Fear ye not lady readers! I have returned from my fearless mission! Now I know I said I was going to toss some barrels with the big boys but when I got there they were EXTREMELY big and they were on fire. In fact one man lost an arm and a small child perished in the flames. I read about this in the local paper however, for I unfortunately didn't make it to the toss pot parade. My lovely friend George just makes the best mulled cider you see, and we WERE in Devon. One thing led to another and before I knew where I was, I was dancing on a haystack with a village local. Then black, maybe I fell? Don't remember much after that, except vague memories of snorting my H&B steroids... Anyway posie projects posie projects posie projects: Posie's projects just keep coming, eh gals? I'm planning a move into movie reviewing,
everyone's doing it and I met a nice lady at G2 who says they're always looking for experienced contributors to their pages, a far cry from the attitude they adopted when I was a humble work experience gal in the 1990s - "Oh no
Posie, they said, you can't be a journalist, but you can be my PA if you like. Minimum wage? What's that? Oh no
Posie, women's pay cuts aren't a 'story', not unless we can find a victim to profile. Can you find a victim
Posie? We need a victim! We need a victim!"
Fucking hacks.
I was half tempted to tell them to stick it, especially seeing as Paul
Pott, the bastard Junior Features ed. who I worked under, sometimes literally (yes gals, a budding journo's gotta do what a budding journo's etc ad
nauseam) is now Head of Features, whatever that means. Fortunately the temptation to 'stick it to the man', via the use of, you guessed it, an expertly penned 'feature' plastered all over his precious
Gbloody2 was too, too much.
So, here goes. Let me know what you think!
I've Loved you So Long (0ct 2008. French) Reviewed by
Posie Rider.
Starring the inimitable Kristen Scott Thomas, this heartbreaking film charts the return to sanity of a woman who has been in prison for killing her son! Supported by her slightly wet sister, a professor of 'literature' at an unspecified French University, she rebuilds her life and starts doing proper things again, as for example when she leaves prison she looks very haggard, but by the middle of the film she's wearing earrings and make-up and smoking a lot less. Along the way she attracts a myriad of male
suitors, some of whom kill themselves and others who are sensitive and like art - I know how you feel sister!
This film was
particularly engrossing for one of two reasons. Firstly, Scott-Thomas is especially beautiful, whether she is looking haggard or not. I only just resisted the temptation to touch her face. I would have mostly liked to stroke her powdery eyelids.
Secondly, the portrayal of the relationship between the two main characters (who are WOMEN) is very strong, as they manage to talk for entire scenes without mentioning their husbands, children or sex lives. And, seeing as the film is about a woman who killed her child, this is far from easy.
The film was in French, although at one point a character, who was a bit mad, spoke in English, and do you know the remarkable thing was, I didn't even notice! And they had been speaking French the
whole way through. I turned to my compatriots, terribly literary types who know about these sorts of things, and they had
definitely noticed. I wonder why I didn't? Perhaps I am far more intelligent than I actually realised.
The plot dwindled, however, towards the end when we discovered why she had in fact killed her child - just when I was beginning to revel in the challenging Medea re-imagined undertones, it turns out the child was ill and she was just 'being kind'. Now, this was disappointing. Some slushy sentimentalists were sated by this, I'm sure, but it begs the question: is art house cinema (I assume this was art house, I mean it was in French although the sound track was a little Dawson's Creek) sorry, is art house cinema not brave enough to tackle an honest portrait of a female child-murderer? Would it not have been far more interesting to force us into sympathy with a character we knew was technically pathological?
OBViously NOT. The rights to my own novel,
Me Tim and My Quim, were recently
acquired by Paramount, and the first thing they did was to scour my viciously acerbic psycho-lust psychological thriller of all of its
challenging sexual elements: the rape of the gerbil, Rosie's botched suicide attempt with a
Gillete Ladyshave, Tim's death at the hands of Rosie's friend Lucy who simply couldn't take Rosie talking about Tim any more. I know, right? Well, suffice to say, once Cameron
Diaz has had her famous 'creative input',
ie. grubby little fingers, all over it, it'll be as weak as a Starbuck's Chai Latte.
Anyway, I can't help but think that they softened this movie somewhat in translation. Perhaps the original script was far more edgy, and perhaps she killed her kid because she just didn't like him? Another criticism is there were an awful of redemptive scenes in which she made cakes and did the washing up - cue gushing music and lingering shots of her lovely puffy eyes.
I hope I'm not alone in saying I would rather have my tubes tied than spend a Saturday afternoon making scones.
Summary - 3 Stars.
***
