Moot Point

I wanted to watch more stuff this week, but I apparently didn’t have the energy.

1. Lilies (John Greyson, 1996): You guys I am so in love with this movie. It’s a movie of a play about the events surrounding a crime being performed in a prison chapel (by the prisoners, including a big black man as a female French aristocrat), but then there are also scenes that are set in the actual past (when the events happen) but that retain the actors. If that makes sense. It probably doesn’t. Anyway, it’s just a gorgeous movie: there’s all this interplay between performance and reality and there’s a gay love triangle melodrama at the centre of it. It’s like someone (John Greyson) took all my research interests and rolled them up into one fantastic movie. I’m definitely going to check out more of his stuff.
2. Crazy Love (Dominique Deruddere, 1987): This is an adaptation of several Charles Bukowski stories that are more or less about male desire and objectification of women, and it feels like it’s set in America, but it’s Belgian, so it’s in Flemish. I found it really hard to sympathize with a character as skeevy as the hero (who we see attempt to rape a sleeping woman and also…well, let’s just say “necrophilia” is one of the imdb plot keywords). It’s actually kind of poetic, that he can only love a dead woman, if you think of it from a feminist standpoint as a critique of masculinity, but you’re weirdly forced to feel sorry for him as well. So you know, it’s tricky. I loved the band at the dance, singing thickly accented, overly syrupy covers of American dance music.
3. Malpertuis (Harry Kümel, 1974 — the longer, Belgian release cut on the DVD, not the Cannes English dub, but I’m told the other isn’t bad): What a weird movie. You guys know me, you know how much I like movies that are kind of off-kilter, so when I say weird, I mean weird. It has Orson Welles (in full-on “Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now mode) as this giant dying patriarch in a giant bed in charge of this weirdly decaying and oddly hard to map house, and then he declares that his heirs all have to never leave the house in order to actually get the estate. The ending is the most amazing, disorienting thing ever: there are a bunch of different “explanations” all nested in each other, which don’t really wind up explaining anything.
4. Switching Channels (Ted Kotcheff, 1988): Oh man, I can just picture the pitch meeting:
   Ted Kotcheff: “Hey you guys I have a sweet idea for a movie. It’s a remake of His Girl Friday. With Kathleen Turner in the Rosalind Russell role and Burt Reynolds in the Cary Grant role! And make it about TV; a CNN-like network. In Chicago. During an election. It’s a can’t miss.”
   Producers: “A comedy about politics? Sounds risky. We can’t put up the whole budget on a project like that!”
   Kotcheff: “I know! But I have an idea! There’s this new thing I keep hearing about. It’s called ‘product placement.’ What happens is, we have Burt Reynolds drink a Jack & Coke, and then we get Jack Daniels and Coca-Cola to pay us for it!!”
   Producers: “Like the Reese’s Pieces in ET! That’s brilliant! Do you have any more such ‘ideas’?”
   Kotcheff: “Tons! I thought we could have the governor be an exercise fiend so that when he watches Turner’s touching interview with the wrongly convicted killer and decides maybe he should pardon him, someone will offer him some Gatorade! In a big bottle with a Gatorade logo!”
   Producers: “Of course. Everyone who identifies with the effete and totally inept governor will want to buy Gatorade!” Kotcheff: “But that’s not all? You know how in the original, the wrongly convicted killer hides in a roll-top desk?” Producers: “Not really, we don’t actually watch movies, you know.”
   Kotcheff: “Right, well anyway, to modernize it, we’re going to change the roll-top desk to a Canon photocopier. They’re desperate to make people not think of Xerox when they think copiers, because it’s 1988 and people still refer to copying something as ‘Xeroxing’ it. We’ll have the characters constantly discuss how their copier is so much better than a Xerox.”
   Producers: “Right, but make it a running joke so the audience won’t suspect they’re being advertised to.” Kotcheff: “Of course.” [Touches the side of nose.] “I’m a storyteller.”
   Producers: “Hey, do you know who’d be great for the Ralph Bellamy part?”
   Kotcheff: “I’m open to suggestions.”
   Producers: “Christopher Reeve! Superman! He’s desperate to show he has acting range and a sense of humour! But I’m sure that won’t show in the film.”
   Kotcheff: “No, of course not. Reeve has layers just like an onion.”
   This honestly wasn’t that bad, considering the desecration of a beloved classic. I actually really like Kathleen Turner and Burt Reynolds as a screen couple: the tough independent woman with the old-fashioned man’s man is a very winning combination. And unlike (the late) Christopher Reeve, he has great comic timing.
5. The Flower of My Secret (Pedro Almodovar, 1995): I’ve already written about this movie a few times. I wasn’t really looking forward to watching it again, but it did win me over with its splendid visual gorgeousness (it’s one of his best-shot films, in my opinion) and the performances of Chus Lampreave’s as the mother and Juan Echanove as Angel (both of which get better the more I watch them).Obviously Marisa Paredes is great as well; she’s just fabulous in general, so it doesn’t come as a shock when you see her run the gamut of emotions convincingly. The ending is still really slow, but the payoff is worth it.