ellauri112.html on line 701: I appreciated the fact that a troubled mom did seek help, I’m just not sure the script needed the plot twist. I didn’t immediately warm to this flick. Actually, I often alternated between exasperation and captivation – and a key plot twist at the end left a sour taste in my mouth, though for petty reasons. Nonetheless, something about it didn’t feel quite right. It took one observation from a friend afterward to allow for the film’s brilliance to bloom in my mind.
ellauri112.html on line 727: The film’s strength – for its first two thirds – is the relationship between the two women at the heart of the narrative. We learn through a clumsy coincidence at the beginning of the film that Marlo is bisexual; as her intimacy with Tully expands to fill the vacuum of her absentee marriage, it becomes a tender eroticism. This is mediated, always, through other bodies: as Tully cradles the baby who has just finished feeding, she talks about how the ‘molecules’ of the child still exist within the mother; later, in a bar toilet, she gently wets a paper towel and uses it to draw the milk out of Marlo’s swollen breasts. In a pivotal scene, Marlo sits behind Tully and instructs her on what to do to arouse her sleep-befuddled husband. This moment can be read as emblematic of the film’s mistreatment of the queer intimacy it establishes. Coming after a discussion of sexual history and sexual fantasy, Marlo reveals to Tully that she has a waitress’s uniform that she’s never used, bought to surprise her husband. As Tully puts the outfit on, which fits her pre-natal body in a way it wouldn’t Marlo, the moment of sexual possibility between the women is subsumed into heteronormative, ageist fantasy: Tully’s young, and therefore fantasy-appropriate, body is used as bait to ‘recharge’ the masculine battery.
ellauri133.html on line 394: In the novel, the creature known as IT is not a clown; IT is a malevolent entity that takes on forms tailored to the person it´s terrorizing. Unlike Steve who is a clown AND a malevolent entity. Although its most common form is a clown, IT also appears as creatures like werewolves and vampires, wreaking murderous havoc on the fictional town of Derry every 27 years. Oddly, the 2017 film adaptation hit theaters 27 years after the 1990 miniseries. Since the film’s production has stalled and changed hands several times, this is pure coincidence. (For the sequel, fans only had to wait two years.)
ellauri152.html on line 609: It’s frustrating to catalogue the ways in which the film works to cis-normify the story. No Yentl crossdressing into the infinite future. No wrestling with her gender identity. The film’s ending throws out the story’s ambiguity and unapologetic queerness in favor of, one might charitably say, a feminist ending, or one might say uncharitably and truthfully, a cisnormative ending.
ellauri161.html on line 546: The targets of the satire – incompetent governments, media, tech billionaires, populace believing in politics not science – are obvious. There’s a shorthand that makes each character’s real world avatar easy to get hence the laughs but does that undermine the film’s intelligence? No, it's spot on.
ellauri163.html on line 833: In essence, the film called Mouchette recapitulates the point of view of its character Mouchette, which allows the viewer to both ‘feel’ a bit of the character’s warp, while also being able to step back and intellectually distance oneself and ‘understand’ the character’s warp. Whether or not Bresson intended this doubled perspective on life, it, and many of the film’s other strengths more than make up for its weak ending, and lift it to a greatness that, while it falls short of the utmost in the canon of great cinema, nonetheless makes Mouchette a film for which the term “great” is applied a surety. There are, certainly, worse ways to misfire, slightly or otherwise.
xxx/ellauri250.html on line 450: What’s not fine is that Laura eventually initiates physical intimacy with Ljoha. The film’s logic is that she’s in an emotionally vulnerable state and he’s the only one there for her, because Irina can’t even bother to muster up any excitement when Laura calls. Of course it’s entirely possible that she is bisexual. Still, hasn’t Mr. Kuosmanen learned the inherent offensiveness of depicting such sexual fluidity after Kevin Smith made this mistake in 1997 with “Chasing Amy?” “Blue is the Warmest Color” only went on to prove in 2013 the toxicity of this plot device.
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