I'm Just not that into it

He’s just not that into you

OK let me start this story with the fact that when I left the house to see this film, I told my housemate I was popping to the corner shop. Soon realizing that she might wonder where I was after an hour, I then texted her saying I was at the cinema. By the time I arrived home I was prepared to answer the first question that was flung at me:

Her: What did you go and see?
Me: Oh just that Benjamin Button film…

I wanted to see this film because I’m genuinely interested in what Hollywood thinks (or sets) as the zeitgeist in terms of women and relationships. I’ve spent a long time trying to come to terms with my enjoyment of Sex and the City while so many seek to level at it the anti-feminist accusation that all the female characters ultimately want is a man.

I did actually find something liberating in that episode of SATC where Berger tells Miranda that her reluctant date is just not that into her (which inspired the book, which inspired the film…). I don’t think it’s a bad thing for women to be less deluded about a guy’s feelings. I’ve certainly convinced myself that someone’s into me when they clearly weren’t, and obviously in retrospect, wish I’d seen the light earlier.

Other motivations for seeing this movie include last week's Guardian article which I wanted to explore.

But even before reading that, I’d looked at the cast of this movie and passively mused, “Jennifer Connelly – Requiem for a dream – respected actress? Jennifer Aniston – a chance for her to make a positive reaction to that media characterization of her as the desperate-unlucky-in-love singleton? Drew Barrymore – sure she’s been in some crap, but isn’t she about empowering women, Charlie’s Angels, Exec producing all her flicks etc. Ben Affleck, he’s made a big thing about making respectable movies, no?” Apparently, my relationships are not the only area of life in which I am deluded.

HYNTIY is a truly crude attempt to portray the panorama of different situations a desperate female faces (singledom, unwillingness of partner to marry, unfaithful partner) which drags its ‘heroines’ so far through the mud and the stocks before their eventual emancipation/happy endings (finding a man, getting engaged, getting divorced) that my face was almost locked irreversibly into a scrunched-up prune (or maybe a date would be more apt) by the time the credits rolled.

Ginnifer Goodwin undoubtedly drew the short straw as Gigi, one of the most terror-inducing characters I’ve had to witness on screen. Gigi is single and spends the whole film entangled with wanky city boy types who are clearly ‘just not that into her’ – clear to everyone except her who is actually one of those characters who stare at the phone imploring it to ring. By the time she has met the friend of one of her rejectors, who subsequently becomes her confidant (brutally making it clear how much these guys are not into her) it’s pretty obviously they’re sleighriding into their eventual romantic union – but this doesn’t happen before GiGi physically throws herself upon him after his party, only to be literally and metaphorically pushed off. The scene where she hassles a guy to be more precise about who will actually be calling who following their number exchange had my stomach physically in knots. All I was thinking was ‘please God don’t let any men see this’. If I had taken a date to see this (which would never have happened) I would definitely have been getting up to ‘pop to the corner shop’ halfway through.

But Jennifer Aniston’s character fares little better. Following a conversation with an apparently enlightened Gigi, Beth goes home and confronts Neil (Affleck) that after 7 years he needs to marry her, or its over. Neil apparently doesn’t believe in marriage and therefore can’t deliver. Beth leaves, going straight off to her sister’s wedding (bar Beth, the last of the 4 to get married), where at the rehearsal dinner a sleazy uncle tells everyone during his speech that lucky for them all Beth is still on the shelf, if getting a little old.

Jennifer Connelly loses all respect I had for her as Janine (bear in mind that her scene at the ‘party’ in Requiem for a Dream is the scene that has most disturbed me in cinema – ever), wife of Ben (Bradley Cooper) who is slowly tempted into his first extra-marital affair with yoga-teaching wannabe singer Anna (Scarlett Johansson). Let’s pause for a moment and look at the character of Anna since she has clearly been included to facilitate the counter-argument that women can behave as badly as men. Her quite likeable - and extremely attractive - character teases an also likeable (and attractive) Ben into an affair which provides just about the only non-robotic dimension to the film as we wonder how Ben can ever resolve the situation torn between the two women. But there’s still a really uncomfortable sense of objectification as she finally tips him over the edge when she takes off all her clothes to go swimming, just as there is a cringeworthy sex scene in his office where Ben prepares to take her from behind, grabbing clumsily and forcefully at her bouncing breasts and suddenly losing all the tenderness that we might have seen between them. If I wasn’t feeling depressed by this point, Janine knocks at his locked door, Ben locks Anna in his stationary cupboard as his wife comes in. Janine is coming over having taken a personal day from work after telling her colleague that she and Ben no longer have sex. So, in an attempt to neatly tick that off she comes to see Ben and removes her top to reveal an elaborate corset, before awkwardly kneeling on top of him (despite his protestations). After the sex, she leaves and Anna emerges and tells him never to touch her again. Problem solved.

I can’t even be bothered to tell you about Drew Barrymore’s character who is pursing love online and after receiving a romantic voicemail from a suitor, proceeded to receive another voicemail from the same suitor, destined for another woman.

Drew actually ends up with the only male character who experiences any shred of the humiliation that the women endure. Conor (note that in writing this I’ve had to look up every single character’s name on IMDB since they were so unmemorable) is the first guy to reject Gigi, but somewhat gets his just desserts since the sex in his relationship with Scarlett Johansson has dried up, although she still visits, asks for massages etc, leaving him puzzled. But at least her eventual termination of their relationship is respectful.

Leaving this film I really felt emotionless. I couldn’t feel angry – maybe I didn’t want to waste any energy, good or bad, on this. A few days have since passed and my current feeling is one of sadness – it’s sad that Hollywood is perpetuating this myth about women being so intensely needy. The more men think this, the more they will treat us like shit. I only felt sadder on visiting the IMDB boards, where I always like to have a look, and seeing people vilifying Jennifer Aniston for looking hideously old. Is there any end to it? Then to the Oscars where the camera panned to Angelina twice during Jennifer’s introduction of the Best Animated Feature Award. Why would they do that? Oh yes – because Jennifer is only defined by her relationships.

In parts this film induced the same feelings in me as when I read a woman’s magazine – something that tells me that I am liberated, can treat men as I wish, be independent and empowered, and happy with my body – and then very subtly proceeds to victimize and indoctrinate me about how to keep my man (especially with sex tricks), how to spend my money on material things to keep me relevant and make me happy, how to improve my life for the better (or live vicariously through celebrities) because I clearly cannot be satisfied with what I’ve got. And in case I’m feeling down about my body, the cosmetic surgery ads in the back can provide a way to ease the pain. A very twisted sort of guilty pleasure that always leaves me feeling a bit dirty and wanting to put the magazine in the bin straight after. I’m now trying to put the memory of having seen this film into my brain’s bin. I am also promising you that thankfully I do not even have the slightest urge or morbid curiosity to see Confessions of a Shopaholic.

Laughing

Here's a couple of things that made me laugh hard lately:

http://is.gd/hh6n

http://tinyurl.com/6vgddh

Subtitling/dubbing

This depressed the hell out of me. I've just got back from Berlin where I swanned a little round the festival before having a lazy few days in the city where the hardest thing I did was party. Now, part of the reason I went was to scout it out for potential living area. I'm really done with the UK now and just want to get out of here. I'm an expat through and through. There is really only one thing putting me off moving to Berlin and it's not even the fact that I don't speak German.

They dub everything.

There was only one cinema in Berlin (apart from the illegal and underground ones) that showed current releases in the original language.

Personally I hate it when films are dubbed. I know this is the case for most of the western world, but I genuinely feel that you can't appreciate a film and its actors' performances unless you hear the original voice. But I can also understand that this is a cultural thing and if you've grown up with it, you're likely to be used to it. Furthermore, it made me wonder whether if foreign films were made widely available in the UK in dubbed versions, whether independent film would get a bigger audience? Comments like the one I posted above which I found on lovefilm serve to reinforce this idea. Although I don't like the idea of distorting/corrupting* (* delete as appropriate) a foreign film in this way, if more people could simply get used to the idea of watching foreign film, and really appreciate the different kind of stories they'll see, then surely in the long run it's a good thing?