dir. Lukas Moodysson
USA, 2009
Stars Michelle Williams and Gael Garcia Bernal.
This film appeared as if Moodysson had been given themes - sex trafficing, Western economic imperialism/exploitation, banality of consumerism, lack of family/time etc - and had a bit of a freak out and clumsily put them together. This film was BAD, but there were moments of accidental (and totally not down to Moodysson's choices, I don't think) power - like the cut from Williams opening the garage-sized fridge in her SoHo loft to the tiny Phillipines kitchen of her nanny's family. That is a vulgar fact and maybe actually was helped by its communication in the clumsy vulgar way that Moodysson does it - to make it subtle is to misunderstand the very nature of the thing you are trying to communicate, which is quite possibly the least subtle, most vulgar thing possible: people have a lot and others have not much at all.
The film was full of these moments, making it a very strange proposition indeed. It really was BAD, don't get me wrong, but it was bad in a very, VERY odd way. The weird spiritualistic mammoth/elephant metaphor running through it, complete with ominous-sounding droney music; the first cut to the nanny's boys growing up in the Phillipines, when you realised that as well as a semi-Lost in Translation it was also a semi-Babel; the bemusing choice of Williams' character's profession (a ER doctor) when the seeming point of this couple's existence in the film was to show the vacuousness of Western life. The strange non-relationship that Williams' and Bernal's characters had - no amount of time was spent establishing what it was like, so one got the impression it wasn't that bad not that good either, and one wondered that in a better film this relationship would have been fleshed out more but also maybe in the process too-determined, too causal, too subtle, really, thus making it less realistic, that maybe the point of this relationship was that it was not "in crisis" nor "perfect".
Perhaps "not subtle, but in which clumsiness performs the same functions as subtle" would be a good way to describe this odd film. Perhaps not. Either way, Lilya 4-Ever is MUCH better.
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
All the films I see. And barely much more than that.
Me
- Mark
- I am writing a PhD at the University of Glasgow entitled "The Poetics of Time in Contemporary Literature". My writing has been published in Type Review, Dancehall, Puffin Review and TheState. I review books for Gutter and The List. I am also an editor and reviewer at the Glasgow Review of Books.
1 comment:
hehe, interesting that lots that you didn't like about this film i liked.
It's a while since i saw it, but for me it was predominantly about mothers trying to do the right thing, Whether they were leaving their children for financial reasons (entering the sex industry or moving to the other side of the world to nanny), or to provide necessary medical care for others.
The fact that Williams was a surgeon was crucial to this, and the part of the story that took place in the hospital served to explain/excuse her need for a nanny. I think few other jobs would be more convincing in that respect, and, for me at least, this made the role of these women much more relatable, as -in terms of this film's audience- Williams' position is more relatable than leaving your kid for entirely financial reasons.
The fact that the couple wasn't in crisis was really important for this aspect too, and I liked that you had to create the relationship between the two of them yourself, and were therefore able to adapt their story to fit your own. I don't think they were intended to be entirely vacuous. Bernal's character was dealing the conflict/confusion around trying to pursue something you care about within the financial system, and how, despite trying to distance yourself from that consumerism, you don't always have the tools to, and may just fall back in to another segment of it.
Was Lilya4ever better? i think it's an odd comparison to make. Lilya was about an entirely different thing - it was one character surrounded by people acting in entirely inhuman ways for inexplicable reasons. This is more about elaborating on how people who feel like they're making ethical choices can end up participating in horrible things.
Post a Comment