JENKINS: I feel like the first 80–85 minutes or so of the film is the telling of a story where the characters are advancing in age: eight, ten, twelve years of age at a time in each chapter. So we’re rapidly building this portrait. For example, the two longest shots in the film are when Chiron is in the parking lot outside the diner. He pulls up in his car, gets out, puts on his shirt, combs his hair, and then starts walking across the parking lot towards the door. Then there’s the shot of the door’s bell ringing that shifts to a gliding camera shot. It’s a very Hou Hsiao-Hsien–influenced shot that is a camera movement perpendicular to the action in one continuous moment. Then there’s that close-up when Chiron sees Kevin’s face for the first time and then we match it. From that point on the character has been built and now the character has to finally make a choice. He must decide who he is going to be as the film shifts into real time. I think the diner scene really resonates with people because you’ve grown so accustomed to the character advancing through time but now Chiron has to sit there opposite someone who’s actually allowing [him] the space.
The world is always projecting this idea of who a black man is while there is always the performance of black masculinity. You see Chiron dealing with that over the course of the film. Then he walks into Kevin’s home, the diner, and Kevin dominates that space but in a very tender way, a very gentle way. So, you’re right. This is when the cycle of questions begins but they are never asked aggressively and there’s never really a single or direct answer to these questions.
hyo-rin wants in-hye to be her sister sooooooso bad she wants to have grown up with her and learned everything about her as a child and then as she changed in her teen years.......and in-hye wants the same she wants hyo-rin to have been raised by her sister instead as soon as she learns of the parks' deplorable situation she wants to have had hyo-rin with her close and protected all her life, not from poverty, as hyo-rin wishes for her, but from abuse--they each want the other to have the one good thing they were afforded. and they get to plot and scheme and take comfort in each other and dream about running away together :) it's so beautiful
tagged by @v4mpgrrl to post my letterboxd top four yay. find me at reidsroom
I hate movies except when I dont. and these are the magnificent exceptions <3 tagging ummm @ianthewife @loumandivorce @ophthalmotropy @mistressaccost and anyone else that wants to do it plz do + consider yrself tagged <3
movies are so hard bc teaching yourself to love the medium when you didn't grow up with it is a far more painstaking process than people will have you believe. worth it though for better or for worse
it has to be said that the top four on my letterboxd --shadow of a doubt (1943), passing (2021), us (2019), jab we met (2007)--aren't really my specific favorites they're more like. all timers that serve to illustrate the (very narrow) range of my taste. they don't define, merely illustrate lmao so this answer is going to differ
but the definitive list for now goes like this in no particular order. under a cut because this is so long. oh my god it's so long
love and leashes: i love a good sexy romcom but it is so hard to pull off that fucking effortless charming little balance of chemistry conflict and humor in one fell swoop. too short and you fail to convince viewers of the Love. too long and it feels like you're trapping characters for your voyeurism. the pressure on romcoms is particularly hard because they're so underestimated as a genre as far as i can tell--not by the public or marketing and press but by the industry--and not really taken seriously for reasons of misogyny, being less likely to adapt existing ips, etc
none of this has directly anything to do w L&L but it does serve to show just how impressive it is that it pulls off what it does--a bdsm relationship between a man whose gf dumped him for his perverse desires, and his coworker rediscovering her sexual pleasures when he draws up a contract w her to be his dom. he's nice enough but the parts where they show her alone in her room--she lives with her mom--are what hit the hardest. it's an anti kevin can fuck himself because the switch that flips is entirely in the love interest's favor, and our girl falling for him is almost incidental to her delighting in being able to cut down to the marrow of someone like this and have them thank her for it because she did it well. anyway ! ate up the very good movie that is secretary (2002) to me bc regardless of personal preference i do enjoy watching a dom who's a woman far, far, more. it's got a best friend talking herself into an age gap relationship it's got the protagonist pressing her heeled foot into her love interest's back while he begs for more it subverts the battle between vulnerability and comfort by nesting the former in the latter so it creeps up on her, and she has an emma woodhouse moment. perfect movie
jab we met: this one is actually in my letterboxd top four. i can like promise i enjoy more than just romcoms but tbf this is the blueprinttttttt train movie and bella swan depression montage movie and most importantly mutual subsummation movie--i will never get over him singing that there's no more of him left in himself. speaking of which all the songs are incredible. i thought the song format of bollywood put me off it turns out i was just watching all the wrong movies with terrible soundtracks. if you watch one movie on this list let it be this so so good for real.....
la haine: some might say this is recency bias because your narrator watched it yesterday but real tragedyheads know it's got no equal and the second it ends the realization hits you quickly, efficiently. i wrote an unnecessarily long review of this on letterboxd already so here i'll just say i love how they banter...i saw a review that said you can feel the underlying rise of mutual disdain and well i just don't think that's true ! i think all these boys have even when they hate each other is that they love each other, because they understand each other. thats what keeps them together, and what lets them disagree
dogtooth: i have nothing to say this was just a really enjoyable watch and not at all as weird as everyone was making it out to be. creepy, though, of course, to its credit. i always love a story about the oldest daughter waking up and this is among the best of them. movie that makes you go fuck you have to read lacan right now. i actually can't say anything more abt this i have to clock in to my job at the intertext factory....a film worth checking out for the horrors of the family. incest warnings.
passing: for the fifth i struggled between this and shadow of a doubt but yuri wins out rather surprisingly. i think i'll have to rewatch both movies to decide which one i like better, but the gothic double commonality sets me at rest abt the decision. anyway this might be one of those few cases where the movie is more evocative and fluid than the book. the black and white is a great choice, stylistically and thematically meaningful, and every single movement and glance feel so loaded. one of those movies where Nothing Really Happens, until everything does. you know the kind. you've read hill house. that's all there is (relief) vs that's all there is (horror). you know.
