his poetry, where he brought himself to the city of love and erotics as he puts it. He lived in Soviet Latvia and was not allowed to travel. Many of his poems were never published. But he earned his money writing detective stories.
Rue Saint Denis, one of the classical streets for prostitutes, it still is, I can confirm having looked from my apartment windows, even if someone in the film says it is not. Well they are not young any longer, maybe they were, when Imermanis wrote about them. And Paris his dream city, in many ways I agree, where he would love to have his ashes spread… .
Anyway, Imermanis is the protagonist of this joyful documentary detective story that circles around who his was, with examples of his poetry, with a focus on his love to women and sex and as mentioned his wish to be buried in Paris, maybe by one of the naughty professional women he writes and dreams about. But where is his urn, his ashes… that brings in the detective perspective:
To find out where …”becomes the mission of the main character on screen, a poet and a soulmate Aleksandrs Zapols who takes up a role of investigator… to fulfil the last wish of Anatols Imermanis 34 years after death.”
He asks friends of Imermanis about him and they add to the portrait: A lonely man, obsessed with the opposite sex, does not want to be with family. He is with friends, who helps him, Zapols walks around having calvados and wine talking about the poet wanting to re-create the atmosphere, he loved.
Two stories are hilarious and deserves to be mentioned: The female journalist, who interviewed him – that was his condition – naked, she said yes and was shocked, when he lifted the blanket… it was like the Tour Eiffel, she says! And his friend who brought in “half corona” cigars from the West through customs showing an official document claiming that cigars was medicine for the poet to help his low blood pressure!!!
(I wish that was a fact, writes this former cigar smoker, who has promised himself to start again, when times come, it is a temptation, when I pass the Tabac just around the corner, and Poul Rude and I wanted to smoke after a visit to the Orson Welles exhibition…)
That’s a another story but one of the friends says it: He lived from coffee and cigars and when there was no more of that, he died.
Back to Paris: The detective, Aleksandrs Zapols, finds the urn and heads for Paris with a friend to make the poet’s last will come through. They investigate the places that Imermanis was dreaming of; Closerie des Lilas, the famous restaurant where literary and artistic notabilities came, they go to Pigalle and Moulin Rouge and to the Saint André des Arts street, where a special place is to be found… never heard about it but according to the film it is close to my favorite art house cinema in the same street…
Enough of spoilers but… look at the photo, the dancer from the place in the street mentioned above spreads Imermanis ashes to the Seine and some of it blows back to her cleavage! Imermanis would have loved it, the detective says. Indeed!
Latvia, 74 mins., 2025.
❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
