Shopgirl (Tucker, 2005)

If this makes any sense, Shopgirl is a movie I love a lot more than I like. The film gently tugged at my kindred heart, but like its characters, it is too clunky and awkward for its own good.

At the heart of the film is Mirabelle, a painfully shy girl working at Saks’ glove counter. Simultaneously courted by a millionaire of distinguished gray hair (Steven Martin) and a slacker no-job (Jason Schwartzman), Mirabelle finds herself in an unfamiliar place—the center of attention. As a love triangle between these three characters, Shopgirl is an unsatisfying story, but Mirabelle, a bud of quiet beauty and extreme shyness, is an exquisitely written and acted portrait of a Vermont fish out of her water in LA. By the end of the film, which is a bit deus ex machina for my tastes but a lovely bookend nonetheless, Mirabelle learns to grow and perhaps even blossom.

There is a fine line between comedy and tragedy, a line that Shopgirl, a film about loneliness, gradually blurs. There are moments of wonderfully realized painful awkwardness, but the film itself has too many unintentional blunders as well. The fancy filters, the intrusive score, the heavy-handed narration, and Anand Tucker’s overdirection threaten to overwhelm the delicate emotional presence of Mirabelle. Shopgirl needs to be stripped of its bells and whistles, baring its bittersweet core—a tender, aching heart.

Fat Girl (Breillat, 2001)

Despite being basked in a golden Mediterranean sun, Catherine Breillat’s Fat Girl is a film devoid of warmth. A cold cynicism chills the film to a frigidity oddly appropriate for a story of two sisters frolicking on a summer vacation. You see, Breillat does not view these dapper, sun-drenched family outings as fun. Like so many other films, this summer vacation represents a sexual awakening, but Fat Girl shreds through the romanticism, leaving a harsh but indelible impression.

Elena, the elder and skinner of the too, is a budding beauty who thinks or has deceived herself into thinking that she’s found love in a caddish Italian college student. Her younger sister Anais, the titular fat girl, is given the unenviable role of sleeping in the same room as Elena loses her virginity, an act the film frames as tantamount to self rape. As for her own virginity, Anais says, “I want my first time to be with a boy I don’t love.”

Anais is a frightening character indeed, a prepubescent Frankenstein in the making. The shocking finale is almost a point of personal triumph for Anais—a sickening yet resonant thought.

Fat Girl, originally titled To My Sister in French, is a look at both the complicated relationship between sisters and the not so complicated relationship between men and women. Breillat actually tones down the sex in this film, but it shocks and provokes nonetheless. Breillat’s reputation as an international provocateur takes no hit with Fat Girl; it is a cold film, but a truly incendiary one.

Surprise! Kicking Samosas Around with Howl's Psychiatrist.

Is it possible that I survived junior year with my sanity intact? End-of-the-year reminiscing sees the past year as a blur and a breeze—words that I never thought I would use to describe junior year. Alas, I have now utterly lost my motivation; simply reading a book now seems like a chore.

The school bus is a rather unfashionable hang-out for most upperclassmen, but lacking both a license and a car, I usually have no other choice. After missing the bus--my final action of junior year--I doubled back to math class to wait for Sue with Olga and Sruthi. Inevitable loitering ensued while, well, everyone else got ready.

Color me surprised when we arrived at Sruthi’s seemingly empty house, but it turned out that her friends are just too good at hiding. Following much jabbering and random outbursts, we finally got settled down to what else? A game of football! The Netherlands and Ivory Coast duked it out in Nuremberg, Germany while a group of junior girls spastically cheered them on in Acton, Massachusetts. Other than passionately rendered screams of “Gooooaaaaal!” and puns of homoerotic innuendo, the discussion somehow also included racial relations and the political ramifications of football. Wha, what? I just want to ogle at my hot guys.

More ogling ensued after the deliciously yummy lunch of Indian food, this time at males equally unavailable. Howl’s Moving Castle was a jumping, fractured narrative with way too many loose ends and strange twists, but who cares when we have Howl? Vain, self-absorbed, temperamental, and impossibly handsome both raven-haired and blonde, Howl is a sexy beast. Gratuitous “nude scene” very yummy indeed.

I suck at playing video games. No further commentary needed, though failure is very fun while it lasts.

After so much couch potatoing, we took it upon ourselves to get some fresh air. An outdoor game of psychiatrist began on a spider-like contraception made to torture toddlers and then moved to a splinterful picnic table. Very sadly, it was my time to go home afterwards.

Sex and the Literary Mind

Vanity Fair (the magazine, not the hefty book that was turned into a frothy movie) is a worthy read, no? If not a worthy read, it is at least a worthy look with all its slick and pretty pictures. The nubile girls in seductive poses certainly nudges at a sexual innuedo that transpires directly into its articles.

Today, I cracked open the latest Vanity Fair to find a lollipop-sucking Lolita seductively glancing over her heart-shaped glasses. Given the content of the article following it, this famous image from Kubrick's Lolita posits the lollipop as something much more explicit. The article was about the history of fellatio.

Of course sex sells. This was probably only the third Vanity Fair article I've read from beginning to end. I usually find the cutesy prose peppered with oblique literary references hard to stomach, but I ate up this article nonetheless. To give credit where it is due, the article poses some interesting questions:

Why is it a blowjob? The proper technique does not involve blowing, but an action similar to what one performs when consuming a lollipop. And why is it a job? As if implying it is a service in exchange for a fee (ie prostitution.) And lastly, why do we say things "suck," when in sexual terms, it should be a high compliment? When we get to the root of things, etyomology is rather fascinating. (Bad pun.)

But Vanity Fair, a magazine that has published naked girls on its cover, finds itself too classy to get into the tawdry details. The tone of the article shifts betweeen scholarly and point-and-giggle, but don't expect to find anything in the vein of "The Ultimate Question Answered: Spit or Swallow." Although I doubt anyone thinks of Philip Roth when they hear "blowjob," the article managse to reference not only that venerable American author, but also Vladmir Nabakov, Leonard Cohen, Don DeLillo's Underworld, the Kumasutra, Leonardo DaVinci, Jack the Ripper, W.H. Auden, Robert Crumb...My head was spinning with the incessant name-dropping. Amazingly, the article spends more time talking about Philip Roth than Deep Throat.

I could never quite figure out the exact readership of Vanity Fair. With its wildly diverging content (from Paris Hilton to the Dalai Lama to Prada), the magazine always seemed a publishing paradox. It sticks one foot in the world of serious journalism and another in the frivolity of celebrity, somehow balancing the two to a measure of class and status in the publishing world.

ETA: Did I really just write an entire post on Vanity Fair and oral sex? And sound incredibly pretentious while at it?Oh my god. I need to find better uses of my time.

Being a Senior: That's Old!

List things to do before I die? Yeah right, I can't think that far ahead. To a student, our lives are measured by academic years, not calendar ones, and sitting at the near end of junior year, I feel a need to put down some thoughts for senior year. Three-fourths of the way through my high school experience, I feel a tinge of nostalgia as the time approaches. Senior year is my last chance; I want to make the most of it.

List of things to do before graduation:

1. GET INTO COLLEGE.

2. WATCH THE ENTIRE OEUVRE OF INGMAR BERGMAN.

3. GO TO PROM.

4. FALL IN LOVE.

5. GET MY FACEBOOK INTO RESPECTABLE SHAPE.