ellauri069.html on line 63: "My father regards the tray of pink cupcakes. Then he jams his thumb into each cupcake, into the top. Cupcake by cupcake. A thick smile spreads over the face of each cupcake." —Views of My Father Weeping (1969)
ellauri112.html on line 683: Marlo, already a mother of two, begins the film heavily, outrageously pregnant: we learn, in rapid succession, that this third pregnancy was unwanted, that her husband does little of the domestic labour, and that her “shitty” upbringing is the reason she’s so committed to her nuclear family unit. Postnatal depression, never named, haunts the narrative: her wealthy brother offers to pay for a night nanny to avoid, in his words, the advent of another “bad time” like the one that followed the birth of her son, Jonah. When the nanny arrives – described by more than one reviewer as a “millennial Mary Poppins” – the panacea seems to be working. Not only does she look after the baby at night but she also operates as a kind of empathy machine, listening to Marlo’s problems, sharing sangria in the garden, and baking the Minions cupcakes that Marlo herself never has the time to make. The postnatal depression, it seems, disperses; Jonah – who has “emotional problems” – finds a place at a school more suited to his needs, family dinners get increasingly wholesome, and Marlo does a passable Stevie Nicks impression at a child’s birthday party. And then comes the twist: after a bender in Brooklyn with Tully, a sleep-deprived Marlo, drunk at the wheel, drives her car off a bridge and ends up in hospital, and we realise there was nobody else in the car. Her maiden name, we learn, was Tully.
ellauri112.html on line 707: Tully seems too good to be true when she quickly organizes the home, cleans it from top to bottom, and finds a place for all the errant toys too. She even makes cupcakes for Marlo to take to Jonah’s school as a peace offering. Ultimately, Tully becomes the ‘spouse’ Marlo really needs, and they even have a simpatico banter together, quipping back and forth in sharp, pithy dialogue, the only way Cody can write for her characters.
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