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Episode 028 - Love in the Time of Cinema
15 Plays5 months ago
In this episode, we take our first look at the cinema of love featuring stories of the fleeting, loss, tragedy and obsession sharing some of our favourite examples along the way.
CREDITS:
Intro clip from Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise" from Castle Rock Entertainment and distributed by Columbia Pictures
Opening music: https://pixabay.com/music/id-116199/
Closing music: https://pixabay.com/music/id-11176/
Two Oceans is a creation of Siouxfire & Scrumpy in association with SiouxWIRE
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Transcript
Introduction to Romance Films
00:00:00
Speaker
It's been seven hard and fifteen days Since you took your love away Two oceans Two oceans will begin
00:00:32
Speaker
But if I don't ask you this, it's just, uh, you know, it's gonna haunt me the rest of my life. What? Um, I want to keep talking to you, you know? I have no idea what your situation is, but, uh, but I feel like we have some kind of, uh, connection, right? Yeah, me too. Yeah, right. Well, great.
00:00:52
Speaker
So listen, here's the deal, this is what we should do. You should get off the train with me here in Vienna and come check out the town. What? Come on, it'll be fun. What would we do? Um, I don't know. All I know is I have to catch an Austrian Airlines flight tomorrow morning at 9.30 and I don't really have enough money for a hotel so I was just gonna walk around and it'd be a lot more fun if you came with me. And if I turn out to be some kind of psycho, you know, you just get on the next train.
Exploring Themes in Romance Cinema
00:01:18
Speaker
Welcome to the Tuishins Podcast, where myself, Sufi, along with my friend and Amherst colleague Scrumby discuss film and other media through a decades-long lens of mass media consumption. In this episode, we'll be taking our first look at the cinema of love, discussing what makes a great romance movie, while focusing on stories of fleeting, lost, tragic, and obsessive romance, sharing some of our favorites along the way.
00:01:41
Speaker
This is the Two Oceans podcast, so let's wander the city until our morning train as we fall into episode 4, series 2.
00:01:52
Speaker
into the romance episode. Yeah. Talking about the huge genre of films covering love and the limited time that we have, we'll be excluding topics like bromance, which we covered in episode 21, hopeless bromantic. And it's going to wholly focus on films about the connection between two people in terms of achieving that special connection with or without a physical relationship.
00:02:20
Speaker
Um, so yeah, I supposed to kick things off. We'll, we'll maybe talk a little bit about what we think makes a good romance. Um, I was thinking today, uh, because the scope, because we've created this huge, huge list of films, um, that I think to a certain degree we need to exclude some things like, um,
Review: 'Love Lies Bleeding'
00:02:44
Speaker
uh some of the noir romance uh so for example today i saw love uh love dies bleeding oh yeah and very good very good absolutely knocked it out of the park um
00:03:01
Speaker
Yeah, I can't because they're overstate. I cannot love lies bleeding. You're already tipping your hand, man. That's your tell. I know. I know. So it's from the director who rose glass.
00:03:23
Speaker
who did Saint Maud, which was a psychological horror, which was her debut, and it was very interesting and very good. This is a completely different beast, and she's so confident with it, and
00:03:39
Speaker
Everything has just done so well. You have to see it. It's quite funny. I heard an anecdote that when she was making the film, she explained to the cast that the tone that she was kind of after was Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls.
00:03:57
Speaker
which is, you don't see it in the film. The film feels a lot more like Blood Simple or early Cohen stories, but goes off in surprising ways. Ed Harris is very good in it as well.
00:04:12
Speaker
Fairhoven's good about setting a tone, you know, whatever it is. So I guess that's fair. Set the tone. Fairhoven. Yeah, so I suppose, well, I'll kick off with a question for you. Okay. What's the earliest romance movie that you can remember that had an impact on you?
Impact of Classic Romance Films
00:04:33
Speaker
That had an impact. Gosh.
00:04:36
Speaker
Um, or that you remember that stuff. Yeah, that's the thing. Like just stick out. I mean, mom was a fan of, uh, old Hollywood musicals, like the, um, yeah, the stuff, uh, uh, coming out like, uh, Brigadoon or, uh, singing in the rain or, but even broader than that, you know, the, uh, like showboat and Oklahoma and seven brides and all those.
00:05:04
Speaker
So those are all, you know, those are all romance, you know, on the melodrama side. Yeah. But I think melodrama was really the first, you know, most accessible. Oh, sure. Example for me. So probably one of those, probably something like, you know, you call it singing in the rain, which is a
00:05:23
Speaker
you know, ultimate love story, you know, the whole boy meets girl, you know, girl hates boy, you know, you can have those discussions of descriptions, right? And then you have that whole other layer on top about like that.
00:05:36
Speaker
the movie industry. The history of Hollywood and everything else, exactly. Three actors able to hold each other together and all in their prime in terms of performance and things like that. There's a lot in that movie that make it extra special.
00:05:57
Speaker
to make it kind of a dominant, you know, that's why it's a classic, right? So that's probably, you know, that and you always hear, you know, the first time you watch Casablanca, you know, you've heard at this point, it's like, you know, the greatest love story of all time or something like that.
Bittersweet Endings in Romance Films
00:06:10
Speaker
And so you're like anticipating that and you're kind of watching this like, is it?
00:06:15
Speaker
Because this seems pretty sad, I mean, in a way. I was just about to get to that. So when I was thinking about what sort of makes a great romance movie for me, it is that sort of sadness, that sort of bitter sweetness, not across all the films, but certainly among my favorites. That's a theme. And I think what it is
00:06:38
Speaker
is when you don't have the Hollywood ending, right, at the very least, it makes it accessible to people who are in a couple and people who are outside a couple. Do you know what I mean? Because for those who are in a couple, it's like, well, thank God we're not them. And for the others, it's something that they can empathize with.
00:07:05
Speaker
Um, yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, it's quite, quite interesting. You mentioned that sort of sadness, but because, uh, yeah, it's going to be a theme in all of mine. Uh, in fact, there's a whole category, uh, you'll, you'll have noticed on the list, uh, that is, uh, you know, around, uh, kind of the tragic, you know,
Real-life Complexities in Romance
00:07:25
Speaker
Oh of course yeah because that seems like and you know i wondered about that too as i started thinking about you know as we talked about this and i started thinking okay romance movie so like well you know the first thing comes in mind rom coms or chick flicks or some other lousy term yeah but there's a lot of those kind of movies that
00:07:43
Speaker
You know, you watch if you end up watching them for whatever reason, you know, you may have a partner that's more interested in you say or something like that or purely for, you know, academic purposes. I'm doing this for research so I can have an opinion. But, you know, sometimes you say, oh, it was pretty good for that kind of movie. You know, you've got to you feel like you have to qualify it or something like that.
00:08:04
Speaker
when it doesn't have the element of something, and again, blame Hollywood or anything like that for it, but something about us where we feel like there's got to be more struggle, more loss, more hurt in order for it to count. I put on my list, one of the things I threw out there was crazy rich agents.
00:08:29
Speaker
I like having the representation of it, but also, you know, it was very much, you know, very much a rom com, you know, very much so had all the homeworks of it. And it was still, you know, it was enjoyable, you know, for the way it did that. And again, I feel still feel like if there's a qualification like, you know,
00:08:48
Speaker
romance movies, you know, as they're identified or as we call them out or label them as such, for me, they tend to seem to get, you know, a separate categorization. Like, oh, it's pretty good for a romance movie. You don't say that about, you know, like, oh, that was a really good movie. Yeah, it was an action movie. Or that was really good. It was just happened to be sci-fi or, you know, it doesn't feel like at least in the circles I move in and again, it could be something different, but I really haven't seen it.
00:09:16
Speaker
Sure, sure. Called out that way, you know. Things where they'll actually hide it sometimes. And, you know, recently we had that trailer for Wonka that didn't give away that it was a trailer. That was a musical, you know, that they hid that from the audience. Kind of similarly, it's like they were ashamed it was musical. Of course, the film did really well. It is a good film.
00:09:39
Speaker
But they tried to hide it away because of that kind of, I don't know, shame or whatever it is. Whatever the marketing guys do. Yeah, exactly. They know it's mostly men that they're going to alienate immediately if they say it's a musical.
00:09:55
Speaker
Which again side note on this and I could do a whole episode just on musicals but I feel the musical is probably the best example of what cinema can do because it is its fantasy it combines every single element the way no other medium can and the musical is like the heights or the pinnacle.
Musicals and Storytelling Fantasy
00:10:16
Speaker
of that. Now, is it the pinnacle of all filmmaking? No, but pinnacle of what film can do. Yes, I would say. It can communicate things in a different way than non-musical film. Totally different way. And I don't know if you saw today, but I shared, so there's an animated short that's musical called The Burden.
00:10:34
Speaker
and it's available on YouTube, and it's absolutely excellent. It's so smart, it's funny, it's bittersweet, but I just thought it was amazing. So listeners, seek it out. We'll put a link to it in one of the things there.
00:10:55
Speaker
Yeah, we should do that on the Two Oceans Facebook page. The newly minted Facebook page. Exactly. What you were just talking about there, so another thing that I'd watched this week was Slavoj Zizek's Pervert's Guide to Cinema, parts one through three, and his Pervert's Guide to Ideology.
00:11:18
Speaker
And what's great is that he uses cinema as a lens to kind of demonstrate his ideas, which are pretty complex. And despite him being an intellectual, he's got a real eclectic taste in movies. Like he's using examples like John Carpenter's They Live.
00:11:35
Speaker
and Revenge of
Labels in Film Genres: Necessary?
00:11:36
Speaker
the Sith. And then going over to Tarkovsky, he doesn't differentiate. He's not a snob, basically. And you might not agree with everything that he says, but he gives a fresh point of view on everything, which is a great thing. But yeah, that whole pre-judging before you go into a movie, like Love Lies Bleeding,
00:11:55
Speaker
It kind of annoys me, and we'll get into this when we get to the queer episode that we have coming in a couple episodes, is that it keeps getting described as not a thriller, but a lesbian thriller. It's like, no, no, no. You could just call it a thriller. That's straight, guys. You gotta cater to us.
00:12:22
Speaker
Well, they do the same thing with like a lesbian. I mean, it's described as a lesbian love story as well. And there's definitely a chemistry in this movie, but yeah, it's a bit like that thing in American fiction where they have the sort of black literature section. And it's like, why is it different? Yeah. Yeah. I did the same with the recent movies. I watched Driveaway Dolls.
00:12:47
Speaker
And that was also billed as, you know, it's like, and they're lesbians, you know, it's like just like, okay, but I mean, do you call it out when they're straight? No? Okay. Yeah. Yes. Saving that for the queer film history episode. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there are points in here where I'm going to be touching on some of those, but yeah. Which is an interesting thing we'll come back to, I think, in that episode to see why that is.
00:13:15
Speaker
why this genre aligns or it feels the need to align with the Q plus representation. But anyway. I mean, going back to what you're saying about this sort of tragic, I mean, I think because of so much storytelling, at least in sort of Western storytelling,
00:13:39
Speaker
is sourced from Greek plays, and obviously there were tragedies in those plays, is to a certain degree that has a point in it. In fact, to the movies that I have, reference some of those Greek tragedies in them, and actually replay parts of them as part of their story as well.
00:14:03
Speaker
But yeah, so there's all these, so I was looking online about the different structures of story. So one of the descriptions was that in a typical kind of love story, you have one of three things that prevent the couple from uniting. And it's either an exterior force, family, race, class, blah, blah, blah, money, arrival, or the lovers themselves.
00:14:33
Speaker
And I thought, that's pretty broad. So the categories that we've gone into are a little bit more focused. And the first kind of broad category, and there's some subcategories underneath this, is the fleeting. So basically two souls find each other momentarily and then part. And the first subcategory I've got is fleeting and forbidden.
00:14:59
Speaker
So that would be along the lines of a brief encounter from David Lean, Bridges of Madison County, that sort of thing. Carroll from Todd Haynes. Yeah.
00:15:15
Speaker
Uh, yeah, we called out, uh, we both had in the mood for love, one car wise, you know, out. Absolutely. I mean, that's one of the most romantic movies I think. But it's also so sad in a way. But also in a way it's not played as sad. That's the thing. He doesn't, he doesn't fall for that.
00:15:32
Speaker
thing saying, oh, isn't this tragic? It's more like, isn't this great what people can do? I mean, that's his specialty, right? And, you know, Chung King Express does that as too, but, you know, you look at the films that build up to, especially in his, you know, filmography, and in the mood for love, just, I mean, especially the leads. They are so good. Yeah.
00:15:59
Speaker
It's almost cathartic at the end, in terms of being a real downer. It should be a downer, but they both held that love within themselves still, and that continued. It didn't die. Do you know what I mean? The two weren't together, but the feelings were still there. It's fleeting, and maybe it should be. Maybe that's okay.
00:16:25
Speaker
You know, that's the nice thing about that. Anyway, that one calls out the other one that, you know, it strikes the more, again, melodramatic or extreme kind of display for me, like growing up especially, was Edward Scissorhands. You know, absolutely, such a tragic figure, but, you know, everything turns in on itself and back and forth, but they stay
00:16:49
Speaker
true to each other in a way. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he's, you know, she's remembering him. She starts off both, but telling her grandkids. So she's had a life. She's married someone else, you know, conceivably, and has had this whole other life, but in the shadow,
00:17:08
Speaker
of this other one that kind of defined it for her, you know, and that was as much as I hate Titanic, you know, that's the one nice thing I liked about the end is that it, you know, it gave her context for framing the rest of her life for defining herself and that sort of thing. She was kind of stepping in her own. It's not a feminist moment by any stroke of the imagination, but it does have that idea of, you know, yes, it was fleeting or something like that, but you got something out of it that wasn't just
00:17:37
Speaker
Um, you've got something really, uh, uh, significant for you as a person out of it. And I think that kind of helps define the sub genre. Um, I, and I mean, the other thing you sort of mentioned, uh, maybe they shouldn't have come together kind of thing, uh, is, uh, before sunrise, uh, sort of fits into this category as well.
Chemistry in 'Before Sunrise'
00:18:00
Speaker
Yeah. Um, the whole series, right? That's because as, as we know what's coming next.
00:18:07
Speaker
But the first movie before sunrise is just so cracking. I mean, it's an absolute classic. And it is just people talking and just making that connection. And again, it's that chemistry, isn't it? And I've seen another film recently called Good Luck to You, Leo Grande.
00:18:29
Speaker
And it's got Emma Thompson and Carol McCormack in it, and he's basically a prostitute, pretty much, an escort, right? And Emma Thompson is just going into her 60s. Her husband died. She's had this passionless
00:18:53
Speaker
life. Right. And now that he's passed, you know, he she's she's having one last punt. Right. And a lot of it is conversations as well, similar to before sunrise. And it's kind of her awakening. And she's very she's very sort of prudish character. It's not very cinematic is one criticism I have with it. It would it feels like a stage play, you know, play. Yeah. Yeah. But the but the performances are
00:19:23
Speaker
very good in it. And it's not very long. I think it's like 80 minutes or something like that. But that was quite an interesting one. And another one that I'd say is E2 mama tambien and your mother too from Alfonso Cuaron.
00:19:38
Speaker
where Diego Luna and Gail Garcia Bernal come across Maribel Verdu. And the three sort of come together. I don't want to give away the ending, even though I know the film's been out for a long time, but I know a lot of people might not have seen it, but it has a sting in the tail that is brilliant. And there's
00:20:01
Speaker
It is this fleeting, and I'm trying to recall, because it's been a while since I've seen the movie, is I do believe that some of the narration at least kind of looks back at this time, and how it has kind of formed Diego and Gail Garcia's characters as they went into life. And it's kind of a coming of age too, isn't it?
00:20:26
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. What do I have next here under the fleeting reunions?
00:20:37
Speaker
kind of similar. So Casablanca, I would consider that. So at the beginning of the movie, the couple know each other, but then they come back together for whatever reason. And same thing with before sunset as well as you have Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy reuniting after nine years after before sunrise. And they're at a different point in their life. And
00:21:04
Speaker
Yeah. Past lives as well, which is a recent one. I don't know if you've managed to catch that one. Hadn't get a chance to see that one yet. Yeah. It's very good. And it's another one of these ones where a lot of people are saying, oh, but it's so sad. I don't think it is. I think it's pretty awesome.
00:21:26
Speaker
Um, so it's from Celine's song and, uh, basically, um, the, it's about this, this pair from Korea who, you know, as children we're, we're kind of being lined up to be a couple, right?
00:21:44
Speaker
They were best friends and all this and then one of them moved to the States and you know many many years later they reunite but you know she's with this new fella and she's married and yeah it kind of goes from there but the it doesn't cop out in the finale either it's it's it's really brilliant
00:22:06
Speaker
And actually, Celine Song, who was the director of that film, her husband wrote screenplay to Challengers, which came out this week, and I went to go see that.
00:22:22
Speaker
I didn't really enjoy it. And the thing is, it's from the director, Luca Guadagnino. And it's my least favorite of any of his movies. I think it was too long. And I think it was trying too hard. And if anything, after watching Love Lies Bleeding,
00:22:48
Speaker
Love Lies Bleeding was so confident and felt so natural and it just kept moving, you know, at pace. And it all seemed to gel together, whereas Challengers was a bit ropey. Zendaya is very good in it, but I didn't like any of the characters in it. You know? Yeah.
00:23:11
Speaker
That would do it. Just with the fleeting or something like, there's some balance where they, again, they get something out of it. But sometimes they don't, somebody's gotta, it feels like, sometimes they post these, somebody has to lose versus both of them losing or something like Casablanca. It's like Bogie's character has to give up.
00:23:39
Speaker
the great love that he realizes it's only the memory, it's not real, it doesn't hold. But there's that tragic sort of sacrifice thing to it, the same sort of like when...
00:23:54
Speaker
something like Romeo and Julie gets held up in this great love story. I'm like, it's not a great love story. Everybody dies in the end. Like, nobody has happened. Nobody wins. Like, but their love is so great. They're teenagers. Dude, come on. You ever hear teens talk about love and then try to break up? And it's like the end of the world. It's like, yeah, you'll get over it. There'll be more. You know. They just had better friends. They would have been, you know, would have been fine.
00:24:22
Speaker
So there's that element where sometimes it feels like that's maybe one of the tropes or such where they feel like they have to qualify. It's like, OK, if they're not getting together, there has to be a good reason versus getting into a looser, deconstructed sort of approach to it where it's like, no, doesn't have to be a reason. People are people.
00:24:42
Speaker
You know, exactly, exactly. I mean, the best movies. I mean, it's not because I'm going to I'm going to contradict myself here because there's the whole death and everything coming up, coming up. But yeah, sticking to the the fleeting, there's also the sort of fleeting non physical as well.
Non-physical Love in 'Lost in Translation'
00:25:01
Speaker
So films like Lost in Translation, right? Which I would consider a love story, but not but not. Yeah.
00:25:10
Speaker
Yeah, you know what I mean? Not a consummated love story, but two people actually needing that thing and then the other having it, right? Like the two really needing each other. And I'd also include- Just happened to be, you know, there happened to be some relationship between them, though, that's strong, but it's never a will there, won't they? Oh, sure, sure. Absolutely. And I would also-
00:25:37
Speaker
include in that Fury Road, George Miller's Fury Road with Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron. And, you know, Max has this facade, this tough guy facade, blah, blah, blah, through the whole movie. And it's not until Charlize Theron is, you know, Furios is on the cusp of death.
00:26:02
Speaker
that he starts to express himself. But at the end, they get what they need and they part. And they're okay with it. Yeah. And they're okay there. Yeah, that's okay. And they learn something from it, right? Exactly.
00:26:19
Speaker
Yeah, what else do I have? I'm here under the fleeting. So a few others I had, I won't go into too much detail on them. I think we've kind of covered this topic pretty well. A Roman holiday, he or Shima Menon were one that some people might not have heard of called Undine, which is kind of a mermaid story.
00:26:44
Speaker
Okay. It's got Franz Rogowski in it, who seems to be in everything good lately. It's an okay movie, but kind of interesting because as you know, the whole mermaid thing, but it's done so seriously.
00:27:02
Speaker
It's kind of interesting. So the next category that I got on my list is the lost but persistent, which is kind of similar to what we were talking about with
00:27:16
Speaker
in the mood for love. Uh, so this is love that's been found and love lost, but not forgotten. So, uh, the first one that I have in my list and maybe one of my favorites is the umbrella is a Sherburg by Jacques Demi. Um, and that, uh, that just has such a great ending and it's essentially the template for La La Land.
00:27:44
Speaker
Almost the same thing. It's telling virtually the same story. It almost ends in exactly the same way as well. It's in a jazz club instead of a gas station. It's not a news story. I did enjoy La La Land, by the way.
00:28:02
Speaker
The same, yeah. I don't know if it was worth the hype it got, but I still enjoyed it. Sure, sure. Yeah. And another musical. Two musicals. We got Cherberg and La La La. Cherberg as well. Exactly. Yeah.
00:28:17
Speaker
And what else do I have here? I've got the Portrait of Lady on Fire. So this is from Celine Shiyama from 2019. God, on my cue, I have not watched yet. I mean, in Celine Shiyama, anything that she's directed has been great. So she's been, I think the last one she did was Petite Momo, which is
00:28:42
Speaker
this odd little story, this little girl goes with her dad to the countryside. And when she goes in the forest, she meets her mother, but her mother is the same age as her, so they're both like seven, eight year olds. And it's almost like a time travel thing kind of going on here.
00:29:05
Speaker
But it's kind of interesting because she's starting to see her mother is, you know, like her, you know, she's not this higher being. She's she's she's this kid. But that's excellent. And she also did a film called Water Lilies, Girlhood, Tomboy, which is is about this this trans boy. And they're all cracking. They're all so good. They're all so easy to watch. You know, it's just one of those directors that
00:29:32
Speaker
knows how to do the pacing, surprises you at every turn, really good. But Portrait of a Lady on Fire is, again, it's one of those stories where if you were to look at the ending in a synopsis, you'd be like, oh, that sounds like a downer, but it's completely not. It's another one of these ones where
00:29:53
Speaker
You know, the two involved in the relationship have come away learning something and they continue to treasure that time that they had, even if it was fleeting, you know, into the future. So it's really great. Also have on this Starman. Yep. Yeah, I thought Starman as well. Yeah, Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen.
00:30:21
Speaker
Yeah, just because it's ostensibly the, because it's her, it's the alien taking the form of her recently deceased husband. So it's, it is a love lost and found, but not found. As he's seeking the human identity, he's taken on an identity that's already really so established in her mind.
00:30:43
Speaker
Well, I can remember when we were in high school, you used to always do an impression of Jeff Bridges singing, I can't get no satisfaction from everybody. I can't get no. Well, that is this whole thing. I'll make maps. As you take on the personality, whoever is with him, he's with the old boy in the truck and make maps. It still amazes me when you look back at
00:31:13
Speaker
John Carpenter's filmography. It's just amazing. It's just so much variety in it. Once he's done something and doesn't really repeat it, it's really cool.
00:31:28
Speaker
Okay, so the tragic is our next big category.
Tragic Romance in 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'
00:31:36
Speaker
Basically, the narrative shows the struggle to make a connection only for it to be taken away either by outside circumstances or issues within the couple itself. And this is a huge list. I've just got a whole bunch of stuff on here. What does that say about us?
00:31:54
Speaker
Really, that's what I was looking forward to. Listen, I'm like, you know, that might explain a few things. What do you know, it's one of those things as well when when people go, well, why do you watch horror movies? Right. Yeah.
00:32:09
Speaker
It's not because as you want to ever be in that situation, right? So you're not in that situation. You're an outside observer, you're watching, and you can kind of walk out of the cinema and think, well, at least I'm not them. I'm safe. I'm okay.
00:32:30
Speaker
But these ones are always find the most most I'm not damn. That's real empathy right there. I mean, these movies are the ones that really stick with me, though, at least in terms of like the romance angle in them. So the first one I'm going to bring up is Crushing Tiger Hidden Dragon.
00:32:53
Speaker
from Ang Lee. So you have Michelle Yeoh and Chaoyoung Fat are really sort of restrained. And by the time that they actually kind of realize that they should be reaching out to each other, it's too late. It's too late at the very end. But at least it has given an example to the younger couple
00:33:20
Speaker
in the movie of what not to do, basically. But yeah, that's always stuck with me. I love the fact that Kung Fu got that romance angle brought in there, too. It's just a nice mix. Yes, indeed.
00:33:41
Speaker
And then another big one, and I know a lot of people don't have patience for this movie, but I do, which is ironic considering the title, The English Patient from late Anthony Mingla. I could watch this movie again and again.
00:33:57
Speaker
Really? Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I probably watch this movie under a dog's head or something. I've watched this movie probably more than anything else on this list. Wow. And really? Yeah, absolutely.
Complex Romance in 'The English Patient'
00:34:10
Speaker
And I'll tell you what, just looking at that movie outside of the kind of romance angle, it's also the fact that it was one of the first movies that showed World War Two
00:34:22
Speaker
and allied soldiers being fucking dicks and not just, oh, they're, you know, no, they're the good guys. They're all, they're all good. And in this, cause you've got this weird sort of pivoted view of them.
00:34:40
Speaker
It's not so nice, right? And you have this group at the beginning of people working for National Geographic, they're doing the surveys, they're all from different nationalities and then suddenly the war starts and they all have to be on opposing sides.
00:34:58
Speaker
And then you have the whole thing with Ralph Fiennes. The English patient is actually German, but nobody knows it. The reason I've watched this movie so many times is I get something else out of it every time. It has so many layers to it.
00:35:18
Speaker
And, you know, you've got Juliet Benage, Kirsten Scott-Thomas, Willem Dafoe, Colin Firth, Ralphie Ensign, probably my favorite performance of his. But yeah, it does have that tragic ending, you know. And it's also that forbidden fruit thing as well, because... Yes, that is true.
00:35:43
Speaker
And then a more recent one that I think we've both seen is All of Us Strangers. Yes, yes, absolutely. Although, I don't know that that's tragic, but it's working, it's processing tragedy. In a way, it's processing grief as well, but through a romance and
00:36:10
Speaker
There's a lot of different things at play in that one, right? Well, it's definitely got a tragic event. Yeah, and there's tragedy involved, right? But it is cathartic at the end, right? Yes.
00:36:24
Speaker
Because I believe the movie starts with him looking out the window and the way that he's looking out the window at the end of the movie is very different from what it was at the beginning. And it ends with a very beautiful shot with the music and everything and the way that the camera moves.
00:36:47
Speaker
I was like, whoa, OK, wow, OK. Because usually movies and because I've been I go to the cinema so much, you notice this more when you're in the cinema is that suddenly the titles come up. I mean, just just suddenly like directed by and it's so sudden. But that movie fades, fades away very sort of nicely. Yeah.
00:37:10
Speaker
So a few other ones I won't go into too much detail on. So we got the unbearable lightness of being from Philip Kaufman, Philip Kaufman of The Right Stuff, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a few other movies. Again, Juliette Binach in there. So she's got another look in. The Fly from David Cronenberg. That was just interesting. Yeah. Because yeah, it definitely is tragic. But it's also this, you know, it's like, well, what gets in the way of it? It's like, well, you know,
00:37:40
Speaker
Jeff Goldblum, the scientist, gets in the way of himself. Sure. It's the mad scientist, which for me is one of my favorite things to do. There's the stereotypical mad scientist, but I was like, what makes them mad? Why are they considered mad? Why are they considered insane? The Fly, speaking of Verhoeven earlier, it wasn't a great movie, but his
00:38:05
Speaker
Hollow Man, his Invisible Man version, I thought did an excellent version of showing that breakdown, the psychosis that they go through, what you put yourself through to try to achieve and all that too. And you know, it's one of the things I was thinking about too, because the fly is a good example of that too, of in these tragic love stories, right?
Modern Tragedy: 'The Fly'
00:38:24
Speaker
There's oftentimes
00:38:27
Speaker
And sometimes it's handled poorly and sometimes it's handled really well. Most of the times it's poorly in terms of some moral choice that a character makes or the characters make that they then have to pay for. There has to be a penalty. There's like a pseudo-religious kind of morality.
00:38:46
Speaker
That has to speak up and to give you the ending right they say well, you know science gone too far or you know like Bonnie and Clyde As well, but the same thing there it's like you guys went too far Your tragic couple you were meant to be together. This was meant to happen, but this is also not supposed to be Sure, like you can't do you can't do this kids. You can't have don't try this at home He can eat it too kind of thing
00:39:13
Speaker
The fly, I think, out of all of these, is the one that, going back to what we were talking about at the start, is the one that feels most like a Greek tragedy, like the Jeff Goldblum character dared to try to equate himself to the gods. Steel fire, yep. Yeah, exactly, and he gets punished for it. He flew too close to the sun. Something so simple as a house fly.
00:39:42
Speaker
Exactly. Again, that could go off. We've talked about doing the Cronenberg episode. That's the whole thing there. Sure. It's a weird thing, again, I always wonder, again, not blaming Hollywood, but so often, you know, storytellers, right? Often enough, there has to be some kind of like, oh, well, they shouldn't have done that.
00:39:59
Speaker
You mentioned Bridges of Madison County before, and a friend of mine, when she saw it in the theater back in the day, there was some woman who just at one point stood up and yelled at them for being in an adulterous relationship. Like he yelled at the screen. Or like in, it's another one I just thought of, I could have had on the list here as well, the piano.
00:40:24
Speaker
of seeing that in the theater and there were several women at one point that just yelled at this, yelled at Sam Neill's character like, I mean, venomous thing, which is, you know, good. It's like neat that, you know, the movie can inspire that kind of reaction. The story can motivate you. But the same point, it has that
00:40:41
Speaker
Like, let's watch them go through this hell to get what they want or to get some to come on the other side of it. And you know, it's a tricky thing with romance, I think, because when it's, you know, in that kind of context, because, okay, what are you saying then about, you know, you know, often, you know, we haven't talked about love stories, right? I mean, they are ultimately, but we haven't really used the word, right?
00:41:07
Speaker
It's like, what do you do? No one deserves true love. You might just luck into it. You might happen to it, or it might be fated. Again, it's this weird range. That's I think why you end up with all these different divisions on the two, but there's something like you have to earn it. You have to pay for it. If you mess it up, you deserve to be unhappy.
00:41:28
Speaker
And maybe you deserve to get happy at some point. Again, it's a weird kind of condemnation, holding close support, like, hey, it sucks for all of us. It's a strange psychological bent with this particular storytelling type.
Romantic Comedies vs. Deeper Films
00:41:45
Speaker
I think. Oh, totally. And I'd seen an excellent video on YouTube. I'm trying to remember who made it, but they were talking about rom coms in general and how they have all this capitalist agenda in them that
00:42:02
Speaker
that people have these amazing houses, amazing products, amazing clothes. If they're upset, they go buy things, they're spending the money, there's the product placements. It was really interesting, but I didn't quite realize how open it was in a lot of the rom-coms, because like you were saying before, I'll watch a rom-com, but I think the movies on the list that I have here are movies that
00:42:32
Speaker
I would consider revisiting, whereas some of the more disposable movies, it's like, I got what I needed out of that one, I don't need to watch that one again. One is steak, one is a dessert.
00:42:47
Speaker
And also on here, Dangerous Liaisons. It's the Stephen Freer's version with John Malkovich going close to Michelle Pfeiffer. That was another one where they kind of underestimate the power of love, so to speak, to the point that they think that they're immune and they are not. And that kind of leads to the- And they all pay for it. And they all pay for it. Oh, they totally do. Yeah. Every one pays for it.
00:43:16
Speaker
nobody gets out of that good. Yeah. And it's such an enjoyable movie. I still really enjoy that, that Danger's Leasons. Breathless as well, Jean-Luc Godard. Godards, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I lived John Belmondo and Gene Seaburg, so that's probably one of the Godards that I can cope with. But again, that's one of the, yeah, I hate to use the term accessible Godard, but it really is.
00:43:46
Speaker
Yeah, it totally is. It's as close as you're gonna, as good as it's gonna get people. But yeah, we both talked about Blue Velvet as well. Yeah, Blue Velvet. Which has that condemnation sort of thing, but it's making fun of that condemnation thing, or it's pointing that out as like, this is the way the stories are told and that's not right.
00:44:06
Speaker
Right. Like the fairy tale thing is not, you're believing in it and it's bullshit, which is, you know, again. Look under the grass. Lynch is, exactly. Find the ear, you know, that's Lynch's thing, right? Across the majority of his movies. I mean, there's still, you know, the majority of the, you know, it's one of those things, you know, he still believes in the happy ending, right?
00:44:25
Speaker
Sure. He wants his characters to come out okay. But it's like, yeah, what you go through and where you're at at the end of it, you know, it's this weird, especially Boo Velvet, you know, it's like a weird amalgam at the end of that they've, they've put the the other, they've accepted the other back into their ranks and the other evil, the evil has been excised. Right, right. So there's an order, there's a balance, there's a rebalancing that's occurred and it's a new
00:44:56
Speaker
a new world basically that they've created, but it's still grabbing the best parts of the old world, right? It's not like everybody coming into their own and being able to stand on their own. It's like, no, now they stand in relationship to each other.
00:45:12
Speaker
Speaking of Blue, also I have Betty Blue on my list from Jean-Jacques Benet, 1986 film with Beatrice Dahl. And that was such a weird movie for that time. And when I was just looking up sort of the details of Betty Blue, and it wasn't released in England for like eight years. Because obviously the censorship in the 80s was
00:45:39
Speaker
was pretty strict in this country, so they didn't get it until the early 90s. But yeah, that's a very unusual movie. That's definitely a dark ending. And then another one that I'd seen more recently is called If Beale Street Could Talk by Barry Jenkins.
00:45:59
Speaker
and great performance from Kiki Lane and Stephen James. And it is basically about this black couple in the 60s. They've known each other since they were children. They're obviously meant to be with each other. And that is how the film opens. But then he gets accused of a crime and ends up going to jail for something that he clearly didn't do.
00:46:29
Speaker
And it's that whole challenge of this couple being able to kind of keep that connection through it. I wouldn't say this ends pessimistically, but it is just
00:46:47
Speaker
quite frustrating to kind of look at at the things that they have to deal with. But it's also got so many sparks of hope in it as well. So quite quite enjoyed that one. And just atonement. I don't know if you've ever seen that from Joe. Joe Wright, James McAvoy, Keir Knightley. The the young version of the sister in the movie
00:47:12
Speaker
Rumola Gare directed one of my favorite horrors in recent years, Amulet, which is really interesting that that kid has grown up and made a movie already. But yeah, Itoman again, it's got something kind of similar to the English patient for me in terms of the way that it kind of flips things on its head in a way that I quite enjoyed. And
00:47:41
Speaker
Yeah, that's all I've had on that part of the list, and then we've got the obsession element.
Obsession in Hitchcock's 'Vertigo'
00:47:48
Speaker
Yeah, well, we're circling the drain here. Well, so I've got a whole bunch of weird stuff in here. So first one, obvious one is
00:48:01
Speaker
Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart. The better ones that these talk about get into a male gaze and nothing gets into that like Vertigo, right? Yeah. That's like the granddaddy. It does get creepier with age, that movie.
00:48:27
Speaker
And actually, the newest one on the list is not a movie as such, but the new series on Netflix, Baby Reindeer. Yeah, I haven't watched that yet, but you were saying you enjoyed it.
00:48:42
Speaker
Um, I, I really enjoyed it. And I'd say anyone who, who wants the trailer, we're like, uh, um, that trailer doesn't represent it very well. And it's a lot smarter than that trailer portrays. Um, it, uh, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, I would say that it's a very respectful to all its characters in the movie. Like every single one, no matter how horrible they are, it every, every, everybody's got,
00:49:11
Speaker
their own point of view and motivation and all this in the series. But I just burned through that. And Richard Gadd is starring in it, and he's the one that had to live what happens in the series. And yeah, it's pretty raw in terms of what he puts out there on the screen. But yeah, it's fantastic. I'd be interested to hear what the people in the States think, because over here, it's just like,
00:49:37
Speaker
everyone and their mother and their grandmother and everyone's watched it. This is the kind of must-see at the moment. That was very good. I don't know if you've ever seen a movie called Possession from 1981 with Sam Neill. And again, another one of those
00:50:01
Speaker
way, way, way, way, way overly obsessed men again in Sam Neill. And Sam Neill is so good in it as well. Yeah. Well, and Isabella Giannis. Absolutely. Yeah. Just what she has to go through. I mean, that's the breakdown scene in the subway tunnel.
00:50:19
Speaker
And the lookalike had just like vertigo as well. Yeah. The other one I wanted to throw in there on obsession was heavenly creatures, just because it's, you know, it's an upset, you know, again, obsession is something with ease, something turns deadly, something goes seriously wrong, something
00:50:40
Speaker
something is very broken. Exactly. Some boundary that shouldn't be taken down is broken. But it kind of avoids the judgmental sort of thing. It's like just by its... It's like, okay, we already know this is too far, so let's just see how far it goes. You know, they're not... And for listeners... There are other forces that are trying to exert that order, right?
00:51:01
Speaker
And for listeners, heavenly creatures from 1995 is from Peter Jackson, uh, pre, uh, Lord of the rings. Um, which, uh, I mean, it just shows his range. So yeah, you have to meet the fee, but this is the thing in his range is, is, is pretty awesome. You know, it's crazy. Um, uh, another one that I have on this list for obsession is, uh, Rob Reiner's misery, uh, with Kathy Bates and James Con.
00:51:31
Speaker
I was wondering though, is that really a romance? Well, this is the thing, I don't know if any of these, hmm, what's it going to do with the obsession thing? I think in Kathy Bates head, that was
00:51:53
Speaker
to her, to her, it was James Connaught. It was not reciprocated. For some reason. Yeah. Yeah. And it was expressed in ways that
00:52:06
Speaker
were conjuring. Very wrong. Very, very wrong, yeah. Yeah. And another one I just had today was Enduring Love, which is an adaption of Anine McEwen novel.
00:52:24
Speaker
from 2004. It's got Daniel Craig in it, Recy Fons, Samantha Morton, and it opens with Daniel Craig is planning to propose to Samantha Morton's character there in a field.
00:52:43
Speaker
And out of nowhere, this balloon goes out, sort of floats past them, and these men are trying to grab the ropes of this hot air balloon because there's a kid in the balloon.
00:52:59
Speaker
and the people are holding on to it and Daniel Craig goes to help. But unfortunately, some people die because they hold on to the rope that goes up in the air and they can't hold on anymore and they fall. And Recy Funds is who, by the way, is so good in the
00:53:25
Speaker
What is that movie? Reece Evans just came out, Nyad, this week. He is one of the best seamen that I've seen in a movie since Jaws. He's so good in it. So good. He's absolutely excellent.
00:53:45
Speaker
But in this movie, he's kind of an obsessive. So you have this weird thing of Daniel Craig and Samantha Morton have this relationship, but then we see funds who kind of is obsessed with Daniel Craig and what happened that day. But that's kind of a kind of a weird one. Right. Well, we were just about to get to the optimistic, but we're getting to the last last few minutes here. So probably going to have to split this
00:54:12
Speaker
into two, but the positive is the next one is a lot more optimistic. That's what we have. Yeah, we've taken you down. Like I said, circling the drain and now we're going to come back up. Wicklow's down has got to come back up. We obey the laws of thermodynamics in this podcast.
00:54:29
Speaker
So, yeah. So the next one that we've got to start the next episode is The Found, which is where the narratives about the search typically starting from a point of isolation and loneliness that ends at the most optimistic point of the relationship as the pair find
Preview: Optimistic Romance Films Next
00:54:48
Speaker
each other. And this is kind of the
00:54:51
Speaker
Now your princess brides and that sort of, that sort of thing. Your happy time. It's okay. The happy place. Although some of the movies aren't exactly, I wouldn't call happy. Yeah. You're good, but you go through some, you go through some shit in some of these, you know? Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, not that they don't earn it, but yeah, they can make their way through.
00:55:17
Speaker
Right. Is there anything else that you're looking to watch this week? What do you got up in the old roster for you? Man, not specifically. I watch some that we'll talk about in the next bit to kind of catch up for these.
00:55:37
Speaker
Yeah, nothing, nothing screaming at me, you know, just catching up on some new releases. Got to show the wife monkey man the other day. Oh, because that's out on video on demand now and oh, she loved it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She was it was like, okay, that's what I was like a figure and you will but you know.
00:55:56
Speaker
I was thinking that we need to do an episode of female directors, but then I realized that almost all of, probably more than 50% of the recent films from horror across genres that I've really enjoyed have been women directors. They don't really tout that very much. I suppose it's down to the marketing guys again.
00:56:24
Speaker
You know, and against that whole thing is like they don't have to be, uh, you know, lesbians or, uh, you know, look, women directing. Uh,
00:56:35
Speaker
Look, sort of thing. Like people. Look at you. Look what they're doing. Look what they can do. Yeah. And then upcoming, there's a ton of great films coming out. Coming out. Yeah. I'm really looking forward to it. I mean, yeah, what's opens this weekend is the new Planet of the Apes movie. We think the Planet of the Apes. Yeah. Looking forward to that. And then Furiosa later in the month.
00:57:03
Speaker
Yeah. Furios. Boy Kills World is coming out here soon. Okay. Yeah. Just came out here. Right. Right. There's a horror movie that I'm going to try to see. It's a kind of more of an underground one. So it's only playing like once at my local cinema called Stop Motion. And it's... Oh yeah. I've heard good things about that.
00:57:26
Speaker
Yeah, stop-motion animator who's trying to control her demons, but all her creations kind of come back to haunt her, which sounds pretty great. And I saw a trailer for a movie called La Cameira.
00:57:45
Speaker
but it's been getting a lot of buzz. I don't know much about it, haven't looked into it, want to go in blind, but I'll report back on what that is. And then there is another movie that is coming into my cinema about this 11-year-old girl in Southeast Asia, and it's called Tiger Stripes, but it's basically a werewolf movie. But it sounds like it's something along the lines of Ginger Snaps,
00:58:15
Speaker
but kind of from a South Asian Muslim country. So that should, I'm really kind of interested in that one. I want to see if they pull it off. But yeah, I think we'll close off there. We've got our equipment working this week. And yeah, we've got the optimistic episode. We've got the dinner episode done and done.
00:59:15
Speaker
It's inconceivable. You keep using the word. I don't think it means what you think it means.