Category Archives: romance

From 2001, Y tu mama tambien is a critically acclaimed movie made in Mexico by Alfonso Cuaron (who is directing the next Harry Potter film) about two teenage boys and a slightly older woman who learn about life, love and themselves in the course of a trip to an isolated beach. Very tittilating movie mining wellworn territory.

Frankly I don’t understand why this film was so well received (such as an Oscar nomination for Best Writing that Cuaron shared with his brother) but perhaps it was the pseudo-innocent sexuality swirled with mixed-high left wing politics. The film opens with one of the boys and his girlfriend, naked and tossing together in bed, followed by the other boy sneaking in some last-minute sex with his own chickie before the two girls fly off for a Summer holiday in Italy. And the Cuaron brothers throw in more physicality about any chance they get. Meanwhile, there is talk of political corruption, protests and economic disparity combined with classism around every bend.

Not recommended

Bret Easton Ellis writes novels that focus on the charismatic sociopath searching for an emotional connection. His first book, Less Than Zero, was a blast when I read it, like a much more real version of the movie crap Hollywood was putting out in the mid-’80s. But his stories work much better on the page than on the screen and The Rules of Attraction is no exception.

Roger Avary (Killing Zoe) writes and directs, trying to make something artful and eclectic out of something that doesn’t really have a plot; in fact, he’s going to have an even more difficult time with Ellis’ recent novel Glamorama, which he’s making now. Avary tries to use non-traditional techniques like running film backwards to connect the three main characters to each other, as well as quite a bit of voiceover, and wrapping the film in a flashback without letting the audience know what they’ve seen is the denoument. So I watched the whole film thinking that the first few minutes were actually the story’s beginning.

James Van Der Beek plays the semi-lead character, Sean, who tells us at the beginning that he’s an emotional vampire. Shannyn Sossamon is a fellow student, Lauren, who’s caught Sean’s eye but is only interested in the missing Victor. Ian Somerhalder plays a student named Paul just coming into his own homosexuality who also wants Sean in his bed. Sean thinks Lauren has been sending him unsigned love letters–though she hasn’t, the letters come from another–and Sean somehow sees her as an innocent, uncorrupted spirit, something he’s apparently never been. The truth, as with the letters, is quite different as we see Lauren submit to drunken sex, smoke pot and go down on a TA to help her grade and snort coke with her roommate.

In fact, in place of a plot Avary mainly shows us scenes of drug and alcohol consumption, foreplay and sex (though nothing more explicit than bare breasts get onscreen) and a bit of rudeness and violence. The result is a pretty but empty mishmash.

Sadly, not recommended

Trying compete with the production might of HBO has not been easy for the executives at Showtime. Since they seem to have fairly similar subscriber counts (AFAIK, of course), they ought to have similar monies available, but then again HBO is part of AOL Time Warner and Showtime is owned by Viacom, so the difference may be corporate philosophies. Showtime is trying to pick up the pace lately, while also differentiating itself from HBO with more adult-oriented material, so perhaps in a few years they difference will be minimal.

Last night we watched two original films on the #2 cabler, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone and Our Town, both filmed versions of classic stage plays. Each is produced quite often on stage and have been filmed numerous times before, of course, so I’m always curious to understand why someone chooses to do so again. The reason for shooting Our Town was quite obvious: any chance to get some proprietary Paul Newman is worth doing. How much could it have cost to just set some cameras up in front of a stage play where the drama was being staged anyway?

The rationale for Roman Spring is not so easy to uncover but I chalk it up to HBO envy–just look at the movie they’re premiering tonight! A movie with an older star set in Italy, just to make the connection explicit. But I’m surely making too much of this, given the long cycles of decision making and production.

Our Town is primordial drama, written by Thornton Wilder and first produced back in 1938, where small events, a few days in the lives of small people in a small town, are used to scrutinize the largest meanings of life. The late ’30s were a time when, as a friend pointed out today, so many intellectuals were attempting to absorb the messages of Nietzsche and Wilder certainly was trying to do so in an American context. In other words, lump this play in with current megahit Matrix Reloaded as fiction attempting to pull the covers off the bed of existance. without all the cool technology and special effects, of course.

Newman plays the Stage Manager, the central role which narrates the play, providing glue material and enough interpretation to ensure that no viewer misses the core message: savor life’s little pleasures before it’s too late. The production, not surprisingly, is filled with name actors: Lorraine Newman, Jeffrey DeMunn, Frank Converse, and Jake Converse; actor James Naughton directed.

Viewing note: Don’t worry if you don’t have Showtime, since this is a Masterpiece Theater co-production and will be seen on that PBS series in August.

Recommended: I watched it because it’s been years since I saw a serious production of the play and, well, Newman is a great actor and I’ll almost always watch anything he’s in.

The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone was originally written as a novel in 1950 by Tenessee Williams, after Greta Garbo declined his entreaty to use it as a starring vehicle, then later transformed into a play; the original Broadway production starred Vivian Leigh as Stone, an actress who’s passed that certain age, and Warren Beatty as Paolo, the proud but poor Italian count who services rich American widows in post-WWII Rome.

In this version, shot as a film unlike Our Town, Helen Mirren plays the woman past her prime but not past her pride and Olivier Martinez (the hottie who disrupted Diane Lane’s marriage to Richard Gere in last year’s Unfaithful) as the marcetta (Italian for gigolo). Mirren is a good match for the role, as the wrinkles and changes wrought in her face by Time make the contrast with oh so pretty Martinez as well as her own misgivings absolutely explicit. She struggles with the turn in her fortune–her rich, adoring husband dies early on–and is stalked (or so we would call it today) by a character known only as The Young Man throughout. Finally, Stone’s pitiful existence cannot sustain whatever attraction she once had, Martinez moves on to a more tempting target, and Stone surrenders to The Young Man. I didn’t draw the connection, but another reviewer says that The Young Man is William’s symbol of Death; the movie ends semi-ambiguously with Stone embracing him.

Can’t really recommend this as the best use of two hours of lifespan