The End of Summer

It's the end of July and outside today the sky is dark, so it seems fitting to finally cover summer movies. There are two kinds: movies where summer is the theme, and movies where summer sets the tone. (I will continue to happily ignore summer blockbusters.)

Adventureland (2009) is one of the former. Jesse Eisenberg is James, a young college graduate who plans to spend the summer traveling Europe. Instead he ends up working at an amusement park.

That's it. That's the entire set-up.

Here, have a shot of the amusement park.

The first time I watched this it felt perilously normal. There's a teen party scene halfway through which I'm pretty sure is when I turned it off.

LET ME SAY NOW, that was a mistake. As I've lately discovered, the second half of Adventureland is brilliant. It takes all those traditional loose ends and ties them up somewhere you wouldn't expect, thanks to some character-driven plotting and a hilarious supporting cast.

You kind of even believe that the lead actress, Kristen Stewart, is acting.

I flip my hair back and forth

So that's summer film #1. Amusement parks, corn dog jokes, dick jokes, triangulation, Eisenberg's hair--whatever you're nostalgic for, Adventureland will suit your needs. (Just don't ask for the giant ass panda.)

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Renoir (2013) is a more recent addition to the summer genre. Mainly in that it's set in the summer of 1915 on the French Riviera. Entire minutes are dedicated to the lushness of the surrounding foliage as model Andrée (Christa Teret) lounges around for aging Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir and seduces his son, Jean. This is the actual Andrée:

Blonde a la rose

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this film is the backstory. Jean Renoir became a famous filmmaker whose films--including La Grande Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1950)--remain among my favorites from my film studies classes. Yes, I minored in Film Studies. I'll give you a moment.

Take two.

Renoir itself is slow, but it's so beautifully shot you don't really care. Stuck on the Renoir property, any and all happenings--the Great War, the workings of greater society--flow around the film without sticking. And yet it is a question of the real world--the question of what Jean will do as a profession--that proves the sticking point.

Like Adventureland, Renoir captures a moment in time alongside a coming of age. It just happens to be a time that none of us remember.

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Not feeling summery? Watch Under the Skin (2014). I liked parts of it, though I have been reliably informed it is depressing.

Till next week, au revoir.

Soccer, Shakespeare, and Its Discontents

Last week I said I was going to cover 10 Things I Hate About You (1999). Set in modern-day Seattle and loosely based on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, it stars Julia Stiles and the late Heath Ledger, along with a very, very young Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

He's adorable.

The only problem is that I wasn't sure how to cover 10 Things I Hate About You. You know Tolstoy's maxim about how all happy families are alike? That also holds true for movies.

Good movies are good for a very specific set of reasons. Bad movies, on the other hand, are each bad in their own way. And because About You fulfills some stereotypes of a "bad" rom com--that it's geared toward the teen market, essentially--I thought it would be useful to compare it to another Shakespearian adaptation, one from a similar time period that also happens to feature a soccer-playing lead. I'm talking, of course, about She's the Man (2006).

Nooo, I would never play off World Cup mania.

Twelfth Night, She's the Man's source material, is the bratty little sister of Shakespearian comedies. Fittingly, the adaptation stars Amanda Bynes, the actress formerly known as Amanda, Amber, Penelope, Courtney, Cynthia, and Melody on The Amanda Show. 

In She's the Man Viola (Amanda Bynes) is a soccer player who after a series of correspondingly wacky circumstances ends up impersonating her brother in order to play yet more soccer. [Sidenote: If you go from 10 Things I Hate About You, to She's the Man, to Bend It Like Beckham, it's like soccer inception.]

Both movies deal with hidden identity. In About You, Ledger's character Patrick Verona is paid to go out with Kat; in She's the Man, no one knows that Viola is actually a girl. The difference is that She's the Man treats the story as a farce, dealing with the issues of cross-dressing and gender-bending through slapstick style comedy. There are no real consequences and no one, least of all the main character, is taken seriously.

About You takes everyone seriously. All the players--the stoner boys, the pretty girls, the model, the criminal--have a raison d'être.

See skipping, singing.

Like She's the Man and many other teen rom coms, it trades in stereotypes. The difference is that it also acknowledges and confronts those stereotypes. As teacher Mr. Morgan opines: 

I know how difficult it must be for you to overcome those upper middle class years of suburban oppression. Must be tough. But the next time you storm the PTA crusading for better lunch meat or whatever it is you white girls complain about, ask them why they can't buy a book written by a black man.

It meets the players where they are and then demands more of them. This element, along with a script that deals with the misogyny of Shakespeare's original comedy in a more useful way, makes the resulting film seem genuine. By recognizing that a part of taking someone seriously is dealing with their identity in an honest way, it validates every respective choice.

(It also includes the greatest serenade ever.)

10 Things I Hate About You's message is that what's on the inside is what matters, not what is on the outside--almost the opposite of She's the Man, where Duke won't date Viola until she's a confirmed girl. It all comes down to the opening song: I don't give a damn about my reputation. 

Now go rent 10 Things I Hate About You, and when you do, throw popcorn at the screen in my honor.

The Proposition of Romance

Two weeks ago I posted about Blue Valentine, and in the meantime received some feedback that I thought deserved serious consideration. The comment was that Blue Valentine was not a romantic comedy.

I just googled "Ryan Gosling crying," this is so not on me

I had to admit that this was true. No matter how romantic or comic I personally think Blue Valentine is, it does not qualify as a romantic comedy--and yet I wrote about it on this blog, which is ostensibly about the rom com. So I decided to take a step back and consider what I have actually been trying to articulate, and what the true focus of this project really is.

What I came to realize is that what I love about romantic comedies is neither the romance nor the comedy. It's sadness. And I'm not talking about the romantic comedies that seem to have been made to be deliberately sad, like say While You Were Sleeping (1995), where the main plot regards Sandra Bullock and a guy in a coma.

Sidenote: why does every rom com from the '90s take place in Chicago? Why?

If someone can answer this question I promise to never move there.

I'm talking about dualities. In good movies lightness is tempered by darkness, each action having an equal but opposite reaction. Most importantly, there is a core of truth underpinning the story's dramatic structure.

This is precisely what is missing from most romantic comedies. They are meant to be the happiest movies in the world. There's a reason that Shakespeare's comedies end in weddings; these stories have a natural dramatic arc where the climax is literally a happy union. Unfortunately this means that many are predictable from the start. We know the main couple is going to end up together; they know they're going to end up together. 

But change--change is good. Change can make all the difference. Stories where this doesn't happen: now that's interesting. I'd argue that the best romantic comedies are ones that don't particularly care about being comedies, or don't particularly care about being romantic. Even a movie full of light needs some negative space.

I believe the movies I've covered so far--Pride and Prejudice, Heathers, SPEED, Thelma & Louise, and yes, Blue Valentine--all fit into this category. I mean, do you remember the scene in the rain from P&P? (The Wedding Date is the exception. Sorry, The Wedding Date.) Starting now, I want to highlight these exceptions more deliberately. The results should surprise and amuse you. 

Next up, a Shakespearian comedy.

Bet you can guess.

Blueness

It's officially July, which means it's time to celebrate, in order, patriotism, weddings, and Fake Christmas. In honor of all of that I'd like to showcase Blue Valentine (2010).

Directed by Derek Cianfrance, Blue Valentine is a film about a marriage. Dean and Cindy meet, fall in love; marry, and fall out of it. The divide between the two points is crucial to the film, as is a certain blueness written into script and the imagery.

Image source: http://moviestorrents.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Blue-Valentine-2010.jpg

In this way Cianfrance has constructed a film with the circular quality of perpetual, long-lasting arguments--going around and around. The differences between the two timeframes are otherwise largely circumstantial: Dean's thinning hairline; Cindy's nurse uniform. (The exception is the presence of their child, Frankie.) Their struggles are constant and impenetrable.
As you might imagine, the film carries a tremendous sadness.

Image source: http://www.filmcaptures.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Blue_Valentine_28.jpg

There is no forever love. What love there is, is desperate, quiet--

Image source: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1KISDanngmJIDU0lvcm7kE8JxXG3SxGNswqALGrUmbUlL4hczEGpb4lkWYJMPuXq_QOhws_tuz5GDkGO82Xzq3jrBIrGruGwzwLw1tLVRDNm5bydLDj29b6VakDM3NtgtiRsvTPe8Qi4/s1600/eGcyczV4MTI=_o_blue-valentine-trailer.jpg

Domestic.

Image source: http://ilarge.listal.com/image/2113095/968full-blue-valentine-screenshot.jpg

Through Dean and Cindy, the film presents not the love story, but a love story.  In the process it memorializes both.


Reading suggestion: "Flick Chicks," by Mindy Kaling