When a Man Negs a Woman

Movies: The Souvenir

Joanna Hogg's coming-of-age drama The Souvenir is a strange, quiet movie. I saw the preview some months ago and was intrigued even though I couldn't figure out what the movie was supposed to be about other than a tumultuous relationship between a young man and woman.

And it is about that, albeit with a twist (which will be revealed below, so spoiler alert). But it is also about a young woman, Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne--Tilda Swinton's daughter), who is emerging from a cocoon of privilege and severe naivete´ and blossoming into an artist.

The time period of The Souvenir is the early 1980s in England. Julie is in film school and being supported by her rich parents (real-life mom Tilda Swinton plays Julie's mom). She meets Anthony (Tom Burke) at a party and the two start meeting regularly for lunch and champagne. Anthony is the ultimate rich, arrogant preppie. He wears Tucker Carlson bowties and slyly undermines Julie's ambitions and opinions. But he hides a pretty intense secret of his own.

During a dinner at home with a pair of mutual friends, when Anthony is in another room, Julie's friend casually calls Anthony a "habitual heroin user" as he is puzzling out how Julie and Anthony know each other. Julie is struck silent, and this revelation informs the rest of the events of the movie, especially when Julie comes home to find all of her jewelry and film equipment missing and Anthony claiming that they were robbed. Her willingness to believe him is both cringeworthy and understandable. A 24 year old girl in love is going to hard-pressed to believe that not only would her boyfriend steal all her shit to feed his drug habit, but that he would do so and then lie so blatantly to her, as if she's that stupid. It's almost less insulting to her intelligence to believe him.

And so The Souvenir goes. Anthony acts like an ass while denying his drug problem, then can't hide it, then disappears, then reappears claiming he is fine, then relapses. All while Julie is puzzling out film school and what filmmaking means to her.

Words I could use to describe this film are "frustrating", "insufferable", "pretentious", "repetitive", and "boring". But despite its difficulties and almost stubborn unwillingness to be a likable or accessible film, I admired it because it was honest about how relationships really work. It's also honest about the human ability to lie to ourselves and others. Julie isn't foolish and she isn't weak, she's simply inexperienced. And because of that inexperience, she lets herself be influenced by a man who is arrogant and attractive in his arrogance. I have been Julie. I have been a young woman who is attracted to art, beauty, and arrogant men. Haven't we all been Julie, to some degree or another?

The inevitable conclusion of The Souvenir is almost annoying in it's clean resolution. Julie is free of Anthony and able to fully pursue her work, all the more wise for having had a borderline emotionally abusive relationship. And while that is what I wanted for her character, it's too neat a resolution for all the messiness and pent-up emotions that came before it. The Souvenir might be the most British film I've ever watched: despite everything--the drugs, the stealing, the sex, the fights--there is never truly an explosion of emotions. Maybe that's one benefit American have over the English: we're willing to scream and cry when it is warranted.

The Souvenir is like a museum: beautiful, curated, clean, elegant, and ultimately cold and frictionless. It's an imperfect, yet poignant film that feels like it only scratches the surface of a more interesting film lying underneath.

Grade: C

The Bitch is Back

Movies: Rocketman

When I first saw the preview for Rocketman, I thought "well, this movie is going to be embarrassing." Biopics, especially musical biopics, seem to be a devilishly difficult genre of film to get right. They either lionize the subject of the film too much and/or white wash the person's more nasty parts, or they try to cram too much of the person's life into two hours and thus feel like a Wikipedia article adapted into a movie. I'm not sure why I was so skeptical of Rocketman at first--maybe just the title alone made me groan a bit.

Well, I was wrong. Rocketman, which blends the genres of biopic and musical pretty seamlessly, was a delight and a joy to watch. While not perfect, it goes right more often than it goes wrong and actually got me close to tears in the final scenes.

Rocketman traces the rise of a shy, musically-inclined boy named Reginald Dwight as he blossoms into the campy, glam-y butterfly we now know as Sir Elton John. Beginning at a critical point in John's life--when he entered rehab in the late 80s--the film uses a recovery meeting as the frame for John telling his own story (through song and dance!) up until that point. I loved that the film doesn't use John's songs in chronological order, but rather by how well they tell the story of the artist's life. For example, the 1990s song "I Want Love" is used to show how various members of John's family were deeply repressed and unhappy: John's father was distant and disdainful of his son's "softer" traits. His mother was more interested in fashion magazine and martinis than in raising her son. Only John's grandmother seemed to understand his unusual gift of being able to memorize music by ear and play it perfectly on the piano.

And so shy, soft Reggie Dwight grows into shy, soft early-20s Reggie Dwight who decides he wants to play rock and roll and changes his name to Elton John. Taron Egerton, the rising star from the Kingsman movie, plays John and captures the musician's deep hunger to be loved and to be seen and accepted for who he really is. And it's that vulnerability that both helps John--especially in his longtime partnership and friendship with lyrics writer Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell)--and hurts him.

After Taupin and John, working under the management of Ray Williams, hit it big in the United States, John meets John Reid (played by Robb Stark Richard Madden, with a domineering intensity that is as scary as it is sexy), a music manager who eyes John like a cat eying a mouse. The two have immediate chemistry and begin a relationship, which you can tell from the get-go is not going to be good for the barely out of the closet (and apparently a virgin when he met John Reid) Elton John. Indeed, Reid convinces John to break his contract with Ray Williams and work under the management of Reid instead, which allows Reid more control over John's work (which is shooting off like, well, a rocket) AND personal life (increasingly filled with drugs, partying, and insane material wealth). The underlying message of the film is that John just wanted to be loved, but was taken advantage of by a manipulative (and, the movie suggests, physically violent) man and this lead to John's descent into drugs and "fucking half of LA", as he tells his mother at a very uncomfortable dinner.

The musical sequences that tell Elton John's story are dazzling, outrageous, and fun--and deeply moving at times. During a scene at the Troubador nightclub in Los Angeles, the audience actually lifts off the ground as John plays an exuberant rendition of "Crocodile Rock". During the height of John and Reid's relationship, Egerton and Madden sing a slick, campy rendition of "Honky Cat" that is one of the gayest things I've ever seen (that's a high compliment, btw). During John's "rock bottom" scene, he literally dives into a pile of humans and bodysurfs along a slithering mass of sexy flesh while singing "Bennie and Jets".

I've seen some reviews that ask the question "Is Rocketman queer enough?" Apparently, the film's one sex scene is a big deal (they do it face to face --I guess straight people think gay men only fuck doggy style??), especially compared to the PG-13 Bohemian Rhapsody. But some reviews have suggested that Rocketman takes the route of painting Elton John as a flamboyant, strange artist who just happens to be queer instead of revealing how queerness itself informed John's art. I don't really see a difference in Rocketman. Personally, I thought the film hit the sweet spot of reminding the audience that Elton John is gay and that is a huge part of his identity, art, and choices he made in life, but not focusing *entirely* on his queerness and sex life. In any case, between the hot/scary chemistry between Egerton and Madden, the over-the-top costumes, and the orgasmic bliss of the eye-popping musical numbers, Rocketman is gay as hell. And I love gay as hell movies.

Though Rocketman has a few cheesy scenes, I still found myself deeply moved. Maybe I just saw the movie on the right day at the right time, but even the scene where John's younger self asks grown-up John "when will you hug me?", echoing an earlier scene where young Reggie Dwight asks his neglectful father the same question, only to be told "don't be soft", threatened to make me cry (I rarely cry during movies, so even getting close to crying means the movie gave me FEELS). There was something so earnest, so humane, and so willing to be vulnerable about the film that you can't help but feel your heartstrings getting tugged. And I left the theatre with a sense of joy and happiness that I haven't felt after watching a movie in a long time.

So, long story short, go see Rocketman. It's fun, dazzling, sexy, and warmhearted--much like the artist himself.

Grade: A-