Not so long ago, a man I fancied very much hurt my feelings through the grave sin of casual disregard, and I found myself trying not to cry at the exact moment I’d thought I’d be slathering on lipstick. I was crumpled on my bed next to a very pretty dress laid out in anticipation of him taking it off; it was blue and green and generally of a form and function I’d known he would admire. Though I never explicitly buy an article of clothing for one man’s eyes, I’d been happy about the prospect of this dress barreling past his defenses. I should have known better. Recently I’d had a dream in which this manic pixie dream man had been idling beneath a neon sign flashing the words DISASTER THROUGH AMBIVALENCE. That’s more supertext than subtext–neither ambivalent nor ambiguous–but what can I say? Hope is the thing without feathers, or so Emily Dickinson and Woody Allen might have said had they put their heads together. (Perish the thought.) Continue Reading →
Archive | Age Matters
Priggishness as Virtue: ‘A Man Called Ove’
It’s a good thing that “A Man Called Ove,” writer/director Hannes Holm’s Swedish import about an aging widower who finds new reasons to live, wasn’t made in America. Next to hookers with hearts of gold, grumpy senior citizens are Hollywood’s go-to cliché; no fewer than Shirley MacLaine, Christopher Plummer, and Jack Nicholson have been felled by such two-dimensional roles. But Ove is something different – something deeper and more complex. This is partly because, well, he’s Swedish – the Swedes do tortured and deep very well; hello, Ingmar Bergman! – and partly because this character already was so richly formed in the pages of Fredrik Backman’s eponymous international bestseller.
On the topic of what makes a good adaptation, Holm has said:
My task as a director is to, like a thief, steal the story out of the book and make a film of it. So when I began shooting, after I had read it one hundred more times than anyone will ever do, I set it aside to focus on the production.
Whatever he did, it worked. Continue Reading →
Dance Out the Dawn, Eleanor Rigby
I’m not minding how lazy the sun is this time of year. It gives me an excuse to wake a little less aggressively. This morning, I slept until 6:30—nuts in my book—and only rose then because Grace took matters in her own paws and woke me herself. Lest you think she was mean about it, “waking me” means she settled softly into my chest and patted me softly on the cheek. Continue Reading →