Infinity Float session at Q Flatiron relieves stress and anxiety
Multiple locations
April 11-17, all treatments $50
www.spaweek.com
Spa Week has been one of our favorite events for more than ten years; twice a year, spring and fall, hundreds of spas provide an enormous array of top-of-the-line full-length health, wellness, and beauty treatments, including massages and facials, manicures and pedicures, microdermabrasion, peels, waxing, laser hair removal, cellulite reduction, and more, for $50 each, for one week only. The appointments go fast; would-be hedonists need to sign up on spaweek.com online and book ahead of time. Every year spas offer new technologies and techniques, from LED photofacials and acupuncture to organic, vegan, and allergen-free treatments; spring 2016, taking place April 11-17, focuses on health and wellness in the face of technology. We may love ordering organic smoothies, booking spin and yoga classes, and counting steps on smartphones and tablets, but constant electronic connection and input takes its toll on mind and body in back and neck pain, anxiety, and facial tension. To reverse the damage from technology overload, this year spas have created treatments that specifically focus on relieving muscular and energetic stress, such as the Office Relief Massage at KUR Skin Lab, which includes a guided meditation to address subconscious tension, and the Short Geek Massage at Haven Spa, for neck, back, and shoulder tightness from mouse, keyboard, and screen time, plus the groundbreaking Infinity Float at Q Flatiron, which features an hour disconnected from everything in a totally private spacious float tank. Returning favorites include the Cherry and Gooseberry Seasonal Spring Facial at L’institut Sothys, the super-effective OxyTrio Face Treatment at one of Skin Spa’s six New York City locations, and GemVie’s high-tech Dermaplaning and Turbo Microcurrent, Dermalift, or Microdermabrasion for Face and Décolleté treatments. NOTE: It’s important to remember not to schedule a treatment via the spa’s website; you must register on the official Spa Week site (a matter of entering your email address) and book from there in order to receive the special deals.
Chantal Akerman’s No Home Movie was meant to be a kind of public eulogy for her beloved mother, Natalia (Nelly) Akerman, who died in 2014 at the age of eighty-six, shortly after Chantal had completed shooting forty hours of material with her. But it also ended up becoming, in its own way, a public eulogy for the highly influential Belgian auteur herself, as she died on October 5, 2015, at the age of sixty-five, only a few months after the film screened to widespread acclaim at several festivals (except at Locarno, where it was actually booed). Her death was reportedly a suicide, following a deep depression brought on by the loss of her mother. No Home Movie primarily consists of static shots inside Nelly’s Brussels apartment as she goes about her usual business, reading, eating, preparing to go for a walk, and taking naps. Akerman sets down either a handheld camera or a smartphone and lets her mother walk in and out of the frame; Akerman very rarely moves the camera or follows her mother around, instead keeping it near doorways and windows. She’s simply capturing the natural rhythms and pace of an old woman’s life. Occasionally the two sit down together in the kitchen and eat while discussing family history and gossip, Judaism, WWII, and the Nazis. (The elder Akerman was a Holocaust survivor who spent time in Auschwitz.) They also Skype each other as Chantal travels to film festivals and other places. “I want to show there is no distance in the world,” she tells her mother, who Skypes back, “You always have such ideas! Don’t you, sweetheart.” In another exchange, the daughter says, “You think I’m good for nothing!” to which the mother replies, “Not at all! You know all sorts of things others don’t know.”
In Tony Girardin’s debut feature-length documentary, Marinoni: The Fire in the Frame, friends and colleagues of Giuseppi Marinoni’s describe the Italian Canadian cycling legend as “explosive,” “authentic,” “iconoclastic,” “hard-headed,” and “cantankerous,” and the film shows him to be all that and more. Born in Bergamo, Italy, in 1937, Marinoni became a champion cyclist in his home country, then moved to Montreal in the mid-1960s after participating in races there. After he retired from racing, he turned his attention to building bicycle frames, training in Italy with Mario Rossin before opening his own business in Montreal in 1974, where he gained renown as a master craftsman. But he doesn’t necessarily like to talk about his life and career; it took the Montreal-based Girardin three years to convince Marinoni to agree to be filmed, and it’s clear that the septuagenarian is never fully comfortable being onscreen, whether building one of his coveted frames — he’s made more than thirty thousand, all by hand — or training to break the hour record for his age group, seventy-five to seventy-nine, a solo competition in which a cyclist attempts to go the farthest distance in sixty minutes. “Marinoni embodies what I love most about cycling: passion,” Girardin says at the start of the film. “It’s a culmination of life, love, and many things, but ultimately the challenge is to ride as far as is humanly possible.” Marinoni might never warm up to the camera — “You watching me is stressful!” he says to Girardin in French (he also speaks Italian but not English) — but other cyclists, promoters, and bike shop owners can’t wait to gush over how much they admire the man and his frames. Among those singing his praises are Andy Lamarre, Colette Pépin, Ken MacDonald, Julie Marceau, Federico Corneli, Marian Jago, Charle Lamarre, Marissa Plamondon-Lu, and Rossin.