Tag: film

Some Good Fortune

I’d heard on a podcast that it was good for couples to do “novel activities” together.

On another podcast came the comment that Landmark Theatres were far superior to the more dominant Cineplex ones. We have a Landmark Theatre close by.

In the newspaper, I’d read how Aziz Ansari had fought to have his new movie get a theatrical release. And that he’d cast a bunch of Canadian actors in it, albeit not because they were Canadian.

On the shared calendar, I saw that we had an opening Monday afternoon.

Hence Jean and I found ourselves at Landmark Cinemas for a matinee showing of Good Fortune.

Now, by this point the movie had been out for about four weeks and it was, you know, Monday afternoon. So this wasn’t a true “watching with a crowd” experience, given that there were only about two other people in attendance. But—notwithstanding our having gone to see a physics documentary at the Princess Cinema last month—it had been so long since we’d gone to a chain theatre, this seemed to qualify as a “novel” experience.

Plus, you know, Monday afternoon! On a non-holiday! Novel!

The Landmark was nice. We sprung for a few extra bucks to sit in the premium seats with recliners, heaters, a coat hook, and such. The screen was big. The movie was high definition. The sound was surround.

And the story was entertaining. The trailer is a pretty accurate synopsis: Arj, played by Ansari, is trying to stay afloat with part-time and “gig economy” jobs—and not entirely succeeding. He captures the attention of Gabriel, an angel played by Keanu Reeves, who longs to make bigger gestures than saving people from texting and driving. Though advised against it by his supervisor, Gabriel tries to show Arj that money wouldn’t solve all his problems by having him trade places with Jeff, played by Seth Rogen, a wealthy “tech bro” that Arj has been doing errands for. Only Arj very much enjoys living Jeff’s life and doesn’t particularly want to go back, setting off a chain of cosmic chaos.

It’s quite funny, it moves at a good clip (it’s about 90 minutes long), and it has a strong cast. It is pretty delightful seeing Keanu Reeves as a “budget angel”.

But, it’s kind of excruciating sitting through the struggles of Arj, and then Jeff, and also romantic foil Elena (played by Keke Palmer), working so hard for so little while Jeff, and then Arj, live in such leisure, comfort, and luxury. Because it is so true. And because I know which side of that spectrum I’m closer to (sitting in my premium seat, on a Monday afternoon).

Warning that I’m about to be a little spoilery about the ending…

Continue reading “Some Good Fortune” →

Relationship lessons from movies

Without meaning to, we went through a series of movies about couples (before breaking the spell with Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, which is very sweet, and not in a bad way): You Hurt My Feelings, Anatomy of a Fall, Simple comme Sylvain / The Nature of Love, and Past Lives. These are the key questions each one seems to address.

You Hurt My Feelings

Is honesty the best policy?

The least artsy of this collection of movies, I suppose, it centres on a happily married couple, Beth and Don, whose relationship is shook when she overhears him honestly tell his brother-in-law that he didn’t like her novel, which is still working its way toward publication. Things become tense and initially, Don has no idea why.

Beth and Don are also having work struggles: Don is a psychiatrist with some unhappy clients, who feel that he hasn’t really helped them. Beth is stunned to discover that the students in her small writing class not only hadn’t read her previous book; they didn’t even know she’d written one. And their son is wilting under the pressure of their expectations, and is angry about it.

So yeah, it’s a movie about relatively privileged people and their relatively minor personal problems. But it’s snappily written, funny, and very well cast, with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tobias Menzies as the lead characters. Jean and I both enjoyed it.

As to the question… Well, in life, as in the movie, sometimes you do want to blunt your honesty in order to be encouraging. But it can go too far. At a certain point, a relationship should be strong enough to handle the truth that you don’t, in fact, appreciate those V-neck sweaters you’ve been gifted with every year.

Anatomy of a Fall

Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?

OK, the question is from Hamilton, but it still seems apropos for this movie. The husband and father, Samuel, dies at the start of it, from falling out of his office window. His wife Sandra is the only one home at time. Their partly sighted son Daniel is the one who comes across the body, after a walk with his dog. We, the audience, don’t see what caused the fall.

Sandra lives, Samuel dies, but who tells the story? Initially, Sandra, mostly, as she’s trying to defend herself against an accusation of murder. Daniel also participates, and in doing so, realizes that he has decide what he believes is the truth about what he heard. But in one of the movies many twists—the nature of which I won’t reveal—even Samuel is able to give some input as to his state of mind at the time.

This was a fascinating one, and I came to my own conclusions about what I believed happened—but not because the movie spoon-fed them to me. The facts remain ambiguous to the end, a fact Jean found deeply unsettling.

Simple comme Sylvain / The Nature of Love

Do opposites attract?

Sometimes, for sure, and this movie, the most popular Québecois film of 2023, presents one such case. Sophia, a philosophy professor, is in a comfortable but staid long-term relationship with another professor when she meets Sylvain, a handsome craftsman hired to do some renovations on her country home. Sophia and Sylvain’s attraction is quick and deep and soon consummated. And consummated again. And again.

Though she initially tells herself it will just be a fling, ending things proves harder than expected and Sophia starts to wonder about the possibility of a long-term relationship with Sylvain. But they are very different, in education, background, wealth, interests… Each phase of their relationship is punctuated by a section of Sophia’s lecture in the course she’s giving about the nature of love (philosophically speaking).

That structure made me think of Le déclin de l’empire américain, though this film, directed by Monia Chokry, definitely has its own strong vision. Jean and I were both drawn in, and he was better at predicting how things would turn out. Fun fact: This movie beat Oppenheimer as Best Foreign Film at the César Awards in France.

Past Lives

Do you ever really get over your first love?

Easy question; of course you don’t! But few people have the trajectory with their first love as the one followed in this film. Nora and Hae Sung are childhood friends in South Korea. Nora’s mom, wanting her to have good memories of South Korea before the family immigrates to Canada, arranges for them to go on a “date”, the apex of which is them holding hands.

But with her family’s pending departure, the two friends are separated before any true, mature romance can bloom. Years later, though, they find one another on Facebook. The sparks still seem to be there, but so is the distance…

By the time Nora and Hae Sung finally do meet again, in New York, Nora is married to Arthur, a perfectly decent guy who is a good sport about the whole thing.

This is a very low-key, gentle movie—too understated for Jean, who gave up partway through. But I quite enjoyed this exploration of the paths not taken, of the forces beyond your control, and what you do with that knowledge. It was lovely.