i am laboring under a terrible curse in which my brain wants to write
a loustat Love in the Afternoon. which is emphatically impossible, not least of all because this film only barely works in its very very very specific misogynistic infantilizing twee moment in history. nothing about it is realistic on every level and the characters are destined for doom after the credits roll. but it has *something*.
mostly i just want the dynamic where louis thinks he has to pretend to be something he’s not in order to get lestat’s distracted (and then very focused and jealous) attention, and louis’s heart is in a very vulnerable position playing this game because he’s stalking/toying with a guy he’s down bad for, but can never let said guy know that he actually cares about him for fear of scaring him off. ….hopefully that makes some kind of sense if you haven’t seen the movie.
but
it’s impossible to write? i need a crack team of experts to write this motherfucker with me. so much of it hinges on louis being 33 AND naive AND inexperienced (i’ve toyed with having him institutionalized for quite some time or smth a la Paul), but the conflict comes down to me wanting louis to have more of an edge. and louis having an edge (he needs that edge!) might break the story. bc writing louis as 50’s audrey hepburn is kinda boring as shit in theory: i love her in that moment, she made it work, but it was very much its own thing. i don’t want to write louis pinned in by misogyny, which is kinda the crux of hepburn’s character’s conflict.
just throwing this out into the ether in case there’s a soul who knows wtf i’m talking about