SWANN ARLAUD + LETTERBOXD REVIEWS Anatomy Of A Fall (2023)

I've been trying to watch more movies with Swann Arlaud in it so I watched Perdrix last night without knowing anything about the storyline. Definitely one of the strangest movies I've seen and also surprisingly funny. I would say it's worth the watch!

no line in cinema has understood me in the way that “I love you too. but I shouldn’t have married you” from Fantastic Mr Fox has understood me. The idea that she wanted a family and a good, safe life, and she wanted him too. But no matter how hard she loves him, he can’t change. She’s never ever going to be able to get exactly what she wants and her child will always have a complicated relationship with his father and there will be this quiet realisation they have to live with. I love you so much, but this was our mistake. and now we’ve made it theirs too.

everyone talks a lot about suffering and despair as it pertains to Dostoevsky’s work which is totally fair and understandable given the subject matter but I rarely see discussion of how deeply and sacredly tender the end of C&P is. I think there’s a very important lesson to be learned which is that you do not unilaterally get to decide that you are horrid beyond redemption and unworthy of love, no matter what horrible things you’ve done. Sonya and Razumikhin and Dunya do not abandon Rodya as he thinks they should and in fact they uproot their entire lives to make sure there will still be a place for him in the world when he gets out of prison. Other people have free will and they can use that free will to unconditionally love and forgive you and there’s nothing you can do about that, whether you choose to receive it or not so you may as well receive it- even if you feel unworthy. And that is like the very beginning of hope and coming back from the place of no return. Is letting yourself be loved. And letting yourself be loved—- even if you don’t feel that you deserve it—- opens the gateway to experiencing love for others yourself after a prolonged period of cutting yourself off from feeling those feelings of positive regard. It’s a stream that flows both ways. And it doesn’t change any of the horrifying facts about the past. But it makes it possible to begin to live again.

Just finished watching season 2 of Broadchurch. Tbh I lost interest about halfway through, but I wanted to finish it. It was so frustrating to watch. It bothered me that Beth seemed to be so upset at the fact that Mark cheated on her, but not at the fact that HE HIT DANNY. I thought the lawyers might develop some interesting story lines but, unfortunately, they just didn't do it for me. I could've done without the Sandbrook story line or maybe if they changed what happened/who killed the girls it would have been more interesting. Anyway, I did enjoy the first season of Broadchurch! I just wasn't a huge fan of this one. I probably won't watch the last season.

"You and I are perfect for each other. Never believe anything else."

Dark in Dusk In Winter Color Palette Meme Request for @demadogs

Barbie (2023) dir. Greta Gerwig

Fallen Angels (1995) dir. Wong Kar-wai

Ayo Edebiri is special to me because bluntly speaking, every time a young actress of colour blows up in Western media spotlight it's usually a light skinned woman or a biracial person with very Eurocentric features and beauty. It's almost like clockwork every time, and the standards of beauty are carefully upheld by colourism even while maintaining a guise of "diversity". But in Ayo's case, it's really great having a gorgeous and talented dark skinned actress be successful, beloved and hailed as a sapphic icon in a way that does not feel like audience paying lip service or being performative.

Like idk how to articulate but it's just so goddamn rare seeing an actual young dark skinned woc thrive in fandom spaces and in terms of commercial or critical success. I really hope people can learn to accept dark skinned young women in comedies, romances and mainstream show business more often because everywhere in movie and shows fandoms, from edits to fanart to fancasts to *actual* casts are BRIMMING with light complexioned actresses of colour. And dark skinned women are expected to grovel and be grateful for getting those crumbs of representation.

I watched Dear Ex a couple of days ago because it had been recommended in a lot of LGBTQ Taiwanese film lists to me. And it was a good film. But what I found really interesting was how the film’s thesis statement about motherly love is ultimately one I think a lot of queer people, especially queer people who grew up in cultures emphasising filial piety, could find really cathartic.

In the film, there’s a teenage boy who decided to live away from his overbearing mother with a gay man (who was also his dad’s lover; the gay man functions as a sort of stepfather figure to him now since his dad passed away). And as revenge, his mom outed the man to his elderly mother, assuming that it would ruin their relationship (earlier the elderly woman also expressed confusion and admitted to not really ‘getting’ queer relationships too, which supported the assumption). She also spends much of the film helicopter parenting her son. Which her teenage son makes clear that he dislikes.

Later on in the film, mother and son go and see a play that the gay man directed and acted in. The play bombed. But at the very end, the gay man’s elderly mother was there, and gave him a bouquet of flowers and hugged him. The film ends with the teenage boy living with the gay man now, and his mother visiting from time to time. The teenage boy and his mother’s relationship is also shown to have greatly improved.

And I found this interesting, because ultimately, the thesis statement (or at least one interpretation one can derive from it) of the film is about motherly love. Or more specifically, how sometimes a mother can best show her love by stepping aside and allowing her child to live their life according to what they believe is right for them.

And I think this message is something that I think can resonate with a lot of queer people, because I think one of the big pains that a lot of queer people face in their lives is unaccepting families. Families who do expect something out of their child without giving them the freedom to live their life. Especially in a society like Taiwan, where children are very heavily expected to be filial to their parents. To have a film talk about motherly/parental love in such a manner - that the mothers eventually stepped back and allowed their children to be themselves and live their lives - would be very cathartic for a lot of queer people.

Downton Abbey S3E5 demonstrates how a well-written death can affect the audience beyond the screen;

Sybil was a side character for most of the show, but she had her moments to shine, especially during the war when she was working at the hospital, which is pointed out by Thomas when they hear of her death. Thomas's reaction in particular is one that stands out in terms of how well-written the scene is - it would have been easy to have him be cold about the matter, considering his insistence that he doesn't care much about their employers in earlier seasons, or to have a mild reaction of vague sadness at most, but no, Thomas, who was until now always cold and cynical, sobs. He tries to keep up his facade when Anna checks on him, tries to insist that Sybil wouldn't have cared if he had died, only to sob even more when admitting - more to himself than Anna, really - that she would have cared.

It's an especially heartbreaking scene to watch when remembering that the only other times he had previously shown this kind of desperate vulnerability were when he decided to get out of the trenches, after he figured out the scam, and - and! - after the death of Edward Courtenay, an experience he shared with Sybil. The first two can be argued to be selfish, in the roughest terms, as they are about Thomas, but the latter two and the pure grief he displays for both someone he was romantically interested in and someone he pretended not to care about speaks volumes in terms of who Sybil was, and that even after she is dead already. It's fascinating to see the scene in this light, how 'even' someone like Thomas, someone with little regard for the upper class, was touched by Sybil's life and death to such a degree that he will openly show this amount of pain and general emotion over her loss.

Alongside Thomas's, there are other particularly touching moments in this episode as well, of course, with especially the reaction of Daisy - who had been in a bad mood for the entire episode - standing out as one that shows how the news break her away from her jealousy; Mrs. Hughes referring to Sybil as "the kindest being in this house" with this barely contained sadness and, a bit later, hugging Daisy for comfort as well pushes this further, even if Mrs. Hughes has been established as having a bit of a softer side.

All of these small details just in the reactions of the servants show how well this episode and the show as a whole are written in terms of how they handle difficult emotions and especially grief. The reactions of the people around the deceased are always so much more powerful in touching the audience than the actual death itself. Wonderful writing, here the same as with the deaths of Edward, Lavinia and and William.