Saw Maria Full of Grace last Tuesday. The theatre was packed. My overall impression: a beautiful movie. Mark’s overall impression: a sad one. We both eagerly noted that it met the Alison Bechdel lesbian criteria.

Then on Thursday I read promotional articles about it in the local A&E weeklies and was very surprised to note that it was being touted as an anti-drug movie. I hadn’t noticed that theme. I double-checked with Mark, and he had. Ok, so I am somewhat oblivious. We knew that. But then he said he agreed with me that it wasn’t the dominant theme.

Special interest points:
Y Lesbian (features: at least two women, who talk to each other, about something besides a man).
Y Latina (a latina occupies the screen by herself without sharing it with anyone else).
N Crazy (from the point of view of a visibly unhinged person trying to get by in the real world).
N Aspie (features someone who appears to have Asperger’s syndrome)

*** *** ***
Then Mark downloaded Supertex from BitTorrent and we watched it on Friday. It’s a Dutch movie, made in Holland with Dutch actors who all speak English and Yiddish. There is no Dutch version. He watched it for the Dutch nostalgia value and I watched it for the rag trade theme. Well, it was awful. At first I thought it was just clumsy which I really don’t mind: if I made a movie it would be very clumsy. But then there were some simply terrible scenes and even I had to admit that it was simply a bad movie. The father dies and the mistress and the bright son – who had been fighting like teenagers with PMS up until then – fall tearily into one another’s arms and make love. The moralizing about Jewish identity made me gag: happiness lies in speaking Yiddish, wearing a yarmulke and marrying a submissive, silent woman. Oh, and in carrying on your father’s business even though you have determined that it’s a bad business decision.

Even Mark was disappointed in the Dutch nostalgia value department: people kissed in greeting only twice (not three times, the way they do in Holland) and no, he has never seen anyone with side curls in Amsterdam, never mind large communities of them impeding traffic on Saturday.

Mark knows the filmmaker and says he was one of the few people in Holland who supported the US invasion of Iraq.

Special interest points:
N Lesbian (features: at least two women, who talk to each other, about something besides a man).
N Woman-of-colour (a woman of colour occupies the screen by herself without sharing it with anyone else).
N Crazy (from the point of view of a visibly unhinged person trying to get by in the real world).
N Aspie (features someone who appears to have Asperger’s syndrome).

So I can confidently say that there is no reason to watch this movie at all.

[originally transmitted by e-mail August 9 2004]

Oh, and about the movie: recommended. The first Michael Moore movie I’ve seen with an identifiable thesis. (Not the one the title suggests, and not the one the movie seems to start out with, but identifiable nonetheless.)

Special interest points:
Y Lesbian (features: at least two women, who talk to each other, about something besides a man)
Y Woman-of-colour (a woman of colour occupies the screen by herself without sharing it with anyone else)
N Crazy (features a visibly unhinged person trying to get by in the real world)
N Aspie (features someone who appears to have Asperger’s syndrome)

[originally transmitted by e-mail June 30, 2004]

Last night’s movie pick.

I carefully shield myself from unpleasant things I can’t do anything about, which means I don’t watch the news. So this was the first time I ever saw George W in action.

Mean little bugger, isn’t he?

[originally transmitted by e-mail June 30, 2004]

Tonight M. and I went to visit Anne and Claire for pizza and a video.

The pizza was exactly what I expected of pizza and I was pleased.

The movie (”Sugar Sweet”) was exactly what I would have expected of an out lesbian’s first feature commissioned for $40k by a straight Japanese porn channel, and I was pleased. It was funny; featured smart and attractive characters that resembled people I know; presented a utopia of lesbian community in Japan that the director explicitly stated does *not* exist; was intercut with hot sex scenes whether or not they bore any relation to plot; the screen was entirely devoted to asians, most of whom were lesbians; and was followed by the filmmakers interviewing each other. I was pleased.

What’s not to like about pizza and cheese?

M. didn’t like it; he thought it was like a student film. Whatever: I don’t see any relationship between the two observations. Besides, in my experience student films are much shorter. In the interview the filmmakers had been quite straightforward that straight men watching their movie appeared to be less than enthusiastic; they thought this was funny but not unexpected. M. fit right in with the crowd in this respect. He’s certainly entitled: I fit right in with the crowd myself often enough. (Note that the possession of a penis is not the only impediment to the enjoyment of Sugar Sweet. Anne and Claire didn’t like it either. I was entirely alone in my delight tonight.)

M. went on to inform me that I only liked it because I thought it was ideologically correct. Which comment I was so furious at him for that he isn’t coming home tonight. I don’t know what he plans to do instead and I don’t care. (Anne and Claire refrained from telling me what I thought. Anne often tells me what she thinks, and I listen, but she has never told me what I think. Claire is more discreet, preferring to listen and learn. We parted with kisses and hugs and promises of more movies.)

***

SUGAR SWEET
http://www.seattlequeerfilm.com/02/films/sugar.html

Desiree Lim, the first out queer filmmaker in Japan to direct a lesbian feature, turns in a delightfully sassy, saucy and sexy feature debut. Naomi is an aspiring TV director who pays the bills by directing lesbian porn. Her callous male bosses deride her work for its unsuitability for male viewers, and her lesbian friends see her as a sellout. Her only confidante is “Sugar,” a secret chat-room friend on the Internet. When Naomi gets a chance to direct an episode of a popular “matchmaking” TV show, she casts her friend Azusa, who’s experiencing lesbian bed death with her long-term girlfriend and looking to spice up her life. Romantic sparks fly on the set – scorching even Naomi! Can she keep her job, her dreams and Sugar – especially Sugar – online? Delightful and whimsical, SUGAR SWEET creates a fascinating, fun girl world of sex toys, gossip and romance.

***

Oh, and yesterday M. was really angry with me for finding the link below distasteful (”It’s culture”; culture is immutable, constant, unchanging; because culture is entirely resistant to thought in general and Dutch culture is resistant to my thought in particular, I am wrong to find buffoons in blackface distasteful; by persisting in my wrongness when instructed to immediately desist, I am demonstrating a profound lack of education and intellectual depth and honesty). And no, I didn’t say “This is gross” or “Dutch people suck” or “Holland is a racist country.” I said “I find this distasteful.”

http://portal.omroep.nl/sinterklaas2003?0FlashV=6

I need help.

[originally transmitted by e-mail November 30, 2003]

Just got back from the Festival International Nouveau Cinéma Nouveaux Médias Montréal.

Saw Stormy Weather, a lovely story about mental illness and comparing Belgian and Icelandic ways of coping. The Belgian psychiatrist wants her patient to stay with her, in Belgium, where she can live forever in a well-funded hospital with lots of pleasant, well-spoken, polite and slightly dysfunctional patients and be tended to by trained professionals who restrain her kindly and reluctantly when necessary, addressing her as Madame when they regretfully have to sedate her. The patient’s husband loves her and wants her to live at home with him in Iceland where there is no psychiatrist and no treatment. He’s a little dingy himself and would totally lose it if his wife were taken away from him and institutionalised. (This is a terrible movie about psychiatry, by the way. In real life it’s not nearly so either/or. Hospitals are largely for keeping mentally ill people safe, or for evaluating them (both short-term propositions), or for offering outpatient care (a longer-term proposition). There is absolutely no reason a mentally ill person like the woman in this movie couldn’t be evaluated in Reykjavik and sent home to her family and GP with some prescriptions. And no, psychiatrists do not work by selecting a single patient out of the hospital or treat them by taking them shopping and on extended field trips. If a patient is well enough to handle going into a store without freaking out they probably don’t need to be hospitalised. Also, in this fantasy Belgian hospital mental patients were allowed to stay in bed as long as they wanted to. Not in any psychiatric ward I’ve ever known!)

But, whatever, yes it’s a terrible movie about psychiatry but still a lovely movie about mental illness, and coping, or not; and about the burden of trying to act as if everything were okay when it isn’t. Highly recommended. Even if you have no interest in mental illness, the Icelandic scenery is beautiful. (Plus it meets the Alison Bechdel lesbian criteria.)

A little while ago I mentioned Matchstick Men in the context of a theme of older men paired with much younger women that had become rather tedious. Well, Matchstick Men starts out as a totally refreshing movie about mental illness. I was thrilled to see Nick Cage up there on screen representing me: visibly unhinged, dependent on meds, and getting by. Even getting by rather well. Then the dénoument ruins everything. Go ahead and see it anyway: it’s rather more likely to be playing in a theatre near you than Stormy Weather is.

Does anyone have any suggestions for movies about mental illness? Or psychiatry? I don’t want a movie where mentally ill people are simply mildly eccentric and flourish when someone is nice to them. Someone who flourishes is not ill.

I never saw Girl, Interrupted. How was that?

[originally transmitted by e-mail October 14, 2003]

I got feedback and help here too, though not as abundantly as for laundry.

My favourite suggestion for breaking the monotony was Irréversible, a movie I actually saw when it came out last year. It’s notorious for its brutal, nine-minute rape/murder scene. M. had warned me in advance so I kept my eyes closed for that bit, but the soundtrack was pretty gruesome all by itself. Overall what I noticed about the movie was its sophomoric frat-boy obsession with anal sex, and its mysterious (to me) equation of anal sex with sadism. The person who embodied evil was nicknamed La Tenia (tapeworm); he was a gay man who hung out in a gay bath house called Le Rectum; he was a top (sexually dominant in anal sex); which meant, quite naturally in the world of the film, that he was essentially a sadistic rapist; and his essential identity as a sadistic rapist meant that he was a danger to all women everywhere.

Yes, this is a different view of sexual relations than the one shown in Lost in Translation. But, um, not the kind of different I was really looking for.

Other suggestions, more on track:

-The general one to carefully research movies before going to see them. Not really my style. I’m not looking to be protected from bad movie-going experiences, and I like surprises.

Underworld
-Features a woman in the lead, but from what I can tell there aren’t any others.

Bend It Like Beckham
- Features women and girls in all sorts of interesting relationships. Lots of gorgeous shots of girls practicing on the field. Highly recommended: yes, there is an unfortunate love triangle featuring a man, but it doesn’t dominate the film.

Bound
- Two women, unambiguously lovers. Fun to watch, lots of people really like it, but I found it just a teensy bit dull.

Prey for Rock and Roll
- A bisexual rock musician in the lead trying to figure out what life in rock means for her at age forty. A tryst with another woman. Don’t know anyone who’s seen it, but will definitely be giving it a whirl. Thanks for the tip!

White Oleander
- Six women, five of whom stand in parental or quasi-parental relationships to the sixth, so it scores high on the Alison Bechdel rating scale. But the closer the relationship the mothers have with the daughter, the more they fail her. Motherly love is inherently flawed and poisonous and covetous and may not even exist. The three most motherly women are insanely jealous – either sexual jealousy, seeing competition with the man in their lives, or jealousy of other mothers. Our little heroine finally finds herself when her mother lets her go to pursue her future coupled to a safe and bland young man. Gag.

Please keep the tips coming!

[originally transmitted by e-mail October 3, 2003]