The Lost Daughter

It's strange how much time I used to spend going to the cinema. In fact it's not strange at all, it was perfectly normal, everything about pandemic existence being strange, but it's been going on for so long that it's starting to feel normal.

That's depressing. And even with the vaccines, there's no end in sight.

Ah well, no use in dwelling, that's counterproductive, and at least we have vaccines and boosters available in Canada and Québec, and the risk of hospitalization is greatly decreased if you get them, I recommend getting the vaccine, getting it soon, I suppose it goes without saying but vaccines help prevent you from getting sick, especially if you get the virus, which is still spreading rapidly, and isn't showing any signs of letting up.

But I used to spend around 8 hours a week carefully or carelessly choosing films in cinemas and travelling back and forth to see them, sometimes while stopping for lunch, it was a great way to pass the time.

Now I've got all the time in the world just to choose two films a week and watch them on my computer or television, and it still seems like I have to find the time, how did I ever come up with all the extra hours?

It's certainly much less engaging watching films at home although there's an endless supply available, still, films are meant to be seen in theatres, and it's kind of lame always watching them on a smaller screen.

No end to the variety, however, and I'm super happy there's a Criterion channel, Criterions used to be really expensive films that you had to buy, if you really wanted to see one and couldn't find it at the library. 

I'm not sure if Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Lost Daughter has resonant artistic flair, but it certainly leaves an impression, and is like nothing else I've ever seen.

It's about an unappealing dull grouch who decides to go on vacation, during the off-season in a resort town, as locals celebrate liberation (Olivia Colman/Jessie Buckley as Leda).

Her ornery disposition and assertive dismissals ensure she doesn't make any friends, she's also generally annoyed when people talk to her, no matter how harmless or well-meaning.

She's plagued by haunting remembrances of the daughters she left behind to pursue her career, the surrounding carefree families at play only serving to vex her further.

She proceeds to steal one of their dolls and even buys it a new fancy outfit, and refuses to return it or just leave it on the beach even after a campaign is launched for days to find it.

The Lost Daughter's total lack of utility and uncanny investigation of gloomy self-obsession, lugubriously generates pathological charm through disorienting morose unabashed stern vision.

It's like a campy intellectual film that leaves you free to discern and judge, is it critiquing cantankerous agency or oddly celebrating unattached dysfunction?

Does she feel bad about not feeling bad about never having tried to cultivate feelings?

I think there's Criterion potential.

Resort towns are fun in the offseason. 

Downhill

My apologies if Downhill was meant to be taken seriously, if it wasn't a clever attempt to make fun of itself for being so, um, unavailingly unorthodox. That's what it seemed like to me for a time but perhaps it wasn't meta-Will Ferrell (Pete) at all, perhaps it was a serious Will Ferrell film that was meant to be taken literally as a serious comedy? It seems like that at times. If so, I apologize for the misinterpretation. If I hadn't expected it to be purposely self-defeating after the scene where Pete and Billie (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) eat room service together early on, perhaps I would have been less likely to say anything positive, meaning if I did misinterpret the film that misinterpretation has lead to something more productive, not that much more productive, but I'll at least smooth out a silver-lined missed opportunity. It's like directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (two directors can be a bad sign) were trying to make a Will Ferrell film with an indie aesthetic that subtly lampooned Will Ferrell films generally while still making another Will Ferrell film, like they can't decide if this is a film making fun of Will Ferrell films or is in fact another one of his traditional films. For years I've been meaning to suggest that Ferrell should make a film about making a Will Ferrell film but haven't found the right moment. Downhill is something different yet still embodies that same spirit. It's like the directors know it struggles and they're making fun of that struggle (was a second director brought in to save it?) as suggested by the stock mountain images that keep showing up, accompanied by jaunty lighthearted doodles, as if their idea was to make an appealing comedy for mainstream audiences where a family vacations at an adult-oriented ski resort with non-traditional staff (perhaps traditional for the resort in question), but then realized their idea was much more independent and wouldn't catch on, leaving them caught in the crossfire as they sought to blend everything, and couldn't reasonably orient the resulting disharmonies. It becomes clear that Pete is a huge douche for multiple reasons so I started to think, wow, this is what Ferrell's usually like (or used to usually be like) in his films but he often has no responsibilities so it's kind of funny, but with the added responsibilities it seems grotesque, so it's like the film is trying to make older Will Ferrell films seem grotesque as he continues to act the same way even though he has a family, and it accomplishes this goal but then still seems like it's also making his predicament seem tragic, as if it's tragic that he's had to take on responsibilities, and can't continue to randomly drink, fight and fornicate whenever and with whomever the moment unwittingly presents. The key moment comes when Billie is propositioned by her ski instructor before she remembers her marital commitments and they head off on their separate ways. Meanwhile, Pete is getting drunk with a friend that he invited to meet him during their family holiday and revelling in the assumption that women still find him appealing, until he discovers he's been mistaken for another and then tries to punch him in a drunken stupor. If Billie had gone further, not much further but further, Downhill would have asserted itself as a master of just reckonings, and the ways in which it made fun of itself for being a bit lame would have become much more appealing. But she doesn't and Pete returns drunk to his family to have an awkward dinner where everyone's disappointed in him and he has trouble eating his red meat. Soon Billie finds a way to help him reestablish his respectability in his children's eyes (he bailed on them earlier during an avalanche and then engaged in critiqued horse play at a family-themed resort), and their marriage moves forward with Pete still regarded as patriarchal liege. For a moment it seems like Downhill really is sticking it to lifelong juvenile shenanigans, but in the end there's no consequence, even though it's clear there should be. Perhaps it's saying that the fact that there's no consequence is awful, and there should have been a consequence resolutely, but since there often aren't consequences for such behaviour in real life, they decided to mundanely lampoon this reality instead. But why go for the mundane lampoon? Why not have the strong female character assert herself instead? The answer lies in the response she's given after she complains about the avalanche: a man tells her, "it was done perfectly". So it's like Downhill uses the indie aesthetic to suggest there's something more while still giving juvenile shenanigans a free pass. Difficult to watch consequently and lacking the courage to go further, it falls flat in the face of Me Too, and leaves you wondering, why? For what purpose? Ding dong.

Juliet, Naked

A long-term relationship, once overflowing with amorous bounty, has fallen into a state of blind extraction, one partner remaining guiltless as the other pans and prospects, crass dismissive routine having disenchanted glib absorption.

Duncan Thomson (Chris O'Dowd) is quite successful for someone who's become even more enamoured with the music of his youth as he's aged, a rare highly-specialized peculiarity who's found both stimulating employment and an irresistible mate without having to adjust his lifestyle, at all, like an uncompromised established radical nerd god I suppose, who may have been diagnosed autistic if he hadn't learned to tame distracting obsessions, level-headed if not unique, examining non-Dickensian media pedagogically throughout the day.

Annie Platt (Rose Byrne) is also a success yet puts up with more bullshit than most women I know would for five minutes. She's spent too many years acquiescing and it's unfortunately resulted in stalemate.

When suddenly, as if a rival divinity decided to mystify his or her earthly spiritual contemporaries, she writes a critical review of the artist Duncan fetishizes, and shortly thereafter, that very same singer/songwriter, one Tucker Crowe (Ethan Hawke), makes first intuitive contact.

Crowe's soon visiting town after attending an hospitable family reunion close by (he's from the States and Annie lives in Britain), and the two hit it off even though/because they're both rather charmingly unsure of themselves.

Multiple characters offering myriad commentaries accompany them as they exchange goods, stewing an atypical bourgeois pot roast of sorts which narratively generates free-flowing conceptual sustenance.

From Annie's worldly lesbian sister (Lily Brazier as Ros Platt) to her town's mayoral sensation (Phil Davis as Mayor Terry Barton) to the subject of an old school photograph (Ninette Finch) to Tucker's thoughtful son Jackson (Azhy Robertson), an active international urbanely pastoral assertive inoffensive multigenerational cluster thoughtfully protrudes, constant flux radiating concerted solitude, domestic clutches loosening vows seized.

Unmarried vows.

Whatever.

The main characters aren't one-dimensional pin-ups either, evolving crises and resurgent settlements interrogatively finagling initial semantic outlines, as a matter of psychological flexibility openly conciliated, in spite of pretence recalled.

Tucker Crowe isn't ideal or anything, but he's changed and is much more responsible than he used to be.

Breakdowns still regularly accompany his daily regimen, often brought on by legitimate grievances cunningly wielded by jaded yet prosperous former lovers.

Wives, partners, fans.

Children he's never met.

Duncan is a bit of a douche but you still feel for him when Crowe bluntly and insensitively ignores his questions, even if from Crowe's point of view he's that guy.

Juliet, Naked is a laidback multilayered serious comedic piece of exceptional screenwriting (Evgenia Peretz, Jim Taylor, and Tamara Jenkins), convincing personalities innocently/frankly/charitably/maturely/helplessly/judiciously observing otherworldly circumstances, while remaining committed to personal affairs which romanticize anaesthetic sensation.

Dozens of cool little ideas and points of view expertly weaved into a funny unconcerned profound teacup tapestry.

It doesn't acknowledge how ridiculous it all sounds.

Adroitly so.

I'll keep coming back to the hospital scene again and again, which was much too short.

Perfectly timed ending though.