I knew about Wiener Dog, another inclusion in the Todd Solondz cinematic universe, if you want to call it that. I think I'd read somewhere Dawn Wiener returns but I'd forgotten this until her character, now played as a sheepish blonde, runs into Brandon, her crush, and he calls her Wiener Dog. I'm not sure if the movie itself is set directly after Dollhouse as she's dead by Palindromes and we open on her funeral, as it was filmed in 2016 but it doesn't mention the period in which it's set. Wiener Dog plays as a great little short movie anthology, the stories linked by the inclusion of an abandoned wiener dog, who's first left with a family with a son in remission from cancer, the father adopting the dog for the son against the approval of the mother. After the dog is too sick the father sends the dog to the vet to be put down, where we find Dawn, who rescues the dog. Since she reunites with Brandon, we also catch up with Brandon's Down syndrome brother. He's since married a girl with Downs and they live in a nice house but tend to function as children, so like the dog, they've been sterilised to prevent accidental pregnancies, a very dark commentary on how we treat pets and the intellectually disabled. Brandon has a bit more heart to tell his brother their drug addict father has died, they have a moment and he leaves with Dawn, giving us some hope for both of them considering how they parted in Dollhouse. We don't see how the dog leaves the couple but it winds up with Danny Devito, playing a failed screen writer who is mocked by a JJ Abramsesque ex-student for his "what if" story device, meanwhile left taunted by the possibility of his script getting off the ground. The dog becomes part of his bomb hoax plot as revenge on the college he's been teaching at, where he's also accused of being too negative. So we leave him and the dog is finally adopted by the mum from Requiem, her granddaughter showing up to take some more money for her artist boyfriend's new installation, that Wiener Dog eventually becomes a part of. This is a pretty typical Solondz movie, I didn't find much fault with it and only saw it from signing up for SBS on Demand, the same service with two other movies I haven't bothered finishing, Dogville or another indie film.
Under the Silver Lake was another film I wanted to see based on the trailer. I don't want to say you need to have a Lynchian sensibility to watch weird movies with bizarre plots, but you sort of have to love Lynch to appreciate them This is quite tame in terms of its subtext and narrative. I didn't get all the pop culture references but liked most of them. It did suffer from too much information and drawn out scenes that could have been shortened, and I wasn't that impressed with the song writer scene, that was cringey with its implication of who wrote modern music. It's an accessible film with its clues but you're not fond of Andrew Garfield's character at all points. The movie pits itself as a commentary on the inherent sexism in Hollywood and leaves a lot of clues just to this theme but you can't always cheer the main character on since he's pursuing the same ideal from the mystery woman he falls for within in the space of an evening after meeting her. He is invariably punished on his odyssey by a skunk, stray bullets, magic cookies and generally being rejected by women and the industry as a whole. We discover fairly quickly he's out of work but isn't making serious moves to land another job. Silver Lake doesn't have a satisfying ending but you don't feel like there's any ambiguity that might plague you the way a Lynch movie may. It was okay.
I wasn't going to see Call Me By Your Name after reading the Wikipedia entry. And I couldn't do the peach scene but I also wasn't captivated by this overall. I know there's subtlety being used and you're to spend time basking in the beautiful cinematography depicting "Somewhere, Northern Italy". I could put up with the lack of subtitles as there was enough context in each scene. And I can see why this was problematic in its subject matter but it does present the relationship as "something that happens", which is condoned by the father of the younger protagonist. The boy's naive pursuit of a girl his own age is handled reasonably well, she forgives him once seeing his heart's been smashed by the older American man Oliver, even if you're lead to think Elio's using her to make Oliver jealous. And Elio doesn't claim to be outright gay, you accept his urges as being something more of a pansexual nature (peach not included in this) - he's attracted to Marzia and not opposed to having sex with her, but his heart belongs to Oliver. You don't warm to Armie Hammer's dorky Adonis Oliver until he sees what he's doing to Elio, when it's far too late and he has to return to America. I didn't really feel for Elio until the tragic end of the film, and I found Elio's character somewhat unsettling with his weird agitation, though he did play a surly, hypersexed teen convincingly. You don't know what to think of Oliver, whether he's genuinely using and toying with Elio, or if he's trying to relive his youth through Elio by the way they wrestle and romp through the fields like boys.
I'm surprised this movie has copped flack for its representation of an older gay man with an underage boy. Like Brian and Justin in Queer as Folk was never a thing, and the show also upheld as the relationship legit the very minute Justin is of age at 18. Plus in this case Brian is pushing 30, not 25, like Oliver. Being set in the 80s upholds the requirement for Oliver and Elio to leave this as a private matter anyway, but Elio's father doesn't shun Elio for the romance (due to implied personal experience) and I think that was the only heartfelt, genuine moment where I felt more for Elio. I wasn't taken in with this until a third of the way in but I didn't hate it overall. Setting it against Oliver's studies of Grecian sculptures being indicative of Plutonic romances, most would see that as a tool through which we're meant to condone Oliver and Elio's relationship, but that doesn't fly with everyone, and I get it. I don't harp on about these "Lolita" type representations to most people, considering I've seen Mysterious Skin and Leon more than once, and I've read End of Alice a few times as well. King Cobra also dealt with the same narrative but it was done poorly and no one bothered to see it so it wasn't an issue, either. And that was based on a true story. When you're going over the legalities of these relationships and considering the younger component the "instigator" or "seducer" of the relationship, you're immediately met with the "adults should know better" argument, which is true, but it glosses over that a) this shit does happen, sadly, and b) the child in the equation sometimes doesn't view themselves a victim. Legally, they are. Emotionally it might be a different story. I'm not advocating anything here or making excuses for MAPs or NAMBLA, they don't need propping up or sympathy. Ultimately if an underage kid is hitting on you as an adult and you act on that shit, you are and will be held accountable, not them. So if you're thinking you can Woody Allen your way out of that, get fucked. We're a bit too woke for that now. Europeans tend to also consider children to be small adults so there was a lot of the environment around which Call Me By Your Name is set.
Either way it's a sad as fuck love story which is represented as exactly that.
