Philomena is based on the true story of a woman who had a baby out of wedlock and was essentially forced to give the child up for adoption. Many years later she goes looking for her son, and a journalist tags along. The movie stars Judi Dench and Steve Coogan. According to my review, it is a good film. Honestly, I remember very little about it, but I still have the Blu-ray so maybe I should revisit.
The opening scene of The French Lieutenant’s Woman has Meryl Streep dressed in period garb standing on the street of an old village near a great bay. The shot is from far away so the details are difficult to see. A makeup woman touches up Meryl’s face and someone snaps a clapperboard.
Thinking this was supposed to be a period movie I turned to my wife and asked if I had maybe accidentally pressed play on a behind-the-scenes featurette. She hit the menu key on the remote control, but no, I had played the correct thing. This was the movie.
Streep is playing Anna, an actress who is starring in a movie called The French Lieutenant’s Woman. In that film, she plays Sara Woodruff a fallen woman in Victorian times who had an affair with a French Lieutenant and was left by him without marrying her. Anna is having an on-set affair with Mike (Jeremy Irons) who plays Charles Smithson in the movie-within-a-movie. In that movie, he falls in love with Anna.
If that wasn’t confusing enough the movie (I mean the one I watched not the movie-within-a-movie) presents both of these stories – Mike and Anna two actors making The French Lieutenant’s Woman – and Sara and Charles existing within The French Lieutenant’s Woman’s story – as real. Or at least they are filmed realistically. When we are watching the events of the story-within-the-story we don’t catch glimpses of cameramen, the actors never flub a line, etc.
But the film does play with the two timelines. At one point Anna and Mike are rehearsing a scene for their movie. They are dressed in street clothes and are inside a modern house. They go over the scene a couple of times and then suddenly we are transformed into the older storyline – Sara and Charles live out the scene we just watched Mike and Anna rehearse. This type of thing happens several times where one event is doubled in the other timeline.
Based on a book by John Fowles the movie completely makes up the Anna and Mike story. Apparently (for I haven’t read it) the book offers multiple endings and includes a narrator who often intervenes with a personality of his own. The modern story is then the film’s attempt at making that bit of metafiction work cinematically.
It worked for me. Though it took me a little bit to figure out exactly what was happening, once I got into the groove I found it to be a fascinating way to make a film. I enjoyed both stories and the way the enveloped each other.
Both are love stories with the two characters falling for each other though in both cases their love is socially unacceptable (Charles is engaged to another woman and Sara is disgraced/both Anna and Mike are married to other people). The differences in social norms for their time periods make their stories go in different directions and conclude in ways you might not expect.
Streep and Irons are wonderful as you would expect. I could watch Meryl Streep’s face all day long and never grow tired. After watching the film I immediately took the book off my shelf and put it in my “to read” stack.
Originally written on September 20, 2006.
Nudity in the United States is an odd thing. We tend to love our nudity, yet are mostly ashamed of our love and try to hide it. Well we try to hide what we determine is actual nudity while plastering near nudity everywhere we can.
From TV to magazines to print ads, on beaches, sidewalks, and shopping malls, flesh reigns king. Skimpy bikinis, short skirts, and tight shirts are all acceptable, admired, and loved. Yet again, flash a nipple or pubic hair and there is an outcry from the same public that so adored the near nudity.
As a lad, I could often get my mother to allow me to watch the newest Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick filled with bloody battles, but as soon as a movie showed a bit of nudity and it was off to play Monopoly.
The nudity didn’t even have to be sexual. A girl walking out of a shower was reason enough to turn it off. Strangely we could often get away with a film full of innuendo or engaging in physical nuances that hid the nudity.
I don’t want to knock my mother too hard here, certainly, the culture she was raised in had a great deal to do with how she parented us. She tried her best to do the difficult job of guarding our television and movie viewing habits. A difficult job with no official rules to what is acceptable
It also must be said that we often baited her and pressured her constantly to allow us to watch the newest action flick while staying mostly mum about the nudity. As a kid, I didn’t mind complaining that it was just fake violence and wouldn’t affect me, but there was no way I was going to beg for boobies, no matter how much I secretly longed for them.
Funny how some 12 years after I’ve left home I’m still worried about what my mother will say having watched and reviewed a picture such as Anatomy of Hell.
The film starts with a warning which looks like the typical FBI copyright warning but which reminds the viewer that film is not real, but an illusion and informs us that the most intimate moments do not belong to the main actress, but a stand-in.
It then moves into two men involved in a little back alley oral action.
No kids, this isn’t going to be your typical night at the cinema.
The plot involves a woman (Amira Casar) on the verge – she is first seen in a nightclub where she promptly slits her wrists in the bathroom – and a young gay man (Rocco Siffredi) who rescues her from suicide.
The woman invites the man to her secluded home for four nights to “watch her where she is unwatchable.”
The film then concentrates on four nights of sexual exploration and philosophy.
It is not a film for the prudish, or squeamish, or for those looking to get their jollies off.
It is full of explicit nudity and sex, but also of graphic imagery that exposes both man and woman for everything that they are physically – from urinating to coitus to pulling out bloody tampons. It is anything but sexually stimulating.
It tries to do the same emotionally but is all too often obtuse with its imagery and symbolism.
In one scene the woman talks of her pubic hair and vulva as a newborn bird lying in its nest. The film cuts from a close-up of the woman’s nether regions to such a bird. The bird is then plucked from its nest by a young boy who sticks it in his pocket. Moments later blood on the shirt reveals the bird is dead and the boy then throws it to the ground and stomps the bird with his boot.
Not exactly subtle. But not exactly poignant either.
The dialogue is similarly robust. The man discusses disgustedly at the horridness of the female body while the woman remarks that all men despise women and if they could would murder them all.
There are lots of long, languid shots where the camera rests upon the couple laying in bed, or pouring a drink without music, sound, or dialogue. As if the image brings some meaning to its story.
If you look closely, beyond some of the more pompous turns of phrase, there is a deeper meaning to be found. Despite the hamfistedness, the director does have something to say.
There is a scene towards the end of the film after the couple parted ways where the man sits in a bar, angry at the previous night’s actions. Like many a man, he displays that anger by playing the braggart making like he devoured the poor woman and split her apart with his maleness, while it is he that has been torn down by those events.
No, Anatomy of Hell is not a film for everyone. Nor does it reach the lofty heights it aims for by breaking so many boundaries. Yet, for those willing to try, there is some truth to be gleaned, some treasure buried beneath its repulsiveness and pomp.
themidnightcafe.org 