I had mixed feelings about this after I saw it. I always end up with mixed feelings about Kirsten Dunst. But then I remembered while re-watching Melancholia this is one of her best performances. The core of it makes sense to depressed people, since Von Trier was inspired by his own depression enough to make this, Antichrist and Nymphomaniac. I couldn't watch the latter and haven't watched the former, as it's possibly too dark even for me. Dancer in the Dark is in my list of favourite films. Being a fan of Bjork isn't a reason to see this, but I wanted to see what she had to bring. It came out for me when I was going through my own first bout of diagnosed depression. Dancer's issue is it holds on to so much tension before there's a real escalation but the penultimate scenes in the prison would cement in most people's minds Bjork's depth of talent. My consensus, if you're not choked up by the end of this film, you have no fucking soul.
Melancholia hinges probably too much on the same refrain from Wagner's score Tristan and Isolde, this being Melancholia's theme throughout. But it doesn't detract from Charlotte Gainsbourg's weeping or the resignation in Dunst's acceptance of their demise. Clearly the son is there to add to the sense of hopelessness, if he'd been absent, I don't think the ending would have had anywhere near as much weight. Kiefer Sutherland has always been good at playing relatively arrogant and unlikable characters. I don't particularly have sympathy for his cowardly exit strategy. You're not really set up to like any men in this film, including the father and son Skarsgards, both here has Dunst's boss and husband respectively. The characters at the wedding carry the responsibility of reflecting wider aspects of humanity: the greedy boss, the rather naive husband, the witless boy sent to pry a tagline out of Dunst (this I found the least believable aspect - causing tension over a tagline seemed contrived); and least of all the father, John Hurt, the absentminded, hedonist drunk. The mother (Charlotte Rampling) seems to exist to add further tension to this recipe of dysfunction. And the victims are the sisters, Justine and Claire. Ultimately, it's Justine picking up the pieces of the supposedly stalwart and often put upon Claire, because Justine's heavy depression is what steels her for the actual end of the world, that we all know is coming. The science fiction aspect blends believably into this narrative, it's well displayed, the oncoming Melancholia starkly beautiful as it is perturbing in its constant looming presence. Justine embraces death quite rightly for her depression, seeming to almost flirt with Melancholia and its pending destruction by bathing in its glow under the gaze of a bewildered and perhaps even jealous Claire. You could argue Claire has more at stake with her son and her husband, she has more to mourn, while Justine has lost her job and her husband rather haphazardly, you would think she's the least sympathetic one in this mix. It's through her acceptance and stoicism you gain a sense of admiration for her. One thing we depressives can do is withstand the idea of death once it's become inevitable. But Von Trier's movies are a constant reminder of death across the board. He only tends to paint more hope into something that should be riddled with despair.
I think it was tactless of him to make comments on his family history concerning the Nazis. Perhaps in his depression he'd embraced some truths other people couldn't stomach. He picked the wrong time to admit to it.
My obsession with Dancer comes from the soundtrack. I know that more intimately than the movie itself. What is bringing an overture of hope and acceptance is the lyrics of New World. (Anyone reading this - you have play it at my funeral - it's not a dirge.) The songs all carry the story, I get how Scatterheart is a bit more disjointed where it plays in the narrative, but it's a portrait of Selma's innocence now being exploited and she's holding on to this so fiercely knowing the reality of her situation. I also learned Chelsea Manning was affected by seeing this film, another thing I connected with her over. It's a confusing movie on first viewing. You don't really understand the weight of what's being discussed until it all begins to unravel. Again, you're not meant to like many of the men here, but you're more likely to loathe Bill's wife, Linda, clearly a representation of the American Dream that in her case isn't earned - she's squandering an inheritance and Bill has no spine to stop giving her money. The pair of them are despicable once it becomes apparent how quick Bill is to exploit Selma's disability and how callous Linda is to call Selma a liar. Those on Selma's side, her overbearing friend Cvalda who's constantly bringing Selma down from the clouds, and Jeff, the unrequited suitor who can't distract Selma from her rather girlish crush on Bill, fail to convince Selma to discard her plan to save her son's sight at any cost. Selma's a character who doesn't ever leave your memory. I don't know if any other actress could've delivered what Bjork does here, hence Von Trier's relentless pursuit of her. She stated some regret working with "a certain director" due to his overbearing nature, there wasn't a need to name names. I can imagine Von Trier being another director who's been elevated by intense admiration and hasn't been humbled by it. You have two astounding films to come out of this tenacity, but not a terribly likeable director.
I couldn't see that same brilliance in Nymphomaniac, I couldn't tolerate the pacing or the content. I think it lends too much to pornography and fails to be a believable commentary on female sexuality. Granted, I only watched twenty minutes, this thing in its entirety has two parts. It bored me shitless and I might've been there for reasons of curiosity but from what I've since learned, this was insufferable for some. So I can't claim to be a fan of Von Trier if I can't find him that accessible. I can certainly see what makes his films off-putting to the general public.
But definitely see Melancholia and Dancer in the Dark. I can quite easily visit these and still find something with each viewing.
Friday, 13 July 2018
Why I love the Dirties: Lifted from SUAGBAI
Ugh. You know what I'm like when I have a boner for a movie and I'm wide
awake. So now you have to suffer with my analogy of "The Dirties".
I am in love with this film, its core concept and the people who made it. I don't love Kevin Smith for increasing its audience and once again there's songs in there ironically that are hard to find IRL. Even though he didn't make it. Him just being associated with it makes that a thing.
I only stumbled on it because of him, and a conversation on Bret Eastern Ellis's podcast that I bothered suffering through, because I don't find Kevin Smith that insufferable to listen to if I'm in the right frame of mind. And he mentioned this flick and I managed to find it. I've seen it maybe four times now. It's so perfect and perfect that I got all the pop culture references. The leads aren't high school kids, but they were just the essence of the geek boys I hung with in high school. The "one of these days" kinda guys who always had something to prove, and were either too egotistical to like you if you liked them, or too in love with you when you wanted to friendzone them but still felt shitty about it. We friendzoned the shit out of boys before it was even a thing, and Owen is right, essentially we all did it and had it done to us. Bullying was a thing that wasn't taken all that seriously in my day because we didn't have access to guns. There's been a stabbing at my school since I graduated. That's about all.
But this movie nailed it. It just got to the crux of a school shooting in America the way Elephant or any other movie just didn't do. I don't even like that Elephant implied the two Columbine guys were gay and in a secret relationship. That's insulting and unnecessary, and doesn't help gay teen boys. It makes all shootings about sex. Because that's the American way.
Matt and Owen aren't gay or gay for each other. There's a bromance of sorts going on in terms of who's more important to the other that they subtly joke about in one of the montages, but you know the dynamic. You know those two guys who always hung out almost exclusively with one another but things got sour over a girl or one growing up or moving on too fast.
And to call this a "found footage" movie isn't quite fair. It doesn't purport itself to be that despite using that convention. It's reached its own uniqueness by the approach the filmmakers took, keeping the story line loose enough and the conversations real enough that we're believing this is real on a whole other level. There's none of that contrived found footage horror shit going on. There's no long drawn out camera runs in the dark where you're not seeing shit but you feel it coming up on you. It's not a mocumentary. You're not getting a sense of these kids being interviewed. They do vox pop shit but it ties into it in terms of what the two main characters are doing as a school project. All of it blends, and like Matt says, and his teacher loses in translation, it's a genre-bender in the truest sense. It doesn't claim to be any of these things and ultimately becomes all of those things in an almost perfect way that hasn't been achieved before.
Your inner critic who can't suspend enough disbelief will always pick apart the found footage notion. Things felt edited and there was a story despite these people just continuously filming and each "cut" is just them turning off the camera. Things are too polished as opposed to genuine. When the Blair Witch people attempted this back in the late 90s and kind of birthed the form, the movie industry shat its pants. Suddenly you could make low budget blockbuster shit. Whoops. Then the experts were all "how to make a movie on a shoestring budget" but then Paranormal Activity happened and those movies are over budgeted for now (one of their producers actually lamented not jumping on Blair Witch when it was presented to them). And Paranormal Activity is cliched as fuck. Person is on the screen. Person goes flying backwards due to unseen force. Person who wasn't there suddenly is there. It becomes desensitizing so you have to up the ante to scare the fans all the time.
The Dirties just reels that all back in to a logical standpoint. It so much more organic despite there being multiple schools and only half the people being aware of what's going on. They made it seamless enough for me to think it was the same school, but high schools over there are generic compared to the ones here, that are campus types with mapped out buildings. If you were to do a school shooting in my old school as it was, there were too many places to hide, the whole thing takes up a couple of acres in total, and it's too spread out to effectively kill a ton of kids at once. You would need a squad of teens, at least five working in tandem at various points, to effectively kill the majority of the 1500 odd kids who were there. But you know we thought about it. I still think about it. A shooting is a perfect fantasy in your mind, you're good with a gun already, you just whip it out and point it at your enemy and they're dead. Doesn't matter who they were. It's so easy to orchestrate in fantasy and harder to pull off in reality. And we don't have enough survivors, victims or perpetrators, to give that perspective. No one interviews the victims and the shooters take themselves out to preserve their myth for television. The world will know them in death. But as the Dirties points out, psychotic behaviour is NOT that simple, no matter how badly you want it to be. It's just FUCKING NOT.
I am in love with this film, its core concept and the people who made it. I don't love Kevin Smith for increasing its audience and once again there's songs in there ironically that are hard to find IRL. Even though he didn't make it. Him just being associated with it makes that a thing.
I only stumbled on it because of him, and a conversation on Bret Eastern Ellis's podcast that I bothered suffering through, because I don't find Kevin Smith that insufferable to listen to if I'm in the right frame of mind. And he mentioned this flick and I managed to find it. I've seen it maybe four times now. It's so perfect and perfect that I got all the pop culture references. The leads aren't high school kids, but they were just the essence of the geek boys I hung with in high school. The "one of these days" kinda guys who always had something to prove, and were either too egotistical to like you if you liked them, or too in love with you when you wanted to friendzone them but still felt shitty about it. We friendzoned the shit out of boys before it was even a thing, and Owen is right, essentially we all did it and had it done to us. Bullying was a thing that wasn't taken all that seriously in my day because we didn't have access to guns. There's been a stabbing at my school since I graduated. That's about all.
But this movie nailed it. It just got to the crux of a school shooting in America the way Elephant or any other movie just didn't do. I don't even like that Elephant implied the two Columbine guys were gay and in a secret relationship. That's insulting and unnecessary, and doesn't help gay teen boys. It makes all shootings about sex. Because that's the American way.
Matt and Owen aren't gay or gay for each other. There's a bromance of sorts going on in terms of who's more important to the other that they subtly joke about in one of the montages, but you know the dynamic. You know those two guys who always hung out almost exclusively with one another but things got sour over a girl or one growing up or moving on too fast.
And to call this a "found footage" movie isn't quite fair. It doesn't purport itself to be that despite using that convention. It's reached its own uniqueness by the approach the filmmakers took, keeping the story line loose enough and the conversations real enough that we're believing this is real on a whole other level. There's none of that contrived found footage horror shit going on. There's no long drawn out camera runs in the dark where you're not seeing shit but you feel it coming up on you. It's not a mocumentary. You're not getting a sense of these kids being interviewed. They do vox pop shit but it ties into it in terms of what the two main characters are doing as a school project. All of it blends, and like Matt says, and his teacher loses in translation, it's a genre-bender in the truest sense. It doesn't claim to be any of these things and ultimately becomes all of those things in an almost perfect way that hasn't been achieved before.
Your inner critic who can't suspend enough disbelief will always pick apart the found footage notion. Things felt edited and there was a story despite these people just continuously filming and each "cut" is just them turning off the camera. Things are too polished as opposed to genuine. When the Blair Witch people attempted this back in the late 90s and kind of birthed the form, the movie industry shat its pants. Suddenly you could make low budget blockbuster shit. Whoops. Then the experts were all "how to make a movie on a shoestring budget" but then Paranormal Activity happened and those movies are over budgeted for now (one of their producers actually lamented not jumping on Blair Witch when it was presented to them). And Paranormal Activity is cliched as fuck. Person is on the screen. Person goes flying backwards due to unseen force. Person who wasn't there suddenly is there. It becomes desensitizing so you have to up the ante to scare the fans all the time.
The Dirties just reels that all back in to a logical standpoint. It so much more organic despite there being multiple schools and only half the people being aware of what's going on. They made it seamless enough for me to think it was the same school, but high schools over there are generic compared to the ones here, that are campus types with mapped out buildings. If you were to do a school shooting in my old school as it was, there were too many places to hide, the whole thing takes up a couple of acres in total, and it's too spread out to effectively kill a ton of kids at once. You would need a squad of teens, at least five working in tandem at various points, to effectively kill the majority of the 1500 odd kids who were there. But you know we thought about it. I still think about it. A shooting is a perfect fantasy in your mind, you're good with a gun already, you just whip it out and point it at your enemy and they're dead. Doesn't matter who they were. It's so easy to orchestrate in fantasy and harder to pull off in reality. And we don't have enough survivors, victims or perpetrators, to give that perspective. No one interviews the victims and the shooters take themselves out to preserve their myth for television. The world will know them in death. But as the Dirties points out, psychotic behaviour is NOT that simple, no matter how badly you want it to be. It's just FUCKING NOT.
Saturday, 7 July 2018
This is 40 - strangely endearing.
I guess I'm a Judd Apatow fan. I liked Freaks and Geeks. I didn't think I'd like 40 Year Old Virgin as much as I did. Superbad, by extension, is actually a hell of a lot of fun for his input. Knocked Up's also alright. But I didn't think This is 40 would be any good at all. When you see a running time of 2 hours and 15 mins as you're booting it up on Netflix, you'd be put off if you didn't know Apatow does incredibly long comedies. He's been accused of having a problem with editing, and yes, a lot of scenes in This is 40 seem like skits to fill in time. But he's one of the few directors bothering to portray some semblance of reality, so you get vignettes of real life situations threaded together into a fairly basic story with a lot of heart.
This is 40 meanders more than Knocked Up, but you could see there was something of a film between Rudd and Mann's characters that was worth exploring more. And returning to them when they're turning 40 (Lesley Mann's character in denial and claiming she's 38 - I have words on this I'll get to) and their daughters (Apatow's real life daughters, who seem to have adopted their dad's quippy sense of humour) could've failed miserably. But the problem is, the situation they're in doesn't always seem to make total sense at first glance.
I haven't been paying 100% attention to movies lately, it's background noise, but some aspects of this bothered me. Would you really have a father so irresponsible he's taking money from Pete (Rudd) without Debbie (Mann) being unaware of just how much has gone missing and how in the hole they are from Pete's bad business decisions as the head of his own record label? There's the extension from Knocked Up of Debbie's hang ups over her aging, we get to see her going through a myriad of health checks, including a mammogram, just to illustrate the fears of the target audience on turning 40. Pete accepts his actual age but not a full sense of adulthood and responsibility. He has to be the sensible one though when Debbie's spending money on useless eastern medicine. They argue like a cliched couple, try to revive their relationship with a dirty weekend away complete with edibles, which is a fun montage, and they hide shit and their feelings until they escalate. Neither of them deal with other parents or children effectively, though Melissa McCarthy's portrayal of the bitchy mother who'll happily lie about the location of her own fucking nipples made me want to slap her. She's not that funny, people. Debbie and Pete are comically children trying to be adults with children and responsibilities. They just about have the right chemistry for a couple with serious ambivalence as to whether or not to stay married, that's perhaps the most genuine part of this film.
I can't relate to any of this because I'm an asshole who has no issue with turning 40. I've completed personal goals and self-actualised and it's not been a simple process, but I'm fine where I am and fine with my age. I don't look my age admittedly, but I still don't really see why turning 40 is a nightmare except because movies and TV and society tell us that it's supposed to be a nightmare. You're not allowed to kid yourself at this point. You've got to get your shit together or you're screwed. Some people should get their shit together by 30, not 40. Those ten years seem to give you leeway for postponing maturity and responsibility. By 40, it's too late. You're a loser if you've not pulled it together by then. And I don't believe this. I've met too many people in their 40s, 50s and 60s who do and say the stupidest, most immature crap and completely mean it, and feel justified in their actions. Age is a number. That's all I can say of this.
I did enjoy this movie much more than I expected. Megan Fox as Desi isn't so terrible. She plays off Mann's sad desire to retain her youth and be endearing and attractive to men while trying to ascertain if Desi is stealing, and for some stupid excuse we have to suffer through Jodie (Charlyne Yi) because she was kinda funny in Knocked Up, but she's still a stoner who seems to have the cognisance to falsely accuse Desi and then show no genuine remorse for being the actual thief. I was fine with her until that reveal, (the line "Everything that comes out of her mouth is lies. Everything that goes into her mouth is dicks." slayed me) then she made it awkward with her mugging, stoner crap. I get this is played for comedy but then you see how Debbie's an idiot for hiring a stoner (who's also babysitting the kids). Neither of these adults make genuine adult decisions. For comedy. And adding Pete's dad's irresponsibility of fathering triplets late in life, with Debbie's dad's absence, you have the reasons for the dumb decisions Pete and Debbie both make. And it works within the context of the film, but not real life. And that's fine, but it's actually harder to suspend disbelief with this than it is with Knocked Up.
These aren't really reviews, I know. I'm kind of just fleshing out my thoughts in the vein of people I've been watching lately, and I was surprised with This is 40 as the trailers didn't sell this to me at all. You end up liking Debbie despite her being thoroughly and purposefully unlikable, but because of this through two thirds of the film, I am SO on Pete's side and I rarely have time for Debbie's self-denial and self-pity. Maybe when my tits are sagging and I start to wither, I'll be eating my own words. But I haven't botched my body with a baby either.
Pete and Debbie do seem to embrace the inevitable in the final scenes, and the meandering closes on them reaching an understanding. Which I know happens in real relationships, I can attest to it taking more than ten years to actually get to that place if you're willing to keep going and not give up, and wanting to give up makes sense too. So this movie makes sense in its own Apatow kind of way.
3/5
This is 40 meanders more than Knocked Up, but you could see there was something of a film between Rudd and Mann's characters that was worth exploring more. And returning to them when they're turning 40 (Lesley Mann's character in denial and claiming she's 38 - I have words on this I'll get to) and their daughters (Apatow's real life daughters, who seem to have adopted their dad's quippy sense of humour) could've failed miserably. But the problem is, the situation they're in doesn't always seem to make total sense at first glance.
I haven't been paying 100% attention to movies lately, it's background noise, but some aspects of this bothered me. Would you really have a father so irresponsible he's taking money from Pete (Rudd) without Debbie (Mann) being unaware of just how much has gone missing and how in the hole they are from Pete's bad business decisions as the head of his own record label? There's the extension from Knocked Up of Debbie's hang ups over her aging, we get to see her going through a myriad of health checks, including a mammogram, just to illustrate the fears of the target audience on turning 40. Pete accepts his actual age but not a full sense of adulthood and responsibility. He has to be the sensible one though when Debbie's spending money on useless eastern medicine. They argue like a cliched couple, try to revive their relationship with a dirty weekend away complete with edibles, which is a fun montage, and they hide shit and their feelings until they escalate. Neither of them deal with other parents or children effectively, though Melissa McCarthy's portrayal of the bitchy mother who'll happily lie about the location of her own fucking nipples made me want to slap her. She's not that funny, people. Debbie and Pete are comically children trying to be adults with children and responsibilities. They just about have the right chemistry for a couple with serious ambivalence as to whether or not to stay married, that's perhaps the most genuine part of this film.
I can't relate to any of this because I'm an asshole who has no issue with turning 40. I've completed personal goals and self-actualised and it's not been a simple process, but I'm fine where I am and fine with my age. I don't look my age admittedly, but I still don't really see why turning 40 is a nightmare except because movies and TV and society tell us that it's supposed to be a nightmare. You're not allowed to kid yourself at this point. You've got to get your shit together or you're screwed. Some people should get their shit together by 30, not 40. Those ten years seem to give you leeway for postponing maturity and responsibility. By 40, it's too late. You're a loser if you've not pulled it together by then. And I don't believe this. I've met too many people in their 40s, 50s and 60s who do and say the stupidest, most immature crap and completely mean it, and feel justified in their actions. Age is a number. That's all I can say of this.
I did enjoy this movie much more than I expected. Megan Fox as Desi isn't so terrible. She plays off Mann's sad desire to retain her youth and be endearing and attractive to men while trying to ascertain if Desi is stealing, and for some stupid excuse we have to suffer through Jodie (Charlyne Yi) because she was kinda funny in Knocked Up, but she's still a stoner who seems to have the cognisance to falsely accuse Desi and then show no genuine remorse for being the actual thief. I was fine with her until that reveal, (the line "Everything that comes out of her mouth is lies. Everything that goes into her mouth is dicks." slayed me) then she made it awkward with her mugging, stoner crap. I get this is played for comedy but then you see how Debbie's an idiot for hiring a stoner (who's also babysitting the kids). Neither of these adults make genuine adult decisions. For comedy. And adding Pete's dad's irresponsibility of fathering triplets late in life, with Debbie's dad's absence, you have the reasons for the dumb decisions Pete and Debbie both make. And it works within the context of the film, but not real life. And that's fine, but it's actually harder to suspend disbelief with this than it is with Knocked Up.
These aren't really reviews, I know. I'm kind of just fleshing out my thoughts in the vein of people I've been watching lately, and I was surprised with This is 40 as the trailers didn't sell this to me at all. You end up liking Debbie despite her being thoroughly and purposefully unlikable, but because of this through two thirds of the film, I am SO on Pete's side and I rarely have time for Debbie's self-denial and self-pity. Maybe when my tits are sagging and I start to wither, I'll be eating my own words. But I haven't botched my body with a baby either.
Pete and Debbie do seem to embrace the inevitable in the final scenes, and the meandering closes on them reaching an understanding. Which I know happens in real relationships, I can attest to it taking more than ten years to actually get to that place if you're willing to keep going and not give up, and wanting to give up makes sense too. So this movie makes sense in its own Apatow kind of way.
3/5
Friday, 6 July 2018
Midnight In Paris - An Egotist's Journey
I'm not a fan of Woody Allen. I'm not prepared to say a lot about this movie, or Vicki, Christina, Barcelona. Which I've seen twice and thought was okay.
I once said to my screenwriting lecturer that Allen was a neurotic and he asked me why I thought that. Um, he's not? Maybe I've seen too many exaggerated parodies of the man and he's actually well adjusted, but looking at the characters he creates and the stories he writes (and seems to rewrite in various forms), how could he not be at least nervy?
Midnight In Paris looked interesting based on the trailer. I do like Owen Wilson when he's doing serious Wes Anderson characters. I prefer Luke Wilson, personally. However, Owen Wilson is gormless in Midnight In Paris. He's a successful screenwriter who wants to be an author who flunked out of English, in Paris with his fiance and her rich parents to shop for furniture because that's how the rich furnish their houses. He's dragged around the sites by a pretentious friend and their partner. Rachel McAdams, who I think is a pretty great actress, does well as the spoiled brat who doesn't understand Wilson's character and why he'd want to be a struggling author. So off the bat, she's not the right one for him. This is the key to story lines which feature some sort of infidelity. The person cheated on is usually not so great and the new object of desire who's threatening the existing relationship turns out to be the "one".
By some twist of magic realism, Wilson's character, Gil, ends up in a car and is transported rather smoothly into 1920s Paris, where he meets a variety of famous authors, painters and philosophers, who just sort of happen to all know one another. And all the actors picked to play these figures seem to fit - Tom Hiddleston as F Scott Fitzgerald, Adrien Brody as Dali and Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein - they work. You can believe it. But in my egotistical writer mind I was expecting this novel of Gil's, presented to Hemmingway and Stein, would be laughed at, Hemmingway from the outset refusing to read it, as if it's bad, he'll get angry and if it's good, he'll get jealous and hate it more. Case in point, this is a writer's mind on display, at least an insecure one. Yet in true Allen fashion, the novel is considered "good" and Stein then goes on to give Gil some valuable feedback.
There was a show from the UK called Goodnight Sweetheart, in which a hapless man finds a hidden portal back to the Blitz era and falls for a woman who owns a pub. The series plays out as him basically living a double life and cultivating an affair with the woman from the 40s while he's still with his wife in the present day. It was a great show, I liked it, I didn't like when they changed the actresses for both the female leads. All that being said, Midnight in Paris reminded me of this when Gil mentions the protagonist of his novel owns an antique/nostalgia store (the theme of the film centered around the notion of nostalgia and all its pitfalls and limitations). At that point I couldn't help thinking shades of Goodnight Sweetheart had ended up in this film. Doubtful, but it stopped me from viewing this as a completely original idea, especially since Gil falls for another woman, Picasso's mistress, and tries to have an affair with her. Of course it transpires his fiance is quite possibly having an affair herself, again nullifying Gil's actions and guilt because these types of stories always have a tit for tat justification for cheating. And the fiance is also bitchy, bratty and mean. Perfect.
Putting all this aside, all I see here in this narrative is a writer's wet dream about being loved and admired by his supposed idols. Gil is immediately accepted in this world and everyone loves him, his writing is admired, it inspires Picasso's mistress to fall in love with him. So if you're not a writer, you may not consider this to be an ego trip narrative. If you are, how can you not see it as anything but that? I kind of wish it were possible for Allen to go back and meet his heroes, and when they discover what sort of person he is (he cheated on Mia Farrow and took up with his much younger adopted daughter) perhaps he would be crushed and ridiculed. The major problem with Allen is he's surrounded by devotees and too many actors want to work with him. He's a decent film maker, I don't think he's an exceptional screen writer if he can't move from the same topic of morality, mortality and infidelity. I don't think his comedy is astoundingly funny; humorous maybe, not riotously funny. And I don't think it's intended to be laugh out loud hilarious. It's clever, but in that annoying way of being too self aware and pretentious. I'd never call him a humble person. It's a well made film, he does make Paris look particularly gorgeous and illuminating, and inviting. There's a particular attention to detail and a subtlety about the transitions from past to present. It definitely derives all its tension from the various neuroses of the characters playing off one another. But it rubs me up the wrong way on too many levels.
I didn't hate the film. I just saw it for what it was, a joyride through Allen's ego.
I once said to my screenwriting lecturer that Allen was a neurotic and he asked me why I thought that. Um, he's not? Maybe I've seen too many exaggerated parodies of the man and he's actually well adjusted, but looking at the characters he creates and the stories he writes (and seems to rewrite in various forms), how could he not be at least nervy?
Midnight In Paris looked interesting based on the trailer. I do like Owen Wilson when he's doing serious Wes Anderson characters. I prefer Luke Wilson, personally. However, Owen Wilson is gormless in Midnight In Paris. He's a successful screenwriter who wants to be an author who flunked out of English, in Paris with his fiance and her rich parents to shop for furniture because that's how the rich furnish their houses. He's dragged around the sites by a pretentious friend and their partner. Rachel McAdams, who I think is a pretty great actress, does well as the spoiled brat who doesn't understand Wilson's character and why he'd want to be a struggling author. So off the bat, she's not the right one for him. This is the key to story lines which feature some sort of infidelity. The person cheated on is usually not so great and the new object of desire who's threatening the existing relationship turns out to be the "one".
By some twist of magic realism, Wilson's character, Gil, ends up in a car and is transported rather smoothly into 1920s Paris, where he meets a variety of famous authors, painters and philosophers, who just sort of happen to all know one another. And all the actors picked to play these figures seem to fit - Tom Hiddleston as F Scott Fitzgerald, Adrien Brody as Dali and Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein - they work. You can believe it. But in my egotistical writer mind I was expecting this novel of Gil's, presented to Hemmingway and Stein, would be laughed at, Hemmingway from the outset refusing to read it, as if it's bad, he'll get angry and if it's good, he'll get jealous and hate it more. Case in point, this is a writer's mind on display, at least an insecure one. Yet in true Allen fashion, the novel is considered "good" and Stein then goes on to give Gil some valuable feedback.
There was a show from the UK called Goodnight Sweetheart, in which a hapless man finds a hidden portal back to the Blitz era and falls for a woman who owns a pub. The series plays out as him basically living a double life and cultivating an affair with the woman from the 40s while he's still with his wife in the present day. It was a great show, I liked it, I didn't like when they changed the actresses for both the female leads. All that being said, Midnight in Paris reminded me of this when Gil mentions the protagonist of his novel owns an antique/nostalgia store (the theme of the film centered around the notion of nostalgia and all its pitfalls and limitations). At that point I couldn't help thinking shades of Goodnight Sweetheart had ended up in this film. Doubtful, but it stopped me from viewing this as a completely original idea, especially since Gil falls for another woman, Picasso's mistress, and tries to have an affair with her. Of course it transpires his fiance is quite possibly having an affair herself, again nullifying Gil's actions and guilt because these types of stories always have a tit for tat justification for cheating. And the fiance is also bitchy, bratty and mean. Perfect.
Putting all this aside, all I see here in this narrative is a writer's wet dream about being loved and admired by his supposed idols. Gil is immediately accepted in this world and everyone loves him, his writing is admired, it inspires Picasso's mistress to fall in love with him. So if you're not a writer, you may not consider this to be an ego trip narrative. If you are, how can you not see it as anything but that? I kind of wish it were possible for Allen to go back and meet his heroes, and when they discover what sort of person he is (he cheated on Mia Farrow and took up with his much younger adopted daughter) perhaps he would be crushed and ridiculed. The major problem with Allen is he's surrounded by devotees and too many actors want to work with him. He's a decent film maker, I don't think he's an exceptional screen writer if he can't move from the same topic of morality, mortality and infidelity. I don't think his comedy is astoundingly funny; humorous maybe, not riotously funny. And I don't think it's intended to be laugh out loud hilarious. It's clever, but in that annoying way of being too self aware and pretentious. I'd never call him a humble person. It's a well made film, he does make Paris look particularly gorgeous and illuminating, and inviting. There's a particular attention to detail and a subtlety about the transitions from past to present. It definitely derives all its tension from the various neuroses of the characters playing off one another. But it rubs me up the wrong way on too many levels.
I didn't hate the film. I just saw it for what it was, a joyride through Allen's ego.
Thursday, 5 July 2018
Me during and after "Me Before You"
With all the subtlety of a roid-raging sledgehammer, Me Before You does nothing for the right to life or right to a dignified death movements. Nor does it do anything for Emilia Clarke’s apparent acting prowess while she runs from her day job as a stoic and cranky dragon lady and goes way over the edge of tweeness right into a big pile of artificial- sweetener. The god bus careens into the picture and barely misses everyone at dinner in the middle of the second act, later returning and actually hitting the target with infuriating preciseness. Sam Claflin sits as a gorgeous and patient centrepiece around what essentially amounts to over-dramatic drivel, barely coming away unscathed himself from Clarke’s awful, overbearing performance. Terrible soundtrack overloaded with life affirming pop songs that lend to a heavy-handed score that takes all the drama and joy up to an unnecessary eleven, detracting from the actual human moments that are scattered throughout. Also riddled with cinematic cliches and clunky, badly edited montages with stilted dialogue.
Me during 90% of this film: C- . Disappointing AF
#EmiliaClarkstitsarentworthwatchingorlivingfor
Me during 90% of this film: C- . Disappointing AF
#EmiliaClarkstitsarentworthwatchingorlivingfor
Silver Linings Playbook is an insult to humanity
I refused to watch this movie based on the trailer alone. Bradly Cooper hurling a book out a window because he didn't agree with the ending completely put me off. There's mixed messages for the most part, but if you think your physician can play a "trigger" song in the reception of his office to "see if you are still able to be triggered", and that same doctor will be all buddy buddy with you at a football game, then you're an idiot. There are elements to its "depiction" of mental illness that sort of act like vague references to someone who has an equally vague understanding or outsider experience of mental illness. Maybe you did live with someone volatile and prone to rage outbursts who was later diagnosed. Maybe they did keep you up with their obsessive ramblings. But maybe they were just a jerk, and maybe Bradley Cooper's character, Pat, is in some part, a fucking jerk. I wanted to give Jennifer Lawrence all the passes since she got famous, because she's as caustic and flippant as I am about the notion of fame, but she was playing to a gallery in this, with her quirkiness on parade, and she's failed so far to present a human being who's also a sex addict. No, she's just a quirky sex addict whose addiction stems from a single trauma concerning her deceased husband. Sorry, sexual addiction is actually a bit more complex than that, and people aren't as open about it as she claims to be. The leads sharing notes over dinner on medication makes this facet of mental illness look like an "in-club" the normies will never get a pass to. These exaggerations clearly come from the writer's understanding of mental illness, which is limited. You can't really humanise someone with this condition (bipolar) by making them eccentric and lacking in the basic social graces and modes their healthier alternates (normies) have.
And De Niro as a superstitious football lover? Who's actually more insane than his formally diagnosed son? How about no. You might find an a trend with families who have a mentally ill loved one, that they tend to use that person and their issues as a way of avoiding their own. It seems truer in this than any other film, so yes, I'll call for a degree of accuracy in this. You think for all of Cooper's behaviour, the parents would want him out, but the dad is obsessed with keeping home as a "lucky charm" to hide his own want to bond with his son. I don't hate De Niro. I think he does okay with comedy. Jacki Weaver gets the neurotic mother who's trying to patch it all up with a smile and how else are you meant to play this part in Hollywood? We don't get the mother who's actually well adjusted and capable of dealing with their mentally ill progeny? Apparently not. I've not seen Ordinary People, but I'm going to assume now that all mothers of mentally ill characters are different versions of her. This role isn't a stretch for anyone, Weaver does it well, but it's bordering on stereotypical.
Admittedly I'm doing this as I'm running into the third act of this movie. There's these unrealistic twists, and now I see the writer/director was responsible for I Heart Huckerbees, a movie I enjoyed but knew was an exaggerated exploration of existentialism. This is supposed to be a movie about real people with real issues, and you've taken the quirk from that film and injected it where it doesn't really belong, in order to make Playbook a comedy. The "bet" seems to be to add tension and stakes to a movie that's only other stakes hinge on a letter from Pat to his ex, who's distanced herself for logical reasons. And somehow, it fooled the Oscar crowds and all of America as a genuine, feelgood film with an accurate portrayal of mental illness.
It's garbage because the story isn't realistic enough to coincide with the supposed realism associated with the mental illness factor. Do you see people this fucking attractive having these kinds of arguments in public? No, you see winos shouting and screaming, and they may be mentally ill, but they're also drunk. Sane people have arguments in bars this explosive, and there aren't any people coming to take them to the fucking loony bin, they go to the drunk tank.
I'm fine with no representation of my condition (manic episodes being included in this) over a fuzzy, semi-real representation that is pinned on a heavily flawed, nearly unlikable character you're struggling to root for. You don't like the family so you don't care they're about to lose everything on a parlay bet because no sane person would bet all their money on a football game, never mind that AND a dance contest. (Yes, I have heard of people losing their houses from a gambling addiction, but I thought this was slowly over time, not in one fell swoop). You don't like the leads because they shout too fucking much and embarrass themselves and everyone around them.
So many of us are hiding this level of rage and frustration from the public, usually because of movies like this. When we're doing okay, and we know how we are when we're not, we're working towards staying that way because there's no joy or benefit in being sick. Don't believe anyone who says they gain from their illness. We don't meddle like this in other people's lives unless we're also sociopaths. And even those who have abandonment issues have good reason for it, and are acting on this with no real intent to genuinely hurt anyone. Unless we're maligned in other ways, you'll find a huge majority of us are hurting ourselves first before we hurt others. And yes, our hurting does hurt others, and we're trying not to. So I can't abide movies with characters who don't work on their illness or shun medication. I can't tolerate or agree with films who misrepresent doctors and their actions. (So I can't give Donnie Darko a pass with the director's cut because he's been given placebos the whole time. Again. No.)
Okay, yes, Playbook isn't Cuckoo's Nest, everyone's favourite benchmark for mental illness movies. But it's not entirely accurate, or helpful. It has some heart to it, but not enough for you to love these characters, flaws or no. And having a little uplifting dance routine would've been great if I liked the two leads and had been laughing for the rest of the film, and cheering them on to get together. Two sick people, in reality, can't have a relationship based on their illnesses. I couldn't date or live with someone as sick as me. It would be toxic no matter how much we loved one another. You can bond over the struggles if you have other common interests, but these two don't. Not really. Marissa Tomei saying "He doesn't make sense, I don't make sense. Together we make sense" sounds lovely in theory, but fucking nightmarish in practice if you're dealing with a fucked up illness on both sides. I can deal with someone who's anxious, or depressed. I don't think I could deal with someone who has what I have. Full disclosure.
Ugh, the Dirty Dancing flub is also painful and awkward. I'm still struggling to get through this, but they only have to score a 5 average to win the bet so.... it can be moderately shit, and the punchline... WAS THE ONLY THING I LAUGHED AT. It's all tied up in a nice bow as per How to Write a Rom Com 101. It's a very predictable story, even the big reveal of the film concerning the letter business isn't that shocking if you hadn't seen it coming in the shots and subtext.
Oh, and boy is this filmed like a crazy person shot it. No, in fairness, it makes sense. Stylistically, I'll give it a pass. All the frenetic closeups and camera shifts and tilts simulate the perception of a person experiencing mania. And when all is calm and balanced, the shots represent this shift in tone. But it's also overplayed. You can represent chaos without a series of confusing focus shots and cuts and Dutch angles. It could've reeled that in and I'd still have gotten the point. So it wasn't clever or useful to the narrative. I know it's hard to see through the eyes of a crazy person unless you are crazy yourself, but I think if I'd paid more attention, the frenetic shooting would've given me motion sickness, and I do have legit queasy cam. So this is all I can say in its thin defense.
Well done to all involved. You've failed to make a comedy, a romance or a drama, or a realistic and fair depiction of mental illness.
Where's my silver lining? I don't feel good. I'm angry and you promised me a feelgood movie.
1/5
And De Niro as a superstitious football lover? Who's actually more insane than his formally diagnosed son? How about no. You might find an a trend with families who have a mentally ill loved one, that they tend to use that person and their issues as a way of avoiding their own. It seems truer in this than any other film, so yes, I'll call for a degree of accuracy in this. You think for all of Cooper's behaviour, the parents would want him out, but the dad is obsessed with keeping home as a "lucky charm" to hide his own want to bond with his son. I don't hate De Niro. I think he does okay with comedy. Jacki Weaver gets the neurotic mother who's trying to patch it all up with a smile and how else are you meant to play this part in Hollywood? We don't get the mother who's actually well adjusted and capable of dealing with their mentally ill progeny? Apparently not. I've not seen Ordinary People, but I'm going to assume now that all mothers of mentally ill characters are different versions of her. This role isn't a stretch for anyone, Weaver does it well, but it's bordering on stereotypical.
Admittedly I'm doing this as I'm running into the third act of this movie. There's these unrealistic twists, and now I see the writer/director was responsible for I Heart Huckerbees, a movie I enjoyed but knew was an exaggerated exploration of existentialism. This is supposed to be a movie about real people with real issues, and you've taken the quirk from that film and injected it where it doesn't really belong, in order to make Playbook a comedy. The "bet" seems to be to add tension and stakes to a movie that's only other stakes hinge on a letter from Pat to his ex, who's distanced herself for logical reasons. And somehow, it fooled the Oscar crowds and all of America as a genuine, feelgood film with an accurate portrayal of mental illness.
It's garbage because the story isn't realistic enough to coincide with the supposed realism associated with the mental illness factor. Do you see people this fucking attractive having these kinds of arguments in public? No, you see winos shouting and screaming, and they may be mentally ill, but they're also drunk. Sane people have arguments in bars this explosive, and there aren't any people coming to take them to the fucking loony bin, they go to the drunk tank.
I'm fine with no representation of my condition (manic episodes being included in this) over a fuzzy, semi-real representation that is pinned on a heavily flawed, nearly unlikable character you're struggling to root for. You don't like the family so you don't care they're about to lose everything on a parlay bet because no sane person would bet all their money on a football game, never mind that AND a dance contest. (Yes, I have heard of people losing their houses from a gambling addiction, but I thought this was slowly over time, not in one fell swoop). You don't like the leads because they shout too fucking much and embarrass themselves and everyone around them.
So many of us are hiding this level of rage and frustration from the public, usually because of movies like this. When we're doing okay, and we know how we are when we're not, we're working towards staying that way because there's no joy or benefit in being sick. Don't believe anyone who says they gain from their illness. We don't meddle like this in other people's lives unless we're also sociopaths. And even those who have abandonment issues have good reason for it, and are acting on this with no real intent to genuinely hurt anyone. Unless we're maligned in other ways, you'll find a huge majority of us are hurting ourselves first before we hurt others. And yes, our hurting does hurt others, and we're trying not to. So I can't abide movies with characters who don't work on their illness or shun medication. I can't tolerate or agree with films who misrepresent doctors and their actions. (So I can't give Donnie Darko a pass with the director's cut because he's been given placebos the whole time. Again. No.)
Okay, yes, Playbook isn't Cuckoo's Nest, everyone's favourite benchmark for mental illness movies. But it's not entirely accurate, or helpful. It has some heart to it, but not enough for you to love these characters, flaws or no. And having a little uplifting dance routine would've been great if I liked the two leads and had been laughing for the rest of the film, and cheering them on to get together. Two sick people, in reality, can't have a relationship based on their illnesses. I couldn't date or live with someone as sick as me. It would be toxic no matter how much we loved one another. You can bond over the struggles if you have other common interests, but these two don't. Not really. Marissa Tomei saying "He doesn't make sense, I don't make sense. Together we make sense" sounds lovely in theory, but fucking nightmarish in practice if you're dealing with a fucked up illness on both sides. I can deal with someone who's anxious, or depressed. I don't think I could deal with someone who has what I have. Full disclosure.
Ugh, the Dirty Dancing flub is also painful and awkward. I'm still struggling to get through this, but they only have to score a 5 average to win the bet so.... it can be moderately shit, and the punchline... WAS THE ONLY THING I LAUGHED AT. It's all tied up in a nice bow as per How to Write a Rom Com 101. It's a very predictable story, even the big reveal of the film concerning the letter business isn't that shocking if you hadn't seen it coming in the shots and subtext.
Oh, and boy is this filmed like a crazy person shot it. No, in fairness, it makes sense. Stylistically, I'll give it a pass. All the frenetic closeups and camera shifts and tilts simulate the perception of a person experiencing mania. And when all is calm and balanced, the shots represent this shift in tone. But it's also overplayed. You can represent chaos without a series of confusing focus shots and cuts and Dutch angles. It could've reeled that in and I'd still have gotten the point. So it wasn't clever or useful to the narrative. I know it's hard to see through the eyes of a crazy person unless you are crazy yourself, but I think if I'd paid more attention, the frenetic shooting would've given me motion sickness, and I do have legit queasy cam. So this is all I can say in its thin defense.
Well done to all involved. You've failed to make a comedy, a romance or a drama, or a realistic and fair depiction of mental illness.
Where's my silver lining? I don't feel good. I'm angry and you promised me a feelgood movie.
1/5
Monday, 2 July 2018
Just because I don't like realism in films
... doesn't mean I can't deal with reality.
There seems to be an argument that if you find realistic cinema too "confronting" then you have issues with the real world and need to face it. No, you don't. You watch a movie to enjoy it, and I don't enjoy scatological humour. Period. And speaking of which, yeah maybe limit your period representations as well. Painting a girl's pants with a spot of ketchup doesn't endear me to your movie either.
I got insanely mad at a movie called Anatomy of a Love Scene and its absolutely ridiculous, unrealistic plot. It involved a director who was so obsessed with the romance cultivated between her two leads during the original shooting, and who is now so depressed by their breaking up, she concocts a completely stupid excuse of having to reshoot the sex scene to get them back together. Stupid. Unrealistic. No director in their right mind would waste a whole crew's day, AND pay for craft services, just to reunite a couple. I was in a fit of rage with this premise, adding to this the characters themselves were unbelievable in the truest sense. The couple in question spout tropes from any romantic film about a couple who's broken up - including "you're just like your piece of shit alcoholic mother" - and the leads no actual dimensions other than one suffered panic attacks and only the alcoholic one could calm her down. Thin plot, thin characters, thin premise. And I'm left ranting about it to all and sundry because it was riddled with cliches and contrivances. And by the trailer, I'd assumed it would be quite good. No. God awful.
Then I'm watching Netflix's Duck Butter, (a theme I missed because I wasn't engrossed in the story and had to look up on Urban Dictionary later), and I'm onboard until one of the romantic leads is belting the other with a bag of dog shit for her depressing and VALID diatribes on the state of the planet, then I'm almost tapping out. In another scene she's legitimately cussing out a bunch of boomer lesbians for leaving her as a millennial to pick up the proverbial tab on the state of the planet, and it's all, oh go be a young person and dance, why should we care? Patronising. I give this thing a chance, and it decides to present me with human shit instead. Really. Now I've skipped through the last scenes to the punchline (spoiler: fuck relationships and get a dog instead). I wanted to support this as a lesbian love story with its realistic representations of lesbian eroticism and sex, but when you've shot a scene where one lover farts in the other lover's phone so she can email it to their ex boss, who'd fired them that very day, then you're smash cutting to a bedroom scene involving the fired girl's head up the farting girl's ass, I'm less convinced. Worst case of juxtaposition I've seen. It had its moments of dry humour, but when you're almost shoehorning in a four-way, and one of the leads is just annoying, clingy and has an unbearable accent, you're still not convincing me. Your premise had me interested, your opening scenes had me interested. Then you threw animal and human (albeit fake) shit into the mix. And I'm asking, why didn't the depressed girl lock the fucking bathroom door before the psycho manic pixie barged in there? Suddenly I'm skipping through the last ten minutes of your Netflix "masterpiece".
Please don't go there. I give one movie the pass for that bollocks, and that's Henry Fool, I forgave it since it's not that graphic, just stupid, and it was discussing scatological humour in Simon's poetry. You don't need to show me the actual (fake) shit. Leave that for Divine and John Waters. (Pink Flamingos being another film I never saw all the way through as we ran out of lecture time, but at least knew the final scene. That was intentionally grotesque. You don't need to marry experimental comedy with grotesque comedy). And if you want to say, oh you don't understand the point, believe me, I do. You've already made it abundantly clear by this point by illustrating the leads still piss and shit anyway. We understand you want to represent reality in all its facets. Someone sitting on a toilet with basic "toilet foley" is plenty.
I get why Sex and the City also grappled with this, I think it still made its point without being vulgar. You wanted to represent a realistic lesbian romance, and the scope of a realistic relationship. But you ruined it with realism.
As a side to this, I did like Blue is the Warmest Colour initially, but after hearing complaints from its target audience, and finding out the two actresses were subjected to arduous hours of simulated sex with fake vaginas, the film loses a lot of impact. It's a beautifully shot film, it does explore an intense relationship based on passion and shades of obsession. But it failed to represent its subject matter accurately and now people are viewing it with this afterthought of, oh maybe we don't get how lesbians work in bed. If I were gay, I'd be madder. But ironically, my gay friend was just, "yeah, we could've told you that."
Oh and BIG PS: I made it to the end of A Serbian Film, and still couldn't finish Duck Butter. Consider that my argument ender.
There seems to be an argument that if you find realistic cinema too "confronting" then you have issues with the real world and need to face it. No, you don't. You watch a movie to enjoy it, and I don't enjoy scatological humour. Period. And speaking of which, yeah maybe limit your period representations as well. Painting a girl's pants with a spot of ketchup doesn't endear me to your movie either.
I got insanely mad at a movie called Anatomy of a Love Scene and its absolutely ridiculous, unrealistic plot. It involved a director who was so obsessed with the romance cultivated between her two leads during the original shooting, and who is now so depressed by their breaking up, she concocts a completely stupid excuse of having to reshoot the sex scene to get them back together. Stupid. Unrealistic. No director in their right mind would waste a whole crew's day, AND pay for craft services, just to reunite a couple. I was in a fit of rage with this premise, adding to this the characters themselves were unbelievable in the truest sense. The couple in question spout tropes from any romantic film about a couple who's broken up - including "you're just like your piece of shit alcoholic mother" - and the leads no actual dimensions other than one suffered panic attacks and only the alcoholic one could calm her down. Thin plot, thin characters, thin premise. And I'm left ranting about it to all and sundry because it was riddled with cliches and contrivances. And by the trailer, I'd assumed it would be quite good. No. God awful.
Then I'm watching Netflix's Duck Butter, (a theme I missed because I wasn't engrossed in the story and had to look up on Urban Dictionary later), and I'm onboard until one of the romantic leads is belting the other with a bag of dog shit for her depressing and VALID diatribes on the state of the planet, then I'm almost tapping out. In another scene she's legitimately cussing out a bunch of boomer lesbians for leaving her as a millennial to pick up the proverbial tab on the state of the planet, and it's all, oh go be a young person and dance, why should we care? Patronising. I give this thing a chance, and it decides to present me with human shit instead. Really. Now I've skipped through the last scenes to the punchline (spoiler: fuck relationships and get a dog instead). I wanted to support this as a lesbian love story with its realistic representations of lesbian eroticism and sex, but when you've shot a scene where one lover farts in the other lover's phone so she can email it to their ex boss, who'd fired them that very day, then you're smash cutting to a bedroom scene involving the fired girl's head up the farting girl's ass, I'm less convinced. Worst case of juxtaposition I've seen. It had its moments of dry humour, but when you're almost shoehorning in a four-way, and one of the leads is just annoying, clingy and has an unbearable accent, you're still not convincing me. Your premise had me interested, your opening scenes had me interested. Then you threw animal and human (albeit fake) shit into the mix. And I'm asking, why didn't the depressed girl lock the fucking bathroom door before the psycho manic pixie barged in there? Suddenly I'm skipping through the last ten minutes of your Netflix "masterpiece".
Please don't go there. I give one movie the pass for that bollocks, and that's Henry Fool, I forgave it since it's not that graphic, just stupid, and it was discussing scatological humour in Simon's poetry. You don't need to show me the actual (fake) shit. Leave that for Divine and John Waters. (Pink Flamingos being another film I never saw all the way through as we ran out of lecture time, but at least knew the final scene. That was intentionally grotesque. You don't need to marry experimental comedy with grotesque comedy). And if you want to say, oh you don't understand the point, believe me, I do. You've already made it abundantly clear by this point by illustrating the leads still piss and shit anyway. We understand you want to represent reality in all its facets. Someone sitting on a toilet with basic "toilet foley" is plenty.
I get why Sex and the City also grappled with this, I think it still made its point without being vulgar. You wanted to represent a realistic lesbian romance, and the scope of a realistic relationship. But you ruined it with realism.
As a side to this, I did like Blue is the Warmest Colour initially, but after hearing complaints from its target audience, and finding out the two actresses were subjected to arduous hours of simulated sex with fake vaginas, the film loses a lot of impact. It's a beautifully shot film, it does explore an intense relationship based on passion and shades of obsession. But it failed to represent its subject matter accurately and now people are viewing it with this afterthought of, oh maybe we don't get how lesbians work in bed. If I were gay, I'd be madder. But ironically, my gay friend was just, "yeah, we could've told you that."
Oh and BIG PS: I made it to the end of A Serbian Film, and still couldn't finish Duck Butter. Consider that my argument ender.
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