![]() ![]() ![]() In this regard he differs sharply from Cosima, the author of a novel, long out of print, that Maestro tracks down, reads and decides he must use as the basis for his next film. For Maestro, the struggle to reconcile ambition with artistic vision is never-ending. To simply outline its trajectory is to give short shrift to the alchemy by which Govinden, the author of five previous novels, so utterly occupies his narrator’s mind. Yet it is Maestro’s chance encounter at a bar with Cosima, a woman his own age, that sets “Diary of a Film” off on a far less predictable course, leading him through a labyrinth of abandoned apartment buildings to see the graffiti-art mural that Cosima’s great love, Bruno, spray-painted 30 years ago, just before his suicide.ĭoes this summary do “Diary of a Film” justice? Probably not. Maestro’s gradual realization that Lorien and Tom are having the love affair for which Spud and Lymie, coming of age in 1920s Chicago, did not have the words, would itself be impetus enough for a good novel. for the premiere of his “liberal” adaptation of “The Folded Leaf.” Joining him are his longtime co-producer, Gabi his editor, Stjepan and Lorien and Tom, the up-and-coming young American actors whom Maestro has cast in the lead roles of Spud and Lymie. To read “Diary of a Film,” Niven Govinden’s splendid and heartfelt new novel, is by necessity to recall another splendid and heartfelt novel, William Maxwell’s “The Folded Leaf.” As “Diary of a Film” opens, its unnamed narrator, a film auteur in his 50s whom everyone but his husband calls Maestro, has just arrived at an esteemed film festival in the Italian city of B. ![]()
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