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Ignited by ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’

February 15, 2020 in Art Matters, Feminist Matters, Film Matters, Reviews

What follows is a talk I gave about Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which opened this weekend and which you absolutely must see on a big screen if you love and support contemporary cinema about something besides metaphorical and literal penises.

With its gorgeously textured examination of female desire, creativity and agency, Portrait of a Lady on Fire is one of my favorite films of 2019.

Though it may seem magically out of time and space, it was shot in a never-rehabbed house in Brittany and set in the autumn of 1770—when all that would remain of a moment after it passed was what could be captured by memory and imagination. Witness one of its first scenes, when Marianne, played by Noémie Merlant, leaps fully clothed into the sea to save her canvases while the guys rowing the boat watch impassively (read: uselessly).

This sets the tone for this film, not only in terms of how largely absent men are—this is the last time we see one until nearly the end—but in terms of the female determination that defines this story. Continue Reading →

Little Women, Inner Children

December 10, 2019 in Age Matters, Book Matters, City Matters, Essays, Feminist Matters, Film Matters, Reviews, TV Matters

Yesterday we taped the first episode of Talking Pictures since my back went kablooey (and yes that’s the official medical diagnosis). To celebrate I got it into my head to decorate my head, and so wove into my triple-braided bun pine cones and branches, baby’s breath, and tiny bird. All in all it was an effect that raised more than a few eyebrows among the normally unflappable population of NYC.

Chalk it up to the fact that I was reviewing the most recent iteration of Little Women, which I had approached with great trepidation and from which I had floated with great elation.

There have many, many film, television, and stage adaptations of Louisa May Alcott’s Civil War-set saga about four Massachusetts sisters who are rich in love and poor in cash, but this is the most ravishing and the first that does not betray the intense feminism of its author. Directed by mumblemouth millennial Greta Gerwig (cue my trepidation), it boasts an intensely good cast including Soirse Ronan as stalwart Jo, Meryl Streep mugging to unusually good effect as drolly disapproving Aunt March, Timotheeee Chalomet very right if too slight as Laurie, and Florence Pugh, channeling the authentically big emotions of Midsommar to animate Amy, the most bedazzled and entitled of the March girls. (Laura Dern is too Modern Millie for the Marnie of my dreams, but I’m immune to her Lynchian charms.) Continue Reading →

Welcome to the Fun House

December 5, 2019 in Astro Matters, Cat Lady Matters, Church Matters, City Matters, Essays, Film Matters, Sabboytical

I woke Friday with the words suspended above my head like a cartoon bubble, like a neon sign:

Yesterday was fun.

Which may not sound like the sort of weighty dispatch I typically unpack here but if you’d had a year like I’ve had–and chances are, you have—then such words are a bolt from on high. Life-changing.

Because this Year of 12 Novembers was simply not fun. But it being December—the season of goofy Sagittarius, no less– I’m finally better. Not perfect, mind you, but by middle-age only fools strive for perfection. Fun on the other hand–

Fun is precious indeed. Continue Reading →

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy