Water Lilies (Naissance des pieuvres – 2007)

There is supposed to be give and take in every relationship, but I want to say, instead, that there are, more accurately, givers and takers, the selfish and the selfless. But what about everything and everyone in between? The collateral damage of our codependent relationships. This got me thinking about spatial relationships, gravity, the universe, and our place in it.  Some of us are stars.  Others planets or their moons.  Even fewer, like myself, are the Plutos, classified somewhere between the planets and planetesimals of the galaxy. And who knows what to make of asteroids, dark matter, space dust and the rest? The Water Lilies cover describes the movie as being a love triangle. I think my metaphor is more accurate.

A star will shine bright, giving life to the planet and contrast to the moon. Those same rays that radiate life will also radiate a cancer. And when the star shines no more it will consume the entire system. In a star’s eyes this is just because what would a system be without its star? What would they revolve around? Nevermind the billions of other stars. A moon will revolve around its planet, if only to find a purpose that is not completely defined by the star.  The impact on the planet’s tides is coincidental.  The moon is always there, but shines brightest at night, and can still get lost in the dark sky it is all too aware it shares with a billion stars. The planet has no function, outside of existing at the whims of the star.

I wouldn’t consider Water Lilies to be about lesbians either.  The relationship between the different girls is more complex and less sexual in nature than that. Still, it falls in the same category as Lost and Delirious and Wild Things. (Water Lilies is French, Lost and Delirious is Canadian, and Wild Things is American). All three movies are, with varying accuracy/realism, representative of high school girls experiencing and defining their respective sexualities. I thought, based on the love triangle description and overly sexual posing on the cover of Water Lilies that that’s where I was headed. In my last post on Cold Fish I wrote about being tired of Asian sexploitation but still being open to exploring European sexploitation. I came in to Water Lilies with my exploring gear on and full of arguments about the legitimacy of portraying mid teens as sexual objects. I left more critical of how North Americans tend to show young female sexuality on film.

The girls in Water Lilies are supposed to be 15 years old. Adèle Haenel (star) was 18, but showed no nudity, despite her characters reputation of being a slut and constant sexual antagonization.  I didn’t find a birth date for Pauline Acquart (moon) or Louise Blachère (planet) but they were supposed to be around the same age as the characters they were playing. Blachère, the only one to be nude in the entire film, could be as old as 19, but more likely 17. Acquart struck me as being something closer to 13, which made her scenes with Haenel uncomfortable (it’s not often I’m confronted with the idea of prepubescent sexuality, mostly because the idea of the inability to consent makes it moot in my mind). Something about this movie struck me as being authentic, which made me able to relate to every character, which, I think, makes Water Lilies a good movie.

Considering what I wrote in the beginning, this is how I classified the relationships in Lost and Delirious and Wild Things. I included their ages because I think it’s an important factor in considering how the people from these different countries attacked the issue of the muddied sexuality of a teenage girl.

Lost and Delirious:

Jessica Paré (star) – 19

Mischa Barton (moon) – 15

Piper Perabo (planet) – 25

Wild Things:

Denise Richards (star) – 27

Neve Campbell (moon) – 25

If child pornography laws were changed, I wonder what impact it would have on this subject in cinema, more specifically in North America. Maybe you wouldn’t see actresses in their mid-twenties or early thirties playing characters ten to fifteen years their junior, or those same actresses enacting improbable sexual circumstances, which never passes the eye test anyway. But maybe changing the laws isn’t necessary.  There was something more powerful about Water Lilies, which showed the least skin of them all.

I’ve come to the same conclusion I always do.  American cinema is doomed, regardless of what laws restrict them or what cinematic rules they choose to follow.  I’ll seek refuge elsewhere (still waiting for the people from my planet to come scoop me up).

http://www.waterliliesmovie.co.uk/trailer/

Cold Fish (Tsumetai nettaigyo)

I can’t remember the last time I watched a Japanese movie, but I can’t remember a lot of things.  I do, however, remember the first time. It was my freshman year at NYU in 2002.  A girl from my building let me borrow her Battle Royale DVD, suggesting that she knew it would be to my taste.  I loved it.  I’m still puzzled by her assumption to this day.  I don’t remember ever having a meaningful conversation with her and am still not aware that I give off the Battle Royale vibe, at least not to most people.  The next year, when I relocated (reluctantly) to Denton, I spent countless hours and dollars trying to find more Japanese movies that would be to my taste.  It’s harder than you think to find something to your taste when you don’t even know what your taste is.  The matter is made more complicated when you add in the factor of it being cinema from a completely different country.

Something that I noticed immediately was the cartoon-style blood squirting, which has always truck me as being more intelligent than the gratuitous gore it appears to be on the surface. Another thing was the obsession with breasts. Whenever a Japanese man in a movie wants to express his desire for a woman he excessively squeezes her breasts. Makes you wonder what the breast feeding habits are of the modern Japanese woman. I had no idea that Japanese women were so voluptuous or were even capable of having ample bosoms without the aid of surgery. The reason why I’m fixating on the breast thing is because it’s something that stood out to me, again, while watching Cold Fish.

Here, again, I’m confronted with the theme of relationships, which brings me to a movie I watched last night, Blue Valentine. I’m a big fan of Ryan Gosling so the only reason I can figure it took me so long to watch Blue Valentine is because I find Michelle Williams as annoying as Reese Witherspoon. (I’ve also, to date, avoided The Notebook, but I actually like, or used to like, Rachel McAdams). I know it’s because I keep clear of sappy Hollywood love stories, but sometimes I wonder if the only other alternative is the ultimate downer like Barney’s Version, Blue Valentine or Cold Fish. It amazes me when American and Japanese movies carry similar themes, downer or otherwise. It’s a small world, but within that world there is so much variation, especially when it comes to storytelling. In both Blue Valentine and Cold Fish there’s a similar portrayal of a father’s affection that isn’t reciprocated by a wife who doesn’t know how to say she wants a divorce.

I really couldn’t tell what Cold Fish is about by reading the description on the back of the DVD case. The only details it really gave away were that someone’s daughter steals which causes something bloody and suspenseful to happen. I really wish they would have done a better job of marketing the movie for what it was, because I wouldn’t have taken so long to pop it into the DVD player.  On its face Cold Fish reminded me of, and did little to change my mind that it was just like, Chinese Cat III movie Naked Poison.  Several years ago that would have been fine, but I think I’ve outgrown my Asian sexploitation phase.  French, Spanish and Italian sexploitation is still fresh enough to be engaging. Cold Fish, while it utilized some gratuitous sex/nudity was actually a serial killer movie that reminds me of a cross between Clay Pigeons and a series of nonsensical narratives similar to my hospital dreams/delusions. Cold Fish was a nice welcome back to Japanese cinema.

I’ve decided that Japanese women are the most beautiful women on the planet.  This was reinforced after watching Cold Fish.  I also remember that they come with red hair. Logic would dictate that if something comes with red hair it has to make it that much more awesome. I don’t actually remember seeing any Japanese women outside of at UNT, and that even includes in New York.  I’m sure there must be a dating website for it. There’s a dating website for everything. Unfortunately, “JDate.com” is already taken. Don’t remember seeing any young Japanese women when I got sushi the other day either.

http://www.sushi-typhoon.com/films/coldfish

Submarine

The last week or so of December I moved into my friend’s house.  I actually lived here in 2005 when he and his now ex wife first got married and bought what has become this dump.  It’s almost sad to see all the half done remodeling, undone seven years later.  I’ve been very critical of my friend the past few weeks.  He does, after all, live in a pigsty.  In all of that criticism I’d forgotten two very important things. 1) He hasn’t been a dick about paying rent because he knows how bottom rung radio doesn’t even make you hood rich, and 2) All of these undone projects will always give him something to do, well into his retirement, when he’ll finally finish doing whatever it is he’s doing to this house.

He’s hardly ever here and we have opposite schedules which means I’m basically living alone again, just like PHPE (Pre Heart Pump Era).  The negative, as stated above, is that his house is suffering from neglect.  The positive is that I’ve finally had some time to hear my thoughts.  I think I actually went through a secondary depression when I finally had a clear head to process what it means to be 27 with a heart pump.  I still don’t know, but I think I’m further along in these few weeks than I’d been in the seven prior living with my cunt of a mother.  Just like with Rudolph, if you ever saw it…

It doesn’t amount to the neglect of not having a functional dish washer or clothes dryer, but my friend is and has been without cable for some time.  He will shamelessly go to his parents’ or girlfriend’s house if there’s something on TV he wants to watch. Fortunately or unfortunately, I still have some sense of what is and is not socially awkward/acceptable.  Not near as awkward as when that same friend gave me the keys to his parents’ condo to crash on the couch for a few months while they were moving, but awkward nonetheless. Did I mention that he didn’t tell them I was coming?  That gem also goes back to 2005.

The point of all that is to give background as to why I have no cable and have resorted to watching TV and movies online.  Some of my co-workers recently revealed that they haven’t had cable in 5 plus years and provided me with some websites. I’d like to take this moment to point out that I actually have no issue with paying for cable, there just isn’t an adequate web based cable provider and I’m not paying $3 for an episode of anything. You have to remember, being in the hospital for 2 months and being out of work for at least double that time kind of fucked up my credit/ability to obtain cable by conventional means.  Plus, I find myself broker than ever, both physically and financially.

I started out watching the last season of Dexter.  Then someone turned me on to Parks & Recreation. I just recently, within the past several days, started watching movies online.  It’s actually proven to be a great avenue for finding artsy/indie movies that take 6 months to come to Dallas if they come at all. First was Sleeping Beauty.  Emily Browning has a gorgeous face but it’s odd to think of her as anything but a child.  Then I watched Another Earth.  I haven’t had a movie speak to me like that in a while. I also discovered Brit Marling.  There’s something hauntingly beautiful about Marling’s character in Another Earth. Marling is my age, yet she has accomplished so much more.  My biggest accomplishment will be getting this hurt pump out, which is to say my biggest accomplishment may prove to be nothing.

While looking for more movies to watch online, I watched the trailer for Submarine.  And then it hit me.  I own this movie.  I immediately thought of this blog, which I’ve been neglecting, in part because commenting on streamed films seems like cheating on the original premise of going through my unwatched DVDs.  (You’ll notice that guilt didn’t stop me from mentioning them above).  I completely misunderstood where Submarine was going based on what I remember of the trailer. I thought Submarine was going to be a “love story,” something akin to 500 Days of Summer.  It was really more about male adolescence and imperfect adult relationships.  I know too much about imperfect adult relationships. 

I’m almost convinced that the best a relationship can ever be is when you first meet someone.  (I just watched Swingers, so bear with me). For example, earlier tonight I went to pick up the first sushi I’ve had in over a year.  I forgot my wallet and had to drive back to get it.  When I came back I had awkward small talk with the unconventionally gorgeous waitress while she rang me up and got my food. For the next few days I’ll remember her gorgeous smile that distracted from whatever piercing she has. But, I know if I pursued that further, if I even did so much as ask her name, that superficial one-time relationship and memory would be forever ruined. 

In contrast, I also saw my cunt of a mother earlier in the day while gathering the last of my things from her house.  I don’t know how I would describe that relationship.  I get guilt trips like a husband, picked on like a little brother, and burdened like a father.  It’s a bloody mess, worse than the sty mentioned above.  (Of course I’m jaded when it comes to relationships.  And fuck you for being judgmental). There were two main stories in Submarine.  One was of the main character’s first relationship with a girl.  The other was of the dissolution of the main character’s parents’ marriage. I never had the fortune/misfortune of seeing my parents go through a divorce. I think it happened when I was 2. I think because I have no memory of it at all.

The main character decides at some point that he has to choose between what I’m characterizing as a meaningless relationship with some high school nothing and saving his parents’ marriage.  I see this a lot in films. One or more of the children attempting to reconcile parents. I’m assuming this happens in real life, only because art imitates life.  My only frame of reference is Catch Me If You Can and, to a lesser extent, Stepbrothers. I’ve been put in a vaguely similar situation with my cunt of a mother’s (you should know by now that it is an official title she has more than earned) boyfriends, and in each case I’ve encouraged them to leave.  

Even thinking that you have to decide between puppy love and family obligations reminds me of how skewed my priorities were in high school. I don’t know why I spent so much time thinking about that one crazy chick (you’ll notice from CT and the ol’ cunt that I have a history of crazy women in my life). The boy in Submarine describes his girl as being perfect, which is funny because all I saw when I watched her were glaring flaws, physical and character. Even with a looming death, I think he made the right decision according to the circumstances. I did, as well, deciding to go to New York instead of waiting out a dysfunctional and fizzling relationship with a less than sane person.  I won’t ruin how Submarine ends. I’ll just say that I’m disappointed.

I’m still trying to grasp how Friday the 13^th slipped by me.  It’s historically been my lucky day, but Saturday the 14^th has also been incredibly unlucky.  I don’t know exactly what luck I had today, but I do know several things that can muck up my 14^th (2^nd day at studio in Arlington, second blood draw, life).

http://warp.net/films/submarine