Little Scene

I’ve been making the rounds of the obscure indie movie front lately and have reaffirmed my belief that a lot of these “films” remain unseen simply because they are quite bad. Diving Bell and the Butterfly is not so obscure and by far the best of the bunch, despite falling short of my breathless anticipation based on the trailer. The vast majority of movies would be improved if they existed solely in trailer form. Anyway, Diving Bell... was fitfully beautiful and the story (about a man who is rendered paralyzed after a stroke and dictates an entire memoir by blinking his eye) is incredible. But it was more tedious and less lyrical than I would have liked. Barcelona: A Map, was mediocre and took place entirely in a single apartment building, depriving me of the opportunity to see the city itself on screen which was the only reason I bought a ticket. Also, bizarrely, a revelation of incest at the end of the film is treated as casually as most people’s discussions of what to have for dinner. This troubled me and kind of ruined the whole movie. Still, Barcelona was a masterpiece suitable for inclusion in the national archives compared to Chaotic Ana, a movie I saw based on a) the description of the main character living in a cave in Ibiza and b) because it co-stars hot sexagenarian Charlotte Rampling. This movie was indescribably bad. And it took itself far too seriously to fall into the so-bad-it’s-good category. I cannot begin to quantify its suckiness or delineate its completely nonsensical and impossible-to-follow plot. I think it had something to do with past lives and Woman Throughout History. Revoltingly, it ended with the titular heroine defecating in the mouth of a conservative American congressman, at which point the audience collectively gave up and attempted to appreciate the movie as camp. It still fell short.

Speaking of shitty politicians, I have been observing the presidential race at arm’s length since it began, seemingly, 9 years ago. Not in love with any of the candidates, as usual. However, I despise Rudy Giuliani and am frightened by Mike Huckabee due to both his uber-Christianity and the fact that he (allegedly) runs 10 miles before dawn every day. In the event of a victory for either of these candidates, I will be packing up my bags and decamping for Montreal.