Netflix

The Mrs. and I saw Breillat's Romance at the Charles when it came out, and had a few good laughs (though I never saw it again). On a whim I got A Real Young Girl from Netflix. How can I best sum up my response to this picture? P-U!

A Real Young Girl combines the production values of Don't Look in the Basement with masturbation scenes whose degree of erotic interest approaches that of the crucifix sequence from The Exorcist. And it's boring--more boring than church, as Homer Simpson would say. No amount of boobies and fannies could rescue this celluloid train wreck. At times I imagined a John Waters commentary and then the movie got better. Otherwise, blegh.

Prelude d'apres-midi d'un faune

The world of faerie co-exists with our own, and has its own moral measure. What we consider good and evil--events we judge based on our own societal and personal calculi of tolerability--will have an entirely different significance for fauns, nymphs, and faeries, if they have significance at all. Immortal beings of course have a broader context in which to situate the daily news.

Pan's Labyrinth is only briefly about the realm of faerie, at least in a comparative sense. Most of the film is about fascism in Franco's Spain. The narrative features a truly monstrous Captain, a creaking leather sadist, whose task is to destroy a band of Republican guerillas holding out in the hills around an old mill. The Captain brings his pregnant wife and her young daughter by a previous man to the mill. Nearby is the mysterious stone edifice from which the film gets its title. This labyrinth instantly attracts young Ofelia, the heroine of the film, and the one character who inhabits both its worlds.

There's a lot to say about this masterpiece, but without spoilers I'd be hard-pressed to discuss or describe it. Guillermo del Toro does a magnificent job balancing its two plots, and providing the viewer a comparison/contrast between what we'd consider a gruesome realm of fanciful monsters and magic and an even more monstrous reality. Unfortunately the worse of these two worlds is not a bit unbelievable.

One caution. Don't take the kids to this one. Some scenes were too horrid for my poor wife, who squirmed and covered her face. The people next to me were disgusted. There are torture scenes, and a homicide that pays homage to the most horrifying cinematic killing I've ever seen (from Gaspar Noe's Irreversible).

Nevertheless, I was enchanted the entire time. This one goes in the DVD library upon its release.

The Straight Talk Express

Finally people are starting to expose McCain for what he is and always has been--a typically cynical and manipulative gasbag politician.

Tunes

Yo La Tengo is playing Sonar February 9th. Might be a nice break from packing.

[tip of the hat to Silenus, whose status as a newly minted Manhattan urbanite doesn't prevent him from following Charm City happenings.]

Haint that a shame, Part VI

Cha is running an art educator's conference at Towson University this weekend. She has thirty teachers staying at the Burkeshire Hotel across the street from us and I will likely see very little of her the next few days. As she stayed up late ironing out details and preparing materials I read in bed for an hour, and then fell asleep.

How much later I woke I don't know. I was on my right side, feet drawn up to my ass, right hand on the pillow by my head. "Cold," Cha said in my ear, cuddling closer behind me. "Cold." The house is cold. Winter has finally arrived in Baltimore after a two month delay. I stingily keep the thermostat at fifty seven degrees because I already cancelled our contract for home heating oil in anticipation of the move. I refuse to pay three hundred bucks for an oil delivery just as we leave. We have nice down comforters we bought in Frankfurt, however. It could be twenty degrees in the house and I would never notice.

She kept cuddling and rubbing against my back each time I approached sleep. "Cold," she hissed, then feet beyond icy touched my bare ankles and I recoiled. She was making a weird noise like a mewling cat right in my ear. I got aggravated.

"Goddamnit will you stop?" I said. "Some of us are trying to sleep!" The icy cold spread from my ankles straight up my spine as Cha came in the bedroom door, letting in the glare of the landing ceiling fixture.

"Did you say something?" she asked as I jumped out of the bed, kicking blankets everywhere.

Cocteau

Netflix

The bourgeois subjects of Buñuel's film are shown symbolically from time to time walking down a road. They appear to be nowhere in particular, heading nowhere in particular, and uninterested in either arriving or not arriving some place. The rest of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is an attempt by these characters to have dinner together. Or perhaps lunch. Or maybe only cocktails. This narrative is disrupted at times by their dreams, and where the dreams end and the reality begins is anyone's guess. The dreams function to deflate the characters' egos, or provide release via revenge fantasies, or to create some meaning or adventure to a bland albeit comfy existence. My favorite scene? The host couple attempt a nooner and are interrupted by their lunch guests. They awkwardly escape their home by climbing down from a window and enjoy a quicky in the garden. Meanwhile their guests leave, fearing the police are coming to raid the house, and the local bishop arrives to discover our disheveled heroes with grass in their hair.

The banality of bourgeois concerns--the quality of cavier, the method of martini mixture, the number of minutes per pound for a lamb roast--is ably lampooned, as is the hypocrisy of the class system. The Church, the police, and the military suffer sound drubbings as well. I laughed a lot. I do prefer Godard's Weekend. But The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie has hotter chicks, and much less cannibalism.