marriage

Marie and Bruce (4/8/11)

brittany — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 20:00:00 +0000

New York, New York

When I was a kid I used to stay out of sight when my parents fought, fearful that their vitriol would extend to me. But I always listened, eager to understand the conflict. So it is with Marie and Bruce, Wallace Shawn’s look at the most dysfunctional of dysfunctional relationships.

The play begins even before a word of dialogue is uttered. As the audience enters the theater, Marie (a furious and pained Marisa Tomei) and Bruce (a disaffected and cool Frank Whaley) are lying on a large, ill-made bed in center stage. He’s asleep. Marie, however, is awake and the audience sees her tossing and turning, blowing her nose, touching her forehead to check for fever, and getting up stretch and smoke. Her angst is visible as Bruce softly snores, apparently unbothered by his wife’s unease.

As morning dawns, Marie turns to the audience and confides that she is planning to leave her mate. Her ire is apparent in her language: Bruce is addressed as a “fucking pig,” a “goddamn worthless piece of shit,” and a “cocksucking turd.” We also learn that they’ve had a “a miserable summer.” Neither has a job—although as the play unfolds, money doesn’t seem to be a problem—and Marie has been afflicted with some sort of physical malaise that she likens to the flu.

As Marie rants about Bruce’s inadequacies, he seems unfazed and we soon realize that theirs is a waltz that is repeatedly danced. Like couples that bicker endlessly, Marie and Bruce are locked in a routine that is both senseless and compelling.

The three-scene, one-act play—it is one hour and forty minutes long—goes from the bedroom, to a nine-person dinner party rife with neurotic conversation, to a small café where the couple’s banter is clearly well honed. Both are verbally abusive. At one point, Bruce tells Marie that she “can be sort of a cunt” while she lambastes him as someone she neither respects nor loves.

It’s horrible to watch and must be far worse to live.

First performed in London’s The Royal Court Theatre in 1979, Marie and Bruce crossed the ocean a year later, arriving on U.S. shores in 1980 and garnering mixed reviews.

The New Group’s revival of the piece is beautifully acted. Furthermore, the staging, set design, lighting, and special effects are exceptional. That said, the play is depressing and audience members leave the theater thanking their lucky stars that they don’t have to contend with Marie and Bruce in real life.

What’s more, as a cautionary tale of love gone sour, Marie and Bruce makes for a harrowing, often cringe-worthy, evening. Worse, while the rancor expressed by each member of this lovelorn pair pulls at the viewer’s heartstrings, the play is ultimately an unsatisfying peak at a horrid relationship. One can only wonder why The New Group dusted the play off and brought it to Theatre Row.

Marie and Bruce runs through May 7, 2011 at Theatre Row.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, April 12th 2011

Monogamy

brittany — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 22:00:00 +0000

Directed by Dana Adam Shapiro

Oscilloscope

Don’t let the relationship-centric plot fool you; Monogamy is not a chick flick. In fact, it’s one of the more interesting films I’ve seen that explores fears about committing oneself to just one person for the rest of one’s life, from a wholly male perspective.

Typically these kinds of heteronormative man-boy treatises on marriage phobia are treated with ample doses of trite and predictable humor. While Monogamy dips its toe into these well worn waters, to writer-director Dana Adam Shapiro’s credit, it never dwells there for very long. Instead, Shapiro gives the viewer nonverbal shards of Theo’s (Chris Messina) conflicted inner tumult through a dully present, self-distanced, unsteady lens. The result is a thought-provoking film.

While Shapiro stays away from Hollywood-style cliché, Monogamy is overflowing with film student-esque visual metaphor: Theo’s repeated donning of a creepy dog mask indicates that men are dogs, an engagement ring constructed from a piece of string represents how Theo’s desire to get married is hanging by a thread, and a repetitive, ambient score overlays the relationship’s tedious monotony. These ubiquitous moments caused my partner to say out loud at one point, “Alright. We get it already!” Clearly, he’d had enough.

That said, I appreciated the way Monogamy's clunky pace impressed the awkward and stilted predictability present in Theo’s and Nat’s (Rashida Jones) interactions—and the interactions of most all the married couples in the film, for that matter. The utter lack of spontaneity coupled with Nat's rejection of his sexual advances made it easy to empathize with Theo’s frustration with his fiance, despite the deep level of comfort he felt with her. So, when the mysterious, daring, and overtly sexual Subgirl (Meital Dohan) makes an entrance by masturbating in a public park as Theo consensually captures the indiscretion with his camera, you can feel Theo’s core being shaken.

The enigmatic character’s pseudonym illuminates Theo’s undoing. Subgirl is not a full person, just a partial representation of something men desire: naughty, anonymous, illicit sex. She is as tantalizing as she is elusive, and her entry into his life causes Theo to become obsessed with what marrying Nat means giving up. He takes the gains of monogamy for granted.

This provocative, if somewhat banal film, is sure to get attention for all the wrong things: its treatment of voyeurism and exhibitionism, for example. But what makes Monogamy worth the watch is what it says about male perspectives and masculinity. It’s a trip to boy’s town, that’s for sure. And one I believe is worth making.

Written by: Mandy Van Deven, March 11th 2011

Made for You and Me: Going West, Going Broke and Finding Home

andrea — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Caitlin Shetterly

Hyperion Voice Press

I’m sharing this book with everyone I know. Caitlin Shetterly’s Made for You and Me: Going West, Going Broke and Finding Home is a strong memoir about a young couple going broke in the recession and it gives readers the satisfying feeling of walking around someone else’s shoes for 250 pages. We’re all connected by some basic humanity and a good memoir reinforces this connection as we don the cloak of another with ease.

Caitlin Shetterly’s Made for You and Me doesn’t simply resonate for us at the level of humanity. It is us. Within the first few pages I learned we are the same age and as she discussed her career moves, life plans and even the love of her pets, I felt we were kindred spirits. Though this may be true, I must attribute this to Shetterly’s writing style more so than the potential that we are long lost siblings. One key element she mentions after a few lengthy tales of her family pets is that writers often neglect the importance of pets in a tale, or even in a life. She refuses to subscribe to this and keeps her promise throughout the tale by consistently accounting for the pets’ needs and whereabouts at every step of their journey.

The pets aren’t the whole story, however. Caitlin Shetterly and her husband Dan Davis struggle through mid-thirties job searches, the want for something more, and the need for some basic success amid an economic recession that brings it all to a screeching halt. The pair is an example of the hidden layers beneath the CNN-drafted economic tag lines and phrases pundits regurgitate at us daily. They are the living, breathing case that represents us.

What’s so endearing about this book is that not only do you recognize the story and eagerly peel back its layers, but you also come to feel the very real emotional stresses that television news stories are leaving out. Particularly moving in Shetterly’s storytelling is her ability to frame her husband through the nuanced lens of gender expectations. These two critically educated people know that they’re held to ideological gender standards and in many places in their lives seem to balk at the hegemonic practices that secure them. Yet, Shetterly’s descriptions of her husband’s transformation strikes at the very core of how masculinity is a powerful framing force that deeply impacts the psyche of men and women alike.

You feel for both of them, but what’s moving the story is the way her gentle, honest tone captures the nuance we need to see in order to understand this is us, this is how we plan our lives, this is what we want for ourselves.

Shetterly frames the story around my childhood favorite, the Laura Ingalls Wilder series, Little House on the Prairie. Little House’s Manifest Destiny, coupled with the lyrics of “This Land is Your Land,” act as a critique woven throughout the story of their financial struggle, and her tale becomes a memoir with more take-away meaning than most. The mirror she holds up to us reminds us that the American Dream is complex, and that the drive within you has as much potential as a Horatio Alger success story as well as the potential to break you with exhaustion, crisis, trepidation and economics. It is this paradox that is particularly comforting and engaging about Shetterly’s story. Her recession tale sheds light on more than just a tough economy. We often argue that the ideology of capitalism and the American Dream have been disrupted, and we do not live in the world, economic or otherwise, that our parents or grandparents did. Shetterly’s work shows us that the resulting reality is complex and dynamic and many of us are struggling within it.

Basic ideas about family, support, goals, ambitions, and working hard are surely themes across the surface of Caitlin Shetterly’s Made for You and Me: Going West, Going Broke and Finding Home. But Shetterly also takes those themes and moves them from trite assumptions about how we are to live and packs them full of the struggle they cause us, inside and out, when we’re simply fighting for survival.

Written by: Dr. Julie E. Ferris, March 8th 2011

The Last Pretence

payal — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

By Sarayu Srivatsa

Harper Collins

In the South Indian town of Machilipatnam, Mallika gives birth to twins, Tara and Siva. Emotionally and psychologically damaged when her daughter dies during childbirth, Mallika finds herself unable to love Siva who is a constant reminder of Tara’s death. Pretending that Siva is Tara, both Mallika and Siva embark on a downward spiral of self-destruction that ends in tragedy. Sarayu Srivatsa’s The Last Pretence tells Mallika and Siva’s stories, their learning and unlearning of love and loss, and attempts to question, through stories of childhood, marriage, and motherhood, how identities and experiences of gender are shaped.

Its book jacket advertises The Last Pretence as a "novel that takes nothing for granted", and that "grapples with notions of love, gender and sexuality", a description that probably attracted readers who were intrigued by the idea that modern Indian-English writing was taking on gender stereotypes, particularly in the specific context of South India, where this theme has been relatively under-explored in contemporary Indian fiction. Alas, The Last Pretence falls far short of being revolutionary, both in craft and in plot.

Unimpressed by the writing, I asked myself if the author’s intentions had any merit. The principal character upon whom Srivatsa’s gender-play is enacted is Siva, who struggles with his gender identity because of his mother’s desperate inability to cope with her daughter’s death. But in what sense are we supposed to find Mallika’s behavior towards Siva troubling? Clearly, some combination of her delusion that her son is her daughter, but also that she sees her son as a girl, and that she treats him as such. Mallika’s ‘disturbing’ behavior includes dressing Siva up in girls' clothes; piercing his ears, and breast-feeding him for longer than necessary, which we are led to believe confuses his self-identity and his notions of what it would mean to be a girl (to be loved by his mother). Ultimately this leads him away from home, fuels his exploration of his own sexuality through his quick and sometimes brutal sexual encounters, and finally leads to his inability to negotiate his personal peace in Srivatsa’s fictionalized world.

In dabbling with issues of gender and sexuality Srivatsa appears like a young child with a stick—gently prodding some fascinating multi-legged creature under a rock. Curious, not intentionally cruel, but ultimately uncomprehending, she speaks as an outsider to the experiences of her characters, making them less believable and more allegorical in order to make broader didactic (but again, superficial) points about gender, culture and the nature of patriarchy.

Perhaps Srivatsa’s biggest failing is the superficiality with which she writes; for example, the historical context of Machilipatnam, a town "where the British first landed to trade in dyes" on the Coromandel coast of southern India – is more or less absent from the book, with limited interweaving of even its fictionalized history through the cursory mythology of George Gibbs and his incestuous relationship with his sister. It also includes a peek into the eunuch sub-culture in India (the stock shining symbols of gender subversion) where half-yawning, half horrified, the reader is dragged into a short (but seemingly necessary) scene of castration involving a sharp knife, hot oil and a grinding stone, cheaply highlighting the cruel repercussions of gender deviance in a straight world.

Marred by poor characterization, predictability, and unproductive diversions (inexplicable inter-religious riots seem to randomly pepper this slim novel) from an otherwise heavy-handed plot driven by unnecessary brutality and an unconvincing lack of detail, I found the long-listing of The Last Pretence for the Man Asian Literary prize undeserving. Lacking in originality and failing to deliver but the most prosaic of prose, The Last Pretence most damningly shrivels before a feminist gaze where it is slowly sucked into the quicksand of the hetero-normative aphorism that any deviations to established gender norms will be ruthlessly punished by society, and ultimately (spoiler alert!) cannot survive.

Written by: Kaavya Asoka, February 4th 2011

I'm a Registered Nurse, Not a Whore

tina — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Anne Purdue

Insomniac Press

My grandmother was a nurse. She's retired now, but I remember how she used to chastise her grandchildren, scolding us about washing our hands, eating certain foods, and getting exercise. Above all, she was straightforward about our bodies. When we were too shy to put on our swimsuits in the changing room at the pool, she used to say, "We all got the same thing you got.” Another time she scolded me for cringing at a violent scene in a crime show, "Well, we all have to go sometime, sweetheart."

Because of her, I have always associated nurses with a sort of grandmotherly sass and frankness about the human body. This immediately came to mind when I picked up Anne Perdue's I'm a Registered Nurse, Not a Whore and I can honestly say I was not disappointed by the book. With episodes ranging from dental self-surgery to an accident involving a vat of wax, Perdue's plots often revolve around physical crisis. Her stories are not for the squeamish. Perdue uses unhesitating honesty for her descriptions of people and their bodies, offering up characters that are flawed and deeply compelling. The result is a collection that shows us the painful—and often darkly funny—conflicts of friendship, marriage, and parenthood.

Perdue's stories typically begin by introducing us to a common scenario: a couple on vacation or a family at dinner, but then she shows us how the character’s smoldering inner desires and regrets build up into a violent climax. In "Inheritance," a Botox-injected car salesman fantasizes about his youthful dreams of becoming a musician while building a deck for his house. As he’s working his children torment and disobey him, but we are privy to his inner thoughts. The story culminates in a relative's fall, a lost tooth, and a backyard grill tragedy. "Inheritance" introduces two of Purdue's common themes; one is regret. Characters in I'm a Registered Nurse, Not a Whore lament a youth subculture ("Theories of Relativity"), bad marriages ("CA-NA-DA," "Inheritance"), and failed careers in musical theater ("The Dry Well"). The other common theme is parenthood. There are some sympathetic parent-child relationships in these stories, but parenthood in I'm a Registered Nurse is often more painful than it is fulfilling: Children are distant and unappreciative, defying their parents' efforts at reconciliation.

Perdue's prose is crisp and direct, presenting fresh ways to describe our physical selves ("Bodies aren't a whole lot different from houses. They're made of matter and they crack and tear and sometimes things grow in them that shouldn't") and reinventing old clichés ("If we are what we eat, Leona was oxidized, fused to the vegetable crisper, ripe for fruit flies"). She writes engaging dialogue, transferring from one character's head to another with a sometimes absorbing and sometimes vertigo-inducing speed. Perdue is at her best when she stays with one or two characters throughout a story, as in my favorite piece from this collection, "Pooey." "Pooey" follows the relationship between Jackie, a single woman pursuing artificial insemination, and her sick and aging mother, Leona. "Pooey" masterfully blends pathos and dark humor—you cringe as Leona takes a drunken fall on her seventieth birthday, as Jackie falls over the punch bowl at a bridal shower—but you root for these women all the way. In "The Dry Well," the marriage between new homeowners Heather and Keith slowly unravels as the house around them floods and falls apart. The story transitions between Heather’s and Keith's thoughts, using crawling mice, leaking roofs, and sinister repairmen as the backdrop for the story.

At times I wanted to know more about the victims of the violent outbursts in these stories, about the world after the catastrophe. Perdue's structure can feel a bit redundant—near the end of I'm a Registered Nurse, Not a Whore I found myself patiently waiting for the fire, the fistfight, or the flood that would come and sweep the story away. But these stories also give us splendid moments of release, moments where the passion of inner life mirrors the explosive and painful physical action of the stories. Perdue's stories are edgy and fresh, providing just the right dose of sympathy and satire.

Written by: Barbara Barrow, January 30th 2011

Monica & David

barbara — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Directed by Alexandria Codina

HBO Films

One of the many things people take for granted—Americans especially—is free will. Basic human rights. When you are able-bodied, physically able to take care of yourself, the ways to access free will seem limitless—there are plenty of things you are able to participate in, such as having a job, living on your own, and preparing your own meals. In Monica & David, novice filmmaker Alexandra Codina documents the wedding and first year of marriage between Monica and David, two adults living with Down’s syndrome.

The titular Monica is Codina’s cousin and it is clear to see why the filmmaker was interested in filming the couple. The best moments celebrate the tenderness between the couple whose love for each other is more than apparent through constant physical affection, pet-name-calling and emotional support. They exude a genuine excitement about spending their lives together and take pride in calling each other husband and wife. In an especially touching moment, Monica shares a letter she’s written to her birth father, who left when she was very young, and David sits next to her holding her hand and offering soft words of encouragement.

Codina’s footage offers a personal glimpse into issues around independence, identity, and care-taking: how we construct who we are in relationship to who we are to others. The dependent relationship in the roles of parents and children is highlighted by Monica’s mother, Maria Elena, and step-father, Bob, who are sincerely trying to offer the couple autonomy but cannot quite loosen their grip. Having both lived in their parents’ homes, as a couple Monica and David move into a separate wing of Maria Elena and Bob’s house, the parents who appear to be more financially equipped to support the couple. A discussion of financial privilege and women’s work would have been effective here, but Codina fail to flush out these issues. There is a brief mention of Maria Elena’s experience as a single mother who worked her way up from an airline flight attendant to VP of the company so that she‘d be able to provide for her daughter.

Overall, had Codina given more attention to the experiences of Monica and David’s mothers raising their children, it may have made for a richer film. Both hardly twenty years old when their children were born, the women immediately faced resistance from their doctors. Maria Elena recalls the doctor walking in to her room at her first ultrasound and announcing “Your child is a mongoloid,” while David’s mother was persuaded to give her son up for adoption. Here Codina misses an opportunity to bring this experience into a larger dialogue surrounding reproductive rights and our nation’s pro-natal “family values” narrative. Perhaps this drawback points to the flaw in researching your family, but the lack of subtext is ultimately the flaw of the film.

Written by: Alicia Sowisdral, December 22nd 2010

Partir (Leaving)

annette — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Catherine Corsini

IFC Films

David McKenzie’s Asylum is a flawed but breathtakingly compelling portrait of violent sexual obsession, deception, and mental illness. Unremittingly dark, this film also presents us with a woman who rails against the constraints placed on women in 1950s middle class Britain.

Stella (Natasha Richardson) is a bored housewife who makes her home on the grounds of a mental hospital outside London. She’s married to Max (Hugh Bonneville), a pompous overbearing psychiatrist who makes it clear that she is expected to devote all of her energies to helping him rise to the top of the hospital hierarchy. The servants who cook meals, clean the house, and care for Stella’s son guarantee that Stella never has anything productive to do.

Stella has a chance encounter with Edgar (Marton Csokas), an inmate who is repairing the gazebo in her garden. They are both instantly attracted and begin having steamy trysts. Edgar, who has been institutionalized after having murdered his wife, is denied release from the asylum. Frustrated, he escapes and re-establishes contact with Stella once he is safely ensconced in a squalid cold-water flat in London.

Meanwhile, Max’s rival, Dr. Peter Cleave (Sir Ian McKellen) puts two and two together and confronts Stella, demanding to know where Edgar is. When Stella refuses, he reminds her that Max, as her husband, can have her committed to the asylum. Stella, trapped and caught in the full grip of hybristophilia, runs to Edgar.

Why did I choose to start off this review of Partir (Leaving) with a synopsis of a completely different film? Quite frankly, the plot of Partir is startlingly similar to Asylum. Although Partir is set in twenty-first century France, both films are keenly rendered character portraits of strong-willed British women who’ve grown tired of sacrificing their happiness for their families’ sake and decide to follow their hearts to tragic results.

Suzanne (Kristin Scott Thomas) is an Englishwoman who’s called France home for more than two decades. She is a stay-at-home mother who decides to go back to work after fifteen years out of the paid labor force. She is completing her training as a physiotherapist, something she’d planned to do before having children. Suzanne is married to Samuel (Yvan Attal), a pompous overbearing doctor, who reluctantly sinks a small fortune into fixing up a shed for her home office.

The man in charge of fixing up the space is Ivan (Sergi Lopez), a Spaniard who went to prison for “kid’s stuff.” When Suzanne causes an accident that causes Ivan to break his ankle, the guilt-ridden Suzanne to offer him a ride to Spain so that Ivan can visit his young daughter. The two, who already feel attracted, embark on a passionate affair.

Suzanne leaves her husband after confessing the affair and unsuccessfully trying to end it. Samuel, who seems to view Suzanne as more of a possession than an equal partner, resorts to blacklisting the couple to the point of starvation and freezing the bank accounts, not at all willing to give Suzanne a quick divorce.

Despite its derivativeness, Partir still managed to absorb me. This is in no small part due to Kristen Scott Thomas’ subtly commanding performance. Scott Thomas effortlessly conveys Suzanne’s conflicting emotions through her eyes and nearly imperceptible gestures.

I also like the fact that Corsini doesn’t feel the need to tell us everything. Many of the films climactic scenes end rather abruptly, requiring the audience to draw its own conclusions and Partir’s lean eighty-five minute run time guarantees that the film’s pacing doesn’t lag.

Partir doesn’t shy away from its feminist subtext, exploring the invisibility and frustrations of homemakers at length. Partir, in brutally honest scenes, depicts how easy it is for a vindictive husband to use his financial clout to punish an errant wife.

Given the date of its release and its serious subject matter, I anticipate Partir becoming a contender for Best Foreign Language Film. (It’s in French with English subtitles). Nominations for its cast and director are probably in short order, too.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, October 26th 2010

I Want to Get Married!: One Wannabe Bride's Misadventures with Handsome Houdinis, Technicolor Grooms, Morality Police, and Other Mr. Not-Quite-Rights

admin — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Nora Eltahawy, Ghada Abdel Aal

University of Texas Press, Dar El Shorouk

The first suitor was a friend of a friend's husband. Along with his family, he came to Ghada's house. He was a doctor, she was told. Excited at the idea of finally meeting a potential husband, she washed the carpets, mopped the floor, scrubbed the stairs, and cleaned all the windows.

She opened the door only to meet Mr. Not-Quite-Right, her technicolor suitor. His shirt was yellow, his pants were blue, and he was wearing purple socks with brown shoes—not to mention the green sweater. "Maybe he is fun and he likes colors", she told herself, in an attempt to convince herself to focus on his personality and brains. The official introduction happened when her father entered the room. "My name is Samy. I'm a physiotherapist," he said. She was impressed until he started rambling about his "imitation skills;" apparently, he could imitate every character in this world. He eventually stopped sharing his talent and asked if the television was working. He turned it on and proceeded to watch a football match. Ghada held in a laugh and tried to pretend that everything is normal, but when her mother criticized his favorite football team, hell broke loose and at the ancient age of twenty-eight, Ghada lost a potential husband. Not only that, she also lost her friend who was angry with her for not being compromising to a "perfect" groom.

I first came across I Want to Get Married! in 2009 and soon afterwards, the blog was turned into a book by a publishing house in Egypt. The blogger/writer is a young Egyptian woman who is a successful pharmacist, but in a country like Egypt, success is measured by your ability to attract a groom at a young age. "The clock starts ticking the day you graduate. Personally, I started feeling like a spinster after I turned twenty-three," Ghada wrote in the introduction to the book.

Currently, Ghada is thirty-two and is still unmarried. After she turned thirty, her family and friends narrowed down her husband wish-list to a man "with a heartbeat." After introducing her to numerous men, from the technicolor suitor to the paranoid policeman who was adamant to get her fingerprints for "research," they gave up on her.

In her book, she chronicles the at least thirty prospective grooms she was introduced to from the age of twenty-five. This is how it works: Someone nominates her to an eligible bachelor, and the bachelor brings his nuclear family to meet her and her family. If she feels something towards him, they start dating to get to know each other. Not only does Ghada hilariously document meeting the men; she also shares the struggles of young women in Egypt who face societal pressure to tie the knot.

Recent statistics state that there are at least nine million unmarried women in Egypt. Social scientists consider rising costs as the main reason to blame for the delayed age for marriage, and they even use the term "marriage crises" to describe the situation of late marriage in Egypt. Diane Singerman, a professor of Comparative Politics at American University, uses the term " wait-hood" to describe the marriage situation in Egypt. She states that women used to get married by seventeen or nineteen in the past and men were ready to get married around the same age or even at twenty-five. Currently, the average marriage age for men in Egypt is thirty-one. Singerman estimates the cost of marriage at eleven times the annual household expenditure per capita. As economic reasons make it hard for couples to marry, women take the brunt of this delay. Ghada is such an example, but she took advantage of the digital age and empowered herself by blogging about her situation. Not only has she established herself as a great social commentator, but she reached out to millions of unmarried women and helped them deal with the social stigma they face.

This Ramadan, after reading the book, I watched I Want to Get Married! as a TV series and today, I will also get the chance to read the book in English as well.

Written by: Reem Abbas Shawkat, October 14th 2010

The Romantics

caitlin — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Galt Niederhoffer

Paramount

Walking in to watch The Romantics, I feared it might be a movie that relies on star power to get by. Valentine’s Day is what came to mind, and even though the level of celebrity of the stars of The Romantics isn’t exactly the same (Katie Holmes and Anna Paquin aren’t quite Julia Roberts and Jessica Alba), I was nonetheless worried. As it turns out, I didn’t have much to worry about on that front, though I still struggled a bit with this movie.

The Romantics is about a group of college friends who got this nickname because of, in the words of Katie Holmes’ character, their “incestuous” dating history. At the center of this group are Laura (Katie Holmes) and Lila (Anna Paquin), who were roommates and best friends. The group has reunited for Lila’s wedding, with Laura as her maid of honor. The problem is that Lila is marrying the one man Laura loves, Tom (Josh Duhamel). Everyone – the Romantics, Lila’s family, and even Lila herself – knows that Laura’s still in love with Tom.

I want to start by saying that the main thing I didn’t like about this movie is the sense that it is trying too hard. The characters are completely unlikable, references to their days as undergrads seem forced, and the ending is somewhat unsatisfying. Any of these things on their own would simply make this a different kind of movie, but all of them together gave me the impression that the film is trying to be different, which I don’t generally like. As I thought about the film moments, even hours, after, I was disappointed.

But for some reason, I got over it. When I looked back on the film the next day, I realized that it didn’t matter if it tries too hard, because it's still very refreshing.

The characters are unlikable, but they’re also familiar. I may not be best friends with the girl who's with a guy she knows doesn’t want to be with her, but I’ve certainly known that girl. I also know the couple that just can’t make it work, no matter how much they seem right for each other.

And while my friends and I don’t constantly start sentences with, “Remember that English paper junior year,” we do randomly bring up our all-nighters or the class that kicked all of our butts. It isn’t farfetched to think that if we all got together and were reminiscing, these memories would come to us much more quickly.

So maybe the film is trying too hard, but the fact is that I still really enjoyed it. The acting was great, and the main characters had very good chemistry as an ensemble. There were some uncomfortable moments, some sad moments, and some really funny moments. Then there was the music, which I completely loved and was carefully weaved through the film to help tell the story.

In the end, I was pleasantly surprised and looked back at The Romantics as a good story told by the right people in just the right way.

Written by: frau sally benz, September 26th 2010

Adrift (Choi Voi)

admin — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 01:00:00 +0000

Directed by Bùi Thạc Chuyên

Global Film Initiative

At last year's Venice Film Festival, Adrift won the FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) Prize. With its lush scenery, layered characters, and startling soundtrack, it’s not hard to see why the film stood out to an international panel of jurors.

The film is in Vietnamese with English subtitles and is set in various Vietnamese locales, including Hanoi, Quang Ninh, and Hoi An. Jam-packed streets filled with tiny tuk-tuks and motorcycles are juxtaposed with lonely, gorgeous beach campfires at sunset. The sights and sounds of Vietnam play a large role in the film, but the characters and their ambiguous, conflicted emotions take center stage.

Our female protagonist Duyen (Do Thi Hai Yen) is a beautiful and happy newlywed. She admits to her friend Cam (Linh- Dan Pham) that she is content to have “settled” on a life that makes her happy. Cam is unable to hide the myriad of negative emotions that she feels in response to Duyen’s union with Hai (Duy Khoa Nguyen), a boyish cab driver. Cam’s physical expressions paired with her vague verbal musings make it hard for a viewer to discern the root of her negativity. Is it because she is ill? Jealous?

Tho (Johnny Tri Nguyen) is introduced when Duyen makes a delivery to him as a favor to Cam. The relationship that ensues between Tho and Duyen is chaotic, lovely, and not quite right. Likewise, Hai embarks on a friendship with a young neighbor that blurs the line between right and wrong, appropriate and inappropriate. In both cases, there is a power dynamic at play, in which the female has been or could be victimized by one or multiple men. Cam seems to be exempt from this rule, as her character straddles the continuum of masculinity and femininity.

If you are seeking clarity, tidy conclusions, or even an a-ha moment, Adrift may leave you disappointed. Feel like spending the afternoon in a rain-soaked relationship kaleidoscope? Then this is the film for you.

Written by: Rachel Muzika Scheib, August 14th 2010

Whom Not to Marry: Time-Tested Advice from a Higher Authority

admin — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Father Pat Connor

Hyperion

After reading Whom Not to Marry by Father Pat Connor, a Catholic priest, I contemplated the different ways to approach this review. I could discuss the practical aspects of this book, but Maureen Dowd already addressed this in a July 6, 2008 op-ed in the New York Times. I could parody Whom Not to Marry, but Father Connor seems so earnest and well-meaning I couldn’t mock him in good conscience (and I’m not even Catholic). I could take a liberal stance and point out that this book is heteronormative, patriarchal, and antiquated. However, I’m much less offended by this instruction manual than I am by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider’s The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right. Connor at least encourages women to find someone who treats them with respect and kindness, rather than giving lessons on how to seduce men by playing hard to get.

Whom Not to Marry is based on Connor’s lecture that he shares with audiences of young women. He structures the book around 1 Corinthians 13:4-13, from the Bible: “Love is patient, love is kind...” If you’ve ever attended an American or Christian wedding, you’ve certainly heard this read, usually by a relative. I don’t want to be dismissive and say this is cliched, but Connor is certainly not introducing a new idea. Not to mention the fact that as a Catholic priest Connor has never been married himself, but gleans his experience from premarital counseling and presiding over ceremonies.

Full disclosure: I’m married and believe everyone should have the right to marry. At the same time, I respect that there are many people opposed to the institution of marriage. To enter into marriage should be an individual choice. This is the fundamental weakness of Whom Not to Marry. It assumes every woman wants to marry a man.

Another weakness of the book is that Connor does not criticize the institution of marriage, or at least the wedding industry in the U.S. I would never expect him to violate the tenets of his religion, but the book doesn’t account for social context. In many ways this book is ahistorical, and attributes failed marriages to women’s bad judgment, rather than considering the social pressure to marry quickly, traditionally, and with spectacle.

I don’t think I would actually recommend Father Connor’s Whom Not to Marry to anyone that I know. It’s very reminiscent of Good Housekeeping relationship advice columns that my grandmother may have clipped. Sweet and with the best intentions, but predictable and naïve.

Written by: Claire Burrows, June 27th 2010

If You Like It Then You Should Be Able to Put A Ring On It

admin — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Directed by Cara Holmes, Ciara Kennedy

Adorable, DIY-style animation and quirky music start off this excellent and important film about marriage equality in Ireland. Cara Holmes and Ciara Kennedy cut and paste stories, images, protests, and facts into a clever, witty, and purposeful narrative.

Voice-overs and interviews are illustrated and screened, intercut or overlaid upon footage from rallies, photo montages, and title cards (which have a very on-trend hand-drawn look). These touches make the film more accessible and adhere to the filmmakers’ established aesthetic. I really respect the directors’ decision to use this style–it actually underscores the gravity of the issue. It’s a very watchable, warm, and likeable documentary, and will have wide appeal.

Full disclosure: I met Cara when we were both booked at Ladyfest Berlin a few years ago, and her band wrote a song about my zine. A couple of years after that, we were both on the bill at Ladyfest Cork, which became the hen do before my UK civil partnership with my wife Sarah. Sarah and I actually staged a mock wedding as part of our comedy show at the festival, using vows rewritten to address the illegality of our marriage in Ireland. We met with MarriagEquality, who were tabling at Ladyfest, and took badges back for our friends to wear while preparing for our ceremony in the UK. We knew some bills were being proposed, and things were looking pretty good in Ireland at the time–like this issue was moving ahead.

When I saw If You Like It Then You Should Be Able To Put A Ring On It mentioned on a friend’s Facebook page, I immediately recognised Cara’s name and followed the link to the film. I felt really frustrated as I began watching; Ireland seems to have come no closer to legal and financial equality for queer couples who wish to marry.

Here’s a quote from one of the on-screen title sequences early on in the film:

In 2005, it was argued before the High Court that Katherine and Ann Louise had a constitutional right to equality: a right to marry, property rights, and family rights. They also argued that the failure to recognise their marriage breached their rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. To date their marriage is still not recognised. On Feb 23, 2007 the case was appealed to the Supreme Court. There is no known timeframe for the Supreme Court hearing.

If You Like It... goes on to introduce couples who’ve married elsewhere, shows footage from protests and rallies (including some awesome placards!), interviews representatives from several marriage rights organisations, and manages the difficult task of presenting different viewpoints (civil partnership as a stepping stone to full equality vs. ‘separate but equal’ compromise) toward a common purpose remarkably well. It also puts the campaign into the larger context of queer rights around the world generally, and provides links in the credits to the organisations and artists who contributed to the film.

The pace of the film is quite inspiring–it builds to a climax that offers hope to the queer community, and should galvanise new allies into action. In the end, I was heartened by both the message and its style of delivery.

The case mentioned above is still pending, and a civil partnership bill is working its way through the Irish government, but it’s a slow process. Major props to Holmes and Kennedy for helping speed things along with this outstanding short film.

Written by: Chella Quint, June 26th 2010

I Am Love

admin — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Luca Guadagnino

Mikado Film

The story is simple—and familiar, at least to feminists: years after being plucked from her home, stripped of her individuality, and thrust into a loveless marriage, a woman is shocked back to life and inspired to flee. But from A Doll's House to Titanic, it's not so much about the story itself as it is about how it's told. The "doll" of I Am Love is Emma Recchi (Tilda Swinton), a Milanese transplant who, upon arriving from Russia years before, inherited both a husband and the wealth of his prosperous family business. Being the matriarch-in-waiting of the elite Recchi clan is a privilege for Emma, complete with a sprawling mansion and a slew of servants, but one that comes with the price of a stifling lack of privacy, not to mention the complete loss of her identity.

Of course, it's not clear that all this is going on in the film, at least not at first. The way director Luca Guadagnino decides to approach Emma's story is the opposite of obvious, even experimental at times. For the first twenty minutes or so, it's not even clear that it's Emma's story, as the camera maintains a cold detachment from everyone, even allowing objects to partially obstruct its view, like a hidden surveillance. As the Recchi clan gathers around the dining room table for a formal dinner, Emma fades into the background, almost more so than the family's servants. Then, after Emma meets her son's friend and potential chef Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini), a seemingly innocuous introduction, Guadagnino starts to ease us closer and closer to her, finally arriving at a crescendo of close-ups when she samples his food for the first time. The meeting of Antonio, who will soon become her lover, and the way it is shot, beautifully marks Emma's transition from a sterile, colorless life to something brighter, more vibrant, and more immediate.

Emma and Antonio's scenes together are a sensory assault, the robust, invasive music and the sounds of nature rising in counterpoint to a similar crescendo at Emma's most dramatic revelations. Their first kiss is impressionistic, and their love scenes are experiential rather than voyeuristic. While revealing, they are not graphic or gratuitous but sensual and deeply erotic. (Afterward, my friend remarked that Hollywood could take a couple of pointers from Guadagnino on how to shoot sex.)

I Am Love is terribly rich, and not just for its style. Although it is Emma's story, there is so much more going on in the film. Emma's children provide interesting foils for her: daughter Betta (Alba Rohrwacher) is following her heart into the arms of another woman, while son Edo (Flavio Parenti) is about to enter a marriage based mostly on sex. It is fascinating to realize, as the film progresses, just how much of their spontaneity and spirit was inherited from their mother.

In stories such as these, and throughout film history, the unfaithful woman is typically punished for her infidelity. When an unexpected tragedy befalls the Recchis at the height of Emma's affair, it seems that this will be her fate as well. Interestingly though, she takes this devastation as an almost needed inspiration to follow her heart and abandon her marriage.

I Am Love is certainly an experience. The director and cast are so deeply committed to inhabiting the film's world and telling its story that you can't help but get pulled right in with them. Like the best films, it makes you feel like you've been somewhere, or at least been through something, and it takes a while after the credits have rolled to readjust your eyes and return to the real world.

Written by: Caitlin Graham, June 25th 2010

Le Code a Changé

admin — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Directed by Danièle Thompson

IFC Films

The French comedy of manners conjures up for me, an Anglophone, a bitchy Restoration drama rather than Molière. Jean Renoir’s heavy 1939 film The Rules of the Game, the iconic update of the genre, greatly dilutes the comic elements. Now, Le Code a Changé (Change of Plans) offers a lighter brew with only a dash of melancholy. The aristocracy is replaced by the bourgeoisie, the country house and servants disappear as a more modest yet comfortable life appears, a weekend becomes a dinner party, and women (and men) have real jobs. Nobody gets murdered, though there is an “accident” and a death from cancer. Importantly, the central characters—and there are quite a few of them—emerge relatively unscathed, as do the “rules” underlying the genre. In short, as director Danièle Thompson wished, I went away happy.

Because I tend to upend rules rather than deftly observing them, life has taken me, thankfully, to almost as few dinner parties as on full-fledged dates. This film might change my mind, since this dinner party includes a surreptitious kiss by the bathroom door rather than a strained date. A dinner has functioned before as a plot device for getting things moving (think David Hare’s Wetherby). In the current film, the characters knew each other at school and do not roll around on a stair landing, at least not on camera. Here, the dinner sets off quite a display of romantic fireworks, though miraculously only one divorce.

ML, a high-powered divorce lawyer, has people over partly to show off her new kitchen. Six of her guests are married couples, and her sister and the sister’s older co-worker are another, though ML doesn’t know it. Besides the kitchen designer, the other single guest is ML’s flamenco dance instructor, invited at the last minute because ML is down a woman. (No gay couples at this soiree.)

During the year after the dinner, ML’s unemployed husband—who makes bigos, a Polish meat stew, for the meal—starts working with the kitchen designer. A gynecologist-oncologist couple is headed toward the marital rocks way before the get-together. The wife is already having an affair and her irritation with her Jewish husband, the archetypal mensch, takes an ethnic turn in a conversation with the host, who drives her home from the party. Lucas, another attorney, who has driven his wife to dysfunction, comes to the party to recruit ML into his firm to beef up its divorce practice, and ends up “changing plans” for the good of all.

Some viewers will take away the message that innate humanity that can still emerge in capitalist relations, traditional marriage, and the economy’s privileged class, here more professional and managerial than haut. For me, the fun of this film comes from guessing which of the relationships survive and how this comes to pass. Just enjoy the mash up of professional discretion, romantic relationships, white lies, and intergenerational conflict.

I could have done with less self-referential film industry stuff—Roman Polanski’s recipe for bigos appears in the film credits. The film’s director, daughter of film director Gérard Oury and actress Jacqueline Roma, wrote the screenplay with her son Christopher Thompson (who plays Lucas), so maybe they are entitled. And, the film fulfills the critic Kenneth Burke’s criteria for the “comic frame,” which tells the viewer: “What he should try to get, how he should try to get it, and how he should ‘resign himself’ to a renunciation of the things he can’t get.”

Written by: Frances Chapman, June 13th 2010

Half Life

admin — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Roopa Farooki

St. Martin's Press

Love stories aren’t really my thing, but Roopa Farooki’s newest novel, Half Life, shows many shades of love in a way that warms the heart, wets the eye, and expands the mind. The book opens with Aruna Ahmed Jones’ seemingly crazy and impulsive decision to leave her year-old marriage. She does this quite literally by stopping mid-breakfast, throwing on a light jacket, and making her way through the Tube to London’s Heathrow International Airport where she hops the next plane to her hometown of Kuala Lumpur, and back into the arms of lifelong friend and ex-lover Jazz Ahsan. We soon learn that two years ago Aruna left Jazz in a similarly rushed and unexplained exit, and the story progresses by attempting to resolve the characters’ (and reader’s) unanswered questions about her ostensibly hasty retreats.

To go into any depth about the somewhat unsettling plot would be to reveal too much; indeed, I recommend the reader skip even the publisher’s description on the front cover flap and dive headfirst into chapter one. The core of this story revolves around the destructive nature of family secrets and the reparative qualities of truth. Half Life is full of subtle yet astute observations about the personal and social functions of one’s identity as a person of a particular class, gender, nationality, and mental health status—and exemplifies how all are historically and geographically situated. Without being too obtuse or heavy-handed, the story is, ultimately, about finding one’s authentic self while avoiding being a detriment to those one cares for deeply.

Language makes the ordinary extraordinary, and Farooki’s gift is in the ease with which she perfectly captures the complexity of a moment with a casual, pithy description. Literary hat tips are littered throughout with tender references to such masterful figures as the Bengali polymath Rabindranath Tagore, British poet Wilfred Owen, and Jacobean dramatist John Ford—all of whose influences can be readily felt while turning the book’s pages. Farooki is obviously a thoughtful writer, and the story is executed with well-planned precision. Half Life is penned in a visceral style similar to that of Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies or Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows. Farooki’s witty wordplay constructs a melancholy emotionality that mirrors the interplay between the main characters. The ubiquitous sense of suspense maintains reader’s interest even after the elements of surprise are effortlessly divulged.

Half Life is a substantive beach read that is engaging as it is accessible. But be sure to slather on the sunscreen or find a cozy spot in the shade before cracking the spine. You might just find you’re unable to put this book down once you pick it up.

Cross-posted at VenusZine

Written by: Mandy Van Deven, June 6th 2010